Wednesday, April 6, 2011

So Where Did the Back Radiation Go?

Balancing the radiation budget for the Earth is an evolving process. I guess when when the climate scientist Keith Trenberth noticed there was missing heat the accountants had to change their accounting methods. The changes make for some silly but interesting conversations with the pro global warming crowd.

The change for the incoming or down welling longwave radiation are pretty dramatic!

In this cartoon the big white arrow is a huge amount of longwave radiation warming the Earth. There is a tiny little white arrow showing longwave radiation cooling the Earth. This is posted in Wikipedia under Global Warming.


This one doesn't have a big white arrow. It is posted under Earth Radiation Budget in Wikipedia.

So if you are discussing the radiation budget and warming, which cartoon do you use? Just looking at them, which one is more confusing? Are killer clouds shooting huge amounts of energy at us on the surface or are they just acting like a blanket so we don't get so cold at night? If you are trying to sell the fear of global warming, which cartoon would you use?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Boas muito bem estruturado blogue , adorei mesmo muito, talvez poderiamos tornar-nos blog palls :) lol!
Tirando as piadas chamo-me Paulo, e parecido contigo escrevo webpages embora o tema principal do meu espaço é bastante diferente do teu....
Eu faço páginas de poker que falam de ofertas grátis sem ter de fazer depósito sem teres de por do teu bolso......
Apreciei muito aquilo vi escrito!

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