If you look at any explanation of the “Greenhouse effect” you will undoubtedly find it explained in simple terms as CO2 acting to “trap heat” in the atmosphere like a blanket. That is provably false and this article explains why.
The “heat trapping” or “blanket” model invariably goes along with the following type of diagram. This diagram is not “wrong” in the sense it largely correctly accounts for the various heat “flows”, but it is wrong as a physical model of the greenhouse effect because it doesn’t even mention the critical factor which is the temperature of the atmosphere. And without knowing that the model is nothing but a set of meaningless numbers and any explanation using it is complete twaddle.

Do Academics believe the heat trapping model?

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For a while I’ve known that the 1970-2000 warming which caused the Global warming scare was a result of 1970s moves to reduce atmospheric pollution. This is clearly shown by the strong correlation between the areas with most intense warming and the areas with SO2 emissions (which I use a a proxy for industrial activity).
However, when I compare these with areas of acid rain (timescale unknown – I couldn’t find anything which clearly showed the areas subject to acid rain and gave a timescale)
It seems that the areas of acid rain are between the areas of emission, and highest rise in temperature (in other words greatest reduction in 1970s cooling causing pollution).
From this it is possible to conclude:

1. That the process is not the direct formation of cloud by sulphates
2. That the process takes longer to affect the weather than the simple formation of acid clouds

I have no doubt that the 1970-2000 warming was due to the reduction in pollution. However the exact nature of what was causing the cooling in the 1970s remains a mystery. It still seems likely to be cloud, and I wonder whether it could be stratospheric cloud, but to put it bluntly … it is very difficult researching something that went away in the 1970-2000 before much of the more modern monitoring and about 40 years before anyone even considered it a driver of global temperature.

In any subject a culture can be created, and that culture may make some things permissible that otherwise would not as well as making taboo that which would normally considered acceptable.
For years, having seen the protestations of self-styled “Climate scientists”, it’s been clear to me they had completely wondered off the scientific path and were indulging in fantasies not science. However, by chance I came across this tweet from Michael Mann in which he makes it very clear that his working methods, and so presumably the culture in climate “science” is to change the data to fit the model. That’s not science.

Here is the original source, but given Twitter is now censoring content and blocking users it disapproves of, and given this is such a clanger by Mann, it may not remain available

Copy the URL into an anonymous web browser pic.twitter.com/8q0qp62yuh

— Jonathan Jones (@nmrqip) January 2, 2018

I often find this. I hear someone in the public eye say something I think is extremely mild and so hardly give it a passing thought, and then when I finally start reading about it, it turns out to have created a media storm. Clearly the only thing the global warming Libtard media in the US want to talk about is Trump tweet which I think was only “we could do with a bit of global warming”.
Now, even someone who believed in Global warming could find that funny – because even if you believe in catastrophic warming, you must also believe in natural climate change which will from time to time bring much colder weather.
However Libtards don’t have a sense of proportion, they only think weather is climate when it is hot and they have no sense of humour. In short this is a blasphemy and so they are reacting with the normal religious fervour against anyone who dare express the heretical view that global warming is laughable.
 

An interesting tweet across came I

Destroyers of wealth. https://t.co/UPUw8DMHdA

— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) December 31, 2017

It contained the following graph
First we need to recognise that capacity is nowhere near the same as average delivered power. I think the figure for what is currently delivered is closer to 20-30% of capacity, so the actual capacity will be lower. But it gets worse, because it gets even lower the higher the % of unreliables. Because whereas it is now cheap conventional that gets turned off when there is excess power, if you were insane enough to get rid of conventionals then much of the time it is expensive unreliables would be turned off because unreliables were producing too much … and much of the time industry and consumers would be turned off as they produce too little. So the available capacity from unreliables would be much smaller.
However if we assume a 25% delivery for convenience, the above graph suggests the cost per W per person of unreliables is 0.018*1000/0.25 =  74cent/kwh per person. On average a household of 2.5people consumes about 400w. So that yearly cost of unreliables for a household if anyone were mad enough to go for 100% unreliables appears to be around

74 * 0.4 * 24 * 365  = ~2600 Euros per Household

This is however the direct cost. But as raw materials and manufacturing costs are all directly related then the cost will be higher. A while back I wrote about The Enerconic multiplier (expanded later in the  The Enerconic or society energy multiplier). This provides the useful figure that energy is reused in society about 4x. As such, if everyone we sourced goods and services were to adopt the same crazy policy of 100% unreliables, I can work out the cost per household as

2600 x 4 = ~10,000 Euros.

