The claim that increase of human-induced “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere would cause “global warming” ran into serious trouble right from the start.

It happens that there is no current technology that is capable of measuring the average surface temperature of the earth. There is no way that temperature sensors could be situated randomly over the whole surface of the earth, including the 71{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} that is ocean and 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} that is desert, and measure it all instantaneously for sufficient time to find if it is rising.

It is not even possible to measure the temperature reliably in one place. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, who has made a reputation for promoting “global warming”, has an item on his website as follows:

“GISS Surface Temperature Analysis

The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature   (SAT)

Q. What exactly do you mean by SAT?

A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10ft or 50ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest) the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50ft of air either above ground or on top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been adopted. I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Q. What do we mean by daily SAT?

A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every two hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.

Q. What SAT do the local media report?

A. The media report the reading of one particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT we would have to use many 50ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.”

Having stated that there is no agreed way to measure the surface air temperature, he talks about the “true” value which nobody agrees to; Essex et al (2007) argue that “there is no physically meaningful global temperature”. There are theoretical reasons why the average temperature of the earth’s surface cannot be measured. Because of the fact that the sun does not shine for half the time, its variability is non linear. It is impossible to simulate it with any of the mathematical functions used by statisticians and even if this were possible there is a variety of possible averages, such as the arithmetic mean, geometric mean, or the harmonic mean.

Applied Mathematics professor, Claes Johnson of the School of Computer Science and Communication, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden publishes a lament of the failings of modern (post-normal) physics.

We take pleasure in reproducing it here:

The last sequence of posts on Quantum Contradictions 1 – 20 gives examples of the crisis in modern physics recently described by the Perimeter Institute Director Neil Turok as follows:

• Theoretical physics is at a crossroads right now…In a sense we’ve entered a very deep crisis.

• You may have heard of some of these models…There’ve been grand unified models, there’ve been super-symmetric models, super-string models, loop quantum gravity models… Well, nature turns out to be simpler than all of these models.

• If you ask most theorists working on particle physics, they’re in a state of confusion.

• The extensions of the standard model, like grand unified theories, they were supposed to simplify it. But in fact they made it more complicated. 

• The number of parameters in the standard model is about 18. The number in grand unified theories is typically 100. In super-symmetric theories, the minimum is 120. And as you may have heard, string theory seems to predict 10 to the power of 1,000 different possible laws of physics. It’s called the multiverse. 

• It’s the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all.

• We have to get people to try to find the new principles that will explain the simplicity.

The crisis in modern physics resulting from the confusion of modern physicists originates from the  statistical mechanics of Boltzmann used by Planck in a desperate attempt to explain blackbody radiation as statistics of quanta, which led to the quantum mechanics of Bohr and Heisenberg based on atomistic roulettes without casusality and physical reality.  

But blackbody radiation can be explained without statistics in a classical model subject to finite precision computation as exposed on Computational Blackbody Radiation, which is simple and therefore possibly correct in the spirit of the above. 

Read more at ‘Claes Johnson on Mathematics and Physics.’

“It occurred to me….” people rush home to sit down, put their feet up and say, what will I do now.

Buying “a pig in a poke” refers to buying an unseen piglet in a sack. The piglet was actually a cat, so when you opened the sack after purchase “the cat was out of the bag.”

Governments bought the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘pig’ ‘that human CO2 was causing global warming wrapped in the ‘poke’ of their Reports. IPCC assured buyers it was a pig with 90+ percent certainty.

They fooled governments and media four times now they offer a new poke in Assessment Report 5 (AR5), but with 95 percent certainty it’s a pig. This despite the fact that the cat is already out of the bag. Their predictions have failed. For 17 years global temperatures have declined while CO2 levels continue to increase.

Arctic summer ice, supposedly all gone by 2013 has recovered by 60 percent in one year. Severe weather has not increased. Damage done by policies already implemented, such as green jobs and alternate energies, is already evident. Newspaper coverage declined dramatically as people sense problems even if they don’t understand (Figure 1). Decline followed the peak created by Gore’s false fantasy An Inconvenient Truth.

