Efficacy Of Green House Gas Forcing Compared To Solar Forcing

temperature of the source of IR is physically impossible. Even on the theoretical level such an effect must lead in some cases to an endless mutual warming without additional energy input, which is absurd.
Or, as anyone with a shred of knowledge of actual mathematics and the laws of thermodynamics can easily show, when the object being “warmed” is actually being warmed by a heat source like Mr. Sun, it never overtly leads to a runaway solution, violation of the first law (energy conservation) or violation of the second law (entropy increase for irreversible processes). On the contrary, one can show quite easily that a sphere heated by the sun and cooled by outgoing blackbody IR radiated to space as a cold reservoir will “warm” if one interpolates an layer of gas that is opaque/absorptive in (bands in) the outgoing IR, in the specific sense that its dynamical equilibrium temperature will increase. One can show that at no time is energy conservation violated. One can show that entropy of the Universe is increased by the net heat transfer(s) involved in the process. One can do this with elementary physical and thermodynamic arguments.
Leaving out the source of heat as you implicitly do in the statement above is of course going to get you in trouble. You should listen to Bart, above. It’s easy to get these things wrong.
rgb

My comment is that the system in your experiment isn’t sealed. You are blowing air across the water with a fan and the heat extracted in this way is venting back into the room. The water with the backscattered LWR is receiving more heat into a thin surface layer. Unsurprisingly the forced convention via the fan immediately extracts almost all of this extra heat into the air. The air coming off the backscattered LWR container will be fractionally hotter and more humid than the air coming off the other container. That is where the heat is going.
Your experiment does not support the contention that backscattered LWR causes no heating over the 71% of the globe which is covered by water, which is the spin you seem to be trying to put on it. What it suggests is that the main effect of backscattered LWR over water is not to heat the water itself, but rather to heat the air above the water. The heat goes somewhere. Over the oceans it goes into making the air fractionally hotter and more humid.
This does however underline just how difficult it is going to be for Trenberth to come up with any plausible explanation for how his ‘missing heat’ from the greenhouse effect is ending up in the deep ocean where he says it is. Your experiment underlines the fact that you simply can’t heat water from above with LWR if it is exposed to convection because the heat goes straight into the air.

I truly believe there are alot of people that dont want this argument to ever end because it brings them attention and status. I for one am tired of it, I was born to forecast weather, but knowing the climate is essential in providing a base for a good forecast. Its no different than a general understanding past battles or the enemies tendencies in previous fights. People want to dismiss such things today, but all we see now is the similar events in the past observed much more intensely. So I have proposed a simpler test. Look at the global temp in 1978 when the PDO flipped to warm and the satellite era of objective temp analysis truly started, and see what it is in 2030 now that pdo has flipped to cold and the atlantic will follow in about 10 years. So far the triple crown of cooling, introduced on Oreilly 4 years ago along with this test proposal to Bill Nye seems to be carrying the day, as seen here:
http://models.weatherbell.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_recent.png
The sun, the oceans and stochastic natural events rule the climate. I am sorry if that destroys alot of arguing but I have proposed the test and its running and in the end I am confident of the result. Most likely when dealing with the massive power of the sun, and then the earths reaction, the simple, most obvious answers are most likely correct. Man is just not as important as many believe he is, IMO. If that lessens my “status” in this debate, so be it. The whole thing we be proven to be an overblown sham that wasted alot of time and money in a world that needed it in other more dire places

I hate to be a bucket of cold water, but I really doubt there is any proof whatsoever that will convince the true believers. Max Planck once quipped, “Science advances one funeral at a time”. The objective is not to win an unwinnable argument. The objective is to prevent committed zealots from getting the government to do something that is very expensive and totally useless.

Bart;
Not necessarily. A change in solar forcing increases the time rate of change of energy coming into the system. A change in ghg indeed provides zero increase to the input time rate of change, but it could momentarily decrease the time rate of change of energy exiting the system,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well certainly. But this is a temporary condition as you yourself state. In a theoretical “doubling of co2” we might even be able to quantify it and measure. For practical purposes though, we’re only increasing CO2 at a rate of 2 ppm per year. The heat capacity associated with such a small change is miniscule. So technically I agree with you, I just don’t see it as being significant in the climate context.

