​Now let us consider what happens to the energy radiated by our Sun which strikes any planet or satellite moon in our Solar System. We should expect the same laws of physics to apply, and so we should expect the hypothesis outlined on the Home page to be able to explain observed temperature data, not only on Earth but for these other planets and moons.

The planets and moons may or may not have surfaces, and may or may not have atmospheres.  We will also consider those temperatures below the surface, because, as Josef Loschmidt postulated in the 19th century, gravity will produce a temperature gradient even in solids.

​Earth's atmosphere is known to absorb a little over 20% of the incident solar radiation before it reaches the surface.  About 30% is reflected, and so only about half is absorbed by the surface.  In the case of Venus, barely 2% is left after absorption which warms the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere for that planet.  A planet like Uranus has no surface at the base of its 350Km high nominal troposphere where the temperatures are hotter than Earth's surface, even though no solar radiation reaches down there.

Furthermore, because an atmosphere absorbs some of the incident solar radiation, there is less radiative flux the further you go down into that atmosphere. But we know the temperatures increase at lower altitudes in a planet's troposphere, and so the attenuated radiation in the lower regions cannot raise those already warmer temperatures at all, just as it cannot raise the mean surface temperature for Earth. Hence we know that there must be additional thermal energy reaching these lower troposphere regions on a planet, as well as any surface.  Where can this extra energy come from and how does it get down there when the laws of physics tell us it cannot get there by radiation?

On Venus, for example, the incident solar radiation is only strong enough to raise the temperatures in regions in the upper troposphere (and above) where temperatures are less than about 100ºC because the maximum intensity is comparable with that for our Moon.  But the surface of Venus is hotter than 460ºC and so we must expect a transfer to a much hotter region somehow.

Fortunately the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes to our rescue, as explained on the Home page.  Does a convective heat transfer to a hotter region violate that law?  No, not in a vertical plane in a gravitational field, for the reasons explained in detail on the Home page.  The corollary that heat always passes from hot to cold only strictly applies in a horizontal plane where gravitational potential energy remains constant.  That energy plays a role in determining when entropy reaches a maximum and there are no remaining unbalanced energy potentials.  When that occurs we have thermodynamic equilibrium which has both a density gradient and a temperature gradient which is cooler at the top.  If the temperature at the top is then increased by absorption of new solar energy, some of that new energy will be transferred downwards to warmer regions in order to maximise entropy and establish a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium. 

Beneath the surface of a planet or moon similar conductive heat transfers can occur to warmer regions, transferring energy from the Sun even down to the center of the core. For example, the temperature at the core of our Moon is thought to be over 1300ºC. Could it have cooled off in billions of years?  When you consider how cold the surface gets on the dark side, the answer is certainly "yes" if there were no solar radiation.  Any matter half way between the nearest stars would be close to -273ºC which is about the coldest anything can be.

The best confirmation for the hypothesis comes from the planet Uranus.  There is no convincing evidence of significant net energy loss at the top of its atmosphere, so it is not just "cooling off" or generating energy from mass in its small solid core that is about half the mass of Earth and is at a temperature of about 5,000ºC.  The solar radiation is mostly absorbed in a methane layer near the very top of its atmosphere that is thousands of kilometers high.  Yet somehow over the life of the planet we know that some of that solar energy must be getting down into the atmosphere and keeping it at existing temperatures at each and every altitude. This could only happen if the hypothesis on the Home page is correct  See also the diagram here.  Yes, it is the Sun which keeps all planets and moons at existing temperatures, even down to the center of their cores.  Consider reading this site, and watch Senator Malcolm Roberts' speech.  Discussion is invited on this blog. For the last nail in the greenhouse coffin read this  experiment.
There is evidence in the temperature records that there were peaks roughly around the years 1880, 1940 and 2000 indicating a superimposed cycle of just under 60 years which can also be traced further back.  We see this cycle (correctly positioned) in the above plot which is derived from angular momentum determined by planetary orbits.​

There is also evidence of previous longer-term maximum and minimum temperatures in periods called Roman warming, Dark Ages cooling, Medieval warming and the Little Ice Age.  Again, the above plot shows a long term cycle of 934 years which appears to be correctly positioned also.

Whilst this evidence is statistically significant it does not prove that carbon dioxide could not have some additional effect, but we should note that the computer climate models do not correct for these natural cycles.  This I believe was deliberate and of course, when both cycles were rising in the 30 years between about 1970 and 1998-2000 they should have expected the observed rises due to the natural cycles, not blamed the rise on carbon dioxide. 

