I suspect 1001 = Dr Kate Willetts.

Interesting that my thread morphs into a radiative physics thread. 1001 is way out of his depth here, he would do well to read some of our discussion threads on this topic before making veiled accusations that we don't understand physics. *points to his 3 science degrees on the wall*

In fact, CO2 is the enabler of heat's escape from the earth's atmosphere, since it (and the other greenhouse gases) are the only ones which can emit radiation in the correct bands into the vacuum of space.

Of course, the only reason the atmosphere contains heat in the first place is precisely because they absorb in the correct bands too. So in one respect CO2 hinders (rather than traps) heat as well, in that it delays the transmission of radiated energy from the surface to the TOA.

But to delay is not to keep, as 'trap' implies the energy is permanently retained, which it is not. Since temperature is a measure of kinetic energy per volume of gas, this delay raises the energy density and thus temperature. But no trapping is involved, since energy in = energy out at the TOA*

*Unless you subscribe to the conjecture it's being stored somewhere out of reach of our thermometers, e.g. the deep ocean, or up climate scientist's collective butt-holes.

Nice of you to join us here 1001, but scientifically, we will eat you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Three science degrees, woohoo! Couldn't decide what to study, eh? Or made two bad choices? That would be expensive these days at £9k per-annum. Nice if someone else pays though.

Do you guys like word games? It seems so. As I understand it, if CO2 is added to an atmosphere without any, the heat leaving the surface will take longer to radiate away and the surface temperature will rise. To me, that means some heat has been 'trapped'. If more CO2 is added the radiation is delayed more and the surface temperature rises further - i.e. more heat has been 'trapped'. Of course I only have one degree so I could be wrong. Mr 3-degrees will surely correct me.

My three degrees were all sequential, one undergraduate and two postgraduate. All three were in science, including a large chunk of physics and materials science, with mathematics. This was also a long time before fees, my education was paid for by the taxpayer. If this hurts your feelings, then I'm sorry. I paid more in taxation last year than my entire 18 years in education cost.

As you understand it, you understand it wrongly. To trap something, you have to keep it from escaping. As in 'trap an animal'. Trap means catch and keep. No heat is kept from escaping. Every joule of heat energy caused by GHG absorption escapes from the top of the atmosphere, eventually.

This is easy to demonstrate in a thought experiment.

If the sun was turned off suddenly would CO2 trap some of this heat energy? No, it would all vanish out into space through radiative transfer - and the earth would cool to as close to zero as internal heat would allow. If CO2 was trapping heat in the naive way you describe, then some should remain 'trapped' in the atmosphere, but there is no scientific basis for this. CO2 does not trap heat.

This isn't a word game (at least not one started by us)

The reason we are so touchy about semantics is because for years the alarmist side has used emotive and fuzzy terms, such as 'traps' to bamboozle the lay person. I understand what is meant when the vague unscientific word trap is used. I hope you now understand it. But the lay person thinks traps means retains, possibly forever. And that is the wrong impression, but it is deliberately done to make it sound more scary.

That is why we jump on it.

"Disturbances in the sea could see dolphins scatter. It's that fracking thing again."

It's that "could" thing again. And I see a "might" in there as well.

Warmist speak for "we have no evidence whatsoever for this, but are running with it anyway."

Don't play with words, 3-degrees. You know what is meant by 'trap' very well, just as I do. The earth is hotter because of CO2 in the atmosphere - do you question that? If so then your education was a wasted effort. The heat that accumulates because of CO2 is trapped to all extents and purposes. Turn off the sun? Not possible. Reduce greenhouse gas levels? Unlikely to happen near-term. The heat is not leaving any time soon. It is trapped. And the more CO2 we add, the more heat will be trapped.

Your analogy is silly. Turning off the sun is equivalent to opening the trap door. Even a trapped animal's condition is less permanent than greenhouse heating: if not freed, it will leave through decomposition - and decomposing seems a fair metaphor for what has happened to your argument.

1001,
The web site science of doom has some usually helpful discussions.

