Do Infrared Thermometer Sky Temperature Measurements Prove Greenhouse Gas Back Radiation?

A NASA website page says:

The atmosphere is why the Earth is warm enough to support life, for it contains water vapor, a gas that strongly absorbs infrared radiation. This water vapor is the key to why the Earth is warm enough to support life. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, removing water vapor from the atmosphere would reduce the average temperature of Earth to 0 degrees F! The oceans would be frozen solid. 

You can use an infrared thermometer to see the impact of water vapor on warming the atmosphere. The temperature in outer space approaches absolute zero, which is -273 degrees Celsius. But you will measure a much warmer temperature if you point an infrared thermometer at the sky directly overhead (the zenith). Depending on the season and your location, the temperature will likely be near or below zero degrees Celsius. While this is very chilly, it’s far from being as cold as absolute zero. The difference is caused mainly by water vapor in the sky that has become warm by absorbing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth below. The warmed water vapor returns some of the infrared back to the Earth, and this helps keep the Earth warmer than space.

Now it is true that without water vapor, the average temperature of the Earth would be below freezing or 0⁰C = 273.15 Kelvin (K).  It is true that water vapor lies behind the fact that the Earth experiences relatively mild day to night decreases in temperature as well.  It is commonly the case that one can point an infrared thermometer at the sky and read a temperature which is much closer to 0⁰C than close 0 K or -273.15⁰C. However, there are several common misconceptions that people, including scientists, have about what this means.  One of the popular misconceptions is that the inexpensive and common infrared thermometer pointed straight up into the sky is reading a temperature based on infrared radiation absorbed by water vapor, which is then re-emitted back to the surface of the Earth where it is re-absorbed and warms the surface.  The reading of the infrared thermometer is taken as evidence that water vapor, and to a lesser degree other greenhouse gases, are back radiating infrared energy to the surface as the above NASA website claims.  I will evaluate this assertion about what the infrared thermometer reading is actually telling us later.

But first we will note another instance of the claim that infrared thermometers measure the back radiation from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  Here is Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., on the back radiation from greenhouse gases and how he proves it exists by making infrared thermometer temperature measurements of the sky:

One of the claims of greenhouse and global warming theory that many people find hard to grasp is that there is a large flow of infrared radiation downward from the sky which keeps the surface warmer than it would otherwise be.

Particularly difficult to grasp is the concept of adding a greenhouse gas to a COLD atmosphere, and that causing a temperature increase at the surface of the Earth, which is already WARM. This, of course, is what is expected to happen from adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere: “global warming”.

Well, it is one of the marvels of our electronic age that you can buy a very sensitive handheld IR thermometer for only $50 and observe the effect for yourself.

These devices use a thermopile, which is an electronic component that measures a voltage which is proportional to the temperature difference across the thermopile.

If you point the device at something hot, the higher-intensity IR radiation heats up the hot-viewing side of the thermopile, and the IR thermometer displays the temperature it is radiating at (assuming some emissivity…my inexpensive unit is fixed at e=0.95).

If you instead point it at the cold sky, the sky-viewing side of the thermopile loses IR radiation, cooling it to a lower temperature than the inside of the thermopile.

He continues after discussing a number of measurements he has made of the sky with varying cloud cover, ground elevation, and surface temperatures:

The IR thermometer was measuring different strengths of the greenhouse effect, by definition the warming of a surface by downward IR emission by greenhouse gases in the sky. This reduces the rate of cooling of the Earth’s surface (and lower atmosphere) to space, and makes the surface warmer than it otherwise would be.

Greenhouse gases, more properly, infrared-active gases, and very much primarily water vapor, cause the Earth to be warmer than it would be without them by causing the Earth’s surface to emit less thermal radiation in the form of infrared radiation to space.  This is not the same as saying that they emit infrared back to the Earth’s surface where it is absorbed and warms the Earth’s surface, as most scientists mistakenly believe.  It is also commonly assumed that because the Earth’s surface is warmer because it has infrared-active gases, that the addition of further infrared-active gases in the atmosphere will further warm the Earth.  In fact, the infrared-active gases have both warming and cooling mechanisms.  The warming mechanisms are nearly saturated effects at present atmospheric concentrations, while the cooling mechanisms generally do not saturate, so additions of these molecules to the atmosphere provides cooling mechanisms that more and more compete favorably with the warming mechanisms.  So the fact that at present concentrations the most important infrared-active gases have caused a net warming effect does not tell us what the effect of higher concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere will be.  In most places, higher daytime relative humidity actually causes cooling.

If the greenhouse effect were a slowing of the cooling of the Earth’s surface due to decreased surface infrared emission, then there is a greenhouse effect, though of rapidly diminishing effect upon adding those gases whose warming effects are largely saturated.  But if the definition is as Dr. Roy Spencer makes it, namely that downward infrared emission from the atmosphere by water vapor is the cause, there is no greenhouse effect.  I am not here going to concentrate on the proof of this statement I have just made.  I am going to prove that the common and inexpensive infrared thermometers that Dr. Roy Spencer and the above NASA website refer to do not at all prove that water vapor is absorbing infrared thermal radiation from the surface to diminish the rate at which the surface loses energy by means of thermal radiation.  I will show that the infrared thermometer readings of a warmer sky temperature than one near absolute zero do not prove the existence of back radiation from anything.  What they prove is the absorption of radiation by objects colder than the surface and the emission of radiation from sparse matter which is warmer than the surface of the Earth.

Let us consider how thermal radiation is exchanged so we can discuss how infrared thermometers generally work and why they work as they do.  First consider a black body radiator surrounded by vacuum at a temperature of absolute zero.  The power, P, emitted from the surface of the radiator in Watts/m² is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation

P = σ T⁴,

where σ = 5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m²K⁴ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.  This black body radiation consists of a distribution of wavelengths, whose peak energy wavelength shifts to longer wavelength as the temperature drops.  See Fig. 1. Below.

