Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
When I’m analyzing a system, I divide the variables into three categories—first-, second-, and third-order variables.
First-order variables are those variables that can change the system by more than 10%. Obviously, these must be included in any analysis of the system.
Second-order are those that can change the system by 1% to 10%. These are smaller, but still too large to overlook.
Finally, third-order variables are those than can change the system by less than 1%. These are small enough that they can be ignored in all but the most detailed analyses. To give you an idea of why we can neglect the third order variables, here’s how those three forcings would look on a graph, for an imaginary signal of say 500 W/m2.
Figure 1. Showing the relative sizes of first-, second-, and third-order variables.
Note that the series containing the third-order variable is almost invisibly different from the series where the third-order variable is left out, which is why third-order variables can be safely ignored except when you need extreme precision. So … what does this have to do with climate science?
Let’s do the same kind of analysis on the forcings of the climate system. At the TOA, the “top of atmosphere”, there is downwelling radiation from two sources: the sun, and the longwave “greenhouse” radiation from clouds and “greenhouse” gases (GHGs). The globally-averaged amount of downwelling solar radiation at the earth’s TOA (which is total incoming solar radiation less a small amount absorbed in the stratosphere) is on the order of 330 watts per square metre (W/m2). The amount of downwelling longwave radiation at the TOA, on the other hand, is about 150 W/m2.
Finally, if CO2 doubles it is supposed to change the downwelling radiation at the TOA by 3.7 W/m2 … here’s how that works out:
Figure 2. Sources of downwelling radiation at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), defined as the tropopause by the IPCC.
By that measure, CO2 doubling is clearly a third order forcing, one that we could safely ignore while we figure out what actually makes the climate run.
Or we could look at it another way. How much of the earth’s temperature is due to the sun, and how much is due to the earth’s atmosphere?
If there were no atmosphere and the earth had its current albedo (about 30%), the surface temperature would be about 33°C cooler than it currently is (see here for the calculations). Obviously, downwelling longwave radiation from the greenhouse gases is responsible for some of that warming, with DLR from clouds responsible for the rest. Cloud DLR globally averages about 30 W/m2 (see here for a discussion). So the 150 W/m2 forcing from the GHGs is responsible for on the order of 80% of the 33° temperature rise, or about 25°C.
But if 150 W/m2 of GHG forcing only warms the surface by 25°C, then the so-called “climate sensitivity” is only about 25°C warming for 150 W/m2 of TOA forcing, or a maximum about six tenths of a degree per doubling of CO2, or about 0.2% of the earth’s temperature … again, it is a third order forcing.
Now, if someone wants to claim that a change in the forcings of less than 1% is going to cause catastrophes, I have to ask … why hasn’t it done so in the past? Surely no-one thinks that the forcings have been stable to within 1% in the past hundred years … so where are the catastrophes?
Finally, most of the measurements that we can make of the climate system are imprecise, with uncertainties of up to 10% being common. Given that … how successful are we likely to be at this point in history in looking for a third-order signal that is less than 1% of the total?
w.
PS – In any natural heat engine of this type, which is running as fast as the circumstances permit, losses rise faster than the temperature. So in fact, the analyses above underestimate how small the CO2 effect really is. This is because at equilibrium, losses eat up much of any increase in forcing. So the effect of the CO2 at general climate equilibrium is less than the effect it would have at colder planetary temperatures. In other words, climate sensitivity is an inverse function of temperature.
PPS – Please don’t point out that my numbers are approximations. I know that, and they may be off a bit … but they’re not off enough to turn CO2 into a second-order forcing, much less a first-order forcing.
PPPS – What is a first-order climate variable? Clouds, clouds, clouds …
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By the way I am not an an “alectrical engineer”
Cheers, Kevin
Quite clear Kevin.
Interesting, you didn’t make any comments on the points I made.
A small problems with your sense of outrage. Its NOT total nonsense. It is well based on science and data stretching back decades.
