2014 hottest year on record

Rigged4Flight said:
IMO, man can't help but affect the climate. Just like volcanoes, forests, large fires and other contributors to the atmosphere. But man has never, will never, and could never begin, end or significantly influence the glacial cycles of our planet. The contributions of man are laughingly miniscule when compared to the incredibly powerful engine that is our sun/planet/moon.

Please don't take this as me trying to say that we shouldn't clean up our act and live in a healthier world. We can, and we should. But don't delude yourself into thinking that any changes we make will have any real or lasting affect on our global climate.

I'll just leave these two graphs here. Glacial periods last ~100,000 years. That's a very long period of cold climate. Interglacial periods last ~10,000-20,000 years, which is a relatively short period of warmer climate. So it's normal for the Earth to be in a state of climatic change, with glacial periods lasting significantly longer than warmer periods. Warm climatic periods show as relatively quick and short-lived spikes when viewed against a historical graph. It is normal for the global temperature to raise quickly until it peaks, and then drop quickly back into a glacial period.

For more info on the graphs, google is your friend (and any link I provide would be assumed to be biased).

UcO1eLr.jpg


b13e99e3cdc6.jpg
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The only time frame they are interested in is 1975-1998. Everything else can be made to fit.
 
Rigged4Flight said:
IMO, man can't help but affect the climate. Just like volcanoes, forests, large fires and other contributors to the atmosphere. But man has never, will never, and could never begin, end or significantly influence the glacial cycles of our planet. The contributions of man are laughingly miniscule when compared to the incredibly powerful engine that is our sun/planet/moon.

Please don't take this as me trying to say that we shouldn't clean up our act and live in a healthier world. We can, and we should. But don't delude yourself into thinking that any changes we make will have any real or lasting affect on our global climate.

I'll just leave these two graphs here. Glacial periods last ~100,000 years. That's a very long period of cold climate. Interglacial periods last ~10,000-20,000 years, which is a relatively short period of warmer climate. So it's normal for the Earth to be in a state of climatic change, with glacial periods lasting significantly longer than warmer periods. Warm climatic periods show as relatively quick and short-lived spikes when viewed against a historical graph. It is normal for the global temperature to raise quickly until it peaks, and then drop quickly back into a glacial period.

For more info on the graphs, google is your friend (and any link I provide would be assumed to be biased).

UcO1eLr.jpg


b13e99e3cdc6.jpg
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That last chart has to be fake. After all we are in a period of unprecedented warming. We use to think the medieval warm period was warmer than today, but now we know that didn't happen. Some skeptic probably fabricated evidence of wineries in Yorkshire England and Viking settlements in Greenland.
 
azure said:
Your arguments have already been refuted six ways from Sunday, but just in case someone isn't up to speed and doesn't want to slog through 800+ posts:

CO2 doesn't provide "further warming". It slows the escape of heat from the surface, effectively acting like insulation. Ordinary insulation slows the escape of heat by providing a barrier to thermal conduction. In the case of the planet, the heat is in the form of IR radiation and the CO2 absorbs the upward radiation and keeps its energy in the system, but otherwise the basic principle is the same. By your argument it would make no sense to wear a coat when it's warm outside, or insulate the walls of a house to cut down your heating bill.

Convection only cools the surface, it doesn't cool the planet as a whole because the atmosphere can't escape into space.

Re-radiation by CO2 is NOT instantaneous, but even if it were, some of the re-radiated energy goes back downwards, and that by itself would slow the escape of heat. As it turns out, most CO2 molecules that have absorbed an IR photon transfer that energy to other molecules via collisions, so we are back to convection which cannot cool the planet as a whole anyway.

There are two effects, scattering and absorption, neither of which produce heat. Most molecules in the atmosphere scatter IR radiation only. CO2 can do either but is much likelier to absorb it.

