Mathematics is Not Coincidence
There are six planetary bodies in our solar system that have atmospheres thicker than our own. These are Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, Uranus and Neptune.
I am going to compare the temperatures and the blackbody energy values of those temperatures of five of these planets to Earth in this article.
I am going to leave out Saturn’s moon Titan, because it is regularly eclipsed by its host planet from the sun and I don’t know how to quantify what cooling effect this should have on it’s temperature. Suffice to say, when compared to its host at an equal atmospheric pressure, Titan is slightly the cooler of the two.
The point I will be making later in this article about small changes in energy having a bigger effect on changing temperatures the colder the starting temperature, can still be applied to Titan, though.
We have very good data on the temperature of the planet Venus. The first successful flyby of Venus was performed by NASA’s Mariner 2 spacecraft (pictured) on 14 December 1962.
The first successful landing was the Soviet Venera 4 lander, which touched down on the surface on 18 October 1967.
This was followed by a number of other spacecraft in the Soviet Venus exploration programme, culminating in two balloons known as Vega 1 and 2 in June 1985 that flew in the Venusian atmosphere.
We had the Magellan mission in 1989 and the ESA’s Venus Express, which went into orbit around Venus in April 2006. There have been more than 40 missions to Venus. The last being a fly by launched by Japan in 2010.
In contrast just 9 spacecraft have visited the outer planets of our solar system. All have at least passed in close proximity to Jupiter. 4 have visited Saturn, whilst Uranus and Neptune have had to make do with just a single fly by by Voyager 2 (pictured) in 1986 and 1989 respectively.
Jupiter had the luxury of two separate spacecraft orbiting the planet for a while and Saturn had one spacecraft paying a lengthier visit.
When it comes to average planetary temperature data then, we must give the possibility for greater margin of error to the outer planets. A single flyby mission 30 years ago does not compare to 50 years of regular data from over 40 different missions.
A bigger issue is that fly by missions calculate temperature from energy intensity rather than measure temperature directly. Temperature is proportional to the fourth root of energy and this means that measurement errors cause much greater discrepancy of temperature the further away from the sun you get.
For example the temperature given for Venus’s mean temperature at 1 BAR atmospheric pressure is 66C which translates to a blackbody energy input of 750W/m2.
If we raise the energy to 751W/m2 we raise the temperature to just 66.09C.
If, however, we take Neptune’s given temperature of -214C, this requires just 0.694W/m2 of energy to achieve.
If we increase the energy by 1W/m2, 1.694W/m2 of energy is capable of heating a black body surface to -199C.
So small errors in energy measurements for Uranus and Neptune can cause huge errors in given average temperature, but cause no detectable error in Venus at all. As the orbits of these planets are not circular and the Voyager spacecraft quickly sped by millions of miles away, we must consider the possibility that such errors are possible.
This is all the more so when we consider that planetary temperatures are not uniform, with great variations between equator and poles, night and day, high and low altitudes.
It took 10 years of painstaking measurements all over the earth to get a “standard atmosphere” average temperature for the different altitudes. It is a wonder that NASA is able to give any temperature for the other planets in our solar system at all!
Bearing these difficulties in mind, the purpose of this post is to expand on the observation by physicist Harry Huffman and compare all of the given mean planetary temperatures at an equal atmospheric pressure to that found on Earth at sea level (see graph below), dropping all assumptions based on theory and simply looking at the most basic variable: distance from the sun .
If we ask the question: what would the average surface temperature of the Earth be if we moved Earth into the orbit of Venus and the only variable to affect temperature was distance from the sun, then what would the temperature of the Earth be?
We can calculate this as follows: Earth is 1 astronomical unit from the sun (1AU). Venus is 0.72AU. The ratio is 1/0.72 which equals 1.38889.
The inverse square law says that the sun’s energy will change by the square of this number. Because temperature is proportional to the fourth root of the energy, the temperature will change by the square root of this number. So the square root of 1.38889 is 1.1785.
The mean temperature of the Earth at sea level (1 BAR pressure) in Kelvin is given as 288K. So if we moved earth to the orbit of Venus and the only thing to affect temperature was the changing distance to the sun, then 288 x 1.1785=339.4K or just over 66C.
What is the measured average temperature of Venus at this atmospheric pressure? Also 66C. What a coincidence?! What are the odds of that happening?!
