Global warming

varwoche said:
Huh?

A limited amount of energy reaches the earth from the sun.
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Thank you, Varwoche, but I'm not trying to partake in an argument, I'm just asking some questions about a subject I don't understand as well as I would like. If you don't understand the questions I'm asking or have no answers, then please leave it for someone who does.
 
mhaze said:
You are kidding, right? The sky is glowing slightly infra red and that means ....
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Slightly? Relative to what?

The night-sky glows in the infra-red. What more do you need? That radiation - heat - is coming from the sky straight back here. Absent any alternative explanation - as usual - this confirms greenhouse theory.
 
CapelDodger said:
Slightly? Relative to what?

The night-sky glows in the infra-red. What more do you need? That radiation - heat - is coming from the sky straight back here. Absent any alternative explanation - as usual - this confirms greenhouse theory.
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Do you think there is a chance that any of the massive amount of heat that is being radiated from the Earth on the night side, is being reflected back by the clouds and the atmosphere ?
 
Badger said:
Dude, clouds/water vapour trap heat, and to a much greater extent than CO2.
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The effect of clouds is two-fold : on the one hand they reflect light from the Sun back into space (some of it even back into the Sun, where it has no significant effect), on the other they radiate infra-red down to the surface. Where it has some effect.

Water-vapour is a very different matter. It doesn't relect light from above, but it does absorb infra-red from below. That said, clouds are full of water-vapour, and the air below them is generally close to saturation. So the water-vapour effect probably dominates on a cloudy night.

It has long been a contrarian argument that clouds might be a negative feedback to climate change, but experience has demonstrated otherwise. It was always very speculative.

Water-vapour has long been recognised as a positive feedback to any climate forcing.
 
Diogenes said:
Do you think there is a chance that any of the massive amount of heat that is being radiated from the Earth on the night side, is being reflected back by the clouds and the atmosphere ?
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Most of the atmosphere is transparent, so it doesn't reflect anything, long-wave infra-red from the surface at any time or short-wave sunlight during the day. Long wave radiation does not reflect as readily as short-wave, so reflection of infra-red by clouds is tiny if it exists at all.

Apart from which, even in cloudless conditions there's still an infra-red glow from the atmosphere. It's not reflection. Re-emission, as per greenhouse theory, remains a very credible candidate.
 
David Rodale said:
Once again going back to this simple observation, why are CO2 levels varying with ENSO and volcano events?
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The rate of increase is varying, not the CO2-levels. Look at your bar-chart again. Every year different, but every year an increase.

Does it suggest a)there is no lockstep consistent rise in CO2 caused by fossil fuels
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Of course there isn't, since there are other influences. Such as the effects of El Nino/La Nina/Itsa Nada on carbon sinks.

b)the 200 year life cycle is not observed
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Hardly likely on such a short-term chart, and what's this 200-year life cycle? Do you mean the 100-year half-life?

c)chemical and thermodynamic laws actually do apply to CO2.
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Of course they do. Who's ever said different?


Further, does CO2 have the omnipotent power to control ENSO and volcanoes?
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Is it not more likely that El Nino/La Nina and ENSO influence carbon sinks? I commented on that a page or two back, in a direct response that you seem to have ignored, unless I've missed something. Which is always possible.

How can CO2 levels drop during volcanic eruptions which emit high levels of CO2?
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How can you claim that volcanoes emit significant amounts of CO2 when the evidence shows that they reduce the rate of increase? I'm still at a loss to explain the mechanism involved, but there it is in the data. Volcanoes do not emit significant amounts of CO2.
 
Mycroft said:
Thank you, Varwoche, but I'm not trying to partake in an argument, I'm just asking some questions about a subject I don't understand as well as I would like. If you don't understand the questions I'm asking or have no answers, then please leave it for someone who does.
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There is not one single question-mark in the post that varwoche was responding to. No questions, just statements. Such as "there's no practical limit to the output of the Sun". Which there is. More to the point, the Sun's output is observable and observed.

