Is There a Climate Change Consensus?

Written by Dr Charles Anderson on December 4, 2016. Posted in Current News

Is there any level on which a climate consensus can be said to exist?  Only at the most obvious level, which is that everyone agrees that the climate changes.  The realists know that the climate has always changed, drastically over millions of years of alternating Ice Ages and Warm Periods and within a narrower range over the warm last 12,000 years, with such periods as the Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warm Period, and the present warm period.

The catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists claim that the climate was very stable prior to the Industrial Age, which just happens to have had its start at the end of the Little Ice Age according to the Climate Realists.  But, since man became powerful and plentiful with the Industrial Age, the alarmists say that climate change now occurs mostly due to man.

Most western governments and legions of those who argue that mankind faces its greatest challenge in trying to prevent the catastrophe of man-made or anthropogenic global warming, like to claim that 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of scientists agree with them.  This claim is based on a completely bogus survey of published papers, with papers simply stating that there may be some human influence on climate being counted as part of a scientific consensus.

It is not noted that almost all climate research or other research with any implications about the climate at all is funded by governments, almost all of which will not fund research that is unfavorable to the thesis that man has warmed the planet badly since the start of the Industrial Age.  If you are a scientist and you want further government funding for your research, you are likely to be rewarded if you find some way in which your results support the government-favored thesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

If your results are contrary to that thesis, it will be fatal to further funding support to take note of that.  You had best put another interpretation on your results.  One of the most interesting observations is that retirement brings on a major change of viewpoint for many scientists.

Those who supported the alarmist claims before retirement often oppose it afterwards. Those who were silent on the subject often come out against the alarmist thesis after retirement.  This applies to many scientists who are not climate scientists themselves, but are experts in radiation such as infra-red, visible light, and ultra-violet light radiation.  Just like climate scientists, it is harmful to their careers if they speak out against the so-called consensus the governments have tried so hard to create.

NASA, Navy, Air Force, Army, EPA, NOAA, and university researchers in the sciences in the USA are all given good reason to be fearful about their careers if they speak up against the alarmist crusade.  The government has worked ruthlessly hard to try to produce a “scientific consensus”, but has massively violated the scientific method in the process.  The scientific method depends critically on independent thinking and on freedom of speech and press.

Most of the scientists said to be supporters of the catastrophic man-made global warming thesis can not provide a decent explanation of the physics which is supposed to cause the so-called greenhouse gases to cause a catastrophic level of warming.  Most of those who attempt an explanation will initially try it by using an argument similar to that used in the IPCC reports from 2001 through 2014. This explanation of the science is based on a viewpoint provided in the following Earth energy budget:

Fig. 1. Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget for the Earth of 1997.  This represents a common viewpoint of the physics that is used to justify the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  It is apparently the settled science. It will be demonstrated to be very wrongheaded.  I have added the percentage power flux values with 342 W/m2 equal to 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} and approximately equal to one-quarter of the solar power incident upon the Earth most directly facing the Sun.  More recent energy budgets have slightly different numbers, but the viewpoint is the same.

The IPCC reports claim that solar radiation absorbed at the surface of the Earth causes the Earth’s surface to emit about 2.3 times as much energy in the form of infra-red radiation as it absorbed from the sun.  This seems plausible to them because they believe that a body will emit infra-red radiation at the bottom of the atmosphere and with water all over the surface just as the body would if it were isolated in space.  This is not the case.  Infra-red radiation is emitted from oscillating dipoles and they cannot emit all of their energy in the form of radiation when those same oscillating dipoles are dumping energy into the evaporation of water and losing energy via collisions with air molecules.

But having started off by neglecting the conservation of energy, the IPCC has to balance out the flow of energies, so they posit a huge back-radiation flow of energy from the so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  This does not happen either.  It violates electric field theory.  It also fails because the mean free paths of the infra-red radiation that can be absorbed by water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane gas are all very short.  That means that these molecules absorb the infra-red energy they emit over a very short distance.  In the lower half of the troposphere, the likelihood that the absorbed radiation in a greenhouse gas molecule will be re-emitted before it is transferred to non-radiating molecules in the infra-red range is very small.

