Dear Patrick Sutton:

Thank you for your response. I am happy to update you on several points that you have repeated from the AGW supposed scientists that are not supported by scientific data. You did point out a slight technical error in my previous presentation.

 Let's start with the following: it is true that gasses can be somewhat of an insulator. Dry air is used in thermopane windows, however a better gas is argon. Following is a response from a representative of the storm windows manufacturers that answered my question on using CO₂ or CH₄.

 “I’m not aware of anyone using CO₂ or CH₄. Argon is the most widely used fill gas, but the much more expensive krypton is used almost exclusively for triple pane windows. Xenon is theoretically used for windows, but I’m not sure if anyone uses it in mass produced windows.”

 The reason that CO₂ is not used is because it has higher thermo conductivity than dry air. Thus you would have less effective storm window.

 If the gas seal is broken, this would lead to the introduction of water vapor into the “air gap.” Therefore, the insulation value is significantly reduced.

 I do not agree with the use of the “greenhouse gas effect” at all. Yes there are CO₂, CH₄, and other gases that can absorb IR radiation, and the molecular formula of the elements O₂and N₂ do not absorb IR.

 What I and many physicists don’t agree is that the radiation of the absorbed IR can cause “Back Radiation”. What is happening is that any gas that is above absolute zero will radiate IR radiation. Also, any gas that absorbs IR will radiate the energy at some time, thus a little more IR that can go in any direction.(molecules rotate ,spin and bump into each other) will be radiated. Most of the absorbed IR by CO₂ is insignificant compared to the amount of IR from O₂ and N₂. The reason for this insignificance is that there is only 320 ppm (maybe) of concentration.

 There is one other molecule in the atmosphere that does have an affect on atmospheric temperature that is water/liquid/vapor/solid. This compound has many properties that are not found in CO₂ or CH₄ in the atmosphere.

1. water can be a liquid

2. water can be a vapor-gas

3. water can be a solid- snow ,ice

4. As any of these phases of material can exist at the same time for water in the atmosphere and depending on energy absorption or release it can change rapidly.

The other two compounds (CO₂, CH₄) only exist as gas at ambient temperature (-35 to 150 degrees).

 Consider the properties of a cloud that contains almost all water (liquid (rain) ,vapor, or ice-snow) phases. If the top of the cloud is heated by sun, the solid can become vapor or liquid. Then the bottom of the cloud gets colder by the release of the heat of liquidation – where water can become ice.  Depending on the atmospheric temperature surrounding the cloud you can have snow, rain, or hail. All of these phase changes result in the release or absorption of significant amount of energy. Some of this energy release can be as lightening and then thunder. There is a great deal of turbulence, winds, tornado, hurricanes, etc.

 Needless to say none of this is “back radiation” of IR, because the water is above absolute zero. As a result there will be great amounts of IR from the clouds.

 I have spent many evenings reading the IR coming from the sky at night and found significant differences from a clear sky compared to a cloudy sky. But do not confuse this with a “greenhouse gas effect.”

 We are in agreement that the Earth’s atmosphere and greenhouse do not have anything in common, except they both let solar radiation through. Your comment about the heating and heat movement in the atmosphere are also correct.

 “Most of the solar radiation is in the form of visible light: IR UV radiations.  Most of the UV and IR radiations are absorbed in atmosphere before reaching the Earth’s surface.  The solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface is mostly within the visible light spectrum.”

 The above quote from your reply is not scientifically correct. It is a statement that is repeated by most AGW alarmists. Let's look at the facts. Please visit the website www.stratus-sphere.com. It will show that the normal spectrum that is received on the surface of the Earth is from the very short UV to the long wave IR. There are almost imperishable dips at the three narrow wave lengths of CO₂. This is true on a clear cloudless day. As proof do you have trouble getting sunburn on a clear sunny day? You can get a sever burn in as little as 20 minutes. Plenty of UV, and it gets plenty hot (IR) in addition to the normal air temperature. Just us an umbrella to block the IR and see how much you cool off.

 On an over cast day you can still get a very sever sunburn even though you are much cooler. The clouds do absorb and reflect both IR and visible light, but there is plenty of UV getting through the over cast. It might take an hour to get a sever burn.  The actual measurement by a spectrometer confirms this.

