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.
A proper comparison of the atmospheric temperatures of Venus and Earth proves (to any competent, and honest, physical scientist) that there is no greenhouse effect such as is “visualized” here and promulgated by the IPCC scientists.
Venus: No Greenhouse Effect
Therefore, clearly something is fundamentally wrong with your understanding (and the IPCC’s).
From many comments I have seen on the internet, it is clear to me that many think that a “greenhouse effect” is proven merely by the ability of CO2 and other gases to absorb infrared radiation (Judith Curry clearly believes this, for example). And invariably, those who try to lecture on the greenhouse effect, focus on infrared emitted by the surface, and then absorbed by the “greenhouse gases”, and then supposedly radiated back to the surface again. All the visualizations of this supposed process I have seen, from the by-now-infamous Trenberth and Kiehl “Energy Budget” onwards, simply accept a huge loop of energy, larger than that coming from the Sun, between the surface and the atmosphere (and which is largely derived from wrongly assuming that the Earth’s surface is a blackbody). I know this is believed as the sacred scientific truth in many quarters (based on a belief in the present use of radiative transfer theory in climate science), so I won’t argue about it; I will simply tell you, as directly and honestly as I know how, that it is an incompetent belief, that violates the conservation of energy (no matter what believers such as ScienceofDoom, or Judith Curry, or Roy Spencer, etc. tell you). The critical evidence that decides the issue is the Venus/Earth comparison of actual temperatures I have done, and it is decisive against that incompetent belief.
To start with, everyone needs to consider that the Sun radiates a continuous spectrum that is about half infrared, most of which (except for the well-known atmospheric windows) is directly absorbed by the atmosphere (even the Trenberth diagram shows 20% of the incident radiation being so absorbed, and the actual fraction, in my present view, is around 40%). Absorbed going down, not coming back up from the surface. The Venus/Earth comparison directly indicates this, because the ratio of temperatures, Venus/Earth, is essentially a constant (1.17) which is just that due to the distances of the two planets from the Sun, NOTHING ELSE. It does not depend upon CO2 concentration (Earth has 0.04% CO2, and Venus a whopping 96.5%); and it does not depend upon albedo, either at cloud tops or planetary surfaces (Earth’s surface is 70% deep ocean, while Venus is solid crust) — These great differences in the two atmospheres and surfaces mean nothing, introduce no complicating effects. The Venus/Earth comparison shows they have no overall effect, because the solar distance explains the entire difference, over a broad range of atmospheric pressures. So both planets MUST be warmed, overall, by direct atmospheric absorption of the same (infrared) portion of the Sun’s incident radiation, not by the more complicated process of first warming of the surface. This is a revolutionary finding, but my Venus analysis is easily verified by any competent scientist, and should have been confronted and generally accepted nearly 20 years ago, when the 1991 Magellan mission returned the detailed Venus data.
So you have a complicated radiative transfer theory — obviously incompetently implemented when you consider the Earth’s surface a blackbody, or ignore the fact that you are showing thermal measurements, not directed radiation measurements — supposedly backing up a complicated “greenhouse effect”, versus a simple, planet-sized experiment (a competent Venus/Earth comparison) that definitively denies the “greenhouse effect” concocted by James Hansen et al..
Obviously, in the present heated intellectual atmosphere, it is going to take time for enough good scientists of dispassionate manner to confront and accept my clear and simple contribution. I submitted it to “Physics Today”, for a necessary open airing before the entire scientific community and the public, but of course have gotten no response. So I await signs of an incipient competency among climate scientists on this subject, or an overthrow of the current climate “consensus” by scientists in other fields (I am a physicist). The truth is quite different, and remarkably simpler, than anyone now seems to realize.
“I am not sure about this ‘radiation down’ or so called ‘back-radiation’.
According to Trenberth et al. this amounts to about 330 W/m2, nearly twice that of the energy reaching the Earths surface from the sun (184 W/m2). If this is true why isn’t this energy collected and used as an energy source (better than solar energy as no need for storage – this can be collected 24 hours /day).”
