Greenhouse Effect Debate

Judy Curry has opened a debate on the book Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, focussing on my two chapters

• Computational Blackbody Radiation
• Climate Thermodynamics

I look forward to a hopefully constructive lively discussion. Science does not thrive under dead

silence. In particular, I hope that Spencer, Lord Monckton, Lindzen and other leading skeptics will give the debate some attention.

My perspective is mathematical including both mathematical modeling and computation. I believe that physics must be expressed in mathematical terms, typically as differential equations, to have a precise meaning, and that understanding physics basically boils down to understanding mathematical models of different physical real phenomena, in the spirit of Dijkstra.

I give different presentations of the underlying idea of computation of finite precision in posts on thermodynamics, blackbody radiation, greenhouse effect and climate on this blog and in My Book of Knols and under "books" on my home page.

I repeat that I do not say "that there is no greenhouse effect" since the "greenhouse effect" is not well described in the literature. So anyone preparing to accuse me of "denying the greenhouse effect" should also prepare to tell me what sort of "greenhouse effect" I am supposed to deny. "Greenhouse effect denier" has the same value as "climate change denier".

What I am saying is that there is no backradiation, because that would correspond to an unstable physical phenomenon, as unstable and unphysical as "backdiffusion" or "backconduction".

What I am saying is that radiation alone without thermodynamics cannot tell anything meaningful about climate. A no-feedback sensitivity of + 1 C is just a formality or definition without any connection to reality, as non-informative as the statement that there are 100 centimeters on a meter, with its nature of definition signified by the message that it is "unassailable". Anything "unassailable" is a definition and a definition carries no information about reality. This is important to understand for both CO2 alarmists and skeptics, since CO2 alarmism starts with the basic postulate of a no-feedback climate sensitivity of + 1 C, which is then jacked up to + 3 C by positive feedback. Without the + 1 to start from, CO2 alarmism has to start feedbacks from 0, which is a completely open game with not even the sign being known.

Review of the debate after 83 comments Jan 31:

• None of the big skeptics has had anything to say. Only Judy Curry who agrees that something is wrong with the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget, but does not want to tell what.
• Of course Monckton and Spencer do not want to answer any of my questions, or Lindzen...
• If you are a skeptic then you pose questions, and of course do not answer any, just like a professional journalist or Freudian therapist. But scientists need to answer questions.
• Mostly confusing remarks as if my message has not be absorbed at all. Absorbitivity = 0.
• The "greenhouse effect" is strong and healthy science, although the equations are missing.
• Judy Curry clarifies and says that the KT budget with backradiation is basically correct.

Summary of my position Febr 1:

1. Radiative heat transfer is carried by electromagnetic waves described by Maxwell's equations. The starting point of a scientific discussion of radiation should better start with Maxwell's equations than with some simplistic ad hoc model like the ones typically referred to in climate science with ad hoc invented "back radiation" of heat energy. If there is anything like "backradiation" it must be possible to find it in Maxwell's wave equations. In my analysis I use a version of Maxwell's wave equations and show that there is no backradiation, because that would correspond to an unstable phenomenon and unstable physics does not persist over time.
2. Climate results from thermodynamics with radiative forcing, and radiation alone cannot tell anything of real significance, such as the effect of changing the atmospheric radiative properties a little: It is not clear if more clouds orwater vapour will cause global cooling or warming, or the effect of a small change of CO2. Climate CO2 alarmism is based on a postulate of a climate sensitivity of + 1 C which is a formality without known real significance.
3. I welcome specific comments on these two points.

Power of Language: "Refrigerator Effect" vs "Greenhouse Effect"

The Refrigerator Effect:

Lord Monckton, Judy Curry and Roy Spencer are critical to the critique in the new book Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory of the "greenhouse effect" underlying CO2 climate alarmism. My arguments that the standard conception of the "greenhouse effect" represents a scientific dead end, are summarized in my contributions to the book:

• Computational Blackbody Radiation
• Climate Thermodynamics.

By double negation (critique of critique) Monckton, Curry and Spencer effectively come out as supporters of the claimed consensus of (alarming) global warming by a "greenhouse effect".

