R.I.P. Greenhouse Gas Theory: 1980-2018

Fresh analysis of government scientific records reveals the idea of ‘long-settled’ science in the greenhouse gas theory is a myth. The claim human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) act as a control knob on climate only appeared in consensus science since the 1980’s. Prior to that time, official records show the theory as “abandoned.”

Famously, on June 24, 1988 the whole world first heard about the dreaded “greenhouse effect” (GHE) from NASA’s  new champion of the theory, James Hansen. Hansen had breathed life into an old and “abandoned” theory drawing from new space research into Venus and Mars. Thanks to Hansen’s role, climate fear prevailed for a generation.

Recently, Russian scientists have declared the GHE dead as global cooling sets in; while a team of Italian scientists called for a “deep re-examination” of the failing theory. Other new papers readily dismiss the CO2 climate hypothesis. Below we present the stark evidence and encourage readers to engage in their own research.

Consensus as Science?

Of course, we should begin by stating real scientists avoid reliance on consensus opinion to determine the validity or otherwise of any theory. But so often, non-scientists in the general public and media (and certain corrupt national science institutes) cite consensus claims to quell discussion and debate.

In that regard, we show that for the greater part of the 20th century consensus science, itself, rejected the idea that carbon dioxide causes global warming.

The so-called greenhouse gas theory (GHE) was first famously debunked by Professor  H. W.Woods in 1909. Establishment scientists usually never decry the Woods debunk. Instead, they gloss over it and the long hiatus that followed (1909-1980).

Concocting a Strong Narrative

Spencer R. Weart, director of the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics is pre-eminent among establishment science historians in splashing gloss.  Weart’s book, ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ is compulsory reading for modern students in this field.

Weart plugged Hansen’s comparison of Mars and Venus with Earth, asserting life as being very fragile and vulnerable to any climate shifts. Weart writes:

“In the 1960s and 1970s, observations of Mars and Venus showed that planets that seemed much like the Earth could have frightfully different atmospheres. The greenhouse effect had made Venus a furnace, while lack of atmosphere had locked Mars in a deep freeze. This was visible evidence that climate can be delicately balanced, so that a planet’s atmosphere could flip from a livable state to a deadly one.” (id.)

Like James Hansen’s ‘fixing’ of history, Weart is masterful at making evidence fit the narrative.

Alarmist drumbeater, Andrew C. Revkin, in The New York Times Book Review heaped fulsome praise proclaiming that Weart’s version of science history,

“dissects the interwoven threads of research and reveals the political and societal subtexts that colored scientists’ views and the public reception their work received.”

Revkin’s words are subtly revealing of the importance of appearance in science and public perception. Glowing praise for Weart came, too, from Fred Pearce, of the UK’s The Independent:

“It is almost two centuries since the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Fourier discovered that the Earth was far warmer than it had any right to be, given its distance from the Sun… Spencer Weart’s book about how Fourier’s initially inconsequential discovery finally triggered urgent debate about the future habitability of the Earth is lucid, painstaking and commendably brief, packing everything into 200 pages.”

We could be forgiven for thinking we’ve had two centuries, no less, of CO2 ‘settled science’, couldn’t we?

Follow the Money

Sadly, too few have scratched beneath the surface of Spencer Weart’s compelling (biased) narrative. If they had they would have found some very disturbing pronouncements of consensus science wonderfulness to jar such faith.

What Weart and other establishment lackeys won’t tell you is that the American Meteorological Society – as well as Britain’s top climate scientist, CEP Brooks (1951) no less – published the most damning assessments discrediting Weart’s Big Greenhouse Gas Fiction.

Weart, and so many profiting from the scam, won’t admit that it doesn’t pay to come clean and jump off the billion dollar global warming gravy train. Professor Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan, sums it up succinctly:

 “CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other – every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so.”

Weart and co. would rather you not know that there are more than 65 (SIXTY-FIVE!) known iterations jockeying for position as THE GHE theory. Many are self-contradictory and unphysical. By contrast, we don’t have 65 variations of the laws of gravity. Plus, there are no less than  53 bogus authority statements online declaring that Earth’s atmosphere DOES act ‘like a greenhouse.’

The Hansen ‘Cooling is Warming’ Flip-flop

Weart also fails to tell readers that in 1967 Hansen claimed (when he was a fringe theorist) that if there was a GHE it was likely induced by dust (aerosol particulates).  [1]

Hansen had been pitching his “Dust Insulation Model” (DIM) to anyone and everyone after obtaining his PhD from the University of Iowa and starting work at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Then in the 1970′s disaster science became the rage, inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky, a leading advocate of Catastrophist ideas as opposed to the prevailing Uniformitarian notions. Hansen, as a disciple of Velikovsky, was crying about an impending ice age on Earth while at the same time speculating that dust aerosols in the atmosphere of Venus caused a “runaway greenhouse gas effect” on the hot planet. Nowhere, back then, was Hansen claiming CO2 drove climate. Does the term “opportunist” spring to mind?

Not until television science celebrity and fellow catastrophist, Carl Sagan, won fame with his claims about a “runaway greenhouse effect” on Venus – all due to carbon dioxide – that Hansen got on the new bandwagon. Meanwhile, a contemporary of Sagan, American physicist Richard Feynmen, discredited the GHE. Today, independent scientists, using the latest data from space probes, have a better idea of what’s happening on Venus. Moreover, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests life is not fragile, but enduring and likely common throughout the universe on many planets like ours.

This certainly conflicts with the Weart narrative. But then, why would Weart – a loyal alarmist propagandist – want to expose how bad Hansen’s science really is? If Weart were honest, he would have come clean on Hansen’s howler made in a key climate paper published in a 1981 edition of ‘Science‘.  [2]

Hansen’s Huge CO2 ‘Window’ Howler

In it Hansen claims carbon dioxide absorbs in an atmospheric “window” from 7 to 14 micrometers – which transmits thermal radiation emitted by the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere. But the scientific reality is that carbon dioxide only has an effect on the atmospheric window centered on 14.77 microns with a range from about 13 to 17 microns – not from 7 to 14 micrometers. So how did Weart and thousands of “experts” over decades never spot that corker?

None of these crucial failings was systematically challenged until 2010 and the full-volume ground-breaking book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the  Greenhouse Gas Theory.’ A recent bombshell study validated the book’s science.

The clues for junk science are staring us in the face, especially now so many experts, outside of climate ‘science’, aver to the facts of empirical evidence that CO2 has only even been proven to cool, never warm, anything.  Joseph E Postma illustrated well how respected textbooks on thermodynamics show’ energy‘ is generally not ‘heat‘, which is where the GHE theory is confused and any forcing role from CO2 cannot work. [3]

Charlatans Conflate Correlation & Causation

But thanks to mainstream media hype and despite the flaws in the science, the GHE gained traction from 1980, as global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) went ever upwards. Non-scientists often mistake correlation for causation (charlatans depend on it!).  Yet, we now look back and see that average global temperatures over the past 100 years have barely moved one degree – despite the brief uptick in the late 20th Century.

With no catastrophe imminent and fears of a new ice age gripping ever more scientists, we are right on the cusp of the biggest science paradigm shift since Einstein. Academics don’t want to admit to the truth that levels of CO2 – whether higher or lower – can be shown to have no measured climate impact. The truth, it seems, shifts full circle back to what the AMS declared in 1951, as the extract below reveals. [4]

https://archive.org/stream/compendiumofmete00amer#page/1016/mode/2up

The author of the above extract is CEP Brooks. He and the publisher, the American Meteorological Society, unequivocally advise that the old CO2 climate theory of Arrhenius, Fourier, et al:

was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation absorbed by CO2 is also absorbed by water vapour.”

Brooks (+AMS) then addresses the rise in atmospheric CO2 due to human industrial activity:

In the past hundred years the burning of coal has increased the amount of CO2 by a measurable amount (from 0.028 to 0.030 per cent), and Callender [7] sees in this an explanation of the recent rise in world temperature.”

Continuing, Brooks (1951) makes the same inescapable argument made by skeptics today:

But during the past 7000 years there have been greater fluctuations of temperature without the internvention of man, and there seems no reason to regard the recent rise as more than a coincidence. This theory is not considered further.”

Thus, the greenhouse gas theory was well and truly dead and buried in 1951 – according to settled consensus science (if you are a believer in it).

No ‘Greenhouse Gas Theory’ Spoken in Charney (1979)

For the next revealing insight we must shift 28 years further ahead to ‘Charney’ (1979). But before we do, let us first heed some words of warning from a man with the keenest insight of Big Government machinations.

