[Note: Jim sent me this in response to an group email pointing out yet another hopeless alarmist website climatetruth.org. He says it is his stock response, written somewhat like a poetry or haiku, and some of you may find it handy – Anthony]
By Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist
It is hard to disagree with receding glaciers.
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is undeniable.
Yet as skepticism survives it is not about facts – but about cause.
There are those who would interpret facts to fit their agendas.
The Smithsonian Intuition initialized a solar constant measurements project
In about 1910 using the finest pyranometers available
They were not able to measure solar variation closer than 1%
The variation due to atmospheric water vapor was close to 2%
Thirty years of solar constant numbers were not usable for that objective
Solar constant measurements were made from orbiting satellites starting in 1978.
Measurements were made normal to the suns rays.
They were corrected for the mean Earth Sun distance
The resulting solar constant measurements were made to an accuracy of 0.1%.
They were found to vary as the historic Sunspot Numbers.
Sunspot numbers are available since 1700.
Sunspot numbers are cyclic and repeat every eleven years.
Taking the sunspot numbers since 1900 and plotting an 11-year running average
Results in a graph showing an increasing sunspot trend for 110-years
The Hadley Center has a 110-year sea surface temperature record
The trends in sea surface temperature and sunspot trends are similar
The effect of rising SST is lower solubility of dissolved CO2
The increase in atmospheric CO2 is consistent with rising SST
Where there is a need to support a conservation ethic.
The increase in CO2 was attributed to tailpipe emissions perhaps in error.
Some say that a skeptic is a thing of evil
Some should not consider alternatives.
If your job depends on a specific interpretation
Perhaps you should ignore the solar evidence.
Our lives are filled with self-delusion it is handy to deceive others
“Aside from skeptics in the history of philosophy
Others were strangers to the first principals of intellectual honesty”
Objectivity is the goal. Skepticism is a tool.
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Sunspot: “I have used GISS temperature anomalies data from the site for about 10 years and starting to lose faith in the data. Basically the 1860′s has miraculously become cooler and the later years warmer. I am not sure where the problem lies.”
1. The site has been running for less than four years. How have you been using it for ten years?
2. Have you tried reading any of the many papers describing how the GISTEMP record is constructed?
Alan Statham says:
“Have you tried reading any of the many papers describing how the GISTEMP record is constructed?”
Have you?
click1
click2
click3
Explain why GISS always “adjusts” the temperature record to show a more alarming chart.
Alan Statham says:
December 11, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Alan I may have overstated the time frame. However when I line up GISS temperature anomalies in columns for years 2008, 2009, 2010 the monthly figures (rows) don’t match. Temperature anomalies between 2008 and 2010 were progressively updated to show cooler temperatures for the 1800’s and warmer for later years. This of course steepens the trend line.
I would be happy for you to enlighten me on the reason for this alteration in the baseline.
Smokey, none of those charts look terribly alarming to me. Are you alarmed? You must be quite a sensitive soul.
Sunspot, I could enlighten you perhaps, but have you tried to enlighten yourself? Have you read any of the many papers describing the GISS methodology?
fredj says
Presumably you mean the IPCC. The last report has two sections dedicated to water vapour (tropospheric/stratospheric) and the greenhouse effect. A few years ago I searched the third and fourth assessment reports for mentions of water vapour. I got several hundred hits in both reports, WG1.
BTW, here’s a graph of 11 year running means for sunspots and sea surface temps.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1900/mean:132/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1900/mean:132/normalise
The correlation is terrible. Jim’s got it wrong.
GISS gets it totally wrong again, re: it’s SST predictions. And CO2 follows SST’s very closely. This gif shows what’s happening.
And this graph clearly shows the major effects of the MWP and the LIA. The planet is still recovering from the LIA. Sea levels are also moderating. CAGW “theory” predicts steric sea level rise due to CO2-induced warming. Wrong again. Empirical evidence contradicts the CO2=CAGW conjecture because the conjecture is wrong.
fredj,
Mauna Loa CO2 measurements began in the 1950s.
80ppm is an increase of 0.0008%
That is a percentage of the entire atmosphere, not of just the greenhouse gases.
Nitrogen and oxygen make up more than 95% of the dry atmosphere, and neither are GHGs. As a proportion of the greenhouse effect, CO2 suddenly looms a bit larger, eh?