Instead of acknowledging error the IPCC try to defend the indefensible. This alone warrants disbanding of the agency.

They’re in a corner of their own design. They manufactured the poke through an organization, process, and computer models designed to prove their claim. Now we know it contains a cat. More frightening for them, people, including governments, are asking questions. A report by German scientists showing 65 climate models failed to predict the current no temperature increase period caused EU and US governments to ask questions.

“U.S. and European Union envoys are seeking more clarity from the United Nations on a slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics have cited as a reason not to “panic” about environmental changes, leaked documents show.”

Principia Scientific International’s affiliated organisation (OMSJ) once again is compelled to show it has legal teeth by going to trial to put a halt to ongoing defamation and business disparagement.

The Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ) reports the matter as follows:

OMSJ Files Trademark Complaint Against AIDS Activist

(September 11, 2013, Austin, Texas) A Texas federal judge has set a January 2015 trial date in the case of OMSJ v. DeShong.  The federal lawsuit brought by Clark Baker, founder of the Office of Medical & Scientific Justice (OMSJ), seeks to halt ongoing defamation and business disparagement by Jeffrey Todd DeShong, a Ft. Worth AIDS activist and blogger and to abate DeShong’s use of Plaintiffs’ federally protected trademark.

A non-profit investigative agency, OMSJ provides medical, scientific, and legal support to the defense of those charged with criminal or civil offenses related to HIV and other diseases.  OMSJ has been involved in more than 100 cases – many that are still active.  Of the cases now closed, more than fifty have resulted in acquittal, favorable plea bargains, or the complete dismissal of HIV-related charges.

The lawsuit alleges that DeShong, 49, has spent the last five years posting defamatory emails and blogs under numerous fictitious names in an attempt to silence Baker and disrupt OMSJ’s business effort under the guise of exercising First Amendment freedom of speech rights. The suit claims that in 2009 DeShong directed his improper attacks at OMSJ’sHIV Innocence Group, which has successfully defended dozens of men and women who were accused of HIV-transmission crimes. Currently 32 states, the military, and two U.S. territories have laws that criminalize the intentional exposure of HIV to another person, even if the retrovirus is not actually transmitted.

On September 5, OMSJ filed its First Amended Complaint, along with Responses to the Defendant’s FRCP 12 (b) (6) and Anti-SLAPP motions to dismiss. A federal judge is now reviewing the motions and has set the trial for January 2015.

The amended complaint and responses can be found at:

• First Amended Complaint

• Response to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss

• Response to Defendant’s Anti-SLAPP Motion to Dismiss

• Clark Baker’s Affidavit

A fundamental assumption of the “Greenhouse Climate Change” theory is that the energy entering the earth from the sun is “balanced” by the energy emitted from the earth.

This illusion is assisted by the assumption that all energy exchanges are by radiation, and therefore are instantaneous. Without this assumption it would be impossible to claim that all “change” of climate is exclusively caused by increases of human-emitted “greenhouse gases”

The latest official presentation of this theory is by Trenberth K E, J T Fasullo and J. Kiehl (2009), Earth’s Global Energy Budget. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 90, 311-323. It is depicted in what is commonly known as the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram (or K-T energy budget: Fig 1 below)

Near the beginning this paper states:

“For an equilibrium climate the outgoing long wave radiation necessarily balances the incoming absorbed solar radiation.”

Then it goes on to admit that there are many reasons why this is not true. These include scattering and reflection of incoming radiation  by clouds and aerosols, absorption by the atmosphere, transfer of absorbed heat to kinetic energy and latent heat. They also admit that energy may be stored for some time or be converted to other forms of energy.

The above diagram, which assumes constant values for all the assumed energy transfers, shows a global energy imbalance of +0.9W/sqm, presumably a result of the mentioned additional disturbing factors. If their figures are realistic this means that the earth is warming without increases in “greenhouse gases.”