 “The process of terrestrial radiation being absorbed by atmospheric gases and reemitted back to the Earth’s surface, especially during the nighttime, has helped to maintain an average temperature on the Earth between approximately 19°C and 27°C over the last 500,000 years.  If the atmosphere were transparent to all terrestrial radiation, then the Earth would have a significantly higher rate of cooling during the nighttime and the current average temperature would be about 18°C.” This is another way of saying the validating GHG effect, which is wrong. The only gas in the atmosphere that might absorb IR is CO₂, however there is not enough CO₂ to heat the atmosphere by one millionth of a degree. When a gas absorbs IR it does not heat the gas it only energizes the electrons to a higher energy shell. Look up Niels Bohr and his Nobel prize winning Bohr’s model of 1922 or 1923. This is part of the start of quantum physics.

 The reason that the earth’s temperature is warming that a planet without an atmosphere is because the gasses have absorbed heat energy; i.e. a heat sink. Because a gas is a poor transmitter of heat it takes time to cool. Also the atmosphere is being continually heated by the sun (clouds are still being illuminated) even after half of the Earth surface is out of direct sun light.

 To a mechanical engineer working in the field of HVAC it is well known that air does not move heat around very well - heat rises then as it cools it settles. If you want to move heat around as in a house for heating you need a fan. In the atmosphere we have the Earth's rotation to help move large quantities of air and this air can be warn or cold thus we have weather. Most meteorologist know that man-made global warming caused by 320ppm (maybe) can not cause climate change. The fact that the distribution of CO₂ in the atmosphere can not be well defined because of weather shows how ridiculous the whole idea was from the start. As I have said repeatedly there is no experimental data showing that the greenhouse gas effect exists.

I feel very sorry for you , you are being scammed and you don't have enough understanding of the laws of physics to realize that the greenhouse gas effect does not exist. One of the replies to one of my comments refer to the fact that R.W. Wood  an expert in IR and UV radiation proved by experiments that the greenhouse gas effect does not exist in 1909.  Yet the AGW children believe in a hypotheses that has never been proven and was proposed in 1824, repeated in 1861, and then again in 1896, Non of the physicists ever claimed that they had proof of their hypotheses. They all suggested that the concept MIGHT happen. Read their technical papers.

Albert Einstein after the publication of his Nobel prize winning “Theory of Relativity ”in 1922 was not believed by thousand of scientist that did not understand a very complex concept. It has taken almost 90 years and more and more of its concepts have been proven. Just the opposite of this has happened with the hypotheses of the greenhouse gas effect. The more honest scientist look at the concept the less believable it becomes. The dishonest "scientists" have had to MANNipulate temperature data to fake proof of the ghg effect.

February 25, 2010

The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory

By Alan Siddons

Insulated by an outer crust, the surface of the earth acquires nearly all of its heat from the sun. The only exit for this heat to take is through a door marked "Radiation." And therein lies a tale...Recently, I chanced upon an Atmospheric Science Educator Guide [PDF] published by NASA. Aimed at students in grades 5 through 8, it helps teachers explain how so-called "greenhouse gases" warm our planet Earth.

These guides are interesting on a number of levels, so I recommend that you look them over. But what caught my eye was this:

Question: Do all of the gases in our atmosphere absorb heat?

• Answer: (Allow students to discuss their ideas. Don't provide the answer at this time.)

Indeed, that's a good one to think over yourself. Almost all of what we're breathing is nitrogen and oxygen -- do these gases absorb heat? Lakes and rocks absorb heat, after all, and thereby reach a higher temperature. So can nitrogen and oxygen molecules do the same?

Well, I won't keep you hanging. After allowing students to discuss it, the instructor is instructed to give them the final verdict.

Answer: No. Only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat.

 These are the infrared-absorbing "greenhouse gases," of course, substances like carbon dioxide and water vapor, and not nitrogen and oxygen.

 Now, is something wrong here? Most definitely, for NASA has a finger on the scale. Let's review a few basics that NASA should have outlined.

 Heat consists of vibrating and colliding molecules. The motion of these molecules jostles their electrons around, and this emits light. Heat and light are thus strongly related, but they aren't the same. For instance, heat can't actually be radiated; only the light that heat brings about can. By the same token, light itself has no temperature because temperature is an index of molecular motion, and a beam of light isn't composed of molecules. In short, "heat" can be regarded as molecular excitement and light as electromagnetic excitement.

