Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics

sylas

That remark is merely disruptive of the discussion. There's nothing in my posts which suggests I am trying to single out one particular "material". I'm also not all that interested in weather, as such.

Weather variation is chaotic. You cannot possibly predict the particular weather on a given day in the future, except in the very near future.

You CAN, however, make some perfectly sensible predictions based on simple physical principles of the range within which weather can be expected. This is climate, and THIS is where my primary interest lies. To take a really obvious example, winter tends to be colder than summer in mid-latitudes, but there's no such thing as summer and winter at the equator. Winter in Canada tends to be more harsh than in the same latitudes in Norway. We know why this occurs. It can be explained simply, and without direct reference to all the other processes giving rise to the unpredictable chaos of specific weather conditions on a given day. And it can certainly be explained without distracting asides about one supposedly most important material. (Air? Water? Sunlight? Radiation? It's silly to single out one as "predominant".)

Most of the discussion here is not at a level of full complexity. Here we are mostly still at the stage of sorting out elementary thermodynamics. The paper in the first post of this thread is an example. It's physical nonsense, and it is well worth while explaining why. You don't need all the full complexity of climate analysis for this. Getting these basics right is a solid basis for going on to deeper understanding.

If you want all the full details, don't look to me to write a text book. I'll stick to addressing things at a more basic level, appropriate to this forum, dealing with particular points of confusion as they arise.

There are good text books for more detail. When I started learning about technical details of this myself, I got a lot of value from a long on-line text, called "Principles of Planetary Climate", by R.T. Pierrehumbert at the Uni of Chicago. It can be used for advanced undergraduate course work. It deals with physical basics that can be applied to any planet, and covers physics of lapse rate, radiative transfers, circulation, condensation, etc. It can take you to a level of understanding that will allow you to calculate bounds on the lapse rate and height of the troposphere, and show a generalized definition of "tropopause" or "stratosphere" that continues to work on a planet with a vastly different atmsopheric profile of temperature and pressure. It is available online, and look on that page for the 13.6 Mbytes pdf download of the current working draft. Not an easy read, but I've learned a heck of a lot from it so far. I am still struggling with the harder parts. Some readers might find it of interest.

In the meantime, let's stick with calculating a radiative transfer. What do you reckon would be the equilibrium temperature, approximately, of a small ball of black iron suspended above a large pan of liquid nitrogen, under a sunlit summer sky. Rough estimate will do.

It's a useful exercise, and the answer lets you get to grips with one of the important features of Earth's climate that some people find confusing: atmospheric backradiation.

Cheers -- Sylas

Phrak

It's difficult to dissrupt a dead thread.

suibhne

Silas
My interest in climate change was sparked by the East Anglia e-mail scandal.
I have a physics degree obtained in 1967 and have taught high school physics until I retired.
The G and T paper seemed to be a genuine contribution to the ongoing debate.
I followed the discussion in this forum with interest.
My take on the Moon/Earth difference is that the Moon does not rotate or have Oceans or an atmosphere.
It is true that the atmosphere stores energy in the form of translation KE of the gas molecules and latent heat and so on but the huge contribution that your diagram shops of back-radiated is not backed up with realistic calculations nor have you answered abb well made point that if the Suns EM radiation can be blocked or reflected this seems not to happen in the case of the atmospheres.
The G and T paper gets quite technical in places and I don't intend to revise my vague knowledge of non linear partial differential equations to nail every last point but it seems to me rather unlikely to say the least that they have made fundamental mistakes in basic physics.

Evo

Due to the inability to moderate discussions pertaining to Global Warming or Climate Chnge. Discussions on the subject have been temporarily suspended. It would appear that this thread slipped through the cracks, I apologize for any inconvenience.