Water vapour is not well-mixed in the atmosphere, and can be found in trace amounts in arid regions, and up to 4% of the atmosphere in the most humid regions.
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But different GHGs absorb infrared radiation more and less strongly, and you need to sort that out to begin to get a handle on the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect. For instance, nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2 as a GHG per unit weight (over time), but is present in the atmosphere at 325 part per billion, and has increased by 25 parts per billion over the last 30 years or so.
This stuff is not straightforwardly intuitive.
Harvey,
RE your comment that the US Navy is worried about climate change.
Have you read the report you linked to?
For those who haven’t, it is important to note that
a) The authors were “directed” by the CNO to come up with the report.
b) The authors were “directed” to accept the conclusions of the IPCC with regard to expected future impacts from climaye change.
c) The conclusions of the report (at least the first few – I stopped after it became clear what the report was about) basically support current US naval policies and programs.
I no longer keep as current on naval and military issues as I once did, but I am still a member of the United States Naval Institute and read their monthly Proceedings publication (an outstanding source for current views concerning naval matters). If climate and change and global warming is a concern, it certainly is not showing up there.
So Harvey, I’m willing to make a wager that the SecDef told the Chief of Naval Operations that climate change was an important issue and he wanted to know what the Navy planned to do about it. The CNO said “Yes, Sir. When would you like this by?” After determining who it was he needed to task this assignment to, he sent them the order. To which the authors (or more likely their CO) replied “Aye, Aye Sir.” and proceeded to write the requested report. They could have been asked to evalute the effects of a large asteroid impact or alien invasion and they would have responded in the same way. None of which means they or the Navy, is worried about any of it. The are simply following orders.
And when you think about it, why would the Navy worry about a rise in sea level? It will still float their boats. In fact, rising sea levels would extend their reach ashore, something the Navy IS concerned about.
“””””” Sean Peake says:
December 9, 2011 at 5:34 pm
With all due respect to Mr Goodridge, what he wrote could have been set down over 10 years ago. He believes that correlation is causation. He focuses on the minor variability TSI and sunspots whilst ignoring that solar magnetics is likely a much bigger influence. He relies on data that no longer shows what he states. To quote Bob Dylan, “Things have changed.” I hope he snaps out of it. “””””
Now Sean, how did you reach that conclusion from what Goodridge wrote ? He mentioned sunspots; they are something that can be observed about the sun. The observation of sunspots goes way back before Galileo ever thought about a telescope. The Chinese ancients didn’t know diddley squat about solar magnetism, yet they surely knew of sunspot cycles; one could almost imagine it was something they could observe. I have no idea whether the Chinese ancients could correlate sunspots with global climate; like they knew anything about the latter.
So where does Goodridge exclude solar magnetism as being involved in any way; that is known to be intimately related to the same processes that result in observed susnpots, and even tracks the same cycles (for that reason).
It seems to me the message of Goodridge is much simpler. Even our crudest measures of TSI, were already swamped by known atmospheric water variability, and now that swamping is known to be an order of magnitude worse.
So what do we do, instead of trying to lnk climate variability to H2O variability; we don’t even pay attention to TSI variability; it’s so small; so we look instead, at an even further removed variable; namely what happens to some small fraction of the “effluent” resulting from TSI, namely a small part of the LWIR radiant emitted energy from the earth, that just happens to get held up for a while by CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere. Yes we don’t claim that such GHG capture doesn’t occur; that’s silly. We just claim that is far more important, than interference with the solar energy input that is driving the whole system.
Sunspots, are just symptoms, of changes in TSI (small) and changes in solar magnetism, and any of that may affect global climate to some extent; but we already knew 100 years ago, that it was peanuts compared to known water content variabiloity.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Better yet write down that it is false, it does not apply to subatomic particles nor does it apply to gas molecules in the IR frequency range. “””””
So Phil, I’m surprised to see you say that.
At what point does an atom or molecule; that previously was part of a solid or liquid; and freely emitting electromagnetic waves, as a direct consequence of its “non-zero” Temperature, meaning it has a non zero kinetic energy, as measured as a statistical disrtibution of kinetic energies of a large collection of nearby atoms or molecules, with which it is in constant collisions, suddenly become aware that it has “evaporated” from its solid or liquid safe house, and must therefore cease and desist immediately from emitting any such EM waves, until such time, as it once again properly joins a solid or liquid “Emitting” club and is once more allowed to emit THERMAL radiation.
