What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense
Guest post by Matt Ridley
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it.
For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
1. I need persuading that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record. Satellites are showing less warming than the surface thermometers, and there is evidence that local warming of growing cities, and poor siting of thermometers, is still contaminating the global record. I also need to be convinced that the adjustments made by those who compile the global temperature records are justified. Since 2008 alone, NASA has added about 0.1C of warming to the trend by unexplained “adjustments” to old records. It is not reassuring that one of the main surface temperature records is produced by an extremist prepared to get himself arrested (James Hansen).
2. Despite these two contaminating factors, the temperature trend remains modest: not much more than 0.1 C per decade since 1979. So I would need persuading that water vapour will amplify CO2’s effect threefold in the future but has not done so yet. This is what the models assume despite evidence that clouds formed from water vapour are more likely to moderate than amplify any warming.
3. Nor am I convinced that sulphate aerosols and ocean heat uptake can explain the gap between model predictions and actual observations over the last 34 years. Both are now well understood and provide insufficient excuse for such an underperformance. Negative cloud feedback, leading to total feedbacks being modest, is the more plausible explanation.
4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.
5. Even the Met Office admits that the failure of the models to predict the temperature standstill of the last 16 years is evidence that natural factors can match man-made ones. We now know there is nothing unprecedented about the level and rate of change of temperature today compared with Medieval, Roman, Holocene Optimum and other post-glacial periods, when carbon dioxide levels did not change significantly, but temperatures did. I would need persuading that natural factors cannot continue to match man-made ones.
6. Given that we know that the warming so far has increased global vegetation cover, increased precipitation, lengthened growing seasons, cause minimal ecological change and had no impact on extreme weather events, I need persuading that future warming will be fast enough and large enough to do net harm rather than net good. Unless water-vapour-supercharged, the models suggest a high probability of temperatures changing less than 2C, which almost everybody agrees will do net good.
7. Nor is it clear that ecosystems and people will fail to adapt, for there is clear evidence that adaptation has already vastly reduced damage from the existing climate – there has been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from drought, flood or storm since the 1920s, for example, and malaria retreated rapidly even as the temperature rose during the twentieth century.
8. So I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive
subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
9. Indeed I will need persuading that dashing to renewables can cut emissions rather than make them worse; this is by no means certain given that the increased use of bioenergy, such as wood or corn ethanol, driven by climate policies, is indeed making them worse.11 Meanwhile shale gas use in the USA has led to a far greater cut in emissions than
any other technology, yet it is opposed every step of the way by climate alarmists.
10. Finally, you might make the argument that even a very small probability of a very large and dangerous change in the climate justifies drastic action. But I would reply that a very small probability of a very large and dangerous effect from the adoption of large-scale
renewable energy, reduced economic growth through carbon taxes or geo-engineering also justifies extreme caution. Pascal’s wager cuts both ways.
At the moment, it seems highly likely that the cure is worse than disease.
We are taking chemotherapy for a cold.
Full paper with graphs and references here
Related articles
- A climate of scepticism (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Matt Ridley responds with a “sleight of hand” (scienceblogs.com)
- Matt Ridley’s actual response (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The Lukewarmer’s Way
Simon says:
January 30, 2013 at 6:28 pm
What about upward LW from the surface? Unless you measure in ALL directions
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They do measure in all directions that was the POINT.
Konrad;
if 200 watts can be detected form ground level, more will be being radiated to space from that same patch of sky.
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Obviously, like Simon, you didn’t read the paper.
Konrad;
It is this IR radiation that allows energy loss from the atmosphere at a level higher than energy enters the atmosphere. Without this convective circulation below the tropopause would stall.
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Didn’t read any physics texts either I see.
Konrad;
What would happen to temperatures in the lower atmosphere if convective circulation stalls?
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Well unless the laws of physics have been suspended, warn air rises unless it isn’t warm. There’s no “stalling”.
Konrad;
“Increase of temperatures due to suppression of convection has been known to engineers and scientists as far back as ancient Rome.” – davidmhoffer
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….and now you are quoting me completely out of context. Are you deliberately trying to be misleading or did you just not understand the statement in its proper context in the first place?
