Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #631
2 hours ago Guest Blogger
The Week That Was: 2025 02-15 (February 15, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (
www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.” — Carl Sagan (1934-1996) [H/t William Readdy]
Number of the Week: 15%
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW will continue with questioning whether climate science is a physical science. It begins with the Greenhouse Effect. Then continues with The Blue Marble, issues of forecasting rain with climate models, and a discussion on cloudy skies. Discussions also include topics such as the Texas blackout four years ago, the Paris Agreement, and the IEA politicizing its standards. Findings about USAID funding other organizations are discussed.
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The Greenhouse Effect: In discussing whether climate science is a physical science, TWTW stated:
“Satellite observations using spectroscopy instruments have verified ideas suggested by Karl Schwarzschild during WW I: different atmospheric gases, called greenhouse gases, interfere with (block) the emission of infrared radiation (IR) from the surface of Earth to space. This was first revealed by the Nimbus satellite flying near Guam in 1970. When intensity is plotted against frequency (wave numbers, the number, or wavelengths per centimeter), the Schwarzschild calculations produce a jagged curve which was observed. The Planck curve on the emission of IR from the surface produces a smooth curve. The difference between the two is the Greenhouse Effect.”
Reader Christopher Game objected, stating that the part in boldface is a poor definition of the greenhouse effect. Although UN IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report uses that definition and assigns the symbol G to it, TWTW fully agrees, and that the sentence should include the phrase “a measurement of” to read: The difference between the two is a measurement of the Greenhouse Effect.”
The particular observations were taken on a clear sky near Guam in 1970. In their papers AMO physicists William van Wijngaarden and William Happer have used the differences in other locations to test their model of calculations using the HITRAN database. For example, their paper published in the Science of Climate Change, Figure 9 (p.5) compares their model calculations with observations taken over the Sahara, the Mediterranean, and Antarctica.
“The right column of Fig. 9 shows spectra of long wave thermal infrared radiation that reaches the satellite from a cloud-free area of the Earth. On the left are theoretically modelled spectra. One can hardly tell the difference between the modelled and observed spectra.”
The vertical axis of each graph shows that the intensity of the radiation varies significantly by locations. The caption under the Figure states:
“Figure 9: Comparison of modeled for a clear sky with data observed by a Michelson interferometer in a satellite over the Saharan desert, the Mediterranean and Antarctica. … Radiative forcing is negative over wintertime Antarctica since the relatively warm greenhouse gases in the troposphere, mostly CO2, O3 and H2O radiate more to space than the cold ice surface at a temperature of T = 190 K [minus 83 C, minus 117 F], could radiate through a transparent atmosphere.”
Further, both the calculations and the observations show that the intensity of the radiation is significantly greater over the Sahara than over the Mediterranean. Thus, on Earth the greenhouse effect varies significantly with the latitude and with the atmospheric conditions of the location. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/17/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-631/
