CO2 Follows Temperature

[IanC]

Quote: Originally Posted by IanC
until someone can prove to me that these things do not happen then I dont think we should scoff at people who are concerned with the build up of CO2. in the past I have looked for quantification of these various pathways but the information is not easily found. it is certainly less than 4% (half of 8%), and more importantly we are only talking about the recent increase of CO2 on a previously equilibrated system, which is known to decrease its effect logarithmically.
SSDD said- No one need prove to you that those things do not happen. All you need do is look at the real world and see whether or not the things that are claimed to result from those things are happening or not. Observation tells us that they are not. No hot spot in the troposphere, no reduction in OLR. Long term static, and perhaps even slightly cooling global temps in spite of increased atmospheric CO2. Atmospheric CO2 has been far higher than it is at present with none of the disasterous effects claimed that even 450 or 500ppm might cause. The predicted result of those things happening are just not evident so either they are happening but the result is vanishingly small or the claims of such things happening are the result of misunderstood, or misapplied physics and they are simply not happening regardless of what the models say. In either event, no real effect is being observed in the atmosphere or the climate and the excessive waste of money on a non existent or an incapable greenhouse effect continues.

There may be a theoretical case to be made in a world where radiation is the dominant means of heat transfer but we don't live in that world and observation keeps telling us daily that such an argument fails in this world.

the hotspot is problem of climate models with bogus positive feedbacks built in.

how much energy leaves the system by convection and conduction????? hahahahaha

 

[IanC]

Seems to me that convection and conduction ARE the primary "bottleneck".. It's the blanket on the bulb -- that Ian was referring to. It doesn't "delay" the exit of OLR -- it ANNIHILATES OLR and turns it to heat.

So if the blanket (CO2) annihlates the OLR and turns it to heat, then outgoing OLR measurements should be lessened. They aren't.

The problem with thinking of greenhouse gasses as a blanket is that a blanket is a fixed quantity. Throw it over the heat source and wait a while for equliibrium to be reached then the outgoing OLR will resume. If you are always throwing more, or less blankets on the heat source, then that original amount of OLR won't be reached and the number will be fluxuating....usually decreasing with the addition of more blankets (CO2).

there are a coupla problems there. the increase in CO2 is incremental. there are no big year to year jumps, and what little is there is swamped with natural variation throughout the year due to vegetation. a slightly increasing sine curve, if you will.

next is the problem of the sensitivity of our instruments. often we are looking for changes that are smaller than the measurement error.

and third and most important- when increasing CO2 stops a little bit more of the surface IR from escaping, that energy simply takes a different route into the upper atmosphere where it can again escape by radiation. the bottleneck only affects the lower regions by increasing the temps a bit which increases the radiation a lot (P~T^4), which makes the other pathways functionally more efficient.

there should be no smoking gun deficit of OLR because the system is always in near equilibrium. and the noise of fluctuating CO2, cloud formations, solar fluctuations, etc swamp our abilty to measure, especially over decadal lengths.

 

[SSDD]

are you saying that you dont believe that the CO2 molecule absorbs the photon and becomes excited in one or the other of two vibrational states before it re-emits an identical photon in a random direction as it returns to ground state? perhaps you just think that that process takes exactly zero time. if it does take some finite amount of time then the average speed from when the photon leaves the surface until the same type of photon leaves the atmosphere has declined significantly if it has been absorbed and re-emitted.

You said "slowed considerably" I asked first if you think that the absorbed photon slowed to something less than the speed of light between the time it is absorbed and the time it is emitted. Then I asked if it is not slowed to less than the speed of light, how long it takes for a photon travelling at the speed of light to pass through a CO2 molecule.

Where did you get the idea that I didn't beleve that the CO2 molecule absorbs the IR?

I asked you how long you believe it takes for that photon to pass through the CO2 molecule. Then we can look at that amount of time and determine whether slowed considerably is an accurate statement.

 

[SSDD]

we are talking radiation. the CO2 molecule does not test the universe for its temperature before it emits a photon in a random direction.