However, that some people (and I must admit as a bewildered non-American, more Americans than any other nationality) have been so willing to let their opinions be influenced by all the highly networked professional skepticism-mongers and all the massive mis-representations they create (some unwittingly perhaps but I am quite convinced that many of them are quite witting), that is TRUELY NONSENSE!
Kevin. YOU HAVE BEEN DECEIVED. Not by the climate scientists. By the Merchants of Doubt. All to willing to play to your sense of outrage. I have a simple rule in life. I NEVER TRUST PEOPLE WHO TELL ME I SHOULD BE OUTRAGED. I never trust people telling me what I should think. And the Merchants of Doubt are a full time fraternity furiously engaged in that. Where is your judgement Kevin? Can’t you see that these guys are flim-flam men, playing on the fact that most people don’t notice their deceptions. Read my earlier comments to Willis. His post is actually gobbledeegook. But it sounds good to those not in the know.
Tell me Kevin, when you look in the mirror in the morning do you ever harbour any fears, any doubts that maybe your certainty that AGW is nonsense might be misplaced? Maybe it frightens you. Is that the source of your anger? Fear is usually what anger derives from. Is the idea that AGW is real so disturbing that you need to completely reject to avoid the fear. So anyone who suggests it is true generates your anger against them for raising the spectre of the thing you are afraid of facing. There is a nmae for that. Its called Denial. ANd no I am not referring to Holocaust deniers or any such thing. I am referring to the psychological process of denial, the description of which started with Sigmund Freud. Read up on it and see if any of the ideas apply.
You might also like to read this article in Physics Today, comparing past scientific advances that generated similar patters of attck and denial – Copernicus, Einstein. The similarities to the modern day are striking. http://physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i10/p39_s1?bypassSSO=1
Glenn Tamblyn says: October 5, 2011 at 9:21 pm
A truly magnificent performance. If your knowledge of engineering is on a par with your psychology then I think I’ll avoid any project you’ve been involved in…. when you finally realize the extent to which your mentor, John Cook, has lied to and deceived you there will be outrage enough. We won’t have to tell you. Of course, it will be too late then: the first thing the successful revolutionaries do is turn on their own…. Lenin’s treatment of Trotsky comes to mind….. but of course, you’re not a Trotsky. Or a Lenin. Just one of the tens of thousands of Old Bolshiveks who had outlived their usefulness. Tool.
Pamela Gray says:
October 5, 2011 at 6:50 pm
All right, Gates. Here is a challenge for you. You say there should be increasing wet and drought conditions. Blocking highs, in pressure strength and/or duration, should show a trend (blocking highs lead to droughts) commensurate with rising CO2. Do they? Low pressure systems (leading to storms) should be on the upswing in strength and/or duration commensurate with rising CO2. Are they?
______
Interesting notion, but I don’t recall making any such a statement, and am certainly not qualified to do so. I simply know that without CO2, Earth becomes an ice planet, so this little 3rd order effect trace gas is essential to preventing that. Amazing what an “insignificant trace gas” can do, eh?
fred berple:
“Since GHG IR is 7/24, and strongest when it is cloudy and/or at night, when solar is weakest, then GHG IR panels should be as widespread as solar panels. If not to generate electricity, certainly to heat houses.”
You seem to be having a bit of trouble understanding things here. (And jae who’s off on a bender about impossible objects or some such.) So I’m going to walk you through Trenberth’s graph of the flows — here often maligned as a ‘cartoon’ — rather than deal with Willis’ denialist tripe above.
Now imagine a black-body comprising an infinite Euclidian plane and sheathed in an infinitely deep atmosphere of pure Carbon Dioxide. Now, by Trenberth’s numbers 168 Watts/M^2 reach the black-body directly and are then perfectly re-radiated from the surface. As you should be well aware from basic geometry this means that every ounce of radiation will be caught by the greenhouse gasses and that fully one-half will be radiated back to the surface. The other one-half will take a path away from the surface, never to return.
But here you have to remember Zeno’s arrow. One-half of our one-half will be re-radiated from our black body, caught by the atmosphere, and returned. And one-half of that still, and so on. Such that we will find a similar 168 Watts in back radiation due the atmosphere. If you note Trenberth’s note of 67 Watts being trapped by the atmosphere first then you can plainly see that 33.5 of those will be ejected forthwith, while the other 33.5 will remain as backradiation from the greenhouse effect. Or a total of 201.5 watts due GHGs.
It’s here that you have your misunderstanding over the missing 122.5 Watts of back radiation. (And some other issues arise as well, I’m sure.) But it’s this which has led you to rather farcical statements over back-radiation heaters and claiming that this is all quite impossible. Indeed it would be impossible if we lived on an infinite Euclidian plane and you would be right to object. But the numbers clear right up when you remember that we live on a concave planet.
Hope that helps.
Robert E Phelan
So John Cook has lied to me. Which means he has lied to all the other authors at SkS, the dozens and dozens of them. Which also means that to maintain the lie we then all have to lie to each other as well. So I lie to all of them and they all lie to me. And when discussing some new piece of science we have to carefully ‘manage’ each other so we don’t report it accurately. Whic is hard sinse SkS always refer to the science they are commenting on.
Interesting test for you. Select the 100 most recent posts at SkS and count how many different scientific papers are referenced. Then go to those and count hao many separate authors there are in total. Then do the same here at WUWT. Then consider the relationship between the two sites and how they report science. Take this post by Willis for example. The only links in his post are to some data sources. All the rest of the content comes from Willis. Even when he does use something from the scientific literature he doesn’t even credit the source. Regulars here might know where it comes from – Trenberth et al – but a newbie wouldn’t. Every thing else on this post is just Willis.
As for the references to revolutions etc!! LOL.
Hey Dude, wake up and smell the roses. Revolutions, Evil Socialism vs Freedom, Left vs Right. Have you no sense of just how dated you sound. Just how 20th Century! Left vs Right is oh so dated and meaningless. Like so many Americans (pardon my if my assumption that you are American is incorrect) all you seem interested in doing is just continually replaying the same stuck old record, endlessly revisiting the tired old narrative. The USA has a lot of problems, but you don’t solve them just reciting fromtired old scripts. If America is going to prosper into the future you need to understand that it is not enough to try and just endlessly recycle old thinking, old feuds, old ideologies, even the notion of ideology being relevent. You sound like Bill Murray in GroundHog Day. At least Bill new that he was in some sort of trap, even if he didn’d know why. Do you?
No, Glenn, you are perfectly correct. I am an American. You don’t seem to like us much. Pity that. And yes, that emminent expert in climatology, the cartoonist, has been lying to you, as have your professors. You are far less interested in the science than in the political implications and that makes you a tool and no scientist. I don’t talk about left vs. right, I talk about an elite that has cp-opted business, science and government. Wake up and smell the roses dude. You have been sold a bill of goods and the freedoms and opportuinities of your children and grand children are being sold to some self-styled masters of the universe who will use them as high-tech proletarians and dispose of them as they please. Look up “false consciousness” and then go through the exercise of applying it to yourself.
Let me ask you this: just how is it this site has seen one after another of you John Cook disciples making your presence known, one after the other? You guys working to a rotation? I think there is a word for that…..
“Tim Folkerts says:
October 5, 2011 at 8:07 pm
“The average energy from surface to GHG due to radiation is ~ 350 W/m^2. The average energy from GHG to surface due to radiation is ~ 325 W/m^2. In other words, the “heat” is ~ 25 W/m^s from surface to GHG.”
Yet the sun is only 200 w/m2. Using your method the net heat flow should be 350-200 = 150 w/m2 outwards from the earth towards the sun. We should be getting a net cooling from the sun.
