While CO2 warming effects have raised earth’s temperature to present levels, CO2’s absorbed wavelengths are saturated. More CO2 will have reduced warming effects going forward. On the other hand, more CO2 increases collisions with O2 and N2 allowing those air molecules to release heat absorbed from conduction with the ground to be radiated back to space.
Those cooling effects offset warming, reduce dangerous inversion layer heating, and maintain a balanced climate.
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism, and proud member of CO2 Coalition
“While CO2 warming effects have raised earth’s temperature to present levels,”
Sorry Jim, I love your videos but that statement must have been a misspeak.
You cannot deny that CO2 has any warming effect. The science says otherwise. It is in fact a greenhouse gas, as is water vapor, and methane, and others too.
The point of anti warmunism is that CO2 is not the sole or even the most important thermostat for global climate, despite the silly claims of warmunists. The climate system is highly complex, with many contributors such as solar radiance, the wobbles in earth’s orbit and spinning on its axis; clouds and water vapor; wind circulation patterns; biological factors including the conversion by green plants of CO2 into plant mass and atmospheric oxygen concentration; and many more.
Denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that it has ANY effect on climate is mere denialism. The science says it plays a part, but it is no planetary thermostat.
CO2 absorbs and radiates energy. It composes a fraction of the Earth’s atmosphere. The anthropogenic part is a fraction of a fraction. There is no evidence that it is a net contributor to heating in the atmosphere, let alone that the heat or radiation is transported to the ground to raise the temperature a la greenhouse effect. CO2 produces a greening effect at ground level. Climate change (e.g. cooling and warming, including record levels) can be completely explained through natural terrestrial and extraterrestrial processes and phenomena.
So what natural terrestrial and extraterrestrial processes caused the climate system to take on 350 ZJ of energy while still maintaining a +0.87 W/m2 planetary energy imbalance (Schuckmann 2020)?
The same that made it warmer 1000 years ago, 2000, 5000…
which was?
Don’t know. Which means we don’t know now either.
We would know though wouldn’t we? … unless it involved new physics.
The physics that we do know of via Tyndall, Arrhenius and others stretching back ~ 150 years has not been falsified except in the minds of ABCD “sceptics”.
It’s all just a coincidence that it fits so well with observations and it really is something we are unsure/unaware of (sarc)
BTW: Another ABCD sceptic assertion is that the likes of the LIA, MWP and RWP were global.
Evidence suggest that climate variations in those periods occurred regionally in that same time period but not contiguously … as in being globally synchronous.
As such they are explained by natural variation in the climate system driven by internal mechanisms and feedbacks.
eg, Volcanic aerosols and ocean current oscillations with feedbacks involving the NAO and sea-ice extent.
And yes, I know that is not accepted here.
And evidence shows warming is not Global either. Warming holes in China, southeastern USA, eastern Antarctica , etc. etc.Most of detected oceanic warming is relegated a narrow latitudinal band of the southern Pacific
Idiotic trolls always cherrypick to make false claims
In the context of climate research “global warming” is in reference to the spatially average temperature over the whole of the Earth all 510e12 m2 of it. It does not mean that each square kilometer, meter, etc. individually is warming. If you take a looked a gridded maps you’ll see that there are regions where it has cooled yet the globe as whole still warmed. Can you explain to us how analyzing the global as a whole is cherry-picking but selecting specific regions is not?
So, you are saying that the LIA, MWP, and RWP, being ‘regional,’ had no impact on the global average temperature. Do you have evidence to support such a view?
No. I am not saying that regional temperature swings have no impact on the global average temperature. Regions are subsets of the globe so they definitely have an impact on the global average. What I’m saying is that an increase in the global average temperature is the very definition of “global warming”. And the global average temperature can increase even though the temperature in some regions may decrease. And no, I don’t have any evidence to support the view your describe. Understand that the view you describe is not one I support though.
Please give me the equation that defines your average GW.
(C1 + C2 + … + Cn) / N where Cn is the temperature in cell n of a grid mesh that covers the entire Earth and N is the number of cells in the mesh.
“(C1 + C2 + … + Cn) / N where Cn is the temperature in cell n of a grid mesh that covers the entire Earth and N is the number of cells in the mesh.”
And the result is a physically meaningless number.
You are missing the time component entirely.
Or are you saying the temperature is one and the same over time on any location?
Last I heard it gets cold in the night and warms when the sun is up.
The value of each cell Cn is over a defined period of time. Monthly periods are the most common, but yearly, daily, and hourly grids are common as well.
For 1 -you did not say that.
For 2 – how can a cell have one temperature value if time-depended it changes?
For 3 – Are we to believe that monthly values suffice, where years one end show deviations, not to speak of seasons?
For 4 – How do you account for multi year cycles?
If you have some concept (or at least applied it) of Meteorology (retired professional) then you would understand why. Especially Antarctica (vis the O3 hole and the “reverse” GHE, not to mention the role of the ENSO MJO cycles on it concerning the ACC and consequent wind regimes there
IE: the climate system is having energy stores moved around, and there will be places that warm more/slower than others
On the contrary – you are the one cherry-picking.
So why no experimental evidence of the GHE in, say, the last 40 years?
Which was—- natural variation .
No one here is denying that CO2 is a green house gas .
CO2 is a very minor player and as Jim Steele states its band width is almost saturated .
Global warming has been picked up by most politicians around the world to push any cause that they want to achieve .
AS has been pointed out many times on this site the world has been both much warmer and much colder in the last 20 thousand years .
These so called scientists who are pushing man made global warming will not and can not explain how the world came out of the ice age and there is plenty of evidence that sea level have been higher than at present which proves that there was a lot less ice at the poles in the past .
The same science that says the Earth was warmer and colder in the past is the same science that says CO2 like other polyatomic gas species is a GHG that acts in a manner approximated by Myhre 1998 or 5.35*ln(C/Ci). The science is clear on this matter. Given enough of a nudge the climate can change very quickly. Pumping 40 GtCO2 into the atmosphere is a pretty big nudge.
40 GtCO2 is a smidgen as most of is absorbed by plants and my lawn (mostly green weeds) that over the last 20 years I have gone from mowing once a week to every five days.
That’s 40 GtCO2 per year. Sorry I should have made that clear.
A smidgen nonetheless!
Humans have pumped a total of 330 ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere. And at the current of 40 GtCO2/yr that is 500 ppm/century.
So what?? If the primary absorption bands are saturated, added CO2 helps cool the earth!
The center of the band of saturated, but the wings broaden with increasing temperature. And your second statement is patently false. There is no point where adding CO2 switches its effect from having a positive radiative force to a negative radiative force.
There you go again bdgwx with your “patently false” assertions to protect your errant beliefs. Please view the video again to clarify your misconceptions.
Indeed there is no switching point, that is a desperate and misleading statement . Of course greenhouse gases always emit 50% of absorbed wavelengths out to space and 50% towards the earth. However warm layers of air radiate heat upwards faster than cold layers above radiate heat downwards. So there is always a net radiative loss of heat back to space.
Atmospheric density most definitely changes. As altitude increases the molecular windows, and mean free paths between collisions expand and greenhouse radiation escape more easily.
Once above the altitude at which the most important greenhouse gas, H2O condenses and precipitates, the greenhouse -free window for escaping infrared increases dramatically
And there has been no argument against the dynamic ‘broadening”, but the fact remains those broader wings have far less significance than the primary absorption bands.
Stop spamming the comments with your abundance of misinformation , Instead lIsten and learn
I said it is patently false because it is patently false. Increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere does not cause the temperature of Earth to decrease. Adding CO2 does not cool the Earth.
The unit [ppm] is not a value to be used for flow measurements!
Your statement is wrong!
https://s.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/dl5Ou0BqfHEU7VglhFnLnA–~C/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9MTI2O3E9ODA7dz0yMDA-/https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.CHfQb3wuVjVov42wXdqAigHaEr&w=200&h=126&rs=1&qlt=80&pid=3.1
Perhaps those of you who worry about a small addition of CO2 to our atmosphere, can explain why (as shown on this graph) there seems to be no correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures over the last 600 million years?
It is because CO2 isn’t the only thing that modulates the planetary energy balance and heat uptake. You might have noticed that solar irradiance doesn’t correlate with the temperature either. Remember, the Sun brightens as it ages so as a result it was 5% dimmer 600 MYA resulting in a radiative force of -12 W/m2. CO2 would have had to have been 4000 ppm just to offset the reduced solar output. And there are many other factors to be considered as well.
“CO2 is a very minor player and as Jim Steele states its band width is almost saturated .”
That is NOT how the GHE (presently) works.
There are 10’s of kms above the effective emission level where “saturation” (as in continued attenuation of outgoing LWIR) can take place – in that as it rises with greater CO2 concentration to lower temperatures it will cause weaker emission (SB law).
And than “minor” play just happens to be crucial from stopping the planet turn into an ice-ball (as H20 being condensing and having a solid phase at terrestrial temps will freeze out without CO2’s supporting warming)
Ask Roy Spencer FI ….
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/29/slight-beneficial-warming-from-more-carbon-dioxide/
“I’m afraid I have to agree with Nick on this. The authors used detailed line by line calculations and get the same radiative forcing from 2XCO2 others have gotten. How much warming occurs largely depends upon feedbacks, which were not the main subject of the paper. Talk of near-saturation is nothing new, this is known and included in climate models. There is no such thing as total saturation of the GHE. Ask Venus (with over 200,000x our CO2).
That is not controversial and to wave the GHE away by saying the bands are “saturated” with “More CO2 will have reduced warming effects going forward”, is specious when W & H have done no more than the accepted science and used the logarithmic causation of atmospheric CO2 on radiative forcing. As they say themselves in the paper …
“The forcing increments in Table 3 are comparable to those calculated by others.”
So a nothingburger. The science is unaltered (what a surprise)
https://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/atmospheric-radiation-and-the-greenhouse-effect/
Cyclic overturning of oceanic water columns.
How does cyclic overturning of ocean water columns cause the entire ocean to take on 300+ ZJ of energy?
How do you know that energy is “new”? You don’t. We know squat about the deep oceans, but we like to fool ourselves into thinking we do.
Indeed Wunsch has published that the Pacific Ocean’s deep layers are still cooling from more ancient warming
I never said the energy was “new”. I’m not even sure what you mean by that exactly. What I said is that the climate system took on 350 ZJ of energy between 1960 and 2018.
350 ZJ…
How many meters of ocean would that amount of energy be able to bring up to 100 degrees C (boiling)?
That was a nonsense argument but here is one that isn’t: How many Centigrades, Kelvin would 350ZJ of heat add to (say) 500 meters depth or the entire 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of ocean water?
Now use that figure to back-calculate how many gigaton CO2 our oceans would release.
Extracurricular:
How much do you need to increase insolation/irradience with (from say 1000 Watt bombarding the surface), to add 350 ZJ over a time period of 350 years (since LIA)?
Oddgeir
350 ZJ is enough energy to raise the first 3 meters of the ocean by 80C. 350 ZJ = 3 m * 360e12 m2 * 1000 kg/m3 * 4000 j/kg.C * 80 C.
350 ZJ is enough to raise the temperature of the entire ocean by 0.063 C. 350 ZJ = 1.4e21 kg * 4000 j/kg.C * 0.063 C.
Making a big assumption that this 0.063 C increase is homogenous throughout the entire depth (its not) and using Takahashi 1993 that is exp(0.042 * 0.063) * 400 – 400 = 1.0 ppm of partial pressure equivalent. In reality the outgassing occurs at the surface which has warmed more than the rest of the ocean. Assuming about 1C of SST warming that is exp(0.042 * 1) * 400 – 400 = 17 ppm of partial pressure equivalent.
The 350 ZJ figure is over a 58 year period from 1960 to 2018. I don’t think you’ll mind if I use 58 years instead of 350 years in the following calculation. 350e21 j / 58 yr / 365.24 d/yr / 86400 s/d / 510e12 m2 = 0.37 W/m2 as the average uptake flux. If we assume the imbalance starts at 0 W/m2 and ends at 0.74 W/m2 and with a linear increase that does average out to 0.37 W/m2 of uptake over the period. Note that 0.74 W/m2 isn’t too far off the observed +0.87 W/m2 imbalance so that does work out nicely here. Then assuming this was all delivered by an increase in TSI we take the 0.74 W/m2 end of period uptake flux and adjust for albedo and geometry for 0.74 W/m2 / 0.7 * 4 = 4.2 W/m2 of dTSI. In other words, TSI would need to increase by 4.2 W/m2 linearly from 1960 to 2018 to both account for the observed 350 ZJ of uptake and approximately +0.8 W/m2 linger imbalance. So if the 11yr centered average of TSI is 4.2 W/m2 higher in 2018 then that would at least be consistent with the total uptake and imbalance observations.
Explain what happens to the heat in that builds up in an atmosphere with no greenhouse gases present.
N2 and O2 are transparent to infrared, so with no greenhouse gases, the heat goes directly to outer space. Water is the predominant greenhouse gas at ground level but at the height airliners fly, water is 10 ppm and CO2 is 400 ppm.