This simple question points a very large problem with the back radiation model. The simple fact that we cannot harness the power of the back radiation points to a problem with the back radiation model.
If Trenberth’s et al model is correct, then standing naked outside at midnight in still air should feel almost as warm as standing outside naked at noon on a sunny day.
We should also be able to harness the energy of the IR photons from the back radiation using solar panels sensitive in the IR spectrum to generate a large fraction of the power we generate in sunlight.
The simple fact that we cannot harness the energy of the back radiation suggests that it exists more as a function of our current theories in physics than as anything else. If the back radiation can’t do work, then something is missing in the explanation.
I’ve been working with a combination of the reanalysis data set and CO2 data in an effort to quantifiy the relative effects of atmospheric water and CO2 on OLR from the top of the atmosphere.(click on my name). I think a better approach is to estimate the “average optical thickness” of the atmospheric blanket and determine what effects water and CO2 have on it. First estimate the temperature at the top of the atmosphere using the S-B law and OLR at TOA. Then estimate “average optical thickness” using the difference between SST (skin surface temperature) and temperature at TOA with different lapse rates (wet for tropics and dry near the poles). Regress these values on precipitation rate, precipitable water, and CO2 to determine the magnitude of their effects. This technique captures the additional effects of non-radiative processes (formation of clouds, rain, and snow). I expect you will find that any minor effect of CO2 is statistically lost in the error variability of the atmospheric water factors.
richard verney says:
March 10, 2011 at 6:29 am (Edit)
tallbloke says: March 10, 2011 at 4:26 am
“….The greenhouse effect works by *SLOWING DOWN THE RATE THE EARTH COOLS AT*, by raising the altitude at which the atmosphere radiates to space .
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/tallbloke-back-radiation-oceans-and-energy-exchange/
Thanks for the link to your article. I was one of those who was arguing similar points with Willis and I have not seen your article before today. It is an interesting read.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for that. In fact, it was your exchange with Willis on the folie a deux part deux thread which prompted me to write the article and invite Willis to respond.
His position and Ira Glicksteins seem quite close, but niether of them seem willing to engage with the issue of the inadequacy of the mixing down of the back radiation warmed ocean surface to explain the rise in ocean heat content in the ’90’s.
The ocean freezing argument misses the real point. If the ocean is re-emitting whatever back radiation flirts with it’s surface in short order, an increase in co2 is not going to affect ocean heat content much, because it’ll just cause a bit more evaporation/convection, which cools the ocean surface.
Cheers
Two identical plates at identical temperatures exactly parallel in a vacuum radiating at each other.
heat transfer between the two is:
q/a = (emissivity * sigma * T1^4) – (emissivity * sigma * T2^4) since e and sigma are the same
q/a = emissivity*sigma* (T1^4-T2^4) since they are both the same T no heat transfer.
There is no temperature increase at both plates because the other is radiating at it, no slow down of radiation, nothing. Even if you now put a gas (CO2) in between the plates you still end with the same thing no heat transfer between plates. The gas will not impede the plates from radiating. The gas will not make the plates hotter.
For people who say a cold body will transfer heat to a warmer body please present a formulaic argument for that.
For Phil who ask about why PV=nRT does not heat Titan: The gases on Titan are near critical temperature and therefore the formula cannot be used. However on Earth the critical temperature of nitrogen (-173 C or so) is so far away from the air temperature of the Earth that PV=nRT can be used at one atmosphere with a less than 1% error. Ergo my statement that we over state the effects of any GHG effect by at least 18 C.
And we have yet to have a definitive answer as to whether N2 and O2 follow the noraml law that “all matter will radiate according its temperature” or that N2 and O2 are immune form this.
