In Defense of the Term “Greenouse Effect”

May 9th, 2018 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Over the years I have gone along with the crowd and derided the term “greenhouse effect” as a poor analogy between the atmosphere’s ability to keep the Earth’s surfce warmer than it would be without IR-absorbing (and thus IR-emitting) gases, versus a greenhouse in which plants are grown.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that “greenhouse effect” is a pretty accurate term.

The main objection has been that the warmth within a real greenhouse is primarily due to the roof’s ability to keep warm air from escaping, thus inhibiting convective heat loss. While that is true, it is also true of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Remember,

1) the roof of the greenhouse is also an IR absorber and emitter, like water vapor and CO2 do in the free atmosphere, and

2) the atmospheric greenhouse effect is only fully realized in the absence of convective heat loss.

Let’s start with that second point. As originally calculated by Manabe and Strickler (1964, see slide #10 here), the greenhouse effect does not explain the average surface temperature being 288 K (observed) rather than 255K (the effective radiating temperature of the Earth absent an atmosphere). Instead it is actually much more powerful than that, and would raise the temperature to an estimated 343 K (close to 160 deg. F.) It is convective heat loss generated by an unstable lapse rate caused by the greenhouse effect that reduces the temperature to the observed value.

This is the actual “greenhouse effect” on Earth’s average surface temperature: not the oft-quoted 33 deg. C, but more like 88 deg. C of warming. (We can quibble about the calculations of surface temperature with and without greenhouse gases because they make unrealistic assumptions about clouds and water vapor.)

The point is, the atmospheric greenouse effect is radiative only, and does not include the cooling effects of convective heat transport away from the Earth’s surface.

Kind of like in a real greenhouse.

So, this actually is what happens in a real greenhouse:

1) sunlight warms the interior

2) infrared radiation absorbed and emitted by the roof reduces radiative energy loss by the air and surfaces within the greenhouse

3) convective heat loss is minimized (although it is generated on the outside surface of the roof, thus keeping the interior cooler than if there was no convective heat loss at all)

So, all things considered, I think we need to embrace the “greenhouse effect” concept. Plants like it so much, we artificially enhance Nature’s greenhouse effect (which existed before greenhouses were invented) for their benefit.

Next, let’s pump some extra CO2 in there to help the plants even more.


2,972 Responses to “In Defense of the Term “Greenouse Effect””

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    • ren says:

      “A series of thermal equilibriums is computed for the distributions of absorbers typical of different latitudes. According to these results, the latitudinal variation of the distributions of ozone and water vapor may be partly responsible for the latitudinal variation of the thickness of the isothermal part of the stratosphere.”

    • Bart says:

      The heat in a greenhouse is not strongly dependent upon the emissivity of the panes of glass. If is from the inhibition of convection in a constant volume structure. Convection of the Earth’s atmosphere is not inhibited by “greenhouse” gases, and the volume is not constant. These are big differences.

  1. tonyon says:

    …interstellar travel (without religion)… religious demented are burning the forest in the entire World, and the miserable occult power Rome-saint, terror against reason how it did to Galileo Galilei, recent threat: “the III World War has already begun”, protects to other credos and silences to the Global Media for the innocent people do not know it a fact already evident: IS TRUTH THAT RELIGION IS LIE

    • I can’t tell if this is a profound thought, or the result of a random word generator.

      • Mark says:

        The result of a random thought generator at least. 🙂

      • FSvante says:

        Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. It gets better if you read it again a few times.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        roy…”I cant tell if this is a profound thought, or the result of a random word generator”.

        Just another climate alarmist gone off the deep end.

      • GHouse says:

        The post’s author was obviously attracted to the thread by the discussion of a “greenhouse effect.”

        Must’ve stopped along the way to one of those marijuana “grow” forums…

      • swampgator says:

        For sure the latter.
        Roy, I agree on the use of this term. But what is important is the overall understanding of the complex systems involved.
        I am a Pharmacist so I work in the medical/health area. As a critical thinker, I have learned that so much of medical “science” is really just personal hunches backed up by poorly control ed/non controlled studies.
        The thing I find interesting is that in both fields feedback mechanisms are largely ignored. So, yes, Co2 may reflect back a certain percentage of earths heat radiation. The assumption by the global warming alarmists is that the system (earth) can not respond via feedback to this perturbation.
        This is akin to the calorie in-calorie out equation. People will state that the laws of thermodynamics dictate that this equation holds true. It does in a simple sense. But for example, in the human system, decreasing calories in, is met with a decrease in basal metabolic rate. In other words,a feedback mechanism inside the human body responds to decreased calories (a perturbation) by decreasing caloric expenditure. So the idea that calories out is INDEPENDENT of calories in, is not correct. This I believe is the fundamental error that that CAGW proponents make. They assume the perturbation of increased greenhouse effect is not countered by any feedback mechanisms withing the earths system.

        • David Appell says:

          swampgator says:
          So, yes, Co2 may reflect back a certain percentage of earths heat radiation. The assumption by the global warming alarmists is that the system (earth) can not respond via feedback to this perturbation.

          Umm… No.

          Just wrong.

          PS: And it’s not reflection, it’s re-emission.

  2. My blog has apparently become the go-to place for posting off-topic comments.

    • Bond says:

      It also has become one of the worst trolling sites, on par with the YouTube comment section. You really need to clean it up because it deters normal people from posting.

      Just look at the names of the people in this thread. Most of the trolls have stayed away, so people who don’t usually comment have come out of the woodwork and are making sane comments.

      Honestly, please look at Mike Flynn’s comments in the recent monthly temperature threads, and decide if that is really the type of person you want arguing on your side of the debate.

      • Bond says:

        “Most of the trolls have stayed away”

        At the time I posted this comment, this was correct.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          B,

          I presume you have a point, but on the face of it, you are just making irrelevant and meaningless posts for no good reason.

          I am sure Dr Spencer can read. He may not even need or welcome your unsolicited advice. What do you think?

          Cheers.

        • Dr Spencer may even need and welcome a lot of unsolicited silly drivel.

          Face it, buffoons and fools are even called for and are just making “relevant and meaningful posts for very good reasons”.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        bond…”It also has become one of the worst trolling sites….”

        I have only noticed alarmist trolls. I have been called a troll, a liar, and a fabricator for posting the work of Clausius, Boltzmann, Planck, Bohr, and Schrodinger. I often post it verbatim and I still get called a liar/troll.

        Bond…people like you need to become more secure in your science and learn how to rebut an argument using good science. Recently I posted three times the explanation of carrier modulation, even explaining it using a circuit model. You replied three times with nary a word about my explaination, apparently trying to win the debate using input totally out of context.

        Roy…in case you think carrier modulation is off-topic, I have used it previously to demonstrate that electromagnetic energy can carry information from an antenna via modulation. It’s exactly the same EM that electrons in atoms convert from heat, which results in cooling of a body when EM is emitted.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        bond…”Honestly, please look at Mike Flynns comments in the recent monthly temperature threads, and decide if that is really the type of person you want arguing on your side of the debate”.

        I find Mike’s comments amusing. It’s even more amusing how you alarmists feel compelled to reply.

        Mike makes some good points and he does it generally with humour. It’s sad that you are so intense you have to take it to heart.

        It has likely been Mike’s persistence in asking for a testable hypothesis for the GHE that prompted Roy to write this article.

        Roy has a conundrum, however. His data is not showing the kind of warming one would expect from an ever-increasing supply of CO2. Roy has remained wisely non-commital as to how much CO2 should warm the atmosphere. He thinks it’s a factor but he has never specified how much.

        • E. Swanson says:

          Gordo has a conundrum. Mike demands a testable hypothesis, while ignoring the data from spectroscopic IR radiation measurements both within and outside the atmosphere. Evidence has been presented that “back radiation” from a cooler body can warm one with a higher temperature, in accordance with theory, yet, Gordo insists on ignoring that experimental result.

          The trend in the UAH LT data is less than that found by the three other groups which analyze the same data. Gordo should consider possibility that maybe the UAH data is wrong, as has been shown for previous versions. That is, if Gordo is really interested in seeking the truth, something he has avoided repeatedly so far.

          • Bart says:

            UAH has the best match with the CO2 rate of change proxy, and the other sets have been continuously “adjusted” with confirmation of the assumed outcome in mind. It is clear that the others are the ones with thumbs on the scale.

    • Rob Mitchell says:

      Speaking of off-topic comments, I have one for you Dr. Spencer. I am the weatherman with a Tesla. And I am at “war” against some of my fellow Tesla owners (mainly Californians) over climate and policy. The authoritarian Tesla owners want to force Tesla and other battery electric vehicles (BEV) onto the general public with strict government policy against the internal combustion engine, and the implementation of a punitive carbon tax. I tell them to let Tesla and other BEVs grow by free-market choice, and leave the government out of it (government is already involved enough).

      And because of my libertarian stance on BEVs, I get labeled a DENIER! I’m sure you’ve been called that more than a few times in your lifetime! These California Tesla owners have an Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) zealotry way beyond any sense of rationality. They keep telling me I need to pay attention to “the science.” They think that ridiculous “skeptical science” site is the gold standard of climate science. Whenever I point to scientists with alternative views on “climate change,” they immediately attack the scientist with blatant lies. As an example, they attack you over ontology. And they claim you are a young-earth creationist, and nobody should believe you. I’ll never forget that Senator (Sheldon Whitehouse) trying to make an issue out of that while you were testifying before Congress.

      I tell these AGW zealots to tell you that on your site. They won’t dare because they are chicken-sh*ts. So, is there anything you want me to tell these Tesla AGW zealots about the “6000 year old earth?” I can’t help but notice that atheists have a religion. And that religion is AGW!

      If you don’t answer, I more than understand!

    • Leitwolf says:

      I wish posting on topic was a bit easier. Everytime I hit the submit button my post gets lost in cyberspace.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        leitwolf…”I wish posting on topic was a bit easier. Everytime I hit the submit button my post gets lost in cyberspace”.

        There are certain rules you need to know.

        1)certain words won’t post due to WordPress filters.

        eg. absorp-tion requires a hyphen or dot between p and t.
        refrig-e-ration needs hyphens as indicated.

        a ‘d’ and a ‘c’ need a hyphen as in NCD-C, even in a URL. Had-crut is another example.

        2)always save your post with a copy before posting. If it disappears, paste your copy into a text editor, then post it in sections to see where the error is occurring.

        Post the first section and see if it goes through. If not, troubleshoot it using hints above or go through words using hyphens or dots and retesting.

        It doesn’t happen often, just be patient when it does. Over several years posting here I have never seen a post that won’t go through provided the error is found.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      roy…”My blog has apparently become the go-to place for posting off-topic comments”.

      Comments generally get more off topic as the blog length increases but I’ve found the initial comments tend to be on topic.

      Personally, I thoroughly enjoy that later comments as well and I appreciate your patience in allowing it to proceed. The name calling is pretty mild compared to trolled sites where instigators focus on disrupting the discussions. I have been on some pretty rude sites and yours is mild.

      All the same, the off-topic stuff is generally in the range of physics and thermodynamics related to climate. Even though you and I disagree on certain topics, I support you and UAH. However, I am now regarded a troll by alarmists frequenting your site. I am trying to contribute to a discussion on science whereas trolls do what they can to disrupt it, like some alarmists here.

      • David Appell says:

        The problem is you rarely add to the discussion, you just repeat things you’ve written before (and before, and before…) that have already been refuted many times.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”The problem is you rarely add to the discussion,”

          There’s a perfectly good explanation for that, you alarmists are generally talking nonsense.

  3. gbaikie says:

    I would say a very large greenhouse is similar to Earth atmosphere. But very large greenhouse is dissimilar typical greenhouse or parked car with windows rolled up.

  4. Lewis says:

    Dr. Spencer,

    Most would agree that the analogy is very accurate. The questions have to do with how much the change in C02 affects the radiation. Or does it just change the lapse time? Or both.

    Beyond that, the history of the globe shows much warming and cooling previous to mankind’s advent as a possible influence.
    This being true, that raises the questions of what caused those changes, even though the atmosphere was already here.

    In all, I appreciate and enjoy what you provide here, even some of the off topic rants.

    Best wishes, and keep up the good work.

  5. m d mill says:

    I could not agree more…well said.
    When you pump CO2 into a green house the inside temperature rises (all other things being equal)…case closed.

    • Robert Austin says:

      I assume sarcasm is intended.

    • Chic Bowdrie says:

      I don’t think that is what Dr. Spencer wrote. I disagree with you. CO2 doesn’t retain absorbed radiation long enough to accumulate enough energy to come to higher temperature than a CO2 free atmosphere with a sufficient amount of water vapor.

      If the control greenhouse had no water or CO2, then the air in the CO2 greenhouse might warm faster, but eventually both should come to the same temperature, having similar input and ability to cool.

    • adding CO2 into a greenhouse would have almost no radiative effect on temperature.. certainly not a measurable one. You could model it and compute one, but I suspect the value would be on the order of 0.001 deg. C.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        roy…”adding CO2 into a greenhouse would have almost no radiative effect on temperature.. certainly not a measurable one. You could model it and compute one, but I suspect the value would be on the order of 0.001 deg. C.”

        Ironically, my ballpark calculations using the Ideal Gas Law and Dalton’s law of partial pressures reveal a similarly low heating effect from CO2 in the atmosphere.

        Even Lindzen has placed an upper limit of 0.4C for a doubling of CO2. In his paper on the GHE, he has claimed radiation is not the primary method of surface cooling.

    • m d mill says:

      I did not say it would rise much, as the density is low and path length short.(nor did I mean it is a good way to heat a green house)
      But if the CO2 density were increased greatly the inside temperature would also increase accordingly (as less radiation would escaped at the original temperature), which is exactly the “green house” effect…not true?

    • goldminor says:

      @ m d mill …that would be a simple test then. Two greenhouses side by side, one with unadulterated air, and the other with CO2 pumped up to 1500 ppm. Which would be warmer?

  6. donald penman says:

    If we look at the heat gained and lost for a specific area such as The UK then more heat is lost then gained during winter days which have more hours of darkness so that high pressure and clear skies increases the radiation losses more but cloudy skies decrease the amount of radiation lost but when we have more daylight hours the increased solar radiation heats up the surface more with high pressure and clear skies then we lose from the fewer hours of darkness and cloudy skies and low pressure does not allow the surface to heat up so much during the longer daylight hours even though there is less radiation loss during the shorter nights. This is my hypothesis of how surface temperatures change through the year.

  7. Chic Bowdrie says:

    Dr. Spencer,

    I really appreciate your views on low sensitivity and research into how the climate ticks. However, the greenhouse analogy does more harm than good, IMO. I leads immediately to the warmist’s conclusion’s that more CO2 will cause more warming. There is no definitive evidence of that. If so, can you tell me where the data is?

    Without an atmosphere, there is no water, no clouds, no snow. So 240 goes to 342 W/m2 or so. Why do you et alia continually refer to 255 deg C as the no atmosphere temperature?

    The unstable lapse rate is caused by the earth’s daily rotation. If the sun surrounded the earth 24/7, the lapse rate would be steady and determined by the gravitational compacting of atmospheric gases.

    We can quibble about the calculations, but we should realize they are meaningless when used to calculate unverifiable imaginary situations.

    • YouBond says:

      The claim that the greenhouse effect provides 33 degrees of warming is indeed wrong. Ice, clouds, aerosols, etc. would reduce the average global temperature from 255K if there was no greenhouse effect, but the greenhouse effect supplies MORE than 33 degrees of warming, resulting in a net increase of more than 33 degrees.

      The statement should be “the net result of positive forcings from the greenhouse effect and negative forcings due to albedo etc, is 33 degrees of warming above the simple model”.

      • Bond says:

        Oops – somehow I started inserting “you” before my name. Must be a misplaced beginning to a comment.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        By all means quibble at will.

        • Bond says:

          Not sure what part of my response you see as “quibbling”.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            B,

            I’m sure you don’t. That is why I presume many could find your comment irrelevant and pointless, not to mention stupid and ignorant.

            Oh well, you could always ask a direct question, if you really wanted to increase your knowledge.

            Cheers.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            B,

            Apologies. I meant to say that I was sure that you were’t sure. Please forgive my lapse – laughter does have some adverse effects, at times.

            Cheers.

    • I agree th 255K calculation involves assumptions which are likely wrong. I agree, no atmosphere, no clouds, so absorbed sunlight would go up. But even without clouds, it is doubtful global average surface albedo would be over 0.9. That gives a global average temperature of just below freezing…and the more ice there is, the lower the temperature as the albedo goes up even more.

      Regarding your compression-causing-warming hypothesis, I completely disagree, and have written on that ad nauseum. The adiabatic lapse rate is the RESULT of convective overturning, and convection can only occur if there is a greenhouse effect destabilizing the atmosphere. Without the atmosphere absorbing and emitting IR, surface heating by the sun would gradually warm the entire troposphere to the same temperature through conduction, since the upper layers would have no way to cool.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        You make two assumptions for which there is no verifiable data. One is that an inert atmosphere is isothermal and the other is that an inert atmosphere has no way to cool. There are many theoretical derivations supporting the existence of a lapse rate in any atmosphere with sufficient pressure.

        A planet with an inert atmosphere, regardlesss of whether inherantly isothermal or not, will be heated by the sun and its surface air will convect and advect. How would it not? The atmosphere would continue to warm until the sun was well past its apex and the atmosphere would begin cooling as soon as the surface cooled to a lower temperature. Everything the same as happens on an IR-active atmosphere except not as fast, so the days would be hotter and the nights cooler.

        The Master Designer added water and CO2 to make Earth tolerable.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          C,

          Given that the Earth’s core is 5500 K or more, that outer space is 4 ‘K or so, any matter between the two will find itself situated between the two, on the appropriate thermal gradient (in the absence of complicating factors like sunlight).

          It seems reasonable to me that the atmosphere cannot be isothermal, being much “hotter” at the bottom than the top. Convection will not necessarily occur, if the hotter air is denser than the cooler aloft, and this is observed. Another example is the solar pond, where convection does not occur even though the lower water is above 80 C, and the surface 30 C. Adjusting salinity ensures the hotter denser water remains under the cooler, less dense water.

          Others may not be aware that sayings such as “hot air rises” or “the lapse rate is due to gravity” may not be the complete story.

          Cheers.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Mike,

            Interesting. And I don’t think for a minute atmospheres can be isothermal.

            “Convection will not necessarily occur, …and this is observed.”

            May I trouble you for a reference?

          • Mike Flynn says:

            C,

            No offense intended, but step outside on a calm day. The air near the surface should be warmer than the air aloft, and this will usually be confirmed by radiosonde data. The warmer air at the surface is remaing on the surface – if it is denser, and it usually is, because density generally decreases with altitude.

            A heat high, or a blocking high, has higher temperatures and pressures than the surrounding atmosphere. Of course, under certain conditions, convection occurs, and warm air rises. Just not all the time.

            Density, not temperature. Same with a fluid like water. I assume you know about anabatic and katabatic winds, which can give rise to situation where the normal order of things is reversed. Just when you think you have it all under control, some inconvenient fact emerges.

            I nearly forgot that the inhabitants of LA (amongst other places) regularly observe smoggy conditions, when a capping inversion occurs, suppressing convection. Hot, muggy, and generally uncomfortable.

            Enough – sorry for being so verbose.

            Cheers.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            No offense taken. I just thought you were generalizing an exception to the usual warmer air rises because it becomes less dense than cooler denser air above. My point was that IR-active gases aren’t needed to initiate convection.

      • Leitwolf says:

        “But even without clouds, it is doubtful global average surface albedo (sic!) would be over 0.9”

        I assume you meant to say absorp-tivity rather than albedo, or that albedo would hardly be <0.1 respectively.

        We have these beautiful pictures from the DSCOVR satellite which show both Moon and Earth in one frame.

        http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/3-earth/2015/20150805_DSCOVR_Earth_Moon_Aligned_f840.png

        What is the albedo of the Moon again? Like 0.12 or 0.13? We can see how the clear sky albedo compares to that, and it is fair to say Earth is much darker.
        Land is darker than the moon if there is vegitation, and similar or brighter than the moon if the land is arid. Ocean water however is definitely much darker. So Earth's albedo should be well below 0.1 indeed.

        However, we must consider that even in the absence of clouds, we are still looking through the atmosphere and aerosols. For that reason clear sky albedo should be even lower.

        Finally there is snow and ice, which we can hardly see in this picture. But both of which have a natural tendency to "hide" from the sun.

      • Geoff Wood says:

        Hi Roy. You have said,

        The adiabatic lapse rate is the RESULT of convective overturning, and convection can only occur if there is a greenhouse effect destabilizing the atmosphere. Without the atmosphere absorbing and emitting IR, surface heating by the sun would gradually warm the entire troposphere to the same temperature through conduction, since the upper layers would have no way to cool.

        End of quote,

        But the adiabatic lapse rate is by definition the result of no energy gained or lost, so stating that adiabatic requires energy input to destabilise it does not make sense. You have multiple competing mechanisms that add together to produce a vertical thermal gradient exactly the same as if they all just answered to gravity. This is grossly over complicating the issue that the troposphere is extremely adiabatic irrespective of heat transfer processes that act in a manner to reduce it, by popular acceptance.

        Secondly, a non radiative atmosphere would be heated to surface Tmax not Tave by conduction as without the ability to radiate or convect down stratification would stop the atmosphere losing its heat to the surface at all other times.

  8. Robert Austin says:

    The greenhouse analogy is a “catchy” simplification as to the thermodynamic engine of our atmosphere, something that the lay public can relate to. On the other hand, in a normally functioning greenhouse one does not have clouds, aerosols are not a significant factor, we don’t have the most powerful “greenhouse” molecule acting in three different phases, and the scale of a greenhouse does not lead to the chaotic behavior of an atmosphere on a rotating and revolving planet. Some climate “experts” are too clueless to realize how an actual greenhouse functions but pretend to know the effects of CO2 on our planetary atmosphere. For example, rabid environmentalist David Suzuki stated in a May 12, 1999 article in the London Free Press,

    “We are familiar with this effect in a car that has sat in the sun. The interior becomes hot because the carbon in the glass keeps the heat in.”

    • Nate says:

      Can anyone find that actual quote? I cant. Sounds like one of those internet legends…

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        It was quoted a few times at WUWT, but the original link at canada.com is not found.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        N,

        Here’s one that seems real (if the voice really belongs to Dr Laurie Johnson) –

        “Im telling you your car heats up because there are greenhouse gases in your car.”

        I don’t believe that a car full of non-greenhouse gases doesn’t get hot in the Sun. Oxygen and nitrogen cylinders in the Sun get just as hot as carbon dioxide cylinders.

        The testable GHE hypothesis would no doubt explain this phenomenon, if it existed. Have you found a copy yet?

        Cheers.

        • Nate says:

          GHE theory explained quite well in the link Roy posted above from 1964.

          Section 2.7. Have at it. Tell us which parts are wrong and why.

        • Nate says:

          Dr Laurie Johnson, might be her, who knows.

          But she is an economist, not a climate scientist.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Nate,

            A couple of things.

            There is no GHE theory. There is not even a testable GHE hypothesis. Sly appeals to authority are typical of stupid and ignorant avoiders and deniers. Try harder – you might even consider addressing the question.

            Second, Gavin Schmidt is an undistinguished mathematician.

            Are you trying to make a point?

            Cheers.

          • Nate says:

            You are an expert at posting irrelevancies. I said nothing about G Schmidt. But his CV is fine.

            “There is no GHE theory.”

            Did you look at the GHE THEORY in the link? Obviously not.

          • David Appell says:

            Nate, MF asks for things, then when you give the evidence he either ignores it or whines about “gotchas.” And around and around it goes. He’s hopeless.

            Imagine a grown man who comes here every day only to taunt and bully and insult people. Ignore him.

  9. The main objection has been that the warmth within a real greenhouse is primarily due to the roofs ability to keep warm air from escaping, thus inhibiting convective heat loss. While that is true, it is also true of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

    How does the presence of GH gases in atmospheric GH inhibit convective heat loss ?

    Quite the reverse is true, it triggers or at least enhances it and so it reduces the real observed temperature enhancement to the famous 33 K. Hence convection here subtracts from radiative effect.

    If one defines the atmospheric GHE as radiative only (the 88 K) then convection reduces it. Yet for the sake of consistency, one must then define the real GHE as (essentially) convective only, the radiative part being small or negligible and if ever sizable it actually adds to the convective effect and thus enhances the real GHE effect.

    The real greenhouse inhibits convection because of a scale effect. Interior air cannot participate in convective motion at a few kilometers scale as in free atmosphere. Scale is reduced to L = a few meters and Rayleigh number scales as L^3. Heat loss in a real greenhouse is thus dominated by thermal conduction through the solid material the greenhouse is made of.

    That said I have no objections at all to the “atmospheric, respectively real GHE” concepts. Both work by inhibiting, heat loss, that is radiative respectively convective heat loss.

    • ren says:

      Changes in ozone in long periods caused by UV and GCR changes in the lower stratosphere induce changes in convection. The temperature of the tropopause is decisive, and in periods of low solar activity increases locally. Through these holes, heat escapes into the stratosphere.
      http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/gome/solar/mgii_composite_2.png

    • sorry, ambiguous wording on my part. My point, which was further elaborated, was that the atmospheric greenhouse effect does not include the cooling effect of convection. The radiative greenhouse effect makes the surface very hot, and does not include convective cooling…similar to a real greenhouse.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        This is really troubling to me and why I object to using greenhouse terminology. You may know what the difference between an atmospheric and a radiative greenhouse effect is, but I have to go back and reread the ambiguous wording again to figure it out. Just my pet peave.

        As long as the sun hits the surface, it will get hot. CO2 and water vapor cool it.

        • If they cool it, why does the temperature keep getting warmer, why is ice melting, and why is sea level rising?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Cooling is relative, but warm is warm. Ice melts above freezing whatever the cause.

          • goldminor says:

            Global warming is mainly about the oceans warming, imo. When the oceans start to shed their heat load, then that will signal the switch to cooling.I see two levels of that, a long term cyclical pattern, and a shorter pattern. The shorter pattern has set in now from what I can see.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            Cooling is relative, but warm is warm. Ice melts above freezing whatever the cause.

            So since ever more ice is melting, and not refreezing, the world must be getting ever warmer.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Nice try. Ice will continue to melt even if temps continue to linger. Stick to the natural vs. AGW debate.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            Nice try. Ice will continue to melt even if temps continue to linger.

            Yes. So more melting ice means temperatures have increased, right?

            Why is the melting of sea ice accelerating?

            Why is sea level rise accelerating?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            No, because cooling, warming, and melting are relative to what the temperatures are at a given time and place.

            Melting accelerates when the temperature difference between the air or water at the surface of the ice increases. This is more likely to happen at noon in the summer in the northern hemisphere.

            Last I heard, sea level rise has been constant for a least a century. Probably has a lot to do with tectonic plates and volcanoes.

      • Thanks, I guess I see what you meant now.

  10. David Effler, PhD says:

    I have been a psychologist for over 40 years, so I am quite familiar with this type of expression. It appears in some of my clients when they stop taking their medication.

    • David Effler, PhD says:

      Sorry. I was attempting to respond to the post by tonyon.

    • Brad says:

      Here’s a random thought Dave,
      Could it be to some ( large?) extent, that the mass media’s infatuation with Global warming ( oops climate change) stories spelling endless doom for mankind could have a psychological component?
      By that I mean so many seem to relish reading – Internet “click bait” is a prime example – tales of rogue asteroids,society collapse, pandemics, pending nuclear holocausts etc etc.
      Could it be we just love tales of doom, presumably affecting just about everyone except our goodselves to the point of having to invest catastrophes even when there isn’t one?
      I christian it ” The Omega Man ” complex…

      Or do I just need to book a appointment with you…. LOL
      Kind regards
      Brad

      • David Appell says:

        Perhaps — there are a lot of apocalyptic sci-fi movies, but most of them involve viruses or zombies.

        On the other hand, books by global warming “skeptics” seem to sell much better than books by the opposite. Perhaps “skeptics” need more reassurance.

      • Nate says:

        Some people think we are doomed by the ‘Mongol horde’ of a few refugee families from central america trying to cross the border and seek asylum.

  11. gbaikie says:

    –The main objection has been that the warmth within a real greenhouse is primarily due to the roofs ability to keep warm air from escaping, thus inhibiting convective heat loss. While that is true, it is also true of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.–

    I would say it is true of an atmosphere and it doesn’t need greenhouse gases for the atmospheric effect.
    As one increases elevation in atmosphere, the less dense air inhibts convection, which is occurring from tropopause to the stratosphere, though if flying stratosphere in commercial airliner, you can hit turbulence due cloud activity below it or within the clouds. Also one has the jet streams at higher the elevations.

    If greenhouse is taller, if greenhouse is larger (and if got streams and ponds in it) it going to be earth like, even if on planet Mercury. For Mercury put in polar region, if at say 85 latitude, the sunlight striking the floor of greenhouse at the low angle will not cause much warming. And only small portion of the surface a large dome would get much heating from the intense sunlight.

  12. jimc says:

    In times past I have made the following argument:
    “The sun’s surface temperature is 5777 K and its radius is 696000 Km. The radius of the earths orbit is 149.6e6 km. Thus the solar intensity at the earth orbit is 1368 W/m**2. The earths albedo is roughly 0.3. Thus its surface (four times the area of its disk) receives an average of 240 W/m**2. Ignoring the effect of the fourth power character of S-B on averaging, some part of the earth would have to average -18 degree C to radiate that much power intensity back out to space. What part of the earth? Well as another crude estimate, pick the atmosphere center of mass at 500 millibar or 5.5 km up. The lapse rate of the troposphere averages -6.5 K/km. so the surface has to be 35 degree C hotter than 5.5 km up, or 17 degree C.
    “The actual answer is more like 15 degree C. Pretty darn close for a bunch of estimates.
    “How does the surface of the earth get hotter than the -18 degree C required to cool the earth/atmosphere system? Well, you guessed it, back radiation from the atmosphere.’
    One of my justifications: When I point my IR thermometer in the sky 5 minutes ago (on a 30 degree C day), I get a reading of -18 degree C, not the -4K of outer space. The atmosphere is the radiator that counts.

    • Kelvin Vaughan says:

      That suggests to me that you are measuring radiation from the point in the atmosphere where Earth radiates omnidirectionally. Am I right?

  13. Coolist says:

    Can anyone find anything wrong with Ed Berry’s analysis and conclusions with regards to C02’s effect on climate? http://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-not-change-climate/ Or Prof. Murry Salby’s explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZqWMEpyUM I find both to be much more logical than believing our emissions of a trace gas can cause measurable warming, and I have yet to read a convincing critique of either one.

    • David Appell says:

      Berrys error is a very simplistic, and wrong, model of the carbon cycle. He doesnt consider the physics and chemistry of how carbon cycles from the atmosphere to the ocean, or from land to the atmosphere, etc. The cycle time period is on the order of 100,000 years – silicate weathering is slow – and far more complicated than Berrys fluid analogy and equations. He makes the same mistakes as the Harde paper that somehow did get published recently, and refuted. RealClimate had a good discussion recently of the Harde paper thats worth reading.

      • David Appell says:

        Here’s that RealClimate post on Hermann Harde’s CO2 paper:

        http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/04/harde-times/

        • bill hunter says:

          It takes about 5 minutes to trace the Real Climate scolding of the Harde paper back to a self described “preliminary analysis” in dire need of a longer period data set to a 1992 paper by Keeling and Shertz. So the “opinion” of Real Climate is that the paper is trash. However, RC could not offer anything in the way of a science argument except a proposed means of estimating ocean uptake of CO2 that the authors of which vividly warned was in need of a much extended dataset in order to arrive at any conclusions. Gotta love political science where somebody can take two years of data and reconstruct the entire history of the planet. Real Climate claims to have “refuted” Harde’s paper but its more akin to whipping it with a wet noodle.

          • David Appell says:

            RealClimate cited a paper written in response to Harde, published in the same journal earlier this year:

            P. Khler, J. Hauck, C. Vlker, D.A. Wolf-Gladrow, M. Butzin, J.B. Halpern, K. Rice, and R.E. Zeebe, “Comment on Scrutinizing the carbon cycle and CO 2 residence time in the atmosphere by H. Harde”, Global and Planetary Change, vol. 164, pp. 67-71, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.09.015

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bill…”RC could not offer anything in the way of a science …”

            That’s true, and they never could. Gavin Schmidt, now head of NASA GISS, fumbled an explanation of positive feedback.

          • Gordon, its not true – I just gave the paper they cited.

          • bill hunter says:

            David, you are too easily convinced when a study agrees with your preconceptions. The paper you quote as refutation falls apart completely with the acknowledgement that “Although models still disagree
            on the contribution of individual processes, the common consensus is. . . .”

            Science is not a popularity contest.

      • Coolist says:

        So the climate has been warmer in the past and cooler just a few centuries ago with out human C02. When you look at all the proxy data with all the uncertainty bars there is no evidence that the small amount of warming over the last 150 years is unusual or catastrophic. You can come up with all kinds of arguments that these warm periods and cold periods weren’t global but you have no more evidence that is wasn’t global than those who are willing to consider that it may have been global. Or that the current warming is more rapid than previous warming periods. Again there is no evidence accurate enough to substantiate that claim. Anyone who believes the global climate would not have changed in the last 150 years if humans were absent has nothing to back it up. So the big question is how much of the recent change is natural? Graphs that show the sun, volcanoes, orbital changes etc have little effect on climate, but C02 does, mean nothing. Something had to have caused previous climate change naturally without human C02. So why would anyone believe that nothing natural could be causing the current (small) warming? Why do some people think it is logical that C02 causes more warming than natural climate variation? The ocean is by far the largest reservoir of C02. A cooling ocean absorbs more C02. A warming ocean releases more C02. This known fact backs up the theory and proxy data that shows C02 levels follow temperaure change. Believing that a small human perturbation (5% using IPCC data) is driving climate change and C02 rise is IMO illogical! Claiming rising C02 and rising temperatures are catastrophic is ridiculous. What catastrophes came about when the Vikings were farming Greenland? What caused that warming? The odds of future cooling is just as likely as future warming. Cooling is more dangerous than warming despite the claims to the contrary. Polar bears and the great barrier reef survived warmer periods before. The time and money wasted on AGW is shameful as is the belief that our emissions will change significantly in the next 50 years. All the well laid plans to reduce C02 are unraveling as government debts rise and consumer’s prices rise. The AGW believing governments will be replaced with AGW denying governments and the whole issue will go away. All accept for the debt it created. Some will claim that we are transitioning to greener energy at an impressive rate and the future is even brighter. Let’s see what happens as the green subsidies dry up, not to mention hair brained ideas like shipping wood pellets from the US to Britain to be burned in place of coal and adding that to the “renewable energy” column. What could be greener than that!? Looking forward to seeing the satellite temperatures move downward. Not looking forward to a cooler climate.

        • David Appell says:

          Coolist says:
          You can come up with all kinds of arguments that these warm periods and cold periods werent global but you have no more evidence that is wasnt global than those who are willing to consider that it may have been global.

          “All kinds of arguments?” How about looking at the data? Like this huge study of proxy data conducted by 60 or 70 scientists? They divided their data into 30-year bins and concluded:

          “There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age.”

          — “Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia,” PAGES 2k Consortium, Nature Geosciences, April 21, 2013
          http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html

          Here’s a very good table that summarizes their results:

          https://andthentheresphysics.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/pages-2k-temperature-grid.jpeg

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            A testable GHE hypothesis would be more convincing than all your delusionary folderol, but you cannot produce one, can you?

            Time for another gotcha, do you think?

            Cheers.

    • Bond says:

      Not sure if this is the same Salby video I’ve watched. If it is, you’ve gotta love his circular logic as he “proves” there is no greenhouse effect by first assuming there is no greenhouse effect. But he is clever in hiding the fact that he has made that assumption from people who simply nod and agree with any challenge to climate science without having any idea what the person is actually saying.

  14. Fred De Jour says:

    Has anyone calculated the impact of all the heat released from the burning of fossil fuels?

    Outside of the Heat Island Effect, all those engines radiate a tremendous amount of heat.

    • Mike Flynn says:

      FDJ,

      Title of a paper – AGU –

      “From urban to national heat island: The effect of anthropogenic heat output on climate change in high population industrial countries.

      There are others. Given that the worlds population has risen substantially over the last century, and per capita energy consumption has measurably increased, one might go looking to if ones speculation was borne out by measurements. It would seem so.

      There are other papers – one identifies the national heat island effect down to about a population density of 100 per sq. km.

      Still a possibility or two. The research seems valid.

      Cheers.

    • David Appell says:

      Human civilization consumes about 20 TW of power. Assuming all machines were 0% efficient, that much would be released. But it’s only 0.04 W/m2, compared to total GHG forcing which is now 2.0 W/m2 and the Earth’s energy imbalance with is 0.7 W/m2. So it’s only a small effect.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        Ice can emit 300 W/m2.

        Sees your 0.7 W/m2 and raises.

        You fold. Boo hoo.

        Cheers.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        David,

        Do you have error limits associated with the forcing and energy imbalance numbers? Maybe a citation would help.

        • David Appell says:

          Chic, here are data on GHG RFs:

          https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html

          although my number was calculated relative to 1850 assuming CO2e(1850)=280 ppm CO2.

          For Earth’s energy imbalance:

          “Improving estimates of Earths energy imbalance,”
          Johnson, G.C., J.M. Lyman, and N.G. Loeb
          Nature Clim. Change, 6, 639640, doi: 10.1038/nclimate3043 (2016).
          http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n7/full/nclimate3043.html

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            It’s pay-walled. I’ll trust you to provide the error estimates.

            Back in 2012, Stephens et al. reported:

            “For the decade considered, the average imbalance is 0.6 = 340.2 − 239.7 − 99.9 Wm2 when these TOA fluxes are constrained to the best estimate ocean heat content (OHC) observations since 2005.”

            “The combined uncertainty on the net TOA flux determined from CERES is 4 Wm2(95% confidence) due largely to instrument calibration errors.”

            “The average annual excess of net TOA radiation constrained by OHC is 0.60.4 Wm2.”

            https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260208782_An_update_on_Earth's_energy_balance_in_light_of_the_latest_global_observations

            My question for Stephens and you, David, would be how can the imbalance error be only 0.4 when the source data can be as much as 4 Wm2?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            That should be +/- 4 W/m2 in the second quote and 0.6 +/- 0.4 W/m2 in the third quote.