Unfortunately, our scientists have been horribly inept for decades, and calculate
that doubling of the CO2 at high altitude will increase the surface temperature by somewhere between 0.5 to 8 degrees. So quite useless for determining whether it is important to humanity or not.
Thee problem is O2 and N2 absorb heat by colliding with the ground. They are not greenhouse gases so they can not release that energy. Without greenhouse gases, the temperature of 99% of the atmosphere would result in runaway warming
Jim photons leaving the Earth’s surface collide with O2 and N2, they just don’t get absorbed. To say photons can’t make it to space without GH gases seems not right. If that is the case the video is wrong is saying there is a window of wave length where photons pass freely to space.
The bottom layer of air absorbs the heat at the surface. Rises and is replaced by a new layer of air which rises and a new cooler layer replaces it. Repeats over and over again. The air keeps absorbing energy.
Where does the energy go?
Where does thermodynamic law SAY the energy goes? This is grade school science.
You misunderstand Nelson,
Indeed photons of infrared heading back to space do not get absorbed, and infrared wavelengths do indeed escape to space unimpeded where they are not absorbed by greenhouse gases.
You confusion lies in the fact that O2 and N2 absorb kinetic energy via conduction with a solar heat surface. Increase kinetic energy you increase temperature, and that kinetic energy cannot be shed back to space unless it converts to radiant energy, which can only be done via collisions with greenhouse gases
That is not entirely true. O2, for instance radiates in the microwave range, which is what the satellites use to make temperature measurements of the atmosphere. Energy is energy, it is just a matter of different magnitudes.
Thee amount of energy radiated by the earth in the microwave spectrum is negligible for the earth’s energy budget.
Anything suggesting a gas violates thermodynamic law is false.
That’s slightly screwy logic, Jim, no insult intended. The warm surface would emit photons to the cold temperature of outer space, 3 K, so the surface would be colder than it is now. And entropy considerations disallow the molecules contacting the surface from being any warmer than the surface they are in contact with.
I do agree that increased CO2 at top of troposphere increases IR emission to outer space (cooling), but also more back downwards (warming). And convection from the surface warms the top of troposphere where increased CO2 can more effectively radiate to outer space instead of having all those clouds in the way….so you are mostly correct….and a blog comment section is tough knowledge transmission…kudos to you for your efforts.
Interesting 140F surface temp sans convection the topic in this old blog
article. Not addressed to Jim, who knows this stuff…
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/06/what-causes-the-greenhouse-effect/
DMAC you are dishonestly misrepresenting this video and trying to divert attention from the point of the video COOLING aspects of greenhouse gases. You sound like a troll when your attacks are the video didnt cover every aspect of the complexities of climate. The video would be much to long to hold people’s attention, as I suspect you didnt watch the whole video.
I most definitely reference the great warming effects from suppressed convection in the parts discussing inversion layers. So again you are acting like a dishonest troll
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GREENHOUSE GASSES!
Greenhouses work by STOPPING CONVECTION.
They do NOT WORK BY SOME MAGICAL GAS PSEUDO-SCIENCE.
God you are such a stupid troll. You are so wrong and dishonest I can only believe you are on a mission to make skeptics look as stupid deniers like you!
Yes real greenhouse work by stopping convection, as the video states regards rolled up windows in your car stop convective cooling.
But only a complete idiot would deny there are no greenhouse gases, even if the name is misleading. Gases that absorb and emit infrared at wavelengths emitted by the earth are called greenhouse gases! Based on that definition, only trolls and idiots would argue that CO2 and H2O are not greenhouse gases despite the overwhelming abundance of measurements showing that they absorb and emit infrared
i’m addressing your comment of 9:00 AM, which I addressed with every possible politeness, but the comment is incorrect….yet you call me a troll….hmmm….
I dont understand you argumeent DMac,
Of course the warmer solar heated earth surface radiates heat back to space, but cooling is reversed during the daytime in most places. That is why diurnal inversion layers happen at night and during the winter as solar heat is reduced and cooling time is increased, And inversion layers are eroded during the day as the sun heats the ground imparting enough kinetic energy for the air to be more buoyant than the inversion.
The renowned atmospheric scientist Will Happer described the science in the video as “rock solid”
“Without greenhouse gases, the temperature of 99% of the atmosphere would result in runaway warming” is the statement I dispute.
NOT correct, surface would just emit the heat directly to outer space through the “no green house gas” atmosphere. SB calcs.
I think you are talking about “a little more greenhouse gas than we have now” instead of “none”, which is where GHG emit to outer space the heat convected from the ground including water condensation.
“…where increased CO2 can more effectively radiate to outer space”???
You’re kidding, right?
Doesn’t ANYONE here know thermodynamics???
Clearly you dont letmepic!!! First from a thermodynamic perspective there is a net movement of heat from the surface to space. Warmer surfaces radiate heat upwards faster than colder layers above can radiate heat downwards.
Second because most water vapor condenses and precipitates by the tropopause, above that layer, close to 60% of the greenhouse effect is removed allowing heat to escape more rapidly
Finally because air density increases dramatically with altitude, the “molecular windows enlarge” further enhancing infrared escape.
Leanr some basic science letmepic
Something increasing with altitude generally intends to means as altitude increases. Air density decreases dramatically with altitude would then be the correct statement.
Thanks for the correction. That is what I meant to say
It has to do with lower elevations being thousands of ppm water vapor a more effective GHG at surface, but at top of troposphere, water vapor is less than 10 ppm so 400 ppm CO2 is a more effective GHG way up there, which is really only 11 km away….
Engineering degree, Master’s heat transfer courses for career purposes…my thermo is OK…
This is literally one of the most moronic statements I’ve ever heard in my life.
O2 and N2 absorb heat by colliding with the ground. And then they cannot release that energy. So it transforms the atoms into something else??? They become plasma?
Everything you have said here…is stupid. Everything.
ROTFLMAO, “They become plasma?” That is your refutation
Clearly you reveal what a total idiot you are, and you r complete lack of science. You can call me names all you want, it wont change how idiotic you are
Let’s copare what the troll letmepicyou says versus what renowned Atmospheric physicist, Dr William Happer said about this video
“The video is a gem. The science is rock-solid, the graphics are well chosen, and the explanations are extremely clear. I highly recommend it!
So you stand by your statement “O2 and N2 absorb heat by colliding with the ground. And then they cannot release that energy.”
I won’t even address the first sentence because it’s…drivel.
But lets do #2. By what mechanism do you claim this energy is bound to O2 and N2?
Your combination of self righteous arrogance, dishonesty and stupidity certainly makes you a loathsome pathetic creature.
I never said the energy was “bound” That is another of your dishonest twists. That energy can be transferred via collisions. Watch the video and count how many times that is said.
The truth is that N2 and O2 cannot release that energy as radiation at the earth’s temperatures. Unless the sun’s energy is radiated back tp space, the earth will indeed warm.
Try to upgrade yourself from your ignorant depths and read all the studies that say N2 and O2 are not greenhouse gases and dont radiate the energy they acquire back to space
….colliding with the ground, otherwise known as conduction. Jim is right on this point. Slightly askew on the N2/O2 thermal runaway comment…yes, the video is excellent cuz its not about that minor non-GHG effect.
That statement is just plain wrong. If O2 and N2 can absorb heat but colliding with the ground then they can also lose heat by colliding with the ground. Thus in the absence of any greenhouse gas there would not be runaway warming but rather the atmosphere and the ground would reach thermal equilibrium with the temperature being determined by the rate at which energy was lost due to the ground radiating it away.
Do you know why conovection happens?
Yes “If O2 and N2 can absorb heat but colliding with the ground then they can also lose heat by colliding with the ground.”
But because heating made the air more buoyant, it cannot cool and return to the ground unless it releases heat radiatively.
If there is a hot parcel of air then it will warm the surrounding air through collisions which will in turn warm other parcels of air and eventually molecules will hit the ground and warm it up. If the air is warmer than the ground then energy will flow from the air to the ground cooling the air and warming the ground. There will never been any runaway warming in an atmosphere without greenhouse gases.
Without greenhouse gases, the surface will cooler faster at night than it does now and form a stronger inversion layer with warm air overhead that had been warmed by conduction with a surface heat by daytime sun.
Some people keep stating the warmed daytime air will sink back to the surface but the physics refutes that claim. It wont sink unless it cools radiatively, and it cant without greenhouse gases
Jim:
Are you saying that an insulated tank of N2 or O2 at some terrestrial temperature would never cool?
Interesting denial of the Laws of thermodynamics of you are!
Nitrogen absorbs/emits in the UV range.
It will cool in the Earth’s (non GHG) atmosphere because of that.
“Vacuum UVR (100–200 nm) is efficiently absorbed by the molecular nitrogen in air “
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128012383002580emits in the
Also it seems that N2 emits/cools in the microwave band ….
“The ir emission spectrum of nitrogen from 1 μ to 5 μ wavelength, arising from transitions between excited electronic states of the molecule and the atom, is presented and discussed. “
https://www.osapublishing.org/viewmedia.cfm?r=1&rwjcode=ao&uri=ao-9-1-195&html=true
Another typical twist and distortion of the truth. It is only you who is denying the laws of thermodynamics as you are clearly on a mission to distort the video’s scientific principles showing greenhouse gases have an important cooling effect that alarmist models and trolls like you ignore to push a doomsday scenario!
Try to think critically for a moment and set aside your blind doomsday beliefs.
Without greenhouse gases, the surface reaches the black body temperature, but it varies between night and day. During the day the surface heats (lets say an arbitrary 100 degrees warm er than night as exemplified in dry climates like deserts) creating a very turbulent lower troposphere. N2 and O2 warm via collisions, and that warmth creates the buoyancy for the air to rise.
At night the surface cools rapidly. Without greenhouse gases, the only way for N2 and O2 to cool is by colliding again with the colder surface. But at night a strong inversion develops and the air stagnates. At night N2 and O2 cannot shed its acquired heat because the inversion layer prevents contact with the now cold surface. Daytime turbulence resumes and more O2 and N2 can now contact the surface, but the surface is hot and heating the air. Eventually the atmosphere will heat until it reaches equilibrium with the heated surface
O2 and N2 have radiant emissions; just not in the IR band. In fact, UAH and RSS exploit the microwave emissions of O2 escaping to space to measure the global mean temperature of the troposphere. Sure, that means O2 and 2 cannot effectively shed terrestrial temperatures, but without GHGs they wouldn’t even be at terrestrial temperatures to begin with.
But water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and probably the most important one.
Agreed, so whats your point?
Which is one of the biggest misconceptions ever formulated in climate science.
Totally ignoring heat capacity and convection as the major source of energy transfer in the atmosphere.
The reduction of climate science to radiative transfer is what made up all the mess of CO2 being a major driver. On a single molecule basis it sounds plausible, on global climate system scale it’s just wrong.
Allen, how would heat build in the atmosphere without GHGs? O2 and N2 are not effective on their own at capturing terrestrial radiation?
So you say you don’t know the three important ways of energy transfer?
Why do you discuss matters that clearly you do not understand?
And btw, it has been said multiple times in the discussion that convection and heat conduction allow air to warm. Radiation plays a minor role.
Conduction. Convection. Radiation. Of the transfer right off the surface conductions accounts for about 4%, convection about 17% mainly via evaporation, and radiation the remaining 89%. And within the atmosphere terrestrial radiation accounts for nearly 60% of the total energy absorbed. See Wild et al. 2013 for details.
That depends on the denominator of choice you use bdg to push your agenda. The numbers you are using are bullcrap!
Using Stephens’ energy budget graph (who is not a skeptic) from this video
Of the 165 +/- 6 W/M2 solar warming of the earth’s surface
Sensible Heat removes: 24 +/- 7 W/M2 or 14.5% of solar surface heating
The great uncertainty in Sensible Heat is largely due to great differences in surface heating due to landscape changes that dry, denude or pave over the surface
Latent Heat removes: 88 +/-10 W/M2 or 53.3% of solar surface heating
The great uncertainty in Latent Heating. is largely due to the fact latent heat can’t be measured directly. It is assumed that the amount of heat required to evaporate water that results in rain, would equal the latent heat component. But measuring rainfall has many difficulties and uncertainties of its own in addition to measuring occult rain, virga, snowfall, etc
Sure, if you want to use 165 W/m2 as the denominator and the Stephens 2012 energy budget (which is not inconsistent with Wild 2013 BTW):
Radiation Heat removes: 398±5 W/m2 or 241% of the solar surface heating input
That’s fine if you want to analyze things that way. But 241% is not the percentage of the surface heat input that is shed by radiation. It is the percent of radiation output relative solar input only. Nor is it the portion of atmospheric absorption attributable to terrestrial radiation either. And just so there is no ambiguity I think this is an incorrect analysis and I would never do it that way.
Your choice of stats is misleading and so of course you dont analyze it any other way.
There is a net long-wave radiation emitted from the surface back to space of just 53 W/M2 +/- or jus 32% of the surface absorbed solar radiation.
By just focusing on the total 398±5 W/m2 obscures the fact that warming by downward long-waves enhances upward long-waves, some of which escape unhindered through the atmospheric window. Most of the long-wave radiation is simply recycled and slows the cooling process. But the key issue is : are long-waves trapped causing global warming affecting life at the surface..or not? In addition to the large uncertainty in radiative heating, the tremendous uncertainty in estimates of sensible and latent heat compared to the alleged imbalance 0.06 W/M2 +/- 17, suggests there is no significant imbalance in the energy budget, and by their numbers, greenhouse gases could just as well be cooling the earth right now!
