GLOBAL GREENHOUSE FLOP

by

C. (Kees) le Pair

Trigger

In 2017 I wrote, unfortunately in Dutch, a lesson on climate and the greenhouse effect⁽¹⁾ for beginning students in those fields. Later it turned out, that advanced students also needed that lesson. The much-discussed greenhouse effect has been misunderstood almost everywhere. As a result, the Global Climate Policy and the CO₂ fear are based on falsified scientific results.
Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is publicly accessible, two researchers⁽²⁾ submitted the issue to various AI systems, Chatgpt and Perplexity⁽³⁾. Both discussed it extensively. Their main conclusions make the results topical again and extremely urgent, because the CO₂ hunt has disastrous consequences for society:
Chatgpt: "Yes, this is a fundamentally correct approach. The analysis of Cees le Pair on clepair.net, in which he starts from a strictly radiative model without energy transport or storage, lays the correct physical basis for assessing the effect of additional processes (such as rotation, convection, greenhouse effect, heat reservoirs) on planetary temperature."
Perplexity: "The real radiative base temperature of a planet can only be calculated as here: https://www.clepair.net/temperature-evening-2.html. Discussion. This is a theoretical model, without transport and without storage of energy, with the temperature calculated for each point on the sphere separately. Everything that makes the planet in question warmer than in this purely radiative model for a sphere that is not 'superconducting' is due to a multitude of factors, some of which you have just listed. I think this is the correct basis and the correct approach to perform the analysis of the planetary temperature."

I consider this a 'peer review after the fact' in which the wisdom of the internet has been taken into account. Therefore, I will summarize the essence of the previous article below. Dutch original.


Introduction

Public and governments fear a changing climate caused by more atmospheric CO₂. This is unnecessary and harmful. This fear is driven by alarm over an enhanced greenhouse effect. More CO₂ strengthens the effect and makes the Earth so warm that regions become uninhabitable. That's alarming. And the world population is falling over itself to emit less CO₂ into the air, capture the substance, and even store it forever.
The greenhouse effect is the effect that gases in the air, such as H₂O, CO₂, SO₂, CH₄..., have on the Earth's temperature. According to calculations, without those gases, the temperature would be -18 °C (255 K). However, we measure it to be +15 °C (288 K). So, the greenhouse effect on temperature is 33 °C.
How well we understand what the Earth's greenhouse effect does, thus depends on how accurately we know those two temperatures: +15 °C (288 K) and -18 °C (255 K).


De temperatuur van de Aarde

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers calculate as follows. Measurements close to the surface of the ocean and solid Earth give, averaged over the entire surface and over a year, +15 °C (288 K). The measurements do show different temperatures everywhere - such as in the tropics and around the poles, in mountains and valleys, in cities and among forests - and they keep changing. Just like the representativity for a large or small area. But you can always average, and if you measure consistently with the same method, place, and time, and the average is stable, then you have an indicator that says something about the system and about the changes.
More serious is that this average says nothing about the Earth's temperature distribution⁽⁴⁾. It's merely an indicator for the small part of the Earth we inhabit. And the question is what that means for the Earth between the Sun and the universe. So, there is much disagreement about that +15 °C (288 K). But even with an uncertainty of 4 °C, that is still relatively accurate for a slice of Earth flying through a universe where the ambient temperature is -270 °C (3 K). An uncertainty of 1.4%, in fact.
We'll keep this indicator for that part of Earth with its greenhouse gases in mind, with admiration for the many measurements and the organization required.


Temperature Without Greenhouse Gases

For the Earth without greenhouse gases, there are no temperature measurements. However, we do measure the solar flux outside the atmosphere: on average over a year ~1350 W/m². Then comes a bold assumption: 30% of the solar radiation is reflected⁽⁵⁾. That does nothing to the Earth. The radiation that does reach the Earth is then, averaged over a year, ~1000 W/m² perpendicular to the incoming radiation. The Earth's cross-section perpendicular to the radiation beam is πR². So, the incoming radiation energy on Earth is 1000πR² W (R = the radius of the Earth).
The total Earth surface area is 4πR². To keep the Earth unchanged, it must emit as much energy as it receives, i.e., 1000/4 = 250 W/m². A reliable physical law tells us that a black sphere without an atmosphere must have a uniform surface temperature of -18 °C (255 K)⁽⁶⁾ to radiate this energy. That is why the IPCC and its followers assume that temperature as the Earth's without greenhouse gases.
It goes without saying that something is wrong here. Because the Earth is not a sphere with a uniform surface temperature. Far from it. The Sun imposes a highly uneven temperature distribution on the Earth.

A black sphere receiving the same amount of energy from a parallel radiation beam of 1000 W/m², but that does not distribute the energy across its surface at all, must radiate the incoming energy at each spot and time back into space locally to remain unchanged. To do so, at the point directly under the Sun, it must be +91 °C (364 K). Half the sphere receives no radiation and emits nothing. There, the temperature is -270 °C everywhere. On the sunlit side, the incoming solar energy depends on location: 1000·cosφ, where φ is the angle between the incoming parallel beam and the surface normal at that location. Even then, you can neatly calculate an average temperature over the whole surface. That would be no more than -128 °C (145 K).


Conlusion

The comparison of the Earth with a black sphere, by which the greenhouse effect of 33 °C is defined, is a wrong choice between two extremes: