Ending Obama EPA climate deception by Paul Driessen

Let’s finally review Endangerment Finding used to justify trillions in climate and energy costs

In December 2009, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency issued its Endangerment Finding (EF) – decreeing that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) endanger the health and welfare of Americans. In the process, EPA ignored the incredible economic, health and welfare benefits of fossil fuels – and the fact that (even at just 0.04% of the atmosphere) carbon dioxide is the miracle molecule that enables plants to grow and makes nearly all life on Earth possible.

EPA turned CO2 into a “dangerous pollutant” and ruled that fossil fuels must be eradicated. The agency subsequently used its EF to justify tens of billions of dollars in climate research, anti-fossil fuel regulations, and wind and solar subsidies; President Obama’s signing of the Paris climate treaty; and proposals to spend trillions of dollars a year on Green New Deal (GND) programs.

And yet, despite multiple demands that this be done, there has never been any formal, public review of the EF conclusion or of the secretive process EPA employed to ensure the result of its “analysis” could only be “endangerment” – and no awkward questions or public hearings would get in the way.

Review, transparency and accountability may finally be on the way, however, in the form of potential Executive Branch actions. If they occur – and they certainly should – both are likely to find that there is no valid scientific basis for the EF, and EPA violated important federal procedural rules in rendering its predetermined EF outcome. (One could even say the EF was obtained primarily because of prosecutorial misconduct, a kangaroo court proceeding, and scientific fraud.) Failure to examine and reverse the EF would mean it hangs like Damocles’ sword over the USA, awaiting another climate-focused president.

To the consternation and outrage of climate alarmists, keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground radicals, and predictable politicians and pundits, President Trump may soon appoint a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, to review “dangerous manmade climate change” reports by federal agencies.

Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has filed a formal petition with EPA, asking that the agency stop utilizing and relying on the EF – and instead subject the finding to a proper “high level” peer review, as required by the Information Quality Act. The reasoning presented in CEI’s succinct and persuasive petition is compelling. Its main points are these.

* EPA’s Endangerment Finding and the Technical Support Document (TSD) that supposedly justifies it did not meet Information Quality Act (IQA) requirements for how the work should have been done.

* The agency’s evaluation of the then-current climate change and related science was clearly a “highly influential scientific assessment” (HISA), which triggered important IQA and OMB rules governing rulemakings that have “a potential impact of more than $500 million in any year” … or present “novel, controversial or precedent-setting” changes … or would likely raise “significant interagency interest.”

* EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” to shut down coal-fired power plants alone would cost $2.5 billion in annual compliance costs, EPA admitted. Its motor vehicle rules would cost tens of billions. The Paris agreement and GND would add trillions per year in costs to the US economy. All are based on the EF. And all were certainly controversial and generated significant interest by multiple other government agencies.

* EPA deliberately downplayed the significance of its review and decision, ignored the IQA and OMB requirements, and refused to allow citizens, independent energy, climate and health experts, or even scientific and professional societies to nominate potential reviewers or participate in the EF analysis.

* Instead, the agency utilized an entirely internal review process, designed and conducted entirely by its own federal employees. Those employees had substantial conflicts of interest, because they were reviewing their own scientific work; would be writing, implementing and enforcing regulations based on that work; and had jobs and professional status that might be affected by the outcome of their review.

[The review team even summarily dismissed one of EPA’s most senior energy and economic experts, because his probing analyses and comments “do not help the legal or policy case” for the EF decision.]

* EPA never allowed the general public or scientific, energy, health or economic experts to review its draft scientific assessment; never sponsored any public meetings; and never let its internal peer reviewers see any of the public comments that outside experts and organizations submitted to the agency.

* In fact, none of the EPA peer review panel’s questions and responses have ever been made public.

Each of these actions violated specific IQA and OMB peer review guidelines. Indeed, two years after the Endangerment Finding was issued, even EPA’s own Inspector General found that that agency had violated rules governing all of these matters. And yet even then nothing was done to correct them.