To John Marshall and Vince Causey:
In regard to the second law discussion, I would add this way of looking at it, which is really just a simpler way of saying what Vince said. When you have energy being transfered between the ground and the air it will have a rate of flow based on the difference in temperature between them. If you make the air warmer and the ground stays the same temperature, then the rate of energy flow will slow down. It’s not a matter of whether energy flows in both directions or not. The question is relative rate of flow. Changing the temperature of either medium relative to the other will change the rate of flow in the form of conduction.
To Ira Glickstein:
Are there any sources that show what those bottom/top of atmosphere graphs would look like with double CO2? I wonder how much it would change and how?
this one must be for Roy Spencer and his Vacuum theory,
For people who say a cold body will transfer heat to a warmer body please present a formulaic argument for that.
Next up: Could you address for our reading audience LOWTRAN, MODTRAN and HITRAN and what that means for LWIR transmission and how it relates to CAGW?
Moshpit (S. Mosher) can advise where to obtain if required … so can cba I think.
.
#
#
Gilbert K. Arnold
……” Did you even look at Ira’s brief CV at the bottom of his article. “……
Perhaps he has forgotten his thermo.
Other posters have pointed out mistakes with Kelvin temperature units and so on.
I was being helpful when I said he should revise his thermodynamics.
Bomber_the_Cat says:
March 10, 2011 at 6:10 am
Ira, there’s a problem here. as P. van der Meer says at 3:15 am. The blackbody curves are showing a peak at about 18 micron when they should be peaking at about 10 micron for a 300K blackbody.
In fact, if you refer to your previous post ‘Visualising the Greenhouse Effect – Atmospheric Windows’, you have the peak correct at 10 microns.
So, the current graphs don’t make sense – unless I am missing something? I have looked at the source material and that appears to be wrong also.
Has anyone got an explanation for this?
Yes, the Petty data is spectral radiance (mW/m^2.sr.cm-1) plotted vs. cm-1 and is correct, the transformation to a plot in terms of wavelength is non-linear (and is why it’s misleading for Ira to have reversed the axis on his plots, should leave it in wavenumbers).
James says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:06 am
Re-emitted radiation does not and cannot heat the Earth significantly, because downwelling IR does not and cannot penetrate the surface of the ocean beyond its own wavelength.
But the radiation from the Sun has an even smaller wavelength. How come solar radiation can heat the Earth but re-emitted radiation [can’t]?
It’s because it has a smaller wavelength that it can penetrate the ocean. Most of the incoming solar energy is in the visible wavelengths, and it penetrates the ocean to around 300feet at most. The U.V. penetrates even further, to 1500feet or more, but carries a lot less energy than the visible. A big percentage is absorbed in the top 30feet, but that’s ok, because that’s well onto the zone which can get mixed further down by wind and wave action, tidal action and subsurface currents.
Gary Swift says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:52 am
Are there any sources that show what those bottom/top of atmosphere graphs would look like with double CO2? I wonder how much it would change and how?
Go and use Modtran, you can play with it to your heart’s content, very instructive.
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.orig.html
Harry Dale Huffman says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:25 am
Thank you Harry.
And
mkelly says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:42 am
“And we have yet to have a definitive answer as to whether N2 and O2 follow the noraml law that “all matter will radiate according its temperature” or that N2 and O2 are immune form this.”
Ditto.
I have been saying exactly this for years. If N2 and O2 do not radiate according to their temperature then they must be the only two substances in the Universe which do not.
How convenient would it be, if that were the case (which of course it is not), that they happen to make up 99% of the atmosphere?
to Harry Dale Huffman
Good post. Great analysis. Far more valid than the nonsense out there.
On earth, the data from the Antarctic interior regions, confirms exactly what you concluded. CO2 levels have no silly feedback effects.
It’s as if the climate scientists, ignorant of the basics of radiational heat transfer, have built an elaborate farce. They chase around bits and pieces, thousands of localized effects. Meanwhile they construct a farcical ‘greenhouse effect’, include in it what they think belongs there, blow them way out of proportion, and exclude or ignore what they ‘think’ doesn’t belong there.
