Bill Kininmonth Requests Explanation of the Greenhouse Effect
Posted by jennifer, September 8th, 2008 - under Letters.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
Bill Kininmonth knows a lot about climate science, he is a meteorologist and he was the head of Australia’s National Climate Centre from 1986 to 1998. He is also a well known global warming skeptic and is particularly critical of the idea that the principles for sustaining the greenhouse effect are well understood. While this may seem like a ridiculous proposition, indeed the greenhouse effect is the underpinning science for the hypothesis of dangerous global warming, in a recent letter to the Federation of Australian Scientists and Technologists (FASTS) he explains how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are neither consistent in their explanation for the greenhouse effect nor provide a mechanism that accords with the global average earth energy budget.
Mr Kininmonth’s letter to FASTS follows their issuing of a media release on climate change including comment that:
“The scientific evidence is compelling that global policy objectives must remain squarely focused on returning greenhouse gas concentrations to near pre-industrial levels through the reduction of emissions.”
The media release was accompanied by a statement that included comment:
“The physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well-understood. Without greenhouse gases, clouds or aerosols, the surface of the Earth would have a mean temperature of about 18oC below zero. While the natural atmospheric composition varies over time, the observed warming in the late 20th century can be attributed with a very high degree of confidence to additional human emissions of greenhouse gases.
The statement was developed and published without input from rank and file member of FASTS and indeed not everyone agrees that the scientific evidence is compelling. Mr Kininmonth explains why in the following open letter:
Bradley Smith
Executive Director
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Dear Bradley,
In the “Statement on Climate Change” issued by FASTS on 4 September is included the sentence, ‘The physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well-understood.’
I would be grateful if you would provide a summary of the physical principles of the greenhouse effect. In making this request I do not doubt the existence of the greenhouse effect, only that the scientific principles for sustaining the greenhouse effect are well understood.
The IPCC, in its most recent (2007) report has the statement (Frequently Asked Question 1.1):
“The reason that the Earth’s surface is this warm (14oC) is the presence of greenhouse gases, which act as a partial blanket for the longwave radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as the natural greenhouse effect.”
There are two problems with this statement. Firstly, a blanket acts as an inhibitor of conduction and not radiation; oxygen and nitrogen are equally as good insulators as water vapour and carbon dioxide and adding greenhouse gases does not materially affect the conducting properties of the atmosphere. Secondly, net upward longwave radiation increases with altitude (according to the IPCC global average data, from 66 Wm-2 at the surface to
235 Wm-2 at the top of the atmosphere); the increase is due to the greenhouse gases and can hardly be described as inhibiting (ie, blanketing) radiation loss to space!
In an attempt to clarify the situation, the IPCC has an additional explanation (Frequently Asked Question 1.3):
“Much of this thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean is absorbed by the atmosphere, including clouds, and reradiated back to Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect.”
As the IPCC’s global average data clearly show, there is more longwave radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface than is emitted by the atmosphere back to the surface. The net effect of longwave radiation is to cool the Earth’s surface, not to warm it.
The above two explanations from the IPCC are quite different and neither accord with the data presented on the global average Earth energy budget. As you will appreciate, the greenhouse effect is the underpinning science for the hypothesis of dangerous global warming from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by human activities. If we cannot get the underpinning science as a clear and logical construct then the edifice is no more than a house of cards! Also, if it is not possible to explain how the Earth’s greenhouse effect is sustained then how can we be confident that the computer models used to project global warming are adequately representing the greenhouse effect?
As FASTS claims that the physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well understood I presume FASTS has a different explanation than what IPCC has presented. I would be grateful for a summary of the FASTS principles of the greenhouse effect.
Yours sincerely,
William Kininmonth
Kew, Victoria
As long as institutions and organisations like FASTS demand that governments impose new taxes and regulations on the basis that the science is settled, they must be prepared to publicly engage in discussion on the same. Indeed I look forward to posting the response from FASTS to Mr Kininmonth’s open letter.
