Out of the frying pan... into the Greenhouse Effect

As is well known, if the sun is shining brightly enough, you can leave a frying pan in the sun and then fry an egg on it. This works because aluminium (and many other metals) have low emissivity.

And as we also know, if an object is absorbing solar radiation, it will warm up until it is emitting the same amount of radiation energy (ignoring other forms of heat transfer, like conduction etc).

If an object (the frying pan) has low emissivity, then for a given temperature, it is emitting less radiation than another object at the same temperature with higher or 100% emissivity (a 'blackbody'). But the amount of radiation absorbed, and hence emitted, is fixed, so the frying pan reaches a higher temperature (than the ground around it) before it reaches a steady-state temperature where solar radiation absorbed = radiation emitted.

So on a hot sunny day, ground-level air temp might be 'only' 30 degrees C, but the frying pan is more than 100 degrees C, hot enough to fry an egg. Key thing to note is that ground and pan are emitting a similar amount of radiation. Which is why you have to calibrate an IR thermometer to take the emissivity of the object into account - if you don't, it will tell you that the ground and the pan are a similar temperature.

[OK, I have glossed over the fact that pans are shiny and therefore reflect more, and absorb less, radiation, which would make them cooler than their surroundings, all things being equal. But all things are not equal and the lower emissivity outweighs the albedo effect.]

I doubt any Physics Denier looks at the hot frying pan and concludes that, because the frying pan's actual temperature is greater than the hypothetical temperature it would be if it were a 'blackbody' with 100% emissivity, this must be an example of the Greenhouse Effect.
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But this is the best (and basically only) evidence they have that there is a 33 degree Greenhouse Effect in the first place - they just compare actual temperature of oceans and land with hypothetical surface temperature of a planet with a uniform surface, all at the same temperature and with 100% emissivity. This is like saying that clouds, oceans and land are a) all at the same temperature and b) have 100% emissivity. Neither a) nor b) is correct, it would be fairer to say a) and b) are deliberately misleading assumptions. (Cooler clouds are missing from the first part of the comparison, this is a key part of the deceit).

There's a handy overview of cloud properties here. Note that typical or average cloud emissivity is given as 0.7. If you pick sensible estimates for typical or average cloud-top altitude, then you know how much warmer it is at sea level than at the cloud-tops (this relationship is fixed by the gravito-thermal effect), then you can work out total radiation emitted to space by clouds and cloud-free oceans/land respectively (oceans/land beneath clouds can't emit radiation directly to space, the clouds absorb, reflect and re-emit it). Take a weighted average and hey presto, the overall radiation being emitted spacewards is the same as incoming solar.

Therefore, no radiation is being blocked or absorbed by 'Greenhouse Gases'; there is no 'Greenhouse Effect' (unless you see clouds as acting like the roof of a greenhouse, which I suppose they do) and there is nothing left to explain away.

When I did the workings, I calculated that clouds emit about 47% of the total radiation reaching space, the 'official' estimate of "cloud amount weighted by the cloud IR emissivity" is 50%, so I'm not far off and I suspect the 50% is rounded.

And of course, clouds are nebulous. Nobody will ever know what the exact thickness; altitude; temperature; emissivity; or radiation being emitted by any particular cloud or cloud-top at any particular moment are. How many measurements would you have to make to have a fair picture of the global average over a year? Dunno, even though it wouldn't be that difficult with enough weather balloons and satellites.

But it's easy enough choosing reasonable mid-points of ranges of estimates to get sensible answers, and until these time wasters dedicate a bit of time and effort on doing actual observations of all these variables (and proving me wildly wrong), I will assume that they simply don't want to know (and they can't).

This is what you wanted.

From The Daily Express:

Pensioners may still be paying off mortgages as soaring property prices cripple Britons

The demand for longer mortgage terms of 35 years instead of the traditional 25 years has jumped 75 per cent as cash strapped owners want to keep their monthly payments as low as possible. Coupled with the average age of a first-time buyer (FTB) rising, an increasing number of people could be paying their home loans out of their pensions in retirement....