M, C and S claim that they do not have the time required to enter into the mathematics of the criticism in the articles, but nevertheless remain critical to the critique referring to a strong belief that the greenhouse gas theory with its "greenhouse effect" cannot be killed because it is strong, healthy and very much alive. A seemingly invincible Sky Dragon...

It is natural to ask how it is possible to be so sure about the existence of a "greenhouse effect",

which in fact is not well described in the scientific literature? The meaning of the term ranges

from the total effect of the atmosphere as an "atmosphere effect" to the absorption spectrum of the "greenhouse gas" CO2 with unknown warming effect.

Is it simply due to the folklore description of the "greenhouse effect" acting like a "blanket" or "sheet of glass" helping us to stay warm in a chilly Universe at 3 K? Even if the atmosphere does not act like a blanket or sheet of glass at all?

Is the power of language so strong that the "greenhouse effect" from a "blanket in the sky" is

so seducing for the soul that the body becomes convinced? Maybe.

Suppose then that we change vocabulary and describe the effect of the atmosphere as the

"refrigerator effect", which is in fact more logical than the "greenhouse effect", because what

the atmosphere does is to transport heat (from insolation) away from the Earth surface to the top of the atmosphere for radiation to outer space. In the same way as the cooling system

of a refrigerator transports heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the outside.

OK, so everybody can now understand the "refrigerator effect" and with this understanding comes the immediate threat of a too strong effect of global cooling. Like with alchohol the risk is a too strong effect, not a too small effect (unless you are completely addicted).

So, with a "greenhouse effect" the imminent risk is too much of the effect into global warming. While with the "refrigerator effect" the threat is instead global cooling.

We see that semantics can twist our brains into firm beliefs which may lack scientific rationale. Of course we are all too familiar with this phenomenon in politics.

So how would the debate change if "greenhouse effect" was changed to "refrigerator effect?

Such a change could get quick acceptance this winter.

Judy now signals that she is ready to initiate a discussion on her blog starting from the two

articles listed above. I look forward to this discussion. Science without discussion is dead immobile science, while science with discussion is live science which can move forward.

PS1 If you want to get to understand thermodynamics for the first time in your life, download the draft of my upcoming book Computational Thermodynamics and explore physics with confusing statistics replaced by

• analog finite precision computation (reality)
• modeled by digital finite precision computation (virtual reality).

The idea of finite precision computation also underlies the new analysis of blackbody radiation

as Computational Blackbody Radiation.

PS2 Comparing the thermodynamics of global climate with that of a refrigerator should be done understanding the following important difference: The atmosphere transports heat from the Earth surface to a top of the atmosphere at lower temperature, while the cooling system of a refrigerator transports heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the outside at higher temperature. More precisely:

To transport heat in a system from a cold part to a warmer part (without chemistry) requires compression consuming external energy (driving the compressor in a refrigerator), while transport of heat from a warm part to a colder can be performed without external input of energy. The compression in a standard compressor refrigerator cycle is needed because expansion is used to create the temperature drop required to absorb heat from the interior of refrigerator to the circulating medium. In the atmosphere ascending air expands and cools and descending air warms as potential energy is exchanged to heat energy, without net input of energy, if turbulent dissipation is neglected.

PS3 As concerns Planck, his radiation law and his heroic (resultless) struggle to derive it mathematically from electrodynamics, and his final surrender in an "act of despair" to statistics, see Planck: The Reluctant Revolutionary.

Questions to Lord Monckton and Roy Spencer

I pose the following questions to Lord Monckton and Roy Spencer motivated by their criticism of the book Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory:

1. Do you consider the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget to be essentially correct?
2. Do you consider backradiation from cold to warm to be a real physical phenomenon?
3. Have you read and understood my derivation of Planck's radiation law without statistics?
4. Do you consider the derivation to be essentially correct?
5. Have you read and understood Planck's derivation of his law based on statistics?
6. Which derivation do you consider to best represent physics?
7. Do you think it is necessary to understand the derivation of a physical law to properly understand the meaning of the law?
8. Is it correct to speak of a greenhouse effect from a whole range of a causes, but then connect the effect to one (small) cause?
9. Is it correct to speak about a greenhouse effect from CO2 which may very well be zero?
10. It is correct to speak about a no-feedback climate sensitivity of +1 C from doubled CO2 obtained by a direct application of Stefan-Boltzmann's radiation law without any consideration of thermodynamics, as a basic value with physical significance? Isn't it a formality like a definition twisted into a physical fact?
11. Do you think an IR-meter can give information of radiative flux by effectively measuring temperature? If so, how is the translation from temperature to radiation performed by the instrument?

