Prevailing winds in Phoenix tend to be from the East. So winds will be coming in over sun-warmed desert. Prevailing winds in Atlanta are from the northwest.

Not really that hard to figure out.

This paragraph seems to allude to both very high temperaturs and very low temperaturs. Are you just saying that the range of temperatures represented by the total downwelling IR is quite broad??

What is your position on whether the molecular bond radiation of GHG’s is temperature based as black body radiation?

You are also ignoring the heat capacity of the atmosphere itself. Then there is the ocean heat capacity.

Trying to compare a bare earth to a full system and then claiming only the GHG’s in the full system make a difference is obtuse.

I still don’t think that the “atmospheric greenhouse effect” can be demonstrated empirically, although I support a continued effort to do so (and, importantly, until this happens, the “atmospheric greenhouse effect” is still an hypotheisis and not even a scientific theory, according to “consensus” scientific principles).

I still think the “atmospheric greenhouse effect” can be refuted empirically simply by comparing Atlanta to Phoenix. If the whole world consisted of the climate of Phoenix, then maybe the excess radiation from CO2 would make some difference. But most of the world is humid, and it is clear that there is a water-regulating system that controls temperatures on this planet. That is not to refute the concept of back-radiation; indeed it is simply a property of matter (but it is an effect, not any cause). Mother Nature (i.e., God) has checks and balances that far surpass human understanding. The planet and your silly ass could not possibly be here, otherwise.

Perhaps Miskolski and Eschenbach are the closest humans to explain the physics of the real world. If so, we humans don’t have much effect.

any chance we can get a writeup of the status of posts, discussions & experiment results from the initial “yes virginia” post until now ?

I’ve become lost somewhere.

In yes virginia I thought you were talking about temperature moving from cold to hot surfaces.

People seemed to provide plausible reasons why your example was flawed. You then proposed an experiment which I assumed was designed to prove this.

Now following (or trying to) follow that discussion I am confused.

Do we regard the air as a surface. Were you trying to show that a colder air pocket (surface) would transfer heat to a warmer air pocket (surface) ?

Is the air regarded as a surface ?

If downwelling radiation exists, why is the box colder than the air.

How can you claim evidence for downwelling radiation when the reason for the box cooling is ???? Is the air really not a surface and transparent and the surface is really the stratospheric layer which is colder and hence that is where the boxes heat is going ?

Does the air actually hold heat or does the heat just pass through it ? Does it mean temperature readings of air are temperature readings of the heat that is currently passing through it (i.e either radiating down or being reflected up). How is the heat transported ? Is it attached to molecules that are rising or descending ? What molecules ?

Is co2 present at the surface layer or does it rise rapidly and only contained in the upper atmosphere (well obviously not) so why isn’t the box temperature rising if it has a blanket of CO2 over it and the blankets temperature is warmer that the cavity ?

Is there any merit in what you are doing here or are you in some tangential way trying to appease the AGW overlords by trying to appear totally objective to get science funding ?

Where are the points of agreement here. Where is the actual proven science in all this discussion and which parts of it are theoretical or debated ?

Sorry, but I find this has completely confused me. And in trying to follow it I’ve just become more confused.

The development of the solar oven/refrigerator developed at Brigham University has been mentioned approvingly by your Secretary of State. It can maintain a temperature differential of 11degreesC and has produced ice.

What puzzles me is that not many (as far as I can see) doubt the existence of IR back-radiation, so who are “they” that you are trying to convince. It is easy to prove that back-radiation exists by comparing outgoing surface radiation from the real earth and the bare rock earth, where the radiative energy output must equal the solar input.

The real earth surface radiates at about 288K, and the bare-rock at about 255K, so the difference is 63% of the solar input. Only the back-radiation from the atmosphere can balance this increase to maintain the surface temperature. The back-radiation is, after all, the negative term in the Stefan-Bolzmann heat transfer equation used by heating engineers (whose equations have to work in the real world).

The contentious point is not the existence of back-radiation, but what it is capable of doing. It cannot directly heat the surface of the earth, because it originates from a colder region. It can reduce the outgoing radiant energy from the surface, which will allow the sun to warm the earth. An increases in atmospheric absorption might produce an AGW effect on temperature, but this might or might not be detectable. Any increase in atmospheric temperature might increase radiation to space, counteracting the warming.

Woods designed his twin greenhouse experiment to test this theory. Could you repeat this, Roy, with better instrumentation and variable IR absorption?

Let’s look at the construction of your box, a cooler box with a window.

100mm styrofoam, painted white and then black, inside.

Do you seriously think that a mere thin layer of paint will stop the exchange of heat? If so, you might have hit the jackpot! Coleman, the maker of cooler boxes, maybe still the biggest in the world unless the Chinese have overtaken them, would be prepared to pay a fortune for that magic potion. Just think of the commercial spin offs, a cooler box that you can fill with ice in spring, keep outside and still use the ice in Autumn to mix the last of your summer cocktails!

Unfortunately, somehow I think that Coleman, cooler box designers, would have tested a black lining for their boxes, and if successfull, the camping stores would have stocked the ‘Black Knight’ line by now.

A cooler box filled with water will have ice in it if left outside north of Yellow Knife in winter, and a cooler box filled with ice will have water in it if left outside in the Kalahari, or any other desert of your choice, in summer.

The thermal conductivity is expressed in W/(m*degree C).

A good conductor of heat is copper with a thermal conductivity of 401, Aluminium is 250 and Iron comes in at 80. A heat insulator, like syrofoam has thermal conductivity of 0.033. Now look at the formula again, the thermal conductivity is expressed in a unit length, a thin layer of paint will hardly have the characteristics to stop the transfer of heat! Beefing up the thickness of the styrofoam makes more sense!

Again, most of this information can be obtained from the heating and ventilation section of the engineer’s toolbox.