Lab Work Matters!

[Old Rocks]

Come on, Billy Boob, that is just first quarter 200 Stats. Surely you are also a Phd Statatician in addition to all your other acedemic accomplishments.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Come on, Billy Boob, that is just first quarter 200 Stats. Surely you are also a Phd Statatician in addition to all your other acedemic accomplishments.

You cant even grasp basic properties of a trace gas... why would i waste my time with you?

 

[konradv]

All you presented were a bunch of papers that tell us that CO2 is a GHG. We know that. What we don't know is whether an infinitesimal increase in an infinitesimal trace gas can make a temperature difference.

A 40% increase is hardly infinitesimal. Since you admit CO2 is a GHG, i.e. is responsible for keeping the planet warmer than it would be without its presence, that should be proof enough that continued increases will inevitably lead to warming. If you say it doesn't, it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

 

[mamooth]

Too funny...

The Moron thinks that an experiment in the lab will have the same results in the atmosphere..Empirical evidence says NOPE!

So you're saying that Frank's constant demand for one extremely specific lab experiment is pointless and stupid.

However, "moron" was a little harsh. Try to explain it to him more gently.

 

[Billy_Bob]

All you presented were a bunch of papers that tell us that CO2 is a GHG. We know that. What we don't know is whether an infinitesimal increase in an infinitesimal trace gas can make a temperature difference.

A 40% increase is hardly infinitesimal. Since you admit CO2 is a GHG, i.e. is responsible for keeping the planet warmer than it would be without its presence, that should be proof enough that continued increases will inevitably lead to warming. If you say it doesn't, it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

As I have shown before, the increase in CO2 has gone on without an equal rise in temperature as determined by it LOG function. Thus CO2 is driving nothing.

Using the Null Hypothesis which states that any systems direct effect, by a single item can be determined by either adding the item and observe the systems reaction or removing the item and observing the systems reaction. The Empirical observed behavior trumps any hypothesis that may be derived from other sources.

The UN IPCC folks in AR1 determined that all warming prior to 1950 was natural variation and all warming post 1950 was man made. Using the lower troposphere as the means (because the hypothesis should result in a hot spot) lets look at these two periods.

Below are two rates of warming from the Hadcrut3 lower troposphere. One is from the period 1900 through 1950 and the the other is 1951 through 2000. Below each is the rate of warming.

The trend for the period 1900-1950 is 0.51 deg C or 0.103/decade

This trend occurred before CO2 became a rapidly increasing according to the IPCC and is near or is the Natural Variational rate.

The trend for 1951-2000 is 0.50 deg C or 0.100 deg C/decade.

This means that the two rates of warming are statistically insignificant DESPITE the rapid rise in CO2 and equal to NATURAL VARIATION..

So by simple observation we can see the problem with the hypothesis of runaway temp caused by CO2. The Null hypothesis is now clearly in play. We didn't change anything, the sun according to many is static in its output and given the rise in CO2 there was no discernible increase of temp given the previous rate of natural rise.

The system did not respond to the further input of CO2. Thus the premise used by alarmists and luke warmers is wrong. 18 years 2 months of 0.0 linear trend rise despite CO2 input. The system did not respond. Premise FAIL..

 

[Old Rocks]

Billy Boob, you are obviously quoting some idiot from a blog on what the use of the null hypothesis model is. Perhaps you should take a basic Stats course and then come back and talk to us.

 

[konradv]

it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

As I have shown before, the increase in CO2 has gone on without an equal rise in temperature as determined by it LOG function. Thus CO2 is driving nothing.

You haven't proven anything until you tell us what happened to the energy CO2 and the other GHGs absorb. Your objections could merely show that we haven't seen the results of human activity to its fullest extent yet. Until you can prove that the energy somehow disappears, I'm afraid you're the one earning a FAIL.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Billy Boob, you are obviously quoting some idiot from a blog on what the use of the null hypothesis model is. Perhaps you should take a basic Stats course and then come back and talk to us.

How ab out you disprove what is empirical evidence.. OBSERVED EVIDENCE.. You see that Blogg gave up the data and methods so it could be REPRODUCED like real science is. Unlike the CAGW fools who hide everything or as Mann and Jones stated "why should we give up or data and methods you will only show them wrong" (cliamtegate emails are such a wealth of information on how the elitist class thinks and acts).

Come on Old Crock, Show us the math like i just did to you. Show us how your version is true... Come on... Show us your work Old Crock!

 

[Billy_Bob]

it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

As I have shown before, the increase in CO2 has gone on without an equal rise in temperature as determined by it LOG function. Thus CO2 is driving nothing.

You haven't proven anything until you tell us what happened to the energy CO2 and the other GHGs absorb. Your objections could merely show that we haven't seen the results of human activity to its fullest extent yet. Until you can prove that the energy somehow disappears, I'm afraid you're the one earning a FAIL.

Simple... Its not in the deep oceans.. Its not in our atmosphere.. Given wide swings of lateral air movement and fluctuating energy being pulled pole wards it has been released to space through the earths exhaust pipe for energy. The polar regions. As the Antarctic is now freezing up fast and now the Arctic is regaining ice that energy is GONE.. Its in space. One need only do simple atmospheric processes to see where it went.

Now that balance is returning to our sun input deprived world, the thermal balance is again being restored by natural process. The next step in that process is cooling for about the next 30-60- years as we continue down the cooling side of the low solar cycles.

 

[mamooth]

Billy, you understand that was insane, right?

The polar regions are not exhaust pipes of heat. IR flux out of the polar regions is really damn low. We measure such things.

Billy, why are you even pretending you're not a cult nutter? You may as well have started screaming the flat earth theory, given it makes the same amount of sense.

 

[konradv]

Billy, you understand that was insane, right?
The polar regions are not exhaust pipes of heat. IR flux out of the polar regions is really damn low. We measure such things.Billy, why are you even pretending you're not a cult nutter? You may as well have started screaming the flat earth theory, given it makes the same amount of sense.

Apparently we have to show lab work, but the deniers can just make up things as they go along. It's the Global-Warming-Hoax Hoax!!!

 

[jc456]

All you presented were a bunch of papers that tell us that CO2 is a GHG. We know that. What we don't know is whether an infinitesimal increase in an infinitesimal trace gas can make a temperature difference.

A 40% increase is hardly infinitesimal. Since you admit CO2 is a GHG, i.e. is responsible for keeping the planet warmer than it would be without its presence, that should be proof enough that continued increases will inevitably lead to warming. If you say it doesn't, it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

huh?

 

[jc456]

it's up to you to tell us what happens to the radiation that is absorbed, in light of the Law of Conservation of Energy.

As I have shown before, the increase in CO2 has gone on without an equal rise in temperature as determined by it LOG function. Thus CO2 is driving nothing.

You haven't proven anything until you tell us what happened to the energy CO2 and the other GHGs absorb. Your objections could merely show that we haven't seen the results of human activity to its fullest extent yet. Until you can prove that the energy somehow disappears, I'm afraid you're the one earning a FAIL.

wow!! Why don't you provide the experiment that shows how GHGs absorb. Because Herr Koch did the CO2 experiment back in 1901 and it proved adding CO2 did very little. So mimi, show us yours that shows otherwise!!!

 

[jc456]

Billy, you understand that was insane, right?
The polar regions are not exhaust pipes of heat. IR flux out of the polar regions is really damn low. We measure such things.Billy, why are you even pretending you're not a cult nutter? You may as well have started screaming the flat earth theory, given it makes the same amount of sense.

Apparently we have to show lab work, but the deniers can just make up things as they go along. It's the Global-Warming-Hoax Hoax!!!

Herr Koch 1901, what else you need?

 

[mamooth]

But that experiment had little to do with how the atmosphere works. So why do you keep bringing it up? When you do that, it just demonstrates how poor your grasp of the science is.

 

[jc456]

But that experiment had little to do with how the atmosphere works. So why do you keep bringing it up? When you do that, it just demonstrates how poor your grasp of the science is.

what do you mean? Is there CO2 in the atmosphere?

If you raise the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will it cause.....Cause a rise in temperature?

Why do you need to mimic the atmosphere to get that answer? Or, are you afraid of the answer?

What is it? Is the amount of CO2 causing a rise in temps or are other variables? Which is it? Cause dude/ dudette, I have shown that CO2 doesn't. Set and match!!!

 

[RollingThunder]

wow!! Why don't you provide the experiment that shows how GHGs absorb. Because Herr Koch did the CO2 experiment back in 1901 and it proved adding CO2 did very little. So mimi, show us yours that shows otherwise!!!

Herr Koch 1901, what else you need?

LOLOLOL.....just your committment papers to the mental hospital, JustCrazy!