Fig. 1.  Black body thermal radiation as a function of temperature and wavelength is plotted above.  The Earth’s surface temperature is about 288 K.  The temperature of the outer surface of the sun is about 5800 K.

Real materials hardly ever emit radiation as a black body radiator would, however.  Many solid materials thermally emit about the same wavelength distribution of electromagnetic energy with temperature, but with less emitted energy.  Such materials are called gray body materials.  The emitted power is then given well by adding another constant called the emissivity, ε, which has a value between zero and 1.  The thermal radiation emission power for such a gray body material surrounded by vacuum at 0 K is

P = ε σ T⁴.

This adjustment is not always adequate for real materials, however.  For instance, some materials such as gray iron do not have a constant emissivity with temperature.  In fact, it is not unusual for the emissivity of a metal to decrease as the temperature drops, while non-metallic materials often do the reverse.  Plastics and organic materials have strong variations in their absorptivity and emissivity with wavelength, making them very unlike either black bodies or gray bodies.

See these examples of materials not behaving like black or gray bodies:

Fig. 2.  The infrared absorption spectra are shown for the non-gray body materials from top to bottom of a) rich, moist soil, b) sand, c) green leaf from a bush, and d) water.  4000 cm^-1 is 2.5 μm and 400 cm^-1 is 25 μm wavelength.  The thermal emission as a function of temperature is the same as the thermal absorptivity and these are clearly all highly unlike the emission curves for black bodies or gray bodies.

For the moment, we will examine the rate of energy transfer, P, between two gray bodies at different temperatures, so we can see how this applies to an infra-red thermometer near the Earth’s surface temperature and a body whose temperature is to be measured.  Let T_w be the warmer gray body temperature and T_c be that of the cooler body.  The power P flowing from the warmer to the cooler body is then

P = ε σ T_W⁴ – α σ T_c⁴,

where α is the absorptivity of the cooler body.  If the cooler body were a black body, then α = 1, but usually 0 < α < 1 for real materials.  Since infrared thermometers are most often used to measure the temperature of bodies warmer than the meter, the absorptivity is usually a fixed property of the meter itself, but this is not the case when it is used to measure the temperature of a cooler body.  The Fluke 568 Infrared Thermometer that I use in my laboratory measures temperatures from -40⁰C to 800⁰C (233 K to 1073 K).

So, if one knows the temperature of the backside of the thermopile of the infrared thermometer facing the object whose temperature one wants to read and one knows the value of P in the above equation, one can determine the temperature of the object the instrument is focused on.  Ideally, the side of the infrared thermometer thermopile facing a warmer object will warm up due to the transfer of energy at the rate given by P in the power exchange formula above.  If the object temperature is cooler, the side of the thermopile facing the object will cool down as infrared radiation is emitted from that side of the thermopile and absorbed by the cooler object.  The thermopile develops a potential difference across it due to the temperature difference and this yields a measured voltage.  The measured voltage and knowledge of the temperature at the backside of the thermopile would allow a determination of the object temperature.

However, this is not how infrared thermometer instruments work for many practical reasons.  The straightforward use of this total power transfer equation to make a temperature measurement is frustrated by the infrared transmission properties of the infrared focusing lenses, by the absorption of radiation emitted by the warmer object by water vapor and carbon dioxide in the air, and even by the absorption properties of the thermopile sensing material.

No lens material transmits all of the radiation wavelengths without absorption in the spectrum emitted from the warmer body.  The absorption will also vary with wavelength.  These wavelengths may range through the entire infrared spectrum and include red visible light for an object at 800⁰C, which is the top of the temperature range of my Fluke 568 infrared thermometer.  Actually, there is even a bit of microwave radiation in the tail of the spectrum, though there is little energy in that very longwave radiation.  Consequently, the radiation from a warmer external body is obstructed in varying degrees by the lens material from warming the object-facing side of the thermopile.  If the external object is cooler, then the lens material decreases the amount of radiation transferred from the object-facing side of the thermopile to the cooler external object.

Now of great importance to the meaning of infrared thermometer readings of the temperature of the atmosphere, we will consider why the market for infrared thermometers demands that certain parts of the infrared wavelength spectrum not be used.  These instruments were developed to address the need to make temperature measurements at a distance, to make them quickly, and to make them of moving objects such as those on a conveyor belt in a production process.  One does not want the accuracy of the measurement to be decreased by variations in the relative humidity or even in the local carbon dioxide concentrations.  Carbon dioxide may go up due to nearby combustion processes or due to calcining concrete or due to having many people in an enclosed area.  Consequently, one wants to exclude the infrared wavelengths which atmospheric water vapor and carbon dioxide absorb.

The infrared wavelengths absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide are shown in the Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.  The infrared absorption spectrum at 65% RH and a much elevated CO2 concentration after subtracting the background due to about 40% RH and normal atmospheric CO2 concentration is shown above.  This spectrum was acquired by me using my FTIR spectrometer in the Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc. laboratory.  Most of the absorption is due to water vapor with carbon dioxide absorbing the relatively narrow lines at about 4 and 15 micrometers wavelength.  Some of the absorption at 15 micrometers is also due to water vapor.  Note that neither water vapor nor carbon dioxide absorb, and therefore emit, thermal radiation as a gray body would.  The blue area is the range from 8 to 14 micrometer wavelength which lies in the atmospheric window where water vapor and carbon dioxide do not absorb infrared radiation significantly.  Most general purpose and relatively inexpensive infrared thermometers use only this 8 to 14 micrometers (microns) wavelength for temperature measurements in order to keep water vapor and carbon dioxide absorption from creating errors in the measurement.  The Fluke 568 infrared thermometer is among those using this wavelength range for its temperature measurements.

