lewts stick with basics...light include's..uv..[heat]..heat rises..space is called a vacume..but more rightly,..is a freezer

the core of the earth is..supposedly a molten core...yet we live on this hot blob..radiating uv/heat..outwards into the freezer..

so there is a fire in the sky...and a fire below..yet we in between these two heat sources...have yet evolved...life..

as children..we know the relief..of returning to a shady classroom..or standing in a shade tree...we have day light..when its warm...and night time when the temp drops,..,near ten degrees of difference

yet we have these nutters..saying a two degree increase in temp will destroy the reef...will result in great extinctions...pretending the true/facts arent real..only their models are real...and their selective..records..of local climatic vairiations

yet their local tree rings are valid...but our real numbers..are called local..recall its global cooling/warming ..then finally change...yes there is a daily change..[near ten degrees]

here is an egsample..of the numbers...see every day masses of PREDICTIVE numbers..are generated..under the guise...forcasting/weather..

for a long time i tried to make sense of this vast quantlty of numbers..till i realised they are all predictive fictions...predictions...that were patently deceptive..if/when called science

so here we are...plenty of numbers..but all of them fiction..and the actual numbers..are clasified secret..

we are sitting here in a freezer,..,being told we must believe their numbers..on faith..this from the same nutters..who inject us with scalene/fleuride our waters..and aids in our polio/vacine..and poluted the planet..to near extinction...in/with/by..their industrialised consumerism

that the new tax will subsidise the poluters..with carbon credit is a fact...that it will be lent..under ursurous terms is a certainty..al/la argentina...by the same world bank

that the neo/new industrialisation..will be paid..subsidised by carbon tax surities...by the same securities traiters..who gave us debt swaps/derivitives..now clogging up our compulsory super..is a certainty

that you been decieved is certain..evolution was sold to us as kids..go see your leaders talking to the kids..who will become hitler yugen..policing thier parental..non compliance...is the final betrayal...by their deeds..will they be revealed

Well i have been around since the 50's and it is cooler now than it was then,The only diference is there seems to be a bunch of accountants trying to run the weather.White people are at ware with nature you don't see the natives getting upset it's all natural to them.

csteel,

It was examinator who put them up. I have now watched all 16 hours of them. I have said this before elsewhere, but if you are comfortable with grade 12 maths and physics, and like Discover Channel types shows you will most likely enjoy them. Although the 16 hours sounds like a lot you watch them like cricket - with 1/2 a eye, rewinding when you miss something. I watched them while working.

I see GrahamY dealt with your first question pretty well.

> The other concept I'm struggling a little with is the need for a difference in temperature to be present for there to be a greenhouse effect.

He did explain the science, but if the science is difficult think of being under a blanket. Regardless of whether the blanket is there is not, the temperature of the surface exposed to the air in the room is about the same - ie room temperature. Thus if you don't want you skin to be that temperature you hide from the air by putting a blanket over you. The temperature of the thing exposed to the air is still the same, but in this case the thing exposed is the surface of the blanket, not you.

The Earth's blanket is the atmosphere. The "room temperature" in this case is determined by the amount of energy (heat) the Earth must radiate. Too hot and the Earth will radiate more than the sun supplies and we will cool down, too cold and we will radiate less heat than the sun supplies and will heat up. Right now, when the Earth "appears" to be at -30 degrees C or so, we radiate exactly the right amount of heat. If we didn't have that blanket of air above us whose surface appears to be -30, we would have to be -30 and that would not be nice.

Dear Graham,

I'm sorry but that should have been the tropopause. The troposphere loses 6.5 C for every kilometre of height but through the tropopause it remains fairly stable until we hit the stratosphere where we start gaining temperature with height.

It seems the coolest layer in our atmosphere lies over the equator.

So when you said “If the atmosphere were warmer then the earth is going to keep heating until it reaches a temperature which is higher and then the heat loss will start again.” the question needed to be asked – 'Why doesn't the warmer stratosphere heat the troposphere as the heat can't escape?'

In fact at 500kms up at the top of the thermosphere the temperature can reach 1727C.

I thought differences in atmospheric temp were mainly a function of pressure i.e. decreasing with height. It appears not to be so.

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/atmosphere/layers.html

Water vapour is the obvious culprit in the troposphere but what of higher up?

The water vapour – CO2 connection is interesting. WV is a stronger greenhouse gas and so delivers a positive feedback result of increases in CO2 i.e. it amplifies the temperature increase.

The other concept of note was that climate forcing from CO2 scales as a log. Therefore an increase from 10 to 20 ppm has the same effect as 1000 to 2000ppm.

BTW I feel I will have to just accept that the Earth only loses heat through light/radiation. Just seemed not quite right to me.

One of the questions I had after Ch 14 was whether weathering of CaSiO3 + CO2 to CaCO3 + SiO2 occurred under sea water? But perhaps the answers will come in a later lecture.

Thus far the physics says to me that all things being equal increases in global CO2 will result in an increase in global temperature and that the corresponding increase in water vapour is a compounding factor. However it is a very complicated picture. I'm looking forward to the next lecture.

Dear rstuart,

My thanks to Examinator and thanks for your answer but how does it work with a hotter stratosphere?

This discussion leads to a question I've been thinking for a while.

We learned at school that overnight temperatures are higher on cloudy nights, because the escaping radiation hits the cloud layer and bounces back into the atmosphere. So, why doesn't the extra heat in our atmosphere (that is causing global warming) leak into space on clear nights?

Is it postulated that the extra concentration of greenhouse gases acts as a fog or cloud that permanently traps in the extra heat? If so, is this fog uniform across the globe and is it really permanent? And what are the natural earth mechanisms that could dissipate this fog if we were to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow?

I think I was to blame RStuart I've been touting the site for a while.
My recommendations is to pick on lecture the latter lectures that give how it fits together particularly 18/19 and the ones that critique the books 21/22/23.

I'm with Pacnet and have a limited speed package 5gigs during the day but at night its unlimited full bore. No surprises I down load at night. $49 per month. I've yet to be stopped or cut back and clearly I hammer the band width on lectures etc.

Q&A Thanks for your site currently working through it.
BTW thanks for the site that examined Plimer's 'Chariots of the Gods' style book.
Did you see his performance on late line....what did you think. I thought it sad.