Guest post by Ira Glickstein
The Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” has been analogized to a blanket that insulates the Sun-warmed Earth and slows the rate of heat transmission, thus increasing mean temperatures above what they would be absent “greenhouse gases” (GHGs). Perhaps a better analogy would be an electric blanket that, in addition to its insulating properties, also emits thermal radiation both down and up. A real greenhouse primarily restricts heat escape by preventing convection while the “greenhouse effect” heats the Earth because GHGs absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards Earth.
Many thanks to Dave Springer and Jim Folkerts who, in comments to my previous posting Atmospheric Windows, provided links to emission graphs and a textbook “A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation” by Grant Petty, Sundog Publishing Company.
Description of graphic (from bottom to top):
Earth Surface: Warmed by shortwave (~1/2μ) radiation from the Sun, the surface emits upward radiation in the ~7μ, ~10μ, and ~15μ regions of the longwave band. This radiation approximates a smooth “blackbody” curve that peaks at the wavelength corresponding to the surface temperature.
Bottom of the Atmosphere: On its way out to Space, the radiation encounters the Atmosphere, in particular the GHGs, which absorb and re-emit radiation in the ~7μ and ~15μ regions in all directions. Most of the ~10μ radiation is allowed to pass through.
The lower violet/purple curve (adapted from figure 8.1 in Petty and based on measurements from the Tropical Pacific looking UP) indicates how the bottom of the Atmosphere re-emits selected portions back down towards the surface of the Earth. The dashed line represents a “blackbody” curve characteristic of 300ºK (equivalent to 27ºC or 80ºF). Note how the ~7μ and ~15μ regions approximate that curve, while much of the ~10μ region is not re-emitted downward.
“Greenhouse Gases”: The reason for the shape of the downwelling radiation curve is clear when we look at the absorption spectra for the most important GHGs: H2O, H2O, H2O, … H2O, and CO2. (I’ve included multiple H2O’s because water vapor, particularly in the tropical latitudes, is many times more prevalent than carbon dioxide.)
Note that H2O absorbs at up to 100% in the ~7μ region. H2O also absorbs strongly in the ~15μ region, particularly above 20μ, where it reaches 100%. CO2 absorbs at up to 100% in the ~15μ region.
Neither H2O nor CO2 absorb strongly in the ~10μ region.
Since gases tend to re-emit most strongly at the same wavelength region where they absorb, the ~7μ and ~15μ are well-represented, while the ~10μ region is weaker.
Top of the Atmosphere: The upper violet/purple curve (adapted from figure 6.6 in Petty and based on satellite measurements from the Tropical Pacific looking DOWN) indicates how the top of the Atmosphere passes certain portions of radiation from the surface of the Earth out to Space and re-emits selected portions up towards Space. The dashed line represents a “blackbody” curve characteristic of 300ºK. Note that much of the ~10μ region approximates a 295ºK curve while the ~7μ region approximates a cooler 260ºK curve. The ~15μ region is more complicated. Part of it, from about 17μ and up approximates a 260ºK or 270ºK curve, but the region from about 14μ to 17μ has had quite a big bite taken out of it. Note how this bite corresponds roughly with the CO2 absorption spectrum.
What Does This All Mean in Plain Language?
Well, if a piece of blueberry pie has gone missing, and little Johnny has blueberry juice dripping from his mouth and chin, and that is pretty good circumstantial evidence of who took it.
Clearly, the GHGs in the Atmosphere are responsible. H2O has taken its toll in the ~7μ and ~15μ regions, while CO2 has taken its bite in its special part of the ~15μ region. Radiation in the ~10μ region has taken a pretty-much free pass through the Atmosphere.
The top of the Atmosphere curve is mostly due to the lapse rate, where higher levels of the Atmosphere tend to be cooler. The ~10μ region is warmer because it is a view of the surface radiation of the Earth through an almost transparent window. The ~7μ and 15μ regions are cooler because they are radiated from closer to the top of the Atmosphere. The CO2 bite portion of the curve is still cooler because CO2 tends to be better represented at higher altitudes than H2O which is more prevalent towards the bottom.
