Explaining misconceptions on "The Greenhouse Effect"

Good article Dr. Pielke. It is unfortunate that this needs saying at all, but I fear the infamous G&T paper has done a bit of damage to the credibility of sceptical science.

Hi there,
well .. I usually describe it the following way:
It is a fact, that with increasing CO2 the characteristic CO2 emission into space comes from a greater atmosphere layer (measured by the temperature of the emitting molecule via the spectrum width).
In layman terms this means the lower layer losses one way to transport energy and thus has a lower thermal conductivity (which means it warms)
This effect is well understood and can be calculated to the 3.7 W/m^2 cited by IPCC, the question reamins, what this means to the temperature.
All the best regards,
LoN

My guess is all of the feedback ‘constants’ are driven by the variables “The rest of the processes, including convection, conduction, feedbacks, etc. are too complicated to discuss here and are not completely understood anyway.” Without understanding those variables ones instrumentation is left to quantify the dynamics. Empirical prediction?

Rubbish…

While it doesn’t refute your argument, I want to point out that assertion #2, technically, is not correct. There are many sources of energy on Earth that are not sun related. Simply because it has mass, the Earth contains ~5^41 J of energy. It creates a vast gravitational well that imparts energy on all objects on the planet. Additionally, a lot of our energy sources have no ties to solar energy (e.g. fission reacts on Uranium which is, most likely, a remnant of a distant supernova).
However, if you were to say that the sun is the source of all BIOLOGICAL energy, I wouldn’t argue.

How much of the 33 degrees is due to heat escaping from the Earth’s core and tidal forces?

I question the analysis by Herman and Pielke in
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/07/blackbody-radiation-by-ockhams-razor.html
Comments from Herman and Pielke are particularly wellcome.

That is a very good simple explanation of the greenhouse effect.
Can you tell me, does atmospheric CO2 currently absorb 100% of the longwave IR in the bandwidths which apply?
If so, at what altitude is the saturation achieved?
Assuming that additional CO2 would lower that altitude, what sort of effect would this actually have on surface T? I mean, given what we know about the atmosphere I would think convection would distribute this additional atmospheric heat well enough to prevent a significant increase to the ground temp and probably keep the increased surface atmospheric temp from increasing a great deal as well. I guess what I’m really asking is, if all of the IR that CO2 can absorb is already being absorbed by CO2 within the first several tens of meters above the surface (to my understanding), what additional impact can more CO2 have on the overall heat content of the atmosphere, and does it really make a difference if that heat is added in the first 50 meters or the first 5?
Maybe this isn’t so, I do not know for a fact if the CO2 is currently absorbing 100% of the IR it is capable of, though I’ve read and been told that this is true. Maybe science doesn’t yet know the answer to these other questions, which would seem plausible as this is almost bordering on chaos theory; (everything’s just so, you have all of the measurements and can accurately predict what will happen forever, then a butterfly flaps it’s wings and all of your calculations go awry.)
Or maybe I’m just way off base in my line of thinking here.
Please let me know your thoughts.
And again, this is a really good article in describing the greenhouse theory of global warming to someone (like me) who hasn’t the scientific background to do the math, but is really trying to understand and keep up with the debate.

This is entirely reasonable. For me, that we have greenhouse affects on the planet is rather boring (not that your presentation was). It’s kind of a stable thing and of not much complexity relatively speaking.
It’s the feedbacks and turbulent nature of the thermosphere that fascinates me. Much harder to simply explain and therefore endlessly fascinating to me. If each of our gasses and particulates in our overturning thermosphere (warm to cold in height so it wants to be turbulent) were colored, it would be a right pretty ever changing kaleidoscope of swirling color topped with a ribbon-like fairly stable stratospheric layer (cold to warm in height so those layers don’t want to be turbulent), and so on. If one were to try to demonstrate AGW increases in any one color in that thermosphere, stratosphere, etc, you would be hard pressed to do so. But regardless I could stare at such a presentation for hours.

This shows a lack of understanding of how a green house works. A green house restricts transfer of energy it does not heat or cool. By claiming that green house gasses that restrict energy transfer result in warming you are missing half the equation because they also restrict the increase in warming to start with. The restriction leads to less extreme temperatures both warm and cold. If the globe was experiencing an increase in Green House Effect we would see a reduction of extreme weather events because of the restrictive nature you claim. There is no evidence of that! Climate continues within the range expected for an interglacial period as displayed by historic interglacials.

While I agree that so-called greenhouse gases reduce the cooling rate of the earth, the degree that CO2 affects that cooling rate is in question. Ibelieve the formula used by IPCC is in serious error.
The IPCC contends that doubling the co2 concentration will cause a forcing of 3 to 6 degrees C. Unfortunately they seem to be better at fudging data than applying physics. Their standard calculation is shown below.
∆T=4.7ln(c/co)=4.7ln(836/368)=4.7*.69=3.2Deg C
However, H20 also absorbs 15 micron radiation. Since water vapor concentration is 1 to 4% of the near earth atmosphere, it would be more accurate to include all gasses that absorb 15 micron radiation. To be clear, c should include 10000ppm water vapor plus 836 ppm co2, and co should be 10000 ppm water vapor plus 386 ppm co2.
∆T=4.7*ln(10836/10386) = 4.7*.044 = .2 degrees C
I can live with that.

The radiation density in my idealized CO2 fog must, when it reaches equilibrium with the LWIR-radiating Earth surface, have the same radiation density as the Earth’s surface. It cannot exceed this radiation density. The CO2 concentration is not a variable that can manipulate this. The fog model only breaks down with extremely low CO2 concentrations; but the variation in CO2 concentration from 270 ppm to 390 ppm does absolutely NOTHING to the radiation density in this fog.

So any measured INCREASE in downwelling CO2-caused LWIR radiation must be caused exactly because this fog model is idealized and the real atmosphere behaves differently. IOW, CO2 moelcules collide with O2 etc and heat the gas mix up via conduction. Where, again, energy leaves the radiation model and turns into plain old kinetic energy, heats the atmosphere up, leading to convection. As Abdusamatov has said “Heat rises up, not down”.

“If you’ve done your arithmetic correctly, you should have come up with something like 255 K. But with the atmosphere, it is about 288 K, 33 degrees warmer. This is the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere.”
I politely disagree. That 255K has been obtained by blackbody calculation, but confusingly with present Earth’s albedo (which is predominantly made by clouds and snow/ice). Look at the nearby Moon with albedo 0.11 (Earth has ~0.3): its average temperature is 270K.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
So for start, 288-270K = 18K is more correct.
Second, this temperature difference is because of existence of ATMOSPHERE, not greenhouse gases. It is easy to show, that on Earth, the main “greenhouse gas”, water vapor in various states, effectively cools the Earth: a) by clouds, creating major part of albedo, b) by evaporative cooling, preventing all Earth being hot as dry deserts, c) by ice/snow, participating on albedo.
Mere greenhouse gases in a thin atmosphere create no “greenhouse” effect. Mars atmosphere consists of 95% CO2 – but Mars blackbody T = Mars actual T = 210K.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
You need a bulk atmosphere (in our case composed of N2 and O2) and water in liquid/vapor state to get habitable conditions with mild diurnal cycle and pleasant average temperature. Our nights are warmer than on the Moon not because of “backradiation”, but mainly because the atmosphere holds the daily heat. “Backradiation” on Mars does NOTHING, and the effective concentration of CO2 there (6,000 ppm) is that of CO2+water vapor on Earth (if water vapor creates 90% of GHE).
In my chemist opinion, the greenhouse theory confuses the simple heat storage in the atmospheric mass with hypothetical arrows in radiation diagrams.
Not to forget, how do I know the IR radiation is coming from IR active gas, and not from nitrogen/oxygen bulk atmosphere? That forgotten 99% of the atmosphere radiates in IR spectrum, as every material with its temperature above zero K.

Speaking for the simple-minded among us, I think we are very fortunate to have an atmosphere that “behaves/responds” as well as it does supporting life as we know it. Keeping it simple, I don’t think anyone would argue that the atmosphere is in equilibrium. But it is “responding” to something. Right? Could it be the sun above and/or the oceans and land mass below or volcanic emissions or even the pesky humans? I’ll stick with Ian Plimer on this one and say the pesky humans are the least of out worries.

