The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
Posted on 22 October 2010 by TonyWildish
Skeptics sometimes claim that the explanation for global warming contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. But does it? To answer that, first, we need to know how global warming works. Then, we need to know what the second law of thermodynamics is, and how it applies to global warming. Global warming, in a nutshell, works like this:
The sun warms the Earth. The Earth and its atmosphere radiate heat away into space. They radiate most of the heat that is received from the sun, so the average temperature of the Earth stays more or less constant. Greenhouse gases trap some of the escaping heat closer to the Earth's surface, making it harder for it to shed that heat, so the Earth warms up in order to radiate the heat more effectively. So the greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer - like a blanket conserving body heat - and voila, you have global warming. See What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect for a more detailed explanation.
The second law of thermodynamics has been stated in many ways. For us, Rudolf Clausius said it best:
"Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature."
So if you put something hot next to something cold, the hot thing won't get hotter, and the cold thing won't get colder. That's so obvious that it hardly needs a scientist to say it, we know this from our daily lives. If you put an ice-cube into your drink, the drink doesn't boil!
The skeptic tells us that, because the air, including the greenhouse gasses, is cooler than the surface of the Earth, it cannot warm the Earth. If it did, they say, that means heat would have to flow from cold to hot, in apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
So have climate scientists made an elementary mistake? Of course not! The skeptic is ignoring the fact that the Earth is being warmed by the sun, which makes all the difference.
To see why, consider that blanket that keeps you warm. If your skin feels cold, wrapping yourself in a blanket can make you warmer. Why? Because your body is generating heat, and that heat is escaping from your body into the environment. When you wrap yourself in a blanket, the loss of heat is reduced, some is retained at the surface of your body, and you warm up. You get warmer because the heat that your body is generating cannot escape as fast as before.
If you put the blanket on a tailors dummy, which does not generate heat, it will have no effect. The dummy will not spontaneously get warmer. That's obvious too!
Is using a blanket an accurate model for global warming by greenhouse gases? Certainly there are differences in how the heat is created and lost, and our body can produce varying amounts of heat, unlike the near-constant heat we receive from the sun. But as far as the second law of thermodynamics goes, where we are only talking about the flow of heat, the comparison is good. The second law says nothing about how the heat is produced, only about how it flows between things.
To summarise: Heat from the sun warms the Earth, as heat from your body keeps you warm. The Earth loses heat to space, and your body loses heat to the environment. Greenhouse gases slow down the rate of heat-loss from the surface of the Earth, like a blanket that slows down the rate at which your body loses heat. The result is the same in both cases, the surface of the Earth, or of your body, gets warmer.
So global warming does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. And if someone tells you otherwise, just remember that you're a warm human being, and certainly nobody's dummy.
This post is the Basic Version (written by Tony Wildish) of the skeptic argument "The 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory".
- If IR optical depth of the atmosphere is increased by a small amount by adding to it some well mixed greenhouse gas while everything else is held constant, entropy production rate would decrease. I do not have a rigorous proof of this statement, but based on simplified model calculations I believe it's true.
- If that everything else is allowed to adjust now to the new situation, it would not change in a way that leads to further reduction of entropy production rate (MEP is used at this step).
- Therefore this spontaneous adjustment (a.k.a. feedback) does not amplify the effect of increased IR optical depth, but either leaves it unchanged or attenuates it, that is, the feedback is either neutral or negative.
Please note a "return to an entropy maximum with a total rate of entropy production exactly equal to the previous local maximum" is never mentioned. And you are right, in fact [...] the unknown future maximum could be either lower or higher to some degree", but it is perfectly consistent with points 1-2-3. If you still maintain there must be a positive feedback in the climate system (for example by water vapor, high clouds or whatever), you have several options to attack my reasoning.- You may try to show that in some cases increased IR optical depth alone does not imply a decrease in entropy production rate.
- You could demonstrate the climate system has a unique structure that makes the MEP principle nonoperational in this case.
- Or show us while feedback on entropy production rate is indeed not positive, it can still be positive on surface temperatures.
You may even be able to come up with something else. But please refrain from constructing strawmen. And be specific in order to facilitate understanding.