          • David Appell says:

            You can find a PDF of the paper online probably, or write to the author to request one.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            That should be +/- 4 W/m2 in the second quote and 0.6 +/- 0.4 W/m2 in the third quote.

            Huh?

            No idea if you’ve quoted anything correctly, but the uncertainties are what they are. Good scientists report them faithfully and honestly.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            David,

            They reported a net energy imbalance of 0.6 with an associated error of 0.4 W/m2. The 0.6 is calculated from the TOA solar insolation, reflected solar, and outgoing LWIR. The error in TOA source data is 4 W/m2. Error propagation is usually additive. How can the error in calculating the net energy imbalance be only 0.4 W/m2?

            I’m not saying Stephens et al. aren’t faithful and honest. Good scientists just want to know.

          • Ball4 says:

            “The error in TOA source data is 4 W/m2.”

            Yes, initially from CERES radiometers. The CERES team admit the data calibration task is “daunting” (CERES Team term) but are able to use Argo ocean data to constrain the net imbalance down to the range & CI you quote. There are later earth energy imbalance (EEI) papers with ~similar imbalance & reduced CI from Stephens 2012.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Do you really understand how Argo ocean data can constrain the net imbalance error by a factor of 10 or are you forcing me to look into it?

          • Ball4 says:

            To really understand how the CERES Science Team uses Argo ocean thermometer field data to calibrate earth energy imbalance as reported in e.g. Stephens 2012, Chic will need to read the instrument calibration specialist papers. Start with Loeb 2018, 2016 and 2012 all of which ref. even earlier papers on the subject.

            This is also a good starting ref.:

            https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/products.php?product=EBAF-TOA

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Must be really complicated if you can’t explain it. Thanks for the leads.

          • Ball4 says:

            Yes, just discussing the specialist lingo would take more than a sound byte on a blog.

        • David Appell says:

          Hmm, I think my 2.0 W/m2 should be about 3.0 W/m2. That NO.AA page gives CO2e(2016) = 489 ppm CO2. Taking CO2e(1850)=280 ppm CO2 (i.e. now contribution also from CH4, N2O, etc at that time), as per their graph of CO2e just above the data table, then today’s RF compared to 1850 is

          RF(2016 cp 1850) = (5.35 W/m2)*ln(489/280) = 3.0 W/m2

    • David Appell says:

      This paper is about “waste heat” from power plants, and it says:

      “The immediate effects of waste heat release from power production and radiative forcing by CO2 are shown to be similar. However, the long-term (hundred years) global warming by CO2-caused radiative forcing is about twenty-five times stronger than the immediate effects, being responsible for around 92% of the heat-up caused by electricity production.”

      “The relative contribution of waste heat from power plants to global warming,”
      R.Zevenhovena, A.Beyeneb,
      Energy
      Volume 36, Issue 6, June 2011, Pages 3754-3762
      https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2010.10.010
      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544210005694

  15. KevinK says:

    Well, the only problem with Dr. Spencer’s explanation is that man made Agricultural Greenhouses have been made with “IR Transparent” and “IR Opaque” roofs for many years and there is no discernible temperature difference between the two.

    That is an empirical measured result, replicated many times.

    And is simply explained; the “IR Opaque” roof absorbs the IR and warms slightly and then emits half of the energy off of the “outside”. So the “IR Opaque” material is not “Opaque” at all when the temperature of the material is nearly the same as the “color temperature” of the radiation.

    The long wave radiation emitted by the surface is merely delayed as it travels to the energy free void of space.

    Cheers, KevinK

    • Mike Flynn says:

      KevinK,

      With ambient temperature of 30 C, shipping containers can reach 60 C. I do not know the highest temperature ever recorded.

      No glass, no allowing some wavelengths in, but trapping others. It is just a steel box.

      Methyl bromide was used for fumigation, and is supposedly a greenhouse gas. When flooding a shipping container with methyl bromide, and maintaining the concentration, instruments are used to measure concentration routinely, and temperature occasionally.

      I have never noticed any temperature increase due to the addition of 100% GHG within a steel greenhouse (shipping container). Others may have noticed a GHE temperature increase, but I doubt it.

      I believe ordinary physics supports your view.

      Cheers.

    • there is probably some truth to what you say. I’m sure the convective loss effect dominates the IR effect. The reason why there is little difference between, say, glass (essentiall opaque to IR) and, say, polyethylene (about 85% transparent to IR) is because the atmosphere is already pretty opaque in the IR, so it doesn’t matter too much if you add another absorber.
      The difference between glass and plastic would be greater in a dry air mass, very little in a humid air mass. In either case, I doubt anyone has done a controlled experiment keeping everything else the same except the IR absorption of the roof. The materials have different thermal conductivities, different sunlight transmission, etc.

      • KevinK says:

        Dr, Spencer, with respect, so the empirical results of Dr. Woods experiment are to be dismissed since his “greenhouse” was already inside the “Earth’s GHG effect” ???

        Build a greenhouse inside a greenhouse and see what happens ???

        Seems Dr. Wood already tested that in his experiments…

        And in fact the students at Penn State (a locus of climate science activity) did indeed build two greenhouses side by side (one with IR Opaque roofs and one with IR Transparent roofs) and measured how big their peppers grew in each case…. There was no significant statistical difference…

        I suppose there might be some merit to the argument that the atmosphere of the Earth already does all the “greenhouse effect” that is possible so we can never ever observe the GHE at the surface of the Earth. But observations of the surface temperature of the Moon also disagree with the postulated temperatures that should result from the radiative greenhouse effect.

        Seems more and more as time goes by that the “radiative greenhouse effect” caused by “Greenhouse Gases” cannot be directly observed except in computer models….

        And I for one, having done lots of computer modelling that predicted my engineering designs would perform in a flawless manner have acquired a hard earned preference for actual measured data versus “model predictions”.

        Cheers, KevinK

        • Seems more and more as time goes by that the radiative greenhouse effect caused by Greenhouse Gases cannot be directly observed except in computer models.

          Bullshit.
          It “seems” that you don’t have the slighted clue.
          The proof of atmospheric GHE is right there in this IRIS satellite measurements.
          http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/modtran_iris.jpg

          Of course the proof cannot be grasped by physics illiterate people. But who cares ?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            It doesn’t take an expert in physics to realize the falacy of your logic. A spectrum taken from one point in time at one location superimposed with model output is not proof of a greenhouse effect whatever that is. Energy fluxes cannot be measured at one point in time.

            The presence of CO2 in the atmosphere increases the average surface temperature by facilitating surface cooling during the day and keeping the surface warmer at night compared to an inert atmosphere. Average surface temperatures are going to be greater because temperature to the fourth power gives more weight to warmer temperatures. Therefore, moderate temperature variations in an IR-active atmosphere result in greater average temperature compared to what would occur in an inert atmosphere with more extreme temperatures.

            I don’t that a greenhouse effect because a greenhouse doesn’t work like that. Can we all agree it’s nonsense to rationalize otherwise?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Correction: Energy fluxes can be measured in systems at equilibrium, but that doesn’t happen in real atmospheres.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            A spectrum taken from one point in time at one location superimposed with model output is not proof of a greenhouse effect whatever that is. Energy fluxes cannot be measured at one point in time.

            Of course not, but you can repeatedly measure energy fluxes each over small periods and combine them analytically. Or you can measure energy fluxes at one point of time, then at one much later, and compare the two while trying to to control for changes other than GHGs. That’s what Harries et al did in 2001:

            “Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
            http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

            There has been lots of papers written about OLR — this site has a collection:

            http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            David,

            Exactly what do spectra measure? Not fluxes. That is not what Harries et al. measured. All they did was confirm that the greater concentration of CO2 is taking a greater bite out of the overall spectrum as would be expected. What is not clear from that data is whether it results in any actual difference in OLR measured over the time interval and to what degree it’s due to CO2. From Goody et al.:

            “Harries et al. [38] showed that the expected bands could be detected in the observed IRIS/IMG difference spectra, confirming the capabilities of the two observing systems. But the important problem for modern climate science is to predict and to measure the response of other atmospheric variables (temperature, humidity and cloud) to a climate forcing. These changes also leave characteristic imprints on the outgoing thermal spectrum. The requirement is to separate forcing and response, and to compare the response to theoretical predictions.”

          • KevinK says:

            Wow, I am now a “physics illiterate people” who “cannot grasp a Modtran plot”….

            Ok, if you say so, but in the 100 years since the “greenhouse gas effect” has been postulated no, I repeat NO unambiguous empirical observations of it have been documented…

            For cripes sake the folks that were certain that Man could “never” fly because of “physics” shut the heck up after the Wright Brothers pulled it off at Kitty Hawk….

            CO2 UP, temperatures flat or DOWN….

            Man made greenhouse built with “IR Opaque” versus “IR Transparent” roofs — same size peppers…

            You are chasing a Ghost…. N-rays… CAGW…. Bigfoot… The Creature from the Black Lagoon…. all imaginary…. (Although there might be some merit to the bigfoot meme).

            And it will probably annoy the heck out of you, but that whole Modtran software was developed to figure out how to detect enemy missile launches headed “incoming” towards the USA during the COLD WAR… It had NOTHING to do with the climate…

            Cheers, KevinK.

          • There is not even any need to detect the change in GHE due to anthropic CO2.
            The point is that the shape of any single IRIS spectrum as the one I linked to pretty much demonstrates the existence a strong GHE on planet Earth.
            The reason is simply the presence of conspicuous notches at CO2, O3 and H2O absorp-tion bands. In a steady state the reduced IR emission at these frequencies implies enhanced IR emission elsewhere in spectrum in order to conserve energy and TOA balance. In particular emission in atmospheric window must be larger than without any GHG’s and relevant notches.
            And there is no way out, enhanced IR emission in atmospheric window implies a warmer surface temperature with GHG’s, i. e. a phenomenon called GHE.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            IT,

            When you say “strong GHE,” what do you mean? Please define.

            If you mean a warmer surface, then compared to what? If you mean compared to a black body, then who disagrees? The important question is why and how IR-active gases make the planet warmer, if they do at all.

            IR spectra tell us nothing about TOA balance. You say “In a steady state the reduced IR emission at these frequencies implies enhanced IR emission elsewhere in spectrum in order to conserve energy and TOA balance.” But there never is a steady state and emission elsewhere at a later time may be conserving energy without requirement of any net surface warming due to changes in CO2, O3, or H2O.

          • The spectrum is fairly similar everywhere every time with the specific “notches” except over small polar regions such as Antarctica.
            In what I call “steady state” there are of course fluctuations around a mean but over a year or so and over whole surface, here again there is no way out, energy cannot accumulate or be removed from system indefinitely, energy must conserved and TOA balance ensured on average.

            By “strong GHE” I mean one that permits you, me and other humans to merely exit and thrive on this planet.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Unlike a greenhouse, IR-active gases transport warmed air to higher latitudes where a greater proportion of energy is radiated to space. Do you have any evidence those polar regions aren’t compensating for the notches elsewhere and thereby ensuring energy does not accumulate?

          • Of course there is all the evidence.
            On Antarctic plateau the CO2 GHE is rather locally reversed during part of the year but this cannot and does not (and by far) compensate for the standard GHE everywhere else.
            You could have got a serious hint just by yourself and calculate the ratio of Antarctic surface area to total Earth surface area, namely less than 14 M KM^2/510 M km^2 or 3 %And this an upper very conservative limit.

            As to this:

            Unlike a greenhouse, IR-active gases transport warmed air to higher latitudes where a greater proportion of energy is radiated to space.

            Even a non IR-active atmosphere would transport warm air to higher latitudes. That’s just a matter of meridional temperature gradient and non uniformly lit surface.
            And with GHG’s, in spite of this meridional transport, pretty much less heat is radiated to space per square meter in polar caps than elsewhere at lower latitudes because hot radiates (much, T^4 law) more than cold.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Did you even read the paper you cited? It makes my case. Additional CO2 cooling at the poles might be compensating for any reduction in cooling occurring in the lower latitudes.

            “We investigated [a negative GHE] in detail and show that for central Antarctica an increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increased long-wave energy loss to space, which cools the Earth-atmosphere system. These findings for central Antarctica are in contrast to the general warming effect of increasing CO2.”

          • Did you even read the paper you cited? It makes my case. Additional CO2 cooling at the poles might be compensating for any reduction in cooling occurring in the lower latitudes.

            Bullshit and laughable wishful thinking !
            Did you even read what I said and where does the paper state such a ridiculous nonsense ?
            It “might compensate” for at most 3% of the warming effect elsewhere, that is peanuts .

            You are a plain idiot.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Idiot tracker,

            After more careful reading of your comments, I am still not sure you understand the negative GHE paper you cited above.

            Unfortunately, I did not properly explain why radiation from polar regions can compensate for differences in the notches in outgoing IR spectra elsewhere, thus insuring that energy doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere. It follows from this that one cannot assume that changes in the spectra due to increases in CO2 will have any effect on global temperature.

            You are correct that “even a non IR-active atmosphere would transport warm air to higher latitudes.” However, absorp-tion of IR and thermalization amplifies this effect.

            You write “less heat is radiated to space per square meter in polar caps than elsewhere at lower latitudes.” That does seem obvious due to average temperature differences.

            The paper you cited explained that increasing CO2 in the antarctic is not warming by blocking outgoing radiation as warmists assume. In contrast, “an increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increased long-wave energy loss to space, which cools the Earth-atmosphere system.” Why would this be the case? Maybe because the meridional temperature gradient moves more warmer air over the antarctic than would otherwise be there.

            So I will rephrase my earlier assertion. Unlike a greenhouse, IR-active gases transport warmed air to higher latitudes where more energy is radiated to space than would other occur. Furthermore, the massive daily energy transfers are more than enough to compensate for the small effect of any average notch “fluctuations around a mean.”

            If you doubt there is a greater than proportional share of energy flux per degree of surface temperature at the poles, then I suggest you read this post: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/05/symmetry-and-balance/

        • David Appell says:

          Chic Bowdrie says:
          All they did was confirm that the greater concentration of CO2 is taking a greater bite out of the overall spectrum as would be expected.

          “All they did?” That’s an increase in the GHE!

          What is not clear from that data is whether it results in any actual difference in OLR measured over the time interval and to what degree its due to CO2. From Goody et al.:

          They measured flux changes as a function of wavelength, so they can attribute them to not only CO2, but to other GHGs as well.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            “That’s an increase in the GHE!”

            No it’s a figment of your imagination until you have definitive evidence that differences in spectra obtained in 1970 and 1997 caused any increase in global temperature.

            Those are not measured fluxes! If they measured the differences in fluxes, where is the data?

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      kevink…”Well, the only problem with Dr. Spencers explanation is that man made Agricultural Greenhouses have been made with IR Transparent and IR Opaque roofs for many years and there is no discernible temperature difference between the two”.

      That was corroborated by an experiment in 1909 by R.W. Wood, an expert on IR. Wood had an unquenchable enthusiasm for experimentation, dismissing theory till it could be proved by experimentation. He saw the greenhouse theory described and thought it was wrong so he set up an experiment to measure the difference in IR throughput between real glass and halite, which freely transmits IR.

      Wood found that in both cases that boxes supporting the glass/halite warmed equally and concluded that real greenhouse do not warm by the blockage of radiation.

      We know that from insulation in homes. Very few homes have barriers for IR, the insulation serving to slow down heat loss by conduction. Radiation has an imperceptible effect on cooling in homes.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        GR,

        As a matter of interest, I recollect that people trying to reproduce Wood’s experiments generally neglect to follow his procedures in one important respect. Whether this is intentional, or due to sloppiness or ignorance, I don’t know.

        After Wood’s initial run of greenhouse experiments, he was puzzled by the results, and gave the matter a little more thought, as a scientific experimenter often should.

        He then interposed a sheet of glass between the sunlight and the sheets of halite and glass, respectively, used as his greenhouse roofs. This, of course, alters the results significantly, but is usually neglected by others, who do not have Wood’s powers of scientific reasoning.

        Anyone interested can chase up Wood’s reasoning. Tyndall also used the same reasoning much earlier, to overcome a similar puzzling result.

        Maybe a little irrelevant, but there seem to be many sloppy and slapdash experimenters calling themselves professionals, as opposed to competent, thoughtful, meticulous experimenters of the Wood and Tyndall variety.

        All part of the rich tapestry of life and science, I guess.

        Cheers.

      • KevinK says:

        And R. W. Wood also disproved the existence of “N-Rays” by moving part of an experimental setup that “proved the existence of N-Rays”. R.W. Wood removed the “part” that created “N-Rays” and the rays were still detected….

        The person that “discovered” N-Rays never forgave R.W. Wood for experimentally disproving the existence of N-Rays….

        The person that “Discovered” N-Rays went to his deathbed insisting that “N-Rays” existed….

        Science advances one funeral at a time.

        Cheers, KevinK

  16. gbaikie says:

    Earth absorbs on average 240 watts, and emits 240 watts.
    If Earth rotated 1/2 of the speed- 48 hour day rather than 24 hours, how much would Earth absorb on average.
    And would change in terms of how much Earth absorbs it rotated 1/10th or 1/100th of the speed?

    • Bond says:

      So the entire earth absorbs and emits 240 Watts? Interesting.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        B,

        Does it really? Is it true, and is it relevant? Interesting.

        Cheers,

      • Bond says:

        gbaikie, your calculation and the numbers you used have been declared irrelevant.

        • Bond says:

          Making it clear that it is Mike Flynn who has declared your numbers and calculations irrelevant. I am challenging only your units.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            B,

            You wrote –

            “gbaikie, your calculation and the numbers you used have been declared irrelevant.”

            Is that not really what you meant to say? Why not say what you mean, in that case?

            How hard can it be?

            Cheers.

          • Bond says:

            “I replied to your comment”
            VS
            “Your comment has been replied to”

            Simple English comprehension. For most.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            B,

            I’m sure if you thrash around hard enough, you will eventually reach your destination – nowhere at all.

            Keep at it. You’ll get nowhere if you try hard enough.

            Cheers.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          bond….”gbaikie, your calculation and the numbers you used have been declared irrelevant”.

          If the declaration of irrelevance comes from someone who is himself irrelevant, don’t the two sort of cancel?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        g,

        Bond has declared your calculations and the numbers you used irrelevant.

        Henceforth, no one may use the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, or 0. They have been declared irrelevant.

        Give yourself a good whipping, you naughty boy!

        Cheers.

      • gbaikie says:

        Average, per square meter.

        • Bond says:

          Thanks for a non-troll response.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          gbaikie,

          As I suspected. Unwhip yourself. Your omission is forgiven. I have spoken.

          All joking aside, I don’t think it would make any practical difference at all. I’m sure some will disagree, and I may be wrong, but the number of photons interacting with electrons shouldnt change.

          The temperature variations of an object would not be as great – a sphere rotating at infinite speed would have an isothermal surface. On the other hand, a stationary sphere would have a maximum temperature at point of the surface normal to the Sun, and a minimum diametrically opposite. Obviously all the above becomes irrelevant if the body was initially isothermal, with perfect conductivity!

          An object exposed to a fixed heat source will not continue to heat indefinitely. It can never exceed the temperature of the heat source, and if not in intimate contact with it, will only intercept sufficient photons to raise it to a lower temperature.

          One example might be the Earths poles, where 6 months exposure to the Sun at approximately 5800 K, does not result in temperatures approaching those attainable in 3 hours in the tropics, from the same heat source.

          Oh well, them’s my thoughts.

          Cheers.

          • Nate says:

            ‘I may be wrong’

            Finally, a fact from Mike!

          • Mike Flynn says:

            N,

            Thanks for agreeing with an obvious fact. And your point is?

            If you are indulging in a puerile attempt at giving gratuitous offense, you have wasted your time.

            Just another pointless, irrelevant, stupid and ignorant comment, trying to divert attention away from the fact you can’t even provide a testable GHE hypothesis in lieu of the pseudoscientific nonsense you cling to.

            Try harder.

            Cheers.

          • Nate says:

            Mike,

            Lets take a poll of who among us posts the most ‘pointless, irrelevant, stupid and ignorant comments’?

            I think you would be crowned champion.

          • Nate says:

            Mike,

            ‘puerile attempt at giving gratuitous offense, you have wasted your time.’

            I don’t see the puerile.

            But the nature of your posts invites, practically screams:

            Please ridicule me!

          • Mike Flynn says:

            N,

            Thank you for the encomium.

            You may think your attempts at being gratuitously offence are not puerile. As you admit, you cannot see it. Your ignorance and stupidity obviously blind you to reality in more ways than one.

            I decline to be offended, upset or annoyed as a general rule, and certainly see no good reason to make an exception in your case. Why should I?

            Carry on. You are free to waste your time anyway you see fit, as am I.

            Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      gbaikie…”Earth absorbs on average 240 watts, and emits 240 watts”.

      What do you think of the notion that the atmosphere expands during the day in response to solar heating and contracts at night?

      Through expansion and contraction it should mediate heat internally. It’s not like new solar heating every morning must be dissipated to space, it could simply cause the atmosphere to expand to absorb it. Then after sunset, the temperature decreases with a decrease in volume.

      Don’t know, just a thought.

      Charles’ Law: V1/T1 = V2/T2, at constant pressure. Maybe gravity can keep the pressure fairly constant.

      I liken it to a cylinder with a piston pressing down vertically on a gas. If you heat the gas, it does work against the piston to raise it. Remove the heat and the weight of the cylinder compresses the gas.

      With gravity working as the piston, heating the gas causes it to expand against gravity, so the pressure should remain fairly constant while the volume increases with temperature. Remove the heat and gravity should drag the gas molecules closer together, reducing the volume and the temperature.

  17. Mike Flynn says:

    Unfortunately, adding CO2 to a greenhouse can make it too hot, but possibly not due to any supposed greenhouse effect –

    “The CO2 generators can also provide too much heat in the greenhouse necessitating venting which will dilute the CO2 present in the greenhouse and defeat the purpose of the CO2 generator in the first place. Therefore there are certain advantages and disadvantages to fuel burning CO2 generators.”

    The recommended Canadian Government method –

    “The safest method of CO2 supplementation is the use of compressed CO2 from cylinders. This CO2 is pure and free of contaminants and is easily regulated.”

    Of course, this avoids the problem of inadvertent extra heating.

    Generating CO2 by burning stuff can generate too much heat. The way to avoid this is to add CO2 from a CO2 cylinder. No additional heat – information courtesy of the Canadian Government.

    Cheers.

    • Actually, releasing any compressed gas from a cylinder contained within a “closed” space (assuming that the cylinder is at the same temperature) will reduce the temperature (that’s about grade 9 physics). What happens after that will depend on the other conditions obtaining – e.g. the nature of the structure, and the comparative temperatures within it and outside it (approximately!).

      I don’t care what the government says.

      Tony..

      • Mike Flynn says:

        AR,

        I assume you are responding to my comment. Are you disagreeing with something I wrote? If so, quoting what I said might allow me to correct any errors. Up to you, course.

        Cheers.

        • A supplement (= additional refinement), not a disagreement.

          Tony.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            AR,

            Thanks. You may have noticed some people take violent exception to my comments. Rarely can they actually disagree specifically within anything I write.

            To address your point, I agree. I will amplify a little then, if I may.

            The gas needs to be released slowly if you are particularly concerned about reduction in temperature – not a lot of CO2 is required to adjust the level from say, 400 ppm to 1200 ppm or so. Depending on the time of day, and the method of release, it will be impossible to determine any change in temperature whether the internal concentration is one or the other.

            Alternatively, one may heat the released CO2 by any suitable means. As you point out, letting the Sun do this, is a reasonable strategy.

            I’m not criticising you, but other commenters will accuse me of being unaware of the (generally) adiabatic process resulting in the lowering of temperature seen when compressed gas is allowed to expand rapidly. Yes, I know, not an adequate or comprehensive explanation, but I am sure you get my drift.

            Cheers.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        tony…”Actually, releasing any compressed gas from a cylinder contained within a closed space (assuming that the cylinder is at the same temperature) will reduce the temperature….”

        Lot of presumptions here. For one, whenever I have released a lot of compressed gas, the tank has formed frost on the outside and feels cold to the touch. Also, how long would you wait before taking the temperature? Maybe the immediate effect would be a reduction in temperature but the overall effect of increasing the pressure in a confined space is to raise the temperature.

      • coturnix says:

        Some gases could heat up with decreasing pressure, it is called joule-thompson effect, google it. The effect is supposedly smaller than the adiabatic expansion cooling, so is probably masked by it unless you irreversibly throttle gas into relative vacuum or something like that. In the case of co2, at ambient conditions the effect works to cool it even further.

  18. donald penman says:

    When we talk of the Earth being a greenhouse or the Earth being a heat engine we are using analogies. The earth does not heat up or cool down as a single unit it is too big to do that, the individual temperatures which make up the global temperature are not causally connected unlike in a laboratory experiment. The polar regions are not regions where the heat from the equator goes to be radiated to space, heat loss or gain in the polar regions is determined by atmospheric conditions in the same way as it is at the equator.

  19. AaronS says:

    Sorry to ramble on but seems a greenhouse would be hotter if a second layer of glass surrounded the greenhouse because convection would be reduced… like a double pained window has better insulation i guess.

    But in nature does GH have a negative feedback because of cloud formation associated with convection increases albedo?

    • That’s a very painful comment.

      Ouch. Tony.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        AR,

        I feel your pane.

        Groan!

        Cheers.

        • AaronS says:

          Why? I am not sure if you are dragons that dont buy into ghg or if I am inconsistent with Roy’s post.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            AS,

            No offense intended. You made a little spelling mistake – using “pained” instead of “paned”.

            I was making a very bad pun, as I assumed AR was.

            I don’t believe in the existence of a testable GHE hypothesis, that’s true, but I wasn’t trying to offend you – just esssaying a little light humour. I didn’t succeed, apparently. Thanks for letting me know I missed the mark.

            Cheers.

          • AaronS says:

            Yea. Haha. I am not a speller. I let auto check make the final call because i am in china and no google available. I appreciate the pun…. now that i get it.

    • I would imagine it would be hotter, yes. But, as discussed above, the convection inhibiting effect of a greenhouse is likely much larger than its radiative effect on temperature. As I tried to explain in the OP, the REAL atmospheric GHE also excludes convection.

      • Tim Folkerts says:

        I have had thoughts about a few simple experiments to highlight the GHE. One of those experiments was more or less a multi-paned greenhouse. I’ll have to play around this summer when 1) the sun is strong and 2) I have more free time. I am pretty sure I could get temperatures up over 100C.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Tim,

          Good luck. If you can achieve temperatures of over 100 C utilising the unconcentrated rays of the Sun, you can power a steam boiler and run an electric power plant.

          I am sure you can’t. Let me know how you get on. Actually, you wont need to – the world will beat a path to your door. Low tech free electricity – just a steam engine and an alternator. Good luck.

          Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            “I am sure you cant.”
            I just have to chuckle at the things you are “sure” about.

            I.T. just remarked that commercial flat panel solar collectors already can get WAY above 100C, so such technology already exists. My goal was actually to push the temperatures even higher.

            Furthermore, this is hardly ‘free electricity’. Low temperature, low pressure steam is very inefficient. You would still be paying for the turbine and generator but getting very little from it. And it would only work close to midday when it was sunny. But you can be ‘sure’ about free electricity, too, if you like.

        • Snape says:

          Tim

          I have a hunch that the size of a multi-paned greenhouse will make a big difference in temperature. Bigger should be hotter.

          This is based on what I know about down insulation. If one ounce can “fluff up” to 900 cubic inches (compared to the more typical 600 cubic inches) it has a very high warmth rating.

          I think it has to do with air being a poor conductor of heat.

        • Flat plate solar collectors for domestic hot water routinely reach stagnation temperatures that exceed 150 C. Stagnation means that the fluid that removes the heat from collector is not circulated.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      aaron…”seems a greenhouse would be hotter if a second layer of glass surrounded the greenhouse because convection would be reduced”

      The convection heating the greenhouse is inside the glass. Greenhouse owners trying to mediate the heat have openings in the glass, like automated/manual doors, to allow a certain amount of convection to the outside.

      I know a guy with a small greenhouse who has an automated system with a thermostat. It not only opens doors in the glass, it turns on fans to blow the air out.

  20. Steve T says:

    Dr Spencer, you appear to have mis-spelled “Greenhouse” in the title, and again once in the text, which may make this article less easy to locate in search engines.

    • coturnix says:

      i don’t think so, google nowdays is smarter than that. Instead, one should just tell the search engine not to index, afaik at least google obeys those instructions.

  21. pochas94 says:

    Excellent opportunity to illustrate why the “Greenhouse Effect” is an unphysical mistake as applied to the free atmosphere. Inside the greenhouse, nice and warm. Open the vents, the outside air rushes in. Inside, the radiation balance is crucial, the greenhouse rules because convection is defeated. Outside, forget about it, because the greenhouse is gone, convection is in control, heated air rushes skyward, and no more greenhouse effect. To experience the greenhouse effect, you need a greenhouse. But don’t think the greenhouse effect controls climate.

    • Snape says:

      As far as I can tell, there are two main variables that determine accumulation of something into a system: “rate of entry” and “average length of stay”.

      CO2 has little affect on the rate energy enters the earth system, but causes that energy to stay longer……meaning more accumulates.

      Same idea with a greenhouse.

      • Snape says:

        Effect, not affect.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        S,

        And as far as I can tell, it doesnt matter how long you expose an object to sunlight at a distance of a 150 000 000 km. It just doesnt get very hot.

        If you put something like an atmosphere between the object and the Sun, it wont even get as hot as on the Moons airless surface.

        Insulators work both ways. Even a vacuum flask, an excellent insulator, wont raise the temperature of its contents.

        No heat accumulation. The surface still cools at night. Talking about the atmosphere blocking infrared is bizarre. Put a thermometer on the ground in bright sunlight, and it gets hot. Wait for a solar eclipse, it cools down. As Dr Spencer pointed out, some black plastic bags are IR transparent, while blocking visible light. Wrap your thermometer in that plastic, it gets very nearly as hot. Enough IR comes from the sun to make the water in a solar pond very, very, hot, and to keep your solar hot water system operating nicely.

        The Earth does not accumulate or store energy. If it did, it couldnt have cooled, could it? And the surface is no longer molten, as you have noticed!

        Learn physics, or concoct more pointless, stupid, and irrelevant analogies – the choice is yours.

        Cheers.

        • Snape says:

          Mike , whatever happened to your poor brain? A bad fall? Too many drugs? Dementia?

          Sometimes your comments are rational, but usually, like here, just a mish mash of facts and gibberish:

          “And as far as I can tell, it doesnt matter how long you expose an object to sunlight at a distance of a 150 000 000 km. It just doesnt get very hot.”

          And later:

          “Enough IR comes from the sun to make the water in a solar pond very, very, hot, and to keep your solar hot water system operating nicely.”

          *********

          Then there’s this beauty:

          “The Earth does not accumulate or store energy. If it did, it couldnt have cooled, could it?”

          Why do you think an object has a temperature?

          • David Appell says:

            Snape, see how MF avoids questions? He asks them, but won’t answer them.

            I don’t know why you keep responding to replies like this.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          S,

          I assume you are disagreeing with something I wrote.

          What is it, and why are you disagreeing?

          Posing a stupid, ignorant and irrelevant gotcha isn’t achieving much, is it?

          Over to you. You cannot seem to be able to figure out what you are disputing, if anything. You certainly provide no facts, in any case.

          Keep at it. It is not not my fault if you seem confused, as well as demonstrating ignorance and stupidity.

          Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      pochas…”Inside the greenhouse, nice and warm. Open the vents, the outside air rushes in”.

      As Joe Postma claims, we build greenhouses to do what the atmosphere cannot do.

  22. ren says:

    Sorry.
    Warning of phreatic explosions
    However, the volcano observatory now warns that as the magma column in the summit reservoir connecting to the lava lake continues to drain and drop, the risk of potentially large explosions increases. This will be especially true if the surface of the magma column drops beneath the ground water table under the caldera floor, which would allow water to seep into the hot conduit, and likely trigger violent steam-driven (phreatic) explosions, perhaps similar to those observed in 1924, when violent phreatic activity destroyed the pre-1924 lava lake and excavated the Halema’uma’u crater as it was known after 1924.
    https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/kilauea/news/68868/Kilauea-volcano-update-Summit-lava-lake-continues-to-drop-risk-of-explosions-increases.html

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      ren…”However, the volcano observatory now warns that as the magma column in the summit reservoir connecting to the lava lake continues to drain and drop….”

      Let’s hope the volcano does not blow a hole in its side near ocean level. That volume of water getting into a magma chamber could cause another Krakatoa and blow the top off the island.

      Why would people build homes on an active volcano?

  23. David Appell says:

    Roy wrote:
    “Next, lets pump some extra CO2 in there to help the plants even more.”

    That works in a real greenhouse because you can control temperature and water.

    But in the real world plants have to deal with warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation.

    In the real world yields often decline due to higher temperatures, all else being equal, and nutritional content decreases with higher CO2.

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/1/014002
    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3115.html
    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2183.html

    Corn Yields Under Higher Temperatures,
    Figure 18.3, p 421
    U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014 National Climate Assessment
    https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report

    • Mike Flynn says:

      DA,

      Would you rather have 100 tonnes of something with 75% useable carbohydrate, or 50 tonnes of something with 80%? In other words would you prefer more food or less food?

      The yield may have decreased. The quantity has increased.

      What was your point again?

      Cheers.

    • coturnix says:

      I wonder, how do people grow, nay, how do people live in tropics where it is +29C mat at +35C every day at noon.

      • coturnix says:

        .. it must be a horrible barren desert there, woth no food and everyone dead… oh wait, the island of java the island the size of louisiana hosts 141 million people – a whopping 43% of the USA population… hmmm, i wonder how they got that

        • Cot: The plants that grow in the tropics have evolved to live there. Same as the plants in the mid-latitudes. The question is whether they can adapt fast enough as their respective ecosystems change.

          • coturnix says:

            I thought we were talking about farming yields? It takes just 1 second to change one mind and order corn seeds in place of wheat, or plant sweet potato in place of the regular one. And even the wild plants don’t have to change, just move north – a no brainer for annuals, a bit of a strain for oak forests but otherwise doable on the decadal timescales.

          • David Appell says:

            But the world needs so much of certain crops — corn or soybeans or wheat, etc.

            Does it matter to farmers with farms that the ecosystem for their crop is moving north? When will it be out of their region? What do they do then? A massive soybean operations just switches to something else on the spot?

            And it’s by no means clear that plants and animals can keep up with climate change by moving towards the pole or up in altitude. You call it a “no brainer,” but almost no ecologist would agree. Are the soil there workable for the plants? Will they face new predators? Will precipitation there be suitable?

            Temperatures are moving poleward at about 0.5 km/yr:

            https://www.nature.com/articles/7276956a

            Can plants and animals move poleward that fast? Can they do it in an environment that is now full of highways and housing developments and shopping malls? Why have plants and animals gone extinct during past times of rapid climate change?

            These things aren’t simple, and calling them a “no brainer” doesn’t indicate much thought about them.

            I thought we were talking about farming yields? It takes just 1 second to change one mind and order corn seeds in place of wheat, or plant sweet potato in place of the regular one. And even the wild plants dont have to change, just move north a no brainer for annuals, a bit of a strain for oak forests but otherwise doable on the decadal timescales.

          • David Appell says:

            Sorry, my last paragraph is yours; I pasted it into my reply box to address it, but forgot to then delete it.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        c,

        You are right! It’s terrible!

        I am even forced to put insulation in the roof of my house to keep cool. Mind you, I don’t need a fireplace or a heater, so there are some advantages.

        At the moment it’s about 29 C, 44% RH. how terrible is that? Mind you, it is a bit humid, but the dry season is pretty much here.

        Cheers.

        • coturnix says:

          that gives dew point of 16C at sea level… by my standard that’s should be at the upper end of comfortably tolerable range of , but basically should still be ok as long as one stay in the shade

  24. Was Greenouse Effect a Freudian slip ?

    The fact is that atmospheric CO2 does not cause global warming:
    1. There is no statistically significant correlation between satellite lower troposphere temperature ( generously provided by Dr Roy Spencers web site ) and atmospheric CO2 concentration;
    2. There is a statistically significant correlation between the temperature and the rate of change of CO2 concentration;
    3. Temperature change precedes CO2 change so it cannot possibly be caused by the latter;
    4. The temperature and the rate of change of CO2 concentration have practically identical autocorrelation coefficients with a prominent maximum at about 42 months;
    5. This is confirmed by having practically identical Fourier amplitude spectra with the most prominent peak at a period of 42 months, other maxima reflect the changes in configuration of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to the measuring location on the Earths surface, that is, the climate change is caused by the changes in the configuration of the Solar System;
    6. The so-called greenhouse effect is simply the old fashioned Universal Gas Laws in operation.

    For detail see:
    https://www.climateauditor.com

    Relax !

    • ren says:

      I greet a real math! A great article.

    • E. Swanson says:

      Bevan Dockery, The relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature is logarithmic, not linear. In the first graph of this post, comparing the smoothed curve for CO2 with the UAH LT v6 unsmoothed data gives an improper visualization. There’s a strong annual cycle in the Mauna Loa CO2 data and the article presents no description of the method used for “removal of the seasonal variation”. The use of a moving average to smooth the series, as often is the choice, induces spurious frequencies into the result, which would then appear as a signal in a spectral analysis.

      Figure 2 shows the monthly lower troposphere satellite temperature for the Tropics-Land component in blue and the annual change in CO2 concentration in red. The obvious correlation between the two raises the possibility that there may be some common causal factor whereby the temperature drives the rate of change of CO2 concentration.

      The balance between ocean and atmospheric CO2 is a function of temperature and warm periods would result in increased transfer of CO2 from the ocean reservoir into the atmosphere. There’s much more CO2 in the oceans than in the atmosphere.

      • E. Swanson, there is no perceptible difference between using the CO2 concentration data in Figure 1 as presented by the Scripts Institution of Oceanography or using a transformation to logarithmic values. Both appear to be almost straight lines with none of the variation seen in the satellite lower troposphere temperature time series. The CO2 values are those taken from source reference [2], column 10 being the measurements after a seasonal adjustment to remove the quasi-regular seasonal cycle. The adjustment involves subtracting from the data a 4-harmonic fit with a linear gain factor.