As Warren E. Leary writes, no less than President Dwight D Eisenhower urged us to be on our guard:

“During the 1961 address, in which the president famously warned of the danger to the nation of a growing armaments industry referred to as a “military-industrial complex,” he included a few sentences about risks posed by a scientific-technological elite. He noted that the technological revolution of previous decades had been fed by more costly and centralized research, increasingly sponsored by the federal government.

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields… ,” Eisenhower warned. “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” [5]

Intellectual curiosity certainly has gone into short supply in contemporary government science. From the 1940’s to early 1970’s, the temperature records had showed a clear cooling trend. Till the mid 1970’s the big story among scientists was global cooling – not warming. We have to get well into the 1980’s, when there was evidence of an uptick in global temperatures, to see wide evidence that the long-abandoned CO2-driven greenhouse gas hypothesis was rising again – like phoenix from the ashes.

Indeed, we can pinpoint the change by examining the extremely detailed  13,000-word climate report ‘Carbon Dioxide and Climate, A Scientific Assessment’ (1979). Widely referred to just as ‘Charney’. This makes zero mention of the greenhouse gas theory. Not. Anywhere. Among. Thirteen. Thousand. Words. So how could the greenhouse gas theory be “settled science” if not mentioned by name ANYWHERE in such a key US federal climate report?

Nonetheless, ‘Charney’ did concede that CO2 might actually cause cooling, something contemporary alarmists would rather you didn’t know!

https://www.nap.edu/download/12181

Prominent skeptic, Professor Richard Lindzen,  was one of the original ‘Charney‘ science contributors (see image above – along with James Hansen!) and  has “walked back” from the GHE. Despite Hansen’s “contribution”  his theory was shut out. Canadian space scientist, Joseph E Postma summarizes why bias, group think and incompetence helped sustain the discredited greenhouse gas theory for so long when proper examination shows it is literally ‘flat earth physics.’

NASA Boss: Hansen “Embarrassed” Us

But time is not the friend of climate fraudsters. And Hansen’s beloved greenhouse gas theory is consistently and monotonously being refuted in peer-reviewed journals rendering him – and other alarmists – disgraced. NASA’s Mass/Gravity Equations contradict the GHE and retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theonm James Hansen’s former supervisor at NASA, has declared on government record that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” and “was never muzzled.” [6]

The failure, after 30 years of prophesy, for a climate catastrophe to unfold, has left James Hansen a somewhat chastened man. In a recent paper Hansen shows he has now flip-flopped again on the climate forcing properties of aerosols. Returning to his old DIM science idea Hansen now says aerosols are part of the control knob for a planet’s energy content. But contrary to what he claimed before, he now says they cause cooling, not warming.

In 2018 the null hypothesis awaits the greenhouse gas theory. In 1951, the AMS and Britain’s best climate scientist and head of the UK Meteorological Office, CEP Brooks said it all (id.)


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[1] Hansen, J.E., and S. Matsushima “The atmosphere and surface temperature of Venus: A dust insulation model”Astrophys. J. 150: 1139–1157 (1967) Bibcode1967ApJ…150.1139HDoi:10.1086/149410.

[2] [Hansen J., Johnson D., Lacis A., Lebedeff S., Lee P., Rind D., Russell D., SCIENCE 28 August 1981, Volume 213, Number 4511, Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.].

[3] Refers to Schroeder in “Thermal Physics” (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000) stating that: “Much of thermodynamics deals with three closely related concepts: temperature, energy, and heat. Much of students’ difficulty with thermodynamics comes from confusing these three concepts with each other.”  And so note once again that energy is generally not heat. GHE believers conflate both.

[4]  CEP Brooks, American Meteorological Society (1951) in its Compendium of Meteorology (Brooks, C.E.P.  “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” pp. 1004-18 (at 1016)).  https://archive.org/stream/compendiumofmete00amer#page/1016/mode/2up

[5] https://www.aaas.org/news/after-50-years-eisenhower-s-warnings-against-scientific-elite-still-cause-consternation

[6] https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases-all?ID=1a5e6e32-802a-23ad-40ed-ecd53cd3d320

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Comments (20)

  • Avatar

    jerry krause

    |

    Hi John,

    A very good (excellent) historical review.