So, the market that makes these infrared thermometers available demands that they not measure infrared radiation absorbed by either water vapor or carbon dioxide.  Only the infrared range from 8 to 14 micrometers is used in most infrared thermometers.  This is the blue region in Fig. 3 and it is the region in Fig. 1 near 10 micrometers (μm) indicated by the vertical dashed lines on either side of 10 μm.  Note that the wavelength axis of Fig. 1 is logarithmic, while the wavelength axis of Fig. 3 is linear.  Only that part of the power transferred from a warmer to a cooler body that is between 8 and 14 μm is then used to determine the temperature of the object in these common infrared thermometers.  It is also important to note that the instrument maker has assumed that the heat emitting and heat absorbing materials behave like gray bodies.

Yet when one points these instruments at the sky, they do measure something.  Here are some measurements I recently made pointing a Fluke 568 instrument vertically up at the sky from a grassy area on the other side of the parking area in front of my laboratory, of the grass at my feet, the woods just beyond the grassy area, and the asphalt of the parking area.

Date	Time	Vertical Sky Temp (⁰C)	Grass Temp (⁰C)	Woods Temp (⁰C)	Asphalt Temp (⁰C)	Comments
1 Sep 17	2130	5.7	15.1	7.5		Overcast, light rain
2 Sep 17	1900	14.1	17.1	15.4		Overcast, light rain, low clouds
3 Sep 17	2115	-37.0	16.4	18.6	20.8	Clear, 19.3⁰C air temperature, 65% RH
4 Sep 17	0708	-39.9	13.8	15.4	16.5	Thin, high, wispy clouds, 17.5⁰C air, 69% RH
4 Sep 17	2142	-21.9	19.5	22.4	24.1	Clear, 22.8⁰C air, 65% RH
5 Sep 17	0100	-24.0	19.5	21.6	21.6	Clear, 21.2⁰C air, 72% RH

When pointing the instrument at a cloud, the temperatures measured are commonly above zero Centigrade.  The most important single cooling mechanism for the Earth’s surface is the evaporation of water.  As water vapor is carried upward in warm air currents, it cools as the air cools with increasing altitude.  This cooling is because the air temperature is proportional to the kinetic energy of its molecules and that decreases as the molecules potential energy in the Earth’s gravitational field increases.  At a sufficiently high altitude, commonly about 2,000 to 4,000 meters if there is enough dust, aerosol, or ions present for the water vapor to condense on, condensation of the water vapor occurs and considerable heat of condensation is released.  This in turn makes the clouds that are formed relative warm spots in the atmosphere.  This accounts for the relatively warm sky temperature measurements of 1 and 2 September above.  These measurements are essentially of the cloud temperature at its bottom surface. 

Clouds are said to behave relatively nearly like gray bodies in this wavelength range, so this temperature measurement may be relatively accurate.  It is not obvious that this should be so.  Here is the absorption spectrum of water as a function of wavelength:

Fig. 4.  The absorption spectrum of water acquired on my FTIR-ATR at Anderson Materials Evaluation, Inc. is shown here.  Note that liquid water is not itself a gray body absorber of infrared radiation between 2.5 and 25 micrometers wavelength. There is some absorption in the range of wavelengths from 8 to 14 μm, however.

A critical part of the reason for clouds absorbing infrared in this range like gray bodies is that the many small water droplets scatter the light within the cloud so much that what is not absorbed by one droplet is absorbed the nth time it scatters from other droplets of water.

Now note that under clear sky conditions, the vertical temperature measurements of the sky using the Fluke 568 infrared thermometer instrument were between -21.9 and -39.9⁰C.  The lower limit on this instrument for an accurate temperature measurement is -40⁰C, so the lowest reading obtained was at this limit.  [Readings taken since this posting have been as low as -47.7⁰C, indicating faster rates of surface cooling by radiation.  The lowest temperature reading was made with a relative humidity of 64%, consistent with water vapor playing no significant part in the absorption of radiation in the 8 to 14 micron wavelength region of the infrared spectrum.  While the cooling rate of the thermopile was no doubt greater with a reading of -47.7⁰C than with one of -39.9⁰C, because this is beyond the accurate limits of the meter, the temperature read would not be that of a suitable radiation absorber and surely is not one that corresponds to any object in the sky.  We do not know what instrument artifacts are introduced into this reading either.]  [The lowest sky reading to date was -50.0⁰C and some readings would not register at all, meaning the meter saw the sky as below that temperature.]  But why were some of the readings slightly higher.  One reason may be that the humidity was substantial and while the 8 to 14 μm range does not detect the transfer of energy from the meter’s thermopile side facing the cold sky to water vapor, there may be small pockets of atmosphere with a bit of water droplet formation occurring which is not sufficient to appear as a cloud by eye.  The very coldest measurement made was made between two wispy and thin cloudy areas.  There are surely areas with lower densities of droplets that one does not see and then there would be a small amount of energy transfer from the instrument thermopile to those few water droplets.  This would contribute to a temperature reading.

There is another factor which is definitely at work here.  While ozone is not much of a factor in the lower atmosphere designated as the troposphere where the temperature drops nearly linearly with altitude, ozone is much more of a factor in the stratosphere.  The troposphere ends at about 11 km altitude in the US Standard Atmosphere of 1976, where the tropopause has a temperature of about 217 K.  The stratosphere begins at an altitude of about 21 km and the temperature rises to about 271 K at 50 km altitude.  Above the stratosphere, the temperature then drops again to about 188 K at 95 km altitude, before it increases once again to reach about 1000 K at 800 km.  The layer of the atmosphere with the highest concentrations of ozone is that from about 20 to 30 km altitude, where the temperature ranges from 217 to 227 K, but there is also ozone at higher altitudes in the stratosphere and beyond where the temperature is higher.  The concentration of ozone relative to other gases is not more than about 10 parts per million (ppm), but this is enough that ozone, O₃, absorbs most of the ultraviolet light in the solar insolation of the Earth.  See Fig. 5. below. 

