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Universidade Fernando Pessoa

Porto, Portugal

Plate 23- Presently, it is quite common to hear that the Earth's atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, warming our planet in much the same way that an ordinary greenhouse warms the air inside its glass walls. Conventionally, what you hear can be summarized as follows: (i) Like glass, the gases in the atmosphere let in light yet prevent heat from escaping; (ii) This natural warming of the planet is called the greenhouse effect; (iii) Greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and others) are transparent to certain wavelengths of the Sun's radiant energy, allowing them to penetrate deep into the atmosphere or all the way to Earth's surface; (iv) Clouds, ice caps, and particles in the air reflect about 30% of this radiation, but oceans and land masses absorb the rest, then release it back toward space as infrared radiation; (v) The greenhouse gases and clouds effectively prevent some of the infrared radiation from escaping; they trap the heat near Earth's surface where it warms the lower atmosphere; (vi) If the natural barrier of atmospheric gases were not present, the heat would escape into space, and Earth's mean global temperatures could be as much as 33° C cooler (about -18°C as opposed to 15° C); (vii) The greenhouse effect is important to life on Earth, without it the Earth would be far too cold for us; (viii) Some scientists are concerned that humans are producing too many greenhouse gases, and that we may be warming the Earth too much. All these sentences about greenhouse that we hear everyday in the media and from the mouths of the "Alarmists" are just simple conjectures. In fact, as we will see next, the model of the greenhouse effect, particularly when it is induced by CO2 is not scientifically corroborated by data. In addition, a lot of observations refute it. For instance, the greenhouse effect hypothesis, defended by the "Alarmists", implies that troposphere (lower part of the atmosphere, which play the role of greenhouse) must be hotter than the Earth, which is contradicted by recent satellite temperature measurements (see later).

Plate 24- The Swiss naturalist, Horace Bénédict de Saussure, by the end of 18th century, placed thermometers in five glass boxes included one in another and exposed the boxes at the sun. Then, he noticed a significant temperature increasing in the thermometers when going towards the inner box. Taking such a feature into account, he hypothesized the glass traps solar energy and suggested that Earth’s atmosphere could behave in the same way in relation to the solar radiation. Later, in 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, came to the conclusion that by a doubling of CO2 in the atmospheric air, the ground temperature will be globally increased by about 4°C by a similar mechanism (the greenhouse effect). Subsequently, he advanced that the industrial age being generative of CO2 will generate a global warming. However, Saussure and Arrhenius never tested their hypotheses. The temperature of greenhouse window glasses, which according them are the entrance gates of the solar rays and the blocking gates for the exiting infra red rays, should be higher, or at least the same, than the temperature inside of the greenhouse. Robert William Wood (1868-1955) tested such a conjecture and the results of the tests refute completely the hypotheses advanced by Arrhenius and Saussure. Wood, replaced the windows glasses by halite, which is transparent to the infrared rays, and realized the temperature inside of the greenhouse was roughly the same, i.e., the greenhouse effect mechanism alone could not explain the temperature increasing inside of the greenhouse.

Plate 25- The Earth on receiving solar radiations works as a black body, i.e., as an object that absorbs all light that falls on it. No electromagnetic radiation passes through it and none is reflected. Because no light is reflected or transmitted, the object appears black when it is cold. However, when the Earth receives the sun radiations it becomes hot and thus makes it an ideal source of thermal radiation. If other objects in thermal equilibrium surround a perfect black body, at a certain temperature,, it will on average emit exactly as much as it absorbs, at every wavelength. Since the absorption is easy to understand (every ray that hits the body is absorbed) the emission is just as easy to understand. A black body at temperature T emits exactly the same wavelengths and intensities, which would be present in an environment at equilibrium at temperature T, and which would be absorbed by the body. Since the radiation, in such an environment, has a spectrum that depends only on temperature, the temperature of the object is directly related to the wavelengths of the light that it emits. At room temperature, black bodies emit infrared light, but as the temperature increases few hundred degrees Celsius, black bodies start to emit at visible wavelengths, from red, through orange, yellow, and white before ending up at blue, beyond which the emission includes increasing amounts of ultraviolet. It is important to remember that the Stefan–Boltzmann law (or Stefan's law), states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body, in unit time (black-body irradiance, energy flux density, radiant flux, or the emissive power), is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body's thermodynamic temperature T (also called absolute temperature).

