Open Thread Weekend

@ur momisuglybair polaire
@ur momisugly Andrew Judd
Andrew, I think you have had a few too many wars with a few too many people. Understandably you are suspicious of questions like Bair’s, but I think Bair really does want to understand (potentially both sides of the argument). If he can come here for the science, he can get the team view over at Real-Climate and make up his own mind. We can only hope science prevails.
Bair
With the Brick experiment Andrew is trying (in a round about way) to demonstrate that the source must always be hotter than the sink, as the back radiation from the colder brick increases (reducing the nett flow of energy from hot to cold) the transfer of energy from the hot interior of the hot brick to the surface needs to meet the nett radiative loss of the surface and so the brick gets hotter. This will actually tend to an equilibrium, where the surface of the brick relative to the cold brick, would reach a temperature where the loss of energy radiatively exactly balances the nett gain of energy by conduction from the bricks interior. The surface of the brick however can never get hotter than the energy source – in this case the centre of the hot brick.
When you say most CO2 molecules see more sky than earth that is strictly true, but if you look at the depth of the atmosphere relative to the diameter of the earth, you’ll see that the radiation that misses the earth at low angles is not a lot and 50% is probably a pretty good approximation.
Your reasoning is a little off. The CO2 is cooling the earth, but it is not as effecient at doing it as oxygen, when we take oxygen and turn it into CO2 then we reduce the cooling efficiency of the atmosphere (increase the insulating factor) and (Theoretically) the earth warms – the only problem is the the atmosphere is not a closed system it reacts to imbalances like this. You see it every day, given the right weather conditions, the hot air evaporates and stores water, if there is enough water in the air and a low enough air pressure, storms form and sucks massive amounts of heat upward which is mostly radiated to space. (Because the clouds of the storm are below the energy source now, and clouds reflect IR the radiation is pretty much all outward to space now). Rain falls – interestingly the kinetic (motion) energy in the rain comes from absorbed heat (turned into potential energy in the water vapour). To my knowledge the potential energy absorbed by evaporated water in reaching the troposphere and then expended in kinetic energy is NOT accounted for in any models.
Anyway, the CO2 cools the earth less efficiently that it’s precursor (oxygen) but any heating of the surface is still very lossy, the broadband emission of the hot solid (the surface) now slightly warmer than the no CO2 case, escapes through the remaining spectrum, 15% escapes through at CO2 wavelengths, some is absorbed in increased evaporation and precipitation, a whole lot goes into heating the oceans, some goes to heating the bulk of the earth. In the end when you spread that tiny bit of extra warming due to the insulative effect of CO2 at three narrow wavelengths across all of the possible ways it can escape, only a fraction of the extra warmth remains, it has to be warmer, because the extraction of energy is driven by the surface temperature, but the equilibrium temperature is far below what you would expect if there were no losses. This is what we would call Negative feedbacks and there are a lot of them.
There are undoubtably positive feedbacks too, the IPCC contend that the positive feedbacks overwhelm the negative in such a way that the CO2 warming is amplified by three times. Given the scale of the negative feedbacks in the system naturally, the positive feedbacks would need to overwhelm the negative feedbacks by that factor, considering that the negative feedback due to broadband emission BY ITSELF is 5:1 the CAGW proponents are therefore contending that positive feedback is more than a factor of 15!. If this was the case the temperature would be massively unstable and there would be oscillatory behaviour every day at noon, and the temperature will continue to rise for hours after a cloud comes over or the sun goes down. In real life that just doesn’t happen, things are remarkably stable. One can only conclude that the feedback has to be negative.
Personally I don’t see why this isn’t self evident to climate sciences, it stands out like the proverbial dogs balls to me

I see that Australia is proposing to provide jobs for American skilled workers in Australia on a temporary basis – program was announced jointly today with US Officials and Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen. Claimed to cut the red tape out of the immigration process to facilitate employer recruitment of suitable skilled personnel in Civil Engineering, Electrical and Plumbing (though there are different standards, additional wiring and plumbing regulations to comply with. Not sure how this will be received by our highly unionized local workforce. But it will be welcomed by employers in remote industries like mining and exploration sites.
It might sound like an April fools stunt, but it is not. (what a day to announce a grand scheme!!) I guess it will help your employment or is it making things better looking in the run up to your Presidential election.

Re previous on Australian skilled shortage.
Age Newspaper link
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/us-workers-to-fill-aust-skill-shortage-20120402-1w7pj.html
Have a look at the state of the current Fairfax media polls with the slump in personal support of Julia, and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and no gain at all for Greens. The carbon pill is biting but they are in denial – perhaps that is the reason for today’s announcement.
The Poll re the problems facing both Obama and Julia is interesting too.

Andrew Judd says:
April 1, 2012 at 7:09 am
“3. The surface receives some of this radiation from the cold atmosphere. But this means some of the energy from the surface heated by the sun has not passed thru the atmosphere to outerspace. If you are heating something and you reduce the cooling it becomes hotter.”
We had a discussion of all of this on a thread here some time ago. I made the following analogy.
Think of the incoming solar radiation as the source of a river. The Stefan-Boltzmann relationship determines the rate of outflow. Atmospheric gases form a dam across the river, with floodgates at the level where surface temperature absorbs and reemits substantial radiation in the band where the atmospheric molecules can radiate.
So, the river level (surface temperature) behind the dam rises until the floodgates are activated. Adding more of the gas makes the dam bigger, raising the floodgates, so it will generally raise the level at which the water settles out.
BUT… suppose there are other radiating gases in the atmosphere, which would be analogous to putting additional floodgates at a higher level. Suppose moreover that the lower floodgates are unable to handle the entire flow, and the level rises until the higher floodgates are activated. Now, what happens when you add additional floodgates at the lower level?
The water level behind the dam goes down.
Why is this applicable? Because on Earth, we had substantial atmospheric floodgates at levels dictated by H2O, CO2, and… CH4. The CH4 gates are substantially activated, but they are at a higher level than the CO2 floodgates. Ergo, if you add lower floodgates (CO2), you might well end up lowering the temperature (water level).

Lars P. says:
March 31, 2012 at 9:32 am
Well ottot nothing new under the sun, but agree, it is shocking to see how crank these people are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
This is in my view the top crank of the year 2012 in the global warming hysteria so far.
@LarsP
good links, sadly, you have it quite right..

Tim Blair has a poll being run by the Australian Boadcasting Commission on attitudes to Global Warming. It started off favouring the Warmists, but after it has warmed up to 2599 votes, the poll favours ‘dismissive’ as being 56%. Faces are very long at ABC.
Have some fun at:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/carbon_quizzler/