Politics and Greenhouse Gases

American Thinker ^ | November 27, 2009 | John McLaughlin

[neverdem]

Advocates and sympathetic politicians claiming that man-made global warming from use of carbon-based energy sources mandates international controls on economically prosperous nations were already worried that their victory is slipping. Now another blow has been struck against the basic "science" used to support their case. Following an extensive theoretical analysis, two German physicists have determined(pdf) that the term greenhouse gas is a misnomer and that the greenhouse effect appears to violate basic laws of physics.

To briefly review, the entire argument for immediate political action on carbon-based emissions rests upon three premises, formulated over the last twenty years by scientists affiliated with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

1. The planet is experiencing worldwide atmospheric warming, threatening life as we know it.

2. This warming is unprecedented because average worldwide temperatures for at least a thousand years have shown no significant variation until the last seventy years, which correlates with a thirty-percent increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) gas generated by industrial activity.

3. Invoking a "greenhouse effect" model, the IPCC claims that CO2 exhibits a property involving special characteristics of long-wave energy absorption and radiation with altitude (called "radiative forcing") which accelerates near-surface warming and, as the CO2 quantity increases, spells planetary disaster unless reversed.

In an AT article posted September 27, I laid out the case for why the first two premises were flawed, if not outright fraudulent. Now, the IPCC "consensus" atmospheric physics model tying CO2 to global warming has been shown not only to be unverifiable, but to actually violate basic laws of physics.

The analysis comes from an independent theoretical study detailed in a lengthy (115 pages), mathematically complex (144 equations, 13 data tables, and 32 figures or graphs), and well-sourced (205 references) paper prepared by two German physicists(pdf), Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner, and published in several updated versions over the last couple of years. The latest version appears in the March 2009 edition of the International Journal of Modern Physics. In the paper, the two authors analyze the greenhouse gas model from its origin in the mid-19th century to the present IPCC application.

The Greenhouse Model

The paper initially tackles the concept of thermal conductivity of the atmosphere (vital for any discussion of radiative heat transfer) and how it is affected by carbon dioxide, which, they point out, is a trace gas. The current estimated concentration of CO2 is 0.04% by volume and 0.06% by mass. Gerlich and Tscheuschner show that even if CO2 concentrations double (a prospect even global warming advocates admit is decades away), the thermal conductivity of air would not change more than 0.03% -- within the margin of measuring error.

The authors then devote nearly twenty pages to a detailed theoretical and experimental model analysis of the classic glass greenhouse. This model posits that glass surrounding a large volume of air allows solar radiation to pass through to heat the greenhouse surface and then selectively blocks resulting infrared energy from escaping. However, calculations show that no property of glass can adequately explain the temperature rise. Normal glass assumed in the model just cannot selectively screen and filter sufficient radiation energy by spectral absorption or reflection. Thus, assumption of a dominant radiative heating model must be incorrect.

Gerlich and Tscheuschner rely on referenced experimental evidence to show what is really going on. The dominant heat transfer mechanism is not radiation, but convection. Experimental evidence shows a greenhouse interior warms merely because the glass physically traps interior rising air, which then becomes warmer and warmer relative to air outside the greenhouse, which conversely can rise and cool unimpeded.

If the classic glass greenhouse model is obviously wrong, then this raises suspicions about the atmospheric "greenhouse effect" itself. The authors examine definitions of "greenhouse effect" by three respected sources (the Dictionary of Geophysics, Astrophysics, and Astronomy; the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics; and Encyclopedia Britannica Online). They show how each uses ill-defined global concepts (such as "mean temperature"), confuse infrared radiation with heat (they're different), incorrectly describe the physics inside a glass greenhouse, and use other terms unsupported by the laws of physics.

Surprisingly, the authors find that the term "atmospheric greenhouse effect" does not occur in any fundamental work or text involving thermodynamics, physical kinetics, or radiation theory. They then attempt to fill that void. They first derive the generalized equations a computer would have to solve to calculate an average radiative temperature for a rotating smooth globe without oceans (half exposed to the sun and half not) and inclined relative to the sun (as is Earth). They show that for a globe the size of Earth, even this simple non-convection model would be unsolvable by the most powerful computers available today or for the foreseeable future -- not only because of the quantity of calculations required, but also because of the impossibility of setting the initial boundary conditions at every point needed to even begin the calculation process.

