Climate Discussion Group 2024, CDG2024
Discussion - Climate C3
October - November 2024
C3
For the RTC/HTC - where and when they apply
Dec. 31, 2024
Gerald Ratzer
Canada
CDG2024 Final Technical Report
Climate Discussion Group
Climate change is one of the most debated topics of our time, covering everything from the impact of weather patterns to economic stability and human health. As scientific opinions evolve around the causes and consequences of a warming planet, the urgency for effective policy responses becomes paramount. For policymakers, this means not only understanding the complex interplay of environmental, social, and economic factors but also crafting effective strategies. This is a discussion from invited participants about an understanding of Climate on the technical level.
C3 Radiation Transfer (RTC) and Heat Transport (HTC) Concepts
Weather always changes. So does climate - all over the world, all the time. Carbon dioxide interacting with infrared radiation is a very minor, bit actor in "climate change." Where does RTC apply and where and when do HTC control our weather?
Nikolov, Ratzer, & Throne (6Dec) RTC versus Thermodynamics
Shula & Ott (30Nov) The “Missing Link” in the Greenhouse Effect.
Shula (29Nov) Why Radiative Transfer is the Wrong Model for the Earth’s Atmosphere.
December 27, 2024
Dec. 27, 2024
Gerald Ratzer Canada
Shula (29Nov) Photons and Photonic Confusion
Shula (27Nov) On Spectral Radiance and its Meaning
Lightfoot (2Nov) Email to Howard Hayden about the effect of thermodynamics and RTC on dips and bumps in the radiation profile of GHGs.
Ratzer (16Oct) on where RTC and when HTC apply. Includes the four Laws of Thermodynamics in plain text.
Nikolov, Throne & Newman (15Nov) Video discussion on their new paradigm.
Nikolov (14Oct) Email with text and links to his papers.
Hayden & Catt (14Oct) Link to 10 lectures on Climate Science.
Throne (13Oct) Explains the Nikolov & Zeller paradigm for planets with a rocky surface and an atmosphere.
Zeller (12Oct) Explains the background of the Nikolov and Zeller papers.
Lindzen (10Oct) What is Climate? Global Warming Narrative. Nikolov & Zeller (10Oct) Latest paper link.
We know the Antarctic flux diagram has a bump up, rather than a dip down for CO2, and that this cannot be explained by the Radiative Transfer Concept (RTC).
A negative greenhouse effect?
This is well explained by the recent N&Z on paper (August 2024) on page 25.
Further proof that the greenhouse effect (GHE) is not a physical reality – in an open atmosphere like our air.
Remember gravity stops our air from flying off into space. The Moon does not have an atmosphere as it does not have strong enough gravity to keep air molecules close to the surface.
December 27, 2024
Deg. 7, 2024
Terigi Ciccone USA
Here is the paragraph in question.
Tom I agree 100% with what you said. But it’s not all inclusive to explain weather and climate change there are variables and are often omitted. For example,
The earth does not need to radiate out as much power as the earth receives from the sun. During times of global warming the earth consumes a lot of power to melt polar glaciers. Which goes into the oceans as stored heat from a change of water phase. There’s no known law of conservation of radiative energy. There’s only one law of the conservation of energy.
Same with the melting of the tundra. That solar energy is not required to radiate back to space but can be stored in the earth as potential energy for some future need.
The earth’s energy budget is not a ping pong table. The earth’s, especially the oceans are like an accumulator of energy. Excess energy is stored there in warm times and drawn upon during Cold weather.
Respectfully
Terigi
Dec. 7, 2024
Gerald Ratzer
Canada
Yes – the oceans and icecaps are huge sources of warmth and coolth. So just a quasi-balance is needed for a stable temperature. We have been climbing out of the LIA (Little Ice Age) since 1850 – with a nice warming trend (with its cyclical ups and downs).
According to my thinking, we have just come to the end of the rising trend and the trend will be reversing and heading down.
Valentina Zharkova has detailed analysis of four solar cycles of data. This is 44 years of the Solar Magnetic background with at least a daily datapoint for 44 x 365 readings. Her data analysis follows the Scientific Method and passes validation – unlike the IPCC climate models.
So I think AGW is finished and has no real data or Science to back it up. I hope governments around the world will stay away from Net Zero and not follow the example of the UK and EU.
Gerald.
Dec. 7, 2024
Tom
Shula
USA
I have been following Valentina Zharkova for many years and I am quite familiar with her work.
All of the arguments based on all of the measured data that would indicate there is not a crisis for the past 30 years have not stopped the crazies from moving forward with the “green” agenda that is dismantling western industrial society.