What is Governing the Temperature of the Earth?
The surface of Planet Earth is heated by the incident short-wave electromagnetic radiation from the sun. In order to balance the temperature of the earth, most of this incident radiation energy is, contrary to the assumption made in the AGW hypothesis, removed from the surface by convective cooling by a flowing atmosphere and by evaporation (removal of latent heat) from the surfaces of the seas, lakes and moist soil; and by transpiration of plants. Only a small fraction of the incident energy is radiated by the surface towards space in the long-wave infra-red (IR) part of the electromagnetic spectrum [1]. Consequently, the lower atmosphere, is heated by convective heat transfer from the surface of Earth; by release of latent heat during condensation of water vapour (formation of clouds) and; to a small extent, by thermalisation of excited GHG molecules. The so heated air parcels increase in volume (reduce their density) and rise towards higher altitudes, while their temperature reduce along the lapse rate function. The rising warm air is replaced by cooler air, thus maintaining a continuous convective churning/stirring of the atmosphere that we call wind.
In the upper part of the troposphere and in the stratosphere, IR energy can more efficiently be emitted towards space to achieve the required radiation balance of Earth’s. That is, the estimated effective radiation balance temperature for the earth, ‑18°C, is established in the upper portion of troposphere and in the stratosphere and not at the surface of the earth, as anticipated by IPCC and the AGW proponents.
The bottom portion of the troposphere and thereby also the surface of the earth, exhibit an average temperature of +15°C. This is approximately 33 K higher than what can be estimated based on the radiative balance with space. This temperature increase is the direct result of the presence of an atmosphere, with its given mass, within the gravitational field of the earth (see contributions by Jelbring and Thieme below). The atmosphere (the air), with its mass, is attracted towards the surface of the earth by the gravitational field. Most of this atmospheric mass will thus reside close the surface of the earth where it is compressed to a higher pressure (on average 1.013 bar) and obtains thus a higher temperature. Correspondingly, the atmosphere becomes thinner (less compression and thus lower pressure) and cooler, the higher the altitude is. This pressure and temperature distribution is governed by a restricted thermodynamic equilibrium, so-called adiabatic condition. Such a condition prevails when the size of the air parcels is large in comparison to the length scales for heat conduction and diffusion during the time interval pertaining to the state change. Adiabatic changes in temperature thus occur due to changes in pressure of a gas while not adding or removing any heat from or to the surrounding. This entails that the total energy content in an air parcel with a given mass remains constant when it moves vertically, that is, the sum of potential and thermal energy remains constant, independent of the altitude.
The (vertical) circulation of the air is a continuous process that is driven by the sun and the dynamics of the planetary atmosphere. At high altitude (high potential energy), a parcel of air of given mass has a large volume and low temperature (low thermal energy). When brought to lower altitudes (low potential energy and high thermal energy) it becomes compressed and thus heated. Again, the temperature of the air parcel will be governed the lapse rate function, which is a consequence of the prevailing thermodynamic equilibrium under adiabatic conditions.
The mathematical description of this mechanism has been called the adiabatic model of atmospheric temperature (see papers by Khilyuk and Chilingar) and can closely (within 0.1%) describe the long-term average temperature distribution as function of altitude in the troposphere. The normal atmospheric pressure (1.013 bar) near the surface of the earth will bring the air temperature to around +15°C, or TEarth  33 K higher than the temperature determined from the radiation balance between incident (short-wave) radiation from the sun and outgoing (long-wave) radiation from the upper part of the atmosphere towards space.
The cyclic heat input from the sun (over day and night; seasonal variations at different latitudes, etc.) provides the driving forces behind the continuously circulating atmosphere and its vertical transport of heat from the surface of the earth to higher altitudes, where heat balance can be established by long-wave radiation towards space. Well proven, basic physics considerations (radiation balance and adiabatic compression) therefore directly explain the observed temperature of Earth’s atmosphere, without the need to revert to obscure and unverified greenhouse effects from greenhouse gases.
The Hothouse Venus
Planet Venus, with its CO2 rich atmosphere (96.5% CO2) has a very high surface temperature, in the order of 462°C (735 K). This high surface temperature is often claimed to be the result of a runaway greenhouse effect due to the high CO2 concentration, evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of the levels of other GHGs. This, of course, sounds plausible in the ears of the AGW proponents, who want to scare the inhabitants of Planet Earth that similar dramatic temperature increases (beyond the tipping point) may develop also here, if we do not take appropriate measures to curb the emission of GHGs.
There exists, however, a physically well-founded, explanation for the high surface temperature on planet Venus, namely the adiabatic model of atmospheric temperature (see papers by Khilyuk and Chilingar), mentioned above. Not only is the concentration of CO2 much higher at Venus than on Earth, but also the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is much higher, approximately 90 bar. While the gravitational effects on the mass of the (dynamic) planetary atmosphere heats the bottom of the atmosphere and the surface of Earth by TEarth  33 K above the effective temperature expected from radiation balance alone, the same effect on Venus heats its surface by TVenus  507 K above its effective radiation balance temperature, which is ‑45°C (228 K). The adiabatic model of atmospheric temperature also well describes the temperature of the Venusian atmosphere as function of altitude, within 1%. Again, there is no need to revert to an (unverified) runaway greenhouse hypothesis to explain the high surface temperature of Venus. Plain, well established, physics suffices. Consequently, the (runaway) greenhouse effect does not exist.
Suggested Reading:
H.R. Jelbring. The Greenhouse Effect as a Function of Atmospheric Mass, Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Number 2 – 3, May 2003, pp. 351-356, http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf
Hans Jelbring, Politics and the Greenhouse Effect, http://www.tech-know.eu/NISubmission/pdf/Politics_and_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
Heinz Thieme, The Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect – explained stepwise, http://realplanet.eu/atmoseffect.htm
L. F. Khilyuk, G.V. Chilingar, On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved? Environmental Geology, Volume 50, Number 6 / August, 2006, pp. 899-910, http://www.springerlink.com/content/t341350850360302/ (behind pay-wall)
G.V. Chilingar, L.F. Khilyuk, O. G. Sorokhtin. Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission. Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2008, pages 1‑9
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen9/Chillingar_Atm_Cooling_due_to_CO2.pdf

Thus, the warming is a result of decreased cooling rates.

This is a bit misleading. As you point out later, the total heat released to space is going to be the same eventually. And the amount of radiation released by the surface will actually increase to include the increased amount of long-wave radiation downward. What’s really changed is the ability of the atmosphere to absorb additional heat because of the increased amount of GHGs in it. This means both the surface and the lower atmosphere will warm (if feedbacks are ignored.)

Though I agree with the general idea written about here, I still have a few questions about the greenhouse effect that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere yet (perhaps I just missed it along the way). If greenhouse gases increase, would they not absorb incoming IR as well as outgoing IR? If they do, how do we determine which IR they abosorb at what rate? Also, since CO2 and other gases can/do emit IR in all directions, how do we determine where the radiation emitted goes or is it just assumed that it is emitted in all directions at the same rate/proportion? Is it easier to emit IR outward, sideways, down, any other direction depending on which layer of the atmosphere said greenhouose gas is in? Is all or some of this part of the great unknown at this point?

Is it not true that your explanation is based on the assumption that CO2 molecules are distributed randomly in the atmosphere? Is it not true that there have been no experiments to test the assumption that CO2 molecules are randomly distributed throughout the atmosphere?

And then… then there’s night. That would be what half of the planet is experiencing at any one time.
Has anyone tried using a satellite to measure IR radiation on the night side? If night time IR emissions are dropping, then I’d accept that “something” is happening. But as it is, “nothing” out of the ordinary is happening.
Any attempt to show “something” will continue to fail as long as heat continues to radiate away on the night side. That would be the major mechanism of the planet’s temperature self-regulation.
Of course the “greenhouse effect” is real, and of course H2O is the overwhelmingly dominant factor. The currently popular fantasy about CO2 “tipping” the balance in some dramatic fashion is ludicrous, and ignores historically significant CO2 levels that did not (and can not) cause any of these “tips”.
If only some of these people would stand back and see how insane the concept of runaway “feedbacks” is at the gas percentages we’re talking about… especially in the context of an atmosphere that has remained relatively stable for BILLIONS of years.