A revision of this diagram, about to be launched by the Fifth Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and which I am not allowed to show you, complicates this still further. They change several of their chosen figures but they now admit that the figures chosen are more or less arbitrary choices from a range of published estimates which they now add to the diagram.

Some days ago I was reading the debate between Gary Novak and Pierre Latour regarding the absurd hypothesis by the former, suggesting we “eliminate” the kinetic energy equation and replace it with the momentum equation.

Of course, I have no problem in totally supporting what Pierre Latour (who is a very competent and expert Chemical Engineer) wrote. His statements and calculations were totally correct, whereas those by Gary Novak were totally wrong, and no absurd claim of “corrupted science” can change that.

Therefore, my arguments below are only further evidences of the bizarre and indefensible statements by Gary Novak, maybe other readers can add their own.

Actually, the “arguments”  by Novak regarding kinetic energy and momentum, are quite similar to those sophistic  paradoxes  from the philosopher, Zeno of Elea, in 5 B.C. when he said that the fast Achilles could not reach the turtle, because any times he moved on the road, he had to make ½ + ¼ + 1/8 of cm., and so he could not reach the turtle making the same road, because he had to run “infinite little spaces”.

The Zeno paradox was an error, of course, because the limit of ½ + ¼ + 1/8 …+ 1/n is mathematically converging to 1, and doesn’t tend to infinity, first of all. Moreover Zeno was forgetting the TIME, both Achilles and the turtle are traveling on a physical space/time = velocity, so you can always compare the velocities of both.

But Zeno was living 2,500 years ago, and NOT in 2013 as Gary Novak!

So, it is clear that Novak is confusing momentum (p = mv) with kinetic energy , which is Force x displacement (Fs) = ½ mv², when he wrote that kinetic energy should be mv (???) and not ½ mv², as any high school students know.

In doing so, Novak “forgets” that kinetic energy refers to acceleration, work and power, namely totally different concepts than momentum only.

I received a question about how the 168 W/m2 solar input from the IPCC energy diagram (last post) can be converted into a temperature.  Here is my reply plus some further elaboration:

_______________

Radiation Wattage can be converted directly into a temperature via the Stefan-Boltzmann Law:

F = sigma*T4

where F is the radiant wattage, sigma is a physical constant (Stefan-Boltzmann constant) equal to 5.67×10-8, and T is temperature.

So, solve for T:

T = fourth_root(F/sigma).

The IPCC lists the wattage from the Sun as 168 W/m2 (this is actually a wattage flux, or energy flux density, a wattage flowing through a square meter, i.e. Joules per second per square meter).

Then you get T = fourth_root(168/5.67×10-8) = 233K = -40C, which is the temperature that the radiation would induce in matter on the surface when absorbed.  Sunshine induces a heck of a lot higher than -40C…up to 121C (250F) actually.  See the figure below for my own diagram which lists the REAL energy flux values and related temperatures from the Sun/Earth etc.

They’re so blatant about how wrong their diagram is, that they list the atmosphere providing almost twice the amount of power than the Sun does.  324 from backradiation over 168 from the Sun = 192{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.  The atmosphere, without being an actual source of energy because there’s no actual chemical, nuclear, or any release of energy going on in the atmosphere, miraculously provides twice the heat of the Sun.  So, I guess when we feel warm sunshine and cool air, we have it backwards?  It is the Sun that feels cool and the air that feels warm…on one side of your body…the side that’s facing the Sun…errr…

So, looking at the IPCC energy numbers, yes indeed there is a problem.  Energy is being invented from nowhere, numbers are just being made up, and then they say that it’s from the atmosphere and greenhouse gases.

Living organisms are dependent on a whole series of chemical reactions whose rate is dependent on temperature. To maintain life, the whole organism must be surrounded by an environment which keeps  the temperature of the organism within the limits necessary for its continuity. The environment must also make possible the provision of the necessary inputs  such as food and  shelter and the disposal of outputs.

