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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics

What the science says...

Select a level... Basic Intermediate

The 2nd law of thermodynamics is consistent with the greenhouse effect which is directly observed.

Climate Myth...

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

 

"The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist." (Gerhard Gerlich)

 

At a glance

Although this topic may have a highly technical feel to it, thermodynamics is a big part of all our everyday lives. So while you are reading, do remember that there are glossary entries available for all thinly underlined terms - just hover your mouse cursor over them for the entry to appear.

Thermodynamics is the branch of physics that describes how energy interacts within systems. That interaction determines, for example, how we stay cosy or freeze to death. You wear less clothing in very hot weather and layer-up or add extra blankets to your bed when it's cold because such things control how energy interacts with your own body and therefore your degree of comfort and, in extreme cases, safety.

The human body and its surroundings and energy transfer between them make up one such system with which we are all familiar. But let's go a lot bigger here and think about heat energy and its transfer between the Sun, Earth's land/ocean surfaces, the atmosphere and the cosmos.

Sunshine hits the top of our atmosphere and some of it makes it down to the surface, where it heats up the ground and the oceans alike. These in turn give off heat in the form of invisible but warming infra-red radiation. But you can see the effects of that radiation - think of the heat-shimmer you see over a tarmac road-surface on a hot sunny day.

A proportion of that radiation goes back up through the atmosphere and escapes to space. But another proportion of it is absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules, such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane.  Heating up themselves, those molecules then re-emit that heat energy in all directions including downwards. Due to the greenhouse effect, the total loss of that outgoing radiation is avoided and the cooling of Earth's surface is thereby inhibited. Without that extra blanket, Earth's average temperature would be more than thirty degrees Celsius cooler than is currently the case.

That's all in accordance with the laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant - while energy can be transformed from one form to another it can be neither created nor destroyed. The Second Law does not state that the only flow of energy is from hot to cold - but instead that the net sum of the energy flows will be from hot to cold. That qualifier term, 'net', is the important one here. The Earth alone is not a "closed system", but is part of a constant, net energy flow from the Sun, to Earth and back out to space. Greenhouse gases simply inhibit part of that net flow, by returning some of the outgoing energy back towards Earth's surface.

The myth that the greenhouse effect is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics is mostly based on a very long 2009 paper by two German scientists (not climate scientists), Gerlich and Tscheuschner (G&T). In its title, the paper claimed to take down the theory that heat being trapped by our atmosphere keeps us warm. That's a huge claim to make – akin to stating there is no gravity.

The G&T paper has been the subject of many detailed rebuttals over the years since its publication. That's because one thing that makes the scientific community sit up and take notice is when something making big claims is published but which is so blatantly incorrect. To fully deal with every mistake contained in the paper, this rebuttal would have to be thousands of words long. A shorter riposte, posted in a discussion on the topic at the Quora website, was as follows: “...I might add that if G&T were correct they used dozens of rambling pages to prove that blankets can’t keep you warm at night."

If the Second Law of Thermodynamics is true - something we can safely assume – then, “blankets can’t keep you warm at night”, must be false. And - as you'll know from your own experiences - that is of course the case!

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!


Further details

Among the junk-science themes promoted by climate science deniers is the claim that the explanation for global warming contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. Does it? Of course not (Halpern et al. 2010), but let's explore. Firstly, we need to know how thermal energy transfer works with particular regard to Earth's atmosphere. Then, we need to know what the second law of thermodynamics is, and how it applies to global warming.

Thermal energy is transferred through systems in five main ways: conduction, convection, advection, latent heat and, last but not least, radiation. We'll take them one by one.

Conduction is important in some solids – think of how a cold metal spoon placed in a pot of boiling water can become too hot to touch. In many fluids and gases, conduction is much less important. There are a few exceptions, such as mercury, a metal whose melting point is so low it exists as a liquid above -38 degrees Celsius, making it a handy temperature-marker in thermometers. But air's thermal conductivity is so low we can more or less count it out from this discussion.

Convection

Convection

Figure 1: Severe thunderstorm developing over the Welsh countryside one evening in August 2020. This excellent example of convection had strong enough updraughts to produce hail up to 2.5 cm in diameter. (Source: John Mason)

Hot air rises – that's why hot air balloons work, because warm air is less dense than its colder surroundings, making the artificially heated air in the balloon more buoyant and thereby creating a convective current. The same principle applies in nature: convection is the upward transfer of heat in a fluid or a gas. 