        As for Figure 2, the Climate Auditor web site gives the correlation coefficient for both the Tropics-Land and the Tropics-Ocean temperature relative to the rate of change of CO2 concentration. There is no significant difference between the two results.

    • David Appell says:

      Bevan Dockery:

      Do you honestly think you have found some simple errors that millions of scientists have someone overlooked in the last 100 years?

      Really??

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”Do you honestly think you have found some simple errors that millions of scientists have someone overlooked in the last 100 years?”

        Millions of scientists???

        It does happen and it is happening. The so-called scientists promoting catastrophic warming have erred egregiously. Not only that, some of them are ego-driven, arrogant SOBs who have not the slightest clue how wrong they are.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          The so-called scientists promoting catastrophic warming have erred egregiously.

          You can’t honestly think you’ve found some simple errors that 100 years worth of scientists somehow missed???

          Do you?

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        “DADo you honestly think you have found some simple errors that millions of scientists have someone overlooked in the last 100 years?

        It does happen and it is happening.

        When? Where?

      • David Appell, my aim is to create a mathematical synthesis of empirical data recorded over the past 40 to 60 years to expose what has actually happened as distinct from the media presentations that are often derived from computer models. Pre-1950 scientists did not have this data available for study so could not know what is now revealed.

    • David Appell says:

      Outgoing longwave energy like this is strong evidence there is a greenhouse effect:

      Taking the measure of the greenhouse effect
      http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/

      There is a Greenhouse Effect on Venus, Michael Hammer, 10/9/11
      http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/there-is-a-greenhouse-effect-on-venus/

      • David Appell, I am only concerned with empirical data, not complex calculations based on computer models which may include assumptions that are later supposedly proved by the model calculations. The Gavin Schmidt article commences with a misleading diagram, the Earth is definitely not a black body so comparing an average output measured from a satellite vehicle with the theoretical output from a black body, which does not have an atmosphere, proves nothing about the effect of atmospheric CO2 at the Earths surface.

        My web page shows that temperature controls the rate of change in CO2 concentration. Consequently the atmospheric CO2 concentration at a given time is the result of the integral of the prior time series. The CO2 concentration has been increasing in a near linear fashion because the temperature: CO2 rate has remained positive. The effect is clearly illustrated by the temperature and CO2 behaviour through past ice ages. The CO2 concentration lags well behind the temperature because it does not start to decrease until the fall in temperature reaches the critical level at which the CO2 rate is zero. I speculate that this is 0 C ground temperature at which time water freezes and is no longer available to the multitude of life forms that generate CO2.

        The presence of CO2 in the atmosphere leading up to an ice age has apparently had no effect in stopping the temperature falling so low that large areas of the globe became covered in ice kilometres thick!

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      bevan…”6. The so-called greenhouse effect is simply the old fashioned Universal Gas Laws in operation”.

      Ditto to that. I have asked the question as to why climate modelers did not simply use the gas laws that have been proved over centuries rather than invent dumb theories based on radiation. A quick look at the Ideal Gas Equation and Dalton’s law of partial pressures reveals immediately that 0.04% CO2 is not warming much of anything.

      I think the gas laws (Charles) might explain heat dissipation from solar energy by daily atmospheric expansion/contraction.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        I have asked the question as to why climate modelers did not simply use the gas laws that have been proved over centuries rather than invent dumb theories based on radiation.

        “dumb?”

        “invent?”

        Gordon, do GHGs absorb and emit IR, or not?

        Gordon, if there are three targets painted randomly on a wall, what’s the probability of hitting one with a thrown ball?

        • Mike Flynn says:

          DA,

          Do bananas absorb and emit IR radiation, or not?

          Are you stupid and ignorant, or not>

          The world wonders!

          The world no longer wonders whether a testable GHE hypothesis exists, because evidence for its existence is not evident.

          Cheers.

  25. Mike Flynn says:

    From Dr Spencer –

    “As originally calculated by Manabe and Strickler (1964, see slide #10 here), the greenhouse effect does not explain the average surface temperature being 288 K (observed) rather than 255K (the effective radiating temperature of the Earth absent an atmosphere).”

    Disregarding the observed temperature in favour of a calculated one, brings this Feynman quote to mind –

    “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

    What if your calculation is in error? It isn’t borne out by observation, obviously. Maybe it is wrong. The whole GHE seems to predicated on the assumption that the “temperature” of the “surface” “should be” 255 K.

    How one “calculates” the surface temperature of a ball of molten roock which has cooled from a molten state, to cool enough for the first liquid water to form, to its present range of -90 C to +90 C, is quite beyond me. One might as “calculate” the temperature of a white hot billet of steel placed in the Sun!

    If the “calculation” doesn’t agree with the measured temperature, your calculation is suspect. Calculating the surface temperature of the Earth is about as easy as calculating the temperature of the steel billet surface. It can’t be done in any useful way. Trying to wriggle out by talking about averages is pointless. You have no numbers to “average”, unless your calaculation generates a series, which of course is nonsensical.

    Just a thought.

    Cheers.

    • Myki says:

      “Just a thought.”
      And a very poor one at that. Your “cooling ball of rock” analogy is totally irrelevant since we all know that the GHE is 5000 times more powerful.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        M,

        Oooooh! Scary! Very scary!

        5000 times more powerful? Only 5000? Why not a million, or a zillion?

        A squillion times zip is still zip! Zero, nothing, nought.

        Still no testable GHE hypothesis, is there?

        Cheers.

  26. Gordon Robertson says:

    something to ponder by R.W. Wood:

    First, a bio to show he’s not a lightweight:

    http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/wood-robert-1.pdf

    Second, a brief article by him on IR radiation and the GHE:

    http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html

    Please note, R.W. Wood was a highly regarded scientist who lived by the experiment. He was a member of the National Academy of Science and an expert on infrared radiation. I think it would be a serious mistake to disrespect the man and take him lightly. For me, his explanation for the GHE makes far more sense than any I have encountered.

    You might also note that the article is posted by William Connolley, a computer programmer who hangs out at realclimate expressing his uber-alarmist thoughts. He asks what is wrong with the theory of Wood? There is nothing wrong with it but there’s a whole lot wrong with the alarmists theories of Connolley and his ilk.

    • Tim Folkerts says:

      Gordon,

      Even highly regarded scientists can make errors, especially when WOOD specifically said “I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter”

      GR says: “William Connolley, a computer programmer who hangs out at realclimate … alarmists theories of Connolley and his ilk”
      Pure ad hom! Stick to facts.

      WOOD: “remaining there on account the very low radiating power of a gas”
      CO2 has an emissivity of ~ 0.2 Water has a higher emissivity. Clouds are much higher yet. The atmosphere overall radiates on the order of 50% as well as a blackbody. Gordon, do you consider 50% as “very low”?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        Tim,

        What part of Wood’s results are you challenging? No part at all?

        That would seem about right.

        Cheers.

        • Tim Folkerts says:

          Mike, what part of my reply did you not understand? Perhaps the messed up formatting threw you. Let me repeat & highlight.

          WOOD: [thermal energy in the atmosphere] remaining there on account the very low radiating power of a gas

          ME: “The atmosphere overall radiates on the order of 50% as well as a blackbody.”

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            Nope. Im still not sure what part of Woods results you are disputing.

            If you are disputing a comment he made leading up to his recorded results, I think you are on shaky ground.

            I misleading statement such as “The atmosphere overall radiates on the order of 50% as well as a blackbody. does not dispute his findings. 50% of what? Is it relevant to anything? 50% of almost nothing is almost nothing. 5% of something a million times bigger is much more. Numbers may be meaningless, unless you define your context quite precisely.

            There is no testable GHE hypothesis, and trying to avoid this fact might not draw the respect you may be seeking.

            But back to Woods results – do you dispute his results? Why do you think they are wrong?

            Because they dont agree with the imaginary results of your fantasy thought experiments? I will believe measurements, until someone shows me they are wrong. You dont have any, do you?

            Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            Woods claims
            * P implies Q
            * (“the very low radiating power of a gas”) implies (“The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere”).

            But the radiating power of the atmosphere is NOT very low! Thus there is conclusion to draw.

            As for “50% of what?”, that is literally the very next words in the sentence! “50% as well as a blackbody”.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            You said there is a conclusion to draw. There is. It is that you cannot or will not say that you are challenging Wood’s results.

            I also draw the conclusion that you are obfuscating because you can’t produce facts to contradict his methodology or his results.

            As to your statement that you are referring to 50% of something else, it is completely irrelevant. 100% of a small black body may be quantitatively less than 1% of another. Would you not agree that a cubic meter of gas contains less total energy than a cubic meter of water at the same temperature?

            But this is all nonsensical diversion, isn’t it?

            You are not disagreeing with one recorded result of Wood’s experiment. Your nonsense about implications and unsupported assertions is not worth a cracker.

            Press on. I believe measurements, not your irrelevant fantasies. Draw any conclusion from that, that you wish.

            Cheers.

          • Myki says:

            Tim, don’t waste your time.
            The old man is deliberately obtuse.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Oh the irony!

            The stupid and ignorant ordering the stupid and ignorant not to be stupid and ignorant!

            How stupid and ignorant is that?

            Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            “But this is all nonsensical diversion, isnt it?”
            Yes, indeed! Everything you have been saying is nonsensical diversion!

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            tim…”(The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere).

            But the radiating power of the atmosphere is NOT very low! Thus there is conclusion to draw”.

            ********

            Radiation in the atmosphere amounts to about 0.3% of the atmosphere that is GHGs, most of it WV. Wood is claiming the other 99.8% which is N2, O2, and Ar, does not radiate, but retains the heat, I suppose till it rises and expands, when it cools naturally.

            I ad hommed Connolley for his job on Wikipedia where he is an editor. He regularly went after skeptics like Fred Singer, insulting and demeaning them till wiki fired him. After appropriate groveling they seem to have taken him back.

            Here…read what Wood has to say about gases formally:

            https://archive.org/stream/physicaloptic00wood#page/n9/mode/2up

            If that link doesn’t work, try this one, press the enlarge button, and you’ll get a download option:

            https://archive.org/details/physicaloptic00wood

            For Mike:

            https://www3.nd.edu/~powers/ame.20231/clausius1879.pdf

            or

            https://archive.org/details/cu31924101120883

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon says:
            Radiation in the atmosphere amounts to about 0.3% of the atmosphere that is GHGs, most of it WV.

            This is the number density of GHG constituents, not of radiation.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”This is the number density of GHG constituents, not of radiation”.

            0.3% is an overall average of GHGs in the entire atmosphere including the troposphere, stratosphere, etc. There is virtually no WV in the stratosphere.

  27. Leitwolf says:

    Thanks Dr. Spencer for discussing the matter! In an odd way that is very hard to at all on the internet.

    Yet I think that the GHE is an illusion and of course there are a lot of reasons to it.

    a) The basic theory of the GHE is based on three assumptions which are all logically impossible and contradicting in themselves.
    1. Earth is a perfect black body (emissivity) AND Earth is not a perfect black body (absorp-tivity).
    2. Clouds are counted to the surface (absorp-tivity) WHILE they are not counted to the surface (emissivity).
    3. Clouds have a negative forcing of 50W/m2, a positive forcing of 30W/m2 and thus a net negative forcing of 20W/m2 (AR5 IPCC) WHILE they have a negative forcing of 110W/m2 (NOAA, no figures for positive or net forcing given, link below)

    https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/energy

    I think a theory based on these assumptions will not need to be falsified any further. But I would like to outline the “GHE” with corrected assumptions. Surface emissivity is indeed about 0.92, which brings surface emissions down to 360W/m2 (rather than 390 or 398?!). Clouds may have a negative forcing of 110W/m2 indeed and if we link that to a negative net forcing of 20W/m2, their positive forcing logically needs to be 90W/m2.
    These 90W/m2 would then fill most of the gap between 240W/m2 (solar input) and 360W/m2 (surface emissions), leaving a meagre GHE of only 30W/m2.
    However analyzing weather data shows that clouds are correlated rather with warmer than colder surface temperatures. That suggests rather a positive than negative net forcing by clouds, putting the remaining 30W/m2 at jeopardy. Of course that is a complex story to be explained hereafter..

    https://de.scribd.com/document/370673949/The-Net-Effect-of-Clouds-on-the-Radiation-Balance-of-Earth-3

    b) From a) we need to conclude that there is no GHE at all and the ~33K are only originating from ill fated assumptions. While on the other side, “back radiation” not just confirms the GHE as such, but even puts it to a staggering 88K (or even 110K). How can that be?
    Well first we need to question in which way a GHE of ~100K is confirming a theory that suggests a GHE of 33K?! Indeed this “confirmation” is farther off target than putting the GHE to zero. The difference between 0 and 33 is 33, while the difference between 88 (for instance) and 33 is 55. By any rational reasoning, that is not a confirmation but a huge confusion.
    Let us do a thought experiment. Let us assume there were no GHGs, no clouds, just a perfectly transparent atmosphere. Now you add to this some GHGs which only emit some “back radiation”, how would that effect temperatures? They would go up for that reason, obviously.
    Now let us consider the opposite, where some GHGs would only emit some radiation into space, but not downward. How would that effect surface temperatures? Because of there additional emissions, temperatures would be lower, logically.
    And now think of a real world scenario where GHGs emit radiation both upward and downward. What you think will be the combined effect of that heating and cooling? Right, it will be zero, nada, niente.
    That seems to be the mental jaw breaker which everyone fails to understand. The GHE could work perfectly if GHGs reflected(!!!) terrestrial IR, but it will not work based on emissions. The process of emission and absorp-tion is ubiquitous and takes place within every material, even in our own body, and it does not heat anything, anywhere. Clouds however will reflect terrestrial IR, which is why they could provide a “GHE”.
    One could even discuss pyrgeometers at this point, and how they are rather measuring horizontal than vertical IR. I’ll skip that.

    c) There are GHEs almost everywhere. We have a GHE on our moon, there is one on Ceres and there is definitely one on Enceladus. We always yield a GHE if we apply the ill fated assumptions named in a) 1., even on moons and planets where there is no atmosphere and henceforth no possible GHE.

    Btw.. there is this little short video taken at surface temperatures of 5-10C, which is quite indicative on the question where (relevant) “back radiation” actually comes from.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5LovP3WN4M&amp;

    • ren says:

      If we do not compare the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere with the temperatures of other planets with dense atmospheres (at the same pressure and taking into account the distance from the Sun), none of this will be. On all these planets, the temperature drops linearly in the troposphere and grows in the stratosphere. The earth is not unique in this respect.

  28. ren says:

    The high speed solar wind causes the tropical storm to move along the equator towards Hawaii.
    http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/tpac/flash-rb.html

    • ren says:

      “There were signs early this year of a potential shift to El Nio with the arrival of an extraordinarily strong Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) in the western Pacific. It led into a downwelling Kelvin wave, a slow-moving pulse of warmer-than-average water that translated from west to east just below the surface of the equatorial Pacific. Sometimes an MJO and Kelvin wave can weaken trade winds and realign atmospheric and oceanic circulations enough to kick off an El Nio event. This MJO didnt do the trick, possibly because it occurred a bit too early in the seasonal cycle, but it did hasten the demise of the 2017-18 La Nia event.”

  29. Myki says:

    Warming? What warming?
    “Denvers daily record high crushed as temperature hits 90, 4th earliest 90 on record”
    http://kdvr.com/2018/05/10/denvers-daily-record-high-crushed-as-temperatures-near-90/

    • Mike Flynn says:

      M,

      It’s called weather. It seems it has been hotter, earlier at least 3 times before.

      This time it is later and colder.

      What warming? Colder is hotter? Learn English Learn physics – if you can.

      Cheers.

      • Myki says:

        All these records being broken.
        It seems that the GHE predictions are indeed being verified on a continual basis.
        Did somebody ask about a “testable hypothesis” ?

        • Mike Flynn says:

          M,

          You dont have a testable GHE hypothesis, do you?

          If you did, you could state it. But you cant. So sad, too bad.

          Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      myki…”Denvers daily record high crushed as temperature hits 90, 4th earliest 90 on record”

      It’s all perfectly scientific. Mother Nature is feeling badly for having forced record cold temperatures on us the past winter and now she is making up for it with some kindness.

  30. Myki says:

    Alarmist? Me?
    “Scientists Say Record Heat In The Gulf Of Mexico Supercharged Hurricane Harvey In 2017”
    A new study revealed that Hurricane Harvey was fueled by record heat in the Gulf of Mexico. The 2017 storm was the wettest tropical cyclone in U.S. history.
    http://www.techtimes.com/articles/227426/20180510/scientists-say-record-heat-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-supercharged-hurricane-harvey-in-2017.htm

    • Mike Flynn says:

      M,

      Are you really sure you want to depend on Kevin Trenberth? The confused pseudo scientist who believes that the Sun shines everywhere at once, and said that it was a travesty that he could not find missing heat that didn’t exist? He also decided the scientific concept of the null hypothesis needed to be changed, because he was smarter than every scientist in the world!.

      Not terribly persuasive, Myki, not at all.

      Maybe you would do better pretending that Gavin Schmidt is a world renowned climate scientist. Even more laughable, wouldn’t you say?

      Go for it.

      Cheers.

      • Myki says:

        As usual, nothing to add but ad hominems.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          M,

          As usual, no facts.

          Still no GHE hypothesis. Just more assertions, couched in pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.

          Well done. Are you still sure you want to depend on the likes of Trenberth? You seem content to rely on him as an authority, without any facts to back you up.

          That looks like an appeal to authority to me. When I point out your authority is flawed, you become unhappy. Why is that, do you think?

          Because I am right, and you are wrong, that’s why!

          Carry on. Appeal to Hansen, or . . . ? Nominate a world famous first class recognised climate scientist, if you choose. How hard can it be?

          Cheers.

          • Nate says:

            Trenberth, Schmidt, Hansen, Mann are the ones who get smeared most often by deniers. I wonder why?

            Maybe its because their pioneering work in climate science has been the most impactful. They have been very effective scientists.

            Makes sense.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      myki…”A new study revealed….”

      Is that the same Kevin Trenberth who whined in the Climategate emails that the warming has stopped and that it’s a travesty no one knows why. When called on his comment, he replied in a Monty Pythoneque manner, “Oh, oh…the heat is hiding in the oceans…look, look”. When the reporters looked, he disappeared.

      Or the same Kevin Trenberth who has made snarky remarks about a paper by Roy Spencer and who hit on a journal editor so hard for posting a skeptic’s paper, the wimpy editor resigned.

      Or the same Kevin Trenberth who admitted his energy budget is based on guesses?

      His buddies in the Climategate emails have been implicated in scientific misconduct.

      Great source.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        Is that the same Kevin Trenberth who whined in the Climategate emails that the warming has stopped and that its a travesty no one knows why.

        Gordon lies again.

        Even when corrected, he still lies.

        Gordon has no interest whatsoever in the facts.

        He’ll ignore replying to this too.

        Kevin Trenberth:

        “In my case, one cherry-picked email quote has gone viral and at last check it was featured in over 107,000 items (in Google). Here is the quote: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.”

        http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/emails/

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”The fact is that we cant account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we cant.”

          That’s Trenberth trying to cover his butt. Many people who read that statement interpreted otherwise, that he was admitting he could find no warming, ergo, the warming has stopped.

          Later, he created that monstrous fabrication that the missing heat is in the oceans. He admits he cannot find the heat but claims at the same time that it’s there.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            ps. The IPCC confirmed in 2013 that no warming had taken place and Trenberth had to know that. He was a Coordinating Lead Author, one of the highest and most influential positions with the IPCC.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon, so you know better what Trenberth than he did, huh?

            I don’t think so.

            You are clearly lying about what Trenberth said. And even though he corrected you, you lied yet again.

            Later, he created that monstrous fabrication that the missing heat is in the oceans. He admits he cannot find the heat but claims at the same time that its there.

            Where did he say this?

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            ps. The IPCC confirmed in 2013 that no warming had taken place and Trenberth had to know that.

            As you well know, but lie about, new and better data came in after the AR4 — especially Karl et al 2015 — that showed there actually was not pause.

            Gordon, why do you lie by omission?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Gordon, so you know better what Trenberth than he did, huh?”

            Apparently.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”especially Karl et al 2015 that showed there actually was not pause”.

            Do you mean Karl the fudger?

          • Nate says:

            “Thats Trenberth trying to cover his butt. Many people who read that statement interpreted otherwise, that he was admitting he could find no warming, ergo, the warming has stopped.”

            Good Gordon. Im sure you’re own, out of context, interpretation of what he meant, that feeds your conspiratorial mind, is more accurate than his own statement in proper context.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        Or the same Kevin Trenberth who admitted his energy budget is based on guesses?

        Where did he do that?

        I suspect Gordon is lying again. Because he always does. And has no shame doing it.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          DA,

          And I suspect you are suffering from delusional psychosis. Or are your suspicions of a higher reliability than mine?

          I suspect not. What do you suspect, and why?

          Cheers.

  31. Nylo says:

    Dr. Roy,
    “As originally calculated by Manabe and Strickler (1964, see slide #10 here), the greenhouse effect does not explain the average surface temperature being 288 K (observed) rather than 255K (the effective radiating temperature of the Earth absent an atmosphere). Instead it is actually much more powerful than that, and would raise the temperature to an estimated 343 K (close to 160 deg. F.)”

    Manabe and Strickler calculated that value of 343K for a simplified atmospheric model with a lot of assumptions. AFAIK nobody has demonstrated that this model (atmosphere with 2 layers completely opaque to longwave radiation) is anywhere close to Earth’s atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere is NOT completely opaque to longwave radiation, to begin with, regardless of layers.

    • atmosphere with 2 layers completely opaque to long wave radiation

      That’s not even true, so why should one not simply ignore your drivel ?

      Manabe and Stickler certainly made simplifying assumptions ( there are no calculations on any real system without any approximations in physics ) but for sure not these ones.

      Maybe reading (and better understanding) their paper might help.

      • Nylo says:

        I did read the presentation that Dr Spencer linked to when talking about it. And I cite: “Now we assume that atmosphere is transparent to shortwave radiation and the atmospheric layers 1 and 2 are completely opaque to longwave radiation […] for 2 layers the temperature is 335K…”

        • This 2 layer model in slide has just educational purpose and is a simple back of envelope calculation that can be done analytically.
          It is not of course what Manabe et al. did in their paper where a more realistic state of the art radiative transfer model and a computer are used that resolve frequency bands and calculate a continuous vertical profile of temperatures as shown in figure on slide.

          http://www.phy.pku.edu.cn/climate/class/cm2010/Manabe-1964.pdf

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Quick, shift those blasted goalposts!

            Claim its only educational and we want to educate people with untruths first.

            Later on, well say –

            “more realistic state of the art radiative transfer model and a computer are used that resolve frequency bands and calculate a continuous vertical profile of temperatures as shown in figure on slide.”, which will hopefully confuse people into forgetting we treated them like idiots in the first instance, by intentionally feeding them falsehoods.

            Dont let anybody know that we dont have a testable GHE hypothesis – because we are pseudoscientists, and dont believe in things like the scientific method.

            Do you think that sums up climatological pseudoscientific thinking in this instance?

            Cheers.

          • Do you think that sums up climatological pseudoscientific thinking in this instance?

            Yes, indeed !
            Your drivel readily sums up all of your amusing climatological pseudoscientific “thinking” and your blabber in general funnily parades your idiocy.
            Keep it up !

          • Mike Flynn says:

            IT,

            Thank you. I will.

            As long as you complain that asking for a testable GHE hypothesis is pseudoscientific, of course.

            You can’t produce a testable GHE hypothesis. You can’t even figure out how to describe the miraculous GHE, can you?

            You might think this makes you knowledgeable and smart. I’d characterise it as stupid and ignorant.

            Time will tell who is right, eh?

            Cheers.

  32. gbaikie says:

    A greenhouse is warm because it loses less heat to atmosphere.
    The warmed air is inhibited from transferring energy to atmosphere via convection. A greenhouse is not inhibited from radiating energy to space.
    An atmosphere does not transfer energy to space via convection, and an atmosphere loses little energy to space via radiant energy.
    Energy from the surface radiated thru a atmosphere into space and energy from surface of a greenhouse radiates thru atmosphere to space.
    A greenhouse and an atmosphere do not have much convectional heat loss, so they are similar.

    In a proper analogy do greenhouse gases in atmosphere act like the glass of a greenhouse?
    Greenhouse gas don’t inhibit convection heat loss of atmosphere, vacuum does.
    But I would say any type of atmosphere (say one with pure nitrogen) acts like a greenhouse and basically an atmosphere is like very large greenhouse.

    • ren says:

      Convection is inhibited by the low temperature in the tropopause. If the temperature in the lower stratosphere rises, the temperature in the troposphere will drop. The temperature in the lower stratosphere can only change as a result of changes in ozone.
      http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2018.png
      http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/TLS/plots/RSS_TS_channel_TLS_Tropics_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.short.png

      • gbaikie says:

        “Convection is inhibited by the low temperature in the tropopause. If the temperature in the lower stratosphere rises, the temperature in the troposphere will drop. The temperature in the lower stratosphere can only change as a result of changes in ozone.”

        I would say it is vacuum of tropopause, which is inhibiting convection.
        And it is low density (or vacuum) of tropopause which is or results in the low temperature of the air.

        I agree ozone has warming effect, but though ozone is called a greenhouse gas, IR is not heating ozone.

        • David Appell says:

          The tropopause isn’t a vacuum.

          Ozone is a GHG.

        • I would say it is vacuum of tropopause, which is inhibiting convection.

          Unfortunately Nature stubborly refuses to cooperate since even a Mars troposphere with “more vacuum” or a lower density than at tropopause on Earth exhibits strong convection.

          So I would say you post a lot of nonsense.

          • gbaikie says:

            There are high velocity wind on Mars and in the Earth tropopause.
            Wind will cause convection heat loss, and convection can create wind.
            A vacuum will not inhibit movement of air, and convection heat loss does not require the movement of air, within Earth troposhere, heat rising is the transport of kinetic energy rather air molecules moving up.

            Mars does not have strong convection, when windy it would have more convection heat loss, but it would have less than still day on Earth.

          • gbaikie says:

            Every night on Mars reaches about -100 C, and in the day the ground surface can warm to about 20 C.
            You would not have that happen on Earth, and reason it can happen, is due to lack of convection heat loss of a surface warmed by sunlight.

          • gbaikie says:

            This might illustrate any added to atmospheric mass to Mars is not a good idea.
            There are other reasons (such the enormous costs) but add atmospheric mass, would make Mars a colder and more uninhabitable world (for humans). Or at the moment, Mars is not very cold for humans using modern technology and adding enough atmosphere in order to not need a spacesuit, would make Mars cold. Or if night is warmed by 50 K by added atmosphere, it would increase the convectional heat loss, making the warm night, colder and making the day colder, in terms keeping humans warm enough to live.

            Whereas instead if add water, in terms making lakes in tropics, one provides enough pressure to breath and have cheap living areas, and one can live outside in “natural” environment. And this would also increase the average temperature of Mars (but such warming is not needed nor makes much difference, or as I said, the temperature of Mars is not a problem).

    • Bindidon says:

      gbaikie says:
      May 11, 2018 at 10:36 AM

      But I would say any type of atmosphere (say one with pure nitrogen) acts like a greenhouse and basically an atmosphere is like very large greenhouse.

      No.

      An atmosphere with GHGs (H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O, …) prevents tiny parts of the IR radiation emitted by Earth from direct, entire exit to space.

      An atmosphere consisting of solely N2, O2, H2 or the like lets all Earth’s IR radiation thru.

      Tiny but indispensable difference as far as Mankind is concerned.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        binny…”An atmosphere consisting of solely N2, O2, H2 or the like lets all Earths IR radiation thru”.

        So why does our atmosphere warm? Don’t try to tell me it warms due to an overall GHGs average of 0.3%.

        N2/O2 gather heat at the surface via direct conduction. The same thing would happen with any atmosphere above a warmer surface.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          So why does our atmosphere warm? Dont try to tell me it warms due to an overall GHGs average of 0.3%.

          So?

          How big is each of the targets that make up the 0.3%?

          If the side of a barn 100 m2 in size has three targets painted on it, what’s the probability of hitting one with a random toss of a ball?

          • Nylo says:

            What are the probabilities of plants succesfully doing the photosynthesis? Isn’t it the same? Maybe 0.3% of the atmosphere is still a LOT of individual molecules. Did you calculate the probabilities of NOT hitting one when you fire a just 1-molecule-narrow laser to the air? And to be clear, with 1-molecule-narrow I mean the average space ocupied by a single molecule in our atmosphere.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        B,

        You wrote –

        “An atmosphere with GHGs (H2O, CO2, CH4, N2O, ) prevents tiny parts of the IR radiation emitted by Earth from direct, entire exit to space.

        Complete nonsense, of course. You cannot specify any wavelength of light (including infrared light) which is prevented from moving from a warmer body (the Earths surface, say), to a colder one (outer space, nominally 4K or so).

        You will no doubt take refuge behind direct”. It doesn’t matter does it? At night, the surface cools. For four and a half billion years, even the average surface temperature has dropped.

        Accept reality. Learn physics. Keep the pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo machine going. It gives rational people the opportunity to assess for themselves if people like you are as ignorant and stupid as I suggest.

        Keep cranking away.

        Cheers.

      • gbaikie says:

        –gbaikie says:
        May 11, 2018 at 10:36 AM

        But I would say any type of atmosphere (say one with pure nitrogen) acts like a greenhouse and basically an atmosphere is like very large greenhouse.

        No.–

        If put greenhouse with only N2 gas, does N2 gas become hot.
        Or parked car with windows sealed with only nitrogen gas.
        Or a tin can with only nitrogen gas in it.
        Does the gas become hot, or if on moon, what temperature would gas get on lunar surface when sun is at zenith?

        • David Appell says:

          Why would pure N2 have a greenhouse effect?

          (Other than the quite small one due to collisional broadening?)

        • Mike Flynn says:

          gbaikie,

          I have never met anyone who claimed that charged gas cylinders allowed to reach equilibrium with the environment could be distinguished on the basis of temperature.

          A gas cylinder charged with N2 cannot be distinguished from an empty one (or a full one), of say, CO2, on the basis of temperature. Knowing the colour code for the cylinder, or reading the label tells you what sort of gas it is designed for.

          Weighing the cylinder (if the tare weight is known) will tell you how much gas it contains. Temperature not so much – nothing actually. A pressure reading will give a rough indication, which is usually good enough for Government work.

          CO2 is not immune to the laws which govern other gases.

          Cheers.

          • gbaikie says:

            –Mike Flynn says:
            May 11, 2018 at 6:39 PM
            gbaikie,

            I have never met anyone who claimed that charged gas cylinders allowed to reach equilibrium with the environment could be distinguished on the basis of temperature.–

            In shade or in a room, the charged gas cylinders, will be at the air temperature. In sunlight they can warm up higher than air temperature, but not warmer than other surface which warm to higher temperature of the air temperature.
            A sidewalk could warm to 70 C, and gas in charged gas cylinders will not get above 70 C, whereas the outside air temperature might not exceed 40 C.

            If put scuba tank on the moon, the pressurized air will heat to about 120 C, and during the night the air in tank might liquidify. At 1 atm pressure (and scuba tank could be hundreds of atm pressure) N2 is a liquid at 77 K:
            “When appropriately insulated from ambient heat, liquid nitrogen can be stored and transported, for example in vacuum flasks. The temperature is held constant at 77 K by slow boiling of the liquid, resulting in the evolution of nitrogen gas. Depending on the size and design, the holding time of vacuum flasks ranges from a few hours to a few weeks.” Wiki
            At 1 atm N2 can not become a liquid (nor can 02).
            But at say 33 atm (487 psi) it become liquid at 126 K. And at lunar night temperature can become about 100 K.
            So if tank was 50 atm at 0 C (and was as small as scuba tank, it might begin to liquify (latent heat from gas to liquid would add heat, keeping it at around 126 K, while rest surface cooler to lower temperature- and larger and more massive charged gas cylinders would not cool quick enough to begin make liquid nitrogen).
            If instead of had 55 gallon steel tank of water, it would get to about 120 C, and to remain a liquid, tank would need to withstand 30 psi, and it would stay a lot warmer than scuba tank during the lunar night.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      gbaikie…”A greenhouse is not inhibited from radiating energy to space”.

      Same as in a house with insulation, the effect of radiation from a greenhouse is so miniscule it makes hardly any difference to heat loss, even though it can radiate freely from glass heated by air molecules on the inside.

      • Tim Folkerts says:

        Gordon, are you ready to back this up with actual calculations? Or or we just to accept your intuition as sufficient proof?

        • David Appell says:

          Good question. Gordon?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Good question. Gordon?”

            It’s only a good question if it is relative. There is nothing relevant about radiation at terrestrial temperatures.

            Tim is challenging me to produce the math but he cannot produce it himself. Nor can you.

          • David Appell says:

            Where are your calculations, Gordon?

            Plainly, you don’t have any.

            You never do. Not once, that I’ve seen. Until then you’re not doing science, you’re mouthing opinions.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            Only a stupid and ignorant follower of climatological pseudoscience would profess belief in something he cannot even clearly describe – the GHE – and thus cannot even provide a testable GHE hypothesis.

            No wonder all you can do is issue a seemingly endless torrent of gotchas and demands.

            Stupid or ignorant, or both?

            Truly, the world wonders!

            Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            Gordon says …
            Same as in a house with insulation …
            There is nothing relevant about radiation at terrestrial temperatures …
            No one worries about radiative heat loss with a home …

            But Gordon, surely you realize this is not really relevant. We are not talking about homes. We are not talking about situation where conduction is the primary form of heat transfer. For earth, conduction is a distant third to radiation and convection.

            “ask any engineer who specifies insulation for a home …”
            No — ask any engineer who specifies insulation for *spacecraft*. Earth is a giant spacecraft. And for spacecraft, radiation is the critical factor,
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-layer_insulation

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Tim,

          Who cares? If you cant produce a testable GHE hypothesis, gibbering about greenhouses is not going to make much difference is it?

          Maybe you dont really intend to deny, divert, and confuse, but you certainly give that impression.

          Why cant you produce testable GHE hypothesis? Is it because you would have to say something really ridiculous, such as claiming that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere between the Sun and a thermometer would raise the temperature of the thermometer?

          How stupid would that sound?

          It would make a mockery of anyone who claimed that CO2 was a thermostat that controlled the Earths temperature, wouldnt it?

          Cheers.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          tim…”Gordon, are you ready to back this up with actual calculations? Or or we just to accept your intuition as sufficient proof?”

          Don’t need to Tim, ask any engineer who specifies insulation for a home, like R-tated.

          https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/weatherize/insulation

          “Most common insulation materials work by slowing conductive heat flow and–to a lesser extent–convective heat flow. Radiant barriers and reflective insulation systems work by reducing radiant heat gain. To be effective, the reflective surface must face an air space”.

          No one worries about radiative heat loss with a home well-insulated with a good R-type insulation, complete with vapour barrier, but if that interests you, feel free to do the calculations.

          ps. how would you do that anyway?

          • David Appell says:

            GR: How does heat loss from a house vary as the thickness of its insulation?

            You can assume whatever properties of the insulation you want.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            Another stupid gotcha? Why do you persist in asking pointless questions when you obviously believe you know the answer?

            Is this some arcane demonstration of the pseudoscientific climatologist’s craft?

            But in case you are truly stupid and ignorant, radiant barriers’ insulating properties are completely independent of thickness. Asking trick questions is pretty stupid, isn’t it?

            They might fool the average GHE believer, I suppose.

            Think up some better gotchas. – if you can,of course

            Cheers

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”GR: How does heat loss from a house vary as the thickness of its insulation?

            You can assume whatever properties of the insulation you want”.

            ******

            No need to assume, the R value tells you exactly how much heat it will transfer given the temperature on each side of the insulation.

            Good example in this article:

            https://www.brainstuffshow.com/blogs/how-insulation-works-what-r-value-means-and-how-to-calculate-heat-lossgain-for-your-house.htm

  33. Bindidon says:

    Tim Folkerts says:
    May 10, 2018 at 7:12 PM & ff

    Tim, it makes not so much sense to stay on Wood’s non-paper.

    It is so incredibly superficial that, if it had had the inverse direction, thousands of pseudoskeptics would have shouted:

    ” Look! Look! One more of these bloody alarmists tries to debunk 40 pages long papers full of sound skepticism with a ridiculous 1 1/2 page long pamphlet! ”

    Instead of insisting on Wood’s lack of experience in the domain (as opposed to what the troll de service pretends, he has never been an IR specialist; his real experience was in UV and visible), we should concentrate on reactions to his paper, e.g.:

    – Abbot, C. G.(1909) ‘V. Note on the theory of the greenhouse’, Philosophical Magazine Series 6, 18: 103,
    32 35

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786440708636670

    – Vaughan R. Pratt, Stanford University (2009) ‘Failure to duplicate Woods 1909 greenhouse experiment’

    – Idem ‘Woods 1909 greenhouse experiment, performed more carefully’

    http://clim8.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/

    and, last not least

    – Science of Doom (fully accepted by Judith Curry) ‘Absorp-tion of Radiation from Different Temperature Sources’

    https://tinyurl.com/y7gy4eaf

    • Tim Folkerts says:

      Thanks Bindidon. I was not familiar with those critiques. They point out EVEN MORE problems than the ones I mentioned.

      • David Appell says:

        You can expect Gordon to ignore them all. Of course.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”You can expect Gordon to ignore them all. Of course”.

          Too funny. The work of a great scientist is overturned by a computer scientist.

          • David Appell says:

            Just the other day you lauded the view of a geophysicist, who was not a climate scientist. Hypocrite.

            Gordon Robertson says:
            May 9, 2018 at 5:53 PM
            “The eminent geophysicist, Syun Akasofu, has estimated the planet should rewarm from the LIA at 0.5C/century. Since it is claimed to have ended in 1850, it should have taken till 1950 to warmed 1C.”
            http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/05/uah-global-temperature-update-for-april-2018-0-21-deg-c/#comment-301509

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            Curiously, some people apparently think that the undistinguished mathematician Gavin Schmidt is a climate scientist.

            He isnt, is he? Nor is Michael Mann, it appears. Not even a Nobel Prize winner, by all accounts.

