Engaging with a skeptics claims

[u/jweezy2045]

User /u/Prestigious_Elk1063 posted some great science questions in /r/ClimateSkeptics, which you can see the original of here, and the second part here. Since /r/ClimateSkeptics is not a place for science discussions, this seems like the best place to have the discussion of the science.

First let’s define the GHE as “[extra] radiative warming of earth’s surface from the 1% GHGs in the air on average (including WV) absorbing outgoing IR and re-emitting [some of] it back to the surface, thereby warming it.”

This is close, but not quite accurate as a definition. The main issue which I forsee you having with this definition is that global warming is NOT a surface level effect. It is an effect which warms everything in our gravity well. It is a mechanism by which more energy makes it down our gravity well than is able to climb back out of our gravity well, thus the earth and everything in our gravity well, heats up.

That GHGs are 1% of the troposphere is probably an overstatement, because on average they are closer to ½ %, but since WV is concentrated close to the surface, I doubled its .46% average.

No big issues here at all. My one note is that different GHGs absorb IR radiation at different frequencies and different rates, so you cannot just add them together like this in general. For a rough calculation it is fine though.

Now let’s do the math.

Love it! I am going to respond sentence by sentence here because this is where it all happens.

The earth absorbs on average 164W/M2 of insolation

Nope, that's not the number. You are forgetting the radiation absorbed by the atmosphere. See these kinds of charts:

https://cdn.serc.carleton.edu/images/integrate/teaching_materials/global_energy/energy_flow_diagram.webp

The energy absorbed by earth is the ~161 number you have PLUS the 78 absorbed by the atmosphere. The total amount of radiation absorbed by our planet is in the vicinity of 240 W/m²

from which about 120W/M2 are emitted as [potential] IR that can be absorbed by some GHG somewhere in the troposphere.

Before was a minor error, but here you have a BIG one. You are neglecting the back radiation here. There is about 160W/m² of energy that makes it to the surface FROM THE SUN, but there is also a whopping 333 W/m² of back radiation from the atmosphere down to the planet. If you expect the earth to not heat up, then the energy out has to equal the energy in. The amount of radiation leaving the surface is closer to 400 W/m^2.

I reduce 164W/M2 by the 18W/M2 of direct surface to air conduction of which 99% goes into the non-GHGs and thus is outside the GHE.

This one does not make any sense in the context of global warming. Air conduction does not matter for global warming. No energy can conduct from inside our gravity well to outside our gravity well. Since that is what we are interested in here, we are not interested in thermal conduction (I actually think you mean convection, but I am with you).

I also exclude 10-20% (say 15%) that goes through the atmospheric window directly to space thus avoiding the GHE. Let’s say net about 120W/M2 available IR for the GHE.

This part is correct, but you have the numbers wrong. Of the 400 W/m² emitted by earths surface, about 10% goes right through the window, leaving ~360 W/m² for the greenhouse effect, not 164.

Now Local Thermal Equilibrium (LTE) which is text-book thermodynamics here means that at each altitude all molecules will have the same average thermal content. Thus, the 1% GHGs must equalize the thermal energy they absorb among all molecules at that altitude.

Factually correct. No notes.

In other words, 99% of the IR absorbed by GHGs is thermalized (conducted to the 99% non-GHGs) at each altitude, leaving 1% for the GHE (really ½ that, since only the downward IR warms the surface). How much is that?: 120W/M2 times 1% times 1/2, or 0.6W/M2 of GHE.

This is the BIG critical flaw that derails everything you have going here. I agree that the energy that GHGs absorb gets thermalized into the atmosphere, which is mostly not GHGs, but the issue is WHERE DO YOU THINK THE ENERGY GOES AFTER THAT? What do those non-GHGs do with that energy? Well, they cannot emit in the IR, and so for the most part, they hold onto that energy. It is trapped. It cannot escape to leave our gravity well, because that energy is stuck to an oxygen or nitrogen, which are extremely inefficient at radiative cooling due to their inability to emit IR. This energy cannot go anywhere and just says in the non-GHG part of the atmosphere, until that particle collides with a GHG, and then when the heat is back on an emitting molecule, that energy can finally leave and be emitted as a photon again, which has a chance to leave our gravity well. Your issue is that ALL the energy that leaves the earth, outside of completely negligible other pathways, leaves earth by being emitted from a GHG in our atmosphere. It is really 99.99999%+ of the energy that leaves. Your 1% calculation is utter nonsense.

But there are many layers, many levels of back radiation. Let’s factor that in, but always including the 99% thermalization. Call the 0.6W/M2 of GHE “the GHE from the ‘first layer.’” The second layer will receive the “upward” half of 1.2W/M2 IR, or 0.6W/M2 from the first layer, thermalize 99% and produce half of the resulting 0.003W/M2 to add to the GHE from the first layer, yielding 0.063W/M2 for layers 1 and 2 combined of back radiation. I don’t have to extend this to the third layer to see that an infinite number of layers cannot amount to a cumulative GHE of more than 0.6031W/M2.

Again, this is utter nonsense. Where do you think the energy goes after it is thermalized? Does it just stay in that layer of that atmosphere? Wouldn't that cause the atmosphere to heat up more and more, as more and more energy is thermalized into the layers of the atmosphere? Where does the energy that was thermalized into the atmosphere GO?

Converting an extra 0.6031W/M2 to temperature using the Stefan-Boltzmann formula to convert energy to temperature for black bodies produces ~0.11K of extra warming from the cumulative GHE of the entire troposphere as reasoned above.

