That's only half the story, this half, after absorption it emits an infrared frequency photon in a random direction "cooling" the molecule it leaves. Nobody seems to care about that second part. But if we would "see" in the infrared spectrum lines of water vapor or CO2, we would see fog because all the infrared radiation is scattered in any direction, including the shadow with the not melting snow. No warm wind melts snow by conduction at the surface, not by radiation Melt is rare at the summits of the ice sheets. some evaporation occurs but most annual snow remains including the summer snow, otherwise we would not have been able to count the annual layers. This accumulation of snow is offset by the dynamics of the ice sheets, the lower ice layers flowing outwards and cause the horrible scary calving ice at the coasts, brilliantly mis-used by an inconvenient truth. That's not science, is it? Declaring something not falsifiable. But indeed there is no reason to dismiss greenhouse effect, only the honest misconceptions and the dishonest spin around it. There is a lot to say about that, especially about the effects of latent heat (evaporation) but this would require a seperate thread guess If we study Pleistocene climate related events and I mean, really study all of it, notonly pick the pieces that we like, and dismissing the evidence we don't like (for instance: mammoths), then we see that nothing adds up with the current greenhouse thinking. Solving that would require inductive (top down) thinking and run a lot of possible scenerios, including unthought changes of the Earth etc to find the missing player. But scientists seem to hate inductive thinking since crackpots do it too, So avoiding the-guilt-by-associating fallacy, deductive (bottom up) thinking is paramount, discovering evidence and attempting to fit it into the big picture. But this way the mystery of the ice ages will never be solved, if the big picture is wrong. But to change that, we have to demonstrate the problems of the current paradigms and falsify them before philosophizing a next paradigm together. One of the easiest debunkable ideas is the isotopes-are-temperature assumption of the ice cores leading to that red Alley temperature graph: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's not, that can be proven and it can be sustained by an alternative explanation that is supported by all the evidence. This however does not explain what happened yet, though But it requires time and attention to grasp that. I'm demonstrating the problem here with Younger Dryas exhibits.
Which is then absorbed by other molecules in the air - of soot, water vapor, other greenhouse gas, and so forth, The net effect being, along with a backscattering of infrared to the ground (where it is absorbed by impurities in ground ice and snow), a warming of the air. The air warms. It gets warmer by absorption of infrared radiation. OK? And air warmed by infrared absorption melts snow by conduction, as well as further infrared emission. Just like a chinook (which also emits infrared radiation, of course). We certainly hope these processes, along with extra snow from the warmer and wetter air, balance out the increased sublimation and melting from the greenhouse effects - but hope is not enough, eh? The initial greenhouse gas effect - the extra absorption of infrared formerly radiated into space - is straight physics, and easily falsifiable, and not "minute". The consequences are complex, and remain to be measured - early measurements seem to indicate they are quite noticeable, and possibly dramatic. There was no apparent greenhouse gas warming in the Pleistocene, except as part of a feedback regime. What specific aspects of the "current greenhouse thinking" are you objecting to?
The net effect of more CO2 in the air is that the photons keep bouncing around a wee bit longer before they escape to space. Warm but still air does a poor job melting that snow in the shadow, due to the very low heat capacity versus the heat that is required to melt it. It's the wind speed of the chinook responsible for exchanging the heat. Now these kind of unfounded speculations demonstrate the main cause of the positive feedback loop of scare. Again, the effective increased solar radiation during the Holocene Thermal Optimum was unable to melt Greenland, so why would the much less effective increase in C2 would do it now? more later.
So there is no net absorption of infrared by anything at all, and there is no net temperature increase of the air after the first "wee bit longer" boost? That's comforting. Strange all these science guys would have missed that, though. And how did Venus get so hot, then? And greenhouse gas warmed air is guaranteed to stay still in the shadows ? Your assumption that the increase in CO2 will be "less effective" is just that - one plausible, speculative possibility among several. It is also possible - reasonably possible - that the increase in CO2 will be more effective than the solar irradiance then at melting the ice caps we have now, through increased sublimation and melting and reduced snowfall, and creation of feedback regimes involving open water etc.
