The Warming/Cooling Climate Paradox of Dr Roy Spencer
Norman Rogers (American Thinker) this week poses the question: ‘Is Roy Spencer the world’s most important scientist?‘ Obviously, Norman is no doubt and suitably eulogises his hero.
Rogers tells his readership:
“Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama Huntsville who may be the world’s most important scientist. He has discovered scientific insights and theories that cast great doubt on global warming doctrine. That doctrine has always been dubious and is often defended by attacking the integrity of anyone who dares to raise questions. Spencer is a rare combination of a brilliant scientist and a brave soul willing to risk his livelihood and reputation by speaking plainly.”
Now while we may agree that Dr. Spencer has, for many years, been on the front line of the skeptical cause fighting the man-made global warming scam he is certainly not serving the advancement of science. Worse, yet, some of us argue Roy is cut from the same junk science consensus-affirming cloth that underpins all man-made global warming alarmism. “How so?” you may ask.
For no other reason than Spencer is an active promoter of the so-called greenhouse gas theory. This “theory” is the essential cornerstone of all alarmist science. It basically asserts that the more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere the more warming will occur. Roy says “some warming” must happen, while the alarmists assert a more extreme message.
So why are we making such a big deal about it? Well, let’s be clear; there is no standardized definition of this “theory” which may be shown to be false and, because of that, was known to have been widely abandoned before the 1950’s. [1]
Without this “theory” there would be no credible scientific basis whatsoever to blame human emissions of CO2 for warming the climate. As such, there would be no multi-billion dollar climate science research industry. Now, perhaps, you may see why even “skeptical” climatologists don’t want to question the source of their bread and butter. The GHE began to re-emerge very slowly on the radar from the sixties when the infant science of climatology was a backwater unpoliced by peer-reviewers from the “hard” sciences.
But since then, thanks to the politicization of science, it has grown in acceptance out of all proportion to its scientific validity. In recent years heretics, such as those from Principia Scientific International (PSI), have been waging a battle on behalf of those from the more skeptical “hard” sciences. We show that Spencer’s claims (and those of other GHE believers) flout the laws of physics.
Spencer is now even claiming that H2O makes the lapse rate steeper, contrary to well known fact and making spurious claims regarding infrared thermal imaging devices that PSI member, Doug Cotton rebuts here.
With a growing body of extensively and openly peer reviewed – yet heretical – papers PSI is winning friends and new members daily. This is because ever more independent scientists recognize the fallacy of those who make bogus claims that a trace gas, carbon dioxide, has magical properties causing both cooling and warming in the atmosphere at the same time!
Here is a taster of the Spencer “cooling equates to warming” double-speak put recently to Principia Scientific International members who questioned Roy in email correspondence:
“Without greenhouse gases, the atmosphere would be unable to cool itself in response to solar heating. But because an IR emitter is also an IR absorber, a greenhouse atmosphere results in warmer lower layers — and cooler upper layers — than if those greenhouse gases were not present.” [2]
Now let us dissect the above and expose the mumbo-jumbo contradictions Spencer presents to us.
So, in the first sentence Roy tells us that greenhouse gases allow the atmosphere to cool itself, but ‘cooling also causes heating.’ It doesn’t matter how you try to trick this statement out afterwards, it is still an absolute contradiction in terms physically, thermodynamically, logically, and mathematically.
Second, there is nothing wrong with the atmosphere and CO2 being heated by a warmer source – the surface. The surface is warmer because this is where HOT sunshine is deposited and turned into the kinetic heat of the surface.
Also, Oxygen (O2) and Nitrogen (N2) are heated by conduction with the surface but have zero emissivity, meaning they trap heat and keep the atmosphere warmer than otherwise, while Carbon Dioxide (CO2), as admitted by Roy, allows the atmosphere to cool. Only N2 and O2 insulate the atmosphere from heat loss.
Third, the temperature distribution of the atmosphere is a natural result of thermal equilibrium and conservation of energy. The dry lapse rate can be calculated precisely without any reference to greenhouse gases (GHG’s), and the wet lapse rate can be calculated precisely simply by factoring in latent heat release from water vapour to the dry lapse rate. This proves that GHG radiation does not determine nor have any effect upon the temperature distribution of the atmosphere, whatsoever.
Fourth, just because the colder atmosphere is heated by the warmer surface, does not mean that the colder atmosphere heats up the warmer surface some more, which is the sophistry and sleight of hand and outright obfuscation and mangled science promoted by all who peddle such greenhouse gas “physics.”
Not only “does it not mean that,” the supposition in and of itself is a plain violation of all thermal physical laws, and is predicated upon cave-man and embarrassing assumptions such as sunshine being cold and the Earth flat.
Despite a reported 36{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in recent decades we see flatlining temperatures well within normal variation. Where is the supposed additional warming effect of increased CO2? The answer: climatologists like Spencer cannot find it. As such, they are grudgingly modifying their “climate forcing” expectations from this trace gas ever lower towards zero.
But, Norman Rogers and all you good readers of ‘American Thinker,’ “think”! Never has it ever been demonstrated that CO2 has any heating impact. All those claims about of added heating from back-radiated energy from IR-absorbing gases exists only on paper and are, frankly, mere sophistry. For there are no lab-based measurements to “agree” with – just various models. So to speak, we’re shown different toy dragons in the display case not just by the alarmists but so-called skeptic scientists like Roy Spencer. But where is a REAL one?
So, come on Roy. Practice genuine skepticism on this issue as any good scientist should – let alone “the world’s most important.” It’s time for you to concede that like a dragon, the greenhouse effect is a modeled phenomenon, a chimera, from beginning to end.
**************
[1] Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” In Compendium of Meteorology, edited by Thomas F. Malone, pp. 1004-18 (at 1016). Boston: American Meteorological Association. It shows the American Meteorological Society had refuted the concept of a GHE in 1951 in its Compendium of Meteorology. They stated that the idea that CO2 could alter the climate “was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor.”
[2] Spencer, R., email correspondence with Siddons, O’Sullivan et al. (May 2013)
Trackback from your site.