Category Archives: Greenhouse Effect

The Earth without Greenhouse Gases

By Andy May The overall greenhouse effect (GHE) is often defined as the difference between Earth’s average global temperature without greenhouse gases (GHGs) and with them. Greenhouse gases are all the gases that absorb some portion of the thermal energy emitted by Earth’s surface. The most important of these gases is water vapor, but thereContinue reading “The Earth without Greenhouse Gases”

Schwarzschild: About the equilibrium of the solar atmosphere

By K. Schwarzschild, January 13, 1906. Translated by Dr. Markus Ott, 2025 In the opinion of Karl Schwarzschild, “Radiation equilibrium will occur in a strongly radiating and absorbing atmosphere, in which the mixing effect of ascending and descending currents [convection] is insignificant compared to heat exchange by radiation.” Ed. I. Contents. The surface of theContinue reading “Schwarzschild: About the equilibrium of the solar atmosphere”

The Climate Catastrophe – A Spectroscopic Artifact?

by   Dr. Heinz Hug, 1998 Lightly edited by Andy May   Summary   Laboratory measurements of the infrared absorption of carbon dioxide using an FT-IR spectrometre suggest that the radiative forcing for CO2 doubling must be much less than assumed by climate scientists until now. A reduction factor of 80x is likely.

Energy and Matter

By Andy May & Tom Shula Revised Feb. 3, 2025 due to reader comments and for clarity. Figure 1 was added Feb. 4, 2025. Fundamentally the entire man-made CO2 global warming concept, boils down to the interaction of energy and matter in Earth’s atmosphere. The only reason that CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) areContinue reading “Energy and Matter”

Uli Weber´s Hemispheric Stefan-Boltzmann model.

By Markus Ott I assume that most readers are aware that the 33°C overall greenhouse effect (GHE) is the product of an arithmetically and physically incorrect calculation. It inappropriately averages the insolation evenly over the entire surface of the Earth, as if it were flat and not a rotating sphere, and then uses this averageContinue reading “Uli Weber´s Hemispheric Stefan-Boltzmann model.”

A Much Larger Greenhouse Effect – But Temperatures Dominated by Cooling

Guest post by Wim Röst Abstract The Earth’s greenhouse effect is much larger than suggested so far. If surface radiation and the greenhouse effect set surface temperatures, our oceans would be boiling. Fortunately, they don’t. Water Earth has a strong water-vapor-based evaporative surface cooling mechanism that effectively sets and stabilizes surface temperatures at a muchContinue reading “A Much Larger Greenhouse Effect – But Temperatures Dominated by Cooling“

Temperature Regulated Cooling Dominates Warming and Why the Earth Stopped Cooling At 15°C

Guest Post by Wim Röst Abstract It is said that the Earth’s surface temperature variations are controlled by [human-induced] greenhouse gases1. This is not the case. When cooling systems dominate, surface temperatures are set by the cooling system and not by the system that is warming the surface. On Earth the surface cooling system dominates;Continue reading “Temperature Regulated Cooling Dominates Warming and Why the Earth Stopped Cooling At 15°C”

The Greenhouse Effect, A Summary of Wijngaarden and Happer

By Andy May This post was updated 9/24/2021 to reflect reader comments. The phrase “greenhouse effect,” often abbreviated as “GHE,” is very ambiguous. It applies to Earth’s surface temperature, and has never been observed or measured, only modeled. To make matters worse, it has numerous possible components, and the relative contributions of the possible componentsContinue reading “The Greenhouse Effect, A Summary of Wijngaarden and Happer”

Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2.

By Andy May In Part 1, we introduced the concepts of climate sensitivity to CO2, often called ECS or TCR. The IPCC prefers a TCR of about 1.8°C/2xCO2 (IPCC, 2013, p. 818). TCR is the short-term, century scale, response of surface temperature to a doubling of CO2, we abbreviate the units as “°C/2xCO2.” In theseContinue reading “Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2.”

Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 1.

The first version of this post had an error in Figure 1. It has been fixed along with the associated text (7/5/2021). By Andy May The IPCC claims, in their AR5 report, that ECS, the long-term temperature change due to doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration or the “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity,” likely lies between 1.5° andContinue reading “Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 1.”