Tim Folkerts says:
October 5, 2011 at 8:07 pm
No the first law says dU = δQ – δW (following a common sign convention)
at equilibrium dU = 0, therefore
0 = δQ – δW
δQ = δW
at equilibrium heat = work
Robert. Actually I do like Anerica and Americans – people divided by a common language and all that, being a fellow colonial from the Great Southern Land. Thats why watching the slow decline of America in the last couple of decades has been truly saddening. Good decent people who don’t seem to know how to get their country out of a morass of competing identities and ideologies. Americans don’t seem to see that the answer to many of their woes is to move on from past ideas. Or more specifically the idea that past ideas are the source of certainty in life. Ideas usually have a use-by-date. If good ideas don’t evolve to fit new circumstances then they become bad ideas.
And to correct a piece of misinformation that Anthony put out in another post to which you disparagingly referred. John Cook is an academic.’Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland’. And the ajority of the SkS authors have a range of technical qualifications – Physicists, Geologists, Engineers, Environmental scientists, Statisticians etc. Not publishing authors in climate science but in a range of allied fields.
Then “You are far less interested in the science than in the political implications and that makes you a tool and no scientist.” Didn’t you read what I said and the tone of it? I couldn’t give a tinkers damn about political implications. Politics is one of the great irrelevencies in life, along with lawyers and real-estate saelemen. Its about management, not politics.
Then you talk about “an elite that has cp-opted business, science and government.” Thats one hell of a big elite Robert. 100’s of 1000’s of them going back over half a century, from countries all over the world. All applying the same physics and chemistry that has built our high-tech world. You do realise don’t you that the scientific understanding that allows you and I to communicate across the world over the Internet is exactly the same understanding that tells us what GH gases will do in the atmosphere. That the same understanding of the transmission of IR radiation through the atmosphere that lets us understand AGW also lets the US Defense Department understand why IR Heat Seeking missiles work and why their early warning satellites didn’t start WWIII because they confused a lightning storm in Siberia with a ballistic missile launch.
Here are some names, part of the elite. Gilbert Plass, missile guidance system designer. Roger Revelle, oceanographer studying the aftermath of nuclear test blasts. Also solving the riddle of the complex ‘buffered’ chemistry of sea water. Hans Suess, explored the rates of ocean uptake of CO2 using Carbon 14 studies. Ever heard of them? Add in Bert Bolin, Mannabe & Wetherald in the 1960’s. These were the fathers of the study of AGW. In the 1950’s & 60’s. By 1967 the basic understanding of AGW was in place. And Al Gore was still in Grade school, and James Hansen was in High school. And these guys are all dead. Their membership of the ‘elite’ didn’t do them much good did it
So your narrative is this “You have been sold a bill of goods and the freedoms and opportuinities of your children and grand children are being sold to some self-styled masters of the universe who will use them as high-tech proletarians and dispose of them as they please.”. Interesting for someone who says your views aren’t about left vs right views, you seem very comfortable using the language of that divide.
Here is my narrative. “The well being of my children and grandchildren is totally dependent on the capacity of the physical processes of the physical world around them to provide food, shelter, security for them. In a world where the climate and other physical resources are depleting/declining/degrading, their well being cannot be guaranteed. Add in the follow-on consequences of social decline, violence, war, etc can only make this worse. Putting the physical processes of the world under this sort of pressure is really bad for my granschildrens future.”
Key point of difference I see between your narrative and mine: You seem to have a presumption that the threats to your grandchildren’s futures don’t come from hazards to the physical systems of the planet – that presumably will just go on an on. Therefore threats are of a political/social nature: ‘freedoms’ etc. You seem to be discounting physical threats like starving to death, dying in a war over water or food.
My view is that the key threats to my grandchildren are physical. Based on reading a lot of the science. You reject/disparage such a threat and then only see a second-order threat to ‘freedoms’
So what is your reading of the science that lets you reject physical threats so you can focus on 2nd order threats. So, some questions?
What % of the heat from warming in the last 4 decades has gone into the oceans as opposed to the atmosphere?
What is your view of the recent paper by Meerl et al 2011 analysing decade long hiatuses in atmospheric warming due to circulation changes in the ocean?
How much do you think aerosol increases in the atmosphere in the last decade due to the growth of economies such as China, India etc have masked warming?
Generally, what is you basis for saying that we have been sold a ‘bill of goods’. Note I said basis, not just opinion. Because the alternative hypothesis is that you have been sold a ‘bill of goods’ but are reluctant to admit it.
Gates, you most certainly did make such a statement. You contend that climate change will result in increased frequency of extreme weather events. This can be directly measured. However, clouds, or lack thereof, are terribly difficult to measure. Economic proxies are fraught with corrupting variables. And I won’t consider temperature as that is not your contention here. You focused, in your statement, on extreme weather events. Don’t dismiss my challenge as being “interesting”. It is your hypothesis. Back it up.
Data taken from pressure systems should be a straight forward measurement of extreme weather events being on the upswing commensurate with increasing CO2, unless you contend that such extreme events have no correlation to atmospheric pressure indices. That would be a flip flop for you as you often refer to Arctic pressure system changes being driven by CO2 warming.
Aerosols, ocean heating etc. are so far baseless arm waving with no evidence. Where’s the empirical evidence for any of these? These are fanciful theories dreamt up by the AGW clique to justify the non-existent warming.
Read below post by Pat Michaels in this very forum about the holes in aerosol excuse of Kauffman et. al.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/pat-michaels-on-aerosols-china-coal-and-lack-of-recent-warming/
And as far as Ocean heat is concerned, nothing has been detected so far and Argo floats show now warming. So by what mechanism did the heat mysteriously bypass the first 700 metres and then lurk at the bottom?
And what is the empirical evidence form the past that warming is a physical threat? An what empirical science did you read which shows that there has been warming due to human released CO2 and that it is catastrophic with disastrous consequences?
There is no empirical evidence for any of your claims and the only physical threats seen are from Ben Santer who wanted to deck Pat Michaels.
jae says:
We’ve explained it to you a thousand times: In the absence of an IR-absorbing atmosphere, the earth’s surface cannot for long be emitting ~390 W/m^2 when the earth system (including atmosphere) is only absorbing ~240 W/m^2 from the sun. This huge imbalance between emission and absorption would lead to rapid cooling.
The gravitational force is not a source of energy for the system unless there is a constant increase of gravitational potential energy…which would be true for a system that is undergoing gravitational collapse…but alas the earth and its atmosphere ain’t doing that.
Fred says:
“Yet the sun is only 200 w/m2. Using your method the net heat flow should be 350-200 = 150 w/m2 outwards from the earth towards the sun. ”
No, the sun is about (5.67E-8) * 5800^4 = ~ 6 MILLION W/m^2. Distance, geometry and cloud cover conspire to reduce that to an average of ~ 200 W/m^2 at the surface of earth. The net flow is still quite definitely from the sun to the earth if you understand the physics and geometry.
Robert E. Phelan says:
October 5, 2011 at 9:50 pm
…….Of course, it will be too late then: the first thing the successful revolutionaries do is turn on their own…. Lenin’s treatment of Trotsky comes to mind….. but of course, you’re not a Trotsky. Or a Lenin. Just one of the tens of thousands of Old Bolshiveks who had outlived their usefulness. Tool.
_________________________________________________________________________
That is a thought that has been running through my head lately. Especially the wiping out of the Russian intelligentsia by the Bolshevik’s after the intelligentsia helped bring them to power and Stalin’s intentional starvation of about 14 million the Ukrainians farmers.
Anthony’s They had to burn the village to save it from global warming along with the wiping out of 75% of Mexico’s peasant farmer’s, 60% of Portugal’s, the death by suicide every 32 minutes of India’s farmers and every 4 days of the UK farmers while the likes of george Soros and Al Gore are buying up farm land world wide….
Those who believe in CAGW also are those who think there are too many people on Earth. They are not concerned about others as they would have us believe.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:27 am
“My view is that the key threats to my grandchildren are physical. Based on reading a lot of the science. You reject/disparage such a threat and then only see a second-order threat to ‘freedoms’
Personally, Mr. Tamblyn I would want my grandchildren to be free and contend with the physical rather than be a servant of the state. Freedom lost is normally never regained.
