dansmith62 - 20 November 2012 07:06 AM
sine dues - 30 October 2012 12:40 PM
I don’t see a problem with increased CO2….it is good for the planet
Increased CO2 -increased plant mass- increased number of humans enjoying the Earth
Really? What about life in the oceans? Does the term ocean acidification mean anything to you? What about marine plankton at the bottom of the food chain?
Ooh-ooh I know the answer to that one: Silly the ocean is alkaline… how can it possibly be becoming acidic. 
for the record
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But on the serious side as it happens I stopped by over here because I’ve been reading some interesting stuff about Gerlich and Tscheuschner 2009 and that whole crazy-making about the “greenhouse theory” being disproven. It’s always bizarre how some people can be convinced that they’ve proven many thousands of thousands of scientists and experiences wrong with one great insight.
In any event this post impressed me and then I was trying to remember from where I’m familiar with “logicman” I thought it was over here, but guess I’m wrong (probably skepticalscience.com) but then, I saw this thread and “sine dues” confusion. And it seems to me this post directly addresses sd’s foolishness.
(http) climatephysicsforums(dot)com/topic/3292392/2/index(dot)html (it’s not spam I promise)
post #13 ~ logicman:
This is going to be a very short comment, just to keep the ball rolling.
It might be better if the term ‘greenhouse gas’ had never been coined. The basic principle of every greenhouse or cloche is that warmed air is trapped and kept from rising as a thermal.
As to the papers under discussion, I think we have a straw man argument:
“a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment”
Firstly, an atmosphere is an integral part of a planetary surface environment.
Secondly, a planetary atmosphere is a heat engine driven by a sun.
The second law of thermodynamics is often stated to demand that heat can only flow from a hot to a cold body. If that is the stance taken by the authors as a founding argument then their conclusions must inevitably be wrong.
The notion that heat can only flow from a hot to a cold body is a basic principle of the caloric theory of heat. Whilst being a very useful fiction in the case of conductive heat transfer it completely fails to describe reality in the case of radiative heat transfer.
Caloric heat flow is unidirectional. Radiative heat transfer is bidirectional.
The temperature of a body is determined by the net radiative transfer.
When two radiating bodies are in proximity there will be a flow of radiated energy from each to the other. If they are of different temperatures then there will be a net flow of energy from the hotter to the colder body.
Unlike caloric theory, the law of net radiative transfer does not completely prohibit the transfer of heat energy from a colder to a hotter body. It prohibits a net positive transfer from cold to hot.
If you consider CO2 and radiative transfer then you must not treat the atmosphere as a single homogenous body. For the purpose of discussion it is a support matrix of Nitrogen with embedded radiating bodies - CO2 molecules.
A CO2 molecule can emit a photon in any direction. In atmosphere, that photon can be directed towards the ground or towards space.
There is no mechanism by which a hot ground surface can force a CO2 molecule to emit a photon towards space.
In the correct model, the planetary surface is a body and each individual CO2 molecule is a body.
By intercepting photons and returning some of them to the surface, CO2 molecules reduce the net radiative transfer between a hot planetary surface as source and empty space as sink.
A CO2 molecule, just like any reflector, can return photons towards their source.
The CO2 effect is less like a greenhouse, more like an assemblage of corner reflector antennas. The more such antennas you hang on your plastic boat, the greater the chance that an echo will be returned to the supertanker that’s headed your way.
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Missdufus has a point, but I think Darron nailed it
DarronS - 29 October 2012 06:11 PM
Missdufus - 29 October 2012 05:25 PM
Do you think the reasons for denial may be as simple as not wanting to change? If you admit that global warming is man made, then to change that, would mean changing the way you live. For those leading a western lifestyle, it means a fundamental shift in the way you use the planet.
I used to think that, but if you read Six Aspects of Denial on the Watching the Deniers site linked above you’ll find the real answer in aspect #6.
For libertarians and free market advocates, climate change is a direct challenge to their assumption of unlimited growth.
This is the key. Climate change not only requires we change our lifestyles, it requires free market advocates to abandon their cherished anti-government worldview, for we cannot mitigate climate change without regulations.