I don't believe "random" is the correct word but that is a topic for a different conversation.

as far as the supposed violation of the SLoT, the returning radiation does not heat the surface, it obstructs the loss of heat. the ordered shortwave radiation from the sun does the 'heating'. a thermos doesnt heat or cool its contents, it only slows the movement towards equilibrium.

That being said, explain the lack of heating for the past 16 years even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise. If the loss of heat were, in fact, being obstructed as you claim, then warming would be inevetable and the more CO2 present in the atmosphere, the more warming would be occuring. No warming so it stands to reason that your description of the physics is not a description of reality.

 

[SSDD]

Quote: Originally Posted by IanC
the third case is where the photon is absorbed, causing the CO2 molecule to vibrate, and before it emits the same frequency photon, there is a collision with another molecule in the atmosphere which affects both the speed of the colliding molecules (temperature) and/or emits corresponding radiation (also near 50/50 up/down) according to Planck's Law.
SSDD said- All of these cases are dependent upon photons existing as discrete particles which is questionable.

photons have the properties of both particles and waves, therefore they are obviously neither.

Obviously? Observation tells us that it is obvious that CO2 doesn't have the magical properties ascribed to it either but that fact doesn't seem to bother anyone. Particles were nothing more than a theoretical construct needed to explain the photoelectric effect.

are you questioning that matter radiates according to its temperature as well?

No I am not, but the original statement really didn't warrant any serious rebuttal at all. If the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate, then it can not be emitted at the same frequency as there would be some energy lost in the physical act of causing the vibration. Causing that vibration would be work and work requires energy. Or are you saying that among the other magical properties of CO2, it can do work without expending energy? The energy would have to be emitted at a lower frequency than it was absorbed. If the energy is at a lower frequency, which molecule is it going to interact with?

 

[SSDD]

the hotspot is problem of climate models with bogus positive feedbacks built in.

how much energy leaves the system by convection and conduction????? hahahahaha

The hotspot is the natural result of your theoretical bottleneck.

I am not sure why you are laughing unless it is at the idea that the radiative effects of CO2 on the climate could possibly be detected even if they exist in the noise of convection and conduction.

 

[SSDD]

there are a coupla problems there. the increase in CO2 is incremental. there are no big year to year jumps, and what little is there is swamped with natural variation throughout the year due to vegetation. a slightly increasing sine curve, if you will.

And yet the increase in OLR doesn't indicate that at all.

next is the problem of the sensitivity of our instruments. often we are looking for changes that are smaller than the measurement error.

Or more probably non existent in so far as CO2 is concerned.

and third and most important- when increasing CO2 stops a little bit more of the surface IR from escaping, that energy simply takes a different route into the upper atmosphere where it can again escape by radiation. the bottleneck only affects the lower regions by increasing the temps a bit which increases the radiation a lot (P~T^4), which makes the other pathways functionally more efficient.

Except that temps aren't increasing. They haven't increased for some time and may be decreasing while CO2 continues to rise. That should be enough to tell you that there is an error in your hpothesis.

there should be no smoking gun deficit of OLR because the system is always in near equilibrium. and the noise of fluctuating CO2, cloud formations, solar fluctuations, etc swamp our abilty to measure, especially over decadal lengths.

There is no smoking gun with regard to CO2 at all because if it has any effect at all, it is much to small to detect and therefore completely unimportant. If it exists, natural variables will always completely overwhelm it making the luke warmist argument moot.

 

[IanC]

are you saying that you dont believe that the CO2 molecule absorbs the photon and becomes excited in one or the other of two vibrational states before it re-emits an identical photon in a random direction as it returns to ground state? perhaps you just think that that process takes exactly zero time. if it does take some finite amount of time then the average speed from when the photon leaves the surface until the same type of photon leaves the atmosphere has declined significantly if it has been absorbed and re-emitted.

You said "slowed considerably" I asked first if you think that the absorbed photon slowed to something less than the speed of light between the time it is absorbed and the time it is emitted. Then I asked if it is not slowed to less than the speed of light, how long it takes for a photon travelling at the speed of light to pass through a CO2 molecule.