And the standard of living among retirees could decline significantly as they struggle to pay a mortgage out of a fixed pension, experts warn... Worryingly, the trend could be exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis which is likely to see the age of first-time buyers continue to increase.

Yes, Home-Owner-Ism leads to terrible outcomes, I keep saying that. So why doesn't the Daily Mailexpressgraph just say it?

Theresa May, safely out of power, pillories Home-Owner-Ism.

From PA Media:

Former prime minister Theresa May has warned that the housing system is “broken” and “letting down” the next generation.

The backbench Tory MP said the problem can be traced back to a lack of action from “governments of all colours”, with the crisis beginning “not because of a blip lasting a year or a parliament, but because not enough homes were built over many decades”.

Speaking at a conference on social housing hosted by the charity Shelter, Ms May said for “too long” the Tories have been seen by many as “the party only of home ownership... Indeed, dare I say it, our policies have too often made it seem that way,” she said. But she argued the Conservatives are in fact “the party of decent homes for all”...[That's obviously a lie but neither were Labour when it power, so gloss over it]

Ms May called for processes to be put in place “support the building of more social housing... We know our housing system is broken, but the housing crisis in this country began not because of a blip lasting a year or a parliament, but because not enough homes were built over many decades. Under governments of all colours we simply haven’t given enough attention to social and affordable housing. It is undeniable that the housing system is letting down the next generation. Fixing the housing crisis will let so many more people get on in life.”

"In line with our commitment to deliver 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s, we need to put in place processes to support the building of more social housing... It’s still too hard to build social homes and too easy to be an irresponsible landlord. We need to harness the momentum that I think we now have and use the levelling up agenda as an opportunity to spur further change.

“I think, and I say to the Government, next month’s Queen’s Speech does give an opportunity to bring forward the measures that require primary legislation, including those reforming regulation for private rental and social tenants, that will tip the scales in favour of fairness.”

"Britain can only remember seven Tory scandals at any one time"

Go read at The Daily Mash.

The insane Rwanda plan is of course just a distraction from Partygate, which appears to have been affecting Tory polling ratings. The rightwingers are cheering to the rafters; the lefties are up in arms. It will never happen, neither will it be officially shelved, but 'something not happening' is hardly headline news.

This technique was exploited to the full by New Labour. Minister has affair? Driven from the front pages by a corruption scandal/colossal overspend; which was driven from the front pages by 'cash for peerages', which was driven from front pages by grants to Trade Unions that were matched by TU donations to the Labour Party; which driven from front pages by James Purnell photoshop episode (at least that one was funny); not forgetting the Individual Learning Account money that disappeared into the sand... the list is endless, and nobody (least of all me) can remember more than half a dozen of them or the order they happened, they came so thick and fast. New Labour made John Major's lot look like choirboys.

Killer Arguments against Citizen's Income, not (35)

I posted one of my usual articles here a couple of weeks ago pointing out that if you add up all the cash benefits paid out (incl. state pensions, excl. housing- and disability-related benefits); the value of the tax -free personal allowances; add on all the 'welfare for the wealthy' tax breaks; and then distribute that total pot equally across the UK population, you end up with something like £180/week for pensioners, £90/ week for working age adults and £45/week per child (+/- £10, no point arguing over precise numbers). Disability and housing top-ups can stay as they are for now.

To reduce 'churn', people would then have a straight choice between a) claiming the tax-free personal allowance, which most working age adults would do, and b) claiming the Basic Income amount. You can tweak the numbers to ensure that people in steady jobs are slightly better off sticking with the personal allowance. I then tweeted a link at Citizen's Income Trust, inevitably, the usual left wing argument came up: "So you are just redistributing between people on low or no incomes?".

