The Daily Mail was the source of the story that started this thread, which was shown to be a lie. They printed a retraction.

Blankflag you go on and on about people being fooled by the media but here you are being taken in by one of Rupert Murdoch's papers. Looks like you are the fool.

Richard Lindzen is an interesting person. I think is entitled to challenge the mainstream view, he is a well-known scientist in his own right, with his own radical theories. But that doesn't mean lay people should automatically accept his views over the consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

"According to an April 30, 2012 New York Times article,[60] "Dr. Lindzen accepts the elementary tenets of climate science. He agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, calling people who dispute that point "nutty." He agrees that the level of it is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate." However, he believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming.[60]"

So he has an alternate theory, in which liken the atmosphere to an "infrared iris". If anyone is entitled to question the consensus I would say Lindzen does. But a lay person has no way of knowing whether Lindzen is right. The only way we will gets a sense if he is probably right is if other scientists investigate his theories and if they gain traction in the scientific community. At this point in time he doesn't have that support.

Brian Cox wrote an article about how to spot bad science:
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/10/how-to/spot-bad-science

I think point 2 is relevant here:

2. Beware the maverick

Ensure the researcher is embedded in the scientific community; the consensus is rarely changed by those studying in isolation. "If it's some scientist working on their own, and they seem to have revolutionised the whole of physics, then it's probable that they haven't," says Cox.

This is not to say that a lone physist can't revolution science. After Enstein did just that. But the appropriate time for a lay person to accept revolutionary views is after those views have been endorsed by the scientific community.

At this point Lindzen is on the outer with his views. Why take his word over the rest of the consensus?

it is a difficult problem to convince lemmings such as the typical webdiplomacy member. the thing is academic positions are nearly all political but even getting a phd these days require whoring out to whatever the mainstream beliefs are. so this consensus you talk about, which does not even really exist, would not really say much since it is a self-selected sample of people who tend to believe what others tell them without thinking critically.

sad irony of modern academics - it is characterized by a clear lack of critical thinking and an acceptance of common belief for political reasons. some say "oh it is not true, because the average person doubts this global warming in higher numbers than academia" but they just blindly follow what they think other academics say.

however, there are some critical thinkers. and you have to pay attention to them because they are sacrificing their positions in their institutions in order to follow the now ostracized scientific method. he is lucky he was already so famous and was at an institution like mit. because the vast majority of universities would cut all his funding and not promote him and maybe even get rid of him if he doubted the bs.

"it is a difficult problem to convince lemmings such as the typical webdiplomacy member"

I tried to have a discussion about this with not a long ago blankflag, but you were unable to support ANY of your ridiculous claims. Zero. You believe because you believe.

You raised a few non-circular points which were easily shown to be fallacious (baseless assertions for which you provided no evidence)- and you yourself had no counter. Sorry you have already lost this debate.

If you really want to discuss this you'll need to go back in the thread and actually provide an answer to the questions I raised earlier.

You go about people who "lack critical thinking" but you are the worst offender in this area that I have seen on webdiplomacy. I think you find that just about every other member of this site agrees.

it is called science. i do not have to prove shit. the onus is never on those doubting a theory to disprove it. you prove to me that co2 emitted by human burning things is driving world temperatures.

funny, though, they are measuring temperatures on mars that are matching the temperature changes on earth. yet no humans there. also funny, all the models that they use to claim co2 drives temperatures predicted ice-free arctic this year, when we had 60% ice growth, highest recorded. and all those models said our temperature would be much higher, but they are lower than when the theories came out.

there is really no evidence for the theory. all empirical evidence is sadly enough for them disproving it. the thing i have to worry about is what if, as it was just as statistically likely, it had warmed since the theories came out rather than cooled? if even when the data contradicts the theory they become more confident of the theory.... this is not science.

"it is called science. i do not have to prove shit. the onus is never on those doubting a theory to disprove it. you prove to me that co2 emitted by human burning things is driving world temperatures."

I am going to try one more time to discuss this with you rationally. I am going to make some point and you need to provide counters that are based in reason, and not simply the voices inside your head.

First we need to establish which parts of AGW theory you agree with and which parts you have problems with.