An individual neutral atom or molecule of ANY kind, may be excused from emitting electromagnetic waves, when it is in “free flight” under the influence of only gravitational fields, and sufficiently remote from any other thing, so as to undergo NO collisions with anything else; but if it collides with other things, it emits.
I don’t know whether the force of gravity fields will cause it to emit or not; but likely not much in the IR, if that is your main concern.
OOoops !! Silly me; I almost forgot. If it doesn’t collide with anything else; it doesn’t have any Temperature at all, does it ?
As for well known IR emitters (and absorbers) such as CO2, supposedly they emit(or absorb) because they have a non-zero electric dipole moment (aka antenna length).
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation. Well of course, Heisenberg taught us that CO2 does not remain as C=O=C or any of the others for very long, since, anything with such a precisel;y known position, will have a very unknown momentum, so those bits and pieces will move around creating a non zero dipole moment.
Given that some very interesting physics happened, in just the first 10^-43 seconds after the big bang, the amount of time involved in the collision between two neutral atoms or molecules at Temperatures in the range of interest to earth climate, amount to an entire geologic age time scale in the general scheme of things, and is plenty of time for all kinds of interesting physics to happen, and the acceleration of the electric charges (probably of both signs), which can alternatively be described as varying electric currents,in a non zero length path, is all that is required to emit electromagnetic radiation in accordance with Maxwell’s equations; or as explained by Heinrich Hertz, if I recall correctly. And as described by Planck’s radiation formula, some of that emission(or absorption) is likely to be in the IR range.
So if one were to point a spectrometer upwards on a dry clear air cloudless moonless night, where one might reasonably presume, that solids and liquids were essentially absent from the atmosphere, and sunlight was no longer present, then the observed detected spectrum, would be nothing but the LWIR spectral bands of CO2, and O3, and other GHGs, since other gases are forbidden to radiate IR.
Why would such observed spectra seem to have a boundary envelope, that looks remarkably like the limiting envelope of Planckian style Black Body Radiation, since gases simply cannot emit such spectra.
“”””” Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:03 am
BtC, thanks, I stand corrected. Spencer’s AMSU does it this way. They use the very low energy in the microwave rotation bands. Microwave is about two orders of magnitude longer than IR thermal radiation, and emission there is at least ten orders of magnitude below the IR emission of GHGs, since Planck’s Law goes as wavelength to the fifth power. My statement about no thermal radiation from O2 and N2 is still correct, because microwaves are not thermal radiation by its normal definition. “””””
Well Jim, wouldn’t that be dependent on one’s definition of “normal” ?
For example, when I first started studying electromagnetic radiation; my first textbook on the subject, knew nothing at all about the existence of something called a neutron. Luckily, neutrons don’t seem to have much to do with microwave emission from the atmosphere, so I wasn’t steered to far wrong by that erroneous textbook.
But even back then, in 1938, when “The Admralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy” edition I had was published, when one referred to “Thermal radiation”, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the wavelength of the radiation; in fact it claimed that such radiation extended from down to but not including DC, up to nearly infinite frequency. Oddly, Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1938; too late to include in my first textbook.
It was called “Thermal radiation” simply because the physical origin of it was taken to be the TEMPERATURE of the source material.
It would be instructive for people to read what Max Planck and others actually wrote and derived, including Sir James Jeans, and Lord Raleigh, about “Thermal Radiation”, because as far as I can tell, none of them actually tied any of it to any specific material, or any atomic or molecular configuration of matter, or to the physical state of that matter, such as the particular “phase” that the material was in.
Only its Temperature, and the presence of a statistically large number of interracting “particles”, seemed to be required in their derivations.
The approximately 3K microwave “background” radiation remnant of the “Big bang”, IS thermal radiation.
“”””” Jim D says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:55 am
Blackbodies, which are idealized objects emit at all wavelengths and produce a blackbody spectrum. No object is a perfect blackbody as they are limited in what wavelengths they can emit by the behavior of their molecules. Gases are the least perfect having few or no thermal wavelengths where they can emit. Try detecting thermal radiation from pure O2 and N2. You won’t. “””””
Well actually Jim, “Black bodies” are defined as bodies that absorb ALL electromagnetic radiation
that falls on them. That means they can absorb any sort of EM radiation, regardless of its origin, or its spectral composition. Since they absorb ALL ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION, they have NO ABSORPTION SPECTRUM.
