Image via Wikipedia

“Earth’s Energy Budget Diagram” is part of the title of  a ‘WUWT‘ post by Bob Fernley-Jones AKA Bob_FJ.  Full title is

“Does the Trenberth et al “Earth’s Energy Budget Diagram” Contain a Paradox?”

Much is said and much is commented upon and after spending some time perusing it, I am left wondering to where it actually leads us.

From other posts here and from many references, there will be no doubt on which  ‘side of the fence’ I stand. So certainly I am a “denier”, but not of the truth. Far from it!

Bob Fernley-Jones takes this paper to task for its scientific details, but I am moved to comment on the general science aspect.

Where-ever I look, whatever direction and whatever the duration, my conclusion tends to  ” ‘the science of climate variability’ is far above our usual science fields in complexity”:

The main variables:

• known unknowns, perhaps unknown unknowns,
• continually changing conditions,
• inability to accurately measure parameters,
• models and assumptions that have no real scientific basis;
• changing relativities, positional and angular,
• rotations of the earth itself and its orbit,
• resulting day and night cycles,
• rotational axis effects – seasonal variations,
• cloud effects impossible to quantify,
• earth surface variability,
• ocean surface changes with weather,
• ocean current variability,
• wind variability,
• precipitation – rain, sleet, snow,
• confusion with heat energy and heating,
• uncertainty on the solar radiation/energy characteristics,
• lack of agreement on green-house effectiveness,
• lack of agreement on degree of CO2 as a GHG.

This is not genuine or convincing science, it is an attempt to understand a climate system so complex that it can be discussed, modelled, hypothesised, even analysed, but can never confidently be understood and defined in scientific certainties. Not even attaching statistical degrees of uncertainty resolves this issue. The number and degree of uncertainties far outweigh our ability to make meaningful conclusions.

From all these variables and lack of accuracies scientists have the misguided confidence to come up with a computed global average and attach momentous decisions to their assessments. “CO2 in the atmosphere is the cause of catastrophic weather variations”?  I think not!

Decisions that require or support changes to our civilization that are currently being FORCED upon us, and are destroying our lifestyles and economies, no less.

An extract from  the WUWT post:

Here is the diagram as extracted from their 2009 paper, it being an update of that in the IPCC report of 2007 (& also 2001):

The unusual aspect of this diagram is that instead of directly showing radiative Heat Transfer  from the surface, it gives their depiction of the greenhouse effect in terms of radiation flux or Electro-Magnetic Radiation, (AKA; EMR and a number of other descriptions of conflict between applied scientists and physicists).  EMR is a form of energy that is sometimes confused with HEAT.  It will be explained later, that the 396 W/m^2 surface radiation depicted above has very different behaviour to HEAT.  Furthermore, temperature change in matter can only take place when there is a HEAT transfer, regardless of how much EMR is whizzing around in the atmosphere.

A more popular schematic from various divisions around NASA and Wikipedia etc, is next, and it avoids the issue above:

Figure 2                                                     NASA

Returning to the Trenberth et al paper, (link is in line 1 above), they give that the 396 W/m² of EMR emitted from the surface in Fig.1 is calculated primarily by using the Stefan–Boltzmann law, and global year average conditions.  Putting aside a few lesser but rather significant issues therein, it is useful to know that:

1) The Stefan-Boltzmann law (S-B) describes the total emission from a flat surface that is equally radiated in all directions, (is isotropic/hemispherical).  Stefan found this via experimental measurement, and later his student Boltzmann derived it mathematically.

2) The validity of equally distributed hemispherical EMR is demonstrated quite well by observing the Sun. (with eye protection).  It appears to be a flat disc of uniform brightness, but of course it is a sphere, and at its outer edge, the radiation towards Earth is tangential from its apparent surface, not vertical.  It is not a perfect demonstration because of a phenomenon called limb darkening, due to the Sun not having a definable surface, but actually plasma with opacity effects.  However, it is generally not apparent to the eye and the normally observed (shielded) eyeball observation is arguably adequate for purpose here.

3) Whilst reportedly the original Stefan lab test was for a small flat body radiating into a hemisphere, its conclusions can be extended to larger areas by simple addition of many small flat bodies of collectively flat configuration, because of the ability of EMR waves to pass through each other.   This can be demonstrated by car driving at night, when approaching headlights do not change in brightness as a consequence of your own headlights opposing them.  (not to be confused with any dazzling effects and fringe illumination)

4) My sketch below demonstrates how radiation is at its greatest concentration in the lateral directions.  It applies to both the initial S-B hemispherical surface radiation and to subsequent spherical radiation from the atmosphere itself.

 5) Expanding on the text in Figure 3:  Air temperature decreases with altitude, (with lapse rate), but if we take any thin layer of air over a small region, and time interval, and with little turbulence, the temperature in the layer can be treated as constant.  Yet, the most concentrated radiation within the layer is horizontal in all directions, but with a net heat transfer of zero.  Where the radiation is not perfectly horizontal, adjacent layers will provide interception of it.”

The main issues that come to my mind are:

Any attempt to quantify energy and heating effects depends on variables known to be occurring but whose exact effects have to be estimated, as distinct from being known.

Firstly, the solar energy, varying in approximately 11 year cycles in intensity, with additional sun-spot activity added in almost randomly.

Then,  an example of an area of earth surface, might be ocean (with variable properties due to wind and tides, therefore wave conditions, and currents), perhaps land (with various vegetation and surface permutations, altitude, buildings, man made surfaces), perhaps ice or snow. All these have different absorbtion and reflective characteristics.

Then each area rotates through a range of angles wrt to solar radiation, from oblique to a short period of vertical incidence and then fades to an oblique dusk. During this 12 hour (nominally) period the reflective angles are similarly varying.

This is followed by another 12 hour(nom) of zero UV radiation and a completely different heat exchange mechanism takes place where the earth radiates its warmth back into the night sky, or not, depending on clouds.

These nominal 12 hour night-day periods then vary with seasons.

Then there are latitude effects, from equator to polar, completely different from each other, also varying seasonally, with changing heating and reflective parameters and day-night period variations.

Yet somehow, a scientist can create an equivalent steady-state “average” of all these variables and suggest a statistically useful scenario. I suspect not!

The energy budget models above are so dependent on assumptions that can not be verified, that they are only useful for school-room education. That they could be considered relevant to the possible global warming effects of CO2 seems extremely far-fetched to me.

Even if the models were somehow representative of reality, the figures used are questionable. For example, it appears in Fig.1 that the cloud and GHG back radiation is responsible for returning 333 of the outgoing radiation 356 W/M>2 which is over 90% and absurd. Further more this 333 W/M.2 simply returns to earth and apparently heats it without any subsequent re-radiation skywards.

I may not be any cleverer than anyone else, I am a qualified Engineer, more experienced in practical science rather than theoretical, but like to consider common-sense as an element of assessing even scientific matters. It seems to me that a great deal of common-sense is lacking in this debate.

Read the WUWT post here. A look at the comments is interesting.

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