Gary Hladik;
I see them only as models of…
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(wait for it)
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greenhouses! 🙂
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LOL
@dvunkannon
You said: “I’d say basic physics is what you can demonstrate repeatedly in a lab, where confounding individual circumstances can be removed.”
I’d agree with that, which rules out the earth’s atmosphere, so I think you are really stating that “Any rise in temperature will raise the amount of water held in the atmosphere. ” is not basic physics, contrary to your original claim.
I really struggle to understand claims that additional CO2 will cause global warming is simple or basic physics. If it was, then there would be no arguments. I can relate to additional CO2 would cause global warming if all other factors remained the same, but that doesn’t happen in the climate system, which as the IPCC states is chaotic.
davidmhoffer says:
January 30, 2013 at 8:16 pm
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“Obviously, like Simon, you didn’t read the paper.”
I do not believe that paper contained a reference to any empirical measurement of DWIR at the surface while a satellite was simultaneously overhead measuring up-welling IR at TOA for the same point on earth. If I am wrong feel free to point it out.
“Didn’t read any physics texts either I see.”
I read engineering texts. I conduct empirical physics experiments.
“Well unless the laws of physics have been suspended, warn air rises unless it isn’t warm. There’s no “stalling”.”
You will note that I wrote “convective CIRCULATION stalls”. Hot gases can still convect to altitude in a non-radiative atmosphere, they just cannot descend again. This is of course entirely the point. Here is a diagram to illustrate that point –
http://tinypic.com/r/6zy1ky/6
The figure on the left shows normal convective circulation occurring. As you can see radiation of IR to space is critical to this continued circulation. The figure on the right shows what would happen shortly after the atmosphere lost its ability to radiate IR. Convective CIRCULATION “stalls” or stagnates, and the atmosphere heats. (this is just before the atmosphere goes isothermal and surperheats)
Here is a simple empirical experiment you can build that illustrates the point –
http://i48.tinypic.com/124fry8.jpg
the image shows two EPS foam boxes full of air with aluminium heating and cooling tubes running through them. Equal volumes, equal temps for cooling and heating tubes. Build the boxes 1m tall for good results. Box 1 with cooling at higher altitude than heating always runs cooler than box 2.
What’s happening in box 2?
http://tinypic.com/r/zmghtu/6
Convective CIRCULATION has “stalled”. Hot air rises but cannot lose energy, just like gas in an atmosphere without radiative gases. Even at the small size of the experiment the speed of gas conduction cannot overcome the speed of convection. This effect will be far more severe in a gas column kilometres tall.
David, the truth is that those promoting the failed hypothesis of AGW never modelled the role of radiative gases in vertical convective circulation in our atmosphere. You cannot model this by treating the earth and atmosphere as a single “body”. Those doing so were simply trying to miss-apply SB equations to a gaseous atmosphere. You cannot model the atmosphere as a static body or layer, because without modelling moving air masses you will get the conductive flux between surface and atmosphere during the diurnal cycle totally wrong. The reality is that the gases in our atmosphere move. Gravity keeps cold air near the surface at night, minimising conductive flux between the surface and atmospheric gases. Gravity keeps cold air near the surface during the day, maximising conductive flux between the surface and atmospheric gases.
The simple fact, easily proved as I have done by empirical experiment, is that radiative gases are critical to convective circulation below the tropopause. It is a fact that the role of radiative gases in the basic physics of convective circulation has not been properly modelled in the “basic physics” of the AGW ”settled science”. Our atmosphere will not be “33C” cooler without radiative gases. It would be far, far hotter. Radiative gases cool our atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
“….and now you are quoting me completely out of context.”
You may be right that the quote was not used in the context it was intended. However it is entirely accurate. If convective circulation stalls or stagnates in our atmosphere, the atmosphere heats. Radiative gases are the only way our atmosphere can lose energy at altitude. Without them, convective circulation will stall just as in the empirical experiment with the two EPS foam boxes.
Adding radiative gases to our atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability. AGW is a physical impossibility.