What Planck showed was that “black bodies” DO have a specific EMISSION SPECTRUM, that is immortalized in the Planck radiation formula; and depends ONLY on the TEMPERATURE of the body, and is unrelated in any way to its material compositionor the state of matter it is in.
OOoops, isn’t that inconvenient; apparently a black body emits only a certain amount of radiation in a specific spectrum, at a specific Temperature, yet it absorbs ALL em radiation of any amount and any spectral content. Ergo BBs at fixed Temperature DO NOT obey Kirchoff’s Law.
Well Kirchoffs law of course is VERY restrictive; it ONLY applies to systems in Thermal equilibrium at some Temperature
“”””” Bomber_the_Cat says:
December 11, 2011 at 8:05 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
With respect Dave,
Jim D is correct. “The atmosphere cannot cool radiatively without GHGs”
Here we go again; So Bomber, I wouldn’t dismiss Dave quite so fast, if I was in your shoes.
Now why didn’t you simply say that without GHGs (in the atmosphere), the LWIR radiant emission from the earth surface, approximating a black body spectrum corresponding to about a 288 K black body Temperature, would simply bypass all of the atmosphere and escape directly to space, in about one millisecond or less, and be done with it.
So LWIR radiation would NOT heat the atmosphere (much), and the atmospheric gases warmed by conduction from the surface would simply rise to higher and higher altitudes. Apparently they could never give up the energy they aquired, since they can’t radiate, so they would simply gain in kinetic energy as they rise, and be lost to space. Problem solved; no atmosphere, so the surface radiation simply exits, per Planck’s mechanism.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 6:12 am
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
More like 10%, over 90% of the dry atmosphere.
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
Dave Springer says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:37 am
Nonsense. A fundamental law of physics is that all matter with a temperature above absolute zero emits thermal radiation. This applies to subatomic particles to say nothing of whole elements or compounds. All matter in motion emits thermal radiation. Write that down.
Better yet write down that it is false, it does not apply to subatomic particles nor does it apply to gas molecules in the IR frequency range. “””””
So Phil, I’m surprised to see you say that.
At what point does an atom or molecule; that previously was part of a solid or liquid; and freely emitting electromagnetic waves, as a direct consequence of its “non-zero” Temperature, meaning it has a non zero kinetic energy, as measured as a statistical disrtibution of kinetic energies of a large collection of nearby atoms or molecules, with which it is in constant collisions, suddenly become aware that it has “evaporated” from its solid or liquid safe house, and must therefore cease and desist immediately from emitting any such EM waves, until such time, as it once again properly joins a solid or liquid “Emitting” club and is once more allowed to emit THERMAL radiation.
When it becomes a gas George, because it no longer has a mechanism to emit thermal radiation!
A homonuclear diatomic like N2 or O2 has no ability to emit rotational or vibrational radiation.
As for well known IR emitters (and absorbers) such as CO2, supposedly they emit(or absorb) because they have a non-zero electric dipole moment (aka antenna length).
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation.
No George, it usually does have a dipole because it spends its time continually bending and is only straight for a very short period (which is the only time that it has a zero dipole).
Bending frequency of CO2 ~20THz
Phil. says:
December 12, 2011 at 2:16 pm
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 6:12 am
By my reckoning, CO2 currently is about 2% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
More like 10%, over 90% of the dry atmosphere.
========================================
Ah, that (your misinformation) raises an interesting point – the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?
Dry air contains roughly (by volume) 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
Is that one percent accurate? The dry air figure is standard, but an artefact of the lab because water must be included in real life. Ah, and other bits and pieces floating around so the dry percentages have dust and stuff removed too, here it says water vapour varies:
“The amount of water in the air varies tremendously with location, temperature, and time. In deserts and at low temperatures, the content of water vapor can be less than 0.1% by volume. In warm, humid zones, the air may contain over 6% water vapor.
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/pdf/airgas.pdf
When AIRS first announced its findings, and then went very quiet, it said that carbon dioxide was insignificant compared with water vapour in the atmosphere – does anyone have that saved as page or URL?
Is this 1%? – http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/story_archive/Ghostly_Images_in_Earths_Water_Vapor/Ghostly_Images_Water_Vapor_Visualization/
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
(CO2stands at about 390ppm today)
If water vapour is on average 1% of the atmosphere, then CO2 percentage (per unit volume) of total greenhouse gases is between 4% (my estimate, which I originally based on 2% water vapour), and 10% (via Phil, who from memory knows much more about this stuff than I do).