Fig. 5.  The strong absorption of ozone, O₃, of incoming solar radiation (solar insolation) is shown above.  It absorbs ultraviolet light strongly and some visible light as well.

So the question is whether it can play a significant role also in the absorption of energy emitted from an infrared thermometer pointed straight up at the sky on a clear day.  The absorption spectrum is provided in Fig. 6. below.

Fig. 6.  The infrared absorption spectrum of ozone, O₃, is shown above.  The 8 μm wavelength is the same as 1250 cm^-1 in the spectrum above and 14 μm wavelength is the same as 714 cm^-1 in this spectrum.  The major absorption peak at about 1050   cm^-1 as shown is at about 9.5 μm wavelength.  Consequently, ozone absorbs strongly within the atmospheric window of 8 to 14 μm, though it does not do so strongly at all wavelengths within that window.  Yet there is some absorption throughout that range.

So, we see that ozone does absorb infrared radiation within the 8 to 14 μm atmospheric window.  What is more, while the most concentrated layer of the ozone is in the cooler stratosphere from about 217 to 227 K (-56 to -46⁰C), there is also ozone above that layer in the stratosphere where the temperature can get up to 271 K or -2⁰C.  There is even a bit at 800 km altitude where the temperature is 1000 K.  There is also about 0.3 ppm of ozone in the troposphere with its higher temperatures.  So, it is quite reasonable to believe that ozone absorption accounts for some part of a -39.9 K temperature reading when one points an infrared thermometer vertically upward at the sky on a clear day.  This ozone absorption effect is not significant for the kinds of measurements that these infrared thermometers are designed to make near the surface of the Earth.

Above the tropopause, in the stratosphere and above, the equation of state of the gases in the atmosphere undergoes a significant change relative to the near compliance with the ideal gas law in the troposphere.  I have long believed that bound water and carbon dioxide molecules might be brought together by ionization processes to form trimers and tetramers in the stratosphere.  It is common for water and CO2 to be absorbed together between the layers of lamellar or layered materials, so they seem to have an affinity under the right circumstances.  Recently, Dr. Michael Connolly and Dr. Ronan Connolly posted a paper on a website suggesting that trimers and tetramers might even exist of oxygen and nitrogen molecules.  These more complex molecular structures might explain a change in the equation of state of the gases and would have more infrared absorption lines due to their more complex internal vibrational states.  They may therefore add to the absorptions in the atmospheric window between 8 and 14 micrometers.

There are also other contributors to the implied absorption of infrared radiation emitted by the lens facing side of the thermopile in this instrument.  Dust, aerosols, and smog in the atmosphere can also absorb some of that energy.  In fact, absorbing dust does not even have to be in what we usually consider the atmosphere of the Earth.  It can be out there in space.  Now some of this dust will be at very low temperatures if it is far from our sun, but much of the dust within a few times the Earth’s orbital radius around the sun can be much warmer due to solar insolation absorbed by that dust.  This dust diminishes the flow of heat from the lens side of the thermopile out to space, making the instrument read a higher temperature than that of space as a whole.

Any absorption of surface emitted longwave infrared radiation by ozone or possible trimers and tetramers of other molecules in the stratosphere or by dust and aerosols beyond the troposphere does not constitute energy that can be radiated back to the Earth's surface in any efficient manner.  The energy captured by these means is much more readily re-radiated to space.  Consequently, we can safely conclude that longwave infrared radiation from the Earth's surface in the 8 to 14 micrometer wavelength range is not a significant part of the radiation NASA claims is back radiation from the atmosphere to the surface as shown in the following figure:

Fig. 7.  NASA Earth Energy Budget with most of the surface thermal radiation returned to the surface by a highly efficient absorbing atmosphere.

In this NASA Earth Energy Budget, 85.5% of the thermal radiation from the surface of the Earth is absorbed in the atmosphere and returned to the surface.  By some means of magic, whatever bodies absorb this radiation fail to re-radiate it to colder parts of the atmosphere preferentially or even to radiate half of that absorbed energy to colder regions or to space. No, the re-radiated heat is radiated most strongly to the higher temperature Earth's surface with a strong prejudice against radiation to colder bodies or to space.  This is already insane physics if the absorbing bodies are in the troposphere, but it is even more insane when a very substantial portion of the infrared spectrum absorbs very little radiation anywhere in the Earth's atmosphere and what it does absorb is absorbed mostly above the troposphere. 

Remember that the temperature read by the infrared thermometer is based on the assumption that the body whose temperature is read is a gray body absorber or emitter.  The absorbing bodies in the atmosphere are generally not gray body absorbers, so the temperature read is not the actual temperature of the infrared absorbing bodies or even a weighted average over the many absorbing bodies.  There is further error in that some small fraction of the energy comes from warmer bodies.

Another point to be made about infrared thermometers is that they do not replicate the actual energy loss rate by means of thermal radiation from the surface of the Earth.  The Earth’s surface loses more energy by the combined means of water evaporation and thermals or convection currents than it does by means of thermal radiation.  The sensor or thermopile of an infrared thermometer is isolated from the effects of these other energy loss mechanisms.  It is not cooled by the evaporation of water and is kept dry.  It is also tightly enclosed so that convection currents do not carry heat away from it.  Either of these loss mechanisms would badly interfere with the function of the infrared thermometer in reading the temperatures of bodies at which it is pointed.

