Based on Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures Feb 2013, Douglas J Cotton.
Also see my other papers including Comprehensive Refutation of the Radiative Forcing Greenhouse Hypothesis at https://ssrn.com/author=2627605.
Website: http://www.climate-change-theory.com
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Most people don’t like physics, probably because they don’t understand much of it, especially thermodynamics and entropy. In climatology texts I have shown precisely how and where the laws of physics are disregarded and/or altered so as to be incorrect, but usable to “explain” their false radiative forcing “greenhouse” conjecture.
When we apply the laws of physics correctly everything falls into place and science is confirmed by empirical evidence, as it should be.
It is no longer a “coincidence” that planetary systems have just the right temperature gradient from the core to the tropopause, getting down to just the right temperature there so as to be in radiative balance with the Sun. It’s not a coincidence at all, because it happens the other way around: the temperature plot builds up going downwards from that anchoring layer.
Many other “mysteries” are also solved, not least of which is how the surfaces of Earth and Venus receive the required thermal energy to rise in temperature during the day, balancing the cooling from the night before. Is convection going downwards during the day? Well, study what I have explained and find out what is really happening, because the Sun’s direct radiation to the surface is way too little to explain the mean temperature.
You can be enlightened, or you can stick with such mysteries seemingly unsolved: that’s your choice, because I just write here to help those who want to learn.
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The world needs to focus more on what is and what is not the correct physics that does in fact explain temperatures and energy transfers both on Earth and other planets. That correct physics has nothing to do with radiation reaching a planet’s surface, because nearly all such solar radiation is not sufficient to raise the existing temperatures. Most solar radiation merely warms the upper troposphere and stratosphere, and this is very obvious for Venus if you apply Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. The “greenhouse effect” assumes incorrectly that the most prolific so-called “greenhouse gas” water vapour warms the Earth’s surface by most of 33 degrees on average. So, given that water vapour concentrations vary between about 1% and 4% we could deduce from the invalid “science” that rain forests should be more than 50 degrees hotter than dry deserts at similar latitude and altitude. Of course they are not, and that disproves the “settled” science. My study showed that, in the real world, the more moist regions have lower mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures than the drier regions. Water vapour cools, and it’s just as well that it does. So does carbon dioxide, but by less than 0.1 degree.
In all of world literature there is nothing which correctly explains the necessary thermal energy transfers on planets other than this website and my linked papers, videos and book. You need to study this and, if you think you can fault the physics, then write in the comment thread here and, if you can, produce a different hypothesis which correctly explains both planetary temperatures and the required heat transfers in accord with the laws of physics, and is supported by empirical evidence of the greenhouse gases water vapor and carbon dioxide actually warming the Earth’s surface as is implied by the standard greenhouse explanations. So far nobody has proven my “heat creep” hypothesis wrong. You’d do better to recognise that it’s correct physics and spread the word in the fight against the hoax.
Douglas Cotton (Author of the book: “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All.”)
Dr ROY SPENCER – AMATEUR PHYSICIST
By pointing his IR thermometer at a cloud and reading a temperature of about -3°C our friendly climatologist Roy Spencer claims he has proved the truth of the radiative forcing greenhouse conjecture because he says the sensor in the thermometer is affected by the radiation. He doesn’t say if its temperature rises or falls – just that it changes. Well, actually it changes downwards, because the radiated heat is not coming from the cloud – it is going towards the cloud from the instrument, which measures its own rate of cooling as a result. He doesn’t perhaps realize that his 3°C cloud is not actually radiating like a true “blackbody” in Space, and it cannot possibly be providing anything like the 324W/m^2 that the IPCC and NASA energy diagrams claim to be a global mean for the atmospheric radiation – roughly twice the 168W/m^2 of Solar radiation reaching the surface. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn’t 324W/m^2 on average, but whatever the case, such radiation does not help the Sun to heat the surface, and in fact it does not even penetrate the oceans. Roy knows this, but seems immune to the evidence that it provides.
The fundamental underlying assumption of the greenhouse conjecture is that, without greenhouse gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane, there would be no convection in the atmosphere and (since they think it requires convection for there to be a temperature gradient) the whole atmosphere, they think, and Roy Spencer documents, would supposedly collapse temperature-wise until isothermal (same-temperature) conditions prevail at all altitudes. Spencer et al come to this conclusion because of a very incorrect concept taught by climatologists to the next generation of climatologists. That concept is that there are imaginary parcels of air rising, expanding and getting cooler as a result. Well, unfortunately for their conjecture, molecules move around randomly and nothing restricts them to any confined space (or parcel) in the open air. Instead, as you will read in my paper linked above, everything happens at the molecular level due to molecular collisions.
