Every modern weather forecast model has a radiative transfer model in its core, which models the greenhouse effect.
Weather models would not work without fairly accurate models of the greenhouse effect, because humidity and cloudiness have a large impact on temperature – largely due to the greenhouse effect.
People who don’t accept the greenhouse effect – are simply not dealing with reality. And they make skeptics look extremely ignorant.
I will give you the greenhouse effect, however where we should be at odds with the “models” are how much effect/affect that CO2 has.
One of my favorites to the adding greenhouse “problem” is how insects (ants and termites are believe to have a bio mass 29 times that of humans) add methane gas at a higher rate than humans and methane has more capacity for greenhouse effect/affect.
So “RAID” fights global warming.
Steve,
Now you are the one bringing in straw man arguments.
Humidity and clouds are important because they relate to water VAPOUR and VAPOUR is not GAS. They have different thermal characteristics and it is these conduction and convection characterisitcs and not their radiative characteristics which is why they are important to short term weather prediction.
The climate models do not handle humidity and clouds well, but do use greenhouse gases and they are crap at predicting reality. That should tell you something right there …
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas in exactly the same way that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that Nitrogen is a non-greenhouse gas.
This is at the very core of the science. You don’t know what you are talking about
You are saying that a vapour is the same as a gas and you say that I do not know what I am talking about.
You are correct in what you said before. It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation here. The posts are still very entertaining though. Keep up the good work.
Exactly. You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about
> VAPOUR is not GAS
???? Whut?
I swear these have to be paid trolls.
It does not matter because it still absorbs IR,much more than CO2 does as a gas.
What? So you are agreeing with the idiot who thinks water vapor is not a gas? I thought only global warming alarmists were this stupid.
Perhaps TS is thinking of clouds, steam and fog as examples of water vapor, and humidity as water in a gaseous form. That is not scientifically accurate, but his comments are correct within that (mistaken) context.
It has been a long time since I last had to work with the difference, but if my memory is correct, the difference between a gas and a vapor has to do with where on the phase diagram the sample of gas you’re talking about lies. If the sample is below its critical point, you can call it a vapor because you can mechanically cause a change of state (normally to a condensed form). If it is above that point, then you cannot mechanically cause a change of state. Mechanically here means maintaining the sample’s temperature while changing the pressure applied to the sample. Note that this is an heuristic and there are cases where this will not hold.
You have a confused understanding: As per physics, water vapour is a transparent gas with defined thermodynamics properties close (not identical) to ordinary gases, as long as it does not condensate. In terms of warming, water vapour is similar to CO².
But a CLOUD is not water vapour, it is a stable mixtude of ordinary atmosphere and liquid water droplets. It has a very different role about sun irradiance reflection when thick, thermostatic effect when turbulence moves it upwards and so on.
The popular steam steam locomotive panache exiting from its chimney is NOT water vapour as per physics, but a mixture of oxygen depleted air and water droplets… thence looks like a high density natural cloud.
ATTENTION REAL SCIENCE READERS….
Be aware of the Frigid Heat bearing down on all but 6 States this week… SNOW predicted in all but 6 States this week… Frigid Heat… Climate Disruption on the move thanks to man made, heat trapping CO2….
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/shaping-the-data-to-match-the-theory/
There is no forced greenhouse effect in a convection system. Feedback loops and mamy to many variables makes the forced greenhouse effect a laughingstock. Climate is a convection system. This used to be taught in grade 9 science.
I see. So you think the entire planet is experiencing a convective storm 24x7x365
It doesn’t have to be, but convection (vertical) and advection (horizontal) do happen 24/7/365 to some degree below the tropopause, where most of the atmosphere’s mass is located.
You can’t leave it alone… can you? I understand what you are saying, the problem is that the CAGW people have intertwined this principle with what co2 is suppose to do. If AGW Theory were right, none of us would be still arguing about it. That is what the IPCC and other scientists that support AGW should be doing, acknowledging that the way they have laid the Theory out is wrong. There is no question that using the math and feedbacks from co2 the dire predictions that were forecast in the 1990’s and early 2000’s should have already happened. It hasn’t, it isn’t and every feeble effort to support it is ridiculous.
The trouble is using a term like ‘greenhouse’ . It has a become a hot button word. (so to speak)
The problem is that junk science is no better for skeptics than it is for alarmists.
However the war is real, even if it is being fought in cyber space. The CAGW crowd has never censored anyone without a clue. Even hair brained ideas were supported as long as they supported CAGW. It gave critics a lot more ideas that needed to be refuted, wasting a lot of time and energy. Since I saw this tactic being used, I have stopped saying anything against anybody who is against CAGW. Who knows, maybe the earth really is 6,000 years old, I doubt it but… according to them, God can do anything,
I hate the term “greenhouse gas” primarily because all the gases in the atmosphere contribute to the greenhouse effect, even if they don’t acquire their heat directly by radiative absorption (the lack of bulk gases is the reason there is only a very small greenhouse effect on Mars, despite its atmosphere containing 8 times more CO2 than Earths).
