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"No, I am proposing that the CO2 would be aproximately the same inside and outside the greenhouse, so its effect would not be noticeable."

No, no, wait a minute. You don't get to do that. I am guessing that you are trying to say that the temperature inside and outside would go up by the same amount... but so what? A thermometer does not measure the temperature indoors compared to the temperature outdoors. It just measures temperature. In any case, this really isn't very important either.

" I am sorry it offended you so."

Nothing you wrote "offends" me. It just wasn't clear to me that you meant it as a joke.

If I may ask, why did you chose to link to the PDF document when there are (as you noted) many other HTML documents mirroring the original? Also please note that I did not "ask [you] about credibility". We are discussing these pages on content, only.

The answer to the first question is that I wanted to link to an original source, not a third-party source, and the actual original site is down. The pdf I linked to is supplied by the author himself.

I am happy to discuss content only. And pardon me if my tone has been a bit short. I've seen enough name-calling and ad-hominem over this issue to last me for yet another lifetime, and as a result I have grown a short temper. So let me try to calmly and politely clear up some possible misunderstandings:

"In any case, the original source page was up when I googled for it before I posted. As I stated, it had little to no relevence to the article you referenced. That is a report produced by the person who wrote the web article, linked to from the article. It seems to contain the conclusions listed in the "Results" section of the web article. In it is a very different experiment to the one listed on the website (that doesn't even involve measuring temperatures in a greenhouse at all!)"

That isn't the original source page. this is. But as I said, that website is down for repairs. And I understand that the relevance might not be obvious. I'm getting there.

But first, the pdf you linked to in the above comment was by the same author as the first article, which I am calling the "layman's explanation". Joe Postma is an astrophysicist. The author of the second article I linked to is Dr. Pierre Latour. Latour has spent much of his adult life designing control systems for heating and other thermodynamic processes in chemical plants, and for NASA. (Which really doesn't matter here, if we're discussing content, because the math speaks for itself. It doesn't care in the slightest who writes it down; either it is correct or it is not.)

But your article above, by Postma, and the one I linked, by Latour, are basically saying the same thing. And this is how they are related to the first article:

No, they do not mention greenhouses. In the first article, Postma was trying to describe, in layman's terms, the mechanism behind the (current popular use of the term) "greenhouse effect", and explain WHY it is NOT the effect that actually happens in greenhouses. Many people simply have not understood this. A real greenhouse is warm because it traps air that is already heated, preventing convective cooling. The "greenhouse effect" (again, the one you were referring to) supposedly works by trapping radiation. Two completely different, unrelated things. Again, the point is that he was explaining HOW they are different.

That is wh

Just to be clear: the argument got nowhere because you did not prove your point.

Here's how you CAN, if you can manage it: explain how radiation that is of a LOWER "black-body temperature" will be absorbed by a body of a HIGHER black-body temperature. Despite your protestations, it's really that simple. In practice, the same holds true for less-than-ideal gray bodies, if you really want to get that technical.

Why don't you go to the source... that is to say, the engineer who first pointed out this flaw in the AGW reasoning? Here is his analysis of Roy Spencer's claim that cooler bodies can warm hotter bodies via radiation (the rebuttal contains a link to Spencer's original article that it is rebutting, if you want to see what that is all about.)

To the best of my knowledge -- and I have been following the issue -- not one physicist has even attempted to refute LaTour's analysis, while a number of physicists have backed him up.

I'd maybe be more humble if you actually said ANYTHING that came close to actually refuting my comment. But you did not. You made no relevant argument, and you presented no citation or evidence.

So... what? I am supposed to be humble just because you argued with me? Somehow I don't think so.

And before you go shooting at the messenger (the site that appears on), let me tell you I won't be impressed. I'll listen to a discussion about the science, but not to ad-hominem attacks.

" Latour claims cooler bodies cannot affect warmer bodies, which Newton proved wrong centuries ago."

NOW who's overgeneralizing? Latour's claims are very specific; I see nowhere any claim that "cooler bodies cannot affect warmer bodies".

Latour's article says "The generalized claim that a cooler object placed near a warmer object cannot result in a rise in temperature of the warmer object stands."

I attempted to post his math here but Slashdot would not allow it (lines too short).

I respectfully suggest, then, that you actually go read the fucking article , and refute the author there, rather than trying to argue with me, since I am not him.

Good luck with that.

"They aren't mutually exclusive."

I never claimed they were. Holy crap. Do people on Slashdot even look at links anymore? Okay, look. Here they are again. The articles this whole discussion is about:

This one by Spencer.

And this rebuttal by Latour.

Got it? If you have a problem with either argument, please make them to the appropriate people, okay? Rather than me. I am just a reporter here.

"I'm actually not seeing shit."

Well, then, try this article about why most AGW models are in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

You might actually want to start, though, with the article by Roy Spencer to which the above article is a response. Just for reference.

To the best of my knowledge (which I admit is incomplete), Dr. Latour's rebuttal has so far not been successfully refuted.

"But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument. "

That is a non-response and deserves no answer.

