Also he mentions that if an increase in CO2 were responsible for increased temperature, then the effect would be immediately observable.
There would be no decades long delay in temperature rise. The IR would immediately have heated the planet. Zero delay.
There is no measurements (which haven’t been otherwise manipulated and lied about) showing any increase in global temperature beyond seasonal and cyclic variation.
That really does seal it for me.
To sum up, any increase in CO2 would according to the “greenhouse effect” have an immediate effect.
i.e. if downward infrared backradiation did indeed work like it does in the atmospheric greenhouse effect, then this is how stoves would work. There would be a hot surface, and then a small vacuum gap (to prevent conduction & convection), and an IR-transparent pot would sit on top of this. Then the heater surface would be heated to a temperature far less than 100°C. The water would absorb the heat, this would warm the water up, and then radiate infrared both upwards and downwards. The downward infrared radiation would then heat the surface of the heater past what it was (without adding any additional power) until it eventually got to 100°C and boiled the water!
This would be incredibly useful and it surely would have been discovered and invented by now, it would be how stoves work.
Yet in the real world, we have to heat the stove past 100°C in order to boil the water!
If steam can’t heat the surface of the water it came from, and it’s actually hot, then it’s plainly obvious a cold atmosphere isn’t going to heat the surface of the earth.
It was his comment that radiation is instantaneous that really got me.
Any increase in CO2 (or water vapour etc) would instantaneously heat the globe if “back radiation” is really what turns a frozen planet into a livable one.
I haven’t tried it yet, but it should be possible to show this from the climate “science” published numbers.
That is; “radiative forcing” is ascribed to certain gases. In proportion to the 33C they are attributed to providing.
Why there should be any controversy is beyond me, as it would be primary school mathematics to work that out.
So is the consensus here that CO2 doesn’t trap heat? I’m interested in pursuing this topic for my own edification. But I need to dumb it down first. Otherwise, it’ll be too much unfamiliar knowledge too fast.
Not in the way that the “greenhouse effect” is said to do it at a scale which warms the planet 33C above it’s (Stefan Boltzmann derived) -18C starting point to the observed 15C average surface temperature.
It’s not that there is no trapping/ radiation etc going on, just the amount that is associated with “radiative forcing” which is the backbone of the CO2 AGW (anthropomorphic global warming) doctrine.
It didn’t sound like you were saying that. I got that you thought the original -18C temp without CO2 number was basically just a guess. And that there is no greenhouse effect at all. Are you able to concisely explain to a non-scientist who hasn’t done his research why you think CO2 traps heat but isn’t responsible for the melting glaciers? It’d really help me frame my research.
The original -18C proposed by the use of a modified Stefan-Blotzmann equation has indeed been my main interest. I can’t conclusively prove it is wrong without building a computer model.
So what Claudiu has been investigating, which climate AGW proponents call “radiative forcing” is more fruitful for an amateur.
It’s indisputable that everything that can absorb heat can radiate heat. That includes all matter, which includes all gasses.
The question is can a very thin layer of gasses raise the temperature of the planet from -18C to 15C?
Well, like our experience of insulation in everyday life, air can insulate us. Our own bodies attempt to do this with goosebumps. The body causes hairs to stand on end to trap air next to the skin. It’s very ineffective because most people are not hairy enough.
As far as the planet goes, the air (held to the planet with gravity and the magnetic field) traps heat. However, it can’t trap heat which wasn’t already there.
The mechanism of “greenhouse effect” is proposing that it not only traps heat, which is obvious, but also raises the temperature of the surface beyond it’s starting point.
Dig into the theoretical science and numbers, the Stefan-Blotzmann equation, thermodynamics, gas absorption spectrums, etc.
Dig into the history of the “greenhouse” theory.
Search for experimental examples.
My personal hypothesis is that the average temperature of the planet without an atmosphere or water, (and obviously without life)
is close to the observed average temperature of 15C. Perhaps higher, perhaps lower, but not radically far away from the observed average.
Anything which interacts in the material universe, interacts with heat.
So, all the gases (is it gases or gasses? English really needs a makeover), being matter, will absorb and radiate heat. CO2 will do it better than O2 or N2 because of how it is; it has far more matter in it.
To say it isn’t making a difference to global temperature is wrong. Of course it does. All matter on the planet is interacting with heat.
The question is whether it is pivotally impacting global temperature in the way the political AGW advocates claim.
No.
Simply no.
It has no where near the matter required to make the difference they propose.
If we were emitting granite, or limestone, or something substantial, it would make a huge difference. However, that matter would have to be in addition to the matter already on the planet. Which obviously is impossible.
To be frank, I don’t think the value of this topic is in the conclusion, but rather in the process of seeking the answers which appeal to your curiosity.
Doesn’t virtually all the Earth’s heat originally come from sunlight. And the Sun continuously heats the planet. If the planet wasn’t able to cool off then wouldn’t it get hotter and hotter like a jogger wearing winter gear who eventually overheats?
Well, yes, that is the fact of it. So perhaps the atmosphere actually cools the planet down!
There is around average of 60KW per square kilometre of geothermal heat.