This is exacerbated by the vast majority of skeptics capitulating to the GHE and arguing over what the magnitude of the effect is. That is the power of cancel culture.
No GHE => no GHGs => no problem using fossil fuels and letting cows fart =>NO HUMAN CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE!
As long as the false GHE persists, they will claim man made climate change. It has been falsified in at least two ways, and now we have an administration that is more skeptical than most so-called skeptics. Trump will be open to entertaining that the GHE is false, and to go in with
December 27, 2024
Dec. 6, 2024
Ned Nikolov
Gerald Ratzer, Darwin Throne, Australia –Canada - USA
anything softer than that would be a great mistake. He is a bottom line guy.
Tom Shula
Radiative Transfer Concept versus Thermodynamics
Gerald Ratzer:
As I said in a previous email about the Nikolov & Zeller papers – I am impressed by the result that the atmospheric pressure (not the composition) and the TSI, Total Solar Insolation, at TOA ,Top of the Atmosphere, are all that is needed to calculate the surface temperature for any planet or moon with a rocky surface. I believe this to be true for our solar system and the many others as well.
This is good Physics, but how important is the finding?
The RTC/HTC discussion shows that the Heat Transport Concept has many aspects from the circulation of the atmosphere and the oceans. These are changing from hour to hour in the air and on a seasonal basis for all the environments we live in.
I would prefer to say that auto-compression of the atmosphere is just one of the processes along with evaporation, conduction, convection, buoyance, and gravity that influences our weather. 30 years or more of dynamic weather will allow for some climate averages and estimates. One number a year is not in the same category.
Terigi and I would say the N&Z GMAT provides a baseline on top of which the dynamic and random weather processes take place.
December 27, 2024
Darwin Throne:
I recommend that you read Clark's paper Nobel Prize for Climate Model Errors which was recommended by one of the Clintel participants if you haven't already done so. His conclusions reflect my views.
The Radiation Theory of climate change is based on a false model that has been propagated since the early 60s starting with the Manabe work. He raises this question in his conclusion:
At present the average annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is near 2.4 ppm per year.
This produces an increase in the downward LWIR flux from the lower troposphere to the surface approximately 0.034 W m-2 per year. How does this change the surface temperature of the Earth?
The correct answer is that any temperature changes are too small to measure. Nor can there be any effect on extreme weather events.
To which I reply: exactly so.
The Radiation Theory of climate change is based on a false model that has been propagated since the early 60s starting with the Manabe work. He raises this question in his conclusion:
At present the average annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is near 2.4 ppm per year.
This produces an increase in the downward LWIR flux from the lower troposphere to the surface approximately 0.034 W m-2 per year. How does this change the surface temperature of the Earth?
The correct answer is that any temperature changes are too small to measure. Nor can there be any effect on extreme weather events.
To which I reply: exactly so.
December 27, 2024
Nov. 30, 2024
Tom Shula, Markus Ott
USA
Germany
Ned Nikolov
I'd like to commend you for the correct understanding of our GMAT model published in 2017. Indeed, our discovery was that total atmospheric pressure and mean annual TSI completely determine/define the long-term, baseline global temperatures of rocky planets & moons in the Solar System. Variations in cloud albedo and annual TSI cause departures of global temperature from that baseline value. These departures are described by Eq. 16 in our 2024 paper.
We now have an extension of the original GMAT model that describes baseline temperatures at several key latitudes in addition to the global mean. I'm currently working on a paper that will present the extended set of equations along with an update of the 2017 pressure-Tb/Tna curve based on new data for the baseline temperatures of Earth, Venus and Titan.
The most critical conclusion from our research is that the Atmospheric Thermal Effect (ATE) is not a radiative phenomenon as assumed for nearly 200 years, but a thermodynamic one, and that ATE is independent of atmospheric composition. This latter finding alone implies that non-condensing trace gases such as CO2 cannot in principle have a measurable impact on climate.
The “Missing Link” in the Greenhouse Effect
This paper by Thomas Shula and Marku Ott is comprehensiv and easy to
December 27, 2024
understand. It challenges a lot of the current and historical thinking on climate science
Below are a few excerpts. Studying the whole paper at the link above is highly recommended.
Background
In his summary of a van Wijngaarden and Happer paperi, Andy May begins his discussion as follows:
“The phrase “greenhouse effect,” often abbreviated as “GHE,” is very ambiguous. It applies to Earth’s surface temperature, and has never been observed or measured, only modeled. To make matters worse, it has numerous possible components, and the relative contributions of the possible components are unknown.”