Greenhouse Students see “hot topics”
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/publications/index.html
Simply put
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm
How we fit in
http://www.icmpa.umd.edu/salzburg/climatechange/index.php/606/
http://www.co2crc.com.au/links/
Then
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html
and draw your own conclusions
I clicked on 3 links Gavin. One shows how many people have their noses in teh AGW trough. One shows we should be sceptical and teh david evans supports this stance as well. So obvious conclusion …be sceptical.Agreed?
Perhaps old Bill might want to comment on how survival blankets work, precisely by reflecting the radiation emitted from the bunnies inside
Oh yeah, old Bill might try this an explanation so simple even Jen can understand it tho she probably won’t admit it.
Toby; Thanks for looking.
Following my previous post I tried to be fair after sweeping Google for “greenhouse gas + evidence” and considering advanced thinking in Australia.
Your next question should be based on a similar reflection given several up front pages of links from Google
“Comment from Eli Rabett
Time September 10, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Perhaps old Bill might want to comment on how survival blankets work, precisely by reflecting the radiation emitted from the bunnies inside…..”
Right so are you saying that heavier non-reflective blankets cannot do the job? Eli? Eli you biased old prick?
Are you saying that the survival blankets do not have any effect that can be attributed to conduction?
You see our job is to differentiate the effects of radiation, conduction, and convection rather than get about bullshitting people and talking as if the whole deal is radiation and radiation alone.
I find you actually very annoying Eli you rude old bastard. Because the fact is you do know a lot of stuff yet you are so damned tendentious.
You’d make yourself more useful if you stuck around and answered specific questions on demand.
I just find it fascinating that as knowledgeable a fellow as yourself can fall for this racket, and I put it down to moral failure and the fact that you are an eccentric old git.
Richard S. Courtney said…”But I have had it easy compared to some other climate reaists. For example, Tim Ball has had death threats and I have not had those”.
Good post, Richard. Tim Ball lives near me here in Canada. I communicated with him after a terrible program was aired on Canadian television (CBC) about Tim Ball and Fred Singer (The Denial Machine). It was an out and out witchhunt, and front and centre for the prosecution was James Hoggan, a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation and the operator of desmogblog. He was not identified as either on the program, only as an expert of some kind.
Here’s a critique of the program:
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2c07121b-85c2-4799-9aaf-0c2688bf5ca1&p=1
As you probably know, Singer had a run in with Al Gore, who infered Singer had influenced his friend, Professor Roger Revelle, Gore’s mentor at Harvard, to make statements about greenhouse warming that contradicted those of Gore. Singer sued Gore, who backed off. Here’s that story from Singer himself:
http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf
I think it’s deplorable that any scientist should be exposed to a witchhunt mentality. I am aware of Henk Tennekes, but as I tried to point out in another thread, this goes on even in other disciplines. Peter Duesberg has had his career ruined and has been reduced to teaching undergraduate labs over his skepticism that HIV causes AIDS. In Australia, Eleni Papadopoulos of the Perth Group can’t get her papers published for the same reason.
I would ask Irena et al what good peer-review does anyone when perfectly good theories are dismissed outright simply because they don’t fit a paradigm, even if the paradigm is in great doubt.
Irena Ischenko…I don’t mean to be offensive, but you strike me as being naive. You refer people to the IPCC as if they are the ultimate authority on climate theory. Why would you think that? Is it because there are a lot of scientists involved, so they must be correct? Is it because the media have infered that or that governments have said they are right? Or maybe you respect authority.
I have looked at the same IPCC reports you have mentioned. I saw the hockey stick graph in all its glitter and prominence. It was wrong…they have withdrawn it and the inference with it that the 1990’s was the warmest decade in a millenium. They were told by the National Academy of Science that no such inference could be made from the data and that they should do better science in the future.