            Maybe you could name a climate scientist? Climate is only the average of weather, as you have pointed out from time to time. Is the process of averaging considered a science in the US, for example?

            Off you go now, and demand some more citations,if you have time.

            Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            Gordon, you missed that Wood was not being critiqued by computer scientists, he was being critiqued by OTHER scientists — both contemporaries and more recent scientists.

            You also seem a fan of “appeal to authority”, one of the common logical fallacies. Just because someone famous or smart said something does not make it correct. The actual objections are well-presented and worth considering.

            One simple example — efforts to repeat the experiment show that temperature variations WITHIN a box are at least as large as the temperature variations BETWEEN the two boxes. So it would be easy to draw a false conclusion.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            Which part of Woods experimental results are you disputing?

            Just tossing in irrelevancies to divert attention away from the fact that you cant find anything to dispute, is more the mark of the pseudoscientist faced with an inconvenient fact.

            Making an assertion that it would be easy to draw a false conclusion is fairly pointless, don’t you think? Are you presenting yourself as an authority on false conclusions?

            Why should anyone give particular weight to your opinion?

            Proposing a testable GHE hypothesis might be more persuasive – but first you would have to describe the observable natural phenomenon where the effect is observed. Just saying you think something should be bigger or smaller than observed is stupid, unless you have very good reason.

            And you do not have a very good reason, do you?

            Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Just the other day you lauded the view of a geophysicist, who was not a climate scientist. Hypocrite”.

            Akasofu is more of a climate scientist than Gavin Schmidt. He has a degree in an applicable discipline and he works with real phenomena as opposed to the virtual, sci-fi world of climate models.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            tim…”Gordon, you missed that Wood was not being critiqued by computer scientists, he was being critiqued by OTHER scientists both contemporaries and more recent scientists”.

            I did not see any scientists listed in binny’s link, just clowns at scienceofdoom. The title of their site should say it all. He name-dropped Judith Curry’s name without proof that she agreed with the SoD article.

            Besides, I have no interest in what lightweights think. Wood was an eminent science who was acknowledged universally. I am not appealing to authority, the guy was a master experimenter and it’s highly unlikely, given his understanding of experiments and his expertise with IR, that he messed up.

            None of the links provided by binny came close to disproving him and the one from SoD was irrelevant due to it’s plain stupidity.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Akasofu is more of a climate scientist than Gavin Schmidt.

            Mann has a PhD in geophysics, too.

            Gavin Schmidt is a very good scientist — as any Director of GISS would be. Climate science is interdisciplinary, and anyone smart enough to get a PhD in mathematics is smart enough to learn climate science and contribute to it, especially on the models.

          • David Appell says:

            Besides, Gordon, how would you know what it takes to do climate science? You don’t even understand high school physics. You are utterly unqualified to judge professional scientists.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        tim…”Thanks Bindidon. I was not familiar with those critiques”.

        And you would not understand them if you had been aware. Do you seriously think that an eminent scientist like Wood would mess up an experiment like that?

        Pratt has already been debunked by Nahle. Pratt did not do the Wood experiment as Wood performed it, he added plastics and acrylic. Furthermore, Pratt was a computer scientist, not a physicist.

        I won’t comment of SoD, they are known idiots.

        https://principia-scientific.org/the-famous-wood-s-experiment-fully-explained/

        see…”The importance of moist air inside the boxes”.

        Reminds me of an experiment done by Moertell to reputedly debunk Pauling’s claim that 10 grams of vitamin C was beneficial to terminal cancer patients. Moertell claimed it was false.

        A perplexed Pauling approached Moertell and asked him how he had done the experiment. Moertell advised he had used only 250 mg of C and kept the terminal patients on chemotherapy. When an astounded Pauling asked why, Moertell claimed keeping them on chemotherapy gave the impression that something was being done.

        Wood was an esteemed scientist and researcher with whom experimentation was a way of life. Vaughn Pratt was a pioneer in COMPUTER SCIENCE.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson wrote:
          Wood was an esteemed scientist and researcher with whom experimentation was a way of life.

          Esteemed?

          Wood lived before quantum mechanics. So he didn’t understand much about how radiation and matter interact that we know today.

          Remember, he wrote:

          “I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter….”

          R. W. Wood, Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse, Philosophical magazine, 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL
          http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html

        • David Appell says:


          The results of some experiments that confirm strongly held beliefs will be accepted no matter how poorly the experiment was carried out. A classic example of this is the 1909 Wood experiment. Its extremely poorly documented and the results were rejected by no less than Charles Greeley Abbot in the same journal a few months later. Wood wrote a more detailed theoretical paper the same year, but it had a fundamental flaw which invalidated the result, as was pointed out in a rebuttal published shortly thereafter. And yet you find people quoting Wood as if he actually proved something about radiative transfer physics. One could only obtain the results he did if his boxes werent equally well insulated. That was actually inadvertently demonstrated by one of the Sky Dragon crowd recently.

          DeWitt Payne, Science of Doom comment
          https://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/confusion-over-the-basics/#comment-24361

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            And? Which of Woods recorded results are you disputing? None at all?

            I thought so.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            Gordon: “Do you seriously think that an eminent scientist like Wood would mess up an experiment like that?”

            He didn’t, Prof. Wood proved the increase in T occurred due to the glass plate like a normal greenhouse vs. the rock salt plate. Pratt replicated Prof. Wood experiment with the same results.

            Nahle was debunked in pictures Nahle supplied showing added box insulation Nahle did not disclose. Pay better attention Gordon.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”The results of some experiments that confirm strongly held beliefs ….” and scienceofdoom.

            I repeat, the people at SoD are a load of friggin’ idiots. Norman accuses me of making up science and he needs to go there to see how science is really fabricated.

            And you are coming across as an idiot by quoting their pseudo-science, especially when you use that trash against someone like R. W. Wood. He was a real scientist who was acknowledged internationally for his work. SoD are a load of ingrates who sit around conjuring up propaganda to support AGW. They are on the same level as skepticalscience, which is run by a cartoonist.

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo, You are again relying on an appeal to authority. Wood’s text to which you linked is the second edition from 1911, the first of which appeared in 1905. He speaks of the transmission of EM via an unknown “ether”, which was one of the explanations which was common at the time. He has a chapter on the “Laws of Radiation” and writes of Kirchhoff’s Law, “At a given temperature the ratio between the emissive and absorp_tive power for a given wave-length is the same for all bodies”. Wood continues, briefly describing experimental results of the emissions of CO2 gas.

            While Wood is presenting experimental results, he clearly accepts that absorp_tion and emission from a gas are equal at specific wavelengths.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        Tim….re the SoD link supplied by binny. I took a look and once again SoD has completely messed up basic science.

        They infer heat can be transferred from a cooler atmosphere to the surface and the basis of their argument is from Kircheoff’s law. Kircheoff’s law applies ONLY TO BODIES IN THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM!!!!!

        That’s twice the idiots at SoD have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of heat transfer and the 2nd law.

        I don’t think binny even saw that, he was googling frantically looking for anything to rebut one of the premier scientists of our time.

        And where is binny’s evidence that the SoD trash is accepted by Judith Curry?

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          They infer heat can be transferred from a cooler atmosphere to the surface and the basis of their argument is from Kircheoffs law.

          False. Wrong. Ill-informed.

          Some of us understand the 2LOT. You don’t, and refuse to learn.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            You wrote –

            “Some of us understand the 2LOT.

            Have you looked up the definition of “us” recently?

            You might be declared guilty of language abuse, if you are not careful!

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            Bordon: “(SOD) infer heat can be transferred from a cooler atmosphere to the surface..”

            They do not infer that Gordon, this is just another of Gordon’s egregious mistakes. SOD shows energy can be transferred from a cooler atm. to the surface which is proven by Dr. Spencer’s experiments on the atm. and E. Swanson’s experiments in the lab, and many others like those of Prof. Wood and Prof. Pratt.

          • Ball4 says:

            Ha, Gordon…

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”Instead of insisting on Woods lack of experience in the domain….”

      This is why I started calling you an idiot. Wood was a foremost expert on infrared radiation. He understood IR at a level climate scientists today could only dream about.

      Wood was a member of the National Academy of science, was consulted by Neils Bohr for his expertise on IR, was elected a Foreign Member to the Royal Society, and you won’t find Gavin Schmidt in there, even though he is English.

      He received three honorary degrees in the UK, from Birmingham, Oxford, and Edinburgh. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, the Academia dei Lincei in Rome, the Russian Academy of Science in Leningrad, the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm, and the Indian Association for Science in Calcutta, among many others.

      The University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctor’s degree in 1934, and Johns Hopkins University honored him in the same way when in 1951 he had finished his fiftieth year as professor at that institution.

      Seems your fellow Germans thought a great deal more of Wood than you.

      It’s telling that an expert on IR could take one look at the GHE theory and claim IR could not do that, while offering an explanation that makes eminent sense.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        Wood was a foremost expert on infrared radiation. He understood IR at a level climate scientists today could only dream about.

        You’re deluded. Woods lived before quantum mechanics. His knowledge was nothing like what’s understood today.

        I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter….

        R. W. Wood, Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse, Philosophical magazine, 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL
        http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”Some of us understand the 2LOT. You dont, and refuse to learn”.

          Some of you are deluded into thinking you understand it, I got my information straight from the man who wrote the law and who took great pains to describe it subjectively.

          I have nothing to learn about it after reading Clausius, he explained it very well in simple terms even a five year old could understand. Heat can NEVER be transferred, by its own means, from a colder body to a hotter body.

          What is it about NEVER that escapes you, or ‘by it’s own means’? The latter is understood clearly when you study a contraption, like an air conditioner, that transfer heat from a colder body to a warmer body. Unplug it from the wall socket to see how much heat it transfers from cold to hot.

          Maybe I missed it, is there an extension cord going into the atmosphere to power a compressor, that pumps a refrig-e-rant through a condenser and an evaporator?

          • Ball4 says:

            “Heat can NEVER be transferred, by its own means, from a colder body to a hotter body.”

            No Gordon, this is another of your egregious mistakes by not fundamentally understanding Clausius’ 2LOT. Here Gordon continues to ignore the later work by Maxwell & Boltzmann that proved what Gordon writes is entirely possible and routinely occurs.

          • E. Swanson says:

            Gordo, As usual, you cherry picked the quote from Clausius. As written in 1854, it is

            Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time.

            Note that this statement applies to closed systems, not the open atmosphere. And the qualification, “without some other change”, would apply to the situation in which there is a constant input of energy into the system. Furthermore, the statement applies only for a system of 2 bodies, such as a hot body transferring energy to the surroundings by conduction or convection or radiation. When a third body is introduced into the system, such as in my Green Plate demonstration or in the case of the semi-transparent atmosphere in which the surroundings are the cold of deep space and the energy flows in from the Sun, the basic statement of the Second Law no longer applies.

          • Ball4 says:

            “..the basic statement of the Second Law no longer applies.”

            E. Swanson, the 2LOT is universal. Open or closed system, 1 object to N objects, Sir Arthur Eddington had a good point.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        And yet, you cannot or will not address Wood’s results.

        Nor produce a testable GHE hypothesis – an essential part of the scientific process, but not of the climatological pseudoscientific process, obviously.

        Keep demanding answers to stupid and ignorant gotchas. It suits you.

        Cheers.

  34. Mike Flynn says:

    Gee.

    The practitioners of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo cannot produce anything faintly scientific, such as an actual testable GHE hypothesis.

    Is it any wonder that they thrash around in aimless fashion, arguing about anything except fact?

    Endless appeals to dubious authority, instead of having the intestinal fortitude to read Woods account of his experiments, and point out any factual errors in his work.

    But no, that might require knowledge, and thought. Much easier to claim that the GHE exists, and therefore any actual experimentation from Tyndall to Nahle (or indeed, any bench experiments carried out in any decent physics course, demonstrating the basis of the radiative transfer equations), must, by pseudoscientific definition, be incorrect, stupid, and imaginary.

    Papers such as “CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature based on computer models which Gavin Schmidt admits are having to be continuously rewritten as old bugs are fixed, new bugs discovered, and, most surprisingly, as new physics are incorporated, are taken as authoritative!

    A triumph of fantasy over fact!

    Stupidity and ignorance writ large! Oh well, onwards and upwards. Luckily, at least one proposed CO2 monitoring satellite program has been cancelled by the US. Hopefully, the funds intended for it can be applied to something useful.

    Cheers.

    • Nate says:

      “Luckily, at least one proposed CO2 monitoring satellite program has been cancelled by the US. ”

      Indeed, we don’t want more data, particularly of this very useful type that will help test AGW hypotheses..

      Hey..NASA..we don’t need to know.

  35. Gordon Robertson says:

    response to ball4 from an earlier post…

    ball4…”Of course I refrained, (kinetic or brightness) temperature is not heat Gordon, they even have different units”.

    Kinetic energy is stated in terms of work and heat is equivalent to work. The net force on an object over a distance can be expressed as the change of kinetic energy. Heat is related to work, hence kinetic energy by the 1st law, Q = U + W. U can be broken down itself into internal work and heat and Clausius contributed the term U to the 1sy law.

    Clausius pointed out that heat and work have different units but he pointed to a conversion equation that relates them.

    Heat is the kinetic energy of atoms in motion and that motion can also be expressed in terms of work. Internally, in a solid, the atoms are vibrating due to the electron bonds. That vibration has both a work and heat equivalence.

    Brightness temperature is something different. It is the equivalent temperature a glowing body would give off at that temperature. It’s not a real temperature but an equivalent or apparent temperature.

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      Kinetic energy is stated in terms of work

      It is??? Where?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        It isn’t?????? Where not????????????

        If you are so sure hes wrong, you could always provide facts to the contrary.

        However, that would be a courteous and rational course – nothing courteous and rational about you, I’m sure!

        If you run out of punctuation marks, I have plenty to spare.

        Cheers.

        • Ball4 says:

          “Internally, in a solid, the atoms are vibrating due to the electron bonds. That vibration has both a work and heat equivalence.”

          Atoms aren’t held together by electron bonds, molecules are though. In a solid, the molecules vibrate around their cg, the molecules do no net work thus Gordon makes yet another egregious mistake.

          And it is not Q = U + W, that’s just another egregious mistake by Gordon. 1LOT is conservation of energy in the form dU/dt = Q + W

          Thermodynamic U may change with time (dU/dt) because of the interaction of any molecular system with its molecular surroundings. These thermodynamic interactions take two forms:

          1) Those interactions for which the net force vanishes on average yet the energy of the system molecules changes because of random collisions with surrounding molecules having a different average energy

          2) Those interactions for which the net force does not vanish on average

          Here, 1) adequately explains dU/dt in the experimental results of Dr. Spencer and E. Swanson without possibility of misinterpretation since no use of the concept of a heat term.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Clausius pointed out that heat and work have different units but he pointed to a conversion equation that relates them.”

            No Gordon. Just no. That’s another of your egregious mistakes.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”Kinetic energy is stated in terms of work

        It is??? Where?”

        ************

        simple stuff actually:

        W = fd and a force over a distance can be measured as the change in kinetic energy over that distance. Therefore,
        W = KE2 – KE1.

        But f = ma and W = ma.d or (mad…bwuhahhahaha)

        but wait…a is related to v by ad = (v^2 – vo^2)/2

        therefore W = fd = mad = m(v^2 – vo^2)/2 = 1/2m(v^2 – vo^2)
        =KE – KEo

        or KE2 – KE1

        i.e. W = KE2 – KE1

        work is the change in kinetic energy of a body.

        tada!!!!

        http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/physics/work/node3.html

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          W = fd and a force over a distance can be measured as the change in kinetic energy over that distance.

          Poppycock.

          Let’s say I do work by compressing a spring. Where’s the change in kinetic energy?

          • Ball4 says:

            The change in KE is in the mass you used to depress the spring David, KE becoming = zero at max. spring deflection dmax.

          • David Appell says:

            The KE is zero when I start compressing the spring, and zero after it’s compressed.

            There is no change in KE.

          • Ball4 says:

            “The KE is zero when I start compressing the spring..”

            That’s impossible David. If d increases (you are “compressing”) then the mass depressing the spring has a velocity.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson wrote:
          W = fd and a force over a distance can be measured as the change in kinetic energy over that distance. Therefore,
          W = KE2 KE1.

          i.e. W = KE2 KE1

          You simply proved your assumption. Hilarious.

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      Heat is the kinetic energy of atoms in motion and that motion can also be expressed in terms of work

      How?

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      Clausius pointed out that heat and work have different units but he pointed to a conversion equation that relates them.

      He did??????

      Where did he do that??????

      What are their different units, heat and work?????

      Huh??

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        Huh??

        Huh???

        Huh??????????????

        Cheers.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”What are their different units, heat and work?????”

        Not different units, it’s a conversion factor developed by Joule circa 1840. He was laughed out of the Royal Society till Thompson came to his rescue.

        http://pruffle.mit.edu/3.00/Lecture_04_web/node4.html

        Clausius addressed the conversion in The Mechanical Theory of Heat, real page 25.

        “Of all his results Joule considered those given by water as the most accurate; and as he thought that even this figure should be slightly reduced, to allow for the sound produced by the motion, he finally gave 772 foot-pounds as the most probable value for the number sought.

        Transforming this to French measures we obtain the result that, To produce the quantity of heat required to raise 1 kilogramme of water through 1 degree Centigrade, work must be consumed to the amount 423.55 kilogrammetres. This appears to be the most trustworthy value among those hitherto determined, and accordingly we shall henceforward use it as the mechanical equivalent of heat, and write

        E = 423.55 …………………… ..(1).

        In most of our calculations it will be suf?ciently accurate to use the even number 424”.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          to clarify E:

          “If this numerical value is so chosen as to give the work corresponding to an unit of heat, it is called the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat; if on the contrary it gives the heat corresponding to an unit of work, it is called the Thermal Equivalent of Work. We shall denote the former by E, and the latter by 1/E”.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon, this is gobbleygook.

          You wrote:
          “Clausius pointed out that heat and work have different units but he pointed to a conversion equation that relates them.”

          That’s wrong, Clausius never said that, and you’re confused, as usual.

          Heat and work have the same units: Joules (in the MKS system).

          There is no “conversion equation” that relates them, because work and heat are different concepts. Work might produce heat, or it might not. There is no 1-1 relation.

          Again you have butchered and bastardized the physics. Yet you’re an expert, right!

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      Clausius pointed out that heat and work have different units but he pointed to a conversion equation that relates them.

      What is this equation?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        Why do you care? You do not appear to be seeking knowledge.

        Another gotcha perhaps?

        If you believe GR to be wrong, maybe you could provide contrary facts. If he doesn’t change his views, congratulate him for his steadfast faith. GHE believers are the same, surely. No testable GHE hypothesis, no useful description of the GHE, but they believe it anyway – just like you!

        Carry on with stupid and ignorant gotchas. You will no doubt get your desired response from someone, sometime, somewhere.

        Cheers.

      • barry says:

        A straight forward question is not a gotcha.

        What is the ‘conversion equation’ you mentioned, that relates the units of heat and work?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        barry,

        Are you asking me, or DA?

        If you ask a question, and it seems obvious you are not asking it to advance your knowledge, and you have made no effort to find an answer elsewhere – it can be regard as a gotcha – a question asked in bad faith, endeavouring to make the answerer appear foolish or stupid.

        I havent mentioned a conversion equation, as far as I know.

        I think DA is quoting someone else, but I could be wrong.

        Cheers.

  36. Mike Flynn says:

    According to nasa.gov –

    “A greenhouse is a house made of glass. It has glass walls and a glass roof. People grow tomatoes and flowers and other plants in them. A greenhouse stays warm inside, even during winter. Sunlight shines in and warms the plants and air inside. But the heat is trapped by the glass and can’t escape. So during the daylight hours, it gets warmer and warmer inside a greenhouse, and stays pretty warm at night too.”

    So there you have it. Greenhouses stay warm, even in winter. Stay pretty warm at night, too.

    Or maybe NASA is lying to the kiddies. They wouldn’t want to upset them with truth, would they?

    NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory carrying out its duties. I suppose.

    Cheers.

    • bilybob says:

      Mike, NASA may just have this wrong or maybe a bit generalized. I worked in my friends Greenhouse as a kid during summer/winter breaks from school. They were plant wholesalers. In the summer, the greenhouse was a few degrees cooler on a sunny day than outside temp. On cloudy days, it may be cooler outside. In winter, without external heat source, plants would freeze (we were in NJ). Owner often complained of oil bills.

      I never cared for the term Greenhouse Effect since it just did not seem the atmosphere was acting like a greenhouse. Different dynamics. But its just a term, it should be taken with a grain of salt. With a stretch of logic, you can say there are a few similarities. You do not hear much of mass heat exhaustion from Greenhouse workers, there is no run away GHE in this industry. I think adding Atmospheric to it helps, as it clarifies that this is not a land based greenhouse.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        bilybob…”In the summer, the greenhouse was a few degrees cooler on a sunny day than outside temp”.

        Did they leave the doors open? My friend has a small greenhouse and he leaves the door open in summer to cool the place. Plants don’t always thrive in really warm environments.

        It feels close to outside temps in his greenhouse but if you walk in you feel the distinct environment of a greenhouse. Leave the door closed an it’s very hot in there.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          Plants dont always thrive in really warm environments

          Doesn’t bode well for our AGW future, does it?

        • bilybob says:

          They had a concrete building on the north side that served as a receiving/shipping area. Huge black walnut trees kept it in the shade. Box fans pushed air into the 3 30 x 150 greenhouses that were perpendicular to the concrete building. Not sure if all commercial greenhouses operate this way, but it did keep the greenhouse cooler than without ventilation. They also applied what the owner called “whitewash” on the glass, that also helped in reducing peak summer temperature.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      Mike…”Sunlight shines in and warms the plants and air inside. But the heat is trapped by the glass and cant escape”.

      ***********

      NASA specifically states the glass traps heat, not IR. Heat is a property of gas molecules not of EM.

      Again, NASA is a big place and some of them do real science. NASA GISS are pretenders who work on climate models in a non-reality yet they pass themselves off as real scientists.

    • Nate says:

      Mike, Glad to see you’re choosing ‘just right’ reading materials, that are at your intellectual level. Keep it up, maybe you’ll learn something.

      • Nate says:

        And Mike, they have a GHE hypothesis, that even you might be able to understand:

        “How is Earth a greenhouse?
        Earth’s atmosphere does the same thing as the greenhouse. Gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide do what the roof of a greenhouse does. During the day, the Sun shines through the atmosphere. Earth’s surface warms up in the sunlight. At night, Earth’s surface cools, releasing the heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That’s what keeps our Earth a warm and cozy 59 degrees Fahrenheit, on average.”

  37. Myki says:

    “?If you thought the 32-degree day in Perth felt a little odd for this time of year, you would be right.

    The city recorded a maximum of 32.7 degrees Celsius at 1:04pm making it the latest 30-degree or above day in autumn on record.

    The previous record for Perth was set on May 9, 1962, when the city recorded exactly 30C.

    It was also Perth’s second hottest May day on record, behind the 34.3C recorded on May 1, 2002.”
    Hello! Any denialstis still out there?

    • Chic Bowdrie says:

      Here. April was near record cold month in Midwest and NE US. World average for April was about the same as after 1997-8 El Nino. Check Dr. S’ last post.

      • David Appell says:

        UAH’s April anomaly is in the top 20% of all anomalies since 1979. Cold isn’t what it used to be.

      • La Pangolina says:

        Chic Bowdrie says:
        May 12, 2018 at 12:59 PM

        World average for April was about the same as after 1997-8 El Nino. Check Dr. S’ last post.

        Here is an ascending sort of all UAH 6.0 April anomalies since 1979:

        1993 | 4 | -0.34
        1982 | 4 | -0.32
        1985 | 4 | -0.31
        1979 | 4 | -0.28
        1992 | 4 | -0.27
        1997 | 4 | -0.26
        1984 | 4 | -0.25
        1989 | 4 | -0.20
        1986 | 4 | -0.16
        1994 | 4 | -0.15
        1981 | 4 | -0.13
        2008 | 4 | -0.13
        1990 | 4 | -0.08
        1996 | 4 | -0.08
        2011 | 4 | -0.03
        1991 | 4 | -0.01
        2009 | 4 | -0.01
        1999 | 4 | 0.01
        1980 | 4 | 0.03
        1988 | 4 | 0.03
        2000 | 4 | 0.05
        2013 | 4 | 0.05
        2006 | 4 | 0.07
        1983 | 4 | 0.08
        1987 | 4 | 0.08
        2015 | 4 | 0.08
        2012 | 4 | 0.11
        2014 | 4 | 0.11
        1995 | 4 | 0.14
        2004 | 4 | 0.14
        2007 | 4 | 0.14
        2003 | 4 | 0.15
        2001 | 4 | 0.20
        2018 | 4 | 0.21
        2002 | 4 | 0.23
        2017 | 4 | 0.27
        2005 | 4 | 0.33
        2010 | 4 | 0.33
        2016 | 4 | 0.71
        1998 | 4 | 0.74

        This is, as you can see, by far not the coldest one in the series.

        Working with exact numbers is better than eye-balling.

        What is true is that in Northern America, people experienced a very cold April, even if it was not the coldest one since 1900.

        You can see that both at the surface:

        https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/2018/04/map.png

        and in the LT:

        https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2018/april2018/APRIL%202018%20map.png

        • Chic Bowdrie says:

          Well I certainly wasn’t clear enough for nit-picking and I doubt this will help, but here goes. As of the last global anomaly posted by Dr. S, we are at about the same temperature as after the 1907/8 El Nino. From 2002 until 2006, global anomalies fluctuated around 0.2, same as last month.

          Let’s take your April figures from 1998 through 2007: 0.74, 0.01, 0.05, 0.20, 0.23, 0.15, 0.14, 0.33. 0.07, 0.14. Those ten April anomalies average to 2.06. Pretty close to this past April.

          To repeat, I wasn’t claiming last April a globally cold month. On the contrary, that a cold April here was balanced by a warm April somewhere else.

          • La Pangolina says:

            I do not understand your logic. You are suddenly speaking about a 10 year average reference, considering above all only one month.

            UAH’s 10 year jan-dec averages for
            2008-2017: 0.187 C
            1998-2007: 0.152 C
            1988-1997: -0.063 C
            1979-1987: -0.163 C

            I repeat: I’m not interested in getting anything warmer. I simply do not understand what you exactly mean.

            Good night, it’s UTC+2 here…

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            La,

            Sweet dreams. If you read this in the morning, just realize that the average global temperature 12 to 16 years ago was about the same as today.

          • David Appell says:

            More cherry picking, as you admitted to below.

            You realize cherry picking disqualifies any conclusions you make from it, right?

        • Nate says:

          La P, Pretty clear on the map that the US was the lone island of cold in April. Of course people here will think here is all that counts.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      myki…”If you thought the 32-degree day in Perth felt a little odd for this time of year, you would be right”.

      The real Perth is in Scotland. Your Perth is in Australia, not far from the equator.

      The BOM, Australia’s answer to NOAA and GISS, are data fudgers, just like their role models at NOAA.

      Since des disappeared and myki showed up, can I assume you are Des posing under a woman’s name, just like binny is trying to pull off?

      • Myki says:

        “The real Perth is in Scotland. Your Perth is in Australia, not far from the equator.”
        So what’s your point?
        It is, in fact, 32 degrees south. Far enough?

        “The BOM, Australias answer to NOAA and GISS, are data fudgers, just like their role models at NOAA.”
        Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the scoundrel.

        “Since des disappeared and myki showed up, can I assume you are Des posing under a womans name, just like binny is trying to pull off?”
        Wrong again.
        BTW, do you have a problem with women?

  38. NP-Hard says:

    I have a question about how CO2 keeps the earth warmer. I would especially appreciate it if someone like Dr. Spencer or Dr. Appell could address it.

    I would like to follow just one photon at a wavelength where CO2 can absorb it. I estimate there is only a 15% chance that the earth will emit IR in this wavelength. The exact amount is not important, but most IR light emitted from the earth will not interact with CO2.

    Once this photon is emitted it travels some distance and hits a CO2 molecule. It is absorbed raising the energy level of that CO2 molecule. The CO2 molecule then reemits that photon in some random direction some will go up and some will go down. The photon will rattle around until it makes it back to the ground or out to space. Are there any estimates on how long this process takes? I would guess fractions of a second, or a few seconds at most. Light is fast and the relative distances are very short.

    If the photon makes it back to the earth then it is absorbed and adds energy back to the surface. This is the so called GHE energy is added back to the earth keeping it warmer than it would be without the CO2. I think this is almost undeniability true, but, probably irrelevant. The energy in the photon is transferred to the ground, but the ground will reemit it again per its grey-body spectrum.

    On this second iteration that energy is likely to change frequency. Again, there is only a 15% chance that the energy of this first photon will be emitted in a wavelength that will interact with CO2. If it emits it at some other wavelength then it quickly escapes to space and is gone.

    As I see it, yes CO2 does absorb some IR light. Yes, it returns some of it to the ground and adding energy back to the surface. But it does not trap heat. It only delays its exit by some short amount of time, which I guesstimate this to be in seconds. Adding more CO2 will slow this process by some amount, but if it goes from 2 seconds to 3 seconds then so what?

    To me, CO2 is like sweater with huge wholes in it (85% missing) how can it keep you any warmer than nothing at all? If CO2 traps energy, then it only trapped it for a few seconds, and then the earth is in exactly the same energy and temperature state if there were no CO2 at all.

    Where is any of this wrong?

    • Snape says:

      NP – Hard: “Adding more CO2 will slow this process by some amount, but if it goes from 2 seconds to 3 seconds then so what?”

      That relates to something I wrote upthread:

      “As far as I can tell, there are two main variables that determine accumulation of something into a system: rate of entry and average length of stay.”

      *******

      If cars enter a parking garage at a rate of one/second, and, on average, each car stays for two hours, how many cars will be in the garage when an equilibrium is reached?

      Now calculate how many there will be if each car stays for three hours instead of two.

      • NP-Hard says:

        Snape,

        Thank you for the nice analogy, which I understand completely. To further expand upon it, what if the parking lot closes at sundown?
        How many cars are in the parking lot at sun up? In both of your examples the the parking lot will be empty (assuming length of stay variance is small). For this reason, unless IR energy is trapped in the atmosphere for days (which I consider most unlikely), when night arrives the darkness will allow all of the energy trapped by CO2 to exit the system. If this is true, then CO2 does not retain any heat in the earth system.

        What are your thoughts on this?

        TL

        A software engineer working on physics based problems in the NP-Hard domain.

        • Snape says:

          I’m glad you get the analogy, and you’re right about the garage being empty come morning.

          As long as the Earth surface (including oceans) has a temperature greater than absolute zero, it contributes energy to the atmosphere, so unlike a parking garage it never closes. Also, the sun is always shining on one side of the planet, and some of that energy circulates to the nighttime side (wind).

          The situation you brought up is similar to a moon night, which are very long. With no wind or oceans (oceans are a massive heat sink), temps can dip to – 173 C.

          • NP-Hard says:

            Yes, of course, the earth, atmosphere and oceans are always trying to shed energy to space.

            Do you, or anyone else, have any idea or estimate of how long CO2 delays the exit of this specific band of IR light?

            I believe this time is very important to the radiative insulating effect of CO2. Good insulators restrict heat flow for a long time, but it appears to me that CO2 is probably very poor since light is so fast. Yes, CO2 blocks a lot of watts, and returns some of it to the surface, then that energy is absorbed and converted back to heat, but then it is free to change frequency and then exit the earth without restriction. It seems to me that CO2 only warms for a few seconds. After those couple of seconds then the earth is in exactly the same energy state as it would be if there was no CO2.

          • David Appell says:

            NP-Hard says:
            Do you, or anyone else, have any idea or estimate of how long CO2 delays the exit of this specific band of IR light?

            Again, this isn’t how AGW works.

            There isn’t one photon that is delayed from escaping to space.

            There are many photons that are ab.sorb.ed, and many that are emitted. The net result, as I explained elsewhere on this post, is warming in the troposphere, and cooling in the stratosphere.

        • Chic Bowdrie says:

          TL,

          I love that analogy. It doesn’t matter how fast or how many cars go in as long as the garage is big enough to park them all. The garage doesn’t have to close. The question is can they leave fast enough before dawn so that any net remaining doesn’t accumulate day after day.

          What we have now is CO2 increasing steadily if not exponentially. Yet temperatures have been oscillating around the same level for about 20 years. There’s some thermostatic mechanism in play, but it isn’t CO2.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            What we have now is CO2 increasing steadily if not exponentially. Yet temperatures have been oscillating around the same level for about 20 years.

            False.

            20-yr trend of UAH LT v6.0 = +0.10 C/dec
            20-yr trend of RSS LT v4 = +0.17 C/dec

            How many knives will it finally take to stab this claim to death?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Maybe poison will work.

            What was the UAH temperature exactly 20 years ago? Warmer than today right? So is the 20-year trend going to make this month’s temperature any warmer than it is? No it won’t. The temperature is what it is.

            You are hoping that temperature rise will accelerate so that it will confirm your faith in AGW. It won’t bother me if temperatures rise a bit, continue to linger, or trend down. I hope not the latter.

          • La Pangolina says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            May 12, 2018 at 4:29 PM

            Theres some thermostatic mechanism in play, but it isnt CO2.

            Over such a short time period, I com pletely agree with you.

            Yet temperatures have been oscillating around the same level for about 20 years.

            Maybe you will try to view me as an alarmist, as do some rather dumb persons all the time, but… the UAH 6.0 trend for the last 20 years is, according to Excel’s linear estimate function:

            <0.136 ± 0.020 °C / decade

            Feel free to check using any appropriate tool.

            *

            I don’t want the World around us getting exceedingly warmer.

            Because the consequence of such a warming could be that it subsequently becomes quite a bit colder, much colder than we could stand.

            No thanks.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            La Pangolina,

            Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want an exceedingly warmer world either. From where I sit, we’ll be OK.

            About temperature trends. Do you invest in the stock market? If a correction in the market wipes out all your gains, can you get that money back by claiming the trend was up? Same with the temperature. We don’t know what next year’s temperature will be. But right now the temperature is less than what it was 20 years ago.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            What was the UAH temperature exactly 20 years ago? Warmer than today right? So is the 20-year trend going to make this months temperature any warmer than it is? No it wont. The temperature is what it is.

            You’re about noise, not the signal.

            You are hoping that temperature rise will accelerate so that it will confirm your faith in AGW.

            I’m not “hoping” anything, I’m simply stating what the science says.

            Scientists said 50 years ago that it would get warmer, and it has. Apparently that counts for nothing. And the climate will keep warming, because physics says it must.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            About temperature trends. Do you invest in the stock market? If a correction in the market wipes out all your gains, can you get that money back by claiming the trend was up? Same with the temperature. We dont know what next years temperature will be.

            The stock market isn’t subject to physical laws. The climate is.

            But right now the temperature is less than what it was 20 years ago.

            You’re just cherry picking. The long-term trend of UAH LT is positive, and shows no signs of slowing down. Temperatures will fluctuate, as always, but their long-term average — climate — is getting warmer all the time.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            “Scientists said 50 years ago that it would get warmer, and it has. Apparently that counts for nothing.”

            Correlation is not causation. Scientists need to provide definitive evidence of causation. Good scientists know that.

            “And the climate will keep warming, because physics says it must.”

            That’s about as religious a statement that one can make.

            “Youre just cherry picking.”

            Yes I am. But I’m citing real data, whereas your climate religious views prevent you getting my point about trends. What would you have said about them in 1950, or during the medieval warm period, or at the end of the previous interglacial?

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            Correlation is not causation. Scientists need to provide definitive evidence of causation.

            They have — CO2 and other anthropogenic GHGs.

            You simply try to reject any evidence you don’t like.

            And the climate will keep warming, because physics says it must.
            Thats about as religious a statement that one can make.

            No, it’s actually a scientific statement, if you understand the science.

            Youre just cherry picking.
            Yes I am

            You admit it. That makes critiques easy.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”20-yr trend of UAH LT v6.0 = +0.10 C/dec
            20-yr trend of RSS LT v4 = +0.17 C/dec

            How many knives will it finally take to stab this claim to death?”

            ********

            Better question is what it will take to stop alarmists trolls from spreading their propaganda?

            The IPCC, your god, admitted in 2013 that no global warming occurred between 1998 and 2012. The same UAH you misleadingly quote above has extended that flat trend to 15 years.

            The only evidence you can provide is fudged data from NOAA who showed the same flat trend in 2011. Recently they have retroactively shown a trend by fudging the SST, contradicting their 2011 data.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon, I quoted UAH’s trend and RSS’s trend, not NO.AA’s.

            About the fudging, you’re a damn liar who has no evidence of anything untoward. Not a single piece. But you’re the type of man who lies whenever it suits him. You should have gone into politics.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            The IPCC, your god, admitted in 2013 that no global warming occurred between 1998 and 2012.

            You keep lying by emission — you know new & improved data has come in since the 5AR.

            The same UAH you misleadingly quote above has extended that flat trend to 15 years.

            False. (Snicker) The 15-yr trend of UAH LT v6.0 is a whopping +0.18 C/decade.

    • gbaikie says:

      -Where is any of this wrong?-

      It might be mostly right. Another idea is the excited C02 molecule somehow adds to the average velocity of gas molecules. But this would occur due to the density of atmosphere, or the shortness of time between collision of molecules could be less time than it takes to re-emit the photon.
      Or if the radiant energy of IR wavelength that excited the CO2 molecule increases the kinetic energy of atmospheric gases (and it is the kinetic energy of gas molecules which is the temperature of gas) then it warms the air rather than the surface.
      And another way to look at it is that a warmed gas acts like insulation, or more radiation will be emitted to the “cold” 2 K universe.
      I think Roy prefers this last “way” of “explaining it”.

      I happen to favor idea that effects of greenhouse gas occur at low elevation, which is not according to the “settled science” of climate pseudoscience.

      • gbaikie says:

        It is assumed that photons, emitted from a surface, will go in a random direction. Or travel any vector within spherical volume. Which is different than simply up and down, but half will go down, and will not transfer radiant energy away from the surface. And in terms of what is radiate from a surface, it would be hemisphere.

        On Earth the sphere has about 40% of surface area in the tropics which is about 23 1/2 degrees North and South latitude. In terms of half of sphere, say northern, 40% of the hemisphere is between equator and 23 1/2 degrees north.