The entire Obama EPA process smells like a crooked prosecutor who framed CO2 and was determined to get a conviction. The agency built its entire case on tainted, circumstantial evidence, and testimony from agency officials who had conflicts of interest and their own reasons for wanting CO2 convicted of endangering Americans. EPA reviewers ignored or hid exculpatory evidence and colluded to prevent witnesses for the CO2 defendant from presenting any defense or cross-examining agency witnesses.

A full reexamination now is essential, and not just because the Obama EPA violated every procedural rule in the books. But because EPA ignored volumes of climate science that contradicted its preordained EF finding. Because real-world climate and weather observations consistently contradict alarmist computer models and headlines. Because science is never settled … must never be driven by ideology … and must be reevaluated when new scientific evidence is discovered – or evidence of misbehavior is uncovered.

We know far more about Earth’s climate and have far more and better data than a decade ago. But climatologists still cannot explain why our planet experienced multiple ice ages and interglacial periods, Roman and Medieval warm periods, the Little Ice Age, or Anasazi, Mayan and Dust Bowl droughts.

And yet some of them insist they can accurately predict calamitous temperatures, weather events and extinctions 10, 20, 100 years from now – based on computer models whose temperature predictions are already a degree Fahrenheit above what satellites are measuring … and that rely primarily or solely on carbon dioxide, while downplaying or ignoring fluctuations in solar energy and cosmic ray output, the reflective properties of clouds, El Niño events, ocean current shifts, and other powerful natural forces.

And then, in the face of all that uncertainty and politicized science, they demand that the United States slash or eliminate its fossil fuel use – and that the poorest nations on Earth continue to forego fossil fuel development, and instead remain wracked by joblessness, misery, disease, malnutrition and early death.

Thankfully, poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America are building or planning more than 2,000 coal and gas-fueled generating plants. They deserve to be freed from dictatorial carbon-colonialism and eco-manslaughter – and to become as wealthy, healthy and vibrant as modern industrialized nations that also relied on fossil fuels to develop … and are still 80% dependent on those fuels today.

But if those countries are building fossil fuel power plants, driving millions more cars and trucks, and emitting multiple times more CO2 and other GHGs than the United States – why should the USA slash or eliminate its coal, oil and natural gas? Why should we roll back our job creation, living standards, health and welfare, based on the IPCC’s junk science and EPA’s fraudulent Endangerment Finding?

For unfathomable reasons, a few White House advisors still oppose any PCCS or IQA-triggered review of the EF or junk/fraudulent science behind it. Perhaps they are too closely tied to the Deep State or invested financially or ideologically in the $2-trillion-per-year Climate-Industrial Complex. But whatever their reasons, they must be ignored in favor of science and the national interest. Let’s get the job done – now!

Write to President Trump: Ask him to appoint his Presidential Committee on Climate Science – and instruct the EPA to agree to the CEI petition and review the 2009 Endangerment Finding forthwith!

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles and books on energy, environmental and human rights issues.

I have posted this article at Paul Driessen's request.  I was a signer of the petition to the President in support of a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, Heritage Action for America, CFACT, the Institute for Energy Research, Americans for Limited Government, Institute for Liberty, Caesar Rodney Institute, Ethan Allen Institute, John Locke Foundation, Rio Grande Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and many other organizations and individuals.

Let's do follow the climate money! by Paul Driessen

Climate Crisis Inc. gets billions to promote imaginary manmade cataclysm – but attacks realists  

The climate crisis industry incessantly claims that fossil fuel emissions are causing unprecedented temperature, climate and weather changes that pose existential threats to human civilization and our planet. The only solution, Climate Crisis, Inc. insists, is to eliminate the oil, coal and natural gas that provide 80% of the energy that makes US and global economies, health and living standards possible.

Failing that, CCI demands steadily increasing taxes on carbon-based fuels and carbon dioxide emissions.

However, as France’s Yellow Vest protests and the latest climate confab in Poland demonstrated, the world is not prepared to go down that dark path. Countries worldwide are expanding their reliable fossil fuel use, and families do not want to reduce their living standards or their aspirations for better lives.

Moreover, climate computer model forecasts are completely out of touch with real-world observations. There is no evidence to support claims that the slight temperature, climate and weather changes we’ve experienced are dangerous, unprecedented or caused by humans, instead of by the powerful solar, oceanic and other natural forces that have driven similar or far more serious changes throughout history.