    But to move our understanding of the earth-atmosphere-sun climatic system forward, I believe you should have included what R. C. Sutcliffe, Chief Meteorological Officer for the British Forces in Europe at the end of WWII, wrote in his 1966 book (page 33)–Weather and Climate.

    “Clouds which do not give rain, which never even threaten to give rain but which dissolve again into vapour before the precipitation stage is ever reached, have a profound effect on our climate.”

    Have a good day, Jerry

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Rosco

    |

    Just a few comments –

    “Of course, we should begin by stating real scientists never rely on consensus opinion to determine the validity or otherwise of any theory.”

    I do not agree – have you ever tried to argue that your answer to an examination question at any academic institution which the examiner has marked wrong is actually correct ? If it isn’t exactly what the consensus says then good luck with getting academia to change its mind no matter what evidence you can provide.

    “The so-called greenhouse gas theory (GHE) was first famously debunked by Professor H. W.Woods in 1909. Establishment scientists never decry the Woods debunk. Instead, they gloss over it and the long hiatus that followed (1909-1980).”

    I do not agree – This guy claims it is incorrect – http://clim.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/

    Am I mistaken in my belief that a lot of email correspondence by PSI supporters in an effort to dispute Pratt’s results and highlight his experimental failures took place several years ago.

    Also PSI had an article disputing Pratt’s “replication” of Wood’s 1909 experiment.

    This guy also appears to dispute your claim – https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324.

    I do not see how you can validly make your claim – “Establishment scientists NEVER decry the Woods debunk”.

    “Respected textbooks on thermodynamics show why the GHE and any forcing role from CO2 cannot work.”

    You make this assertion yet you provide no evidence in support.

    I possess several respected University cited textbooks which include sections acknowledging the “greenhouse effect” is real :-

    Young and Freedman University Physics 13th edition – Page 576.
    John H Lienhard IV and John H Lienhard V – A Heat Transfer Textbook – Page 581
    Yunus A Cengel – Heat Transfer – A Practical Approach – Page 585
    Kee R Kump, James F Kasting, Robert G Crane – The Earth System – Page 36.

    5 J P Holman – Heat Transfer – 10th Edition – Page 458.

    You can’t just make stuff up without providing some form of evidence.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      John O'Sullivan

      |

      Ross,
      Thanks for your constructive comments. Have fine tuned the article accordingly. I don’t see any need to muddy the waters by referencing Pratt’s bogus debunk of Woods, which as you say, was ably debunked on PSI some years ago.
      I agree the wording is sloppy here: “Respected textbooks on thermodynamics show why the GHE and any forcing role from CO2 cannot work.” Have therefore tightened it up with: “Joseph E Postma illustrated well how respected textbooks on thermodynamics show’ energy’ is generally not ‘heat’, which is where the GHE theory is confused and any forcing role from CO2 cannot work. [3]”
      You state you “possess several respected University cited textbooks which include sections acknowledging the “greenhouse effect” is real. Indeed, but merely “acknowledging” the GHE is not verification of it. Hopefully, others will discern the difference, too.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      jerry krause

      |

      Hi Rosco,

      Here is my personal experience with the greenhouse effect. In 1973 I began to teach general chemistry, at the 2nd oldest two-year (junior, community) college in the USA, for chemistry majors, engineering majors, and any other majors which required a ‘rigorous’ general chemistry course at a community college. Because it was expected that our courses should transfer to any 4-year college (university), we always needed to use one of the textbooks currently popular with the chemistry professors at these 4-year schools to which our students might want to transfer.

      After WWII because of the rapid growth of industry and our economy it quickly became obvious that ‘noxious chemicals’ were polluting our air and water. This was a topic that chemists could not ignore. And it is a fact that we (the USA) got a large percentage of these real problems rapidly solved; much more rapidly than the vocal environmentalists claimed would be possible.

      And I have read that others beside John considered that the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide was a problem well before 1980. John is correct when he mentioned Carl Sagan.
      But what he did not write was that Sagan had a partner. He was Svante Arrhenius, a Nobel-Prize winning Swedish scientist, because of his acid-base discoveries and theories. His 1896 essay titled On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground was published in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Series 5, Volume 41, pages 237-276. Carbonic acid being the common name of carbon dioxide at that time. His elementary radiation balance calculation is still included in many introductory meteorology textbooks although he is not generally credited as being its ‘author’.