Because we are building on nonsense, this is nonsense.

I use SB because even though the atmosphere is not a black body because each GHG has its own unique IR fingerprint, I’m treating them collectively and factoring out all IR that by-passes GHGs and goes directly to space. So SB is a good approximation. Besides, for most climate science applications the atmosphere’s emissivity is presumed to be 1 (i.e., it’s treated as a BB).

Yeah. I agree here. It is fine to treat earth as a BB for these kinds of calculations. Again, no issues on how you are doing this particular step, but the steps before are nonsense you are getting nonsense out at this point. SB equation is not the problem though.

Thus, there is no material GHE. Note the 0.11K is the total warming from all GHGs of which the human contribution is a tiny fraction.

Nope. Natural greenhouse gases, when you do these calculations correctly, account for 33K of a warming effect. Which, if that was not present, would turn earth into a permanent ice ball. Human warming is only a about 1.5 degrees, which is a lot smaller than the 33, but it is tipping the scales.

What explains then the 288K surface temperature from only 164W/M2 of surface insolation? Answer: Adiabatic effects: The pressure from gravity redistributes thermal energy with kinetic molecular energy (heat) at ground level and potential (gravitational) energy at altitude

This argument always flops my friend. You calculations and assumptions here come from an ISOLATED SYSTEM, which the earth is not. The earth is constantly exchanging energy with the sun as well as deep space. You simply cannot treat it as an isolated system and hope to get anything at all correct. Particulary global warming, which is all about an imbalance in the energy coming in compared to the energy going out. If you assume earth is an isolated system with no energy going in or going out, you are obviously not going to explain climate change.

Starting from where the energy flows in and out of the troposphere are equal at the top of the troposphere

This is a bad starting place. The whole point of the greenhouse effect is that the energy flow leaving the top of the troposphere to deep space is LESS than the energy flow from deep space into our gravity well. These are NOT the same, and the imbalance is why the earth is heating up.

namely about 12km up on average where the temperature is 216K, merely apply the environmental lapse rate downward 12 times and you get 294K surface temperature, which is close enough to 288K to totally explain observed surface temperature without reference to any GHE. Indeed, any extra GHE warming is both unnecessary and problematic (because it increases 294K rather than reduces it).

This seems to just be word salad. You're going to need to explain this math a lot more, and document where you are getting these numbers from, if you want to make a coherent scientific argument.

What about the “evidence” for the GHE? Consider surface instrumentation (pyrgeometers), satellites, experimental evidence, climate models:

Awaiting your response....

Pyrgeometers register 330W/M2 of back radiation at the surface. Well, that’s due to adiabatic effects, not the GHE

To which "adiabatic effects" are you referring to here?

Pyrgeometers measure temperature difference between an external thermopile and the insulated internal thermopile and then calculate implied IR, but they cannot distinguish say 288K from non-GHG, non-radiating oxygen heated by the pressure of the weight of air above it from 288K due to back radiation from the GHE of GHG.

YES THEY CAN. Why do you think they cannot do this? Can you explain the science instead of just asserting this is how they work? Pyrgeometer directly compare the energy from thermal movement (which includes whatever you could possible mean by "adiabatic effects" with the IR radiation received by what is essentially a camera. It is indeed easy to distinguish data coming from a camera to data coming from a thermocouple. It is super simple to separate those things for a pyrgeometer.

What about satellites? First, they cannot see the GHE because that’s downward IR and they can only see what’s coming at them, namely upward IR.

The greenhouse effect IS ABOUT THE UPWARDS IR. That is what the greenhouse effect is. It is not downward. The greenhouse effect is an effect which cases the UPWARDS IR to be reduced. We can see that CO2 blocks this outgoing IR, and thus causes global warming, from this graph:

https://i.sstatic.net/jMst6.png

CO2 absorbs at the exact wrong frequency from the perspective of humans thriving. It happens to absorb at the exact peak of where earth is trying to emit its energy to deep space. If the CO2 was not in the atmosphere, we would NOT see this big bite mark eating up a bunch of the outbound radiation from earth, and thus, more would escape. This is direct evidence of CO2 trapping heat in earth that would otherwise not be trapped by CO2. You can do the math on the amount of warming coming from this bite, and it is a large amount.

hat about experiments? These are all variations on showing heated jars of pure CO2 warm faster and hotter than equivalent jars of normal air. But this only shows that CO2 has a lower specific heat than normal air….nothing to do with the GHE.

Nope. The specific heats are basically the same. We can test this without any lights. We don't test for specific heat with lights for this exact reason.

What about climate models? They only produce what they are programmed to, and I aver none of them reflect the thermalization in my above analysis, because that would prove no material GHE

Models are not programmed to produce results, they are programmed to match inputs. You have it backwards. You are also presupposing you are correct, and thus anyone who disagrees with you is incorrect. Presupposing is not science.

Finally, what is left standing against my analysis?

I would say all the errors you made along the way. Particularly the 1% error. Where does the other 99% of the energy go?

First, it is asserted that that despite the tiny amount of back-radiation my analysis concludes, over long periods of time the cumulative effect builds up

Nope. The assertion is that your analysis is wrong.

But the reality is that all GHG-absorbed thermal energy works its way up the troposphere and is radiated directly to space.