Relevant Atmospheric Physics

Gerlich and Tscheuschner next show that even the simplest forms of the special equations needed for a true analysis of magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) relationships involved in planetary atmospheric heating cannot be solved -- even for small-space regions and small-time intervals -- because of the inhomogenities of each fluid involved and relevant solid, liquid, and gaseous phases to be considered.  The real world is just too complex.

However, they are able to show that MHD-type equations offer no terms corresponding to absorption of electromagnetic radiation, do not include equations for "radiative transfer," and give no indication of the point where the concentration of carbon dioxide would even enter into the computations. Further, they go on to show that any mechanism whereby CO2 in the cooler upper atmosphere could exert any thermal enhancing or "forcing" effect on the warmer surface below violates both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

There are too many different transfer phenomena (radiative transfer, heat transfer, momentum transfer, mass transfer, energy transfer, etc.) and types of interfaces (static or moving) between solids, fluids, gases, plasmas, etc. for which no applicable scientific theory nor ability to determine boundary conditions exists. "Hence, the computer simulations of global climatology are not based on physical laws," the authors conclude (their emphasis). "Nevertheless, in their summaries for policymakers, global climatologists claim that they can compute the influence of carbon dioxide on the climate."

Dr. Roy Spencer, in his book Climate Confusion, points out how man-made global warming alarmists attempt to mislead the public by claiming that global CO2 emissions total about 50 billion tons per year while failing to acknowledge that the total weight of the atmosphere is 5 quadrillion tons. In other words, the 50 billion tons adds to 5 million billion tons, or a mere 10 parts per million -- relatively speaking, a trivial change each year.

Spencer shows how with oceans covering nearly seventy percent of Earth, water vapor and ocean currents totally dominate our global climate. He attributes oceanic and atmospheric circulation in the North Pacific as the dominant modern climate forcing mechanism. As for infrared radiation, Gerlich and Tscheuschner agree with earlier studies that water vapor is responsible for most of the IR absorption in the Earth's atmosphere. Thus, any infrared radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide represents only a tiny part of the full IR spectrum and is affected little by raising CO2 concentration.

Gerlich and Tscheuschner state without equivocation that there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effect which explains the relevant physical phenomena. They call the terms greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases "deliberate misnomers" and a "myth beyond physical reality" and conclude:

The point discussed here was to answer the question, whether the supposed atmospheric effect has a physical basis. This is not the case. In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2-greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy. 

Thus, scientific support for the man-made global warming hoax slowly collapses while politicians rush to lock in massive international wealth-redistribution in its name. Those pesky "greenhouse gases" just don't behave in a politically correct manner.

[FreedomPoster]

FYI, see my previous post regarding them.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Awesome.

BTTT

[grey_whiskers]

Does anybody want to check my math above?

I've done better than that, I've done the math on your checks.

Exxon Mobil is paying you! /Gore-bot>

(Seriously, the only issue I see is that the solar irradiation is 365 days / year: a hurricane lasts what-- a week or ten days? So 10 days * 1 year / 365 days = .0274 years. Include the 1% factor, and each hurricane transposts .00274 of the average annual solar irradiation.

Which actually does a lot to refute "The Day After Tomorrow" and its monster cyclones, doesn't it...?

(Hint: in order for NYC etc. to freeze solid, what is the rate at which energy must have been
a) transported to the upper atmosphere
b) then radiated out to space

The mind reels.

Cheers!

[maryz]

those pushing AGW nonsense, though I doubt many even attempted to read it.

Do you s'pose if we sent the link to Boxer and Kerry, they'd read it? Can they read???

[PapaBear3625]

Seriously, the only issue I see is that the solar irradiation is 365 days / year: a hurricane lasts what-- a week or ten days? So 10 days * 1 year / 365 days = .0274 years. Include the 1% factor, and each hurricane transposts .00274 of the average annual solar irradiation.