      But Arrhenius’ major accomplishment was that he took the historical air temperatures that had been measured and recorded around the world at that time and calculated the average air temperature of the earth (world), which is still very near that presently being considered the average far the earth. But for whatever reason, I have yet to read that the average air temperature of the earth is not necessarily the average temperature of the earth’s ground as the title of Arrhenius’ essay claims it should be. And, of course, about 70% of the earth’s surface is water and not ground.

      And Rosco, I have yet to read that you address this problem of apples and oranges. But I do not claim to have read everything you have written. But maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on what John wrote or about the professors and I who taught our students about the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide which had been accepted by so many by the 1970s.

      I wonder how many skeptics of this theory have asked themselves: Why is this theory so accepted? My answer is: It’s much easier to explain, or understand, than hydrogen bonding is. It is so logical.

      But Rosco, a fact is that chemistry teachers and chemistry instructors and chemistry professors have carried the water for this theory. Why? Because so many college majors demand chemistry courses and not many demand meteorology or climatology. And another fact is that I was amazed to discover that the chemistry professors that I had, or knew, in graduate school claimed they did not understand my essay titled—A New Scientific Law And The Greenhouse Effect (http://principia-scientific.org/new-scientific-law-greenhouse-effect/)—well enough to comment upon it when I shared it with them in 2014.

      Perhaps they were influenced by the fact that a contract chemistry instructor had not been offered a contract for the coming academic year without any explanation after being a recognized as good to great instructor by his students for 5 years. Even though there was no official explanation there was a fact that after 3 or 4 years this instructor had begun to openly question the greenhouse effect in the lecture hall. And this instructor was well known and liked by these professors and a poker buddy of one. But not one indicated they had stood up for the academic freedom they had enjoyed after becoming a full professor or maybe only associate professor.

      Yes, as an instructor at my community college I questioned the theory as I taught the theory because I had not yet discovered the evidence presented in my essay. About which there were two comments. One began: “There is a mountain of ambiguity in what you write here.” And the other was more positive: “Thank you for the article, and particularly for this statement:
      “A scientific law is merely a summary of similar observations for which there has never been observed an exception. It is not a hypothesis, not a theory, not an explanation; it merely predicts what will be observed in specific circumstances. It cannot be proven by reason and it can only be disproved by an observation that is an exception to the summary. ””

      This latter person identified what I consider a fundamental problem of science today. Too few scientists today understand the critical importance of the scientific law in modern science. And if one is not trained to be a scientist, how can I expect one to grasp a understanding of this?

      Have a good day, Jerry

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Rosco

        |

        “And Rosco, I have yet to read that you address this problem of apples and oranges.”

        I assume by this you mean the difference in air temperature and the ground or ocean surface temperatures.

        I can assure I have written on this and many other subjects regularly – unfortunately PSI articles from years ago are hard to find these days.

        I will state that the “average” global temperature is nonsense.

        Ground surfaces heat to much higher levels than oceans. The air is almost always cooler than the ground whilst air can be significantly hotter than ocean surfaces or significantly cooler thaneither in polar regions.

        Here’s one I wrote years ago – not quite the subject you reference but it is difficult to find stuff from the past. I’d amend it today and fix a few typos but it is still OK.

        http://tech-know-group.com/essays/Climate_Science_Paradox.pdf

        Here’s a collection of some more –

        https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hfbz82rsw5unx2s/AACMVxBeOoyK3KcPoy7utFwOa?dl=0

        And https://principia-scientific.com/publications/PROM/PROM-ROSS-Experiment.pdf

        Surely “carbonic acid” is a term rightly reserved for CO2 dissolved in water. ?

        Isn’t CO2 and its mildly dissociation properties among the principal reasons why rainwater has a pH of ~5.6 ?

        Thus any IR properties of “carbonic acid” are more likely due to water vapour than CO2 – after all CO2 has only three major IR active bands and 2 of those are in wavelengths where at ambient Earth temperatures there are such low numbers of “photons” emitted as to be insignificant despite the higher energies associated with shorter wavelengths – although there is significant solar IR in the 2.7 micron area.

        My criticisms of some ponts in the article are important. If someone states something as fact it should be verifiable.

