Why did the Royal Society need secret meetings?
Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball
Recent events underscore problems with understanding climate and how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) achieved their deception. Comments about my recent article appreciated it was a synopsis. The problems were central in my presentation to the First Heartland Climate Conference in New York relating to climatology as a generalist discipline in a world that glorifies specialization. The dictum in academia and beyond is specialization is the mark of genius, generalization the mark of a fool. In the real world each specialized piece must fit the larger general picture and most people live and function in a generalized world. The phrase “it is purely academic” means it is irrelevant to the real world.
A secret meeting occurred between Lord Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and members of the British Royal Society. Why the secrecy? It is likely because this collective of specialists is scrambling to recover reputations after being misled.
Claiming they were deliberately deceived in the propaganda campaign orchestrated through the British Royal Society is no excuse. The supposed prestige of that Society was used to persuade other national Science Societies that human caused global warming was a serious and proven fact. The only Society that refused to go along was the Russian. It was a deliberately orchestrated campaign that allowed media to use the consensus argument with focus. I was frequently challenged with the interrogative in the form of a consensus argument that you must be wrong because science Societies all agree.
Climate science is the work of specialists working on one small part of climatology. It’s a classic example of not seeing the forest for the trees, amplified when computer modellers are involved. They are specialists trying to be generalists but omit major segments, and often don’t know interrelationships, interactions and feedbacks in the general picture.
Society has deified specialized academics, especially scientists. Consider the phrase “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist” used to indicate intellectual superiority. Substitute a different occupation and prejudices emerge. “You don’t have to be a farmer”. Now consider the range of specialized areas required for success on a modern farm. Then count the specializations included in Figure 1, a very simple systems diagram of weather. (Note that three “boxes” include the word “flux” but the 2007 IPCC Science report says, “Unfortunately, the total surface heat and water fluxes are not well observed.)
Ian Plimer said, studies of the Earth’s atmosphere tell us nothing about future climate.
An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, paleoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history.
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Figure 1: Source: After; Climate Stabilization: For Better or for Worse? William W. Kellogg and Stephen H. Schneider, Science, Volume 186, December 27, 1974
It’s an interesting observation that underscores the dilemma. Climatology is listed as a subset, but must include all the disciplines and more. You cannot study or understand the pattern of climate over time or in a region without including them all.
A frequent charge is I have no credibility because I only have “a geography degree”. It’s, ignorant on many levels, and usually used as a sign of superiority by specialists in the “hard sciences”. My PhD was through the Geography department at Queen Mary College because climatology was traditionally part of geography. The actual degree was granted in the Faculty of Science.
Climatology, like geography is a generalist discipline studying patterns and relationships. Geography is the original integrative discipline traditionally called Chorology. In the late 1960s when I looked for a school of climatology there were effectively only two, Hubert Lamb’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia and Reid Bryson’s program in Madison Wisconsin. Neither was a viable option, although I was privileged to consult with Professor Lamb about my thesis.
Unlike most students, instead of going through the sausage-maker machine of education I pursued my studies later and with deliberation. Environmentalism was a new paradigm changing the focus from the Darwinian view of humans as a passive to an active agent in the environment. An undergraduate course on Soils taught me the formula for soil-forming factors included parent material (rock), weather, and the letter “O” for Organic. I wondered why this included everything except humans.
Early German geography recognized the impact distinguishing Landschaft, the natural landscape, from Kulturschaft, the human landscape. Others were considering the differences. George Perkins Marsh’s work, Man and Nature (1864) and William L. Thomas’ 1956 publication Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth influenced me and provided a central theme – the impact of climate on the human condition.
All three theses were deliberately designed. An Honours thesis titled, Some Philosophical Considerations of Humans as a Source of Change, considered the historical and philosophical context. The Masters thesis titled, The Significance of Grain Size and Heavy Minerals Volume Percentage as Indicators of Environmental Character, Grand Beach, Manitoba provided scientific method especially related to energy inputs in an environment. The doctorate addressed two problems in climatology. Lack of long-term weather records, which Lamb identified, and the challenge of linking historical records with instrumental records. My doctoral thesis title, Climatic Change in Central Canada: A Preliminary Analysis of Weather Information from Hudson’s Bay Company Forts at York Factory and Churchill Factory, 1714-1850 involved creating a long term record from daily journals of the Hudson Bay Company. It blended daily weather observations with instrumental records through a numerical coding for each weather variable. Once the data was digitized, statistical and scientific analysis was possible.