Convection is highly important in Earth's atmosphere and especially in its lower part, where most of our weather goes on. On a nice day, convection may be noticed as birds soar and spiral upwards on thermals, gaining height with the help of that rising warm air-current. On other days, mass-ascent of warm, moist air can result in any type of convective weather from showers to severe thunderstorms with their attendant hazards. In the most extreme examples like supercells, that convective ascent or updraught can reach speeds getting on for a hundred miles per hour. Such powerful convective currents can keep hailstones held high in the storm-cloud for long enough to grow to golfball size or larger.

Advection

Advection is the quasi-horizontal transport of a fluid or gas with its attendant properties. Here are a couple of examples. In the Northern Hemisphere, southerly winds bring mild to warm air from the tropics northwards. During the rapid transition from a cold spell to a warm southerly over Europe in early December 2022, the temperatures over parts of the UK leapt from around -10C to +14C in one weekend, due to warm air advection. Advection can also lead to certain specific phenomena such as sea-fogs – when warm air inland is transported over the surrounding cold seas, causing rapid condensation of water vapour near the air-sea interface.

Advection

Figure 2: Advection fog completely obscures Cardigan Bay, off the west coast of Wales, on an April afternoon in 2015, Air warmed over the land was advected seawards, where its moisture promptly condensed over the much colder sea surface.

Latent heat

Latent heat is the thermal energy released or absorbed during a substance's transition from solid to liquid, liquid to vapour or vice-versa. To fuse, or melt, a solid or to boil a liquid, it is necessary to add thermal energy to a system, whereas when a vapour condenses or a liquid freezes, energy is released. The amount of energy involved varies from one substance to another: to melt iron you need a furnace but with an ice cube you only need to leave it at room-temperature for a while. Such variations from one substance to another are expressed as specific latent heats of fusion or vapourisation, measured in amount of energy (KiloJoules) per kilogram. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, the only substance of major importance with regard to latent heat is water, because at the range of temperatures present, it's the only component that is both abundant and constantly transitioning between solid, liquid and vapour phases.

Radiation

Radiation is the transfer of energy as electromagnetic rays, emitted by any heated surface. Electromagnetic radiation runs from long-wave - radio waves, microwaves, infra-red (IR), through the visible-light spectrum, down to short-wave – ultra-violet (UV), x-rays and gamma-rays. Although you cannot see IR radiation, you can feel it warming you when you sit by a fire. Indeed, the visible part of the spectrum used to be called “luminous heat” and the invisible IR radiation “non-luminous heat”, back in the 1800s when such things were slowly being figured-out.

Sunshine is an example of radiation. Unlike conduction and convection, radiation has the distinction of being able to travel from its source straight through the vacuum of space. Thus, Solar radiation travels through that vacuum for some 150 million kilometres, to reach our planet at a near-constant rate. Some Solar radiation, especially short-wave UV light, is absorbed by our atmosphere. Some is reflected straight back to space by cloud-tops. The rest makes it all the way down to the ground, where it is reflected from lighter surfaces or absorbed by darker ones. That's why black tarmac road surfaces can heat up until they melt on a bright summer's day.

Radiation

Figure 3: Heat haze above a warmed road-surface, Lincoln Way in San Francisco, California. May 2007. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Energy balance

What has all of the above got to do with global warming? Well, through its radiation-flux, the Sun heats the atmosphere, the surfaces of land and oceans. The surfaces heated by solar radiation in turn emit infrared radiation, some of which can escape directly into space, but some of which is absorbed by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide, water vapour, and methane. Greenhouse gases not only slow down the loss of energy from the surface, but also re-radiate that energy, some of which is directed back down towards the surface, increasing the surface temperature and increasing how much energy is radiated from the surface. Overall, this process leads to a state where the surface is warmer than it would be in the absence of an atmosphere with greenhouse gases. On average, the amount of energy radiated back into space matches the amount of energy being received from the Sun, but there's a slight imbalance that we'll come to.

If this system was severely out of balance either way, the planet would have either frozen or overheated millions of years ago. Instead the planet's climate is (or at least was) stable, broadly speaking. Its temperatures generally stay within bounds that allow life to thrive. It's all about energy balance. Figure 4 shows the numbers.