That is a good explanation, as far as it goes. However, it seems there is something else going on. The ~7μ and ~15μ radiation emitted from the bottom of the Atmosphere is absorbed by the Earth, further warming it, and the Earth, approximating a “blackbody”, re-emits them at a variety of wavelengths, including ~10μ. This additional ~10μ radiation gets a nearly free pass through the Atmosphere and heads out towards Space, which explains why it is better represented in the top of the Atmosphere curve. In addition, some of the radiation due to collisions of energized H2O and CO2 molecules with each other and the N2 (nitrogen), O2 (oxygen) and trace gases, may produce radiation in the ~10μ region which similarly makes its way out to Space without being re-absorbed.
There is less ~15μ radiation emitted from the top of the Atmosphere than entered it from the bottom because some of the ~15μ radiation is transformed into ~10μ radiation during the process of absorption and re-emission by GHGs in the atmosphere and longwave radiation absorbed and re-emitted by the surface of the Earth.
Source Material
My graphic is adapted from two curves from Petty. For clearer presentation, I smoothed them and flipped them horizontally, so wavelength would increase from left to right, as in the diagrams in my previous topics in this series. (Physical Analogy and Atmospheric Windows.)
Here they are in their original form, where the inverse of wavelength (called “wavenumber”) increases from left to right.
Source for the upper section of my graphic.
Top of the Atmosphere from Satellite Over Tropical Pacific.
[Caption from Petty: Fig. 6.6: Example of an actual infrared emission spectrum observed by the Nimbus 4 satellite over a point in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Dashed curves represent blackbody radiances at the indicated temperatures in Kelvin. (IRIS data courtesy of the Goddard EOS Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) and instrument team leader Dr. Rudolf A. Hanel.)]
Source for the lower section of my graphic.
Bottom of the Atmosphere from Surface of Tropical Pacific (and, lower curve, from Alaska).
[Caption from Petty: Fig. 8.1 Two examples of measured atmospheric emission spectra as seen from ground level looking up. Planck function curves corresponding to the approximate surface temperature in each case are superimposed (dashed lines). (Data courtesy of Robert Knutson, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison.)]
The figures originally cited by Dave Springer and Tim Folkerts are based on measurements taken in the Arctic, where there is far less water vapor in the Atmosphere.
[Fig. 8.2 from Petty] (a) Top of the Atmosphere from 20km and (b) Bottom of the Atmosphere from surface in the Arctic. Note that this is similar to the Tropical Pacific, at temperatures that are about 30ºK to 40ºK cooler. The CO2 bite is more well-defined. Also, the bite in the 9.5μ to 10μ area is more apparent. That bite is due to O2 and O3 absorption spectra.
Concluding Comments
This and my previous two postings in this series Physical Analogy and Atmospheric Windows address ONLY the radiative exchange of energy. Other aspects that control the temperature range at the surface of the Earth are at least as important and they include convection (winds, storms, etc.) and precipitation (clouds, rain, snow, etc.) that transfer a great deal of energy from the surface to the higher levels of the Atmosphere.
For those who may have missed my previous posting, here is my Sunlight Energy In = Thermal Energy Out animated graphic that depicts the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” process in a simlified form.
I plan to do a subsequent posting that looks into the violet and blue boxes in the above graphic and provides insight into the process the photons and molecules go through.
I am sure WUWT readers will find issues with my Emissions Spectra description and graphics. I encourage each of you to make comments, all of which I will read, and some to which I will respond, most likely learning a great deal from you in the process. However, please consider that the main point of this posting, like the previous ones in this series, is to give insight to those WUWT readers, who, like Einstein (and me :^) need a graphic visual before they understand and really accept any mathematical abstraction.
O H,
I think we are on the same page now for the balance of energy.
