Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Version 3.0 (September 9, 2007) replaces Version 1.0 (July 7, 2007) and later
By:
Gerhard Gerlich
Institut fur Mathematische Physik
Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina
Mendelssohnstrae 3
D-38106 Braunschweig
Federal Republic of Germany
g.gerlich@tu-bs.de
Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Postfach 60 27 62
D-22237 Hamburg
Federal Republic of Germany
ralfd@na-net.ornl.gov
arXiv:0707.1161v3
Abstract
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
1.1 Problem background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 The greenhouse effect hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 This paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 The warming mechanism in real greenhouses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1 Radiation Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1.2 The infintesimal specific intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1.3 Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1.4 The Stefan-Boltzmann law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2 The Sun as a black body radiator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3 The radiation on a very nice day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3.1 The phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3.2 The sunshine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3.3 The radiation of the ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.4 Sunshine versus ground radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 High School Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.5 Experiment by Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.6 Glass house summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3 The fictitious atmospheric greenhouse eff ects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1 Problem definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2 Scientific error versus scientific fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3 Different versions of the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.1 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Moller (1973) . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.2 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Meyer’s encyclopedia (1974) . . . . 38
3.3.3 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Schonwiese (1987) . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.4 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Stichel (1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.5 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Anonymous 1 (1995) . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.6 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Anonymous 2 (1995) . . . . . . . . 40
3.3.7 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Anonymous 3 (1995) . . . . . . . . 40
3.3.8 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after German Meteorological Society (1995) 40
3.3.9 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Gral (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.10 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Ahrens (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.11 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Dictionary of Geophysics, Astrophysics,
and Astronomy (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.3.12 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Encyclopaedia of Astronomy and
Astrophysics (2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.3.13 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
(2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.14 Atmospheric greenhouse effect after Rahmstorf (2007) . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.15 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4 The conclusion of the US Department of Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5 Absorption/Emission is not Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.1 An inconvenient popularization of physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.5.2 Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.5.3 Absorption and Emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.5.4 Re-emission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.5.5 Two approaches of Radiative Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.6 The hypotheses of Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.6.1 The traditional works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.6.2 Modern works of climatology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.7 The assumption of radiative balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.7.2 A note on “radiation balance” diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.7.3 The case of purely radiative balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.7.4 The average temperature of a radiation-exposed globe . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.7.5 Non-existence of the natural greenhouse effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.7.6 A numerical example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.7.7 Non-existence of a global temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.7.8 The rotating globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.7.9 The obliquely rotating globe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.7.10 The radiating bulk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.7.11 The comprehensive work of Schack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.8 Thermal conductivity versus radiative transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.8.1 The heat equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.8.2 Heat transfer across and near interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.8.3 In the kitchen: Physics-obsessed housewife versus IPCC . . . . . . . . . 74
3.9 The laws of thermodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse effect : : : . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.9.2 Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.9.3 A paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.9.4 Possible resolution of the paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4 Physical Foundations of Climate Science . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2 The conservation laws of magnetohydrodynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.2.2 Electric charge conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.2.3 Mass conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.2.4 Maxwell’s equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.2.5 Ohm’s law for moving media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2.6 Momentum balance equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2.7 Total energy balance equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2.8 Poynting’s theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2.9 Consequences of the conservation laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2.10 General heat equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2.11 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3 Science and Global Climate Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.1 Science and the Problem of Demarcation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.2 Evaluation of Climatology and Climate Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5 Physicist’s Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100