This is a case where you have the Global Warming Alarmist cult and the Global Warming Deniers cult fighting and both sides ignoring the math. Case in point, Neil Degrasse Tyson claims that the 864 degree temperature in the Earth’s surface is a result of Global Warming Greenhouse Effect. And it’s simply not true. And it can be proven with simple math relying on accepted reference material.
So – here’s the math.
First, Earth and Venus are about the same size. So we don’t have to do size math because it’s the same. makes things much easier.
But – Venus is about 30% closer to the Sun than Earth is. So the amount of solar energy hitting the planet is going to be a lot more. Because solar energy is proportional to the square of the distance from the Sun it turns out that Venus gets twice the amount of solar energy hitting the planet than Earth. Earth gets 1366 watts per square meter and Venus gets 2611 watts per square meter. Here’s the reference, and these numbers are not in dispute.
Planets have a property called Bond Albedo which is the percentage of light the planet reflects back into space. A black planet would have a Bond Albedo of nearly 0, and a planet made of polished silver would have a Bond Albedo of nearly 100%. So the important concept here is that the amount of solar energy a planet retains is that amount of light that strikes it less the amount of light that is reflected back into space. A black planet would get hotter than a silver planet.
So what is the Bond Albedo of the Earth and Venus? A simple Google search reveals the numbers and these numbers are not in dispute.
Earth – 30%
Venus – 75%
The reason Venus is so bright is not because it is closer to the Sun. (Although that helps) It is because sulfur compounds in the atmosphere are very reflective and 3/4 of all light hitting Venus is reflected out onto space. The planet Mercury is much closer to the sun, but its albedo is only 12%. Mercury absorbs much more of the solar energy than Venus does.
Since the albedo represents the percentage of solar energy reflected, the amount of solar energy absorbed would be (100% – albedo). Earth absorbs 70% (100 – 30) and Venus absorbs 25% (100 – 75).
Now it’s just simple multiplication to calculate the amount of solar energy absorbed by the planets.
Earth – 70% of 1366 = 956 watts/square meter.
Venus – 25% of 2611 = 652 watts/square meter.
What? Wait a minute! WTF! The Earth absorbs 47% more solar energy than Venus? Then why isn’t the Earth hotter than Venus? How can this be?
It’s because Neil Degrasse Tyson and the Global Warming Alarmists are just plain dead wrong about why Venus is hot. Venus is not hot because of the Greenhouse Effect. It’s hot for other reasons that have yet to be determined. So I’m calling bullshit on the whole “Venus is a result of runaway greenhouse effect” cult.
Furthermore – the atmosphere of Venus is so dense that light doesn’t make it to the surface. If you remember how the greenhouse effect works on Earth light heats up the surface, heat is the radiated off the surface as infrared radiation, which is then trapped and reflected back by greenhouses gasses like carbon dioxide and water. (Yes – water is a greenhouse gas!) But on Venus all the solar energy absorption happen in the atmosphere.
So if the atmospheric solar absorption is causing Venus to heat up then the atmosphere would be hotter that the surface. (Heat flows from hot to cold.) But is it? No – the surface is hotter. Which completely disproves the greenhouse effect on Venus and makes Tyson utterly wrong.
A Better Explanation
A more likely explanation is based on the fact that the atmosphere of Venus is 90 times as dense as Earth. Earth is 14.7 ponds/square inch. Venus is 1323 pounds/square inch. (Reference)
Think of Earth’s atmosphere as a blanket holding in heat. If the Earth has 1 blanket then Venus would have 90 blankets.
When the planets formed they were molten hot in excess of 20000 degrees. The Earth cooled to today’s temperatures of 59 degrees, but Venus, because of its thick atmosphere cooled slower to 864 degrees. If the Sun stayed the same after many billions of years Venus would end up colder than the Earth. Also remember that just a few miles below the surface of the Earth our temperature is 1300 degrees and up. Our planet is also a liquid planet and what we call land is just a thin crust floating on a ball of molten lava. So where we live is a very thin layer of paradise between 8000 miles of molten lava at thousands of degrees and the -455F degrees cold of outer space. One has to assume that much of our heat comes from below and not above.
But this is just my best guess and I have no proof that it’s true, but it is at least mathematically correct.
Having said all this, I am not a global warming denier. Carbon Dioxide does increase the amount of solar energy retained by the planet and the amount of CO2 is increasing due to human activity. Right now carbon dioxide is 3/4 natural and 1/4 man made. So – there will be an affect and it’s something we should stop doing along with all the other pollutants we put into our environment. This planet is our space ship and we should understand it in those terms. And the first step in fighting this is population control. If we do that can convert to solar and wind, grid battery storage, and electric cars we can fix the problem. If we implemented a carbon tax and used the money to fund birth control and abortions – problem solved.
