The problems with that view are that the integrated coal and oil contribution is more than 0.01% and as humans we actually care about very small changes - a degree or two on the back of an absolute temperature about 300 or so, depending where on the surface of the planet you care to measure. And considering the average temperature only gets you so far - the slightly un-even nature of the heat distribution is extremely important to us.  We need summers that are hotter than winters and a UK that is cooler than the Sahara, as much as we need the gulf stream to flow the right way and the poles to be cooler.  If the earth were a billiard ball in space painted in one colour then the uniform  view would be more or less right, but it isn't.

I am a physicist by profession, albeit one who pushes electrons about for a living, but I am one who can appreciate a need for a model with fine structure when I see it, even if I am happy to assume that horses are spherical for first approximations.

Mike.

I think what Physicist is conveniently ignoring is that it's the temperature at the Earth's surface that really matters to us.  And the sea surface to a large extent too.

The rather messy atmosphere messes up the assumption that the Earth is a uniform sphere.

Horses are square not round everyone knows that.

The "Physicist" seems to muddle energy with temperature. If you follow his theory a matt black surface left in sunshine would end up the same temperature as a white one - which I'm pretty sure (if only personal empirical data) isn't the case, at all.

   - Andy.

no but in a vacuum it certainly would.
The reason that the black bits of the cat get hotter in front of the fireplace than the white is that the absorption rate is lower for the white,  Now the emissivity is also lower, but in air the loss from radiation, even from 'radiators' is not the main cooling mechanism. Given a more or less identical cooling, but a variable rate of heat absorption vs reflection now the white bits are cooler.

If you force the only available heating and cooling mechanisms to be radiative, then a uniform black object and a uniform white one reach the same final temp, just the black one gets there a lot faster. But for satellites if we make things that are white, or shiny,  on the side facing the sun and metallically connected to things that are darker - i.e good radiators and absorbers, on the side facing away from the sun, now the equilibrium is not the same as if it was turned about.

The thing is we thrive only because of the fact that the surface of the earth is not all at one uniform temperature, much as a uniform land level would be no good to us either as it would all be flooded, just not as deeply as the deep bits are now.

Mike.

The planet circles the sun and rotates on its axis with a focal point at the equator of 1370 watts per square meter reducing to the poles then off into space via the Hadley cells. The physicist says an equilibrium will be found as the input energy is constant. It might bounce about a bit in the atmosphere as it works its way to the poles and beyond. And may alter temperatures over time as has been seen during the roman warm period and the little ice ages. 

Broadly true at the macro level. Ignores the variation in solar flux with the 22 year sunspot cycle and the variation in earth to sun distance through the year and indeed the fact the sun is running down with occasional hiccups. And ignoring that the temperature of thew atmosphere is quite different from top to bottom. It is colder on mountain tops for  a reason  - that model fails to explain ;-)
  A simple model like that will get you earth surface temperature within about 50 degree of what we actually observe - it is at  the level of the spherical or cuboid horse calculation.  Fine for the astrophysics degree and to eliminate planets where life is clearly impossible.

Unfortunately failing to understand the finer structure of that temperature distribution is fatal to humanity.
Mike.

Mike, horses are donuts.

no but in a vacuum it certainly would.

Ah, maybe so. In my defence, I've not spent much time in vacuums. I am having difficulty picturing it though... if more energy is initially reflected away from the surface, then won't there be less energy available to actually heat the body? - and therefore it'll be able to reach equilibrium at a lower temperature? (I presume radiated energy loss is proportional to body temperature) ... Unless the increase in radiance due to the surface colour exactly (inversely) matches the effect of the initial reflectance...

   - Andy.

Trying to unscamble what you say, the models that the IPCC profess to be proof of AGW only use the Northen Hemesphere where we have monitoring systems but only surface monitoring. They then use pure guess work to assess what's going on laterally.  Then say we're all doomed.

Do you take modelling over observation?

Because the UNs political arm do exactly that.

They use algorithms that are driven to show CO2 is the cause. Proove it isn't CO2.

All the models show way above observation nothing below.