Basic heat loss theories demolish the climate change nonsense

You can learn how to calculate heat loss for a pittance, publish your own climate change narrative, and possibly get a grant if you pretend there is a threat

The B.C. government has courses on calculating residential heat loss, a common practice by mechanical engineers in sizing the right heating and cooling equipment for new construction. The course costs CAD$1,295.00. You don’t need a degree in atmospheric physics or climatology. There are even grants for people needing financial support to take the course.

Why is this relevant to climate change theory? Answer - basic thermodynamics. “Heat loss” is a concept integral to the laws of thermodynamics. The everday definition and formulae are well known.

Builders need to ensure the heating system in a new construction has enough capability to offset the estimated “heat loss” to ensure the building can be maintained at a constant temperature in all weather conditions. The capability is expressed in the same units as the heat loss - watts. For those who have forgotten, a “watt” is one joule per second and a joule is a defined amount of energy. One defined property of all matter is its “specific heat capacity” which is the number of joules of energy needed to increase the temperature of one kilogram of the matter by one degree Centigrade (or one degree Kelvin since the units are identical even if the scale is displaced by 273 degrees). For those who have forgotten the Kelvin scale is based on absolute zero (the temperature where all molecular activity is impossible) which is minus 273 degrees in the more common Centigrade scale.

The specific heat capacity of atmosphere (air) is 1,004 joules per kilogram. The so-called “Greenhouse Effect” (the “GHG Effect”, an annoyingly absurd term for a phenomenon which has absolutely nothing to do with greenhouses) is the reality that without any atmosphere the average temperature of the Earth would be minus 18 degrees Centigrade instead of the approximately +15 degree Centigrade we enjoy. Basically, the atmosphere retains enough heat (or energy if you prefer, since heat and energy are identities) to offset the heat loss from Earth at 15 degrees in equilibrium.

Just like the heat escaping from your home despite insulation (through windows, doors, cracks, radiation, convection and a host of other processes) needs to be offset by heat created by your furnace or baseboards etc. to maintain the temperature of your home at a constant level you have set with your thermostat, Earth’s temperature remains more or less constant as a result of sufficient of Sun’s energy being prevented from immediate escape to space by the GHG effect.

There is no serious dispute that the GHG effect is approximately 240 watts per square meter of the Earth’s surface at a constant CO2 level of about 280 parts per million of concentration in the atmosphere. What is disputed is the effect of an increase in CO2 concentrations on global average temperatures.

It is close to trivial to explain that the temperature increase of any mass exposed to an increase in energy (from the Sun, your furnace, a camp fire, or an electrical circuit) is equal to the joules of energy applied divided by the “specific heat capacity” of the particular mass divided by the mass in kilograms.

Expressed as a formula:

Temperature increase = joules applied / (mass in kilograms x specific heat capacity).

I am being pedantic to repeat the obvious as a mathematical formula but do so for one reason - the relationship is “linear”. Mass in kilograms times specific heat capacity for any given mass is a constant.

We know that the mass of the atmosphere is 5.146e18 Kilograms (more or less, since the mass will change with the concentration of water vapour from time to time) and we know the specific heat capacity is 1,004 joules per kilogram. We don’t need to multiply these out to solve the increase in global average temperature resulting from a higher amount of energy being applied to that mass -we just need to know how much more energy is applied.

We can be thankful for the billions of dollar spent on “climate research” and published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) every few years since, while the alarming rhetoric coming out of this left-wing United Nations organization and encouraging billions or even trillions of dollars of payments by rich countries to poor countries to help offset the strident claims of damage to the poorer nations from “climate change” is political science, hidden away in the reports (pretty well all of them) is the estimate that a doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will increase the energy balance by 3.77 watts/square meter of Earth’s surface from the estimated 240 watts/square meter estimated to be the level which keeps global average temperatures at 15 degrees Centigrade.

Basically, those billions helped many people understand that 240 watts per meter squared of “retained energy” in the atmosphere increased global average surface temperature by 33 degrees (from minus 18 to plus 15) and that each doubling of CO2 levels would add another 3.77 watts per square meter of retained energy.

But the so-called “scientists” (many were scientists, others were just hopping on the bandwagon of publishing what they called “research” which was no more than doing linear regressions in a complex chaotic non-linear system using the same hackneyed and imperfect data base used by everone else to create the illusion that there was an alarming and potentially catastrophic potential rise in global temperature and humanity had better act before it was “too late”. What they did not do was apply their grade school algebra to the problem to see if their conclusion made any sense.

Since we all learned the associative law of mathematics in grade school, we know that the increase in global average temperature of this linear function can be found by applying the ratio of 243.77/240 to the base of 33 degrees (the insulating effect of atmosphere offsetting an equal amount of heat loss to keep temperatures constant).

243.77/240 x 33 = 0.52 degrees Centigrade.

You can debate whether the 240 or the 3.77 figures are accurate (although there is, to use a popular term, a “consensus” that they are reasonably accurate), but you cannot debate the arithmetic. Taking IPCC reports at face value, the inescapable conclusion is that doubling CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm by volume to 560 ppm by volume has the potential to increase global average temperatures by 0.52 degrees Centigrade and that process is well underway now that CO2 concentrations have reached approximately 420 ppm by volume.

Double CO2 levels again and the temperature rise of another 0.52 degrees would bring the total increase from pre-industrial times to 1.04 degrees Centigrade. At that point, CO2 levels would be 1,020 parts per million of atmosphere by volume. Double again to 2,040 parts per million by volume and the cumulative temperature increase comes to 1.56 degrees Centigrade.

The alarmists like to claim rising atmospheric CO2 levels are attributable to fossil fuels and must be curtailed to save humanity. They ignore the fact that the annual increase in fossil fuels of about 35 gigatonnes is equivalent to about 7 ppm of atmosphere by mass (mass is 5.146e18 kg and 1 ppm by mass is 5.146 gigatonnes) or about 10 ppm by volume, but the measured increase in CO2 concentrations (done at Mauna Loa) is running about 2 ppm by volume. It seems the bulk of the added CO2 coming from fossil fuels is being removed from atmosphere by other processes (largely photosynthesis and absorption by oceans). For fossil fuels to bring atmospheric CO2 levels to 2,040 parts per million would be quite a chore since complete combustion of oil, for example, produces 433 Kg of CO2 per barrel of oil and there are only 1.7 trillion barrels of oil reserves known to exist. Total combustion of all known oil reserves would add 1.7 x 433 x 10^15 = 7,361 trillion kilograms of CO2 which can be expressed as 736.1 gigatons, equal to 143 ppm of atmosphere by mass or 200 ppm by volume.

Stated simply, burning all oil known to be economically developable would create CO2 equivalent to 200 ppm by volume of atmosphere if none of that oil went into asphalt or petrochemicals. Natural processes like photsynthesis would remove about 80% of that, and the total increase in atmospheric CO2 levels from oil use would be a paltry 40 ppm by volume. For natural gas, the figure would be less than half of that. For coal, about three times. For all fossil fuels, complete combustion of the world’s fossil fuels reserves would add 240 ppm to atmospheric CO2 levels and have virtually no measurable effect on global average temperatures.

Still alarmed? I am, but not by fossil fuels. I am alarmed by the fossil fools inhabiting the White House, Ottawa and Whitehall who are doing extraordinary damage to the world economy and letting the activist socialists in the United Nations dictate destructive policies on Western economies and threaten another century of underdevelopment to poorer economies by denying them essential, reliable and low cost energy from fossil fuels.