The IPCC papers admitted in 2001 that the satellite data was contradicting the model predictions. In 2007, they did not withdraw that observation, they covered it up in mumbo jumbo, insisting errors had been found in the satellite data. Those errors were trivial and did not change the basis for the original observation that the atmosphere was significantly cooler than the surface.
The whole point of CO2/warming is that the atmosphere will warm up more than the surface in certain regions. That has not happened, so the IPCC is wrong again.
You make reference to Boltzman et al, as if the atmosphere is a laboratory in which controlled experiments can take place. I supplied a link to a paper by Gerlich and Tscheuschner:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
in which they explain in great detail why that is the case. You can’t simply look up papers on gas laws and extrapolate that to a complex environment like the atmosphere. There’s no way to do measurements, let alone observations. The IPCC papers are based on theory, not fact.
beautifully put Gordon!
jennifer said…”Spencer’s work suggests other parts of the climate system are compensating for the potential effects of warming ffrom more greenhouse gases”.
Yeah…but what would Spencer know, he’s just an expert in atmospheric physics and a world authority on the MSU telemetry on satellites. The IPCC, on the other hand, is full of scientists no one has ever heard of before their governments sent them off to the assessments. You simply can’t compare an expert like Spencer with so many unknown scientists.
I mean, how much could Spencer, or his partner at UAH, John Christy, really know? They took undergraduate courses in atmospheric physics, then graduate courses, then got their doctorates in the same discipline. No one really knows what the IPCC reviewers specialize in, but hey, they do have consensus on their side, and apparently that’s more believable than fact.
Next you’ll be quoting Richard Lindzen. What would he know about anything? He has only 40 years experience in atmospheric physics and teaches at MIT. Most people don’t have the academic essentials to qualify for MIT but he teaches there. According to Gavin Schmidt, a mathematician, Lindzen is teaching ‘old’ school’ theory while Gavin’s work is ready for textbooks.
You don’t seem to get it jennifer. You’re not playing the game; you’re not playing fair. You’re supposed to get in line, follow the leader, do the right things, cooperate. Above all, you’re not supposed to question authorities like the IPCC and Penny Wong, not necessarily in that order.
I climbed up a mountain in the tropics this week. Walking up between about 1 and 4pm I was getting cooler as the temperature at sea level would have been increasing. Walking down between about 4.00 and 7.00pm the temperature was getting warmer until the last half hour or so.
What I noticed is just how comfortable it is at this altitude. The peak is 922 metres. But probably a lot higher than that in relation to sea level.
When I say “comfortable” I don’t mean just the temperature. There is more going on here to do with the greater ability of evaporation at that level as well as something to do with what Alan Siddons says about space being akin to an insulator. In the sense that a cool breeze is not as chilling up there as it would be on the ground.
On the ground you take off everything and you run about you will be too cold or too hot and you will get itchy. Up on the mountain you can be much more comfortable in a pretty wide range of temperatures.
Thats probably why you can have people fighting in the Mountain tropics for so long. Pretty good lifestyle if the food and some financing is coming from elsewhere.
You’d have to move from place to place. But once you’d set up at the new place you could just contend yourself playing games of chance or mucking about in great comfort. Waiting for the opportunity to go down and hit a military target every now and then……. and bugger off back to altitude.
Mareeba, up in the Tablelands, must be about the most comfortable, nicest town in the country, one would think. When its cold its not chilling-cold. When its hot you get in the shade and the air is not too hot. Or you’d pull out the garden hose and wet everything, and the whole area be cooler.
Now with all that in mind lets look at the watts-per-square-metre climate model. It says nothing about compression as such. Nothing about the effect of it. Set up your flat earth model, where its noon all the time. Average out and aggregate your watts and convert it to a surface-temperature, and the compression ought to not matter at all. Except insofar as it affects the total number of greenhouse-gas molecules.