More importantly, the CCI “solutions” would cause unprecedented disruption of modern industrialized societies; permanent poverty and disease in poor countries; and serious ecological damage worldwide.

Nothing that is required to harness breezes and sunshine to power civilization is clean, green, renewable, climate-friendly or sustainable. Tens of billions of tons of rock would have to be removed, to extract billions of tons of ores, to create millions of tons of metals, concrete and other materials, to manufacture millions of wind turbines and solar panels, and install them on millions of acres of wildlife habitats – to generate expensive, intermittent energy that would be grossly insufficient for humanity’s needs. Every step in this process requires fossil fuels – and some of the mining involves child labor.

How do CCI alarmists respond to these points? They don’t. They refuse to engage in or even permit civil discussion. They rant that anyone “who denies climate change science” is on the fossil fuel industry payroll, thus has a blatant conflict of interest and no credibility, and therefore should be ignored. 

“Rebuttals” to my recent “We are still IN” article cited Greenpeace and DeSmogBlog as their “reliable sources” and claimed: I’m “associated with” several “right-wing think tanks that are skeptical of man-made climate change.” One of them “received $582,000 from ExxonMobil” over a 14-year period, another got “$5,716,325 from Koch foundations” over 18 years, and the Koch Brothers gave “at least $100,343,292 to 84 groups denying climate change science” in 20 years, my detractors claimed.

These multi-year contributions work out to $41,571 annually; $317,574 per year; and $59,728 per organization per year, respectively – to pay salaries and overhead at think tanks that are engaged in multiple social, tax, education, medical and other issues … not just energy and climate change.

But let’s assume for a moment that money – especially funding from any organization that has any kind of financial, regulatory or other “special interest” in the outcome of this ongoing energy and economic battle – renders a researcher incapable of analyzing facts fairly and honestly.

Then apply those zero-tolerance, zero-credibility Greenpeace-DeSmogBlog-CCI standards to those very same climate alarmists and their allies – who are determined to shut down debate and impose their wind, solar and biofuel policies on the world.Where do they get their money, and how much do they get? 

Billionaire and potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg gave the Sierra Club $110 million in a six-year period to fund its campaign against coal-generated electricity. Chesapeake Energy gave the Club $26 million in three years to promote natural gas and attack coal. Ten wealthy liberal foundations gave another $51 million over eight years to the Club and other environmentalist groups to battle coal.

Over a 12-year period, the Environmental Protection Agency gave its 15 Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee members $181 million in grants – and in exchange received quick rubberstamp approvals of various air quality rules. It paid the American Lung Association $20 million to support its regulations.

During the Obama years, the EPA, Interior Department and other federal agencies paid environmental pressure groups tens of millions in collusive, secretive sue-and-settle lawsuit payoffs on dozens of issues.

Then we get to the really big money: taxpayer funds that government agencies hand out to scientists, computer modelers and pressure groups – to promote global warming and climate change alarmism.

As Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore noted recently, citing government and other reports: 

* Federal funding for climate change research, technology, international assistance, and adaptation has increased from $2.4 billion in 1993 to $11.6 billion in 2014, with an additional $26.1 billion for climate change programs and activities provided by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

* The Feds spent an estimated $150 billion on climate change and green energy subsidies during President Obama’s first term.

* That didn’t include the 30% tax credits/subsidies for wind and solar power: $8 billion to $10 billion a year – plus billions more from state programs that require utilities to buy expensive “green” energy.

* Worldwide, according to the “progressive” Climate Policy Initiative, climate change “investment” in 2013 totaled $359 billion – but this “falls far short” of the $5 trillion per year that’s actually needed.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change echoes those greedy demands. It says the world must spend $2.4 trillion per year for the next 17 years to subsidize the transition to renewable energy.

Bear in mind that $1.5 trillion per year was already being spent in 2014 on Climate Crisis, Inc. research, consulting, carbon trading and renewable projects, according to the Climate Change Business Journal. With 6-8% annual growth, we’re easily looking at a $2-trillion-per-year climate industry by now.