 Observe how NASA describes this relationship, however.

 Question: What is the relationship between light and heat?

• Answer: Things that are hot sometimes give off light. Things under a light source sometimes heat up.

 Utterly false. Heated masses always emit light (infrared). Always. That's a direct consequence of molecules in motion. And while it's true that some substances may be transparent to infrared light, it doesn't follow that they can't be heated or, if heated, might not emit infrared. Yet NASA's misleading formulation implies precisely that.

 There are three ways for heat (better to say thermal energy) to move from one zone to another: by conduction, convection, and radiation. Conductive heat transfer involves direct contact, wherein vibrations spread from molecule to molecule. Convective transfer involves a mass in motion: expanded by heat, a fluid is pushed up and away by the denser fluid that surrounds it. Radiative transfer arises when molecules intercept the light that warmer molecules are emitting, which brings about a resonant molecular vibration -- i.e., heating.

 Heat is transferred and absorbed in several ways, then, and no substance is immune to being heated, which means that all gases absorb heat -- contrary to what NASA tells children.

So how does NASA go wrong? By consistently confusing light and heat, as you see in the illustration below, where infrared light is depicted as heat. Elsewhere, NASA expresses heat transfer in terms that pertain to radiant transfer alone:

The Earth first absorbs the visible radiation from the Sun, which is then converted to heat, and this heat radiates out to the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gases then absorb some of the heat.

Nowhere in its teacher's guide are conductive and convective heat transfer even mentioned. By selective context and vagueness, then, NASA paints an impression that only light-absorbing substances can be heated. Thus, since nitrogen and oxygen don't respond to infrared, NASA feels justified to say that "only some gases have the unique property of being able to absorb heat."

Astonishing.

But a mixup like this raises a deeper question: Why does NASA go wrong? Because it has a flimsy yet lucrative theory to foist on the taxpaying public, that's why. As the space agency explains in the Main Lesson Concept, the core idea of greenhouse theory is that downward radiation from greenhouse gases raises the earth's surface temperature higher than solar heating can.

To make this idea seem plausible, therefore, it's crucial to fix people's attention on the 1% of the atmosphere that can be heated by radiant transfer instead of the 99% and more that is heated by direct contact with the earth's surface and then by convection. NASA is stacking the deck, you see. If they made it clear that every species of atmospheric gas gets heated mainly by conductive transfer, and that all heated bodies radiate light, then even a child could connect the dots: "Oh. So the whole atmosphere radiates heat to the earth and makes it warmer. All of the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas."

Crash, boom, there goes the theory. And there goes the abundant funding that this fear-promoting "science" attracts so well. For what CO₂ and water vapor emit is miniscule compared to the buzzing multitude of heated nitrogen, oxygen, and even argon, all of it radiating infrared, too. Keep in mind that thermal radiation from this forgotten 99% has never been proposed or imagined to increase the earth's temperature, although by the theory's very tenets, it should. You simply take the NASA formulation:

Greenhouse gases absorb heat that radiates from Earth's surface and release some of it back towards the Earth, increasing the surface temperature ...

...and make allowance for conductive transfer, too...

All gases in the atmosphere absorb heat from the Earth's surface and radiate infrared back towards the Earth, increasing the surface temperature.

Consider too that since most air molecules are infrared-transparent, they can't be heated by the infrared that CO₂ and water vapor emit. This means that downward radiation from "greenhouse gases" can only explain how the earth's surface might get warmer, not the rest of the atmosphere. This underscores, of course, how much the surface is heating this 99% by conduction and convection alone, since radiative transfer can't do the job.

To repeat: Irrespective of the manner of transfer, all gases absorb heat, and all heated gases radiate heat (infrared light) in close proportion to their temperature. Major gases like nitrogen and oxygen, then, do not just radiate heat to the earth below, but the total of this radiation vastly exceeds what minor players like carbon dioxide and water vapor contribute. Ironically, another NASA publication [PDF] reinforces this point.

