Q&A: Joe Postma's New Greenhouse Gas Paper

Frequently Asked Questions about Joe Postma Greenhouse Gas Theory Paper

Joe Postma's ground breaking new paper, 'A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect,' and proudly published by Principia Scientific International, is generating a huge number of questions. As such, to aid interested readers we provide below some frequently asked questions with answers from Joe.*

If you cannot find the answer to your question, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Or alternatively, take a look at Joe's helpful articles on his blog.

'A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect’

Questions & Answers:

Question: You and your colleagues at Principia Scientific International claim that climatologists wrongly use a flat earth model of our planet to calculate its energy budget. Why do you say it is wrong to use this simple model that also proves the greenhouse gas effect?

Answer: It is precisely because climatologists wrongly model Earth as a flat planet that their crude calculations need to factor in a “greenhouse gas effect” or else the numbers would not balance. We prove in our calculations that flat earth model DOES dilute the power of sunshine; it DOES force you to have to invent an additional heating mechanism to save the appearances.   This IS the basis of the GHE and cannot be denied. The very basis of the GHE paradigm is that the sunshine is too cold, and it does this by using P/4, by re-interpreting the OUTPUT response as the input, and incorrectly diluting the power of solar heating etc.

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Question: Do you and Principia Scientific International have a better model of Earth's climate?

Answer: Yes, but no one understands entirely how our climate works. PSI shows that a real-time spherical model already does most or all of what the additional heating mechanism is said to do in the flat earth model. In an age of supercomputers climatologists have never explained why they don't even use even a spherical STATIC model instead of their static flat Earth model, at least a 3-D model would at least more realistic, and we would have +49C on the dayside.

Or another way of putting it: a real-time realistic spherical model explains how the surface temperature arises from the sunlight alone, and in combo with latent heat explains why the poles are so warm.  A diluted sunshine model, whether it is flat earth OR a spherical Earth but still using diluted “averaged” sunshine, has to invent a mechanism to explain the heating in the spherical model that it can’t replicate, and calls it a GHE.

See the divorce from reality there?  How hyper reality works?  Philosophers have described this in detail, this technique that divorces the mind from understanding reality. 

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Question: Your paper says there is no greenhouse gas effect (GHE) because “back radiation” cannot cause any additional heat in the atmosphere nor can it delay cooling. Why is this a big issue?

Answer: The IPCC version of the GHE depends upon the idea that the atmosphere provides twice as much heating energy to the Earth than the Sun does, and they do this because of the incorrect dilution of the power of solar heating.

The paradigm was created and rests upon the idea that the sunshine is not strong enough to heat the planet all by itself, and backradiation is required to add twice as much heat energy input than the Sun.  This is official IPCC science and published in the K&T reference, and many, many, many other places.  If we compare the diluted sunshine paradigm, vs. the real-Sun paradigm, ENTIRELY DIFFERENT physical responses in the system naturally occur.  Entirely different phase-spaces are created.  What the GHE paradigm does is create a GHE to accomplish what the real-sunshine system already does by itself.

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Question: In section 1.1 of your paper you suggest that the standard calculation of the greenhouse effect of 33 C is in error because it compares a temperature with the current albedo of 0.3 to a theoretical temperature without greenhouse gases at the same albedo, whereas the surface albedo without clouds is only 0.04. While some agree that without water vapour, the most important greenhouse gas, there would be no clouds and the albedo would be about 0.04, it is reasonable to state that the greenhouse effect is about 33 C, assuming the albedo is unchanged at 0.3. You calculated a temperature without greenhouse gases and with a surface albedo of 0.04 of 276 K, giving a temperature difference of 12 C. But isn't this 12 C in the combined effect of a change in albedo due to clouds and the long-wave radiative greenhouse effect, so it is not only the greenhouse effect?

Answer: The point of this section was to establish the fact that the radiative surface should never be associated with the physical surface because the albedo is not found with the physical surface.  The albedo and the physical surface are conceptually separate entities, and we should never think a-priori that without the GHE, the radiative surface and albedo surface of equilibrium should have corresponded.

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Question: But without “greenhouse gases,” surely the atmosphere does not interact with the outgoing radiation, so the radiating surface is the ground?

Answer: That might be; however, if non “greenhouse gases”  can’t radiate, then they are very efficient trappers of heat.  CO2 must help cool since it is collisionally dominated, constantly taking kinetic energy away from other species and then losing that energy to radiation.  Also, the interaction between surface IR and CO2 is merely one of scattering, because the vibratory mode for CO2 is already activated by collision.  This doesn’t cause actual heating in the atmosphere, or if it does it is very, very minor.  The outgoing radiation would need to be internally scattered for about 2 seconds on average, to make the numbers work out with the diluted solar input, to get twice as much heating from backradiated IR as solar input.

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Question: There would be no lapses rate and there would be no convection, so the atmosphere column would be isothermal. So wouldn't the temperature at 6 km altitude would be the same as at the surface?

Answer: The lapse rate originates as it was derived in the paper, and is not dependent upon backradiation.  There is no thermodynamic reason that the column would be isothermal.  Thermodynamically, using local thermal equilibrium that is what must be used because energy changes as altitude increases, you get a natural lapse rate, depending only upon specific heat and gravity.

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