Why the theory of man-made global warming is incorrect

Reblogged from The Inconvenient Skeptic:

Next week I plan on making a big push to get this information out to many, many people.  This is one of the key topics that is covered in my book.  It is not the only critical topic, but this one by itself is enough to demonstrate in a scientific way that warming as described by The Theory of Global Warming is impossible.  My goal is to present this and related information to a wide audience next week.  Wish me luck.

The Theory of Global Warming can be stated in the simplest form as:

An increase in the Earth’s temperature which is caused by an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO₂.

The science behind the theory is that CO₂ molecules in the atmosphere absorb and transmit IR (infra-red) energy in all directions.  Specifically they prevent IR energy in the 14-16 micon wavelength (which widens as the concentration increases) from leaving the Earth and then those same molecules then transmit that energy in all directions, most importantly downward where that energy acts like a heating lamp which will cause the oceans and the land to warm up.

There is even a formula by which they show how much power is in the CO₂ warming lamp.

CO2 Forcing Equation

Where C₀ is usually taken to be 300 ppm of CO₂ in the atmosphere.  If I used this equation to determine the power of the heat lamp that is taking place today, I get 1.4 W/m² of IR energy that is being transmitted by the “extra” CO₂ in the atmosphere today.  That 1.4 W/m² is important to keep that number in mind.  If I then translate that forcing into warming (see here for that topic), I find that The Theory of Global Warming predicts a 1.1 °C increase in temperature for a CO₂ level of 390 ppm.

Now to show that such warming is absolutely impossible by using proven science.

As any object warms up, it transmits more energy which is described by the Stefan-Boltmann Law which is described as:

Amount of energy radiated by an object.

One important note here is that the energy radiated increases to the 4th power and it is absolute temperature that matters here and not relative temperature change or anomaly.  The average temperature of the Earth is ~14 °C which is an absolute temperature of 287.15K.  The energy transmission of a blackbody at 287.15 K is 385.5 W/m².  Clearly the Earth does not lose energy at that rate since it receives less than that and this is where the greenhouse effect comes into play.  The end of it all is that the Earth’s atmosphere radiates energy to space at a rate of ~198 W/m² and also some additional energy from the surface.  I spend a lot more time on the details of this summary in the book, but in effect the Earth loses most of it’s energy to space from an altitude of ~9.5 km which has a temperature of 243K (or -30 °C).

So according to the science, a warmer Earth (and it’s atmosphere) should lose energy to space at a greater rate when the Earth warms up.  This would be a problem to prove if the Earth was at a constant temperature.  Fortunately the Earth’s temperature varies a great deal over the course of a year so it is easy to show that the Earth does in fact lose more energy when it warms up.  This can be shown by comparing the OLR (outgoing longwave radiation) to the actual global temperature.

(Blue) Global Temperature in °C, (Red) Measured outgoing long-wave radiation. Infra-red energy.

This shows there is an immediate and direct dependence on the amount of energy the Earth is losing to space and the absolute temperature of the Earth itself.  It is also worth pointing out that while the last decade has in fact been warmer, it has also lost more energy than it did before by a large margin.

If I plot the OLR as a function of temperature, the dependence of OLR becomes clear.  In addition I have added the theoretical increase in energy transmission as a function of the absolute temperature.

(Dots) Measured OLR Data, (Blue Line) Linear regression of the Measured OLR, (Pink) Theoretical change in OLR using the Stefan-Boltmann Law

This shows the direct dependence between OLR and temperature on a monthly basis that has a reasonably good R² value of 0.81.  Considering the amount of local variation that exists over the entire Earth, this is a very good result.

It can also be used to compare entire years against each other.  I will pick 1984 and 2009 to show that the same result applies over the course of a year.  1984 is a good year for that since it had a temperature anomaly very close to 0.0 °C for most measurements.  As a result that would also be a year that should have an almost zero anomaly for the amount of energy that the Earth lost to space.

OLR and Global Temperature for 1984 and 2009.

A 0.5 °C temperature difference between these two years resulted in an additional 2.5 W/m² increase in the measured amount of energy lost to space.  That increase in energy loss is not theoretical, it is a measured difference.  It is also what is predicted by the Stefan-Boltmann Law.

If the Earth were to warm by 1.1 °C, the amount of energy lost would be almost 4 W/m² greater than what it lost in 1984.  If the Earth were to warm by 3.0 °C which is what is predicted by a doubling of CO₂, then the amount of energy lost would be > 10 W/m² the energy loss that existed in 1984.

The science of this is very clear.  The rate at which the Earth loses energy will increase at more than twice the rate that the theoretical CO₂ forcing is capable of causing warming to take place.  The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere cannot stop the Earth from losing more energy if it warms up.  The reasons behind this are the wavelengths of energy that are transmitted by the Earth, but it can simply be shown by looking at the energy loss increase that has taken place over the past 25 years.

Time to put 2.5 W/m² into perspective.  That is comparable to the energy flux of the Gulf Stream.  That is ~500 times more than the total energy consumption of the United States in a year.  That is 80 times more energy than the entire human race uses in a year.  It is also 30 times more energy than what the Earth’s interior brings to the surface each year.  That is a huge amount of energy.  An Earth that was 3.0 °C warmer would lose more than 4x more energy than that.

There is far more information on this topic in my book and  this is only one of the major flaws in the Theory of Global Warming, but it is a big one.  It is the science that has caused me to be a global warming skeptic.  It is foolish to believe that a radiative forcing can cause warming when the rate of heat loss will increase at such a rate.  The consequences of this science is profound and will alter our understanding of the Earth’s climate.