With an average EU salary of 17640, an average wage single earner household will be spending 56% of their salary solely on extra costs incurred by this crazy policy. Of course, not every country is mad enough to go along with this insanity. So, the effect at the moment is that it is cheaper to produce things in countries who have not been infected with the madness. Thus in addition to seeing large cost increases, there is also a steady drain of jobs abroad. That will depress EU economies & hence wages until it has much the same effect  as if we were all being taxed an additional ~ 56%. But there is one small issue here. The average tax rate in the EU is 40%. So between the increase costs for unreliables and massive government taxes (also added to the cost of unreliables) there is frankly very little left.
There is however one ray of hope … as the UK isn’t in the Euro, and with the Italian financial crisis looming, the cost of unrelieables in Euros will be much smaller (… I’m just joking, the green parasites suck us dry whatever the currency).
But can you now see why I call this policy insane? The direct cost is massive, but the indirect cost is totally bonkers and would leave all of us with almost no personal salary – or more likely, we’d end up being able to afford to purchase a fraction of what we do now. We will all be a lot lot poorer. It is total bonkers and if politicians were mad enough to push it through would cause those countries adopting it to descend into an economic decline heading toward third world status. And with that I would like to wish you all …

Happy New Year

As a scientist, you’d expect me to make decisions rationally. So why have I stopped being a full time sceptic. The reason is that people just didn’t seem to be interested in the subject any longer. I couldn’t point to any statistic to justify that feeling, I couldn’t show you a graph or do a cost benefit analysis showing I had done what I could to change public opinion and my time was now better spent getting around to the things I had neglected for so many years.
However as always  Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot has hit the nail on the head with his explanation of the series of global warming film flops this year:

“Hollywood is finding out that the climate scare continues to be nothing more than a big yawn for the public,” Mr. Morano said. “Lecturing the public on climate change is boring, and ticket receipts prove this.” (Link)

There are now several different models trying to explain or calculate the Greenhouse effect. None of them are perfect. The best models are too complex and not even understood by some top scientists who have failed to spot the importance of pressure. Others like the “standard” model are so dumbed down as to be laughable. And clearly my own model (hereafter called Haseler’s lapse rate model) is no better because although physically much much more realistic than most models, it is clearly too difficult for many to understand.
So without going into detail, I thought I would try to describe the differences and the pros and cons of each model.

Layer-by-layer Numerical Model

The best model of the atmosphere is a detailed layer by layer model of the atmosphere whereby for each layer, for every frequency, for all molecules types, the net incomings and outgoing IR energy and heat flow from convection, etc. Continue reading →

First, as so many have so many times said, the so called “Greenhouse effect” is completely different in physics to a real greenhouse. Instead as I outlined in my last post, the effect stems from the lapse rate: that the earth AS SEEN FROM SPACE must emit radiation equivalent to a black body at 255C (the temperature at which incoming and outgoing radiation balances at our distance from the sun).
The reason for the higher temperature at the surface, is because there is a drop in temperature with height due to the lapse rate, and this means the planet’s surface will be warmer. Yes, there is radiation trapping, yes greenhouse gases have a marginal effect on the average height (and therefore temperature) of the earth as seen from space (or to reverse, the temperature of the surface must change to bring the temperature as seen from space back to the stable blackbody temperature). However, the radiation trapping is important, only in that it drives the lapse rate. However, I jump the gun. So what are the key requirements for the Greenhouse effect:

An Atmosphere with Pressure

The first requirement is that the planet must have an atmosphere. The reason for this, is that there is no temperature profile through the atmosphere without an atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases OR IR emitters like Clouds

The next requirement is that the atmosphere, which will have a thermal gradient due to the lapse rate, must emit radiation from within the atmosphere from either IR interactive molecules like water vapour, CO2, etc. or from liquid droplets in clouds.

That there must be heating to drive convection

Whilst the lapse rate explain the thermal gradient, it is not possible for heat to be emitted from the atmosphere without simply cooling the atmosphere, unless  unless there is a heat flow from lower down in the atmosphere. In other words, there must be an excess of heat in the lower atmosphere, that drives convective currents to take that heat to higher up where it will be emitted.
This is where the “Mickey mouse” explanation that we hear so often about global warming is partly right. The scale of the greenhouse effect is almost entirely due to the lapse rate. In that regard, the “heat trapping” concept is completely unhelpful. However, unless there were heat trapping: radiant energy is absorbed at the surface and cannot escape via IR, then there would be no energy source to drive the convective currents which stabilise the temperature gradient in the atmosphere DESPITE massive cooling as IR is emitted from out of the top of the atmosphere.