The correct distinguishing term should be radiative and non-radiative gases, IMO.
And never forget to emphasize that the most important radiative gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, water vapor, water vapor and water vapor (:
Greenhouses have floors, right? Then Earth must be a greenhouse as we have a surface, or floor. Correlation is something or another.
+1
logic 101
Actually, everything with a temperature above 0 Kelvin radiates. The distinction is between IR active and IR inactive gases.
The other issue is that none of the gases in our atmosphere do ANY radiating below the very low pressures of the stratosphere. The emissivity of the gases in our atmosphere at normal pressures are, for all practical purposes, zero. If they emitted anything in the IR spectrum thermal cameras and the military’s thermal weapon sights (collectively known as FLIR devices) would not work as ALL of the uncooled microbolometers used in these devices are sensitive to the entire range of CO2’s and CH4’s emission range. You can see clearly for thousands of meters with these devices and if any of the atmospheric gases was actually emitting IR it would be like looking through fog.
How do you define a greenhouse effect? The point of a greenhouse is to be warmer than its surroundings, but the earth itself has no surroundings in this sense. Only matter can be hot or cold; empty space is neither.
We are invited to compare the temperature of the earth’s surface with the temperature if there were no atmosphere (in which case, of course, we would not exist). The usefulness of this comparison escapes me.
That sounds like a personal problem.
Beale: I invite you to compare the temperature of the earth’s surface with the temperature if the atmosphere were completely transparent to radiation (N2, O2, and Ar come very, very, close to this.) In this case, the earth’s surface — on average — could radiate no more power to space than it received from the sun — also on average. What kind of temperature levels would you get then?
Curt: I invite you to explain more.
The temperature of the earth would still vary if your fictional world has rotation at a tilt, with oceans, sea, deserts, forests etc., and variable thickness and density crust over a liquid core. These confounding factor also affect our planet and the temperature cycling that happens.
Reduce your model any further by removing these factors and it is not the earth, it is just a naked ball in space.
Add any real world confounding factors and your model fails.
The atmosphere is not the only thing – get real.
Well said
Ultimately, for the earth to be in even approximate energy balance, it must radiate basically as much power to space as it receives from the sun. There is absolutely no alternative to this.
With a transparent atmosphere, this radiation would have to come directly from the surface. If this were true, the earth’s surface would be far, far colder than the temperatures we see, and everything you mention is small potatoes compared to this difference.
And the more the surface temperature varies, both over time (day/night, summer/winter) and over area (tropics/temperate/polar), the lower the average temperature, and the more you need the “greenhouse effect” to explain the temperature levels we see.
So our planet is just like a low pressure Venus where all the surface warming come from greenhouse gases.
OK
Ah-ha, I finally got it, Tony, you magnificent bastard (quoting Patton when he beat the crap out of Rommel). You are drawing all of us “greenhouse deniers” out of the woodwork to show off our stuff. Man you are quite the wiz at this…….
Robert Wood would be proud of you, he did after all disprove the presence of “N-Rays”.
What’s that you say, you’ve never heard of an “N-Ray”, well that’s simply because they DO NOT EXIST, much like the “Greenhouse Effect”.
Very clever of you Tony…
Cheers, Kevin.
No, I am trying to educate people, so that this is a site where new people will come for facts.
The question is not whether a greenhouse effect exists. The question is whether the greenhouse will get warmer if you add glass to it.
During the night, CO2 and water vapor serve as radiative gases, converting heat in the air to IR, which is lost to space. During the day, these gases are saturated and their absorption and emissions are a wash. If the “greenhouse effect” is talking about CO2 and water vapor in the upper tropical troposphere (at -17 deg C) warming the Earth’s surface (at 15 deg C), it’s a complete failure and against simple thermodynamics. If the “greenhouse effect” is the core of weather forecasting, then it is an accident that they have compounded errors to produce a working model for predicting the weather.
Wait, the “greenhouse effect” does NOT include the effects of water vapor and warm air causing convection, part of a huge negative-feedback engine, and also does NOT include the radiative retarding effects of clouds!
I claim foul here. You are redefining “greenhouse effect” to include features NOT included in the “greenhouse effect” claimed by the warmers.
Take your argument to Piers Corbyn who does the best long term forecasts. He doe not use the Greenhouse Effect in his work and does a better job than those who do.
In other words, it is too small to matter.