Claes Johnson says:
July 23, 2010 at 8:35 am
“I question the analysis by Herman and Pielke in […]”
Great to see you here, Prof. Johnson! I guess your argument (ignoring the low frequency backradiation) is the classical thermodynamics position. My model of a “CO2 fog” that redistributes the “backradiation” around until an quilibrium is reached practically has the same effect: As the radiation in this absorption band goes back and forward in all directions, it practically cancels out, and that is exactly what your argument says (that it’s irrelevant).
Yours is the general view of energy balance, mine – or Dr. Pielke’s – looks at individual rays and tries to figure out the system dynamics.

There is no such a thing as the greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases are gases IN a greenhouse, where heated gases are trapped and relatively isolated not to lose its heat so rapidly. If greenhouse effect were to be true, as Svante Arrhenius figured it out: CO2 like the window panes in a greenhouse, but …the trouble is that those panes would be only 3.8 panes out of 10000, there would be 9996.2 HOLES.
See:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28018819/Greenhouse-Niels-Bohr
No CO2=No life on earth=No YOU.
BTW: CO2 it is not black, ya know, it’s what you exhale (900 grams a day)and plants breathe.

I disagree completely with the 3rd and 4th paragraphs because they refer to a step change in absorption and not the resulting steady state condition after the system returns to equilibrium! The temperature of theEarth is controlled by the radiation received from the sun. If that radiation is held constant, the changes in the CO2 concentration will not deduce the energy out, only slow the transit time temporarily until the new equilibrium condition is achieved. Energy in was balanced with the energy out prior to the step change and if the energy in does not change, the energy out will again balance the energy in at the new equilibrium level. The only change is the temporary change to the radiation transit time.

DirkH says:
July 23, 2010 at 9:40 am
“IOW, the temperature anomaly must be the first derivative of the CO2 increase ”
Correction : “the temperature anomaly must be the first derivative of the CO2 concentration”
We must be nit-picky here.

Omitted is the fact that the overwhelming greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and not CO2.
I do not know of any serious student of climate study refuting the fact that water vapor literally blankets the planet and keeps it warm during nighttime.
This fact is evident whenever cloud cover at night blankets us even in colder weather.
Everyone who is alive recognizes that fact and it has never been in any serious dispute.
A crystal clear night cools more rapidly than a cloudy one. What is always lost on the warmest, and apparently the authors of this piece, is that CO2 remains relatively constant whether or not the night sky is cloudy or clear.
If CO2 were a dominate greenhouse gas, then every night would remain warm regardless of cloud cover.
Thus endeth the obvious. Why not point it out?

Vince Causey says:
July 23, 2010 at 8:15 am
“Good article Dr. Pielke. It is unfortunate that this needs saying at all, but I fear the infamous G&T paper has done a bit of damage to the credibility of sceptical science.”
Not at all! It is the same argument as formulated by Prof. Claes Johnson and classical thermodynamics! It is just that we mere mortals often have a hard time following the physicists because they tend to make rather large steps in their arguments. It’s not a contradiction at all.

1. It’s kind of sad that Pielke needs to put this kind of thing forward and that hoi polloi are/were/continue to be so wishful thinking as to believe the greenhouse effect can not exist or the like.
2. There are a lot of good insights from nuclear reactor design that are useful in giving insights into why greenhouse effect occurs. Things like understanding heat transfer accross plates of multiple cladding content. Things like how a material may be non-absorbing of fast neutrons, but absorbing of thermal neutrons. how water can act as a “reflector” despite isotropic nature of the liquid itself, how power can remain the same, but centerline temp change as a result of gradient across the plate. Etc. etc.

Wow, this is a popular thread!
As few are likely to connect my first post back to Juraj V insightful comment,
I herewith try to make a self-contained post.
What about the application of ‘greenhouse gas’ theory to Mars?
The (thin) Martian atmosphere is >95% CO2.
Unless I’ve blown the math, Mars atmosphere has much more (total) CO2 enveloping Mars than our Earth enjoys.
Yet the atmospheric temperature of Mars is the same as the BlackBody temperature, at 210K.
So, it seems that ‘greenhouse gas’ theory should apply with equal vigor to warm Mars as to more complex planets like Earth.
Is it wrong to expect that a planet with more total CO2 than Earth would have such a negligible ‘warming’ by all of that CO2?
Perhaps Dr. P will run the GG math on this nice clean example planet, which lacks the complexity of oceans, clouds and highly variable albedo feedbacks.
TIA
RR

Steven Mosher says:
July 23, 2010 at 9:57 am
“[…]GHGs will not cool the planet.”
CO2 in upper atmospheric layers does cool the planet.
“The planet’s temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance.”
from:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
See also:
“Earth’s upper atmosphere cooling dramatically ”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34479085/

Enneagram says:
July 23, 2010 at 9:03 am
“Tallbloke is right. Do you prepare your breakfast with a hair dryer?”
No, but I do put water in the freezer and after a while I get ice cubes.

Perhaps we need to rename the “greenhouse effect” to something that is more descriptive? After all, that’s not how greenhouses work.

After all these decades, how in this world can anyone talk about greenhouse anything and not be talking about water?
We’re still trying to come up with some plausible explanation of CO2.
A person would think, after all this time, and all the horrible things that are going to happen to us all, we might have some sort of clue.

All climate forecasts need to take a lesson from economics. There is a Latin phrase which is used (not over used) in economics. That phrase is: Cēterīs paribus.
Unfortunately in climatology, as in economics, one cannot hold all other things equal (constant). This is where the “rub” is. The AGW concept may be right in theory, but it will never be useful in forecasting the earth’s climate because there are so many many other factors in play. I doubt that no one really knows what all those factors are; nevermind being able to model their effects and the interplay amongst all of those factors.
This is amongst my biggest complaints about the AGW concept (that controlling ONLY the relative amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will greatly impact Global Warming). What is also so remarkable about the AGW concept is that such an infintesimally small change in the relative amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere can have such an enormous impact on the Earth’s average temperature (assuming that anyone can accurately calculate what it is).

The surface warming part of the ‘greenhouse effect’ is just the downard IR radiation from the atmosphere to the surface. Most of this originates in first kilometer layer above the surface. However, there is no equilibrium. The temperature of this layer is mainly set by convection from the surface. The idea that CO2 can cause any kind of climate change is incorrect.
The surface heating is dynamic. The daily heat load hitting the surface can be up to 30 MJ/day – varying continuously during the day. At night the cooling is between about zero and 360 kJ per hour depending on humidity and cloud cover. Over the last 200 years the 100 ppm increase in CO2 has produced an increase in downard ‘clear sky’ LWIR flux of 1.7 W.m-2. That is 6 kJ/hour or 0.15 MJ perday. Add this to the rest of the surface surface flux and it is buried in the noise. The surface flux is also coupled into the surface and heats the ground down to about 1 meter.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A 100 PPM INCREASE IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONCENTRATION TO CAUSE ANY KIND OF CLIMATE CHANGE
There is no CO2 ‘signature’ in the meteorological surface air temperature (MSAT) record. This has been created from the ocean surface temperature changes along the path of the weather systems that show up in the MSAT. In the US it is just the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The hockey stick itself is not the major fraud. It is the use of the hockey stick to ‘calibrate’ the climate simulations that is the real fraud. The climate results are then used to perpetuate the rest of the ‘environmental disaster’ fraud. The increases in ocean surface temperatures from about 1960 onwards have been reprocessed into a ‘CO2 signature’ in the meteorlogical surface temperature record. The ocean surface temerpatures are now cooling so the fraud is finally being revealed. The oceans won’t ‘hide the decline’.
For more info go to Energy and Environment 21(4) 171-200 (2010) ‘A Null Hypotheisis for CO2’
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/9p72043270187318/?p=186148f7bd6a4c1681163d19daa8aea0&pi=2
[Paywall, unfortunately – if WUWT sends me an e-mail address I can send a copy of the paper]

The fastest way to lose your soul: Change your creed to GWR religion.

