Greenhouse Gas Effect is not Large Enough
Post #576
The Carbon Tax and Carbon Credit schemes of globalist elites allow them to make you pay for something intangible. This is like selling an “invisible diamond necklace” to an unsuspecting woman — where it costs a lot but she cannot ever tell how much it benefits her.
The required premise of carbon control schemes is that carbon emissions (and other greenhouse gases) are the culprit in recent global warming — so that reducing our carbon emissions would save the planet.
But it turns out that evidence does not support a crucial role of carbon dioxide in recent global warming. Here is the mechanism by which greenhouse gases could heat the planet:
Notice how the greenhouse gas layer forms a ‘warm blanket’ that becomes so warm that it radiates heat back to Earth. To get Earth’s surface temperature to rise by 1.8 degrees Celsius requires a gas layer which got at least 2.0 degrees Celsius of warming.
Not all of the heat trapped in the gas layer makes it back to Earth, and some escapes up into the stratosphere. The greenhouse gas layer cannot keep warming the Earth unless it “stays ahead” of the Earth as far as temperature trends (Second Law of Thermodynamics: heat flows out to cooler bodies, not to warmer ones).
The biggest lead of temperatures is found in the Deep Tropics, plus or minus 20 degrees of Latitude. For a greenhouse effect to occur in that region, the greenhouse gas layer warms 38% faster than Earth’s surface.
Note: Global troposphere temperature trends are 82% of tropical troposphere trends.
One record of surface warming is from NOAA:
This trend was made to start at 1979, the year when satellites began measuring the change in temperature of the greenhouse gas layer (lower and mid-troposphere). The overall trend shows global surface warming of +1.8 degrees Celsius per century.
The peaks and valleys correspond almost perfectly to the last 4 solar cycles (change in solar activity), because the sun is the primary driver of temperature change on Earth. Here are the solar cycles in terms of the number of sunspots:
But to explain the overall upward trend in surface temperature of +1.8 degrees Celsius per century via a greenhouse gas effect, you’d need huge increases in the temperature of the gas layer (increases of at least +2.0 degrees C per century). But after looking, it is clear that those huge increases are not found.
Here is the temperature trend of the mid-troposphere:
The mid-troposphere is the most relevant horizontal slice of the atmosphere regarding the greenhouse gas layer, but adding in the lower troposphere makes the estimate more comprehensive.
Here is the temperature trend of the Lower Troposphere:
In neither case is the required temperature trend of +2.0 degrees C per century found. This means that recent warming cannot be predominately due to greenhouse gas emissions, because it has been shown that it is not predominately due to the greenhouse gas effect.
While the greenhouse effect can explain a small minority of recent warming, it wouldn’t be appropriate public policy to allocate much resources toward something whose causal role is minor.
Good public policy focuses almost exclusively on major causes, not minor ones.
Deep Note:
A crude, weighted average trend for the temperature between 3 miles up and 6 miles up (i.e., the greenhouse gas layer) might be to triple-weight the mid-troposphere trend and average it with the lower troposphere trend.
With triple-weighting, it produces a “greenhouse gas layer” warming rate of [(1.375 + 1.375 + 1.375 + 1.75)/4 =] 1.47 degrees C per century.
In other words, Earth’s surface is warming ~22% faster than the greenhouse gas layer — but a greenhouse gas effect requires almost an exact opposite (gas layer ~15% faster).
Here is a vertical graph where the middle troposphere can be viewed roughly as running from atmospheric pressure of 500 hectoPascals (hPA) and up to 250 hPA. Notice how temperature trends are higher there, than on the surface of the Earth (bottom of graph):
Image from:
Tropospheric temperature response to stratospheric ozone recovery in the 21st century. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 7687–7699, 2011. www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/7687/2011/ doi:10.5194/acp-11-7687-2011
Reference
[solar cycles] — NOAA. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
[surface temperature trends] — NOAA. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/ytd/12/1979-2023
[tropospheric temperature trends] — NOAA. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/upper-air/202205
[With a greenhouse effect, tropical tropospheres warm 38% faster than Earth’s surface does] — What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979?. Remote Sens. 2010, 2(9), 2148-2169; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs2092148. or at: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/2/9/2148
[the global average troposphere (MSU2) warming rate is 82% of the tropical troposphere (MSU2) warming rate] — Troposphere-Stratosphere Temperature Trends Derived From Satellite Data Compared With Ensemble Simulations From WACCM. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027158