Goose5 said:
I am masking nothing. I am simply asking questions. Questions that have been responded to, but not quite answered. Yes, my intention is to get you to reveal why it is that you believe whatever it is that you believe. And yes, when that happens I will respond. It is called debate. I would rather hear about what you think. If you classify that as "stirring the pot." That's fine. If you are not interested in defending your position on this issue let me know. I will quietly withdraw. If you prefer a different set of questions I can provide that too.
Question 1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. How does that work?
Question 2. (In reference to CO2) How do we know how much is too much?
You act like a troll, but on the very, very remote chance that your an actual inquisitive person, here:
1. Greenhouse gases are gases that emit radiation in the far infrared region of the radiation spectrum. FIR is considered to be thermal radiation. Note, the gases do this as a function of their temperature, so they'll emit radiation as a function of the atmospheric temperature. They'll emit at higher temperatures as a result of radiation incident on the Earth's atmosphere from outer space. Moreover they emit radiation at a higher temp as a result of albedo radiation: radiation, from the sun, reflected by the Earth's surface, vegetation, cities, and so on. How the gasses emit energy is defined by the Planck equation (given in attachment), where
h is Planck's constant, 6.62607x10^(-34) J sec;
c is the speed of light, 2.99792x10^8 m/sec;
λ is the wavelength of light (radiation emitted by gas) in meters; and
n is the index of refraction of the gas.
M is the radiant exitance of the gas (how much power, watts, it emits per m^2, where the area is the area of the gas atom.). The subscript, BBλ, tells you that the calculation is a black body radiation calculation in wavelength space. If you want you can use this equation with liquids and solids, too, to see how they optically respond (an optical response in the LIR is a thermal response), but for absorbing media (metals, crystalline solids, some liquids, and etc) you'll have to use the modulus of the complex index of refraction. You have to use MKS units, and temperature must be given in Kelvin. One thing to bear in mind is that the equation never goes to zero, except at absolute zero, at which point atomic motion stops and ν becomes zero. Good luck getting to absolute zero. Second, as a black body, the gas will emit radiation at all wavelengths. The take home message, though, is to make plots at various temperatures and notice how with increasing temperature, the center wavelength of radiation emitted moves to the right, toward longer wavelengths, increasing the emissions at LIR.
The heavy response to radiation in the LIR spectrum makes CO2 rather opaque to LIR. This means that at night when things are cooling off, emitting LIR, that LIR is absorbed and re-emitted by the atmosphere. It follows from this that more CO2 means more LIR emission from greenhouse gasses. That is indisputable. It's all in the well vetted equations.
If you want to know why greenhouse gasses are particular good at radiating LIR, you need to find eigen values for the emitted radiation wavelength by solving Schroedinger's equation for each particular gas. That gets complicated.
2. How much is too much? That depends on who you talk to. James Hansen, an expert in the field, 385 parts per million is that point. Other scientists aren't sure where the exact tipping point is, but there is agreement that there is such a point. The Second Law of Thermodyamics guarantees will get to that point a lot more quickly, if you continue about energy consumption in the time honored fashion, i.e. wastefully. The Second Law, S = kLn(ω), says as the number of possible energy states, ω, increases the chaos in the system, S (entropy) increases (k is Boltzman's constant). Increasing entropy shows up mostly as an increase in temperature (This is, BTW, why you can't cool your house by opening the refrigerator door.). With increasing population and greenhouse gas emissions, the number of possible energy states only increases. The Second Law guarantees that the Earth cannot buffer the excess heat generated from inefficient human processes indefinitely. That would require an infinite amount of energy, and even then, it wouldn't work.
It follows from research data that we are closing in on the tipping point. The rates of some processes, like ice cap melting, glacial treat....are increasing in rate.
I suppose we could do the Republican/conservative thing and just push a solution to some point in the future and hope it's our kids that have to deal with the problem, not us, but that seems a patently ignorant path to follow, given what the science predicts. The "we can't afford it" or "it'll hurt the economy" arguments fail because the economies are going to take huge hits as global warming continues to increase.
That's a short, off the cuff answer, Troll. It's not a google recitation. It's basic information from my fields of study, optics and physics.
You got a good point with the "educational" or "teaching" part. We can all do something to help the environment.