"Sky Dragon is Olsen"

NO... I specifically linked to an article by Pierre LaTour. The fact that it happens to be posted on the Sky Dragon site is incidental, and the article does not rely upon or even mention Olsen. Any argument of that sort is nothing but ad hominem. Surely you know what that is.

"Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement."

On the contrary, as Spencer points out in his article (to which LaTour's article is a rebuttal, and which I did recommend you red first):

"This back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the Greenhouse Effect. "

And if you read on, the back radiation he mentions is clearly the same as that being addressed by LaTour.

Please, if you will (as I originally pointed out): explain to me where these CO2 warming models do not rely on back radiation. All of those of which I am familiar do.

"As for back radiation, downwelling radiation, scattered radiation, blackbody radiation, emissivity and Kirchoff's law, extinction and optical path -- as far as the actual processes involved are concerned there isn't a huge difference between one kind of optical scattering and another, not at the molecular scale."

COMPLETE nonsense. While Spencer does not address the molecular or atomic scale, LaTour does. This is a bald (and rather bold) statement with no support; it is not a refutation.

"As for Rayleigh scattering not being "back radiation" -- I was merely offering that as an example of how molecules can and do reflect and scatter photons in a way that varies with frequency."

Of course they do, but that was not the subject under discussion. "Back radiation" has a very specific meaning in this context, which I was careful to point out.

"... reflect some fraction of the otherwise outgoing energy in those bands towards the source quite independent of the relative temperature of the source that is radiating."

Again, of course, but again: that is not the subject under discussion. It is the ABSORPTION of the radiation, not the emission of it, that is the relevant topic here. You cannot get temperature rise without absorption.

"Call it "back radiation" or not, call it whatever you like, but it is a term that acts as a differential gain in the heat balance of the ground, at least if you believe in Maxwell's equations and that the power incident on a surface is the flux of the Poynting vector through the surface. "

Again, not true, as shown by LaTour. A radiating body will only absorb radiation that is > T (its own radiative energy). When a radiative body radiates, and that radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by, say, a water molecule, some energy is inevitably given up in the process (this is simple thermodynamics).

So when the ground radiates, and its radiation is absorbed by water vapor, and re-radiated, it is always (it must be, according to elementary physics) at lower energy than the original radiation. THEREFORE, the ground cannot re-reabsorb it, because the energy of the "back radiation" is then
That is the "nutshell" summary of LaTour's argument; he gives it much more thorough treatment than I do here.

"On top of atmosphere models looking down (which is what I personally prefer when trying to convince people that do not want to 'believe' in the GHE because the

Actually, the rules aren't even well-known. The majority of CO2 warming models rely on a concept of "back radiation" that (according to physicists) does not even exist.

I encourage you to read Spencer's explanation of "back radiation" (linked to from that page) before reading LaTour's rebuttal. Most CO2 models require this nonexistent "back radiation" for their calculations to work.

"No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense... There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. "

It is not wrong, and it follows very well-understood -- elementary, really -- physics. It actually makes perfect sense. Apologies, but I have explained this concept 2 different ways to you in clear English. I don't know how else to explain it so that it makes sense to you. But your failure to understand my examples does not equate to a failure of understanding on my part.

"There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements)."

Really? What sources are you looking at? Certainly not this one.

Regardless, this quote from your article: "This is a very straightforward and easy to understand formula - the larger the change in solar irradiance, the larger the energy imbalance it causes, and thus the larger the radiative forcing." is precisely the idea that is refuted by the stove example. The idea that input must change in order to cause an energy imbalance is ludicrous, from the standpoint of physics. I repeat: if that were so, your stove burner turned onto "high" might never boil your water; in order to do that (according to the logic just quoted from that article), you would have to constantly turn the knob up. And obviously that is not true.

"Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming."

I have 3 things to say about that: First, the logic is not flawed, in fact it is extremely elementary. But: second, here you are arguing with me about whether the sun is the cause of warming, and I stated earlier here at least 3 times that that isn't what I was saying! Do you have reading comprehension issues? I was talking about someone else's logic, not about what actual causes are. And I repeated it just for your benefit. But apparently it didn't sink into your skull anyway.

I could very easily argue with you about that if you like, but it's off-topic. I wasn't discussing actual causes, only why someone else's argument was invalid.

The third thing I have to say about that statement is: bullshit. It isn't "well known" at all. In fact it is very much still a hot topic of debate (no pun intended). See for example Latour's No, Virginia rebuttal to Spencer's attempt to explain physics. The fact is that so far, some "climate scientists" have made some real blunders when it comes to the actual physics of their warming models.

Now, I will state her for the fourth time that I am not claiming that the sun is the cause of the warming. But I do claim that contrary to your assertion, it is not "settled science" or something on which everyone agrees.

"... but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. "

Except that you don't. How many of the CO2 models rely on the concept of "back radiation" to explain the radiative forcings? There's a bit of a problem with that: "back radiation" is physically impossible. Again see that link to the article by Latour (a physicist) who shows very clearly exactly why that is so.