You further say, “Americans don’t seem to see that the answer to many of their woes is to move on from past ideas.” What the hell are you talking about? Giving up freedom? Get rid of the Constitution? Forget we have borders?
Mr. Tamblyn you write twaddle.
zac siad, October 4, 2011 at 2:25 pm:
“Serious question. Why is CO2 considered more important than water and sunlight when it comes to considering future temperature trends, is it a political or a scientific thing?”
It’s totally political as we have not warmed w]since 1996 or 1998. If they cannot blame it all on CO2, then they cannot blame it on man’s activities that produce CO2.
Maurice Strong came up with this strategy decades ago, as he cast about for a crisis upon which to build a case for imposing a one-world government—his lifelong dream. He was instrumental in forming the IPCC and staffing it with people of like mind, to produce propaganda to create the crisis. They know it’s not true, but the average person really has no way of detecting slight changes in temperature in their daily lives. Even during the warming from 1978 to 1998, the changes were relatively mild and had no effect on any lifeform as biological systems are much more robust, flexible, and adaptive than they would like you to know. There is literally no aspect of the planet, physical or biological that is doing anything unusual, anywhere.
Individuals and banks have jumped on the Strong wagon, seeing opportunity for great riches from totally useless cap and trade of carbon. Environmental groups have loved being able to demonize everybody, even themselves. The powers that be know that wind and solar power are useless dead ends, only good at small scales at the end user, not in large scale (you cannot build a reliable energy supply from unreliable energy sources), but it gives them the chance to hand out huge grants to new companies through crony capitalism—they avoid established technologies, such as nuclear, as the money would go to already established companies and not good friends and campaign donors.
And then there are subsidies for all of this to make bad enterprises competitive in the real world, using taxpayer dollars to support companies that would never succeed in the real world—it’s simple theft to simply hand companies money from the taxpayers, paying them to keep doing something that is not productive—insuring them against failure with huge government, illegal support.
The prime example here is biofuels, which suck up 40-60% of our corn crop, highjack huge portions of our croplands, and raise the cost of foodstuffs, starving millions in poorer countries. The radical enviros love this, as starving to death is natural, and they think there are too many people—it’s all good in their eyes—we get to suffer higher gas prices, less mileage, and destroyed engines and people elsewhere get to starve.
Biofuels use more energy than they produce, the ethanol eats engines and lowers miles per gallon, but it’s crony capitalism again; with the recent recession, ethanol/gasoline sales were down, so demand for ethanol biofuel was down. So, what does the government do? They unilaterally raise the ethanol-% to 15%, immediately creating a demand for more ethanol to be produced by their friends—in the middle of a recession, this industry got a boost. [Above 11.2% ethanol, gasohol really begins to destroy engines.]
Global warming is all about greed, greed, power, and greed, backed by socialists and totalitarians. There’s a group of arrogant jerks in Europe who think the world should be handed over to them because they know so much better than everybody how it should be run. Sure, let’s do that! Sounds good, no problem!
*****
Glenn Tamblyn says:
October 5, 2011 at 11:35 pm
Blah, blah, blah, then at last — “At least Bill new(sic) that he was in some sort of trap, even if he didn’d(sic) know why. Do you?”
*****
A textbook example of psychological projection.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:27 am
Or more specifically the idea that past ideas are the source of certainty in life. Ideas usually have a use-by-date. If good ideas don’t evolve to fit new circumstances then they become bad ideas.
Good point, the IPCC and models based AGW theory spectacularly failed to predict the leveling off of temperatures post 1998. Now AGW resembles epicycles, with more and more “correcting factors” added daily as it continues to fail to predict.
To have value, science must be capable of prediction. The interesting questions to be answered in science are “what” will happen, “when” will it happen, “where” will it happen and “who” will it happen to. These can all be validated.