To some extent yes, but so what? How is this an argument against? If we got accustomed to the Basic Income system, then there would be (say) five million working age claimants, getting £95/week each. If some innumerate lunatic suggested weeding out some subjectively 'undeserving' recipients and paying the remaining 4 million people £119/week each and letting the rest starve (for the same total cost), wouldn't that also be "redistributing between people on low or no incomes?"

How is that better? Marginal utility suggests that you reduce poverty most by paying everybody the same, end of. And seeing as part of the point of any welfare system is to reduce social unrest/improve social cohesion and give people the impression they are all equal citizens (same as one man, one vote), why not have a system where nobody can claim that one group is being favoured and some other group being disadvantaged?

This cuts both ways. Current claimants can't be stigmatised, they just get it as a basic entitlement. The unemployed and single parents have also the same right to vote or use the NHS as everybody else, AFAIAA. Daily Mailexpressgraph reading stay-at-home spouses get £90/week plus £45/week for each child as well, so they've no excuse for looking down on single parents etc.

Greenhouse effect, what greenhouse effect?

I know I keep posting the same thing, but I always end up with long posts, I'm trying to whittle it down to the basics, so each subsequent post gets a bit shorter (hopefully). When it's short enough, I will email it as a question to Climatologists, or pester them in the comments. Greta says 'follow the science' and I have done.
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To quote from James Hansen et al, ca. 1980:

The effective radiating temperature of the earth, TE , is determined by the need for infrared emission from the planet to balance absorbed solar radiation... [insert complicated looking formula which is actually quite simple]... this yields TE = 255 K. The mean surface temperature TS is 288 K. The excess, TS - TE, is the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds, which cause the mean radiating level to be above the surface.

The actual definition of 'effective temperature' is correct and the part we need to focus on. And let's accept his assumptions (nobody has ever seriously challenged them) that average mean sea-level temp = 288K; the weighted average albedo of clouds and cloud-free oceans/land = 30%; and so average absorbed solar radiation (which has to be matched by outgoing LW) = 238 W/m2

The sleight of hand is the 255K result. This is completely incorrect, whether by accident or design, but is taken as Gospel by Climatologists to this day. To arrive at 255K you have to assume uniform surface; all at the same temperature; and with 100% emissivity. All of which is completely unrealistic.

And we mere Earth dwellers assume that "surface" means ocean surface or land - but as far as incoming and outgoing radiation is concerned, it's a combination of clouds and cloud-free oceans/land (there is a separate cycle between clouds and the oceans/land below them). Climatologists skip back and forth between both definitions of "surface" as it suits them.

Here's the proper way of calculating it:
* Cloud altitude 5km, temp 256K, emissivity 70%, two-thirds of surface as seen from space. Emitted LW = 170 W/m2.
* Oceans/land, temp 288K, emissivity 96%, one-third of surface as seen from space. Emitted LW = 375 W/m2.
* Weighted average LW emissions = 238 W/m2, which balances absorbed solar radiation.
* As a check, cloud temp and sea-level temp are different by exactly the amount you'd expect, given a gravity-induced lapse rate of 6.5 K/km, adjusted for latent heat of evaporation (which reduces it from hypothetical 10 K/km to 6.5 K/km).

Conclusions:
1. Earth is - by definition - at the correct effective temperature, because LW emitted by clouds and cloud-free oceans/land ("the surface") = absorbed solar.
2. No radiation goes missing on the way out or is trapped by Greenhouse Gases.
3. Therefore, using his definitions, the greenhouse effect = zero, not 33 degrees.
4. He mentions "the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds". In truth it's just clouds. There is no need to factor in "gases" (by implication C02) as there is no discrepancy left to explain.
5. And of course the "mean radiating level" is above sea-level, but it is not "above the surface". It IS the surface (as seen from space).
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Yes, I am perfectly aware that all my inputs (cloud altitude and temp, emissivity etc) are just mid-points of ranges of estimates. Nobody will ever know the exact figures, although they could be firmed up a lot by using weather balloons with IR thermometers at lots of different locations and latitudes and different times of day. The more data we have, the better.