Yes, the temperature in an atmosphere will (generally, everything else being equal) increase as the pressure increases on the way down. But the equation only predicts what the temperature should be at the altitude from which the radiation can escape into space. With a greenhouse effect, that altitude is high in the atmosphere. Without a greenhouse effect, that altitude is ground level, and at every altitude on the way up it is colder than it would be with a greenhouse effect.

The theory of blackbody radiation is based on a very deep level on the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenhouse effect mechanism is based on the theory of blackbody radiation. Does anyone really think that it would have taken over 100 years for someone to spot that the mechanism contradicts thermodynamics? That assertion defies common sense, unless you think that physicists are complete morons.
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You know how you can tell if something is pseudoscience? It doesn't square with reality. Only on paper can a warm object extract heat from a cold object. Except for a device like a refrigerator, where work is performed.
 
LDJones said:
That was the 60s. The more we learn, the more obvious the existence of a Creator becomes.
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Nah, you just have a propensity to accept unfounded notions. If you have something so obvious, why not tell us about it?
 
ChrisK said:
We're doomed.
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Well, if our social inertia continues on its current path, yes we are, however that future is still in its fuzzy state. We do still have the opportunity to get back on our destined track, but it doesn't seem likely. We have everything we need except faith.
 
vintage cessna said:
You know how you can tell if something is pseudoscience? It doesn't square with reality. Only on paper can a warm object extract heat from a cold object. Except for a device like a refrigerator, where work is performed.
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Translation for non-physicists: VC thinks the greenhouse effect involves extracting heat from the cooler atmosphere and transferring it to the surface. It doesn't. It involves transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere and to space at a slower rate than would otherwise happen, all the while the Sun is heating the surface at a constant rate.

That is why he says it involves a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which requires work to transfer heat from cold to warm.

At other times he has said that it involves creating energy out of nothing, which would violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Again, if the greenhouse effect violated ANY law of thermodynamics, it would have been discovered long ago. I think readers of this thread have more common sense than to believe that physicists are so stupid that no one would have realized that before now.

There are plenty of skeptical arguments out there that serious and reputable climate scientists take seriously. I've yet to find one who doubts that the greenhouse effect is real.
 
azure said:
Translation for non-physicists: VC thinks the greenhouse effect involves extracting heat from the cooler atmosphere and transferring it to the surface. It doesn't. It involves transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere and to space at a slower rate than would otherwise happen, all the while the Sun is heating the surface at a constant rate.

That is why he says it involves a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which requires work to transfer heat from cold to warm.

At other times he has said that it involves creating energy out of nothing, which would violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Again, if the greenhouse effect violated ANY law of thermodynamics, it would have been discovered long ago. I think readers of this thread have more common sense than to believe that physicists are so stupid that no one would have realized that before now.

There are plenty of skeptical arguments out there that serious and reputable climate scientists take seriously. I've yet to find one who doubts that the greenhouse effect is real.
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Does the "back radiation" give the surface any heat or not? Is there a loop going on or not?

Or is it all about slowing the movement of heat through the atmosphere?
 
azure said:
Translation for non-physicists: VC thinks the greenhouse effect involves extracting heat from the cooler atmosphere and transferring it to the surface. It doesn't. It involves transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere and to space at a slower rate than would otherwise happen, all the while the Sun is heating the surface at a constant rate.

That is why he says it involves a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which requires work to transfer heat from cold to warm.

At other times he has said that it involves creating energy out of nothing, which would violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Again, if the greenhouse effect violated ANY law of thermodynamics, it would have been discovered long ago. I think readers of this thread have more common sense than to believe that physicists are so stupid that no one would have realized that before now.

There are plenty of skeptical arguments out there that serious and reputable climate scientists take seriously. I've yet to find one who doubts that the greenhouse effect is real.
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Plenty of physicists have realized what you say is bunk and it was discovered long ago. This is a theory used for a political agenda, nothing to do with science.
 