Where did you get the idea that I didn't beleve that the CO2 molecule absorbs the IR?

I asked you how long you believe it takes for that photon to pass through the CO2 molecule. Then we can look at that amount of time and determine whether slowed considerably is an accurate statement.

a photon can only move at the speed of light. I say it takes a finite amount of time for the CO2 molecule to first absorb the photon, then stay in its excited vibrational form until it drops back into its groundstate by emitting in a random direction a photon equal to the one it absorbed.

perhaps you think it doesnt take time to absorb, vibrate and emit?

 

[IanC]

we are talking radiation. the CO2 molecule does not test the universe for its temperature before it emits a photon in a random direction.

I don't believe "random" is the correct word but that is a topic for a different conversation.

as far as the supposed violation of the SLoT, the returning radiation does not heat the surface, it obstructs the loss of heat. the ordered shortwave radiation from the sun does the 'heating'. a thermos doesnt heat or cool its contents, it only slows the movement towards equilibrium.

That being said, explain the lack of heating for the past 16 years even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise. If the loss of heat were, in fact, being obstructed as you claim, then warming would be inevetable and the more CO2 present in the atmosphere, the more warming would be occuring. No warming so it stands to reason that your description of the physics is not a description of reality.

not random? hahahaha wirebender is back! are you going to tell us that the photon can't be emitted towards the surface because of the 'EM field'?

hey- you do realize that I am a skeptic right? or at least a lukewarmer.

theoretic calculations call for ~1K warming per doubling of CO2. if everything else stays the same. so we should be seeing ~0.5K warming. I think the feedbacks are negative, especially in the tropics where a good thunderstorm can burp off an incredible amount of heat in an hour. could we find the fingerprint of 0.25 or even 0.5K warming in our sliced and diced, homogenized and adjusted temperature data sets? not bloody likely, especially with a myriad of other factors working at the same time.

 

[IanC]

Quote: Originally Posted by IanC
the third case is where the photon is absorbed, causing the CO2 molecule to vibrate, and before it emits the same frequency photon, there is a collision with another molecule in the atmosphere which affects both the speed of the colliding molecules (temperature) and/or emits corresponding radiation (also near 50/50 up/down) according to Planck's Law.
SSDD said- All of these cases are dependent upon photons existing as discrete particles which is questionable.

photons have the properties of both particles and waves, therefore they are obviously neither.

Obviously? Observation tells us that it is obvious that CO2 doesn't have the magical properties ascribed to it either but that fact doesn't seem to bother anyone. Particles were nothing more than a theoretical construct needed to explain the photoelectric effect.

are you questioning that matter radiates according to its temperature as well?

No I am not, but the original statement really didn't warrant any serious rebuttal at all. If the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate, then it can not be emitted at the same frequency as there would be some energy lost in the physical act of causing the vibration. Causing that vibration would be work and work requires energy. Or are you saying that among the other magical properties of CO2, it can do work without expending energy? The energy would have to be emitted at a lower frequency than it was absorbed. If the energy is at a lower frequency, which molecule is it going to interact with?

oh my!

I guess you have never heard of quantum mechanics which state that energy only comes and goes in discrete, defined packets. vibrations at atomic level arent like a guitar string that loses energy. perhaps you think electron spin runs out after awhile too? sometimes the excited CO2 state is also called a bend, maybe that is how you should visualize it. and there are no intermediate steps, it is either bent or not bent, there is no 'bending'.