        In terms of emitted IR, about 40% of energy will be emitted at or below 23 1/2 degree above horizon. And amount going nearly straight up will be about 10%.
        In terms of shortest pathway to space, roughly speaking it is at angle of about 45 degrees of degree or higher.
        At 45 degrees in goes thru about 1.1 times as much atmosphere, and higher than 45 degree is less atmosphere to travel thru.
        And at 30 degrees one goes thru about 2 times as much atmosphere and go thru more atmosphere below 30 degrees. And at 30 degree and lower it is near 1/2 energy emitted from the surface. And from 30 to 90 degrees, a bit more than 1/2 energy from the surface is going to space.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        NP-Hard,

        I’ll be interested to see if and how the Drs you summoned will respond.

        Meanwhile, I think you have posed some good questions. I’d like to know what you think about my take.

        At the top of the atmosphere, the only major contributing IR-active gas left is CO2 with water vapor condensing below. So at that altitude, most photons emitted from CO2 will be emitted directly to space. There isn’t enough density to block those emissions. Essentially no photons will reach the surface from the top of the atmosphere.

        The time between when a CO2 absorbs and emits is much less than a second. Less than 10 microseconds. However, near the surface the air density is much greater and the mean time between molecular collisions is less than 1 nanosecond. So it is roughly 10,000 times more likely that a CO2 molecule absorbing radiation from the surface or any nearby photons will transfer that energy to surrounding air molecules. The term for this is thermalization. Once the bulk air is thermalized, not just from CO2 but water vapor also, it expands and rises. During the day this process cools the surface, but during the night sort of the reverse happens as convection subsides and the surface is kept warmer than it would be without IR downward component.

        The important point you make is that CO2 does not trap heat. But, along with water vapor, it does contribute to moderating the extreme diurnal temperatures that would occur in their absence. The only question is whether further increases in CO2 will cause any net increase in the average global temperatures. No one that I ask has any definitive evidence of that.

        I described the no CO2 at all case above, which includes the no water vapor situation and leads to a somewhat colder planet with more extreme temperatures.

        • David Appell says:

          The important point you make is that CO2 does not trap heat.

          Here is clear evidence that CO2 (and the other GHGs) trap heat:

          Taking the measure of the greenhouse effect
          http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/

          There is a Greenhouse Effect on Venus, Michael Hammer, 10/9/11
          http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/there-is-a-greenhouse-effect-on-venus/

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Is your definition of the greenhouse effect that CO2 traps heat? Or is it Gavin’s “[It] keeps the planet much warmer than it would be otherwise, and similarly we may have heard that increasing amounts of greenhouse gases are enhancing the natural greenhouse effect.”

            So it’s difficult to know what greenhouse effect you think he’s measuring. Moving on, I found no place where Gavin writes about trap, trapping, or traps. Maybe you read that elsewhere.

            I do find this “But few of us appreciate what exactly it is in the atmosphere that makes the effect work and why small changes in trace gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) might make a difference.” However, nowhere in the article did I find any evidence that small changes in CO2 make any difference. Can you point out anything? Computer models don’t count.

            JoNova writes “Michael Hammer has some 20 patents in spectroscopy, and he explains why the Greenhouse Effect where CO2 and other gases absorb and emit infra red is very real, and backed by empirical evidence.”

            So now the Greenhouse Effect is where CO2 and other gases absorb and emit infra red. Will the real greenhouse effect please stand up?

          • Snape says:

            Chic

            I’m not sure if you understood the garage analogy, so here’s something different:

            Close the drain on your bathroom sink so only a little water escapes. Now turn on the faucet and adjust it until you have a steady level of accumulated water.

            Is the water trapped? Yes, in that now there is a “pond” where before there was none. No, in that water is constantly entering and leaving.

            Climate scientists use the term “trapped” to mean there is constantly more energy in the system than there would be without GHG’s. This does not mean that the energy in question no longer circulates from surface to space.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Here is clear evidence that CO2 (and the other GHGs) trap heat:”

            If Schmidt thinks heat can be trapped by other molecules then he has confirmed my suspicion that he has no idea what it is, just like he has no idea what positive feedback is.

            Heat is a property of atoms and without atoms there can be no heat.

          • Snape says:

            Gordon

            The term “heat” has several different definitions, and is used in differing ways even by the same person, even among physicists. You should know this by now.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            chic…”So now the Greenhouse Effect is where CO2 and other gases absorb and emit infra red”.

            We have established laws describing the behavior of gases and they are wrapped up in the Ideal Gas Law. Part of the IGL is Dalton’s Law of partial pressures. If the atmosphere can be regarded as a relatively constant volume, both laws tell us fairly precisely that CO2 at 0.04% cannot warm the atmosphere more than a few hundredths C for a 1C rise in temperature.

            The alarmist POV is based on presumed calculations involving the Stefan-Boltzmann equation which deals with only radiation and was never designed for our atmosphere. Models presume radiation is a major factor in the atmosphere whereas it is a minor player.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            I don’t follow.

            David Appell refuted my claim that CO2 does not trap heat. He keeps defending a greenhouse effect without defining what he means by that.

            You introduce the ideal gas laws, but don’t explain how they “tell us fairly precisely that CO2 at 0.04% cannot warm the atmosphere more than a few hundredths C for a 1C rise in temperature.”

            Was there some error in my thinking you wanted to clear up? I am interested in learning how to demonstrate how much or how little CO2 affects global temperatures.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Snape,

            Glad you want to clear up the trap analogies. See my new thread.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            chic…”You introduce the ideal gas laws, but dont explain how they tell us fairly precisely that CO2 at 0.04% cannot warm the atmosphere more than a few hundredths C for a 1C rise in temperature”.

            I have explained it a few times, did not want to be redundant.

            I presumed a fairly constant volume for the atmosphere.

            PV = nRT becomes P = (nR/V)T with constant V therefore P is essentially directly proportional to T.

            Dalton states the total pressure of a mixed gas is the sum of the partial pressures. I have read a claim that in certain situations the partial gas can even be treated as an individual gas.

            If temperature must respond proportionately to pressure, then the partial pressures should have a related partial temperature contribution. In other words, each gas in a mix contributes heat to the mix based on that gas’s partial pressure or percent mass.

            With N2/O2 at 99% of the air mix, both gases should account for roughly 99% of the heat. At 0.04%, CO2 should contribute a few hundredths of a percent.

            It has been pointed out that the temperature of a gas is based on its average kinetic energy and I’m fine with that. However, the average KE should take into account the number of molecules of each gas. Ergo, CO2 is not contributing much heat.

            Another argument is that CO2 and WV are the main GHG radiation absorbers. I am claiming N2/O2 pick up most of the heat from the surface by direct conduction and that the heat absorbed by GHGs via radiation does not amount to a hill of beans.

            That argument was put formed circa 1909 by R. W. Wood, an expert in IR radiation.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            snape…”Climate scientists use the term trapped to mean there is constantly more energy in the system than there would be without GHGs”.

            Not generic energy, they claim heat is trapped. Not possible.

            Rather than dreaming up thought experiments how about critiquing my claim that the atmosphere is already covered by gas laws that have stood the test of time. I realize the atmosphere is a dynamic system but overall, the heat contributed by each gas is related to it’s percent mass.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Gordon,

            I’ll try replying in a new thread.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Now I’ll try your suggestion of posting sections at a time to see why my full comment isnt posting.

            Your analysis May 12 at 9:45 pm completely ignores thermalization the process where atmospheric gases capable of absorbing radiation from the surface will transfer the absorbed energy to the bulk air. So the part that CO2 plays in affecting Earth’s energy balance and surface temperature is not simply related to heat content proportional to its atmospheric composition.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            The convective overturning that results from IR absorp-tion followed by thermalization contributes significantly more than a hill of beans. But thats not to say an increase in CO2 will have any further affect on global temperatures.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Amazing! Absorp-tion is the key. Without a hyphen, no go.

            Last but not least, Wood’s experiment has nothing to do with accounting for the contributions of convection, advection, and evaporation to Earth’s energy balance.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            Is your definition of the greenhouse effect that CO2 traps heat? Or is it Gavins [It] keeps the planet much warmer than it would be otherwise, and similarly we may have heard that increasing amounts of greenhouse gases are enhancing the natural greenhouse effect.

            A rhetorical difference only. Same thing, different words. More heat = higher temperatures.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            If by “more heat = higher temperatures” you mean more CO2 causes higher temperatures, I disagree. Where is the definitive evidence of that?

          • David Appell says:

            “Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
            http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

            Radiative forcing measured at Earths surface corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004).
            http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract

            “Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339343 (19 March 2015).
            http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            I realize the atmosphere is a dynamic system but overall, the heat contributed by each gas is related to its percent mass.

            Gordon, why are you ignoring radiative transfer? Do you think it doesn’t exist?

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            David Appell refuted my claim that CO2 does not trap heat. He keeps defending a greenhouse effect without defining what he means by that.

            Oh please — we all know what the greenhouse effect means.

            Look it up on Wikipedia if you really don’t know.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Models presume radiation is a major factor in the atmosphere whereas it is a minor player.

            What evidence says radiation is a “minor player” in the atmosphere?


            PS: Models don’t presume radiation’s role, they calculate it. (Something you have never done.) And it’s not based on the SB Law, but on energy conservation and the Planck equation. Look up “Schwarzschild equations”.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            PV = nRT becomes P = (nR/V)T with constant V therefore P is essentially directly proportional to T.

            But pressure decreases exponentially with altitude while temperature decreases linearly. Care to explain?

            And the stratosphere — pressure decreases there, but temperature increases. Care to explain?

            Have these objections never occurred to you?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            David,

            On your citations allegedly providing definitive evidence of more CO2 causing higher temperatures, please see my final comment in a new thread posted today.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          chic…”At the top of the atmosphere, the only major contributing IR-active gas left is CO2 with water vapor condensing below….”

          You are claiming that heat dissipation from the surface and atmosphere is dependent on a gas making up 0.04% of the atmosphere.

          Few problems.

          1)The percent CO2 in the atmosphere has been a few hundredths of a percent for a long time, long before the pre Industrial era. Why has the atmosphere not heated up?

          2)Why have you focused only on radiation as a means of heat dissipation? Gases will cool on their own as they rise into the atmosphere and become rarefied. There should be a steady-state equilibrium between solar heat input during the day and cooling at night by said method.

          You can’t think of heat as an energy that must be maintained. It is a property of the molecules in air and changes with pressure and volume. It’s going to keep rising till its pressure is equal to the pressure of the molecules around it, and it will lose heat naturally as the molecules slow down at a higher temperature. As it rises, it will offload heat to adjacent molecules by collision.

          For me, that’s a good explanation for the GHE right there.

          3)Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist, claims the surface does not cool primarily by radiation. He has a conduction/convection model where heat is transported into the upper atmosphere.

          He does not specify whether the radiation is by WV and CO2 or by the entire gas. However, if you expose any gases to low temperatures they will lose their heat.

          Nitrogen at sea level will warm by direct contact with the surface. Then it rises. As it rises, it’s pressure reduces and that will cool the gas naturally.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Gordon, “You are claiming that heat dissipation from the surface and atmosphere is dependent on a gas making up 0.04% of the atmosphere.”

            No, you misinterpret what I wrote. CO2 is the major contributing component to outgoing IR radiation in the tropopause. That doesn’t mean that outgoing IR depends only on the CO2 contribution, because H2O contributes plenty at lower elevation along with radiation directly from the surface.

            1) Why should the atmosphere heat up? I never say it should and continually ask for evidence that it would due to an increase in CO2 above contemporary levels.

            2) It is often said that without radiation from IR-active gases, the atmosphere has no way to cool. I may have erroneously parroted that view myself. Assuming I understand what you mean by ‘Gases will cool on their own as they rise into the atmosphere and become rarefied,” how is heat conducted through upper layers of the atmosphere when the temperature gradients reverse sign several times? Are there any measurements of the magnitude of this mode of atmospheric cooling?

            “For me, thats a good explanation for the GHE right there.”

            I agree with that, but how is it in any way similar to a greenhouse?

            “However, if you expose any gases to low temperatures they will lose their heat.” What is the context and where is the data for this?

            “Nitrogen at sea level will warm by direct contact with the surface. Then it rises. As it rises, its pressure reduces and that will cool the gas naturally.”

            And cooling naturally means collisions with IR-active gases capable of off-loading the heat energy by radiation as the probability of another collision decreases relative to the probability of emission.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Few problems.
            1)The percent CO2 in the atmosphere has been a few hundredths of a percent for a long time, long before the pre Industrial era. Why has the atmosphere not heated up?

            Gordon, do you see the graph Roy puts up every month when he presents the latest anomalies?

            You’re denying reality. In this case I’m sure you know that.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            1) Why should the atmosphere heat up? I never say it should and continually ask for evidence that it would due to an increase in CO2 above contemporary levels.

            It was predicted 50, 100, 120 years ago that adding CO2 to the atmosphere would cause it to warm. And that the stratosphere would cool.

            Both have happened and are still happening.

            That’s evidence.

          • David Appell says:

            And here’s evidence that CO2 and other GHGs are doing the warming:

            “Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
            http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

            Radiative forcing measured at Earths surface corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004).
            http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract

            “Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339343 (19 March 2015).
            http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson wrote:
            3)Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist, claims the surface does not cool primarily by radiation. He has a conduction/convection model where heat is transported into the upper atmosphere.

            No, he does not.

            And you can’t prove it. Lindzen is certainly not an idiot.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Despite all the forcing Feldman, et al. found between 2000 and 2010, by 2012 global temperature was at the same point as in 2000. Maybe the models need tweaking.

          • David Appell says:

            Why are you using 2012 and not 2010, the period of the research?

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Because in 2010, the global temperature was up during an El Nino. In 2012 temperatures returned to same as in 2000 both at low points after El Ninos. If you are trying to say that Feldman, et alia are showing CO2 increases global temperatures, then major fail.

          • Ball4 says:

            Chic 7:53am, consider Feldman et. al. are focused on researching the surface temperature increase over a ~decade due 1 atm. forcing out of 9+ simultaneous independent forcings.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            David,

            Please see my new thread posted today.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Ball4,

            Huh?

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          chic….”The time between when a CO2 absorbs and emits is much less than a second”.

          CO2 absorp-tion/emission is far more complex than that. For one, there is no way to measure the absorp-tion/emission of one electron in the atoms that make up CO2.

          Here’s the diagram for CO2:

          O====C====O

          The dashed lines represent the electrons that bond the oxygen atoms to the carbon atom. There are 4 shared electrons between them. Any one of those electrons can absorb/emit photons and the vibration related to heat is produced by the interaction of the electrons orbiting the C and O +ve nucleii.

          The inter-molecular collisions are a different problem than the electron transitions that absorb/emit photons. With collisions, the kinetic energy in each colliding molecule is transferred directly without emission/absorp-tion.

          It’s a very complex problem that is seriously tough to work out at the atomic level. That’s why I prefer a macro solution involving the overall gas pressure, volume, and temperature, using the Ideal Gas Equation.

          Although I do it myself, it’s actually daft to consider a single photon/electron action. It’s even dafter to speak of absorp-tion/emission by a molecule, treating it as a black box with mysterious powers of emission/absorp-tion. A molecule is actually atoms bonded together by electrons and the electrons are the only absorbers/emitters.

          • David Appell says:

            The relative energy state transitions for GHGs are its rotational and vibrational modes, which pertain to the three molecules involved, not electron transitions.

            A molecule is actually atoms bonded together by electrons and the electrons are the only absorbers/emitters.

            False. Please study quantum mechanics.

        • NP-Hard says:

          Chic,

          I haven’t given much thought to thermalization of the energy absorbed by CO2. I’m sure as a warmed CO2 molecule bangs into some other molecule the energy could be transferred to it, but I also expect things could go the other way — a warmer N2 or O2 molecule could bang into the CO2, which then emits IR off to space or the ground. As for 10,000:1 transfer rates, I suppose that could be accurate at lower altitudes and less likely at higher altitudes. If the heat was thermalized into the atmosphere, I would suspect that we would easily see it in the RAOB soundings since the thermal capacity of air is so low.

          NP

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            NP,

            “Im sure as a warmed CO2 molecule bangs into some other molecule the energy could be transferred to it, but I also expect things could go the other way a warmer N2 or O2 molecule could bang into the CO2, which then emits IR off to space or the ground.”

            Read Dan Pangburn’s description of thermalization and its implications for energy fluxes. His analysis is exactly the way I see it. Absorp-tion and thermalization occurs at low altitude. Convection/wind moves air higher up where it thins. There, reverse thermalization and emission take precedence.

            I don’t know anything about RAOB soundings. Looks like a gold mine of data.

            http://energyredirect3.blogspot.com/

          • NP-Hard says:

            Chic,

            I took a quick look at Dan Pangburns website, and he seems to be bringing up the same point I am trying to make, namely that time is important. However, I am not sure I agree with his thermalization process on why deserts cool farther and faster than humid areas. I think cooling slows and ultimately stops in humid areas because of the latent heat of water vapor. Once relative humidity reaches 100% the air cannot cool anymore because water vapor will release an enormous amount of heat when changing phase from vapor to liquid. The latent heat released in the phase change what keeps the air warm. I live in Atlanta, GA, and travel a lot to Phoenix, AZ, so I have a lot of first-hand experience with very moist air and very dry air.

            NP

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            NP,

            At the risk of putting the wrong words in Dan’s mouth, deserts cool fast precisely because of the lack of humidity. Humidity and clouds go together to prevent radiation from the surface going directly to space. While evaporation cools during the day, water vapor emits downward IR through reverse thermalization to keep the surface cooler than otherwise during the night. It’s the climate’s built in thermostat at work.

            Dan’s thesis is basically that water vapor is doing most of the work, not CO2. I’m basically agnostic on how much, if anything, CO2 contributes to any further warming. It may cause a net cooling.

          • Nate says:

            “I think cooling slows and ultimately stops in humid areas because of the latent heat of water vapor.”

            NP, yes. And it means the air contained more ‘heat’ to begin with, compared to the desert.

            http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/05/in-defense-of-the-term-greenouse-effect/#comment-302769

      • David Appell says:

        gbaikie says:
        I happen to favor idea that effects of greenhouse gas occur at low elevation, which is not according to the settled science of climate pseudoscience.

        Does that idea predict the correct spectrum of outgoing flux at the TOA?

        https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/curve_s.gif

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”Does that idea predict the correct spectrum of outgoing flux at the TOA?”

          That graph is sci-fi. Note that the flux is in milliwatts, indicating there is hardly any at all.

          You have to read the fine print.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        gbaikie,

        CO2 molecules can be affected by photons of all energies. People get confused about excitation and various forms of resonance, and the specific wavelengths corresponding to the energies involved.

        When a CO2 molecule interacts with a suitably energetic photon, if the photon is not energetic enough to cause an electron to change “shells”, the molecule may absorb part or all of the photons energy, resulting in a change of direction, speed, or both.

        The net result may be what we perceive as increased temperature or pressure.

        If allowed to do so, the molecules will spontaneously emit photons of steadily decreasing energies, resulting in decreasing temperature or pressure. All the way to absolute zero, where no molecule has any spare energy to emit.

        No magic. Just physics. No GHE that creates hotter thermometers by reducing the amount of energy they receive. That is why no one can formulate a testable GHE hypothesis – the laughter would be deafening!

        If anyone wants to point out where I may have misled by being too concise, please feel free. I have obviously condensed things a wee bit.

        Cheers.

        • gbaikie says:

          “If allowed to do so, the molecules will spontaneously emit photons of steadily decreasing energies, resulting in decreasing temperature or pressure. All the way to absolute zero, where no molecule has any spare energy to emit. ”

          The concept of symmetry does suggest this, and is a problem with the idea.

          • David Appell says:

            Molecules will only emit energy in the frequencies determined by transitions of energy levels, and then only if it is in an excited state.

          • Ball4 says:

            “only emit energy in the frequencies determined by transitions of energy levels”

            Not according to ideal Planck curve David, object molecules emit radiant energy at all frequencies at all temperatures all the time.

            To show otherwise from any specific object, find any object T and any light frequency to plug into ideal Planck formula and compute zero irradiance on another object from that specific object.

            You won’t be able to do so.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            David is not terribly bright. He is not alone, and many people believe as he does.

            You are correct – it appears that we agree on something, at least.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            “the molecule may absorb part…of the photon’s energy”

            Mike will want to study quantum mechanics a little deeper to understand why they call the field “quantum”.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            You refuse to say what you disagree with, as usual. I assume that is because you know you will be shown to be stupid and ignorant.

            Give it a try, if you wish. Quote my words, and tell me what part of quantum mechanics I dont understand, but you do, and why.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            I obviously did quote Flynn’s words. It is also obvious to the critical, informed reader (not Flynn) that Flynn’s statement about a molecule absorbing only “part” of a photon’s energy means a full quantum of the photon’s energy was not absorbed by Flynn’s molecule. Per Flynn’s quoted statement therefore the field of study should not be named quantum mechanics. Since it is thus named, Flynn needs deeper study of quantum mechanics.

          • David Appell says:

            Ball4 says:
            only emit energy in the frequencies determined by transitions of energy levels
            Not according to ideal Planck curve David, object molecules emit radiant energy at all frequencies at all temperatures all the time.

            A molecule isn’t a blackbody. The Planck curve is for BBs.

          • Ball4 says:

            “A molecule isn’t a blackbody.”

            Right but you didn’t write “A molecule” at first David, you wrote “molecules”. An ideal BB or real object would be composed of “molecules” which is the term you used. The real object also has to have a diameter much larger than the wavelength of light of interest to apply Planck formula which is never zero, which is my point.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            If you can actually bring yourself to quote me directly, you will find you are talking nonsense.

            If you are castigating me for characterising a photon being partially absorbed by an electron, I apologise. I have abbreviated the procedure into one action, rather than an electron absorbing a photon, and subsequently emitting a photon.

            However, you may choose to answer the following basic problem to see if you know as much as you think (taken from a university physics course) –

            “Show that a photon cannot transfer all of its energy to [an] electron. (Hint: Energy and momentum must be conserved.)”

            As a matter of interest, the fact that a cooling object, by itself, emits photons of progressively longer wavelengths, and hence lesser energy per photon, should assure you that an electron which absorbs a photon of a particular energy, does not necessarily emit a photon of the same energy.

            Others may have already noticed that some sources (including Wikipedia) either omit critical information, or in some cases, state incorrect factual information.

            Off you go then, Ball4, tell me precisely what you are complaining about.

            Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            ball4….”Not according to ideal Planck curve David, object molecules emit radiant energy at all frequencies at all temperatures all the time”.

            The Planck curve is a statistically-doctored curve of radiation from a blackbody in thermal equilibrium at a temperature T. It is aimed at overcoming the UV catastrophe predicted by Rayleigh-Jeans. The radiation from all atoms/molecules is governed by E = hf and as frequency increases the energy should increase without bounds. Planck reasoned it can’t because higher energy levels (and lower) won’t be as available as those in the mid-range of a spectrum at temperature T.

            Planck’s curve shows the EM distribution at a specific temperature and the temperature is proportional to the frequency, as is the intensity. That means a spectrum at a temperature in the IR band will be lower and narrower than a spectrum with visible frequencies as a centre-point.

            Although you could claim that EM from a very hot body (3000C) radiates a broad spectrum of frequencies, that is not true for radiation at terrestrial temperatures.

            Molecules do not radiate at all frequencies they exist at very specific narrow ranges of temperatures. Molecules at temperatures that radiate IR at terrestrial temperatures do not radiate UV frequencies, although they can absorb the much higher intensity UV. On the other hand, high temperature sources with molecules radiating UV do not radiate significant IR. And, they won’t absorb IR.

            That’s why heat cannot be transferred from a cooler body to a warmer body. The transfer is one way, from hot to cold.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            ball4…”The real object also has to have a diameter much larger than the wavelength of light of interest to apply Planck formula which is never zero, which is my point”.

            Don’t forget that Planck applies to theoretical blackbodies and that the Earth’s surface can in no way be regarded as a blackbody. Neither can the Earth’s surface be regarded as a constant temperature source.

            I think it is foolish to apply Planck or Stefan-Boltzmann to the Earth’s surface or atmosphere.

            The surface poses a complex target to solar energy. Not all atoms/molecules in the surface heat evenly when exposed to solar energy.

          • Ball4 says:

            “The Planck curve is a statistically-doctored curve of radiation from a blackbody in thermal equilibrium at a temperature T.”

            statistically-doctored? Only in Gordon speak.

            Planck radiation law was developed experimentally Gordon, before the theory so is not from a BB in thermal equilibrium as BB’s do not exist to experiment upon. The experiments were on radiation from a physical cavity at various temperatures dry ice to superheated steam. The cavity emitted what is known as BB radiation which therefore does exist.

            EMR from a very hot body (3000C) radiates a broad spectrum of frequencies; this is also true for radiation at terrestrial temperatures – plug in T=288K or lower and at any frequency to Planck law, find a non-zero irradiance on your instrumentation from the real body at that temperature and frequency.

            Molecular radiation is in the realm of micro quantum mechanics, Planck formula is macro radiation in equilibrium with matter composed of those molecules.

            “That’s why heat cannot be transferred from a cooler body to a warmer body. The transfer is one way, from hot to cold.”

            Maxwell and Boltzmann proved Gordon wrong about that by building on Clausius’ earlier work. These guys showed how Gordon’s heat can be transferred from a cooler body to a warmer body without compensation.

          • Ball4 says:

            “If you are castigating me for characterising a photon being partially absorbed by an electron, I apologise.”

            Thank you. Actually atomic and molecular structure makes the photon absorbing process possible.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      np…”I have a question about how CO2 keeps the earth warmer. I would especially appreciate it if someone like Dr. Spencer or Dr. Appell could address it”.

      Come off it norman, or is that a David Appell family member writing in?

      Dr. Appell????? Doesn’t he have an undergraduate degree in Home Economics?

      • Norman says:

        Gordon Robertson

        No the person posting as NP-Hard is not me. It is just more to the point you make up stuff and think it is real.

        You do it with references to scientists you admire, you do it with physics. You just like to make things up. I guess it is your hobby.

        Maybe you are proud of your creative ability to make up stuff. I think is is very poorly made up stuff and illogical as well. I think it would be the same a complimenting an adult artist when he makes the same kind of stick figures a young child might draw. To the child you want to encourage them. With the adult you tell them that their work is very poor. Your science is lame. Mostly bad.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          norman…”You do it with references to scientists you admire…”

          You expect me to reference scientists with whom I don’t agree, ergo alarmists climatologists?

          • Norman says:

            Gordon Robertson

            No, I expect you to represent what they are saying correctly. You do not do this. You distort and manipulate what they claim and twist it to fit your own incorrect and misguided view of reality.

            I saw in a previous thread where you made up claims about what Clausius was saying. barry was posting direct quotes and links and you said Clausius was talking about (r*e*f*r*i*g*e*r*a*t*i*o*n) and he was not. You just made it up and tried to pass it off as true. I start to distrust anything you post about anyone because you are a fanatic. As bad or worse than the “alarmists” you oppose.

            Fanatics should not pretend they are scientists. It is an opposing mind state. Scientists are truth seekers regardless of what that “truth” is.

            Fanatics for climate change (twisting and distorting reality to support a position) are wrong and fanatics against climate change (like you) are equally wrong. Neither are scientific and it is unwise to trust anything they claim.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            “You expect me to reference scientists with whom I dont agree, ergo alarmists climatologists?”

            Fascinating how you see your self as the perfect arbiter of scientists! Anyone with whom you disagree is *by* *definition* an alarmist and wrong.

          • David Appell says:

            You expect me to reference scientists with whom I dont agree, ergo alarmists climatologists?

            You should at a minimum read them.

            But be careful, or you might learn something.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            norman…”No, I expect you to represent what they are saying correctly”.

            Why should I when alarmist scientists make up physics as you claim me of doing?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            tim…”Fascinating how you see your self as the perfect arbiter of scientists! Anyone with whom you disagree is *by* *definition* an alarmist and wrong”.

            I don’t make my stuff up as norman claims. I get it from the original, undoctored sources like Clausius, Planck, Bohr, Schrodinger, etc.

            When alarmists disagree with those sources, and get their fudged theories wrong, I call their science wrong.

            How can I talk you into coming back to real science and abandoning this sci-fi being put out by alarmist scientists? You seem like a good type, Tim. Even Norman seems alright but he also seems beyond redemption.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”You should at a minimum read them”.

            I have. I read through most of a book by Pierrehumbert. I’d like to get some of that stuff he’s smoking.

            I have read Gavin Schmidt and I have posted an article by engineer Jeffrey Glassman that undresses him based on his theories, especially in feedback theory. I have read Trenberth carefully re his energy budget with Keile. I have also read widely on the IPCC dogma.

            Here’s that link again to Glassman doing a job on Schmidt.

            http://rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html

            Here’s Motl doing the same to Rahmstorf, one of your favourites and a mentor of Schmidt.

            https://motls.blogspot.ca/2008/03/lindzen-vs-rahmstorf-exchange.html

            The science of Schmidt and Rahmstorf is basically flawed.

          • Ball4 says:

            “I don’t make my stuff up as norman claims. I get it from the original, undoctored sources like Clausius, Planck, Bohr, Schrodinger, etc.”

            There is no evidence of that Gordon. You doctor (fracture actually) their words and substitute your own faulty wording.

      • NP-Hard says:

        No, I’m not impersonating anyone. Dr. Spencer has my real email address when I post, so he could confirm I’m not impersonating anyone.

        I thought David Appell has a PhD in physics. Is this not true?

        TL

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          NP…”I thought David Appell has a PhD in physics. Is this not true?”

          I was kidding by claiming you are Norman. There are a few posters here who sporadically post under different nyms.

          There are rumours that DA has a PhD but after debating him extensively I claim his degree is in Home Economics. If that does not translate to your milieu, Home Economics in Canada is a study of cooking and home management.

          It strikes me as odd that David has a PhD in physics and work as a self-employed journalist. The head of skepticalscience claimed at one time to have a degree in solar physics but has since admitted he has an undergrad degree and works as a cartoonist.

          Roy definitely has a degree in meteorology and deserves his title. I call him Roy but not out of a lack of respect. I am not comfortable with titles. I call my physician doctor only because he has my life in his hands.

          If I had a doctorate I would respond well to, “Hey you”. Of course, if someone calls me an idiot I insist on them addressing me as Mr. Idiot.

    • David Appell says:

      NP-Hard says:
      If CO2 traps energy, then it only trapped it for a few seconds, and then the earth is in exactly the same energy and temperature state if there were no CO2 at all.
      Where is any of this wrong?

      Well, it’s not the same photon ‘bouncing’ around, that gets trapped in the atmosphere for a few seconds. Photons are destroyed when they are absorbed by an atom or molecule, and a new one is created when that atom or molecule emits a photon.

      Thus more CO2 in the atmosphere means more downward radiation (“back radiation”). Radiation carries energy, so more energy is striking the surface. So the surface warms. That energy can be “thermalized,” transferred to the air by conduction or convection, making it warmer, and also by radiation, which warms you when it strikes you or, building on the process, is again absorbed and re-emitted, or escapes to space. The end result is there is extra heat in the surface and lower atmosphere, i.e. they’re warmer.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”Photons are destroyed when they are absorbed by an atom or molecule, and a new one is created when that atom or molecule emits a photon”.

        If the energy quantum was destroyed at absorp-tion the absorbing electron would lack the energy to jump to a higher orbital as required. The EM is converted to kinetic energy by the electron, which is realized as increased heat at the higher energy level.

        **********

        “Radiation carries energy, so more energy is striking the surface. So the surface warms…”

        So alarmist claim but they have forgotten the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Heat cannot be transferred from a cooler atmosphere, or even one in thermal equilibrium with the surface. That’s a basic law of thermodynamics that is being blatantly misrepresented by alarmists.

        Some are claiming that a net balance of electromagnetic energy satisfies the 2nd law, which is not true. The 2nd law is about heat and EM is not heat. EM fluxes cannot be summed and claimed to represent a transfer of heat.

  39. Snape says:

    I agree with Dr. Spencer: “But the more I think about it, the more I realize that greenhouse effect is a pretty accurate term.”

    It’s a metaphor for RADIATIVE heat transfer, so the confounding, obscuring influences of conduction and convection need to be removed……… imagine the greenhouse is on the MOON!

    • Snape says:

      What would happen to the moon’s surface temperature if it were surrounded by a pane of glass?

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        snape…”What would happen to the moons surface temperature if it were surrounded by a pane of glass?”

        Probably nothing. There is no atmosphere to warm by conduction from the surface.

        Also, it wouldn’t last long, there is no atmosphere to burn up meteorites and it would be bombarded by them.

        • Tim Folkerts says:

          With all due respect, “probably nothing” is the wrong answer. You imagine that I can’t do the basic calculations, but when I do (and it is a trivial calculation), you can’t even understand the physics.

          Conduction has nothing to do with this example! Lack of air actually makes it much SIMPLER! Until you know where the 2^(1/4) comes from, you really are not up to speed enough to add an opinion.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            tim…”Conduction has nothing to do with this example! Lack of air actually makes it much SIMPLER!”

            Agreed, and there is nothing to heat but the surface. Explain how that heats anything within the glass cover when temps outside the cover are close to 0K. There is nothing inside the glass to heat.

            I would guess that the glass would transfer the cold to it’s inner surface and that the glass would likely warm from the solar energy. Nothing would happen between the glass and the Moon’s surface. That is, no greenhouse effect, as you call it.

    • bilybob says:

      Well stated. I especially like the reference to putting it on the moon.

      • Snape says:

        Thanks.

        I think a “moon greenhouse” would also demonstrate something Tim Folkerts has been saying. If the greenhouse were 10 meters high, then the elevation where ASR equals OLR would now be 10 meters above the surface.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          snape…”If the greenhouse were 10 meters high, then the elevation where ASR equals OLR would now be 10 meters above the surface”.

          The OLR would do nothing to warm the space between the glass and the surface. OLR is not heat and it has no effect till it is absorbed by atoms.

          It seems snape and tim are still confusing thermally generated IR with heat. It’s not heat, it has no warming ability of its own and it cannot heat a space on the Moon that is empty.

          This is a more complex problem than it seems. When we use an electric space heater it is rated in electrical watts, the wattage of the electrical power it consumes. That tells you nothing about the IR radiated and the heat you feel from the heater is largely due to air heated directly by the heater.

          Once again, R.W.Wood was an authority on IR and here’s what he had to say:

          “THERE appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.

          I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the “open,” the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents”.

          **************

          A problem I have had is thinking the IR in question is part of the solar spectrum, but it’s not. The IR spectrum related to a thermal source is off the end of that spectrum and cannot be considered as light.

          Why would Wood doubt that the IR radiated by the surfaces in a real greenhouse could warm the interior of the greenhouse if it is blocked by the glass? The guy was an authority on IR and he performed an experiment to prove it is air molecules being trapped that causes the heating and not the IR.

      • Tim Folkerts says:

        The moon’s surface temperature would go up on the order of ~ 2^0.25 = ~ 20%. (Details would of course depend on factors like rotation rate, thermal conductivity & heat capacity of the surface, the exact properties of the glass, etc).

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          tim…”The moons surface temperature would go up on the order of ~ 2^0.25 = ~ 20%”.

          I was under the impression snape was creating a greenhouse effect on the Moon by covering it with a glass roof. What does the surface temperature have to do with it? I thought we were talking about the space between the surface and the glass in which we might try growing plants, or whatever.

          Of course, if you build a glass house on the Moon the surface under it should warm provided the glass blocks thermally-generated IR. If you hang a thermometer on the wall of the glass house and shield it from IR, as we do with thermometers and solar radiation, what would the thermometer read?

          However, the temperature of the glass should be around 0K and the IR would be absorbed by it. The surface itself would be well in excess of 100C and I don’t think the glass house would make much of a difference at all.

          I am still not sold on the theory that glass blocks thermally generated IR. Microwaves, which are a lower frequency than TGIR, go straight through glass, plastic, or whatever. Maybe they are somewhat dissipated, but not blocked.

          Maybe someone could take a radio into a greenhouse, close the door, and see if they get reception through the glass.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      snape…”Its a metaphor for RADIATIVE heat transfer….”

      The GHE is a metaphor and heat can be transferred only one way in our atmosphere, from hot to cold.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        The GHE is a metaphor and heat can be transferred only one way in our atmosphere, from hot to cold.

        You simply refuse to learn. Silly boy.

  40. Steve Richards says:

    @Myki, strange, just called up the BOM web site:

    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=122&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=1944&p_c=-16300449&p_stn_num=009021

    Perth airport, 1944, the first year of records here, Dec 2n 1944 = 38.7C

    October and November have temps higher than you report.

    I wonder what station your are referring to?

    • Snape says:

      The seasons are upside down.

    • barry says:

      The problem is that Myki forgot to provide a link to the article.

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-12/soaring-autumn-temperatures-set-new-record-in-perth/9754952

      This is about Perth temps in AUTUMN and in MAY.

    • tonyM says:

      Myki:
      I will put it down to naïvity and perhaps youthful idealism when you write:
      “Hello! Any denialstis still out there? ”

      Perhaps you should detail what these denialists are denying; it would be interesting otherwise you are leading with your chin.

      I live in Perth now and it was a most glorious day that you describe. In fact most of Autumn is fantastic.

      The Perth W.A. temp you mention is one particular site. It has been going since late 1993. So you don’t have a like for like comparison over a long period (including methodology changes). Now, had you picked the Perth airport (which is a major station) it hit 33.1C. It could not manage to beat the the 1972 max of 33.7C. Does that mean temperatures have dropped since then?

      Now can you guarantee me that these are all like for like comparisons? Take UHI – is it accounted for? How? What about the newest trick of BOM’s modern instrumental records measuring to one or two seconds. Have they accounted for the difference in this measure? Show me the homework. You will find it went the way of Phils Jones’ data; the dog ate his homework. Just look at the time of your recording 1.04pm. Do you really believe past data were measured minute by minute and to a one second max readings?

      Now had you told me that central Africa set a record in summer I may have noticed and I did notice. Then I found out there are no measuring stations there. Amazing this newfound methodology; the temperature you have when you don’t have a temperature. Clayton’s temperatures.

      Perhaps had you told me that birds were dropping out of the sky in Perth it may have meant something. Sharks frozen alive on the US East coast waters was news-worthy some time back. I’d never heard of such a phenomenon. No, I did not interpret it as globull cooling!