The US Government Accountability Office puts United States taxpayer funding alone at $2.1 billion per year for climate change “science” … $9.0 billion a year for technology R&D … and $1.8 billion a year for international assistance. Total US Government spending on climate change totaled $179 billion (!) from 1993 through 2017, according to the GAO. That’s $20 million per day!

At the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit, 29 leftist foundations pledged to give $4 billion over five years to their new Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming campaign. Sea Change Foundation co-founder Nat Simons made it clear that this “is only a down payment”!

And I get pilloried for working with organizations that received $41,571 to $59,728 per year from fossil fuel interests … questioning claims that fossil fuels are causing climate chaos … and raising inconvenient facts and questions about wind, solar and biofuel replacements for coal, oil and natural gas.

Just as outrageous, tens of millions of dollars are squandered every year to finance “studies” that supposedly show “surging greenhouse gases” and “manmade climate change” are creating dangerous hybrid puffer fish, causing salmon to lose their ability to detect danger, making sharks right-handed and unable to hunt, increasing the number of animal bites, and causing US cities to be overrun by rats.

Let’s apply the Greenpeace-DeSmogBlog-Climate Crisis, Inc. standard to all these organizations and researchers. Their massive multi-billion-dollar conflicts of interest clearly make them incapable of analyzing climate and energy matters fairly and honestly – and disqualify them from participating in any further discussions about America’s and the world’s energy and economic future.

At the very least, they and the institutions that have been getting rich and powerful off the catastrophic manmade global warming and climate hustle should be cut off from any future federal funding.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT.org). He has written numerous studies and articles on energy, climate change, human rights and other topics.

Note by Charles R. Anderson:  I am a donor to CFACT, SEPP, The Heartland Institute, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Capital Research Center, all of which are catastrophic manmade climate change skeptical organizations.  I support these groups because, as I have explained in many ways through the years, the physics claimed to support catastrophic warming by man's emissions of infrared-active (so called greenhouse gases) is crazy wrong and not even applied consistently by the climate alarmists.

Climate lunacy takes center stage in Poland by Paul Driessen

IPCC Poland conference presents fictional climate chaos and fake renewable energy salvation 

The unwritten rule seems to be that each successive climate report and news release must be more scarifying than any predecessors, especially during the run-up to international conferences.

Thus Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report 15 claims governments worldwide must make “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” spend $40 trillion by 2035 on renewable energy, and impose carbon taxes that climb to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2030. Or temperatures could climb another 1 degree F (0.5 C) and bring utter cataclysm to human civilization and our planet.

Not to be outdone, the 1,700-page 2018 US National Climate Assessment wailed that failure to eliminate fossil fuels and roll back American industry and living standards would send global temperatures soaring 15 degrees F by 2100! Chaos and food shortages would ensue; US economic growth would plummet.

The hyperbole continues in Katowice, Poland – where 30,000 activists and bureaucrats (and a few scientists) are meeting to finalize regulations to implement the 2015 Paris climate treaty and compel wealthy nations to give trillions of dollars in “adaptation, mitigation and compensation” money to poor countries that have been “victimized” by climate change, even as the rich nations de-industrialize.

All of this certainly plays well with those who orchestrated these reports and programs, are ideologically opposed to fossil fuels, or get paid to advance climate chaos and renewable energy narratives. However, a very different response among other audiences is increasingly evident around the world.

People look out their windows and realize the “unprecedented climate and weather chaos” isn’t actually happening, is little different from what they and previous generations experienced, and cannot possibly be attributed solely to fossil fuel use. They know the sun and other powerful natural forces have driven frequent climate changes throughout history, and play equally important roles today.

They understand that the scary headlines are the product of “scenarios” conjured up by computer models that blame climate change on greenhouse gases. They see the boy who cried “fifty 20-foot-tall wolves” far too often. They don’t buy the notion that today’s incredibly wealthy, high-tech, energy-rich societies are somehow less able to deal with climate change than those that lived through the Little Ice Age, for example. They typically put climate change at the bottom of any list of pressing concerns.