The first five levels of the environment are essential for the maintenance of human settlement. The sixth is only required for recreation and exploration . Yet it is the only level that is promoted by “Environmentalists” They are hardly interested at all in the first five levels which are the only really important ones for human progress.

“Protection”  of this sixth level is heavily dependent on the effectiveness and efficiency of the first five: on the expenditure which is left after its essential maintenance .

Environmentalists”  display extreme concern for the non human organisms of the sixth level, but this interest is grossly uneven. Large easily visible organisms are regarded as important whereas small invisible organisms are neglected. This lack of balance prevents effective “protection” of any of them.

OF POSSIBLE USE IN THE ANALYSIS OF CLIMATE POLITICS?

From Wikipedia: The Gold Effect is the phenomenon in which a scientific (often medical) idea is developed to the status of an accepted position within a professional body or association by the social process itself of scientific conferences, committees, and consensus building, despite not being supported by conclusive evidence.

The effect was described by Professor T. Gold in 1979.[1] The effect was reviewed by Drs. Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick in their book “Follies and Fallacies in Medicine”.[2] The Gold Effect is used to analyze errors in public health policy and practice, such as the widespread use of cholesterol screening in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.[3]In their book, Skrabanek and McCormick describe the Gold Effect as: “At the beginning a few people arrive at a state of near belief in some idea. A meeting is held to discuss the pros and cons of the idea. More people favouring the idea than those disinterested will be present. A representative committee will be nominated to prepare a collective volume to propagate and foster interest in the idea. The totality of resulting articles based on the idea will appear to show an increasing consensus. A specialised journal will be launched. Only orthodox or near orthodox articles will pass the referees and the editor.” 

So what gives with the climate theory that says more emissions of carbon dioxide means more warming? Despite atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) up more than 40 percent in recent decades global temperatures have stubbornly remained flat for more than 15 years. Indeed, in the mainstream UK press global cooling is fast becoming the big news story with Arctic ice growing 60{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in 2013 and Antarctic sea ice extent breaking an all-time maximum (September 14, 2013)

Alarmists have long insisted increased human industrialisation was a dangerous ‘experiment’ and we should stop adding more ‘greenhouse gases’ to the atmosphere. But the planet’s stubborn refusal to get hotter has confounded expectations. At last, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its upcoming Fifth Report admits the models may have exagerrated the impact of CO2.

The Myth of ‘Cold’ Outer Space Debunked

Laboratory Physics Shows Vacuum Space Inhibits Cooling

Moreover, you may find here, another experiment, conducted by Professor Colm O’Sullivan of Cork University, Ireland [no relation] showing exactly with graphics how a body is cooling in a vacuum chamber and the difference with forced (convective) cooling, and natural cooling. [2]

In O’Sullivan’s experiment, as you can clearly see, the body was always cooling LESS, when it was kept in the vacuum chamber. Thus the near perfect vacuum of outer space inhibits, not enhances, the loss of energy from our planet. As such, actual physics proves that ‘greenhouse gases’ do not keep our planet warmer.

One of the most prescient indicators clearly shows it, namely the Danish Meteorological Institute’s daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel. They have been measured for over 50 years which shows a long-term average of 90 days with the air temperature above freezing.

The Year 2013

The year 2013 has seen a dramatic departure from that routine. In 2013, the summer (above freezing temperatures) lasted for only 45 days, one half of the average number of days. Not only did the frost-free days start much later than on average this year, they also ended much earlier, see the figure below. In fact, the frost-free period seen this year was significantly shorter than in other year since 1958, when the recordings began.

The new data corroborate other findings of no global warming for the last 18 years. In fact, not a single of the 20-plus climate prediction models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even shows the recent temperature developments as within their model uncertainties. It begs the question: Is another ice age imminent?