In an interview with Tom Nelsonii describing the issues with the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and some of the issues with the climate models May says:
“…they are clearly in that stage of their modeling effort that every time they try and fix a mismatch, they break something else. It’s a sign that their models are missing some vital component of climate.”
For the past 33+ years since the first IPCC Assessment Report, the level of alarmism has continued to grow over this effect that has only been modeled and never measured. GHE has become ubiquitous in the Western lexicon, and many, if not most, of the prominent members of the “skeptic” community will defer to the belief that increasing CO2 causes “some” warming. It has so permeated our culture that now, when one searches the internet for “how a greenhouse works”, many sources claim that this is how garden greenhouses work as well. Surprisingly (and thankfully) Wikipedia still points out that a garden greenhouse works by blocking convection, NOT via the GHE discussed in the context of climate change.
Part 1 - The Behavior of CO2 mixed with non-IR active gases.
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Part 2 - The Application of the Concept of Radiative Transfer in Climate Science
.. Part 3 - How Heat from the Surface of the Earth is Transported into Space from the Ground Up
.. .. Part 4 - An Engineering Perspective on Climate – “Average”, “Balance”, and “Equilibrium”
.. .. Part 5 – Observations/Comments on Global Climate Models
.. Part 6 – Summary
Richard Lindzen since his retirement has become an outspoken critic of the growing climate alarmism that is being promoted in current society. While openly skeptical regarding the potential impact of climate change, he grudgingly concurs as most do, that GHGs cause “some” warming.
“Cancel culture” is a powerful force. One of our favorite quotes attributed to Dr. Lindzen is the following:
“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”iii
December 27, 2024
We have presented an alternative paradigm to explain how heat absorbed by the Earth’s surface is returned to space. The “missing link” in the GHE is the assumed spontaneous emission by GHGs in the lower atmosphere which is required for the radiative transfer mechanism to apply. Thermalization kills the upwelling radiation field from the surface, and the work of heat transport from the atmosphere to space is performed by convection until radiation from thermally excited emission (reverse thermalization) can escape to space at higher altitudes. GHGs are a conduit that converts surface radiation to sensible heat in the atmosphere. This decouples the surface radiation from the atmosphere. Outside of the atmospheric window there is no direct radiative energy transport from the surface into space. The heat energy is not “trapped”, it is simply slowed by the atmospheric “speed limit” of convection. The Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) outside the atmospheric window is determined by the atmospheric composition and thermally excited emission as a function of altitude of the GHG species therein. Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that the so-called “Greenhouse Gases” facilitate heat transfer at the surface AND the top of the atmosphere, rather than hindering it.
Almost all the OLR outside of the atmospheric window is from water vapor. The contribution of other so-called GHGs is insignificant. This is apparent from the predominance of water vapor emission at low frequencies in the OLR spectrum. There are two reasons for this. First, water vapor is the most abundant GHG, generally making up 90% or more of all GHGs in the lower atmosphere. Second, because water begins condensing at a relatively low altitude, the low density of water vapor molecules enables the escape of photons from thermally excited emission at a much lower altitude than other GHGs. As shown in Koll and Cronin11 , there is an approximately linear relationship between OLR and surface temperature over a wide range of terrestrial surface temperatures. While their “radiation-centric” analysis attributed this to other more complicated factors, it is more easily explained by recognizing that the convection generally follows Newton’s law of cooling which is a linear function of temperature. This also provides a natural negative feedback mechanism preventing “runaway” warming or cooling.
We posit that radiative transfer models were chosen for treatment of these phenomena because they mirrored the conjectures of Arrhenius and Schwarzschild, and that they were tractable from a computational perspective. As indicated earlier in this work, they have become a de
Nov. 29, 2024
Tom Shula USA
facto “standard of practice” in climate modeling. What those who chose this modeling approach failed to consider was that the works of Kirchhoff, Schwarzschild, and Arrhenius were conjectures without experimental support and preceded the modern understanding of the quantum behavior of IR active gas molecules. The early scientists assumed that there was a 1:1 relationship between absorption and emission by “bodies.” This is true under a limited set of conditions and was intended to apply to condensed matter in thermodynamic equilibrium. Climate modelers conflated this into a 1:1 relationship between absorption and emission at the atomic/molecular level. This is stated explicitly by Syukuro Manabe in his 2021 Nobel Prize acceptance speechiv, and this is a misapplication of Kirchhoff’s law that is deeply rooted in radiative transfer models. One might argue that because these models can reproduce measured OLR spectra with reasonable accuracy, they should be useful to provide some information regarding the behavior of the climate system. The work of vWH shows that spectra measured from various points on the globe with both moderate and extreme climate conditions can be reproduced qualitatively. This was explained in Part 2. For outgoing radiation, emission breaks out when the mean free path of the photon allows it. There is a catch, however. These models require the presence of a “back radiation” component of the atmosphere radiating energy back to the surface. Because thermalization converts the radiation field from the surface to sensible heat, the energy for a downwelling radiation field is no longer available and the “back radiation is impossible.