A while back I posted an excerpt from Dr. Spencer Weart's in depth study of the development of the modern greenhouse gas theories of modern atmospheric physics. The troll JustCrazy latched onto one paragraph describing some early experiments around the beginning of the 20th century that eventually proved to be poorly conceived, constructed and executed, leading to some false conclusions that were conclusively shown to be wrong by later experimentation. JustCrazy then ignored everything in that article that followed, detailing the subsequent advances in the scientific understanding of atmospheric physics and refuting the bogus early experiment that he now touts as the 'final word' in science. LOLOLOL. Check out paragraphs #5 & #7 in the original article that JustCrazy is misquoting.

The Discovery of Global Warming
Dr. Spencer Weart
American Institute of Physics
The next major scientist to consider the Earth's temperature was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages, and he saw CO2 as the key. Why focus on that rare gas rather than water vapor, which was far more abundant? Because the level of water vapor in the atmosphere fluctuated daily, whereas the level of CO2 was set over a geological timescale by emissions from volcanoes. If the emissions changed, the alteration in the CO2greenhouse effect would only slightly change the global temperature—but that would almost instantly change the average amount of water vapor in the air, which would bring further change through its own greenhouse effect. Thus the level of CO2 acted as a regulator of water vapor, and ultimately determined the planet’s long-term equilibrium temperature. (Fuller discussion - simple models)

In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.

It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. As another scientist would put it a decade later, we were "evaporating" our coal mines into the air. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough. (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C (averaged over all zones of latitude).

Arrhenius brought up the possibility of future warming in an impressive scientific article and a widely read book. By the time the book was published, 1908, the rate of coal burning was already significantly higher than in 1896, and Arrhenius suggested warming might appear wihin a few centuries rather than millenia. Yet here as in his first article, the possibility of warming in some distant future was far from his main point. He mentioned it only in passing, during a detailed discussion of what really interested scientists of his time — the cause of the ice ages. Arrhenius had not quite discovered global warming, but only a curious theoretical concept.

Experts could dismiss the hypothesis because they found Arrhenius's calculation implausible on many grounds. In the first place, he had grossly oversimplified the climate system. Among other things, he had failed to consider how cloudiness might change if the Earth got a little warmer and more humid. A still weightier objection came from a simple laboratory measurement. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.

These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision. But even if he had seen the 1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (Fuller discussion - simple models

The subtle difference was scarcely noticed for many decades, if only because hardly anyone thought the greenhouse effect was worth their attention. After Ångström published his conclusions in 1900, the small group of scientists who had taken an interest in the matter concluded that Arrhenius's hypothesis had been proven wrong and turned to other problems. Arrhenius responded with a long paper, criticizing Koch's measurement in scathing terms. He also developed complicated arguments to explain that absorption of radiation in the upper layers was important, water vapor was not important in those very dry layers, and anyway the bands of the spectrum where water vapor was absorbed did not entirely overlap the CO2 absorption bands. Other scientists seem not to have noticed or understood the paper. Theoretical work on the question stagnated for decades, and so did measurement of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

(continued in great detail)

 

[jc456]

wow!! Why don't you provide the experiment that shows how GHGs absorb. Because Herr Koch did the CO2 experiment back in 1901 and it proved adding CO2 did very little. So mimi, show us yours that shows otherwise!!!

Herr Koch 1901, what else you need?

LOLOLOL.....just your committment papers to the mental hospital, JustCrazy!

A while back I posted an excerpt from Dr. Spencer Weart's in depth study of the development of the modern greenhouse gas theories of modern atmospheric physics. The troll JustCrazy latched onto one paragraph describing some early experiments around the beginning of the 20th century that eventually proved to be poorly conceived, constructed and executed, leading to some false conclusions that were conclusively shown to be wrong by later experimentation. JustCrazy then ignored everything in that article that followed, detailing the subsequent advances in the scientific understanding of atmospheric physics and refuting the bogus early experiment that he now touts as the 'final word' in science. LOLOLOL. Check out paragraphs #5 & #7 in the original article that JustCrazy is misquoting.

The Discovery of Global Warming
Dr. Spencer Weart
American Institute of Physics
The next major scientist to consider the Earth's temperature was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages, and he saw CO2 as the key. Why focus on that rare gas rather than water vapor, which was far more abundant? Because the level of water vapor in the atmosphere fluctuated daily, whereas the level of CO2 was set over a geological timescale by emissions from volcanoes. If the emissions changed, the alteration in the CO2greenhouse effect would only slightly change the global temperature—but that would almost instantly change the average amount of water vapor in the air, which would bring further change through its own greenhouse effect. Thus the level of CO2 acted as a regulator of water vapor, and ultimately determined the planet’s long-term equilibrium temperature. (Fuller discussion - simple models)

In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.

It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. As another scientist would put it a decade later, we were "evaporating" our coal mines into the air. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough. (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C (averaged over all zones of latitude).