This would cost a tiny fraction of the $ billions they spend on 'climate models' and hunting round for evidence with satellites and expeditions to the South Pole. However conscientious the measurements and however rigourous the analysis, there will always be margins of error and uncertainty. But I am sure, you could get to +/- a few W/m2 or a few degrees K of my above zero-conclusion. And Greenhouse Gas Theories that are built on what is basically margins of error and uncertainty wouldn't really be sound science, would it?

Dear Climate Scientists - do clouds exist or not?

From NASA's Clouds and radiation factsheet:

The study of clouds, where they occur, and their characteristics, play a key role in the understanding of climate change.

Clouds exist. Before we worry about marginal changes, it's good to understand how clouds anchor sea level air temperature at average 288K.

The Earth's climate system constantly adjusts in a way that tends toward maintaining a balance between the energy that reaches the Earth from the sun and the energy that goes from Earth back out to space.

Correct and agreed.

Energy goes back to space from the Earth system in two ways: reflection and emission.

Part of the solar energy that comes to Earth is reflected back out to space in the same, short wavelengths in which it came to Earth. The fraction of solar energy that is reflected back to space is called the albedo. Different parts of the Earth have different albedos. For example, ocean surfaces and rain forests have low albedos, which means that they reflect only a small portion of the sun's energy. Deserts, ice, and clouds, however, have high albedos; they reflect a large portion of the sun's energy.

Over the whole surface of the Earth, about 30 percent of incoming solar energy is reflected back to space.

So clouds exist for the purpose of calculating albedo and are considered part of the surface. They said it themselves. Good. The 30% reflected is the weighted average of the two-thirds of the surface covered by clouds with albedo 40% and one third cloud-free oceans/land with albedo 10%. This leaves an average of 238 W/m2 being absorbed by clouds and cloud-free ocean/land. All coherent so far.

The top of the cloud is usually colder than the Earth's surface. Hence, if a cloud is introduced into a previously clear sky, the cold cloud top will reduce the longwave emission to space, and (disregarding the cloud albedo forcing for the moment) energy will be trapped beneath the cloud top. This trapped energy will increase the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere until the longwave emission to space once again balances the incoming absorbed shortwave radiation.

Clouds still exist. The conclusion is broadly correct, but the explanation is poor or downright misleading. Clouds are emitting what LW they can. The upper layers that emit to space are average 255K (sea level temp 288K minus 5km altitude x 6.5 K/km lapse rate) and, given their emissivity of 70%, emit 168 W/m2. Note that the word or concept "emissivity" is not mentioned in the article. As they say themselves, there is a separate system that operates as between clouds and sea level; what we are looking at is the 238 W/m2 from the Sun and back out to Space.

So for every three square metres of Earth (two of clouds, one of cloud-free) total outgoing LW has to be 3 x 238 W/m2 = 714 W total. The two m2 covered by clouds are emitting 2 x 168 W = 336 W/m2. That means the remaining 1 m2 of cloud-free oceans/land has to be emitting 714 - 336 = 378 W.

[Analogy: it's like inflating an air matress with a puncture. Cloud-free areas are the puncture. The smaller the puncture a) the higher the air pressure in the mattress and b) the faster the air will leak through the puncture.]

Ocean/land emissivity is 96%, so working backwards from 378 W/m2, the temperature of ocean/land has to be 288K to bring up the overall average LW emitted to space of 238 W/m2. 168 + 168 + 378 = 714. The upwards LW absorbed by clouds and LW reflected or re-emitted down again by clouds need not be taken into account again - we have an answer that ties in with actual observed temperatures and the gravity-induced lapse rate of 6.5 K/km (assuming average cloud-top altitude to be 5km, which seems about right). The reflected and re-emitted LW is already part of that overall balance.