Lack of a “science” degree was a focus early. Immediately after a presentation to Forestry graduates at the University of Alberta a professor in the front row asked, “Is it true you were denied funding by the major agencies in Canada?” This referred to two government agencies, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Sciences and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. (SSHRC). I was not denied, I just didn’t qualify, my category of historical climatology was considered Social Science by NSERC and Science by SSHRC. Fortunately, the National Science Museum of Canada, particularly Dick Harington head of the Paleobiology division, understood the problem and provided funding.
I knew as a climatologist I needed to consult with specialists. I obeyed Wegman’s warning in his Report on the Hockey Stick fiasco.
As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.
Consultation is essential. The challenge is to know enough to ask the right questions and understand the answers. As a climatologist I try to place each piece in the puzzle. If it doesn’t fit I consult specialists for answers.
The claim that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) didn’t exist is a classic example of a piece that didn’t fit. Many knew it existed and Soon and Baliunas provided evidence in their article Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years; it’s why they were so viciously attacked. Statistician Steve McIntyre showed how the infamous “hockey stick” graph was created. The Wegman Report confirmed his findings and exposed a major misuse of statistics and dendroclimatology. The misuse of tree rings was further confirmed by a forestry expert. Few areas of IPCC climate science bear examination by specialists.
The claim that CO2 is greenhouse gas does not fit. I itemized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deliberate diversions to demonize CO2 for a political agenda. Years ago at a conference in Calgary I heard a skeptic challenged by a knowledgeable audience member about the claim of CO2 as a greenhouse gas (GHG). The reply was troubling. We (skeptics) would lose all credibility if we suggest CO2 is not a GHG. It is better to say it is, but the effect, especially of the human portion, is minuscule and of no consequence.
I pursued my policy asking physicists about the role of CO2 as a GHG. I thought they would agree. They didn’t. It’s partly reflected in estimates of climate sensitivity. They range from the IPCC high through those who believe it is zero to some who believe it is a negative quantity with CO2 as a cooling agent. The conflict appears to be disagreement in how temperature is modified by the physical processes involved in energy transfer. If the physics was known and agreed presumably weather and climate forecasts would work, but they don’t.
Traditional climatology included a mechanism called continentalism. It measured the modifying influence on temperature range of the distance from the ocean. Here are ranges for three Canadian cities at approximately the same latitude.
Station Maximum Minimum Range
Gander, Nfld 35.6°C -28.8°C 64.2°C
Winnipeg 40.6°C -45°C 85.6°C
Vancouver 33.3°C -17.8°C 51°C
Both Vancouver (west coast) and Gander (east coast) are close to the ocean but they are in the zone of the prevailing Westerlies. Gander experiences continental air more frequently than Vancouver. The different specific heat capacities of land and water explain the difference. Water acts to modify temperature range.
The greatest daily land temperature ranges occur in regions with very low atmospheric moisture (hot and cold deserts). Water vapour acts like the oceans to modify temperature range, as a result desert biomes record the greatest daily temperature ranges. It has nothing to do with CO2. Similarly, lowest daily temperature ranges occur in tropical rain forests where water vapour levels are highest. Total modification of global temperature range is achieved by water in all its phases.
Climatology is a generalist discipline that requires incorporating all specialist disciplines. The modern glorification of specialization allowed climate scientists to dominate by claiming their piece of a vast puzzle was critical. IPCC climate scientists misused specialized areas, especially in climate models, to achieve a predetermined result. It is only exposed when specialists examine what was done or climatologists find a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit.
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For the record, I don’t agree with Dr. Ball’s opinions on CO2, not being a greenhouse gas, the science is quite clear on that issue long before global warming being an issue. The only valid question is climate sensitivity – Anthony
Martin A says:
November 29, 2013 at 4:48 pm
=================
Be very,very, careful what you say right now.
Somebody might take exception to it.
Just saying.
Werner Brozek says:
“We (skeptics) would lose all credibility if we suggest that mankind was not responsible for the huge increase in CO2 since 1750.”
=============================================
Yes, human activity is responsible for part of the increase in CO2 since [pick your date].
But that is not really the issue, which is this: has the rise in CO2 caused measurable global warming?
