(07-10-2010 05:21 PM)MostlyHarmless Wrote:  Experiments done in the laboratory use rarefied CO2 to represent the sort of concentration found in the atmosphere.
The gas in the experimental vessels has to be pure CO2,
as water vapour masks most of the CO2 absorption and oxygen and nitrogen complicate the distort the measurements further.
The experiments show that CO2 both absorbs and re-radiates LW IR strongly.

Quote:What about solar energy? Solar radiation is the result of an E = mc2 transformation as the sun transforms hydrogen to helium. Unfortunately, the reaction takes place 90 million miles away. Radiation dissipates with the square of the distance, so by the time solar energy reaches the earth it is diluted by almost the same factor, 10-15. Thus, the amount of solar radiation falling on a one square meter is 400 watts, enough to power four 100-watt light bulbs. “Thermal solar” – large arrays of mirrors heating a fluid – can convert 30 percent of this to electricity. Photovoltaic cells are slightly less efficient, converting only about 25 percent. As a result, the amount of electricity we can draw from the sun is enough to power one 100-watt light bulb per card table.

Quote:(iv) The relationship between temperature and altitude
There is a well-known relationship between temperature and height in the troposphere, known as the ‘lapse rate‘ (the temperature decreases with height at a rate -6K/km). The relationship between temperature and altitude can also be seen in the standard atmosphere. The lapse rate can be derived from theory for any atmosphere that is the hydrostatically stable condition with maximum vertical temperature gradient, but it is also well-known within meteorology. Thus, given the height and value of the emission temperature, we can get a simple estimate for the surface temperature: 255K + 5.5km * 6K/km = 288K (=15°C; close to the global mean estimated from observations given by NCDC of ~14°C).

Quote:This reinforces the claim that previous climate models—which are highly dependent on the coupling between ocean and atmosphere and, hence, the ocean circulation models they contain—cannot be considered accurate reconstructions of Earth's climate system. I repeat my earlier assertion: if the conveyor belt model is wrong then none of the IPCC's model results can be taken seriously. This point is underscored by recent work that found small changes in high latitude insolation, driven by Earth's orbital cycles, can trigger significant changes in lower latitude ocean and atmospheric circulation. The circulation of Earth's oceans is now known to be much more complex and nuanced than even a decade ago, which has significant implications for climate modeling.

This spate of recent discoveries serves to underline a fundamental tenet of science—that no theory, no matter how elegant or widely believed, is sacrosanct. As the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, stated, science progresses by moving from one false theory to another, still false theory that is nonetheless closer to the truth. There is nothing wrong with dismissing the conveyor belt model for another, more correct model. In fact, a scientist incapable of realizing that a cherished, comfortable old theory is false and must be discarded is not capable of doing good science at all. Keeping that in mind, here is Lozier's summary of the case against the conveyor belt:

Though appealing in its simplicity, the ocean conveyor-belt paradigm has lost luster over the years, precisely because it has overdistilled the complexity of the ocean’s overturning. This complexity has slowly been revealed as the ocean has increasingly been observed at finer scales in space and time and in places previously only sparsely sampled. As discussed, the ocean’s eddy field, unaccounted for just decades ago and now uncovered by measures at appropriate scales, figures prominently in the dismantling of the conveyor-belt paradigm. Another player in this dismantling is the ocean’s wind field. The traditional assignation of surface ocean gyres to wind-forcing and overturning to buoyancy forcing has ignored the vital impact of winds on overturning pathways and mechanics. As the study of the modern ocean’s role in climate continues apace, the conveyor-belt model no longer serves the community well— not because it is a gross oversimplification but because it ignores crucial structure and mechanics of the ocean’s intricate global overturning.

Quote:Sometimes science does advance one funeral at a time.

Quote:Recently Shackleton (2000) argued that d18O!*3 has
actually a better ice-volume proxy quality than d18O.!3.
Constructing a new, tuned Vostok timescale and using
phase spectral estimations, he found that variations in
atmospheric CO2, Vostok air temperature, and orbital
eccentricity, at 100 ka period, were nearly synchronous
over the past 420 ka and lead over ice-volume variations
by 14$2.5 (1 sigma) ka. As regards the results of the
present study, his estimation uncertainty is too high to
detect the lead of temperature relative to CO2 variations
(Section 3.1) whereas his estimated lag of ice-volume
variations, though of the same sign as estimated here
(Sections 3.2 and 3.3), is clearly larger. This discrepancy
might be resolved considering that (1) Shackleton's phase
estimations were made relative to ETP (a mixture of
eccentricity, tilt and precession)*thus, the high stratigraphic
accuracy of d18O!*3 relative to CO2 (Section 3.3)
was not used; (2) the uncertainty reported by him seems
not to take into account timescale inaccuracies; (3) he
used an atmospheric turnover time of 1.0 ka (we used 2.0
ka, Section 4); and (4) the lag estimated here is an average
over the periods of variation.

Quote:Yes, that's right, there is a "greenhouse effect" on our moon and it's even greater than here on earth.

The idea of an atmospheric "greenhouse effect" was invented to justify why earth is supposedly "warmer than it should be" if there was no atmosphere.


As we now know from NASA's research, even our moon is "warmer than it should be", by a whopping 40 degrees C where earth is a mere 33 degrees "warmer".

"We’ve been told that the earth's surface is quite a bit warmer than calculations predict. Theory has it that heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” account for a 33° Celsius disparity. But it turns out that our airless moon is also quite a bit warmer than predicted. Might something be wrong with the prediction method itself, then? It's a natural question to ask, so let's look into it."



"The Earth is not “unusually” warm. It is the application of the predictive equation that is faulty. The ability of common substances to store heat makes a mockery of blackbody estimates. The belief that radiating trace gases explain why earth's surface temperature deviates from a simple mathematical formula is based on deeply erroneous assumptions about theoretical vs. real bodies."

The justification for calculating the temperature that earth "should be at" is shown to be incorrect. It's based on a formula that is used to convert irradiation levels to temperature and vice versa, based on a blackbody. Earth nor any planet that we know of behaves like a blackbody. All planets literally absorb some of the solar heat during daytime and emit some of that during nighttime. Our moon is the perfect example of that: it has no atmosphere and receives as good as the same level of irradiation as earth does.

Our atmosphere is shown to act as a coolant during the day and a retarder of cooling during the nighttime; the amount of retardation depending on the relative humidity of the atmosphere, which in turn determines the total heat content of a given volume of the atmosphere.

But at all times our atmosphere acts as a conveyor of heat, never a creator of heat.

This essay puts it into perspective.

It does not matter what our atmosphere is made of, it is the surface, including the oceans, that makes it "warmer than it should be".

And yes, seeing that carbon dioxide is actually a good radiator, the only possible effect it can have on the atmosphere is to increase its cooling efficiency; it can't possibly make the atmosphere warmer. Adding a coolant gas to a coolant atmosphere, what else could you expect?

Please spread this paper far and wide, as it clearly proves by means of direct observations that no atmosphere is needed to be "warmer than calculated".

Nothing to do with CO2 after all.

Hans Schreuder
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com