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azure said:
Translation for non-physicists: VC thinks the greenhouse effect involves extracting heat from the cooler atmosphere and transferring it to the surface. It doesn't. It involves transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere and to space at a slower rate than would otherwise happen, all the while the Sun is heating the surface at a constant rate.

That is why he says it involves a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which requires work to transfer heat from cold to warm.

At other times he has said that it involves creating energy out of nothing, which would violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Again, if the greenhouse effect violated ANY law of thermodynamics, it would have been discovered long ago. I think readers of this thread have more common sense than to believe that physicists are so stupid that no one would have realized that before now.

There are plenty of skeptical arguments out there that serious and reputable climate scientists take seriously. I've yet to find one who doubts that the greenhouse effect is real.
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I think I have finally realized what you are saying. The 2nd law of thermodymics only applies to systems, not indivual movements. That is very creative. Hence the invention of this net nonsense.
 
vintage cessna said:
I think I have finally realized what you are saying. The 2nd law of thermodymics only applies to systems, not indivual movements. That is very creative. Hence the invention of this net nonsense.
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That's very nearly correct. The 2nd law applies on the macroscopic scale, not the microscopic. It is basically a statistical property of systems with many degrees of freedom. It does not forbid a warmer body from absorbing a photon emitted by a cooler body.

There is nothing creative about this, it is classical physics. I recommend reading Statistical Physics by Fred Reif, a very good introduction to statistical mechanics on the sophomore (college) level. It should be readable by anyone who has taken a first course in algebra based mechanics.
 
vintage cessna said:
After reading the response of the APS I can understand why he resigned.

In the APS response, they list as one of their stated positions as " The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years".

That is just in line with what the IPCC claims. Which is just the image they want to portray. Man filling up the atmosphere with CO2 as if we were pumping up a balloon.

I guess they just ignore the good work that has been done studying the actual dwell time of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Especially the study of the atmosphere after open air nuclear testing in the Soviet Union. That study revealed that the maximum dwell time of CO2 in the in the atmosphere was 5 years. And that is for CO2 that had been forced by the exposion to extremely high altitudes. CO2 in the lower part of the atmosphere of course would not dwell as long.

Now people have run the numbers of what the CO2 concentration should be based on this very long dwell time. The CO2 concentration level should be much higher than it actually is. When confronted with mathemical reality the climate scientists have now invented yet another excuse about "CO2 sinks " of some sort. Just from the amount of CO2 being released coupled with deforestation one would think the concentration would be higher if CO2 dwelled in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

Just another ugly fact that doesn't fit. Like the "tropical hot spots" that should have appeared long ago. I don't think they have come up with an excuse for that one, just forget about it I guess.
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The phrase "dwell time" is ambiguous. A molecule of CO2, on average, does spend only a few years in the atmosphere. The time over which extra CO2 can influence the climate is much longer than that because there are natural sources of CO2 as well - that dwarf our contribution - so the rate at which CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere if we stopped spewing it out is quite slow.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm
 
azure said:
That's very nearly correct. The 2nd law applies on the macroscopic scale, not the microscopic. It is basically a statistical property of systems with many degrees of freedom. It does not forbid a warmer body from absorbing a photon emitted by a cooler body.

There is nothing creative about this, it is classical physics. I recommend reading Statistical Physics by Fred Reif, a very good introduction to statistical mechanics on the sophomore (college) level. It should be readable by anyone who has taken a first course in algebra based mechanics.
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I'll stick with the scientists that do not try to obscure the laws of nature.
 
azure said:
The phrase "dwell time" is ambiguous. A molecule of CO2, on average, does spend only a few years in the atmosphere. The time over which extra CO2 can influence the climate is much longer than that because there are natural sources of CO2 as well - that dwarf our contribution - so the rate at which CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere if we stopped spewing it out is quite slow.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm
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I have to admire you. Your talents are being wasted. You should work for the White House Press Secretary. Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter, they both do the same thing. You know like what the definition of "is" is, that kind of thing.
 
