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Media claims CO2 “traps heat”! A big lie or a big stupid ???
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36dAG3YkqSE
Welcome everyone. This video will expose a popular climate myth pushed by the media. Although greenhouse gases warm the earth's average temperature, CO2 does not trap heat.
Click bait media thrives on fearmongering. So, ABC news for example, has published this misleading illustration of solar energy entering the earth's atmosphere, but no energy escaping back to space. To blame rising CO2 on climate change they must call CO2 a heat trapping gas, so they can then make simple minded claims that any rise in CO2 must increase extreme heating and then fearmonger a climate crisis.
But all climate scientists agree that the energy absorbed by CO2 is quickly shed in less than one thousandth of a second. Hardly enough time to argue the heat had been trapped.
Others like climate central who identify as independent scientists and communicators reporting "just the facts about climate change" published this bogus illustration suggesting just half the incoming solar energy is radiated back to space.
But satellite data and energy budgets estimated by climate scientists' have calculated that of the absorbed incoming solar heat, the earth radiates 99.6%, with several tenths of percent uncertainty, back to space as infrared heat waves. The greenhouse effect is more complex because CO2 has both warming and cooling effects.
The only thing getting trapped is the public's misunderstanding of how the greenhouse effect works and their fear of the future.
Several natural climate dynamics trap heat for much longer periods. And those natural climate dynamics are better able to explain observed warming events.
Consider that 99% of our atmosphere is composed of 3 gases, oxygen, nitrogen, and argon, and they are not greenhouse gases. Near the surface, a CO2 molecule collides a billion times every second with non-greenhouse gases, transferring the energy CO2 may have absorbed from infrared heat to those non-greenhouse gases.
Conversely oxygen and nitrogen cannot radiate energy away. So, to shed the energy absorbed from collisions with CO2 or the solar heated ground they must collide with greenhouse gases that can radiate that heat away.
If you ever played with newton's cradle, you understand how energy can be transferred back and forth as energy is lost from one ball and given to another.
Alarmist media only focus on the warming effects of CO2 and ignore the fact that increasing CO2 helps infrared radiation escape from the earth's atmosphere by cooling the middle to upper atmosphere
There are three distinct atmospheric layers that affect how infrared heat escapes to space. Changes in the atmosphere's density contributes to how readily infrared heat radiates back to space. At higher altitudes air density is greatly reduced causing fewer collisions and creating wider spaces for infrared to escape unimpeded.
The low-density mesosphere cools with increasing altitude because CO2 radiates more heat back to space, faster than the sun can heat the mesosphere.
The low-density stratosphere also allows more infrared to escape to space, but here the temperature rises with increasing altitude because ultraviolet sunlight interacts with the ozone layer, warming the air faster than CO2 can radiate infrared heat away. However, both observations and modeling have determined that increasing CO2 concentrations are enhancing infrared radiation back to space causing a cooling trend in the stratosphere and mesosphere.
In the dense lower atmosphere, or troposphere, the upwards and downward flow of infrared radiation is approximately balanced, and the warming effect of CO2 is nearly saturated.
Cooling of the troposphere is largely dependent on lower pressure and rising convection currents that carry warm air towards the stratosphere where more heat can radiate away to space. In the troposphere, the transport of heat via convection is as equally important for cooling as infrared radiation.
When air collides with earth's solar heated surface, it warms, expands, and rises. As the rising air approaches the stratosphere, enough heat radiates away to cool the air and allow it to sink back towards the earth’s surface.
Extreme hot weather typically occurs whenever convection is suppressed. Simply consider the studies that have found stopping convection by rolling up a car's windows traps heat in a car. In just one-hour temperatures inside the car rise by 43 F.
Convection happens whenever a layer of less dense warm air lies below a layer of dense colder air. During the day, solar heating of the ground creates those conditions and promotes convection. But convection can still be suppressed.
The atmosphere must balance regions of rising air with regions of sinking air. So, the earth is covered by a mosaic of regions dominated by rising convection alternating with regions dominated by sinking air that suppresses convection. Regions of suppressed convection can be temporary, causing above average temperatures lasting for just a day, or extend periods of heating for millennia as experienced by the earth's great deserts.
Heat waves are common when the downward flow of air beneath a jet stream's ridge, causes air to rapidly heat as the air compresses. That creates a layer of air that's warmer than the surface air below and that layer serves as the top of a heat dome that suppresses convection. Combined with increased solar heating from clear skies, reduced convection causes heat waves that trap suffocating heat for days and sometimes weeks.
Conversely, convection is suppressed when the surface layer becomes colder than the air above. This typically happens at night and during the winter.
The ground can shed 20 to 30% of its heat to space by quickly emitting infrared wavelengths to space that are not impeded by greenhouse gases. In contrast because the atmosphere’s heated oxygen and nitrogen do not radiate heat at all. The air can only shed its heat more slowly by colliding with a greenhouse gas that can radiate heat away.
This creates the so-called inversion layers with cold air near the surface and a layer of warmer air above that suppresses convection. In contrast to heat domes, this suppressed convection does not cause a heat wave, but it can trap smoke and pollution near the surface.
Asphalt and concrete absorb and store solar heat, emitting it more slowly than normal and raising nighttime temperatures This trapping of surface heat contributes to urban heat islands and explains why city dwellers suffer the most during heat waves
The oceans trap the most heat for the longest times. Massachusetts institute of technology's esteemed oceanographers, doctors Karl Wunsch and Patrick Heimbach, calculated the amount of heat trapped in today's oceans. They estimated that solar heated waters may be trapped for 100 to 10,000 years before that heat can circulated to the surface and escape back to the atmosphere.