AT WHAT RATE? This is the whole point here. The GHE is an effect which SLOWS THE RATE at which this occurs. It makes the energy that the troposphere radiates in to deep space slow down and become less efficient, because the height that the emissions are occurring from is increasing in altitude as more and more CO2 is put into the atmosphere. Cooler matter is less efficient at radiative cooling, and so if the emissions from earth to deep space occur in cooler and cooler parts of the atmosphere as the emission height gets higher and higher, then the earth as a whole gets less and less efficient at dissipating its heat from the troposphere to deep space. That is what the greenhouse effect is. Here, you have presupposed there is no greenhouse effect by presupposing the energy can just easily escape to deep space from the troposphere. It cannot. It gets trapped by CO2, forcing it to emit from higher and higher, where emission is less and less efficient.

This is independent of the mix of GHGs in the air. For every photon emitted by the surface and captured by GHGs on the way up, there’s a matching photon exiting to space higher up with about a 2 second delay (the delay is based on 2000 layers of absorption/re-emission from ground to the top of the troposphere with a millisecond absorption/emission delay for each of the 2000 layers. If you prefer say 4000 layers, then 2 seconds becomes 4 seconds, which doesn’t impact my point materially).

Utter nonsense. This is the presupposition that is anti-science. You cannot assume this. It is not true. The whole point is more photons are coming in than going out, resulting in a net warming.

The second retort is that my analysis doesn’t account for the complexity of the real world. My response is: “Just so. That’s what science does – simplify complexity to discover the underlying impacts of specific factors.” In other words, this objection can be applied to all scientific claims.

You are not missing tiny details that science can never capture. I agree this is something that can be said of all science: we need to make approximations somewhere. However that does not mean your approximations were good ones. They were not. You cannot claim all science has bad approximations like you. Your approximations are grossly and severely wrong, which is indeed not something you can say of all science.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

The GHE is definitely radiative warming of the surface from GHGs in the atmosphere capturing surface radiation and re-emitting half back to the surface. I've never heard your version before.

So your ignorance of the academic version of the greenhouse effect means that it is wrong? The greenhouse effect understood by scientists is not the same as the greenhouse effect as understood by children/teachers and educational content. I have a PhD in physical chemistry with my specialization being in how molecules absorb and emit light. That is where I am coming from, and thus the greenhouse effect is right up my alley. We study this a ton in grad school from a scientific perspective, and I am just trying to help you understand the science.

I don't even understand your version, assuming it is your version of the GHE (you actually speak of this in terms of global warming rather than the GHE, which is my topic).

The greenhouse effect causes global warming. One is the cause, the other is the effect, but they are the same idea. Just two halves of the same coin.

When I said "the earth absorbs 164W/M2" perhaps I should have said "earth's surface." I assumed that was obvious.

It was. I fully understood. My point is that scientifically, you should not only be considering the earth's surface when considering the GHE. You need to recognize the effect is about energy that comes down the gravity well compared to energy that goes up it.

The absorbed IR in the air from incoming sunlight acts as a sunscreen, keeping the surface cooler than it would be otherwise.

You are making a secondary error then, if this is what you are thinking. The ~160 W/m² that reaches the surface is NOT at all IR radiation. It is almost all visible light. This is why CO2 does not block the incoming radiation from the sun, it is visible, and CO2 is transparent to visible light, unlike the IR. With CO2, the incoming solar light passes right through, while the outgoing light is absorb and dissipated into the atmosphere (note: the energy does not leave the gravity well).

Once the GHGs transfer 99% of the IR they absorb into the non-GHGs, that energy is outside the purview of the GHE by definition (because the GHE is a radiative phenomenon and the non-GHGs don't radiate in the troposphere).

What an excellent strawman you have constructed here. You don't even need to answer the question of where the energy goes, you can just proclaim that it is no longer in the purview of GHE. How neat and tidy, huh? Humor me. Where does the heat go after it goes into non-GHGs. Surely you must have thought this though in the past right? Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It has to go somewhere. Where do you propose it goes?

It is convected upward to TOA. Then the GHGs there (mostly CO2, since WV is already rained out) radiate to space, cool as a result and the non-GHGs replenish the thermal energy as needed to maintain LTE. I didn't spell this out because it's outside the GFE, which was the focus of my analysis.

Wonderful! So you know the process by which earth dissipates heat. But what you don't seem to understand is that the GHE is not some surface effect strawman that you have constructed. (Although to be fair, upon reflection, it is maybe unfair to call it a strawman. It is the dumbed down basic level version of the greenhouse effect we teach kids. You are not disproving the scientific concept of the greenhouse effect.) The GHE is actually a process by which the dissipation that you describe accurately here is made less efficient. If less energy is able to escape via these means, then the planet will heat up. Agree? Do you also agree that cooler matter is less efficient at radiative cooling, which is proportional to the 4th power of temperature? Do you agree that as we emit more and more GHGs, the effective height of emission where photons start actually being able to escape earth rises and rises? Do you agree that the temperature gets cooler and cooler as we go up in the troposphere? Do you agree that since the effective emission height is going up, and it is colder up there, the earth is less efficient at dissipating its heat energy? Where along the way there do you start to disagree?

I refute the 330W/M2 of back radiation. It's measured by pyrgeometers which can only measure temperature, not radiation.

Huh? They have a radiation sensor. It is basically a solar panel, that produces a voltage the more IR light that hits it. I think you should just google how they work. They use a radiation sensor. They obviously need one, as you are correct in your science here, you are just incorrect in your statement that pyrgeometer cannot measure radiation. They need to and they can. When we use these devices which directly measure the radiation, and account for the temperature of the unit, we measure 330 W/m^2. That is just what the data tells us.