Of course, now that there has been a slight net cooling effect for a decade and a half (which will continue until about the years 2028-2030) there is no correlation at all with the continued rise in carbon dioxide.

Now let us turn to other evidence and consider the Moon which has no atmosphere.  Standard physics tells us that we can estimate the maximum temperatures of such bodies from the radiation they receive because, unlike the surface of Earth, the Moon's surface does not lose energy by conduction into an atmosphere.  It only loses energy by radiation back to space.  The physics gives us the right answer which gels with measurements showing a maximum of about 123ºC.  But on the dark side the temperatures can be as cold as -150ºC and so the average temperature of the surface of the Moon is obviously far colder than Earth's mean surface temperature.

But it is well accepted that the atmosphere of Earth reflects and absorbs solar radiation to the extent that the surface only receives about half the direct solar radiation that the Moon receives.  Hence you might expect that it would be far colder than the sub-zero mean temperature of the Moon's surface.

Indeed that would be correct if it were the direct solar radiation from the Sun which were the only source of warming for the Earth's surface. 

But could Earth and its atmosphere somehow accumulate thermal energy from one day to the next?  All the air and also water molecules in the oceans can store thermal energy, and so about 98% of the thermal energy (heat) in the atmosphere is stored in nitrogen, oxygen and argon molecules which do not radiate much of that energy to space.  They act like a blanket, whereas the so-called "greenhouse gases" like water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane act like holes in the blanket.  They receive thermal energy in collisions with nitrogen, oxygen and argon molecules and then transfer thermal energy only upwards in the troposphere and eventually to space.

Now in physics we can postulate an hypothesis using the laws of physics and then test it against empirical evidence.  We can't "prove" it, but if no one finds evidence anywhere that disproves it then, over a period of years, it gains acceptance and may take on the status of a "theory" which has a very high probability of being correct.

The radiative greenhouse hypothesis implicitly assumes that the most prolific "greenhouse gas" water vapor does most of the extra warming of the surface which we have shown must happen somehow because the Solar radiation cannot do it all.

But in my book "Why It's Not Carbon Dioxide After All" (see link at the top) I have published a comprehensive study showing that moist regions have lower mean temperatures than drier regions at similar latitudes and altitudes.  No similar study that I am aware of shows water vapor warms, especially not by over 25 degrees as the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would like you to believe.

So the greenhouse radiative forcing conjecture is not based on the laws of physics, because it assumes the Earth's surface acts like a black body, which it does not, and it assumes that radiation from a colder atmosphere causes the surface temperature to be much hotter than the solar radiation could make it.  There is also no evidence that water vapor warms to the extent they claim, and some evidence that it in fact cools, as the laws of physics imply we should expect it to do.
Watch this meeting video
The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube generates centrifugal force that then creates a temperature gradient in the opposite direction to that force along any radius of the cylinder. This is exactly the same process as the force of gravity acting on molecules in a planet's troposphere. Here is another example of molecules being cooled right down to 1°K (-272°C) using centrifugal force. Also click this, this and this and see Graeff's experiments here this meeting video and papers ...
Comprehensive Refutaton of  RF Greenhouse Hypothesis
Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures and
Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Oh what a wicked web we weave
When in our head we do believe
That we can sway another's mind
And, with some hoaxsters, lead the blind
To fear and tremble at the warning
That CO2 does all the warming
By sending down its radiation,
Fooling leaders of the Nation,
'Til they from flooded houses sailing
Join the weeping and the wailing ...
While Mother Nature calmly ruling
Turns that warming into cooling.

by Doug Cotton, 8 August 2015

Click to enlarge.
This is based on
Planetary Orbits
Click on above graph to enlarge it.
p.48: "maximum around 2050"
"next Little-Ice-Age around 2400 AD."

The greenhouse hypothesis is based on incorrect application of the Stefan-Boltzmann law.  We know this because NASA energy diagrams indicate that they assume that Earth's mean surface temperature can be explained by adding solar and atmospheric radiation as on the 'PSI' page.  That cannot be done because the above law is based on the integral of a single Planck function and, by Wien's Displacement Law, the temperature is inversely proportional to the peak (or modal) wavelength. Combining two sources of radiation does not produce the same peak wavelength that would be associated with a hotter source.  The surface temperature is not determined by radiation, but rather by the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient resulting from the Second Law of Thermodynamics

There's no 97% consensus:
click here.