In developing my hypothesis, variable weather conditions are ignored because they tend to average out globally, and we consider the net effect of what happens in molecular collisions and free flight between those collisions. Below, for real physicists, is what really happens as the temperature gradient evolves …
In the state of thermodynamic equilibrium in a column of the troposphere the pressure from above and below any horizontal plane is equal. Because pressure is proportional to the product of temperature and density, and because there can be no transfer of energy or matter across any internal boundary when there is thermodynamic equilibrium, we can deduce that, for any horizontal plane, there must be equal numbers of molecules crossing upwards as there are crossing downwards, and the mean kinetic energy of each group while crossing the plane must be equal.
Now, for the numbers to be equal we note that the effect of gravity creates a slightly greater than 50% chance that net downward motion will occur between molecular collisions. This means that there must be a higher density below the plane and a lower one above. So we have a density gradient.
And, for the temperatures to be equal, this means that (because molecules gain Kinetic Energy with downward motion) there must have been lower mean molecular KE (temperature) above the plane and warmer temperature below. Hence there is a temperature gradient.
See also the item “EXPLANATION TO Dr ROY SPENCER AS TO WHY HE IS MISTAKEN” below towards the end of this post.
THE FICTITIOUS, FIDDLED PHYSICS OF CLIMATOLOGY
The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that, in an isolated system, entropy will never decrease in any independent process. The combination of two or more inter-dependent processes may be considered to be a single independent process. For example, in a siphon the two sides may be considered to host inter-dependent processes, so water will flow upwards on one side provided that it must flow further downwards on the other side because of the inter-dependence. But water will not flow up a creek to a lake on top of a mountain just because it will subsequently flow further down the other side. Hence, a one-way pencil of radiation must obey the second law because there is no inter-dependence with any reverse pencil of radiation. For example, radiation may heat some water, but some of the energy may exit the water via evaporation or conduction into the surrounding air. Nothing compels it to exit via radiation. Once the electro-magnetic energy in the radiation is converted to thermal energy (as only happens in a cooler target) then the new thermal energy can escape by any heat transfer process, and such a process is totally independent of the first process. Entropy will not decrease in either process. So radiation from the colder atmosphere cannot warm the surface by supplying new thermal energy to the surface. The radiation is pseudo-scattered – a process which (energy-wise) is similar to diffuse reflection.
Now, in the fictitious fiddled physics of climatology the incorrect assumption is made that pencils of radiation from the colder atmosphere can transfer thermal energy into a warmer surface, thus creating an independent process that would decrease entropy. Nature does not permit this, and the way that it prevents it happening is absolutely fascinating. It was the subject of extensive research I did before writing my paper on radiated energy that is linked at the foot of this page.
You can prove what I say is correct with a simple experiment in your backyard. Suspend a mercury bulb thermometer horizontally in a sunny spot. Let’s say that, early one morning it reads 15C – the assumed global mean surface temperature which climatologists want you to be gullible enough to believe is brought about by the combination of direct solar radiation and about twice as much radiation from the atmosphere. But your thermometer is also receiving radiation from the ground beneath so why is it not much hotter? Suppose you now block most of the ground radiation with a large tray filled with ice and placed just under your suspended thermometer. Try it and see if you can explain the temperature readings by adding all the radiation to get a net effect. You can’t, because radiation does not compound like that, and radiation from the colder atmosphere cannot be added to solar radiation in Stefan Boltzmann calculations because the Second Law cannot be violated.
Fortunately there’s more to the Second Law than you realize, and this has now been known since the 1980’s in more recent work by physicists including myself. That’s what you can learn about in my second paper (linked on the same page) that explains the process which accounts for all planetary temperatures and the necessary heat transfers that support such temperatures. It’s a whole new paradigm – a totally different ball park. And of course it proves the greenhouse conjecture to be false, whilst also explaining the observed fact that water vapor does not warm the surface by about 20 degrees for each 1% of WV in the atmosphere – another piece of garbage the IPCC would like you to believe.
WHAT EACH COUNTRY SHOULD SEEK BEFORE SUPPORTING THE HOAX
Governments should pay due diligence and ask for verifiable physics which shows what physical mechanism supplies the thermal energy (“heat”) required to maintain the mean surface temperature of Earth, and how the increase of carbon dioxide supposedly causes that mechanism to increase the surface temperature each morning.
If you provide me here with some future “explanation” that they provide then I will expose the errors in their physics, as I have done regarding their “gold standard” textbook by Pierrehumbert.
They will try to prove that the surface temperature is determined by radiation. It is not, as I have explained in my website http://climate-change-theory.com.
Because the Sun’s direct radiation is not strong enough, they will claim that they can add about twice as much radiation from the colder atmosphere supposedly helping the Sun to raise the surface temperature each morning. It can’t, because heat cannot be transferred from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface.
