The Radiative Reckoning: Why the Greenhouse Gospel Violates Physics and Dooms the Climate Crusade! By Professor X

The climate cathedral is cracking at its foundations; it will require some technicalities to show this, but the issue is important. For half a century, the high priests of alarmism, IPCC, NASA, CSIRO, have preached a radiative gospel: Earth's surface basks in a mere 168 W/m² of solar kiss, yet glows at a balmy 288 K (15°C). By the merciless Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body per unit time is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature, that pittance should freeze us at 233 K (-40°C), a 55°C shortfall. Their miracle? "Back radiation" from frigid atmospheric gases, allegedly beaming 340 W/m² downward to warm a hotter surface. It's the keystone of Net Zero's trillion-dollar edifice, the justification for carbon taxes, windmill forests, and geoengineering hubris. But here's the heresy that topples the temple: This violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics in broad daylight. As physicist Douglas J. Cotton exposes in his paradigm-shifting critique, the true engine isn't radiative witchcraft, it's "heat creep," a non-radiative, gravitationally driven molecular dance that obeys entropy without exception. Once you grasp this, the entire CO₂ villain narrative collapses like a house of radiative cards. The "settled science" isn't settled, it's shattered physics propping up a political Ponzi.

Let's run the numbers cold. Earth's energy budget diagrams, NASA's holy grail, claim the surface absorbs ~168 W/m² direct solar, plus ~340 W/m² "downwelling longwave" from greenhouse gases, totalling ~508 W/m² incoming. Outgoing? ~398 W/m² up, plus evaporation and convection. Balance achieved, crisis averted. Except... the Second Law laughs. As Wikipedia's own thermodynamics entry states: "In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the interacting thermodynamic systems never decreases." Climatologists dodge the italicised interacting with a sleight of hand: "Net flux!" they cry, claiming global radiation out (somewhere else) offsets local entropy sins. But physics demands locality, energy transfer between two systems, not a planetary shell game.

Cotton's indictment is surgical: A colder atmosphere (say, 255 K at the effective emission height) cannot net-warm a hotter surface (288 K) via radiation without work. Clausius's 1850 formulation is ironclad: "Heat cannot, of itself, pass from a colder to a hotter body." Back radiation exists, molecules emit isotropically, but its net effect on a warmer surface is zero or cooling, per Kirchhoff's Law: Absorptivity equals emissivity at each wavelength. The surface, already a blackbody radiator at IR frequencies, absorbs and re-emits instantly; no net gain. Experiments confirm: Pyrgeometers measuring "downwelling IR" actually capture net exchange, not magical heating. Nobel Laureate John Clauser, 2022 Physics winner, calls it "pseudoscience," a violation so blatant it would flunk freshman thermodynamics.

The 55°C gap? Not a greenhouse miracle, but a radiative modeler's fudge. Real-world surfaces hit 288 K because solar input isn't 168 W/m² averaged, it's ~340 W/m² peak at noon, absorbed diurnally, then redistributed via non-radiative physics the models ignore.

Enter Cotton's "heat creep," a resurrection of Loschmidt's 1876 gravito-thermal effect, banished by greenhouse dogma but vindicated by planetary data. In any gaseous column under gravity, molecular collisions create a temperature gradient: dT/dz = -g/C_p, where g is gravity and C_p specific heat. Warmer at the bottom, colder aloft, automatically, no radiation required. Energy flows downward via conduction and convection, then radiates to space from higher, colder layers. This is entropy-compliant: Heat moves from hot to cold, but the gradient sustains surface warmth.

Proof in the planets:

Venus: 735 K surface, 92 atm CO₂, but solar input only explains ~200 K. Heat creep through its dense troposphere, driven by gravity, not "runaway greenhouse," delivers the rest. Even below the surface, the process continues, per Cotton's 2012 paper.

Uranus: 5,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth, yet its tropospheric base hits 320 K, hotter than Earth's surface. No greenhouse gases, no internal heat source. Pure gravito-thermal gradient.

Moon: No atmosphere, no CO₂, yet core temperatures reach 1,400°C. Subsurface heat creep from primordial formation, sustained by gravity's compressive work.

Earth's version? Morning shadows warm before sunrise—energy creeping laterally from sunlit regions via molecular diffusion, not back radiation. CSIRO's own FOI documents admit water vapour's net cooling effect; CO₂ at 0.04% is climatically impotent.

The radiative greenhouse hypothesis (RGH) claims CO₂ traps heat like a blanket. Reality: Blankets work via conduction, not radiation. Earth's atmosphere is 99% O₂/N₂, transparent to IR. CO₂'s 15μm band is saturated; doubling it adds ~1 W/m² forcing, per MODTRAN models, swamped by cloud feedback and ocean cycles. Water vapour, the real "greenhouse" gas, dominates via latent heat and convection, not trapping.

Empirical nails in the coffin:

No hotspot: RGH predicts tropical tropospheric warming 1.2x surface rate. Radiosondes and satellites show zero, a fatal flaw per Christy (2023).

Solar dominance: Nikolov-Zeller's 2021 Geomatics paper: 100% of post-2000 warming explained by solar irradiance and albedo shifts, CO₂ correlation spurious.

485 million years: Earth's coolest period now, per Science (2024), ancient hothouses thrived without CO₂ panic.

Why cling to a broken model? Follow the money. Net Zero's $7 trillion annual tab, carbon credits, subsidies, geoengineering, requires a villain. CO₂ fits: Invisible, industrial, taxable. Heat creep? No revenue stream, no control. The IPCC's 4,000-page tomes ignore Loschmidt, citing "consensus" over Clausius. Clauser's 2023 Lindau speech: "Climate science has metastasised into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience."

The endgame? Courtrooms. Cotton's 20,000+ readers, zero refutations, his 2012 paper stands unchallenged. FOI leaks, whistleblowers, and satellite data converge: The emperor's radiative robes are entropy's illusion.

The global warming problem isn't CO₂, it's a radiative model that defies thermodynamics. Heat creep warms worlds from Venus to your morning lawn, no greenhouse required. CO₂'s a bit player; water vapour cools net; solar cycles steer the ship. The 55°C "gap" isn't a mystery, it's proof the budget diagrams are radiative fiction.

Time to torch the textbooks. Demand IPCC cite Loschmidt, not Lacis. Fund heat creep experiments, sealed columns under gravity, not GCMs tuned to fear. The laws of physics don't negotiate. Embrace them, or watch Net Zero bankrupt the West on a lie.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/10/the_fatal_flaw_in_climate_science.html