With regards to the violation of the second law, what actually happens when absorbing gases are added to the atmosphere is that the cooling is slowed down. Equilibrium with the incoming absorbed sunlight is maintained by the emission of infrared radiation to space. When absorbing gases are added to the atmosphere, more of emitted radiation from the ground is absorbed by the atmosphere.
I have problems with this. You cannot absorbed more energy than is available to the receptive molecule. Perhaps Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr would like to quantify the amount of surface
emitted LWR that CO2 is receptive to that escapes directly into open space.

Monckton says:
“whether attempting to mitigate future “global warming” will make any real difference to the climate (it won’t: remember Canute), whether the cost of forestalling each degree of “global warming” will be disproportionate to the climatic benefit (it will), and whether focused adaptation to any change in the climate, where and if necessary, will be orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to prevent that change from occurring in the first place (yes).”
If some of the ice core data is correct, co2 and methane started increasing about 6 or 8 thousand years ago, about when men, due to a more beneficial climate, crawled out of their caves and began to farm and icrease their population. Can’t quote the study, but it was in “Scientific American” years ago when I still subscribed to that rag. The chart actually picked up the drop in c02 and methane that occured about the time of the two great plagues which substantially reduced populations around 450? and 1450? AD. Makes sense given what we do to warm ourselves (build fires), irrigate crops (rotting vegetation), raise livestock which defecate, as do we, etc. It would appear from that analysis that the only real reductions in these gasses which we could cause would require drastic depopulation of our planet. Of course I am doing what I hate here by implying cause and effect from a simple Algore type of chart.
As far as the cost of any potential change in our production of greenhouse gasses, I totally agree with your comments. Not going to the extreme of drastic population reduction, there will be little effect by other actions and significant socio-economic negative impacts as a result. We must, after all, continue to heat and eat. One can see it coming here with the various carbon tax schemes being planned by the US federal government which all will be detrimental to our economy and way of life while giving more control to the government. But that is the real goal in our particular situation.

Good article. Second time I read it today. I’ve always accepted the greenhouse effect because it just seems intuitive. However I have recently been reading some of the work by some of those who are skeptical of the greenhouse effect theory and they make compelling arguments.
So let’s just assume the greenhouse effect is real and it is responsible for the planet being about 33 degrees K warmer than it would be without it. If water is responsible for 95% of the effect, does that suggest that all the remaining GHGs are responsible for only about 1.6 degrees K of the total effect? I suppose this is the central question. Just how much warming (or reduced cooling) is likely to result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration? As I understand it, a doubling would theoretically result in about 1.2 degrees K of apparent warming. Is this even significant?

The graphic accompanying the article is not helpful to those of us who need education because it does not show the relevant mechanisms. Could someone please post a graphic that covers the molecular level, sort of a “Radiation’s Quest for Space” graphic that shows radiation leaving the cooling black asphalt and all the adventures it might have, especially encounters with CO2 molecules, as it heads for space?

“”” Jeff says:
July 23, 2010 at 8:20 am
slowing down the cooling of an object cannot cause it temperature to rise … THAT would violate the 2nd law … “””
Jeff, if only you knew just how much, a statement such as you just made lowers YOUR credibility (as to knowledge of thermo-dynamics.)
Let us take as the (your) “object” a small spherical “Blackbody”; might as well make it the size of a tennis ball, say about 5 cm diameter. I choose a “blackbody”, simply because you did not exclude it from your “object” category; and other than that it is a simple thing to understand. In the end though, it matters not that I choose a blackbody. And since we are doing this; stick in the sand wise, I will also make the body to have infinite thermal conductivity; well very high anyway; and it is a thin shell like a ping pong ball so that it is of very low mass and heat capacity.
So we put our ball out in space in earth’s orbital position (from the sun) to soak up solar radiation at 1366 W/m^2 of intercept are exposed to the sun. All that incident energy gets absorbed; and since the ball is highly thermally conductive; it spreads uniformly throughout the ball, so the Temperature of the ball is the same all over the surface. BB radiation theory tells us that the ball will radiate uniformly (W/m^2) from all over the surface, as soon as its Temperature moves above zero Kelvins (absolute zero). With this loss of energy through radiation, the rate of increase of temperature with the incoming solar radiation, will slow down, since the energy arrives from the sun at a constant 1366 W/m^2, but leaves at a sigma.T^4 W/m^2 rate based on the Temperature. Since the total surface area of our uniform Temperature ball is four times the intercept area collecting solar energy, the uniform rate of energy loss from the ball, cannot exceed 1366/4 or 341.5 W/m^2 (Trenberth uses 342).
We know from our compendium of useless facts that must be remebered; that at 288 K; the mean earth Temperature; the rate of black body radiation is 390 W/m^2. So we are less than that. 0.875641 of that to be more specific; and we know from BB theory that that number varies as T^4.
So 4th root of 0.875641 is 0.967345, and we multiply that by the 288 Kelvins of earth Temperature and we get 278. 6 Kelvins, or about 5.45 deg C.
Well our authors above said 255 Kelvins; but they don’t have a black body; theirs has an albedo equal to Earth’s, and that is what lowers us to 255 K.
Ok so far so good. I deliberaterly chose a low thermal mass ping pong like ball so that it heats and cools very rapidly; if I make it thin enough it would change temperature in milliseconds or less, adjusting its Temperature so that incoming energy RATE always equals outgoing energy RATE (Watts).
Now you have declared that the cooling rate does not change the Temperature. Well specifically you said “”” slowing down the cooling of an object cannot cause it temperature to rise “””
So now I want to modify our ball to “slow down its cooling rate.” Well just to see if you are correct.
I’m not going to add an atmosphere to our ball; that just complicates things with hurricanes; and tornadoes and things.
So now I am going to fill our nearly massless ping pong ball with lead to increase its mass by a huge amount, and with a material that isn’t too great a thermal conductor either (for a metal).
Now a Maxwell’s Demon sitting on the surface of the sun looking at our new ball, is not going to “see” ANY difference in the appearance of the ball; but its gravimeter is going to detect that the gravitation pull of our modified ball on the sun has increased by a huge factor so it does know the ball is different; but not in external visual appearance.
Now the radiation impinging on our heavy ball is still totally absorbed; but now the ball is not infinitely thermally conductive, so the rate at which heat travels through the ball to the unradiated isde slows down as most of the heat has to propagate through the lead core, which isn’t such a great conductor.
Now notice that the thermal black body radiation being emitted from the surface of the ball, encounters NO impediment of any kind; it simply leaves as before, but the presence of the lead core slows down the rate that heat is moved from the sun side to the night side, which slows the rate at which the sun side can cool.
Since the night side can only radiate energy that comes to it from the sun side, by conduction through the ball, that heat can only flow, if there is a Temperature gradient through the ball to drive the heat. It is quite like Voltage across a Resistor driving a current through the resistor. No Voltage difference; no current flow.
So our ball can no longer be isothermal like it used to be. The sun side must get hotter since heat is arriving faster than it is being radiated (1366 W/m^2 in and 341.5 out) to that extra 1022.5 W/m^2 has to travel through the ball to get radiated from the rest of the surface.
The sun side Temperature increases above 278 K setting up a temperature gradient which starts to drive heat through the ball; but the night side must cool down since it waqs also radiating at 341.5 W/m^2; but we have slowed down the rate of supplu of that energy from the sun side, so the night side temeprature must fall, as well as the sun side heating up; and all this happened simply because we slowed down the rate of heat flow.
Eventually the situation will stabilize; with the sun side somewhat hotter than 278 K, and the night side somewhat cooler than 278 K and the Temperature difference is driving 1022.5 W/m^2 through the ball to other parts (on average).
Since the rate of loss of energy goes as T^4; so it is non-linear with temperature, the colder parts of the ball, are not doing their fair share of cooling, and the hotter parts are being overworked, and if we average the Temperature all over the ball surface that average will ALWAYS be hgher than the original case of an isothermal ball at 278 K all over.
Now I didn’t put any atmospheric impediment in the way of energy loss from the surface; I simply slowed down the rate at which that energy can be lossed; in this case by raising the thermal mass and hence thermal time constant of the ball.
We have such a ball in the solar system. The Planet Mercury keeps one face facing the sun almost all the time; and it isn’t highly thermally conductive, and has no impeding atmosphere and the sun side is much hotter than the night side.
You get into real trouble trying to apply Second Law concepts to Electromagnetic Radiation. EM radiation IS energy; but it is NOT HEAT; and the second law applies to HEAT transport; NOT energy transport.
A photon emitted from some interstellar molecule at a Temperature of say 3 Kelvins; the background Temperature, can easily impinge on the surface of the sun and be absorbed; or for that matter on the surface of some Neutron star at some totally enormous Temperature. Photons don’t know ANYTHING about Temperature; they can come from anywhere and go anywhere without impediment.