1. Greenhouse gases make the Earth temperature warmer than it would be otherwise. Without greenhouse gases the earth would be largely frozen. The physics of the above is well-understood and beyond question at this point in time.

2. It therefore follows that an increase in Greenhouse gases will tend to result in a warmer Earth (ie the Earth retains more heat).

3. The proportion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased considerably in the past 150 years.

4. Humans are largely responsible for that increase.

5. There are various feedback mechanisms which complicate the process considerably. Thus while their maybe a general warming trend, in reality the Earths temperature will trend upwards. The full impact of all feedback mechanisms are not fully at this time fully understood however. But unless a mechanism by which we would expect the Earth to cool can be identified we should assume the Earth will continue to warm.

My challenge to you blankflag is to start at point 1 and state whether you agree or disagree. If you disagree at a point we should discuss that point before moving on to the other points.

You need to provide reasons. If you resort to circular arguments you lose.

i need to think about it to answer you. but i have already went over how there are too many things that need to be assumed to be true for this global warming hoax to make sense. on top of having to ignore the fact that all empirical evidence has been disproving it.

does the greenhouse effect exist? yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much.

do human emissions contribute significantly to it? not too much.

does the greenhouse effect cause most of the climate change we see? absolutely not. most of it is caused by the sun. (that is why mars is warming in the same way that earth is)

if we assume all of this, then is a warmer planet worse, somehow than a colder planet? no - it is actually better. life thrives, and the planet is in much better condition if it is warmer.

this brings up another point, al gore flipped the temperature/co2 record. if you look at the raw data co2 lags temperature. why is this? because a warm planet supports much more life. and that life is causing more co2 to be produced.

finally another point - it is generally accepted that greenhouse gasses regulate temperature. and this effect seems more significant to me than any warming. which, again is a good thing.

to be honest it would be nice if the planet could be warmed a bit by us, because then there would be so much more life on the planet. those barren wastelands in the arctic might be able to be like forestlands. and those forests can be more like equatorial regions filled with life...

but unfortunately it was the biggest hoax in recent times.

"does the greenhouse effect exist? yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much."

Excellent. We are starting to tackle the guts of the problem. It might be best if we discuss your points one by one.

Can you be more specific?How much of an effect do you think the greenhouse effect has?

Presently the Earth's surface average temperature is about 14 degrees Celsius. What would you guess would be the Earth's temperature would be if there were no greenhouse gases (this included water vapor)?

Please disregard point number 5 for the time being. I wrote that a bit too quickly and what I have written does not make any sense. In a nutshell what I was trying to say is that even though greenhouse emissions can be expected to result in a long-term warming trend, complicated feedback mechanisms, some of which are not yet understood, will likely result in temperature fluctuations.In theory the Earth could even become colder for a while as a result of high greenhouse levels.The rapid change that we are causing in greenhouse levels can be expected to destabilize the Earth's climate.

that makes no sense to me. how can greenhouse gasses, which insulate the earth, result in a destabilization of the climate? first of all the climate is not stable. we are constantly going from warm periods to ice ages. that stability they talked about in the first ipcc report was a complete fabrication.

but if it were not for gasses in the atmosphere both reflecting some radiation away from earth and keeping some radiation from leaving earth as fast as it otherwise would have, the earth would see much more variation in temperature as the suns emissions constantly change.

Blankflag - You response are really interesting. Without wishing to be patronising, I want to walk you through why each of your responses could be right but your conclusion can be wrong.

Suppose you are an architect that has built a wonderful 20 storey office block next to a corn field. You want to take a picture of said building for your website. You walk into the field as as you are about to take the picture you are almost blinded by the glare from the 13th Floor window. You look behind you and discover that a piece of corn appears to be singed. What do you do?

Now it is true that the corn field hasn't burst into flames.

Lets ask similar questions and give your similar answers.

does the PARABOLIC REFLECTOR effect exist? yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much. (You answer is correct, the sun is about 10 millions degrees. Your miro has increased the temperature that reached the earth from maybe 20 degrees to 90 degrees - In the scale of things a minute amount).

does YOUR BUILDING contribute significantly to it? not too much.(Again you are correct, your building accounts for such a small area of the earth's surface that I couldn't begin to explain how small it is)

does the PARABOLIC REFLECTOR cause most of the HEAT IN THE CORNFIELD we see? absolutely not. most of it is caused by the sun. (that is why mars is warming in the same way that earth is) - Again you are bang on correct.

