Ken Rice posted in reply to Ronan Connolly's summary of his first 3 papers on climate.
"Yes, but if there is no greenhouse effect, then the surface temperature would be the non-greenhouse temperature (255 K)."-- Ken Rice, 2023
Short answer:
We get 255k when we assume earth's radiant heat loss is calculated by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law (SBL); without bothering even to add a correction for earth's emissivity. Such that earth cools predominantly by radiative emission throughout its entire atmosphere! (about 79% - at the surface, and 100% at the Top of the Atmosphere).
M = ε × σ × T4
M = 1 × 5.67e−08 × 2554 = 240 W/m² [ε = 1]
Yet the SBL only applies to an object in a vacuum. Earth's surface is bathed in a gas - its atmosphere. So SBL does not apply to earth's surface.
and if it did, there'd be an emissivity term in the calculation, which Ken and his self-styled 'climate consensus' have erroneously left out too! As I see it: their numbers, even within their own frame of reference, are deliberately wrong! Q: Why?
Long answer:
The GHE assumes radiation dominates heat transport throughout ALL earth's atmosphere. For example, two energy balance diagrams (for the surface), written by GHE fans, show:
| K+T1997 W/m² | NASA W/m² | Convective version W/m² | ||
| (eb1) | 168 | 163.3 | 163.3 | Incoming solar |
| (eb2) | 324 | 340.3 | 1 | Incoming infrared 'backradiation' |
| (eb3) | 390 | 398.2 | 1 | Outgoing infrared |
| (eb4) | 78 | 88.4 | 88.4 | Outgoing latent heat |
| (eb5) | 24 | 18.4 | 74.9 | Outgoing convection |
Both examples have numbers in the same ball-park. I think Ken and myself agree on two of these numbers: (eb1) sunlight, and (eb4) evapotranspiration. But we disagree on the values for infrared, (eb2), (eb3) and convection (eb5).
We disagree on the two largest values and the smallest one! Evidence tells me the values shown for (eb2), (eb3), and (eb5) are very wrong.
That 255 K figure, is derived by Ken here (Ken Rice, 2017):
"Let’s imagine we have the Earth, but without an atmosphere (or with an atmosphere that is completely transparent). In such a scenario, the surface must radiate back into space – on average – as much energy as it receives from the Sun. If it didn’t, it would either heat up, or cool down, until it did so. If we assume this imaginary Earth has the same albedo as today’s Earth, and orbits today’s Sun, then it would reflect 30% of the incoming sunlight, and would absorb – on average – 240 W/m². It would also, therefore, radiate 240 W/m² and would have an effective surface temperature of 255K"
- KR-2017
Why do I disagree over 255K?
Because I assume:
(a1) Earth warms quickly as radiation travels at the speed of light.
(a2) Earth cools slowly because - in the lower atmosphere: it predominantly cools by convection and conduction, which travel, at best, at the speed of sound. Plus earth has a significant heat capacity. These factors explain why earth's actual temperature = 288K, not 255K.
The greenhouse effect is, of course, the difference between 288 (earth's actual temperature) and 255 = +33C. We're told this +33C warming is due to greenhouse gases.
I disagree with Ken on his 255K number because Ken assumes earth mainly cools by radiation throughout its entire atmosphere. Earth's surface temperature is above 255 K (actually: 288 K), because earth's surface does not cool as quickly as Ken assumes.
(a3) If, like Ken, and his 'climate consensus', friends, one assumes that the Stefan-Boltzmann Law explains 80% of earth's cooling, then one concludes that without a GHE, the surface averages to 255K (or close to that).
My evidence for assumption (a2) is given by Tom Shula in his interview with Tom Nelson regarding how the empirical behaviour of the Pirani gauge precludes a greenhouse effect, GHE, as it's conventionally understood.
Tom Shula disagrees with the Ken, and the 'climate consensus' use of Stefan-Boltzmann Law, SBL, to calculate how earth cools. Their error is to apply SBL out of context. The SBL is ONLY applicable to an object in a vacuum. Even then: ONLY in special circumstances.
For example, Max Planck wrote a book on heat, translated into English in 1914. CHAPTER II, STEFAN-BOLTZMANN LAW OF RADIATION, page 67 begins with a long discussion of an imaginary apparatus for investigating black body radiation. The apparatus which Max Planck describes to elucidate the Stefan-Boltzmann Law reads nothing like the surface of the earth. Planck begins:
"For the following we imagine a perfectly evacuated hollow cylinder with an absolutely tight-fitting piston free to move in a vertical direction with no friction. A part of the walls of the cylinder, say the rigid bottom, should consist of a black body, whose temperature T may be regulated arbitrarily from the outside. The rest of the walls including the inner surface of the piston may be assumed as totally reflecting."
