I hadn’t seen this before – this is classic.
Apparently Hansen claimed in 1983 that the opacity of Venus atmosphere to IR is 100 times greater than Earth.
What utter tripe. In the year 1900, Angstrom demonstrated that IR absorption in a tube of CO2 became saturated at one atmosphere, and that adding more CO2 had very little effect on opacity. Not to mention the fact that CO2 absorption bands almost completely overlap with much broader (and much more abundant) H2O absorption bands.
The atmosphere is 70-85% opaque to IR radiation. The largest possible increase is less than 50%, not 10,000% as Hansen claims.
File:Atmospheric Transmission.png – Global Warming Art
Perhaps he was confusing opacity with transparency? If Earth’s atmosphere was 0.01% transparent, and Venus atmosphere was 0.0001% transparent – then he could say that Venus atmosphere is 100X less transparent. But that difference would have almost no effect on the temperature.
Projecting future sea level rise: methodology, estimates to the year 2100
No Homer, the lapse rate on Venus is nearly identical to Earth. If opacity was the problem, the lapse rate would have to be much higher on Venus.
The reason that Venus is hot is because it has a very thick atmosphere. If the composition of Venus atmosphere was identical to Earth’s atmosphere, temperatures would still be extremely hot on Venus.
This wasn’t Hansen’s first trip into Venusian stupid space. His doctoral dissertation claimed that Venus was very hot due to aerosols – the same aerosols which he now says cool Earth and hide the missing heat.
Sometimes I wonder how this guy made it past high school.
So just how would the temperature of Venus be 22C cooler than that of the Earth if neither planet had an atmosphere?
Didn’t it occur to any of these genius’s that sunlight is reflected by clouds, and it is pretty difficult to form clouds if a planet has no atmosphere.
Words fail me………..
pity words dont fail hansen..still they now have that speech jamming techno toy.
I vote hansen gets to trial it:-)
Sitting in a sunny window on a winter day, you can feel the IR on your skin. How did Angstrom manage such weird results? No IR should be felt at all.
I think you are confusing UV with IR.
I have another Simpson/Hansen “separated at birth” image you might enjoy:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SaNAIXQ-pwI/AAAAAAAAA2w/5nfa0Wz4RRg/s1600/Hansen-Simpson-01.jpg
Hoot!
They’ve developed a theory about all of this……. apparently, in the alternate universe of delusional alarmists, the increased atmospheric pressure widens the absorption bands. ….. I kid you not.
Pressure does widen the absorption bands. But H20 already occupies more than 50% of the total IR spectrum so the biggest increase they could possibly get would be less than 2X.
Agreed….. I was referring to their explanation about Venus and how it gets hotter than it otherwise would.be it the absorption bands were similar to on earth.
Anyone can make a mistake.
It takes a certain mind to keep making the same sorts of mistakes.
You move up a level when after making so many errors, you remain 99% certain.
Someone should write a rebuttal and get Hansen to defend his paper. He has assumed that Venus is as white as the driven snow even without an atmosphere. It gets double the TSI of earth and is made of rock. Its temperature without an atmosphere would be less than the peak sub-solar point temperatures on Mercury of 427°C (700°K) but much greater than that of the earth.