Plate 26- Caption 27- Using a scientific procedure, R.W. Wood tested the conjectures advanced by S. Arrehnius, replacing the windows glasses of the greenhouse by halite (transparent to the infra-red rays). He realized that the temperature inside of the greenhouse was roughly the same. He concluded that the so called back-warming (IPCC nomenclature), i.e., the emission of infra red rays from the glass windows backward the greenhouse, was not the most likely explanation for the temperature increasing inside the greenhouse. As a matter of fact, the halite being transparent to the infrared ray could not prevent them from leaving the greenhouse. Subsequently, he advanced the hypothesis that the incident sunrays on the windows of the greenhouse (in ordinary glass or in halite) were absorbed by the dark surfaces inside the greenhouse (mainly the bottom), which became hot. The temperature increase of such surfaces was transmitted by simple contact of such surfaces to the air, which immediately started to rise in the greenhouse as cold air was replaced by it, through the well-known convection mechanism. The continuation of such a mechanism increases the temperature inside the greenhouse, keeping always a temperature gradient between the bottom and the top of the greenhouse in accordance with the thermodynamic laws. The warming up of a garden greenhouse is not due to the blockage, and re-emission of the infrared rays by the glass windows, but probably just due to a simple and slow convection inside the greenhouse, i.e., within a closed system. Do not forget that for the "Alarmists", the CO2 is supposed to play the same role in the atmosphere as the ordinary window glass in a garden or plantation greenhouse.

Plate 27- You can test the validity of the greenhouse effect model by several simple experiments. For instance, go inside a greenhouse garden or a greenhouse farm. You will soon realize that the temperature inside is not far from 60°C. However, if you open a few (two or three) attic windows you will feel a drastic drop in temperature. When the system is closed, the convection mechanism is working and subsequently the inside temperature is quite high. However, when a few attic windows are opened, the system becomes open and the convection mechanism is inefficient (the hot air escapes to the free atmosphere) and the temperature decreases drastically. Let's see another experiment. Leave your car, I hope it is a Ferrari, with the windows closed, in the sun. After 2-3 hours, return to your car, but before open it, put your hands on the windows. You will feel that they are cold. Such a feature refutes all opacity to the infrared rays, contrary to the IPCC and "Alarmists" dogma. To test again the validity of the convection mechanism, take the car of your wife. I'm sure that if it is a Ferrari it has an opening roof. Leave her car with the windows closed, but with the opening roof opened, in the sun. After 2-3 hours return to her car, put your hands on the windows. They are cold and the temperature inside is more less the outside temperature, but not on the seats and steering wheel. In other words, in an open system the air heated by the sunlight, dilates, becomes lighter, moves upward and escapes to the atmosphere. Convection mechanism works, greenhouse mechanism does not..

Plate 28- As said previously, the certainty assumed by the "Alarmists" on greenhouse effect is based on a false analogy, i.e., that the atmosphere, and particularly greenhouse gases, works like the glass windows of a garden or a farm greenhouse. This false analogy is particularly true for the CO2, which is considered by them (alarmists, politicians and the media) as being responsible for global warming, regardless of the fact that global average temperatures measured by the satellites do not rise. On the contrary, they seem to have decreased since 2000. Several scientists (Gerlich, G. and Tscheuschner, R. D., 2007- Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, in http://arxiv.org/abs /0707.1161), point out that there is no scientific corroboration of the greenhouse effect of the CO2 in the atmosphere: "The atmospheric greenhouse effect.... essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system". Actually, according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. However, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread literature, greenhouse effect is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. G. Gerlich and Tscheuschner, R. D. (2007) analysed the greenhouse effect, as well as the underlying physical principles, and their conclusions can be summarized as follows: (1) There are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects; (2) There are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet; (3) The frequently mentioned difference of 33° C (Earth's temperature with and without greenhouse effect) is a meaningless number calculated wrongly; (4) The formulas of cavity radiation (blackbody radiation) are used inappropriately; (5) The assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical and (6) Thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero. In other words, they have completely falsified the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture..