From link below;
Recent scientific measurements suggest a global heat flux equivalent to 31 Terrawatts of Power.
Averaged over the earth’s surface, this equates 60 KW per square kilometer of heat flux (or 60 mW/m2), but as shown in the figure below, there is considerable varation around this."
1- by this logic isn’t it how stoves should work? See: Global warming/climate change - #286 by claudiu . I mean the heat source would continuously heat the heating element. If it can’t cool off — because there’s a pot of water in the way — then shouldn’t it keep heating up, until it can boil the water away?
We could all be saving so much on our power bills!
When relating the proposed theory to everyday objects it doesn’t quite fit does it?
2- here’s a funny thought. According to some proponents of AGW, gases like O2 and N2 can’t radiate heat at all! NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab disagrees with them — they put out a book in which it’s written that all matter radiates heat including gases — but in any case let’s say they’re right.
That means that O2 and N2 (making up 99% of the atmosphere) would be perfectly and 100% trapping heat! They would be getting heated up by conduction and convection from the ground, and by the CO2 and other IR gases in the air absorbing IR, but literally would be unable to lose the heat in any way at all (not by radiation; and not by conduction or convection as they would already be cooler than the surface of the Earth).
Therefore the IR gases which can radiate heat, would actually be causing a cooling, because they can radiate some heat away while the other 99% of gases can’t.
Of course if the O2 and N2 can radiate heat as well… then they would be causing just as much of a greenhouse effect as CO2, by the exact same proposed mechanism (“back-radiation”).
I am not sure exactly what you mean “by this logic”, but this bit
Is to me one of the main points of what is missing in the Stefan-Blotzmann derived temperature; time.
Materials do keep heating up, and will keep heating up, even to the point and beyond of transforming into other states of matter. Water heats up and becomes a vapour.
Rocks heat up too, with enough heat they can become a liquid, even a gas, as they break down.
This has what has been occupying my mind in the whole discussion; a virtual model of the earth without atmosphere, water etc, and just the calculations of what that body would do.
The geological properties of the sand, silt, rocks etc, rotating correctly, at the correct tilt.
What would be the average temperature?
Because as you say, the water in the jug will keep boiling as long as enough heat is being applied.
So what does happen to an earth spinning in 3K space, bathed in unfiltered solar radiation do?
I have downloaded various data sheets on rocks and sand etc, with the data about how well they conduct heat, IR penetration etc.
When I finally get my taxes done, and all the extra work that appeared lately, and after starting to record and finish my EP, I want to build that virtual model.
I really suspect that the earths average temperature under those conditions is similar, or perhaps even higher than the 15C.
It could well be that the atmosphere is cooling the planet.
Indeed the ice core levels of CO2 show the levels rising hundreds of years after a warm period before the planet cools down.
Interestingly, I was in Russian lessons with an 81 year old Aussie guy who, when I told him I was investigating all of this, said “in the 70s they (scientists) were saying we are going into an ice age”!
By this logic we would only need to heat a stovetop to say 50°C, then put a pot of water on it, and as the stovetop couldn’t cool anymore because of the water in the way, it would heat the water, which would then in turn heat the stovetop (or ‘prevent it from cooling’ if you prefer), etc., until the stovetop would get to the sufficient 100°C+ needed to boil the water!
But we all know in the physical world, the stovetop has to initially be hotter than 100°C in order to boil the water.
You’re saying a pot of water could heat the stovetop up, so we only need to put enough energy to make the stovetop 50°C and this can result in eventually getting the water to boil?
I don’t think the physical world works that way!
This is an imaginary scenario where the calculation wouldn’t correspond to any possible physical reality. As an example only, you can’t have sand and silt without air and water! (sand: “Sand is an authentic relic. In a way, we could say that a beach is the result of thousands of years of mechanical interaction between the earth, air, water and, in some cases, even fire.” ; silt: “fine sand, clay, or other material carried by running water and deposited as a sediment, especially in a channel or harbour.”)
Well you could just glance at the Earth’s neighbor, the moon, which gets the same amount of sun and indeed has no atmosphere. It gets to over +120°C during the day and under -120°C at night!
While I don’t understand the physical principle, you have brought it up many times: The source can’t heat itself up. My brain doesn’t understand that yet. But if I simply take it as true then the stove would never heat up past it’s original temperature. (I’m guessing the air coming back would be too cold).
So why is this a good analogy? It’s the sun that heats up the earth. No one is claiming a hotter atmosphere will heat up the Sun. I don’t see how it makes a difference that the Sun is heating up the atmosphere by first bouncing it’s energy off the earth’s surface. It’s still the sun that is doing the heating. It seems like my joggers analogy is the better one. But a better one would be someone wearing all winter gear at noon on the Equator out of the shade away from the ocean. The Sun heats him past 37 degrees, the gear traps the heat, he gets too hot and passes out. I must be missing something about the Earth’s surface reflecting the Sun’s rays. But I’m not seeing how that changes what the heat source is.
Sorry I have to put this one aside for the time being.