        I simply showed that there ARE reputable University text books which teach the “greenhouse effect” thus falsifying the statement in the article.

        Also I simply showed there were educated scientists who had purported to disprove Wood’s experiment or use a mathematical analysis to “prove” the “greenhouse effect – again falsifying the statement in the article.

        Whether or not we agree with them is irrelevant – falsify their statements by all means using established facts but to dismiss them as non-existent is not a viable argument.

        Reply

        • Avatar

          jerry krause

          |

          Hi Rosco,

          For some reason I did not respond to some of your comments for which I have a few responds.

          “The air is almost always cooler than the ground” Mainly during the daytime, if the ground is very dry and the atmosphere is generally cloudless. Study the hourly data of https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html. In this project the temperature of the surface is measured and I consider these surface temperature measurements to be valid.

          “whilst air can be significantly hotter than ocean surfaces”
          I consider there is a real lack of data here.

          “or significantly cooler thaneither in polar regions.”
          I would like to read how this occurs. I can understand how this is true when cold air masses move from a colder region to over a
          warmer surface but you need to convince me this is the case where these cold air masses form.

          “First, Surely “carbonic acid” is a term rightly reserved for CO2 dissolved in water. ?” Yes

          “Isn’t CO2 and its mildly dissociation properties among the principal reasons why rainwater has a pH of ~5.6 ?”

          It has been a well since I considered ‘acid rain’ but to get a pH this low I believe requires strong acids like sulfuric and nitric. Sulfuric from burning high sulfur fuels and nitric from thunderstorms where lightning furnishes the ‘energy’ to dissociate nitrogen and oxygen molecules to form oxides of nitrogen.

          Have to go for now.

          Be back later to see if I have any more responses.

          Have a good day, Jerry

          Reply

          • Avatar

            Rosco

            |

            My comment was – “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.

            I mean “ground” by the way – not grass or vegetated surfaces.

            I have measured a difference of over 20°C at my home using a terra cotta coloured concrete path outside my laundry in Summer ~50°C versus 30 °C.

            I also note the following from NASA

            “MODIS measures something different: land skin temperature. LST is a measure of heating of the land surface—where solar energy is absorbed and re-emitted—and it is often significantly hotter than air temperature. If you’ve ever walked barefoot across hot sand or pavement on a summer day, you know the difference. The surface beneath your feet feels much hotter than the air around your head.

            Scientists first measured that difference in June 1915. “Around the same time that the Death Valley record air temperature was measured, an analysis of the temperature conditions of air and soil was conducted in the desert near Tucson, Arizona,” Mildrexler explains. In the midday sun, the temperature 0.4 centimeters below the soil surface was 71.5°C (160.7°F). The air temperature, measured four feet above the ground, was 42.5°C (108.5°F).”

            That’s nearly 30°C hotter.

            There is nothing wrong with my comment – it is absolutely true !

            My comment “whilst air can be significantly hotter than ocean surfaces” is anecdotal granted but still indisputably true.

            Where I live the sea temperature is currently 26.7°C and in Singapore it is currently 27.8. Our minimum air temperature last night was ~25° and will increase to well over 30°C from the current 27.6 at 7:20 am as it will in Singapore. The ground surfaces including the sand at the beach will rise to over 50°C while the ocean will deal with the influx of solar energy by evaporating.

            There is nothing wrong with my comment – it is absolutely true !

            My comment “or significantly cooler than either in polar regions.” is again somewhat anecdotal and I’ll concede poorly worded.
            I’ll try to help with your comment “I would like to read how this occurs”.

            I highlight the coldest air temperature ever recorded is almost minus 94°C – no Ocean on Earth has ever recorded such a low figure !

            Thus it is indisputable that air can be far colder than any ocean ! Ocean part of my comment – tick.

            Apparently – “As the mesosphere extends upward above the stratosphere, temperatures decrease. The coldest parts of our atmosphere are located in this layer and can reach < –90°C.”

            Yet the far denser air in Antarctica can be as cold as the less than 1% of the atmospheric mass.

            As to the ice temperatures on the polar continents I concede I have not been able to find this data – I haven’t really tried but all one seems to get in a search is air temperatures. I have measured ice from my freezer at minus 18°C.

            Is the ice in Antarctica colder than minus 94°C – I confess I don’t know.