And now, having shown that the entire Greenhouse Effect can be attributed to clouds (once you factor in emissivity, which Climate Scientists seldom do), clouds leave the stage and The Villain makes a surprise entrance:

However, a significant fraction of the longwave radiation emitted by the surface is absorbed by trace gases in the air. This heats the air and causes it to radiate energy both out to space and back toward the Earth's surface.

So, let's ascribe the effect of clouds to 'trace gases', shall we? Ignore the big white fluffy things that cover two thirds of the surface and reflect and absorb significant amounts or radiation in both directions and provably cause the entire Greenhouse Effect? Let's focus on invisible trace gases?

To ram the deception home, they conclude with this:

The overall effect of all clouds together is that the Earth's surface is cooler than it would be if the atmosphere had no clouds.

That is quite simply untrue, they've provided all the evidence to show that clouds have - surprisingly perhaps - a warming effect at sea level. See the calculation a few paragraphs above. Which is why the Greenhouse Effect is much smaller in cloud-free deserts, non-existent on Mars (a few scattered dust clouds) and very high on Venus (100% covered in very thick, very high clouds). But let's not drag real life into this, eh? Let's live in our logic-free fantasty world?

Conclusion: the Climate Science argument is there is a 33 degree Greenhouse Effect (sort of true) and that this is down to 'trace gases'. Therefore, more trace gases = more Greenhouse Effect. But the Greenhouse Effect is actually a measurement problem - on closer inspection either there isn't one at all and/or it is down to clouds. Therefore trace gases have zero impact, therefore any change in trace gas levels can't have any effect either. I have no strong opinion on what causes small fluctiatons in surface temperatures over longer periods, but it sure as heck ain't changes in the amount of trace gases.

The indoctrination runs deep

Tax rises that kick in today will reduce what homeowners can borrow and potentially send house prices downwards, experts have warned....

says the Torygraph under a headline about rises in National insurance meaning that buyers will be able to borrow less and the strapline,

Sellers will have to cut asking prices as tax rises hit buyers' ability to borrow

Now just consider that for a minute. The only people worried about the price of houses are buyers and they have already been reassured that their ability to borrow less will be matched by a corresponding fall in prices, but the conditioning is so strong that even buyers think a fall in prices is a bad thing, uniquely amongst anything that they would want to buy. "Oh, no, I'm going to be paying less for my new house than I thought! Disaster!"

Another point this article makes to which the conditioning blinds us is that house prices are proportional to what people are able to pay, so that the cut in prices is completely illusory, the only difference it will make is to the banks, who will be getting less interest....

...in case anyone was wondering why we have this obsession with house prices in the first place.

The Diagonal Comparisons that underpin 'Climate Science'

The very cornerstones of Climate Science are two Diagonal Comparisons.

[To give examples:

FAIR COMPARISON: women's current wages in the UK -vs- men's current wages for similar work. This means something. If there is a difference, it needs explaining and maybe action needs to be take to level up.

DIAGONAL COMPARISON: nominal women office workers' wages in 1982, not adjusted for inflation -vs- Premier League footballer wages in 2022. That would be a Diagonal Comparison and of no relevance to anything.

You have to measure and calculate things as accurately as you can and then compare like-with-like i.e. changing only one variable, or as few as possible.]

Unfortunately for me, you have to be well versed in the Climate Science belief system (which I am) to know what I am talking about. And most of the well versed are of course Believers who just believe it all; the Sceptics mainly quibble about the finer details and don't look at the very foundations of the belief system. I can but do my best...
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Here goes. From RealClimate.org ("Climate Science from Climate Scientists...").

Diagonal Comparison #1

33 ºC is the difference between the mean surface air temperature of the planet and the blackbody radiating temperature (i.e. the temperature a blackbody would need to radiate at to be in equilibrium with the incoming solar radiation given an albedo of about 0.3) ["effective temperature"]. So far so good.