There is just too high a collision rate between molecules, so that radiation energy is almost immediately changed into molecular kinetic energy in non-radiating molecules. There is no way that the atmosphere as a whole can radiate a large quantity of infra-red radiation back to the Earth’s surface in accordance with the IPCC viewpoint.  The supposed back-radiation in the energy budget above is 1.93 times the solar radiation energy absorbed by the surface!

What is more, in their own model of molecular dipole radiation, infra-red radiation is isotropic, as though every molecule is isolated in space far from any other electric dipoles and any electric field created by a many-body ensemble of electric dipoles. Yet, the catastrophic energy budgets all claim that the atmosphere radiates much more energy downward than out toward space.  In the schematic of Fig. 1. the downward or back-radiation is 324 W/m2 from the atmosphere, while the radiation toward space from the atmosphere is only 195 W/m2 .  They apply their own model inconsistently.

In reality, the Earth’s surface is a very dense array of oscillating electric dipoles which create a comparatively strong electric field.  Upon entering the atmosphere, only a small fraction of the molecules are sufficiently strong oscillating electric dipoles to absorb or emit infra-red radiation. These are water vapor and carbon dioxide for the most part.  Consequently, the electric field in the lowest atmosphere virtually in contact with the surface has a rapidly decreasing strength and it then further slowly decreases as the density of water vapor and carbon dioxide decreases with altitude in the lower troposphere.

The strength of the electric field then decreases more rapidly as water vapor condenses at altitudes above its freezing temperature.  Above that altitude it continues to decrease at a slower rate as carbon dioxide continues to become less dense along with the main atmospheric gases of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon.  The actual emission of infra-red radiation follows the electric field from its stronger regions to its weaker regions, which means that infra-red photon emission is strongly biased in the upward direction.

The basic problem that greenhouse gas theory is trying to address is the fact that the surface temperature of the Earth is about 288K, while the radiative temperature with respect to space of the entire Earth including both surface and atmosphere is about 255K.  Much of the radiation of infra-red into space is from altitudes in the atmosphere which are considerably cooler than the surface temperature, though some of the radiation is from the surface through the atmospheric window.  Note that the temperature difference between 255K and 288K is 33K, which is attributed by the greenhouse gas theory to warming of the Earth by greenhouse gases.  The viewpoint is one which is entirely dominated by a belief that by far the only significant transport of energy in the entire atmosphere is by means of radiation.

In fact, the transport of energy away from the surface of the Earth is dominated by the sum of the energy transport by water evaporation and condensation at altitude and by convection currents.  As noted above, the transport by radiation in the lower troposphere is very small due to the short mean free path for the absorption of radiation from water vapor molecules predominantly and very secondarily from carbon dioxide combined with the very high collision rate of air molecules.  Infra-red active molecules radiate energy which is very quickly converted into kinetic energy in non-radiating nitrogen and oxygen molecules, and in argon atoms.  Most of the air molecules can only transport heat energy by convection.

According to Fig. 1. above, the sun provides the Earth’s surface with 168 W/m2  of absorbed energy power.  Using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, one can calculate the highest temperature the Earth’s surface can attain from such solar radiative warming, even ignoring non-radiative cooling mechanisms:

P = 168 W/m2 = σ T4 = (5.6697 x 10-8 W/m2K4)T4,

solving which we find that T = 233.3 K, which is nearly 55K cooler than our actual 288K surface temperature.

The fact that this maximum solar radiative surface heating temperature is so low informs us that the surface temperature is not entirely due to the absorbed radiation from the sun.  168 W/m2 cannot produce a surface with a temperature of 288K. There has to be another major contributor to that high temperature. Of course, the greenhouse gas hypothesis advocates say this is due to a large back radiation of energy from the atmosphere, which is not so because photons do not flow up the electric field gradient.