I looked but I can find almost no one, in physics, who measured radiation in a none vacuum!
HELP ME: Please help me here Ken. Please cite some published experiments, done to show the SBL still applies to a surface in a non-vacuum (such as earth bathed in its atmosphere).
Fortunately, the Pirani gauge gives us an experimental setup to investigate heat transport where all of: radiation, convection and conduction can compete to cool a black body, or near black body.
We discover, that at, for example, 65C - a typical temperature used in Pirani gauge measurements, the contribution by radiation is almost negligible when 1 atmosphere of air is present. For each 100W cooling by conduction and convection, ONLY 0.4W of cooling is done by radiation.
The Pirani gauge
So far this - Pirani gauge is the ONLY setup I've seen for measuring radiative output when conduction and convection are also available to cool a body.
PS 1:
Does anyone else find it appalling that the Wikipedia entry on the SBL does not mention that the law only applies to bodies in a vacuum?
A suspicious person might conclude there's a global conspiracy of scientists to misrepresent the behaviour of the SBL, in order to con us into believing we're in a "climate crisis" - alternatively - someone who's read Andy West's new book "The Grip of Culture will understand that climate alarm is a cultural entity, in a similar vein to political and religious movements such as Communism or one of the monotheistic religions.". Also: we all know scientists would never do such a thing - conspire! They are paragons of virtue and saintlyness, who would never lie or dissemble - according to the tennants of the climate alarm cultural entity.
PS 2:
Consider the large backradiation value in the energy budgets: 324 W/m² (K+T1997) / 340.3 W/m² (NASA). This number is added to the energy budget to balance out the massive blackbody outgoing radiation previously calculated (390 / 398.2 ). Backradiation is an equation balancing device. It is also the rationale for the GHE! How convenient, to add a GHE by such slight of hand. If no argues against how the SBL is used, then everyone must agree on the backradiation term, so also agree with the GHE calculated by the 'climate consensus'; and so - ultimately agree with the 'climate crisis', and its net zero cure.
PS 3:
As an aside, I should add that both figures provided by NASA and K+T for radiative emissions: 390 W/m², 398.2 W/m² are obviously too high, even when assuming the Stefan-Boltzmann Law does determine earth's surface radiance! The SBL =
M = ε × σ × T4
M = emittance (watts); ε = emissivity (unit-less), ε = 1 (black body), ε = 0.92 (average earth surface); σ = Stefan-Boltzmann constant = 5.67 × 10−8 W/m² × K-4). , and T = temperature of the emitter. Assuming ε = 0.92, K+T-1997 should've calculated M = 359 W/m². It is ONLY 390 W/m² when one assumes all of earth's surface is a black body emitter - which is obviously a wrong assumption.
Earth's emissivity varies from 0.65 (desert) to 0.95 (water and ice). Given, a third of land is desert, and earth's emissivity is NEVER greater than 0.95; I calculated an average emissivity = 0.92 to get the theoretical: M = 359 W/m²
| Oceans | + Desserts | + Antarctica | + The rest | |
| 71% × 0.95 | + 4.5% × 0.65 | + 4.5% × 0.75 | + 3% × 0.95 | + 17% × 0.9 |
| Earth's average emissivity = | 0.919 | |||
Suppose Ken's imaginary average earth surface temperature = 255 K. Then:
M = ε × σ × T4
M = 0.92 × 5.67×10e-08 × 2554 = 221 W/m²
Ken gets M = 240 W/m²; 8%, or so, too high because he neglects the emissivity term in his SBL
Ken seems to be treating the earth's surface as a black body (assuming its emissivity = 1). It does not. Earth's emissivity is not greater than 0.92.
I cannot even agree with Ken, and his 'climate consensus' allies on how to correctly use the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. I apply the emissivity correction to it. They do not. I doubt they will even justify their assumption that earth's emissivity = 1; when it is obviously not.
LOL. In their energy budget diagram, of 2017, NASA have fraction numbers all over, but they cannot be bothered to correctly apply Stefan-Boltzmann to their own calculations - giving their numbers for OLR and backradiation, at least, an 8% built-in error!
Decades of making stuff up, left them conceited and vainglorious. Or maybe they were already, conceited and vainglorious? That'd explain why the side with The Man's 'net zero', against the people.
Summary:
- Climate consensus energy balance diagrams are completely wrong. In particular the figure for convection (thermals), and infrared radiation (out outgoing, and backradiation) - are totally wrong.
- The figures are wrong because those are the numbers which the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, SBL, gives us.