We can do the same calculation for Jupiter. The calculation yields -147C. The given temperature is -145C. For Saturn I calculate -180C, NASA says -178C. Uranus -207C from me -216C from NASA. Finally Neptune: me -220C, NASA -214C.
Now you might think these differences in temperature are too significant to draw conclusions from, but I refer you to the earlier point. None of these discrepancies in temperature show more than 1W/m2 discrepancy in energy required to produce them, other than the planet Venus.
As the temperature difference on Venus is about 0.2C, the 2W/m2 required to produce it, could just be a rounding error for all we know.
Isn’t it interesting though, that the planet with the least discrepancy in calculated versus given temperature, has the greatest difference in the blackbody energy value required to produce it?
In short the “coincidence” that we can calculate the mean temperature of all the planets with thick atmospheres to within 1W/m2 accuracy or to within tenths of a degree Celsius accuracy (with Venus) without any regard to atmospheric composition or albedo or any other conceived variable other than distance to the sun, should have made every scientist on the planet reconsider the Greenhouse Effect as a valid hypothesis.
Instead the mathematical gymnastics and imaginative caveats or special conditions applied to explain the different temperatures under the current paradigm ventures into the absurd.
We have “runaway greenhouses” on Venus because of clouds and we have reverse greenhouses on Titan also because of clouds (Titan whilst being slightly cooler than it’s host planet at 1 BAR of atmospheric pressure, still has a small margin of error in terms of the calculation) whilst clouds on earth both cool and warm simultaneously.
And God only knows what clouds on Jupiter do, but apparently Jupiter is radiating significantly more energy than it is receiving after conventional theory accounts for them. 
Haven’t any of these “experts” heard of Occam’s razor? If so, why aren’t they standing in front of a mirror and having a shave?
Many others have pointed out all planetary atmospheres get hotter the deeper you descend into them, as shown here:
Once atmospheric pressure exceeds 0.1BAR temperature rises in a mathematically predictable way and correlates with rising pressure. There is no correlation whatsoever with atmospheric composition in regards to this.
Whether we are talking about non “greenhouse gases” of hydrogen and helium that makes up over 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Jupiter’s atmosphere, or the “evil” CO2 that makes up 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Venus’s atmosphere.
For planets with less atmosphere than our own, we also have the work of Nikolov and Zeller to view. These physicists have also been able to use a single mathematical formula that dispenses with assumptions of IR absorption properties, albedo, etc, to accurately calculate the given surface temperatures of every planet and moon in our solar system with an atmosphere.
Again, only distance from the sun and atmospheric pressure were included variables.
Objections to the above observations tend to centre on “curve fitting” or protests about not including “known physics”. For the first, my response is HOW?!
If so called greenhouse gasses and other phenomena played any significant role in determining average planetary temperatures then it should not be possible to find any mathematical formula that excludes their claimed influence from accurately calculating them.
If 2,400 times the concentration of CO2 of Venus compared to earth is supposed to add lots of extra “forcing” of energy, then calculations that exclude this should be way, WAY off!
The second objection is a pure disregard for the scientific method.
Observation dictates theory, not vice versa. I really don’t care what anyone thinks a photon must do or how it must behave. Photons are not the Messiah.
Photons are obviously being very naughty boys and not doing what you think they should be doing. All “scientists” need to stop behaving like academics and remember why scholastic knowledge was substituted for the scientific method in the first place.
It doesn’t matter how long you spent getting your PhD or how long you have had a job that requires the holding of one, a verifiable observation made by a layperson still trumps whatever you think you know.
The Greenhouse Effect hypothesis is dead. The egos of those who cuddle it’s corpse simply need to die with it.
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Al Shelton
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Great..
Thanks for that.
I will pass it along…………
oldbrew
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Harry Huffmann ran the Venus temperature numbers several years ago…
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Chris Edwards
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Cleanly put and easy to digest! Except for the warmists who would choke on it!
JonnyQuates
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This argument is very muddled.
You need to summarise your main argument at the start, not launch into explaining why there is uncertainty in the temperature measurements. That explanation should come after your results.
As usual, these articles are completely lacking in relevant references and don’t align with the websites ethos of critical science.
Where is the mention of the albedo value? Or the temperature change at different altitudes compared with the temperature change due to pressure alone?
You clearly think a lot of yourself and want to be a scientist, but have not got very far academically. Explaining Occam’s Razor with a figure? Such a noob