Global warming/climate change

[claudiu]

@Andrew

It does address it implicitly because if something can’t absorb much heat, and can’t emit much heat.

It’s not adding anything more just because it’s 99%, because it didn’t absorb it to being with.

That’s the whole point. It’s really shit at absorbing, and thus having anything to emit.

It’s not “shit at absorbing” heat. It’s “shit at absorbing” infrared radiation. It absorbs heat just fine via convection and conduction. See:

@claudiu

@solvann

Tyndall and Foote showed that nitrogen and oxygen, which together account for 99 percent of the atmosphere, had essentially no influence on Earth’s temperature because they did not absorb heat.

This is demonstrably false, though. Just start a fire in a fireplace. The air (99% of which is nitrogen & oxygen) warms as a result of contact with the fire. All of it warms, not just 1% of it.

Alternately turn on a heater that heats the air near the floor. The hot air will rise to the top. Then stand up and wave your hands in the air. You’ll feel the heat. The air as a whole (99% of which is nitrogen & oxygen) warms up. It is absorbing the heat from the air below. All the air is hotter, not just 1% of it.

The paper doesn’t even contemplate or consider the capacity of N2 and O2 to become heated outside of infrared absorption. It’s not something it addresses because it’s not in the model it’s all based on in the first place.

@Andrew

@claudiu

And yet according to atmosphere science, the first 10km worth of atmosphere is virtually unaffected by the effects of radiative heating (ie the infrared-absorbing qualities of that 1% of gases):

Yes. They are basically saying that. I haven’t seen any evidence apart from the potential 3% in that paper, to suggest they are wrong.

What I quoted here contradicts your point, it doesn’t prove it!

This is a graph of temperature vs. altitude (source):

What is accepted in atmosphere science is that the temperature of the entire first 10km of this – from 15°C on the Earth to -50°C at the 10km mark – is due essentially entirely to the heat storing and transferring qualities of the gases that do not participate in infrared absorption.

If the 1% of trace gases had a 33x stronger effect than the 99% of regular gases like you say they do, then this wouldn’t be true. The first 10km of the atmosphere would also be dominated by the properties of that 1% of gases – after all they would account for 97% of the effect (everything but the 3% you calculated).

But the facts are the opposite. The 10km is dominated by the 99% of gases not the 1%.

@Andrew

So, to connect the dots here, 99% of the atmosphere is using whatever heat it has to do work when it expands. There is only water, CO2 CH4 and a couple of others, which have the capacity to expand and also radiate heat.

Everything radiates heat! That’s how an object’s temperature is measured. If O2 and N2 didn’t radiate heat then you could heat them up forever and they’d never get hot.

@Andrew

Which, would explain why the models didn’t take the effect of the 99% into account, because it was assumed that air is essentially using whatever heat it had when it expands as work.

Despite whatever the case may be there, the fact is that the atmosphere up to the 10km maintains the temperatures that it does. However the mechanism by which it gets there, work expended or not, this is the equilibrium temperature. And, being at that equilibrium temperature… the entire atmosphere is emitting infrared light, some towards the ground, some towards space. How the entirety of the atmosphere emitting infrared light can be automatically assumed to have zero effect, as the starting point of a model, boggles the mind!

It’s also worth reiterating that all this does is show the model to be self-contradictory. The model claims that the entirety of the effect of the Earth being 33°C than it “should” be, is due to infrared light being emitted to the ground. And they ignore the infrared light that 99% of the atmosphere emits in their calculation!!

It is a self-defeating model. But it doesn’t mean that the Earth indeed should be -18°C and that 100% of the atmosphere is responsible for it being 15°C as opposed to just 1%. The entire basis of thinking the Earth “should be” -18°C is flawed. For the full ridiculosity of the argument see Richard’s article .

Cheers,
Claudiu