Answers will be posted when received.

It appears that neither Lord Monckton nor Spencer is eager to answer any of my questions, nor ask me any question. Lord M says that he has not the time to answer my questions, and Spencer says nothing. The discussion then collapses to silence.

But Lord M insists that there is a "greenhouse effect" somehow caused by the atmosphere, but seems to say that since the physics of this "greenhouse effect" has not be identified and described, it is impossible to say that it does not exist. How can you deny the existence of angels if you don't know what an angel is supposed to be? Maybe there is some sort of angel,

with or without wings?

But as I have remarked before, it is unfortunate if skeptics are more skeptic to other skeptics than to their common target of CO2 climate alarmists.

Judy Curry responds by:

• Claes, I have read and considered your arguments. To rebut/refute them would take more time than I am prepared to spend on this. I have to use my time where I think it is best spent. Judy

Invitation to IVTN Moscow

I have been invited to IVTN Computer Applications in Scientific Research in Moscow describing its mission as follows:

• In recent years the economical situation in Russian science has changed greatly. The destructive period of early 90-s is over and a great number of branches of science has revived.
• The main aim of the IVTN.ru project is to take an active part in supporting Russian science and apply new forms of the support.
• The main objectives of the IVTN.ru include providing opportunities for exchange of research experience, arranging discussions on actual problems, eliminating geographic and bureaucratic boarders, supporting the search for foreign scientific contractors.

Maybe an opportunity to sell BodyandSoul, FEniCS and Unicorn, in April in Moscow.

Why Nothing Rather Than Something?

Leibniz as a classic enlightened asked:

• Why is there Something rather than Nothing?

Baudrillard as a postmodernist turned the question around into

• Why is there Nothing rather than Something?

Let me illustrate with an example from my own experience with the department of Numerical Analysis NADA at KTH:

• NADA in Portuguese means Nothing. So NADA = Nothing.

The story is told in Simulation Technology, BodyandSoul and NADA, and in short tells that rather than using anything connected to the educational program BodyandSoul, the leadership of NADA in the name of Björn Engquist chooses extinction: The new Bachelor program in Simulation Technology ST which is to start in the Fall at NADA according the decision of KTH, which would have saved NADA from disintegration into Nothingness, will not be allowed to start. KTH says Yes!, but NADA says No! The Soul say Yes! but (a part of) the Body says No!

Why? Because ST is connected to BodyandSoul = Something.

So we see that NADA prefers Nothing before Something. This is of course fully logical because we live in a postmodern time where values of enlightenement are no longer important.

Some quotes by Baudrillard:

• The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it.
• If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
• Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
• Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.

PS January 31: I had a one-minute talk with the appointed leader of NADA Anna-Karin Thornberg, in the absence of NADA's spiritual leader Björn Engquist (former advisor of AK), during which Anna-Karin frankly informed me that nothing by my hand and mind could ever be used at NADA, as long as Björn Engquist was in charge. A clear message that Nothing is preferred before Something, if that Something is connected to my name. Academics at its best.

DN Klimatalarmismens Apostel och Härold

DNs Huvudledare 8 januari 2011 betitlad Alarmismens Apostlar visar att DNs programmatiska

ensidiga klimatalarmistiska rapportering är djupt förankrad hos DNs ledning, som gör följande anmärkningsvärda analys:

• De läkare och forskare som tidigare gick tobaksindustrins ärenden är i dag svårt komprometterade. Detsamma kan sägas om de så kallade klimatförnekarna eller anhängarna av kallfusion, möjligheten att framställa kärnenergi vid låga temperaturer.