No, they did not. But they added a great deal of imaginary positive feedback to boost it. Some thoughts here Also, why is there no greenhouse effect on Mars then? With much more CO2 in the atmosphere than on Earth, the black body temperature and the average temperature are both 210K. See here. Strawman irrelevant. Among several other speculative possibilities is that water freezes at 32F or 0C or even at 273K temperature. Or might it be a solid natural law written in concrete, testable and tested over and over. It is also possible - reasonably possible - that the increase in CO2 will be more effective than the solar irradiance then at melting the ice caps we have now, through increased sublimation and melting and reduced snowfall, and creation of feedback regimes involving open water etc.[/QUOTE]
LOL. Among other reasons: No air to warm, less actual CO2, less sunlight, and most of all no feedback effects, especially missing those involving water and ice - those imaginary things seem to have the occasional real influence, eh? So why'd you argue it? Greenhouse gas warmed air is going to blow around - just like a mild little chinook. So your dismissals of the various possibilities of CO2 heat trapping have acheived the status of laws of nature? Exactly when were they tested even once, let alone over and over ?
of course there is atmospheric gas to warm, 6.36 mbar of 95% CO2 and some 5% other gasses. I'm beginning to understand why warmers science is so lousy. Earth's CO2 is at around 380 ppmv which is 0.00038 * 1013 Mbar = 0.385 mbar. Mars with 95% of 6.36 mbar has 15.7 times more CO2 at the surface than Earth The overal effect of the feedbacks are demonstrated to be negative: http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf Which means that they temper the greenhouse effect, not amplify it. So all in all mars has slightly less than half the solar energy of Earth but a lower albedo, creating more infrared, and almost 16 times more CO2, then wouldn't we expect at least some of the 8 degrees GHG effect attributed to CO2 on Earth. There you go, you just falsified yourself implying that the warmed air is melting the snow quicker in the shadow than the sun would. Well, it's not happening. You can do it yourself. measuring and comparing the rate of melt of ice under a controlled visual light source against a controlled IR light source with the same output. Visual light penetrates ice several meters. Infrared about 15 micron. That is 0.000015 meters
Hello all Hot air (same amount of gases and water vapor) will rise and loose heat from expansion and other sinks. Most of this heat comes from the ground. So the convection cycle goes from the ground to about 12,000 meters. 12,000 meters is above 75% of the atmosphere. Hot Co2 at this hight emits most of its IR radiation into space. Hot air rising removes a lot more heat than IR radiation ever will. Just some thoughts Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ha. touche.( My memory fed me total CO2 cycle comparisons) Oh fish, there is that 5% - almost none of it water vapor. My bad. Rephrase: There is very little atmosphere to warm, on Mars, and the greenhouse heat trapping has little storage available. So we expect much less effect from it on Mars. We get what, 5 or 10 degrees C? That is predicted by the same considerations that predict global warming catastrophes on Earth. Not by that link. And that would be quite the demonstration - methinks you would be back to those computer models. Or one you put together yourself - the common ones keep handing out positive feedback, barring cloud uncertainties. What? Irrelevant. We were talking about the potential feedback effects of the atomospheric warming by infrared absorption, and in the real world - with wind, exposure of low-albedo surface, larger air and ocean responses, etc. Warm moving air melts ice, backscattered infrared absorbed by impurities warms ice, rain melts ice, increased vapor retention of warmer air sublimates ice, and all of these things have great and obvious potential to join in various positive feedback cycles. Look, are you denying that absorption of infrared by greenhouse gasses warms the air? That the extra spin and vibration of the CO2 molecules is not transferred kinetically to other air molecules, that the backscatter is not absorbed by particulates and surface features as heat, that the temperature of the air is not raised nor its latent heat content increased ?
Think about that, there is very little atmosphere to warm, hence there is also very little infrared required to warm it. No dice. And that proves what? Models right, reality wrong? take this it just proofs that the models do what the programmers think they ought to do. Karner uses reality to demonstrate net negative feedback behavior in reality. Do I need to explain how? Look, are you denying that emission of infrared by greenhouse gasses cools the air? That the other air molecules kinetically insert extra spin and vibration on the CO2 making them emit infra red to cool down, that the surface heat from the backscatter is not reradiated to cool it again?