This is just not credible. And the climate of Mareeba and Cairns would have substantially converged since the 1950’s and now, if the standard model was even a little bit valid.
Thats why its science fraud to simply claim that the entirety of the alleged 30 degrees descrepancy is all to do with the greenhouse effect. People can have differences of opinion. But any clown claiming that THE ENTIRE AMOUNT is greenhouse related is really being stupid or dishonest.
Others can rule out this or that. But we all can rule out this 30 degrees gyp as obvious nonsense.
Irena said…”You need a radiative model to numerically solve this- ie at which level the maximum warming occurs. And the radiative models are not speculative- they are well backed up by theory, observations and experiment”.
First, you claim the models are backed by observation. What observation? The only observations available are the satellite and radiosonde data and they disagree with the models.
Secondly, you claim the theory calls for cooling above and warming below. You have not been keeping up, Irena. The AGW/model theory calls for a hot spot above, in the troposphere, and it’s not there.
Anyway, I asked people, preferably with expertise in physics, to read this paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
It has an extensive section on models and why they are no good.
All I’m doing in this thread is commenting on this paper. It explains why everything you and your IPCC sources are saying is wrong.
Please don’t come back and say it’s not peer reviewed. That’s not a viable response. You either understand what is being said, and have a legitimate response, or you don’t.
“sjt, you make some stupid comments, and fortunately i delete my responses because they will not add to teh debate. But this time you show once again how blind and religous you are in your faith. Are you infact over 18? your comment sare usually so stupid I would expect them to come from an adolescent. To use a Luke expression. STFU!”
Fine, just ask him what qualifications he was required to give them to be an expert reviewer.
graeme; you obviously know eli well; what’s with the baby-talk and the 3rd person referencing?
In any event eli’s link is to a potted summary of AGW. It is an odd thing. It ignores convective heat transfer and the fact that IR absorption occurs and exhausts close to the surface; it basically is a rehash of the semi-infinite atmospheric model, which apart from anything else is defeated by the fact that MSU data does not show troposheric heating, and AQUA data does not show stratospheric cooling. What’s more the surface temp over the 20thC and into the 21st has only increased by 0.65-0.7C, well short of IPCC forcing figures for the 40% increase in CO2 during that time. I know it’s unfair to introduce actual facts into a theoretician’s musings, which is what I presume eli is, but when reality contradicts the theory, the theory should go; unless the theory is really a theology.
“Anyway, I asked people, preferably with expertise in physics, to read this paper:”
That paper is my litmus test for a denier as compared to a sceptic. Anyone who gives it any credence has to be completely ignorant of anything to do with physics and case for AGW. All it does is comprehensively attack strawman arguments, a case that that the IPCC has never made.
“When you have something very hot or very cold in a vacuum (no conduction or convection) and pour in a fixed amount of energy, it will reach a fixed temperature at the point where the energy coming in is balanced by the radiative energy leaking out of the system.”
All true but nothing to do with the real world. My contention is that the alarmist model is otherworldly flat earth science.
But standby Eli. So that people can ask you technical questions. You want to stick with your strengths.
“That paper is my litmus test for a denier as compared to a sceptic. Anyone who gives it any credence has to be completely ignorant of anything to do with physics and case for AGW. All it does is comprehensively attack strawman arguments, a case that that the IPCC has never made.”
No thats stupidity on your part. You cannot make a case without evidence. You cannot make a case based on the alleged mistakes of people who disagree with you. 0 out of 10 for epistemology.
Faux-falsification will not do it. You need actual evidence. So lets have it right here and right now.
Tell me which philosopher you think you are applying with this negative-evidence business?
SJT:
I write in hope that I may be of some help to you.
I have read each of your contributions to this forum and all of them (without exception) are to some degree mistaken (some are very wrong) and that is OK. But you do not thank those who correct your mistakes. Instead, whenever your errors are pointed out to you then you dissemble and/or obfuscate and sometimes you compound the error, and that is a real problem.