Then they frighten themselves with their own farce of a nightmare. And they try to get others to join them in their self-created nightmare.
Incompetence abounds, not only as scientists, but as people.
“Morris Minor says:
March 10, 2011 at 2:21 am
“…. Perhaps a better analogy would be an electric blanket that, in addition to its insulating properties, also emits thermal radiation both down and up…..”
I am not sure about this ‘radiation down’ or so called ‘back-radiation’.
According to Trenberth et al. this amounts to about 330 W/m2, nearly twice that of the energy reaching the Earths surface from the sun (184 W/m2). If this is true why isn’t this energy collected and used as an energy source (better than solar energy as no need for storage – this can be collected 24 hours /day).
The reason I suspect we can’t use this energy is because it doesn’t exist – heat will not flow from the cold atmosphere to the warm surface of the Earth.
I think the emission spectra shows the scatter of infra-red from the atmospheric gases that wont reach the collimated collector of the sensors due to its direction of travel?
Thoughts please!”
Absolutely 100% right Morris Minor- Cooler air CANNOT heat the warm ground, this article is nothing more than lukewarmer nonsense-
( and by the way great choice of car, I own three! One Traveller, one convertible and a 4-door saloon project. )
regards
John
Gilbert K. Arnold says:
March 10, 2011 at 4:09 am
Did you even look at Ira’s brief CV at the bottom of his article.
I’ll reserve judgement on the value of the CV until Ira has cogently debated the points raised in opposition to his characterisation of the greenhouse effect.
mkelly says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:42 am
For Phil who ask about why PV=nRT does not heat Titan: The gases on Titan are near critical temperature and therefore the formula cannot be used. However on Earth the critical temperature of nitrogen (-173 C or so) is so far away from the air temperature of the Earth that PV=nRT can be used at one atmosphere with a less than 1% error. Ergo my statement that we over state the effects of any GHG effect by at least 18 C.
As you’ve been told before you can’t use the gas laws this way, it’s utter nonsense to do so. I didn’t ask about Titan but Triton, where the atmosphere (N2) is far from the critical point.
And we have yet to have a definitive answer as to whether N2 and O2 follow the noraml law that “all matter will radiate according its temperature” or that N2 and O2 are immune form this.
Yes you have but it doesn’t fit with your preconceptions so you don’t believe it.
On the 2nd Thermodynamics Law, some above are confusing Net Flow of Heat, which must always be from hotter to colder, with Rate of Heat Flow, which can be influenced by placing a resistor in the system (eg the vacuum part of a thermos bottle, for example). The hot toddy in the thermos bottle still cools as heat is transferred out, but more slowly.
A blanket is a resistor to heat flow. The atmosphere is a resistor to heat flow.
The atmosphere resists heat flow more in the infra-red than in the visible light specrum. So heat from the Sun, mostly in the visible range, gets in with less resistance than heat radiated from the Earth, mostly in the infra-red. The Earth must rise in temperature until the imbalances in resistance are balanced by increased radiation from the warmer Earth. This higher equilibrium point, about which the Earth in reality fluctuates, is empirically confirmed by comparison with the average temps on the airless moon.
The issue for AGW (the CO2-part, not the urban heat island (UHI) or land use part) is whether elevating CO2 levels change the net resistance to flow in the assumed linear fashion (ie, doubling CO2 doubles CO2’s contribution to the air’s resistance to heat flow outgoing from the Earth). Logical application of saturation effects suggest that as CO2 rises, its added contribution diminishes.
This leaves aside the issue of feedbacks, positive or negative, related to clouds, storms, surface albedo, and so on.
In summary, one reaches a flat-earther or the-moon-shots-were-fakes level of denial when one tries to deny that a “greenhouse effect” exists because of the atmosphere’s resistance to heat flow. The reason that CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is in doubt is because:
1. The temp records poorly correlate with CO2 levels.
2. “Saturation” effects may limit the change induced by rising CO2.
