donald said:
Zythryn said:
No Donald, it isn't the first you have heard that suggestion, as that suggestion wasn't spoken.
What he said was "the science around the greenhouse affect goes back to 1824". Not that AGW has been observed since 1824.
You are discussing semantics. The implication is disingenuous if that is not what was indicated, else what relevance is the earlier data set if it was not affected in that way?
Donald - it would be so very easy to simply click on the links we've already provided you and I guarantee that things would start to click into place for you. But instead of doing your part, you seem to want to deep deflecting, blaming, misdirecting, and denying. For whatever reason you chose to judge my comment as superfluous without doing your homework. That just makes you look like a shill with an agenda, not a seeker of knowledge. I submit the following just in case I'm mistaken and you actually are interested in understanding.
The science around the greenhouse effect does go back to 1824. That's when smart people that took the time to observe the physical world and then test their ideas identified greenhouse gases and showed how they affect different types of energy transfer. They first had to decide how a greenhouse gas would behave in the real world, then decide how they would test that behavior to prove or disprove their hypothesis. If they found the gases and could test them, they then had to determine how changes in the amount of those gases in the atmosphere would affect the biosphere.
French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier lived from 1768 to 1830. One of his achievements was to show that the Earth should be colder than it is, and then to postulate that some part of the atmosphere must be acting as a sort of insulator. He's credited with identifying the greenhouse effect. He also did work on how energy transfers in matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/simple.htm#L_M085
http://www.manhattanrarebooks-science.com/fourier.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm
The next gent that brought a critical piece of the puzzle to the table was John Tyndall. He's a British physicist that lived from 1820 to 1893. He did work on energy transfer and physical properties of gases, building on at least Fourier's theoretical work. This is the gent that built test devices to actually test containers of gases to see how they affected heat and various frequencies of light - including infrared (heat). His devices clearly demonstrated that some gases allowed higher frequencies to pass through while blocking the transfer of other frequencies. He then measured the actual amount of heat different gases would absorb. The USAF did more in-depth work in this realm when they developed heat-seeking missiles in the 1950s - they had to allow for increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases in their designs so the missiles would continue to work throughout their design life. (I'm an AF vet and attended an electronic combat course that examined ways to defeat various systems...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall
Here's a demonstration of one of Tyndall's experiments:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo[/youtube]
Here's a look at AF research:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoR4ezwKh5E[/youtube]
Now we get to the last part - quantifying the effect of a greenhouse gas concentration change on the temperature. Here's where Swedish physicist/chemist Svante Arrhenius picked up the baton from Fourier and Tyndall. He lived from 1859-1927.
if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
Based on information from his colleague Arvid Högbom (sv), Arrhenius was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes were large enough to cause global warming. In his calculation Arrhenius included the feedback from changes in water vapor as well as latitudinal effects, but he omitted clouds, convection of heat upward in the atmosphere, and other essential factors.
He did this in 1896.
Note the words: "
A great deal has been written on the influence of the absorbption of the atmosphere upon the climate." A great deal has been written - in 1896.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
http://rsclive3.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
This is basic level material - it's covered in university freshman physics, chemistry, and biology classes. It's so well known and so well proven that it's generally not even mentioned in climate research. These physical properties and behaviors are as certain as gravity - which isn't discussed any longer when designing aircraft.
This is some of the background the educated and informed folks on this forum have been working with, though some haven't mentioned. I bring it to your attention because it appears that you could benefit from this quick review of history as much as I did when I first wanted to understand. I hope you'll follow some of the links and become familiar with these three researchers - they were fascinating men with amazing lives. Enjoy the reading.
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