Simple solar system measurements indicate a weaker than expected relevance of Carbon Dioxide to present day earth temperature.

Chris Barnes

Recent and newly discovered causes of global warming are discussed especially in the context of lower relevance to CO2. Heat transfer mechanisms are discussed. The link between convective heat transfer and the thermodynamic and planetary hypotheses of Nikolov and Zeller are discussed. It is considered that the maximum surface temperature reached on an airless planetary body ( planet or moon) is purely a function of solar TSI and albedo. The moon and Phobos are chosen as the first two planetary bodies based on these being close enough to approximate the TSI of earth and Mars respectively. Mercury is forced to be chosen as a third planetary body as Venus does not have a moon. Further, the assumption is made that a planet with an atmosphere will be warmer because of greenhouse warming, however caused. If Nikolov and Zeller hold, the excess temperature of a planet with an atmosphere should be independent of its atmospheric composition. To test this part of the hypothesis, Venus, Mars and Earth are then used. The first two being examples of planets with atmospheres comprising of 95% plus CO2 and the later just over 400 ppm CO2. If XS temperature is independent of planetary atmospheric composition the hypothesis predicts that XS temperature of these three planets should be directly proportional to their atmospheric pressure. If CO2 is the dominant greenhouse gas than earth should not fall in the same linear extrapolation with the other two planets or at least should show a very large negative residual as it has hardly any C02 in its atmosphere, only .0415% as opposed to over 95%. First the proportion of solar TSI arriving at surface of the three airless planetary bodies is linearly regressed against know maximum temperatures for these bodies. Then known TSI’s for earth, mars and Venus are inserted into this algorithm arising to calculate surface temperatures of these planets as though they were airless, i.e. with no atmosphere and no cloud albedo. Next calculate on known maximum measured temperatures for these planets and ascribe the difference to a parameter called excess temperature. This excess temperature is then plotted against surface pressure for the three planets concerned and examine the quality of the regression factor and any residuals. The XS Temp for earth is shown to be (observed) = -.4 and the difference adding almost pure CO2 ( 95.5%) = +1.98K. , it is estimated from the above that an atmospheric composition of 13.5% CO2 would cause some .8C of warming. Extrapolating to present levels of CO2 i.e. .0415% yields some 3 milli degrees Kelvin of warming i.e. totally insignificant and is exactly as observed recently by the author for Northern mid-Latitudes. CO2 could still technically be classed as a ‘greenhouse’ gas of very minor, indeed irrelevant proportions but given our real and mobile atmosphere with convection as the main means of shifting heat we need not worry in the foreseeable future. The conclusion is that an atmosphere only traps significantly large heat if it is pressurized to huge amounts as with Venus.