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vintage cessna said:
That last chart has to be fake. After all we are in a period of unprecedented warming. We use to think the medieval warm period was warmer than today, but now we know that didn't happen. Some skeptic probably fabricated evidence of wineries in Yorkshire England and Viking settlements in Greenland.
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The last chart was a simplified version of the one above it. But I know what you mean.

The popular science climatologists require a plethora of models and atmospheric readings and atmospheric temperatures taken within a relatively short timeframe that frequently don't work together but with a tweak here and a blind eye there they OBVIOUSLY point to we're killing our world and sentencing our grandchildren to a horrible life on a hellhouse planet. All of the global warming logic only makes sense if it ignores the really long term history of the planet. And sinse the climate has become political science, it's hard to step back from the adrenalin rush of a really good argument and get back to the basic charge of the scientist, which is to question everything.

In the 70's, the climate firehose we were all drinking from was that humans were plunging the planet into a new ice age. I'm used to viewing popular science with a skeptical eye. This is just another phase humans are going through, and we'll eventually grow out of it - but not before we spend trillions of dollars worth of the sweat of the common worker to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
 
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Rigged4Flight said:
The last chart was a simplified version of the one above it. But I know what you mean.

The popular science climatologists require a plethora of models and atmospheric readings and atmospheric temperatures taken within a relatively short timeframe that frequently don't work together but with a tweak here and a blind eye there they OBVIOUSLY point to we're killing our world and sentencing our grandchildren to a horrible life on a hellhouse planet. All of the global warming logic only makes sense if it ignores the really long term history of the planet. And sinse the climate has become political science, it's hard to step back from the adrenalin rush of a really good argument and get back to the basic charge of the scientist, which is to question everything.

In the 70's, the climate firehose we were all drinking from was that humans were plunging the planet into a new ice age. I'm used to viewing popular science with a skeptical eye. This is just another phase humans are going through, and we'll eventually grow out of it - but not before we spend trillions of dollars worth of the sweat of the common worker to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
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I think you make all good points here. I was pretty much oblivious to this issue until I read that the EPA had declared CO2 a pollutant and it piqued my interest. The deeper I got into this, the more fascinating the story became. I am just thankful there were some people, scientist and non scientist, that were not asleep on the switch. It is not easy to go against the money and herd mentality. I think they have limited the damage. I won't say the truth will prevail in the end, more likely the whole episode will fade to memory and be replaced by the next boogeyman on the horizon. What really bothers me is that the two government agencies I thought we could trust, NASA and NOAA, have been compromised.
 
vintage cessna said:
I'll stick with the scientists that do not try to obscure the laws of nature.
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The depths at which scientists obscure an entire set of laws of nature because they don't allow consideration of an intelligence based model is truly astounding. "LaLaLaLaLaLaLa... it cant exist!" Untold billions in experiments over the last century, and they just cannot take hold of that spear which pierces all the holes in scientific theories and fills them.

Do you know why the face palm is a universal gesture among mankind? Because that's how God looks at us.
 
Rigged4Flight said:
The last chart was a simplified version of the one above it. But I know what you mean.

The popular science climatologists require a plethora of models and atmospheric readings and atmospheric temperatures taken within a relatively short timeframe that frequently don't work together but with a tweak here and a blind eye there they OBVIOUSLY point to we're killing our world and sentencing our grandchildren to a horrible life on a hellhouse planet. All of the global warming logic only makes sense if it ignores the really long term history of the planet. And sinse the climate has become political science, it's hard to step back from the adrenalin rush of a really good argument and get back to the basic charge of the scientist, which is to question everything.

In the 70's, the climate firehose we were all drinking from was that humans were plunging the planet into a new ice age. I'm used to viewing popular science with a skeptical eye. This is just another phase humans are going through, and we'll eventually grow out of it - but not before we spend trillions of dollars worth of the sweat of the common worker to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
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You mention that science has become political science. The language used in this debate is very telling. The scientists or lay people that question or point out flaws in the MMGW proposition are derisively called " skeptics or deniers ".
Sounds like words used by intolerant fundamental religious people, and with the same connotations.
 