Keep in the mind the focus of this subthread. How would O2 and N2 heat up without GHGs? Another Joe says radiation plays a minor role. I point out that of the energy originating from the surface and passing through the atmosphere 79% of it is from radiation. And of the energy absorbed by the atmosphere UWIR accounts for 65%. That is not what I would call a minor role.
Let’s chat about that 0.6±17 W/m2 figure for a moment as well. That is the calculated imbalance at the surface based on the individual components. The uncertainty is the root sum square of the individual component uncertainties (see fig 1 in Stephens et al. 2012). Also note that the TOA imbalance is 0.6±0.4 W/m2 in diagram. The diagram this publication presents uses a compentized estimate of the surface imbalance. There is nothing wrong with that per se, it’s just comes with higher uncertainty then using the directly observed figure mention as well in the publication of 0.6±0.4 W/m2 matching their TOA figure (see pg. 684). Oh and BTW…Martin Wild is author on that publication.
Typo…89% should have been 79%.
Now tell us, you claim that Earth warms from the energy transfer that allows most of the energy to leave?
Is this like saying that the biggest hole in the ship keeps it swimming?
Surly you must be mistaken in your numbers!
“You cannot deny that CO2 has any warming effect.”
Yes, but what is the net effect of CO2 after feedbacks? It could be cooling.
Whatever the net effect is, it doesn’t appear to be much of an effect as it can’t be separated out from natural variability, despite what the Charlatans at the UN IPCC assert.
It can be:
Though you don’t accept it…..
Nice graph. The major cooling in the early 1900’s and the huge temperature spike in the 1930’s completely missing. Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to show a correlation when you just remove any data that runs counter to the correlation?
And if you’re going down the route of conspiratorial “adjustments” … I’m not interested in a discussion.
The science behind your attribution graph is incomplete and thus bogus. The models that create such graphs ignore or incapable of including the effects of Greenhouse COOLING, landscape changes and natural oscillations. By pushing such graphs you only reveal your lack of scientific understanding and fondness for groupthink!
Banton is a hack
So why was the warming rate from 1910 to 1945 (-.6 to +.5 deg F = 1.1 deg in just 35 years) MUCH FASTER than it was from 1945 to 2005 (+.5 to +1.2 deg F in 60 years!), Bantam weight? Did you even look at your own plot? At a time of low CO2 concentration and LOW rate of increase in CO2, the warming was much faster than it was more recently. Even cherry picking the low temperature point of 1975 gives almost the same rate of temperature increase to 2005 (which is NOT the present) as it was in the earlier period.
Once again, Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do.
Why are here for then? Wasting your time and hours, I suppose.
Can you post a dataset of the global mean temperature that you trust and hopefully addresses the bias that can contaminate the record (like station moves, instrument changes, time of observation changes, etc.) which shows the cooling in the early 1900’s and the spike in temperature in the 1930’s? I’d like to review it if you don’t mind.
Global mean temperature is a pointless, and meaningless, exercise.
Then how do you know “it warmer 1000 years ago, 2000, 5000…“? Better yet…how do you know what the global average temperature was at all back then if you think the global average temperature is pointless and meaningless?
Its hard to do. I’m old enough to remember what the graphs looked like in my 1972 Encyclopedia Britannica, or IPCC AR3 for that matter. Finding record of those “per-adjustocene” graphs isn’t easy, though it can probably be done if you are willing to put in the time.
You may want to fool around with Wood For Trees where you can see what the data looks like from different temperature series, but frankly I trust none of them.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/mean:12
Anthony
No-one has a clue what natural factors are.
Start by explaining the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
How are the “Human Forces” determined?
https://judithcurry.com/2021/08/18/the-ipccs-attribution-methodology-is-fundamentally-flawed/
I agree with you. As I stated, CO2 is not the earth’s thermostat. But claiming that CO2 has no effect as some do here in this thread is mere denialism and anti-science.
“Science says otherwise”.
The repetition of the word “science” does not replace scientific argumentation. Can you name a publication that provides a physical basis for the greenhouse effect? Judith Curry (2010)did not find such articles: https://judithcurry.com/2010/11/30/physics-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect/. At least. in none of the IPCC reports, despite promising headlines like “Physical Science Basis”, there is no physical explanation of the greenhouse effect. There is also no physical experiment directly indicating the existence of the greenhouse effect. The idea of such an experiment was outlined by S. Arrhenius (1896), but he did not have the corresponding “expensive equipment”. Since then, no one has carried out such an experiment.
On the other hand, G.Gerlich and R.D.Tscheischner showed that the greenhouse effect is contrary to the laws of thermodynamics:https://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~jgl/post/Gerlich_Tscheuschner.pdf or https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4.pdf
Let us also recall about the heat capacity. Heat capacity is a universal property inherent in any substance. Obviously, the main components of the atmosphere (nitrogen, oxygen, argon) absorb heat, just like “greenhouse gases”, regardless of the ability to absorb infrared radiation. The molar heat capacity of CO2 is about 30% higher than that of nitrogen and oxygen, but an increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 0.03 to 0.04% changes the total heat capacity of air by a value less than the measurement error.
The essence of the greenhouse effect hypothesis is that the absorption of infrared radiation is at the same time the absorption of heat: greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat. In physics, heat and IR radiation are not identical concepts: see, for example, Van Nostrand Scientific Encyclopedia https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/0471743984.vse4181.pub2. When a molecule of a substance absorbs IR radiation, this leads to a change in the potential energy of the molecule itself, but does not affect the gas temperature, which is determined by the kinetic energy of the translational motion of the molecule (Boltzmann’s equation in kinetic theory of gases).
In fact, there is no scientific evidence for the theory of the greenhouse effect.
I like to emphasize every word of your post. Thank you!
“I cannot deny” ? “I cannot deny”?
Who are YOU, God’s arbiter on denial?
Telling me what I can and can’t deny in real life = get ya smacked.
I will ABSOLUTELY DENY that Carbon Dioxide can VIOLATE THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS.
Anyone that knows ANYTHING about thermodynamics knows THIS as an absolute FACT:
When an atom or molecule absorbs a photon, ie is heated, that photon (or infrared wave or whatever you’d like to refer to it as) re-emits that same photon in a RANDOM DIRECTION.
PERIOD.
THIS is what they call SCIENCE. REAL science, not that greenie moron-based science where they hope you forget everything you learned in grade school, like photosynthesis.
There is NO MECHANISM IN CARBON DIOXIDE WHICH CAN OR DOES PREVENT THE RE-RADIATION OF PHOTONIC ENERGY IN RANDOM DIRECTIONS. Those who make the RIDICULOUS CLAIM of “GREENHOUSE GASSES” absolutely have to believe something we absolutely KNOW to be 100% false, that somehow a “greenhouse gas” prevents heat from being re-radiated back into space, in complete defiance of thermodynamic law.
Not only that, but the very TERM “greenhouse gas” is RIDICULOUS and a complete MISNOMER because a greenhouse doesn’t work with “special heat trapping gasses”, you’d have to be touched in the head to buy that. Greenhouses work by PREVENTING HEAT LOSS THROUGH CONVECTION. So even the TERM “greenhouse gasses” is utterly preposterous.
The crap they have people believing is extraordinarily preposterous.
Molecules of hot gases (not at absolute zero) move (Brownian motion) and vibrate. When there are other molecules around, there are energetic interactions (didn’t the video mention that?). That means energy may be transferred from molecule to molecule, no? That leads to the conclusion that at any instant after photon absorption, but before emission, the energy of any particular GH molecule may be increased or decreased relative to what it was prior to interaction with other molecules.
Emission seems to be a quantum mechanical action, which means it occurs randomly, at least as far a human understanding goes. Therefore, one might suspect that a GH molecule may have more or less energy when it emits than it had immediately after it absorbed a IR photon. Can it thus emit the “same” photon it absorbed or might it have to be a photon of different frequency/wavelength/energy content?
AndyHce
” ,,, Therefore, one might suspect that a GH molecule may have more or less energy when it emits than it had immediately after it absorbed a IR photon. Can it thus emit the “same” photon it absorbed or might it have to be a photon of different frequency/wavelength/energy content?”
I have pondered that thought for years. How does a photon leave the surface at say 120F and when it gets to the upper atmosphere it radiates at say -30F but if it is radiated back to the surface it becomes warmer/more energetic. Its properties/energy levels are changing in some way?
Each photon of the same frequency carries the same energy. The difference is in the number of photons emitted. CO2 at 10C emits more 14 um photons than does CO2 at -60C. The free path of 14 um photons is pretty short down low so they get captured quickly. The free path gets longer and longer the higher you go up until eventually the probability of unimpeded escape switches from unlikely to likely. And remember that the cross sectional density of CO2 is much higher down at the surface. At 400 ppmv and when lying on your back looking up there is 6.2 kg/m2 of CO2, but when looking up at the tropopause it is only 1.5 kg/m2 even if the concentration at 400 ppmv is constant.
So let’s consider my little photon made it high into the atmosphere and now has been sent back/emitted down towards the ground. On the way back down does it multiply itself as the temperature increases or does the next CO2 molecule do it? Read my earlier comment again carefully. If it has the same properties and energy going up as going down exactly how does CO2 create and disappear photons depending on its (CO2) temperature? In other words, if a CO2 molecule catches/absorbs a photon from a higher/colder CO2 molecule exactly how is it going to emit more photons just because its warmer? I’m thinking that 1 = 1.
It wouldn’t be the same photon. When a molecule absorbs a photon it causes the molecule to vibrate. There are two possibilities from here. The acquired energy causes a dipole momentum that can accelerate the molecule such that it imparts a bit more momentum to a neighboring molecule via a collision that it would have otherwise. We often call that thermalization. Or it can spontaneously emit a new photon in a random direction. There is no multiplication effect here. The law of conservation of energy prohibits this. Remember that temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of a volume of molecules. Warmer molecules have more kinetic energy that can be converted into more photons. The emission of photons carries momentum away from the molecule so it moves a bit more slowly and lowers the overall temperature similar to how absorbing more photons causes the overall temperature to increase. If more photons are absorbed than emitted then increases and vice versa. The important take away is that warmer molecules emit more photons. Refer to Planck’s Law for more details.
Thank you for your reply.
Its not about more photons. Its about energy level of the photons.
For each photon a molecule emits it also receives one. The difference in the energy level of both. And a photon from a hotter “surface” has a higher energy, while the gas at a lower temperature emits lower energy photons.
That,s withholding the issue that gases are selective emitters.
“You cannot deny that CO2 has any warming effect. The science says otherwise. It is in fact a greenhouse gas, as is water vapor, and methane, and others too.”
People like you, Duane, make me sick.
Leit, you are a mean-spirited whackadoodle
Jim, you are a total disappointment.. No wonder warmists thrive when people like you support them with your 33C meme.
CO2 probably has some effect upon global temperature but how much and is the effect large enough to be detected by the instruments used to measure global temperature? After all the present level of CO2 in the atmosphere is only about four hundreths of one percent.
Perhaps that statement out of context can be considered misspeak, but I dont argue CO2 is alone is responsible for the earth’s warming and climate change. As the video concludes
More CO2 increases Collisions with O2 and N2 Allowing more Heat to Radiate back to Space
Those who argue that the emission of greenhouse infrared back towards earth cant cause a change in temperature, are denying observable science. And such arguments give credence to fear-mongering alarmists that brand all skeptics as “deniers”
I am amazed at the remarks of several posters here who completely miss the thrust of the video’s argument:
Greenhouse gases are ESSENTIAL to Cool the earth
The alarmist argument that greenhouse gases trap heat is totally bogus! Greenhouse gases absorb and emit radiation or transfer it via collisions in less than micro-seconds.By emitting infrared back towards earth, back radiation simply slows the cooling process, and is misleadingly stated as warming. As illustrated by the diurnal inversion examples, the earth can shed kinetic energy and cool much faster than the atmosphere because some of the emitted wavelengths are not absorbed and re-emitted by any greenhouse gases, because the heat O2 and N2 absorb from contact with the solar-heated surface MUST transfer that heat to a greenhouse gas
“Those who argue that the emission of greenhouse infrared back towards earth cant cause a change in temperature, are denying observable science.”
I would argue that radiative gases paradoxically speed up surface cooling via convection by creating instability and weather in the daytime. (The radiative equilibrium lapse rate being greater than the adiabatic)
Agreed, that too is factor. This video is not trying to account for all variable. The video is already longer than the attention span of many. But you keep ignoring the point of the video. Greenhouse gases enable non-greenhouse gases to shed their heat back to space
I agree with your bold statement. However, that is a double edged sword because greenhouse gases also enable non-greenhouse gases to gain heat originating from the surface. In other words, non-GHG species have a higher temperature than they would otherwise because of GHG species.
Indeed non-GHGs also gain energy by collisions with GHGs. But the net effect throughout the atmosphere to the top of the atmosphere is cooling
If by top of the atmosphere you mean above the tropopause then I agree with that too.