Climate at the Poles

The climate at the earth’s poles is quite different from that at mid-latitudes or near the equator. To begin with, at the poles, the lengths of day and night vary with the seasons. At the earth’s equator, day and night periods are ALWAYS equal, 12 hours exactly. In contrast, near the poles, day and night periods vary from 24-hour sunshine in summer to 24-hour darkness in the depth of winter.

The Arctic winter temperatures average around MINUS 30 °C (MINUS 35 °F) but it can get much colder than that. If nature so wants it, that kind of cold weather can slide down to cover half of the North American continent; even in Minnesota, winter temperatures can reach MINUS 60 °F!

The ‘Hockey Schtick’ (HS) reports (September 10, 2013) on more problems for official climate models. Newly-published research shows that climate models do not realistically simulate the role of wind (convection) on earth’s climate.

The HS-highlighted paper is published the very same day as a damning new analysis exposing similar flaws in the upcoming UN climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

HS explains:

“A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds climate models do not realistically simulate convection, “a key element of the weather and climate system for transporting mass, momentum, and thermal energy,” because of a large gap in the scale or resolution required to simulate convection [1-2 km] compared to global atmospheric motions [on the order of 10,000 km].” 

Meanwhile, Dr. Vincent Gray (Expert Reviewer of every IPCC report since 1990) publishes his own damning study in which wind, among other forces, is not factored into the official models, thereby causing climatologists to overestimate the effects of so-called “greenhouse gases.”

Taken together, both the GRL paper and the study by Dr. Gray form persuasive evidence that undue emphasise has long been placed on the roles of radiation and carbon dioxide (CO2) in climate change.

As the impacts of wind and the water cycle (via latent heat) are increasingly recognized this may persuade ever more scientists to question the greenhouse gas “theory” itself.

A few months ago Professor Robert G. Brown of Duke University wrote at WUWT and elsewhere that members of Principia Scientific International (PSI) don’t know Mathematics (sic). Brown then defied PSI to prove that the inner core of a hollow metal sphere is not heated by “backradiation” ( a junk science concept alien to thermodynamics experts).

Then, as if to “prove” his claim that “backradiation” is “real” Brown  wrote that if we wrapped a hot light bulb up with an aluminum foil, then in a very short time the bulb would be  overheated. To Brown the ensuing overheating of the light bulb was by “backradiation” generated from the aluminum foil (applied scientists may be heard sniggering at the very idea!).

However, Brown was unable to show any actual relevant calculations (only a long and boring array of meaningless algebraic gymnastics) to support what he said. Nonetheless, I took very seriously his challenge and I tried to calculate, in the most precise way, what really happens whenever you wrap a light bulb up with an aluminum foil.

What I present herein are typical, sound and established equations that any serious applied physicists, engineers, technicians, etc., will often use in the course of their work in what is euphemistically known as the “real world”. This is perhaps why academics like Brown, residing in their (“unreal world”) ivory towers, so often fail? For instance, it is a routine task for applied scientists and engineers to, say, calculate how much an electric wire may heat surrounding plastic insulation cable, or define the temperature reached by the casing of car engines in close contact with pistons, etc.

Clearly, it comes as a surprise for Mr. Brown (but not for PSI!) that in the fields of applied science it is impossible to find ANY manuals, technical textbooks, etc., using climate science’s mysterious “backradiation” to carry out  such practical (“real world”) calculations.

“Backradiation” is regarded as a sort of “Arabian Phoenix” in the scientific and technical community. Of course, the academics and global warming believers are saying it exists, but nobody has ever actually found it! Maybe Professor Brown believes otherwise, but I have never met an engineer devising an engine, an industrial plant, or an electric device using “backradiation” to calculate how much heat is passing through the materials!

Global temperatures have flatlined for the last 16 years. Increased public dissatisfaction with what is seen as junk climate science has put policymakers very much on the spot.