In summary:

• Infrared thermometers reading temperatures when pointed vertically upward at the sky are measuring only a net rate of energy loss to the sky and do not provide any evidence for back radiation.
• Infrared thermometers commonly measure only infrared radiation in the atmospheric window, most commonly that in the wavelength range 8 to 14 μm.  Water vapor and carbon dioxide do not absorb or emit infrared radiation in this wavelength range in the atmospheric window.  Consequently, the vertical measurement of a temperature from the sky does not provide evidence for the absorption of the Earth’s surface infrared emissions by water vapor or carbon dioxide at all. 
• Clouds certainly do reduce the nighttime rate of loss of energy from the surface, though they commonly cause a net cooling of the surface during the day.
• Ozone, dust, smog, and aerosols all likely contribute to a reduction of the loss of power from the instrument thermopile by means of radiation as long as they are warmer than the far reaches of space.  There is plenty of material that is much warmer than far space.  Material at a hotter temperature than the thermopile lens facing side can add photons from warmer emitters in the upper atmosphere and in the inner solar system.  But the great majority of the material with which energy is radiatively exchanged is clearly colder than the instrument thermopile lens-facing side.
• The rate of energy loss from an infrared thermometer does not actually replicate the rate of loss of thermal energy from the Earth’s surface since water does not evaporate from the sensor and the sensor is isolated so that convection currents do not affect it either.  These alternative loss mechanisms at the Earth's surface decrease the Earth's surface thermal radiation emissions.
• It makes no sense to believe that thermal radiation emitted from the Earth's surface can be absorbed by the atmosphere and returned to the Earth's surface and absorbed by it with 85.5% efficiency.  This is particularly hard to believe when we realize that most of the small fraction of the absorption of the Earth's thermal radiation in the 8 to 14 micrometer wavelength range is absorbed in the stratosphere and beyond.  Even in the wrongheaded physics common to the alarmists, it is often stated that infra-red radiators re-radiate the energy they absorb isotropically (evenly in all directions), rather than preferentially in the direction of a warmer body.  In fact, they radiate their energy in the direction of cooler bodies, not even isotropically.  If they did radiate isotropically, about half the radiation they absorb would be emitted to space and about half would be emitted back toward the surface.  In NASA science, the so-called settled science, 85.5% of the total Earth surface thermal radiation is both absorbed by the atmosphere and preferentially radiated back to the Earth's surface.  It's a miracle, plausible only to those with unbounded faith.

NASA and Dr. Roy Spencer are wrong to tell us that inexpensive and common infrared thermometer readings of vertical sky temperatures prove that water vapor warms the Earth.  Dr. Roy Spencer is wrong in asserting that they prove that water vapor back radiates infrared photons that are absorbed by the Earth’s surface to warm it.

I will repeat that water vapor does provide the Earth with a substantially warmer surface temperature than it would have without water vapor.  The way and the degree to which it does so is not understood properly by the so-called settled science.  See my discussion of how it does this in Water Vapor and Gravity Act Together to Warm the Earth.

On passing this post through to my Facebook page, my preface was:

Oftentimes, NASA does not think basic climate science through.  This is another example of how it stumbles with basic science.  How much is government incompetence and how much is simply propaganda to further expand the already highly excessive powers of government is hard to say and differs greatly among the proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming.  Dr. Roy Spencer has done much good climate science work and is a more reasonable Lukewarmer, but I must take him to task on some arguments for the effects of water vapor and carbon dioxide here as well.

Additions made through the morning of 11 September are in this green color.

Addition made on 29 October 2017 is in this color.

Additions made on 31 October 2017 are in this color.

Revisiting wind turbine impacts by Paul Driessen

Erroneous recent calculation highlights need to assess renewable energy sustainability claims

It’s amazing, though hardly surprising, how quickly some used Hurricane Harvey’s devastation to claim that fossil fuel emissions are driving catastrophic climate change and weather. Their proffered solution, of course, is to replace those fuels with “clean, sustainable, renewable” energy.

I’ve criticized this supposed solution many times, on multiple grounds. Unfortunately, a hasty numerical calculation for a recent column was way off base, and readers properly chastised me for the error. I just blew it, using megawatts instead of megawatt-hours to derive the number of wind turbines … and amount of land … it would take to replace the world’s 2016 electricity entirely with wind energy.

My conclusion that it would require 830 million turbines and twice the land area of North America was thus off by embarrassing amounts. However, my reviewers offered many “correct” numbers.

Their turbine totals ranged from 2 million to 4, 10 and 12 million; their acreage figures from 0.5 to 40, 60 and even 247 per turbine. Total acreage for all the turbines ranged from the size of France or Texas – to half of North America. Energy scholar Cork Hayden graciously provided analytical aid.

Bottom line: Assumptions are key – about turbine size; number, location and extent of good wind sites; ability to actually erect turbines on those sites; wind turbine capacity factor, in average hours per day of electricity generation; duration and quality of wind power per year, especially as turbines proliferate into increasingly poor wind areas; and power generation needed to charge huge battery arrays to ensure reliable electricity during multiple windless days (2, 7, 14 or more) when turbines provide no power.

Another variable, of course, is the amount of electricity that is to be replaced by wind. In 2016, the world used 25 billion megawatt-hours (MWh) of electrical energy, generated by fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear power stations, with minor contributions from wood (biomass) and trivial amounts of wind and solar. Year-round average power generation was 2.85 million megawatts (MW) or 2.85 terawatts (TW) – compared to zero generation in 1881.

Electricity makes our industries, jobs, travel, communication, living standards, health and safety possible, and demand will certainly grow as more nations electrify, and more vehicles are battery-powered. 

Here are my fundamental assumptions: Wind turbines replace 100% of today’s 2.85 TW global electricity generation, by some future date – as many activists and politicians insist we must (and can) do. Turbines are all 1.8-MW nameplate power. Average turbine capacity factor gradually falls from 33% to 16.5% as the best wind sites are utilized, and much poorer sites must be developed.