Thanks Jim.
As I understand it’s well established even by the climate mainstream that, above the tropopause, CO2 cools the atmosphere by ejecting more IR photons to space, thus a cooling stratosphere is part of the story.
Jim wasn’t saying that recent (within the last several decades) warming was caused by human CO2, but that the reason the Earth is well above blackbody temperature is due to CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. Perhaps you put a different meaning on the word ‘present’.
I take that to mean that going from 0 ppm to 350 ppm has raised temperature. He goes on to point out that further increases have minimal effect, more than offset by other mechanisms.
Consider the oft-cited “blanket effect”. Adding a blanket on cold night makes us warmer, but if you already have six blankets, adding a seventh has little impact.
Sometimes another blanket is a true blessing.
But would you notice that seventh blanket? Or the tenth? Or twentieth?
He was saying CO2 and H2O. There’s no debating that if CO2 were zero the world would be colder.
The driving motivation for this video is to bring greenhouse COOLING EFFECTS front and center, and bring a more realistic understanding to climate.
All skeptics intuitively understand there is something very wrong with the CO2-Climate Crisis fear-mongering.However not understanding all the physics, many skeptics find it expedient to mistakenly reject any and all warming effects of greenhouse gases.
Likewise, alarmists inebriated with just the warming effects and/or unaware of the cooling effects, horrendously rant about runaway warming and future crises and extinctions.
Once everyone understands how the cooling effects balance warming, then the landscape and natural cycles that promote wildfires, heatwaves, etc., those negative weather phenomena that serve as media click bait, and falsely blamed on CO2, then landscape and natural cycle effects can get the proper attention they deserve.
I sometimes worry that those who argue there is no CO@ warming effects, are trolls from same troll factory idiots like Griff are from, whose mission is to discredit any and all good skeptical science.
Agreed Jim. The reality is that nobody knows exactly what causes warming, or cooling either. We have lots of theories, a very little bit of experimental data, but mostly a lot of arm waving by modelers and those who propagandize the discussion.
Complexity and uncertainty are what obscures the science. Two decades ago, the warmunistas used to hang their hats on the “uncertainty principle” as their justification for completely disrupting society with warmunism. But in the last decade they changed their tune and no longer mention uncertainty. Now they embrace absolute certainty, and thus have all become “True Believers.”
“Everything looks simple when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Words to live by.
“I sometimes worry that those who argue there is no CO@ warming effects, are trolls from same troll factory idiots like Griff are from, whose mission is to discredit any and all good skeptical science.”
“True Believers” take many forms. I think that has a lot to do with it.
Btw, I think all your all your commentary, and especially the comment I’m replying to, is right on the money.
Here’s what renowned Atmospheric physicist, Dr William Happer said about this video
“The video is a gem. The science is rock-solid, the graphics are well chosen, and the explanations are extremely clear. I highly recommend it!
So much for the ‘Settled Science’ then, back to the drawing board….
It’s been that way for 40 years.
Oh dear, the lukewarmists have taken over.
I’m off to feed my unicorn.
Jim Steele is the diametric opposite of a Luke warmer. You aren’t paying attention.
Duane, you are erm, how do I put this? An idiot?
Jim, sorry, but you’re not allowed to say CO2 causes warming.
Sadly, like the Intolerant Left, there is a number of intolerant deniers
CO2’s absorbed wavelengths are saturated.
not the case!
If the CO2 effect was saturated, adding more CO2 should add no additional greenhouse effect. However, satellite and surface measurements observe an enhanced greenhouse effect at the wavelengths that CO2 absorb energy. This is empirical proof that the CO2 effect is not saturated.
Reference, please.
Griff will have a lot of Marvel Comics to look through for the reference.
Give him time.
I see no proof, griff.
You write what you always write and that’s wrong, but:
https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The_Saturated_Greenhouse_Effect.htm
And more lies from the lie spewing liar.
More time wasting nonsense
Little Ice Age was global: Implications for current global warming — ScienceDaily
The Little Ice Age lasted for centuries. It is absolutely inane to try and make an argument that this was restricted to just Europe. Temperatures in this region must have had an effect elsewhere. Griff, tell us just how these low temps would not effect the entire globe.
The attached article discusses findings from a study that took place in South America and shows that lower temperatures were even felt in another hemisphere. As usual, Griff needs to provide references that definitively show lower temps did not occur elsewhere.
The warming that subsequently occurred from the Little Ice Age was done without added CO2. This should set the baseline for natural variation and shows the variance in temperatures. It also provides an uncertainty interval for determining when temperature data is outside of what natural variation can provide. This is where the CO2 GHG theory breaks down. There is no proof that current temperatures are exceeding natural variation.
The warmunists dishonestly maintained that lack of data means lack of effect. Until lately there was little data to indicate an effect outside of Europe, supposedly (however there is a great deal of data showing the Little Ice Age had a huge affect in North America as documented by European explorers and colonists). But the more data available the more clear that the cooling then was worldwide in the temperate latitudes.
•Zhixin Hao, Maowei Wu, Yang Liu, Xuezhen Zhang & Jingyun Zheng, Journal of Geographical Sciences, January 2020
‘For China as a whole, the longest warm period during the last 2000 years occurred in the 10th–13th centuries
Chinese Scientists: It Was Warmer In China During Medieval Warm Period Than Today
The Alarmists don’t like hearing that.
I may not completely understand the situation with CO2 and “absorbed”(which I thought was refracted) radiation, but it would seem to me that if all the CO2 in the atmosphere was saturated that a new introduction of CO2 entering the atmosphere that wasn’t yet saturated could indeed become saturated and add an additional greenhouse effect albeit at a diminishing return to the factor of saturation, but I’m just a laymen so I don’t really know for sure..
How is this “enhanced greenhouse effect” measured?
CO2 increases follow warming by hundreds of years so how can CO2 be responsible for our currently benign climate? Solar activity or the lack there of is a far more reasonable explanation for changes in climate over the millennia.
Whether or not CO2 “caused” warming or followed it, as a greenhouse gas it most certainly contributes to warming as a positive feedback. But that is not the point – the point is determining what caused the warming to begin, which is not CO2.
CO2 is in both a forcing and a feedback relationship with the temperature. Changes in temperature result in changes in CO2. And changes in CO2 result in changes in temperature. If another agent catalyzes a change in temperature than CO2 plays the role of a feedback first and then forcing second appearing the to lag the temperature. But if CO2 itself is the catalyzing agent than it plays the role of a forcing first and then feedback second appearing to lead the temperature. The scales at which the forcing role plays out are 10’s to 100’s of years. The scales at which the feedback role plays out are 100’s to 10000’s of years. Both are always occurring though.
Yes, temperature increases, and heat content, preceded CO2 increases. Science has not settled the order of cause and effect of climate [change], but CO2 levels have followed temperature increases.
CO2 is not pollution. That is all you have to say, all else is sophistry.
The effects of the anthropogenic emission of it are.
Ask the Chinese …..
Coal is the leading culprit of air pollution in China. 75% of the premature deaths are caused by the 152 coal-fired power plants in Hebei Province. … Air pollution will remain a serious problem in China as long as coal continues to be the country’s major energy source.”
http://environment-ecology.com/pollution/766-air-pollution-in-china.html
And cooking fires in India and China account for even more deaths.
Good, Anthony-so let’s get rid of the coal and make them use even more expensive wind and solar. That energy poverty will kill even more people
People in China are not dying of excess CO2. It is all the other components of coal emissions that CAN impact human health. That’s why we have aggressive pollution control requirements per the 1990 Clean Air Act as amended. Our air in the US is much cleaner than in China and we have far fewer human health effects.
COAL puts out large amounts of SULFUR DIOXIDE and PARTICULATES. These ARE sources of “air pollution”. CO2 is NOT.
Amazing how you confuse CO2 with air pollution
Air content that might directly cause health problems (air pollution) are something different than CO2, which might have temperature ramifications. Some kinds of air pollution are pretty certain to have significant bad health effects, e.g. asbestos.
However, a couple of years ago China published a study (almost certainly reviewed here in WUWT) between a region where coal was freely distributed for home heating and cooking (no pollution controls) and a region where coal was government forbidden. They concluded that coal use indeed reduced average life span — by somewhere in the neighborhood of two months.
You got that same set of lies and you just keep spewing them. All you religious nuts need to self destruct so all us actual humans can move on with life.
Very enjoyable video. I have a few nits.
1) Heat doesn’t get trapped. This is not the way to describe what’s going on. Photons emitted by the earth’s surface collide with molecules. CO2 molecules can absorb particular wavelengths and vibrations of the CO2 occurs. It’s this motion (heat) that provides buoyancy in the atmosphere. No one should use the “CO2 traps heat” meme. It’s just wrong.
2) The earth is a water world. The phase changes of water should be front and center. CO2 is a bit player.
3) While gravity is given some due. I think there is an important story of the molecular weight of a volume of air that needs more air time. Extremists claiming large temperature changes from rather minor additions of molecular weight to a volume of air from human-caused CO2 emissions run afoul of the ideal gas law. This has always bothered me. While I know that Anthony thinks N&Z are all wrong, much of what they say has strong empirical support. Pressures at planetary surfaces matter for calculating temperatures.
The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere with regard to temperature is that it effects heat transfer through it, particularly radiative heat transfer. It would be good if you could explain in some detail what this has to do with the ideal gas law (PV = nRT).
It doesn’t affect heat transport. CO2 affects radiation, which has a net radiative emission to a relative sink (i.e. space).
You have entirely missed conduction between CO2 and the rest of the atmosphere like N2 and O2. Remember CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. CO2 collisions with molecules like N2 and O2 occur far more frequently as you near the surface boundary than re-emission of absorbed energy. The resulting convection of warmed air moves a lot of heat upward where it cools.
Indeed Jim Gorman, Convection causes rising air to cool ADIABATICALLY. But the energy that increased O2 and N2’s buoyancy and drive convection remains until O2 and N2 are radiatively cooled, which can ONLY happen by collisions with a greenhouse gas. As the video shows air that cools just adiabatically when it rises, warms back to its starting temperature when it sinks
Jim,
You clearly have no idea why the average temperature of the tropopause and the freezing point of super-cooled water are related.
Hint: Solid ice particles are vastly superior thermal emitters than polyatomic gases because solids are able to transmit multi-modal shear flexure and so are not waveband limited.
And Phillip you are clearly being a dishonest butthead! You keep inserting arguments that were never discussed, and then claim that is proof of a lack of understanding. What is wrong with you?!?
I appreciate your knowledge and have eagerly read your articles here. However, as you say, “rising air to cool ADIABATICALLY”. The operative word here is “cool”, that is, for its temperature to drop. Thermalizing GHG’s so their temperature can be radiatively sent into space is not necessary. The molecules of N2 and O2 are already “cooled” as they move up through the lapse rate. This occurs because of the WORK that is expended in countering the effects gravity. Buoyancy is nothing more than a force pushing up while gravity is pulling down. Work=force*distance. It is the expenditure of energy, which is why air cools via convection.
Sorry Jim but you are mistaken. Part of what you say is correct. But as N2 and O2 rise and cool adiabatically they still have the energy absorbed from conduction with the surface. When that air sinks it warms back to the same temperature unless it has released its energy radiatively or via collisions with other non-GHGs. Foehn storms can warm the surface by 30-50 degrees
“cool adiabatically they still have the energy absorbed from conduction”
How does a molecule cool and keep its energy?
When air sinks to the surface and if it remains at the surface then it doesn’t have the original energy gain. If gravity does impart the same energy as with thermalization then it would immediately begin to rise again. Voila! A perpetual motion machine.
You have missed that WORK expends energy so the potential energy from gravity is not as much as (potential + thermalization) energy.
Sorry John, but my value of work was not missed!
The definition of work is simply force x displacement .
The solar heating imparted rotational and vibrational kinetic energy to the ground, and that energy was transferred to the air molecules. The kinetic energy imparted to the air molecules did the work of expanding thee air which increased the air’s buoyancy.
The air rises due to the force of gravity pulling denser less buoyant molecules down to displace that more buoyant air. Thus air rises indirectly due to the force of gravity.
KE = 1/2 the mass times the square of the velocity . As air rises negative work is done, and when the air stops rising the kinetic energy imparted by gravity disappears because it has been converted to potential energy. When the air sinks and speeds up due to the acceleration of gravity, its kinetic energy increases as positive work is being done. The force of gravity did not change, so that an air parcel displaced an equal distance upwards and downwards will have the same amount of total energy
I suspect John you missed the conversions between kinetic and potential energy
which mostly happens by collisions with a greenhouse gas?
How else is that energy released.The only other way is to transfer heat back to the surface via collisions. But without greenhouse gases the earth would rapidly cool at night and the strong inversion layer that would form, would in general prevent further contact with the surface
The math might be completely wrong and made-up through fudge factors but – and that is the important point – that does not proof they are wrong.
Clearly remember the class where the professor was talking about a breakthrough paper that turned out to be completely fabricated and because of that people stopped going into that direction of research. Just turned out decades later that although all data was fabricated it was completely in line with reality and the conclusions were right. People just stopped looking into that.
Bottom line: Even fabricated data and wrong math are not sufficient reasons to discard a theory.