Is it a good idea to set fire to the cornfield? Well, maybe, but if you want to set fire to the cornfield light a match. If you want to encourage life to thrive on earth their are better ways of doing it than hoping the earth warms a little.

You are not certain that the glass on the 13th Floor could cause a fire in the cornfield. But you strongly suspect it could. Do you ignore the potential problem or do something about it?

Read what I wrote more carefully. Not greenhouse gases per say, but a rapid *change*in greenhouse gas levels could destabilise the Earth's climate.

Take the Younger Dryas about 12000 years ago. The Earth had been steadily warming for about 6000 years (the end of the ice age). But melting glaciers resulted in the formation of an enormous fresh water lake in North America. But it is thought the banks of this lake broke, flooding the Atlantic Ocean with cold fresh water, which in turn disrupted Ocean currents preventing warm tropical water from making its usual trip North. Consequently the Earth was thrust back into a ice age. This ice age however only lasted about 1000 years. The same forces that had led to the end of the previous ice age about 20K years ago (probably to do with Milankovitch cycles) persisted and the Earth warmed again.

A similar situation was illustrated in the movie The Day After Tomorrow, in which a huge chunk of ice from Antarctica fell into the Ocean, disrupting ocean currents in a similar way to how I described above, resulting in cooling.

Despite such fluctuations we can still expect the Earth to maintain a long term warming trend due to an increase in greenhouse emissions because of the effect of greenhouse gases on the Earths Energy balance. That is the amount of incoming solar energy the Earth retains before eventually reflecting that Energy into space.

Let's not get to distracted though. We can come back to these points let's stick to point number 1. What would you expect the Earths temperature to be if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

i do not agree that ice ages were caused by chunks of ice landing in water. it is like if i put a ham sandwich in the hot sun all day and then tell you it overheated because some of the mayonaise clumped together, and then at night it cooled because the mayonaise spread out... or something like that. it is bunk.

and your analogy is not great either because when i said the climate change was caused by the sun i mean the temperature variability is caused by the sun. i do not think greenhouse gasses do much at all, but what they do is more to stabilize temperature. the variability seems to come more from the sun itself.

anyway if you feel like watching a video/listening to a podcast on it, here is one you can refer to. but i suppose you probably will not want to because the guy connecting the dots does not work at a university and is rather skeptical of the ipcc

http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-282-the-ipcc-exposed/

"i do not agree that ice ages were caused by chunks of ice landing in water."

Let's talk about that later. We are getting ahead of ourselves. First we need to lay the foundations for our discussion. Can we please go back to point number one.

1. Greenhouse gases make the Earth temperature warmer than it would be otherwise. Without greenhouse gases the earth would be largely frozen. The physics of the above is well-understood and beyond question at this point in time.

To which you replied:
"does the greenhouse effect exist? yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much."

And I said in return:
Presently the Earth's surface average temperature is about 14 degrees Celsius. What would you guess would be the Earth's temperature would be if there were no greenhouse gases (this included water vapor)?

Would you please answer the above question?

do i have to reiterate that the onus is not on the one questioning a theory. why dont you tell me?

would the earth largely be frozen? ok give me a reference on that. mars is 50% further from the sun, so should get half the radiation that the earth does, but its average temperature is not much different from earths.

my guess, although this is just a guess and in no way affects my argument since i am doing it out of pure kindness and not out of logical necessity since you are the one trying to prove something to me, is that if there were no greenhouse gasses on earth, the side facing the sun would be hot and the side away from the sun would be cold.

but then the side facing the sun would be hot enough that the water would evaporate and we would get some kind of atmosphere from the water vapor anyway, so the temperatures on earth would stabilize anyway.... if you are saying that earth did not have all the water it has now, then i would say that half would be hot and half would be cold.

The average temp on mars is lower than the earth. But 50% further does not mean it should be half as hot.

