The Problem With Global Warming Science

I am not a climate change denier, however I am very skeptical as to the cause reported in the media; I will prove that climate change is not caused by greenhouse gases, least of all, man-made carbon dioxide. 

I've been studying this for almost a year now and most of what's out there is nonsense.  The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is voluminous but contains enough hot air to cause the climate to change all by itself; no math, no science, just a bunch of projections on greenhouse gas concentrations.  

The main source of heat to the Earth is solar energy, which is transmitted from the Sun to the Earth by radiation (1372 watts per square meter) and is converted to heat at the Earth's surface. To balance this input of solar radiation, the Earth itself emits radiation to space. Some of this terrestrial radiation is trapped by greenhouse gases and radiated back to the Earth, resulting in the warming of the surface known as the greenhouse effect.

To show this, unfortunately, we have to take a look at the model and the math.  The model I will use is provided by a liberal climatologist from Harvard, but a search of greenhouse gas models on Google will show the same model from multiple sources.  

Fair warning; if you struggled with ninth grade algebra, you may want to skip the equations and skip to the first line after the math.

The model makes perfect sense except that the result of warming by the greenhouse effect is backed into instead of being confirmed by measurement.   Turns out there are measurements that directly refute the conclusions of the global warming community.

The Science 

The concepts presented in the previous sections allow us to build a simple model of the greenhouse effect. In this model, we view the atmosphere as an isothermal layer placed some distance above the surface of the Earth (Figure 7-12 ). The layer is transparent to solar radiation except for the part that is reflected (A, 30% on average), and absorbs a fraction f of terrestrial radiation because of the presence of greenhouse gases. The temperature of the Earth's surface is To and the temperature of the atmospheric layer is T1.

Figure 7-12 Simple greenhouse model. Radiation fluxes per unit area of Earth's surface are shown.

The terrestrial radiation flux absorbed by the atmospheric layer is fsTo4. The atmospheric layer has both upward- and downward-facing surfaces, each emitting a radiation flux fsT14 (Kirchhoff's law). The energy balance of the (Earth + atmosphere) system, as viewed by an observer from space, is modified from equation (7.10) to account for absorption and emission of radiation by the atmospheric layer:

 (7.12)

A separate energy balance equation applies to the atmospheric layer:

 (7.13)

which leads to

 .(7.14)

Replacing (7.13) into (7.12) gives

 (7.15)

which we rearrange as

 (7.16)

The observed global mean surface temperature is To = 288 K (would be 255 K in absence of any atmosphere), corresponding to f = 0.77 in equation (7.16) . We can thus reproduce the observed surface temperature by assuming that the atmospheric layer absorbs 77% of terrestrial radiation.

By substituting To = 288 K into (7.14) we obtain T1 = 241 K for the temperature of the atmospheric layer, which is roughly the observed temperature at the scale height H = 7 km of the atmosphere. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases increase the absorption efficiency f of the atmosphere, and we see from equation (7.16) that an increase in the surface temperature To will result.

The Problem

You may have observed the word assuming in the previous paragraph.  This is the crux of the problem.

The picture above is provided by NASA and represents a direct measurement of the spectral power density of the earth as measured from space.

The upper red curve represents what the Blackbody power density would be in absence of the atmosphere. The Blackbody temperature it slightly higher than 288 degrees K, presumably because the reflectivity (A) was a little bit lower than usual when that measurement was taken.

The blue curve represents the actual power density measured after the absorption by the atmosphere.   The lettering along the curve indicates which greenhouse gases are responsible for the discrete spectral absorption observed within the curve below.  Note the big dip in the middle is from carbon dioxide (CO2);  this is the cause of all the hubbub about CO2.

A brief word about wavenumber.   Wavenumber is not so much a unit of wavelength, but rather the number of wavelengths that will fit within a one-centimeter distance.  This means that the dip at the wavenumber about 600 corresponds to a wavelength of about 15 microns.  The earth only emits longwave (invisible) infrared radiation.

Though we've talked about the red curve and we talked about the blue curve, now we have to talk about the white space between the two curves.

The white space represents the energy that is absorbed by the atmosphere.   Even those of you who struggled with ninth grade algebra can probably see that the white space is less than half of the area of the blue space.  This means that the portion absorbed by the atmosphere is less than one third of the total energy radiated from the globe.

Remember the word assuming?  The model was assuming that the absorption by the atmosphere must be 77% to make the calculated temperature at the earth's surface equal to what they say is the measured temperature at the earth's surface.

Clearly, NASA says this ain't so.

In fact, if you plug and chug an absorptivity of only 30% back into the model you'll find that the greenhouse effect only accounts for 11 degrees of the total 33 degree (288 K minus 255 K) warming that the Inconvenient Truthers are assuming.

Further inspection of the graph above indicates CO2 absorption is only about 1/3 of the total of all the greenhouse gases.  In other word, only 1/3 of 1/3 (1/9) of the warming is caused by CO2; but it gets better still.

Sources of Carbon Dioxide (CY-2011):

The table below shows all of the sources of CO2

Source			Emmisions (billion tonnes)	% of Total	%
Human Sources					4.73%
	Fossil fuel combustion/use		33.2	4.11%
	Land Use		3.3	0.41%
	Industrial Processes		1.7	0.21%
Natural Sources					95.27%
	Ocean-atmosphere exchange		330	40.82%
	Plant and animal respiration		220	27.21%
	Soil respiration & decomposition		220	27.21%
	Volcanic eruptions		0.26	0.03%
Total CO2 Emmsions (2011)			808.46	100.00%

The table shows that man-made sources amount to less than 5% of all CO2 emissions.  

Since the pre-industrial levels were three-quarters of what they are now, this means that man-made CO2 emissions account for less than 1/3 of 1/20 of 1/9 of all greenhouse warming, 0.185%.

Conclusion:

So, NASA worked for President Obama.  So how can it be that they never warned him that he was making a fool of himself by stating that anthropogenic global warming was the greatest threat to the world.

Further, how can it be that the supposed science-loving liberals all buy into this preposterous notion that man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming.

Using the notion that man-made greenhouse gases account for 0.185% of all greenhouse warming, this means that of the supposed 0.9 degK temperature rise over the last century only 0.002 degK/century warming is caused by man.

Now honestly, is 0.002 degK/century the greatest threat facing mankind.  And should we be doing anything about it.

I'm not saying that pollution is a good thing, only that it is idiotic to conflate pollution with climate change (aka global warming) which is something beyond our control. Some have said that I have ignored the radiative and the feedback effects. However these only account for a fraction of a degree but the model is off by 22 degrees. They can safely be ignored for the sake of this discussion.

I think the standard model is ignoring a second source of energy; The earth's core is a molten ball of rock and metal. I will leave that problem to my readers.

Acknowledgements:

I hereby acknowledge that my undergraduate degree is in Electrical Engineering, however electrical engineering is applied physics.

I also want to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of my physicist friend, Smitty aka 'Hoser' or '6' (aka, the typist).