Posted by
Catmman on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 5:18:24 PM
Or, "How I learned to mock the Greenhouse Effect and Radiative Forcing and
love my CO2!"
Does your coffee get hotter after you put it in a thermos? This is exactly what greenhouse gas alarmists would have you believe happens to the Earths temperature as it relates to the greenhouse effect.
Here's the argument: Greenhouse gases (ghg), primarily CO2 (Carbon Dioxide), trap heat which is absorbed on the planet radiated by the Sun. This thermal radiation is transformed to infrared energy which is radiated back out into space. Greenhouse theory (as stated by the alarmists) says ghg's trap this infrared radiation, not letting it escape back into space. If this were true, we would have baked long ago.
GHG's DO trap SOME energy, but this energy isn't held indefinately - it is just released back into space a little slower. Over time this release of energy regulates the "normal" temperature of the planet. This is what our atmosphere DOES - it retains heat and moisture and other gases which allow life. This same mechanism is touted by the alarmists as leading to our ultimate doom.
I can think of two examples to illustrate this.
First, think of your normal day to day temperature fluctuations where you live. Here in San Antonio it was 76 degrees F when I left for work this morning. When I get home this evening, the temperature will be over twenty degrees hotter, around 98 degrees F. And this temperature fluctuation took place in less than 12 HOURS. In 12 hours, the temperature where I lived will go from 76 degrees to 98 degrees F - all without me or anything I see, own or enjoy bursting into flames!
When the sun sets, the radiation absorbed by the sun will slowly be released back into space. This drop in temps also accurs gradually over about 12 hours. And it occurs gradually due to greenhouse gases. The temperature tomorrow morning will be roughly the same as it was this morning. Without the greenhouse effect, we would all freeze to death and the Earth would be a giant icicle!
To further illustrate this, think of a thermos. If you fill a thermos with hot coffee, the radiant heat of the coffee is trapped within the thermos by the thermos' insulation. However, this trapped heat doesn't make the coffee in the thermos any hotter. Just as with our atmosphere, the thermos traps the heat, releasing it slowly over time, keeping the coffee at it's optimal drinking temperature for a longer period of time.
I know this is an oversimplification, but when written like this, it's easier to see just how stupid the alarmists theories are and how easily defeatable their "science" is. Of course the alarmists and advocates for throwing us all back into the stone age would say, "Well, that's the way it's supposed to work, but if you add MORE CO2 like we are, you throw off the atmosphere's balance and it gets hotter!" Well, exactly how much effect would CO2 supposedly have if the alarmist argument were true? More on that below.
Or as stated this way:
As Alan Siddons points out: "You might as well believe that your image in a mirror can burn your face”. It is palpably absurd, and yet it is an accurate depiction of the theory that the IPCC has foisted on the public - a theory that IPCC critics won't even attack because, presumably, they believe it too.
Moreover, the actual trapping of heat cannot raise an object's temperature in the first place. It only slows down heat loss. For instance, a polar bear is a living thermos bottle. Its internal body temperature is much the same as ours. But its surrounding fat and fur are such that - and this is remarkable - a polar bear is virtually invisible to a thermal camera. Just like coffee in a thermos, you can't tell how hot the inside of a polar bear is by looking at it from the outside. But neither does coffee in a thermos get hotter because its heat is trapped. It just retains its temperature for a longer time. Otherwise, both the polar bear and the thermos would self-ignite.
In short, the earth absorbs enough energy from the sun to reach a certain temperature. Since it radiates the same amount, its temperature obviously isn't raised by carbon dioxide absorbing some infrared - for CO2 simply releases that energy at the same pace, as satellites attest. But even if CO2 did trap thermal energy, as insulation does (creating an emission discrepancy that would be quite observable to satellites), the earth's temperature could go no higher than what it began with. To repeat, coffee doesn't get hotter in a thermos."
If your a techno-math geek and
want to see proof, here you go:
Canadian geophysicist, Norm Kalmanovitch, made these calculation for me. [see disclaimer below]
They're based on figures obtained directly from the Dutch Met Office, whereby the mass of our entire atmosphere is given as 5,300,000 gigatons and the total carbon dioxide in it as 3,000 gigatons.
5,300,000 gigatonnes of atmosphere require 0.24 x 1,010^10 kcal of heat to warm 1.0°C. 3,000 gigatonnes of CO2 would requite a warming to 5,300,000/3,000 x .24/.34 = 1247°C to have enough heat to transfer to the atmosphere for each 1°C rise in temperature.
Did you read that? Every single molecule of CO2 would need to be over a thousand degrees Centigrade to warm the rest of the atmosphere by one degree!!
Yet by the magic of radiative forcing this will take place, according to the alarmists and based on the UN IPCC pseudo-scientific dogma.
[Disclaimer: The specific heat of a gas varies with temperature and pressure and static values such as this can only give a gross approximation. The number quoted of 1247°C is probably only accurate to +/- 400°C; but a range of 800°C to 1600°C is still well beyond anything reasonable for the "forcing" from the greenhouse capture of thermal radiation from the Earth."]
So, EACH MOLECULE of CO2 would have to be of such high temperatures as to be unbelieveable to raise the temp of the entire planet - by ONE DEGREE!
Of course there is no evidence of any of this outside of James Hansens computer models.
Al Gore and other alarmists are indeed magnificent bastards for getting so many fools (
including ALL of our current Presidential candidates and all but 13 Republican Senators) to believe this crap!