(In the USA many of the best wind sites are off the Washington-to-California and Maine-to-Georgia coastlines, and in the Great Lakes, where water depths and powerful local opposition would make it impossible to install many turbines. Onshore turbine size is limited by the size of blades that can be hauled by trucks on winding roads. The same situation would likely apply around most of the globe.)

Further assumptions: One-third of turbine output powers society; two-thirds charge batteries that provide power for 48 of every 72 hours that wind is not blowing. And winds always cooperate with that scheme – always arriving just in the nick of time, as batteries are depleted, and never disappearing for more than two days, even during sweltering summers or frigid winters when demand soars but winds disappear.

Of course, most of these assumptions exist only in the realm of fairies, pixie dust, green energy utopia and easy number crunching. They are meant to initiate important analyses and debates that climate alarmists, renewable energy proponents, legislators and policy makers have never conducted.

Using these assumptions, generating 25 billion megawatt-hours would require 1.6 million 1.8-MW turbines functioning at full 1.8-MW capacity in strong winds, all day, every day, with no worries about storage. If they operate only eight hours a day (33% engineered capacity), we just use electricity when it’s available, instead of when we need it. But that’s terribly inconvenient and disruptive.

So we employ the Dr. Hayden system, instead. We erect 4.8 million turbines that operate steadily for eight hours, sending one-third of their electricity to the grid and two-thirds to batteries. That would yield 8 hours of direct power while the wind is blowing (33% capacity factor) – and let us draw power from the batteries for the next 16 hours, until the wind regularly picks up again. “I love magic,” he says.

That clearly won’t work. We really need at least 48 hours of storage – and thus three times as many turbines, under a similar arrangement, but providing more flexibility, to recognize unpredictable wind patterns and the likelihood of two windless days in a row. We’re up to 14.4 million 1.8-MW turbines.

Want a bigger safety net? To assure against seven windless days? 50 million turbines should do it.

But then we’re really into the mediocre wind sites. Capacity plummets to 16.5% or so. Perhaps 100 million turbines will do the trick. Pray that lulls last no more than a week. Or send the army to those intransigent, unpatriotic coastal communities, and forcibly install turbines in their super windy areas.

That would also ensure that electricity generation is close to our big urban centers – hence shorter transmission lines, and less cement, steel, copper, et cetera to build the power lines. It’s a win-win situation, except for those who have to look at or live next to turbines and transmission lines, of course.

How much land are we talking about, to generate 25 billion megawatt-hours of global annual electricity? Assuming top quality wind sites, at 5 kilowatts per acre (average output per land area for any turbine at the windiest locations), onshore turbines operating 24/7/365 would require some 570 million acres.

That’s 25% of the United States – or 30% of the Lower 48 US states. It’s almost all the land in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona combined!

Change the assumptions – change the numbers. To store electricity for windless days, total power generation (and thus turbine numbers and land acreage) begins to skyrocket. For 48 hours of backup, triple the power generation; that’s the entire Lower 48. For a full week of backup, add in Canada.

Let’s not forget the transmission lines and batteries. They also need land (and raw materials).

How many batteries? Storing 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity – to provide power for 48 windless hours for a US city of 700,000 people – would require 480,000 of Tesla’s new 100-kWh lithium-ion battery packs. Backing up 2.85 TW for just two windless days would require 1.4 trillion Tesla units! And this assumes the batteries are charged and discharged with 100% efficiency.

Just imagine the land, raw materials, mining, manufacturing and energy that would be needed to make all those batteries (and replace them every few years). As energy and technology analyst Mark Mills has noted, all the world’s existing lithium battery factories combined manufacture only a tiny fraction of that.

I’m sure the world’s battery makers would be more than happy to take our hard-earned taxpayer and consumer cash to build more factories and make all those batteries – to save us from dangerous climate change that is no longer governed by the sun and other powerful natural forces.

Let’s get real. It’s time to stop playing with pixie dust and renewable energy utopia schemes. Time to open our schools and legislatures to actual thinking about energy, sustainability, climate change and what makes our jobs, health and living standards possible. Time for full-bore studies and legislative hearings on all these issues – in the USA, UK, EU and everywhere else.

Sustainability and renewable energy claims are too grounded in ideology, magic and politics. Wind and solar energy forecasts ignore the need to find and mine vast new metal and mineral deposits – and open US lands that are now off limits, unless we want to import all our wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. They assume land use impacts don’t really exist if they are in other people’s backyards.

Worse, too often anyone trying to raise these inconvenient truths is shouted down, silenced, ignored. That has to stop. The stakes are too high for ideology and pixie dust to drive fundamental public policies.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.

Comments by Charles:  

Howard "Cork" Hayden, Prof. Emeritus of Physics, University of Connecticut, is the publisher of The Energy Advocate, a monthly newsletter promoting energy and technology published in Pueblo, CO. I have a subscription to this valuable newsletter.

One has to conclude that wind power is not really sustainable power.  Neither is solar power for similar reasons.  What many anti-fossil fuel and anti-nuclear power factions want is that most people, usually not including themselves, will use much less power.  Wind and solar and other non-market power sources are advanced simply for the reason that they will increase the cost of power and decrease the convenience of its use.  This is a means of rationing power and is especially effective to ration its use by lower income people.  The false hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming is used as a ruse to justify this energy rationing.

I searched for images of wind farms and easily found many images made with great artistry to make the images beautiful.  Here is a more prosaic image of a wind farm in West Virginia where critics of coal love to bemoan the damage coal mining does to the countryside.  In their minds wind farms do no such damage until someone proposes putting such a wind farm in their neighborhood.