Plate 29- According to the "Alarmists" the major principle of the greenhouse effect is the radiative equilibrium. This principle can be clearly summarized as follows (http://www.pensee-unique.fr/effectdeserre-html): (i) The Earth, placed in the inter-sidereal vacuum, can just receive heat coming from the sun via luminous radiations (incident solar flow); (ii) If the Earth had no way to release such incident energy coming from the sun, its temperature would increase indefinitely...but, in fact, and fortunately for us, the earth, thus irradiated, can eliminate all or part of the incident energy; (iii) The earth heated by the solar rays, emits toward the space infra-red radiation as all other objects heated above the absolute zero (0° K, the temperature at which nothing could be colder and no thermal energy remains in a substance, 0° K= −273.15 °C); (iv) Such a radiation emitted toward the space allows the earth to cool; (v) The equilibrium is reached, i.e., the temperature of the earth keeps constant when the amount of incident energy (coming from the sun) is equal to the energy lost by infra-red radiation toward the space; (vi) The infra-red emission is characterized by the emissivity; (vii) The earth releases also a significant part of the incident solar flow and reflecting it by albedo (ratio of diffusely reflected to incident solar electromagnetic radiation); (viii) This equilibrium between the received energy and released energy is the radiative equilibrium; (ix) The introduction of the "greenhouse effect gases" generated by human activities is supposed to affect the radiative equilibrium or, in other words, it is thought that the greenhouse effect gases generated by the human activity (including breathing), prevents the earth from cooling enough, which leads to a global warming.

Plate 30- Several models have been advanced to explain the greenhouse effect. These models have evolved with time and, presently, they take into account not only the fundamental theoretical principles of radiations but also the convection of the air (and the greenhouse effect gases) in the atmosphere. However, in spite of all advanced models, it is the existence of the greenhouse effect itself that several scientist denied. The radiative unbalance (back-warming) is particularly questionable. In reality, according the "Alarmists" the rate of cooling of the earth by infra-red emission should be around 235 Watt/m2 and it is supposed to have been reduced of 1,6 Watt/m2 (back-warming) by the CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. However, as all nonaligned scientists know any of more modern apparatus orbiting the earth is accurate enough to detect so small variations. By the same token, presently, there is not a direct experimental proof of all these numbers, which, in fact, are just results of theoretical calculations. On the other hand, similar calculations suggest that for a doubly of CO2 in the atmosphere, the Earth's temperature increases just 0.56° C (assuming that the Earth does react by positive or negative feedbacks to a small temperature increasing). As point out (http://www.pensee-unique.fr/effectdeserre-html), the human contribution (in all its forms) for the increasing of the CO2 in the atmosphere is one molecule of CO2 for 100 k molecules of air each five years. Take note that the Stefan-Boltzman law relates the total amount of radiation emitted by an object to its temperature: E =sT4(exponential 4), where: (i) E is total amount of radiation emitted by an object per square meter (Watts m-2), (ii) s is a constant called the Stefan-Boltzman constant = 5.67 x 10-8 Watts m-2 K-4 and (iii) T is the temperature of the object in °K. Considering the sun and earth: (a) T = 6000 K, so E = 5.67 x 10-8 Watts m-2 K-4 (6000 K)4 = 7.3 x 107 Watts m-2 for the Sun and (b) T = 288 K, so E = 5.67 x 10-8 Watts m-2 K-4 (288 K)4 = 390 Watts m-2, for the Earth.

Plate 31- Caption 31- As in the case of a garden or farm greenhouse, it is not the backward radiation of the window glasses that is responsible for the increase in temperature inside of the greenhouse. The more likely responsible mechanism for the temperature increase within a greenhouse is the convection. Let's remind ourselves of certain principles that we learned in the secondary school (http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/wcee/keep/ Mod1/Rules/EnTransfer.htm): (i) The temperature of a body is the measurement of how fast molecules move on it; (ii) The heat is not an energy, it is the transfer or flow of energy from a hot object to one that is cooler; (iii) Thermal energy of an object is the movement of molecules that make up it; (iv) In strict scientific terms, there is a distinct difference between heat and thermal energy; (v) A way to think about this distinction is: objects possess thermal energy, while heat is transferred from one object to another; (vi) Heat (transfer or flow of energy from a hot object to one that is cooler) can occur mainly by three mechanisms (there is also a transfer of latent heat when there is a phase transition, e.g. transformation of water vapour in hoarfrost): (a) Conduction, i.e., the transfer of energy from one molecule to another (when molecules hit against each other), takes place in solids, liquids, and gases, but works best in materials that have simple molecules that are located close to each other (metal is a better conductor than wood or plastic), (b) Radiation, i.e., the transfer of heat by electromagnetic waves coming from the sun, light bulbs, irons, and toasters, etc. (when infrared rays strike a material, the molecules in that material move faster); all these items radiate heat (however, when we feel heat around these objects, we are feeling convection heat rather than radiated heat since the heat waves strike and energize surrounding air molecules); (c) Convection, i.e., the movement of heat by a liquid such as water or a gas or as air (the liquid or gas moves - a current- from one location to another, carrying heat along with it).