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It really is comical the denial we are willing to inflict on ourselves. When the picture from I believe Apollo 11, of the Earth Rise over the Moon, people were supposed to get it, but they haven't. The whole reason we went to the Moon was to get that picture. That was what that inspiration was for, to show us how small and fragile our planet is; but we aren't getting it, or more accurately, aren't wanting to get it.
 
azure said:
The phrase "dwell time" is ambiguous. A molecule of CO2, on average, does spend only a few years in the atmosphere. The time over which extra CO2 can influence the climate is much longer than that because there are natural sources of CO2 as well - that dwarf our contribution - so the rate at which CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere if we stopped spewing it out is quite slow.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm
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"The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years"

The statement is brilliant. The IPCC would love to convey the imagine of a balloon being filled with CO2 . If this stuff is residing in the atmosphere for at least two hundred years that is the first image most people will relate to. But if called to account, they can deny that is what they meant, they only meant the effects of CO2 could last that long.

Is this the language of science or politics. Are you proud of that statement by an organization you belong to ? Do you think that statement could mislead the public? Are you surprised that a scientist with integrity would resign from that society?
 
Henning said:
It really is comical the denial we are willing to inflict on ourselves. When the picture from I believe Apollo 11, of the Earth Rise over the Moon, people were supposed to get it, but they haven't.
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vintage cessna said:
"The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years"

The statement is brilliant. The IPCC would love to convey the imagine of a balloon being filled with CO2 . If this stuff is residing in the atmosphere for at least two hundred years that is the first image most people will relate to. But if called to account, they can deny that is what they meant, they only meant the effects of CO2 could last that long.
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Sure, the orgs don't do the best job of conveying the scientific details clearly. But in this case, the pertinent time IS how long the effects can last, and (for people who don't have a problem with the statement that CO2 can exert an effect on the climate) that is at least the length of time the CO2 concentration stays elevated, not how long a single molecule stays aloft.
Is this the language of science or politics. Are you proud of that statement by an organization you belong to ? Do you think that statement could mislead the public? Are you surprised that a scientist with integrity would resign from that society?
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It's nothing more than a dumbed-down, but basically true, statement of science. I can't speak to Lewis's integrity because I know anything about him personally, but I don't have the slightest problem with the APS reply to Lewis's accusations.

I do prefer their 2010 commentary about climate change to the original 2007 statement, which IMO overstated the certainty of the scientific findings.
 
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html


The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries.

Various mechanisms, involving changes in ocean circulation, changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases or haze particles, and changes in snow and ice cover, have been invoked to explain these sudden regional and global transitions. We do not know whether such changes could occur in the near future as a result of human effects on climate. Phenomena such as the Younger Dryas and Heinrich events might only occur in a 'glacial' world with much larger ice sheets and more extensive sea ice cover. However, a major sudden cold event did probably occur under global climate conditions similar to those of the present, during the Eemian interglacial, around 122,000 years ago. Less intensive, but significant rapid climate changes also occurred during the present (Holocene) interglacial, with cold and dry phases occurring on a 1500-year cycle, and with climate transitions on a decade-to-century timescale. In the past few centuries, smaller transitions (such as the ending of the Little Ice Age at about 1650 AD) probably occurred over only a few decades at most. All the evidence indicates that most long-term climate change occurs in sudden jumps rather than incremental changes.

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Adaption.
 
azure said:
Sure, the orgs don't do the best job of conveying the scientific details clearly. But in this case, the pertinent time IS how long the effects can last, and (for people who don't have a problem with the statement that CO2 can exert an effect on the climate) that is at least the length of time the CO2 concentration stays elevated, not how long a single molecule stays aloft.