More and more people understand that fossil fuels provide 80% of US and global energy – and are essential to lifting billions more people out of crushing poverty. They see Asian and African countries building thousands of new coal- and gas-fired electrical generating plants, and making and driving millions of new cars. They know even Germany and Japan are burning more coal, as they realize that wind and solar subsidies and facilities raise energy costs, kill jobs and hurt poor families the most.

People resent being scammed and get angry when they realize their taxes and energy payments often line the pockets of climate activists, scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, and wind, solar and biofuel cronies.

Above all, a growing number see the proposed solutions as far worse than the wildly exaggerated and even fabricated climate disasters. They won’t tolerate having their livelihoods and living standards disrupted or destroyed by carbon taxes, even higher energy prices or fossil fuel bans – especially when the antipathy toward those fuels is combined with plans to terminate nuclear and even hydroelectric power.

In recent weeks, millions of mostly poor, working class and rural French citizens have joined the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement, protesting and even rioting against President Macron’s proposed carbon tax hikes on their driving and living standards. Even a French police union has sided with the protesters. A shaken Macron finally postponed the tax for six months, then scrapped the plan entirely.

The protests are the first serious backlash against international eco-imperialism. They won’t be the last.

In Africa alone, twice as many people as live in the USA still do not have electricity, or have it only rarely and unpredictably. Can you imagine your life without electricity? And yet they are told by the EU, environmentalists, the World Bank and others that they must restrict their ambitions to what is possible with wind, solar and biofuel energy. Would you accept such carbon colonialism? Can actual, real-world climate risks possibly be worse than the horrid poverty, deprivation and disease that afflicts them now?

The World Bank recently said it would kindly give poor countries $200 billion during its FY2021-25 cycle, for “adaptation and resilience” in the face of manmade climate change. But still nothing for fossil fuel or nuclear power. The White House should read it the riot act, especially if US money is involved.

Poor countries don’t need climate cash. They need to develop: energy, infrastructure, factories, jobs, health, living standards. They need to do what rich countries did to become rich – not what (some) rich countries are doing (or at least saying) now that they are rich. Thankfully, many are doing exactly that.

Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, motor fuels and factory power creates its own prosperity; its own ability to improve roads, hospitals, schools, homes and so on; its own “drop dead money” to tell carbon colonialists to take a hike. “Green” energy is insufficient, unsustainable and ecologically harmful.

With America likely being joined soon by Brazil in rejecting the Paris climate trap, poor nations are on firm ground. Ontario (Canada), Poland. Australia, China, India and other countries have also rejected carbon taxes and coal use restrictions. The Paris deal is fast becoming a climate Potemkin Village.

But what about that National Climate Assessment? Wasn’t that a Trump White House document? It certainly needed some adult supervision, to ride herd on the 1,000 Deep State scientists and bureaucrats who prepared it. However, the White House let them prove how loony climate alarmism has become.

Indeed, as Nick Loris, Roger Pielke, Jr. and other experts have pointed out, the NCA was based on absurd assumptions (eg, vastly increased coal use and no energy technology advances over the next 70 years) and a ridiculous worst-case global temperature increase of 15 degrees F by 2100. That’s twice as high as even the IPCC’s worst-case projections, and far worse than Garbage In-Garbage Out climate models are predicting. It’s more than 15 times the total warming our Earth has experienced since 1820!

The NCA is also based on rampant cherry-picking of data, to wildly inflate climate risks; an almost total failure to factor in the incalculable benefits of fossil fuels; and a refusal to consider the plant-fertilizing benefits of more atmospheric carbon dioxide. It just depicts the CO2 we exhale solely as a dangerous climate-changing pollutant. The NCA also ignored the fact that actual observations show no increases in drought, no increases in the frequency or magnitude of floods, no trends in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. It didn’t mention the 12-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes making US landfall.

Just as egregious, the Deep State NCA claimed continued fossil fuel use would hit the United States with $500 billion in annual climate related costs by 2090. That’s more than twice the percentage lost during the Great Depression. It’s 10% of the US economy in 1971. Even with modest economic growth, it’s likely to be a trivial 0.6% of America’s GDP in 2090. The NCA bogeyman is a little stuffed bear.