Plate 32- As we all know, the moon does not have any air around it. The air that surrounds our earth acts as a nice blanket to keep us warm and comfortably. But the moon, since it does not have such a blanket, gets much colder and much hotter than the earth. On the side of the moon that the sun is shining on, the temperature reaches 260° F (± 126° C). On the dark side of the moon, it gets very cold, -280° F (± -173° C). According to a new NASA-funded study, insights into Earth's climate may come from an unlikely place - the moon. Scientists looked at the ghostly glow of light reflected from Earth onto the moon's dark side. During the 1980s and 1990s, Earth bounced less sunlight out to space. The trend reversed during the past three years, as the Earth appears to reflect more light toward space (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/ 2004/0528earthshine.html). Though not fully understood, these shifts may indicate a natural variability of clouds, which can reflect the sun's heat and light away from Earth. The apparent change in the amount of sunlight reaching Earth in the 1980s and 1990s is comparable to taking the effects of greenhouse gas warming since 1850 and doubling them. Increased reflectance since 2001 suggests change of a similar magnitude in the opposite direction. Earth's surface may have been sunnier, or less cloudy, in the 1980s and 1990s. BBSO (Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), Big Bear City, California) has conducted precision earthshine observations since 1994. Regular observations began in late 1997 and the data showed a steady decrease in Earth's albedo from 1984 to 2000. Between 1995 and 1996, Earth dimmed even more sharply. The data were consistent with satellite measurements of changing global properties. From 1997 to 2000, Earth continued to dim. The researchers suggested that, during this time period, the decreases in Earth's reflectance may be related to an observed accelerated increase in mean global surface temperatures. From 2001 to 2003, Earth brightened to pre-1995 values. The researchers attributed the brightening to changes in cloud properties. As we will see later, the amount of clouds seems to be more or less related with the solar cycles, since cosmic rays are essential to transform the water vapour in water droplets. i.e. in clouds. Subsequently, we can say that more clouds are present in the atmosphere smaller is the solar energy arriving at the Earth's surface, but unfortunately for the "Believers" they feel that this has nothing to do with greenhouse effects.

Plate 33- Henrik Svensmark and his team (Danish National Space Center) has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. They do not believe that CO2 is the main cause for the increase in global average temperature observed at the end of the last century (since 2000 the global temperature is decreasing than increasing). His findings (published in October, 2006, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, i.e., the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London) can be summarized as follows: (i) The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century; (ii) Changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures; (iii) The sun's magnetic field deflects some of the cosmic rays that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and in so doing it also limits the immense amounts of ions and free electrons that the cosmic rays produce. Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their hypotheses after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays (high speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way) and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined. Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 Watts/m2 during that same period. Such a figure (1.2 Watts/m2) can be compared with about 1.4 Watts/m2 estimated by the IPCC for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in CO2 in the air since the Industrial Revolution. Thus, in the 20th century, as the sun's magnetic field more than doubled in strength, it is quite possible that Earth warmed because a large number of cosmic rays were deflected limiting the formation of clouds. Regrettably, the "Alarmists" and particularly Dr. R. K. Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC (the chief agency investigating global warming), immediately castigated Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E,, in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible". Let's wait 5 or 6 years and we will see who is the naive and irresponsible. If Svensmark is right, the average global temperature must decrease significantly in the next years, since we are at the end of cycle 23 or already in the beginning cycle 24, in which the solar activity is supposed to be smaller. Wait and see.

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