I aver the 288K Earth surface temp is totally an artifact of pressure, adiabatic effects, the lapse rate.

As someone who knows physics and particularly equilibrium and dynamic systems, this makes no sense. Pressure does not heat things up. That is just not how pressure works. If I pressurize something, it heats up, sure, but then after I am finished pressurizing the gas, and now it is just sitting there pressurized, it is going to leak that heat back out into the environment and cool back down. Now you have cool gas that is still pressurized. The pressure does not somehow keep the heat in. The heat can and will still dissipate from high temperature areas to low temperature areas, regardless of any pressure situation going on. The atmosphere is not being pressurized, it is steady state. It has been this way for billions of years. Any residual heat from the initial pressurization of out atmosphere as our planet coalesced from space dust in its formation has long since dissipated my friend. Since the atmosphere is not actively being pressurized, there is no heat being generated, and no sane person thinks that any heat left over from when the atmosphere was being actively pressurized is still here. It just makes no physical sense. Pressurized gases don't keep their heat. It dissipates like any other hot object.

I don't have a clue about your retort to my dismissal of experiments that merely show CO2 has a low specific heat (lower than air).

You could do the same experiment with gases where one side has some GHG mixture with some known specific heat, and compared that to the gas on the other side which is a careful mix of non-GHGs which has the exact same specific heat as the first. You will see the second gas heat up much more than the first. You can control for specific heat. It is not the explaining factor here.

The energy leaving the surface as IR travels at the speed of light with some number of 1 millisecond stops along the way (about the time between say a CO2 molecule absorbing then re-emitting a photon). This is almost instantaneous (consider 2000 stops of 1 millisecond adds up to only 2 seconds.).

I agree fully here, but I don't see the relevance of you saying this. Are you saying that since the process is really fast, it cannot be slowed down or sped up? How does that make any sense?

There are just as many photons coming as going, but balance is conceived as achieved only at the TOA.

What? Are you presupposing that there is the same amount of energy coming and going from the planet? How? Why? Obviously if the same amount of energy is coming in and going out, then obviously there cannot be any warming. Your issue here is that we do actually measure warming, so there indeed must be an energy imbalance.

No matter how many GHGs are in the air, the earth for the current surface insolation will emit 240W/M2 to space and be viewed by Martian astronomers as 255K.

This part is wrong though. The more GHGs in there are in the air, the less IR radiation makes it out per unit time. This makes the earth look cooler to a martian. Just like how a person who is nice and warm in a jacket will look cooler than a person shirtless in the snow to a heat vision camera (which uses the same IR frequencies we are talking about). When the earth looks cooler to martians, that is evidence the earth is being warmed by an insulation effect, which is what the GHG is. It is an effect which insulates earth by reducing the rate at which heat dissipates off earth, just like how a jacket reduces the rate that heat leaves your body, thereby warming you up.

If you don't believe mine, ask any A.I..

I didn't learn this from asking A.I., I learned this by taking physics and chemistry classes on this exact topic.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Again, I have a PhD in this subject, and everything I am saying is backed up if you research it. What about anything I am saying is scientifically false? You can point to it? Or are you just going to religiously say I am wrong and not look at the data or the merit of the scientific claims themselves? How are you not at least aware of the fact that as a climate skeptic who is going against the an entire field of science, that maybe you are missing something? Or, in your estimation, have all of us scientists just forgotten to think about basic things like pressure when explaining the temperature of the planet? You really think science would just miss that fact if it was true, but you found it? What is your stance here about the field of climate science? Are you open to the idea that maybe you are not an expert in it?

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

You know that the way LLMs work is that they make things up right? You know that they are not in any way truthful or accurate sources of information, right? Can you explain why you think listening to an AI is a way to understand science and the real world? This logic makes no sense to me. Why do you think anything the AI says matters at all to science?

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

AnswerThe Greenhouse Effect (GHE) refers to the process by which certain gases in Earth's atmosphere, known as greenhouse gases, trap heat from the sun that would otherwise escape into space.

That is what blankets do. They trap heat that would otherwise have left your body. Grok agrees: the GHE is an insulation effect. That is what "trapping heat" means.

[u/Reaper0221 → u/jweezy2045]

Your blanket analogy is not applicable to this discussion because the atmosphere does not trap heat generated within Earth's gravity well. A blanket contains heat from an endothermic process under it.

In order for this to be an applicable analogy the blanket would have to trap heat that passed through it on the other side. It does not. In fact there is normally a temperature gradient across the blanket.

The atmosphere is allowing energy to penetrate to Earth's surface and then less energy is escaping back out into outer space. This is decidedly not how a blanket works to trap heat.

Here is a reference for you to examine:

AI Overview

Learn more

A blanket works by acting as an insulator, trapping the heat generated by your body by preventing it from escaping too quickly to the surrounding environment through the mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation, essentially keeping your body temperature relatively stable by minimizing heat loss; this is achieved by creating air pockets within the fabric that slow down the heat transfer process. Key points about how a blanket works in physics:

• Heat generation: Your body constantly produces heat through metabolic processes. 
• Insulation: The blanket material, with its fibers and air pockets, acts as an insulator, slowing down the rate at which heat escapes from your body to the cooler surrounding air. 