As for how the 324 W/m^2 was arrived at, I don’t know exactly. I assume that all the numbers were the primary found from measurements – IR spectroscopy is a well-established technique. Beyond they, I suspect they were affirmed by calculations (eg how much energy should a black body emit; how much energy would it take to evaporate all the rain that falls ….).
The gas does radiate in both directions. The bottom radiates 324 W/m^2 down and 324 W/m^2 upward (which gets absorbed by intermediate layers). The top (which is much cooler than the bottom) emits 190 W/m^2 upward and (190 W/m^2 downward (which again is absorbed by intermediate layers at intermediate temperatures). The simplified Trenberth diagram skips these energy flows within the atmosphere.
Finally, the diagram shows an equilibrium situation, where everything is balanced. If anything changed (eg, more clouds, more GHGs, stronger sunlight) then all the flows would need to be re-adjusted until equilibrium was re-established. Even small changes would add up. For example, the heat needed to raise a 1 m^2 column of atmosphere by 1 C is about Q = mc(DeltaT) = 10,000 kg * 1000 J/kg*C * 1 C = 10,000,000 J. An imbalance of only ~ 0.3 W/m^s would provide this much energy in a year. So if any of the numbers for the atmosphere changed by this amount, the results would be way more than the observed rate of change.
Joel Shore says
……..”It is totally bizarre that you hang on to a few paragraphs of conjecture from a century-old paper and ignore a century of evidence to the contrary! That’s not science, it is ideological conviction.”…….
My reply
Joel you show a remarkable level of ignorance about this topic.
R W Wood was probably the best experimental physicist that America ever produced.
The quality of genius is that they quickly get to the point.
Wood nailed two points in this experiment.
1. Greenhouses(glasshouses) work by stopping convection.
2. The radiative effects of CO2 are very weak at atmospheric temperatures.
G&T did an experiment to confirm the conclusions of Wood.
However here is a two year study published in 2008 that also confirms Woods conclusions.
Its is interesting paper especially as it comes from a source with no “spin” on the AGW debate.
It gives massive support for the conclusions of the famous Woods experiment.
Basically the project was to find if it made any sense to add Infra Red absorbers to polyethylene plastic for use in large commercial agricultural plastic greenhouses.
Polyethylene is IR transparent like the Rocksalt used in Woods Experiment.
The addition of IR absorbers to the plastic made it equivalent to “glass”
The results of the study show that( Page2 )
…”IR blocking films may occasionally raise night temperatures” (by less than 1.5C) “the trend does not seem to be consistent over time”
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/hightunnel/about/research/general/penn_state_plastic_study.pdf
So Joel, all the experimental evidence shows that the radiative effect of gases at atmospheric temperatures is so small as to be practically irrelevant .
perhaps you think that having a “nice theory” with some “equations” is superior to experimental results.
You say ” a century of evidence” but show nothing that contradicts Wood.
Feynman is shown in a short video clip to be quite intolerant of such nonsense.
You claim to have a physics background.
Are you not embarrassed when you support such an anti-scientific position?
Bryan says:
Wood’s experiment was great for nailing what happens in greenhouses. For what happens in the atmosphere, not so much! And, to Wood’s credit he admitted that this was a limitation when he said, “I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.” In Wood’s day, the theory of radiative transfer was not very well-developed, so he can certainly be forgiven for not understanding something (how the radiative effects work in an atmosphere with a lapse rate) that was not widely understood for another 40 or 50 years (although as Spencer Weart’s “History of Global Warming” discusses, there was at least one person who understood the basic principle already in 1901).
You really should not take that paper seriously. It is one of the most embarrassing pieces to find its way into (even a second rate) physics journal. That paper can basically be summed up by the statement: Everything that is original is wrong and everything that is wrong is not original. They spent several pages arguing that in a greenhouse the primary effect is blocking convection and not radiation when they could have substituted a reference to the wikipedia article on the greenhouse effect.
