BW wrote:

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:28:11 +0000, William Asher wrote:
See, you have all the physics right, essentially,
but then form this entirely bizarre conclusion from it.

Anyway, any time you feel like going through Chandrasekhar's book and
pointing out how he has misunderstood the "simple truth of nature" that
you alone have discovered I am all eyes.

It's not Chandrasekhar's work that's in question, it's the way it's
applied. Since most heat transport through at least the temperate and
tropical troposphere is via poorly understood convection of latent heat,
you need to explain just which model you believe in and why. Can you
describe it in enough detail to be convincing?

Often "truth" is not simple.

Referencing an author is another meaningless way of
avoiding discussion, as if a single energy transfer process could
account for atmospheric physics with the bulk of the atmosphere
being two gases unable to radiate much in IR, along with CO2
and H2O which can act in a number of different ways that can
warm or cool.

But I was really worried that N2 and O2 could not radiate,
because they absorb heat in several ways, from the sun, and
even other sources of thermal energy at high temperatures can
heat them to rather high temperatures.

This thread has helped me a lot, seeing that CO2 can play
a major role in cooling the planet, though not as great as water
vapor, nevertheless, a very major role.

The emission of IR in all directions by CO2 explains a lot
of things satisfactorily, because there can be thousands of absorptions
and re-emissions per second, and the rate of transfer is not restricted
as is that of the sun to a stable source of thermal energy, or to radiation
from one temperature value.

The sun adds the energy to the pipe, and because a unit portion
of energy can be radiated, absorbed, and re-radiated many times in
a unit portion of time, any excess energy can be radiated away, and
the system stabilizes.

This rapid fire absorption and re-radiation is perfect as an
assistance to the broadband radiation of liquid water, the IR radiation
of water vapor, and the latent heat transport processes in cooling
all materials in the atmosphere and liquid and solid surface of the
planet.

The fact that it can occur at the speed of light, and in rapid
fire manner seems to make any mathematical treatment seem
inadequate in description of the cooling dynamics.
It is all about cooling, it always was, it never was about
warming, whoever thought warming was a problem.