Arrhenius brought up the possibility of future warming in an impressive scientific article and a widely read book. By the time the book was published, 1908, the rate of coal burning was already significantly higher than in 1896, and Arrhenius suggested warming might appear wihin a few centuries rather than millenia. Yet here as in his first article, the possibility of warming in some distant future was far from his main point. He mentioned it only in passing, during a detailed discussion of what really interested scientists of his time — the cause of the ice ages. Arrhenius had not quite discovered global warming, but only a curious theoretical concept.

Experts could dismiss the hypothesis because they found Arrhenius's calculation implausible on many grounds. In the first place, he had grossly oversimplified the climate system. Among other things, he had failed to consider how cloudiness might change if the Earth got a little warmer and more humid. A still weightier objection came from a simple laboratory measurement. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.

These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision. But even if he had seen the 1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (Fuller discussion - simple models

The subtle difference was scarcely noticed for many decades, if only because hardly anyone thought the greenhouse effect was worth their attention. After Ångström published his conclusions in 1900, the small group of scientists who had taken an interest in the matter concluded that Arrhenius's hypothesis had been proven wrong and turned to other problems. Arrhenius responded with a long paper, criticizing Koch's measurement in scathing terms. He also developed complicated arguments to explain that absorption of radiation in the upper layers was important, water vapor was not important in those very dry layers, and anyway the bands of the spectrum where water vapor was absorbed did not entirely overlap the CO2 absorption bands. Other scientists seem not to have noticed or understood the paper. Theoretical work on the question stagnated for decades, and so did measurement of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

where were they proven wrong? Where is that experiment? Makin a statement is not fact. Again, show me the experiment that shows your claim? I've given you mine, you still haven't proved it wrong.

 

[RollingThunder]

wow!! Why don't you provide the experiment that shows how GHGs absorb. Because Herr Koch did the CO2 experiment back in 1901 and it proved adding CO2 did very little. So mimi, show us yours that shows otherwise!!!

Herr Koch 1901, what else you need?

LOLOLOL.....just your committment papers to the mental hospital, JustCrazy!

A while back I posted an excerpt from Dr. Spencer Weart's in depth study of the development of the modern greenhouse gas theories of modern atmospheric physics. The troll JustCrazy latched onto one paragraph describing some early experiments around the beginning of the 20th century that eventually proved to be poorly conceived, constructed and executed, leading to some false conclusions that were conclusively shown to be wrong by later experimentation. JustCrazy then ignored everything in that article that followed, detailing the subsequent advances in the scientific understanding of atmospheric physics and refuting the bogus early experiment that he now touts as the 'final word' in science. LOLOLOL. Check out paragraphs #5 & #7 in the original article that JustCrazy is misquoting.

The Discovery of Global Warming
Dr. Spencer Weart
American Institute of Physics
The next major scientist to consider the Earth's temperature was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages, and he saw CO2 as the key. Why focus on that rare gas rather than water vapor, which was far more abundant? Because the level of water vapor in the atmosphere fluctuated daily, whereas the level of CO2 was set over a geological timescale by emissions from volcanoes. If the emissions changed, the alteration in the CO2greenhouse effect would only slightly change the global temperature—but that would almost instantly change the average amount of water vapor in the air, which would bring further change through its own greenhouse effect. Thus the level of CO2 acted as a regulator of water vapor, and ultimately determined the planet’s long-term equilibrium temperature. (Fuller discussion - simple models)

In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.

It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. As another scientist would put it a decade later, we were "evaporating" our coal mines into the air. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough. (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C (averaged over all zones of latitude).

Arrhenius brought up the possibility of future warming in an impressive scientific article and a widely read book. By the time the book was published, 1908, the rate of coal burning was already significantly higher than in 1896, and Arrhenius suggested warming might appear wihin a few centuries rather than millenia. Yet here as in his first article, the possibility of warming in some distant future was far from his main point. He mentioned it only in passing, during a detailed discussion of what really interested scientists of his time — the cause of the ice ages. Arrhenius had not quite discovered global warming, but only a curious theoretical concept.

Experts could dismiss the hypothesis because they found Arrhenius's calculation implausible on many grounds. In the first place, he had grossly oversimplified the climate system. Among other things, he had failed to consider how cloudiness might change if the Earth got a little warmer and more humid. A still weightier objection came from a simple laboratory measurement. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.