Which part of “And, yes, the greenhouse effect does depend on the fact that the temperature decreases with height in the troposphere and thus that when the effective emitting layer increases with height as more greenhouse gases are added, this results in the emission occurring from layers that are colder and thus radiate less” did you not understand?
Actually, your article does not even address the radiative effect of gases. The IR blocking film is not a gas…It is a plastic and it is presumably quite good at doing what it does. The reason it doesn’t make much difference in the temperature is presumably because it re-radiates what it absorbs and it is maintained at about the temperature of the surface by convection of air (and then its conduction into the plastic) being that for the heights involved, the effect of lapse rate is negligible.
As for referencing Feynman, you know he was alive when people were talking about the atmospheric greenhouse effect but I can’t find any quotes where he says the effect is a fiction.
No, because it is actually the scientific position embraced by anyone whose scientific understanding has advanced to the 1950s when these sort of objections were dealt with (see http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm also here http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm and find “saturated” ). That is why even skeptics like Roy Spencer, Willis Eschenbach, and Richard Lindzen accept the atmospheric greenhouse effect…and, to my knowledge, basically even accept the numbers the IPCC uses for the radiative forcing due to a doubling of CO2.
Tim addressed this here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-622399 and I addressed this here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-622536
Nor does it tell me why GHGs only radiate in one direction (towards the surface and not back to space.)
I already addressed this here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-621266 and here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-621292 and here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-621474
Tim already addressed it here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/#comment-621511
Jim Masterson says on March 19, 2011 at 8:15 pm: “I didn’t say that, so you’re deliberately trying to obfuscate this conversation. As I said previously, this is wasting our time.”
It was not my intention to try to “obfuscate this conversation” and I am sorry if you feel I have wasted your time. I can assure you, you haven’t wasted mine though because I have learnt a lot about this particular subject.
If this “Energy flow Plan” was a stick then you and Tim Folkerts have very patiently tried to make me ‘let go of the wrong end of it’
Even thou one system at a time was what I thought I had been looking at all along when I concentrated on the plan starting from “Incoming Solar Radiation” through to “Outgoing Longwave Radiation”, – before I looked at the “GHG system” it was not until Tim Folkerts said on March 19, 2011 at 4:12 pm: “Focus on one “system” at a time” that ‘the penny dropped’ and I thought: “What if my problem 324 W/m² figure is measured as coming from the ground? Then, in that case, I must start at the other end”. Which is what I did, and Jim “I love it when a Plan comes together!”
Thanks to you both.
Thanks to you too Joel, you to have tried to help and I have got lots of reading material now.
OHD
Joel Shore said
………. “G&T did an experiment to confirm the conclusions of Wood.
You really should not take that paper seriously. It is one of the most embarrassing pieces to find its way into (even a second rate) physics journal. “……..
My reply
What was really embarrassing was your signature to the Halpern Gang of Six “comment” on the G&T paper.
You and your other five et als could not even read the paper you were trying to criticise.
The main thrust of your “comment” was your apparent belief that G&T said that cold objects could not radiate to warmer objects.
G&Ts effortless reply was “where in the paper did they say that.”
Since both paper and comment are available in the public domain anyone can check and verify what must be the most stupid “comment paper in print”.
It must be personally embarrassing to yourself as I asked you the same question two months before publication.
If you had heeded my freely given advice you would not have suffered this public humiliation.
>>
O H Dahlsveen says:
March 20, 2011 at 7:40 am
It was not my intention to try to “obfuscate this conversation” and I am sorry if you feel I have wasted your time. I can assure you, you haven’t wasted mine though because I have learnt a lot about this particular subject.
<<
It seems that these arguments focus on the minutiae points instead of the major problems with the model. The KT 97 paper is rather amateurish for a scientific paper. Their figure 7 is obviously intended for a nonscientific audience. Every number on the diagram should have an error range, and some of those ranges are quite large. The window value is “ad hoc” (their words), and they mess up its calculation. In the end, however, the model fails to demonstrate the GHG GW case which is really what is significant.