Energy Budget AR6 WGI Figure 7_2

Figure 4: Schematic representation of the global mean energy budget of the Earth (upper panel), and its equivalent without considerations of cloud effects (lower panel). Numbers indicate best estimates for the magnitudes of the globally averaged energy balance components in W m–2 together with their uncertainty ranges in parentheses (5–95% confidence range), representing climate conditions at the beginning of the 21st century. Figure adapted for IPCC AR6 WG1 Chapter 7, from Wild et al. (2015).

While the flow in and out of our atmosphere from or to space is essentially the same, the atmosphere is inhibiting the cooling of the Earth, storing that energy mostly near its surface. If it were simply a case of sunshine straight in, infra-red straight back out, which would occur if the atmosphere was transparent to infra-red (it isn't) – or indeed if there was no atmosphere, Earth would have a similar temperature-range to the essentially airless Moon. On the Lunar equator, daytime heating can raise the temperature to a searing 120OC, but unimpeded radiative cooling means that at night, it gets down to around -130OC. No atmosphere as such, no greenhouse effect.

Clearly, the concentrations of greenhouse gases determine their energy storage capacity and therefore the greenhouse effect's strength. This is particularly the case for those gases that are non-condensing at atmospheric temperatures. Of those non-condensing gases, carbon dioxide is the most important. Because it only exists as vapour, the main way it is removed is as a weak solution of carbonic acid in rainwater – indeed the old name for carbon dioxide was 'carbonic acid gas'. That means once it's up there, it has a long 'atmospheric residency', meaning it takes a long time to be removed. 

Earth’s temperature can be stable over long periods of time, but to make that possible, incoming energy and outgoing energy have to be exactly the same, in a state of balance known as ‘radiative equilibrium’. That equilibrium can be disturbed by changing the forcing caused by any components of the system. Thus, for example, as the concentration of carbon dioxide has fluctuated over geological time, mostly on gradual time-scales but in some cases abruptly, so has the planet's energy storage capacity. Such fluctuations have in turn determined Earth's climate state, Hothouse or Icehouse – the latter defined as having Polar ice-caps present, of whatever size. Currently, Earth’s energy budget imbalance averages out at just under +1 watt per square metre - that’s global warming. 

That's all in accordance with the laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant - while energy can be transformed from one component to another it can be neither created nor destroyed. Self-evidently, the "isolated" part of the law must require that the sun and the cosmos be included. They are both components of the system: without the Sun as the prime energy generator, Earth would be frozen and lifeless; with the Sun but without Earth's emitted energy dispersing out into space, the planet would cook, Just thinking about Earth's surface and atmosphere in isolation is to ignore two of this system's most important components.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not state that the only flow of energy is from hot to cold - but instead that the net sum of the energy flows will be from hot to cold. To reiterate, the qualifier term, 'net', is the important one here. In the case of the Earth-Sun system, it is again necessary to consider all of the components and their interactions: the sunshine, the warmed surface giving off IR radiation into the cooler atmosphere, the greenhouse gases re-emitting that radiation in all directions and finally the radiation emitted from the top of our atmosphere, to disperse out into the cold depths of space. That energy is not destroyed – it just disperses in all directions into the cold vastness out there. Some of it even heads towards the Sun too - since infra-red radiation has no way of determining that it is heading towards a much hotter body than the Earth,

Earth’s energy budget makes sure that all portions of the system are accounted for and this is routinely done in climate models. No violations exist. Greenhouse gases return some of the energy back towards Earth's surface but the net flow is still out into space. John Tyndall, in a lecture to the Royal Institution in 1859, recognised this. He said:

Tyndall 1859

As long as carbon emissions continue to rise, so will that planetary energy imbalance. Therefore, the only way to take the situation back towards stability is to reduce those emissions.


Update June 2023:

For additional links to relevant blog posts, please look at the "Further Reading" box, below.