The greenhouse effect is very large, as indicated by the difference in nighttime temperatures in deserts and jungles.
No, cloud effects are very large. The Greenhouse effect of GHG’s is quite small and hard to identify or you would have written a peer reviewed paper on the subject and become an instant hero to all the Watermelons who desperately need it. Oh, and independently wealthy.
So tell me, when we talk about convection don’t you consider the arboreal environment as a PHYSICAL BARRIER to it?!?!
Maybe you need to take your measurements from 6 feet above the canopy??
Again, you are confusing the effects of GHG’s/humidity with clouds that reflect.
I am so sick of this shit.
“I’m so sick of this shit” ……
Steve, you need a break. Take a little time off , but in the meantime you might want to do a bit of reading here…..my comments…
http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog/recurring-ice-ages-and-warm-periods-explained#comments
Regards,
Mack.
Steve, also I forgot this comment…
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/back-to-basics/#comment-35574
When it comes to this “Greenhouse” effect, it seems that simplicity and reality almost appear to be “anti-science”, or a joke on human intelligence.
Kind regards,
Mack.
The “Greenhouse effect” in a greenhouse is caused by the prevention of convection heat from the inside air to the outside air, caused by a physical non-convecting barrier (glass, etc) .
CO2, water vapour, methane, etc, don’t stop convection, they can move, therefore there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas.
CO2, etc, only temporarily impede (damp, slow down) the movement of radiated heat, to and from space.
I abhore and revile the term ‘greenhouse effect’. As an expression it is plain and obvious that ‘greenhouse effect’ happens in greenhouses, not to planets.
IMO as a phrase it should be deprecated as it is a source of confusion and annoyance. Infra-red active would fit better. But like so many inconsistent things on this planet I will have to tolerate and accommodate it.
Tony America put men on the moon using the calculations of Newtonian Gravity that has at its core mass attraction. Anyone with even the remotest scientific interest in our world cannot have failed to come across the fact that we have no proof of this “mass attraction” that the most asked question by new physics students always is “what’s the speed of gravity” for which the mainstream have no answer. It is assumed to be infinite which if Einstein is to be believed would imply infinite energy somewhere. Someone is wrong.
You may be thinking where is this going? Simple, Newton’s Math’s works well enough at a local level for us to use it. But we know at galactic scale it does not, we know the orbit of mercury does not, and we know a certain space craft is not where we predicted it to be. Our Galaxy does not. Climate models work at one scale but otherwise they do not and as predictors of climate change have failed, and the simple answer to that is they are full of the wrong assumptions.
If we didn’t use the words “greenhouse effect” we could move this discussion on because there is a fair amount of agreement amongst the commenters. If that leap could be made then progress could be made.
If we are to have “greenhouse effect” used as a phrase in discussions here then at least put a basic definition together that will stop the simpler mistakes, and errors from happening.
Without elementary points of reference how is the debate to move foreward?
I agree. But as I have written in other posts on this topic here, the terms greenhouse, greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases are colloquial terms that have taken on a bogus scientific meaning. Even if you accept radiative forcing, the physical mechanism of this bears no relationship to the way a greenhouse works. These terms are political, they are deliberately vague and over the last 20 years the definition as used by the warmists has changed as their predictions have faltered. We will never get an adult debate on this subject just so long as people insist this is the mechanism the keeps the surface temperature of earth as it is.
If you want another analogy let look at other words that have taken on bogus meanings. Capitalism has all but disappeared from the west to be replaced with crony capitalism. Crony capitalism has caused the banking crisis, it has diverted billions of dollars of investment into government subsidized projects that would never have got off the ground if the rules of capitalism had applied. All this money has been lost to the economy staving western companies of much needed money, and lined the pocket of the chosen few. Average wages and standards of living have fallen across the west for the first time in decades. Yet our liberal left press and bubble doweling political class blame capitalism for this failure. They have manipulated the language so that it is now impossible to have a proper debate on the subject. As with Capitalism; so with science and the green house debate.
Until it is accepted that climate science is politics, and all the political contrived terms banished, we won’t get any progress; which is damaging as this IS the key debate. Tony needs to take a blood pressure pill (I highly recommend them) and take his own advice on all other subjects and listen to what is being said rather than be hung up on words. I don’t think there has ever been a subject that has engendered so many mental blocks than the greenhouse effect.
I have very low blood pressure and avoid pointless discussions of semantics.
Greenhouse gases impede energy flow and raise the temperature below above what they would be without the greenhouse gases.
I can’t get passed ‘greenhouse gases’ or ‘greenhouse effect’ being an illogical phrases, propounded by stupid historical whim. Truly I can not “get over it” anymore than you can “get over” your low blood pressure.