Some fairly clear biases in outlook and in the strength of conclusions on one test, to be fair. And looking at the linked ‘irrelevant’ study I’m not sure that it was, I’m wonder if someone could explain why it would be so? However it would appear that the level of investigation on this basic question by warmers is at least matched by this. Even if valid their linked test was done as something of a lark. Wouldn’t it be fun to take a look as to how the proposed CO2 effect on warming affects oceans? Yes, it would be fun – it might even be science…

For heaven’s sake, there is no net LW forcing. The operational emissivity [radiation only] is ~0.4, 1/3 rd minor side-bands and trace gases, the rest the atmospheric window. Taking account of the convection and evapo-transpiration, the average earth emissivity is 63/396 = 0.16, and you predict this exactly using standard physics.
The main GHG bands including CO2 switch off that net emission. This is radiative physics equilibrium 101.
Because of this error by the meteorologists mistaking the S-b output of pyrgeometers for a real energy flux, we have wasted 10s of billions on stupid science.

I also have to agree with Greg and others who see (most) of the heat of earth coming in via the water where the energy from the sun <0.5 um is the highest and where water absorbs, meaning most of that radiation is changed to warmth because there is mass. A (GH) gas has little mass, hence it deflects where it absorbs.!!
Most recently they also discovered CO2 absorbs at some places in the UV which is why they can identify it on other planets.
I don’t want to give the CAGW crowd more food for turning the whole CO2 scare into CAGC but I will explain it again to those who still "believe" in CO2 as being a factor in unnatural warming of earth by approaching it from another angle,
Check this graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
The red is what you get on your head. Do you all get that? The yellow marked amount of radiation of that solar spectrum is what is being back radiated, to space, mostly by the O3, O2, HxOx and NxOx, and lastly also by CO2. This is why we are even able to measure it (ti.e. he absorption spectra of these gases) as it bounced back to earth from the moon. All these gases are GHG’s, agreed?
Now, do you understand that if there is more of these gases coming into the atmosphere, either naturally or man made, that more of it is being back radiated? If more is being back radiated it means that less radiation is coming in, the red part is becoming smaller, hence we are cooling. So, more GHG naturally means more cooling.
Hence the reason why I say that if you want to prove that the net effect of an increase in one particular GHG is that of warming rather than that of cooling you have to show me a balance sheet that would prove how much cooling and how much warming is caused by a certain% increase of that gas.
The problem is that science has stood still in this regard and has relied heavily on the closed box experiments – by Tyndall and Arrhenius-, and these only show the one side of the coin. The absorption of CO2 causing the back radiation to earth 14-16 um, is at around 200K, while the incoming radiation at 1-2 and 4-5 um being back radiated to space is around 5000K. Furthermore, as I have shown in an earlier post, there is little or no absorbency of water at 14-16 um so it (i.e. the 14-16 coming back to earth) cannot heat the water. Therefore, I am naturally inclined to think that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of cooling rather than warming.
Do you now see what the problem is?
I just hope that people are not going to see the current natural global cooling
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
and turn it into some AGC or CAGC……..