These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision. But even if he had seen the 1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (Fuller discussion - simple models

The subtle difference was scarcely noticed for many decades, if only because hardly anyone thought the greenhouse effect was worth their attention. After Ångström published his conclusions in 1900, the small group of scientists who had taken an interest in the matter concluded that Arrhenius's hypothesis had been proven wrong and turned to other problems. Arrhenius responded with a long paper, criticizing Koch's measurement in scathing terms. He also developed complicated arguments to explain that absorption of radiation in the upper layers was important, water vapor was not important in those very dry layers, and anyway the bands of the spectrum where water vapor was absorbed did not entirely overlap the CO2 absorption bands. Other scientists seem not to have noticed or understood the paper. Theoretical work on the question stagnated for decades, and so did measurement of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

where were they proven wrong? Where is that experiment? Makin a statement is not fact. Again, show me the experiment that shows your claim? I've given you mine, you still haven't proved it wrong.

At this point, that is just demented delusional drivel. Everyone is laughing at you.

 

[jc456]

wow!! Why don't you provide the experiment that shows how GHGs absorb. Because Herr Koch did the CO2 experiment back in 1901 and it proved adding CO2 did very little. So mimi, show us yours that shows otherwise!!!

Herr Koch 1901, what else you need?

LOLOLOL.....just your committment papers to the mental hospital, JustCrazy!

A while back I posted an excerpt from Dr. Spencer Weart's in depth study of the development of the modern greenhouse gas theories of modern atmospheric physics. The troll JustCrazy latched onto one paragraph describing some early experiments around the beginning of the 20th century that eventually proved to be poorly conceived, constructed and executed, leading to some false conclusions that were conclusively shown to be wrong by later experimentation. JustCrazy then ignored everything in that article that followed, detailing the subsequent advances in the scientific understanding of atmospheric physics and refuting the bogus early experiment that he now touts as the 'final word' in science. LOLOLOL. Check out paragraphs #5 & #7 in the original article that JustCrazy is misquoting.

The Discovery of Global Warming
Dr. Spencer Weart
American Institute of Physics
The next major scientist to consider the Earth's temperature was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages, and he saw CO2 as the key. Why focus on that rare gas rather than water vapor, which was far more abundant? Because the level of water vapor in the atmosphere fluctuated daily, whereas the level of CO2 was set over a geological timescale by emissions from volcanoes. If the emissions changed, the alteration in the CO2greenhouse effect would only slightly change the global temperature—but that would almost instantly change the average amount of water vapor in the air, which would bring further change through its own greenhouse effect. Thus the level of CO2 acted as a regulator of water vapor, and ultimately determined the planet’s long-term equilibrium temperature. (Fuller discussion - simple models)

In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.

It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. As another scientist would put it a decade later, we were "evaporating" our coal mines into the air. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough. (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C (averaged over all zones of latitude).

Arrhenius brought up the possibility of future warming in an impressive scientific article and a widely read book. By the time the book was published, 1908, the rate of coal burning was already significantly higher than in 1896, and Arrhenius suggested warming might appear wihin a few centuries rather than millenia. Yet here as in his first article, the possibility of warming in some distant future was far from his main point. He mentioned it only in passing, during a detailed discussion of what really interested scientists of his time — the cause of the ice ages. Arrhenius had not quite discovered global warming, but only a curious theoretical concept.

Experts could dismiss the hypothesis because they found Arrhenius's calculation implausible on many grounds. In the first place, he had grossly oversimplified the climate system. Among other things, he had failed to consider how cloudiness might change if the Earth got a little warmer and more humid. A still weightier objection came from a simple laboratory measurement. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.

These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision. But even if he had seen the 1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (Fuller discussion - simple models

The subtle difference was scarcely noticed for many decades, if only because hardly anyone thought the greenhouse effect was worth their attention. After Ångström published his conclusions in 1900, the small group of scientists who had taken an interest in the matter concluded that Arrhenius's hypothesis had been proven wrong and turned to other problems. Arrhenius responded with a long paper, criticizing Koch's measurement in scathing terms. He also developed complicated arguments to explain that absorption of radiation in the upper layers was important, water vapor was not important in those very dry layers, and anyway the bands of the spectrum where water vapor was absorbed did not entirely overlap the CO2 absorption bands. Other scientists seem not to have noticed or understood the paper. Theoretical work on the question stagnated for decades, and so did measurement of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

where were they proven wrong? Where is that experiment? Makin a statement is not fact. Again, show me the experiment that shows your claim? I've given you mine, you still haven't proved it wrong.

At this point, that is just demented delusional drivel. Everyone is laughing at you.

and still no experiment. I'm the one doing the laughing fella!!!!