I recognise that this forum is not your ‘real life’, but if your behaviour here is an indication of how you normally behave then you must be a very sad and lonely fellow.
So, I suggest that you get some counselling to help you to come to terms with making mistakes; everybody makes them sometimes. When you can cope with the pain of recognising you have made a mistake then you may learn how to stop digging when you are in a hole. And, importantly, you may find that people start to like you.
I suspect you may not know how much pleasure is provided by having friends. So, with sincere concern for you, I beg you to please seek counselling to overcome your problem.
With every good wish
Richard
Testing
Gordon, I read the paper. I have a physics degree, although I don’t use it much in my current job. This is my second try at posting a response.
Leaving aside the poor english, the indiscriminate confusion of analysis with political comment and the apparent inability of the authors to find references:
1) The thermal conductivity of CO2 is not (and has never been) the issue. Its radiative absorbtion and re-emission is.
2) Everyone knows that greenhouses don’t work like the atmospheric greenhouse effect does. This is not a conspiracy but a bit of leftover terminology from before the functioning of greenhouses was correctly understood, (much like the common use of centrifugal force to mean centripedal force). It is irrelevant to the issue of understanding the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
3) the contention that CO2 molecules are too small to absorb IR photons because they are smaller than the wavelength of IR confuses light waves with photons. Waves can be thought of as the sum of a large number of photons, as seen in the classic double slit experiment.
4) The contention that the stefan-boltzmann constant is not a constant is flat wrong. In equation 28 they have substituted the constant term for I, the irradiance, in error. They may be trying to say that the earth is not a black but a grey body – but this is well known and they have expressed themselves extremely poorly.
5) The contention that the IPCC’s models ignore incoming IR from the sun can be easily refuted by looking at any of the radiation balance diagrams from the IPCC, which show radiation being absorbed in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. I believe the figure is about 66 W/m2.
6) Radiation emitted sideways will be reabsorbed and go up or down eventually.
7) The authors apparently think that if something wasn’t published in german, it doesn’t exist.
8) What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out. Spread that energy emission evenly over the surface of the earth and you get an average. Of course it will vary from place to place, but the total energy can’t vary.
9) The contention that back-radiation constitutes a perpetual motion machine of the second kind misunderstands the laws of thermodynamics, which hold in closed systems. The earth-atmosphere system is not closed as it has a perpetual energy inflow from the sun. (This is the same reason that evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics). Furthermore, the laws are statements of net summed statistical effects over thermal physics processes; overall, the earth is hotter than the atmosphere and the net flow of energy is earth -> atmosphere, not vice versa. If back radiation did NOT occur then it WOULD violate the second law, as each molecule of atmospheric CO2 would require a Maxwell’s demon to prevent it from radiating in the direction of the earth.
10) I feel sorry for anyone being taught physics by these people. In a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, not only are they incompetent, but they are unable to recognise their own incompetence and unable to appreciate the competence of others.
“What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out.”
No thats not right.
“What is the problem with the concept of average temperature?”
Lets just reword this:
“What are the pitfalls of over-aggregation in analysis”.
They are massive. You need to aggregate but you need to constantly think about how and why and what level or specifics of aggregation are appropriate. You are trying to pull off flat earth science. You model sucks all the reality out of climate and even the weather.
Its a model that centres around only one of the three ways that energy is propagated in the atmosphere. Your model ignores all insulative properties of gasses. Of ice for that matter. Makes me want to go and bust up a bunch of igloos and leave the eskimos to freeze and then turn around and say “LOOK WHAT YOU IDIOTS HAVE DONE TO THESE POOR ETHNIC PEOPLES.”
Your model ignores Stefan Boltzmanns disproportionate effect when temperatures are disaggregated. It ignores cumulative joules, the very essence of climate change.
