+1 to what eckard said, you're confusing two different things.
Another way of describing it would be a "thought" experiment..
If you took a thermometer and simply moved it vertically upwards through the air in a static atmosphere (no wind, no updrafts/down drafts) in an ideal world you would see the temperature drop at the ISA rate ( until you reach the top of the tropopause). The thermometer is measuring the temperature of different molecules as it moves upwards.
OTOH if, somehow, you could tie the thermometer inside the well known imaginary parcel/ballon of air at sea level, and then displace the parcel of air itself upwards the air whose temperature you are measuring is no longer static, the molecules are now moving vertically (as is the thermometer) and are subject to cooling caused by expansion as the pressure drops and ballon/parcel expands. The air would cool at the dry or wet rate, depending on humdity/dew point , etc.
P.S. For the avoidance of doubt and nit-picking I am well aware the above is very much a first approximation/ hand waving explanation....
Last edited by wiggy; 9th Sep 2016 at 09:38.