They define the true meaning of "effective temperature" in parentheses and correctly calculate Earth's effective temperature at 255K. What they do not mention is that this a hypothetical value only! It is only a very rough indicator of the actual temperature of "the surface" (cloud cover and that part of the sea and land that is cloud-free)*. You have to make several adjustments to work out the likely actual temperature.

They pretend however that 255K is a reliable indicator. They then compare 255K with the measured temperature of one part of "the surface" (at sea level) which is 288K. Hey presto, 33 degrees of Greenhouse Effect!

The 255K calculation, while correct in an abstract sense, is wildly inappropriate as a basis for comparison. Unless you are prepared to make on one or more of the assumptions that:
- clouds, sea and land have 100% emissivity. This is the biggest one, the overall weighted average is more like 80% emissivity, which would get adjusted effective temp. up to about 270K (reducing the 33 degrees by half). That's why they refer obliquely to 'blackbody' (which means 100% emissivity) instead of saying "assuming 100% emissivity", which would have people asking "Why assume anything? Why not use actual emissivity if it's relevant?", and/or
- clouds are at sea level, and/or
- clouds, sea and land are all the same temperature, and/or
- clouds, sea and land are all a uniform pale blue colour with albedo 0.3, and/or
- clouds don't exist (even though their existence reduces albedo and hence reduces effective temp), and/or
- there is no lapse rate, and/or
- without 'greenhouse gases' there would be no lapse rate, and/or
- without 'greenhouse gases' there would be less cloud cover and/or cloud altitude would be lower.
None of those assumptions is in any way correct, they are all reality-denying nonsense.

The obvious flaw with the 255K vs 288K comparison is that it not comparing like-with-like. Effective temperature is based on "what does the planet look like from space?". What you see from space is two-thirds clouds with patches of cloud-free sea or land. So when you calculate effective temperature, you are estimating the weighted average temperature of "what you can see from space", which is clouds and cloud-free sea and land.

The bulk of sea and land which are beneath clouds most of the time are irrelevant here, they could be pitch-black in colour with zero albedo - that wouldn't affect albedo as seen from space so doesn't affect our spaceman's calculation of effective temperature. Similarly, our spaceman can't tell through his telescope whether the white patches are clouds (low emissivity; unknown altitude) or snow fields (high emissivity) so he knows that his calculation of a planet's effective temperature is only a rough guide to its actual temperature.

The sea surface and land are of course warmer than clouds, because clouds are higher up. So what the Climate Scientists are really saying is "a warm thing is warmer than the average of the warm thing and some cold things, especially if you calculate the average using the wrong method." which is meaningless and irrelevant.

In the table at the end of this post, I refer to the effective temperature calculated the wrong way as B, line 28. Measured sea level temperature is A, line 288.
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This is NOT how you work out 'effective temperature' (if you want to get a meaningful answer). What you do is: take emissivity and topography/altitude into account of all the constituent parts (and ignore sea and land that is below clouds - there is separate more or less closed cycle for this) of "the surface"* and work out what temperature all the constituent parts of "the surface" would have to be to emit as much LW radiation to space as they, in total, absorb from the Sun.

This calculation is a bit tricky, but it's easy enough working backwards from actual temperatures and emissivity of the constituent parts of "the surface"* to see if you get the 'right' amount of outgoing LW. This is the the scientific way. You find that clouds, sea and land are at the required temperature/altitude emit, overall and on average, the right amount of LW (E, line 35 - this is the same as absorbed incoming solar radiation, C, line 22).

So there is no discrepancy between actual temperatures and effective temperature, if you calculate effective temperature correctly and make a fair comparison, like-with-like. There is no 33 degree difference to explain away; it's not even 8 degrees, it is +/- nothing. Sea/land surface has to be warmer than expected to emit more LW than first expected to compensate for the fact that clouds are as warm as expected (257K, line 5 vs 255K, line 28) BUT have low emissivity and so emit less LW than first expected. The overs and unders cancel out. So when our spaceman lands and finds that the sea level surface of the planet is warmer or colder than he calculated from afar, he is not too surprised.