Thank you Konrad for that. I was thinking of post-fixing my previous comment with “fundamentally, CO2 is a atmospheric coolant, so policies to reduce its level are 100% wrong, jeopardising Earth’s cooling mechanism, a far greater danger”, but whilst technically correct, is itself alarmist, as the contribution of CO2, let alone man’s ~3% of CO2 pales into insignificance compared to water vapour.
You are absolutely correct though, AGW (increased heating by man’s CO2 via back-radiation) is physically (physics’ally) impossible, so any policy, regulation, law or tax based on this is fraudulent, and those who do so have had plenty of notification that this is so to make their actions deliberate, and not accidental or for lack of knowledge. The fact that the AGW promoters have actively tried to shut out reality (science is ‘settled’ etc.) to promulgate their perceived fantasy will not bode well for them, Obama, Cameron, Gillard, etc. included.
Konrad;
Our atmosphere will not be “33C” cooler without radiative gases. It would be far, far hotter.
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In this single sentence you demonstrate that you don’t even know what the effect being discussed actually is. Until you do, there is no point discussing it with you.
If you are assuming a model with a constant averaged energy input across the globe (i.e. the flat-disk model that the GCMs and CAGW energy budgets use) rather than an equivalent higher level over half the globe that’s rotating (a true, real-world model), then that would account for the 33C difference, but the flat disc model is totally wrong. Earth receives the total energy input from the sun over just half the surface for just half the day, which fully accounts for the temperature given our atmosphere and gravity. The atmospheric cooling mechanisms, conduction – convection – radiation, fully accounts for the energy output. No need for the GHE! GHE is an invention to compensate for the flawed models.
Read Joe Postma’s “Climate of Sophistry” series of articles (at http://climateofsophistry.com/) where he clearly explains this.
So, again, it is not about whether there is back radiation or not, it is about whether this back radiation affects the temperature of the source (surface) or not. I hope this will help.
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I see. So you agree that there is 200+ w/m2 downward radiance. Your argument is that when it reaches the surface, the 200 joules/s/m2 of energy simply disappear. I understand completely.
Simon;
If you are assuming a model with a constant averaged energy input across the globe (i.e. the flat-disk model that the GCMs and CAGW energy budgets use) rather than an equivalent higher level over half the globe that’s rotating (a true, real-world model), then that would account for the 33C difference,
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I’m not and it doesn’t.
from a comment I made (twice) that has not made it past the bit bucket:
Then there are these which show DLWIR=ULWIR on some days wierd??
http://www.patarnott.com/atms749/pdf/LongWaveIrradianceMeas.pdf
Downward longwave irradiance uncertainty under arctic atmospheres: Measurements and modeling
http://www.slf.ch/ueber/mitarbeiter/homepages/marty/publications/Marty2003_IPASRCII_JGR.pdf
Figure 2
Enjoy
REPLY: Mr. Tuppen, see the addition to the comment above – Anthony
More from the rejected post
Experiment 1. (low cost) Build two insulated containers with potassium chloride salt lenses for lids. Under a clear dry night sky (desert conditions would be best) fill both containers with dry 30C gas. CO2 in one container 1, N2 in container 2. Which container cools Faster? Is the answer – A. Both containers cool at the same rate. B. Container 1 cools faster because of the greater IR emission from CO2. C. Container 2 cools faster because of the greater thermal conductivity of N2
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This is not a good experiment as you describe it: the insulated walls/salt winow will be heated by the gas to gas temperature. These will then radiate in all directions, with BB radiationprofile, eventuall passing the window to space. same for both boxes. The CO2 will additionally radiate at specific wavelengths but the large proportion of escaping radiation will be from the warm insulation/salt. the CO2 will additionally intercept some of the wavelengths from the walls of the box/window preventing this escaping The hot Co2 will radiate in all directions. this wold reduce the radiation escaping at the absorption frequencies.
I think i would suggest that the CO2 gas will cool slower.
