I've learned that even people with physics degrees can misread diagrams about energy movement
Care to wow us with how they should be read?
, misapply thermodynamic principles
Explain where he got it wrong and explain the proper application.
, be fooled by out of context emails,
What was the actual context, then? Have you seen the mystery other emails that change the context?
and somehow manage to conclude that CO2 "should" actually have a cooling influence when observations show it very clearly does not.
No they don't. Correlation doesn't prove causation no matter how much you may want it to. But then who have also misread that section anyway. He is not saying that CO2 has a cooling effect on the atmosphere, he is saying that it prevents more solar energy from reaching the surface which is perfectly true. Upper atmospheric CO2 that absorbs inbound IR radiation emits some of that radiation back into space meaning a net reduction in inbound radiation at the planet surface. This is common sense in the same way you probably understand that some of the IR radiated towards space is radiated back down to the surface. This is, after all, how the green house works.
He's also misunderstanding carbon cycles and concluding that mankind's addition of CO2 to the atmosphere is a negative feedback for CO2. Like, dude, what? Are you drunk? He claims there isn't a tropospheric hot spot at the equator like the models predict.
You misread this section as well. He argued that increase in CO2 increases the various natural mechanisms for CO2 sequestration (increased plant growth, shell formation, etc.), he then argues that the anthropogenic CO2 in th atmosphere increases the plant growth, shell formation and so on, so as human CO2 contribution rises, so does the natural negative feedbacks. But saying it increases negative feedbacks doesn't mean it is a net negative feedback anymore than saying that water vapor creates clouds which are a negative feedback mean that water vapor is a net negative feedback.
There is. Also, he's way overestimating the importance of this hotspot to AGW theory. He's straight up claiming that if there's no hotspot then the theory is wrong automatically. The hotspot is actually an expected result of any warming trend, it's not even unique to the greenhouse effect. He's just making **** up there.
You've missed this point as well. The hot spot predicted by the models doesn't exist, which isn't saying that no hot spot exists. Nobody denies that since the end of the LIA the planet has warmed... or we'd still be in the LIA. But the Hotspot that DOES exist in the tropical troposphere is much weaker than predicted, and since there is no clear understanding of the natural variance at work in the current climate we are left with a warming trend that is NOT abnormal or discernible from natural variation.
He makes a vague claim about other planets warming up. Not only is this a spotty assertion the way he presents it, it's completely irrelevant. The climate of other planets just don't compare well to Earth, because they all have very different variables. There's just no meaningful conclusion to draw from Mars' temperature that would apply to Earth
This is false. You are arguing against your own stance here anyway. IF CO2 is the primary driver of climate as CAGW theory demands then Mar and Venus, which both have far more CO2 than Earth's atmosphere should remain stable given that their CO2 doesn't widely vary. But they warmed as we warmed. So if CO2 isn't driving their warming, then why does it drive Earth's? Are you arguing that Earth's climate is simpler than Mars and Venus?
, and that's ignoring the fact that our actual data about the temperature of other planets is incredibly minimal. After all, we don't have a permanent satellite in orbit of any other planet, nor any stations on their surfaces measuring much of anything. (ok, we got like a rover on Mars but that would be like hanging a thermometer outside your window and claiming global temperature trends with it)
We don't need a permanent satellite in orbit around Venus or Mars. We are already remote viewers of Venus and Mars and can easily take the temperature of those planets from Earth in the same way we can tel the temperature of the Sun and distant stars.... unless you want to deny a century of cosmology.
The usual Medieval Warm Period meme pops up.
You only want to call it a meme because it is an inconvenient truth.