Just tallying up the per volume ratio of GHGs won’t give you much of an idea of how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect either – you also have to consider the effectiveness of each gas – and that’s only the beginning of the story. There’s plenty of information on this online. If you google for your preferred point of view, you will of course find numerous blog pages to satisfy that.
I got to here … “Yet as skepticism survives it is not about facts” … and stopped reading.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm
the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
(CO2stands at about 390ppm today)
If water vapour is on average 1% of the atmosphere, then CO2 percentage (per unit volume) of total greenhouse gases is between 4% (my estimate, which I originally based on 2% water vapour), and 10% (via Phil, who from memory knows much more about this stuff than I do).
Over the whole atmosphere water vapor is about 0.4%, we’re not just considering the lower atmosphere, on that basis CO2 contributes ~10%, but is more important in the upper atmosphere.
Simple logic has me starting to believe it is all the sun and oceans. Knowing how fast CO2 can leave a liquid, it seams man made CO2 is not what is causing the increase. I have some practical experience as a homebrewer. When I move my un-pressurized beer from the basement at 62F to the kitchen at 66F, it is only a matter of less than an hour when the airlock starts bubling like crazy as CO2 comes out of the beer due to the rise in temperature.
It is just plain common sense if you look at CO2 reading and the dramatic rise and increase seasonally.
barry says:
December 12, 2011 at 7:44 pm
“the ppm of CO2 is less than half a percent of dry atmosphere – so what is the CO2 as ppm of all atmosphere including water vapour?”
Ermm, that is where the conversation started, when fredj noted the increase of CO2 (80ppm over 20th century) as a fraction of the whole atmosphere. My point was that over 90% of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gases, so the comparison misses the point. If you want to figure out how much CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect, you don’t include nitrogen and oxygen – they aren’t greenhouse gases.
Actually they are. The real ‘greenhouse’ is our whole atmosphere which is practically, I’m going with Phil here, 96% nitrogen and oxygen and 4% water.
Without this our real greenhouse surrounding us, the Earth’s temp would be -18°C, with these it’s 15°C.
But how does it get to 15°C?
With our atmosphere of real greenhouse gases including oxygen and nitrogen, but without the Water Cycle, the temp would be 67°C.
So, 4% water cools the Earth 52°C from the 67°C it would be without it, to get back down to 15°C.
Water vapour takes the heat away from the Earth’s surface where it condenses out in the colder heights to form rain and ice, giving up its heat to space. And, carbon dioxide spontaneously combines with water vapour in the atmosphere to form carbonic acid, all pure rain is carbonic acid, as is fog, dew, etc. Doesn’t matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere at the time, if there’s water around it will capture it, and bring it down to Earth’s surface again.
Carbon dioxide is part of the Earth’s cooling system.
AGW ‘global warming greenhouse gases’, is some imaginary world, not this one, since they exclude nitrogen and oxygen..
What I can’t understand here re the AIRS data, is why they haven’t released the CO2 figures for upper and lower atmosphere… /sarc
All we get is the mid-troposphere, between 3 and 7 miles, and no idea how the carbon dioxide got there, from the surface or from planes above and volcanic activity reaching that, like from Mauna Loa.
? But water vapour is the Earth’s main cooling mechanism – so how did they screw the data to fit in with the models?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196
But how are we going to understand the CO2 isn’t homogeneous but instead “lumpy”, if we don’t get all the data?
http://airs/science/significant_findings/
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 2:10 pm
So LWIR radiation would NOT heat the atmosphere (much), and the atmospheric gases warmed by conduction from the surface would simply rise to higher and higher altitudes. Apparently they could never give up the energy they aquired, since they can’t radiate, so they would simply gain in kinetic energy as they rise, and be lost to space. Problem solved; no atmosphere, so the surface radiation simply exits, per Planck’s mechanism.
Afraid not George, your rising atmospheric gases would cool due to adiabatic expansion and not be lost in the manner you describe. Also you neglected to consider the behavior on the ‘nightside’ of the planet.
“”””” Phil. says:
December 12, 2011 at 4:07 pm
George E. Smith; says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:05 pm
“”””” Phil. says:
December 11, 2011 at 11:33 am
………………………
When it becomes a gas George, because it no longer has a mechanism to emit thermal radiation!