Diagonal Comparison #2

While that is one way to assess the strength of the basic greenhouse effect, another one is measure the amount of long wave radiation from the surface that is absorbed in the atmosphere (by greenhouse gases incl. water vapour, clouds, aerosols, etc.). That is currently about 150 W/m2 and would be zero with no greenhouse effect at all.

They are comparing upwelling LW from sea and land, assuming 100% emissivity (D, line 33 = 390 W/m2) with C, line 22, 240 W/m2. There is, unsurprisingly, a 150 W/m2 difference. They say "Look! GHG's are trapping or blocking 40% of outgoing LW. This is what is heating the planet.". To be fair to this lot, they do mention clouds, which are actually responsible for all the absorbing they try to blame on 'Greenhouse Gases'.

Two-thirds of that hypothetical 390 W/m2 LW emitted at sea level (D, line 33 - they should be using 367 W/m2 at line 34, but hey) hits the underside of clouds and is either absorbed by the clouds or reflected back down. What gets to space is the weighted average of what clouds emit upwards and what the cloud-free sea or land emits (E, line 35), which is exactly the same as incoming solar (C, line 22)*.

So again, this is like saying "a warm thing emits more LW than the average LW emitted by the warm thing and some cold things, especially if you overstate the LW emitted by the warm thing and ignore the existence of the cold things" i.e. meaningless and irrelevant.
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* I put an asterisk after "the surface" as this is a very important concept. Imagine a freshly made sponge cake, still warm from the oven that has just had some icing applied (I think you are supposed to let the sponge cool down first, but I'm in a hurry... to find an analogy). The main sponge part = sea or land. Two-thirds of the cake's surface is covered in icing = the clouds. "The surface" of the Earth cake is two-thirds icing and one-third exposed sponge. Whatever heat exchange there is between the sponge and icing is irrelevant as far as the outside world (space) is concerned. For the cake to cool down, all that matters is the LW which is emitted by the exposed (non-iced) sponge and the icing. Including the LW radiation hypothetically emitted by the covered part of the sponge is insane and insanely stupid.

On Venus, the high temperature of the sponge (hard surface) is irrelevant as it is all covered with a thick layer of icing (clouds). The temperature of the upper parts of the clouds is pretty much the same as the calculated effective temperature. There is a separate set of rultes to reconcile temperatures as between hard surface and clouds and there is no 'Greenhouse effect', let alone a 'runaway Greenhouse Effect' on Venus. On Mars, there is barely any icing (a few low altitude dust clouds) so although there is more CO2 per m2 on Mars than there is water vapour and CO2 added together on Earth, there is little or no Greenhouse Effect on Mars.
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Here is my list of assumptions and summary workings in case anybody want to check. This is all the coherent bits of actual information and proper phsyics that I have pieced together from blogs and articles by 'Climate Scientists'. They can't deny that they have said all this, although they do when it suits them.

Click to enlarge/read more clearly.

Humourless twat of the week (2)

The ever so thin-skinned Mad Vlad strikes again, from MSN/Forbes:

Depardieu, who has had close ties to Putin since 2013 and even received a Russian passport directly from Putin, told AFP on Thursday the Russian people were “not responsible for the crazy, unacceptable excesses of their leaders like Vladimir Putin.”

The Kremlin said it would be “ready” to explain the situation in Ukraine so that “he understands better” if Depardieu “wants,” AFP reported. Depardieu, who previously supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea, is “not completely immersed in the political agenda,” Peskov said.

Depardieu “does not understand what happened in Ukraine in 2014, he does not understand what the Minsk agreements are, he does not understand what Donetsk and Luhansk are, he hardly understands what is the bombing of civilians, he is unlikely to know about the nationalist elements,” Peskov said, according to Politico.

Wot? Anybody who slags off Mad Vlad gets personally invited to Re-education Camp? Even if Depardieu were totally 100% wrong, why should this concern a Head of State?