3. The net feedbacks are most likely negative (characteristic of a stable system, as the Earth has been for eons), not positive.
Obvious take-aways: the “greenhouse” has a lot of broken windows and the “blanket” has a lot of holes.
Phil. says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:36 am
“As you’ve been told before you can’t use the gas laws this way, it’s utter nonsense to do so. I didn’t ask about Titan but Triton, where the atmosphere (N2) is far from the critical point.”
Sorry for the mistake between the two moons. But my comment stands as I went back to my themodynamics book and what I said is a virtual quote about critical temperature and being able to use it about air within a 1% error here on earth. If you disgree then you disagree with not only me but my old text book.
Again with the preconceptions. There was a disagreement on the last thread about this and just because you post a link to somewhere does not make it definitive. But let’s say you are correct that N2 and O2 do not radiate according to thier temperature. Then why Phil: “Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere.” Is NOAA wrong? The quote is from an earlier story here on WUWT.
Domenic says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:30 am
to Harry Dale Huffman
Good post. Great analysis. Far more valid than the nonsense out there.
Except it’s wrong!
For example, the following:
The Venus/Earth comparison directly indicates this, because the ratio of temperatures, Venus/Earth, is essentially a constant (1.17) which is just that due to the distances of the two planets from the Sun, NOTHING ELSE. It does not depend upon CO2 concentration (Earth has 0.04% CO2, and Venus a whopping 96.5%); and it does not depend upon albedo, either at cloud tops or planetary surfaces
Venus has a bond albedo of 0.75 due to the sulfuric acid clouds whereas the earth has a bond albedo of 0.29, you bet the temperature depends on the albedo. Venus absorbs 25% of the light incident on it and Earth 71% but the ratio of temperatures still only depends on the distance from the sun? Even a physicist should see the problem with that.
I’m an engineer, not a physicist, but I think I may be able to clarify the misunderstandings with respect to heat transfer and the second law of thermodynamics.
Any matter that is not at zero Kelvin will emit energy.
Where a cold surface meets a hot surface, both emit energy but the hot surface will emit more than the cold.
Although there will be energy transfer in both directions, the net transfer must be from the hot body to the cold one, causing the hot body to cool and the cold body to warm.
So when the second law forbids the transfer of heat from the cold body to the warm, I think it refers to net heat transfer.
Disclaimer: my thermodynamics are pretty rusty so that might be all wrong.
“Harry Dale Huffman says:
March 10, 2011 at 7:25 am
A proper comparison of the atmospheric temperatures of Venus and Earth proves (to any competent, and honest, physical scientist) that there is no greenhouse effect such as is “visualized” here and promulgated by the IPCC scientists.”
Excellent post, went to your site and read in entirety, very succinct and straightforward. Thanks for joining us here. I find it disheartening that not more of the posters here (only one other I’ve seen so far: Domenic says:
March 10, 2011 at 8:30 am and I agree with his comments also) have picked up on the import of your analysis.
My personal feeling is that too much time is spent on coddling over personalities, psychologies, and what you touched on: this preponderance over comples calculations concerning a dead hypothesis. I mentioned on another thread that the truth is ill-served by trying to “build bridges” or find “common ground” for discussion with scoundrels. Congratulations on your adept use of Occam’s Razor and thanks again.
I have bookemarked your site for frequent referencing.
mkelly says:
March 10, 2011 at 9:21 am
You are correct, all substances radiate according to their respective temperatures, there are no exceptions to that fact.
Gaylon says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 10, 2011 at 9:37 am
Hey all, in my previous post I am not refering to ALL AGW’s believers as scoundrels. I am refering to the scoundrels (Trenberth, Mann, Jones, et al). I realize that this science (climate science) is still in it’s infancy and that many climb on-board through a sincere desire to explore, explain, and to learn. Others, named, not so much.