Here is one discussing stratospheric cooling by CO2 (and other 'green-house' gases):

http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/04/18/stratospheric-cooling/

The heat that accumulates because of CO2 is trapped to all extents and purposes. Turn off the sun? Not possible. Reduce greenhouse gas levels? Unlikely to happen near-term. The heat is not leaving any time soon. It is trapped. And the more CO2 we add, the more heat will be trapped.
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Aug 25, 2013 at 12:19 AM | Unregistered Commenter1001

If I turn on the central heating, my house is warmer than it would be without it turned on: But nobody in normal use of language says that the walls of the house have "trapped" heat. (Perhaps, in view of CO2's minor contribution to the greenhouse effect, it would be better to say that the wallpaper has trapped heat.)

You are trying to justify misuse of language by "climate scientists" that either displays their lack of understanding of what's going on or else their desire to mislead the gullible.

Heat is not trapped it is merely delayed and the atmosphere works in both directions since the heat source is outside. Ever heard about clouds? Only the most fanciful claims about AGW talk about runaway warming. Eventually the atmosphere reaches an equilibrium even at higher CO2 levels than we could reach if we burnt all the fossil fuels. The debate is how much delay for how much CO2. Does it have the same properties in the atmosphere as in the lab? More or less? Up till recently the warmists would have been confident it was more, much more but the pause has given them... pause for thought. They built their scenarious on a fast rising warm period at the end of a long warming period at a time of high solar activity and positive ocean phases. Maybe they were too hasty? If you see fossil fuels as a dirty polluting substance then why not find them summarily guilty? However if you realise that most of the people alive today owe their existence to coal and oil you realise that future generations need us to give CO2 a fair trial. Up to now, the defence has been denied a right to speak.

1001, that three degrees thing really stung, didn't it? :) I notice you didn't state the subject of your one degree, and since you seem to be emotionally attached to semantic gymnastics, I wouldn't be surprised if you were a humanities or social sciences graduate. My condolences.

Welcome to the hard-nosed world of science and engineering, where words have to mean something EXACTLY or people die. We'll leave you to your endless pontifications about what trapped means to your sixth-form common room debate style. You are wrong, CO2 does not trap heat in any scientific or even figurative sense, it merely modifies its rate of transfer. All your apologist ad-hom does is weaken your argument.

Turning off the sun is NOT impossible, for two reasons.

Firstly, it was a thought-experiment, you unfamiliarity with the concept displays a lack of knowledge of science. Einstein did his best work as a Gedankenexperiment. The idea of a thought experiment is to model a system in your mind, change some parameters, and observe what physics tells us must be the result. As a thought experiment, I can turn off the sun, to observe that all the heat escapes from the earth's atmosphere no matter how much CO2 is in it. This flows from simple radiative physics. CO2 has no physical mechanism for 'trapping' heat. This is why it gets cold in the desert at night.

Secondly, nothing in the laws of physics says it's impossible to turn off the sun (or otherwise remove it or earth from the experiment). I'm not saying it's likely, or possible for us, but some advanced tech or unknown physical mechanism could turn the sun off tomorrow. To state it's impossible does not follow from the laws of physics as we know them.

The fact that you focussed on the improbability of the set-up, instead of the logical implications of it happening shows to my satisfaction that you know CO2 does not trap heat, so you're arguing around the edges now, trying to distract the argument onto other things. This is the tactic of the loser,.

CO2 does not trap heat in any scientific sense, and not even in a general-usage sense. No more than an open plug-hole traps bathwater. You are wrong. Please feel free to check with any trusted scientific authority you care to nominate. Have the humility to admit it, but I won't hold my breath. Neither will I continue to waste time on a closed mind who is here to argue for arguments sake.

@ 1001;

Let's stay with the simple 'trapped heat' theory for the moment and keep it very simple by considering only 2 ghg molecues in the atmosphere: one on the day side and one on the night side.

The one on the night side receives radiation (in its reactive part of the spectrum) only from the surface. It wants to reduce its heightened state and so re-radiates. It will do that in a random direction and if that is back to the surface or transferred in collision, then it has caused some warming.

Meanwhile, the day side molecule is doing the same but also has to deal with incoming radiation from the sun (full spectrum). With the latter occurring, the random re-radiation mostly goes toward the much greater target of space and therefore reduces incoming radiation, the effect of which is a cooling one. However, the incoming and outgoing radiation energies are in balance and average temperature is stable.