Yes, thanks. So where the negative feedback mechanism comes in, is that warmer oceans would extend the hurricane season, and also there would be more hurricanes running at a time, causing more heat to be dumped to the upper atmosphere.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More ammo for Inhofe...

[AndyJackson]

I hate to bear bad news, but Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner are self-evidently a couple of cranks, writing nonsense.

In their referenced paper, they state: From known thermal conductivities (Table 5), isochoric heat capacities, and mass densities the isochoric thermal diusivities of the components of the air are determined (Table 6). This allows to estimate the change of the eective thermal conductivity of the air in dependence of a doubling of the CO2 concentration, expected to happen within the next 300 years (Table 7). It is obvious that a doubling of the concentration of the trace gas CO2, whose thermal conductivity is approximately one half than that of nitrogen and oxygen, does change the thermal conductivity at the most by 0; 03% and the isochoric thermal diusivity at the most by 0:07 %

This is sophistry. There are three mechanisms of heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation. Conduction in the atmosphere is irrelevant. Convection gives us weather. It is radiation that determines the heat transfer between space, earth, and clouds or CO2. Conductivity has nothing to do with it, and computing the change in the thermal conductivity of air with the change in C02 is a meaningless and irrelevant calculation.

In fact, here is a plot as seen from space of the earth's atmospheric opacity.

What is important is that gases in the atmosphere block the radiation to empty space of nearly 100% of the infrared. THAT is the greenhouse effect that this author claims does not exist.

That does not stop these idiots from going on to say Furthermore it is implied that the spectral transmissivity of a medium determines its thermal conductivity straightforwardly. This is a physical nonsense as well

These authors are speaking nonsense. The thermal conductivity and spectral transmissivity of a medium are two entirely unrelated phenomenon, and it is these authors who, as quoted above, choose to conflate the two.

The problem is that the conjecture of human generated greenhouse gases on climate is an open scientific question. The physical basis for concern is real enough. The only question is whether the magnitude of the effect, in comparison with all the complex offsetting phenomena, is significant in comparison with other sources of variation. The hypothesis is neither established by overwhelming evidence, nor is it refuted by overwhelming evidence.

For Freepers to claim that the question is anything other than open is to engage in the charlattanism, sophistry and self-delusion of the GCC advocates.

[AndyJackson]

A technically correct discussion of solar irradiation, atmosphereic absorbtion, the "greenhouse" effect, and so forth is in this article by a ME professor at Drexel Monitoring Solar Radiation and Its Transmission Through the Atmosphere

Unlike the swindling gobbledygook of the subject article, this is readily comprehended by anyone with a couple of semesters of physics or engineering. [hint, the ability to explain something simply in science and engineering is a sign that the author knows what he is talking about]

[AndyJackson]

One trouble with the papers on global warming that I've seen is that the theories focus on static behavior.

This is simply wrong, and there are a lot of scientists working on sophisticated models who are pretty smart. Here is an example of the sophistication of an ocean and sea ice model being developed at Los Alamos using the largest computers in the world.

The criticism that these models lack the fidelity and completeness necessary to model long term climate effects is fair, and the researches will tell you that problem.

The claim that these are "static models" is so far off base as to be laughable. It shows your stupidity and not the researchers stupidity.

Again whether human activities are affecting climate is an open scientific quesiton, but do not make yourself look ridiculous by claiming that all the folks working on this problem are stupid. Obviously the CRU folks are corrupt, and apparently incompetent. Not everyone is. Many are good and open minded scientists trying to solve a problem.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[AndyJackson]

Gerlich and Tscheuschner next show that even the simplest forms of the special equations needed for a true analysis of magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) relationships involved in planetary atmospheric heating cannot be solved

Again these guys are sophistic swindlers. MHD equations are mostly irrelevant to problems in atmospheric heating. The important relations are radiation transfer equations, and if you are worried about the simultaneous hydrodynamic equations then the field is called radiation hydrodynamics. For atmospheres, because the radiation flow is at the speed of light, and the convective flow is at most tens of meters per second, the two problems are largely decoupled. The real problems are the uncertainties involved with the physics of clouds and how to model them.