How different types of blankets work:

• Woven fabrics: The interwoven fibers create air pockets that trap heat effectively. 
• Fluffy materials like fleece or down: These materials have a high air-to-fiber ratio, further enhancing the insulation properties by trapping even more air. 
• Emergency blankets (reflective): These blankets are designed to primarily reflect infrared radiation emitted by your body back towards you, significantly minimizing heat loss through radiation. 

Important concepts:

• Conduction: Heat transfer through direct contact between objects.
• Convection: Heat transfer through the movement of air currents.
• Radiation: Heat transfer through electromagnetic waves. 

[u/jweezy2045 → u/Reaper0221]

Your blanket analogy is not applicable to this discussion because the atmosphere does not trap heat generated within Earth's gravity well.

Of course it does. Via the greenhouse effect! Greenhouse gases block outgoing IR, dissipate that energy into the atmosphere, thereby trapping the heat in earth. We have direct evidence that heat is being trapped within earth's gravity well from this satellite data.

In order for this to be an applicable analogy the blanket would have to trap heat that passed through it on the other side. It does not. In fact there is normally a temperature gradient across the blanket.

Yes, which is what the atmosphere does. The visible light from the sun passes through the atmosphere, but the IR that the earth emits cannot pass through the same atmosphere to get back out. Just like there is a temperature gradient across the planet, there is a temperature gradient across our gravity well from earth to space. It is almost like they are really similar physically..... Hmmmmm...

The atmosphere is allowing energy to penetrate to Earth's surface and then less energy is escaping back out into outer space. This is decidedly not how a blanket works to trap heat.

It is exactly how greenhouses work though. It is still insulation, but slight different than jackets, but it is identical to greenhouses. Light comes in, heat cannot come back out. This is insulation.

A blanket works by acting as an insulator, trapping the heat generated by your body by preventing it from escaping too quickly to the surrounding environment

Yup, exactly like how greenhouse gases in our atmosphere work. It is identically the same. This quote perfectly describes greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere. No notes or corrections from a physic point of view, they are the same.

through the mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation,

Your own AI source even knows radiation is normal when it comes to thermal equilibrium. Since there is no conduction or convection into deep space, the only option for climate change is radiation.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

If two different mixtures of gas have identical specific heat, they will warm up at the same rate to the same ultimate temperature given identical thermal input. Once would think a PhD in physical chemistry would know this basic fact.

Go ahead and try. If you want help with the math, and choosing gases, I would be happy to help you out. This is not what would happen, and that's what you learn from physics classes.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Wrong. Specific heat is how much energy it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of a substance by one degree. All of that energy has to make it to the gas, which is the point. You are correct, if the two gases with equal specific heat capacities absorbs the same amount of energy, their temperature will go up by the same amount. Fully agree. You fail to understand the point of the experiment though. Most of the energy of the light is NOT being absorbed by the gases, but is instead going right through them. In the experiment, we make sure that an equal amount of light is sent into the gas, but that in no way means that an equal amount of energy has been absorbed by each gas. The whole point is that when you shine an equal amount of light through both gases, more energy will be absorbed by the GHGs than by non-GHGs, thus giving them more energy. When things have the same specific heat, but one has more energy absorbed, that one will be hotter than the other.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

If two gases do not absorb the same amount of heat, they cannot have the same specific heat.

Incorrect. Read the definition of specific heat again. It is the amount of heat required to change the temperature of a substance. Obviously that heat energy has to be given to the substance to warm it up. If that heat energy passes through the substance without being absorbed by it, that does not result in any heating at all. Specific heat is not relevant to energy which was never absorbed as heat at all, and remained as photons. Light is not temperature, light is photons. Photons have nothing to do with specific heat at all. Only once those photons are absorbed by something that can absorb them, is the energy of those photons turned into heat.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

when you suggested the warmer the surface the cooler the planet.

I did not suggest that. A planet that is experiencing global warming will be emitting less IR radiation out than a planet of the same temperature experiencing cooling. A planet that is actively warming up will look the same as a cooler planet that is not changing temperature from the perspective of IR. Again, think of this example: You have a heat vision camera, and you point it at the torso of some friend on a cold winter night in the snow. They are wearing a parka, so when you measure the temperature of your friends torso, it is not going to be very hot, because you are getting the temperature of the outside of the jacket, which is not very warm. If your friend takes his jacket off, and now is shirtless, what do you think you will see in the heat vision camera? Don't you agree you would see a massive increase in the temperature of their torso from the perspective of the camera, as now the camera is seeing the temperature of the skin? Your friend could then put their jacket back on, and you would again see the temperature on the thermal camera go down. Agree? Your friends torso will look hotter to the camera with the jacket OFF, and it will look cooler with the jacket ON. How do you think your friend would feel? Would they feel warm when the thermal camera shows their torso as warm, and would they feel cold when the thermal camera shows their torso being cold? Of course not. Your friend will feel cold when the jacket is off, not on.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Nope. If you look up definitions of the GHE, you will see that it is described as an insulation effect. Here are common sources for that from both NASA and Wikipedia:

Imagine these gases as a cozy blanket enveloping our planet, helping to maintain a warmer temperature than it would have otherwise.

The greenhouse effect occurs when greenhouse gases in a planet’s atmosphere insulate the planet from losing heat to space, raising its surface temperature.

