Why Is So Little Attention Being Paid to the Physics of CO2?

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I feel that the empirical evidence and many more arguments suggest that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is an erroneous hypothesis that is certainly not fit to support large scale projects purportedly stopping or reducing apocalyptic weather and climate effect. While being mostly more sympathetic to skeptics of the hyped scare, I keep wondering why the skeptics shun criticism of CAGW based on the physics of CO2. 

Loosely speaking, my impression is that the physical foundations are little understood both by alarmists and skeptics.

Apparently climate "science" is at best a very immature fledgling subject of which it is misleading to speak of as a science similar to highly developed Newtonian physics. A budding torso-"science" attracts many hypothesis sooner or later to be filtered out. A torso-"science" is a magnet for wrong-headed ideas, charlatanry and opportunistic political abuse.

Below find another example of an argument challenging CAGW on the basis of fundamental physics. I am not in a position to judge whether it is pertinent or wrong and confused.

Still further below is a comment in German from a friend of mine. I agree with her that the author's claim that leading skeptics — by virtue of entertaining their own theory of a greenhouse effect — prove to be really alarmists in disguise is abstruse. Discussions with my friend yielded the result that we are not even able to establish whether other aspects of atmospheric physics might render his refutation invalid.

All in all, we feel there is a dire need to explain the physical foundations of the atmospheric sciences (or the mix of subjects most effective in explaining the climate). Scientifically sincere elucidations will not come from the alarmists, as they possess absolute knowledge of the "problem" and know the "only and ideal solutions" thanks to being zealous members of a climate church. I hope the skeptics will make the physics of CO2 more transparent. This might add maturity to climate "science", so that unscientific and anti-scientific components will find it harder to become part of received wisdom.

Below, I quote from here.

Here is the IPCC definition of the greenhouse effect, upon which climate alarm and its socially, politically, economically and scientifically destructive movement is based: 

Note that radiant emission from a cooler atmosphere is adding as heat to a warmer surface below it, in an attempt to explain why the surface is warmer than the cooler atmosphere. 

Now consider the definition of heat, from “Thermodynamics”, G. J. V. Wylen, John Wiley & Sons, 1960: 

“Heat is defined as the form of energy that is transferred across a boundary by virtue of a temperature difference or temperature gradient. Implied in this definition is the very important fact that a body never contains heat, but that heat is identified as heat only as it crosses the boundary. Thus, heat is a transient phenomenon. If we consider the hot block of copper as a system and the cold water in the beaker as another system, we recognize that originally neither system contains any heat (they do contain energy, of course.) When the copper is placed in the water and the two are in thermal communication, heat is transferred from the copper to the water, until equilibrium of temperature is established. At that point we no longer have heat transfer, since there is no temperature difference. Neither of the systems contains any heat at the conclusion of the process. It also follows that heat is identified at the boundaries of the system, for heat is defined as energy being transferred across the system boundary.” 

Thus, there is no heat transfer from the atmosphere to the surface.  Thus, the climate science greenhouse effect is incommensurate to the modern definition of heat.  Thus, the climate science definition of the greenhouse effect, upon which alarmism and its associated socially, politically, and economically regressive and scientifically destructive political movement is based, is false.  Thus, climate alarm and much of the entire field of climate science itself, is in fundamental error. 

At this point a secondary argument for a radiative greenhouse effect arises, where emission from a cooler object “slows the emission” from a warmer object thus making the warmer object warmer still.  This is called the “blanket analogy”.
However, given the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, where an object’s emission is proportional to its temperature and given its emissivity: 

F = σεT4 

and given the definition of radiant heat transfer: 

Q = Fhot – Fcool = σThot4 – σTcool4 

then one can see that one cannot prevent something from emitting at the temperature that it is at.  That is, emission from a cool object does not slow the emission from the hot object. 

In other words, you cannot prevent something from emitting at the temperature that it is at.  And of course, again, radiant emission from a cooler object does not transfer heat to a warmer object. 

A blanket is about preventing convection, and has nothing to do with radiation.  And there is no stopping radiation – everything emits at the temperature it has acquired and you can’t stop it from emitting at the temperature that it is.  Whereas, one can prevent what would be open convection.  And so this alternative version of the radiative greenhouse effect is as logically baseless as the original IPCC one.  Radiant emission can’t be prevented, whereas convection can be prevented; therefore it is a false analogy.

And here my friends comment:

... ich glaube, der Schreiber will sagen:

die Klimakonzepte sowohl der Skeptiker als auch der Klimaretter basieren auf falschen physikalischen Annahmen.

Vermutlich will er sagen, dass es gar keine Möglichkeit gibt, an der Erdtemperatur zu "schrauben", weil sich die Erdtemperatur an die Weltraumtemperatur anpassen wird. Es lässt sich nicht verhindern, dass sich Wärme (oder Energie) vom wärmeren Objekt zum kälteren bewegt. Die Art und Weise, in welchem Maß dieser Austausch stattfindet lässt sich nicht beeinflussen, auch nicht, wenn man eine Art Wintermantel oder eine Decke um die Erde legt. Der Mantel oder die Decke verhindert nicht die Strahlung von warmen Körpern und die Angleichung/Übergänge an die kältere Umgebung. Ich denke, der Autor will damit sagen: es kann doch gar keinen Treibhauseffekt geben.

Dann fragt er sich: warum übernehmen die Kritiker die physikalisch falschen Annahmen der Retter? Warum zeigen sie nicht die Absurdität der Annahmen der Retter und greifen stattdessen deren falsches Konzept auf? Wollen sie letzten Endes doch eine[n] Klima-Alarm?

Der letzten Textabschnitt von CB und die Folgerungen, die der Schreiber daraus zieht, scheinen mir etwas fragwürdig, bin mir aber auch nicht ganz sicher, was er damit will. Anscheinend will er sagen: die Wahrheit in der Wissenschaft ist letzten Endes immer einfach (was nicht stimmt - ich ... habe früher auch so gedacht, aber bei Dir gelernt, dass das ein Trugschluss ist), auch wenn der Schreiber vermutlich mit seinem Fazit recht hat:
die Physik und in seinem Fall die Wärmelehre verändert sich nicht, also können wir davon ausgehen, dass die Theorie dahinter stimmt, während sich die Klima-Treibhaus-Theorien ständig ändern, anpassen, verschieben.

Zusammenfassend:

Mir scheint, der Schreiber reduziert das Treibhausthema auf die Wärmelehre, weiss nicht, ob man das so machen kann.


Liebe Grüße ...