Last updated on 29 June 2023 by John Mason. View Archives

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Comments 276 to 300 out of 1481:

  1. I suppose this discussion about the role of albedo on equilibrium temperature should be moved to the thread about albedo. Coincidentally, Rovinpiper just posted a question about exactly that, exactly there. I replied there.
  2. Re #273 CBDunkerson you write:- "Object A reflects 90 units and absorbs 10. That 10 absorption heats up the object until it is emitting 10 units. At that point the 90 units reflected + 10 units emitted equals the 100 units incoming and the object is at equilibrium. Object B reflects 25 units and absorbs 75. That 75 absorption heats up the object until it is emitting 75 units. At that point the 25 units reflected + 75 units emitted equals the 100 units incoming and the object is at equilibrium." Fair enough. But then you write:- "At equilibrium object A is emitting 10 units of energy and object B is emitting 75 units. Object B is thus much hotter than object A. Albedo has a direct and obvious impact on temperature." How so? A has only 10% absorption capacity, B has 75%. Now the absorption capacity is always equal to the emission capacity, after all the reflection part cannot emit as well as reflect, can it? So both objects have the same temperature, any difference would clearly break the 2nd Law of thermodynamics.
  3. Re #275 Ned you cite my post:- "Highly reflective materials (high albedo) heat up slowly and cool down slowly in the absence of input; an example of this is a thermos flask with its highly polished surfaces." Then you write:- "Look, this is just wrong. It really is." So thermos (vacuum) flasks don't work this way? Care to explain how they do?
  4. damorbel, at face value your statement is correct that "the absorption capacity is always equal to the emission capacity." But I think you meant something else--something incorrect. Here is a correct rephrasing: The reflected photons are irrelevant to the absorption and emission of the object, and therefore are irrelevant to the temperature of the object. The only contributors to the temperature of an object are the photons absorbed and the photons emitted. You will get exactly the same temperatures, absorptions, and emissions of objects A and B that you get in the scenario that CBDunkerson described, in this different scenario: (1) Make both objects A and B perfectly absorptive--no reflection, in other words albedos of zero. (2) Isolate A from B. (3) Give object A its own radiation source--a source that sends only 10% of the radiation that CB's original source did. Object A is absorbing 100% of that, so Object A is absorbing the same radiation (and therefore the same energy) that it was getting in CB's original scenario. (4) Give object B its own radiation source--a source that sends only 75% of the radiation that CB's original source did. Object B is absorbing 100% of that, so Object B is absorbing the same radiation (and therefore the same energy) that it was getting in CB's original scenario. (5) The temperature of Object A will be lower than the temperature of Object B.
  5. damorbel, a vacuum flask has an inner chamber inside an outer chamber. If the inner chamber is filled with a hot liquid, emission from that chamber can be reduced by making the inner surface of that inner chamber reflective. But emission from that inner chamber is not reduced by making the outer surface of that inner chamber reflective. Once that radiation has escaped from the inner chamber, it must get through the walls of the outer chamber, which can be reduced by giving the inner-facing walls of that outer chamber a reflective coating; that bounces the radiation back from the outer wall into the gap between the inner and outer chambers.
  6. Re #279 Tom Dayton you wrote:- "1) Make both objects A and B perfectly absorptive--no reflection, in other words albedos of zero." This destroys the whole matter. If you consider the case when albedo is zero there can be no effect due to albedo and there can be no confusion arising from the influence of albedo and 2nd law of thermodynamics. "(2) Isolate A from B." Why? "3) Give object A its own radiation source--a source that sends only 10% of the radiation that CB's original source did" I think you should be more precise and define the source better. I really do not understand why you need two sources to explain these concepts.
  7. damorbel, I posed my alternate scenario so you can see that the temperatures of the objects in that scenario are identical to the temperatures of those objects in CBDunkerson's original scenario. That should help you understand that photons reflected don't contribute to temperatures of the objects. Only the absorbed photons matter.
  8. Consider Tom's example using one source, but objects A & B are spaced so that they receive the amount of energy described and are isolated from each other (i.e. directly opposite each other & fully obscured by the source).
  9. Re #280 Tom Dayton you wrote:- "But emission from that inner chamber is not reduced by making the outer surface of that inner chamber reflective." A polished metal outer surface is an excellent insulator, the old fashioned silver coffee pot is a a good example, the modern chrome model is just as good because it doesn't need polishing so much. Another application of this principle is multilayer insulation Multilayer insulation stacks up reflective surfaces and is extremely effective.