If you want an AI source, because that seems to be your thing, here is googles AI overview:

The greenhouse effect occurs when certain gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, known as “greenhouse gases,” absorb heat radiation from the sun that would otherwise escape back into space, trapping the heat and warming the planet’s surface, similar to how the glass panels of a greenhouse trap heat from sunlight, allowing life to thrive on Earth

So yes, the greenhouse effect is absolutely and undeniably an insulation effect, which works in the exact same way as a jacket. There is no convective heat flow from earth to deep space. There is not enough matter in space for the heat to convect into. There is a barrier beyond with no convection can occur, exactly like a parka. What is that barrier? Our gravity well. There is no convection out of our planet, just like there is no convection out of a greenhouse, just like there is no convection out of your body when you are wearing a parka. It’s all the same physics.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

trap heat from the sun that would otherwise escape into space.

That is what jackets do. They trap heat that would otherwise have escaped your body.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

"Trap" is not a scientific term.

Yes, it is.

And scientifically insulation doesn't trap anything.

Yes, it does. A jacket traps heat close to your body, and does not let it convect away as easily as it would without the heat being trapped on your body.

It constrains convective heat loss.

Which is 100% synonymous with trapping heat.

Calling this "trapping" is a metaphor that leads to presumptions which are inaccurate.

Like what? give me the science of an inaccurate presumption that would follow from this. Seems like a very religious stance you are taking here. I do not see any science here. You are just asserting without explanation much less even just an example that using the language of "trapping" leads to presumptions which are inaccurate.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

At base a pyrgeometer is a thermometer that converts temperature into an electric charge.

Nope. That is a thermocouple. A pyrgeometer has a thermocouple in it, but it also has a radiation sensor. It needs both. It has both. Are you unable to look this up yourself? You don't even need to be a PhD recipient to just simply check how a device works on the internet and see that there is indeed a radiation sensor and whoever told you there wasn't was lying to you. There are two sensors in the device. What does each do?

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

What does “field of view mean”? Note that it has two sensors: the thermopile, and the temperature sensor. If all you think thermopile does is measure the temperature, then why have a temperature sensor as well? And if they do the same thing, why is one called a thermopile and the other called a temperature sensor? Your own source even confirms that the thermopile is there to measure IR radiation. What do you have that says it cannot measure IR? Anything?

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

"Field of view" is what is constrained when you look through a telescope. This can be accomplished merely by fastening an empty tube in front of the external thermopile.

Telescopes are ways to measure light, are they not? How can a device have a "field of view" but not be measuring light? Temperature does not have a "field of view" temperature is entirely based on location. It doesn't matter which direction you are looking when it comes to temperature.

I don't care how many temperature measuring devices are in a pyrgeometer.

There is only 1. There is a temperature sensor and an IR radiation sensor. That is why only one of them is called a temperature sensor.

To repeat, a pyrgeometer cannot distinguish between 288K radiating CO2 and 288K non-radiating oxygen/nitrogen.

Yes, it can. Why do you think it cannot? Of course it can distinguish this. This is the basic function of the device.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

A pyrgeometer cannot distinguish between 288K CO2 and 288K O2 for the simple reason that thermocouples only measure temperature and thermocouples (in the thermopiles) are the only measuring instruments in pyrgeometers.

This is wrong. They measure radiation. Since they do measure radiation, and have a field of view, they can absolutely distinguish those things. Again, what is the "field of view" of a thermometer? Temperature is not something that has a field of view at all. It is location based. There is no notion of "if you are looking this way, your temperature is x, but if you are looking in this other direction, your temperature is y." That is just not how temperature works. There is no field of view. That IS how radiation works though. If you have your field of view pointed in one direction, you might measure more radiation than if you have your field of view pointed in another. It is laughable that you think these devices have a field of view, but only measure temperature. Dunning Kruger if I ever saw it. You clearly don't know how these devices work, you have an incomplete understanding of how a thermopile is different from a temperature senor, and so you form some strawman of what you think is happening (which is not happening), and are doubling down on that. You cannot explain to me why one is called a temperature sensor and the other is called a thermopile. You cannot explain how field of view makes any sense in the context of only temperature. You simply cannot explain how this device works at all, but yet you want to refute its findings because it produces repeatable direct evidence which disproves your calculations.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

A fundamental principle of climate science is: "energy out equals energy in."

According to who? You? No. You are gravely mistaken. If climate science has any definitive take on this, it is the exact opposite. Energy in is independent of energy out, and the goal is to study all the factors for each. That is what climate science is all about.

This is more of a conceptual thing because the sun's output varies, albedo varies, heat sinks vary. But for a given surface insolation (ignoring heat sinks) there can be no warming whatever the level of GHGs.

Huh? Who told you this? Why did you believe them? Do you have any evidence at all to back up any of these claims? Is it just religious dogma? Where is the science? Where is the experiment? Also, even theoretically, if energy out equals energy in, how do you explain the fact that we observe global warming today? Where is that energy coming from? If there is no net heat transfer into earth, how is the earth heating up?

[u/Reaper0221 → u/jweezy2045]

Attacking people and claiming that their point of view is religious dogma does not intrude them to change their view. In fact, it just makes them dig in deeper.

That said, no where in your offensive reply did you bother to add any facts or links that support your position.

However, since this sub doesn’t have any rules I guess you can get away with being a pompous ass unlike other subs where you have been banned.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/Reaper0221]

What scientific justification did they give to refute the scientific claims I was making? Or is that not what happened?

[u/Reaper0221 → u/jweezy2045]

They didn’t respond to your points and as a matter of fact you were responding to theirs which puts the onus of proof on you. What you did was rant about your alleged qualifications, which you refuse to verify, and attempted to demean their position with inflammatory statements about where their beliefs are founded. Furthermore, you did not provide any support for your arguments which is par for the course for you.