Addendum (edit): I apologize for being dense but I’m cooking up some noodles as we speak on my gas stove and have been thinking about what is quite the riddle for me. Is the Sun the heat source or the reflecting matter; the Earth? And for some reason it always comes back to it being the Sun. So the way I am thinking, a proper stove analogy would be the Sun is the fire on the stove, the water is the surface of the Earth and a lid is the CO2. IME, the water boils much faster when there is a lid on it. But I’m probably wrong about that. I was really bad at the hard sciences as a pupil. I liked anthropology and basic astronomy but when it came down to making precise measurements or calculating chemical reactions, I sucked.
Ah, I understand now. Yes, the input energy will always need to be greater than the object it’s heating, for that object to continue heating up.
50C of heat energy will at best heat something to 50C.
Regarding the models, I agree. It’s still a theoretical model which would never actually exist. As you say, the sand and various other results of errosion, are only there because of the water.
The moon is covered in “regolith” , which is actually very sharp, corrosive dust from bombardment over the moon’s life. (I was looking up the actual measurements of temperature from Apollo 15, and apparently the dust is extremely unhealthy to be around).
The basic premise for me was models that use the geological properties of the earth to see what a 24 hour rotationing virtual"earth" would be like.
As apposed to looking at the moon with its 13 day “day” or mars with it’s different size, orbit and day.
Essentially, we will never have the conditions which an actual experiment can happen. There are no other “earths” as a “control” with which we can say "earth A has temperature X, and earth B has temperature Y, the only difference between the two is the atmosphere, water and biology '.
Which is literally the only way it could be definitely said exactly what the effect of atmosphere, water and biology (and the byproducts of them) have on the average temperature.
In the model of the greenhouse effect, they claim the Sun can only heat the Earth to -18C – no more than this. i.e. without an atmosphere the Earth would be -18C. This is said to be the full impact of the Sun’s insolation.
So this -18C surface is as hot as the heat source can get due to the Sun. This is the temperature of the ‘stove’. The sun can’t heat it further. It can’t get any more energy than this from the Sun – and nor do the AGW proponents say that it does. Rather…
They say that this -18C surface then heats up an atmosphere, and the atmosphere radiates some of this heat back to the surface. This back-radiation is now added onto the Sun’s initial radiation, and is said to then bring the surface of the Earth up to +15C.
i.e. they are not saying that the Sun heats the Earth to +15C – they’re saying the Sun heats the Earth to -18C, the Earth then heats the atmosphere, now the atmosphere heats the Earth to higher than this -18C, now the Earth is hotter so it heats the atmosphere more, etc. etc., until finally the Earth is an additional +33C hotter, up to +15C – and it’s this much hotter solely due to the atmosphere’s heat, which heat it got from the -18C Earth initially!
But the Sun can only do this because it’s already giving way more than 37°C of heat in the first place. You can observe this for yourself by parking a car in the sun on a sunny day and leaving the windows closed. If you leave it for a few hours and come back, it’s way hotter in the car – e.g. can even get up to 70°C. That’s because the windows and body of the car prevent cooling by convection – which is how an actual greenhouse works.
That’s the real problem with the model. The Sun really provides over 120°C equivalent worth of heat to the Earth, in the daytime (just look at the moon). That the surface temperature of the earth is only 23°C outside my window right now instead of +120°C, is due to the atmosphere ameliorating or insulating the surface against this powerful 120°C. Preventing convection alone raises this 23°C to ~70°C!
And similarly at the nighttime, the Earth would really cool to -120°C or less (like this moon), if not for the atmosphere. So the reason it will be (a prediction of) 17°C tonight instead of -120°C, is because the atmosphere prevents the surface from cooling.
Hence, during the daytime the atmosphere prevents the Earth from heating up, and during the nighttime it prevents it from cooling down. The magic “-18C” mathematically modelled and calculated number doesn’t factor anywhere into this physical reality.
Basically heat only flows from hot to cold. If you have a hot object and you heat up another object to a colder temperature than it, now that colder object in turn can’t heat anything higher than its temperature, despite its initial heat source having been hotter. Because it only has as much heat as it has. It can’t generate more heat out of this – if it could you could construct a perpetual motion machine, either of the 1st kind – which outputs more energy than is input – or the 2nd kind, which merely redistributes existing energy in a physically impossible way.
That was the brilliance of Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s. He (along with Carnot and probably other contemporaries) saw that the very fact of having a temperature differential between two bodies, means that that temperature difference can be exploited to produce work (e.g. to lift a heavy object off the ground). Therefore if you could create a device that takes existing heat energy and just redistributes it from a colder object into a hotter object, without doing any work — then you could take this new temperature differential and use it to do work! You would have more work output than input, and thus a perpetual motion machine.
Or similarly if you can bring heat from cold to hot by doing X work, and then use the temperature differential to produce Y > X work, then you can connect X the Y output work back into the system to keep the cycle going forever, producing an extra Y - X worth of work – all with conserving energy (1st law of thermodynamics obeyed). The reason it doesn’t work is because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
But that still puts the Earth as the heat source. The actual heat source is said to be about 5000C. That they think the Earth would only average -18C means they think it’s losing heat somehow. Perhaps if we put a blanket over it, then it wouldn’t lose so much heat.