Your model is ridiculous. It just ignores everything. It aggregates and averages water vapour on your implied flat earth. Your thinking is not for the planet in question but for an imagined planet: Flatland, twice as far from the sun and noon all the time. A black body even. With a fudge factor added after the fact to make up for the reality that Earth is no black body.
You ignore the effect of day and night. The effect of the perturbation on strata of the rotation of the planet. The effect of solar cycles. The effect of the planets rotation around the sun as to the timing of its release of energy. The effect of cumulative energy as a result of higher than normal solar activity. The effect of the changing rotation of the moon on atmospheric pressure zones has comes under particular derision.
You ignore the effects of resistance to oceanic circulation. Except as a purely heat transport notion. Oblivious to how Stefan-Boltzmann is implicated in climate change here. Stefan or Boltzmann was a sensitive chap and would commit suicide all over again with the lack of attention you are paying to what he has taught us.
You ignore everything that counts except for back-radiation. And then you say “Look back-radiation has to be of earth-shattering importance to surface temperature” which it surely has to be since you have ethnically cleansed everything else from your model.
You have an absolutely rigid series of steps that you go through with everything else as an afterthought and a computational fudge factor.
You start with the idea, never proved at all, that a doubling of CO2 leads to a one degree increase first up and then you make this leap that this will set off feedback with water vapour. The only reason you think this is that by processing things all the way down to watts….. instead of joules….. you have succeeded in ethnically cleansing TIME!!!! out of your perspective.
ITS JUST…… SO….. STUPID…
Its not science its just stupid and evasive climate-talk-talk.
The whole lot of you need to have your ass whipped and to be sent back to your country of ultimate ethnic origin.
We have this aggregation problem in economics. There is always the problem of how much or how little or the specifics of the aggregation that we use in macroeconomics. We have the problem of the relevant angle from which to approach a problem.
You guys are akin to a group of economists who have trashed all of economics leaving only econometrics. And yet are totally belligerent when your econometric predictions turn out to be wrong useless and misleading.
You expect the computers to do everything. You expect the computers to replace the need for empirical evidence, wipe the babies butt, take the kids to school, fill out your research grant application, let you escape from the need to think conceptually from multiple convergent angles about the problem.
Truly you are the unthinking nazis of science. The goose-stepping zombie hoards of science. The wreckers of science. “THE NOTHING” from the kids movie “The Never-Ending Story”. The never-ending story of leftists debasing all values…….. scientific, monetary and everything else.
Hey! Smilies!
8)
:P
You are an idiot Haughton. You suffer from terminal stupidity.
Nurse!
Doctor!!
What is this. An idiots convention? Ought not you people be over at Deltoid?
Deltoid is a great resource. Since the standards of thinking there are so appalling it means that I get the chance to go over to Deltoid, and pull out moronic comments from the two of you, and paste them in broad daylight here.
Beat it or say something intelligent or I’ll do this just to embarrass you cultists.
“I write in hope that I may be of some help to you. ”
I too hope that someday you may be able to be of help, too, my knowledge is only that of a layman. At present, unfortunately, you have nothing to offer. However, there are some people who post here who do have a lot to offer, and I have learned a lot from them.
Right. It IS an idiots convention. A Deltoid reunion where the crowd gets by on smug stupidity alone.
So how did you regain your confidence to be back in this position.
I KNOW.
You must have found some evidence in the interim!!!!!!
Great!!!!!!
Terrific SJT. So you’ve finally found that evidence. So lets have it then.
GO!!!!
Graeme Bird.
After I picked those random papers I actually took the time to find them and read them, not just their abstracts, and they all document the existence of negative CO2 impacts. I am sure that I could do so for days and days, but I have better things to do than your homework.
Once more, as you seem to be irreparably obtuse, I am not claiming that there are no ‘positive’ effects, and it is mendacious of you to impute so. However you are obviously stuck in an anthropocentric mindset, and until you learn how to review the field for yourself, you will not be able to extend yourself beyond your prejudiced ideologies. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of papers that illustrate my very simple statement that increased carbon dioxide has a range of negative impacts on various elements of the biosphere. Just go and look properly.