The temp (surface) of a planet depends on two things, how much energy it absorbs (total solar irradiance minus the amount reflected) and how much energy it emits (which depends on the temperature - the hotter it is the more energy it emits, this is true for all object if you heat a metal you will notice it becomes 'red hot' where the energy it is emitting has become visible... If you heat it more it become 'white hot', as more blue and green light starts to be emitted)

So the energy balances when the total emitted and total absorbed is the same (and the average temperature will change when the balance is upset)

Mars is very interesting. Average temp is ~ minus 70 F. and yet its, admittedly thin, atmosphere is composed of ~ 95% CO2. This does tend, to my mind, put solar input as the crucial variable. The key comparison with Earth seems likely to be the respective distances from the sun.
Also Mars has clouds..........yes just like the Earth, I wonder if the climate modellers have noticed :-)

radiation should decrease with the square of the distance. so 3/2 of the distance should get 4/9 of the radiation.

i dont know. this is kind of stupid anyway. whatever, we can look at the moon. i think the average temperature is like -20 or something, my guess is the earth without an atmosphere should be higher than that. the moon is bright and seems to have less going on inside of it.

but whatever, i am getting tired of arguing anyway. at least for tonight.

@blankflag - "if there were no greenhouse gasses on earth, the side facing the sun would be hot and the side away from the sun would be cold." I'm pretty sure that both halves face the sun sometimes, this is as clear as night and day. I think we should give up trying to discuss the greenhouse effect of your not sure how the Earth rotates. Please don't tell me I only believe the earth spins because I'm a sheep and that I learnt it on Fox.

spyman said:
"Presently the Earth's surface average temperature is about 14 degrees Celsius. What would you guess would be the Earth's temperature would be if there were no greenhouse gases (this included water vapor)"

blankflag said:
"do i have to reiterate that the onus is not on the one questioning a theory. why dont you tell me?"

Surely if you are going to disagree with a theory you must have some understanding what it is you are disagreeing with? Is it the whole theory or is it part parts of theory. If the latter which parts of the theory? If the former then it will be impossible to have a discussion because then you would have to be in disagreement with the cornerstones of physics, and perhaps even against science itself.

I am going to assume you are smarter than that and simply disagree with parts of the theory. And as I mentioned we need to figure out which parts. That is why I ordered my five questions in the way that I did, from most fundamental and well-understood to issues that are more complex, less well-understood (by science), and hence controversial.

With out greenhouse gases the Earths average temperature would be about -18 degrees Celsius.

You asked me to provide a link. This is from the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia)
www.bom.gov.au/GreenhouseEffectAndClimateChange.pdf

Radiative equilibrium of the planets
The dominant influences on the overall temperature of each of the inner planets are the intensity of the sun's radiation, the planet's distance from the sun and its albedo or reflectivity for solar radiation. Given the amount of solar radiation incident on the earth (approximately 1360 W m-2 as an annual aver- age) and an approximate albedo of 0.3, it is a simple matter to calculate an effective planetary temperature for the earth by noting that the infrared (long wave) radiation emitted to space by the planet is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature. By equating the emitted (long wave) radiation to the absorbed (short wave) radiation, the earth's planetary temperature can be estimated, that is the average temperature in the absence of any other influences, which turns out to be -18°C (255K). The corresponding planetary temperature for the highly reflective planet Venus is -46°C (227K) while that for Mars is -57°C (216K) (Figure 1).

So there you have it. The average temperature would be -18 degrees Celsius. That is 26 degrees cooler than if there no greenhouse gases. You have to admit that is more significant than what you stated earlier.

That part is entirely uncontroversial. Even disagree scientist who are sceptical of AGW agree with that part.

blankflag said:
""does the greenhouse effect exist? yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much."

My next question to you (question number 1b): Is why do greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer than it would be otherwise. Please note I am not talking simply about the atmosphere itself (which is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, which are NOT greenhouse gases) but a small part of the atmosphere, especially water vapour and CO2.

This is a fundamental question and there is no point discussing more complex issues if we are unclear on this point. As I said before before you reject a theory you need to understand what it is you are rejecting an why. This is all part of critical thinking.

That last quote of blankflags was posted out of the order that I intended. Nevermind.

