NO such thing as Climate Change?

Originally posted by Dochico: ↑

Ok, there is quite a bit wrong here, and I think a big part of it is that you don't know much optical physics and things like black body radiation work. If you understood these things you'd realise how much you are saying is factually inaccurate and contradicting itself.

I guess that's inevitable if you try to skip to studying atmospheric physics without studying fundamental physics first.

Because of this, you don't really seem to understand what I wrote in my previous comment. In fact you are thinking of things only in terms of conduction and convection, and because of that coming to some very weird conclusions.

For example, if you understood some of this stuff, you would know that the blackbody radiation emission spectra is very broad. And so the amplitude at 15 um is only about 20% less than the max peak. So there is still heaps of energy there.

I'll try to explain in a different way.

When thermal radiation leaves the Earth, it leaves it at the speed of light. If we lived in a world with no greenhouse gases, then nothing would stop that energy leaving. How much energy is in the Earth's surface blackbody radiation? You can look it up or even calculate it if you know how, but it is somewhere between 20-30 Watts / square meter / steradian. Quite a lot.

This is the blackbody radiated energy only. Not the energy passed on by convection or conduction or the energy generated from anything else.

If there were no green house gases, this blackbody energy would leave the surface and get into space at the speed of light. It doesn't conduct itself through the atmosphere in the way you are thinking. It just goes. The speed of light is about 300,000 km per SECOND. So that energy would leave the planet in less than a millisecond.

This is why satellites can take instant photos of the surface, because the atmosphere is clear in the visible band. The light goes up instantly. It isn't slowed by conduction or convection. Thermal radiation is just photons exactly the same as visible light.

However, when there are green house gases, that blackbody energy gets absorbed by GHG molecules and passed on to heat the rest of the atmosphere. At that point, if the energy gets passed on by for example convection, that would be the speed of wind, which is in the range of tens of km per HOUR, and not even blowing directly upwards. So now the heat will leave at a rate of at least 40 million times slower.

Forty million times slower MINIMUM!

And that's just the thermal energy from black body radiation. We haven't even considered things like the reflection of the sun's infrared emissions.

You can't ignore radiation when developing a theory of atmospheric cooling.

I think you need to step back and read a book on optical physics before we can move on and talk about the atmospheric effects that rely on that physics.

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Wow have you gone off on a tangent that is nowhere anywhere near what Iwonder and I have been discussing. But I guess it felt good for you.

So I see where your mind is and what it is you are claiming. You are claiming that CO2 absorption and energy transfer to the internal portion of the molecule being the vibrational mode is more prolific that the collisional component.

Well simply I disagree.
Yes photons travel at C. So what. All photons do. Yes CO2 will do an amazing job of absorbing energy near the top of the troposphere when the collisional process is far far less than the surface. Yes it fantastic at shunting energy away from the surface. But you already know that.

Your rant about wind is a obfuscation on molecular motion being at 10Klm per hour. What rubbish.

our discussion is on the surface and the ability of CO2 to back radiate at the surface. Not the ABILITY TO HEAT up other molecules. THAT IS NOT BACK RADIATION. That is conduction. Are you moving the goal post now on the meaning of back radiation.

So some revision for you again regarding thermal radiation at the surface and your greenhouse affect..

ABSTRACT
CO2 is not emitting photons at the SURFACE. It is colliding with other molecules transferring all the vibrational energy it acquired to them and also recieving that energy from the following collisions. What minimal amount it did absorb from thermal radiation is being passed over to other molecules via collision. THAT IS NOT BACK RADIATION. it is thermalization

Lets continue
At the surface on Earth majority of the emissions are at a wavelength that Co2 just cannot absorb. There is indeed a small portion of the most efficient absorption band of CO2 at 15um wavelengths that is emitted that can be absorbed. But at the SURFACE it rarely gets time to do that due to the CONTINUOUS collisional process. The vibrational mode of CO2 is already excited from the collisions. It is saturated in excitement. It could take on more possibly but the shear volume of energy thermalized from these collisions swamps what little energy it can absorb from IR.

As what I said in paragraph above. CO2 is not emitting photons at the SURFACE. It is colliding with other molecules transferring all the vibrational energy it acquired from these collisions. What minimal amount it did absorb from thermal radiation when a photon seized the opportunity when the CO2 molecule was in a lower energy state is being passed on to other molecules via collision immediately after. THAT IS NOT BACK RADIATION. it is thermalization

At the surface of Earth for the bending mode it is a very minute amount of the 15um it can absorb. It really struggles to emit it due to constant collisions that absorb that vibrational energy (that is not back radiation). The CO2 molecule does not mystically enter into a 3 mode of vibration that alarmist are led to believe. It is a minute portion of 1 mode The 15um band. The other modes at the surface the minutia is even less. CO2 emissions at the surface are miniscule it really is not worth considering.