Article Tags: Gary Novak, [email protected]
Equilibrium Prevents Humans from Heating the Atmosphere
There has been a lot of talk about equilibrium lately–Richard Lindzen pointing out the difference (again) between weather and climate and concluding that therefore, there is no equilibrium. And Roy Spencer saying that it is dis-equilibrium that adds the heat. Well, there is a lot more to equilibrium than they have been saying.
If there were no long term equilibrium, there would be nothing controlling temperature of the atmosphere, and it would go to one extreme or the other. The tendency to move toward some temperature is an equilibrium process, even though it is a slow process in the atmosphere. But alarmists are only talking about the slow process. An eight year cooling period doesn’t phase them.
Climate physicists totally agree. Based on the Stephan-Boltzmann constant, which says how much radiation leaves any surface at any temperature, they determined that the 235 watts per square meter of energy entering the earth from the sun must be balanced by 235 W/m² exiting earth into space; and this amount of radiation leaves from a surface which is -19°C. The atmosphere is -19°C at about a height of 5 kilometers. So climatologists claim there is a zone at that height from which 235 W/m² of radiation exits into space. Global warming then occurs when heat is trapped near the surface and pushes that zone up higher in the atmosphere.