 

[IanC]

Quote: Originally Posted by IanC
until someone can prove to me that these things do not happen then I dont think we should scoff at people who are concerned with the build up of CO2. in the past I have looked for quantification of these various pathways but the information is not easily found. it is certainly less than 4% (half of 8%), and more importantly we are only talking about the recent increase of CO2 on a previously equilibrated system, which is known to decrease its effect logarithmically.
SSDD said- No one need prove to you that those things do not happen. All you need do is look at the real world and see whether or not the things that are claimed to result from those things are happening or not. Observation tells us that they are not. No hot spot in the troposphere, no reduction in OLR. Long term static, and perhaps even slightly cooling global temps in spite of increased atmospheric CO2. Atmospheric CO2 has been far higher than it is at present with none of the disasterous effects claimed that even 450 or 500ppm might cause. The predicted result of those things happening are just not evident so either they are happening but the result is vanishingly small or the claims of such things happening are the result of misunderstood, or misapplied physics and they are simply not happening regardless of what the models say. In either event, no real effect is being observed in the atmosphere or the climate and the excessive waste of money on a non existent or an incapable greenhouse effect continues.

There may be a theoretical case to be made in a world where radiation is the dominant means of heat transfer but we don't live in that world and observation keeps telling us daily that such an argument fails in this world.

the hotspot is problem of climate models with bogus positive feedbacks built in.

how much energy leaves the system by convection and conduction????? hahahahaha

I was laughing because energy only escapes from the earth by radiation! convection and conduction require matter to be present.

 

[IanC]

there are a coupla problems there. the increase in CO2 is incremental. there are no big year to year jumps, and what little is there is swamped with natural variation throughout the year due to vegetation. a slightly increasing sine curve, if you will.

And yet the increase in OLR doesn't indicate that at all.

next is the problem of the sensitivity of our instruments. often we are looking for changes that are smaller than the measurement error.

Or more probably non existent in so far as CO2 is concerned.

and third and most important- when increasing CO2 stops a little bit more of the surface IR from escaping, that energy simply takes a different route into the upper atmosphere where it can again escape by radiation. the bottleneck only affects the lower regions by increasing the temps a bit which increases the radiation a lot (P~T^4), which makes the other pathways functionally more efficient.

Except that temps aren't increasing. They haven't increased for some time and may be decreasing while CO2 continues to rise. That should be enough to tell you that there is an error in your hpothesis.

there should be no smoking gun deficit of OLR because the system is always in near equilibrium. and the noise of fluctuating CO2, cloud formations, solar fluctuations, etc swamp our abilty to measure, especially over decadal lengths.

There is no smoking gun with regard to CO2 at all because if it has any effect at all, it is much to small to detect and therefore completely unimportant. If it exists, natural variables will always completely overwhelm it making the luke warmist argument moot.

basically I agree with you that our incomplete knowledge of how and why climate changes will preclude us from proving the effect of CO2 on surface temperature. the mechanism is known but not the quantity.

 

[SSDD]

perhaps you think it doesnt take time to absorb, vibrate and emit?

Of course it takes time to absorb and emit. I asked how much time. You said that absorption and emission slowed the photon's path to space considerably. Why not just admit that you used the term considerably inaccurately and be done with it....or are you one of those people who simply can't admit to an error even when it is obvious?

At the speed of light, there is no way that it takes a considerable amount of time to travel the width of a molecule even if you stop for a hand tossed pizza along the way.

Just for the hell of it I looked up the word considerably just to be sure my own definition might not be accurate. Considerably is defined in terms of noteworthy, amply, much, substantially, etc. The photon is not slowed considerably. It is slowed to a vanishingly small degree. Perhaps if you looked up the antonyms of considerably.

 

[SSDD]

not random? hahahaha wirebender is back! are you going to tell us that the photon can't be emitted towards the surface because of the 'EM field'?

I am not quite sure what you mean. The second law states that energy won't flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a high temperature object. The word random seems to allow for a spontaneous emission of energy from a cool object to a warm object. There must be a reason it can't spontaneously move in the direction of warm from cool but I never considered what that reason may be. Can you tell me what you meant in regards to the EM field?

hey- you do realize that I am a skeptic right? or at least a lukewarmer.

Yes, it is obvious that you are a lukewarmer.

theoretic calculations call for ~1K warming per doubling of CO2.

Yes they do. But those calculations are based on assumptions that are simply not proven and observation of the real world tells us that temperatures have remained static and perhaps even dropped over the past decade and a half while atmospheric CO2 has continued on its merry way. Those theoretical calculations are based on a hypothesis that is simply wrong.