Why Radiative Transfer is the Wrong Model for the Earth’s Atmosphere
For the entire article, see link above. For excerpts see below.
In this work I will explain how the scientific community came to and persists in the narrative of Anthropogenic Global Warming based on the
December 27, 2024
Radiative Transfer Theory which results in the fictitious “Greenhouse Effect.”
Going back in history, Fourier, Tyndall, and now Eunice Foote are credited with “discovering” that CO2 absorbs IR radiation. While they may have contemplated the impact this could have on the atmosphere, it was Svante Arrhenius in 1896 who first tried to show that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere might have a warming effect on the Earth. He was motivated to do this because the world was coming out of the Little Ice Age and believed that by adding CO2 from industrial activities it could help prevent future Ice Ages. At that time, the “Greenhouse Effect” was considered a positive thing.
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Ten years later in 1906, in another part of Europe Karl Schwarzschild was trying to explain why the visible disk of the sun showed a darkening at the edges when observed from earth. While he is often credited with formulating the radiative transfer equation in one of the forms recognizable today, it was Arthur Schuster who formulated these equations including absorption and scattering terms. Schuster first published his work on stars in 1903. Schwarzschild introduced the concept of radiative equilibrium in his work.
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If one lets these definitions sink in a bit, the obvious question is, “Why is the modeling of heat flow in the atmosphere based on a model of radiative equilibrium rather than convective equilibrium?” The answer is quite simple, and I think it’s the dirty little secret of the climate-industrial complex that they never talk about.
Neither the mathematical tools nor the computing power required presently exist to solve the equations for a convective model, and they won’t exist in the foreseeable future. The climate-industrial complex would rather make up a scenario and claim they understand what is going on rather than admit it is a phenomenon that we cannot model with the tools at our disposal.
What the scientific climate community has done for the past 100 years is convince themselves that they can make “approximations” and provide a model based on the RTE. What are those approximations? Relative to a December 27, 2024
star, they assume that:
• The surface of the Earth is at a constant temperature and a constant altitude, despite the fact that the temperature can vary spatially by 80+C and the average height of the land mass is ~850m above sea level with significant geographic variation.
• That the earth is flat and receives a constant insolation of 340 W/m^2 despite the presence of a diurnal cycle and a temporal and spatial variance in insolation from 0 to 1340 W/m^2 in a 24 hour cycle.
• That CO2, a trace gas, controls climate even though H2O, water vapor, is on average 50 times more abundant than CO2 in the lower troposphere and is IR active over a much broader range of frequencies
• That radiative transfer is the primary method of removing heat from the surface, even though the troposphere is a strongly convecting layer and the energy transport is by mass flow.
• That the spectral solution produced by the RTE can provide information about energy balance. We now know that this solution only shows us what a well collimated radiometer would detect, as has been demonstrated. It cannot be used to infer the total energy flow, however.
The models used to “demonstrate” the “Greenhouse Effect” are not representative of the real Earth atmosphere. The “Greenhouse Effect” only exists in models and the minds of those who want to believe we can control the climate. It is 100% pseudoscience.
From my first writing in the climate foray, A Novel Perspective on the Greenhouse Effect, I leave with this which I realized a very long time ago.
“The radiation energy that the Earth absorbs from the Sun arrives at the speed of light. The Earth loses heat at a speed driven by convection in a process we call “weather.” Weather is the chaotic process by which the Earth’s atmosphere tries to continuously reach thermal equilibrium but never succeeds. The convection takes place continuously, but the speed
December 27, 2024
Nov. 29, 2024
Tom Shula USA
at which heat is transported by convection is MUCH slower than the speed of light. This means that heat energy leaves the Earth more slowly than it arrives, and that is why the Earth is warmer than predicted by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.”
Modeling climate is complicated, but understanding what drives it is less so.
Photons and Photonic Confusion -
Below are a few excerpts from the above article. See the link above for the complete article.
There is in particular one problem whose exhaustive solution could provide considerable elucidation. What becomes of the energy of a photon after complete emission? Does it spread out in all directions with further propagation in the sense of Huygens’ wave theory, so constantly taking up more space, in boundless progressive attenuation? Or does it fly out like a projectile in one direction in the sense of Newton’s emanation theory? In the first case, the quantum would no longer be in the position to concentrate energy upon a single point in space in such a way as to release an electron from its atomic bond, and in the second case, the main triumph of the Maxwell theory- the continuity between the static and the dynamic fields and, with it, the complete understanding we have enjoyed, until now, of the fully investigated interference phenomena- would have to be sacrificed, both being very unhappy consequences for today’s theoreticians. ..