Now if we had no infra-red active gases in our atmosphere, we would have no water vapor and hence no clouds.  So 77 W/m2 would not be reflected from the clouds back into space, as seen in Fig.1.  In addition, most of the 67 W/m2 of incident solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere would not be absorbed if there were no water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so being conservative, let us estimate that about 35 W/m2 additional solar radiation would be absorbed by the Earth’s surface due to having a much less absorbing atmosphere.  The total solar power absorbed by the Earth’s surface is then about 280 W/m2 .   In this case, the maximum surface temperature can be calculated from:

P = 280 W/m2 = σ T4 = (5.6697 x 10-8 W/m2K4)(T)4

and T = 265.1K, which is a 31.8K higher temperature than the maximum temperature with infra-red active gases absent another warming mechanism.  Thus, one concludes that the presence of the so-called greenhouse gases in our atmosphere causes the Earth’s surface temperature to be almost 32K cooler than it otherwise would be.  Also, instead of having a surface temperature 33K warmer than the net radiative temperature of the Earth as seen from space which is 255K, the actual temperature of the surface might only be about 10K warmer than the present radiative temperature from space.

This proposed greenhouse gas-free atmosphere and the above calculation ignore the air convection that results from non-infra-red active molecules striking the surface, but because radiated surface energy is not absorbed by the atmosphere in the infra-red active gas free hypothetical atmosphere, surface radiation is not quickly transformed into more convection transport of energy.

Also, there is no formation of water vapor, hence no evaporation of water.  Consequently, this calculation is much closer to reality than is the usual radiation-dominated calculation with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  So, it is by no means clear that there is any kind of greenhouse gas warming of the Earth.  One can make at least as good a case for a cooling effect if one has a radiation dominance mindset.

Interestingly enough, when the problems with the usual greenhouse gas viewpoint of man-made global warming featured in the IPCC reports and vaguely taught in the schools are pointed out, many of the scientists who hold that viewpoint will then begin arguing a second and very different theory of man-made global warming based on the effects of infra-red active gases.

It seems not to register on them that one cannot claim a scientific consensus if there is no general agreement on the actual mechanism upon which an infra-red active molecule can warm the Earth.  They have turned to a second and incompatible mechanism, yet they do not stop making the claim that they have a scientific consensus.  Some of those who argue from the start for this second greenhouse gas theory are lukewarmers, who maintain that the warming effect is less than would be catastrophic, but still significant.

Examining Fig.1., one sees that 40 W/m2 of radiation from the surface is emitted through the atmospheric window directly into space without absorption in the atmosphere.  Thus, of the total of about 235 W/m2 of infra-red radiation that the Earth emits into space, about 195 W/m2 is emitted from the atmosphere.  We can calculate the effective temperature of this emission and from that find the effective altitude from which the emission from the atmosphere into space occurs.  We have

P = 195 W/m2 = σ T4 = (5.6697 x 10-8 W/m2K4)(T)4

and we find that T = 242K.  In the U.S. Standard Atmosphere Tables of 1976, this temperature is at an altitude just above 7000 meters.  It is a higher altitude in the tropics.

The catastrophic man-made global warmers like to examine the case of a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Imaging such a doubling.  The added carbon dioxide would absorb somewhat more of the radiation now emitted by water vapor into space, though water vapor emission would still be the main source of radiation into space.  Water vapor is actually very low at altitudes of 7000m and above because the temperature there is way below the freezing point of water at 273.15K or 0C. Despite this, water vapor radiation emission will be greater than that from a doubled carbon dioxide concentration.

The warming argument goes that radiation from lower altitude water vapor will be absorbed by carbon dioxide molecules and emitted by them into space at cooler temperatures since they are at higher altitudes.  The cooler temperature of emission will mean that less energy is radiated into space, which results in warming the entire atmosphere.  This ignores the fact that at these altitudes, some re-emission of absorbed radiation will occur without being distributed to non-radiating molecules since the gas molecule collision rate is now much lower than in the lower troposphere.  The absorbing molecule is not in equilibrium with the surrounding air molecules.  The argument makes a much greater mistake, as we will see.