It's nothing more than a dumbed-down, but basically true, statement of science. I can't speak to Lewis's integrity because I know anything about him personally, but I don't have the slightest problem with the APS reply to Lewis's accusations.

I do prefer their 2010 commentary about climate change to the original 2007 statement, which IMO overstated the certainty of the scientific findings.
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I've visited many of the links you have provided as well as many others that feature scientists discussing various aspects of climate change. It doesn't look like research but more resembles a criminal investigation with CO2 as the only suspect. These public announcements by the APS and others are just like prejudicial public relation releases to influence the media and the jury pool.

In these discussions among scientists, they all know the suspect is guilty, but they quibble over who has the best theory of how the crime was committed. The only thing they don't have is evidence, not even circumstantial evidence. The evidence that has been tampered with has been thrown out.

Really, it is time for these people to stop wasting our money and put up or shut up.
 
azure said:
Sure, the orgs don't do the best job of conveying the scientific details clearly. But in this case, the pertinent time IS how long the effects can last, and (for people who don't have a problem with the statement that CO2 can exert an effect on the climate) that is at least the length of time the CO2 concentration stays elevated, not how long a single molecule stays aloft.

It's nothing more than a dumbed-down, but basically true, statement of science.
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It's a combination of factors, no one person makes a relationship. Scientists lose credibility because there are always unaccountable holes because their entire understanding of existence is flawed and they willfully blind themselves to their flawed thinking.

This gives the greedy the loop holes they need to create doubt, and with no knowledge of further purpose beyond their own existence, people will choose immediate self gratification as their preferred option because they have no faith in the product of extra effort.

The real problem is we are lazy, mentally, physically, or both. The greedy tell us how easy we'll have it and and make sure we have the minimal existence we will accept and cable TV to keep us entertained. That is why we have Welfare.

Without an accurate understanding of our existence and purpose as organs of an organism, we will historically default to this position. This is where science has failed, same as religion; and mankind has failed in general, failing to learn. We are one of the great "Almost ran" species.
 
Credit to Azure for lasting 35 pages on a board that's quite hostile toward anything involving climate change, and doing so with tact, restraint, and obvious knowledge of the physics. I don't think the favor was returned, though that is one man's opinion.
 
asechrest said:
Credit to Azure for lasting 35 pages on a board that's quite hostile toward anything involving climate change, and doing so with tact, restraint, and obvious knowledge of the physics. I don't think the favor was returned, though that is one man's opinion.
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Agreed...

And the fact she claimed she QUIT about 47 times...:D,,
 
azure said:
Translation for non-physicists: VC thinks the greenhouse effect involves extracting heat from the cooler atmosphere and transferring it to the surface. It doesn't. It involves transferring heat from the surface to the atmosphere and to space at a slower rate than would otherwise happen, all the while the Sun is heating the surface at a constant rate.

That is why he says it involves a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which requires work to transfer heat from cold to warm.

At other times he has said that it involves creating energy out of nothing, which would violate the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Again, if the greenhouse effect violated ANY law of thermodynamics, it would have been discovered long ago. I think readers of this thread have more common sense than to believe that physicists are so stupid that no one would have realized that before now.

There are plenty of skeptical arguments out there that serious and reputable climate scientists take seriously. I've yet to find one who doubts that the greenhouse effect is real.
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So it would seem your position has somewhat evolved. It is now CO2 slows radiative cooling, and doesn't provide further warming of the surface from back radiation. You may want to check with NASA and the IPCC and get your story straight. The link to the NASA video below is a typical explanation of the Greenhouse effect. Note the video states that Earth is 33 C warmer becuase it has an atmosphere , but it is warmer entirely due to a Greenhouse effect. Nothing about pressure/temperature relationship.
http://www.edcoogle.com/video/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect-find-out-in-this-nasa-video/420/46
 
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azure said:
Your arguments have already been refuted six ways from Sunday, but just in case someone isn't up to speed and doesn't want to slog through 800+ posts:

CO2 doesn't provide "further warming". It slows the escape of heat from the surface, effectively acting like insulation. Ordinary insulation slows the escape of heat by providing a barrier to thermal conduction. In the case of the planet, the heat is in the form of IR radiation and the CO2 absorbs the upward radiation and keeps its energy in the system, but otherwise the basic principle is the same. By your argument it would make no sense to wear a coat when it's warm outside, or insulate the walls of a house to cut down your heating bill.

