The Greenhouse Effect: Origins, Falsification, & Replacement

Abstract

This article focuses on the lack of a clear thermodynamic definition of the greenhouse effect. The idea of a "greenhouse" effect was initially introduced in 1824, an age when only one mode of heat transfer was known and when the theory of "aether" was used to explain how light and heat were conducted through space. As the greenhouse effect was refuted by a simple experiment in 1909, this article finds that the mechanism of heat residence in materials subject to incident radiation, referred to in the modern misuse of the term "greenhouse effect", would be better referred to via Kirchhoff's Law. Furthermore, this modern reincarnation of the Greenhouse Effect, perhaps more aptly called the Kirchhoff Effect, is controlled by the material property of emissivity; a thermodynamic property that is poorly understood in translucent materials and as yet undocumented with respect to the temperature of a radiating translucent-body at thermal equilibrium. This article, in clarifying the emissivity in this context, critically analyses the role of "greenhouse gases" in a modern radiation budget and finds that the Kirchhoff Effect as the mechanism by which increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in air raises the temperature of the mixture, has no evidentiary underpinning whatsoever.

 

Introduction: Night in the Hothouse

The "Greenhouse Effect" is of crucial importance to modern climatology and is the putative cornerstone of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. However, the greenhouse effect lacks clear thermodynamic definition and this forecasts the likelyhood that the name is misapplied. Even general descriptions of this putative mechanism are confused. In the first year university geology text by Press & Siever (1982, p. 312) we read:

The atmosphere is relatively transparent to the incoming visible rays of the Sun. Much of that radiation is absorbed at the surface and then reemitted as infrared, invisible long-wave rays that radiate back away from the surface (Fig. 12-14). The atmosphere, however, is relatively opaque and impermeable to infrared rays because of the combined effect of clouds and carbon dioxide, which strongly absorbs the radiation instead of allowing it to escape into space. This absorbed radiation heats the atmosphere, which radiates heat back to the Earth's surface. This is called the "greenhouse effect" by analogy of warming greenhouses, whose glass is the barrier to heat loss.

Whitaker (2007, p. 17-18) writes:

The incoming solar radiation that the earth absorbs is re-emitted in the form of so-called infra-red radiation - this is where the vital 'greenhouse effect' begins. Because of the chemical structure of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, they absorb the infra-red radiation from the Earth, and then emit it, into space and back into the atmosphere. The atmospheric re-emission helps heat the surface of the Earth - as well as the lower atmosphere - and keeps us warm.

Wishart (2009, p.24) explains:

The Moon is another excellent example of what happens with no greenhouse effect. During the lunar day, average surface temperatures reach 107ºC, while the lunar night sees temperatures drop from boiling point to 153 degrees below zero. No greenhouse gases mean there's no way to smooth out temperatures on the moon. On Earth, greenhouse gases filter some of the sunlight hitting the surface and reflect some of the heat back out into space, meaning the days are cooler, but conversely the gases insulate the planet at night, preventing a lot of the heat from escaping.

Plimer (2009, p. 365) really describes this situation very well when he writes:

Everyone knows what the greenhouse effect is. Well ... do they? Ask someone to explain how the greenhouse effect works. There is an extremely high probability that they have no idea. What really is the greenhouse effect? The use of the term "greenhouse effect" is a complete misnomer. Greenhouses or glasshouses are used for increasing plant growth, especially in colder climates. A greenhouse eliminates convective cooling, the major process of heat transfer in the atmosphere, and protects the plants from frost.

Plimer (2009, p. 366-375) goes on to explain the dynamics predicted by Kirchhoff's Law, stating, "All the CO₂ does is slows down heat loss. Atmospheric CO₂ does not trap heat, as insulation does.". Archer (2009, p. 15-29) uses the kitchen sink analogy to describe similar dynamics in that a partially blocked drain will not prevent a sink from emptying but slow drainage so that for a given inflow (eg. the tap) a given water level is maintained - much the way a given temperature is maintained for a given thermal radiation level, depending on the emissivity of the material.