I will however attempt to accomodate this stupidity of phrasing. It would be so much easier to do if a reference definition is agreed. These phrases have a slippery history of meaning and use, they can change, camelian-like, to suit any new intent, and that’s difficult to track. I do not feel it is unreasonable to request a standard, a reference point be set in this matter.
I’m sorry if you feel offended by anything I have written – I do not mean to hurt or offend anyone. This is what and how I am. I offer no apology, if I sound too curt or off-hand please do not take it personally.
Define the greenhouse effect.
or
or
or
or
or
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
Wiki blathers on for too long to quote. It basically comes to the point near the end of the first section with…
or
EPA at http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/basics/today/greenhouse-effect.html says
….And on it goes.
Tony/Steven
What is your prefered definition – EPA? Wiki? Other?
Without a point of reference arguments and confusion will continue.
Ooops forgot the IPCC’s definition, well I’ll let someone else do that one.
Steven/Tony JAMSTEC do not include a function for CO² in their forecast model. I wrote and asked. They answered NO .
That is absolutely brilliant. Is there some reason you chose to not ask them whether they model humidity? H2O is the only greenhouse gas which matters to weather models.
My two cents.
Under clear skies, the atmosphere facilitates the loss of thermal energy from the surface to the upper atmosphere. Under unclear skies, water vapor, dust and condensed water in clouds reflect the thermal radiation, impeding the loss of thermal energy from the surface. Calling this reflection “back radiation” or a “greenhouse effect” has created enormous confusion.
Amen. It should be called an atmosphere effect for the dry mix of gases that make up our atmosphere… none of which radiate any energy below the pressures found above the stratosphere. Everything below that is via convection and conduction.
Clouds reflect, but water vapor and dust do not. Please look up the word “reflection” in a science dictionary. Please be more rigorous.
Yes. Clouds reflect in various frequencies.
ftp://ftp.cira.colostate.edu/ftp/Raschke/Book/Kidder/BOOK-CSU/Chapter%208%20-%20Clouds_Aerosols/Clouds/Related%20Literatur/Irvine%20and%20Pollack.pdf
Now that the discussion goes on i have a question.
What would the temperature be if all CO2 was removed from the atmosphere?
I think it might drop a few Kelvin, but would like others opinions and arguments.
Because of the presence of water vapor, removing all CO2 would have a minor effect on temperature in climates with significant amounts of humidity.
Around 3 C
First thing that would happen is all life on earth would cease with no CO2 so the relevance of the question is mute. However to answer it from a purely academic point of view the temperature could go up as CO2 is one of the primary cooling agents in the troposphere where all the earths energy is lost to space as IR. CO2 provides negligible warming effect. Infrared transparency in earth’s atmosphere depends upon pressure, not the composition of gases. The bulk gases, O2 and N2, under pressure delay the surface from cooling and our mild surface temperatures are the result. This by the way is NOT the greenhouse effect as espoused by most, but could be termed colloquially as the greenhouse effect.
Tell us what effect the pressure has on the transparency of CO2 to IR. Please show all work.
Hi Morgan the internet is awash with real working physicists, retired physicists and science enthusiasts working on this stuff. I’m an engineer who is able to interpret others workings and comment upon the conclusions if not always the workings. This work is constantly evolving and being refined as is the case with all real science. If you find this link below of interest then I will provide others to discussions on the subject. The common thread is that running through these discussions is that the warming at the surface is due to pressure slowing energy transfer and the composition of the gases matters little. Convection and conduction are also the main players at the surface and not radiation which is the core assumption in climate models. We know that locally water in its various forms can dramatically change the temperature at the surface but don’t truly understand the mechanisms. We are just scratching at the surface of properly understanding water and I suggest you read a book called “The Forth Phase of Water” if you have not already.
http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf
If the atmosphere ever were a Greenhouse then we wouldn`t have invented them.
Tony,
Water is a miserable example of a ‘greenhouse gas’ because of the confounding effects of the latent heat of vaporization and the effect of albedo/reflectance of water droplets (clouds).
As I mentioned in other threads Sleepalot and I looked at Adrar, Algeria (desert) and Barcelos, Brazil (rain forest) and found the day-night variation of ~ 10C with a high humidity vs a day-night variation of 35C without and the average temp is 4C lower when in Brazil vs Algeria, even though Barcelos is nearer the equator. The latent heat of evaporation is the probable reason for a lower temp in Brazil. You see the same thing in the 1930s Dust Bowl temperatures in the USA. Sky high temperatures and very low temperatures.
I can not see that disentangling the effects of the latent heat of evaporation, IR radiative effect and albedo effect would be simple and I have never seen any information addressing the problem.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1040071
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1041066
Science has many different aspects.