  10. damorbel writes: So thermos (vacuum) flasks don't work this way? Care to explain how they do? The problem is that planets don't work this way. Read the rest of my comment. The point is that the incoming and outgoing radiation fluxes have different spectral distributions. A change in the visible/NIR albedo doesn't imply a corresponding change in thermal infrared emissivity. A lot of your comments in this thread seem to involve trying to analogize the earth-sun radiation balance to some object, like a thermos or asphalt or a coffee pot. With all due respect, that's not necessarily the best approach.
  11. damorbel, the reflective outer surface of an inner layer of multilayer insulation does not help by reducing that layer's emission. It helps instead by reducing that layer's absorption of the radiation emitted by the next-most-outer layer--radiation that this inner layer emitted, that was returned by the outer layer.
  12. Tom Dayton writes: damorbel, at face value your statement is correct that "the absorption capacity is always equal to the emission capacity." ... at a particular wavelength. Part of the problem with damorbel's argument here is that the incoming solar radiation has a very different spectral distribution from the outgoing longwave radiation. Absorptance in the visible/near-IR is not necessarily equal to thermal infrared emissivity.
  13. damorbel - The last 15-20 postings you have presented have made it increasingly clear that you do not have a firm grasp of the physics involved. That's not an insult - we all start somewhere. I, like Ned, strongly suggest you go check with your local university or other institute of learning, and find out some more of the basics.
  14. damorbel writes: Another application of this principle is multilayer insulation Multilayer insulation stacks up reflective surfaces and is extremely effective. Good grief! Did you even read that wikipedia page you linked to? How could you not have noticed that their explanation of how multilayer insulation works is exactly the process whereby backradiation from CO2 in the atmosphere raises the temperature of the earth above what it would be in the absence of that CO2! The process that you yourself cite as "extremely effective" is the exact same process that you claim violates the second law of thermodynamics!
  15. KR writes: damorbel - The last 15-20 postings you have presented have made it increasingly clear that you do not have a firm grasp of the physics involved. That's not an insult - we all start somewhere. Yes. And I would note that, as we saw with the Evil Waste Heat Thread, the usual SkS "skeptics" are once again standing by on the sidelines. Apparently they're willing to quibble endlessly over things like UHI, who wrote what in a snippet of somebody's email, etc. But they're not willing to speak up and help address the problems with even the most appallingly confused argument coming from the "skeptic" side. As always, it turns out that "climate skepticism" is rather asymmetric around here. The unwritten rule seems to be that "No SkS skeptic shall ever publicly disagree with another SkS skeptic." IMHO that's pretty depressing.
  16. Ned @ 290 - there's always the exception to the rule, albeit very minor, BP waded into Ken Lambert a few weeks back over a "theoretical observed" comment.
  17. And took hits for not observing the Skeptics' "Code Duello" The Yooper
  18. Re #287 Ned you write:- "... at a particular wavelength. Part of the problem with damorbel's argument here is that the incoming solar radiation has a very different spectral distribution from the outgoing longwave radiation." The wavelenth difference is indeed great but what that count for? Sure it indicates that the Sun/Earth system is in considerable disequilibrium. But the only significance of this is the nature of the disequilibrium, which is precisely what we are talking about, the contradiction of AGW/GHE 'science' and the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, exactly the OP topic of this thread. Further you write:- "Absorptance in the visible/near-IR is not necessarily equal to thermal infrared emissivity. A statement like that just confirms what I am arguing. If they weren't equal there wouldn't be an equilibrium temperature of any sort. If emissivity always was different from 1-a (a is albedo) then the temperature would never be stable, rising or falling according to the sign of the difference.
  19. damorbel, I can't get past even your second paragraph, which seems to be gibberish.
  20. Tom, it is gibberish. No "seems" about it. The fourth paragraph I kind of get -- damorbel is confused about the difference between emissivity and absorptance, on the one hand, and emitted energy and absorbed energy, on the other. The first two are unitless fractions, and the latter two are radiant fluxes. That confusion probably explains the seemingly erroneous conclusion about rising or falling temperatures. But the second paragraph? Yeah, it's nonsense. Let's try a few substitutions: "The salmon difference is indeed great but what that count for? Sure it indicates that the Estonia/marshmallow system is in considerable hypothermia. But the only significance of this is the nature of the hypothermia, which is precisely what we are talking about, the contradiction of platypus/unicorn 'badminton' and the 2nd Earl of Ambergris, exactly the OP topic of this thread." Does that make any more or less sense than the original? Hard to say!
