Why Venus Is Hotter Than Mercury*

July 2021

Planetary energy balances claimed to prove that greenhouse gases warm a planet are absolute nonsense, and a single calculated temperature is meaningless.  They completely ignore things like rotational speed.  Some references on planetary energy balances actually state that they only apply for fast rotation, but they don’t apply there either.  Using a 4^th power law for radiation completely invalidates the calculation and use of a single average temperature. Rotational speed is the reason that Venus is hotter than Mercury, not because of it's atmosphere of mostly CO2 as claimed by climate science.  Mercury has a solar irradiance of 9116.4 W/m2 and Venus 2611 with less reflected due to some small atmospheric absorption, compared to earth and to Mercury, which has no atmosphere.  A rotation on Mercury takes 59 days and 243 days on Venus.  So during the (much longer) daytime, Venus receives significantly more energy per unit area than Mercury, making it hotter and a volcanic planet believed to have a molten core. The atmosphere of Venus actually mitigates daily high and low temperatures just like on earth, where it does so to the benefit of all life, but to some much smaller degree.  Co2 does not absorb most of the ir radiation as you can see in it’s absorption spectrum below (from NIST for earth at lab conditions and 33.33% co2), and no visible or uv light, so almost all of the incident radiation reaches the surface.  Venus atmosphere is thought to be about 97.5% co2 and have volcanic clouds of sulfuric acid near the surface.

* Taken from AICHE Discussion Central discussion of "UHI's and Droughts", in which the fraudulence of climate/environmental science, atmospheric spectroscopy, and greenhouse gas warming theory is proven, and in which the true explanation of global warming and drought is given by David Cummins and his two papers also given on this website.