I think Planet Earth has been clearly answering that question. Despite the rise in CO2, global warming has not risen as expected, and as almost universally predicted.
So there is something wrong with those predictions, no?
Whether CO2 causes some minor warming, or no warming at all, the predictions of runaway global warming and climate cartastrophe have turned out to be flat wrong.
The climate alarmist crowd is still fixated on runaway global warming. Most of them will never admit that the planet is falsifying their strongly held belief.
We can go even farther than that: the changes in CO2 are largely due to changes in global temperature. Alarmists still believe that ∆CO2 will cause ∆T. But all of the empirical evidence — and the only empirical evidence we have — shows that their premise is exactly backward: ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2, not vice versa.
When the premise is wrong, the conclusion will necessarily be wrong. That is what has happened: the alarmist faction began with the premise that CO2 would cause global warming, when in fact, all of the available real world evidence shows us the mechanism is exactly the opposite: ∆T causes ∆CO2.
Skeptics do not tell the planet what to do. That is how climate alarmists operate. Scientific skeptics only want to find the truth, to the best of our ability. To the consternation of alarmists, the truth is not what they have been assuming all along.
Martin A says:
November 29, 2013 at 4:48 pm
” At least one comment above illustrates the effect his having contributed to the book has had on some people’s opinion of him.”
==============
How deep do you want to dig this hole ?
I’ve been trying to let you off easy…….
An equation, using only one external forcing, that results in 95% correlation with average global temperatures since before 1900 is at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/ . The equation calculates reasonable average global temperature trends since 1610 including the recovery from the LIA. Change to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide had no significant influence.
Truthseeker says:
November 29, 2013 at 1:18 pm
[snip – not interested in your particular brand of “truth” – Anthony]
—————————————————–
So, hypocrisy is OK if you do it, but not if others do it. An on-topic, polite comment was deleted because you do not agree with it. Going to put yourself in your own “Unreliable” category of blog sites now?
Thought not.
[Let us verify your email address first. Mod]
[Reply: The email address checks out as OK. — another mod.]
@ur momisugly gopal panicker
“some people use the phrase…climate change science…”
And there are even some who use the phrase “creation science”.
@ur momisugly LdB
“If you can get something that obvious wrong you loose about the same credibility as Mann and his Hockey Stick.”
You also lose a fair bit of credibility by misspelling “lose”.
“Claiming they were deliberately deceived in the propaganda campaign orchestrated through the British Royal Society is no excuse. The supposed prestige of that Society was used to persuade other national Science Societies that human caused global warming was a serious and proven fact. The only Society that refused to go along was the Russian.”
Interesting (and unsurprising, having seen skeptic papers published by members of the Russian Academy of Science).
Russia has apparently had the curious but fortunate circumstance of far leftism in national politics not meaning environmentalist anti-industrial ideology in the way it tends to in the Anglosphere today (e.g., for all its faults, Soviet communism was pro-industry at least), not as much replicating the enviropolitical foundation of the CAGW movement.
Very lucid post. Thank you.
Odd Haugland says: November 29, 2013 at 2:07 pm
i read one day that the atmosf. contains 12 900 cubic km water and it stays for whaterr 10 days. 1290 cubic km water goes up as [vapor] and comes down as rain. It gains latent heat near surface and gives up the same heat when the vapor [condenses] and heats the air.
I have not seen any calculation of this value of heat related to the total heat form the sol.
Here’s one back of the envelope calculation. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/512638.html reports that the average rate of sea level drop from evaporation is 1.2 meters per year. When multiplied by the area of the Earth’s surface covered by water (approximately 4.1×10^14 square meters), this corresponds to approximately 4.92×10^14 cubic meters of water evaporated each year. At a density of 1030 kilograms per cubic meter, the rate of water evaporation is approximately 5×10^17 kilograms per year or 1.6×10^10 kilograms per second. At a heat-of-vaporization of 2.23×10^6 Joules per kilogram (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fluids-evaporation-latent-heat-d_147.html), the rate energy is required to sustain this level of evaporation is approximately 3.58×10^16 Joules per second or 3.58×10^16 Watts. From http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/ManicaPiputbundit.shtml a representative value for the solar power flux density at a the top of the Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 1380 Watts per square meter. At this power flux density, the rate solar energy impinges on the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system is approximately 1.96×10^17 Watts. If an average Earth albedo of 0.3 is assumed, then the rate solar energy is absorbed by the Earth/Earth-atmosphere system is approximately 1.375×10^17 Watts. Thus, the fraction of the available solar energy required to sustain evaporation is approximately 0.26 or one quarter.