      You might also comment on T difference between Perth and Swanbourne stations at times of 7C to 11C for most of the day and into the night in summer. They are 8km apart!! I know why it can happen. So much for infilling, projections and homogenization nonsense.

      Perhaps you might comment on:

      http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/veteran-meteorologist-talks-of-culture-of-intimidation-skeptics-hide-at-national-weather-service-noaa/

      Read all of it at CFACT —  the meteorologist also describes problems with climate models, says the NWS and NOAA is a “well oiled propaganda machine.” He referred to a study that took ocean buoy data and recalibrated it with measurements taken in ship engine intakes, even though everyone knew that the ocean bouys were more accurate.”

      To me this is further justification for Prof Lindzen calling for a complete defunding of this whole field which has become a religion. Then start again.

      CFACT
      http://www.cfact.org/2018/05/02/meteorologist-allegedly-assaulted-by-nws-director-uccellini/

      BOM on their measurements:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/about-airtemp-data.shtml

  41. Svend Ferdinandsen says:

    (We can quibble about the calculations of surface temperature with and without greenhouse gases because they make unrealistic assumptions about clouds and water vapor.

    Exactly. The no GHG case is unrealistic because clouds is not removed, and they is an important part of the albedo.

    • David Appell says:

      A climate model calculation that undertook the reverse process — removing all GHGs from the current environment (as of 2010), found that temperatures would drop about 33 K before reestablishing equilibrium:

      Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earths Temperature, Lacis et al, Science (15 October 2010) Vol. 330 no. 6002 pp. 356-359
      http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/la09300d.html

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        A climate model calculation. How wrong could it be?

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        Yet another modelling exercise. No connection to reality. Just about as silly as claiming that removing CO2 from air will cause a temperature drop.

        The paper to which you refer might not be the worst pseudoscientific paper ever published, but it is certainly hard to find one with more bizarre and incorrect assertions.

        Nonsensical, but obviously still appeals to the gullible and mentally challenged Warmist true believers.

        Still having trouble accepting reality and the scientific method? A testable GHE hypothesis would help to sort the real from the imaginary. It is a pity you cannot produce such a basic necessity.

        Oh well, that’s the Warmist way, I suppose.

        Cheers.

  42. barry says:

    Dr Spencer,

    “We can quibble about the calculations of surface temperature with and without greenhouse gases because they make unrealistic assumptions about clouds and water vapor.”

    This is a little unclear to me. No GHGs would mean no water vapour and no clouds. What are the unrealistic assumptions?

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      barry…”No GHGs would mean no water vapour and no clouds”.

      Clouds are not GHGs since they are not gases. They are modeled as bodies of water.

    • barry says:

      Clouds need water vapour to form. Water vapour is a GHG.

      No GHGs, no water vapour, no clouds.

      So I wonder what Dr Spencer meas by the comment I quoted.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        barry,

        Water vapour is H2O. It cannot, and does not, make thermometers hotter.

        You are deluded if you believe it can.

        You cannot even define the GHE, let alone find a testable GHE hypothesis, can you?

        All you have is delusional fanaticism, based on gullibility and simple mindedness.

        I wish you the best of luck. You’ll need it.

        Cheers.

  43. Gordon Robertson says:

    Here’s a graph NOAA must have forgotten to delete. It shows a nice flat trend from around 2000 – 2015, and it even shows a negative trend just before 2015.

    The anomalies are relative to the 1901 – 2000 average.

    NOTE…IT IS NECESSARY TO ALTER THE URL FIRST BY REMOVING THE HYPHEN IN NCD-C. That is, copy/paste URL to browser URL bar, remove hyphen, and hit enter.

    https://www.ncd-c.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-land-ocean-mntp-anom/201101-201112.png

    Note the date…2011…before the IPCC announced the warming hiatus and before NOAA began fudging the data retroactively.

    Also note the steep positive trend in the positive anomaly region from 1975 onward till around 2000. That’s for binny and his fake graphs that compare NOAA favourably to UAH. UAH shows no such positive trend in the positive anomaly region from 1979 onward.

    • barry says:

      How many things can you get wrong in a single post?

      It shows a nice flat trend from around 2000 2015, and it even shows a negative trend just before 2015

      How can the graph go up to 2015 when, as you note yourself, the date is 2011?

      The graph goes up to 2011.

      There is no trend line at all. The line you see is a smooth based on averaging a fixed number of years either side of each year.

      The profile of the smooth is flat or negative from 2004 to 2011 – not from 2000. The smooth is still rising in 2000.

      The smooth starts rising in later graphs because the temperatures go up in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

      This happens in all the surface records, including the Japanese version of the global surface record, and other, informal records not based on GHCN.

      This profile is also seen in the RSS graph.

      The 13 month smooth in Dr Spencer’s graph above likewise has temps warmer in the last couple of years than in 2000 (or 2004).

      You think they’re all involved in a data fudging conspiracy trying to make temps look warmer in the last few years?

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        barry…”The graph goes up to 2011.

        There is no trend line at all. The line you see is a smooth based on averaging a fixed number of years either side of each year”.

        My mistake, I thought it was dated 2011 because of the numbers at the end of the URL. It obviously goes to 2015.

        Barry, old son, you need to get off your myopic definition of a trend line. A regression is only one type of trend, I could draw a trend freehand through dots by eyeballing it and calculating the slope.

        I am more interested in the average than the fluctuations. On the UAH graph I always reference the red running average, that’s where I eyeball the trend.

        Trend means tendency. The average on the NOAA graph is relatively flat and tending toward a negative slope near 2015.

        Of course, due to NOAA’s fudged data from 1970 onward they are showing a significant positive trend their satellites are not showing.

      • barry says:

        It obviously goes to 2015

        No, it goes to 2011 only. It’s in the URL, and you can see it in the graph itself just by looking carefully.

        You appear to have no idea what a trend line is, and what it is for.

        I could scrawl a wavy line through data by hand. This is not a trend line.

        I could draw a straight line between any two of the hundreds of monthly points on the UAH graph. This would not be a trend line either.

        If you think otherwise, you have absolutely no business discussing trends at all.

        A trend is a mathematically derived line (straight or curved) that provides a fit to the data given.

        It is not arbitrary in any way.

        The purpose is to see if there may be a pattern in the data.

        Or if the data is essentially random.

        The UAH data at short intervals is essentially random.

        At the longest interval, it has a statistically significant trend – a linear one.

        It has no other kind of statistically significant pattern or trend – like, for example, a quadratic or sine wave.

        You seem to believe trend lines are arbitrary.

        If so, I cannot caution you more strongly on how incredibly ignorant that is.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trend_line
        https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-trend-line-in-math-definition-equation-analysis.html
        http://techweb.bsu.edu/jcflowers1/rlo/trends.htm (To see different types of trend lines)

        A true trend line has a mathematically derived trend value. Smooths do not. But you can use the averaged points on a smooth to derive a trend line.

        On the UAH graph I always reference the red running average, thats where I eyeball the trend.

        The UAH red running average is hotter for the past couple of years than it was in 2000 – which is the year you mentioned above.

        Of course, due to NOAAs fudged data from 1970 onward they are showing a significant positive trend their satellites are not showing.

        The UAH trend from 1979 to present is 0.13 C/decade
        The NOAA trend from 1979 to present is 0.165 C/decade

        Are you really excited by a difference of less than 4 hundredths of a degree per decade?

        What happens when you come across a significant discrepancy instead of this bee’s dick?

  44. Myki says:

    Many celebrating Mothers Day across the United States will have to contend with record-challenging heat or unsettled weather on Sunday.
    “Record-challenging!”
    Go team alarmist!
    Put another nail in their coffin!

    • Mike Flynn says:

      M,

      What are you on about? Climate is the average of weather – historical weather at that!

      Can you have record “unsettled weather”?

      What is significant about “record challenging” heat?

      The physical laws of the universe, (whatever they might be), don’t care about teams, one way or the other.

      Your pious exhortations might give you satisfaction, but are unlikely to change the outcome of a single physical process. No harm done, I suppose, but you would be wasting your time asking me to donate to your cause. What is your cause, by the way? Can you explain a little? It might help potential adherents to make up their minds.

      Cheers.

      • Myki says:

        “What is your cause, by the way? Can you explain a little?”
        The cause is enhanced greenhouse gases – or EGG – in the atmosphere.
        If not, then what else?
        Simple enough for you?

        • Mike Flynn says:

          M,

          What is an enhanced greenhouse gas? Different from non-enhanced greenhouse gas?

          Can you make thermometers even hotter with enhanced greenhouse gases?

          You are joking, I suppose – I do hope you are not expecting anyone to take you seriously. That might be a serious error.

          Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      myki…”Many celebrating Mothers Day across the United States will have to contend with record-challenging heat or unsettled weather on Sunday”.

      Where were you a couple of months ago when the same mothers were contending with record cold?

      You don’t seriously think that CO2 at 0.04% could cause such swings in weather, do you?

      The Sun might, but alarmists have no interest in the prime driver of our climate. The Arctic climate is controlled by the Sun but alarmists think it’s CO2 at 0.04%.

      I wish a bunch of them would have a conference out there on the Arctic ice and see what a polar bear thinks.

  45. Chic Bowdrie says:

    Snape,

    To make the pond analogy similar to NP-Hard’s garage analogy, you have to have outflow proportional to pond level and intermittent inflow like the solar insolation. So with an average “daily dose” of inflow, the average pond level won’t change unless the outflow is constrained.

    Let solar insolation and clouds control inflow and IR radiation from the surface and/or the TOA moderate outflow. Without clouds to minimize the inflow or IR-active gases to constrain the outflow, the pond will reach extreme levels when the input faucet is on, but drain to low levels when off. Add the IR gases and clouds, now you have manageable pond levels.

    Will a small change in outflow restriction change the average level? Probably. But what if the outflow restriction fed back a throttling of the inflow?

    As far as CO2 goes, there is no verification that it is affecting the outflow. If you know of definitive evidence (ie no model data) to the contrary, please let me know.

  46. Mike Flynn says:

    David Appell wrote –

    “Work might produce heat, or it might not.”

    I’m wondering if anyone can provide an instance where doing work does not produce heat. I can’t think of such an instance, but maybe I am overlooking the blindingly obvious!

    Aren’t there always losses converting energy from one form to another?

    What am I missing? Not arguing, just wondering.

    Cheers.

    • Myki says:

      Lifting a dumbbell off the ground.
      Then dropping him on his head.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        M,

        Trying to lift yourself by your bootstraps up so you can drop yourself on your head won’t work.

        That’s about as stupid as thinking that you can make a thermometer hotter by increasing the amount of CO2 between it and the Sun!

        What a stupid and ignorant fellow!

        Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      mike…”Im wondering if anyone can provide an instance where doing work does not produce heat. I cant think of such an instance, but maybe I am overlooking the blindingly obvious!”

      That’s a tough one technically.

      1st law: Q = U + W as applied to a solid.

      no work, Q = U

      but wait, U = internal energy as defined by Clausius and he claimed U involves both heat and work in atomic vibrations. Therefore W in the 1st law seems to be external work. Then again, in order to change the work done via vibration, hence the temperature, you’d have to add heat externally or do work externally.

      How about no heat: W = U

      again, makes no sense as explained above.

      Seems you cannot get away from the heat-work relationship, unless you specify only external heat or work.

      In the experiment of Joule, he installed a small rotating paddle in water and noted the water temperature rose. He calculated the work done by the paddle per unit time and measured the temperature rise during the same period. That’s how he equated work to temperature.

      Suppose you slowed the paddle down to the point where no temperature rise was noted, if that’s possible. Over an extended period you’d do the same work but would the temperature rise if the period was long enough?

      Don’t know.

  47. La Pangolina says:

    Gordon Robertson says:
    May 12, 2018 at 5:48 PM

    As usual, Robertson shows us how inexperienced and ignorant he is.

    Let us recall the comparison between UAH6.0 and NOAA Globe land+ocean

    – of course with all UAH and NOAA anomalies referencing the same baseline, here the mean of 1981-2010;
    – with 36 month running means.

    http://4gp.me/bbtc/1525532428941.jpg

    Everybody able AND willing to use a spreadsheet tool can generate such a graph out of the following data sources:

    1. UAH 6.0 (column 3 in the table)
    https://tinyurl.com/y997zl7w

    2. NOAA Globe land+ocean (column 3 in the table)
    https://tinyurl.com/yakjhzon

    Robertson can tell us about faking as long as he wants. That’s nothing else than one of his many lies.

    He is certainly able BUT NOT WILLING to do the simple job I did.

    Because doing the job would force him to face reality, and to accept that the graph above is NOT faked.

    And ABOVE ALL he would no longer be able to claim that NOAA is publishing ‘fudged’ data.

    He would then lose his favorite toy and major goal: to denigrate the work of others, and by the way to discredit them.

    *

    How is it possible for people to be dumb, ignorant and incompetent enough to compare
    – temperature anomalies wrt e.g. 1901-2000 or 1951-1980
    with
    – temperature anomalies wrt e.g. 1981-2010 ?

    *

    Anyway, if you generate in Excel a graph for 1880-2011 similar to

    https://tinyurl.com/j2xu9ml

    you will see few differences when referencing NOAA’s actual Globe data linked above wrt their old baseline (1901-2000):

    – the lowest actual anomaly is -0.44 C (compared to about -0.41 in the old graph);
    – the highest actual anomaly is +0.70 C (compared to about +0.63 C in the old graph).

    The differences are nearly as small as is the 2 sigma interval.

    My life companion J.-P. would say: beaucoup de bruit pour rien!

    • Mike Flynn says:

      LaP,

      What is your point?

      Do you really believe that arguing about whose interpretation of the past is better, achieves anything of value?

      What has happened has happened – regardless of whether anybody agrees or not!

      No amount of brightly coloured graphs will allow you to peer into the future. Not even the esoteric charts of the astrologers are capable of this.

      As Kung Fu Panda might have said “The past is history, the future’s a mystery. All we have is now, and it’s a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

      How you choose to waste your time is your affair. As is mine, similarly.

      Cheers.

    • La Pangolina says:

      For the sake of completeness: here is a faked graph

      http://4gp.me/bbtc/1526209639966.jpg

      to be compared with

      https://tinyurl.com/j2xu9ml

      and showing, for the period 1880-2011 and wrt the mean of 1901-2000, NOAA’s 2018 land+ocean fudged annual data found in

      https://tinyurl.com/ybea7zzl

      I even took care of scaling the graph’s picture to exactly the same size as that of the old NOAA original :-))

      • Mike Flynn says:

        LaP,

        Graphs, faked graphs, and yet more irrelevant and pointless graphs.

        A pseudoscientific barrage of deny, divert and confuse!

        No testable GHE hypothesis – not even a brightly coloured fake one?

        You’ll have to do a lot better keep up the spirits of the faithful, I think.

        Cheers.

        • La Pangolina says:

          A pseudoscientific barrage of deny, divert and confuse.

          That is exactly what you are one of the worldwide greatest specialists of.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            LaP,

            Thank you for your praise.

            I take note of what you say, as it is obviously based on your wide and deep experience of the subject matter.

            It cheers me immensely to think that someone credits me with being the greatest worldwide specialist – even someone as stupid and ignorant as yourself, who cannot even produce a testable GHE hypothesis.

            Once again, many thanks for your approbation.

            Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”As usual, Robertson shows us how inexperienced and ignorant he is.

      Let us recall the comparison between UAH6.0 and NOAA Globe land+ocean”

      You don’t get it, do you?

      I am questioning your ability to produce an accurate rendition of the UAH/NOAA data. They have produced their own renditions and they don’t match yours or even come close, therefore I’m inexperienced and ignorant for being the messenger.

      • La Pangolina says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        May 14, 2018 at 1:30 PM

        I am questioning your ability to produce an accurate rendition of the UAH/NOAA data.

        No you aren’t.

        The only way for you to do that would be to download the two datasets, to enter them in Excel or in a similar tool and to produce the graphs as I did.

        But for that you are not courageous enough, Robertson.

        You would namely see that what you output is the same stuff as what I do.

        I repeat: your primary goal here is to lie, to denigrate, to discredit. That’s all you are able to do.

  48. Bindidon says:

    I am really amused when reading stuff like ‘Heat can be transferred only one way in our atmosphere, from hot to cold’.

    Simply because when you manage to process UAH’s climatology stored in

    https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/tltmonacg_6.0

    you can then reconstruct absolute UAH temperatures by adding the corresponding monthly climatology value for any of the 9504 grid cells in each month from december 1978 in

    https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/tltmonamg.1978_6.0

    till e.g. december 2017 in

    https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/tltmonamg.2017_6.0

    Moreover, by computing the offset of the cell within the grid encompassing a GHCN station, you can generate an absolute UAH time series for the cell which you may then compare with that of the station, e.g. Verhoyansk in Siberia.

    The graph looks like this:

    http://4gp.me/bbtc/1526176506394.jpg

    The troposphere there is warmer than the surface.
    An amazing, funny detail…

    • Mike Flynn says:

      B,

      Nothing wrong with laughter.

      But what is your point? Are you claiming that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter, or something to that effect?

      As a result of your calculations, are you any closer to formulating a testable GHE hypothesis?

      You can calculate the relationships of the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and relate them to the British Neolithic Ley lines, to achieve equally amazing and funny details, similar to yours.

      All good for a laugh. Calculate on!

      Cheers.

      • La Pangolina says:

        But what is your point?

        J.-P.’s point simply is to animate you in writing one more of your pointless replies :-))

        • Mike Flynn says:

          LaP,

          I am pleased to be able to bring some enjoyment to your otherwise aimless lives. I understand that inability to find the testable GHE hypothesis that you so desire, makes you want to lash out in all directions.

          Feel free to seek my advice on any matter you cannot understand. I am always glad to help those less fortunate than myself.

          You dont need to thank me – it’s my pleasure.

          Cheers

      • Myki says:

        “A MYSTERIOUS void has been discovered in the Great Pyramid. Scientists hope it will unlock the ancient wonders secrets.”
        and in news to hand:
        “A MYSTERIOUS void has been discovered in the brain of Flynn. Scientists hope it will unlock the ancient man’s ignorance.”

        • Mike Flynn says:

          M,

          From National Geographic 6 May 2018 –

          “Its Official: Tuts Tomb Has No Hidden Chambers After All”

          In regard to fact, you are wrong as usual

          With regard to fantasy, who cares? Your mind reading skills are non-existent.

          Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”I am really amused when reading stuff like Heat can be transferred only one way in our atmosphere, from hot to cold”.

      If I said hot to cold, it was a type due to brain-lock. Everyone is allowed a typo, if I see one I make a note of it in my comment rather than try to ridicule the poster.

      However, it’s really hilarious that you don’t understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

      No matter how many times you resort to your fudged graphs, it does not affect the simple fact that heat cannot be transferred from cold to hot under conditions that exist in the atmosphere.

      I don’t see why you have so much trouble with that.

  49. ren says:

    May 17 will be an increase in volcanic activity.
    http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00964/7tqh18zpync9.png

  50. lifeisthermal says:

    You seem to have forgotten the most important point of a greenhouse. The glass is a radiative barrier, it limits heat transfer in the relevant wavelengths to only conduction, in contrast to the atmosphere where you have conduction, convection and radiation.
    An atmosphere is nothing like a greenhouse, an atmosphere is free flowing non-resistance enhanced fluid cooling of a heat source.
    Adding a heat absorbing cold fluid to a heat source is how you create cooling. Used in any combustion engine or AC.
    Simple stuff, you should know this.

    • barry says:

      Atmosphere moderates heat flows.
      That’s why it is cooler on the dayside surface of the earth than the dayside surface of the mon, and warmer on the night side surface of the Earth than the nightside surface of the moon.

      If the atmosphere only acted to cool the surface, nights on Earth should be colder than nights on the moon.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        barry,

        You wrote –

        “Thats why it is cooler on the dayside surface of the earth than the dayside surface of the mon, and warmer on the night side surface of the Earth than the nightside surface of the moon.”

        You’ve got it! By George, I think you’ve got it!

        Well done, barry.

        Cheers.

    • Chic Bowdrie says:

      I agree, but I think our exhortations are fruitless. Even good scientists like Dr. Spencer like using the greenhouse analogy.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      life…”Adding a heat absorbing cold fluid to a heat source is how you create cooling. Used in any combustion engine or AC.
      Simple stuff, you should know this”.

      *****

      And you should know that the heat transfer is from hot to cold in a combustion engine and cold to hot in an AC unit. So, how did they make the AC unit transfer heat from cold to hot?

      They used a compressor, powered by external power, to compress a gas to a high pressure liquid. Of course, its temperature rises with the pressure, and that heat is vented to the atmosphere via a condenser. The the HP liquid is run through an atomizer and into an evapourater where it expands and cools. The cooled gas sucks heat out of a space and cools it.

      So where is this contraption in the atmosphere that is required to cause a transfer from cold to hot? The atmosphere works like the combustion engine, it transfers heat from a warmer surface to a cooler atmosphere. The reverse process is not possible.

      The greenhouse also works like that. Soil and components heated by solar energy transfer heat via conduction to ALL air molecules. The air rises as it would on the surface but the glass blocks it. The GH surface continues to heat and the air continues to rise but there is no cooler air to replace it as on a normal surface. Ergo, the GH heats.

      You have to get it that GHGs in the overall atmosphere account for only 0.31% and CO2 only 0.04%. Never mind thought-experiments about how a drop of ink in a vial of water can block light, or a few drops of arsenic in a cup of coffee can kill you. The Ideal Gas Law tells us such a low percent of GHGs in the atmosphere cannot possibly heat the other gases more than a fraction of a degree C.

      A greenhouse is not warmed by GHGs even if the WV content rises to 3%. The same greenhouse in an arid region with 0.1% WV would warm just the same. And it’s not due to CO2.

  51. ren says:

    Today heavy thunderstorms in the central states of the US.
    http://www.lightningwizard.com/maps/North_America/gfs_cape_usa18.png

  52. ren says:

    Strong storms in these areas will attack for several days.
    http://www.lightningwizard.com/maps/North_America/gfs_cape_usa42.png

  53. Norman says:

    Gordon Robertson

    In your link from Woods

    https://archive.org/stream/physicaloptic00wood#page/594/mode/2up

    Go to page 595 of the book. On this page Woods talks about CO2 and how it emits IR. It acts almost like a black-body radiator at certain wavelengths.

    Again supported by real world measured values of DWIR spectrum, view slide 3 and it shows the same thing found by these early researchers.

    https://www.slideserve.com/faunus/from-grant-petty-s-book-a-first-course-in-atmospheric-radiation

    Also read page 593 from the Woods book. If an object emits IR at a certain wavelength is will absorb IR it receives in the same wavelength. It is NOT exclusive that both objects need to be at the same temperature. That is your twisted, and distorted view of the actual science because of your fanatic drive to oppose any science that might indicate your reality is flawed and wrong.

    • E. Swanson says:

      Those slides from Petty’s text are a great presentation of the reality within the atmosphere. Too bad Gordo and the other denialist posting here apparently can’t figure it out.

      • Ball4 says:

        That’s a reliable description of Gordon comments given that SOD website uses Petty’s work and given Gordon’s opinion here:

        http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/05/in-defense-of-the-term-greenouse-effect/#comment-301881

        • David Appell says:

          Yes, Gordon thinks everyone’s an idiot except him, Woods, Clausius, Lindzen, g*, MF, and UAH.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            Ooooooh! Impressive claim of mind reading ability! Can you back it up, or is it all a product of your imagination?

            How about throwing another gotcha into the arena? You could always point out that bananas absorb and emit IR, and therefore we are all doomed!

            Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Yes, Gordon thinks everyones an idiot except him…”

            Not so, I call myself an idiot…and worse. Makes me feel better being among total idiots like the alarmists here.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          ball4…”Thats a reliable description of Gordon comments given that SOD website uses Pettys work and given Gordons opinion here:”

          That’s the MO of sites like S0D and SkS, to misrepresent science using faulty analysis. The Petty graph is in milliwatts. Back-radiation of 0.15 watts is supposed to super-heat the surface.

          Rich!!!

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        What reality? Surely you aren’t proposing there is any evidence there of increasing CO2 causing an increase in global temperature?

        • E. Swanson says:

          The graphs from Petty’s text are similar to many others which have been available for years. They show clearly that there is IR EM from the atmosphere toward the surface in both CO2 and water vapor bands with wavelengths corresponding to the temperature of the the atmosphere above. They also show that those bands also block some of the energy from the Sun at those same wavelengths. Those results also show that when the water vapor content of the atmosphere changes, the down welling IR EM in the water vapor bands also changes. Logically, changing the amount of CO2 will likewise result in corresponding changes at those wavelengths. So, yes, it’s clear to me that increasing CO2 can warm the surface.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            ES,

            You wrote –

            “They also show that those bands also block some of the energy from the Sun at those same wavelengths.

            True. As I have mentioned before, reducing the amount of energy reaching a thermometer does not increase its temperature.

            Actually, some 30% – 40% of the suns radiation never reaches the surface, dur to the presence of the atmosphere.

            Increasing the amount of CO2 between a thermometer and the Sun will not make the thermometer hotter, will it? Not logically, nor in reality.

            Cheers.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            Mike, that is like pondering whether putting insulation around a a radiator and a room will make the house warmer. And of course it won’t because that is not how insulation is used. Insulation is effective when it is interposed between the house and the surrounding cold winter air. Insulation is effective for keeping houses warm in the winter when the insulation is limiting the OUTFLOW of heat (not the INFLOW of heat).

            Similarly, adding CO2 between the heat input (the sun) and the earth’s surface will not be a good way to warm the surface. (CO2 is pretty lousy at absorbing sunlight, so CO2 will hardly have any cooling effect, but it will have some tiny cooling effect.

            However, adding CO2 between the earth’s surface and the surrounding cold of space WILL matter. The outflow will be reduced significantly (while the inflow is barely changed). The net result is a clear increase in temperature.

          • E. Swanson says:

            MF, Of course, under clear sky conditions, the local EM radiation at the surface can reach 1,000 watts/m^2, which compares with the TOA average value around 1360 w/m^2. And, the absorp_tivity of the oceans is quite high, both for visible and IR EM, thus the back radiation from water vapor and CO2 goes straight into the oceans. The absorp_tivity of ice is also high for IR EM, though ice tends to reflect much of the visible.

            You again repeat your usual comment about CO2 and a thermometer, when it’s been pointed out that the increase occurs because of the energy flowing from the Earth back thru the atmosphere to deep space. So as usual, logically, you are completely off base.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            Not at all. At night, the temperature drops. Talking about average insuoation is just nonsense.

            The surface heats during the day, and cools at night. Overall, the Earth has demonstrably cooled since its creation.

            Your analogy is, as usual, pointless and misleading. The Sun is external to the Earth.

            The outflow you speak of occurs regardless of your wishes. The surface cools at night. It even cools rapidly during a solar eclipse, when a cloud forms, or after the Sun reaches its zenith.

            Step into a shadow, raise a parasol, or put on a hat – reducing the radiation reaching you has an obvious and immediate effect.

            No GHE. Not even a testable GHE hypothesis. Semantic tricks, and pseudoscientific redefinitions cannot make real that which does not exist! Increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer does not make the thermometer hotter. End of story.

            Cheers.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            ES,

            There is no “increase”. The surface heats in the sunlight, cools otherwise. Overall, after some four and a half billion years, the surface has cooled. Fact, to the best of my knowledge.

            You can not describe the GHE, much less propose a testable GHE hypothesis. Pseudoscientific evasion tactics, cannot disguise the fact that you have nothing to offer except devout belief.

            Keep believing.

            Cheers.

          • gbaikie says:

            “Similarly, adding CO2 between the heat input (the sun) and the earths surface will not be a good way to warm the surface. ”

            Though many believe the CO2 between the sun and Venus rocky surface is very good way to warm the surface.

            And a few people imagine Earth could become like Venus if CO2 levels of Earth were to rise.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            swannie…”The graphs from Pettys text are similar to many others which have been available for years. They show clearly that there is IR EM from the atmosphere toward the surface…”

            I have never argued otherwise. All I’ve claimed is that the radiation cannot be absorbed because it came from a cooler source. Besides, it’s far too weak at a few milliwatts to affect anything.

            The graphs counter everything Trenberth et al have claimed, that back-radiation is several hundred watts.

          • Ball4 says:

            No Gordon, ~120 mW not a few. And when integrated over all wavelengths about 240W/m^2. This is just Gordon’s faulty analysis yet again.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        swannie…”Those slides from Pettys text are a great presentation of the reality within the atmosphere. Too bad Gordo and the other denialist posting here apparently cant figure it out”.

        *********

        Did you take the time to analyze the graphs? If so, the first thing you should have noticed is that the radiation intensity is measured in MILLIwatts. The graph for Barrow, Alaska peaks at 40 mw which is 0.04 watts. The hotter, 27C curve peaks at 150 mw = 0.15 watts.

        The graph for Barrow shows an inversion where warmer air normally at the surface gets above the colder air.

        Please explain, never minding the 2nd law for the time, how 0.15 watts of down-dwelling energy can warm a surface with a temperature that purportedly emits several hundred watts of power per sqware metre.

        Remember, it has to warm the surface to a temperature GREATER than the surface is warmed by solar energy.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      norman…”Go to page 595 of the book. On this page Woods talks about CO2 and how it emits IR. It acts almost like a black-body radiator at certain wavelengths”.

      Norman, you have a bitterness about you that concerns me. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I will get over it. However, you are so bent on proving me wrong that you are slinging mud. I’m waterproof, mud doesn’t bother me. Why not lighten up and engage in a scientific discussion?

      I don’t see any reference to CO2 on either page 593-595 when I look at the actual page number or the Adobe Reader page number. I need more information, like the chapter number maybe.

      “Also read page 593 from the Woods book. If an object emits IR at a certain wavelength is will absorb IR it receives in the same wavelength. It is NOT exclusive that both objects need to be at the same temperature”.

      E = hf…f is the inverse of wavelength. The frequency is also related to the electron’s angular momentum and that depends on it’s energy orbital, which is related to its the temperature of the atom.

      It’s the electrons that set the frequency. The absorbed EM has a frequency related to the electron that emitted it elsewhere.

      Th energy orbitals are described by solutions to the wave equation. In order for an energy orbital to increase its radius about the nucleus, energy is required. One form of energy is EM absorp-tion, but the orbitals can also increase in size due to heat being added to the atoms in a body.

      I have been trying to tell you that, it’s all about the interaction of the electrons and the nucleus. Even without EM absorp-tion, you can increase the heat in a body by adding heat externally. If you increase the temperature, the electrons adjust to new energy levels around the nucleus. If you increase the temperature enough, the electrons will break out of their orbital shells and the material will melt or disintegrate.

  54. donald penman says:

    I would make the hypothesis that it is the intensity of solar radiation that causes convection to occur it also causes back radiation to increase as well, the increase in solar radiation is the primary cause of convection increasing and the increased greenhouse effect is just secondary. I would hypothesis that the amount of convection in the middle to high latitudes is very low or non existent in mid winter so saying that convection causes the greenhouse effect to be less than it would be annually is in my opinion just fun with numbers. The very warm December that we had recently where the maximum temperature rose to 15 or was 16 degrees centigrade, the warm air from the south that caused this turned day into night and we had to drive with headlights on even in the middle of the day, I don’t think there was any convection occurring then because there was not enough solar radiation.

  55. barry says:

    If the point of an analogy is to make a complex idea accessible…

    I challenge anyone to come up with an analogy better than the notion of ‘greenhouse’ to illuminate why Earth’s average surface temperature (day + night) is warmer than it would be without an atmosphere.

    • Ball4 says:

      There are better analogies. The text book analogy is the N atm. slab analogy because it works for T(z) with real measured data. (Flynn – do not read this, your head asplode.)

      Each slab of atm. 1,2,3.. N is transparent to incoming SW and black to LW except the bottom one (surface) which is black, opaque.

      Radiative energy balance on each slab then shows downward radiation to the bottom slab increases without limit as N increases. This does break down at some point. However, within reason, it does show that downward radiation to the surface would increase with increasing concentration of IR active gases, accompanied by increasingly higher tropospheric temperatures.

      For Earth & Mars, the text book analogy needs but one thin N=1 slab to calculate T(0) from 1LOT radiative energy balance with all measured natural observed data input. For Venus, it has N slabs approaching infinity limited by T profile converging to the measured Venus T(z) which takes computerized iterations.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        Ball4,

        More analogies! What is so hard about describing the GHE in normal scientific terms? Why is there no testable GHE hypothesis? The answer, of course, is that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer does not make the thermometer hotter!

        Waffling and pseudoscientific semantics won’t make your fantasy become fact.

        Learn physics. Learn English as well. Your post is not a great example of effective scientific communication, is it?

        Cheers.

        • Ball4 says:

          The answer, of course, is that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer does not make the thermometer hotter!”

          Incorrect Mike, Prof. Tyndall proved you wrong experimentally using a very weak sun for the IR (boiling water). His data showed increasing the amount of CO2 between a weak IR sun and a thermometer does make the thermometer hotter.

          But if you wish, you may continue posting such disproven comments for the entertainment of the blog readership. I simply don’t care.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            Setting aside your inability to understand Tyndalls work, are you seriously saying that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter?

            Cheers.

          • gbaikie says:

            –Ball4 says:
            May 13, 2018 at 6:04 PM
            The answer, of course, is that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer does not make the thermometer hotter!

            Incorrect Mike, Prof. Tyndall proved you wrong experimentally using a very weak sun for the IR (boiling water). His data showed increasing the amount of CO2 between a weak IR sun and a thermometer does make the thermometer hotter.–

            Can you provide a description of experiment so that others could repeat it?

          • Ball4 says:

            “are you seriously saying that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter?”

            I see Mike’s head asplode, asked him not to read further for his own safety. Great blog entertainment though Mike.

            As proven by Prof. Tyndall’s experiments – data shows increasing the amount of CO2 between an IR sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter. Experimental evidence since replicated and refined by many authors.

            Disbelieve all you want as per your wishes Mike, I don’t care.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Can you provide a description of experiment so that others could repeat it?”

            Prof. Tyndall’s later research refined his initial work. The internet is a wonderful resource, start your study with google string: Tyndall 1861

          • Mike Flynn says:

            gbaikie,

            For you, and anyone else who may be interested, I suggest “Heat – A mode of motion.” John Tyndall, Sixth Edition, Appleton and Co 1905 – available for download on the internet. I dont have a link to hand.

            Ball4 obviously does not possess the ability to comprehend Tyndalls results, nor to realise that Tyndall altered some of his original speculations based on his later experimental work.

            The book is worth reading – parts more than once, if some things dont seem to make sense at first. A fairly deep understanding of his equipment setup, and why he used certain procedures, can show both the brilliance of Tyndall as an experimenter, and the reasons why some people manage to completely misunderstand his results.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Ball4 obviously does not possess the ability to comprehend Tyndalls results, nor to realise..”

            I know Flynn believes mind reading is possible from many of his previous comments but I can assure that mind reading is not possible, not of this earth nor reality.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            No mind reading necessary. My assessment is based purely on the stupidity and ignorance you evince through your comments.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            If you are not mind reading Mike, then you do not know what ability I possess nor what I realize. And I don’t care either.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            Good for you! I share your sentiment.

            Cheers.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            gbaikie,

            That is the third edition. The sixth edition is better (I believe), and the one I have was downloaded as a PDF which is searchable.

            Tyndall made extensive revisions and amendments, which is probably while Ball4 is so insistent on using old information. Otherwise, I have no idea why he wants to dismiss Tyndalls more up to date writings.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            Flynn admits the obvious: “I have no idea why he wants to dismiss Tyndall’s more up to date writings.”

            There is nothing to dismiss Mike. Prof. Tyndall’s later writings (and other authors) on the subject built on and refined his earlier work with additional testing and more accurate instrumentation. Mike may wish to disagree all he wants, I don’t care as reader’s can confirm on their own.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            Just in case anybody missed it, you omitted the word “Otherwise.”

            Makes a world of difference to the meaning, don’t you think?

            Carry on.

            Cheers.

    • Mike Flynn says:

      barry,

      Why are you trying to push stupid analogies, when you cannot even express this supposedly complex idea? Is it not written down somewhere?

      What is so complex about the idea that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer will make the thermometer hotter?

      It’s ridiculous, not complex. Talking about average temperature is just a pseudoscientific diversion. The Earth’s average temperature has dropped since its creation, deny as you may.

      Stick to the science. Describe the supposed GHE. Propose a testable GHE hypothesis. How hard can it be?

      Cheers.

      • Tim Folkerts says:

        OK … a simple statement of “The Greenhouse Effect”:
        * An object’s ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation affects its temperature.
        * Materials between an object and its surroundings that affect thermal radiation will affect the object’s ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation.

        That is really all there is to it — IR-absorbing materials affect temperatures.

        This can be applied almost trivially in simple cases (basically just use Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation).

        As the situation gets more complex and/or more chaotic, the calculations get more challenging. The earth is, of course, extreme complex AND extremely chaotic, so only approximate calculations are ever possible. This does not change the basic physics in the two rules stated above, which should not be contested by anyone. GHGs affect out-going thermal IR from the surface, and hence affect surface temperatures.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Tim,

          Nope. Not even close.

          Try it – try saying The Greenhouse Effect is a phenomena which is observed . . . followed by your words. Nonsensical, isnt it?

          You havent mentioned Global Warming, rising global temperatures,or any of the nonsense which is supposed to result from increased atmospheric CO2 levels!

          Your supposed statement completely ignores any mention of absolute increased temperatures, supposed greenhouse gases, or anything of relevance to the concept that increasing atmospheric CO2 will cause thermometers to become hotter.

          Just stating random physical effects, followed by a silly statement that IR absorbing materials affect temperatures (completely pointless and irrelevant – bananas absorb IR, dont they?), is just pseudoscientific bafflegab.

          You appear to be trying to say that increased atmospheric CO2 levels result in hotter thermometers, without actually saying such a ridiculous thing, directly. I don’t blame you.

          No GHE. No heating due to CO2. The Earth has cooled since the surface was molten. Sad, but true.

          Cheers.

        • Tim Folkerts says:

          Ah! The “Secret Mike Rule” for describing phenomena. You need the magic words “is a phenomena which is observed”.