But based on IPCC and NCA fear mongering, America and the world are supposed to keep their fossil fuels in the ground – including what the US Geological Survey says is the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed!!” Over 46 billion barrels of oil, 280 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids in just part of the Texas-New Mexico Permian Basin.

No one denies that the climate changes, or even that human activities have some effects on climate and weather. But there is no real-world evidence that human CO2 emissions have replaced the sun and other natural forces; that another degree of warming would be cataclysmic; or that humans can control climate changes and weather events by tweaking the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Want some facts and common sense? See what CFACT and Heartland have been saying in Poland, and read books by Dr Roy Spencer, Marc Morano, Anthony Watts and others. They’ll be a breath of fresh air.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of books, studies and articles on energy, climate change, the environment and human rights. 

My Comments:

Dr. Roy Spencer and Anthony Watts are luke-warmers who believe that CO2 causes less warming than the alarmists say it does and that the warming is less than catastrophic.  They both hold the consensus view of thermal radiation, which is seriously in error.  Dr. Roy Spencer engages in discussions with great patience, but some critical physics he just does not understand.  Anthony Watts has called me nasty names because I advocate that the temperature increases caused by additional CO2 in the atmosphere are insignificant and much lower than than what he thinks they will be.  Despite their limitations, however, both of these men have played major roles in opposing the excesses of the global warming alarmists.  So be nice to them.

I am a supporter of and donor to the Heartland Institute and CFACT.

Posts Evaluating Earth Energy Budget Problems

Here is a list of some of the posts in which I discuss some of the many problems in the Earth Energy Budgets put forth by the advocates of catastrophic man-made global warming:

Using Heat Transport Powers of the NASA Earth Energy Budget to Prove that Carbon Dioxide has an Insignificant Effect on Surface Temperatures, 15 June 2018

A Summary of Some of the Physics Errors of the NASA Earth Energy Budget, 8 June 2018

Water Vapor and Gravity Act Together to Warm the Earth, 19 June 2017

The Settled Science of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Violates the Laws of Physics, 10 June 2017

mgh, Not Just Greenhouse Gases, Provides a Warm Earth, 23 May 2017

Greenhouse Gases Warmed the Earth Somewhat, but Additions Now Cool the Earth, 27 July 2015

Why Greenhouse Gas Theory is Wrong -- An Examination of the Theoretical Basis, 7 March 2015

Back-Radiation Insignificance for the Equilibrium Surface Temperature, 14 March 2014

The Stefan-Boltzmann Law at a Non-Vacuum Interface: Misuse by Global Warming Alarmists, 6 April 2013

The Unsettled Earth Energy Budget, 24 February 2013

Back-Radiation and the Highly Fallacious Kiehl-Trenberth Energy Budget, 10 July 2012

NASA Finally Produces A Realistic Energy Budget for the Earth, 26 May 2011

A Summary of Some of the Physics Errors of the NASA Earth Energy Budget

         I have previously discussed many errors in the physics of the NASA Earth Energy Budget which are critical to the argument backing the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. These errors are essentially the same in the Earth Energy Budgets of the UN IPCC reports, though there are minor variations in the values of the heat transport powers in the Earth system consisting of its surface and its atmosphere. The NASA Earth Energy Budget is shown below, where the heat transport is denoted as a percentage of the average solar insolation at the top of the atmosphere:

Among these errors are:

•         The transport of heat in the atmosphere does not address the critical role in the temperature profile played by the action of gravity on air molecules. This is not an actual error in the Earth Energy Budget, but that budget does serve to misdirect attention toward a completely radiation and heat transport dominated view of the problem.

•         The 117% surface radiation from the Earth’s surface requires the Earth’s surface to directly interface to vacuum, with no atmosphere present. The Earth’s surface must be at 289.4 K, be a black body radiator with an emissivity of 1.00, and be surrounded only by space at very nearly 0 Kelvin (K). Note that 289.4 K is a higher temperature than that usually taken to be the Earth’s average surface temperature and that the Earth’s surface emissivity is usually said to be about 0.95. The lack of vacuum at the interface with the Earth’s surface is a serious problem because the surface oscillating dipoles that radiate infrared energy cannot provide that same kinetic energy that creates radiated energy to evaporating water or transfer it to air molecules colliding with the surface. Energy must be conserved. The higher temperature and emissivity used for the surface is a smaller error, but indicative of a cavalier attitude to the science.