They will say, yes it can provided more heat comes back out. That is not correct: it is just like saying water could flow up a hillside to a lake at the top provided that it subsequently flows further down the other side.
They will say that, when they add this radiation from the atmosphere that they then have 390 watts per square metre and that this flux produces a temperature of 15C.
But, even though the 390 figure is wrong (because it includes radiation from the atmosphere) it still does not give anything like 15C as a mean temperature. That is because the flux is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. Hence, if the flux varies (as it does) the effective mean temperature produced by that variable flux is always much colder than the temperature produced by uniform flux equal to the mean of the variable flux – that’s a mathematical fact.
All their “science” is wrong and in the wrong ball park. What happens is here: http://climate-change-theory.com.
Doug Cotton (author of the book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All”)
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE “HEAT CREEP” PROCESS
There have been significant developments in the understanding of entropy maximization and the Second Law of Thermodynamics since the 1980’s as you can read at this site: http://entropylaw.com where you will note that we can determine what will happen in a natural process if we understand the existence of unbalanced energy potentials and what will happen as those potentials dissipate. The reduction of unbalanced energy potentials is synonymous with entropy increasing, and the complete dissipation is synonymous with maximum entropy, namely the state called “thermodynamic equilibrium” by physicists. Such a state normally only has homogeneous temperature in a horizontal plane in a gravitational field. In a vertical plane, when energy potentials have all dissipated, there is a homogeneous sum of mean molecular (kinetic energy + gravitational potential energy) and thus there is a temperature gradient because temperature is proportional to mean molecular kinetic energy.
Inter-molecular radiation has a temperature leveling effect (as seen with water vapor) but not all molecules radiate significantly, and so the leveling effect is incomplete and it merely reduces the magnitude of the temperature gradient by up to about a third in some planetary tropospheres such as in moist regions in our own. For the planet Uranus, the reduction is less than about 10% of the magnitude of the gradient that is determined by -g/cp where g is the acceleration due to the planet’s gravity and cp is the weighted mean specific heat of the gases.
Now, because the temperature gradient in a planet’s troposphere is the state of thermodynamic equilibrium (maximum entropy) any subsequent absorption of new solar energy (mostly in the upper troposphere and the stratosphere) each planetary morning causes the equilibrium state to be disturbed because it creates new unbalanced energy potentials, there being then more energy (PE+KE) at the top of a column in the troposphere. To restore maximum entropy, some of the extra energy will have to move downwards (yes, to warmer regions) and that is how the required thermal energy gets into a planet’s surface by diffusion (molecular collision processes) in order to raise the temperature of that surface each morning. Solar radiation cannot do it, and there is none anyway at the base of the 350Km high nominal troposphere of Uranus, but it’s hotter than Earth’s surface down there, despite being about 30 times further from the Sun. Nor does radiation from the colder atmosphere to the surface.
For more detail, complete with explanatory diagrams, please visit http://climate-change-theory.com where you can watch a 43 minute video presentation and read my peer-reviewed paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” that was published in February, 2013.
Doug Cotton (author of the book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All”)
WHY THE IPCC AND PIERREHUMBERT ARE WRONG
Here are calculations using the (incorrect) IPCC net flux of 390W/m^2 into the surface* where we assume that there is really variable flux that contributes to the 390 figure and it applies to five equal zones that receive 20%, 60%, 100%, 140% and 180% of the mean of 390W/m^2. This is far more realistic than using 390 for the whole globe including the dark side. Now, using the on-line Stefan-Boltzmann calculator at tutorvista.com (and all the flux, because the reflected component has been deducted) we get blackbody temperatures as shown below.
20% zone (78W/m^2) – 192.6K
60% zone (234W/m^2) – 253.5K
100% zone (390W/m^2) – 288.0K
140% zone (546W/m^2) – 313.5K
180% zone (702W/m^2) – 333.6K
Mean temperature 276.2K (about 3°C)
Firstly, the IPCC et al incorrectly assumed they could include the back radiation and so their energy diagrams show a net of 390W/m^2 into the surface, a slightly fudged figure I would suggest anyway, and one which ignores the outward radiation. But, note the temperature for 100% is 288K (they fluked it right with 390 – or did they?) – just what they wanted for the mean temperature.
But, even when they incorrectly added back radiation (which does not penetrate the ocean surface and so cannot warm it) they still “forgot” the T^4 relationship in S-B, effectively treating the Earth as a flat disc receiving uniform flux day and night. Pierrehumbert made the same mistake.
When we insert realistic variation into the flux (as above) we get a far colder (and unrealistic) mean temperature, and we always will – that’s a mathematical fact. And we should not have added the back radiation anyway.