And that is just ONE of the problems with the "climate science".

""Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act."

Wow. What a bundle of unwarranted assumptions. (1) "climate scientists" have not been able to account for the warming, either, in ways that actually obey the laws o

Ah... someone with an honest question!

There are quite a few different issues here, and the idea that legitimate scientific skepticism is running out of steam is just so much hogwash. Only a person (or newspaper) that was ignorant of the real science -- or that had an agenda -- would try to claim that.

For just one good example: the solar warming model. They say that Earth's temperature followed solar activity patterns for most of known history... there is lots of secondary evidence (proxy data) to indicate that this is so. But also, it has deviated for the last couple of decades, temperatures rising higher even though solar activity has not changed with it.

But this is a completely spurious and illogical argument. The sun has been at an extreme in its various cycles (it has several known cycles, one of them about 11 years, and others of longer periods). The warming alarmist's argument is that since Earth temperature has been going up but the sun's activity has not been following the same trend, then the sun could not be causing it. But that's complete nonsense. The input does not have to change in order for warming to continue. Arguing that it does is simply against known physics and it is ridiculously easy to show why.

Turn an element on your stove up to medium-high. Let it get up to temperature. Then put a pot of water on it. What happens? Even though the output of the stove does not change, the water continues to heat until it boils.

Similarly, the sun sitting at an extreme in its cycles can continue warming the Earth, even if its output does not change during that period. The argument that the sun must continue to change its activity along with the warming is just plain dumb. That's like arguing that you must continually turn the control on your stove up in order to boil water.

But as for your particular question: CO2 levels of the distant past are calculated in several ways. One is ice cores: deeply buried chunks of ice are brought up (from Antarctica for example), and trapped air bubbles are measured for CO2 content at different depths, which are correlated with times in the past.

One big problem with that is that we now know that gases such as CO2 can migrate through the ice, so what is being measured is probably not the real CO2 concentration of that time period.

Another big problem with that is that while CO2 concentrations of the past are correlated with temperature (one of the famous numberless graphs in Al Gore's movie for example) what they often neglect to mention is that the CO2 concentrations followed the temperature rises by 300 to 600 years.

The warmists have used some clever arguments to explain that away, but the fact remains that a cause cannot come after the effect. And given the other problems with ice cores that we now know about, it makes for very dubious "evidence".

There are other known ways to estimate CO2 concentrations in the past (called "proxies"), all of which have been tried to one extent or another. Thickness of seashells and other such clues correlate to the availability of dissolved CO2 in the ocean. And various things like that.

I could go on about this all day. But it all boils down (pardon the phrase) to the fact that the evidence for CO2-based warming is actually pretty thin. And there are plenty of legitimate scientific reasons to be skeptical. For another example, see a physicist's rebuttal of the back-radiation concept that is absolutely essential to most CO2 warming models. John O'Sullivan shows that the entire concept is based on incorrect assumptions about physics.

The "climate scientists" have been quick to say that if you want to know about climate, you should consult them, because... well, because they're climate scientists. But the climate scientists themselves have not been consulting statisticians about the statistical methods they have used, or physicists about the physics!

"We can easily calculate what the measured CO2 increase by itself does to the global energy balance of a static system."

This is where you are wrong. It has been shown that most of the models (at least) that are based on radiative forcings due to CO2 are based on flawed physics. See No, Virginia, Cooler Objects Cannot Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer. Their whole premise is based on a falsehood. So no, we can't "easily measure" it, at all. The attempts to model it to date have been fatally flawed.

Further, even if we could measure that, it is largely irrelevant because the single biggest hurdle to predicting climate is that it is anything but static!

"Majority of the worlds population lives by the ocean. It is hard to see how the winners outweigh loosers on this one."

Again, pretty much irrelevant to the discussion. If warming (which has occurred) forces them to move, then they'll have to move. However, even the most dire predictions of warming have predicted no more than a meter rise over the next 100 years, and most models (however flawed they may be) predict a good bit less. That is hardly a catastrophe for most coastal regions. And please don't go on about storms affecting the coasts, unless you can show me some genuine evidence that warming will make them worse. Existing evidence suggests otherwise. (Just one example: warming or not, total global cyclonic energy has been at a 40-year low.)

"When Al Gore goes on TV and streches the truth to the point of being indisingushable from a lie his action has no effect of any kind on reality. This is not the Matrix and Al Gore is not Neo."

Nonsense. It has a very major effect on reality, by influencing public opinion. This is a very dangerous thing. Probably more dangerous than any real amount of warming.

"Yet they still watch mostly partisian "news" and listen to crackpots on talk radio. By continuing to watch the "BS" they are getting exactly what they are asking for."

So you admit that people should stop watching / listening to news about AGW? Because there has been at least as much BS on the "pro" side of the argument as on the other (e.g., your own Al Gore example), and I believe a good deal more.

If you don't want to get p0wnd you need to turn off the idiot box and do your homework."

Which I have been doing a great deal of on this subject, for a number of years now, and my conclusion is very different from yours.