 

[SSDD]

I was laughing because energy only escapes from the earth by radiation! convection and conduction require matter to be present.

And I pointed out that radiation only matters at the top of the atmosphere where there is obviously no warming. The models and lukewarmers act as if radiation rules down here on earth when it doesn't. Even if CO2 had the magical qualities ascribed to it, the hypothetical effects of increasing CO2 would not be detectable and could never ever ever rise to a level where they could be detected among the noise of natural variability.

Again, the lukewarmers argument is a moot argument. Ascribing the magic but a weaker magic isn't going to kill the hypothesis so we can move on to more more realistic science.

 

[SSDD]

oh my!

I guess you have never heard of quantum mechanics which state that energy only comes and goes in discrete, defined packets. vibrations at atomic level arent like a guitar string that loses energy. perhaps you think electron spin runs out after awhile too? sometimes the excited CO2 state is also called a bend, maybe that is how you should visualize it. and there are no intermediate steps, it is either bent or not bent, there is no 'bending'.

So you are saying that the photon emits from the CO2 molecule at precisely the same frequency at which it was absorbed?

 

[SSDD]

basically I agree with you that our incomplete knowledge of how and why climate changes will preclude us from proving the effect of CO2 on surface temperature. the mechanism is known but not the quantity.

The mechanism is hypothesized, not known. Guessing on quantity is jumping the cart before the horse. As more physicists enter the argument (out of disgust I suppose) that mechanism comes more and more into question.

 

[konradv]

I was laughing because energy only escapes from the earth by radiation! convection and conduction require matter to be present.

And I pointed out that radiation only matters at the top of the atmosphere where there is obviously no warming. The models and lukewarmers act as if radiation rules down here on earth when it doesn't. Even if CO2 had the magical qualities ascribed to it, the hypothetical effects of increasing CO2 would not be detectable and could never ever ever rise to a level where they could be detected among the noise of natural variability.

Again, the lukewarmers argument is a moot argument. Ascribing the magic but a weaker magic isn't going to kill the hypothesis so we can move on to more more realistic science.

There's nothing realistic about your science. Ridicule of well-established physical principles doesn't earn you any points. It just adds to the number of logical fallacies you're committing. Ian and I have gone round and round on this subject, but here I'm with him 100%. You don't back up your arguments with anything but rhetoric. There's no 'there' there.

 

[SSDD]

You don't back up your arguments with anything but rhetoric. There's no 'there' there.

My arguments are backed up by the fact that for all the billions spent so far by climate science, there doesn't exist even the smallest shred of hard evidence to support your claims of the magical properties of CO2. Not one single lab experiment, not one observation in the real world, and as more physicists enter the argument, more and more physicists arguing that the greenhouse hypothesis is just so much bunkum.

Your agreement with any lukewarmer only proves your willingness to shift your belief from one steaming pile to a less steaming pile.

 

[konradv]

You don't back up your arguments with anything but rhetoric. There's no 'there' there.

My arguments are backed up by the fact that for all the billions spent so far by climate science, there doesn't exist even the smallest shred of hard evidence to support your claims of the magical properties of CO2. Not one single lab experiment, not one observation in the real world, and as more physicists enter the argument, more and more physicists arguing that the greenhouse hypothesis is just so much bunkum.

Your agreement with any lukewarmer only proves your willingness to shift your belief from one steaming pile to a less steaming pile.

Not one single lab experiment? I can shoot down your whole hypothesis in one paragraph, if that's all that's required. I put CO2 into a spectrophotometer and it absorbs in the IR range. I put in more; it absorbs more. Therefore, since CO2 is not "magical" and behaves the same way in the lab and in the atmosphere, if CO2 continues to rise more and more IR will be absorbed. Since statistically 50% of all re-emitted IR radiation would head back towards earth, more CO2 in the atmosphere would mean more heading back towards earth, thereby increasing heat. There you go. Now go away and let people who really know about science argue about whether that's significant enough to cause changes in earth's climate.