What is important is the truth and when people like Neil Degrasse Tyson, (who I otherwise respect) make up false science it diminishes science itself. The video above is the equivalent to scientific blasphemy. Global warming deniers and alarmists are both cults and in order to deal with problems we first have to understand the truth and then come up with the technology to deal with the issue.
I knew you’d be wrong when you said you could prove it with simple math. I read the rest of the post and confirmed it, but didn’t think it would be that poor. You never even showed why Neil is wrong.
Venus gets less energy but is hotter. That would tend to confirm Neil’s statement not disprove it.
“Blankets holding in heat” is also frequently used to describe the greenhouse effect.
Mr Tyson may be wrong, but you have given no reason for someone to conclude that.
The mechanism of the greenhouse effect is that solar hits the surface and is trapped. In the case of Venus the solar never reached the surface so the greenhouse mechanism doesn’t apply to Venus.
Your mechanism description is flawed.
If we use the readily available definition used on Wikipedia: “The greenhouse effect is the process by which radiation from a planet’s atmosphere warms the planet’s surface to a temperature above what it would be without its atmosphere.”, the atmosphere is still re-radiating the absorbed solar energy and retaining it causing a text-book greenhouse effect. Nowhere in that definition does it say the heat has to originate from the surface of the plant; the key part is that the atmosphere is warming the surface. Which you seem to be supporting in the rest of your description.
Your comments also have the obvious follow ups of why is Venus atmosphere 90 times as dense and why it has the composition it currently has. Tyson’s claims are as much about the history of the atmosphere as its current state.
“originate” was a bad word choice on my part. I meant the surface doesn’t have to be in any intermediary steps of energy transfer; just that the surface winds up warmer due to heating by the atmosphere.
I had the same thought. OF COURSE….the atmosphere absorbs and reflects incoming solar energy and the reflections go in all directions…back into space, to the atmosphere, and to the surface.
It really is RIGHT THERE in the very definition of the concept…something Marc gets wrong. Good independent thinking though…just wrong.
But the energy is hitting the surface. A little less energy than hits Earth. That is where it is getting trapped, but on Earth it is not getting trapped. Hence the greenhouse effect.
All you’ve shown is a lot of math that has to do with energy not in Venus’s atmosphere, thus irrelevant to the point.
One other thing I think these “scientists” are completely ignoring is the Earths AXIS! In case you didn’t realize it, each of Earth’s hemisphere’s are considerably colder during the time a particular hemisphere’s axis is away from the sun. (This is also why the Earth has seasons too, just in case someone missed their 1st/2nd grade science class.) Therefore, HALF of the globe may not be receiving the entire calculated energy that was mentioned.
And on that note, another huge oversight seems to be how the Earth’s WATER (ocean currents) distribute heat. I don’t think Venus has water or anything other than sulfuric clouds that can move heat from one place to another quite the way the Earths liquid water (oceans) can. It’s a very big consideration that no one seems to have taken into consideration whatsoever.
Let’s also not forget the Earth’s ORBIT as well! FYI: Earth’s orbit is NOT as perfectly circular as Venuses orbit is. Earth’s orbit is more of an ellipse where the northern summers are always further away from the sun than the southern summers are. Therefore, during the northern winter (when the northern axis is away from the sun and there is less land for the sun to heat up) the Earth’s southern hemisphere receives more light where there is more moving (and reflective) water. It’s yet another consideration I’m sure these scientists seem to have forgot.
And then there’s the Antarctic — the primary driving force that causes ocean currents. And sunspots! But since the Antarctic pretty much acts like a giant refrigerator, some of this sunspot math might just be a “wash.”
Yes, scientists are often wrong. But what I like about real scientists is when they can ADMIT IT!!! Otherwise, they’re really just voodoo religious Shaman.
I’m likely to do another article on water as the key to Earth’s stable climate.
You would probably botch it as much as this post.
Michael Mann when he is not being an activist, secretly holds the same view. Not that secret as it is in his book, but he doesn’t tell it to the media. Pacific Thermostat Hypothesis is where he is leaning, but he thinks that his hockey stick papers leads evidence to their being a long term negative feedback to global warming in the tropics that produces La Nina like effects. In one talk he agreed with a questioner that warming in climate models is ‘vastly overstated’.
Another huge variable for stability: the Gaia effect or “life” and how it moderates all sorts of things from temp gain and loss to co2 cycles and “everything” else.
Its complicated.
If you really want to show a pop scientist being foolish about global warming, go for Bill Nye.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
and his general failure as a scientist
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3d0c94936c/bill-nye-addresses-deflategate
I don’t know if it’s covered in the first link, but Bill Nye’s experiment even if not faked, was not demonstrating the greenhouse effect.
