Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory

[Richard111]

Derek, that is simply a check. Nothing hidden, nothing implied. T is just the temperature in degrees Kelvin (you must not use celcius in these calcs). The point is the K-T budget figures don't agree with the explanation.

If a blackbody has a temperature of -40C (233.15K) then it will radiate 168W/m^2. But the global surface temperature of the planet should be -18C BEFORE the greenhouse effect pushes up the temperature by 33 degrees to +15C. But to have -18C you need 240W/m^2. And for +15C you need 390W/m^2.

None of those figures make sense. So K-T must be applying a greybody fudge factor. Why don't they say what they are doing?

None of the above will actually apply to a rotating planet where half the planet is always sheltered from incoming energy. I must do much more study on that aspect before I make any comment. I do love this book!

Anyway, just for fun now. I've often posted about my time in Singapore and noticed how small are the daily temperature changes compared to say the Karroo in South Africa. It seems the answer is water vapour. That wonderful greenhouse gas H2O. At or near the equator there is so much water vapour in the air that it blocks a lot of incoming solar radiation preventing the temperature rising as much as it would in a dry desert region. But at night it absorbs the upwelling longwave surface radiation and slows down the rate of cooling at night, again as compared to a desert region. Now the deserts have the same amount of CO2 as the equator but desert temperature monitors do not show any effect of the increasing CO2 because CO2 does not have the traction of H2O. If you don't already know, look up why deserts occur where they do both north and south of the equator. Fascinating planet we live on.

quick edit: found my signature in the book at location 1205