          The Greenhouse effect is a phenomenon which is observed when “[m]aterials between an object and its [cooler] surroundings that affect thermal radiation, will affect affecting the objects ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation.” This in turn “affects its [the warm object’s] temperature.”

          So much better!

          *******************************************

          More seriously, I perhaps should have specifically added “between an object and its COOLER surroundings” the first time. I just assumed it, but it is worth a specific mention.

          As to the rest of your objections, they basically just show that you didn’t read critically and/or don’t understand he implications of the underlying physics.

          “You havent mentioned Global Warming …
          Global warming is just one of many places the phenomenon occurs. I also don’t have to mention wings every time I mention the Bernoulli effect.

          “completely ignores any mention of … supposed greenhouse gases”
          Wrong. GHGs fall under “Materials between an object and its surroundings that affect thermal radiation”. GHGs are mentioned right there in black and white!

          “bananas absorb IR, dont they?”
          Yes, and if you put bananas between a warm object and the cool surrounding, then will affect the thermal IR and thereby affect the temperature of the warm object.

          “Just stating random physical effects …
          These are not random, they are very specifically chosen. They are a FIRST STEP in the path to understanding the warming effect of GHGs on the earth. Don’t expect to jump straight from here to fully describing earth’s greenhouse effect — just like you can’t jump straight from F=ma to describing fluid flow or getting a rocket to Mars or even something as seemingly simple as a double pendulum.

          ********************************************

          You appear to be trying to say that putting a layer of glass around the moon doesn’t result in hotter thermometers, without actually saying such a ridiculous thing, directly. I dont blame you.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            Putting as much insulation as you like between a hotter object and a cooler environment will not cause the temperature of the hotter to increase. Just like the surface of the Earth at night.

            It cools. Its temperature does not increase.

            Play all the semantic tricks you like, reducing the rate of cooling does not raise the temperature of an object above the environment – unless, of course, you introduce a heat source that you did not mention in the first place.

            You wrote –

            “The Greenhouse effect is a phenomenon which is observed when “[m]aterials between an object and its [cooler] surroundings affect thermal radiation, affecting the objects ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation. This in turn “affects its [the warm object’s] temperature.”

            The temperature of the warmer object drops, according to your description. This is well known. No need to obfuscate by now claiming that objects which cool do so due to a greenhouse effect.

            Still nonsensical, Tim. No raised temperature. You state this is the first step. Your first step appears to be yawning hole. You need to do better.

            Once again, completely pointless.

            Cheers.

          • E. Swanson says:

            MF repeated his usual disinformation:

            Putting as much insulation as you like between a hotter object and a cooler environment will not cause the temperature of the hotter to increase. Just like the surface of the Earth at night.

            It cools. Its temperature does not increase.

            As with all propaganda, the first part of this statement is true on it’s face. But, the conclusion is false, as you’ve ignored the fact that the temperature is an average which includes both day and night, with the energy input from the Sun during the day driving the flow of energy leaving the Earth over the full 24 hours. With an input of energy which is fixed mol, adding insulation will increase the average temperature.

            So your concluding statement is thus obviously wrong and intentionally so.

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            “Play all the semantic tricks you like, reducing the rate of cooling does not raise the temperature of an object above the environment unless, of course, you introduce a heat source that you did not mention in the first place.”

            The impact of an “IR shield” between a warm object and the cool surroundings exists whether there is heat source or not. Hence a heat source is not explicitly needed in the statement. With or without a heat source, the IR shield reduces the heat loss to the surroundings.

            *Without* a heat source, the IR shield causes a slower cooling rate.
            *With* a heat source, the IR shield allows a faster warming rate.

            In both cases, the object with the IR shield will be warmer THAN AN OTHERWISE IDENTICAL OBJECT WITHOUT THE SHIELD. By extension, for an intermittently heated surface (like the earth), the shielded surface will be always warmer than an otherwise identical surface without the IR shield.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            ES,

            The energy input is not fixed. The more insulation you insert between the heat source and the heated object the less energy reaches the object.

            As with the Earth. About 35% of the available energy from the Sun does not reach the surface. If it did, temperatures would of course be higher. As on the Moon.

            The Earth has cooled since its inception.

            No GHE – no waffling about unmeasurable averages will change the fact that you cannot describe the GHE, you do not have a testable GHE hypothesis,and that climate is just the process of averaging recorded numbers. No science there, is there?

            CO2 makes nothing hotter. Putting more of it between the Sun and a thermometer does not make the thermometer hotter, does it?

            Give it a try.

            Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            tim…”The impact of an IR shield between a warm object and the cool surroundings exists whether there is heat source or not”.

            Tim…you’re being silly.

            Let’s presume a vacuum to get conduction/convection out of it.

            What is an IR shield? Metal, right? So you add a sheet of metal between an IR radiator and the surroundings,

            Where in Stefan-Boltzmann is that addressed? There is only a temperature differential in S-B affecting IR radiation therefore the temperature of the shield would be the factor, not the shield itself.

            If the shield was within the required proximity and cooler than the radiator, the IR radiation would warm it till it was the same temperature, then heat dissipation should stop at the radiator. If the shield was warmer, heat would be transferred from the shield to the radiator.

            Heat transfer has nothing to do with the shield per se as far as blocking IR. It’s the temperature of the shield.

            Now remove the vacuum as with the Earth’s surface. Conduction of heat to the atmosphere becomes an issue, and the air replaces the shield as the mitigating factor for IR. However, as in swannie’s experiment, the shield can act to foil convection, causing the radiator to warm.

            CO2 in the atmosphere is nothing like a shield of metal. It cannot block convection, it cannot trap heat, and it cannot interfere with the rate of radiation.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            You wrote –

            “The impact of an “IR shield” between a warm object and the cool surroundings exists whether there is heat source or not.”

            More semantic nonsense. If you are trying to say that increasing the amount of CO2 between a heat source and and an object causes the temperature of the the object to increase, why not just say it?

            What is an”impact”? What are the properties of this supposed “IR shield”? And so on.

            You are sprouting pseudoscience – nothing testable, just indefinite vagueness.

            Bad luck. So sad.

            Cheers

          • Tim Folkerts says:

            You’re getting there, Gordon!

            GR: Lets presume a vacuum to get conduction/convection out of it.
            Good. Let’s make a few other simplifying assumptions.
            1) Lets assume the shell is thin and close to the original object, so we can assume A = (area of object) ≈ (area of inside of shell) ≈ (area of outside of shell). The value of A does not matter.
            2) And let’s assume a constant, uniformly distributed power input, P, to the inner object. Let’s give it a value of P/A = 240 W/m^2
            3) Let’s assume all surfaces have an emissivity of 1.0
            4) Let’s assume the surroundings are ≈ 3 K (deep space).

            [NOTE: None of these assumptions are required. All could be adjusted. But our goal here is to understand the basic physics.]

            GR: Where in Stefan-Boltzmann is that addressed?
            Its ALL about SB! You apply SB (P/A = εσ(Ta^4 – Tb^4)) twice — once for the radiator/shell pair and once for the shell/environment pair.

            GR>> therefore the temperature of the shield would be the factor, not the shield itself.
            The shell’s temperature is determined by geometry and SB (since you conveniently assumed no conduction/convection)!

            Now a few calculations.

            Without the shield, the bare object would adjust its temperature until the power flows were balanced.
            ( (P/εσA + T(space)^4 )^1/4
            = (240/5.67e-8) + 3^4) ^0.25
            = 255 K (a familiar result)
            If it started cooler than 255K, it would warm up; if it started warmer than 255K, it would cool down.

            With the shield, the SHIELD would have to radiate 240 W/m^2 to space, so the shield would have to be 255 K.
            But the inner object would have to be
            ( (P/εσA + T(shield)^4 )^1/4
            = (240/5.67e-8) + 255^4) ^0.25
            = 303 K.
            Again, it doesn’t matter what temperature either of the objects was initially — they would head toward T(object) = 303K and T(shield) = 255K.

            Heat transfer has EVERYTHING to do with the shield as far as blocking IR. The temperature of the shield is uniquely determined by the size/shape/emissivity/power that we assume.

            GR: Now remove the vacuum as with the Earths surface….
            Yes — that is where things get really interesting — and really complicated. We have the eternal conundrum that
            if we idealize the situation enough to make the calculations simple, then it has little to do with the real climate; but if we try to model the real climate, then the calculations rapidly become to complicated to apply exactly (or even approximately)!

            GR: CO2 in the atmosphere is nothing like a shield of metal.
            All the factors you mention make CO2 only SLIGHTLY like the shield of metal. Those factors limit how well CO2 can raise the temperature and make it a rather ineffective radiation shield. But they do not negate the physics above and they do not completely eliminate the warming of the (rather poor) radiation shield.

          • E. Swanson says:

            MF, As usual, you’ve got it wrong. Perhaps you realized that your previous statement actually was correct. The insulation goes between the heated body and the surroundings, which for the Earth would be deep space. The warming is the result of the retarding of the energy flow from the heated body, not the blockage of the energy directed toward the heated body.

            Of course, the Earth cooled, but that was more than 4 billion years back. Since then, there have been periods when the Earth was warmer than now and other periods when it was colder. Beginning about 3.3 million years ago, the climate changed into a new normal of mostly Ice Ages. For the past 10k years, things have been warm, but only 20k years back, the average appears to have been about 5 K colder. No, the Earth hasn’t been steadily cooling since it was formed.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            ES,

            No, I got it right. The insulation is between the source of heat, (the Sun), and the surface, as well. As to the effect when the Sun is not heating the surface (at night), the surface cools, even thought the atmosphere is between the surface and deep space. The same thing happens during a total solar eclipse.

            There is no heating due to CO2. A reduction in the rate of cooling (as occurs at night) does not raise temperatures – that is a matter of common observation.

            The Earth had a molten surface – it is much colder now. Over the longest average there is, the result is cooling. Cherry pick as much as you want, the longest term average results in cooling.

            No GHE. You cannot even describe it usefully, let alone propose a testable GHE hypothesis.

            So sad. Too bad – Nature wins yet again.

            Cheers.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Tim,

            Unfortunately for you, the Earth has cooled. The surface is no longer molten. If you don’t want to accept it, you don’t have to.

            You cannot raise the temperature of any externally heated body with insulation, any more than you can raise the temperature of your soup by insulating it within a vacuum flask.

            Just silly. The atmosphere prevents around 35% of the Suns energy from reaching the surface. The result? Lower temperatures – less energy available for heating.

            Keep beating the drum. Or keep flogging a dead horse, if you prefer.

            Cheers.

          • E. Swanson says:

            MF, You wrote:

            As to the effect when the Sun is not heating the surface (at night), the surface cools, even thought the atmosphere is between the surface and deep space. The same thing happens during a total solar eclipse.

            There is no heating due to CO2. A reduction in the rate of cooling (as occurs at night) does not raise temperatures that is a matter of common observation.

            This comment (and the following reply to Tim) is just totally absurd. Typically, the daily heating from sunlight begins at a low temperature in the AM, reaches a maximum in the afternoon. Then, things cool overnight to a low temperature the next AM. Adding extra insulation in the form of CO2 slows the cooling overnight, thus the heating during the next day begins at a higher value and the temperature at the end is higher as a result, other influences being equal. The result is that the average temperature over the 24 hour cycle is higher.

            There are many ways to demonstrate that your comments are completely wrong headed. Take a low wattage heater of some sort, such as an electric blanket, a waterbed heater or a device to heat an aquarium. Replace the thermostatic control with a electric power control such as a light dimmer of an appropriate capacity. Place the heater along with a thermocouple, or other temperature measure, on a bed and cover with a blanket or other insulator. Adjust the electric power to provide an appropriate temperature setting. Then, add another blanket (i.e., more insulation) and record the change in temperature. Needless to say, the temperature will increase.

            Perhaps you have decided to use a non-standard position for your “common observation”, a place where “the Sun don’t shine”, to use a common vernacular.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            E. Swanson,

            “The result is that the average temperature over the 24 hour cycle is higher.”

            That will happen one day, but not necessarily the next.

            If what you say is correct, every day should get a little warmer. That’s not happening. CO2 is not in control of global temperature.

          • Ball4 says:

            It is happening day to day, just that other forcings exist also day to day. Year to year. Decade to decade. Century to century. So forth.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            “…just that other forcings exist also day to day.”

            Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to detect the CO2 effect on temperature distinct from the effects of all the other forcings. Good luck.

          • Ball4 says:

            I accept. Witness the lab work of Prof. Tyndall and the field work of Dr. Feldman and the other relevant ref.s including Meteorologist Callendar.

          • E. Swanson says:

            Bowdrie, Temperatures are getting a little bit warmer. The data shows that the warming is mostly found in daily low temperatures. Daily high temperatures must contend with the greater thermal losses to space which scale with the fourth power of absolute temperature.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            That’s a handwaving argument. I can do that too. In the last few months, the temperatures have been about the same as they were 15 years ago. Where is the evidence that CO2 is making any day to day difference?

          • Ball4 says:

            “Where is the evidence that CO2 is making any day to day difference?”

            There is no need for hand waving Chic, there are lab experiments and in the wild observations. My that was fast reading, you sure you are done checking out the magnitude of the 9+ forcings & natural cycles, all the relevant tests and observations?

            Witness the lab work of Prof. Tyndall and the field work of Dr. Feldman and the other relevant ref.s including Meteorologist Callendar.

            Show your experimental counter-evidence to those in detail, cherry picking temperatures is so….yesterday’s news.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Did Tyndall, Callendar, and Feldman show that increasing CO2 increases global temperatures? Where is that data?

          • Ball4 says:

            “Did Tyndall, Callendar, and Feldman show that increasing CO2 increases global temperatures? Where is that data?”

            In their reports.

        • Kristian says:

          Yup. Just as predicted, here you go again, Tim. What did I tell you last time around?

          “(…) don’t [try to know the details of the radiative balance at a surface] PRETENDING that the thermal radiation itself is somehow what CAUSES an energy budget between two objects, or between an object and its surroundings, to be more or less positive/negative.

          The radiation doesn’t itself control anything. It is itself controlled. By temperature. And by emissivity. Both bulk properties of physical matter.

          Again, the radiation is only a courier, carrying a temperature (thermal) – and an emissivity – signal between thermodynamic systems. A necessary tool, indeed. But not itself the root cause of the differences driving energy transfers and changing energy contents.”
          http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/05/uah-global-temperature-update-for-april-2018-0-21-deg-c/#comment-301427

          And yet here you are. PRETENDING all over again … Deliberately misrepresenting reality.

          You say:

          * An object’s ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation affects its temperature.
          * Materials between an object and its surroundings that affect thermal radiation will affect the object’s ability to lose energy to its surroundings via thermal radiation.

          That is really all there is to it – IR-absorbing materials affect temperatures.

          You try to make it seem as though the IR radiation and the radiative properties of matter specifically and independently CAUSE temperatures. Both of the material system itself and of its surrounding systems. Even when they’re clearly NOT.

          Matter is NOT (!!!) dependent on being able to absorb IR in order to warm, Tim. All it needs is to be able to absorb and store up internally SOME kind of energy transferred to it as heat [Q] (or work [W]).

          It is then the elevated TEMPERATURE of the matter, resulting from this absorp.tion and internal accumulation of energy, that will affect the temperature of OTHER thermodynamic systems in some kind of thermal contact with it.

          IR radiation, after the initial thermodynamic connection has been established between surface (solar-heated) and atmosphere (surface-heated), is NECESSARY only as an atmospheric COOLANT.

    • barry says:

      Ball4,

      The idea of an analogy is to make a complex idea accessible.

      What you wrote is not that!

      • Ball4 says:

        The text book analogy is not complex barry. Concept of a slab is accessible to the genpop. Opaque and transparent stuff is commonplace. More so than a greenhouse to the non-farmer.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        b,

        The idea that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter doesn’t appear all that complex. Ridiculous and physically impossible, sure, but complex? No.

        Why would you need an analogy?

        Cheers.

        • Ball4 says:

          “Why would you need an analogy?”

          Good point MF, no analogy needed. There are plenty of actual documented, replicable proper experiments showing increasing the amount of CO2 between an IR sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter.

          Mike may continue to believe whatever he wishes, I don’t care.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            Garbage. Not even an IR sun, let alone a real sun.

            You cannot provide an example of such an experiment, can you?

            All you can do is blather about your misunderstanding of Tyndall, and claim that removing the CO2 from air lowers the temperature by 33 C, or 88 C, or some other nonsensical figure.

            The Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years. So much for your fantasies.

            Stupid and ignorant, or ignorant and stupid?

            The world wonders!

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            “All you can do is blather about your misunderstanding of Tyndall, and claim that removing the CO2 from air lowers the temperature by 33 C”

            Proves Mike hasn’t bothered to read or understand Tyndall 1861. Tyndall found upon removing the CO2 laden lab air lowered his thermometer temperature 5F not 33C. Mike knows not of what he blathers and I don’t even care.

            For the experimental data google string: Tyndall 1861

            So what if the Earth has cooled since inception, so has the universe.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            At least you accept a little reality. The Earth has cooled. It didn’t get hotter.

            Your GHE didnt work for four and a half billion years – not on the Earth, not anywhere else. It still doesn’t exist, except in your imagination.

            Cheers.

          • Bart says:

            “There are plenty of actual documented, replicable proper experiments showing increasing the amount of CO2 between an IR sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter.”

            What does this mean? An IR Sun? The IR from the Sun is negligible. The GHE is supposed to be due to blocking IR from the heated object. If anything, I would expect CO2 blocking an IR source to make the thermometer colder.

          • Ball4 says:

            “What does this mean?”

            The documented replicable proper experiments conducted as reported in Tyndall 1861. Or any such follow-up.

            “An IR Sun?”

            Bart missed the small cap on sun. Tyndall’s source for an IR sun was boiling water. A weak intensity source that he had to make do with because his other trials of stronger intensity IR sources varied in temperature way too much during test runs.

            “If anything, I would expect CO2 blocking an IR source to make the thermometer colder.”

            Yes, of course, but not Tyndall’s thermometers due to their bulb placement inside the test chamber; his galvanometer needle was outside the test chamber and always moved toward the colder deflection as you expect.

            Tyndall’s galvanometer needle was calibrated to show zero when balanced between his two IR sources of boiling water. When CO2 or any gas was introduced into his tube, if there were no effect on IR then the needle would not move. The needle did move & much more than he anticipated. Same as expected for Earth surface GHE effect on the stratosphere.

            Tyndall then calibrated his needle deflection to the thermometer temperature readings.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bart…”The GHE is supposed to be due to blocking IR from the heated object”.

            The Stefan-Boltzman equation that addresses IR emission from the surface says nothing about CO2 blocking radiation. It mentions only temperature differential as a factor.

            It makes no sense that 0.04% of the atmosphere would block any more than 0.04% of the immense radiation flux from the surface, especially when it peters out after a few feet to a negligible intensity.

          • Ball4 says:

            Gordon: “It makes no sense that 0.04% of the atmosphere would block any more than 0.04% of the immense radiation flux”

            This was Prof. Tyndall’s going in thinking & assumption also. Until his needle pegged due effect on IR from CO2 and he had to re-calibrate the dial. Even at 0.04% in lab air. Prof. Tyndall was willing to learn from his experiments as should you when he wrote in 1861 to the Royal Society:

            “Those who like myself have been taught to regard transparent gases as almost perfectly (transmitting IR), will probably share the astonishment with which I witnessed the foregoing effects. I was indeed slow to believe it possible that a body so constituted, and so transparent to (visible) light as olefiant gas, could be so densely (IR opaque) to any kind of calorific rays; and to secure myself against error, I made several hundred experiments with this single substance.”

          • Bart says:

            Gordon –

            “It mentions only temperature differential as a factor.”

            It also mentions emissivity.

            Ball4 –

            I thought you had tripped over your words, and sought to help you up. It appears you had a meaning I did not apprehend.

            If you want to have another futile argument with Gordon, be my guest. But, don’t lose sight of the fact that such experiments do not resolve the issue at hand one way or the other anyway. The first hurdle is scalability. Then, you have to deal with all the feedbacks. It is not settled.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bart…”An IR Sun? The IR from the Sun is negligible”.

            52% of the solar spectrum is in the infrared. Terrestrial wavelength IR from the Sun is very low but is it negligible?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bart…”Gordon

            It mentions only temperature differential as a factor.

            It also mentions emissivity”.

            ******

            It also mention surface area but the driver is the temperature gradient. Emissivity is a property of the emitting body, hence nothing to do with CO2.

            “If you want to have another futile argument with Gordon, be my guest”.

            The futility is due to your lack of scientific background. I’m just the messenger with much of what I have to say. If you find it futile dealing with me it’s because you don’t understand the science of the masters.

            Not my fault.

          • Bart says:

            “52% of the solar spectrum is in the infrared.”

            You are correct. I must’ve been thinking of something else.

            “Emissivity is a property of the emitting body, hence nothing to do with CO2.”

            The Earth is the emitting body. CO2 blocks some of the emissions.

          • Ball4 says:

            “It is not settled.”

            Bart, thx, and you are not clear on what “it” is. Tyndall’s experiments are settled science. Sure, you can’t scale his tube up to the atm. however the IR opacity of the surface atm. is affected by the same basic physics as in Tyndall’s tube at 1bar plus the other pressures he tried.

            —-

            Gordon writes: “Emissivity is a property of the emitting body, hence nothing to do with CO2.”

            An emitting body of CO2 has emissivity, transmissivity and reflectivity. All well measured and accounted for. Not nothing.

            “I’m just the messenger with much of what I have to say.”

            No Gordon, the normal messenger does not open the message and change it from the author’s words. You do so intolerably as to try to win any argument appealing to an authoritative name. You offer few quotes and with Clausius, you offer quotes that have since been improved upon.

            You don’t understand the science of the masters and it is your fault.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      barry…”If the point of an analogy is to make a complex idea accessible

      I challenge anyone to come up with an analogy better than the notion of greenhouse to illuminate why Earths average surface temperature (day + night) is warmer than it would be without an atmosphere”.

      *********

      Lindzen has proposed one based on conduction/convection and so has R.W. Woods. An occasional poster here, Stephen Wilde, has proposed the ocean/hot water bottle effect. gbaikie may agree.

      http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-hot-water-bottle-effect/

      In his paper on the GHE, Lindzen claimed the current GHE model is over-simplified and that radiation is not the primary mode of heat dissipation from the surface. Wood claimed the entire atmosphere gathers heat from the surface by conduction and due to the poor radiating abilities of N2/O2 at terrestrial temperatures they retain the heat.

      • barry says:

        Lindzen was perfectly content to acknowledge the greenhouse effect in his paper, while discussing other forms of heat flow in the atmosphere. These were not exclusive.

        Lindzen didn’t come up with a better analogy than ‘greenhouse’ for the effect.

        Neither does Wilde.

        It seems some people here don’t understand what an analogy is. Hint: it should be able to be expressed in a single sentence or phrase.

        • Ball4 says:

          “(an atm. analogy)should be able to be expressed in a single sentence or phrase.”

          1) The atmosphere has a simplified radiative equilibrium analog in a calm weather farmer’s greenhouse with panes of glass ~transparent to SW radiation and absorbing of LW radiation.
          2) The atmosphere has a simplified radiative equilibrium analog in an upper slab ~transparent to SW radiation & absorbing of LW radiation, and a black lower slab.

          Neither analog can be pushed too far.

        • barry says:

          Still too complex for a lay person.

          The atmosphere is like greenhouse, keeping the Earth’s surface warmer than it would otherwise be if there were no greenhouse gases.

          That’s the analogy, nice and simple. The rest is details.

          • Ball4 says:

            “The atmosphere is like greenhouse, keeping the Earths surface warmer than it would otherwise be if there were no greenhouse gases.”

            Lay persons don’t technically know how a farmer’s greenhouse works either.

            The atmosphere is like two slabs, with the upper one semitransparent letting in sunlight keeping the Earth’s surface warmer than it would otherwise be if there were no semitransparent gases.

            The atmosphere is like your daytime picture window, with the window glass letting in sunlight keeping your living room warmer than it would otherwise be if there were no picture window.

            So forth.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            barry,

            Suppose you replace all the gases that absorb and emit IR radiation with N2. No water, no ice, no grass, no climate scientists fiddling with calculators coming up with unverifiable estimates of how warm Earth’s surface would be.

            How would that atmosphere cool off after it receives each daily dose of sunlight?

          • barry says:

            Ball,

            Lay persons dont technically know how a farmers greenhouse works either.

            You’re missing the point of what an analogy is. All laypersons need to know is that it’s warm in a greenhouse because heat is retained (is slow to dissipate) in them.

            When you start discussing finer details, you’re moving away from analogy and into the actual mechanics.

            My challenge remains open for anyone to enunciate a simple analogy for how the atmosphere keeps the surface warmer on average (day + night) than it would be with no atmosphere.

            This should be no longer than a sentence, and in terms and concepts immediately accessible to lay people. That’s the point of having an analogy.

          • barry says:

            How would that atmosphere cool off after it receives each daily dose of sunlight?

            Everything cools off radiatively. Even if there were no convection in the atmosphere the atmosphere would still have the best heat sink there is – space.

          • Ball4 says:

            All laypersons need to know is that it’s warmer in a living room with sunlight coming in thru picture windows because heat is retained (is slow to dissipate) in them.

            A living room with picture window is better casual experience than an analogy of a greenhouse, way more people have living room experience than greenhouse experience.

            So is a translucent slab put in place, you know like a car sun roof or windshield. Like a tent. I’d guess even a swimming pool works as an analogy that people have experienced. MSM just likes to use greenhouse and from there greenhouse gases. Which I’d say occur in real greenhouses too – coming from cats with digestive issues.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Even if there were no convection in the atmosphere..”

            There is no convection as observed in ~9km of earth US Standard isothermal atm. midlatitude tropics.

          • barry says:

            Sure, the living room works as an analogy – and jumpers, blankets, home insulation and all that. But the greenhouse analogy seems most evocative to me. A greenhouse is purpose-built to provide warmth with no work done (no mechanical heating), so it’s analogical function is unmistakable. It is to do with a large-ish space, rather than a covering near your skin, so works to analogise the broad canopy of the atmosphere.

            I still can’t think of a better analogy than the greenhouse though – remembering the purpose of analogies.

          • Ball4 says:

            Concur.

  56. gbaikie says:

    As I have said, I think it is the warm ocean surface temperature (which has average temperature about 17 C) which related to Earth having an global average surface air temperature of about 15 C.

    But it seems a concern of some people is when air temperature exceeds 30 C (86 F) and I don’t think the ocean surface temperature is causing air temperature higher than 30 C.

    So, in the range of 30 to 50 C, what causes these higher surface air temperatures?

    • Mike Flynn says:

      gbaikie,

      The Sun?

      Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. The Devil made me do it.

      Cheers

    • barry says:

      gbakie,

      Those people need to learn not to conflate globally averaged temperature with locally fluctuating temperature.

  57. Geoff L says:

    I now this photo with the giant lilies, in this post.

    It’s at the Jardin Des Plantes in Budapest.

  58. tonyM says:

    I like Dr Roy’s articles but I am not sure whether to take this one as serious or one with strongly embedded sarcasm.

    The formula given in the reference when substituted by multi layers just results in absurd T conclusions. Models do use multilayers not just two layers.

    Let’s take it further. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere equates to less than three metres of pure CO2 at ground level. What the heck, let’s build a long tube maybe surrounding the Large Hadron Collider as this CO2 is hi tech stuff, perfectly insulated and with mirrored internal finish. We can even do it with a straight tube of a few hundred metres. Fill it with pure CO2 so there can be little complaint about the lack of layers. Close the tube and let’s worry about details as we go.

    We only have to feed in either direct sunlight as we have on earth via thin enough clear film at one end and watch the heat build up due to the enhanced multilayer GHE. Maybe that film will melt so use pure NaCl crystal or just use special glass.

    I think that is it. We can file for a patent on perpetual motion and transforming sunlight simply to 500C or so gases. Forget the 88C enhancement Dr Roy mentioned; we can do much, much better

    Clearly with modification this can also be done in the Antarctica with minimal energy use even in winter. A 240 Watt /m2 radiator at one end going all day should do the trick to get super hot gases. Then loop a bit of this energy back in and we need no further external energy.

    Wow the power of GHG’s! Won’t the Emperor penguins be pleased. Venus on earth; the power of love!

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      tony…”We can file for a patent on perpetual motion…”

      Before Clausius and the 2nd law, perpetual motion was permitted by the 1st law in certain instances. The climate alarmists are still leaning heavily on the loopholes while blatantly ignoring the 2nd law.

      Nasty, old Clausius, came along and plugged the loopholes with the 2nd law. When the alarmists heard about that they quickly dug a hole in the sand and inserted their heads. Refused to listen till one of them proposed that summing electromagnetic energy fluxes would satisfy the 2nd law, which is only about heat.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        The climate alarmists are still leaning heavily on the loopholes while blatantly ignoring the 2nd law.

        GR, still ignorant of the 2nd law.

        He simply does not want to learn. Dunning-Kruger in action.

  59. La Pangolina says:

    For those having problems in finding out where to obtain the 6th edition of Tyndall’s work:

    https://archive.org/details/cu31924012337741

    The entire book is wonderful, I read it years ago from A to Z.

    But as Lecture Notes XII are of somewhat greater interest in the discussion here, I upload them:

    http://4gp.me/bbtc/1526289020234.pdf

    This is of interest for both alarmists and denialists, as both use to read it very selectively and retain of it only what matches their egocentric narrative.

    • Mike Flynn says:

      LaP,

      I agree that anybody interested needs to read the book in its entirety.

      I suggest readers pay particular attention to Tyndall’s setup, as many think that an increased galvanometer deflection automatically means an increase in temperature. Obviously not, if the setup is such that the reference heat source is providing the greater heat, and the polarity is reversed.

      Thanks for providing a link.

      Cheers.

      • gbaikie says:

        CO2 does block or seems to destroy or as I would prefer, seems divert in some manner, sunlight or “ethereal waves” and/or longwave IR.

        And I am not seeing the bit about:
        –Incorrect Mike, Prof. Tyndall proved you wrong experimentally using a very weak sun for the IR (boiling water). His data showed increasing the amount of CO2 between a weak IR sun and a thermometer does make the thermometer hotter.–

        But in terms of reading all of it, I would rather buy a book and read it, rather read it all via internet.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          gbaikie…”I would rather buy a book and read it, rather read it all via internet”.

          Activate the cross-hairs at upper right that zoom the book size. You should get a download option above the new page.

        • David Appell says:

          I wonder if GR has ever read a single textbook about climate science.

          I don’t see any evidence he has….

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      binny…”This is of interest for both alarmists and denialists, as both use to read it very selectively and retain of it only what matches their egocentric narrative”.

      **********

      I admire the experiment Tyndall performed to prove gases like CO2 absorb IR but could not get past chapter two in the book. His experiment with the galvanometer in chapter 1 was unique and interesting. However, his idea of heat as a mode of motion rather than atomic motion is vague and based on consensus, not fact.

      Nowhere in the book does Tyndall mention Clausius and his theory of heat. He did the same with Joule. Makes me wonder if Tyndall’s views on heat were not at odds with mainstream thinking. Boltzmann and Planck certainly adopted the views of Clausius on entropy and the 2nd law.

      Having said that, I can now see why many alarmists regard heat as a mode of motion rather than an atomic phenomenon. They have regarded Tyndall as an authority on heat based on his experiment on gases.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        I admire the experiment Tyndall performed to prove gases like CO2 absorb IR but could not get past chapter two in the book. His experiment with the galvanometer in chapter 1 was unique and interesting. However, his idea of heat as a mode of motion rather than atomic motion is vague and based on consensus, not fact

        Gordon, when are you going to start studying quantum mechanics, and learn about rotational and vibrational molecular modes of energy?

  60. ren says:

    Snow in France (Massif Central, May 13, 2018)
    https://youtu.be/0t_y_l279Uo

    • La Pangolina says:

      The Massif Central is up to nearly 2,000 metres high.
      That is as if you would write ‘Snow in the Alps’.

        • Did you ever live there and find out if it’s any unusual to get snow there at 1000 elevation on a 13 th of May ?

          As I did ?

          Obviously not, so you don’t know what you talk about and spout here nothing but nonsense.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            idiot…”Obviously not, so you dont know what you talk about and spout here nothing but nonsense”.

            You’re not an idiot tracker you’re just an idiot. Ren provides useful information here as opposed to you and your pseudo-science.

            Why don’t you take your own advice? Alarmists are fond of pointing to slight warming near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and inferring overall warming on the continent. Or regarding continually moving hot spots in the Arctic to overall Arctic warming.

          • Congratulations, GR !
            You’re by far the easiest one to track.

            So funny.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Alarmists are fond of pointing to slight warming near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and inferring overall warming on the continent.

            SoPol Land warming = +0.31 C according to UAH LT v6.0.

            So you were saying?

        • La Pangolina says:

          ren, I’m serious here.

          Would you pleas stop pretending I’m lying about the Massif Central?

          That is, originating from you, manifestly living in Poland, absolutely incredible.

          What do you know of France, ren? Did you spend during decades holidays in France with the French man who shares life with me during over 30 years?

          Here is something for you to learn.
          On the french news web site

          https://www.francetvinfo.fr/meteo/neige/le-massif-central-sous-la-neige_2751629.html

          you can read this:

          À Châteauneuf-de-Randon, en Lozère, la statue de Bertrand du Guesclin a revêtu un manteau blanc. C'est l'un des villages où il a le plus neigé aujourd'hui en France, jusqu'à 50 cm de neige, ce qui n'empêche pas les habitants de vivre presque normalement : "Ce n’est pas la première fois qu'il neige comme ça. C'est rare, le mois de mai, qu'il ne neige pas".

          In english for you

          In Châteauneuf-de-Randon, in Lozère, the statue of Bertrand du Guesclin has put on a white coat. It is one of the villages where it has snowed most today in France, up to 50 cm of snow, which does not prevent the inhabitants from living almost normally: "This is not the first time it snows like that, it's rare, the month of May, that it does not snow ".

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            binny…”ren, Im serious here”.

            Who cares if you’re serious, you’re still an idiot? Get off ren’s back with your Teutonic superiority complex. Poland is just up the road from France and Poland has an international contingent of high altitude climbers who travel to the Alps and Himalaya regularly.

            “Would you pleas stop pretending Im lying about the Massif Central?”

            Why? You create bogus comparisons between UAH data and NOAA data and lie about everything else. You even lie that a difference is there between Bindidon and La Pangolina.

            Like I said, you left as Bindidon one day in a snit, saying goodbye to the blog. A few days later you show up as La Pangolina. Same old binny…same attitude, same arrogance, same memory for old insults.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Who cares if youre serious, youre still an idiot?

            An ad hominem attack, Gordon?

        • La Pangolina says:

          Do not lie.

          Przynajmniej mógłbyś za to przeprosić.

      • That is as if you would write Snow in the Alps.

        Yes.

        Alternatively it’s as if someone wrote “Idiots post on Dr. Spencer’s blog”

  61. Chic Bowdrie says:

    David Appell,

    You provided several citations claiming they DEFINITIVELY show that increasing CO2 causes global temperature rise. If that was not your intent, then you misinterpreted my position and I dont know what point you were trying to make.

    Ill make this one last try to explain why your citations of evidence are not definitive and I will have to leave it at that. It would be foolish for me to continue to do the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

    My first point is that definite evidence seems to me to be impossible to provide. You need a controlled experiment and how do you control for all the natural factors affecting global temperature to show how CO2 has any significant effect?

    Second, if enough satellites were sufficiently deployed to measure every photon of energy in and out of the atmosphere over a sufficiently long time, it would explain why global temperatures increased, decreased, or stayed the same. But we dont have enough satellites do we? And if there were enough, how would the data prove that CO2 was involved? You still just have a correlation.

    By citing data from only two places or only using clear sky data or using different equipment to make before and after measurements, you cant say your conclusions are definitive. If you believe those conclusions are incontrovertible, you are practicing religion not science.

    • Entropic man says:

      David Appell, Chic Bowdrie

      You have both fallen into a similar error, that science can be definitive.

      Science nowadays is Kuhnian. A successful theory has five Cs.

      Evidence from a large number of experiments and observations builds a description of reality which is coherent( makes sense), consistent( different lines of evidence agree) and consilient (agrees with evidence from other areas of science).

      The evidence forms the basis of a paradigm. This is a description of reality good enough to be generally accepted by most workers in the field, a consensus.

      Science is always conditional. There is always the possibility that new evidence will require the paradigm to be modified or extended (or even occasionally abandoned).

      The CO2 Greenhouse effect paradigm meets the five Cs. It has coherence, consistence, consistence, conditionality and consensus.

      That is as good as you get in reality.

      Claims that any evidence is definitive go beyond what science can supply.

      Refusal to accept anything less than definitive is a denialist tactic known as the “impossible standards argument”.

      • Snape says:

        Excellent post.

        Ideally, there would be a control planet where GHG’s had remained at pre-industrial levels, everything else the same. Each months global average would then be compared to the control planet’s global average.

        No more arguing about the contributions of ENSO, PDO, solar fluctuations, clouds, etc.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        Which CO2 Greenhouse effect paradigm were you referring to?

        Just asking in case I have to run it by some other scientists for a consensus.

        • Entropic man says:

          The CO2 greenhouse effect paradigm summarised in IPCC AR5 WG1.

          http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

          You know, the one that the vast majority of climate scientists agree on.

          • phi says:

            Entropic man,

            “The CO2 greenhouse effect paradigm summarised in IPCC AR5 WG1.”

            …is based on this statement :

            “convection is what determines the temperature gradient of the atmosphere”
            (Ramanathan et al. 1978)

            However, this statement is

            not coherent,
            not consistent,
            not consilient.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Thank you phi, but there must be more to the paradigm than that.

            E-man, I’m not going to look for a needle in a haystack. State the paradigm in your own words or post an extract of the AR5 text you are alluding to.

          • Im not going to look for a needle in a haystack.

            Good idea.
            You might stumble on one and prick yourself on it.

          • barry says:

            Why did phi randomly assign some quote from AR5 to describe the GHE? Is there some game being played today that i’m not aware of?

          • Why did phi randomly assign some quote from AR5 to describe the GHE?

            Maybe just because he has no clue and merely doesn’t know what he talks about. Actually he’s got a handful of much more gossipy playmates here suffering from a quite similar condition.