In solids, the molecules and atoms are vibrating continuously. In a gas, the molecules are really zooming around, continuously bumping into each other. Whatever the amount of molecular motion occurring in matter, the speed is related to the temperature. The hotter the material, the faster its molecules are vibrating or moving.

Electromagnetic radiation is produced whenever electric charges accelerate - that is, when they change either the speed or direction of their movement. In a hot object, the molecules are continuously vibrating (if a solid) or bumping into each other (if a liquid or gas), sending each other off in different directions and at different speeds. Each of these collisions produces electromagnetic radiation at frequencies all across the electromagnetic spectrum.

... Any matter that is heated above absolute zero generates electromagnetic energy. The intensity of the emission and the distribution of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum depend upon the temperature of the emitting matter.

Accordingly, any heated gas emits infrared. There's nothing unique about CO₂. Otherwise, substances like nitrogen and oxygen would truly be miracles of physics: Heat 'em as much as you wish, but they'd never radiate in response. 

Yet this amounts to a double-whammy. For meteorologists acknowledge that our atmosphere is principally heated by surface contact and convective circulation. Surrounded by the vacuum of space, moreover, the earth can only dissipate this energy by radiation. On one hand, then, if surface-heated nitrogen and oxygen do not radiate the thermal energy they acquire, they rob the earth of a means of cooling off -- which makes them "greenhouse gases" by definition. On the other hand, though, if surface-heated nitrogen and oxygen do radiate infrared, then they are also "greenhouse gases," which defeats the premise that only radiation from the infrared-absorbers raises the Earth's temperature. Either way, therefore, the convoluted theory we've been going by is wrong.

An idea has been drummed into our heads for decades: that roughly 1% of the atmosphere's content is responsible for shifting the earth's surface temperature from inimical to benign. This conjecture has mistakenly focused on specifically light-absorbing gases, however, ignoring heat-absorbing gases altogether. Any heated atmospheric gas radiates infrared energy back toward the earth, meaning that the dreadful power we've attributed to light-absorbing molecules up to now has been wildly exaggerated and must be radically adjusted -- indeed, pared down perhaps a hundred times. Because all gases radiate the heat they acquire, trace-gas heating theory is an untenable concept, a long-held illusion we'd be wise to abandon.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html at February 27, 2010 - 10:26:53 PM CST

Indy72: you are absolutely wrong about the UN -IPCC , if you did a little real research you would realize just how political all the organizations in the UN are. At on time there were about 2500 scientists that were consulting with the IPCC most of then have dissociated themself from the IPCC because of the political nature of the reports and the lack of true scientific presentation. At the last report less than 60 individuals are still involved. One of these Mojib Latif has just issued a statement that global cooling has stated and may continue for the next 30 years.

If greenhouse gas effect was the cause of global warming and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing then global cooling would not be happening.

As you have indicated that you don't  understand physics and the 2nd Law of thermodynamics ,then your lack of education leaves you without the knowledge to make an intelligent decision on a very important scientific decision. You are in the same boat with 95% of the people that believe in the Hoax of Man-made global warming. This include many teachers, college professors and all the Environmental extremest that will listen to politician  like AL Gore( not a scientist) whose book and movie have been proven to be 90% fiction(Joe Wilson) Look up the UK court case if you question this statement.

The other 5% know that Man-made global warming does not exist but see an opportunity to steal  billions of dollars from the rest of the world that have been fooled into believing the "BIG Lie".

You obviously have not bothered to read the Executive Summary of Alan Carlin of the US-EPA that is attached to my previous comment.

You talk about all industrialization and other related human activities but you do not realize that a single volcanic eruption can spue more pollutants into the air that all the human activities for the last 100 years.

A single wild fire in California that could be prevented by proper land management and clearing but is opposed by environmental wachos kills more aminals than all the hunters in California and releases more CO2 than is put out by all the cars and trucks in the state.

Based on your last statement lets start killing off all the "old people" in the world.

dear believes in the hoax of Man-made global warming -global warming stopped 10 years ago. Check the temperature data from NASA- Al gore is a con-man and should be in jail along with Lisa Jackson and Carole Browning and other liers. The greenhouse gas effect was disproved in 1909. The Concept of the greenhouse gas effect Violates the Second Law of thermodynamic. This is not subject to discussion it is a fact. No one has any evidence to show other wise.