Open Thread Weekend

This one is not to be missed…. The beginning of the end for the CAGW scam in Europe??
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/5352-dominic-lawson-britain-has-finally-rejected-the-bogus-economics-of-climate-change.html

@Bobl
Thanks again for the detailed answers to my questions. Very interesting aspects!
Just a little clarification on the “bonus question”: I am pretty sure CO2 radiates isotropically
Me too. Thats why I say more than half of the radiation is to the sky, because most CO2 molecules are (high) above the surface.
I restate:
CO2 is radiating isotropically – in all directions.
Most CO2 molecules are seeing more sky than earth especially at higher elevations.
The lower 50% of CO2 is warmer than the upper 50% thus radiating more energy. (Even when the air moves up and down by convection this is still true.)
Therefore no matter how much downwelling radiation from CO2 we measure, there is always more upwelling radiation from CO2 to offset that.
On top of that, most downwelling radiation from CO2 (80%) is not re-emitted by the surface at wavelengths that CO2 can absorb.
Thus CO2 is cooling the earth more than it is warming it. And even with more CO2 the earth must still be cooling due to CO2.
My reasoning is probably wrong, I just don’t understand why. And if I do, I probably understand the greenhouse effect better.

Bair polair
And remember that at point 4. the absorbed energy from the atmospheric C02 only slows down the rate of cooling of a surface heated by the sun. Energy from C02 has no ability to warm the surface. More surface energy leaves the hot surface to keep heating the colder C02

@Andrew Judd
C02 is cooling the atmosphere
The absorbed energy from the atmospheric C02 only slows down the rate of cooling of a surface heated by the sun. Energy from C02 has no ability to warm the surface.
Now I’m seeing light.
Thank you all!

Latest on Richard Black of the BBC and how he is involved in environmental advocacy:
http://blackswhitewash.com

Bair polaire
Good. If you now go to Wiki and try to edit the greenhouse effect page to describe the greenhouse effect as i just described it to you, then you can get banned from wiki like i did
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=592373
There are some fairly well known climate scientists active on the wiki page, who work very hard to ensure you learn the version of the greenhouse effect that you could not make any sense of, where you are required to believe the backradiation warms the surface.

Andrew Judd
I have read your edit war at wikipedia. It’s unbelievable. Keep up the good work!
Maybe you can write an article on this topic and post it here or somewhere else.

bair polaire says:
April 1, 2012 at 2:18 pm
“Andrew Judd
I have read your edit war at wikipedia. It’s unbelievable. ”
You must be new. Happens all the time.

“If you heat an object and place a cold object next to the heated object then the hot object heats the cold object and *both* objects become warmer between each other. If the cold object was not continually cooling it would just get hotter and hotter and hotter.”
If you put a frying pan on the stove, turn the element at low setting so that frying reaches 100 C. Because of low heating the frying pan does get above 100 C.
Though If you put lid on frying pan the temperature would rise [you are blocking convection] by modest amount- so a few degrees [not doubling it’s temperature 200 C]. If put a cold steak on the frying pan or near the frying it would not increase the frying pan’s temperature. After steak as warmed to same temperature and it’s on the frying pan, it would function like a lid.
If you did this in a vacuum on the Moon- there is no convection, and therefore would warm up as though frying pan had a lid on earth.
At a set distance from the Sun [say earth distance] the sun can only heat an object to a certain temperature. The hottest temperatures at earth distance can found on the Moon, where surface temperatures can reach around 120 C. Because the earth atmosphere prevent at least 30% of the solar energy from reaching the surface, the highest surface temperature can not match the lunar’s surface temperature. As long as earth atmosphere blocks 30% or more of the energy from the sun this will always be the case. Doubling the mass of earth’s atmosphere would reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface therefore lower possible maximum temperature
that surface could warm up to. Doubling the mass of earth atmosphere might increase the average temperature or the “greenhouse effect” but not the the surface temperature.
If instead you reduced Earth atmosphere to the Mars’ thin and mostly CO2 atmosphere, you would cause there to be higher surface temperature, but have less “greenhouse affect”.
On earth the warmest temperatures are the ground- one can almost fry eggs on a sidewalk.
And highest air temperatures never exceed [or get close] to the highest ground temperature.
So frying eggs on the moon would be quite easy. But because of spherical nature of the Moon, when one goes towards the poles, a horizontal [or level] sidewalk would have lower maximum temperature that it could reach. If sidewalk tilted towards the sun, one doesn’t get this reduction.
On earth [being spherical] one gets similar reduction in maximum temperature the surface can
reach. But an additional factor on earth as one goes towards the poles is that a sun at a low angle and has to go thru more atmosphere. And therefore with tilted sidewalk one gets a lower maximum temperature.
Venus temperature exceed it’s maximum temperature at it’s distance from the Sun. It does so because it has a massive atmosphere. If one were to measure Venus maximum surface temperature at an elevation which similar pressure as on earth- had a floating sidewalk- the sidewalk’s temperature would reach around 470 K [470 cubed times .0000000567. which is 2767 watts per square meter in the ballpark of solar flux at Venus distance].
Whereas near Venus surface at 92 atm it’s air temperature being around 737 K [and the sidewalk would same as air temperature- whether it was in sunlight or not].
Btw, the floating sidewalk in sunlight would much hotter than the air temperature at that elevation [somewhere around 360 K- a similar difference [though greater] as one can find on earth]. Or if Earth was at Venus distance, mid day surface temperature- easily fry eggs- one could probably cook a pot roast on sidewalk, air temperatures would similar to a sauna. Though one have significant increase in cloud cover which make much cloudier world and vastly more rain. Earth ocean would not boil but there would certainly be an increase their evaporation rate. Earth would still be habitable, it take centuries to warm the oceans. But one would have world in which CAGW would be a more accurate prediction of the future.

gbaikie says:
April 1, 2012 at 4:37 pm
“If you put a frying pan on the stove, turn the element at low setting so that frying reaches 100 C. Because of low heating the frying pan does get above 100 C.”
Don’t confuse radiative energy transfer with conduction. The greenhouse effect describes only radiative transfer.

Australians do not trust Climate Change Commissioner:
http://www.news.com.au/national/tim-flannerys-like-the-weather-unreliable/story-e6frfkvr-1226316094295
I don’t know why that is [/sarcasm]

Joe Bastardi said on his show “Wise Guys of Weather”, that he comes to this site nearly every hour now to check on the rising sea ice. I thought, “Wow, that’s ironic because i do the same thing.” I agree with Ric Werme that this is the best climate blog on the planet, hands down. I was at one time a believer in AGW, but when i saw this site a few years ago, I slowly, but surely became skeptical, and I owe it all to this website, keep up the good work guys!