            My comment was “Isn’t CO2 and its mildly dissociation properties among the principal reasons why rainwater has a pH of ~5.6 ?”

            The word among seems to mean something different than what I thought apparently.

            “Pure water has a pH of 7.0 (neutral); however, natural, unpolluted rainwater actually has a pH of about 5.6 (acidic).[Recall from Experiment 1 that pH is a measure of the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration.] The acidity of rainwater comes from the natural presence of three substances (CO2, NO, and SO2) found in the troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere). As is seen in Table I, carbon dioxide (CO2) is present in the greatest concentration and therefore contributes the most to the natural acidity of rainwater.”

            QED I think !

          • Avatar

            jerry krause

            |

            Hi Rosco,

            My comment was – “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.

            What does the word–always–or words–almost always–mean to you?

            You cite your observations of ground temperatures which I expect, but do not know, are made for a period after midday. While you do mention nighttime air temperatures I find no mention of ground temperatures at night.

            I referred you to a site where air temperatures and the soil surface temperatures are continuously measured but only reported for each hour. For these air temperatures there are four temperatures reported. Two of which are the maximum and minimum temperatures observed during the previous hour, the third seems to be the ‘average’ temperature of the previous hour (which is not the sum of max-min/2) so I understand it to be an ‘integrated’ average. And the fourth might be the measured temperature at the hour. There are three values of the soil surface temperature: max, min, integrated average ( I assume)

            However, Rosco, you have a bad habit of not giving evidence that you even consider evidence like this to which you are referred.
            So, I have nothing else to write until you demonstrate that my previous observation is incorrect.

            Have a good day, Jerry

        • Avatar

          jerry krause

          |

          Hi Rosco,

          “Thus any IR properties of “carbonic acid” are more likely due to water vapour than CO2 ”

          When I look back at my comment, I do not see the reason for your comment about carbonic acid here. Yes, I have written an essay
          https://principia-scientific.com/condensation-nuclei-and-carbon-dioxide/ concerning the formation of carbonic acid in condensation nuclei but that has nothing to do with the IR properties of this acid.

          Yes, I looked back at my comment and see that carbonic acid was mentioned but because it was only a common name used for carbon dioxide before 1900.

          “Whether or not we agree with them is irrelevant – falsify their statements by all means using established facts but to dismiss them as non-existent is not a viable argument.”

          Maybe we agree and maybe we do not. For I dismss any viable argument because I do not be argument, viable or otherwise, have no place in a scientific discussion (conversation).

          Have a good day, Jerry

          Reply

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            Rosco

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            My comment was “Thus any IR properties of “carbonic acid” are more likely due to water vapour than CO2 ”.

            You say “When I look back at my comment, I do not see the reason for your comment about carbonic acid here”.

            I’ll explain.

            “Carbonic acid” describes the solution of CO2 in water.

            We shouldn’t continue to use terms from the nineteenth century that are irrelevant today hence Arrhenius’ term “carbonic acid” is considered wrong today – unless he really meant the solution of CO2 in water vapour.

            From the source I quoted above atmospheric “carbon dioxide (CO2) is present in the greatest concentration and therefore contributes the most to the natural acidity of rainwater.”

            Thus clouds and water vapour condensation nucleii consist of “carbonic acid”.

            As CO2 is only IR active in 3 narrow bands in the spectrum applicable to natural IR on Earth whilst water vapour is IR active in far wider continuous bands as well as in visible light (which CO2 is not).

            I see absolutely nothing wrong with my comment -“Thus any IR properties of “carbonic acid” are more likely due to water vapour than CO2 ”.

            Apparently you do not agree with me or documented laboratory evidence.

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    James McGinn

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    All of the atmospheric sciences are a mess and have been since the inception of meteorology. At the heart of it is a fundamental misunderstanding of H2O. Until that is fixed there is little chance to untangle the mess.

    Climatologists pretend to understand what they couldn’t actually understand. They learned this trick from meteorologists.

    Keep in mind, all climatologists were originally trained a meteorologists.

    Until the anomalies of H2O are resolved there is little chance of making progress on any of this.

    James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

    Reply

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    Serafino Bueti

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    I am not a scientist. Can anyone here explain how a discussion about ”climate change” or ”global warming or cooling,” etc,can exclude any reference to active, ongoing geoengineering programs.