Now add 2 more ghg molecules. They will act just as the first two did. If the net effect is to increase average temperature then the outgoing spectrum will shift toward higher frequency until incoming and outgoing radiation are again in balance (climate science). But incoming radiation has been reduced and so to reach a new equilibrium state, average temperature will decrease (real science).

So CO2, the GHG in question here, when added to the atmosphere, cools our planet. Additionally, it 'traps' heat in the atmosphere raising its temperature, parasitically, relative to surface temperature. Warmer air and colder seas are the result when considering radiation only.

Will we notice this is the big question. The big ghg, water vapour is around 2% of atmosphere and additional CO2 around 0.01%. I would say no but am open to calculations.

Missing heat? Definitely. Where? Lost to space. Cause of climate changes? Best as Svensmark about solar and allbedo variation because mainsteam climate science is currently chasing its tail/funding.

I see that "trapping heat" is one of those red flags that gets sceptic bulls all riled up. And now the bulls have invaded the china shop, each dragging his own contradictory explanation of why what everyone knows to be true is untrue. And of course there will be no mutual correction to ensure that everyone understand, only blind rage at the red flag.

Michael Hart, you probably need to re-read the SoD article you linked to if you think "stratospheric cooling by CO2" is relevant. Perhaps start with some of the introductory articles.

Splitpin, ... whatever.

TinyCO2, pseudo-science, moralising, blah, blah... Next time we hear of submariners trapped in their stricken boat, let's hope the media just reports them to be 'delayed' there.

3-degrees, you misunderstood. I'm tickled by you staring at your three degrees on the wall... "with these babies, I'm going to eat 1001 for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He doesn't stand a chance against my great erudition. Ooh, is that a bit of dirt on my doctorate? No, the glass has cracked! I must get it re-framed. An elaborate gold frame this time, I think...". Since you ask, it was in a branch of engineering, an I haven't a clue where the certificate is.

Not content with this buffing of your self image you now want to draw parallels with Einstein. Your degree of self regard is impressive.

Cold deserts at night? How cold would they be if atmospheric CO2 was not trapping some heat (or "modifying its rate of transfer" if you prefer)? The planet is warmer because of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is no debate about that in any scientific circles, its been know for a century. If you don't like to call that extra warmth "trapped heat" because it can theoretically escape, then it is you playing "semantic gymnastics", not me.

Ssat, CO2 is cooling the planet? You profoundly misunderstand how things work. Perhaps you should join Michael Hart for trip over to SoD. Or 3-degree James can put you right - oh but I forgot, you don't correct each others misconceptions do you, bad form.

Stew Green, "The earth is hotter because of CO2 in the atmosphere" - that is a general statement of truth. Join Ssat and Hart at the SoD/3-degree classroom if you don't understand that.

Its all gone quiet.

1001 has been eaten, digested and defecated out in a neat pile. He just doesn't realise it yet.

I don't think it's BBD. As annoying as he was, he was quite well-informed. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone try to claim CO2 trapped heat, and we've had some singularly stupid trolls here. Reminded me more of BitBucket, they way he used to try to save every point even though he conceded we had a point. BB was humorous at times, though.

It was amusing how the mention of my degrees seemed to send this one into paroxysms of anger. It's a useful tactic to short-circuit the warmist missionary fantasy of introducing the anti-science rednecks to the power of Science. We've had our fill of badly-informed condescension already. We already understand the science, far better than say 97% of the people who express a preference.

Agreed. I'm filing this one under 'pwnd'

3-degrees, are you serious?

"I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone try to claim CO2 trapped heat..."

Here's what Martin-A said, to which I responded originally:

"So what did they learn as gospel...?"

"Carbon dioxide traps heat"

[quote from Dr Kate Willetts, Met Office climate scientist, UEA Phd - video formerly on "My Climate and Me"]

You cannot both be right.

Anger over your degrees? You are too self absorbed to recognise ridicule when you see it.

"We already understand the science, far better than say 97% of the people who express a preference."

Yet more self-importance. Who is the "we"? Does that include those above who think CO2 cools the planet? Individually you might be knowledgeable but taken together it is laughable for you to claim superior collective understanding of science. You cannot even agree whether the existence of CO2 in the atmosphere raises or lowers the earth's temperature. Your forum has no real interest in science, only in opposing those parts of it you don't like.