Brown University President Spouts Progressive Elitist Nonsense -- Once Again

Christina Paxton, President of Brown University, is about to start her second 5-year term in office.  I have just received a letter from her proclaiming the great successes of Brown University.  Here is one such claim to morality and accomplishment:

We are moving forward with plans to address ways in which Brown’s business and investment operations can fully reflect the University’s commitment to environmental sustainability, with an emphasis on addressing climate change. In addition, I will establish a working group to develop new Greenhouse Gas emissions goals that extend beyond Brown’s 2008 commitment, which was to reduce GHG emissions to 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. We are well on track to reach our original goal, and it is time to develop ambitious goals for the future that reflect innovations in technology and changes in energy markets that have taken place over the past decade.

Now the climate change predictions due to Greenhouse Gas emissions are based on clearly faulty physics as I have pointed out on this blog over and over.  Many people have pointed out the continuing failure of many of the predictions made by the advocates of catastrophic man-made global warming.  In real science, an hypothesis is known to be wrong when it makes clearly false predictions.  While she claims that Brown has been "making the case for science and evidence-based research" and been engaged in the "tireless advocacy for investment in scientific inquiry at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the spring", the fundamental role of wrong predictions in the scientific method is unknown to Brown University.  Because of this disregard for the scientific method and for the well-known principles of physics which the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis violates, Brown students are indoctrinated in false science with massively harmful consequences for mankind.  In its pursuit of a false sustainability, Brown University is wasting precious funds, encouraging faculty to misdirect their research efforts, and directing the talents of its students into damaging future careers.

Paxton goes on to say:

I am especially proud of Brown’s role in economic development of Providence and Rhode Island. We are developing new industrial and corporate partnerships with companies that are eager to hire Brown students and collaborate with Brown faculty in areas like data science, biomedical research and engineering. Although Brown’s partnerships with industry extend beyond Rhode Island, we are collaborating with our state and city to attract new businesses to the region. For example, Brown has participated in plans to develop a multi-use “innovation complex” in Providence’s Jewelry District that will house Brown’s School of Professional Studies, the Cambridge Innovation Center and other commercial tenants. Through this and other efforts, we contribute to strengthening our local community at the same time we strengthen Brown.

Because Brown is such an advocate of over-control of the economy by government with a full-blown commitment to the usual anti-business Progressive Elitist agenda which so commonly casts capitalists as villains, Brown has been more effective in creating the very expensive social welfare state and over-regulation that has caused many businesses to leave Rhode Island or at least to make their investments in new facilities outside the state.  The Providence Journal recently reported:

Rhode Island’s slow recovery from the Great Recession is forecast to continue over the next three years, according to the latest economic outlook produced for the New England Economic Partnership.

The state’s unemployment rate is expected to tick down from 5.6 percent in August to 5.3 percent by 2018, but remain the highest in New England. The number of jobs in Rhode Island, and New England, is expected to increase at modest rates over the next few years. However, Rhode Island isn’t expected to match its pre-recession number of jobs until the second half of 2017, according to data to be released Thursday at a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. 

The Providence Journal goes on to report:

Rhode Island’s economic growth is forecast to improve — from “near stagnation” between 2003 and 2008, when the state’s annual average growth rate of its Gross Domestic Product was 0.2 percent, compared with GDP growth of 1.7 percent in New England and 2.2 percent in the United States. But despite improvement, Rhode Island is forecast to trail the region and nation from 2014 to 2018: Rhode Island’s real GDP is forecast to grow at an annualized rate of 1.8 percent; New England, at 2.0 percent; and the United States, at 2.3 percent.

Demographic trends remain “a source of concern,” the report states: “While population has been stagnant, there is evidence that qualified individuals are leaving the state, which reduces the pool of qualified labor.”

Also, the size of Rhode Island’s labor force, roughly the same size over the last three years, is forecast to increase only 0.5 percent per year from 2014 to 2018. 

Median Family Income in Providence is $43,319, compared to a U.S. median family income of $65,443.

President Paxton has been leading Brown for five years, though the Brown University mindset has been what it is for much longer.  The Democrats that the Brown University administration have been so strongly supportive of have controlled the Rhode Island state and city governments without challenge for decades.  Obama, who had the unquestioned support of Brown University, presided in the White House for most of the period in which Rhode Island state GDP grew at a 0.2% annual rate and while its workforce grew at well less than the national rate.  Brown University, with all of the impact it has on opinions in the state of Rhode Island, is responsible for a negative net effect on the economy of the state. Perhaps no state in the union is as much dominated by one university as Rhode Island is by Brown University.  The state is small, there is no other real academic competition, and Brown resides virtually next door to the state government in the state capital.

Brown was becoming the Progressive Elitist indoctrination center it has become while I was a student there in the late 1960s, but it still had rational elements.  The irrational Progressive Elitist viewpoint was strong enough, however, that it kept me in a near constant condition of adversity.  Dealing with that made me stronger and a more determined voice for reason and for individuality, opposing indoctrination and collectivism.  While I won my personal victory, Brown University proceeded to become entirely communitarian with all-controlling government direction, to advocate constant self-sacrifice, and to endorse only the group feelings of identity politics.  Independent and rational thinkers have become Brown's enemies and should find homes in a healthier community than that provided by Brown University.

The Leftist Media Smear Campaign Continues Against Trump and Individualism

A civilized society minimizes the use of force, denying all groups and individuals the initiated use of force.  A legitimate government has the primary function of protecting individual rights from violence and the threat of the use of force.  There are minor additional functions to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from some natural threats to life.  The President of the United States has the job of executing the laws that are constitutionally intended to secure the equal rights of all American citizens.