Jim
Bryan says:
Well, with a paper like G&T’s, it is hard to figure out exactly what they are saying! There are lots of ways for people to be wrong and we may have made a tactical error in writing in a way that allowed them to paint our comment as addressing only that one interpretation of where they went off the rails. That allowed them to convince those who wanted to be convinced that we somehow had not addressed their main point and in particular pull this statement in the reply over on people like you:
Of course, what all of our examples show is that if they mean that the heat flow has to be from hotter object to the colder object, then the greenhouse effect does not violate that. And, if they mean that the colder IR-active atmosphere cannot cause the surface of the earth to be warmer than it would be in the absence of said IR-active atmosphere, we show with our examples exactly why they are absolutely positively wrong in this claim.
It is hard to write a comment addressing people who are either actively deceiving or actively deluding even themselves…and those who really want to continue to believe G&T will no doubt do so no matter what evidence is presented to show what nonsense they wrote.
Bryan says:
March 18, 2011 at 2:38 am
I said
Kirchoff’s Law does not hold strictly for this situation as significant quantities of thermal energy are passed on to non emitters.
Phil. says
“Kirchoff’s Law certainly does apply it’s just that you don’t know what it says!
Emissivity=absorptivity still holds true when collisional deactivation occurs.”
My reply
This does not explain why the photon energy at 15um “goes missing” being transformed into translational energy of N2 and O2 which may be for instance returned to surface by conduction or turned into PE by upward convection.
Also much more likely H2O longer wavelengths are now favoured by 30 to 1 numerical ratio and also SB probability consideration.
Doesn’t make sense, also the H2O spectral lines are very scarce around 15 microns and are a couple of orders of magnitude weaker than CO2 in any case.
I said
Some of this energy can come back to CO2 by collision but emission of 15um as we get to higher altitudes becomes increasingly unlikely due to temperature drop.
Phil. says
“Wrong it becomes increasingly likely due to the lower collision rate.”
My comment
See above and you need to explain yourself in more detail.
How does lower collision rate lead to more CO2 molecules getting enough collision energy to become “active” enough again to emit 15um photon?
However the molecule gets activated, radiation or collision, at altitude it is more likely to emit IR because of the longer lifetime.
I said
A more likely radiative outlet path would be H2O which has several wavelengths >15um available.
This accounts for the large “bite” missing around 15um as shown in the Ian’s satellite “looking down” graphs above.
Phil. says
“No that is classic CO2 spectrum, go to MODTRAN and you can reproduce it exactly but not using H2O.”
My comment
You go to your computer and you exclude H2O and your point is?
That it is impossible to reproduce that signal using the H2O spectrum, which has a very few weak lines in that region, whereas it is an exact match for the CO2 spectrum!
Joel Shore
If you cannot even read properly the paper you attempt to criticise then your comments are worthless.
Halpern and Ho Stuart have some excuse as they are not physicists and perhaps have little grounding in thermodynamics however since you and Arthur Smith claim to be physicists you have no such excuse.
I suggest that you go back and find one mistake in the paper and then perhaps we can have a grown up exchange of views.
Bryan,
I’m a physicist…not a sanitation engineer. I read physics papers; I am not so good with garbage like G&T. Your last post was just a bunch of silly grandstanding. You complain because I have not properly decoded G&T’s nonsense and gleaned from it exactly where they got as hopelessly confused as they did (if indeed they really are confused as opposed to deceptive, which is the charitable interpretation that I find increasingly implausible)! Guilty as charged!!!
You clearly haven’t read one word of my previous post where I explained where G&T made a statement that has two possible interpretations:
(1) It is a rather poor attempt to say something correct but has zero relevance to the greenhouse effect.
(2) It is incorrect and says that G&T’s central claim in their non-sensical paper is based on an elementary misunderstanding that can easily be comprehended by any decent student in an introductory physics course.