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Experiment 2. (high cost) Attach two gas cylinders with regulators one CO2, one N2, to two 10m long lengths of 5mm PVC tubing. Coil most of the tubing through an insulated container full of hot water. Attach the two open ends of the PVC tubes to two retort stands in front of a cool wall. Set gas flow from both tubes to 1 L/s. Observe the gas flowing out of both tubes with a high quality IR camera capable of seeing beyond 15um. Are the results – A. Both tubes are visible as warm, but both gas plumes are undetectable. B. Both tubes are visible as warm and the CO2 gas plume is also visible
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both tubes will be visible at same temperature. N2 will be invisible. CO2 will show up as warm plume but on a camera adjusted for BB radiation the temp will be much less than the actual temp..
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Or perhaps this – “What would happen to convective circulation in the lower atmosphere if the atmosphere contained no radiative gases?”
Convection does not depend on ghgs. The ground would radiate as a BB and the lw radiation would all escape without absorption with no ghgs. The ground/sea transfers heat (conducts) from/to the non ghg atmosphere and eventually equilibrium will be reached when radiation from the ground = radiation from the sun. the ground temp will be the same as the lowest layer of atmos temp and presumably the amos will cool at adiabatic lapse rate from this temp
REPLY: Dear Mike Tuppen (aka thefordprefect) outed here in climategate emails – You are in permanent moderation for all comments, because you have abused your posting privileges here many times before, don’t get a big head that we are allowing you back permanently because these were allowed. And no, I’m not interested in discussing your previous issue with hateful vitriol, those will stay in the bit bucket. Be as upset as you wish.
Moderators – don’t approve any comments from Mr. Tuppen that diverge from his discussion of IR and CO2 – Anthony
more up down LWIR stuff
http://www.nrel.gov/midc/srrl_bms/
has un-modified upward/downward IR measurements
These are used here:
http://www.climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/some-more-analysis-of-ud-lwir-and-clouds.html
and
http://www.climateandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/back%20radiation
but you to can download the data
Greg House says (January 30, 2013 at 7:18 pm): “On the other hand, it was experimentally proven long ago (1909) by American professor of physics R.W.Wood that that sort of IR (back/trapped radiation) had zero (or negligible) effect on the temperature of the source: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html . Thus the second part was in fact disproved.”
Again, Greg, you’ve gone way beyond what Wood himself claimed. He did in fact acknowledge that so-called “back radiation” would warm his model greenhouse, claiming only that the effect was small compared to the effect of inhibiting convection. Note that “scarcely a difference of one degree” is very different from zero.
I defy you to find any quote by R W Wood that so-called “back radiation” could not contribute energy to its original source, as you continue to claim without justification.
Updates on the Makarieva paper!
http://judithcurry.com/2013/01/31/condensation-driven-winds-an-update-new-version/
thefordprefect says:
January 31, 2013 at 8:41 am
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thefordprefect,
The answer I have found to experiment 1 is that the CO2 cools faster. However your answer is reasonable as I did not define the nature of the insulation used in the boxes or give dimension.
Your answer to experiment 2 was totally correct. Both in that the CO2 plume would be detectable with a camera that could see into the far infrared and that the gas plume would appear cooler than the tubes just as in your imaging of steam.
Unfortunately your answer, “Convection does not depend on ghgs” to the third question “What would happen to convective circulation in the lower atmosphere if the atmosphere contained no radiative gases?” is incorrect.
Our atmosphere has maintained a very stable temperature for thousands of years, yet it is exhibiting strong vertical convection below the tropopause. The basic physics of convection in a fluid in a gravity field indicates that for continued convective circulation to be occurring without increase in average fluid temperature, energy must be leaving the fluid at a point higher than energy is entering. Radiative gases are the only method our atmosphere has of losing energy at altitude.
Adiabatic cooling on ascent is matched by adiabatic heating on decent and plays absolutely no role in atmospheric convective circulation. Conductive cooling at the surface cannot replace radiative cooling at altitude. The simple two box experiment I showed here
http://i48.tinypic.com/124fry8.jpg http://tinypic.com/r/zmghtu/6
Shows what happens to temperatures in a gas column when the energy exit point is moved down to the same level as energy entry. The gas column heats.
To observe the role of radiative gases in convection you can try this simple experiment –
– get a large glass container of hot water and mix a ¼ teaspoon of finely ground cinnamon into it.