Convection only cools the surface, it doesn't cool the planet as a whole because the atmosphere can't escape into space.

Re-radiation by CO2 is NOT instantaneous, but even if it were, some of the re-radiated energy goes back downwards, and that by itself would slow the escape of heat. As it turns out, most CO2 molecules that have absorbed an IR photon transfer that energy to other molecules via collisions, so we are back to convection which cannot cool the planet as a whole anyway.

There are two effects, scattering and absorption, neither of which produce heat. Most molecules in the atmosphere scatter IR radiation only. CO2 can do either but is much likelier to absorb it.

Yes, the temperature in an atmosphere will (generally, everything else being equal) increase as the pressure increases on the way down. But the equation only predicts what the temperature should be at the altitude from which the radiation can escape into space. With a greenhouse effect, that altitude is high in the atmosphere. Without a greenhouse effect, that altitude is ground level, and at every altitude on the way up it is colder than it would be with a greenhouse effect.

The theory of blackbody radiation is based on a very deep level on the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenhouse effect mechanism is based on the theory of blackbody radiation. Does anyone really think that it would have taken over 100 years for someone to spot that the mechanism contradicts thermodynamics? That assertion defies common sense, unless you think that physicists are complete morons.
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You say "CO2 doesn't provide further warming. It slows the escape of heat from the surface, effectively acting like insulation."

If you go to any official source, that is not how the Greenhouse is explained. The back radiation to the Earth is a major factor in reinforcing the warming of the surface, not just slowing down the cooling. So , are we to believe NASA, NOAA and the IPCC or you?
 
azure said:
Your arguments have already been refuted six ways from Sunday, but just in case someone isn't up to speed and doesn't want to slog through 800+ posts:

CO2 doesn't provide "further warming". It slows the escape of heat from the surface, effectively acting like insulation. Ordinary insulation slows the escape of heat by providing a barrier to thermal conduction. In the case of the planet, the heat is in the form of IR radiation and the CO2 absorbs the upward radiation and keeps its energy in the system, but otherwise the basic principle is the same. By your argument it would make no sense to wear a coat when it's warm outside, or insulate the walls of a house to cut down your heating bill.

Convection only cools the surface, it doesn't cool the planet as a whole because the atmosphere can't escape into space.

Re-radiation by CO2 is NOT instantaneous, but even if it were, some of the re-radiated energy goes back downwards, and that by itself would slow the escape of heat. As it turns out, most CO2 molecules that have absorbed an IR photon transfer that energy to other molecules via collisions, so we are back to convection which cannot cool the planet as a whole anyway.

There are two effects, scattering and absorption, neither of which produce heat. Most molecules in the atmosphere scatter IR radiation only. CO2 can do either but is much likelier to absorb it.

Yes, the temperature in an atmosphere will (generally, everything else being equal) increase as the pressure increases on the way down. But the equation only predicts what the temperature should be at the altitude from which the radiation can escape into space. With a greenhouse effect, that altitude is high in the atmosphere. Without a greenhouse effect, that altitude is ground level, and at every altitude on the way up it is colder than it would be with a greenhouse effect.