Do you now see how gullible you have all been to accept the whole incorrect paradigm that radiation to a planet’s surface explains the temperature? It doesn’t, and that’s blatantly obvious on Venus, because how could the atmosphere deliver the required 20,000W/m^2 or more to explain the Venus surface temperature when the incident solar radiation even at TOA is only about an eighth of that? Because radiation does not determine the temperature, radiation from CO2 is irrelevant.
* A typical Energy Budget diagram can be seen on this page.
WHY WE NEED THE “HEAT CREEP” PROCESS
We know that, apart from direct solar radiation, there must be additional thermal energy entering a planet’s surface each morning and early afternoon because otherwise we don’t have any warming at those times, and we don’t have overall energy balance each 24 hours at the surface. In typical energy diagrams like the one on this page, they show back radiation of about 324W/m^2 into the surface, but the electro-magnetic energy in that radiation is not converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface, and so there is no heat transfer from cooler to warmer regions. Such heat transfers can never happen by radiation. Instead, a similar amount of thermal energy is actually delivered into the surface by conduction across the interface with the atmosphere. This was energy originally absorbed each morning from new solar radiation that is strong enough to raise the cold temperatures found mostly in the upper troposphere and above. This new energy must be what makes its way to the surface, but it does not do so by radiation. Only non-radiative processes (natural convective heat transfers) can transfer thermal energy up the sloping thermal plane, provided that the process is increasing entropy. This is because such processes depend upon energy being transferred by molecular collisions, and gravity acts on molecules in flight between collisions increasing their kinetic energy as their gravitational potential energy decreases. But, by definition, no energy is transferred across internal boundaries in a perfect state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Energy transfers only happen when new energy creates a state that is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, so that entropy can increase. If the new energy is at the top of a “column” of the troposphere, then a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium (with its associated temperature gradient) can only be attained if some of that new thermal energy at the top is dispersed downwards to warmer regions. That is what I have been first to explain does in fact happen, so that we know this “heat creep” process is possible, and it is indeed the missing link that explains the missing energy that raises the surface temperature each morning, even under thick cloud cover.
REFUTATION OF ATTEMPTS TO PROVE IT WRONG
Some believe they can disprove the gravito-thermal effect (that is, the effect whereby gravity forms a stable, equilibrium temperature gradient) with thought experiments such as attaching wires from the top to the base of a cylinder of gas. These thought experiments are refuted on this page.
Others think that the reverse temperature gradient in the oceans disproves the gravito-thermal effect. In fact, in polar regions in winter there can be observed in isolated lakes and some calm regions of the Arctic Ocean near Norway warmer temperatures at deeper depths. However, in most oceans there is a state approaching hydrostatic equilibrium, rather than the thermodynamic equilibrium required to observe the gravito-thermal effect. The “heat creep” process feeds thermal energy into the non-polar ocean surfaces, mostly by day, and thermal energy is driven downwards by natural convective heat transfers into the colder depths. From there the heat transfers can be expected to follow isotherms which eventually surface in polar regions. The floor of the ocean thus acts like a heat sink draining thermal energy from the tropics to the poles. Because of this heat sink, we can understand why the outer crust in the first 100 meters or so below the ocean floor is not much warmer than the cold, nearly freezing water at the ocean floor. In contrast, the outer crust just below solid surface regions is warmer in non-polar regions, being usually about the mean temperature of the surface above, though getting warmer at depths greater than the first hundred meters or so. The difference between the crust temperatures is due to the heat sink at the ocean floor.
THE QUESTIONS THAT STUMP LUKES AND WARMISTS
(1) You claimed an incremental rise in surface temperature can be expressed as a function of an incremental increase in carbon dioxide radiation which would normally come from a colder region of the atmosphere. Is that a reasonable summation of a key element of the greenhouse hypothesis?
(2) Assuming “yes” then I say that (to convince me of that hypothesis) I need empirical evidence that the surface temperature is a function of such radiation, because if it is not, then neither is the derivative of the temperature. Is that correct?
(3) Assuming “yes” then please explain at least one point on the graph. Doing so does not prove that the function is correct, but it at least supports it and does not disprove it. If you can’t explain even a single temperature with correct physics then I am not convinced in any way, shape or form. Is that reasonable?
(4) Assuming “yes” then please explain a typical surface temperature of, say, 15°C by demonstrating (using any relevant data about any flux) how you calculate 15°C from such typical radiative flux alone.
I would appreciate discussion of the physics only.
When they claim that a mean flux of 390W/m^2 explains 15°C (because that is the blackbody temperature) ask them if they understand that temperature is only proportional to the fourth root of the flux. Then, get them to agree that the flux varies a lot, and ask for calculations for five equal regions having 20%, 60%, 100%, 140% and 180% of the mean flux. (They will get a lower mean temperature around 3°C.) Finally, ask them why they think they can add together solar radiation and back radiation in their Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. Suggest that, if an electric bar radiator is raising the temperature of an object to 350K, then, if there were sixteen such radiators and we add all the flux, Stefan Boltzmann calculations would give a temperature of 700K. Ask if they think that would happen. Assuming “no” then ask why they think they can add solar radiation and back radiation. They cannot claim to be able to do so because they have just agreed that adding the flux from all the radiators does not give a realistic temperature. Any one such example disproves their conjecture that radiative fluxes can be compounded in that way.
