I agree.

hear hear

"there is no so-called back-radiation from the glass roof" Yep. Although I think the pressure expansion is negligible. Most importantly the walls and roof prevent convection

Exactly! The oceans are much larger thermal collectors and if I understand it correctly, when the oceans warm, waste in the ocean decays faster. This releases more co2, which causes plants to grow faster & larger, which cools the atmosphere, reducing the amount of co2 released from the oceans, slowing plant growth, warming the planet which starts the cycle over again. Of course this happens on land masses too. And then throw in the effects of the sun and we have the ups & downs of the climate.

Thoritsu 'This works just fine in greenhouses.'

How greenhouses work:

Heat comes in from the sun, it warms the internal air, the pressure of this warm air increases with temperature.
The volume is constrained, the air 'tries' to expand but is prevented by the glass roof from escaping.

Radiation out to space from this warm air is negligible,
there is no so-called back-radiation from the glass roof.

Thus, greenhouses retain heat as the physical barrier allows radiant heat from the sun to enter,
but prevents hot air dissipating.

Right. You can feel it yourself from a toaster or soldering iron.

Because the effect is to the fourth power and the variable is absolute temp, it takes a real difference to show up because there is 273 degrees before you get to freezing.

Those coefficients in front don't help much either.

I see what this guy is getting at now, but good lord he could make a simpler case.

Yes, somewhere I found radiative heating is usually on relevant when there is a large temperature difference. Otherwise conduction and convection dominate, which makes sense to me.

I did not write the article

hear hear

Oh, and I should point out that WRT temperature, the oceans are also anything but a well mixed system. And even less understood and consistently measurable than the atmosphere. But yes, the oceans are a much, much larger thermal collector than the atmosphere.

I'm not sure if you found some particularly obfuscated material to post or if you're just really good at unnecessarily complicating a simple concept.
The original point was that talking about temperature alone is entirely misleading. Using my original example, the 50F 50% RH air has 16.28 BTU/lb. The 55F 25%RH air has 15.77 BTU/lb. Yes, I've assumed other values constant in this example, but for atmospheric conditions, they are not consequential. As previously stated, the energy contained in the 55F air will melt less ice than the energy from the lower temperature 50F air. But if all you're using to determine "atmospheric warming" is temperature, you will be coming to the wrong conclusion.
Regarding the training of "Climate scientists", a while back I looked at the required course work to get a degree in this area from a number of respected universities. What I found lacking were courses in hard science and engineering. Specifically lacking were foundations in physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, chemical reactions and kinetics, to name a few. All of which would be necessary to even begin to understand something as complex as the heat balance for the entire world.

I am beginning to get it. Seems to me a very strong argument can be made that the temperatures of the air or other gasses are so close to the Surface temperature that radiation is an irrelevant heat transfer mechanism. Back Radiation makes no sense.

The NASA website on this is a big confusing mess.

Yes it is correct, but the article rambles about Q not being a heat source, and some more noise. I don't get the point.

A hotter cold thing can make a hot thing even hotter though. I don't follow what assertion the climate zealots have made that he rebuts.

specific heat

the heat required to raise the temperature of the unit mass of a given substance by a given amount

Yeah, that is the accepted wisdom, but I don't buy it. We do not understand how the Sun works to know that for sure over the time periods that matter.

Yes that is true about closed, open, and isolated systems, however even on the basis of their assumptions it leads to nonsense.

That is the equation for heat transfer and it shows that heat can only transfer from a hot object to a colder object and it is correct.

I do not follow this after reading it a few times.

Q = k1T1^4 - k2T2^4 is exactly the radiative heat transfer between two objects.

The Greenhouse Effect has to do with a frequency shift from a high frequency that is transmissible to a low frequency that is reflected. This works just fine in greenhouses.

This guy is about as good at getting to the point as the AGW people are at explaining their correlation theories.

That is correct for an isolated system where no matter or radiation enters the system. It is not true for a closed system which allows energy to enter the system nor is it true for an open system (Earth system) where both matter and energy are allowed to enter the system. If living systems were isolated thermodynamic systems there would be no life. Humans, e.g., are warm systems where cooler stuff enters and continues to replace the heat radiated from the bodies by chemical means. In fact entropy decreases in living systems due to work done from the environment. Some environmentalists would like to reverse that and even cool down life to save the planet.

Its output is fairly stable but slowly changes over long periods and during sunspot cycles. The main difference is the Earth's orbit gives about 90 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere difference between perihelion, being the most, and aphelion where it is the least. In a way, we in the North are fortunate due to being at perihelion at about January 4 and aphelion on July 4. Though that is not understood to be the cause, I look forward to perihelion here in southern Wisconsin due to the January thaw that happens nearly every year a week or so around the beginning of January. Winter here begins about at Thanksgiving and proceeds to the thaw, and then begins again through February.

What is heat per mass? Specific heat would be how much heat need be absorbed to raise the temperature so much. In physics there are very specific definitions for heat and enthalpy. Heat is energy that is transferred from one body to another other than by work or transfer of matter. Enthalpy is the total energy content of a body plus the energy needed against the environment in the formation of the body, usually the PV of the body. Enthalpy is not measurable other than as a change in enthapy, just as that of energy as a relative amount with respect to other matter. Reference points are needed. It is best to just use energy content rather than heat content. If there is no energy transfer by other than work or mass transfer, there is no heat involved. Energy, of course, is transferable from a cold to a hot body as recognized in the Stefan-boltzmann law as expressed for gray bodies:
energy transfer = (e-hotsigmaT_hot^4 - e_coldsigmaT_cold^4) where energy is transferred in both directions. Since the Earth's system is open, energy enters from the Sun and the cooler atmosphere's gasses return some of the absorbed energy from the Earth back to the Earth, so the Earth's surface may end up slightly warmer during daylight than without the green house gasses because of the return of some energy. The N2, O2, and Ar mostly have affects in the upper atmosphere and little due to their temperature in the lower atmosphere since they radiate mainly in the microwave and radio wave lengths, so cooling of those gasses is mainly done by interacting with the green house gasses which then radiate energy away from the atmosphere. As far as I can see, green house gasses are necessary to remove energy from the atmosphere so that it does not warm too much due to conduction and convection from the Earth's warm surface.

Climate scientists would have training in all the necessary sciences but for many belonging is more importance than having personal integrity.

Makes sense

if you go to the wiggys.com web site and on the home page scroll down till you see the article "how to stay warm there is a section about radiant heat ".

Sorry, RH = Relative Humidity
And the main point was that a given mass of the 50F air would melt more ice than the same mass of the 55F.

Excellent points, which is why the ocean temperature is more important than the air temperature. By the way what is RH? Is is a pressure or density measurement?

For the same reasons speaking of the global average or mean temperature is nonsense.