– wait until Brownian motion slows till the suspended particles are barely moving.
– now suspend a beer can full of ice water in the top 50mm of the hot water to one side of the clear container.
– watch as convective circulation develops in the container.
This experiment demonstrates convection flow driven by the removal of energy from a fluid column in a gravity field. Radiative gases do this in our atmosphere.
Radiative gases are critical for continued convective circulation below the tropopause. This has never been modelled correctly in the “basic physics” of AGW “settled science”. AGW maths relies on linear flux equations. To model the role of radiative gases correctly you need to run these flux equations in multiple iterations on discrete air masses to model convection correctly. Model convection correctly and the answer if that radiative gases cool our atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
Gary Hladik says, January 31, 2013 at 9:23 am: “Again, Greg, you’ve gone way beyond what Wood himself claimed. He did in fact acknowledge that so-called “back radiation” would warm his model greenhouse, claiming only that the effect was small compared to the effect of inhibiting convection. Note that “scarcely a difference of one degree” is very different from zero.
I defy you to find any quote by R W Wood…”
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Gary, generally science and what a scientist said or did not say are 2 different things. Therefore twisting Wood’s comments on his experiment can not scientifically devalue his experiment.
Second, “scarcely a difference of one degree” is in fact close to zero and it is negligible, anyway in context of alleged 33 degrees warming by back radiation from “greenhouse gases”.
Wood did not model a greenhouse, he “constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a themometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed..
By the way, thank you for referring to greenhouses this time, because there is a funny thing about how warmists have adjusted their “greenhouse effect” notion and claim now that it is not trapped/back radiation that warms a greenhouse, it is suppressed convection, but at the same time back radiation does warm earth surface outside greenhouses.
Have you got the feeling yet that this does not fit together? Because, if back radiation warms (outside), why does it not warm inside a greenhouse? Glass is opaque to iR, so there is indeed trapped radiation in a greenhouse. Why would this trapped radiation not produce ADDITIONAL rise in temperature inside a greenhouse? What a capricious thing is this back radiation, it works only inside but not outside! What a bad naughty back radiation! This is warmists “physics”, Gary.
You see, Gary, you can start here or you can start there, any way warmism still looks very much like a hoax.
Sorry, I meant “What a capricious thing is this back radiation, it works only outside but not inside!” in my previous comment.
Wood did not model a greenhouse, he “constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a themometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed..
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And he got results commensurate with the apparatus and instrumentation available in 1906. If you’d stop and listen for a moment instead of insisting that all knowledge stopped in 1906 and nothing changed after that, you might notice that the Heinz Hug experiment is actually identical, but with modern apparatus and instrumentation. You might notice that the Hug experiment was not only identical in nature, but orders of magnitude more accurately measured. You might notice also that the criticisms of the experiment to which I have pointed you to on multiple occasions explain in excellent detail why the experiment as conducted by both wood and hug is not directly applicable to the scale of the atmospheric column. You might even notice that the Hug experiment is accurate enough that it could be used to extrapolate to an estimate of the atmospheric column and that the woods experiment isn’t even close.
But you won’t. You’re too busy debunking physics that resulted in dozens of Nobel prizes since 1906. You must be a genius.
davidmhoffer says, January 31, 2013 at 5:30 pm: “And he got results commensurate with the apparatus and instrumentation available in 1906. If you’d stop and listen for a moment instead of insisting that all knowledge stopped in 1906 and nothing changed after that, you might notice that the Heinz Hug experiment is actually identical, but with modern apparatus and instrumentation. You might notice that the Hug experiment was not only identical in nature, but orders of magnitude more accurately measured.”
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The essential difference between the experiment by professor Wood (1909) and the experiment by Hug you have referred to a few times is that Wood’s experiment debunks the notion of warming via back radiation (“greenhouse effect”) and Hug’s experiment (http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm) does not deal with the issue of warming via back radiation at all. I have already told you that 2 times on 2 different threads. Please, read it again: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/why-we-need-debate-not-consensus-on-climate-change/#comment-1059271.