The evaporated water will rise in the atmosphere where it will condense at approximately 3000 meters altitude. Raising the water from sea-level 3,000 meters also requires energy at an approximate rate of 4.72×10^14 Watts. Thus, evaporation requires approximately 75 times as much energy as lifting the water from seal-level to altitude. Note: The Earth’s surface will recover some of the energy required to raise the water to altitude. However, if you use for the average raindrop speed a value of 10 meters per second (http://www.shorstmeyer.com/wxfaqs/float/rdtable.html), the falling water when it impacts the Earth’s surface will contain kinetic energy at a rate of approximately 8×10^11 Watts. Even if all of the kinetic energy is converted to heat within the Earth’s surface, the rate of recovered heat is a small fraction compared to the rate heat is required to evaporate the water.
[“whatever 10 days”? Mod]
While the physics appear to acertain CO2 is a greenhouse gas, if the effect is zero warming or less, is it an effective greenhouse gas?
We are watching the experiment develop, but the uncertainties are so poorly understood, we may as well just make up the results.(See any RGB post, insufficient data)
Man’s emissions are up,temperatures are flatlined and seem to be starting to cool.
If we did like the IPCC and pretended that all natural mechanisms are of no consequence and only the CO2 to average global temperature relationship matters, then CO2 must be a coolant in some decades and a warming agent in others.
So whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas seems irrelevant, what changes its phase in different time periods?
Yes sarcasm, but the credibility question is another argument from authority.
Believing in the magic gas does not change the simple observation, we currently cannot separate out and identify any global warming definitively as mans contribution, in fact we can not say what part of our temperature is caused by the current atmospheric concentration of CO2.
Geology has indicated,as evidenced by the proliferation of fossilized plants, that such concentrations have been very much higher in earths past.These not fossilized plants did not fry at that time,so what is different about the magic gas now?
100% in support of Dr. Ball. Zero, nada, rein, keine evidence from weather or climate supports CO2 as a GHG. It has a radiative role which may well be neutral or cooling. How hot would a pure O2 and N2 atmosphere be, on a dry dead planet?
PS;
Of course, there would be no O2 on a dead planet, just considering thermal and radiative factors.
A particularly useful and informative set of comments. My awards go to:
Nullius in Verba – for discussion of the lapse rate.
Reed Coray – for discussion of “greenhouse gas.
wayne – for discussion of the “heat absorption” of CO2.
fredberple – for that keeper of a quote.
But I’m probably not being fair to other commenters.
You have proof readers and spell checkers for that … sorry English is not my first language but then most from USA and UK forget that fact 🙂 I would also point out I am at least aware how poor my English is, which is more than many on here who don’t have a clue on science and physics and don’t even realize it.
Anyhow I have had enough of this rubbish, I saw Lubos’s comments about why he doesn’t bother with most comments on here and frankly I agree … not worth the effort.
Nullius in Verba says, November 29, 2013 at 6:37 am:
““the effect of adding GHG to the atmosphere is to radiate energy to space from the atmosphere that would otherwise have to radiate from the surface.”
Correct.”
Now, why is this ‘correct’, Nullius in Verba? According to you, it shouldn’t be. Because you’re very clear in your opinion that the Stefan-Boltzmann law applies to ALL things with a temperature above 0 K, even to volumes of gas and, more specifically, to layers within them. But, if our atmosphere consisted only of nitrogen, oxygen and argon (which it after all does to within 0.5%) it would still on a daily basis receive vast amounts of heat through convective transfer from the surface, and accordingly and naturally gain a physical temperature way above 0 K. However, according to you, despite this, it would emit zero radiation to space, thus not adhering to the Stefan-Boltzmann law at all, defying the very premise that your ‘raising the effective radiating level’ hypothesis rests upon, that this law (by necessity) applies universally.
You can’t have both. Either the Stefan-Boltzmann law can not be claimed to apply directly and linearly to gases (and especially not to distinct layers within the volume of a gas), and hence your premise (basic assumption) is false. Or it can, and hence even a layer of atmosphere containing only nitrogen, oxygen and argon should and would emit radiation to space directly corresponding to its physical temperature, and hence we would not ‘need’ the so-called GHGs to cool.