The greenhouse effect in modern literature, is often taken out of it's historical context (eg. Press & Siever, 1982, p. 312; who completely neglect the falsification of their definition by the Wood Experiment in 1909), or is simply misused to describe other, distinctly separate, thermodynamic concepts such as Kirchhoff's Law and it's quantification via the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation (eg. Archer, 2009, p. 15-29). To his credit, Plimer is the only recent author to acknowledge the role of convection. Plimer is also the only author to acknowledge the respective roles of both kinetic heat (eg. convective transfer) and electromagnetic heat (eg. "radiation balance").

 

In Search of the Elusive Greenhouse: The Important Question of Historical Context

According to Spratt & Sutton (2008, p. 30), John Mercer is credited with the phrase, 'greenhouse effect' in the 1960s. However, according to Weart (2003), Flannery (2005), Archer (2009), and Plimer (2009), the idea of a "greenhouse" effect was first proposed by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1824. What these popular authors (from both sides of the argument) leave out is the context of the discovery and publication of Fourier's Law in 1822. The historical context of a discovery or idea is crucially important because therein lie the influences, misperceptions, and errors of the time - and past misconceptions often play a large role in the shaping of contemporary hypotheses. In this case, Fourier's major proposition was that of Fourier's Law, which described the relationship between thermal conductivity, temperature variation, conducting surface area, and thickness of the body between heat source & sink. When extended by conservation of energy, this relationship also defines the conduction of heat between two bodies of different materials, with the additional consideration of thermal contact conductivity. Moreover, Fourier and his contemporaries operated under the assumption that light, as a wave, could only be propagated through a material medium and to explain the propagation of light and heat in a vaccum or across space, the medium of "aether" was postulated. Not to be confused with the organic chemical solvent, "ether", aether as the very substance of the void, received its first formal scientific hypothesis at the hands of Newton (1704), itself a modification of an earlier proposition made by Hooke (Whittaker, 1910, p. 17). The idea of aether, with it's roots in the Cartesian definition of matter and original proposition by Rene Descartes (Whittaker, 1910, p. 4), wasn't decisively debunked until the results of the Michelson & Morley (1887) experiment were published.

Arrhenius refers to the "sea of aether", which seems to alude to the dynamic aether proposition in which aether acts as a fluid with no mass. Subject to viscosity, a mass-less fluid moves in currents with the motion equal to that of masses in the vicinity, while proportionaly closer to the location of the centre of mass, the motion of this mass-less fluid is proportionally closer to that of the centre of mass. This clever evasion of Michelson & Morley's results may seem to suggest that the speed of aether is always equal to the frame of reference wherever the frame of reference is fixed to a mass. However, this added complication without independant evidentiary underpinning, is no more than an ad hoc explanation at best. Although dynamic aether does predict that light will bend around large masses, unlike Einstein's prediction, this "sea of aether" also predicts that light bending around a star in the plane of the star's rotation will exhibit a different frequency shift either side of the star. Unless the fulfilment of Einstein's prediction in real world observations was accompanied by such such unexpected phenomena, aether presents itself as one of the unsound assumptions of historical science. After 1887, the theory of aether rested on too many uncertainties to constitute a credible hypothesis, much less any foundation for a hypothesis. In fact, the flurry of ad hoc arguments that accompanied the fragmentation of the aether hypothesis after 1887 lead Trowbridge (1910) to exclaim that there was an aether for everything.

In the context of aether as the material medium of light and "ultrared" (or infrared radiation as it is known today), radiation and transmission of light and heat were not distinguished from thermal conduction. Furthermore, Svante Arrhenius continued to publish on the assumption of the aethereal wave propagation theory as late as 1906 (eg. Arrhenius 1906, p. 154, 225). In the absence of an alternative mode of heat transfer, the greenhouse hypothesis was a logical choice of description for the kind of energy trap that would seem apparent between mediums of differing thermal conductivity. However, as thermal contact conductance was found to be equal in both directions, the greenhouse hypothesis needed an additional mechanism to survive.

