Is there a Greenhouse Effect?

Atmospheric physicists disagree.

Both sides claim the other doesn’t know their thermodynamics. (Is that why I heard it called ThermoGodDammics in college?)

Nice article on how greenhouses (real ones) really work.

On Facebook, for more “discussion:”

• Watts Up With That FB Group
• There is No Greenhouse Effect FB Group

I don’t have the physics or the math to really dig into it and I’m just going to sit back and read the stuff as it comes to my attention. However, I do suspect that a lot of the “discussion” is due to poor choice of terminology and a smearing of definitions.

For example: Can a cooler object warm a warmer object? You’ll be warmer inside your Igloo than you will be outside of it and you’ll be warmer in a nice coat or blanket than without. Yet all are cooler than you and they still “warm” you. But does the atmosphere and IR work the same way?

I think everyone agrees the the atmosphere is warmer with an atmosphere than without, right? And with much less day/night variation than it would have with no atmosphere (eg: the moon.)

And from there it gets more interesting… 🙂

So, I’m going to link to the “Yes!” and “No!” posts as I find them. This post will be updated periodically. Perhaps a conclusion or common ground will be reached, someday. Till then, I’m reaching for the popcorn.

(update note: I’m on the “yes” side, though “greenhouse” is a lousy term.)

(Another update note: Can a “greenhouse gas,” in theory, back-radiate to warm the surface? Yes. (See below.) Does it? I say yes. Is CO2 a significant player in this? No, water vapor vastly overwhelms CO2.)

Yes, There IS a GH Effect. Dr. Roy Spencer has challenged the Slayers (of the GH effect theory, to either “put up or shut up.” Here is the article Dr. S. presents. WUWT Article Eschenbach on the The R. W. Wood Experiment	No, There is NOT a GH Effect Principia Scientific responds to Dr. Spencer’s challenge. Here it is Also on Climate of Sophistry Principia adds a followup Climate of Sophistry responds to Eschenbach
JoNova: And with over 1,100 comments (!!) as of this link, we have: A discussion of the Slaying the Sky Dragon science: Is the Greenhouse Effect a Sky Dragon Myth? (Here’s the full PDF of this article.) Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics So what is the Second Darn Law?	Radical New Hypothesis on the Effect of Greenhouse Gases: Michael Hammer, an engineer who specializes in spectroscopy, is also sceptical of the GCM but his criticism is more fundamental.  In the following paper, using the basic laws of spectroscopy, he shows that a significant portion of energy loss from the Earth’s surface is by direction radiation to space at wavelengths not absorbed by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Convection, Venus, Thought Experiments and Tall Rooms Full of Gas – A Discussion	The atmospheric greenhouse effect is really just an artifact of a fictional boundary condition (PDF) Five fatal flaws the greenhouse effect (GHE) “theory” MUST address. (PDF)
Luboš Motl: SciAm, Gavin Schmidt despise climate facts	American Thinker: The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
On WUWT: Simple experiment shows that a hotter object can, in fact, be warmed by a cooler one. Light bulb experiment.	two

I think this sums it up very nicely. 

OldWeirdHarold says: (wuwt comment, from the light bulb experiment) May 28, 2013 at 9:51 am

Years ago, in a statistical mechanics lesson in P-chem, the prof, after wading through an insufferable derivation, drew an interesting conclusion. In a hurricane, over 40% of the molecules are moving against the direction of the wind. If they were all moving the the same direction, they’d be moving at the speed of sound.

The conceptual error that the Skydragons are making is failing to distinguish between individual dynamics and population dynamics. Just as a large percentage of the molecules in a hurricane move against the wind, a large percentage of the photons can and do move counter to the net heat flow, which implies moving counter to the thermal gradient.

The Second Law is an emergent phenomenon that applies to populations. It doesn’t apply to individual particles.

And this: 

(link) GE R&D center developed an incandescent bulb back in the late 1980′s (and GE lighting commercialized it in the 1990′s) that placed a spherical clear glass shell around the filament. The shell was coated with a multilayer (anywhere from 15 – 30 separate layers) optical filter that reflects mid infrared back onto the filament, while allowing visible light to pass through. The result is that a lower filament current can achieve the same filament temperature, thanks to the mid infrared energy being reflected back to the filament. This results in a 15% – 20% increase in lumens/Watt.

GE’s research into IR reflecting films

And I think this one ends the discussion about “back-radiation.”

It is well known that the efficiency of incandescent lamps could be greatly increased if the radiated energy in the near IR region could be returned to the tungsten filament and REABSORBED.

http://www.ies.org/PDF/100Papers/053.pdf