So what will it be?
“(…) the amount of radiation to space depends on the temperature of the layer that is emitting it, and that will increase or decrease until it emits just the right amount.”
No, it does not depend on the temperature of the layer emitting it. Because there is no ONE layer emitting it. The Earth system AS A WHOLE emits it, from the surface to the ToA. Only through the ToA, above the convection top, is the full radiative flux to space achieved, because only above that level all energy transport happens via radiation. Below this level, a significant part of the energy transported from the surface up and out will always be contained within the moving air. The 239 W/m^2 is the total/final flux that goes out from the level where there is no more convective transport of energy, only radiative, and that is at tropopause level. The global average altitude of this atmospheric level is 12-13 km, not 5, and the corresponding mean temperature is ~210K, not 255. 210K; 239 W/m^2. No direct, linear S-B connection. Because this is a layer of GAS, not a solid surface, and the radiation going out through it originates not only from the layer itself, but from all layers beneath it, including the surface itself.
“So if the surface emits to space, the surface will be at the appropriate temperature (about -18 C) (…)”
The surface DOES emit to space. Even directly. Yet it has a temperature of about 15C. It achieves this temperature because there is an atmosphere on top of it, weighing down on it, so as to put a limit to how fast the energy coming in (from the Sun) can be removed again from the surface at a certain temperature through the upward movement (buoyancy) of heated air.
If the layer 5 km up emits to space, the layer 5 km up will be at -18 C (…)”
This layer also emits to space. As do all other atmospheric layers. They all contribute to the final/total flux (239 W/m^2). Only no specific layer can emit the full 239 W/m^2. That flux is only achieved 7-8 km higher up, above the convection top.
The temperature of this layer, 5 km up, happens to be set by the surface temperature plus (minus, really) the lapse rate climbing UP from it. The lapse rate doesn’t climb DOWN, Nullius, to set the surface temperature. That’s a nonsensical idea. That’s not how the world works. The surface heats first, THEN the surface heated air moves up through the atmospheric column, along the lapse rate, setting the tropospheric temperature profile along the way. You’ve got it all turned on its head. Still.
cba says:
November 29, 2013 at 7:08 am
“…surface T emissions are about 391 W/m^2 average.”
Can you please elaborate how you get to the “391 W/m^2 number?
I daresay that loosing credibility is better than losing it.
/pedant
‘thingadonta says:
November 29, 2013 at 4:26 am
In my career in science, I have come across a curious social phenomenon which is relevant to your discussion.
Certain agencies I have worked for are charged with studying a subset of a particular field within science. Within such agencies, some individuals have a strong tendency to promote the particular field or subset which is central to the agency they are associated with, above all other, broader subsets of the scientific field, with which it is a part. They do this almost instinctively. In other words, they make their particular speciality more important, or dominant over, other specialities, but without any real justification to do so. Instead of seeing their particular field or speciality as a subset of datasets within a broader field, sometimes more important sometimes less so, they see their speciality as always DOMINANT over others.’
I saw exactly this during my science career of 1986 – 1997, where the mantra of reductionism using molecular biology, biochemistry, call it what you will, was dominant.
You could make a career isolating, sequencing and characterising one gene and associated protein(s). In those days it was 3 – 5 years to clone it and sequence it, 3 years to express it, make antibodies, analyse expression in vitro and in vivo, 3 years doing site-directed-mutagenesis and functional studies, 3 years doing X-ray crystallography etc.
All kinds of mantras grew up in the 2-dimensional world of tissue culture and 3-D organ culture was about as central to research in those days as astrology.
When Affymetrix came along and industrialised gene chip production, everything changed, of course. At that point global transcription studies became the new mantra: comparing whole transcriptome expression in different scenarios. It ushered in a new era of the generalist.
My field was quite interesting in that regard, since gene therapy, at its apex, is about delivery of genetic material to organs in vivo. All the early testing is done, for matters of cost, in laboratory situations. We learned early that it was easy to create clean, quantitative systems to characterise our early vectors in the lab, but it was another matter entirely to deliver them successfully to tumours in a meaningful manner. The sorts of tools which would have helped would have been tools to track the fate of injected vector in the manner of pharmacology (since it was clear that not much was getting to where we wanted it to get to), half-life considerations, ability to cross blood-vessel-organ boundaries and the like.