•         The Conservation of Energy in a system in equilibrium does not allow the flow of energy into the Earth’s surface to exceed the rate at which energy enters the system. Energy enters this system at 100%, yet this NASA Earth Energy Budget claims it is incident upon the Earth’s surface at a rate of 7% reflected solar insolation plus 48% absorbed solar insolation plus 100% back radiation from the atmosphere for a total of 155%.

•         The atmosphere cannot possibly absorb as much radiation from the surface of the Earth as is claimed to be absorbed, because the atmosphere is not as absorbing as would be a black body absorber and a black body absorber would have to be at a lower temperature than any temperature in the Earth’s atmosphere to absorb as much radiation as the so-called settled science Earth Energy Budget claims is absorbed. This is because the power absorbed by a black body absorber at temperature T_A from a black body emitter at a temperature of T_E at equilibrium is P = σT_E⁴ - σT_A⁴. In the above schematic diagram, it is not possible for the surface to emit 1.17 P_SI, where P_SI is the solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere, and have (1.17 - 0.12) P_SI = 1.05 P_SI be absorbed by the atmosphere. See my discussion of this issue in A Critical Lesson from the NASA Earth Energy Budget.

•         In Solving the Parallel Plane Black Body Radiator Problem and Why the Consensus Science is Wrong, I proved that the consensus science method of applying the Stefan-Boltzmann Law of Thermal Radiation causes the essential characteristic energy density of a black body cavity in equilibrium to double relative the energy density given by Stefan’s Law. Stefan’s Law states that the electric field energy density in a black body cavity is e = aT⁴, where T is the temperature in Kelvin and a is Stefan’s constant. The correct energy density is maintained in the case of two parallel planes at temperatures T_W and T_C with T_W > T_C in the limit that T_C approaches T_W, if the radiation from the warmer plane toward the cooler plane is given by P_W = σT_W⁴ - σT_C⁴ and the radiation from the cooler plane toward the warmer plane is given by P_C = 0. The settled science thinks P_W = σT_W⁴ and P_C = σT_C⁴, which causes there to be many more photons with real energy between the planes than there really are and causes the doubling of the energy density known in Stefan’s Law. Applying this result to the NASA Earth Energy Budget one realizes that there is no equilibrium back radiation from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface, so the 100% back radiation is fictitious. Equally important, if the atmosphere were a black body, the radiation from the surface would also be much reduced to the extent that the atmosphere were absorbing some of it. Other critics have made the claim that cooler bodies do not radiate toward warmer bodies using a simple argument based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which by itself is not sufficient. However, coupling that law with a minimization of the total energy in the system, which provides the correct result to many a physics problem, does provide a pretty good argument for the same result that I worked out from electromagnetic field thermodynamics. Note that the elimination of back radiation eliminates a power incident upon the surface of 100% and therefore eliminates the violation of the Conservation of Energy at the Earth’s surface discussed in the third bullet above. There are serious consequences of using black body radiation theory in a manner that doubles the energy density of a black body cavity.

Further Discussing the Diminished Role of Radiation in the Lower Atmosphere

          Let us consider the equilibrium condition now at the Earth’s surface that the flow of energy into the surface per unit area must equal the flow of energy out of the surface per unit area. The power absorbed by the surface from solar insolation, P_ABS, according to the NASA Earth Energy Budget is 48%. We now know that the other input to the surface they claim from back radiation is zero in the equilibrium case in which the air cools with increasing altitude from the surface. This is not quite true on average for the real Earth system since there are occasions, commonly in the dawn hours and shortly afterwards, when the air temperature just above the surface is warmer than the surface. This is easily recognized as the cause of dew and ground fog. Consequently, I will allow that back radiation might be 1 or 2%, but the upcoming discussion will ignore this small effect.