EXPLANATION TO Dr ROY SPENCER AS TO WHY HE IS MISTAKEN
PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU WRITE A COMMENT
I still receive occasional comments from those who believe in the carbon dioxide hoax. The writers completely ignore the explanation of the “heat creep” hypothesis and merely regurgitate typical “explanations” of the so-called “greenhouse effect” whilst citing typical pal-reviewed papers.
Would all readers please understand that the “heat creep” hypothesis and the AGW greenhouse radiative forcing one are mutually exclusive: only one can be correct. Hence, if you cannot prove the “heat creep” hypothesis to be false (using the laws of physics) then you cannot prove the AGW conjecture to be correct.
Physics is a precise subject. Heat transfers in nature occur if and only if entropy is increasing. Indeed, every autonomous independent process in nature occurs because entropy is increasing (and so unbalanced energy potentials are diminishing) and all such processes cease when entropy reaches a maximum within the relevant constraints. So, you cannot deduce anything about any process unless you have a clear and precise understanding as to just exactly why unbalanced energy potentials are decreasing, why entropy is thus increasing and when and why it will cease doing so.
Hence, if you think you can prove the “heat creep” hypothesis false, then you need to explain why you think my analysis of the entropy maximization involved is incorrect.
FOOTNOTES AND BOOK REVIEWS
I don’t respond on social media to questions, assertive statements or attempted refutations of my “heat creep” hypothesis (for which there is overwhelming evidence) but you are welcome to write here on my blog if you cannot anticipate my response from the material already therein. As I have mentioned, the hypothesis is developed directly from the Second Law of Thermodynamics on which I have written over 30 pages in my 2012 and 2013 papers.
itsnotco2 
Please do NOT write comments here unless you have read the linked website and papers and have genuine and relevant matters to question or discuss.
Doug Cotton
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I received a question relating to acceptance by “scientists” of the greenhouse hoax. Most such “scientists” have been indoctrinated with the teachings of the infant science of Climatology, so it’s a closed shop with plenty of pal-reviewing. There are acknowledged political motives to destroy capitalism and you can all read books like “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science.” I am not going to be sidetracked further into discussion and postulation about the motives of many who of course have pecuniary interests in maintaining the hoax anyway. I have no such interests and the thousands of hours that I have put into research and discussion with others has all been unpaid, private time. Likewise the $3,000 invested in publishing my book was never expected to be recovered in royalties, and won’t be.
Doug Cotton
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Hi Doug,
Have just noticed your recent messages to me via facebook so here is my response:
” I agree that radiation between the atmospheric constituents doesn’t determine the temperature but radiation from outside plus energy absorption by mass held within the gravity field does.
Convective overturning seems a good enough method of keeping the surface warm once the atmosphere has reached hydrostatic equilibrium.The surface initially warmed when the atmospheric gases first accumulated and that energy is then retained in PE form along the vertical density / pressure gradient for as long as hydrostatic balance is maintained. The surface heat on Venus was first acquired when the atmosphere was formed and is then retained by the conversion of PE to KE in descending columns so one doesn’t need ‘heat creep’ at all in my humble opinion.”
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Whilst I have passed this comment by Stephen Wilde, I have done so as an example of the types of comments which will not pass moderation in future. The purpose of this blog is to allow discussion of the hypothesis that I have put forward and the physics I have explained. It is not for others to air their opinions as to what might be an alternative explanation. If you can’t fault what I have written, which is confirmed by planetary data and physical experiments, and which is developed using the laws of thermodynamics, then why look for an alternative? Stephen Wilde does just that, without indicating any understanding of my hypothesis. He assumed that the surface of Venus just somehow acquired its initial temperature when the atmosphere formed on Venus, but he makes no mention of how solar energy achieved this. The Sun’s radiation is only strong enough to raise the upper atmosphere of Venus to temperatures in the vicinity of 400K. Further down towards the surface the temperatures are already higher, and yet the solar radiation is greatly attenuated: about 98% of it has been absorbed by the time it reaches the surface.