Marc, if you think population control is a problem, then you should be supporting more wars. Hillary Clinton, John Kasich, Donald Trump if you think he’ll go nuclear but not if you think he will get along with everybody like Putin. Oppose Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz.
Of course population control is a problem. So are wars.
You think funny………. if at all.
Marc, why do you think renewable energy is a solution? As long as you are amazing us with your mathematical brilliance, why not tell us what is wrong with Google’s conclusion that renewable energy will not solve climate change.
http://foxnews.com/science/2014/11/25/google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-wont-solve-climate-change.html
A. Simple thought experiment is useful here.
If the planet Venus has a sun surface effect on the atmosphere and the fact that the planets rotation is effectively a face stays forward to the sun how any days…
That could imply observable atmospheric effects. Is it that none exist and we would not know there is a staid surface other than radar penetration.
So perhaps the surface is cooler on the back side? Is it, have we measured it?
Otherwise the surface sun effect on heat is not observable, so features like massive lava fields are the heat effect.
So….. what is the mind experiment?
did make me think about winds on Venus though…… they must be quite high if driven by temperature differentiation…so I looked it up.
Do “another” mind experiment. Demonstrate what a climate scientist you are: will the winds get faster or slower as you descend through the atmosphere? I read very quickly, but I think I got it wrong.
Ha, ha. Yeah….reason through something like atmospheric physics.
Go!===============>
Or maybe just that the atmosphere is like our ocean, whatever the surface or sun energy penetration, the averaging of the thick atmosphere has its own equilibrium.
Just a few things you neglected to mention that explains why Venus is a runaway Greenhouse effect.
1. Furthermore – the atmosphere of Venus is so dense that light doesn’t make it to the surface.
Not true. Lower frequency light, such as Infrared light doesn’t penetrate the atmosphere very much (that is what also holds in the heat, since heat is radiated as Infrared light). Higher Frequency light like UV, Xrays and Gamma Rays (very little of the latter two come directly from our sun) do penetrate the atmosphere and heat up the surface causing it to radiate infrared light, which is now trapped in the atmosphere. In fact, UV light is the primary energy source from the sun that heats up the surface of Venus.
This is the primary reason Venus is so hot. It absorbs other types of light energy (mostly UV) that put energy into the atmosphere and surface, which now radiates IR as heat, but is trapped since Infrared light cannot work its way back out of the atmosphere.
2. You make no mention of heat that escapes the atmosphere. Yes, Earth may absorb more heat than Venus, but our thinner atmosphere and non-uniform cloud cover also allows a lot of that heat to escape. Venus lets very little heat escape by contrast (just what is in the higher atmospheres). This is measured by the way, by several satellites we have had around Venus over the years.
3. UV light, which penetrates much deeper on both planets, but on Earth, it gets scattered by the Ozone layer. Your calculations don’t take any reduction in the amount of solar energy due to this.
4. You assume that Venus was created with such a thick atmosphere, but the Earth wasn’t. This is also untrue. The Earth’s atmosphere was much thicker at one time and our atmospheres most likely, were very similar in composition. Why the Earth’s thinned out, is still up for debate. Some theories suggest the collision with another planet that formed our moon could have caused much of the atmosphere to change. Other theories suggest that the “cooler” temperatures allowed for more liquid water which helped cool the planet in its earlier ages. This allowed for bacteria and eventually, plant-life, to consume the CO2 and release O2 which helped build the Ozone layer (O3) which reflects a lot of UV light, preventing our planet from heating up more (like from the excess water vapor).
This isn’t a simple math problem. There are many other inputs to the system you neglected. Any astronomer (or physicist) knows that Venus is the classic Greenhouse effect to its Extreme.
Yes…. thanks so much. I can imagine you gritting your teeth as you posted….so thanks.
So many things making Earth so unique. Watched “Mass Extinction, Life at the Brink” on the tube last night. It mentioned the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs had the effect of destroying the ozone layer that allowed radiation to reach the surface. The show didn’t directly say it, assuming that the viewer would know how damaging to life UV is. Our cave dwelling, hole digging, night time living ancestors survived as a result.
It all fits together: kinda like magic.
…….and if you do favor this forum with your expertise again: why aren’t climate scientist more alarmists than they are still issuing “conservative” estimates of this 6th Great Extinction that we have our big toe in up past our ankles as we post here debating why Venus is hot?
They should be SCREAMING the end of days.
…………….. are we not? Lag time and all?
analysis proceeds on “if/then” reasoning with narry a slow down or recognition that MOST LIKELY the proposition is wrong. The religious frame of mind in operation.