You come here and defend a paper that even your fellow AGW skeptics like Willis Eschenbach, Roy Spencer, and Ira Glickstein won’t defend. I have some friendly advice for you: You would be much much wiser to follow their lead. But, hey, if you want to do otherwise, have fun! If I were them I would be hopelessly embarrassed! Sing the praises of G&T’s nonsense from the rooftops! I am sure it will create very positive impressions of the AGW skeptic among serious scientists.
Joel Shore
You must take the prize for a “brass neck”.
I’m amazed that you have the nerve to discuss your blatant inability to read the paper you criticize.
Considering the papers are in the public domain and any interested party can look for themselves and find how much drivel the Halpern et al(Joel Shore included) produced is documented there.
The G&T paper contains several diagrams showing cold and hot surfaces radiating to each other.
Even the quote Joel highlights, clearly said “colder body that radiates less intensively”
…….”The correct question is,whether the colder body that radiates less intensively than the warmer body warms up the warmer one. The answer is: It does not.”….
The paper that Joel co authored clearly said that G&T had said the colder surface did not radiate to the warmer surface,…..
Have the good manners to apologise to G&T for this gross reading error or anyone who reads this can regard you as an ideological “hack” with no interest in scientific honesty.
I have no interest in correcting your many mistakes until it is clear that when you turn up at WUWT you are not here just to blindly push CAGW propaganda.
The climategate e-mail frauds and the cut and paste hockey stick papers and your own pathetic comment paper give an indication of the quality of scientific work you try to defend,
Moderator
My last post went missing.
Do I have to repeat it?
[ Things that just “disappear” have gone to the SPAM queue. We periodically fish them back out when they are not SPAM. -ModE ]
Phil says
…”That it is impossible to reproduce that signal using the H2O spectrum, which has a very few weak lines in that region, whereas it is an exact match for the CO2 spectrum!”..
My reply
Here we are talking of wavelengths around 15un
Both CO2 and H2O are represented there (see Ira Glickstein previous post).
We cannot then ignore the substantial H2O contribution.
See H2O graph in Ira Glicksteins previous post.
If you think his graphs are in error then take it up with him directly.
Bryan says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:41 am
Phil says
…”That it is impossible to reproduce that signal using the H2O spectrum, which has a very few weak lines in that region, whereas it is an exact match for the CO2 spectrum!”..
My reply
Here we are talking of wavelengths around 15un
Both CO2 and H2O are represented there (see Ira Glickstein previous post).
We cannot then ignore the substantial H2O contribution.
If it were a substantial contribution we couldn’t, since it isn’t we can.
I said about radiation around 15um
“We cannot then ignore the substantial H2O contribution.”
Phil. says:
…..”If it were a substantial contribution we couldn’t, since it isn’t we can.”…..
Ira Glickstein says above;
……”H2O also absorbs strongly in the ~15μ region”…. and produces graphs above to show this rather obvious conclusion.
Further since there are 30 times the number of H2O molecules to each CO2 molecule the net result is that the “bite” around 15um is primarily due to H2O.
Now why would Phil try to contradict this rather obvious conclusion?
Is it part of the IPCC proponents attempts to “demonise” CO2 -…. I think we should be told!
Bryan, you have said several things that are worth considering, but you are digging deeper into a hole here …
“Further since there are 30 times the number of H2O molecules to each CO2 molecule the net result is that the “bite” around 15um is primarily due to H2O.
Now why would Phil try to contradict this rather obvious conclusion?”
Because that “obvious conclusion” is obviously wrong! The “shape” of the bite is all wrong. This graph is widely available on the internet (including WUWT for that matter). Water takes out a broad bite, starting ~12 um and gradually getting stronger. CO2 takes a narrower bite centered near ~ 15 um.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png
Both “bites” are clearly visible in Ira’s original graphics. The broad dip is H2O, the deep sharp dip is CO2. If H2O caused the absorption near 15 um, it would also have to cause similar absorption farther out from 15 um.