          The flow of energy out of the Earth’s surface according to NASA is given by the sums of 5% power lost in convection, 25% power loss through evaporation, and the radiated power P_R. Consequently, we have

P_ABS = (0.48)(340 W/m²) = (0.05 + 0.25)(340 W/m²) + P_R

Solving for P_R, we get

 P_R = (0.18)(340 W/m²)

From the NASA Earth Energy Budget we know that radiation passing through the atmospheric window into space from the surface without any atmospheric absorption is a power, P_AW, of 12% of the top of the atmosphere solar insolation. The remaining power radiated from the Earth’s surface is absorbed by the atmosphere and converted into an upward power loss as convection, R_CC. Thus we have

P_R = P_AW + P_CC

(0.18)(340 W/m²) = (0.12)(340 W/m²) + P_CC

P_CC = (0.06)(340 W/m²)

          Consequently, if NASA has correctly measured the radiation emitted from the surface through the atmospheric window into space, the absorption of solar insolation by the surface, and the sum of the heat loss from the surface due to convection and water evaporation, then the fraction of the radiation from the surface which is absorbed in the atmosphere is only half that of the radiation from the surface that escapes into space without absorption in the atmosphere and it is one-third of the total radiation emitted by the surface. According to the NASA Earth Energy Budget the radiation emitted by the surface of 117% has all but 12% absorbed by the atmosphere, which means that water vapor and carbon dioxide and the various minor infrared-active gases, the greenhouse gases, are playing a huge role in absorbing a power of 105%. In the next to last bulleted item above, I showed that the atmosphere cannot possibly absorb so much infrared radiation from the surface. In reality, we see above that these gases only absorb 6% according to the NASA numbers after we eliminate those that are clearly wrong. The role of infrared-absorbing gases has thus been falsely magnified by a factor of

(105%) / (6%) = 17.5

In light of these observations, is it not interesting that so many are claiming that the science is settled and that there is a scientific consensus that mankind is faced with catastrophic global warming resulting from his generation of carbon dioxide and the use of fossil fuels?

          Given the errors in the science of climate change that I have pointed out here, one should wonder how accurate any of the NASA and the similar values used in the UN IPCC reports might be.

          There is another way in which the NASA Earth Energy Budget is quite misleading with respect to the atmospheric absorption of infrared radiation from the surface. In reality, in most of the world the main part of the surface radiation that is absorbed is absorbed within a very few meters of the surface and not far up into the atmosphere as the diagrams for energy budgets picture the absorption. There are some areas such as the polar regions and a few deserts where the distance for absorption is significant, but in most of the world the humidity is high enough that the absorption length is very short based on laboratory measurements of absorption cross sections or mean free path lengths. Surface radiation in the colder polar regions is substantially less than that from the warmer regions of the Earth, so the longer absorption lengths in those polar regions are also of less importance to the energy budget. That much smaller part of the absorption of surface radiation performed by carbon dioxide is also occurring very close to the surface, though it is a few times greater than the average distance for water vapor, but is also more uniform over the Earth since the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are more uniform.

          If the surface infrared emission is 18% and the atmosphere absorbs 6%, then the temperature a black body absorber in the atmosphere, T_A, would have to be at to absorb so much infrared radiation can be calculated from:

(0.06)(340 W/m²) = (0.18)(340 W/m²) - σT_A⁴

T_A = 163.8 K

This is a temperature lower than that found in the Earth’s atmosphere, so even a black body absorber cannot absorb such a large fraction of the infrared radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface as is implied by the NASA values in the Earth Energy Budget after we have eliminated the errors I pointed out in the bullets at the start of this post. The infrared-active gases can only absorb a fraction of what a black body absorber can, so they certainly cannot remove as large a fraction of the surface-emitted infrared as could a black body absorber.

          I expect the easiest power value for NASA to measure accurately is the 12% surface-emitted radiation through the atmospheric window into space. But, I expect that their measurements of the surface absorption of solar insolation, the loss of surface energy due to convection, and the loss of surface energy due to the evaporation of water are not very well-established numbers. Clearly, the fraction of the surface-emitted infrared energy absorbed by the atmosphere cannot be as high as one-third. NASA has probably substantially underestimated the sum of the heat loss of the surface by means of water evaporation and convection.

          Such is the sad state of the so-called settled science of man-made global warming and such is the foolishness of the scientific consensus on climate change, insofar as that exists.