Comments on: Physics of the Greenhouse Effect Pt 2

By: interestedparty

interestedparty — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:05:43 +0000

thanks for the recommendations!

By: interestedparty

interestedparty — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:47:10 +0000

Do you have any references that I could look up (text book or journal papers) about how non-symmetrical molecular vibrations are the root cause of the greenhouse effect? I have heard about this before, but I have not yet found a good reference about it as most books that talk about global warming don’t go that far deep into why it happens.

In fact this is how I can across your informative post – searching for more info on this effect!

Thanks.

Response– Any book on atmopheric radiation should do, probably from the upper-level undergraduate to graduate level. Grant Petty’s book may help or Ray Pierrehumbert’s “Climate Book” may be a good start, which is fully online– chris

By: omnologos

omnologos — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:01:29 +0000

Does anybody know if there has been any practical application of the greenhouse effect, for example to increase the temperature in an oven?

Response– I’d say keeping the planet from being a giant iceball is pretty practical– chris

By: Kipp Alpert

Kipp Alpert — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:49:14 +0000

HEEELP!!!Anyone who appreciates ChrisC’s good work is sorely needed to
to help our blog to reach the minimal amount of respect, and good Science that is so lacking. There are only a handful of us who know that global warming is true. Most bloggers are either scientifically challenged, deniers, or right wing zealots. They quote Anthony Watts or Joe D’Aleo as their source. I have been over there for more than a year fighting the good fight. Just one remark a week might help our cause, and ultimately, the fight for human existence! Thanks,KIPP
Accuweather.com The global warming blog.

By: Kipp Alpert

Kipp Alpert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:21:34 +0000

Chris:About the runaway effect on Earth. Would we not be toast before we could create enough GHG’s, or extrude enough CO2 from the oceans and the biosphere to get like Venus. NASA has sad that Venus was much like the Earth once, with water, and the heat extruded all of the water out of it.KIPP

Response– Yes, we’d certainly be toast before we hit Venus-like conditions. Even hothouse conditions that existed in the distant past on Earth would not be good to humans, and those were nothing like Venus. Venus and Earth probably have roughly the same amount of CO2, but on Earth it is all locked up in the ground; on Venus it’s all in the atmosphere, and it’s because there’s no ocean that it can’t be removed.– chris

By: Kipp Alpert

Kipp Alpert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:13:51 +0000

Chris:The latest argument aginst global warming on the Accuweather blog is insane. They believe that The Arctic won’t melt because when it warms a little so many clouds are going to come around that they will block the Sun. By the time the clouds come around the Arctic would be chicken soup. KIPP

Response– First they say global warming isn’t happening. If it’s happening then we’re not doing it. If we’re doing it then magical negative feedbacks are going to come to the rescue. If they don’t come to the rescue then the warming must be a good thing. You’ll find most positions against AGW are filled with baseless and self-contradictory assertions, which only shows the goal is to fight AGW at all costs. I’m as confused as you– chris

By: Kipp Alpert

Kipp Alpert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:06:28 +0000

NOAA and NASA Estimate 2008 will be 9th Warmest for the Globe –
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
Though it doesn’t rank with the Bernie Madhoff’s Ponzi scheme, it is nonetheless criminal at a time when important decisions are about to be made that will affect our way of living and economic well-being.
According to a NOAA Press Release yesterday, NCDC’s ranking of 2008 as ninth warmest if expected trends continue compares to a similar ranking of ninth warmest based on an analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The NASA analysis indicates that the January-November global temperature was 0.76 degree F (0.42 degree C) above the 20th century mean. The NOAA and NASA analyses differ slightly in methodology, but both use data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center – the federal government’s official source for climate data.
Don’t believe a word of it. UAH MSU satellite data suggest 2008 will end up about the 15th warmest (16th coldest) in their 30 years of lower tropospheric data. The NASA, NOAA and Hadley data bases are seriously contaminated and the agencies are intentionally ignoring the issues as they are agenda driven with inflated budgets because of the alleged global warming.
NOAA has actually gone as far as to pull out the urbanization (urban heat island or UHI) adjustment from the US data and there is very little to no urban adjustment made to the global data based on the flawed papers by Peterson and Parker which suggest UHI has little effect on global trends. Ignored are the many other papers from some of the worlds best climatologists worldwide that suggest it produces significant contamination.
Add to that the fact that more than 2/3rds of the world’s stations (most rural) have dropped out and or are often missing monthly data, 69% of the first nearly 600 US stations evaluated by Anthony Watts surface stations.org are poor or very poorly sited with only 4% meeting official standards and no changes were made for the known biases of new instrumentation.
Not less than half a dozen peer reviewed papers have suggested the warming is exaggerated by up to 50%. This would put 2008 somewhere nearer the middle of the pack of the 114+ years in the global data bases not near the top. It also belies the claim that the 10 warmest years have occurred in the last dozen years. Read more here on the important data integrity issue.
:http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog
Chris:As you may know Joe D’Aleo Just wrote the summary for policy makers for the Fraser Institute from Canada an Exxon Mobil recipient, KIPP

By: Kipp Alpert

Kipp Alpert — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:58:48 +0000

Chris:I hope it is you who has commented so importantly on the Accuweather blog. Your explanation of the physics of global warming is excellent.I have cut and pasted it for my blog’s if that is ok. The site is overun with the most abusive skeptics I have ever heard. No Science, just consistently negative remarks and inuendo. HELP!! KIPP

By: Al Tekhasski

Al Tekhasski — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:49:28 +0000

Actually, according to works of Ray Pierrehumbert, the snowball Earth cannot be “un-iced” by any amount of CO2 in atmosphere, even 20% would not do un-icing. Go figure.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/JGRSnowballProof.pdf
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/NatureSnowballMelt.pdf

Response– There’s a recent paper in Nature that suggests methane outgassing played a role. Assuming a complete snowball occurred (which is not always agreed upon), CO2 isn’t the only thing involved, but it will play a large role. Not something I’ve looked into much, but I can see why termination would be difficult if the tropics were ice-covered– chris

By: phantom

phantom — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:48:16 +0000

Actually it is not true that clouds form only in saturated air. Most droplets form on condensation nuclei (microscopic dust or salt particles) and this occurs at lower than 100% saturation.