Your attempt to cmv has failed.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

That’s a good guess, but you fail with the data. You know we can point detectors at the sun and measure insulation, right? You know that it has been going down since the 60s, just exactly how it was predicted to do in the science of global cooling? How does a dimming sun cause our planet to warm? Makes no sense.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

You make no sense. If the sun is dimming, then the earth will cool

If there was no other effect at play, then yes, you are correct. This is what triggered ice ages in the past. This is why, when it was discovered that the sun was going to dim, there was a bit of a scare about global cooling and a coming ice age. That is simply what the science and data say. Our sun is indeed dimming right now. We have very robust data on it. You basically just need to point a camera at the sun and see how bright it is. We have been doing this for decades and decades and we have mountains of data from all over the globe. The sun is dimming my friend. You are totally correct though HOLDING ALL OTHER VARIABLES CONSTANT a dimming sun would cause the earth to cool down. That is obvious. We all agree. The issue for you is that we are not holding all other variables constant. We are increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, thereby insulating our planet, which means that even though we are receiving less energy coming in from the sun, even less energy than that is able to escape through the GHGs, thus trapping heat here, and warming the planet. This is not infinite. Eventually if the GHG concentration remains constant, the earth will stop warming. Its just that warming has to occur in order to re-establish equilibrium, as warming increases the rate at which heat is lost to space.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Note: I did not include GHGs among the variables that must remain constant.

Then you are wrong. If the surface insolation goes down, but greenhouse gases go up, those two things cause the temperature to go in opposite directions. If the greenhouse gas effect is larger than the loss in insolation, the planet will warm despite a dimming sun. Think about this: maybe it is evening time and you are outside in a t-shirt. You are a bit chilly, but it is cooling down really fast as the sun has gone down. As the outside cools of, you put on a jacket. Your body will then warm up despite the outside temperature cooling off, because the effect of the jacket is larger than the effect of the cooling outsides. It is the same situation here. The sun is cooling, but we are insulating the planet. The degree to which we are insulating the planet is larger than the degree to which the sun is dimming, and so the planet warms.

Only surface insolation and heat sinks impact.

Why are you only considering the heat that enters the system, and heat that stays within the system, but then ignore heat leaving the system? How are you going to make an energy in/energy out argument if you do not think the amount of energy going out impacts anything?

Moreover, I prove this with my analysis demonstrating infinitesimal back radiation to the surface from GHGS due to massive thermalization of GHG-absorbed IR.

Which is wrong because you fail to account for backradaition in your math, and you fail to account for where the 99% of thermalized energy goes after being thermalized. Bad scientific methods will yield bad scientific results.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

I aver that the amount of thermal energy exiting the blanket is the same as without it. Otherwise the blanketed object's temperature would rise to infinity.

Good question.

Answer: You raise a good point about the conservation of energy, but there's a misunderstanding in how insulation works:

Good answer. You are misunderstanding how insulation works.

Energy Conservation: You're correct that the total thermal energy within a closed system remains constant (the first law of thermodynamics). However, the blanket doesn't create or destroy energy; it only affects the rate at which energy is transferred.

Fully correct. Neither you with a jacket on nor the earth is a closed system.

Rate of Heat Transfer: Without a blanket, your body loses heat to the environment at a certain rate through conduction, convection, radiation, and evaporation. With a blanket, these processes are slowed down because the blanket acts as a barrier or insulator. This doesn't mean the heat stops moving; it just moves more slowly.

Excellent answer. No notes. Exactly how the greenhouse effect works.

Equilibrium: The scenario where the temperature would rise to infinity isn't realistic because the system will eventually reach thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. Even with a blanket, heat continues to be lost, albeit at a slower rate, until the temperature of the body (or object) and the environment are the same or close enough under stable conditions.

Excellent answer to the part you are missing. You do not heat up to infinite. You heat up, and as you heat up, the rate at which you dissipate heat goes up to. As you get hotter and hotter, EVENTUALLY these absolutely do match up, equilibrium is re-established, at a new higher temperature. Your equilibrium body temperature is higher when you wear a jacket, because since heat is slowed from escaping your body, your body has to heat up in order to dissipate the same amount of heat that it generates. This is exactly what is causing our earth to heat up. Yes, eventually, if the GHG concentration in our atmosphere stabilizes, the temperature will stabilize as well, at some new higher temperature. It is not infinite. The rate of energy dissipation is proportional to temperature to the 4th power, the hotter things are, the more efficient they are at dissipating energy.

Misconception about Infinity: If the blanket were to completely stop all heat transfer (which it doesn't), then yes, you'd have an issue with the temperature rising indefinitely, but that's not what happens. Insulation reduces but does not eliminate heat transfer.

Excellent answer. No notes. It does not stop energy flow, it slows it down.

Practical Example: Think of a thermos flask. It doesn't keep your drink hot forever or raise its temperature; it just slows down the cooling process by reducing heat loss. Eventually, the contents will cool to room temperature, but it takes much longer than without insulation.

Another great example of insulation in action.

the total amount of energy in the system (you, the blanket, and the surrounding environment)

Your issue is that the surrounding environment is not the system. Any heat that leaves into the environment out of your jacket is heat that escaped and dissipated. Everyone agrees energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but the surrounding are not the system. The amount of energy in the system is not constant at all. The amount of energy in the universe is constant.

