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150th Anniversary of Greenhouse Climate Theory
An anonymous reader writes "It was 150 years ago that John Tyndall, one of history's truly great physicists, published a scientific paper with the far-from-snappy title On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction. The BBC has an article on John Tyndall and his contributions 150 years ago to the physics behind the study of climate change."
The basic science of global warming isn't too tough or very modern(clearly), although most people don't understand it very well. This article seems to make things fairly confusing as well, although the quote from Tyndall himself is pleasantly concise and clear: "heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat." My favorite explanation, I think, is how Carl Sagan explained it in Cosmos, which is roughly as follows:
The idea is that visible light hits the earth, and warms it up. Some of that light is reflected straight back, so it leaves the atmosphere the way it came in and we're done. A lot of that light, though, gets absorbed by trees or rocks or walruses, causing them to heat up. They'll slowly re-radiate it out again because of blackbody radiation (all things radiate continually, even the universe itself) but it will be in the form of lower energy, lower frequency wavelengths. This means that energy from visible light gets absorbed and often radiated back out again as infrared.
CO2 and other "greenhouse" gases let light in the visible part of the spectrum pass unimpeded, but they don't let IR through as easily. So, energy comes in but it can't get back out again.
Just who worships Al Gore? This must be some obscure subculture or something because I don't really know anyone who thinks very highly of Gore (they may not dislike him, they may even have some basic respect for things he's done but they don't put him on a pedestal).
Or maybe it's like the Michael Moore thing, where lots of right-wing idiots (and trolls) thought everyone left of Mussolini worshiped Moore even though the reality of it was that we were slightly impressed by his documentaries but still had some issues with the movies as well as with Moore himself.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Well first of all I think using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I kinda thought science was supposed to educate, not be like religion where all that oppose dogma are labeled "other" and attacked?
Now here is what I personally have against the whole climate change, which make up your damned mind is it global warming or global cooling? Climate change is a cop out, the climate has been changing for all of recorded history!
But here is the problem: The ONLY "solution" we have been offered is carbon credits by the likes of Rev Al Gore who neglects to tell you the "inconvenient truth" that he has set himself up to be a carbon billionaire, the same ones that cooked up credit default swaps, aka economy killers are writing the rules for the carbon derivatives market and the most telling to me? notice how YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN Rev Al or his buddies come out in favor of tariffs against India and China, even though both countries have given the finger to carbon scams and said they won't play the game? Why is that? Could it be because Gore and his friends are making crazy monies in China and India, and don't give a fuck that dumping carbon credit scams on top of an already broken economy would royally buttfuck us as long as they can leech a few more sheckles before they bail?
I'm all for using less, we only have one planet and we should take care of it. but the only things i've seen is more bullshit, more scams, more bubbles, more ways for the top 1% to rob the middle class and poor before taking their money and buying another polluting factory in China. Perhaps one should watch this video that explains why you are being had. Reduction yes, carbon scamming, no. oh and lets tax the living fuck out of anything coming from factories that pollute and stop allowing designed for the dump hardware off the boat, okay? hell Newegg is still selling brand new IP V4 routers! Talk about prebuilt garbage!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate
This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Isn't the point of science to prove or disprove theories? Just because this is 150 years old doesn't mean it should be taken off the list of what can and cannot be proven.
Absolutely.
But theories that haven't been disproved in 150 years are the ones to bet on.
Disprove it - get a Nobel.
That's what all the climate scientists are trying to do.
Watch this Heartland Institute video