Bob: Your experiment may have several flaws. The surface of the “IR reflector” that is facing the warm water will be warmed by the water and the styrofoam may reduce the rate at which it transfers heat to the room. So the surface of your “IR reflector” could be warmer than the ceiling and walls of the room, which are radiating towards the water through your “IR window”. So your “IR reflector” could simply be acting likely a winter coat on a cold day – the inside of the coat is warmed by your warm skin (analogous to the warm water) and the insulation in the coat (styrofoam) slows down conduction of heat to the environment (the room).
When the fan is blowing, the surface of your IR reflector could be cooled by convection and be closer to the temperature of the room which is “shining” through the cling wrap. You should certainly try your experiment with and without the cling wrap while keeping the fan running in both cases, so that the only thing you have changed is evaporation.
You should also make your “IR reflector” as similar as possible to your “IR window” – two similar frames covered with cling wrap or aluminum foil. Since aluminum foil is thin and a good conductor, once you eliminate the styrofoam, your “IR reflector” should conduct and block convection more like your “IR window”.
The fact that thermal IR penetrates only the top few microns of the surface of the ocean turns out to be unimportant. Both the atmosphere and the ocean emit thermal IR, with the ocean emiting slightly more because it is usually warmer and has higher emissivity. All of the thermal radiation that leaves the water is emitted from the same few microns at the surface of the ocean. (If thermal IR can travel downward through only a few microns before being absorbed, thermal IR can’t get out unless it is emitted from the same few microns.) When you consider both the upward and downward flux (which both involve about 350 W/m2 of energy entering and leaving a very think layer), NET thermal IR makes the surface of the ocean cooler than the water just below. Evaporation – which also comes from the top layer of water molecules – also cools the top few microns. During daytime, some short wavelength solar radiation is absorbed by the top few microns, but the bulk of the energy is deposited in the top few meters. Without heat from the top few meters, the top few microns of the ocean would freeze, not boil of into the atmosphere. At night, loses by net thermal IR and evaporation cool the surface, making it dense enough to sink and convecting the water warmed by the sun to the surface. The bulk of the ocean is warmed by the sun and that energy is convected or conducted to the top few microns where it is lost by evaporation and radiative cooling – and those losses are far bigger than the thermal IR arriving from the atmosphere.

Why has LIR GHG forcing increased over the last 60-70 years? You assume, wrongly, that GHG’s have increased over the past which is not true. Atmospheric CO2 content has varied from over 20% on the primordial planet to thousands ppmv millions of years ago. Measurements taken in Victorian times gives a CO2 content of up to 500ppmv. CO2 content varies diurnally, seasonally and with each hemisphere. Our measly input is but 3% of the total.
And #peterg there is more than enough radiation for 290K. Measured zenith radiation is ~1000W/m2, average hemispheric radiation 500W/m2 giving ~+34C average temperature before the heave losses which reduces it to ~+14C

Lots of interesting comments here so far. As usual, understanding the basic physics concepts is vital to gaining an understanding of how things behave out in the real world. It would seem that this experiment is good for understanding one very important concept – what happens with LWIR w.r.t. water surfaces (Trenberth’s missing heat). The total details of what happens in the atmosphere and ocean surface cannot be duplicated on the lab bench. However, we can through various experiments deduce what happens.
As for what is happening overall, we have observations of the real system that can be combined with our experiments to help gain an understanding of what actually is going on and / or what is not going on.
First, a few little reminders of what the real system includes:
Earth is 70% ocean
Oceans have very low albedo, less than 0.04
Land has much higher albedo, averaging somewhere around 0.12 to 0.16
Sky with clouds provides most of our 0.3 albedo
Land is concentrated mostly in the Northern Hemisphere and oceans in the Southern Hemisphere
North and South Hemispheres are fairly close to each other in average temperature
More solar energy arrives to a hemisphere during the summer than the winter
Earth’s elliptical orbit provides significantly more power at aphelion (December) than at perihelion (June). Peak to peak difference at the TOA is about 90 W/m^2 out of about 1365 W/m^2.
What we see is that with rather little average temperature difference between hemispheres, we have substantially more solar energy arriving at the TOA along with a surface that will absorb significantly more energy in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere. This is not the case since the temperatures are not diverging. What we see is an incoming power difference many times the size of that added absorption achieved in a CO2 doubling.
What is happening is the water cycle. The added heat coming into the Southern Hemisphere goes into evaporating water at the surface of the ocean and then convects up to form clouds that shade the ocean from some of the incoming solar. This also increases the LWIR downwelling as there is added water vapor and the clouds absorb and emit LWIR as well. Moist air is ligher weight because the molecular weight of water is 18 versus the atmospheric average of 28.8 so it should be no surprise that it will rise conveying that excess heat up above must of the ghgs where it can radiate to space.
This expermiment presented is important in that it shows incoming LWIR energy evaporates water (which can then take it back up into the atmosphere for dispersal) rather than is absorbed, warming the lower ocean depth – per Trenberth’s imaginary missing heat.

