The Problem Of Mutual Exclusivity In Climate Science
Two mutually-exclusive ideas cannot both be true.
An empirical fact about the atmosphere is that its temperature decreases with altitude above the surface; this is called the “lapse rate”.
In pedagogical and peer-reviewed climate science, a ‘radiative greenhouse effect’ derived and postulated from a flat model of the Earth is used to explain the lapse rate, although, it does not lead to a direct method to calculate the observed numerical value of it.
Alternatively, application of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics leads to a phenomenon called “adiabatic heating”, which is where a gas can change temperature due to work when heat is not present.
The source of work is provided by gravity. If one combines this adiabatic effect along with the heating effect of latent heat release from water vapor, then the numerical value of the lapse rate can be directly and accurately calculated to the same value as the empirical observation.
There is a conflict here in which phenomenon of physics is responsible for creating the lapse rate: is it the ‘radiative greenhouse effect’ of climate science, or is it the adiabatic and latent-heat effect of thermodynamics?
The former is accepted as pedagogical and ‘peer-reviewed’ climate science, the latter is accepted as the Laws of Thermodynamics.
These are two disparate explanations for a single phenomenon. Either mechanism claims to explain the empirical fact of the existence of the lapse rate. They cannot therefore both be true.
If they both were true, then the theoretical calculation from the thermodynamic approach which arrives at the observed empirical value should not be able to do so, because it leaves out whatever contribution must simultaneously have to manifest upon the lapse rate due to the climate ‘greenhouse effect’ if it existed.
In the face of two mutually-exclusive ideas, which one of these is true, and which is therefore by the process of elimination, false?
See more here climateofsophistry.com
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