How much of the 33 k is due to clouds?

PS I have also been working on the validity of the claim in many of the IPCC models that high AGW/high feedback has so far been partially masked by man-made cooling via aerosols decreasing cloud droplet size thereby increasing albedo. This greatly worries the modellers because of the uncertainties of cloud physics although the direct aerosol effect has been verified by Mt. Pinatubo.
The problem is the cloud theory [Twomey 1974] uses a very simplistic approximation to the physics. Whilst it does successfully predict increased albedo for thin clouds with smaller droplets [e.g. ship’s track clouds], it cannot apply to thick clouds. Also, if you think about it, once the light entering a cloud becomes fully diffuse, the maximum albedo is 0.5; 0.7 is common, I’ve seen 0.9 quoted, there’s an unpredicted angular dependence and no apparent difference of albedo between thick polluted and thick unpolluted clouds.
So, there’s probably another optical process giving enhanced back-scattering at the tops of clouds: I think I’ve worked out why but the maths is horrific. No man-made cooling from polluted clouds means either the assumptions about AGW in the models are wrong, they’ve been wrongly calibrated, or both. I prefer the combination.

“Patrik says:
July 23, 2010 at 11:06 am
How much of the 33 k is due to clouds?”
A good question but even more to the point how much of that 33K is due to liquid water oceans.
The air even in it’s entirety could well be a total irrelevance in comparison.

Dr Pielke,
Has anyone looked at the spectra of C02, and the spectrum of IR radiated toward space from earth’s surface, and quantified how much IR is even available to CO2? If CO2 is in trace concentrations, what becomes the probability that this IR from earth’s surface will find a CO2 molecule to energize, and then, even if ALL of it were captured by CO2, what percentage of total re-radiated IR could this even contribute, given those bands of absorption peculiar to CO2? Would not any single humid day be orders of magnitude greater? And after C02 kinetically hands off that energy to water vapor, what mechanism is to prohibit higher energy water vapor from rising and COOLING further?

Robert of Ottawa:

Would the surface temperature of that planet be the same with a massive atmosphere that was completely transparent to all radiation? No, because the atmosphere would still affect the temperature of the planet through conduction and convection, to the point thatthe same radiative balance would exist at the top of the atmosphere, the surface being at a higher temperature than without an atmosphere, due to the physics of the lapse rate.

Not quite. If the atmosphere was completely transparent to all radiation then the surface would be the (main) effective radiating surface, not the TOA. The surface temperature would actually be a bit lower than it would be if there were no atmosphere, as some of the energy from the surface would go into warming the atmosphere through conduction and convection, but the total energy radiated by the surface plus the whole of the atmosphere (not just the TOA) would equal the incoming energy at equilibrium.
The atmosphere would still be warmer at the bottom than at the top, due to the lapse rate, but it would still be a lot colder than would be the case if greenhouse gases were present.

Juraj V. says:
July 23, 2010 at 9:06 am
I agree with Juraj here.

the fritz says:
July 23, 2010 at 10:30 am
Green house effect is not a source of energy; if it warms the surface, something else must cool
__________
This is the worst response I’ve seen to this thread.
No one is talking about the the GH properties of CO2 and other GH gases as being “sources” of energy. The primary (but not only) source of energy on earth is the sun. It is the sun that loses energy that is received by earth, but the net energy of the system (sun-earth) of course stays the same, however, the total entropy of the solar system increases as useful energy is lost.
Ultimately of course, the source of all energy in our region of the universe is gravity, for without it, we’d be just another cold region like the majority of the universe where not much (in fact nothing at all) exciting happens.

The Moon is without an atmosphere. It’s daytime temperature is around 400K (+/-) and it’s night time temperature is about 120K (+/-). So how does one arrive at a temperatiwhere does the 255K temperature of the Earth without an atmosphere. Actually this would be really cool sine the oceans would freeze during the night and boil during the day. Nice model.

The statement that taking away the atmosphere and calculating the expected temperature keeping the albedo the same is nonsense. Most of the albedo effect is the result of the oceans and the atmosphere. Without the atmosphere there can be no ocean and without them the earth would look like the moon with an albedo in the range of 10-12 percent. If you then calculate the expected equilibrium temperature you will get something about 273-278 degrees Kelvin. Thus the “greenhouse effect of 33 degrees” is utterly false. The best that can be said is that the ocean-atmosphere system causes the earth to be 5-10 degrees warmer that it would otherwise be. The term greenhouse is also a nonsense as no greenhouse works in the way suggested by the proponents of the term.

“The bottom line here is that when you add IR absorbing gases to the atmosphere, you slow down the loss of energy from the ground and the ground must warm up. ”
crazy. backwards.
improve the heat capacity of a convective heat exchange system and you increase efficiency.
2 words:
phase change

Bill DiPuccio says:
You are of course correct. The problem with the greenhouse theory is that the planet is not a greenhouse. The greenhouse theory just is no applicable. The big question is what happens to the energy absorped by a CO² molecule in a system as complex as this planet (not just the atmos).

Reed Coray says:
July 23, 2010 at 11:56 am
An intelligent question. The more you try to make a precise mechanistic definition of a “greenhouse gas”, the clearer one will see the holes in the hypothesis, what seemed intuitively simple proves more complex and elusive.

R. Gates says:
July 23, 2010 at 11:44 am
the fritz says:
July 23, 2010 at 10:30 am
Green house effect is not a source of energy; if it warms the surface, something else must cool
__________
This is the worst response I’ve seen to this thread.
Climate is a zero sum game – didn’t you read the memo?

R. Gates says:
Another of your cracked replies courtesy of the Gavin Schidt school of answers.
Gravity does not generate energy. Energy cannot be made or destroyed einstein.
Sure, gravity is a force which creates the conditions for the creation of stars and the nuclear energy in those stars is started by the force of gravity compressing the gases.

P Wilson says:
July 23, 2010 at 11:43 am
the two dominant climatic forces and the effect they have on climate, despite there being a large amount of research on them are: oceans and clouds/water vapour, which comprise 98% of the climate
Which aspect of climate ??

If you’ve done your arithmetic correctly, you should have come up with something like 255 K. But with the atmosphere, it is about 288 K, 33 degrees warmer. This is the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere.

This implies that the presence of the atmosphere causes 33 degrees of warming, but it doesn’t imply that IR absorbing gases are responsible for all (or any) of the 33 degrees.
The atmosphere of Mars contains about 12 times as much CO2 compared to Earth’s atmosphere and there is very little atmospheric warming on Mars. The amount of warming seems more related to the total amount of atmospheric gas and hence pressure.
Mars=low pressure, low warming
Earth=moderate pressure, moderate warming
Venus=very high pressure, very high warming

@ Read Coray 11:56am
Please see my post at 10:34. The terms Greenhouse Effect & Greenhouse Gas have meanings and definitions other than those now generally used. The terms have been hijacked because of their ability to convey a message and at the same time, convey it in a perjorative way. We need terms for the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere that convey the true meaning of those effects & ‘Greenhouse Anything’ just does not do that.