Now, convective heat transfer in physics can be either forced or natural. Strictly speaking, forced convection is basically wind of any form. Such winds, as you know, can bring warmer or cooler air from other regions. My hypothesis is based on natural convective heat transfers and these, in physics, involve heat transfer only by way of molecular collision processes. This includes diffusion, where no discernible net motion of molecules can be detected, and it also includes a faster process which is really the same but is fast enough for us to be able to detect net movement of molecules. It is important to note that the transfer of heat (kinetic energy) is faster than the apparent net motion of the gas, if that is even detectable. For example, when you drive a car that has been in the Sun into your garage and open all four doors the thermal energy disperses reasonably quickly out into the garage by this process. It is only in this process, for which there is no external energy being added, that we get equal exchanges of molecular kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy which form the temperature gradient which we calculate based on that assumption.
Those who have read and understood my hypothesis will recognize the lack of any “night and day” in Stephen Wilde’s conjecture. His parcels of gas supposedly looping through the whole height of the troposphere have nothing to hold them together, and there is no explanation as to when they should go up and when down. Stephen has been influenced by the false physics of climatology which talks about such parcels rising from a heated surface and expanding and cooling. No such thing happens, because molecules are free to go in all directions and any initial group within some small defined space will not hold together all the way up or down through the troposphere, or even for a meter or two. In any event, there can be no net gain of energy when the rise equals the fall. Stephen does not explain how a particular location on the equator of Venus cools at night (by about 5 degrees from 737K to 732K) and then acquires new thermal energy the next Venus morning, gradually rising in temperature by the same amount that it cooled in the four-month-long Venus night. Stephen does not explain how the new energy acquired each Venus morning in the upper atmosphere (where temperatures < 400K) then gets down and into the 735K surface, thus explaining the rise in temperature.
To Stephen and others I say, unless future comments discuss entropy and the hypothesis I have put forward, they will not pass moderation. If readers are not prepared to study carefully what I have explained, then inevitably their comments will be irrelevant.
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Why we need the “heat creep” process: (copied from the blog)
We know that, apart from direct solar radiation, there must be additional thermal energy entering a planet’s surface each morning and early afternoon because otherwise we don’t have any warming at those times, and we don’t have overall energy balance at the surface for each complete rotation, such as each 24 hours for Earth. In typical Earth energy diagrams like the one on this page, they show back radiation of about 324W/m^2 into the surface, but the electro-magnetic energy in that radiation is not converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface, and so there is no heat transfer from cooler to warmer regions. Such heat transfers can never happen by radiation. Instead, a similar amount of thermal energy is actually delivered into the surface by conduction across the interface with the atmosphere. This was energy originally absorbed each morning from new solar radiation that is strong enough to raise the cold temperatures found mostly in the upper troposphere and above. This new energy must be what makes its way to the surface, but it does not do so by radiation. Only non-radiative processes (natural convective heat transfers) can transfer thermal energy up the sloping thermal plane, provided that the process is increasing entropy. This is because such processes depend upon energy being transferred by molecular collisions, and gravity acts on molecules in flight between collisions increasing their kinetic energy as their gravitational potential energy decreases. But, by definition, no energy is transferred across internal boundaries in a perfect state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Energy transfers only happen when new energy creates a state that is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, so that entropy can increase. If the new energy is at the top of a “column” of the troposphere, then a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium (with its associated temperature gradient) can only be attained if some of that new thermal energy at the top is dispersed downwards to warmer regions. That is what I have been first to explain does in fact happen, so that we know this “heat creep” process is possible, and it is indeed the correct physics which explains the missing energy that raises the surface temperature each morning, even under thick cloud cover.
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I still receive occasional comments from those who believe in the carbon dioxide hoax. The writers completely ignore the explanation of the “heat creep” hypothesis and merely regurgitate typical “explanations” of the so-called “greenhouse effect” whilst citing typical pal-reviewed papers.
Would all readers please understand that the “heat creep” hypothesis and the AGW greenhouse radiative forcing one are mutually exclusive: only one can be correct. Hence, if you cannot prove the “heat creep” hypothesis to be false (using the laws of physics) then you cannot prove the AGW conjecture to be correct.
Physics is a precise subject. Heat transfers in nature occur if and only if entropy is increasing. Indeed, every autonomous independent process in nature occurs because entropy is increasing (and so unbalanced energy potentials are diminishing) and all such processes cease when entropy reaches a maximum within the relevant constraints. So, you cannot deduce anything about any process unless you have a clear and precise understanding as to just exactly why unbalanced energy potentials are decreasing, why entropy is thus increasing and when and why it will cease doing so.
Hence, if you think you can prove the “heat creep” hypothesis false, then you need to explain why you think my analysis of the entropy maximization involved is incorrect.
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Doug wrote: “In the state of thermodynamic equilibrium in a column of the troposphere the pressure from above and below any horizontal plane is equal. Because pressure is proportional to the product of temperature and density, and because there can be no transfer of energy or matter across any internal boundary when there is thermodynamic equilibrium, we can deduce that, for any horizontal plane, there must be equal numbers of molecules crossing upwards as there are crossing downwards, and the mean kinetic energy of each group while crossing the plane must be equal.”