For the last six months Judy Ryan (a retired Epidemiologist) and Marjorie Curtis (a retired Geologist) have been engaged in a public letter writing campaign against prominent scientific climate alarmists, in Australia. The strategy is working.

Now, with the Federal election a week away Judy and Marjory have lodged a formal complaint to the Ombudsman against the Department of Climate Change and the Climate Commission. Over one hundred media outlets, opposition politicians and University student newspapers are openly copied in, so that it is on the public record.

Judy and Marjorie say they will keep applying pressure for a full investigatation of their formal complaint with the Ombudsman, and they have another formal complaint in the pipeline.  Below we are delighted to publish a full copy of their latest correspondence in the matter.

On January 1st 1989 the nations of the world took action, via the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, to eliminate the production of certain atmospheric pollutants; the man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC’s), because they caused ozone depletion in the stratosphere. This depletion allows excessive ultraviolet-B (UV-B) from the Sun to reach the Earth’s surface where it increases the risk of skin cancer, cataracts, and suppresses the immune system for humans and also damages other life forms.

The action of ozone is to absorb the radiance from the Sun across a number of different frequency bands including the damaging UV-B band. An extensive database of the infrared absorption spectra for gases is maintained on the HITRAN Web site by the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA, in conjunction with the V.E. Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics, Tomsk, Russia. It includes the absorption spectra for water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and the halocarbons which the UN’s Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated are, in order of importance, the main ‘greenhouse gases’ in the atmosphere.

While we have been told that ‘greenhouse gases’ are a cause of dangerous surface global warming, climate scientists have failed to tell us that they also absorbs radiation from the Sun in the upper atmosphere thereby protecting the Earth in a similar fashion to the protection given by ozone.For the case of absorption by CO2, the most prominent spectral line is at a wavelength of 4.3 microns.

Applying Planck’s Law this gives us a spectral radiance of no more than 0.73 Watts per (steradian metre squared) per micron. This is for an Earth emitting at a temperature of 288 degrees Kelvin, dependent on the emissivity at the time. For the incoming Sun’s spectral radiance at the Earth’s orbit, the figure is 2.24 W/(sr m^2)/micron for a Sun temperature of 5780 degrees Kelvin.

These numbers mean that at least THREE TIMES as much heat is radiated back into space by CO2 in the upper atmosphere as is ‘back-radiated’ to the Earth’s surface at this wavelength.

Clearly, absorption and re-radiation of the sunshine in the upper atmosphere at this wavelength cools the Earth and is going to cause additional cooling as the concentration of CO2 increases.

Temperatures on the moon are very hot in the daytime, about 100 degrees C. At night, the lunar surface gets very cold, as cold as minus 173 degrees C. This wide variation is because Earth’s moon has no atmosphere to hold in heat at night or prevent the surface from getting so hot during the day.

A single “day” on the moon lasts about 28 Earth days, meaning the lunar daytime is nearly two Earth weeks long.

Today (August 27th 2013), the hottest place on Earth is Palm Springs, where some dear friends of mine are living – I trust. The temperature has reached 134° Fahrenheit, which corresponds to 56.67°Centigrade. This is reckoned to be an all time record.

Just imagine then living on the Moon, where the daytime temperature can reach 123C and the nighttime will drop to MINUS 153C. 123C is more than twice as hot as our hottest day recorded.

On the question of temperature I would like to quote an email that I received from atmospheric physicist, James A. Peden, 4.12.2011: –

“Temperature” is based on a measure of the energy of molecular motion… and indeed,

the temperature at the edge of our atmosphere is quite “hot” … because the molecules,

albeit few in number, have a high kinetic energy … thus technically have a high “temperature”.

However, there are very few of them. Therefore the “heat content” is very small….

resulting in very few calories per unit volume. At sea level, there is a pretty good

correlation between temperature and heat content: a kettle of boiling water has both a

high temperature and high heat content.

But at the edge of space, with very few molecules per unit volume, you have the

seemingly paradoxical condition of both high temperature and low heat content.