Sometime after Kiehl-Trenberth published their model in 1997 showing 79% of the energy leaving the surface of the earth being in the form of radiation, with only 21% being due to conduction, convection and evaporation, NASA produced a model showing 41% radiation instead of 79%. Why? Presumably, trying to regain some credibility, since 79% radiation is too absurd for any scientist to believe. Only white hot metals in a vacuum could emit 79% radiation, not the surface of the earth.
But recently, NASA produced a new model with approximately the same numbers as Kiehl-Trenberth, showing 79% of the energy leaving the surface of the earth as radiation. A few other trivial changes were made for the claimed purpose of updating.
Why did NASA recently cave to the ridiculous 79% radiation? One reason might have been the fact that science is never wrong, and Kiehl-Trenberth published so long ago that their model is incorporated into IPCC reports. More importantly, Kiehl-Trenberth used the Stefan-Boltzmann constant to derive their number. To reduce the radiation to 41%, as NASA originally did, is to defy the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, which is not what science does.
What this shows is that the Stefan-Boltzmann constant is so ridiculous that it will not produce a credible result.
Emissivity Omitted
In addition to the absurdly high radiation required by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, the 390 W/m² (revised to 398.2) radiation leaving from the surface of the earth is supposed to be adjusted for emissivity, which is now days said to be 0.64 for the earth’s surface. This means 0.64 times 398.2, which equals 255 W/m² instead of 398.2 W/m². Yet the recently produced NASA energy budget continues to show the same numbers as the Kiehl-Trenberth model.
Presumably, when the Kiehl-Trenberth model was produced in 1997, a number did not exist for the emissivity of the earth’s surface, so it was omitted. Later, the model by NASA reduced the radiation from 79% to 41%, presumably attempting to make it look more credible. But by then, the Kiehl-Trenberth number had been enshrined in several editions of the IPCC reports, so NASA apparently felt maintaining the same number would be less incriminating than reducing it to almost one half. And still, emissivity was not used to reduce the number to 255 W/m², which shows that a consistent absurdity was more important to them than correct scientific procedures.
The Kiehl-Trenberth model is this:
