The design of Curt Wilson’s experiment–a little glass greenhouse over top of a heat source–perpetuates the idea that the thermodynamics of a gaseous atmosphere tens of km thick can be modeled using a glass dome (as do all of the mathematical models that portray the atmosphere as a sheet of glass suspended some distance above the surface.) What one cannot learn about the thermodynamics of the 11,000 meter thick gaseous troposphere by studying a solid piece of glass is one of the fundamental elements of the first law of thermodynamics.
Unlike a solid piece of glass, air is compressible, therefore “work” can be done on air which will raise its temperature and “work” is done on every kg of air that is pulled down from aloft to replace air that is ascending, expanding and cooling. These two processes are symmetrical; one cannot exist without the other. Ascending air cannot expand and cool unless there is an equal amount of air somewhere else descending, being compressed and warming. The equilibrium temperature of the “Standard Troposphere” is actually about -20.6 C and can be found at an altitude of ~5.5 km. The temperature of the tropospheric air above this altitude is lower by the same amount ( about 35 C) as the temperature of the tropospheric air below that altitude is higher due to the energy imbalance created by this “adiabatic process.” Remember that the “adiabatic process” does not create nor destroy energy but rather just moves it from one place to another.
So, in reality there exists within the atmosphere opposing movements of heat–four are spontaneous and one is active. The spontaneous heat transfer modes of conduction, convection, latent heat transfer and radiation that are all moving heat from the “hot source” of the ground and lower troposphere upward towards the “cold sink” of the upper troposphere. At the same time the adiabatic process (the active mode of heat transfer) through the vehicle of “work” is moving heat from the the “cold sink” of the upper troposphere down to the “hot source” of the ground and lower troposphere. This is in line with the “Clausius Statement” “Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time.” Of course the “other change” is the uneven solar heating of the surface and surface level air, which acts like the early refrigerators that were driven by a propane burner that cycled on and off. At any rate the result of this tug-of-war between the one active mode and the four passive modes of heat transfer is that the dry adiabatic lapse rate of 9.8 C/km is reduced to an average of 6.5 C/km.
The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis denies the fact that the lower troposphere is actively being heated by the “work” being done on descending air by ascending air and instead insists that the ground and lower troposphere are actively being heated by “back radiation” from “greenhouse gases”. For example James Hansen in his 1981 paper – Climate Impact of increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide referred to the “adiabatic lapse rate” as a “radiative vertical temperature gradient” as opposed to a “work” induced vertical temperature gradient. The difference may seem subtle but the former violates the second law of thermodynamics while the latter does not. IR radiation cannot spontaneously create a temperature differential within a body of matter, such as the troposphere, “through warming the lower atmosphere and cooling the upper atmosphere.” (Spencer 2013) This would mean that the same trace gases are having opposite affects at different places within the same atmosphere. In reality, it is the adiabatic process, via the “work” done by ascending air on descending air, that warms the lower troposphere and cools the upper troposphere just as is taught in basic climatology courses.