Alas, very superficial and not well done.
I recommend:
Heat Transfer by Infrared Radiation In the Atmosphere: Walter Elsasser, Harvard Meteorology Studies, 5-8, 1948 Pages 1-107.
Pay particular attention to page 23, discussing his general radiation chart for the Troposphere Dr. Elsasser says:
“It may be noted that since the flux in the carbon dioxide band is EQUAL, at any level, to a definite fraction of the black body radiation corresponding to the temperature of that level in BOTH the upward and downward directions, the RESULTANT flux of the CO2 vanishes in the approximation of the chart. This is a fair approximation to the truth in the lower atmosphere (for the upper atmosphere, see Section 12).”
Section 12, as with Plass, et.al, in 1955, notes the CO2 to be a net “upflux” agent in the stratosphere.
I would like to know how the basic physics changed since 1942.
Yours, stubbornly insistent on resolution…
Max Hugoson

THE “GREENHOUSE EFFECT”
AS A FUNCTION OF ATMOSPHERIC MASS
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf

Back to the basic comparison. What do you do when your greenhouse gets to hot?
And what whould mother nature do? You open the vents!

OK gentlemen. Whats wrong with this scheme?
http://i480.photobucket.com/albums/rr165/magellansc24/hansen_oven.jpg
😀

I think that one area of misunderstanding is that, although the presence of greenhouse gases permits the surface to be warmer than otherwise, it does not necessarily cause the surface to be warmer.

Herman and Pielke end their dissertation with the following pragraph:
“For those that might still question this conclusion, consider taking away the atmosphere from the Earth, but change nothing else, i.e., keep the solar albedo the same (the lack of clouds would of course change this), and calculate the equilibrium temperature of the Earth’s surface. If you’ve done your arithmetic correctly, you should have come up with something like 255 K. But with the atmosphere, it is about 288 K, 33 degrees warmer. This is the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere.”
______________________________________________
Now, apart from the fact that without CO2, life as we know it would be non existent on this planet, can Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr. please tell us what the temperature would be like if we remove only the CO2 component from the atmospheric mix and keep all else unchanged? How much less the temperature of our planet would be? Wouldn’t this hypothetical removal of all CO2 be the reverse of doubling CO2, or would the logarithmic ‘diminishing returns’ characteristic come into play? If the latter is true (logarithmic diminishing return), then why the GE increase due to increase in CO2? Is it tru that the effect of increased CO2 is practically capped at 50ppm?
I m waiting with baited breath.

Juraj V:

OK gentlemen. Whats wrong with this scheme?

I think you know the answer to that already, but, for the benefit of those who might not:
This is not about heat flow (which would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics) but rather nett energy flux A warmer body can absorb radiation from a cooler body because, being warmer, it must still be emitting more energy than it’s receiving from the cooler body. In other words, the nett energy flux is still away from the warmer body and towards the cooler body – it’s just that the nett energy flux from the warmer body is less than it would be in the absence of the cooler body. This does not warm the body, but rather slows down the rate of its cooling (if it’s cooling) or increases the rate of its warming (if it’s warming)

R Gates says
This is the worst response I’ve seen to this thread.
——————
I thank you for your comment; we can do a little more calculations; the average temperature of the atmosphere is -17°C approximately what is given by applying the Stefan law; the thermal capacity of the stratosphere is approximately 1/5 of that of the troposphere; that means that if the troposphere warms by about .7°C due to GHG effect, the stratosphere has to cool by about 3.5°C, approximately what is observed by satellites

Several commentators have expressed it more eloquently than I would have so I will not retread that ground. I would, however, say that the things that you dismiss and assume away have more effect than the CO2 and its radiation. Note that radiation is not the only mode of heat transfer. Radiation only becomes important when you are dealing with heat energy leaving the earth-atmosphere system. Remember, you are dealing with trace amounts of the substance. I would recommend some detailed study on the subject of heat and mass transfer. You might find it enlightening.

Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr.,
CORRECTION : Re2 means Re squared, not “Re2 means Re to the fourth power”. I corrected in the post below. Sorry about that.
—————————
In your post shouldn’t the equation be as follows:
4 x pi x Re2 x sigma x T4 = pi x Re2 x Fso
You show the equation:
4 x pi x sigma T4= pi x Re2 x Fso
Where T4 is T to the fourth power and Re2 is Re squared.
I am wondering you left out an “Re squared” in the first half of your equation?
John

stephen richards says:
July 23, 2010 at 12:15 pm
R. Gates says:
“Another of your cracked replies courtesy of the Gavin Schidt school of answers.”
“Gravity does not generate energy. Energy cannot be made or destroyed einstein.
Sure, gravity is a force which creates the conditions for the creation of stars and the nuclear energy in those stars is started by the force of gravity compressing the gases.”
As several of us discussed in a previous post, gravity is not even really a force but a condition, curvature, of space-time which occurs in the presence of mass causing everthing in its reach to move in a straight line though curved space. The source of energy represented by radioactive material in otherwise empty space would not be due to present gravity though it was originally created by gravity, previously, in the formation a large enough star to forge its properties when it exploded at the end of its life. I believe iron is the heaviest material that can be created in a “living” star that has not gone super nova. Fun stuff.

ScienceofDoom has a great article series which is quite detailed on the subject, the first of which is called “CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part One”
This is a great website which deals only with the science. The administrator is a true scientist and excellent teacher. In the storm of political discussion, this is a great science website to get the basics.
[url]http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/11/28/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-one/[/url]

I’m going to put this another way for you. Lets say we were talking about visible light energy rather than infra-red energy (they are, in any case, only distinct in terms of our physical perception of them rather than physical properties in any case) . What AGW proponents are saying is that we have, in CO2, a translucent panel above our heads (i.e. it absorbs light). According to AGW proponents, if we put more and more translucent panels above our heads the area beneath the translucent panels will get brighter and brighter.
Something sounds wrong with that idea doesn’t it?
What’s more, what happened to the idea that when a gas receives heat energy it causes the gas to do work which in turn results in its expansion. According to AGW theory this would happen with O2 but not with CO2 because CO2 is busily doing something else with all that heat.

Would someone please address the assumption that CO2 is distributed randomly throughout the atmosphere? If the assumption is correct then CO2 is the only thing in the atmosphere that is randomly distributed. Oxygen, for a handy example, is not randomly distributed. Yet this assumption underlies all so-called science by the warmist crowd. To me, the fact that this assumption is used just show that climate science has not advanced to the stage of experiment.

RuhRoh says:
July 23, 2010 at 1:23 pm
So,
Why do not Dewar (‘Thermos’) bottles contain CO2 for the excellent properties of impeding radiative heat transfer?
I’ve just filed a provisional patent on this as we speak.
I’ll remember all of you small people when I am rich beyond measure…
RR
—
Just call it “CarboJug – a carbon-capture device which keeps your coffee warm!” Pre-loaded with CO2 generated from coal-fired power plants!
Put a bunch of “endorsed by the WWF, Greenpeace, and NASA/GISS” stickers on the box, get Al Gore to do the infomercials (“improve your Chakra with CarboJug”), and voila – a blockbuster product that will make you millions!

