What they really mean, however, is that they *cannot absorb infrared radiation*, not that the cannot "absorb heat".
Back to the UW course, note that they said conduction of heat & evaporation of water transfer *about twice as much* energy to the atmosphere than IR does.
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What's the point?
To answer that, let's look to "Basics of Radio Astronomy", published by NASA's JPL ()
From Chapter 3 ():
"Did you know that any object that contains any heat energy at all emits radiation?"
The GHE is predicated on downward IR causing surface heating.
By these very same premises, then, the non-IR-absorbing 99% of the atmosphere, heated far more by convection, emit IR just like the IR-absorbing part...
and should therefore contribute more to the GHE.
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One might ask, do these gases really emit IR?
A user's answer on a physics forum was quite indicative: "Experimentally it is probably very hard to measure these emissions [...] I am not aware of such measurements." ()
Almost four decades since the IPCC was founded, centuries of climate science, all predicated on downwelling IR's effects on surface temps...
... and it is not common common knowledge how much IR nitrogen and oxygen emit & contribute.
One can only speculate why.
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One might ask, do nitrogen and oxygen really emit IR due to their temperature? As we said, it's not well-studied - what if they don't? Or only very little?
If that were the case, then 99% of the atmosphere would have *no way to cool down* radiatively.
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Any heat uptaken from the Earth's surface, by conduction & convection (which dominate below 12km) would have **no way to be lost to space**.
They would perfectly inhibit such cooling -- and therefore still achieve the purpose of keeping Earth warmer than otherwise.
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Nitrogen and oxygen are, in effect, greenhouse gases either way:
By the very tenets of the theory if they emit IR,
and by being near-perfect retainers of heat if they don't.
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This thread ends here, but not the journey.
As a hint for what's next, take a look at this particularly illustrative diagram of the one-layer model.
See how the thermal radiation emitted by the surface returns back to the surface to heat it up further?
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As you go about your daily life, ask yourself if any objects you interact with behave this way.
If you stand in front of a mirror, does your reflected heat cause you to warm up?
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The simple models have a ~50% IR return. Aluminum foil reflects over 90% of IR.
If you step into a foil-lined closet, would you nearly burst into flame as your own body heat reflected off the walls back onto you and heated you up?
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Does *anything* you observe in the world heat itself up with its own heat?
In today's episode of "The Greenhouse Effect Has Never Been Experimentally Demonstrated", we present:
Our very own experiment showing that greenhouses, unlike many believe, do not work according to the greenhouse effect!
This misconception has carried on for far too long! 👇🧵
To recap, a greenhouse stays hot the same way a car parked in the sun does. The sun warms the interior surfaces and objects; these heat the air in turn; the air rises and is physically prevented from escaping by the glass.
I've been reading the IPCC's latest assessment report (), and it's actually disturbing just how deceptively they set up their "proof" that carbon dioxide causes global warming. It completely flips causality on its head!
The perturbations are quantified with "effective radiative forcings" (ERF).
This, combined with "feedbacks", allows them to calculate the "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS), which is how much the surface will warm due to a doubling of CO2 levels since pre-industrial times.
A common response to the simple fact that an object can't heat itself up with its own heat and so the greenhouse effect's back-radiation can't cause warming is:
"But it must! Where else would it *go*? Energy is conserved!"
Yet seeing how it's (not) measured is eye-opening 👇🧵
Backradiative infrared radiation is measured using a device called a pyrgeometer.
With some reading we see that it's essentially a thermopile with various coverings and other sensors.
One of the main problems with the hypothesized greenhouse effect is that it *violates the laws of thermodynamics*!
The debate on this has raged endlessly, yet it is actually *rather simple to grasp*.
Thread below 👇🧵
As a starting point, consider sensate reality.
Have you ever personally witnessed a situation where bringing a cold object closer to a hotter object, caused that hotter object's temperature to increase?
Actually consider this in your own life. Some examples follow...
1/
If you heat your house with a furnace, does the house ever get *hotter than* the furnace's temperature?
If you have heated water radiators, does the house get hotter than the temperature of the water?
No... and no amount of insulation will cause this to happen, either.