What are your questions? Only ask, and you will be answered.

Or you could just slither back to Politics, whatever, it's all good.
 
Diogenes said:
The question was why we can detect infra red in the night sky ...

Do you think there is a chance that any of the massive amount of heat that is being radiated from the Earth on the night side, is being reflected back by the clouds and the atmosphere ?
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Why would you care what I think, I'm not a scientist, and this is a complex area of research. I would seriously suggest you read the 4AR, if you question any of the claims made by the IPCC, then move on from there. Otherwise this is all just a waste of time.
 
Diogenes said:
The question was why we can detect infra red in the night sky ...

Do you think there is a chance that any of the massive amount of heat that is being radiated from the Earth on the night side, is being reflected back by the clouds and the atmosphere ?
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http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunderd/id10.html

Here is a 16 year old student that says that IR glow is just good old water vapor, probably in the ten or twenty meters above CD and AUP's heads.

Who is right?
 
Independent Summary for Policymakers (ISPM) of IPCC

a_unique_person said:
Hmmm, who should I believe, a 16 year old student, or teams of scientists? Hmmm, it's a tough decision, I'll go .... with ..... the ....... scientists. Yep, the scientists.
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http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/ispm.html

Scientists? Well then.

Instead of reading the IPCC, the summary documents of which were written by non scientists and reviewed, changed and approved by governments before printing, one would want the scientists independent assessment.

Well... at least if you thought a 16 year old kid might get it wrong...

(hint: of course she got it right, why else would I have linked...:rolleyes:)
This page provides information on the Independent Summary for Policymakers (ISPM) of the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report (AR4), recently published by the Fraser Institute. The ISPM is not a critique of or a response to the IPCC Report. It is a detailed summary, written on the premise that a great deal of good, balanced science is presented in the IPCC report and it should be widely disseminated and carefully read. The ISPM includes some 300 direct citations to the IPCC report and provides detailed chapter locations so that readers can look up the IPCC sections for themselves.

In producing this Summary we have worked independently of the IPCC, using the Second Order Draft of the IPCC report, as circulated after revisions were made in response to the first expert review period in the winter and spring of 2006. Section references will be checked against the final IPCC version, to be released in May 2007. If, in preparing the final draft of the Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC substantially rewrites the Assessment text, such that the key summary materials presented herein need to be re-worded, we will do so and publish an Appendix to that effect.
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mhaze said:
Here is a 16 year old student that says that IR glow is just good old water vapor, probably in the ten or twenty meters above CD and AUP's heads.
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Most of it is from water-vapour. Not in the ten or twenty metres above ground, obviously. That's just silly. But there's no question that water-vapour is the most influential greenhouse gas. There's no shortage of it at any temperature that doesn't freeze over the oceans.

If water-vapour were the only greenhouse gas, the oceans would be frozen all the way through. Earth's climate would be no different from the Moon's.

It's not wet atmosphere that makes the Earth warm, it's a warm Earth that makes the atmosphere wet. CO2 is what makes for a warm Earth. Water-vapour is just a positive feedback.
 
mhaze said:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunderd/id10.html

Here is a 16 year old student that says that IR glow is just good old water vapor, probably in the ten or twenty meters above CD and AUP's heads.

Who is right?
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I tried to read it, I really did, but she gets so much wrong it just ends up being annoying. The simple fact of the matter is, like the people who hand out mathematical prizes, you just end up with an stream of ignoramii turning up at your door saying "I can square the circle". Even though it has been mathematically proven to be impossible, even though trained mathematicians gave up on the notion 200 years ago, still some idiot claims to have the proof of how to do it.

Let me know when she has actually read and understood the 4AR, which is the starting point, and I'll have another look at what she has to say then.
 
Take this.