Watcher says:
April 21, 2013 at 10:36 am
… the preponderance of evidence is still far, far in favor of the AGW theory.

AGW theory says that human emissions of CO2 are causing global warming. There isn’t actually a lot of DIRECT evidence for that assertion per se. A lot of what people seem to think passes for evidence is little better than conjecture.

… the preponderance of conjecture is still far, far in favor of the AGW theory.

There. Fixed it for ya.

cba makes a lot of sense
I want to add something
I have a swimming pool here and an elaborate system to heat the water.
However, no matter how much energy I put in
the water will never get much above 32 here, no matter how much energy I put in.
All it does is evaporate faster when I try to make it hotter,
Does somebody know why this is so
(seeing that the oceans’ temps. don’t go much higher either…..)
and why this is important to what we are discussing here?

This is also how Multi-layer insulation on spacecrafts works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-layer_insulation
“The principle behind MLI is radiation balance. To see why it works, start with a concrete example – imagine a square meter of a surface in outer space, at 300 K, with an emissivity of 1, facing away from the sun or other heat sources. From the Stefan-Boltzmann law, this surface will radiate 460 watts. Now imagine we place a thin (but opaque) layer 1 cm away from the plate, thermally insulated from it, and also with an emissivity of 1. This new layer will cool until it is radiating 230 watts from each side, at which point everything is in balance. The new layer receives 460 watts from the original plate. 230 watts is radiated back to the original plate, and 230 watts to space. The original surface still radiates 460 watts, but gets 230 back from the new layers, for a net loss of 230 watts. So overall, the radiation losses have been reduced by half by adding the additional layer. More layers can be added to reduce the loss further.”
Yes, but when I try to explain this simple model to the crazy dragonslayers as a reasonable model for a “colder object” heating a “warmer object” they seem incapable of understanding it.
This specific example is ALMOST a perfect (if oversimplified) model for greenhouse warming, if you switch from a constant temperature source to a constant power source. Suppose we have the same square meter of unit emissivity surface in outer space containing a heat source producing 460 watts, it will heat to 300K by the same argument you give above. If we surround it with a thin but opaque layer 1 cm away, separated from it by vacuum, and also of emissivity 1, it will be warmed by heat from the inner object until IT is losing power on its outer surface at a rate of 460 watts, because the system in steady state MUST lose 460 watts (the rate at which it is being heated). But if the opaque surface is radiating 460 watts outward, it is also radiating 460 watts inward. In order to be in detailed balance, the inner object has to be radiating 920 watts — 460 watts from its internal power supply, 460 watts it receives as “back radiation” from the surrounding opaque blackbody shell. To radiate 920 watts, it has to increase in temperature to 300 * (2^{1/4}) = 357 K. The outer shell will actually end up at a temperature slightly under 300 K (as it has a slightly larger surface area from which to lose 460 watts).
If you raise the shell so it is further away, you further increase its area and hence decrease its temperature when it is radiating 460 watts away, and also reduce the absorption cross-section of the object inside to the back radiation itself (some of which starts to travel from the opaque shell to the opaque shell without hitting the inner object at all). Overall this decreases the back radiation but leaves it strictly positive — the inner object will always heat up a bit (compared steady state 300K with no shell at all) as long as ANY back radiation is received from a surrounding shell. The Earth is a teeny, weeny bit warmer than it would be if it were steady heated and there were no 3K blackbody radiation from outer space, if outer space were perfectly dark and empty and hence had a “temperature” of 0K.
Voila! A cooler object (the shell, in steady state) causes a heated object to increase its temperature! And yet heat always flows from hot to cold, entropy increases, the gods of thermodynamics are pleased and shower one with rose petals.
The GHE in the atmosphere is complicated by the fact that it is only one of many things going on, and by the fact that to a large extent it is saturated in all bands associated with all the components of the atmosphere — opaque is opaque, and the logarithmic increase expected from increasing CO_2 concentration is almost an accidental result of (IIRC) pressure broadening of its particular quantum spectrum. So sure, differentially heating and cooling the atmosphere causes convection, conduction, latent heat transfer, and modulation of lots of other relevant stuff such as albedo and water that might well overwhelm any part of the GHE associated with increasing CO_2 BUT that does not mean that the mechanism itself is not valid or important in raising the mean temperature of the Earth compared to the atmosphere-free moon, only that most of the benefit we get from CO_2 was gotten by the first 100 ppm or so, and most of the total benefit (warming) we get now is from water vapor, not CO_2, by somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude.
At this point, since one can now see that there is nothing contradictory about an externally heated object becoming warmer when one interpolates an absorptive/emissive layer of gas between it and outer space at 3 K, one can actually look at the spectral data to try to understand it a bit better without trying to claim that it doesn’t exist at all. At which point I usually recommend that people buy a copy of Grant Petty’s book, because it has actual TOA and BOA spectrographs that are direct photographic evidence for the GHE — if you know how to read a spectrograph and mentally integrate over frequencies.
But kudos for finding the article above on multi-layer insulation. One can do even better, of course, if one has an surrounding layer that is truly reflective, has a high albedo on the inner surface. But atmospheric gases like CO_2 aren’t reflective in that sense; they really are opaque and diffusely absorptive (and re-emissive).
rgb