And just so that you are clear about the semantics, by ‘negative’ I mean something to the effect that the evolutionary fitness of such negatively-impacted species is compromised. Please note, that for many this might include physiological responses that you might regard as ‘positive’, but in the evolutionary context are disadvantageous for the affected species.
You have much searching, reading, thinking and learning to do. You should be able to make a basic start after about three months of concerted effort, so the sooner you start the sooner you’ll reach a decent level of education and true understanding.
Go to your local university library, speak with a librarian, learn how to do a Current Contents or JStore search, figure out how to follow citation links, and above all read, read, read.
GO!!!
Above post was meant to go to:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/second-attempt-to-deny-the-medieval-warm-period-new-paper-by-michael-mann/#comment-62265
“Gordon, I read the paper. I have a physics degree, although I don’t use it much in my current job. This is my second try at posting a response.
Leaving aside the poor english, the indiscriminate confusion of analysis with political comment and the apparent inability of the authors to find references:
1) The thermal conductivity of CO2 is not (and has never been) the issue. Its radiative absorbtion and re-emission is.
2) Everyone knows that greenhouses don’t work like the atmospheric greenhouse effect does. This is not a conspiracy but a bit of leftover terminology from before the functioning of greenhouses was correctly understood, (much like the common use of centrifugal force to mean centripedal force). It is irrelevant to the issue of understanding the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
3) the contention that CO2 molecules are too small to absorb IR photons because they are smaller than the wavelength of IR confuses light waves with photons. Waves can be thought of as the sum of a large number of photons, as seen in the classic double slit experiment.
4) The contention that the stefan-boltzmann constant is not a constant is flat wrong. In equation 28 they have substituted the constant term for I, the irradiance, in error. They may be trying to say that the earth is not a black but a grey body – but this is well known and they have expressed themselves extremely poorly.
5) The contention that the IPCC’s models ignore incoming IR from the sun can be easily refuted by looking at any of the radiation balance diagrams from the IPCC, which show radiation being absorbed in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. I believe the figure is about 66 W/m2.
6) Radiation emitted sideways will be reabsorbed and go up or down eventually.
7) The authors apparently think that if something wasn’t published in german, it doesn’t exist.
8) What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out. Spread that energy emission evenly over the surface of the earth and you get an average. Of course it will vary from place to place, but the total energy can’t vary.
9) The contention that back-radiation constitutes a perpetual motion machine of the second kind misunderstands the laws of thermodynamics, which hold in closed systems. The earth-atmosphere system is not closed as it has a perpetual energy inflow from the sun. (This is the same reason that evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics). Furthermore, the laws are statements of net summed statistical effects over thermal physics processes; overall, the earth is hotter than the atmosphere and the net flow of energy is earth -> atmosphere, not vice versa. If back radiation did NOT occur then it WOULD violate the second law, as each molecule of atmospheric CO2 would require a Maxwell’s demon to prevent it from radiating in the direction of the earth.
10) I feel sorry for anyone being taught physics by these people. In a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, not only are they incompetent, but they are unable to recognise their own incompetence and unable to appreciate the competence of others.”
Great post, so good I posted it again :). As I have said before, the paper is nonsense, anyone who believes this has a real problem with understanding the basic science behind AGW, and really shouldn’t be out there telling other people that the theory of AGW is wrong, when the issue is so important.
“After I picked those random papers I actually took the time to find them and read them, not just their abstracts, and they all document the existence of negative CO2 impacts.”
Bullshit. You are a proven liar. And now you are just trying the social-double-or-nothing.
Your bullshitartistry is established. So now you have a high bar to jump over.
Give me one study.
Just one study.
We are at the point where we must consider you to be lying unless and until you prove otherwise.
You are full of shit. Thats why you didn’t post a single available paper.