Your reference is irrelevant to the issue.
Greg House says:
January 31, 2013 at 3:52 pm
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Greg,
Radiative gases in the atmosphere are heated by a number of means. A small amount of intercepted IR from the surface, conductive contact with the surface and the release of the latent heat of evaporation in the atmosphere. These gases do radiate some of this energy back toward the surface. The AGW claim is not that this adds energy to the surface, rather that it delays escape of energy from the surface to space. It effectively slows the cooling rate of the surface. I have empirically tested the effect of incident IR on the cooling rate of materials and it can slow the cooling rate of some materials.
However this effect is negligible on this planet because 71% of the surface is liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. 15um IR cannot penetrate the skin evaporation layer of liquid water, and does not effect the cooling rate of the water. The IR photons simply trip some molecules in the first few microns of the surface into evaporating sooner. This does not increase evaporation rate as a whole and does not change the cooling rate of the water. You can check this with a simple lab experiment.
For fun, go back and look at the Trenberthian energy budget cartoons. Notice how the “surface” is never divided into land and water. AGW maths never considers this effect. The fools calculated the impact of LWIR on the oceans simply by using the emissivity of water to calculate the re-absorption of DWIR. Just one of the many, many things that AGW believers got wrong.
davidmhoffer says:
January 31, 2013 at 7:23 am
“In this single sentence you demonstrate that you don’t even know what the effect being discussed actually is. Until you do, there is no point discussing it with you.”
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“….no point discussing it with you” That sounds very much like the moist pop of a spherical chicken exploding. I did warn you they don’t stay spherical for long 😉
Oh, and the 33C thing? That old AGW claim can never be erased from the Internet. Not ever.
Huffer huffs again with this weird response:
“But you won’t. You’re too busy debunking physics that resulted in dozens of Nobel prizes since 1906. You must be a genius.”
Huffer, this is pure obfuscation, not science, as I’m sure you know. SOME LINKS, PLEASE! SOME REFERENCES, PLEASE! Your opinion won’t cut it here.
Dozens of Nobel Prizes?? We dumb chemists want to check what you brilliant physicists are saying. FACTS, sir, FACTS and REFERENCES, not your standard (and dumb) diatribe….Just the FACTS, man…
BTW, you STILL have not addressed my question about why the lapse rate is completely independent of “backradiation.” Since you are (I guess) a physicist, I would expect you to address this issue with ease. But you ignore it. Why?
And you might also want to reconcile the gas law with surface temperatures: the heat STORED in the atmosphere easily explains the so-called GHE, and you should understand that as a physicist!
Hug’s experiment (http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm) does not deal with the issue of warming via back radiation at all. I have already told you that 2 times on 2 different threads.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, your insistence upon demonstrating that you do not understand the material is repetitive.
I surrender. Your cloak of ignorance is impenetrable.
dropping thread.
Konrad says, January 31, 2013 at 6:03 pm: “Radiative gases in the atmosphere are heated by a number of means. A small amount of intercepted IR from the surface, conductive contact with the surface and the release of the latent heat of evaporation in the atmosphere. These gases do radiate some of this energy back toward the surface. The AGW claim is not that this adds energy to the surface, rather that it delays escape of energy from the surface to space. It effectively slows the cooling rate of the surface.”
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First, what this back radiation in fact produces has been demonstrated by Wood’s experiment, see above.
Second, look at the contradiction in your own words: “These gases do radiate some of this energy back toward the surface. The AGW claim is not that this adds energy to the surface,”.
Huffer concludes, thankfully:
“I surrender. Your cloak of ignorance is impenetrable.
dropping thread.”
Brilliant response!
Greg, et. al.: Now that the Huffer got frustraated and apparently “dropped thread,” maybe I can discuss this stuff with you.
SAME QUESTION FOR YOU: IF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT YOU MADE IS TRUE: “It effectively slows the cooling rate of the surface.”—
THEN WHY DOESN’T THE LAPSE RATE EQUATION (rate = g/Cp) DEPEND ON “BACKRADIATION”?????
Simple question, but still no answer after years of asking….
[snip]