From scienceofdoom.com:
“The Stefan-Bloltmann Law states:
j = εσ(T^4)
Where
j = total energy radiated per unit area per unit time
ε = emissivity, ranging from 0 to 1, where 1 is a perfect black body
σ = the Stefan Boltzmann constant, 5.67 x 10-8
σ = temperature in K
The effective temperature of the sun is 5780K, it is pretty close to a blackbody, and its radius, r = 696 x 10^6m
The area of the surface of a sphere = 4πr^2
So Total Energy, E = 5.67-8 x 57804 x π x (696 x 10^6)2 = 3.85 x 10^26 W – That’s a lot of Watts!
How much hits the earth?
Radius of the earth, re = 6.37 x 10^6 m (6,370 km)
Distance from sun to earth, ao = 1.5×10^11 m (150 million km)
Imagine a giant sphere with a radius the distance from the sun to the earth, and the earth as one tiny circle pasted onto it – that’s the proportion of the Sun’s energy that hits the earth.
The giant sphere has an area of 4πa^2 = 4π x (1.5×10^11)^2
The earth’s “circle” pasted on this giant sphere has an area = πre2 (not the whole area of the earth’s surface which would be 4πre2, just the effective 2D disc that the sun’s energy hits).
So the proportion incident on the earth’s surface = (πr^2)/ (4πa^2)
= (6.37×10^6)^2 / (4 x (1.5×10^11)^2) = 4.5 x 10^-10 -or around 1/2 billionth of the total energy
The total energy hitting the earth’s “disc” = 1.73 x 10^17 Watts
And per unit area (area = πre2) = 1,360 W/m2
First major result!
Applying the same maths to the earth – the earth’s surface also emits radiation according to the same law. This is where is starts to get tricky, but let’s consider the simple case.
Energy received from the sun = Energy emitted by the earth (if the temperature of the earth’s surface stays the same).
So we have to solve the total energy radiated out from the earth, where Te is the surface temperature of the earth:
Energy flux x total area of the earth = 1.73 x 10^17
5.67 x 10^-8 x Te^4 x (4πr^2) = 1.73 x 10^17
The result, Te = 278K = 5°C ?
Actually, not quite right. The problem is, and can easily be demonstrated by satellites measuring the energy reflected back – not all of the energy gets absorbed by the earth’s surface. Some gets reflected by clouds, the atmosphere, and some by the earths surface. On average about 30% gets reflected.
Redoing the same equation with only 70% of the energy incoming:
Adjusted Te = 254K = -19°C ?
Wow, it doesn’t feel that cold, what went wrong? Nothing went wrong, and you’re right, across the globe the “average temperature” is higher – about +16°C.
The explanation is in the (inappropriately labelled) “greenhouse gases”, which include water vapor, CO2 and methane (CH4). These gases absorb energy from wavelengths in the earth’s range, and hardly any in the sun’s range.
So the sun’s energy just passes through like they don’t exist, but when the earth emits its radiation, these gases absorb energy and then re-emit, so that the earth’s energy doesn’t just fly off into space but instead it’s absorbed and re-transmitted, some of it back down to earth.
The “greenhouse gases” heat the earth’s surface up approximately 35°C higher than it would be otherwise.”
The same website dismisses other silly myths as well. Lord Monckton’s post elegantly summarizes this.
My concern with the field in general is the magnitude of feedback / response in the natural system, continued careless use of statistical methods, missing error bars, the relative impact of CO2 vs land use, and obvious hockey team cronyism in publication including the publication of a blacklist which undermines and cheapens the entire field of study.

@R.Pielke, Ben Herman, Lord Monckton,
“the cooling is slowed down.”
That’s plausible. But if it is that simple, why not laying down the equations and publish a much needed paper ?
How does this translate in terms of heat capacity, heat conductivity, thermal diffusivity, heat transfer and so on ?
What precisely means ” the cooling is slowed down” ?
Greenhouse effect is physics. Physics requires specific and precise statements, equations and numbers.
In the present state, this is just one more climatologist’s assertion.

Phil. says:
July 23, 2010 at 12:42 pm
“Suppose you have an isolated black ball which you heat so that it eventually equilibrates at a certain temperature, introduce another ball nearby at a lower temperature, the hotter one will get hotter (as will the cooler).”
Are you sure about this, Phil? That the hottest will be hotter? I allways believed that this is exactly what was impossible, according to the 2’nd law….because if it got hotter…then heat has gone from colder to hotter….. or is this Trenberts hidden heat?

BTW:
Why forests are so fresh:
Examples of Endothermic and Exothermic Processes
Photosynthesis is an example of an endothermic chemical reaction. In this process, plants use the energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. This reaction requires 15MJ of energy (sunlight) for every kilogram of glucose that is produced:
sunlight + 6CO2(g) + H2O(l) = C6H12O6(aq) + 6O2(g)

Talking of greenhouse gases ( GHG ) assumes that it is the chemistry of the gases that matters. O2 is OK, CO2 is a GHG, and therefore bad.
The temperature of the earth’s atmosphere depends on the kinetic, translational energy of all the gas molecules in it, mainly oxygen and nitrogen.
1. THE “GREENHOUSE EFFECT”
AS A FUNCTION OF ATMOSPHERIC MASS
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf
planet pressure Atmosphere effect Atmosphere gas
mars low low CO2
earth medium medium O2and N2
venus high high CO2
The surface temperature of planet atmospheres depends on the pressure not the type of gas.
There is similar effect on Jupiter and other planets made of hydrogen and helium
The atmosphere is physics not chemistry

Ryan writes:
“What AGW proponents are saying is that we have, in CO2, a translucent panel above our heads (i.e. it absorbs light). According to AGW proponents, if we put more and more translucent panels above our heads the area beneath the translucent panels will get brighter and brighter.”
Let me put that a bit differently. From the posts we have seen today, especially including Pielke, Sr’s article, CO2 in the atmosphere can be treated as a magnifyer of the Sun’s energy, in appropriate bandwidths, of course. From that, it follows that the effects of CO2 would necessarily parallel changes in the sun’s energy output.
Aside from the point above, would someone who knows the math undertake the exercise of treating CO2 as a magnifyer of the sun’s output? I think it would be greatly illuminating.

Steven Mosher says:
July 23, 2010 at 10:50 am
GHGs will not cool the planet. There no science to suggest they will. C02 will warm the planet, up to limit. That limit has not been reached and the questions are:
1. how fast will we reach that limit
2. will it be damaging
3. Can and should we do anything about it.

You forgot point 4 i.e. will increased co2 lead to a runaway warming of the planet? That is the most important question for me and so far all I get are caveats. (Point 2 kind of hited at it though)

From what I remember any atom or molecule when it’s electron have a change in velocity (acceleration/deceleration) will always radiate no matter what type of particle it is of where the change in velocity came from (collisions, vibrations, etc.). Is this when two O2 and/or N2 also radiate when they collide? I think it in the microwave so weaker photons but there are many magnitudes more of those molecules within the atmosphere than CO2 which should compensate. WUWT? Never have seen it mentioned.
Boy, did Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr. ever leave gapping holes in their explanation !! Just read the comments above. Where are all of the inconvenient and lacking-complete-understanding factors which should have at least been mentioned? Come on climatologist, you can do better than that. Give us some real info, don’t worry, you won’t go over most heads here.

Maybe instead of “greenhouse” gasses we could call them “blanket” gasses, for that is what they do.

Maybe I’m missing something, but of course I do miss a lot, but why does everyone use the sun as a constant when its output is highly variable on a day to day basis, month to month, year to year, cycle to cycle? Is it like gravitational pull and push which is used as a constant, in junior high lol, for being conveniently abstract rather than accuracy and detailed?
And using CO2 as some form of a starting point in the whole so called green house effect is moot since nobody frakking knows which gas molecule exhibit the main secondary forcing or what ever. What does CO2 mean if water vapor is first, or heh argon? What would happen to the temperature, in reality, if we could switch co2 for argon, or oxygen, or nitrogen? After all if we remove the “overhead” of co2 something will take its place, especially if you believe that the atmosphere only can consist of 100% of stuff at 1 bar and 1 bar at sea level is an absolute constant.
If the earth’s atmosphere really worked like a green house effect you’d be able to remove the sun and exchange it for an artificial non-heating light source, what with it gets its supposed heating from the ground up rather then from the sun. lol try convincing people of a real green house effect when it is 40 below. The so called green house effect is naught but a self made statistical phenomenon.

