tisdag 1 januari 2013

What Is Roy Spencer's Definition of The Greenhouse Effect?

The top Google definition of the "greenhouse effect" is:
  • The trapping of the sun’s warmth in a planet’s lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet’s surface.
Roy Spencer ironizes over this definition:
  • Actually, the greenhouse effect would still operate even if the atmosphere absorbed just as much solar as it does infrared. When even Google gets the definition so wrong, how can mere mortals be expected to understand it?
  • The so-called greenhouse effect, which is an infrared effect, is admittedly not as intuitively obvious to us as solar heating. Every layer of the atmosphere becomes both a “source” as well as a “sink” of IR energy, which is a complication not faced with understanding solar heating, with the sun as the source.
  • To understand the greenhouse effect’s impact on surface temperature and the atmospheric temperature profile, there are some basic concepts which I continue to see misunderstandings about. If we can’t agree on these basics, then there really is no reason to continue the discussion because we are speaking different languages, with no way to translate between them.
Spencer then lists 6 basic concepts related to the greenhouse effect which "people most commonly misunderstand". But Spencer does not reveal his own definition of the greenhouse effect, which makes the discussion meaningless.

So Roy, what is then the correct description of the greenhouse effect, which you suggest is a real effect? I have sent the question to Roy and await response.

PS Roy does not give any response at all, not even to any of the many comments on his blog. Roy throws out a bunch of propositions to the crowd and then runs to hide behind a wall of silence. Is this what scientific debate is supposed to be? 

Inga kommentarer:

Skicka en kommentar