I was thinking, but then I noticed you had beat me to it: I readily agree that such effects would be important in a thin atmosphere of mostly CO2. And so such thin atomspheres do not "insulate" well - as many astronomers have pointed out in the case of Mars. So only 5 or 10 degrees of greenhouse warming is posited for Mars - less than the dust contributes. But on earth, absorbed infrared once transferred to Nitrogen and Oxygen and water molecules as kinetic energy is very likely to be stored in them for some time - transfer to CO2 is rare, and quite likely to be just handed back. Whereas for CO2 any kinetic transfer is almost certain to be with a non-radiating molecule. So the absorbed infrared energy is very likely to be transferred and stored as kinetic energy - warmth - in the earth's atmosphere. The air heats up. "Warming", we call it. Reality has yet to intrude in this particular area - your link, for example, seems to be about something else. Yep. Because I don't see how such a demonstration could even be attempted - let alone recognize its accomplishment in anything I've read.
%^$#@ You guys have totally hijacked my thread. :frust: I don't care about global warming (in this thread) I want to know about wobble. WOBBLE WOBBLE!!! If the ice melting doesn't affect it, how about another Ice Age? Would that make us tilt more on our axis? If we have another Ice Age, would the sea level drop? And would there be drought like conditions? (if everything is freezing, does it rain?)
Our "wobble" is effected more by the Moon's orbit than anything on the Earth. So, if things go screwie in that department, then blame the moon. ~String
Sorry for the hijack, The Earth wobbles indeed due to gravitational interaction with the other members of the solar system, Moon first, Sun second and a tiny touch of Jupiter. Those are called Milankovitch cycles.It is explained here. The scholar idea is that the Milankovitch cycles cause the ice ages. It might, however the strong 100,000 ice age cycle visible in the ice cores and ocean sediments is NOT explainable by these Milankovitch cycles: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Sourrce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Milankovitch_Variations.png See for instance the strong 'glaciation' spike around 410,000 years ago, when the Milankovitch cycles were really quiet and the strong Milankovitch signals around 220,000 years ago causing only mild 'glaciation' spikes. About other wobbles, An acquitance did his PhD thesis on the possibility of a true polar wander due to assymmetric ice sheets, and calculated 0,3 meter per year max. He later revised that downwards, assuming that the equatorial bulge would readjust. There is also a shorter wobble, known as Chandler wobble. Concerning the ice ages, if nothing adds up, we might be totally wrong, that's why I'm working on a complete overhaul about that, there might be yet other wobbles. The action is here: http://earth.myfastforum.org/forum3.php
So if the North Pole built up ice and more ice and more ice and the planet got top heavy, it wouldn't affect a dang thing??
It would have to be a tremendous amount of ice... but in the long haul of the eons, it is possible for it to effect the wobble, just highly unlikely given our [in the grand scheme of history] short, short, short 100,000 year warming/cooling trend. ~String
I heard the earthquake/tsunami that hit a couple years ago was so large it affected the earth's rotation. Is that not true? If it is true, how could a change in the ice on the poles no affect earth the same way. I'm just NOT GETTING IT!!! Sorry.
But what is top heavy on a spinning planet. it's not the same as a bal on a table, on which you'd put some weight on top of it. It is likely that the spinning axis remains just as stable with or without huge ice sheet as it wants to spin at closely to the inertia tensor as possible. You could consider the inertia tensor the axis where the earth is most symmetrical. So if you shift weight around on Earth in an assymetric way, like the tsunami earthquake, you also change the direction of this inertia tensor a wee bit and the spinning axis will adjust accordingly, this is what is called "true polar wander". However don't expect more than a few inch/feet. A symmetrical ice build up will not change the direction of the inertia tensor but it places more mass to the centre of rotation. And since the angular (rotation) momentum remains the same, just like the spinning ice skater, the earth will spin up slightly and the length of day will decrease a few milliseconds. Welcome to the puzzled club. You can study all your live only to find yourself at an higher level of not getting it. :shrug:
Hello Andre, et al. This is slightly off topic but valid, so check this out. http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div844/facilities/isam/isam.html Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Floating in space, there is no "top" - the intuition of "overbalance" misleads. And the ice sheets are very thin - only a few miles, maximum, and much less on average - compared with the planet. It's like frost on a car roof - doesn't really affect the handling.