The question that is the crux of much of this thread, is simply:- Does LWIR EM radiant energy that propagates downward from earth’s atmosphere, and cloud cover when present, HEAT (verb) the ocean; which implies that the ocean Temperature (whatever that means), is increased by the existence of such radiant energy ? Or does that not happen ?
Now it is well known (by observation) that in the Atlantic/Caribean waters, following the passage of a hurricane, and maybe lesser tropical storms, the surface waters in the track of the storm, are colder than before the storm passed through. Huge amounts of energy in the form of latent heat of evaporation, acompany the megatonnes of water that is in the cyclonic clouds of the storm. The ocean surface heat (noun) is the energy that powers the storm.
Not surprisingly, the high surface wind speeds rapidly remove water vapor from the reaction interface between ocean and atmosphere allowing further evaporation to occur. At the microscopic level, the H2O molecules with kinetic energies on the high energy tail of the Maxwell-Boltzmann energy distribution of the surface water molecules, are the ones that break free of the surface intermolecular forces, and escape from the surface. Chemical engineers know much better than I do, that removal of reaction products from the reaction interface, is essential to maintaining the process. Without removal, the increasing concentration of high energy molecules on the gaseous side of the reaction, results in increased flux of water molecules, back into the liquid phase, stopping the evaporation process. As a result, the liquid surface is depleted of higher energy molecules, resulting in a lower mean molecular kinetic energy. And the words we use to describe this are “lower Temperature”.
Evaporation naturally depresses the surface Temperature relative to the bulk of the liquid. Well that is simply the latent heat of evaporation.
As a result, there is a negative Temperature gradient at the surface, and this gradient, is the driving force causing conductive heat (noun) to flow from the bulk, towards the surface, to replace the latent heat of evaporation. If this did not happen, the evaporation must eventually cease.
So now consider what happens at this microscopic level, when we add in the downward LWIR EM radiant energy. Note I said “energy”. This is NOT heat (noun), it is radiation energy that knows nothing of Temperature, which is a macroscopic property of materials.
We know that this LWIR EM energy is very strongly absorbed in the top few microns of the surface; about 30 microns absorbs 95% of the 10 micron wavelength center of the atmospheric EM spectrum.
Absorption of this ENERGY is a microscopic process; it takes a molecule of water (or perhaps some molecular water complex) to absorb that LWIR photon; it is not a thermal (heat (verb) ) process.
But that absorbed quantum of energy will raise the kinetic energy of THAT WATER MOLECULE or complex, without raising the Temperature of the macroscopic body of water.
The kinetic energy bonus, that results in molecular escape (microscopic process) , can be supplied either by heat (noun) from the bulk of the water (macroscopic) or by the absorption of the LWIR photon, which is a microscopic process.
The negative Temperature gradient remains at the surface, and the surface is colder than the bulk; but evaporation rate is increased, because the downward EM radiation supplies the energy offset, to a single molecule or perhaps complex, to break that microscopia loose from the surface.
I can conceive of no process going on here, that results in heat (noun) propagating DOWNWARD from the surface, into the bulk of the ocean. The negative surface Temperature gradient maintains heat flow from the bulk to the surface, a macroscopic process, resulting in evaporation, and the microscopic process of adding photon energy to single molecules, accelerates the evaporative process. Note that the EM photon energy exits the surface along with the water molecule, and is returned to the atmosphere.
So I invite all comments showing me the error of my ways, and the glitch in my narrative ??