Steven Mosher says:
July 23, 2010 at 10:50 am
PTCO.
It’s more than sad that people continue to fight against the basic physics. Physics that working engineers understand and use on a daily basis. The problem is this: The warmists have been very successful in lumping those of us who understand how GHGs work to warm the lower portion of the atmosphere, with those who deny this fundamental physics. They lump those who deny the science of GHGs with those who question the accuracy and completeness of our understanding of sensitivity.
GHGs will not cool the planet. There no science to suggest they will. C02 will warm the planet, up to limit. That limit has not been reached and the questions are:
1. how fast will we reach that limit
2. will it be damaging
3. Can and should we do anything about it.
————————-
Steve,
Hi, I loved your book : )
Overall, your comment rings true to me with two exceptions:
Exception #1 – in your leading paragraph you show a significant concern about the negative things the “warmists” (your word not mine) might think about some of the GHG effect (or lack of effect) comments by individuals on this active and long thread. In an open society like this wonderful venue Anthony has created, people will do naturally what the commenters are doing on this thread. Limiting comments here because of concern about what the “warmists” think will tend to make for a much more limited participation and there would eventually be less learning going on about very important things. The key is learning.
Exception #2 – you also say “C02 will warm the planet, up to limit”. Ben Herman and Roger A. Pielke Sr give us an introductory tutorial on “the greenhouse effect”, but it is simplistic by their own intention to illustrate fundamental points to try to teach people who they think are missing the physics fundamentals about “the greenhouse effect”. They are to be commended for that and I admire them for that. In their simplistic example they show “GHGs, all other things being constant, will warm the planet”. But when adding in all the very high level complexity of our earth’s systems (which cannot be any farther from constant), however, there is no automatic assurance that about the statement that “C02 will warm the planet, up to limit”. It may try to, but does it when combined with everything else? I think so, but think also that we have hardly started the climate science homework to be convincing about it.
Bless Anthony and the WUWT team.
John

“”” NickB. says:
July 23, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I’ve always wondered if the equation that comes up with 33 degrees of greenhouse effect took into account that space really isn’t absolute zero – if I recall correctly it’s 3 or so K. Not that it really matters, just curious if anyone knew. “””
Has no effect. Remember that objects are limited to radiating sigma.T^4 W/m^2 max (thermally); so just how much radiation do you think you are going to receive from a 3 Kelvin Black Body radiator ?
It is weak enough that it takes a major radio telescope antenna to even detect it in the noise. But a good question.

“”” kwik says:
July 23, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Roger Clague says:
July 23, 2010 at 2:49 pm
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/FunctionOfMass.pdf
Roger, I read that paper. Difficult to debunk, I would say. “””
You may be right on that debunk being difficult; I would say it is just about pure bunk.

Reed Coray says:
July 23, 2010 at 4:13 pm
George E Smith’s response (10:58) to Jeff’ comment is, I believe, an example of what I perceive as the need when discussing energy flow and temperature to carefully define terms. I ask the readers of this post: (a) are the following two statements equivalent; and (b) if not, which statement, if either, is the commonly accepted definition of “cooling”.
(1) An object is “cooling” if the net energy flow is away from the object.
(2) An object is “cooling” if its temperature is decreasing.
—————-
Reed Coray ,
My wife tells me it is better to grab the tail of the dragon (lung in chinese), than to look in its mouth.
John

Pardon an ignorant question.
I assume that a perfect thermal insulator covering the whole earth high up in the atmosphere would result in the world freezing as no radiative transfer of solar energy would reach the earth’s surface.
Then, the reason for the glass of greenhouses to have an effect is because it minimises conductive and convective heat losses.
In what way does CO2 reduce such conductive and convective losses to produce a greenhouse effect?

RockyRoad says:
July 23, 2010 at 3:33 pm
“Maybe instead of “greenhouse” gasses we could call them “blanket” gasses, for that is what they do.”
Why not call them “heat transporting gasses”. For they absorb and re-emit LWIR.

George E. Smith says:
July 23, 2010 at 4:17 pm
“[…]You may be right on that debunk being difficult; I would say it is just about pure bunk.[…]”
Maybe this one is easier to digest; it is also about the lapse rate (the part by William Gilbert):
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:A81VTnHUPkEJ:www.tech-know.eu/NISubmission/pdf/Politics_and_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf+adiabatic+lapse+rate+greenhouse+effect&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiwZvv2w8O-I2jVLvl_jNAyMMK0oFFvnwWm3qZAom59wDIjAF9Q5k-_voIQCmn1hoWtEBgjtFGGZ22LU9giDVTnMmCmdQ7GIUpCrHNeNm6G4nKLg14djiR6c7SgRbj7b3uck3hb&sig=AHIEtbTG1haSI1yNANL1FwkTLacvcOBU0w

Please bear with me with another novice question:
Since the atmosphere has a smoothing effect on the earth’s temperature, compared with if we did not have an atmosphere at all;
1) Of all the gases in the atmosphere, does CO2 contribute more of this effect than the other gases?
2) If CO2 contributes on average less of this effect than the other gases combined, then if CO2 concentrations increase as a proportion of all gases – how can this increase the greenhouse effect in total?

Am I right to think about G&T that:
A possible way for atmospheric “greenhouse gases” to warm a planet could be by temporarily delaying some escape of heat?
Infrared absorbing gases in the atmosphere could slow the cooling of the Earth?

“”” Nylo says:
July 23, 2010 at 1:28 pm
George E. Smith wrote:
“Since the rate of loss of energy goes as T^4; so it is non-linear with temperature, the colder parts of the ball, are not doing their fair share of cooling, and the hotter parts are being overworked, and if we average the Temperature all over the ball surface that average will ALWAYS be hgher than the original case of an isothermal ball at 278 K all over”.
I followed your argumentation quite well until this point, but here I think you got it backwards. The average temperature will always be colder, the bigger the temperature differences in the surface, for the same total emissions. It is because of the emisivity depending on T^4. The emission gain that you get by increasing 1K the temperature is quite bigger than the emissions you lose by decreasing the temperature 1K. So in equilibrium, for the same total emissions, the bigger the temperature differences between different parts of your blackbody, the lower the average temperature will be.
Take it to the absurd. A black body with one half at 0K and another half at 100K emits the same energy as an isotermal blackbody at 84K, yet its average temperature is only 50K, considerably colder. “””
Well Nylo; I think that you have caught me in a fox pass; fancy that; must be the third time this century that I have goofed.
yes I solved the wrong problem !!
So suppose the Temperature at some location goes through a sinusoidal cycle between T0 + a at the maximum and t0 – a at the minimum; but the average temeprature over the cycle is T0.
So I can calculate the energy radiated at a Temperature of T0.
Let’s say our Temperature follows T = T0 +a sin (2pi.t/tau) where tau is the period of the Temperature cycle (could be a spatial period).
So actually the instantaneous emittance is sigma.(T0 + a.sin (2pi.t/tau))^4
and that equals sigma.(T0^4 + 4T0^3.asin(2pit/tau) +6T0^2.a^2sin^2(2pit/tau) + 4a^3 T0.Sin^3(2pit/tau) + a^4 sin^4(2pit/tau)).
It is left to the reader to show that the sin and sin^3 terms integrate to zero when we integrate the above over a complete cycle; and only the first, third, and fifth terms integrate to a non zero value over a complete cycle and they are ALL positive; so the result is ALWAYS higher that sigma.T0^4.
And I already knew that ; so that is clearly the wrong problem.
The simplest way to see that delaying the cooling process results in a higher temperature, is that during the delay time between energy coming in, and an equivalent energy exiting, the sun is still pouring in energy at a constant rate; so an increment of energy is added to the earth system that grows linearly with the propagation delay of the cooling process, and that must result in the Temperature going up.
Good to have you watching my back there Nylo; I almost slipped that one by.

Anders Boman says:
July 23, 2010 at 4:55 pm
“[….]1) Of all the gases in the atmosphere, does CO2 contribute more of this effect than the other gases?”
Absorption bands of CO2 and H2O:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/atmospheric_spectral_absorption.png
Notice that H2O vastly outperforms CO2.
“2) If CO2 contributes on average less of this effect than the other gases combined, then if CO2 concentrations increase as a proportion of all gases – how can this increase the greenhouse effect in total?”
Not very much, is the answer. Even the warmists know this; that’s why they phantasize about a small warming caused by CO2 which makes H20 evaporate, which will with its wide absorption band lead to a feedback which will make the Earth melt and the Oceans boil and we will all be down on our knees and pray for bloody mercy or somesuch.
Which is of course comple lunacy as hot places on the Earth, say in the tropics during noon, are not known for melting down due to a sudden outbreak of water vapor feedback. But sanity does not enter the skulls of the AGW boneheads.

“”” Phil. says:
July 23, 2010 at 12:58 pm
stephen richards says:
July 23, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I’ve got problems with all of this.
What follows is a question and not a statement;
CO² 0.04% “””
Note to Phil.
I think you made a typo in your response Phil. You said that the spoantaneous decay time of the CO2 excited state was much shorter than the collision time in the lower atmosphere.
I’m sure you meant to say much longer; so that collisional thermalisation is far more likely than re-emission from the CO2 excited State. I’m having the same sort of problem today.