- But the SBL is invalid because it ONLY applies to objects in a vacuum. Earth's surface is NOT in a vacuum.
- The operation of the Pirani gauge shows what a realistic ratio should be for radiation : convection and conduction, 1 : 250; at earth's surface.
- This changes the outgoing radiation - at the surface - to below 1W/m²; the back-radiation may be close to that too; Convection and conduction will take up the rest of the slack ~ 74.9 W/m²
- A greenhouse gas effect is ONLY required if one assumes radiation dominates cooling in the lower atmostphere. It clearly does not. Remember the wind you feel - that's convection. I repeat: the evidence of the Pirani gauge shows convection dominates radiation when cooling earth's surface.
- BTW: Evapotranspiration is latent heat moved by convection.
- As air thins, higher up in altitude, radiation becomes more important.
- Modellers, such as James Hansen, theorize a window opening to space - at an imaginary altitude where the atmosphere thinned so much that it is too sparse above to reabsorb radiation emitted to space from below. So the radiation escapes earth. Hansen calculated this window to be less than 10km above - still within the tropophere! This is key for him because Hansen's greenhouse effect happens here! (at this imaginary place):
The basic physics underlying this global warming, the greenhouse effect, is simple. An increase of gases such as CO2 makes the atmosphere more opaque at infrared wavelengths. This added opacity causes the planet's heat radiation to space to arise from higher, colder levels in the atmosphere, thus reducing emission of heat energy to space. The temporary imbalance between the energy absorbed from the sun and heat emission to space, causes the planet to warm until planetary energy balance is restored.
-- James Hansen 2011
The location of this supposed window to space - within the tropsophere - is crucial for Hansen's greenhouse effect to work, as he assumes "This added opacity causes the planet's heat radiation to space to arise from higher, colder levels in the atmosphere" If this window were above the troposphere there could not be any greenhouse effect according to Hansen! - because the atmosphere stops cooling at the top of the troposphere where the tropopause begins!
<- therefore no man-made warming - no need to abandon fossil fuels - no ULEZ - no need for net zero - ...
It's astounding how tendentious this greenhouse effect is. The special conditions it requires cannot be met. - I think the evidence from the Pirani gauge shows that if Hansen's window of emission exists - it must be at a higher altitude - above the troposphere!
- At the very top of the troposphere (ToT), air pressure is still above 200 Torr. Radiative cooling does not dominate convection and conduction until the pressure is approaching 0.01 Torr (see Pirani gauge pressure diagram above). At 200 Torr (ToT) - the Pirani gauge diagram shows conduction and convection doing almost as much cooling as it does at 1 atmosphere!
So it looks like James Hansen's greenhouse effect was fiction too.
- In the diagram of Earth's Atmosphere (above) James Hansen's imaginary window - where radiation escapes to space - is located at an altitude below the summit of Mount Everest. Where the atmosphere is still over 260 Torr. In the Pirani gauge diagram, atmospheric pressure, 760 Torr intersects the green curve at about 101 Watts. But 260 Torr intesects at about 100 Watts. So convection still dominates. I can't believe James Hansen's imaginary windown exists at an altitude where conduction and covection are still dominant in cooling. I can't believe in a greenhouse effect.
- Q: But if I think this Stefan-Boltzmann Law is unimportant in cooling earth's surface, why did I spend so much time on it above?
A: Because alarmists misuse it. In particular none of them seem to use a proper term for emissivity! Ken Rice, Kiehl, Trenberth and NASA all miss it. If they cannot be honest about using their most important equation (SBL) - by always including a realistic emissivity term for earth - how can they be honest over anything else?
Hadley Cells
A Hadley Cell is large scale convective movement of air into the tropics which pushes warmer air up. Such warm, moist air releases it's moisture as it cools (which rising in altitude will cause), at the tropics. Hadley and Ferrel Cells explain the trade winds. The Westerlies and Easterlies.
Anyone with any understanding of earth's climate system, knows that convection if the main reason for earth's surface cooling; and the the claim of the IPCC that 79% of earth surface cooling is due to radiative emissions is an incompetent lie.
Citations:
- c1. Max Planck, 1914 (translation), The Theory of Heat Radiation
- c2. K+T1997: Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997
- c3. NASA 2023 : What is Earth’s Energy Budget?
- c4. Ken Rice, 2017
- c5. Tom Shula white paper:
- c6. Tom Shula interview with Tom Nelson
- c7. James Hansen et. al. 2011; 1 Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications Atmos. Chem. Phys. 2011, 11, 13421-13449. doi:10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011
- c8. Andy West, 2023, The Grip of Culture
No comments:
Post a Comment