More CO2 – and it is increasing – failed to make this year as warm as last year
Funny that
This has been explained many times. The warmening causes the encolderization, therefore the fact that is colder is proof that it is too hot. Please, try to keep up.
“Encolderisation”
A fine example of climate newspeak
I believe that is according to Greta. John Kerry says it is like a 1/4 inch thick blanket “way up there”. The science is not settled.
Blanket or sheet?
A big sheet. A big pile of sheet.
John Kerry (and many others … ) are full of sheet.
So you are saying that each year as CO2 ppm concentration goes up 2-3 ppm that there should be a relentless parallel increase in GMST?
And that we could measure it even it did?
Converted to radiative forcing that increase equates to ~ 0.03W/m^2
Which is around one tenth of the variation in forcing of the solar cycle (~0.35W/m^2)
You know full well that NV within the climate system changes the way energy moves within it – I cite the constant longing for a LN on here.
Just like the drop in CO2 ppm due COVID lockdowns – the variation is lost in the noise. At least 30 years of data are needed to see the overlying warming trend on top of NV of the GMST anomaly.
Actually, there was no measurable drop in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in 2020, as measured in PPM. Instead, the flux (rate) and total annual emissions are estimated to have declined. There is no measured confirmation of the decline.
Yes, it is true that carbon dioxide causes a precaution for them
Er, no. There is no evidence that that has ever happened, or is happening now. All we can really say is that, theoretically, raised CO2 levels may have a slight, unmeasurable effect on temperatures.
The net effect is emission at higher altitudes to lower energy states (i.e. space), and the anthropogenic component is a fraction of a fraction.
Co2 is also active a 2 and 4 microns, these arent saturated, but are frequencies emitted by the sun.
CO2 absorbs incoming solar energy, as does WV, reducing it at the surface and reducing Tmax.
GH gasses moderate temperatures, they make them less extreme.
That would be an accumulation of common fallacies. Already the desert example is completely wrong. Air temperatures in the desert show a day/night spread of up to 20K, just like anywhere else with clear skies, not more. In fact it is just the sand with its low thermal conductivity which turns very hot during the day, and very cold during the night. It has very little to do with vapor. Timbuktu would be a typical example..
https://greenhousedefect.com/2/deception-with-emission-spectra-part-2
Timbuktu today 16.000 ppm H2O 38C, 23% rel hum
E. S.> No, humidity has a substantial impact in how much it cools overnight. This is seen in the cooling stopping when the air temperature reaches the dew point. Fog and dew form releasing latent heat and slowing cooling. This also takes water vapor out of the air reducing radiative cooling while fog blocks radiation from the surface.
True, condensation provides some “heat”. Otherwise I suggest to forget all you believe to know about vapor, as it is most certainly totally wrong.
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/vapor-the-big-misunderstood
Schaeffer,
You too are dishonestly misrepresenting the analogy. The argument was NEVER such extreme temperature changes ONLY happen in deserts. That dryness cause the same effect “anywhere else” It was an example of how dryness, the lack of that greenhouse gas, affects warming and cooling.
Which analogy? I subject to what you say about desert climate, by quoting NASA unreflected. Now I can’t critizise you for the non sense NASA is responsible for. But I will definitely point out THAT NASA is publishing such junk science. And I can only call out to think about what you read, and if it even makes sense, regardless what the source is.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/biome/biodesert.php
Actually, it can be closer to 100 K!
Any evidence to this claim? Where? Air or surface temperature?
I misspoke. I was thinking Fahrenheit and used K. The range would then be more like 50 K for air temp. Surface temp will be higher. From what I have heard, such extremes can be expected in the Sahara.
“From what I have heard” – congrats, you can hear! If you could read as well, you might have recognized the issue discussed..
If there has been any “global warming” due to CO2 additional CO2 does very, very little.
However, there is a reality known as “climate change.” Climate change is glacially slow. We humans can deal with slow-moving disasters.
Energy = Civilization
If small, safe nuclear plants existed we could weather any climate change whether up or down.
Common sense is so passe in these post-modern days. Fear and alarm rool now…
Civilisation = blight on the planet
“Earlier this month, a global survey found that growing numbers of young people fear having children. Described as ‘the biggest scientific study yet on climate anxiety and young people’, it found that four in 10 people between the ages of 16 and 25 are concerned about procreation in an era of so-called climate catastrophe.”
Internalising Malthus – spiked (spiked-online.com)
Are you sure they didn’t misinterpret what concern the 16 to 25 year olds had about procreation?
Small, safe nuclear plants already exist. Just look at nuclear powered ships, and, especially submarines. It’s just that it’s politically inexpedient to deal with large numbers of them on land.
Is there any benefit to being in water? We are worried about the China Syndrome or a Fukushima repeat. Are such fears valid? If invalid, why aren’t we building them instead of wind farms? (Oh, wait, Captain O. You’re right: Politics)
Not only that, the new generation is immune to meltdown by being dependent on laminar flow to establish critical mass which turns chaotic when the temperature gets too high, shutting down the reaction. There’s a current effort to commercialize this kind of reactor by some of those who developed it for the Navy.
Small, safe nuclear plants do exist. It’s just that a) the idea of cheap, reliable energy is anathema to the neo-Malthusians and their useful idiots like Thunberg and the IR rank and file, and b) the likes of Johnson et al prefer the big expensive, over-engineered vanity project ones.
Also when your clique of state governors and their families have a longstanding financial interest in gas and coal …. And we always used to think US politics wasn’t corrupt!
By definition, climate change (net over 30 year period) is slow because of moderating factors/forcings, but weather change is often extreme over short intervals.
Would you like some flat Earth with your back radiation model
?
AS I have pointed out numerous times before this popular graphic is utter arithmetic and thermodynamic nonsense.
Max Planck observed that for heat radiation and molecules to interact requires comparable dimensions.
High energy Gamma and X-rays have short wave lengths on the order of atomic and molecular dimensions and interact aggressively, sundering bonds and ionizing targets. (See attached chart.)
Lower energy UV with longer wavelength photons have only enough energy to displace electrons which then settle back and fluoresce by emitting lower energy visible photons.
Visible wavelength photons reflect/bounce back to human eyes or detectors. The spectral absorption lines produced by the unique molecular electron shells are similar to the crossover networks in stereo speakers that block/pass audio frequencies to the woofer, mid-range and tweeter.
Thermal IR photons are too long to interact with gas molecules and simple pass through. When these thermal photons strike a solid surface, their radiative energy converts to kinetic/thermal energy raising the temperature of that solid. (Temperature is the KE of stuff.)
Those IR heaters mounted ceiling height heat the objects in their path below increasing those object’s KE and temperature. Those objects in turn warm the surrounding air through conduction/convection/radiation. (As discussed in my earlier Power Points.)
In the popular liter bottle experiments, the heat lamps directly heat the bottles which then warm the contents.
The Sun heats the Earth’s surface, the surface heats the air.
That CO2/GHG molecules even absorb/emit/warm thermal photons is supported by neither theory nor evidence.
Nick, You persist in spamming any argument that disagrees with your wrong physics. You don’t understand radiative physics when you have argued that a cooler body can’t emit infrared that “Slows the Cooling”. That is what the graph and observations show. Slower cooling over a 24 hour period causes higher minimum temperatures and is mis-stated as “warming”.
“utter arithmetic “
So it’s racism and sexism?
Professor Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education at Brooklyn College, along with other academics – amazingly enough – contends that 2+2 = 4 is racist and evidence of the white patriarchy.
https://newspunch.com/liberal-brooklyn-college-professor-says-math-is-racist-224-is-white-supremacist-patriarchy/
“other academics – amazingly enough – contends that 2+2 = 4 is racist and evidence of the white patriarchy.”
These people are insane.
I don’t know that it has anything to do with race or sex but for those whose limits are “1,2,3,many”, math is darned frustrating.
Hey, how do CO2 LASERs work?
That would be true if it is a thin enough layer. Cause the wave nature implicates that you have increasing interactions with increasing thickness and collision-induced absorption changes. It does not stays zero. And the thickness is 11 km.
“On the other hand, more CO2 increases collisions with O2 and N2 allowing those air molecules to release heat absorbed from conduction with the ground to be radiated back to space.”
I can think we can test this hypothesis by monitoring the temperature in the troposphere and stratosphere. If we observe neutral to decreasing temperatures in the stratosphere or neutral to increasing temperatures in the troposphere when CO2 is increasing then it seems like the hypothesis would be false.
Well first you would need to account for changes in solar UV that affects Stratosphere temperatures. Because most water vapor condenses and precipitates by the tropopause, cooling of stratospheric O2 and N2, their heat could only be shed by collisions with greenhouse gases or emitted by ozone. Thus cooling would be consistent with the hypothesis
You’d definitely need to control for solar, ozone, and various other agents that would also have an effect. You could also observe how stratosphere and troposphere temperatures behaved in tandem as another test point. For example, increasing/decreasing solar uv would cause both troposphere and stratosphere temperatures to move in tandem (though not necessarily by the same magnitude) so an observation that they move in different directions would falsify the solar uv dominant hypothesis.
“More CO2 will have reduced warming effects going forward. On the other hand, more CO2 increases collisions with O2 and N2 allowing those air molecules to release heat absorbed from conduction with the ground to be radiated back to space.”
Oh my, sounds almost like what I said and got pilloried for.
“On the other hand, more CO2 increases collisions with O2 and N2 allowing those air molecules to release heat absorbed from conduction with the ground to be radiated back to space.”
This isn’t what happens. Atmospheric O2 and N2 have a relative emissivity of about 0 and.do not radiate any appreciable amount of energy. The most likely radiant result from the collision of an energized CO2 with another molecule is the emission of an absorption band photon by the GHG molecule, returning it to the ground state. That photon is then quickly absorbed by another GHG molecule and the cycle repeats until is gets close enough to space or the surface to reach either without being re-absorbed.
The radiation that leaves the planet has 1 direct source and 2 indirect sources. The direct source is surface emissions that are not absorbed by GHG’s and clouds. The indirect sources are clouds and GHG emissions, both of whose energy originated from surface emissions absorbed by them. The difference is that GHG’s are narrow band absorbers and emitters of photons, while the liquid and solid water in clouds are broad band absorbers and emitters. The most significant source of the ‘GHG effect’ is clouds!
To the extent that a photon leaving the planet can trace its origin to latent heat, surface energy that would have ultimately been emitted must be returned to the surface in order to offset the lost latent heat. The same is true for other non radiant transfers of energy from the surface to the atmosphere. Considering otherwise is a serious flaw in the interpretation of Trenberth’s energy balance. Non radiant energy has a zero sum influence on the RADIANT balance, doesn’t belong in the picture and only obfuscates reality by providing wiggle room that doesn’t actually exist.
isnotevil,
But is exactly what happens.
You have failed to explain how the kinetic energy absorbed by O2 and N2 is finally shed. For that energy to be returned to space, it must be transferred to molecules that can radiate that energy. Without shedding that energy by transfer to greenhouse gases, 99% of the atmosphere, heated by the surface, will not cool enough to again contact the surface, which is the only other dynamic that could radiate heat back to space
You are missing what convection does. N2 and O2 do rise in the atmosphere and it takes WORK to do so because gravity is being overcome. Work requires force and that force is basically (mass x acceleration). Where does the energy come from? From thermalization via conduction from the surface and collisions. As that air rises, it cools because of the lapse rate. Voila, a reduction in temperature at the surface boundary of the atmosphere.
As air molecules rise, their individual velocities (kinetic energy) remains about the same. It’s colder because there are fewer air molecules and the total energy is lower. The only energy being ‘shed’ is that of the individual air molecules left behind at lower altitudes.
Whatever heat is convected up must be returned to the surface or else the surface cools. The steedy state radiation consequential to the surface temperature as part of the actual radiant balance already accounts for whatever effect convection plus its return to the surface has which considering the temperature to be the state, is a zero sum effect, just like latent heat.
It’s simply a matter of redistributing existing energy within the atmosphere. The bottom line is that O2/N2 makes an insignificant contribution to the radiant energy leaving TOA.
Consider an Earth like planet with the same N2/O2/Ar, but no GHG’s or clouds. How would the average surface temperature differ if there was no atmosphere at all?
The answer is that the average is the same. Only the min/max values gt closer together as the air conducts heat from warmer parts of the surface to colder spots.
You are ignoring the “work” that is done for air to rise against gravity. The energy to do this work is expended in the convection process. The lapse rate is not all about density.
You are setting up a strawman with the no GHG’s situation. Ultimately, convection would occur and you would have a constant heat engine being driven during the day and pretty much through the night. Would the atmosphere be warmer, sure it would. Without water, there would be no moderating factor for temperature.
You’re talking about converting work into potential energy which is returned when the air molecules that rose eventually fall. ‘
The lapse rate is only about gravity and mass which is all you need to know to calculate it.
https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Thermodynamics_and_Statistical_Mechanics/Book%3A_Heat_and_Thermodynamics_(Tatum)/08%3A_Heat_Capacity_and_the_Expansion_of_Gases/8.08%3A_Adiabatic_Lapse_Rate
A non GHG atmosphere would be warmer than no atmosphere at all, but is still limited by the AVERAGE temperature of the surface which is the same either way.