 

What is the Greenhouse Effect?

In the Nineteenth Century, the mechanism of the greenhouse effect was widely known as the speculation that visible waves were converted to heat when transfering from one material to another. This idea may seem to make sense in terms of wave mechanics. However, when Michelson and Morley falsified the aether hypothesis by demonstrating the absolute (non-relative) nature of the speed of light, this refutation of aether raised the question of an additional mode of heat transfer other than conduction through the now non-existant aether; a method of heat transfer independent of conduction in any material. In doing so, they introduced an evidence-based complication that the greenhouse hypothesis did not account for. Nonetheless, Arrhenius did not consider the implications of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and according to Arrhenius (1896), "Fourier maintained that the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hothouse, because it lets through the light rays of the sun but retains the dark rays from the ground.". Ten years later little had changed for the greenhouse effect, and Arrhenius (1906, pp. 51-52) defined it accordingly:

That the atmospheric envelopes limit the heat losses from the planets had been suggested about 1800 by the great French physicist Fourier. His ideas were further developed afterwards by Pouillet and Tyndall. Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses. Glass possesses the property of being transparent to heat rays of small wave lengths belonging to the visible spectrum; but it is not transparent to dark heat rays, such, for instance, as are sent out by a heated furnace or by a hot lump of earth. The heat rays of the sun now are to a large extent of the visible, bright kind. They penetrate through the glass of the hot-house and heat the earth under the glass. The radiation from the earth, on the other hand, is dark and cannot pass back through the glass, which thus stops any losses of heat, just as an overcoat protects the body against too strong a loss of heat by radiation. Langley made an experiment with a box, which he packed with cotton-wool to reduce loss by radiation, and which he provided, on the side turned towards the sun, with a double glass pane. He observed that the temperature rose to 113 (235 F.), while the thermometer only marked 14 or 15 (57 or 59 F.) in the shade. This experiment was conducted on Pike's Peak, in Colorado, at an altitude of 4200 m. (13,800 ft.), on September 9, 1881, at 1 hr. 4 min. p. M., and therefore at a particularly intense solar radiation. Fourier and Pouillet now thought that the atmosphere of our earth should be endowed with properties resembling those of glass, as regards permeability of heat. Tyndall later proved this assumption to be correct.

As you can see, the greenhouse hypothesis is clearly defined by it's proponents as the transformation of light into heat and subsequent entrapment by a medium pervious to light but impervious to heat (such as glass). In 1858 John Tyndall laid some important groundwork when he devised an experiment to measure infrared transmission through gases. Although Tyndall frequently uses the term, "absorption", he failed in all of his experiments to differentiate absorption and reflection, which is clearly indicated by the experimental diagrams used to depict Tyndall's application (eg. Tyndall, 1864, p. 415). Both Arrhenius (1906) and Weart (2003, p. 3) neglect to mention this rather important fact when describing how Tyndall's work "underpins" the greenhouse efect. The fact that Tyndall failed to differentiate absorbed heat from otherwise reflected heat renders Tyndall's findings on the "greenhouse" effect, purely hypothetical. One thing Tyndall did discover is that the bulk of infrared obstruction occurs at low orders of concentration with subsequent increases in concentration having successively less and less effect. This laid the foundation for later authors in thermodynamics such as Stefan and Boltzmann.

 

Basic Thermodynamics Upgrade for the Twentieth Century

The refutation of Newton's aether hypothesis proved the distinction between thermal conduction (heat transfer through substances) and thermal radiation (aether independent propagation of heat as electromagnetic waves). It did so because the sun's heat crosses space where it cannot be conducted as it can in materials such as air and water. It is important to remember the distinction between the modes of heat transfer because in failing to do so, heat transferred via one mode is usually neglected. This error is common, even amongst modern authors. According to Burroughs, (2007b, p. 124):

Most of the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen and oxygen (see p. 24), which absorb virtually no radiation and allow it to escape to space. There are, however, "greenhouse" gases that absorb and reradiate the infrared to earth.