I had the most unfortunate characteristic that I was a natural generalist in a specialists’ world. I spent 10 hard years forcing myself to become a specialist, eventually obtaining a modicum of competence, but the route to using my generalist skills was being a brilliant specialist and publishing huge numbers of papers using specialist focus. I failed the test, so went off to do other things. My way of addressing this was to leave a legacy of what I had done to those allocated to the roles I would never fill (an Oxford Professor who founded a gene therapy company; an entry essay to business school which was reviewed by a few very senior Professors in the UK). It caused a slight stir, but no-one understood my motives.
They were: ‘I have been sneered at for a decade and more, well screw you….’
With the automation now present in biology, it is once again the domain of the generalist, utilising the skills and/or data of the specialists to synthesise new insights.
It might be fruitful for those giving career advice to youngsters to understand whether specialists or generalists are likely to dominate particular fields in the 20 years from 18 to 38 years of age in the lives of those seek to advise. It might help those youngsters to realise whether they should even enter those fields, since being a square peg in a round hole is one of life’s more pointless career options………
“[Let us verify your email address first. Mod]”
It has been a valid email address for the 2-3 years I have been commenting on this site.
Free discussion starts with statements you disagree with. Otherwise you are just repeating dogma. Sound familiar? Saying the science is “settled” are we? That’s been said before. How did that work out for those that have peddled that line in the past?
” Ian W says:
November 29, 2013 at 6:25 am
Simple experiment: Take a volume of 75% N2 and 25% O2 at a constant temperature there will be no IR radiating from the volume as N2 and O2 are non-radiative gases. Add 400ppm CO2 to the volume and immediately IR will start radiating from the volume as CO2 molecules receive sensible heat from collisions then radiate it as IR. ”
Ian, I’ve tried to find reference to such an experiment but can’t. Has it been done (reference please) or are you flying a kite?
Kristian,
“Because you’re very clear in your opinion that the Stefan-Boltzmann law applies to ALL things with a temperature above 0 K, even to volumes of gas and, more specifically, to layers within them.”
The Stefan-Boltzmann law only applies to black bodies (and grey bodies with an appropriate emissivity coefficient). It’s a good approximation in many circumstances, but coloured/transparent materials can be tricky.
It is very difficult, in a short comment that non-physicists are expected to be able to read, to condense about 6 lectures-worth of physics, concisely and comprehensibly. I have an unfortunate tendency towards long posts as I try (and inevitably fail) to cram in all the necessary caveats, complications, exceptions, and so on without losing the thread. I’m trying to give a simple picture that people can build on, and understand the core idea before we layer on all the complications. When you’ve got the basic idea, please do ask about the complications, but also please be patient.
“Either the Stefan-Boltzmann law can not be claimed to apply directly and linearly to gases (and especially not to distinct layers within the volume of a gas)”
The issue here isn’t that it is a gas, but that it is transparent. Absorption/emission of radiation is an atomic/molecular process – it results from the different parts of a molecule or atom carrying differing electric charges in an uneven distribution. When an electromagnetic wave passes, it pushes and pulls on these charges by differing amounts, bending, shaking, and spinning the molecules in the process. Conversely, the bending/shaking of molecular charges can create electromagnetic waves. So the reason that gases like CO2 and H2O absorb/emit infrared is that the central atom has a different charge to the two side-atoms, and a wave with a frequency that matches the bond’s resonant frequency causes the molecules to bend, and ‘ring’ like a bell.
But gases like O2 and N2 consist of two *identical* atoms, and don’t have such a wide-spaced charge separation. The passing wave moves both atoms together, the molecule is internally undisturbed. So such gases do not interact with thermal infrared, just as they do not interact with visible light. They are transparent. (At much *shorter* wavelengths, the separation between electrons and nucleus *does* allow interaction. But that’s a lot shorter than the infrared.)
But the same goes for a transparent solid or liquid. If the material is transparent at those wavelengths, it can neither absorb nor emit light at that wavelength.