Note that the only proper characterization of a temperature related to the energy balance is a temperature that corresponds to emissions per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. If X w/m^2 comes from the Sun, the surface will emit X w/m^2 with no atmosphere at all or any atmosphere lacking GHG’s and clouds since an atmosphere without GHG’s or clouds is completely transparent to both incident solar energy and lwir emissions by the surface.
“You’re talking about converting work into potential energy which is returned when the air molecules that rose eventually fall.”
You are assuming that the molecule will have the same energy when it is pulled back to the surface. That is a perpetual motion machine that doesn’t stop after the initial injection of energy.
Assuming that N2 and O2 have to “hang around” until they collide with a CO2 molecule would result in a concentration increase of these gases. That doesn’t seem to occur.
Jim,
Your analysis is constrained by the belief in an 100% likely mechanism that converts the state energy of an energized GHG into the translational kinetic energy of another molecule upon collision. The most likely manner in which an energized GHG returns to the ground state is by emitting a photon and collisions can result in such emissions. Energies are low enough that, while theoretically possible, the likelihood of converting state energy into translational kinetic energy is so close to zero, considering it to be anything else is silly. Ths only time any conversion occurs is when an energized GHG molecule is dissolved in or becomes part of a drop of liquid water and this is observed by slightly more than 50% attenuation of water related absorption bands at TOA.
If an energized GHG molecule collides with another GHG molecule, the state energy can be swapped in a lossless transaction (i.e. the quantum in quantum mechanics), but remains state energy and does not become translational kinetic energy. Your claim for the requirement of perpetual motion is baseless since the GHG effect is a 99%+ radiant effect and COE unambiguously applies.
In addition, the potential energy of rising air is completely returned when that air returns the surface, independent of its starting or ending temperature. Any temperature differences in the air molecules are simply the result of redistributing existing energy throughout the atmosphere and surface and which has no bearing on any averages.
The clearest evidence of my assertions is the spectrum at TOA which shows significant energy in the absorption bands of GHG’s. In fact, the emissions in absorption bands at TOA are about half of what they would be without any absorption at all. If as you think, GHG absorption is converted into the translational kinetic energy of other molecules, what’s the origin of all the absorption band photons at TOA? Grant Perry has no answer for this and he wrote the book. Keep in mind that the observed spectrum has significant energy in absorption bands even under clear sky conditions. The only possible origin for these photons is energized GHG molecules returning to the ground state since the effective emissivity of O2/N2 at atmospheric temperatures is about zero.
You falsely assert I made claims that I never did. Bad misinterpretation on your part
You implicitly made the claim I speak of, whether you know it or not, by asserting,
“You are assuming that the molecule will have the same energy when it is pulled back to the surface.”
The potential energy of matter lifted against gravity is not being lost, neither is the latent heat which returns to the water droplet as water vapor condenses upon it.
For any Joule of energy that leaves the planet and can trace its origin to non radiant energy leaving the surface, a Joule of radiant energy emitted by the surface and destined to leave the planet must return to the surface instead on order to offset the lost non radiant energy.
Non radiant energy leaving the surface plus its offset back to the surface has a zero sum influence on the surface temperature, radiant balance and the sensitivity. A failure to acknowledge
this is one of the failures of ‘consensus’ climate science. The ONLY reason Trenberth added non radiant energy to the radiant balance was to provide wiggle room to support what the laws of physics can not.
For two hundred dollars, Alex. What is a study the media will never mention?
Great presentation Jim.
Come on , we all know CO2 causes warming. Al Gore and Bill Nye did an experiment where they compared C02 in a test tube at 500,000+ ppm to a test tube with around 380ppm.
Yet more proof:
CO2 cannot do what you ascribe for it.
Here is a table of specific heat for varies gases. Please note that there is only one value listed for Cp for each temperature. If IR effected CO2 the way it is said there should be two values. One with IR and one without. The Shomate equation shown on the NIST data sheet has no inclusion of IR only temperature.
https://www.ohio.edu/mechanical/thermo/property_tables/gas/idealGas.html
That tells you how much energy CO2 can store per degree K and kilogram. It doesn’t tell you how much it perturbs the flow of radiation though.
It always amazes me that the focus on radiative physics and on CO2 ignores the very fact that the same chemicals re-radiating IR partially back to the ground are critical for taking heat away from O2 and N2 and sending it up into space.
The problem with the CO2 warming hypotheses is that the atmosphere is opaque to IR. The so called back radiation cannot penetrate the lower atmosphere to warm the surface.
As a result it is convection that does the bulk of the energy transfer between the surface and the effective radiation height.
The effective radiation height is the altitude at which the black body temperature equals the lapse rate temperature. A height of about 5km.
And when you multiply the lapse rate (6.5C/km},by the effective radiation height (5km) you get 33C (rounded) which is the calculated greenhouse effect..
And what causes the lapse rate? Convection. That is correct. The greenhouse effect is a result of convection not back radiation, because back radiation cannot reach the surface and through the opaque atmosphere. It is convection the does the bulk of the lower atmosphere energy transfer.
And how does convection warm the surface? By conversion of PE to KE as the air falls from altitude to the surface. And since only KE affects temperature the air warms and as it reaches the surface this KE is transfered via conduction and radiation to the surface, creating the greenhouse effect.
The simple facts are that without a lapse rate there can be no greenhouse effect. And without convection there can be no lapse rate. Thus it is convection that causes the greenhouse effect.
Ed, I think that you have nailed it.
Even without considering convection, there is still a lapse rate, molecules jostled upwards lose velocity, and molecules jostled downwards gain velocity, in a gravitational field. The upper molecules end up being cooler and the lower ones warmer. This does not break any laws of physics and is not gravitational compression heat or some such nonsense. It is simply the characteristic of a tall adiabatic column of gas, adiabatic lapse rate being an important topic in meteorology, and it is about 9.7 C per 1000 meters of dry air in the Earth’s gravitational field. About 11 C per Km on Venus, causing its surface to be over 700 degrees 60 km below the clouds….
Convection considerations result in the same adiabatic formula when the convection is slow enough that bulk kinetic energy is unimportant.
I agree about the lapse rate.
However, IR back radiation does occur and is measured at the surface.
As I mentioned:
“And since only KE affects temperature the air warms and as it reaches the surface this KE is transfered via conduction and radiation to the surface, creating the greenhouse effect.”
At a temperature of about -60C as far as what I’ve read.
How far up can the IR scanner see in an atmosphere opaque to IR?
” And without convection there can be no lapse rate.”
Not quite.
On the theoretical green-house effect with a static humid atmosphere..
“With radiative equilibrium at the tropopause being at minus 60ºC ..and an effective temperature of minus 20ºC at a height of 3km…to calculate the ground temperature…the fourth power of the ground temperature is equal to the fourth power of the effective temperature added to the fourth power of the temperature of the bottom layer at about 0.5km at temperature of 24ºC..we find a value of 60ºC.”
With a lapse rate much greater than the dry adiabatic close to the surface.
from “Atmospheres” R M Goody
And on mixing of air by wind and turbulent eddies.
“If layer of dry air is stirred thoroughly, the temperature will change so that the lapse rate becomes equal to the dry adiabatic rate. At the same time the mixing ratio will become uniform along the vertical. i.e the potential temperature is uniform.”
from an “Introduction to Meteorology” Petterssen
If the lapse rate is less than the adiabatic, potential temperature increases with height,
if greater than the adiabatic, then potential temperature decreases with height.
Mixing will warm the surface in the former and cool the surface in the latter.
So as the theoretical greenhouse effect lapse rate is so much greater than the adiabatic lapse rate very near to the surface, mixing by wind, turbulent eddies, and convection/evaporation reduces the theoretical surface temperature of 60ºC to the 15ºC average observed.
the temperature of the bottom layer at about 0.5km at temperature of 24ºC..
===========
this is a nonsensical value. Garbage in garbage out.
mixing by wind, turbulent eddies, and convection/evaporation
=========
Why ignore conduction and radiation. They can work over short distances in the lower atmosphere.
Wind and turbulent eddies are part of the convection process.evaporation is another short range process that increases convection because water vapor is lighter than air.
Jim:
I may be misinterpreting your argument but are you saying that because “CO2 is saturated for dominant wavelengths”.
Then the GHE is not going to give continued increases in forcing of equivalence for each doubling of concentration.
Is this your stance?
Yes indeed. And due to that saturation, climate models are all over the place regards “climate sensitivity.
That saturation effect has been reported by many expert atmospheric scientists like Wijngaarden & Happer published in Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases (2020)
But also as seen in the following quote from an article on the main alarmist Michael Mann’s website in 2009 discussing saturation:
“We see that for the pre-industrial CO2 concentration, it is only the wavelength range between about 13.5 and 17 microns (millionths of a meter) that can be considered to be saturated. Within this range, it is indeed true that adding more CO2 would not significantly increase the amount of absorption”.
To clarify, in part due to questionable equation and in part due to increasing saturation, a doubling from 10 to 20 ppm would calculate to add the same warming as doubling 400 to 800 ppm
Yes, that is the meaning of logarithmic in the sense of the equation ….
5.35 ln(C/Co)
and so doubling from 400 to 800 would cause another 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing.
Do you agree?
Seems not as you say “questionable equation”
Wijngaarden & Happer published in Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases (2020).
Reproduced numbers in the same ball-park as other 1D modelling (without feedbacks) – so why is it so important?
The emission side of the effect that lies above the Effective emission level is the driving half.
That is that as concentrations increase then so that level rises and emission takes place a lower temperature and hence via SB, weaker.
Do you agree?
To be more specific regards W & H 2020
Nick Stokes from …..
”We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.”
The paper says nothing like that. It goes through the old argument between Arrhenius and Angstrom; the Arrhenius argument prevailed, and this paper does not contradict it. The key outcome is probably Table 5, where they compare their CO2 sensitivities with those calculated 50 or so years ago by Manabe, and by Hunt and by Kluft (recent). The fixed relative humidity numbers are 2.9(2.2), 2.2, 2.7, 2.3. The last number is theirs, and is completely in line with the earlier results, and certainly does not say that CO2 could be added with no effect. It says the CS would be 2.3C per doubling.
The forcing increments due to GHG increase are shown in Table 3. They explicitly say, correctly,
“The forcing increments in Table 3 are comparable to those calculated by others.”
and
“The “saturation” is what it is. The GHE still works. And, I repeat, their calculated CS is 2.3C/doubling. Right in the IPCC range. They have basically repeated the old calculation of Manabe with updated radiative properties, and got a very similar result.’”
Again why is the W& H 2020 paper so often featured here given that they say “The forcing increments in Table 3 are comparable to those calculated by others.” ?
“so why is it so important?”
Perhaps it is important in that it reinforces those earlier works, many of which concluded that such warming is not dangerous. Doubling the current concentration is probably a far fetched goal. Then, net feedbacks are probably negative, meaning that 2.3C is unattainable.
Consider the destructive results of much higher past concentrations, as indicated by the best available evidence.
Did you consider the flaring of the wings of absorption bands due to pressure and collision broadening? Did you consider that most of the energy CO2 emits that does eventually escape to space does so at higher altitudes and that by adding more CO2 you effectively push the escape height higher and higher where the atmosphere is colder where less heat can escape. Thus the issue with the saturation argument is two fold. First, the effect isn’t actually saturated yet. Second, even when it does saturate (that is a long ways off) adding more CO2 will still create a positive energy perturbation on the planet.
Err…”pressure and collision broadening” should have been “pressure/collision and doppler broadening”.
What I said just above …. But left the other absorption bands pressure broadening for later.
I suggest you go back and watch the whole video before rant.
First it was never stated that the saturation of 13.5 to 7 micron wavelengths was the entire story. Indeed there is also pressure broadening. But those are secondary. What was argued the primary absorption bands are saturated and that primary effect is no longer in play.
Second, it has been published in 2021 that about 90% of the downward infrared to thee surface emanates from atmospheric layers 1600 meters and below. Above that altitude the greenhouse gas cooling effects dominate. More CO2 at higher altitudes will increase cooling, not warmin, as you falsely claim
CO2 at a higher altitude is colder. CO2 emits in proportion to its temperature. Less CO2 means the escape height is lower and warmer so there is more radiance in W/m2.sr. More CO2 means the escape height is higher and colder so there is less radiance in W/m2.sr. It is important to understand that we’re talking about the altitude at which the cross sectional density of CO2 is low enough that UWIR actually does have a free escape.
And as I mentioned above if more CO2 cooled the troposphere then we should be observing a cooling troposphere simultaneous with a warming stratosphere. We observe the exact opposite effect though. That observation is inconsistent with the hypothesis that more CO2 is a cooling agent.
Your description seems to anticipate that lower CO2 traps heat until it can be radiated directly to space. I would postulate something more like diffusion taking place where the concentration of lower CO2 would result in a higher diffusion rate to space. A gradient if you will. I don’t think a queue of CO2 molecules waiting for a chance to radiate to space is a correct one.
The bogus argument to dismiss saturation effects, is another perfect example of how trolls cherry pick the warming dynamic and ignore the cooling dynamics to push catastrophic climate change.