Sorry Bob most of your argument fails as most comments have already highlighted. There is a problem with the IPCC projections and it’s much more basic it’s not the understanding of greenhouse effect. The physics of the greenhouse effect is well understood and outside the ability of climate science or pseudoscience types on here to challenge because it falls into the Quantum Mechanics field the classic physics approximations used by the IPCC are reasonable at the level they use.
So now as a scientist looking at the whole stupidity of climate change from the outside there is an obvious problem of the AGW IPCC disaster scenario
Start with wiki on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing and go to the climate sensitivity section first we get the IPCC calculation:
A typical value of λ is 0.8 K/(W/m2), which gives a warming of 3K for doubling of CO2.
Now move down the page to the next section “Forcing due to atmospheric gas”
The relationship between carbon dioxide and radiative forcing is logarithmic, and thus increased concentrations have a progressively smaller warming effect.
Two views of the same equation expressed a different way both saying the same thing you need a logarithmical increase in CO2 production to support a linear temperature rise.
Now go look at the CO2 figures for the atmosphere and then look at the IPCC CO2 projections
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html
See the problem only the A2 and A1F1 scenarios give you an exponential CO2 levels and they both look impossible scenarios based on the amount of fossil fuels you would have to burn and the growth of fossil fuels is not following that projection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
The last 15 years of climate slowdown is because the CO2 levels are not exponentially increasing the rate will continue to slow from the early prior based on the IPCC’s own figures and science.
Looking at the numbers CO2 will be at 550-650ppm by 2100 so 1.5 degree K warmer than now based on the science.
My problem is this suddenly becomes 4 degree C in the IPCC release.
Look at the US EPA page for example
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/future.html
Look at the graph of CO2 only the two much higher emission scenarios project the levels of CO2 to the required 800 ppm CO2 levels to get a 3 degree K rise.
The problem isn’t the science its the politics because the real thing climate science needs to show is that we are following a A1F1 and A2 scenario because that’s the only ones that put 4 degree C rise as even a possibility and the disaster scenarios.
The problem for climate science is the developed countries have leveled there fossil fuel consumption and only the big developing nations like China, India and Brazil are increasing there emissions and it is not at a logarithmic rate and they have to do better than natural log 2 rate to make up for the rest of the world that is relatively flat. China and India increased C02 by 9% and 6%, respectively, in 2011 but this lead to a modest increase in emissions for the world of 3%.
Hence emission scenarios A1F1 and A2 fall based on economic data and common sense that CO2 emission can not and are not following a logarithmic rate.
This is sort of an extension of the same stupidity Anthony took Joe Romm to task on about a 6 degree F rise by 2050 which would require CO2 levels to be 800ppm by that time. If you go an look at the CO2 graphs you will see we have moved the CO2 levels from 310 in the sixties to 400ppm now so around 90 ppm. Think about how much fossil fuel you are going to burn to lift it a further 400 ppm and tell me do you really think that can be done in 35 year time frame?