Som en av landets "klimatförnekare" fick jag enligt samma analys en av mig författade bok om matematik och beräkning kastad på bokbålet i December 2010 genom DNartikeln Växthuseffekten en Myt-Enligt Kursbok på KTH, eftersom boken öppnar till matematisk analys av de grundekvationer från termodynamik och strålningsfysik som utnyttjas inom klimatsimulering.

Stockholmsinitiativet har protesterat mot Huvudledaren i brev från bl a Gösta Walin och Lars Bern och begärt ursäkt av Peter Wolodarski. Även jag protesterar. Så småningom kommer Wolodarski att få svara och be om ursäkt, även om ursäkt hos politiskt korrekta rättfärdiga publicister kan sitta långt inne eftersom de inte kan begripa hur enögda de är.

Uppenbarligen agerade KTH och DN i tandem vad gäller att förbjuda min bok. Frågan är vem som styrde vem? Är DN styrd av omgivningen i direkt motsats till sitt uppdrag, eller ännu värre, bestämmer DN vad som får läras ut vid landets universitet? Wolodarski vet.

PS I ett ögonblick av självrannsakan skriver Wolodarksi i sin ledare:

• ...yttrandefrihet också innebär ansvar. Det gäller i synnerhet för professionella journalister, som just är satta att bevaka allmänhetens intressen.

Man frågar sig vem som har satt Wolodarski att ensidigt predika klimatalarmism? Är det ägaren av DN dvs Bonnier? Eller "allmänheten"? Och vem har satt Karin Bojs att utföra uppdraget? KTH? Läs KTH-gate: The Story.

Naturligtvis har jag sagt upp min prenumeration på DN, som så många andra som fått nog.

Censorship and Deletion of BodyandSoul

To

The School of Engineering Sciences (SCI) KTH

The School of Computer Science and Communication (CSC) KTH

Concerning Censorship and Deletion of BodyandSoul: Mathematical Simulation Technology (MST)

I have made my unpublished ebook MST available for use in the 2nd quarter course Numerical Methods II, for the purpose of testing the material for possible use in the new Bachelor

program in Simulation Technology.

This letter is to state that as the test period now ends with the course, end of January for most of the students and mid March for some, any downloaded pdf-file of MST should be deleted so that no further use of the material is possible without my consent (including excerpts made). MST should thus be viewed as non-existing when the courses are finished.

The deletion is motivated by a planned commercialization of MST, and is also in full accordance with the censorship of MST by SCI during the course.

I thus ask SCI and CSC to inform teachers and students about these conditions, in particular on the course home page, and I want to get a confirmation that my message has been received and understood.

Upon new request MST can be made available in a new agreement with me concerning conditions.

Sincerely

Claes Johnson

Universities Don't Teach Critical Thinking

Donald Clark reports on a CLA Longitudinal Study showing that universities do not fulfill their prime mission of teaching students critical thinking as the most important aspect of university education. Donald Clark explains why in Don't Lecture Me.

This is amply illustrated by the fact that my ebook BodyandSoul: Mathematical Simulation Technology (to be published and available for inspection upon request) asking students explicitly to think themselves, be critical and always ask Why? Whatfor? and not accept anything by mere authority, has been subject to censorship by my own university KTH.

Why? Whatfor? Because BodyandSoul encourages critical thinking!

Not only does KTH not teach critical thinking, but even more deplorably, aggressively oppresses any ambition to do so. What would Wilhelm von Humboldt say about this? Compare with Humboldt State University:

• Students at Humboldt augment their classroom experiences by participating in varied experiences, which in turn strengthens their entrepreneurial and critical thinking skills.

The Unassailable Radiative Physics of the Greenhouse Effect

Raymond Pierrehumbert concludes his featured article in Physics Today Infrared Radiation and Planetary Temperature by:

• The basic radiative physics of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is unassailable.

The greenhouse effect is described as follows:

• Adding more greenhouse gas to the atmosphere makes higher, more tenuous, formerly transparent portions of the atmosphere opaque to IR and thus increases the difference between the ground temperature and the radiating temperature.
• The result, once the system comes into equilibrium, is surface warming.
• The effect is particularly spectacular for Venus, whose ground temperature is 730 K. If the planet were a blackbody in equilibrium with the solar radiation received by the planet, the ground temperature would be a mere 231 K.