    Reply

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    Jon

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    John, great article…thanks for writing it.

    I’m not smart enough to debate the science of this, and I have a brother who does every possible kind of research (his leads him to the sunspot thing / mauradan cycles (sp?)….etc. All of which, by the way, make more sense to me than most discussions I’ve heard.

    I wish we could all quit throwing stones and simply start discussions which begin and end with: “We ARE polluting the oceans. That’s not in debate. There are dead zones, with no oxygen to support life. We’re killing the bees with nicotides. That’s not in debate. We’re stripping the ocean of food for other life…and they are in fact dying of starvation. And there is no question, a carbon lifestyle DOES add CO2 to the atmosphere, whether good or bad….but there’s one thing we do absolutely know for sure: Earth works. We CAN mess it up and in multiple ways, we provably are. Hell, we’re even polluting space to the point where every new satellite now comes with the ability to detect, and move away from floating detritus, which are in the millions. We can heat our homes without damaging the planet. We can power our cars without the need to spend billions protecting those who want us dead solely because they have a product (oil) that we need desperately, providing them all the more funds to….see us dead. I could go on but, the debate should never have been about what has occurred, but rather, at dramatically lower costs (without carbon taxes and the like) we can not only do better, we can leave the place better as well.

    Reply

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    Rosco

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    My comment was – “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.

    “What does the word–always–or words–almost always–mean to you?”

    “Almost always” is what I said and the meaning is straightforward – most of the time. Is that succinct enough ?

    “You cite your observations of ground temperatures which I expect, but do not know, are made for a period after midday. ” Not true – 11:00 am is the time I have regularly measured the temperature.

    I went to the site you gave and really couldn’t be bothered scrolling through the mess that they call a data set for sites that have absolutely no meaning to me – I do not know the localities at all.

    What I do know however is that Nasif Nahle published the results of an experiment he conducted in 2011 that I read back then. He measured radiative flux during the day and night and tabulated his results. Here is one link to it :-

    https://principia-scientific.com/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf

    From this and many other empirical sources I formed the view that lead to my comment – “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.

    From the table in the publication cited it is evident that the power of the thermal radiation emitted from the ground is “always” about 5 times the radiation emitted by the atmosphere – hence my comment.

    There is substantial unequivocal evidence to support my comment – “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.”

    The alarmist argument is that DLR is responsible for heating the Earth’s surfaces more than the solar radiation is capable of. NASA supports that ridiculous hypothesis.

    I do not agree with the pseudoscience of the “greenhouse effect” hence I put my valid criticisms of it forward.

    When I say “greenhouse effect” I mean the backradiative nonsense.

    Everyone knows the air has a temperature and all gases have a lower radiating power than liquids or solids.

    Everyone should know radiation is only dominant when emitting to the vacuum we call space.

    Everyone should know that 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere isn’t directly heated by IR from the surface or anywhere.

    Everyone should know that “The air is almost always cooler than the ground”.

    Reply

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      jerry krause

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      Hi Rosco,

      “I went to the site you gave and really couldn’t be bothered scrolling through the mess that they call a data set for sites that have absolutely no meaning to me – I do not know the localities at all.”

      If you can dismiss measured data as you do in this statement, why should I or anyone else who has a serious interest in better understanding the earth-atmosphere-sun system waste their time reading any of your comments?

      Reply

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        Rosco

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        Jerry you needn’t bother reading any of my comments – I couldn’t care less.

        BUT you should examine who you are putting YOUR faith in !

        The mess that they call data is difficult to wade through and quite frankly why waste the hours sorting through it – they obviously have it in easily usable form but choose to present it as a text file.

        Besides – NOAA and NASA have been shown to change previously “gold data set graphs” to exaggerate the rate of warming.

        Many well qualified people claim this for example Howard Cork Hayden, Emeritus Physics Professor, University of Connecticut.

        This was presented in a debate about man-made global warming at Colorado State University – Pueblo on December 2, 2017

        http://www.efn-usa.org/environment/item/1635-global-climate-howard-cork-hayden-usofa

        Here is a link to 3 graphs presented by these “esteemed” organisations (NOAA/NASA) over time – the professor says it all succinctly –

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/dga01mpdncyo50w/Fidget%20Spinners.pdf?dl=0

        Reply

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