The theory of blackbody radiation is based on a very deep level on the laws of thermodynamics. The Greenhouse effect mechanism is based on the theory of blackbody radiation. Does anyone really think that it would have taken over 100 years for someone to spot that the mechanism contradicts thermodynamics? That assertion defies common sense, unless you think that physicists are complete morons.
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So let's just say you are right, CO2 acts like an insulator. Given that CO2 is about 400 ppm, with uneven distribution around the Earth, what percent of outbound radiation is "trapped". What is the approximate effect this has in slowing the rate of cooling? If a thermos was constructed with this ratio I think your coffee would cool to room temperature as quick as a cup sitting on the table.
 
Woops, bad analogy with the thermos, didn't take into account convective cooling of the cup on the table, but I think you get what I mean.
 
vintage cessna said:
So it would seem your position has somewhat evolved. It is now CO2 slows radiative cooling, and doesn't provide further warming of the surface from back radiation. You may want to check with NASA and the IPCC and get your story straight. The link to the NASA video below is a typical explanation of the Greenhouse effect. Note the video states that Earth is 33 C warmer becuase it has an atmosphere , but it is warmer entirely due to a Greenhouse effect. Nothing about pressure/temperature relationship.
http://www.edcoogle.com/video/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect-find-out-in-this-nasa-video/420/46
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Like I said, government orgs often sacrifice accuracy when it comes to scientific explanations. The explanation in that video is particularly inaccurate because it says, basically, "half of the re-emitted radiation goes into space, half goes back to Earth". Anyone who wants the correct numbers can click on the energy budget link I posted earlier in the thread, but actually, the back radiation reaching the surface is about twice the energy emitted by the atmosphere into space. So yes, obviously the back radiation is important. Yet, if you compare the different contributions to the NET flow of energy from the surface into the atmosphere, less than half of that is in the form of radiation. The rest is convection and evapo-transpiration - the latter being the largest single contributor to the heat outflow from the surface.

If you were actually interested in discussing the mechanism I would go further, but it's pretty obvious you are just playing politics here. Divide and conquer. Not going to play that game. Anyone who is interested in the science can go back upthread and read what I wrote, or better yet, click on the links I posted.
 
azure said:
Like I said, government orgs often sacrifice accuracy when it comes to scientific explanations. The explanation in that video is particularly inaccurate because it says, basically, "half of the re-emitted radiation goes into space, half goes back to Earth". Anyone who wants the correct numbers can click on the energy budget link I posted earlier in the thread, but actually, the back radiation reaching the surface is about twice the energy emitted by the atmosphere into space. So yes, obviously the back radiation is important. Yet, if you compare the different contributions to the NET flow of energy from the surface into the atmosphere, less than half of that is in the form of radiation. The rest is convection and evapo-transpiration - the latter being the largest single contributor to the heat outflow from the surface.

If you were actually interested in discussing the mechanism I would go further, but it's pretty obvious you are just playing politics here. Divide and conquer. Not going to play that game. Anyone who is interested in the science can go back upthread and read what I wrote, or better yet, click on the links I posted.
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So the official sources of information, NASA, NOAA, IPCC, major universities, are giving explanations of the Greenhouse effect that aren't correct. All of their descriptions tell of the WARMING of the air or surface or both by back radiation. Their descriptions violate the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics . Nothing at all about not cooling down as fast as you describe.

Am I playing divide and conquer becuase the organizations that we rely on for info are telling a different story than you? Their story has a feedback reinforcement mechanism, yours just a slowing down of cooling.

Like I said, who are we to believe, them or you? When you all come up with a single definitive definition of the Greenhouse effect, let us know. Considering the claims being made and the actions called for, it's the least they could do.
 
vintage cessna said:
So the official sources of information, NASA, NOAA, IPCC, major universities, are giving explanations of the Greenhouse effect that aren't correct. All of their descriptions tell of the WARMING of the air or surface or both by back radiation. Their descriptions violate the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics.
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You need to get this information out there. I'm pretty sure that if you can prove it, you'll end up on the cover of Time magazine. Heck, you'll probably become one of the most noted people in the world for 2015! Might even get an honorary degree or two and a ton of job offers.
 
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