@Richard111
Your link (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/) comes from a hard sciences unit where we don’t care about the stupidity arguments the pseudoscience in climate change argue about.
You can’t energy pump the atmosphere without it reacting because it is has an equilibrium loop the sort the pseudoscience types want to emit to justify their view on why AGW does or does not exist depending on there political view.
Real scientists actually realize the atmosphere can cool or heat depending on the energy balance but that has little to do with climate change where you assume the suns intensity is relatively constant over time and therefore the equilibrium loops should hold the temperature stable.
AGW is saying you are changing the gas mixture in that exact loop that the scientist in the report measured and therefore the temperature of earth is changing. No physicist ever said CO2 only heats it is simply acts like all quantum active gas in the atmosphere in it’s energy pump loop.
There is something unique about all the Greenhouse gases you can build lasers from them because it utilizes the same quantum energy pumping effect
Nitrous oxide lasers operate in far infrared typically 10.8 μm wavelength
CO2 lasers operate in the far infrared range typically 9.6 µm and 10.6 µm
Water vapour lasers operate in the infrared typically 27.97, 47.7, 78.46, and 118.6 µm
For me coming from a QM science background I find it sort of funny when you get people try and claim they can prove using some classic physics garbage they dream up that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist …. sure it doesn’t and my laser tubes don’t work either according to your classic physics you just mashed up.
There may be problems with the IPCC science like feedbacks and UHI like Anthony has written on but I am sorry to the pseudoscience fringe the greenhouse effect is real and well beyond the scope of climate science stupidity to overturn the science on.

henry@all here who are confused by the remarks by LdB
perhaps LdB should also first read what the argument was about:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/21/efficacy-of-green-house-gas-forcing-compared-to-solar-forcing/#comment-1283346
this argument has nothing to do with politics…..
we were arguing science….
we were in fact asking those who claim to know, to show us that the net effect of more carbondioxide in the air is that of warming, rather than that of cooling.
Richard111 merely pointed to a fact that what we already knew, namely that (more) CO2 also acts as (more of) a coolant…..
Perhaps as a chemist, I should try to explain a point that may be confusing to some.
We know that water has strong absorbency in the UV. The oceans also have lots of mass, so as the UV from the sun hits on the water, that specific radiation where water has absorbency, is easily converted to heat.
However, a gas has little mass. A GHG is gas that has (some) absorbency both in the sun’s emission spectrum and in the earth’s emission spectrum. CO2 is a GHG. As the sun’s radiation falls on the molecule, it can absorb in the absorptive regions only until it itself is saturated (with heat). Remember also that most of the neighbor molecules (N2, O2,) are transparent to the absorptive regions anyway, so it is not possible for the molecule to pass that radiation specific to the absorptive regions on as heat as happened in the water. So all it can do is re-radiate here. To try to understand what happens up there, it is perhaps simpler to imagine that in the absorptive regions, the molecule starts acting like a little round mirror as soon as it is saturated by that specific radiation. That still means that approx. 50% of incoming radiation in the absorptive regions is sent in a radius of 180 degrees back in the the direction where it came from. Hence we are able to measure even as it comes back from the moon.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
For example, they measured this re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth (day)-moon(unlit by sun) -earth (night). Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. You can see that it all comes back to us via the moon in fig. 6 top & fig. 7. Note that even methane cools the atmosphere by re-radiating in the 2.2 to 2.4 um range.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-16 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results?
From all of this, you should have figured out by now that any study implying that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, rather than that of cooling, must exhibit a balance sheet in the right dimensions showing us exactly how much radiative warming and how much radiative cooling is caused by an increase of 0.01% of CO2 that occurred in the past 50 years in the atmosphere. It must also tell us the amount of cooling caused by the increase in photosynthesis that has occurred during the past 50 years. (plants need warmth and CO2, you know)
There are no such results in any study, let alone in the right dimensions. For example, consider the fact that time must be in the dimensions.
For more on why it is considered highly unlikely that CO2 is a contributory cause to global warming, see here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
The above results suggest that a natural cooling cycle started around 1995.
We will stay in that cooling loop until ca. 2040.
Believe me, global warming is over. It is not only me who says it.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend

Kristian says:
“What is reduced is ‘the heat transfer rate’ between the warmer body and the cooler. Q. This does not affect the surface temperature of the warmer body. Only the surface temperature of the cooler one.”
Uh …. if the rate of heat loss is reduced then the temperature of the “warmer body” will be higher at some time interval later than it would have been without the “cooler body’s” radiation.
http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf

Kristian: “Er, rgb, you got this exactly wrong. It says it is 300K radiating 460 W/m^2 both before AND after you put the opaque layer outside it.”. Maybe review the words…
RGB said: “This specific example is ALMOST a perfect (if oversimplified) model for greenhouse warming, if you switch from a constant temperature source to a constant power source.” So, in that case, you are no longer at a constant temperature and therefore no longer at constant 460 W/m². Seems you shouldn’t have tried to correct him there. Robert’s describing what was just discussed in depth over at Tallbloke’s TalkShop.
I just wish rgb would have made the logical jump to include in his comment with a partial of non-interacting window radiation (the non-GHG lines) simultaneously escaping then he indeed would have a very close model for a planet’s atmospheric greenhouse effect. Would have been good hearing how he would see that view of a “leaky shell” around a sphere of constant power.

The leakiness of a shell around a sphere irradiated by a constant power source is important.
In the real world that leakiness is achieved by non radiative mechanisms and is given huge power by evaporation with its 5 to 1 net cooling effect (see enthalpy of vaporisation).
Add to that the minimal resistance to changes in energy flow rates from space at near absolute zero and the fact is that changes in the internal energy flow rate from any factor other than more mass, more gravity or higher ToA irradiation are easily cancelled by equal and opposite changes in the energy flow rate from changes in circulation enabled by changes in total atmospheric volume.
In theory of course one ‘needs’ a higher temperature to support a faster flow rate if there are no volume and circulatory adjustments but when such adjustments are as freely enabled as they are around a sphere floating in space no significant change in temperature is required.
As soon as one tries to ‘add more energy’ from any cause other than more mass, more gravity or more irradiation it goes straight to PE (not heat) at the cost of a volume and circulation change.
As a gas expands, the average distance between molecules grows. Because of intermolecular attractive forces (see Van der Waals force), expansion causes an increase in the potential energy of the gas. The increase in potential energy thus implies a decrease in kinetic energy and therefore in temperature.
So, if GHGs slow down energy throughput (which is not certain anyway), the atmosphere changes volume and circulation pattern to negate that effect for little or no change in system temperature because the extra energy in the air goes readily to PE rather than KE.
The similar volume and circulation changes induced by solar and oceanic variability are magnitudes greater than those achievable by all GHGs combined let alone CO2 on its own or our contribution to CO2.
If one were to propose a residual ‘warming’ effect it could not be measured within natural variation in any event.
In the end, for all practical purposes, the atmospheric temperature around a planet is set by mass, (held within a gravitational field and irradiated) and not composition though composition can influence the circulation pattern.

“In the real world that leakiness is achieved by non radiative mechanisms…”
Sorry Stephen, no, you read me wrong, that leaking through the shell is the “window” radiation that exits directly to space and has nothing to do with non radiative mechanisms.

Henry@Phil.
you did not get it
but don’t worry, not too many do
even Anthony does not get it
Richard111 is spot on,. CO2 is a coolant.
Co2 is both a coolant and “warmant”
as is water
that is why, ultimately, in the final analysis
CO2 and water are like your father and mother.
Anyone wanting less of either (or talking bad about either)
must be daft
Love you father and your mother!

“It’s a Sorcerer’s Apprentice problem. The broom splinters add water to the tank, faster than Mickey Mouse can bail it out again so it overflows.”
Quite so. It overflows.
The amount of energy in the form of KE (heat) that the system is capable of holding on to is fixed only by mass, gravity and insolation.
If any other factor tries to slow down energy throughput (for example an increase in GHGs) so as to raise the temperature of the system then volume and circulation changes occur so as to convert any excess KE to PE (increase in volume) or to accelerate the flow of energy through the system (more convection and evaporation).
Of course the system is never in equilibrium due to a vast number of internal system features that constantly interact to disrupt the KE content set by mass, gravity and insolation so one constantly sees oscillations around the mean.
The observable manifestation of those oscillations is latitudinally shifting jets and climate zones which are the negative system response in action and that constitutes climate change,
The effect of our emissions being an imperceptible fraction of natural variability from solar and oceanic influences.