Bryan,
Truly amazing! G&T are spouting nonsense and you are buying it hook, line, and sinker.
In our abstract, we say:
G&T say in response that they know that the cold surface can radiate to a hotter surface. Well, great! Then, why did they write a paper in which they say in the first two sentences of the abstract that:
They can’t have it both ways…Either they don’t understand how to apply the Second Law or they don’t understand the atmospheric greenhouse effect, because the effect in no way violates the 2nd Law as we illustrate. This is really basic stuff and it is sad that we even have to argue about it.
Just out of curiosity, since you think that G&T is not nonsense, can you please explain it to us? Tell us exactly what they mean in regards to the greenhouse effect and the 2nd Law. If we have misunderstood it, then pray tell, tell us what it really said! I’m all ears!
Joel Shore
……”G&T say in response that they know that the cold surface can radiate to a hotter surface. Well, great! Then, why did they write a paper”……..
Well they did!
Furthermore I told you exactly that here on WUWT two months before publication of your “comment” trash that you were completely wrong on this point.
Now instead of changing your draft you let it be published and made Halpern et al a complete laughing stock for anyone who can read.
I get the impression that you did not read the paper before the comment publication and you allowed Halpern to use you name, like signing a petition.
That’s the most charitable interpretation I can put on it.
Tim Folkerts
Both graphs are shown in Ira Glicksteins graphs above and he makes it clear when he says above;
……”H2O also absorbs strongly in the ~15μ region”…
What is the world coming to when Phil and yourself cannot look at the graphs in the article above.
If you think Ira is publishing errors then take the matter up with him
Bryan: You didn’t answer my question. Why did G&T write a paper in which they said what I quoted from their abstract if they really understood the way the greenhouse effect worked and that it does not violate the 2nd Law? Please, I am all ears if you can present to me a credible interpretation of what G&T said that is consistent both with what they wrote and with the actual facts then I would be impressed. The fact that you haven’t even tried to do so shows that you probably know that what they wrote was indefensible. Neither you nor G&T have ever presented any sort of credible defense of the paper…All the defense consists of is nitpicking and obfuscation with no attempt to coherently explain what they even meant in their original paper! Pathetic!
Bryan, you seem to have not even read the paragraph you are quoting!
“H2O also absorbs strongly in the ~15μ region, particularly above 20μ, where it reaches 100%. CO2 absorbs at up to 100% in the ~15μ region.”
If H2O absorbs “particularly above 20μ” then the absorption would keep getting stronger as the wavelength gets longer. Instead, there is a chunk taken out is localized in the region where “CO2 absorbs at up to 100%”.
The graphs clearly show this; the paragraph clearly states this; they both clearly contradict your claim that H2O could take that deep bite at 15 μ.
Bryan says:
And what does the “…” hide? Oh, it hides this:
So, what Ira is telling you is that if the bite at seen at 15u is due to H2O, it should continue…and even be larger…above 20um, which is exactly what Tim is pointing out to you: The shape of the “bite” is completely incompatible with its being due primarily to H2O.
Well, at least you are being consistently intellectually dishonest in dealing with both me and with Phil & Tim.
Tim Folkerts and Joel Shore.
Readers of the past few exchanges will be wondering about your eyesight and your reading ability.
It is a challenge to make the position so simple that even you can learn from it.
Look up at Ira Glicksteins graphs above.
Lets say you give the CO2 graph amplitude of 100 units in the region of 15um.
Next look at the H2O graph in the same region.
I make it out to be about half that of CO2 lets say 50 units.
Now as you both have poor eyesight and a tendency to exaggerate the problems that CO2 cause I will reduce the H2O magnitude to 30 units.
Now comes the arithmetic are you ready…..
There are 30 H2O molecules for every CO2 molecule.
30 x 30units for total H2O effect = 900 units
CO2 contribution = 100 units
So H2O has about 9 times the radiative effect of CO2 around 15um.