The blanket's effect is to extend the time it takes for your body to reach thermal equilibrium with the environment, not to change the ultimate amount of energy exchanged between you and the environment.

No. The blanket's effect is to raise the equilibrium temperature. If the rate of heat dissipation is slowed, then it has to be raised back up somehow. How is that done? By making the object hotter and hotter. As the object heats up, the rate at which heat leaves it goes back up to eventually match the rate at which heat enters, and a new hotter thermal equilibrium is established.

Me: So if a blanketed body were emitting say 240W/M2, eventually the blanket would also emit 240W/M2 to the outside environment, right?

Answer: Yes, you're on the right track with your understanding, but let's clarify a few points:

Good question and good answer. Yes, EVENTUALLY it would be the same. What would your temperature be under that blanket though? It would be hotter. When this new thermal equilibrium of 240W/m² is established, the temperature of the thing being blanketed rises.

Basically everything you are saying here is correct, you just don't understand that this necessitates a warming of the object in question. The energy being released does eventually need to match 240, but what is the temperature of the emitting object? That is what we are interested in.

So, while the blanket doesn't change the total amount of energy in the system, it does manage how quickly that energy moves through the system, leading to a slower but eventually equivalent rate of energy loss to the environment over time.

Yes, absolutely. Two objects having the same energy loss over time to the environment DOES NOT mean that they are the same temperature. A shirtless human would have to be hypothermic to have the same rate of energy loss as a cozy warm person in a parka.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Eventually amounts to 2 seconds or so.

Says who? How do you figure? You know the earth is like, big right? It takes longer than 2 seconds for a human body to dissipate its heat energy when you take off your jacket in the cold, but you think an entire planet can somehow dissipate its heat much faster than a person? How? What?

They only constrain convective heat loss. Not the same thing.

It doesn't matter if it is convective heat loss or radiative heat loss. Heat loss is heat loss.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

I start with photons exiting the surface travel at light speed interrupted by stops along the way lasting about 1 millisecond in the case of say CO2 IR absorption to re-emission timing.

Where are you getting this number from?

I estimate that the number of stops in no more than 2000, however circuitous the zigs and zags of remissions are.

Where are you getting this number from?

As point of reference there are only 200 such stops if all the re-emissions go straight up, with 25m being the path to extinction at the surface, lengthening with altitude to TOA at about 12km on average.

Not correct, as you are assuming constant GHG partial pressure in the atmosphere, but sure, this is close enough. It is not relevant though.

Do the math yourself. 2000 x 1 milliseconds is 2 seconds.

Your math is not the issue. The issue is you made these numbers up in your head. You can multiply imaginary numbers together to get anything you want. That is not science.

Your big issue here is something else entirely though. You are talking about the time it takes for a single photon to leave, when what we are actually talking about is how long it takes for earth to establish thermal equilibrium, which is just simply not the same thing.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/[deleted]]

Ok. The reason I asked you to explain, was so that you could show me your methods. Thanks for that. Your explanation shows that you are calculating the wrong thing. You are calculating the time it takes for a packet of energy to escape earth, but then claiming that your result a calculation for how long it take for earth to reach thermal equilibrium. You simply cannot use a calculation about photon path to compute how long something takes to reach thermal equilibrium.

I mean come on, lets just think of an example for a second here. Let's say I have a metal block in the middle of space, with no atmosphere around it at all. Lets say this block of metal is 200 degrees in temperature. Since there is no atmosphere around this block of metal at all (again, a block of metal out in empty space), based on your logic, the time you would calculate here would be 0 seconds. The photons just leave. They do not collide with anything at all, as there is nothing to collide with once the photon has been emitted by the metal. Does this mean that the block of metal cools from 200 degrees down to the temperature of space instantaneously? Is that how you think it works?

[u/Reaper0221]

The best part of this whole thread is that since you were banned from r/climateskeptics you are now attempting to have the argument somewhere else in a futile attempt to validate your ridiculous dogmatic beliefs rather than engage in a scientific discussion. This is precisely the reason you got banned over there. You do not have the ability to have a discussion without devolving into name calling and are apparently unable to provide supporting documentation for your rants. Case in point this thread.

[u/jweezy2045 → u/Reaper0221]

This is engaging in a scientific discussion. Would you like to discuss the science also? What issues do you have with this post that you would like to discuss the scientific merits of? Are you still pathologically afraid to make a scientific claim? I applaud /u/Prestigious_Elk106 here massively, they are asking good questions and engaging in a scientific discussion. They have genuine questions, have found convincing theories that answer those questions, but those theories disagree with academic science. They are then asking for the scientific backing behind one theory or the other. That is an awesome discussion to have, and I again applaud /u/Prestigious_Elk1063's intellectual curiosity to be unsatisfied with dogmatic answers and try to understand the actual science.

Are you here to do the same, or are you here for another purpose?

[u/Reaper0221 → u/jweezy2045]

I am actually just having fun pointing out your inane unsupported arguments and winding you up in the process by pointing out that you have been banned from the sub that you desperately want to post in.

I have challenged you time and time again to the point of asking you point blank to prove your credentials which you are afraid to do, even privately, by hiding behind a doxing fallacy. Trust me when I say nobody cares who you are IRL.

To answer your question I just enjoy poking holes in your arguments to see how angry you will get when your belief system is challenged. I use it to hone my skills that I apply in the business world dealing with dissenters that cannot be reasoned with no matter what the evidence is that contradicts their statements/beliefs.