Michael
Mischenko
in Directional
radiometry and radiative transfer_ The convoluted path from centuriesold phenomenology to physical optics also extensively discusses the problems with the photon concept. His discussion begins on page 13 where are also illustrated various configurations associated with directional radiometry pertinent to his work.
December 27, 2024
Nov. 27, 2024
Tom Shula USA
You may be asking why this is important. In the RTT as applied in contemporary climate science, the onedimensional RTE uses spectral radiance as the energy source that interacts with the IR active gases in the atmosphere. In many treatments this is “translated” to a gas of photons, “particles” of electromagnetic energy that fly around at random in space being emitted and absorbed by IR active gas molecules. My favorite descriptor, from van Wijngaarden and Happer GreenhousePrimerArxiv.pdf is “quasi-diffusional transport of thermal radiation in opaque spectral regions.” This leads to the concept of “trapping” or “slowing the progress” of photons, aka the “Greenhouse Effect.” We have all seen the animations of photons “bouncing back” to the surface.
As Mischenko has shown, it is not spectral radiance or “packets of light energy” that interact with particles, it is the electric and magnetic fields that interact with the particles. A “photon” is defined not by what it is, but what it does. It is convenient as a concept for the exchange of electromagnetic energy, but it does not share many physical attributes of matter particles. ..
While the use of the concept “photon” is convenient in many circumstances, it is important to keep in mind that electromagnetic radiation can exhibit “particle like characteristics”, it is not composed of physical particles. There exists no wave function for the position of a “photon.” In my next comments I will discuss Planck’s perspective on spectral radiance.
On Spectral Radiance And Its Meaning
The whole article is at the link above. See excerpts below.
December 27, 2024
Nov. 27, 2024
Tom Shula USA
In his book The Theory of Heat Radiation, Max Planck states:
“Heat may be propagated in a stationary medium in two entirely different ways, namely, by conduction and by radiation. Conduction of heat depends on the non-uniform distribution of the temperature in space.
Radiation of heat, however, is in itself entirely independent of the temperature of the medium through which it passes. It is possible, for example, to concentrate the solar rays at a focus by passing them through a converging lens of ice, the latter remaining at a constant temperature of 0◦ , and so to ignite an inflammable body. Generally speaking, radiation is a far more complicated phenomenon than conduction of heat. The reason for this is that the state of the radiation at a given instant and at a given point of the medium cannot be represented, as can the flow of heat by conduction, by a single vector (that is, a single directed quantity). All heat rays which at a given instant pass through the same point of the medium are perfectly independent of one another, and in order to specify completely the state of the radiation the intensity of radiation must be known in all the directions, infinite in number, which pass through the point in question; for this purpose two opposite directions must be considered as distinct, because the radiation in one of them is quite independent of the radiation in the other.” (Emphasis added)
To paraphrase the emphasized part of the quote, this says that it is not possible to measure the net flow of radiation energy at any point without simultaneously measuring the direction and magnitude of radiation energy flow through that point from every possible direction.
Tom Shula’s background in climate related sciences.
See link above for full article. See below for excerpts
Nov. 26, 2024
Gerald Ratzer Canada
My academic training was in classical physics with an emphasis on theoretical and mathematical physics. Disillusioned by academia in graduate school and attracted by the 1970s allure of Silicon Valley I chose a path in industry.
Part of that included extensive experience in the design, development, and operation of equipment for the manufacture of semiconductors and disk drive components in vacuum. These are extreme environments where temperature control is critical and one learns quickly the relationships of radiation, conduction, and convection for transport of heat energy in a myriad of temperature and pressure regimes.
My first piece in the climate conversation, “A Novel Perspective on the Greenhouse Effect”, was borne from this experience. While well received by many, the criticisms have led me to a deep dive into radiative transfer theory which continues.
My singular focus, with Markus Ott, continues to be the “Greenhouse Effect” which is no more than a failed conjecture which has only been modeled and “justified” by mathematical constructs that were developed for the analysis of stellar atmospheres but have no relevance to the earth’s atmosphere.
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Here is the link to the CLINTEL Climate Conference in Prague.
Here are links to Gerald Ratzer’s paper, “Climate Concepts”.
- Abstract
- Actual slide presentation
Nov. 21, 2024
Climate Concepts – Abstract for CLINTEL Prague
December 27, 2024