In point of fact, what makes carbon dioxide better at transporting heat to where it can be conducted from the troposphere to you, to the glass of a thermometer, or to the stratosphere; is the fact that this gas reradiates a smaller proportion of the heat that it absorbs, than more abundant gases such as oxygen and nitrogen. The temperature we measure in the atmosphere is not a product of radiation from gases, but of the conduction of the heat accumulated in gases to bodies (such as a thermometer or thermocouple), with which they have direct contact. This process is called thermal contact conductance and is quite distinct from thermal radiation.

This modern neglect of thermal conduction leads to an assumption under which all atmospheric heat transfer occurs by radiation. As a result of such assumptions, the greenhouse hypothesis has been also depicted as a stratified radiation trap by modern authors such as Burroughs (2007b, p. 125) and Whitaker (2007 p. 18). However, such authors forget that the greenhouse theory was coined to explain conductive heat retention, not the electromagnetic propagation of heat, which wasn't discovered until much later. It is important to remember that heat comes in two forms:

1. Kinetic Heat: heightened molecular motion
2. Radiant Heat: electromagnetic radiation in the infrared bandwidth of frequencies

The sudden increase in heat that you feel when stepping from the shade out into direct sunlight is radiant heat, which is propagated electromagnetically at the speed of light. The gentler heat that you feel in the shade is kinetic heat conducted from the air to you only as a consequence of direct contact. This crucial difference in the manifestations and transfer of heat is why air temperatures are measured in the shade (Burroughs, 2007a, p. 97), and solar radiation at the ground is measured in direct sunlight (Burroughs, 2007a, p. 98). This is an important distinction that is entirely absent from the greenhouse hypothesis and omitted from most energy budget diagrams used to demonstrate global warming.

 

A Simple Experiment with Not-So-Simple Implications

The contrast between conductive and radiative heat transfer can trap heat without resorting to refractive frequency shifts, so in 1909, Robert W. Wood conducted an experiment to test the core proposition of the greenhouse hypothesis: that light rays are conducted, absorbed, converted to infrared, emitted, but trapped. Wood (1909) in a paper titled, “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”, writes:

There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.

Sceptical of this explanation, Wood (1909) conducted an experiment comparing air temperatures in a glass greenhouse and a diathermic greenhouse. His method is described as follows:

To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a themometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65ºC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.

The fact that the diathermic greenhouse outperformed the glass greenhouse in the first stage of the experiment shows how important radiative heat is, and that not all of the sun's radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere before reaching the ground. Moreover, Wood's greenhouses in the first stage of his experiment present a spectacular analogy of what happens to lower atmosphere temperature if upper atmosphere absorbtivity is increased. The halite pane in Wood's first stage can be compared to the present stratosphere. If adding CO₂ to the atmosphere raises absorbtivity, then the glass pane in the first stage of Wood's experiment can be compared with a CO₂ enriched stratosphere. What makes the comparison so good is that neither stratosphere nor panes convect so the focus is on radiative heat transfer rather than conductive transfer from this level outwards. Both the troposphere and the air inside the respective greenhouses do convect, so here conductive heat transfer is the larger issue. As Wood so eloquently points out, the pane that absorbs less transmits more heat and that produces a higher temperature in the convecting air below.

Why is it so? Heat relayed (absorbed and re-emitted) is scatted, so only half of it makes it inside while the other half is sent outside; back to space. The more heat is absorbed, the less is transmitted directly inside where it is absorbed and the more is divided between being relayed into space and relayed inside the system. Suppose the salt transmits 80% of the radiation, reflects 50% of the remainder and relays what is left. 5% is relayed into space and the total percentage making it inside is 85%. If the glass on the other hand, transmits 20% of the heat, reflects 50% of the remainder and relays what is left; 20% is relayed into space, while 20% is relayed inside making the total percentage of radiation entering the box only 40%. That is a lot less than the 80% entering via the less absorbtive material. This is why raising CO₂ concentration will have a cooling effect if raising CO₂ levels raises absorbtion at the expense of transmission. As we shall see, whether this is really true is yet to be answered.