Let us suppose for an estimate of the maximum carbon dioxide effect that all of the emission from altitudes near 7000 m and all of the emission from water vapor molecules is captured by higher altitude carbon dioxide molecules. In fact, it is not and would not be with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Let us suppose that instead of an emission temperature of about 242K, the carbon dioxide emission occurs at the lowest emission temperature from the tropopause beginning at about 11000 m in the U.S. Standard Atmosphere of 1976 or a higher altitude in the tropics.  The tropopause temperature is about 217K.  The stratosphere is above the tropopause and the temperature increases with altitude in the stratosphere.  Let us calculate the power of emission possible by twice as many carbon dioxide molecules at the temperature of 217K:

P = 2σ T4 = 2 (5.6697 x 10-8 W/m2K4)(217)4 = 251  W/m2

It is clear that twice as many emitters at the lowest available temperature of 217K can emit more power than they can absorb despite the lower temperature.  In fact, these cooler carbon dioxide emitters are not going to emit more power than is transmitted to them by the predominantly warmer and lower altitude water vapor molecules, but they are not going to have any problem transmitting the 195 W/m2 into space.  They will not cause the lower atmosphere to warm up.

One of the keys to understanding the basic physics of the lower atmosphere and its effects on the temperature at the Earth’s surface where we live is that surface cooling mechanisms transporting energy in the lower troposphere are very much dominated not by rapid radiation, but by the slow mechanisms of water evaporation and condensation at altitude and by convection.  Any argument that minimizes this fact is in serious error.

Another critical understanding is that the temperature gradient in the troposphere is mostly due to gravity, which causes molecules which are descending to lose potential energy and gain kinetic energy.  The increased kinetic energy at lower altitude is directly proportional to temperature, with the proportionality constant being the inverse of the heat capacity of the air molecule.

The fact that most of the radiant energy into space is from the upper troposphere means that the surface temperature will of course be much higher due to the action of gravity on air molecules.  Yes, the radiant heating of the Earth’s surface also matters, but in fact it raises the surface temperature less than does the effect of gravity acting on air molecules.

Let us make a ballpark estimate of the amount of power that the surface radiates into the atmosphere and which is absorbed by the atmosphere.  I will use values for the solar absorption, thermal or convection cooling, and water evaporation cooling from Fig. 1.  These values may not be highly accurate, but the idea here is get a sense of the scale of the greenhouse gas effect.

Recall from above that the atmosphere, due to water vapor and carbon dioxide mostly, radiates infra-red radiation into space from an altitude of about 7000 meters according to the temperatures provided in the US Standard Atmosphere.  A simple calculation I provided here estimates the temperature gradient in the dry atmosphere based on an approximation of atmospheric molecular mass, general rules for the heat capacity of a molecule, and the ideal gas law provided by the gravitational field, yielded a static atmosphere temperature gradient of 5.93K/1000m.  This is not in perfect agreement with the US Standard Atmosphere temperature gradient of 6.49K/1000m, but I know the details of my calculation and do not know all the details of theirs.  Consequently, I will use mine temperature gradient in this ballpark approximation.

Fig. 1. says the solar radiation absorbed by the surface is 168 W/m2 .  The surface loses radiant infra-red energy at the rate of 40 W/m2 through the atmospheric window straight into space.  This energy is at wavelengths not absorbed by the so-called greenhouse gases.  The surface loses energy at the rate of 78 W/m2 due to water evaporation and it loses it a rate of 24 W/m2 due to thermals or convection. The effective altitude from which infra-red active gases radiate their energy into space is about 7000m in the US Standard Atmosphere, where the temperature is 242.7K in the US Standard Atmosphere.  With a temperature gradient of 5.93 K due to gravity, the surface temperature is then 284.2K,  Let us calculate the additional net power from solar heating required to increase the surface temperature from 284.2K to 288K.  This is

P  = σ [(288K)4  – (284.2K)4] = 20 W/m2

But P is also equal to

P = [ 168 – 40 -78 – 24 – R], where R is the infra-red radiation from the surface which is absorbed by the atmosphere.  Solving this, we find that

R = 6 W/m2 .