The thermodynamics remain the same even with added CO2. If CO2 at a higher colder altitude emits heat to space more slowly, it will also emit heat back towards earth more slowly.
The net movement of heat from the surface back to space remains. Warmer layers always emit more radiation upwards than colder layers above emit back radiation towards the surface.
Thermodynamics 101:
God, people that come up with this stuff are dumb.
Folks, there are 2 prime movers of Earth climate.
#1: THE SUN. This one should be obvious.
#2: THE TEMPERATURE OF OUTER SPACE IN THIS REGION OF THE GALAXY.
That’s right, folks. Space is “warmer” in some areas, and “cooler” in others. This all depends on our galactic orbital position. Temperatures in our galaxy vary, mainly due to galactic cannibalizations. If you go to the southern hemisphere, you can see the small and large Magellanic clouds. These “clouds” are 2 small galaxies the Milky Way has cannibalized in the last few hundred million years or so.
Where 2 galaxies collide, there is a warming of space in that region caused by the gravitational sheer forces. This means that as we orbit the milky way, we will pass through different regions of space that are warmer and cooler.
Here’s the rub. The “warmer zones” of the galaxy are the more hazardous zones. It’s where we get more extra-galactic objects entering our space. Think, Ouamuamua.
The small impacts we suffer come from within our solar system. The BIG impacts, come from WITHOUT. The evidence of extra galactic impacts in our solar system are many…
Earth’s plate tectonics.
Mariner trench on Mars.
The unique orbital tilt of Uranus (a close flyby)
The great red spot on Jupiter is likely caused by a hot planetary core fragment floating on a sea of metallic hydrogen which collided with Jupiter long ago.
The asteroid belt.
All of these are direct signs of HUGE, FAST IMPACTS. And the only place you generate those kinds of relative velocities are from extra-solar objects.
So sorry, all you “global warming” non-scientific types. The temperature of the Earth is determined by the Sun and by the temperature of outer space, and that’s ALL.
Coincidentally, how THICK a planet’s atmosphere is is dependent on how much water vapor it contains. Earth is losing her oceans to space over time (as Mars did) and hence her atmosphere will eventually thin, the planet will continue to cool and desertify (as it has been doing for a LONG time now) and we’ll eventually look JUST like Mars.
And eventually, Venus will cool to a point where its atmosphere will precipitate the liquid water out, and this precipitous thinning of the atmosphere will take Venus from being uninhabitable to being habitable in literally a few hundred years, maybe even LESS. But once it hits that very special point where the atmosphere can begin to give up its moisture to oceans, the atmosphere will begin to thin VERY QUICKLY and Venus will cool VERY QUICKLY. Despite the high levels of CO2, lol.
Jim
Here is a model diagram that preserves the two distinct and separate environments of day and night.
The Atmospheric Reservoir Energy Recycling Process
What’s your point???
We both are saying there is a good radiative balance
With the sun shining on a single illuminated hemisphere the average beam intensity is powerful enough the melt ice on the surface of the lit globe.
Again whats your point regards the cooling role of greenhouse gases???
Greenhouse gasses and a greenhouse are as similar as apples and oranges. Greenhouses control convection or they would not work. CO2 and other such gases have no such ability.
The GREENHOUSE EFFECT is an unproven theory saturated with anecdotal correlations.
Thanks Jim.
As I understand it’s well established even by the climate mainstream that, above the tropopause, CO2 cools the atmosphere by ejecting more IR photons to space, thus a cooling stratosphere is part of the story.
This can occur in limited regions.
The issue is relative location of the emission height for IR to space compared to the height of the tropopause. When emission height moves into the stratosphere, where lapse flattens and sometimes reverses, the IR emission rate can increase with height. That sometimes occurs in cold polar regions (where IR emission rate is low).
I posted a link to this video on my Facebook page plus Will Happer’s description, and I am now blocked. The fascist left knows no shame
Hmmm, Now I am back on FB
here is screenshot
Now Im blocked again
Facebook is anti-American. Anti-freedom.
I think Facebook is in for some changes in the near future. As soon as Republicans take control of Congress.
Jim,
When you say “CO2 wavelengths are saturated” you should define exactly what you mean.
“Saturation is not what many think.”
The usual official climate science usage is that AT CURRENT ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONCENTRATION, the CO2 greenhouse effect has produced about all the warming it is capable of. However, add more CO2 to the atmosphere, as currently is occurring, and CO2 is quite capable of producing more warming.
Some think of CO2 saturation as the logarithmic-like decrease in the power forcing factor that produces warming as CO2 increases. That largely occurs because, as CO2 increases an increasing amount of warming occurs from the quantum IR lines located on either side of the main, central 15 micron CO2 line representing the fundamental C-O vibration frequency. Because the IR photon absorption cross section decreases as one moves away from 15 microns, the power forcing decreases as atmospheric CO2 concentration increases. This means at 100 ppm CO2 the warming effect per molecule is larger than at 200 ppm, which is also larger than at 400 ppm, etc. However, the power forcing effect is approximately constant each time CO2 is doubled — about 3 watts.
The amount of greenhouse warming depends on the rate new CO2 is added to the atmosphere, and that addition rate currently is rather large.
Let me fix a few things …
“On the other hand, more CO2 increases collisions with O2 and N2, allowing those air molecules to release heat absorbed from conduction with the ground to be radiated back to space.”
The heat ‘radiated to space’ comes from high in the atmosphere. The more CO2, the higher that final radiating layer is. Because of the lapse rate in the atmosphere, the higher the radiating layer, the cooler it is and the LESS radiation emitted to space.
More CO2 = LESS cooling, not MORE cooling.
Also, very little energy is transferred by conduction. Much more is by radiation and evaporation.
You fixed nothing, but did many other effects.
The point is that the “saturation” you mention does indeed apply low in the atmosphere, but ‘fades’ away higher up. The more CO2, the higher you have to go before the saturation’ fades’. That means the radiation that escapes to space necessarily comes from higher — and cooler — regions. That means LESS radiation to space. That means more energy staying. That means a warmer earth.
That is not the impression I got from what you have been saying.
The bogus argument to dismiss saturation effects, is another perfect example of how trolls cherry pick the warming dynamic and ignore the cooling dynamics to push catastrophic climate change.
The thermodynamics remain the same even with added CO2. If CO2 at a higher colder altitude emits heat to space more slowly, it will also eemit heat back towards earth more slowly.
The net movement of heat from the surface back to space remains. Warmer layers always emit more radiation upwards than colder layers above emit back radiation towards the surface.
The bogus argument to dismiss saturation effects, is another perfect example of how trolls cherry pick the warming dynamic and ignore the cooling dynamics to push catastrophic climate change.
The thermodynamics remain the same even with added CO2. If CO2 at a higher colder altitude emits heat to space more slowly, it will also eemit heat back towards earth more slowly.
The net movement of heat from the surface back to space remains. Warmer layers always emit more radiation upwards than colder layers above emit back radiation towards the surface.
Are you guys ever going to learn?
Every time this Anthony Banton guy and bdgwx show up they intentionally ignore the point of the original post and drag the conversation further and further into the pedantic weeds over everything BUT the original article.
They are more technically competent and smarter trolls than griff or Loydo, but they’re trolls just the same.
Engaging their off topic pedantry accomplishes exactly what they want; the important point of the article subsumed under hundreds of tangential jabbering comments about what they want to talk about rather than what the article is. And they usually pick the silliest or weakest response to run off into left field with, until you can’t even see where you started.
Indeed that seems to be their mission, to intentionally ignore the point of the original post and drag the conversation further and further into the pedantic weeds over everything BUT the original article. A common troll tactic
Jim:
That’s because a (the main) supporting arguments in your post are specious.
The main absorption bands for CO2 many be saturated … but there others that come into play and the GHE functions by emission of LWIR to space above the effective emission layer which at ~8km has plenty of space to rise to lower temperatures and thus emit more weakly.
The W&H 2020 paper says nothing new, and indeed the GHE will continue to cause warming at the decreasing log rate that is predicted and hitherto observed.
Also N2 and O2 emit to space.
They cool as all atoms do via EM radiation, that it is not at the peak band of terrestrial temperature emission does not preclude that basic physics.
Quoting…
“drag the conversation further and further into the pedantic weeds over everything BUT the original article.”
Is nowhere near the truth.
It seems that you are not prepared for some challenging arguments and rebuttals (as you would have had should this have been submitted as a paper to a journal )… not very scientific of you IMHO.
Don’t get on your high-horse and have a hissy-fit just because some knowledgeable people have dared to challenge your assertions (NOT diverted from them!) – rathe than have the usual hugs ‘n’ kisses that are expected and the norm here
“They are more technically competent and smarter trolls than griff or Loydo, but they’re trolls just the same.”
A “Troll” is not someone who merely disagrees with an argument. Otherwise an “argument of “position could never be challenged without rancour.
If I were to come her and …
“…. deliberately tries to offend, cause trouble or directly attack people by posting derogatory comments on Facebook … , on forums and other social media,……. Not every argument can be considered as trolling; a difference of opinion can lead to healthy discussion which can be invaluable on forums.”
https://www.endsleigh.co.uk/blog/post/what-is-internet-trolling/
I do know this place is for, err “sceptics” who only want their cognitive dissonance confirmed – as the nature of the presentation of articles here encourages.
I do nothing more than state (with links) what the consensus science says. Of course denizens don’t like it and I wont change minds … but at least they are exposed to it and see the counter to the often “fake facts” reported here.
It seems like you and the troll factory go on a full fledge attack any science that challenges your theoretical group think to er protect your cognitive dissonance and the political power fear mongering gives you
“It seems like you and the troll factory go on a full fledge attack any science that challenges your theoretical group”
Jim:
It’s not “personal group think” at all.
And I am responding to your intransigence and now ad hom (I am NOT a “Troll”)- just because I am asking knowledgeable questions of you.
Given that there are contrarians in any walk of life (often ideologically motivated) there are some in (on the fringes of usually) that dont like what the the science says, and come across all “sciencey” – and that you are without answering my questions respectfully (even at all).
That you don’t like it does not make my posting of consensus science/meteorology “personal” – all links/references have come from consensus science sources.
It is up to you to provide to burden of proof otherwise.
The world is not upside down quite yet despite the bizarre madness of the likes of the QAnon conspiracy nutters.
Refusing to address my enquiries and calling me a “Troll” is not what I would expect of someone of your credentials.
Then again, what you say here, I would not expect of someone with your credentials.
First, if I’ve offended you or anyone else on here I am sorry. That is never my intention. My main intent in this particular blog post is making sure people understand that CO2’s net effect in the troposphere and below is warming; not cooling. Secondarily it is that CO2’s absorption isn’t actually saturated due to the broadening of the spectral lines and that even if it were saturated it would still have a net warming effect in the troposphere due to the increased emission height where it is cooler and thus decreases radiant intensity. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying CO2’s radiative force is linear. It’s not. It is logarithmic. But let’s not pretend like this is some bombshell epiphany that scientists don’t know about. Afterall, this logarithmic relationship was first discovered in the late 1800’s and then further refined with the development of radiative transfer schemes in the middle of the 20th century.
The bogus argument to dismiss saturation effects, is another perfect example of how trolls cherry pick the warming dynamic and ignore the cooling dynamics to push catastrophic climate change.
The thermodynamics remain the same even with added CO2. If CO2 at a higher colder altitude emits heat to space more slowly, it will also eemit heat back towards earth more slowly.
The net movement of heat from the surface back to space remains. Warmer layers always emit more radiation upwards than colder layers above emit back radiation towards the surface.
“it will also emit heat back towards earth more slowly.”
No
We have established that we are above the effective emission layer and so the majority of LWIR exits to space, and as CO2 increases the EEL becomes progressively colder/weaker at it.
The surface DeltaT is maintained by the Trop below the EEL and by convection.
GMST rising as -g/cp LR from that layer to the surface.
GHE theory 101.
“we have established” LOL
You are making empty claims
“The net movement of heat from the surface back to space remains. Warmer layers always emit more radiation upwards than colder layers above emit back radiation towards the surface.”
Of course it does and they do.
But the GHE adds another ~ 150 W/m^2 from those “colder layers” down to the surface before those W/m^2 exit to space via LWIR emission from GHGs in the Trop above the EEL. And that amount will increase by 3.7 W/m^2 for every doubling of CO2 concentration (neglecting feedbacks of final ECS).
I fully agree. People who grow agitated when challenged and accuse the challenger of not being serious often do not view their own reasoning and thoughts with critical eyes.
To say that CO2 is “saturated” means that at the current CO2 concentrations, implies it is producing all the warming it is capable of. However, even that amount could modestly change if atmospheric conditions change appropriately.
There is NO saturation against additional warming if CO2 increases.
The degree of warming depends on the proportional amount CO2 increases and not on the numerical amount CO2 increases. Thus, if CO2 doubles from almost any concentration level, forcing will increase by about 3 watts/cm^2. However, if CO2 is increased by say 5 ppm at a total concentration of 400 ppm, the forcing will only be half as great compared to the forcing when increasing CO2 by 5 ppm at a total CO2 concentration of 200 ppm. This is the so-called logarithmic curve of decreasing warming. Forcing is simply proportional to the proportional CO2 increase; nothing magical.