In the second stage of the experiment, Wood (1909) blocks infrared radiation and allows only visible light to enter both enclosures. In doing so, he ensures that the experiment tests for the conversion of absorbed light into heat. Wood (1909) goes on to tabulate his results as follows:

There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55ºC. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55º, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely.

...and so, if the magical conversion of light rays into dark rays was really happening, Wood's diathermic greenhouse would have been significantly colder than the glass greenhouse. The fact that both performed equally proves that visible light is not converted into heat on absorption. Wood (1909) provides experimental (and thus scientific) facts that soundly disprove the greenhouse effect. Moreover, the Wood Experiment soundly falsifies the later Greenhous warming mechanism based on increasing the role of an upper atmosphere heat relay by increasing upper atmosphere absorbtivity. If anything, the first stage of Wood's experiment showed that this has the opposite effect.

 

Kirchhoff's Law: The Forgotten Alternative to the Shattered Greenhouse

Although Wood (1909) explains his greenhouse shattering results as being a product of convection, this only explains how heat is redistributed within an enclosed fluid. Returning our attention to 1858, we may recall Tyndall's failure to distinguish reflected from absorbed heat when considerion the decline of transmission in response to certain gases. Balfour Stewart determined that absorbtion by an opaque body is the complement of its reflection. In other words, what is not absorbed by an opaque body is reflected by it (Stewart, 1858). Absorbtivity was therefore defined as the proportion of incident radiation absorbed by an opaque body.

Gustav Kirchhoff went on to determine that under all circumstances at thermal equilibrium, the emissivity (the proportion of theoretical black-body radiation represented by actual radiation) of a body is equal to its absorbtivity (Kirchhoff, 1859; Kirchhoff, 1860). Also known as Kirchhoff's Law, this is an important feature of emissivity. Initially, the proportion of absorbed energy that isn't re-emitted as radiation represents an amount of stored energy which raises the internal temperature (as thermally conducted rather than radiated in and out of objects inside the body such as a glass thermometer) - over and above what one would expect. The temperature continues to rise until the radiation emitted by the body is equal to the radiation absobed by the body in spite of the bottleneck presented by the lack of emissivity. This state of balanced heat flow at elevated temperature is called thermal equilibrium, and is driven by Kirchhoff's Law - which applies to all bodies in thermal equilibrium.

The fact that the work of Stewart and Kirchhoff concerned only opaque bodies puts Tyndall's work with translucent materials like carbon dioxide in context. Tyndall determined "absorption" from the proportion of radiation transmitted by the gases he was testing. In fact, what Tyndall was measuring was not absoption but opacity(Tyndall, 1864, p. 415); a fact Arrhenius neglected to account for in his calculation of "Climate Sensitivity" to carbon dioxide.

Nevertheless, Tyndall's experiment wasn't a complete loss. Due to his consistant method, Tyndall's results were sufficient for Jozef Stefan to deduce, in 1879, that radiation from a mass is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. The constant of proportionality, the Stefan constant, defines this relationship for a perfect black-body. In 1884 Stefan's student, Ludwig Boltzman, went on to generalise this law to apply to normal masses, called "grey bodies" in Physics, by introducing the concept of emissivity to this application. Boltzman not only quantified the effect of radiation on grey-body temperature, but the effect of compositional changes at constant radiation, on the temperature of a body. Plimer (2009, pp. 365-375) and Archer (2009, pp. 15-29), from opposite sides of the argument, both admit that the "greenhouse effect" is a terrible misnomer, but like nearly all other authors in climatology, neither attribute the modern mechanism of heat residence to the fundamental law that dictates this mechanism, nor to the person who discovered it. The "greenhouse effect" is not just a misnomer, it is an Nineteenth Century supposition, formally hypothesised by Arrhenius in 1896, and falsified by the Wood experiment barely 13 years later in 1909.