In fact, the same goes to some degree even for opaque materials, since the wave has only a limited probability of interacting. If you spread an atom-thin layer of gold metal onto glass, it is transparent. *Every* material is slightly translucent, and light penetrates into the surface some non-zero depth. It might be a few hundred thousand atoms, as for ‘opaque’ materials, or a few billion, as for ‘translucent’ ones. But the same gradual absorption across layers of material applies to *any* material, including the solid ground. All the atoms inside an opaque body are still emitting and absorbing radiation, but the transfers generally cancel out except close to the boundary, so what we generally do is to ignore all the stuff going on inside, and approximate a minimally-opaque shell around the outside as “the surface”, which emits and absorbs all the radiation. But at the microscopic level, it is more complicated.
This approximation doesn’t strictly work when you have materials that are thinner than the minimally-opaque thickness, or which are opaque at some wavelength but transparent at others. You have to integrate the full radiative-transfer equations across the whole body, which is *not* a trivial topic for lay-physics explanations. Nevertheless, you can still get an *idea* of what is going on by considering the *average* altitude of emission to space in a fuzzy-opaque atmosphere, and treating it as if all the emission was coming from that layer. It’s not quite correct, but it works for the purposes of intuition. At least initially.
“It achieves this temperature because there is an atmosphere on top of it, weighing down on it, so as to put a limit to how fast the energy coming in (from the Sun) can be removed again from the surface at a certain temperature through the upward movement (buoyancy) of heated air.”
The problem is that the weight of an atmosphere doesn’t stop it radiating thermally. The surface/ocean *is* approximately a black body, and so radiates far more energy at that temperature than the sun provides.
“The surface heats first, THEN the surface heated air moves up through the atmospheric column, along the lapse rate, setting the tropospheric temperature profile along the way.”
The lapse rate sets the *gradient*, but it doesn’t set the *intercept*. The lapse rate ties the temperature at all levels of the atmosphere into a rigid structure, but this rigid structure is free-floating, and can bodily rise up and down without changing its slope. And so forces applied at the top can affect it just as easily as forces applied at the bottom. You can pump water in at the bottom of a barrel, but it’s where it spills out at the top that sets the level, and hence the pressure at the bottom.
I… what?
Did you just say CO2 in the atmosphere takes an input of IR from the surface, energy from some other source, and then emits the IR at higher power?
Know what Helium, Neon, Nitrogen, Argon, and CO2 all have in common?
They’re all used as active laser media, your own link says this. Did you miss where it said that?
If the atmosphere operates like a laser, wouldn’t the overwhelming majority of any “greenhouse laser” effect be due to the Nitrogen which makes up around 80% of the atmosphere?
I’m amazed that no one else seems to have a problem with this idea.
Uh: http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o396/maxarutaru/Selection_033.png
H2O CO2 O2 and N2 on top
O2 and N2 on bottom
These are detail shots from the left side of the above image: http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o396/maxarutaru/guest975820037.png
http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o396/maxarutaru/guest511672281.png
The gap in the bottom image is the visible spectrum, everything to the right of it is infrared.
I am a kindred soul to Rhys Jaggar above. As a biologist, I am constantly frustrated by the discussions of physical scientists and so-called climate scientists. Like Rhys, I was a specialist in a field that required that I be a consummate generalist, before any work could be done in the “specialization” (epizootiology, for those who like to drop polysyllabic career names in mixed company).
I sincerely wish the physicists and the climate scientists would drop the term GHG, “greenhouse gas” entirely from the conversation. The term is not scientific, its populist, and part of the reason why no useful common definition exists. It doesn’t describe a physical phenomenon, it describes a “feeling” people have when they enter the popular concept of what a greenhouse is.
Greenhouse operators don’t manage climate, they manage physiology. Greenhouse “climate” is what they get when they provide the physiological needs of the cultivars. Humidity is added to meet and enhance the base physiological and derivative transpirational needs of the the plants, if they are not xerophytic. CO2 is a food additive, and is added to greenhouses in eye-popping ppm as a growth stimulant. Little consideration is given to its thermal properties, because a) its irrelevant in a greenhouse, and b) the plants don’t care. Its just food to them. Neither CO2 nor humidity are used to provide temperature in a greenhouse, although certainly, water’s latent heat characteristics are a factor in the regulation of the temperature. The climates of the planet are not now, and never will be, uniform, and at worst, the effect of CO2 physics and dynamics on a planetary scale are nothing but benign, in as much as life on this planet is concerned.