  21. damorbel #277: "How so? A has only 10% absorption capacity, B has 75%. Now the absorption capacity is always equal to the emission capacity, after all the reflection part cannot emit as well as reflect, can it? So both objects have the same temperature, any difference would clearly break the 2nd Law of thermodynamics." I'm sorry, but what part of 75 units of energy is greater than 10 units of energy don't you understand? Yes, an object cannot emit more energy than it absorbs. Ergo, if the more reflective object is only absorbing 10 units of energy it can only emit 10 units of energy. Those 10 plus the 90 reflected equal the 100 total incoming and thus incoming and outgoing energy are in balance. Ditto the less reflective object except that it is absorbing and emitting 75 units of energy. 75 > 10. It has absorbed and is emitting more energy. Higher energy absorption and emissions equals higher temperature. For the 90% reflective object to be the same temperature it would have to be emitting the same 75 units of energy... which added to the 90 units reflected would be 165 units total... which runs afoul of the law of conservation of energy... an extra 65 units of energy can't just spontaneously appear from nothing. You seem to be arguing that absorption and emission are the same for all objects... rather than that they are the same for each object. That clearly isn't the case because an object can't absorb energy it has reflected away. Taking Tom's example of a theoretically 100% reflective object it is clear that it would absorb no energy... and thus would be at absolute zero. The more energy an object reflects the less it absorbs and the colder it is.
  22. Re #294 Tom Dayton you wrote:- " I can't get past even your second paragraph, which seems to be gibberish." My 2nd para. goes like this:- 'Sun/Earth system is in considerable disequilibrium.' You may not be familiar with the thermodynamic meaning of the term 'equilibrium'; a thermal system is out of equilibrium when there is a temperature difference inside the system. This means that the entropy is below the maximum and there will be energy transport within the system according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The reason why the wavelength of incoming radiation is of no great importance is fairly simple; incoming radiation is either scattered (the albedo or reflected, if you like) or absorbed; the third possibility, transmitted, is not generally considered in planetary physics for reasons that should be self-evident. By definition the absorption does not affect the scattering, it is the scattering that affects the absorption. However it remains true that the scattering that gives the albedo its characteristic wavelength function i.e. its spectral characteristic. From this you will realise that the total scattering depends only on the amount of scatteing material present and the magnitude of the scattering is independent of the direction of arrival of the scattered wave; meaning the material that causes the albedo (scattered solar radiation) will have the same total effect on the emitted radiation, even though the response is in a different part of the spectrum. It is this that makes the emissivity and absoptivity the same in terms of power, even if not at the same frequency.
  23. No, damorbel, you are incorrect that "the total scattering depends only on the amount of scattering material." Scattering does depend on frequency of the radiation and the size of the reflecting matter. But your obsession with scattering is not relevant to absorption, which is the problematic behavior of greenhouse gases. Just to get you off of your reflection obsession, let's assume that you are correct that the same amount of radiation emitted by the atmosphere, water, and land toward space are reflected back, as the amount of radiation coming from the Sun that is reflected by all those. As that emitted radiation is on its way toward space, before it is reflected back down, some of it is absorbed by greenhouse gases. The absorbed radiation's energy can't be reflected, because it's not in the form of radiation any more. Only some of that energy immediately is turned back into radiation. So right there you've got a greenhouse gas trap of radiation and therefore a trap of energy, completely in addition to any reflection. Even if you were correct about reflection (you're not), the greenhouse gas absorption effect would exist, so increasing greenhouse gases would trap more energy.
  24. OK. So, damorbel recently wrote this gem: The wavelenth difference is indeed great but what that count for? Sure it indicates that the Sun/Earth system is in considerable disequilibrium. But the only significance of this is the nature of the disequilibrium, which is precisely what we are talking about, the contradiction of AGW/GHE 'science' and the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, exactly the OP topic of this thread. Now, he/she tries to explain it, but the only explanation is: (1) The difference in the wavelengths of radiation emitted by the sun vs. by the earth means that the sun and the earth are not at the same temperature. (2) This temperature difference means that heat will flow from one to the other. It should be obvious that this contributes nothing whatsoever of value. None of this justifies damorbel's nonsensical claim that planetary albedo is irrelevant to temperature ... and none of it has anything to do with AGW, let alone proving a "contradiction" between AGW and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Damorbel, did you ever read the last paragraph of this comment? Did you understand it? I'd also note that damorbel has still not explained why he/she approvingly cites an explanation at wikipedia that explicitly relies on the exact same mechanism that he/she thinks violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
  25. #299: "nonsensical claim that planetary albedo is irrelevant to temperature" We went through a week or so of back-and-forth on the Chaos theory and global warming thread over 'climate calculators' that show specifically how albedo influences temperature. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

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