You are correct when you say: A gas in thermodynamic equilibrium has as many molecules crossing an arbitrary horizontal plane upward and downward. However, the pressure of a gas in a gravitational field varies the weight of the gas above, creating a pressure gradient dP/dz. According to the ideal gas law (density = rho = n/V = RT/P), the density gradient in the gas (drho/dz), depends on both dP/dz and dT/dz. The latter is a controversial subject. (:)) The flux in either direction depend on both density and velocity, but the downward velocity is increased by the acceleration of gravity between collisions while the upward velocity is decreased. To get the physics right, one needs to deal with all of these complications using differential calculus, not handwaving approximations.
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Frank, first and foremost it is important to understand that the Ideal Gas Law can be understood directly from the Kinetic Theory of Gases because all it amounts to is saying that pressure is proportional to the product of temperature and density. Broadly it applies to a physically bounded system anyway because nothing holds together an ensemble of molecules in an atmosphere. You need to go back to first principles (so to speak) and think at the molecular level, using the Kinetic Theory of Gases (as used successfully by Einstein and many others) and recognize that pressure is just the end result of there being a certain density of molecules with a certain mean kinetic energy, that is temperature. It is not hard to understand that pressure is caused by these molecules colliding with a surface and bouncing off after collisions with the surface molecules. The “weight” of the atmosphere above is information that only comes from these collisions. So think carefully about what I have said because it is in agreement with what Dr Hans Jelbring (one of only a few with PhD’s in climatology) says about gravity forming a temperature gradient, as the brilliant physicist Josef Loschmidt said in the 19th century. Experiments prove this, and every vortex tube demonstrates centrifugal force forming a radial temperature gradient.
Hence, don’t start out with the assumption I’m wrong, because that is not the case. Instead, try to understand the physics I have correctly explained using Kinetic Theory. Gravity acts on molecules and forms both a density gradient and a temperature gradient, as seen in every planetary troposphere. The pressure gradient is a mere corollary. As I said, in an “ideal” column of a planet’s troposphere in the state of maximum entropy, we know that, for an imaginary horizontal plane (with thickness, say, 1 nanometer or less) the pressure from above and below is equal, so we also know that the numbers of molecules crossing each way is equal (the density) and so the temperature (mean kinetic energy at the time of crossing) must also be equal. Hence, because of the acceleration due to gravity, those crossing from above must have had less kinetic energy just after their previous collision, and so the mean kinetic energy at that higher level must have been less – that is, the temperature was cooler there when we consider the macro scale. If I were wrong, then no vortex cooling tube would work, and Earth would be frozen solid because radiation from a colder atmosphere cannot heat the warmer surface, and nor can a mean of 168W/m^2 of solar radiation reaching that surface account for a mean temperature above the black body temperature of 233K which is about -40°C.
As a footnote, let me add that we don’t always have to differentiate some expression for entropy to determine its potential maximum. We just have to understand that it is maximized when all unbalanced energy potentials have dissipated, and those potentials must also consider gravitational potential energy. The latter is ignored in deriving the Clausius corollary of the Second Law, which thus only applies in a horizontal plane. If we were to have isothermal conditions in, say, a perfectly insulated, sealed tall cylinder of non-radiating argon, then there would be unbalanced energy potentials due to the extra gravitational potential energy at the top, and so entropy could and would increase until the mean sum of molecular (kinetic energy + gravitational potential energy) was homogeneous. Then we would have a temperature gradient with d(PE) = -d(KE) and so m.g.dH = – m.cp.dT and thus the gradient is dT/dH = -g/cp. I suggest you also read this guy’s website and the pages there on the Second Law: http://entropylaw.com and perhaps some of the cited references.
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http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2016/08/climate-exit-clexit.html
Latest book and documentary.
‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
http://www.drtimball.com
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[snip – please keep to the topic of my hypothesis]
When you stop looking at an atmosphere as having “A temperature” and realise that the temperature is a distribution of individual molecule temperatures ranging from absolute zero to some thousands of degrees the rest becomes obvious. Because rising air must convert KE to PE when rising it MUST cool. Yes there is no physical container but there is in fact a gravitational container.
So there must be a temperature gradient from bottom to top. [snip – the rest of the comment was incoherent and would be confusing for silent readers.]
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[snip – please keep to the topic of my hypothesis – see instructions towards end of the blog]
“The Stefan-Boltzmann Law in physics confirms that the solar radiation impinging on Earth’s surface (168 watts per square meter according to NASA) is nowhere near sufficient to explain the mean surface temperature. In fact, the flux is like that from an iceberg at -40°C.”