The media dominated by the postmodernist and collectivist viewpoint has an agenda dedicated to painting all who oppose their collectivism and their claims that some factions deserve political dominance over other Americans as racists, as fascists, as angry nationalists with malevolent intent toward all non-Americans, and generally as ignorant boobs.  The factions that should rule are single women, blacks and Hispanics, union leaders, educators, radical anti-human environmentalists, government workers, and one-world collectivists --- all guided by so-called Progressive Elitists. White men and the women married to them, business owners and managers, and non-union, and in some respects union, workers are generally to be forced into submission by a huge government workforce of thugs with no compunction in violating their equal rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, the pursuit of happiness, and their equally broad rights to freedom of conscience and association.  To oppose bigger government and more government controls defines one as a racist even as one advances the principle that all American citizens have equal rights which should not be violated by government.  To oppose the designation of some racial or gender groups as worthy of favored government actions earns one the racist epithet.  To oppose collectivism and the lumping of individuals into broad groups and claiming that their rights are defined by the group that they have been deposited into in accordance with Postmodernist feelings, makes one a Deplorable.

The Postmodernist Left has long cast the opposition to this collectivism and the advocates of individualism as fascists and white nationalists.  There are Americans who are fascists, but fascists are in favor of big, collectivist government.  Fascists characteristically favor some factions over other factions, often with a racial basis.  Some American fascists want special favors for white Americans, while others want special favors for other ethnically defined groups.  Facism is actually inconsistent with the general beliefs of vast majority of Republicans who believe in smaller government and more equal rights than do Democrats.  Only a small minority of white fascists vote Republican in reaction to the Democrats policies favoring certain non-white groups upon racial lines.

The Democrats have a very long history of racial favoritism and have only recently in that history switched from favoring white Americans at the expense of other Americans to favoring black and Hispanic Americans at the expense of white Americans.  This kind of factionalism has been long opposed by Republicans, as has big government, although only in comparison with the Democrat's advocacy of constantly larger government.  The push of the Democrat Party to selectively prevent the exercise of the rights of white Americans, especially those of men, has pushed a few white nationalists, including some fascists, into supporting Republicans in some cases.  Those few cases have been used to paint all Republicans as welcoming fascists and white nationalists into their ranks. This is not the case, but the ballot box is secret.  The leftist media does not care about the truth.  For them, the truth is not about reality, it is defined as that which supports their agenda.

The Enlightment, or Modernist, philosophy holds that man can know reality through the use of his mind, that his efforts to think rationally are not guaranteed success without error, that he must test his observations and deductions in the management of his own life and in the choice of his values, and that he must have the opportunity to both profit from his correct thoughts and to learn from his mistakes.  The rights of the individual follow from this need to use his own mind to manage his own life.

Postmodernism fundamentally undermines this philosophy and claims that man cannot use his mind to know reality, that in reality man only acts upon his feelings, that his feelings are determined by an array of group identities, and that a huge government apparatus is required to determine which factions will prevail at the expense of which other factions because in a society governed only by feelings and group identities conflict is the expected constant.  Harmony is impossible.  Only the warfare of one faction against another for raw power is realistic.  Man cannot govern his actions by reasoned principles.  Consequently, the government must use force constantly to control the outcomes among factions.  This philosophy is the basis for a belief in socialism and in collectivism at the most fundamental level.  It produced both the Communist and Fascist versions of socialism, including the fascist variant National Socialist Workers Party Nazism. Postmodernists control most American universities and trained most American journalists and bureaucrats.  The mainstream media is thoroughly indoctrinated in this Postmodernist belief which fundamentally embraces violence first in the streets and then exercised by an all-powerful government under their control.

One can only understand the leftist media treatment of the violence in Charlottesville, VA in this context.  The leftist, collectivist media is determined to make it appear that Trump has been reluctant to condemn fascists and white nationalists, despite the fact that he did so in very clear and strong terms.  Listen to his complete press conference for yourself.  Trump also condemned violence by all factions and he was right that there were opposing groups at Charlottesville that were eager for violence and that did become violent.  It is hardly surprising that leftist forces were eager for battle in the streets.  They have a long history of this with street riots against the war in Vietnam, Republican and Democrat National Conventions, Capitalism, globalization, and the inauguration of Trump. Street riots and the use of violence are a long accepted and utilized tactic of the left and of major factions in the Democrat Party.  Why not?  Their constant advocacy of collectivism and ever more controlling government is itself dependent upon a willingness to use force to suppress the rights of individuals. As for the Nazis, they were violent in the streets from the beginning of their history as the main socialist alternative to the also violent Communists in Germany between the World Wars.

My identity is not defined by the fact that I am a so-called white American male.  My identity is defined by the use of my mind for 70 years to understand reality.  When I was a small child I realized that it was critically important to use my mind and to be as rational as possible.  The observations I have made of life, the evaluations I have made of those observations, the integration of my evaluations into a self-consistent viewpoint and philosophy, the totality of the decisions I have made and of the values I have chosen play a much, much greater role in determining my identity than does the fact that I am a white American male.  The fact that I am a white American male and was raised in a middle class military family is significant, but it most definitely is not at all adequate to understanding who I am.  There are many, many ways in which I chose how to develop my identity.

There is no way that the Postmodernists can tolerate the existence of such an individual as myself.  Apparently in the last Presidential election, many Americans had at least a significant realization that the Postmodernist media and the Democrat presidential candidate would not tolerate their deplorable natures either.  Many of us Deplorables think the natures we have developed for ourselves in our lifetimes are actually pretty decent and suit us quite well, thank you very much.  We do not intend to see our individual identities crushed by Postmodernists.

Trump may not be as smooth and consistent as we would like, but he has been courageous in opposing the media in its Postmodernist, collectivist agenda.  Compared to most politicians, he has risen for the most part as an advocate of equal rights for all Americans and for some considerable relief from oppressive government dictates.  He is trying to fight back against the Left's use of racial identity politics to rob us all of our individual identities.  It would appear that as a problem-solver in the construction industry, Trump came to hold reason in much higher regard than do his collectivist, Postmodern opponents in academia, the media, and the bureaucracy.