Blankflag, given all of the above, do you now concede that the greenhouse effect is more significant than what you initially stated: "yeah maybe to some slight amount, but not much"

Why is it neither Hydrongen nor Oxygen are greenhouse gases, but H2O in a vaporous form is? Just curious.

Draug,
It has something to do with the complexity of the molecules I believe. Contrast the complexity of N2 and O2 with H20 and CO2. I don't understand the exact mechanics of it, but it means that H20 and C02 both absorb infrared radiation; that is, H20 and C02 are opaque to infrared, where as N2 and O2 are both transparent to infrared.

The Earth is warmed by incoming solar energy (short wave radiation). The Earth in turn then radiates that energy back out into space as infrared (long wave radiation). Energy in equals energy out. However before the Earth radiates that energy back into space it has a level of energy that it will retain before it sending it back into space. This is the Earth's energy balance. On its way back into space some of the infrared bumps into greenhouse gas molecules, which then absorb that radiation (thus warming the molecules), before then radiating that energy back out once again. But this is the crucial part: that energy absorbed by greenhouse gases is radiated in all directions, some of it is lost to space, and some of it goes back to the Earth. In this way greenhouse gases alter the Earth's natural energy balance, meaning that Earth retains energy at a higher temperature than it would otherwise. Hence instead of a freezing cold average surface temperature of -18 degrees Celsius, we have a much more liveable average temperature of 14 degrees Celsius.

fullhamish wrote:"Mars is very interesting. Average temp is ~ minus 70 F. and yet its, admittedly thin, atmosphere is composed of ~ 95% CO2. This does tend, to my mind, put solar input as the crucial variable"

Of course energy ultimately comes from the sun, so natural that is the crucial variable. But there is not just the question of how much energy an object (like Earth or Mars) receives, but how much energy is *retained* before it is once again radiated back into space.

Even though Mars has an incredibly thin atmosphere (100 times thinner than Earths) it does in fact have a slight greenhouse effect. Mars is about 5 degrees Celsius warmer that it would be otherwise thanks to the C02 in it atmosphere (as you mentioned C02 makes up about 95% of that atmosphere).

Why is Mars not even warmer. Its atmosphere is too thin. Note also that it does not have water vapor in its atmosphere. And water vapor is by far the most significant of the greenhouse gases on Earth. (H20 andC02 however have a complex relationship, which I'll explain later. In a nutshell more C02 tends to mean that the atmosphere will hold more water vapor).

You also have to take into account the mass of the celestial body. More mass absorbs more of the radiation.

"Why is it neither Hydrongen nor Oxygen are greenhouse gases, but H2O in a vaporous form is? Just curious."

it is the wavelenghts of photon which are absorbed, comparably to the emission spectra.

You could imagine that the wavelengths absorbed relate to the length of the chemical bonds which make up the molecule - that is why some chemical reactions have an associated colour change (eg litmus in acid/base changes colour readily) the underlying cause is a change in the electron configuration of the molecules invovled.

But that is just half the story. You get absorption due to electrons being excited, but also from vibrating a molecule along it's chemical bond, or rotations, each of these modes (vibrational, electric, rotational and transverse) contribute to the absorption of a given molecule.

"The Earth is warmed by incoming solar energy (short wave radiation). The Earth in turn then radiates that energy back out into space as infrared (long wave radiation). Energy in equals energy out."

I really don't like this... the photons from the sun are indeed 'short wave' which means high frequency, which means high energy, which means high temperature. The sun is at a higher temperature so it emits higher energy photons. The earth is at a lower temperature so it emits lower energy photons - these have longer wavelengths.

And energy in equals energy out ONLY for stable net energy. We can tell the earth is currently warming because there is less energy coming out (across all wavelengths) than there is going in. That doesn't mean surface temperature is going up, because the energy could be sinking into the earth, or down into deep sea water (with the el nino effect in the pacific for example)

Oh, there is something else which i noticed earlier - put some ice in a glass, add a thermometer, wait until you have a nice balance at ~0ºC.

Now add some salt, and see what happens. Cool isn't it? (this seems relevant to the conversation above about frozen water mixing with salt water)