The emissivity of Stewart, Kirchoff, and Boltzman is independent of path length as it concerns the radiation or heat flux at the point of emission, and in a homogeneous translucent body, it is the heat flux that varies with depth, not the emissivity (which is a property of the material at the point at which the temperature is taken). As can be seen from the use of path lengths to identify different "emissivity" curves for materials such as water and carbon dioxide, authors using the term in this context (Eg. Rubens & Ladenburg, 1905; Hottel, 1954; Leckner, 1972; Farag, 1976, Farag & Allam, 1981; Lallemant et al., 1996) are not reffering to emissivity per se, but a function of transmittivity or opacity that relates temperature to depth via the Beer-Lambert Law without the need to calculate and substitute the depth-derived value for internal radiation in a translucent material. This is based on a definition of total impacting radiation as the sum of reflection, absorbtion, and transmission. The resulting tables are useful in the context of thermodynamics within a flame. However, transmitted radiation does not affect internal energy stores and has no effect on the body's internal temperature. Thus when considering emissivity for the purpose of determining emission temperature, only those elements that affect the obstruction of radiation have any affect: reflection and absorbtion or internal reflection and emission. Ergo, the definition of emissivity in opaque materials remains the same for translucent materials:

1. Abosrbtivity is equal to Emissivity
2. Emissivity is the complement of Reflectivity (IE Emissivity is equal to the difference between Unity and Reflectivity)
3. Emissivity is equal to absorbtion (or emission) divided by the sum of reflection and absorbtion (or emission)

The most significant news exposed by this analysis is that we have no Boltzman emissivity measurements for any gases, and as the Boltzman emissivity is crucial to determining the temperature of a radiating body no physical evidence exists to underpin any hypothesis using compositional changes to predict temperature. Knowing that the measurments discussed by the likes of Rubens & Ladenburg (1905), Hottel (1954), or Leckner (1972) have no bearing on the Boltzman emissivity suggests that the emissivity of mixing may not be quite so complicated as is presented by Farag (1976), Faraq & Allam (1981) or Lallemont et al (1996).

Colour as we see it, is defined by the applicable combination of frequencies observed in the spectrum and as such, colour is defined by the distribution of spectral emissivity (IE emissivity specific to key spectra). Differences in the response of materials to radiation in very narrow and specific spectra is how devices such as Carbon Dioxide detectors function. Interestingly, the colour of a mixture (eg. paint) is dependant on the proportion and colour of component materials making up the mixtue. The relationship between colour intensity and concentration of pigment is linnear. In fact, you can test this for yourself in simple colour mixing experiments. Therefore we can deduce that the relationship between emissivity of mixing and component emissivities is likewise linnear, with the following relationship:

Emissivity of Mixing is equal to the sum of products of component concentration and component emissivity.

So, on the basis of gas mixture emissivity, we can model atmospheric temperature via a radiation budget. There is but one slight problem; we still lack the atmosphere's component gas emissivities as they apply to the Stefan-Boltzman Equation. The alternative route to radiative budgeting is to measure reflection off the atmosphere in the context of the difference in radiation incident on the surface and on the top of the atmospheric layer in question.