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=Times New Roman,Times,serif]This is a huge problem for the IPCC and greenhouse gas theorists. Not only do they have enormous numbers of calculations to make for each cubic meter of atmosphere, but those calculations change every few seconds depending on temperature, humidity, elevation, lattitude, local geography, clouds, wind, time of day, season, and etc. They try to use super computers to make these calculations, but even the best computers are not powerful enough, which is why computer climate models are still only “an approximation of reality” (Veiser 2000).

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She seems to think that the computers have to model the actions of every molecule reacting with every photon, which is nonsense, of course. They don't model anything like every cubic metre.

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[/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=Times New Roman,Times,serif]Another problem that has been suggested with the whole radiative-heat transfer theory proposed by the IPCC is because as altitude increases, density decreases, thus leading to fewer and fewer collisions. There are fewer molecules in a unit of space above than below. I would agree that CO2 molecules would suffer fewer collisions at higher altitudes and have a chance to relax and emit their photons in all directions, 50% in an upward direction and 50% in a downward direction. But the photons headed upward are going to travel farther than the photons traveling downward because of the lower density above. Further, as the photons travel downward and are absorbed by CO2 molecules, they are again subjected to collisions. This makes me wonder how a photon can make it back to the surace of the earth and reheat the surface.
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That's evidence. All you have to do is wonder how something can be true, decide it's not, and that's it.

The whole essay is full of rubbish like this.
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a_unique_person said:
nzclimatescience? "commonsense about climate change" give me a break. Science is not about common sense. If it was, no one would have thought of quantum mechanics. It is more and more about understanding highly complex systems. A bunch of earnest nutters and contrarians, with little actual expertise in what is actually being researched, doing just what the deniers all want, finding any answer but CO2, which is the point. It's the sun, no it's a natural cycle, no it's not actually changing, measurements are wrong, it's anything but CO2. Vincent Gray is past it, he has no idea what current research is nor how to understand it, Bellamy is a botanist, Carter is a simple contrarian in the mold of Lindzen, who is outside his field of competence.
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Hoo boy AUP is getting desperate.

Perhaps I should put this in a sig:

"Science is not about common sense - AUP"

Clearly rattled by inconvenient truths, you resort to smear, innuendo and plain old-fashioned lying.

YOU are the simple contrarian. YOU are the denier.

CO2 has never caused warming as seen by every ice core record which shows carbon dioxide rise to be a delayed response. Why? Because YOU don't understand quantum physics. If you did, you'd know that the mean temperature of the atmosphere cannot rise by simply changing the partial pressure of a trace gas.

But you don't know that, because in AUP-world, ignorance is a part of view.
 
CapelDodger said:
If water-vapour were the only greenhouse gas, the oceans would be frozen all the way through. Earth's climate would be no different from the Moon's.
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Rubbish. Absolute nonsense. Where do you get this drivel from?

It's not wet atmosphere that makes the Earth warm, it's a warm Earth that makes the atmosphere wet. CO2 is what makes for a warm Earth. Water-vapour is just a positive feedback.
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This is clearly a religious belief, typical of creationists. No mention of the sun, solar cycles, no mention that water vapour has a very large negative feedback because of its cloud forming properties.

Its CO2, CO2, CO2 and its all the fault of man, man, man, because Capeldodgy read it in Marx, Marx, Marx
 
a_unique_person said:
I tried to read it, I really did, but she gets so much wrong it just ends up being annoying. The simple fact of the matter is, like the people who hand out mathematical prizes, you just end up with an stream of ignoramii turning up at your door saying "I can square the circle". Even though it has been mathematically proven to be impossible, even though trained mathematicians gave up on the notion 200 years ago, still some idiot claims to have the proof of how to do it.

Let me know when she has actually read and understood the 4AR, which is the starting point, and I'll have another look at what she has to say then.
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The much more likely reason is that AUP doesn't like the implication that his creationist friends are fundamentally wrong on a point of science. The student must be wrong because AUP says so.

Let's see YOUR full explanation, with references to primary scientific literature and with equations showing with the student is wrong. We'll wait. We're patient.
 
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