Why greenhouse Gas Warming is Physically Impossible

Written by Dr Peter L Ward on January 21, 2019. Posted in Current News

Here is the most important takeaway fact: Earth Cannot Be Warmed by Its Own Radiation.

Greenhouse-warming theory assumes that mean global surface temperatures rise when greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere absorb infrared radiation from Earth. This rise in temperature is thought to be a few degrees Celsius when the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is doubled.

But no body of matter can be warmed in any way by absorbing its own radiation. This is not physically possible. If that were possible, bodies of matter could spontaneously heat up. Something we all know does not happen.

Imagine two bodies of matter next to each other. Each at the same temperature. Each potentially absorbing radiation from the other. Neither can get hotter. Neither will get hotter, no matter how long you wait. Both bodies can lose heat to cooler surroundings, but neither can absorb heat from the other body as long as both bodies are at the same temperature. Heat is what a body of matter must absorb to get hotter. Heat is well-observed to flow by radiation or by conduction only from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature. The smaller the temperature difference, the slower the flow of heat—the smaller the flux. Zero difference in temperature means zero flow of heat, which means zero increase in temperature of the absorbing body. Earth cannot physically be warmed by its own radiation.

This single observation is completely sufficient to show that greenhouse-warming theory is not physically possible, but there are many other reasons based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what heat physically is and how heat physically flows.

Earth Cannot Be Warmed by a Blanket of Greenhouse Gases

Some scientists propose that greenhouse gases act like a blanket surrounding Earth, keeping Earth approximately 33^oC warmer than expected for a planet at Earth’s distance from Sun. Blankets are well-known to slow the loss of thermal energy from a body of matter, but a blanket cannot be the source of new thermal energy required to increase the temperature of the body under the blanket, unless it is an electric blanket that adds thermal energy from somewhere else. Earth’s blanket is observed to be the stratosphere, which does act like an electric blanket heated by solar radiation.

The stratosphere is the only part of the atmosphere below the thermosphere where temperatures increase with increasing altitude from approximately -51^oC at the base of the stratosphere to ‑15^oC at the top of the stratosphere. This temperature increase is caused by high-energy solar ultraviolet radiation causing dissociation of the bonds that hold together gas molecules such as oxygen and ozone. Upon dissociation, when the bond is broken, the pieces of a gas molecule fly apart at high velocity. Temperature of a gas is well-known to be proportional to the average kinetic energy of all gas molecules, which for a single molecule is equal to the mass times the velocity squared. Thus, when a molecular bond is dissociated, all of the energy holding the atoms together is converted instantaneously and completely into increased air temperature. Greenhouse gases, on the other hand, absorbing terrestrial infrared radiation that is not energetic enough to cause dissociation, have never been shown by experiment to cause significant increase in air temperature as explained at JustProveCO2.com.

Slowing Cooling Does Not Cause Heating

Other scientists argue that slowing the cooling of Earth, which is heated by Sun, would cause a net increase in thermal flux absorbed by Earth, which would cause an increase in Earth’s surface temperature. This widespread assumption, emphasized by Joseph Fourier in 1822, turns out to be mistaken. To understand why, we need to understand the observed physical relationships between thermal energy, heat, and temperature.

Heat Is a Broad Spectrum of Values

Thermal energy in matter is well observed to be the oscillation, at trillions of cycles per second, of all the bonds holding matter together. The higher the thermal energy, the higher the amplitudes and frequencies of oscillation, and the higher the temperature of the body of matter.

In 1900, Max Planck derived an equation by trial and error that has become known as Planck’s Law. Planck’s Law calculates the observed intensity or amplitude of oscillation at each frequency of oscillation for radiation emitted by a body of matter at a specific temperature as shown in the next figure. Thermal radiation from Earth, at a temperature of 288 Kelvin, consists of the narrow spectrum of frequencies of oscillation shown in green. Thermal radiation from the tungsten filament of an incandescent light bulb at 3300K consists of a broader spectrum of frequencies shown in yellow and green. Thermal radiation from Sun at 5770K consists of a much broader spectrum of frequencies shown in red, yellow and green.

Note in these plots of Planck’s empirical law that the higher the temperature, the broader the spectrum of frequencies, the higher the amplitude of oscillation at each and every frequency, and the higher the frequencies of oscillation that are oscillating with the largest amplitudes of
oscillation. Radiation from Sun (red) clearly contains much higher frequencies and amplitudes of oscillation than radiation from Earth (green).

These frequencies and amplitudes of oscillation contained within thermal radiation must also be the frequencies and amplitudes of oscillation on the surface of the emitting body, which is transmitting them. They must exist on the surface of the radiating body for that body to be at the temperature shown.

Heat, that which must be absorbed by matter to increase its temperature, is similarly a broad spectrum or continuum of frequencies and corresponding amplitudes. For example, the broad continuum of heat that Earth, with a temperature of 288K, must absorb to reach a temperature of 3300K is shown by all the values within the yellow-shaded area in the figure. The physical properties of heat and the thermal effects of this heat are determined both by the temperature of the emitting body and by the temperature of the absorbing body.

Dr. Peter L. Ward worked 27 years as a geophysicist and program leader for the United States Geological Survey.He invites you to join him on this fascinating quest in his well-documented and well-illustrated book, What Really Causes Climate Change? Greenhouse gases or ozone depletion?

Read more at whyclimatechanges.com

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