 

Counterfeiting the Currency of the Universe

Kirchhoff's Law is unavoidable, as it is based on the conservation of energy in that a body cannot not emit more energy than it receives or absorbs. Emissivity describes the proportion of absorbed energy that is initially emitted. As this proportion remains relatively constant, energy accumulates raising the temperature until the emitted radiation is equal to the absorbed radiation courtesy of stored energy congested within the body by lack of emissivity. Beware of wheels within energy diagrams as these usually constitute the energy creation mechanism of perpetual motion machines. One such gem of clarity, used uncited by Plimer (2009, p. 370), was offered by Kiehl and Trenberth (1997, Fig. 7):

If we assume thermal equilibrium, the regular features, excluding the greenhouse cycle tally up. 342 Wm^-2 incoming solar energy is balance by 107 Wm^-2 (reflection) + 235 Wm^-2 (emission) = 342 Wm^-2 outgoing radiation. Non-gaseous temperatures just below the surface are raised so that 198 Wm^-2 reaching the surface is balanced by 30 Wm^-2 (reflection) + 168 Wm^-2 (surface absorbtion). However, this is where things get ugly as the total surface absorbtion of 168 Wm^-2 can only be balanced by 24 Wm^-2 (thermals) + 78 Wm^-2 (evapo-transpiration) + 66 Wm^-2 = 168 Wm^-2 emitted by the surface.

However, Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) go on to supply the surface with an additional 324 Wm^-2 of special radiation from "greenhouse gases". I say special because in this case the surface absorbs all of this radiation instead of reflecting 30 / 198 x 324 = 49 Wm^-2 (but this would mean that the earth radiates more energy than it receives). The question remains, however, where do the "greenhouse gases" get the energy to emit 324 Wm^-2 in the first place? It can't be from the surface, because the surface can only emit 168 Wm^-2 into the atmosphere given that, that is all it absorbs before the greenhouse gases are introduced. Furthermore, by what mechanism do these "greenhouse gases" preferentially radiate towards the surface and not towards space? In the overall picture, for the "greenhouse gases" to radiate 324 Wm^-2 towards the ground, they must equally radiate 324 Wm^-2 into space which turns the earth into a heat creation machine emitting 666 Wm^-2 for a total absorbtion of 342 Wm^-2.

Accounting for atmospheric temperature, Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) portray an atmosphere absorbing 87 Wm^-2 (solar radiation) + 24 Wm^-2 (thermals) + 78 Wm^-2 (evop-transpiration) + 66 Wm^-2 (surface radiation liberated from the "Greenhouse" perpetual motion machine) = 225 Wm^-2. This is not quite right because just as only 67 Wm^-2 out of 342 Wm^-2 is absorbed by the atmosphere from incoming solar radiation, so too only 87 / 342 x 66 = 17 Wm^-2 of outgoing surface radition is absorbed by the atmosphere. Furthermore, Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) portray all radiation reflected from the surface as escaping where 87 / 342 x 30 = 8 Wm^-2 of reflected surface radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere. Total radiative absobtion is thus 87 Wm^-2 + 24 Wm^-2 + 78 Wm^-2 + 17 Wm^-2 + 8 Wm^-2 = 214 Wm^-2. Given that this is the amount of radiation emitted by this model of the atmosphere (the 324 Wm^-2 bouncing back and forth in the greenhouse cycle violates the First Law of Thermodynamics - so the prudent thing to do is assume that the entire mechanism is science fiction and exclude it from our calculations), it only remains to determine emissivity and execute the Stefan-Boltzman Equation.

Emissivity was originally developed in the study of opaque materials, and the Smithsonian Physical Tables still only list emissivities for opaque materials. Translucent materials introduce a new complication known as transmissivity. If absorbed radiation in a translucent body is counted against total incident radiation to get absorbtivity, temperatures calculated from this value will be grossly exaggerated because transmitted radiation does not contribute to radiative conjestion nor to the temperature of the material through which it is trnasmitted - and yet this is part of the sum that totals to the amount of incident radiation. Therefore absorbtivity is equal to absorbtion divided by the sum of absorbtion and reflection. In the example by Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) above, this is 87 / (77 + 87) = 0.5305. From this and the 214 Wm^-2 that must be radiated from atmosphere, the Stefan-Boltzman Equation yields 290ºK or 17ºC as a mean surface temperature.