            Is there some game being played today that im not aware of?

            I suggest idiot tracking. A lot of fun and game is fairly abundant.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            phi…”convection is what determines the temperature gradient of the atmosphere
            (Ramanathan et al. 1978)”

            This is what concerns me about climate science. Ramanathan is reputed to be an authority on the atmosphere yet he makes statements like this.

            Convection rides on top of the temperature gradient created by gravity. I have used the example of Mt. Everest several times where the atmosphere at the peak is 1/3 the pressure it is at sea level.

            Convection cannot do that.

            The temperature at the peak of Everest is also a fraction of what it is at sea level, even in summer. That is not caused by convection. It does not matter whether winds are blowing or not, the air at the peak of Everest is barely breathable and it’s darned cold, especially when there is no solar radiation.

            Exertion on Everest from base camp up requires breathing that involves panting. The body is starved for oxygen and climbers get sore throats from the ragged breathing. Convection cannot do that. With a relatively constant volume for the atmosphere, pressure is proportional to temperature.

            Is Ramanathan not aware of this basic physics/chemistry?

            The only factor that can create a pressure gradient that applies the planet over is gravity.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            This is what concerns me about climate science. Ramanathan is reputed to be an authority on the atmosphere yet he makes statements like this

            At this point one can only laugh at you.

      • bilybob says:

        “Science is always conditional. There is always the possibility that new evidence will require the paradigm to be modified or extended (or even occasionally abandoned). ”

        Agreed, so many theories have been modified and abandoned.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories

        “The evidence forms the basis of a paradigm. This is a description of reality good enough to be generally accepted by most workers in the field, a consensus.”

        What defines most? and how is this surveyed? Are Roy’s view mainstream (part of the most)?

        “Refusal to accept anything less than definitive is a denialist tactic known as the impossible standards argument.”

        Interesting, who are these denialists?

      • Bart says:

        That’s only 4 C’s. And, it lacks unique and compelling evidence. Whining about “impossible standards” is something you hear a lot from teenagers.

        • Entropic man says:

          Bart

          coherence, consistence, consistence, conditionality and consensus.

          5Cs.

          “unique and compelling evidence”

          What were you saying about “impossible standards”?

          • Entropic man says:

            Not my night!

            coherence, consistence, consilience, conditionality and consensus.

          • Bart says:

            Is there some accent on the second “consistence” that makes it different from the first?

            Unique (i.e., unambiguous) and compelling evidence is not an impossible standard. If you want to cut corners on your product, I’m not buying.

          • Bart says:

            Messages passed. OK.

          • Bart says:

            Tell me, which of these 5 C’s is lacking in the theory of night gases causing malaria? Or, of rumblings in the Earth being due to the anger of the Volcano God?

            This is not science. It is pre-Enlightenment rationalization.

          • Bart says:

            I asked a simple question. Do you not see that your method of rationalization could have been used to justify all kinds of consensus views of the past that turned out to be completely wrong?

          • Snape says:

            Bart

            You look at this time series…..

            https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/listentothee.png

            …and are CONVINCED recent warming is part of a 60 year cycle.

            *******

            Yes, quite a stickler for the scientific method.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Em,

            Good luck with Kuhnism.

            Of course, normal science doesnt seem to suit climatological pseudoscientists, depending as it does on the scientific method, including such basics as testable hypotheses, experimental support and so on.

            A likely refuge for dilettantes who are unable to cope with the rigours of real science, and prefer the airy-fairy world of consensus, adulation, and mutual ego massaging.

            Facts are facts. Opinion is opinion.

            Still no GHE. CO2 heats nothing. Climate is the average of weather, and climate science is an oxymoron.

            Keep praying. It won’t replace the scientific method, but you can always hope that a miracle will occur – like a testable GHE hypothesis appearing, graven on a stone tablet or two!

            Only joking, of course. I wouldnt like to be at the mercy of every ignorant and stupid dimwit who claimed to be offended – the refuge of the born victim, whose main talent is blaming someone else for their inadequacies.

            Take a teaspoon of cement, and harden up, I say!

            Cheers.

          • Bart says:

            Snape – not so much that one. That one has been “adjusted” to within an inch of its life. The original GISS had a clearly defined ~60 year periodicity. Then, it changed.

            The vestiges are still there (peaks in about 1945, 2005) but the signal has been modified in every way they could think of to smooth the irregularities out, and rob it of any character save that which supports the AGW “cause”. In future years, it will become a case study in confirmation bias.

          • David Appell says:

            Bart says:
            The original GISS had a clearly defined ~60 year periodicity.

            Where can I confirm that?

            The vestiges are still there (peaks in about 1945, 2005) but the signal has been modified in every way they could think of to smooth the irregularities out, and rob it of any character save that which supports the AGW cause. In future years, it will become a case study in confirmation bias.

            Are you aware that adjustments REDUCE the long-term warming trend??

            And do you know why they’re done?

            “Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data: How thermometer and satellite data is adjusted and why it *must* be done,” Scott K Johnson, Ars Technica 1/21/16.
            http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/thorough-not-thoroughly-fabricated-the-truth-about-global-temperature-data/

            “Understanding Adjustments to Temperature Data,” BEST
            http://berkeleyearth.org/understanding-adjustments-temperature-data/

            “Understanding Time of Observation Bias,” Zeke Hausfather, 2/22/15.
            https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/22/understanding-time-of-observation-bias/

          • Bart says:

            “Are you aware that adjustments REDUCE the long-term warming trend??”

            Immaterial. Wouldn’t change the fact that the character of the series has been altered to mask natural variation.

          • barry says:

            That is an assertion that is never corroborated with more than innuendo and/or circular reasoning.

            Nor do proponents read the large body of material explaining how and why adjustments are done.

            So colour me unconvinced.

          • Bart says:

            “Nor do proponents read the large body of material explaining how and why adjustments are done.”

            One can always rationalize a change on spurious reasoning. More subtly, even with sound reasoning, there is a tendency to seek out reasons to change things that reinforce one’s predilections, and neglect others just as sound that don’t.

            And, that is how confirmation bias can lead one astray, even when one thinks one is operating on the up-and-up. When the “adjustments” overwhelmingly tend to support the established narrative, that is a tip-off that people are fooling themselves.

          • barry says:

            Yep, just more innuendo and generalizing about what can happen.

            Nothing about what did happen, because that would require you to read some actual reports.

            The irony is pretty great, though. Bias and predilections and all that. Amply demonstrated by you trying to push the point with nothing substantive behind it.

      • Chic Bowdrie says:

        “Science nowadays is Kuhnian.”

        Who says? I imagine Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever, Richard Lindzen, and other prominent scientists would disagree. What would Feynman and Einstein say if they were still with us?

        Kuhn’s ideas substitute subjectivity for objectivity allowing consensus to become most of us instead of all of us.

        In Kuhn’s SSR, the first of your “C’s” should be “empirically adequate with experimentation and observation (wiki).” Your “paradigm” can’t even be defined consistently.

        The “impossible standard argument” is not just a tactic. It goes to falsifiability. If definitive evidence isn’t possible then the theory isn’t falsifiable. If a theory isn’t falsifiable, then it isn’t a valid theory.

        • Entropic man says:

          Chic Bowdrie

          Falsifiability isn’t what it used to be.

          Popper’s approach works beautifully for simple laboratory experiments.

          Take the Law of the Pendulum, t=2π √l/g.

          That is easy to test by controlled experiments.

          Yo were asking for a clear formulation of the CO2 greenhouse effect theory. Try this.

          All else being equal, a change in the atmospheric CO2 concentration will change the balance between incoming and outgoing longwave radiation and lead to a change in global average temperature. Increased CO2 leads to a temporary decrease in outgoing radiation below incoming shortwave radiation. The net accumulation of energy leads to an increase in temperature. Decreased CO2 leads to an increase in outgoing radiation above incoming radiation. The net loss of energy leads to a decrease in temperature.

          Take the forcing equation for CO2, ∆f = 5.35ln(C/Co)

          That describes the effect of changing CO2 on the flow of energy through the Earth’s climate system. It can be demonstrated on a laboratory scale using tubes of gas to simulate the atmosphere. It is not falsifiable in the classic sense because, as was pointed out, it is not practicable to carry out controlled experiments on a planetary scale.

          How do you test it? You look for predictable effects such as the imbalance between incoming shortwave radiation and OLR. You examine the OLR spectrum and observe that it is low at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2. You observe the downwelling radiation and note that its spectrum is the inverse of the OLR. You observe the change in CO2 over time and check whether the predictable effects change with it.

          Overall you observe that the Earth is behaving in a way consistent with the CO2 theory and inconsistent with the proposed alternatives.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Em,

            Complete nonsense. Adding more CO2 between the Sun and the thermometer reduces the amount of energy reaching the thermometer, resulting in the temperature dropping.

            Reducing the rate at which energy leaves an object lacking an internal heat source slows cooling. Nothing else. The Sun is external to the Earth.

            Your witless attempt to define the GHE leads to the conclusion that removing CO2 from the atmosphere leads to a decrease in temperature. No so on the Moon, for example. Not if you consider H2O as a GHG, either.

            The hottest places on Earth are the ones with the least obstruction of insolation caused by GHGs – the arid tropical deserts. Less GHG (H2O), the higher the temperature.

            You are full of crap, to put it mildly. No clue – just religious fervour.

            Ill go with Feynman –

            “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

            If you are not even clever enough to devise an experiment to test your non-existent hypothesis, you are indulging in fantasy. Pseudoscience at its best (or worst)!

            The Earth has managed to cool over the last four and a half billion years. Don’t like that inconvenient fact? Tough.

            No GHE. No testable GHE hypothesis, either. Nothing.

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Adding more CO2 between the Sun and the thermometer reduces the amount of energy reaching the thermometer, resulting in the temperature dropping.”

            Complete nonsense as demonstrated by experiment. The CO2 increases IR opacity making the energy reaching the thermometer increase
            resulting in a temperature increase. To apply what someone else wrote:

            Flynn is full of crap, to put it mildly. No clue – just religious fervor. I’ll go with Feynman “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with Tyndall’s experiment, it’s wrong.”

            So Flynn is wrong per Prof. Feynman.

            If Flynn is not even clever enough to devise an experiment to test his non-existent hypothesis, he is indulging in fantasy. Pseudoscience at its best (or worst)!

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            E man,

            You get an A for effort on stating a coherent GHE description.

            Here are your problems to sort out.

            First the lab experiments. Are the tubes of gas closed? Doesn’t work because you’ve immediately eliminated convection.

            So next you propose going to the atmosphere and make a few assumptions like what’s happening in some places is happening everywhere. Or you might ignore the clouds because they don’t do the same thing everyday, and so on. You have to rationalize that all the error introduced by these approximations are negligible and then the CO2 signal becomes clear. Not, because global temperatures are not responding to that signal.

            Have you considered the possibility that atmospheric CO2 is sufficiently concentrated to absorb every W/m2 a day’s sun can deliver and it all gets thermalized in the dense bulk air near the surface? Then the air is distributed all around the globe. At high altitudes the bulk air is now giving up its energy to the IR-active gases to emit to space. A little more CO2 can’t do much to change the massive daily energy transfers.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            It appears that Nature doesnt agree with you.

            The Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years.

            Physics doesn’t agree with you either. Reducing the amount of energy reaching a thermometer does not result in an increase in temperature.

            You will just have to keep a’hopin’, and a’wishin’ . . .

            Good luck.

            Cheers.

          • SkepticGoneWild says:

            The CO2 increases IR opacity making the energy reaching the thermometer increase resulting in a temperature increase.

            Complete and utter thermodynamic nonsense. Ever hear of the First Law of Thermodynamics?

          • Ball4 says:

            “The Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years.”

            Mike continues to disappear interglacials. Increasing the amount of energy reaching a thermometer does result in an increase in temperature as shown by Prof. Tyndall.

            —–

            “Complete and utter thermodynamic nonsense. Ever hear of the First Law of Thermodynamics?”

            Yes, you should put it to good use. See above and check Dr. Feynman’s notes about experiments. Increasing the amount of energy reaching a thermometer does result in an increase in temperature as shown by Prof. Tyndall.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Ball4,

            The Earth has cooled for four and a half billion years. The longest term average there is. Cherry pick all you like. It wont help you.

            Off you go. Dream up something else – a testable GHE hypothesis might be a good place to start.

            How hard can it be?

            Cheers.

          • Ball4 says:

            “How hard can it be?”

            Not very hard, even Mike Flynn has listed several testable GHE hypotheses, all easily passed the Feynman test being based on experiment.

          • Ball4 says:

            “The longest term average there is.”

            Not really Mike, the universe has cooled for a lot longer. Cherry pick all you like, it won’t help you disappear interglacials. You may wish to disagree, I don’t care.

          • Entropic man says:

            Chic Bowdrie

            The laboratory experiment I had in mind uses long tubes containing gases to simulate the atmosphere.Pressure and composition can be varied as necessary. The tubes are usually horizontal to remove convection.

            The tubes used have a reflective lining to stop the walls absorbing radiation and are sealed with rock salt plugs (transparant to IR).

            At one end, call it the origin, a 15 micrometre IR source simulates longwave radiation from the surface. iR sensors at both ends detect transmitted radiation and returned radiation.

            CO2 absorbs 15 micrometre radiation and reemits it in all directions.

            With zero CO2 you get transmitted radiation but no returned radiation. This is because none of the radiation is absorbed.

            Add a small amount of CO2. A small amount of radiation is absorbed and reradiated in both directions. Suppose 10% of the incoming radiation is absorbed. 5% will be returned to the origin, 5% will be reradiated onward and %90 will pass onward uninterrupted. The IR detetectors will see 95% of the radiation transmitted and 5% returned.

            Increase the amount of CO2. You increase the amount of radiation absorbed and reradiated. The % of radiation coming out the other end decreases and the % of returning radiation increases.

            Given enough CO2 the system saturates. All the incoming radiation is absorbed and reradiated in all directions. 50% of the radiation leaves the output end and 50% returns to the origin.

            Scale this up to the atmosphere. The origin is the surface radiating IR. The other end is the top of the atmosphere radiating to space.

            CO2 absorbs a proportion of the radiation from the surface and returns half of it to the surface. Less heat is lost to space and the surface is less cold than it would be without the CO2.

            Because the real world is a lot more complex than the tube, there is a lot more detail to be considered, but that is the basic principle.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Entropic Man,

            Apparently you have no idea about how thermalization and convection completely obscure any relevance your closed tube experiments contribute.

            When you extend your tubes beyond 50 meters or so, CO2 will become saturated before reaching the top of the tube. Most of the absorbed radiation will be thermalized, so the magnitude of the 50% radiated up and down is a small fraction of the total absorbed. If the tube is not closed, the thermalized (warmed, expanded) air will rise. The saturated condition (50% up, 50% down) continues up through the troposphere until the air thins. Because of reverse thermalization, more CO2 means a greater absolute amount of radiation goes up even though the 50% up and down still applies. The 50% down never gets to the surface because it will be absorbed on the way down as the atmosphere thickens.

            If you apply the same principles to water vapor, you might imagine that additional CO2 has little effect on affecting the global temperature.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Apparently you have no idea about how thermalization and convection completely obscure any relevance your closed tube experiments contribute.”

            Apparently you have no idea about the effects of convection. Put some forced convection in the tube (aka a fan). The results will be the same as at 4:53am once the work on the fluid from fan power is accounted for.

            Alternatively, you could add some natural convection by warming the bottom of the tube. Once again, the results at 4:53am will hold once the power source is accounted.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Ball4,

            Apparently, you don’t understand thermalization either.

            If you actually do your experiment in a sufficiently long vertical tube, I assert that adding CO2 to an already saturated condition will not change the temperature profiles.

          • Ball4 says:

            Chic, consider the CO2 thermalization effect is logarithmic with additional CO2 (O2 continually chemically changed to CO2 with hydrocarbons) and what effect that math has on the temperature profile.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Thermalization has nothing to do with a logarithmic effect. Neither does an O2/CO2 reaction. What straws are you grasping at?

            Please read: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2016/12/solar-activity-oceans-cycles-water.html

          • Ball4 says:

            HS: “Three factors explain essentially all..”

            Essentially all but not all. That site even concludes there is more to the story! You can find the rest of the story in:

            The lab work of Prof. Tyndall and the field work of Dr. Feldman and the other relevant ref.s including Meteorologist Callendar.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            Please read: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2016/12/solar-activity-oceans-cycles-water.html

            Sorry, no. If the sun or ocean cycles were causing warming, the stratosphere would be warming too. Instead it is cooling — a prediction of AGW theory.

            And water vapor in the atmosphere can’t increase unless the temperature first increases.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Ball4,

            Keep working on that explanation of what Tyndall, Callendar, and Feldman did.

            David,

            The sun doesn’t cause warming! No wonder water vapor doesn’t increase. I should have known.

          • David Appell says:

            Chic Bowdrie says:
            David,
            The sun doesnt cause warming! No wonder water vapor doesnt increase. I should have known.

            Water vapor is increasing.

            Why?

          • Ball4 says:

            “Keep working on that explanation of what Tyndall, Callendar, and Feldman did.”

            All in their published reports. I don’t need to add to their bulk of work, all experimental. Passes the Feynman test.

          • ByEntropic man says:

            Chic Bowdrie

            In my 4.53 post I said specifically that the tubes were sealed and horizontal.

            Your focus on thermalization and convection is mistaken.

            Increased CO2 leads to a cooler stratosphere. This is because CO2 is causing a net flow of energy from kinetic energy to radiation, not the net flow from radiation to kinetic energy that you envisage.

            Look at Earth’s energy budget.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget

            Earth’s surface loses an average of 398W/sq M by radiation, 86 W/sq M by evapotranspiration and 18W/sq M by convection.

            Convection carried 4% of the surface heat loss. It is unlikely that this is the dominant heat carrier.

          • Ball4 says:

            “Convection carried 4% of the surface heat loss.”

            No net convective heat loss though. Downdrafts and surface inflow mixing carry that convective 4% right back to the surface in continuous steady state cycle.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            E man,

            “Your focus on thermalization and convection is mistaken.”

            No it isn’t. Other than the IR radiating directly through the atmospheric “window,” all IR energy leaving the surface travels via thermalization and convection, wind, etc. It is not glued to CO2.

            If your numbers were correct, 398 + 86 + 18 = 502 W/m2. How can that be? Where does the 502 – 240 = 262 W/m2 go?

            Ball4,

            You can’t be serious. No one thinks that.

          • phi says:

            Entropic man,

            “Convection carried 4% of the surface heat loss.”

            No, convection (including latent heat) is 61% of surface heat loss (98/161).

            Singular, your error is precisely due to a misunderstanding of the notion of entropy.

          • Ball4 says:

            11:53am: “You can’t be serious. No one thinks that.”

            Yes, seriously Chic! Global updrafts balance downdrafts & lateral infilling, rain balances evapotranspiration over the 4-12 annual periods studied. The earth global energy balances (EB) all cycle LH & SH in ~steady state. No one that seriously reads the numerous EB papers detail miss this balance.

            ——

            12:33pm: “No, convection (including latent heat) is 61% of surface heat loss (98/161).”

            Surface LH + SH thermal energy loss in the link provided is 104.8 and surface LH + SH thermal energy gain is 104.8 for no effect on surface temperature since the thermal energy net is zero in steady state for these processes.

            This should not be that hard to figure out if you read the details in the EB papers.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Ball4,

            Think about it. How does rain happen? The only way water vapor gets into the atmosphere is by evaporation. There are no showers at the TOA.

            Evaporation causes convection, because water molecules are lighter than the rest of the air. The ligher air rises.

            When the water vapor condenses at a high altitude, it gives off energy. It doesn’t rain that energy back to the surface. The energy is radiated away to space.

          • Ball4 says:

            “When the water vapor condenses at a high altitude, it gives off energy. It doesn’t rain that energy back to the surface.”

            Almost correct, liquid water rain does transfer some small energy of the total 104.8 back – some EBs dont distinguish it & show like the one linked only that total 104.8 LH + SH is transferred back down to the surface in balance over the periods with the total 104.8 up.

            Also, you are correct, in the 240 OLR there are energy components from the LH and SH that are lost to deep space. Consult the EB papers for a breakdown of the 240 though some cartoons do so for you in part (e.g. the link shows 29.9 emitted by liquid water colloid in clouds).

          • Nate says:

            Mike,

            “The hottest places on Earth are the ones with the least obstruction of insolation caused by GHGs the arid tropical deserts. Less GHG (H2O), the higher the temperature.”

            Really, the hottest? Does that mean there is more trapped heat (thermal energy) in a desert than a moist tropical site?

          • phi says:

            Ball4,

            104.8 / 163.3 = 64% if you want.

            Try thermodynamics, it’s better when temperature is at stake.

          • Nate says:

            “Does that mean there is more trapped heat (thermal energy) in a desert than a moist tropical site?”

            Lets check Phoenix vs New Orleans in July. Which city contains more thermal energy on average?

            Lets look at enthalpy (H) of air in the two cities, using this calculator:

            http://www.remak.eu/en/calculation-moist-air-properties

            City–ave Temp (F)–Ave Humidity(%)–H (kJ/kg)–hours of sun

            Phoenix—–94———32—————63——-377

            New Orleans-83———80—————79——-260

            FYI, Enthalpy is a measure of thermal energy content.

            Notice New Orleans has greater thermal energy, even though it receives much less sunlight.

          • Ball4 says:

            “104.8 / 163.3 = 64% if you want.”

            163.3 is only part of the object’s illumination in the graphic EB, phi. If you are looking to compute emissivity meaningfully you will need consider all of the illumination on an object vs. the total of that transmitted (transmissivity), reflected (reflectivity) and emitted (emissivity).

          • phi says:

            Ball4,

            No. Heat loss is heat loss. A thermodynamic concept.

            A pseudo-science of climate and 1 E9 comments because we put thermodynamics in the trash.

          • Chic Bowdrie says:

            Phi,

            I think Ball4 is making stuff up as he goes along. It’s one way to learn, but not the best.

          • Ball4 says:

            Heat stays in a solid object phi, heat can’t transfer unless the molecules do. Heat doesn’t exist separate form the avg. KE of the object’s constituent molecules.

            “Heat loss is heat loss.”

            Heat loss is KE transfer from a solid, phi. So that solid can be translucent i.e. transmit some of the radiant energy straight through with no change, reflect some of that incident radiant energy with changed polarization, or absorb and emit the incident radiant energy.

            Since phi doesn’t account for all these processes or all the illumination on the object, phi gets the wrong emissivity.

            Always a good test simply to use an inexpensive fixed emissivity IR thermometer in view of the object of interest. If the brightness temperature readout is the same as thermometer temperature, then the object has emissivity 0.95.

            So get one and point it at the dirt outside near a thermometer in equilibrium with the dirt. Point it at the grass so forth. Point it at some shiny aluminum, tell us what you find experimentally.

          • phi says:

            Ball4,

            In thermodynamics, heat is a type of energy transfer in which energy flows from a warmer substance or object to a colder one.
            [Wikipedia]

            Simply apply the consensual definitions.

            When the term temperature appears, we are in the universe of thermodynamics with its definitions and its laws.

            That lagging behind climatology, some seek to change the definitions and laws leaves pensive.

          • Ball4 says:

            More specifically as to which form of energy transfer some unnamed wiki author is discussing, phi:

            In the hard won field of thermodynamics, heat doesn’t exist in any form by itself but is a type of molecular net kinetic energy transfer in which molecular kinetic energy transfers from a warmer substance or object to a colder one and vice versa due the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistical distribution of molecular velocities.

            The M-B distribution appears whenever the word temperature is invoked as temperature always…ALWAYS involves averages. But phi knew that.

          • Bart says:

            David Appell @ May 15, 2018 at 6:00 PM

            “Instead it is cooling a prediction of AGW theory.”

            But, not uniquely a prediction of AGW.

          • Bart says:

            Depends upon high altitude ozone, which has been in decline.

        • David Appell says:

          Chic Bowdrie says:
          Who says? I imagine Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever, Richard Lindzen, and other prominent scientists would disagree.

          “[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but its rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.”

          – Freeman Dyson, Yale Environment 360, June 4, 2009
          http://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        entropic…”Science nowadays is Kuhnian. A successful theory has five Cs”.

        It’s exactly the same today as when Kuhn first pointed out the problem with paradigms. They are resistant to change even when the evidence against them is clear.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          Its exactly the same today as when Kuhn first pointed out the problem with paradigms. They are resistant to change even when the evidence against them is clear.

          And the evidence against AGW is…?

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        entropic…”The CO2 Greenhouse effect paradigm meets the five Cs”.

        You forgot the most important C…consensus. The GHE and AGW theories rely heavily on agreement and have no direct physical evidence to back them.

        • Entropic man says:

          To the contrary, the evidence came first and the consensus followed.

          Change the evidence and you change the consensus.

          Sometimes one piece of evidence is enough. Remember the Astronomer Royal who said that “Space travel is utter bilge” just before Sputnik 1 launched.

          The steady state and big bang paradigms coexisted until the cosmic microwave background was detected. This swung the consensus firmly behind the big bang.

          Scientists are as conservative as the rest of us. There is a reluctance to change paradigm until the weight of evidence in favour of the change is considerable. Younger scientists tip over earlier than older ones.

          A few never change. There is some truth in the old adage that science advances one funeral at a time.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            entropic….”To the contrary, the evidence came first and the consensus followed”.

            Several of us here keep asking the same question, where is the evidence? The IPCC has never stated once that anthropogenic CO2 is warming the atmosphere, only that it is likely.

            Of course, they have supplied their own confidence levels which many people cannot understand. A CL would not be required if there was real, solid data to prove CO2 is warming the atmosphere.

            With regard to their CLs, the IPCC stated in 2013 that the 15 year period from 1998 – 2012 was a ‘warming hiatus’, and in the same report they raised their CL from 90 to 95 that humans are causing the warming?

            Double-speak, or what?

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            Several of us here keep asking the same question, where is the evidence?

            What efforts have you made yourself to answer your own question?

            What textbooks, books and papers have you read? What lectures have you watched on YouTube? What scientists have you written to to ask?

            If you want to learn, you have to learn to research and answer your own questions.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            With regard to their CLs, the IPCC stated in 2013 that the 15 year period from 1998 2012 was a warming hiatus, and in the same report they raised their CL from 90 to 95 that humans are causing the warming?
            Double-speak, or what?

            Not at all.

            1) There is far more than 15 years of overall warming.

            2) A “hiatus” of 15 years happened at least seven times in the 20th century.

            3) There are too many other indicators of warming — ice melt, rising sea level, increase in ocean heat content — for anyone to think that AGW had stopped.

            4) Better data has not shown that surface “hiatus” did not, in fact, happen.

            For some reason, despite claiming to want to see the science, you ignore all of this, especially #4.

            Why?

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          The GHE and AGW theories rely heavily on agreement and have no direct physical evidence to back them.

          Instead of making dumb statements like this, why don’t you crack a textbook open now and again?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”Instead of making dumb statements like this, why dont you crack a textbook open now and again?”

            And why don’t you show the direct proof instead of shooting off your mouth with ad homs and innuendo?

          • David Appell says:

            Why should I answer your questions when you’re too lazy to research them for yourself and lack the science and mathematical background to understand them anyway?

          • David Appell says:

            Why should I answer your questions when you ignore me and everyone here who tries to point out your errors and point you in the right direction?

            Hmm?

      • David Appell says:

        I don’t think science can be perfectly definitive. But there comes a point where the evidence is so overwhelming that it’s silly to argue otherwise.

        Is it definitive that atoms exist?
        If not, let’s see you argue the other side, presenting the evidence for your claim.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      chic…”…how would the data prove that CO2 was involved?”

      That’s the point, isn’t it? Roy, who studies this stuff daily, thinks CO2 has some kind of effect but he cannot say what it is. No one can, except alarmists who are misrepresenting the truth.

  62. gbaikie says:

    I think if Earth was completely covered with a ocean, the global average air surface temperature would be higher.

    Or Earth land surfaces causes cooling.
    Land surfaces causes a cooler average air surface in various ways and land surfaces also causes high (or the highest) air surface temperature. And the higher land air surface temperatures is related to a cooling effect of the global average temperatures (or more energy being emitted into space).
    A way to get highest average global temperature is to have the most uniform temperatures. The Moon with wide differences in surface temperature is example of low average global temperature, as is the scorching hot planet, Mercury.

    Venus has very uniform temperature at the rocky surface- hundreds of days lacking sunlight and the air remains about the same temperature (perhaps about 5 K cooler).
    And one has the model of the Ideal thermally conductive body being warm or if, the temperature wasn’t uniform or if was much hotter in sunlight, it would have lower global average temperature.

    If use the model of ideal thermally conductive blackbody to a world that is covered with ocean, one assumes in some fashion the global surface water would have an uniform temperature.

    And I think that NATURE, would tend to make world covered with ocean have a more uniform temperature as compared to the world having 30% covered with land.
    First, world covered with ocean, can’t have polar ice caps.
    Land or at least shallow ocean is needed to have polar ice caps. And one needs land to have glaciers.
    At some distance from the Sun, one would far enough so that polar sea ice would form on planet completely covered with an ocean, but without land such ice wander about, and could last more year and would be a mechanism to cause a more uniform temperature, rather create larger difference.

    A fundamental aspect of an Ocean is it absorbs nearly all of spectrum of Sunlight and absorbs indirect sunlight as well as direct sunlight. Or when sun at zenith and day is clear, one gets about 1050 watts of correct sunlight, but if one includes indirect sunlight, it is 1120 watts per square meter. Another aspect is that sunlight is not directly warming the surface, as most of Sunlight passes thru the surface.

    At Earth distance, planet completely cover by an ocean, and it has mechanism allow one to have a more uniform temperature it will closely resemble an Ideal thermally conductive blackbody body AND have average ocean temperature of about 5 C.
    Or Earth has average volume ocean temperature of about 3.5 and it should about 5 C (or more). And such world doesn’t have polar sea ice (in winter). Whereas Earth currently has lots of polar sea ice in both summer and winter.

    Another aspect is with Earth, tropical ocean is pushed East, and is stopped by land masses, and one might assume if there was not land masses to stop it, it could continue. And if so, that would cause and more uniform global temperature.

    • gbaikie says:

      Oh, forget point, higher global average temperature, but no temperature getting much above 3O C. And lacking large land regions which are warmed to 70 C, with the surface air even exceeding 50 C, which radiates more energy into space.

      And roughly such a world would absorb and emit, more than 250 watts per square meter. And people (assuming they lived on the ocean) would not get our hot weather found on the land we live on.

      Btw, I tend to think that in the future, more people will live on the ocean, not because of “global warming”, but due to space exploration and the results of that exploration being utilized.

    • David Appell says:

      First, world covered with ocean, cant have polar ice caps.

      See: Earth, Arctic, sea

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”First, world covered with ocean, cant have polar ice caps.

        See: Earth, Arctic, sea”

        See: comprehension

        • David Appell says:

          GR: Read to see that gbalkie wrote:

          “Land or at least shallow ocean is needed to have polar ice caps. And one needs land to have glaciers.”

          This is not true on Earth.

  63. ren says:

    By Eric Hunt
    May 2, 2018

    AER Corn Belt Report
    The U.S. Corn Belt is on the move
    Recent research has highlighted a spatial shift in the Corn Belt. While the spatial expansion to the northwest in the Corn Belt is evident, it was not clear if there has also been a corresponding shift in the highest yielding areas over time. During the 2012 flash drought that affected almost all of the traditional United States Corn Belt, there seemed to be media consensus that the highest yields will eventually be in states like Minnesota and South Dakota. Therefore, we extended previous work to determine whether such a hypothesis about the northward shift in the highest yielding districts has been concurrent with the spatial expansion of the Corn Belt. We found that northward shift in the highest yields is consistent with the overall shift in the Corn Belt, but what may have gone unnoticed is the equally significant westward shift in the highest yields. This short report quantifies some of the changes that have been observed over the Corn Belt since the early 1960s.
    https://www.aer.com/news-events/blog/aer-corn-belt-report/

    • David Appell says:

      From the report:

      “In the coming months we will be working with a team of inter-disciplinary scientists from multiple sectors to try and determine the contribution from these factors, starting first with climate change.”

  64. Bond says:

    Isn’t it funny how no one here is complaining that UAH only has the USA at -0.01 for April.

    This figure was despite the fact that NOAA has the USA at -1.65 for April when compared to the same baseline, and when everyone knows how cold April was in the US.

    It makes you wonder:

    (1) How effective is the UAH method at measuring temperature

    (2) Why it is that the band of so-called skeptics suddenly lose their skepticism when the situation is reversed.

    • Bart says:

      Because we are not ADHD.

      • Bond says:

        Unless you are whining about NOAA.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          bond…”Unless you are whining about NOAA”.

          You mean the data fudgers.

          • Bond says:

            Does that mean you are saying that you believe that UAH got it right, and that April in the US was only average?

            If so then yeah – it looks like NOAA must have fudged their data too LOW by 1.64 degrees.

          • barry says:

            Come on ye NOAA-haters and spin this – NOAA getting a lower value than UAH.

            Shock to your paradigm? Whither did you flee?

          • Bond says:

            It’s not just that NOAA was lower than UAH – that has happened before. It’s that it happened in the homeland of denial, and they all know that UAH absolutely MUST be wrong, yet refuse to acknowledge it.

          • Bart says:

            This is really dumb…

          • Bond says:

            Bart
            Nice self-referential sentence.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            bondUnless you are whining about NOAA.
            You mean the data fudgers.

            Still no proof, huh Gordon?

    • Mike Flynn says:

      B,

      It makes me wonder if you are stupid and ignorant. Are your wonders more important than my wonders?

      Does anyone really care about either collection of wonders?

      I wonder.

      Cheers.

    • I always go by UAH data which is not manipulated one way or the other unlike NOAA.

      • Bond says:

        So April in the US was not cold then – merely right on the 1981-2010 average?

        • gbaikie says:

          Pretty close in April, warmer than average in the winter months.

          Or land temperature in US and most other lands has been increasing over last few decades (since 1979) but in April in US it returned to average.

          • Bond says:

            So all the claims by the denier fraternity, including most who comment here, of April 2018 in the US being one of the coldest on record were fabricated BS?

          • David Appell says:

            April 2018 wasn’t one of the coldest recorded Aprils in USA48.

            It was ranked 22nd highest, out of 124 months. In the top 20%.

          • barry says:

            So all the claims by the denier fraternity, including most who comment here, of April 2018 in the US being one of the coldest on record were fabricated BS?

            Yes, it must be BS, because UAH for the US was average, not especially cold for the month.

            And UAH, as the skeptics keep saying, is the absolute best data set out there.

            So April in the US was not cold. Reckon the skeptics here who said it was will take it back because of the UAH result?

      • David Appell says:

        Salvatore Del Prete says:
        I always go by UAH data which is not manipulated one way or the other unlike NOAA.

        What proof do you have that NOAA’s results are “manipulated?”

        Why do you ignore RSS’s results, which have a trend about 50% higher than UAH’s (for the LT)?

  65. Norman says:

    Gordon Robertson

    In response to your post way up somewhere:
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/05/in-defense-of-the-term-greenouse-effect/#comment-302370

    The very link you posted on page 595 of the Woods book (it has a 595 number on the Upper right of the page. The last paragraph deals with the emission of CO2)

    https://archive.org/stream/physicaloptic00wood#page/594/mode/2up

    • Mike Flynn says:

      N,

      What is your point? That CO2 can be heated and allowed to cool? That it absorbs and emits light of various wavelengths – progressively longer and longer – all the way to absolute zero?

      You cant even describe the GHE in any sensible way can you? Blathering about the properties of this or that is irrelevant, if you cant even state concisely what it is you are attempting to claim.

      Are you trying to claim that increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer hotter? It is obvious that CO2 does not prevent the temperature from falling at night, when a cloud passes between the Sun and the surface, during a solar eclipse, or when it is foggy, raining or snowing.

      Go ahead – describe your wondrous and magical GHE – which only seems to result in increased temperatures when the sun is shining brightly! It doesn’t even seem to work when the Sun shines continuously for six months at the poles!

      How hard can it be? Very, very, hard it seems. Impossible would be one description.

      Cheers.

      • Norman says:

        Mike Flynn

        I would say that if you had a dry planet or the Moon and you had only CO2 in the atmosphere, then such a thermometer on such a planet would get warmer as you added CO2.

        The Solar energy has very little percentage of 15 micron IR in the mix of wavelengths. The CO2 would absorb very little incoming solar energy. The surface would absorb this energy and warm emitting IR. This IR would act to heat the CO2 atmosphere which would radiate energy back to the surface. This added energy would cause the surface to rise to higher temperatures.

        Not sure what you are droning on about.
        https://www.slideserve.com/faunus/from-grant-petty-s-book-a-first-course-in-atmospheric-radiation

        Look at slide 3 of this link. It is a Downwelling IR Spectrum. It shows CO2 emits almost like a black-body in its strong emission bands. I really don’t know what you are asking for. I give you all the evidence you need. The failure is in your mental abilities. You can’t handle the Truth so you reject it.

        I watch Westworld and you remind me of the robots that reject a reality that does not fit their programs. They are shown photos and claim “I don’t see anything” You remind me of this mental state. You can be given tons of evidence and you are not able to grasp it but then you keep asking for it. Why do you do this? You need to be reprogrammed, you have a bad logic loop in that cyber mind of yours.

        Your point about the Sun is most childish and ignorant. It hurts to respond to such poor logic. Why must you act so dumb? Do you get credit for it?

        The GHE does not magically warm the surface without an input of energy. It only sets the condition to reach higher equilibrium temperatures over another condition. People have explained this to you hundreds of times. Each time it goes over you head and you can’t understand it. Yet you keep asking over and over.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        N,

        You seem to have missed the point that the airless Moon reaches far higher temperatures due to the unconcentrated rays of the Sun, after the same exposure time. Putting an obstruction such as an atmosphere of any type between the Sun and a thermometer makes the thermometer colder. Fact.

        As to the miraculous heating properties of CO2, they don’t work at night, during a solar eclipse, when it is cold, rainy . . .

        Make sure that any attempt at describing the non-existent GHE takes all that into account.

        Go your hardest. You will fail – it is all nonsense.

        Cheers.

        • Norman says:

          Mike Flynn

          I have asked this from you once and you ignored it. You will ignore it again. Not sure if you are human, you