The article is hailed by Judith Curry:

• Raymond Pierrehumbert has written an excellent overview on infrared radiation and planetary temperature.
• So, if you have followed the Climate Etc. threads, the numerous threads on this topic at Scienceofdoom, and read Pierrehumbert’s article, is anyone still unconvinced about the Tyndall gas effect and its role in maintaining planetary temperatures?
• I’ve read Slaying the Sky Dragon and originally intended a rubuttal, but it would be too overwhelming to attempt this and probably pointless. Has anyone else read this?

What to say about this?

First, Pierrehumbert by claiming that certain radiative physics is "unassailable" (impossible to dispute) and as such makes also the greenhouse effect impossible to dispute, in fact admits that he seeks to fool people by presenting a definition as a physical fact.

A no-feedback climate sensitivity of of 1 C is also unassailable, because it is a definition disguised as a physical fact.

That Venus high temperature depends on a greenhouse effect is easy to assail: It depends on a high thermodynamic lapse rate determined by the high pressure of the thick atmosphere and is not an effect of radiation.

Second, Curry claims that she has read Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death to the Greenhouse Gas Theory, but finds it "too overwhelming" and asks for help: Is it perhaps so overwhelming even to the Sky Dragon, that it is almost unassailable? Is the slaying or assail effective and therefore not pointless?

Compare with the true story about Tyndall and His Greenhouse Effect.

PS Also Roger Pielke Sr endorses Pierrehumbert's unassailable greenhouse effect, as another skeptic confused by IPCC CO2 alarmism.

KTH vs Pope Paul III: On the Revolutions

In the Foreword to On The Revolutions, conceived by Copernicus in 1514 but kept unpublished until briefly before his death in 1543, Copernicus makes the following statements directed to His Holiness, Pope Paul III to prepare for the message that the Earth is not the Center of the Universe:

• I can readily imagine, Holy Father, that as soon as some people hear that in this volume, which I have written about the revolutions of the spheres of the universe, I ascribe certain motions to the terrestrial globe, they will shout that I must be immediately repudiated together with this belief.
• Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned.
• Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heaven as its center would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
• When I weighed these considerations, the scorn which I had reason to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon completely the work which I had undertaken.
• For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philosophers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe’s spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools.
• And in fact first I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion. I have decided to set his words down here, so that they may be available to everybody:
• Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus, and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in a rotation from west to east about its own center.
• Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth. And even though the idea seemed absurd, nevertheless I knew that others before me had been granted the freedom to imagine any circles whatever for the purpose of explaining the heavenly phenomena.
• I have no doubt that acute and learned astronomers will agree with me if, as this discipline especially requires, they are willing to examine and consider, not superficially but thoroughly, what I adduce in this volume in proof of these matters.
• Perhaps there will be babblers who claim to be judges of astronomy although completely ignorant of the subject and, badly distorting some passage of Scripture to their purpose, will dare to find fault with my undertaking and censure it.

Copernicus escaped conviction and punishment by the Church by hiding his new theory until shortly before his death, but not his followers Giordano Bruno, who was put on fire in 1600 and Galileo, who was convicted to prison in 1633, both accused to believe that On The Revolutions said something true about the world.

With no comparision to On The Revolutions or the old Masters, my book BodyandSoul (BS) has met a similar fate at KTH with censorship and punishment threatening those who believe that BS says something true about the world of mathematics and physics, as evidenced in the strange story named KTH-gate. Why this oppression then, today at KTH? Because BS expresses the heretic idea that

• KTH is not the Center of the Universe.

Compare with Giordano Bruno:

• It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
• It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.

A difference with the Inquisition in the 17th century, is that at KTH there is no trial, no debate, no open discussion, only secret plots behind closed doors on how to feed media like DN with the message that my work is "rappakalja", and on campus only deathly silence with teachers muted by fear of oppression. Is this the 1984 of our time?

In 1992 Pope John Paul II lifted the ban on Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo:

• Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...

In 2000, Pope John Paul II also issued a formal apology for all the mistakes committed by some Catholics in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church's history, including the trial of Galileo among others.

One may wonder if the Church of Mathematics of today is more like the Catholic Church of the 17th century than that of Pope John Paul II?