Hmm now I am blocked from Twitter
Hmmm and then when I post about it, I am no longer blocked
Now Im blocked again
I’ve been thinking about the comments that CO2, being a greenhouse gas, can help cool the planet because O2 and N2 cannot radiate energy to outer space while CO2 and other greenhouse gases can. I believe a thorough analysis will show that this is basically an untrue statement. If there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and since diatomic molecules are transparent to the incoming solar radiation, the only way the O2 and N2 could be heated is by sensible heat from contact with the ground and water which is heated by incoming solar radiation, and by the latent heat of vaporization surrendered by water which condenses in the atmosphere. I have not attempted to calculate the amount of heating of the atmosphere which would occur by these processes, but I assume someone has, or perhaps someone knows and can report how much heat is transferred by these two processes. What has been widely reported and is generally accepted is that the temperature of the atmosphere would be about 0 deg F if there were no greenhouse gases. If there were no sun, we can assume the temperature of the earth would be the same as its surroundings, and would be well below 0 deg F, so the amount of heat transferred from the ground and water to the air must be substantial. But, since we do have greenhouse gases, we know that they also provide additional heat to atmospheric O2 and N2. As the greenhouse gases are warmed by radiation, they pass on some of that energy to the non greenhouse gases, and they warm up, which accounts for the atmosphere being about 60 deg F rather than 0 deg F. So, the net effect of greenhouse gases is not to help cool the earth, but to warm it up. It makes no sense to think of greenhouse gases as providing cooling, even though they are causing energy to be transferred away from the atmosphere by radiation. If the greenhouse gases were not present, the atmosphere would cool off.
You make the same mistake as others have by failing to address the main point, or to just ignore it. Indeed greenhouse gas and non-greenhouse gas collisions can both warm and cool. No one argues against that. But you ignore the added energy acquired by collisions with the surface, conduction, that give rise to the sensible heating that escapes from the surface, which amounts to about one/seventh of the total surface heat budget. Without greenhouse gases O2 and N2 can not shed that heat, so the net change is greenhouse gases cool the atmosphere. And without greenhouse gases O2 and N2, cannot transfer the gained daytime heat back to the surface because at night when the surface cools an inversion layer forms
I did mention that the air gains sensible heat from the ground and oceans, but what an atmosphere with only diatomic molecules will not do is impede the heat loss by radiation to outer space. Do you disagree that without greenhouses gases the earth would be much cooler than it actually is? If so, is there a calculation to show that it would be warmer?
, a doubling from 10 to 20 ppm would calculate to add the same warming as doubling 400 to 800 ppm
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What is never considered in the calculation of ECS is the first increase in CO2 from 0ppm.
Starting from 0ppm, you have an infinite number of doublings to reach 10ppm or any other value, which reduces the ECS to zero at the limit.
This of course explains why no one has been able to nail down a value for ECS after many decades of trying. ECS is an iterative formula specifying the value of each iteration without having defined the zero condition.
As such, ECS has no solution because the zero condition, the initial doubling from zero is not defined.
When CO2 is very low, the IR emission height to space is much lower in the atmosphere, the IR emission rate is higher, and warming from CO2 is relatively small.
Across the broad 15 micron CO2 band, say 13-17 microns, most of the IR emitted when CO2 is below 100 ppm moves directly to space without absorption and with no warming effects.
For those who like to speak of “CO2 saturation”, is CO2 saturated under these conditions, when only a narrow part of the CO2 IR band participates??
If the ECS from 1 to 2ppm is the same as the ECS from 400 to 800ppm then the Ecs from 0.01 to 0.02ppm must also be the same.
And the Ecs from 0.001 to 0.002ppm, and from 0.0001 to 0.0002ppm, and from 0.00001 to 0.00002ppm on to infinity.
In other words, there have already been any infinite number of doublings in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
As such, any value for ECS greater than zero will result in an infinite surface temperature. And a negative value for ECS will result in a temperature of absolute zero.
As such, the only possible value for ECS is zero.
The math behind this is solid. I’ll write it up and submit time permitting.
They’re not the same. Also, if you don’t mind let me provide a couple of important tips before doing your calculation. Make sure you factor in the Komabayashi–Ingersoll and Simpson–Nakajima limits for the upper bound and the blackbody temperature in the no-GHG case with 1360 W/m2 of TSI for the lower bound. If your calculation yields < 255K as a lower bound or > 350K for an upper bound then you’ve probably neglected an important concept.
then you’ve probably neglected an important concept.
=======!=
My point was that the definition of ECS leads to nonsense because of Zeno’s paradox.
The definition itself is the problem because it leads to negative infinity. There is an error in my calculation on the positive side because CO2 cannot exceed 100%
If you’re getting negative infinity then you’ve almost certainly made an assumption you shouldn’t have. Determining CO2’s temperature response effect is a ridiculously complicated matter.
They’re not the same.
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Please explain why. The definition of ECS is quite simple. The temperature change from a doubling of CO2. It doesnt specify the domain. So it must be constant for any doubling..
It’s not quite that simple. ECS includes feedbacks. There is the slow-feedback ECS and the fast-feedback ECS. The SB ECS can take tens of thousands of years to fully play out while the FB ECS is limited to about 150 years (give or take) which excludes long duration processes like some components of the carbon cycle and ice sheet melting.
Anyway, these feedbacks play out differently depending on how the current state. So 2xCO2 in one era might exhibit 6.0C of warming while in another it might only be 1.5C even though the RF is 3.7 W/m2 in both cases. The sensitivity to the temperature is response can vary between 0.5 and 2.0 C per W/m2. It’s also not even static. In other words, it may start on the low end but then as warming progresses and initiates tipping points it may begin to rise. But then there will a point where it begins to dip again as those tipping points eventually self limit and clamp out.
The ice sheets are a good example of this. At some point enough warming will have occurred to tip the melting over the edge of recovery resulting in increased sensitivities as albedo begins to decline. But once all of the ice melts the effect ceases and the albedo stabilizes cause the sensitivity to decline as well.
The point is that not all doublings are the same even if the RF is the same between the two. And that brings up the next caveat. The RF isn’t exactly the same for each doubling. Myhre 1998 provides a simple estimation of the RF via 5.35*ln(C/Ci) where C is the current concentration and Ci in the initial concentration. And although not spelled out in that particular publication it is believed this simple relationship only holds for a narrow range of concentrations say from 10 to 10000 ppm.
It is also important to note that the cumulative forcing effect of CO2 at 300 ppm is about 30 W/m2 (Schmidt 2010). This implies the Myhre 1998 relationship could hold all the way down to 1 ppm. But it’ll breakdown very fast below that and personally I wouldn’t use it for anything below 10 ppm. You’ll have to use more complex and numerically intensive radiative transfer schemes to provide an estimate with a broader range of inputs.
Komabayashi–Ingersoll
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From what I can see this limit is based on the positive feedback water 1D model.
Rather than limit temperature it says that you will get runaway warming with increased CO2 above a certain limit.
This looks to be early work back in the day when people believed Venus surface temperatures were due to runaway warming due to CO2.
In plain language the radiation limits represent the maximum output a planet can sustain. If the input exceeds the output then a runaway will occur. For Earth the KI and SN limits are 320 W/m2 and 300 W/m2 respectively. The SN limit is a bit lower so that would be most applicable for Earth. And since Earth only takes in 240 W/m2 of input there is a 60 W/m2 gap preventing the runaway.
Also note that CO2 does not change this limit as it increases. This effectively clamps the temperature rise to that which only CO2’s direct radiative force (and tandem feedbacks) can supply on their own. Thus there is a finite limit to the amount of warming that can occur limited by the carbon stock available which is likely to be less 10,000 ppm.
But even if we manufactured CO2 like there’s no tomorrow and managed to exceed 10,000 ppm the warming would still be clamped due to the logarithmic relationship with the resultant forcing. Even at ridiculous concentration radiative modeling shows that the temperature will begin clamping near 340K.
Venus has no such clamps because its KI limit is below its solar input thus paying the way for a runaway GHE.
Let’s look at the hatchet job that someone, not necessarily author Jim Steele, did on the Kiehl & Trenberth-type power flux flow and “balance” diagram presented at the top of the above article as background for the clickable YouTube video:
— incoming and outgoing power fluxes presented to 0.1 W/m^2 precision (seriously???)
— power flux for incoming solar TOA asserted to be at ±0.1 W/m^2 accuracy, when it is known that over the course of one solar cycle (one ~11-year period), the Sun’s emitted energy varies on average at about 0.1 percent, or ±0.17 W/m^2
— Reflected solar from atmosphere, clouds and Earth’s surface is stated to be 100.0±2 W/m^2, yielding a calculated total albedo of (100.0±2)/(340.2±0.1) = 0.288–0.300, despite Earth’s average albedo being measured and publicized as varying across a much smaller range of 0.299–0.301 from March, 2000, through December, 2011 (see https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/84499/measuring-earths-albedo )
— “All sky atmospheric window” flux (i.e., radiation from ground directly to space) is stated to be 20±4 W/m^2. “Clear sky emission” is stated to be 266.4±3.3 W/m^2. Combining these, one obtains a possible total radiated emissions range of 279.1–293.7 W/m^2. In comparison, subtracting total reflected solar (100.0±2) from total incoming solar (340.2±0.1 W/m^2) one calculates a net absorbed radiation flux range of 238.1–242.3 W/m^2, so clearly there is a mathematical error here since the worst-case range mismatch (high-end to high-end) is 51.4 W/m^2 whereas the diagram states the TOA imbalance as being only 0.6±0.4 W/m^2.
— Alternatively, if one combines that stated “all sky atmospheric window” flux of 20±4 W/m^2 with the stated “outgoing longwave radiation” flux of 239.7±3.3 W/m^2, which accounts for cloud effects, one calculates a total emissions range of 252.4–267.0 W/m^2, which is a different range than calculated in the preceding paragraph and which also departs from the incoming solar minus albedo range by as much as 24.7 W/m^2 whereas the diagram states the TOA imbalance as being only 0.6±0.4 W/m^2.
— Just a simple look at the stated variabilities for “reflected solar” (±2 W/m^2), or “all sky atmospheric window” (±4 W/m^2), or “clear sky emission” (±3.3 W/m^2), or “outgoing longwave radiation” (±3.3 W/m^2) is sufficient to falsify the stated “Top of Atmosphere imbalance” could have the stated variability of ±0.4 W/m^2 . . . no detailed error analysis is required.
Clearly, the presented K&T-type diagram at the top of the above article is FUBAR.
So where is the evidence for the photon?
……just curious…..did anyone play with CO2 back when it was the #1 coolant for the world ??
Putting a chunk of dry ice in a bucket of water was tons of fun :)……anyone remember that cloud that came rolling out…….and went down to the lowest level possible ……
just curious.
Noticed right away . . . and quickly concluded that the reason the CO2-induced clouds “went down to the lowest level possible” was because the visible condensation of water droplets comprising the clouds showed the ensemble (H2O condensation droplets plus CO2 vapor) was much cooler, and therefore more dense, than the surrounding air that had not been cooled by the dry ice (having a temperature of about minus 109 °F).
P.S. Also, I never wondered why the “clouds” disappeared so quickly.
Once again, the lie that never dies is peddled as common knowledge.
The lie is that the T^4 Stefan-Boltzmann Law can be inverted so that surface photons returned to the Earth’s surface can reraise its temperature. The truth is that the temperature of the surface causes radiation that follows the S-B Law, but not vice-versa.In the case of the Earth’s surface, the only heating is caused by solar radiation at 0.4-0.8 microns, raising the temperature to the range of -50C to +50C, with a wavelength range of 8-13 microns. Returning the longer wavelength radiation doesn’t make the tail wag the dog and reheat the surface to the same temperature that the Sun did.
This lie is based on the bigger lie that all photons of any wavelength have the same power to raise the temperature of an absorbing material based on raw energy (Joules) alone. The truth is that a rod of temperature T cools by emitting radiation controlled by Planck’s Radiation Law, whose power curve has a peak power wavelength dependent solely on T, independent of the material, meaning that its radiation can’t raise the temperature of an absorbing material higher than T, regardless of the material. Thus, CO2’s 15 micron radiation absorption/emission wavelength has a Planck radiation temperature of -80C, colder than dry ice, hence its radiation is indistinguishable from an iron rod cooled to -80C, which can’t melt an ice cube, much less cause global warming. The U.N. IPCC lie machine tries to twist the science like a pretzel with ridiculous arguments about energy balance at the top of the atmosphere, claiming that the surface will magically increase its temperature to maintain the balance without any feedback signal or any increased radiation energy input at any temperature. It’s fantasy and magic, not science. The IPCC just wishes that atmospheric CO2 can cause global warming, and jumps to save us from our anxieties by demanding trillions, with no money-back guarantee, intending the money to be used for redistribution of wealth using climate as a punch line. Since it’s currently picking up steam daily, the hardened global Marxists at the top of the IPCC must be laughing all the way to the bank.
https://www.quora.com/Without-greenhouse-gases-in-the-atmosphere-would-Earth-be-able-to-dissipate-enough-heath-to-stay-cool/answer/TL-Winslow