“Why” something happens is only temporary until the next discovery, and there are an infinite number of discoveries yet to be made. Thus “why” has limited value because it can only be validated within limits.
For example, we know bacteria cause ulcers. But what causes the bacteria to infect? Could stress lead to infection? And what causes the stress. And what causes the cause of the stress? “Why” goes on to infinity.
@matt October 5, 2011 at 7:26 am
I think you are missing the point. Drunkeness is 100% effect of (just) alcohol. Difference in radiation is not 100% effect of CO2 but only 0.8%
If I was drunk from 3 kinds of alcohol and 1 only contributed 0.8% to my drunkeness then I wouldn’t blame that 1 for my overall drunkeness.
Tim Folkerts says:
October 6, 2011 at 4:43 am
Fred says:
“The net flow is still quite definitely from the sun to the earth if you understand the physics and geometry.”
Mr. Folkerts, the K&T energy flow graphic in one of Willis’ repsonses clearly shows the following
342 W/m^2 incoming from Sun. 105 W/m^2 reflection of sunshine outbound and 237 W/m^2 of IR outbound. The balance 342 = 105+237.
This shows that K&T equate IR with sunshine. The two are not the equal in their ability to do work or heat my sun tea.
I believe this is what Ferd in talking about. And the numbers take in the physics and geometry if K&T are of value.
It further shows 321 W/m^2 of DWLR being absorbed by the surface and only 169 W/m^2 of sunshine absorbed by surface. So which really heats rocks, sand, water, you, me, etc?
Show me a radiative heat transfer equation for this using K&T numbers that show how this all works. Remember emissivity.
mkelly says: “This shows that K&T equate IR with sunshine. ”
I think I can speak for K&T when I say that they equate the two in some ways. Both are EM waves. Both carry measurable energy. Conservation of energy applies equally to both.
On the other hand, they are different in that they consist of a very different set of wavelengths. Sunlight has the energy concentrated in a small number of photons, while the thermal IR has the energy spread out over a larger number of photons. This property of the light does indeed mean they are not the same in their ability to power a heat engine, just like like energy concentrated in a few molecules of steam can power a heat engine better then the same energy spread over a larger number of cooler water molecules.
“So which really heats rocks, sand, water, you, me, etc?”
You have to be very careful with language here (although the science is rather simpler). I prefer talking about energy movement, not “heat” since “heat” has different meanings to different people. Both solar photons and DWLR photons provide energy to the surface. Both contribute to the surface temperature. Changing either the absorbed solar photons or the absorbed DWLR photons by 10 W/m^2 will have the same effect on temperature.
Joel:
“We’ve explained it to you a thousand times: In the absence of an IR-absorbing atmosphere, the earth’s surface cannot for long be emitting ~390 W/m^2 when the earth system (including atmosphere) is only absorbing ~240 W/m^2 from the sun. This huge imbalance between emission and absorption would lead to rapid cooling.”
The SURFACE may be emitting 390 wm-2, but the EARTH is not emitting 390 wm-2; it is emitting only what it receives–240. The rest is stored in the atmosphere (you picture it as radiation flying around in some type of radiative GHE; i picture it differently, that’s all).
JAE says:
“The SURFACE may be emitting 390 wm-2, but the EARTH is not emitting 390 wm-2; it is emitting only what it receives–240. The rest is stored in the atmosphere”
I agree with the first sentence; I disagree with the second.
By “the rest” I assume you mean 390 – 240 = 150 watts/m^2. But there is no “rest” in reality. To see how energy flows balance, you need to look at all the energy flows.
The surface loses energy at a rate of 390 + 78 + 24 and absorbs energy at a rate of 324 + 168, for a net balance of ~ 0
The atmosphere loses energy at a rate of 324 + 195 and absorbs energy at a rate of 78 + 24 + 350 +67, for a net balance of ~ 0.
(Of course, all numbers are approximate.)
It is all in balance — there is no “storage”. (Well, if there is a slight imbalance, then there could some storage and a subsequent increase in global temperature.)