[Yes my statement (which you quoted) is correct. See NASA energy diagrams here: http://whyitsnotco2.com/PSI.html showing the 168 figure and (below the NASA diagram) the Stefan-Boltzmann calculator showing 168W/m^2 flux and the resulting temperature of 233K which is -40°C. Please read that whole page.]
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[snip. There is no need to teach me about latent heat, evaporation etc. Such is discussed in my paper that you have not read.]
You don’t define how areas are categorized into either category, but let’s take three end-member examples.
[snip. Yes, the study in the Appendix explains the methodology and the selection process for the 15 locations. Your cherry-picked “three” locations and your complete disregard for appropriate methodology, lack of consideration of the angle of the Sun and lack of adjustments for altitude or proximity of large water masses render your data as being far from an appropriate counter study. To you and others, do NOT submit comments here without spending at least an hour reading the paper and the study in the Appendix thereof.]
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[Snip – this whole comment has nothing to do with my hypothesis and merely reiterates what I know only-too-well about the false physics promulgated by climatologists. Unless comments show evidence of reading my three papers at https://ssrn.com/author=2627605 they will be ignored. I have proven that the standard IPCC explanation is based on nothing but fictitious, fiddled physics, and there is AU $50,000 for the first to prove me wrong.]
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I’m so glad President Trump killed the Global Warming Cooling Changing “shenanigans” today! Embarrassing to watch my country waste tax dollars on garbage science! Still… half of the voting population completely buys the hype, and has the nerve to call people politically on the right morons! I just wanna face palm their airhead into a brick wall sometimes.
Good blog and website!
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Doug – Very good work on the papers, I started working on a similar explanation several years ago when I began to suspect there was something quite dodgy about the CAGW/GHE theories. I quickly concluded that it was gravity and the resulting atmospheric lapse rate that explained planetary surface temperatures but 2 things prevented me from getting it all sorted out like you. 1) I only studied it as a hobby 2) Every time I discussed it with a climate “believer” there seemed to be a new explanation about some aspect of it which I had to get my head round.
Still, the explanation of how it really works is quite simple and the equations quite simple too so I was always biased towards that as Feynman says we should be !
Thanks for putting it all down properly for all of us. I am trying to come up with some ideas for relatively simple experiments which could be used to assist students in understanding the truth here. Have you got any thoughts on experiments ?
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Thanks for your comments. Regarding experiments, there’s reference to ones with centrifugal force (including vortex tubes) on my website http://whyitsnotco2.com and in my summary paper “Comprehensive Refutation of the Radiative Forcing Greenhouse Hypothesis” at https://ssrn.com/author=2627605 and note also the 16 radiator experiment that does not produce double the temperature that one radiator does. You can still make the point with fewer radiators. There are my computations for vortex tubes in the ‘Talk’ page for the Wikipedia article. There’s also evidence in temperature data for other planets, and the troposphere of Uranus exhibits a temperature gradient very close to the negative quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases. Your students may wish to look up data for Uranus and do the calculations. You can also explain (with reference to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law) that the Venus surface would require well over 16,500W/m^2 of radiation to explain its temperature with radiation, but it gets less than 20W/m^2 from solar radiation impinging on its surface, and clearly the atmosphere could not deliver the rest.
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Doug,
there is a fundamental issue with the way the solar radiation is seen by you, by climate science, by skeptics and AGWist. The incoming solar radiation might be a xxx W/m2 flux. But as incoming radiation it does not follow the Stefan Bolzman law. [snip]
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Yes incoming solar radiation does follow the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Furthermore, that law applies only to a single source of blackbody radiation. It seems that you have not read my explanation as to how climatologists add solar radiation and about twice as much back radiation and then incorrectly use the sum in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. That is where they misunderstand the physics, and you don’t even realise that is what their energy diagrams imply they do. In other words, you are trying to present yet another explanation of the Earth’s surface temperature based only on solar radiation. Climatologists realised they could not do that last century so NASA changed their diagrams.
I assume you have not studied physics to degree level (as I have) by your lack of understanding of Planck functions and emissivity. A polished silver spoon (with very low emissivity) does not get hotter in the sun than a black asphalt surface. In fact, nothing gets hotter than a blackbody for any given flux of incident blackbody radiation. So the Stefan-Boltzmann law gives the MAXIMUM temperature achievable by any given flux from a single source having a Planck distribution such as does solar radiation. Hence the mean solar radiation of 168W/m^2 cannot produce a mean surface temperature greater than 233K which is about -40°C. There is no solar radiation at all reaching the base of the 350Km high nominal troposphere of Uranus and yet it is hotter than Earth’s surface down there. It is NOT direct solar radiation that warms a location on the surface of Venus (from 732K to 737K) during four months on the sunlit side. It is the “heat creep” process that I have been first in the world to discover and explain from the laws of physics. I suggest you actually read my three papers in their entirety before writing more imaginary physics. Doug
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