A homonuclear diatomic like N2 or O2 has no ability to emit rotational or vibrational radiation.
Well C=O=C, or C-O-C, or C=O-C, or C-O=C, or however you want to draw it has exactly zero dipole moment, so it couldn’t possibly emit or absorb EM radiation.
No George, it usually does have a dipole because it spends its time continually bending and is only straight for a very short period (which is the only time that it has a zero dipole).
Bending frequency of CO2 ~20THz “””””
Well you can’t get off the hook that easy Phil. First let’s dispense with my molecule (CO2) diagrams. I dliberately drew them in that “diagrammatic” form (pick your own favorite), to present them as mathematically exact geometric models; that is I specifically placed the three component atoms in mathematically exact locations (mentally).. As such, the molecule does have zero electric dipole moment; precisely so it cannot radiate. It is also an isolated molecule, so nothing is going to disturb it and cause it to bend or distort in any other way.
And my point was simply that, by virtue of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, those three exactly located atoms, must have infinitely unce4tain momenta. In other words, simply due to Heisenberg, the molecule does not remain in that mathematically exaxt configuration; the molecule even when isolated from collisions with other molecules or atoms, will still occasionally exhibit some assymmetry, and hence a dipole moment; and the bending mode you mentioned is of course one such deviation from my exact model structure.
Now of course, the mode of oscillation you mention is a molecular resonance; and is unrealted to the Temperature; so one thing that radiation is NOT is “thermal radiation”, which depends solely on the Temperature ( of an assemblage of molecules).
Atomic line spectra, and molecular band spectra are not thermal radiation; they are phenomena, that depend on atomic or molecular structure; or if you like electron configurations in the case of atomic spectra.
So I said nothing about rotational or vibrational modes of oscillation, because “Thermal radiation” requires NO resonances or oscillations; it requires nothing more than intermoleculat or interatomic colisions. I’m sure Phil that you recall, that temperature is characterized by collisions between molecules, in a large assemblage. It does not matter, whether that large collection of atoms or molecules is constrained in position and volume as in solids, or merely in volume as in liquids, or unconstrained in volume as in gases; so long as the atoms or moleculaes can collide with each other in random collisions, and exchange mechanical motional energy among themselves, each of those atoms or moleculaes, regardless of species, can and will absorb and emit thermal radiation, in a spectrum determined only by the Temperature of the assemblage of molecules.
Nothing more exotic than Newtonian mechanics, and Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetic radiation (due to varying electric currents), is required for thermally agitated (and colliding) atoms or molecules to radiate EM waves.
In fact even isolated electric charges, such as electrons and protons (and their anti-particles) are perfectly capable of emitting EM radiation.
I’m about a 10 minute car ride from the world’s largest monument to that siimple fact; the Stanford Linear Accelerator; which was constructed solely because varying electric currents aka accelerated electric charges MUST radiate EM waves. The whole Bohr orbital atomic model was postulated, simply becaue Maxwell insisted that accelerated electric charges must radiate energy in the form of EM waves, and if you try to send electrons around in a circle continuously, they will radiate away their energy as EM radiation..
I’m perfectly willing to accept your declaration that molecules such as O2 and N2 or atoms such as Ar are incapable of rotational and vibrational resonance modes of EM radiation; or that those modes of oscillation may even be in the IR or LWIR or microwave regions; but they have nothing to do with thermal radiation, which is a consequence of interatomic or molecular collisions, and occurs at the individual atom or molecule level.
It is certainly true that solids, and liquids, have much higher densities than gases, so there are many more molecules in a given space in a solid or liquid, so naturally the thermal radiations they emit are much brighter than those from gases.
I’ll give you the cigar for my vanishing atmosphere; I figured someone would bite on that. It just seemed silly to me to be talking about the atmosphere not being able to cool without GHGs; there wouldn’t be any LWIR radiative heating of the atmosphere either without those GHGs, and the LWIR from the surface (THERMAL RADIATION) would simply escape promptly without bothering the atmosphere.
So solid near black body radiators, can me microns to mm dimensions and absorb essentially all incident radiation. The oceans need about a km of thickness to do likewise, and behave like BB radiators, so it is not surprising an atmosphere equivalent to about 33 feet of water, isn’t a very good black body absorber or emitter, but it still emits thermal radiation when it is above zero Kelvins; and I believe that is what Dave Springer originally said. I agree with him..