 

Greenhouse Effect Version 2.0: with the Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden

Although the greenhouse effect died with the Wood experiment, the diverse multitude of radiation "budgets" shows that the greenhouse effect is far from buried. This is a classic case of shifting the goalposts, because the greenhouse effect is not a scientific hypothesis that can be buried when it dies from experimental causes; it is a political symbol that cannot be allowed a proper burial, and so remains forever on display at the funeral parlor; an eternal viewing just like Lenin's. Version 2.0 of the greenhouse effect relies on heat congestion by limited emissivity on the supposition that the addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere will alter overall atmospheric emissivity in such a way as to increase heat congestion and force temperatures to rise (Archer, 2009). The modernisation of Arrhenius' greenhouse effect neglects some rather important thermodynamic properties. In fact, version 2.0 of the Greenhouse effect neglects any quantitative science at all. There is no measurable thermodynamic property used to compare the relative strengths of greenhouse gases, and there is no equation of measureable thermodynamic properties that likewise can give us an indication of how much one gas is more a greenhouse gas than another. The emissivities of gases we have to date are not applicable because they are intended for use in systems where the point radiation is unknown, and no determination of gas emissivities applicable to determining temperature from radiative emission have been measured. We may well be able to determine air emissivity from remote imaging systems at the present time, but we have nothing on the component gases. It is impossible to do more than guess how CO₂ from combustion and additionally from other sources such as respiration, deflation (soil erosion) and volcanic activity; affect the bulk thermal emissivity of the atmoshere as a consequence of compositional change, and temperature. The sicence isn't settled at all. In fact, the evidence hasn't even been collected.

Technological advancement is the most valid measurement of a science that I can think of. We have clean water, electricity, refrigeration, transport, communications, computers, a conspicuous lack of world wars, and most importantly, espresso, thanks to science. Science is soley about evidence, and this makes scientific discovery closely connected with practical applications that would not have been possible without the discovery. In 100 years, what did the greenhouse hypothesis give us? It is an amazing theory and the tendancy of materials, particularly gases, to warm is a property with amazing possibilities. For example, filling the space between double-glazed panes of glass with a "greenhouse" gas would produce a window that heats itself in the presence of incident light and could conceivably be used to minimise frost and ice buildups on windows in colder regions. Double glazing typically uses air, but argon filled double glazing is preferred. Why not carbon dioxide? In the real world, carbon dioxide conducts five times more heat than argon, and and has twice the heat capacity. This makes carbon dioxide a vastly inferior insulator, and its lack of insulating properties are not nearly made up for by any amount of heat absorbion and radiative warming.

 

Conclusion: Those who live in greenhouses should not throw stones.

Having had it's foundations vanish and having been subject to demolition by indubitable experimental results, the greenhouse effect lives on as a label that only serves to misattribute Kirchhoff's discovery of the mechanism of incident heat residence in gray-bodies to Arrhenius. Arrhenius may well be the first to speculate on the possibility of significant climate change by humans. Then again, Fourier (1827, p. 584) could be said to anticipate urban heat island effect; another way we have changed the climate of the places where we live. Either way, this bears no relevance to the fact that the mechanism used to explain global warming has nothing to do with the disproven greenhouse effect, and is defined at it's core by Kirchhoff's Law. Will the real discoverer of this principle remain forgotten, or is it possible to replace the misnomer, "Greenhouse Effect", with the more appropriate, "Kirchhoff Effect"? Even so, the Kirchhoff Effect is yet to be underpinned by emissivity measurements that are applicable to the Stefan-boltzman Equation and therefore to the temperature of a radiating atmosphere and in engineering circles this effect is simply not strong enough to allow practical applications such as self-heating double-glazed windows. The question remains as to whether the Kirchhoff Effect due to CO₂ is strong enough to overcome natural cooling mechanisms such as convection and attached phase changes such as evapouration, condensation, freezing, and melting. As demonstrated by the literature, scientists can't agree on whether raising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will have a warming or cooling effect because the evidence has not even been collected, and scientists without evidence are only capable of ignorant guesswork and idle supposition, just like anyone-else.

 

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