Now this value of the atmospheric absorption by surface radiation bears a much more reasonable relation to the 40 W/m2 transmitted through the atmosphere than does the 350 W/m2 shown in Fig. 1. We know this from many an infra-red sensor applications.  Because this value is based on several powers which are approximate, it is only a ballpark value.  Continuing in that spirit with this, we can calculate an effective altitude for this surface radiation absorption.  We will calculate the temperature of the atmospheric layer absorbing the infra-red emission from the surface that can be absorbed by the so-called greenhouse gases, chiefly water vapor:

P  = 6 W/m2  = σ [(288K)4  – (T)4]

T = 286.9K, which according to the US Standard Atmosphere is an altitude of 5 meters!  This will be a surprise to those who believe the IPCC story, but in fact we know that the mean free path for the absorption of infra-red by water vapor near the surface is commonly only a couple of meters.  The absorption of the wavelengths that carbon dioxide can absorb has a longer mean free path, but that is still only a few tens of meters and water vapor absorption dominates near the surface.

This calculation shows that radiation from the surface absorbed by infra-red active gases is actually in total a small effect and that small effect is dominated by water vapor.  The IPCC hypothesis that water vapor and carbon dioxide and a smattering of other greenhouse gases contribute a warming effect causing a surface warming of about 33K is absolutely a huge exaggeration.

Gravity causes the surface to be at about 284K or a bit higher and solar radiation only has to supply another total temperature increase of about 4K.  It is not clear that there is any warming caused by greenhouse gases at all.  At most, it is a small fraction of 4K! Given that most of whatever small fraction that is is caused by water vapor, any effect by carbon dioxide is minuscule.  It is hardly a wonder that the size of any warming effect by CO2 has not been measured.

In fact, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, causes an increase in the heat capacity of the atmosphere and that causes the temperature gradient due to gravity to decrease very slightly, causing a cooling of the surface.  There is also a very small transport of energy to higher altitudes aided by rapid infra-red transport of energy from one layer of the atmosphere to the next which will increase very slightly.

Carbon dioxide also has a small effect in absorbing solar insolation in the upper atmosphere, thereby cooling the surface as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere.  The net very small effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might be an infinitesimal decrease in the surface temperature. What is certain is that carbon dioxide is not threatening a catastrophe and will never likely even have a measurable effect on temperatures.

It is my hope that this relatively short and simple description of aspects of the physics of the atmosphere will give the reader much to think about and open new avenues for the evaluation of the usual arguments made for catastrophic man-made warming.  Few of the scientists who might claim that this science is well-understood and agreed upon by most scientists actually do understand the science.  There are many who cannot at all reasonably describe the theory they claim is universally understood and agreed upon.  There are many vague and poorly examined versions of the above hypotheses for the cause of man-made warming.

To my knowledge, there is no theory that stands up to a critical examination of the physics and there is certainly none that is proven by evidence.  It is a terrible thing that many scientists have been so careless or so corrupted by government incentives and intimidation that there is no massive scientific rebellion against the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmism.  Their hypotheses are such flimsy houses of cards that they will fall apart in time. Opposition by many scientists has been growing, though most of that opposition is of the sort that the warming effects are a bit less than catastrophic.

In the meantime, the damage has been horrible to the People in the form of less freedom and a lower standard of living due to an increased cost of energy and a loss of energy reliability.  They will also suffer from the waste of many tens of billions of their taxes on wasteful government spending in support of non-viable renewable energy projects and companies.

Those scientists who are fighting this scientific fraud are serving mankind and science. Those scientists who are perpetrating the fraud should be remembered for their infamy.  The reputation of science will suffer, but ultimately, science will prevail and the fraud will be known as such.  Many so-called scientists will be found to have failed in the practice of rational thinking and the use of the scientific method.  This will be a massive human failure, but not an actual failure of science.

Republicans now control the House, the Senate, the presidency, most governorships, and most state legislatures and they are not nearly as convinced about catastrophic man-made global warming as are the Democrats.  This will give the pretense of a scientific consensus about this climate alarmist theory more time to continue its collapse.  However, the Republicans will come under great fire for their reluctance to treat catastrophic man-made global warming as a real threat.  It is important that scientists who have feared to come forward and argue the truth should do so now.  We all know that politicians rarely have strong backbones.  Good scientists need to take some of the pressure off of them by putting forth good science.

****
Updated on 29 November 2016.
Updated on 3 December 2016.
Updated on 4 December 2016 with a calculations based on the gravity temperature gradient to estimate properties of the surface IR radiation absorption by the atmosphere

****

Read more at objectivistindividualist.blogspot.co.uk

Trackback from your site.