The greatest amount of heat is trapped in the Atlantic Ocean, illustrated here by the dark red color. One reason for this concentration of trapped heat is the outflow of warm salty Mediterranean seawater into the Atlantic. The clear summer skies of all Mediterranean climates result in evaporation exceeding precipitation, which causes salty & dense, warm surface waters to sink.
The sinking of dense Mediterranean water creates the warmest waters in the world of any waters at 1000-meter depths.
As detailed in earlier videos, the greatest amount of solar flux into the ocean happens in the eastern pacific during la Nina periods where less cloud cover allows greater solar heating. The trade winds then pile up that solar heated water in the western pacific and Indian ocean, pushing heat down to 200 meters depth and trapping it there for years.
The alarmists' narratives claim the oceans are heating up because oceans absorb 90% of the so-called "excess heat from CO2's downward infrared energy.
But the science suggests it is the sun's visible light that is warming the oceans. Visible light carries far more energy than greenhouse infrared.
And it penetrates to 40 meters depth in murky coastal waters
And up to 200 meters depth in clear open ocean waters
In contrast greenhouse infrared heat penetrates only a few microns past the ocean surface. That heat, absorbed in the ocean's extremely thin skin layer is not transported to deeper layers but commonly and quickly released to the atmosphere via evaporation, suggesting infrared heat from greenhouse gases are not causing ocean warming at all.
Just as trapped solar heat warms the oceans, if outgoing infrared doesn’t balance incoming solar heating the earth's climate will warm. So, the debate becomes: are the currently observed warmer temperatures due to natural dynamics that trap heat as described in the first part of this video, or due to the trapping of heat by rising CO2. But atmospheric physics suggests CO2 can't be more than a minor contributor.
The physics describing how heated bodies emit infrared and how that infrared interacts with greenhouse gases is very well studied and can be accurately modeled as illustrated here in a 2019 paper by atmospheric physicists, Drs. Wijngaarden & Will Happer from Princeton.
The solid blue curve describes a hypothetical condition with no greenhouse gases, and it illustrates how much energy is ideally emitted from a surface with our current average temperature back to space by each infrared wavelength. But keep in mind, without greenhouse gases to re-cycle infrared heat back to the earth's surface to delay cooling, the earth's average temperature would become uninhabitable, plummeting to an average temperature just below freezing.
The jagged black curve indicates how much energy actually escapes via each wavelength under our current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and ... With CO2 at 400 ppm. The difference between this curve and the idealized blue curve indicates how much of the energy outflow of each infrared wavelength is reduced by greenhouse gases and instead gets re-directed to the earth's surface.
And keep in mind, that re-directed infrared has delayed cooling and raised the earth's average temperature to our very livable current temperature of about 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unfortunately, in this and similar graphs, the large areas of reduced outgoing infrared for specific wavelengths, has falsely suggested some of the outgoing energy has been trapped. But that would be a gross misinterpretation.
The large areas of reduced outgoing infrared suggest about 20% could be trapped but that disagrees with evidence from satellite data and energy budgets, indicating at least 99.6% of incoming solar energy, still escapes as infrared. So, if not trapped where does the missing infrared go?
The misinterpretation arises because, when greenhouse gases emit downward heat via a limited number of different wavelengths, the resulting warmed surface then radiates that heat via all possible wavelengths, and that allows more infrared heat to escape via wavelengths of “atmospheric windows" where greenhouse gases do not impede the heat's escape to space.
However, the large reduction of outgoing infrared wave lengths centered around 15 microns, which are wave lengths CO2 and water vapor absorb, indicates CO2 is involved in the greatest intensity of re-directed downward infrared heat.
The area below the green curve indicates how much energy is affected by just CO2, with the remaining reduction above caused by water vapor.
The red curve shows that despite a doubling of CO2 concentrations to 800 ppm, the downward flow of infrared at these wavelengths is only increased by 1%
Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas and absorbs and re-directs infrared heat from a much larger range of wave lengths.
But again, for every wavelength of re-directed downward heat, that heat is not trapped, a significant portion of that heat always escapes unimpeded through the infrared "atmospheric windows". And the longer the nights, the greater the escape of greenhouse heat.
Wijngaarden and Happer also modeled how changes in solar heating due to latitude, affected escaping infrared. Surface temperatures common to the Mediterranean would ideally emit infrared with a maximum intensity of about 140 units And.... Freely escaping infrared through atmospheric windows would range between 110 and 50 units
Over much hotter surface temperatures as observed in the Sahara, ideally emitted infrared increases to a maximum intensity of about 190 units Accordingly in the Sahara, the more freely escaping infrared via the atmospheric windows also increases to a range between 160 and 100 units
Thus, atmospheric windows enable negative feedback that reduces overheating. whether the surface temperatures are raised by increased solar energy or by recycled greenhouse infrared, higher temperatures cause more infrared to freely escape unimpeded through those atmospheric windows.
Wijngaarden and Happer also confirmed what other researchers had found. There is no greenhouse warming over Antarctica in the winter.
The wavelengths dominated by CO2 emit more infrared back to space than Antarctica’s cold surface could ideally emit. This surprising result happens because the heat trapped by non-greenhouse molecules comprising the warm air that is constantly transported southward to the Antarctic, continues to collide with CO2 which can then radiate heat out to space.
Unusual warm events in Antarctica that the media ignorantly proclaims to be caused by CO2 warming, are caused when warm winds originating from elsewhere descend to Antarctica’s surface, as observed during its many fohn storm events
So, beware of anyone telling you that increasing CO2 is increasingly trapping heat and causing a climate crisis. They are either ignorant of the science, or dishonestly manipulating your thinking to advance their political agendas.
Truly .... there is no climate crisis
Our democracy depends on a diverse array of good critical thinkers. So, please shun mindless group think. Instead embrace renowned scientist, Thomas Huxley’s advice
Skepticism is the highest of duties and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
