I was reading this excellent book ‘Taxing Air’ for the second time and for the second time I was stopped dead in my tracks by some words on page 69. It says that the common ground among scientists includes that ‘Carbon Dioxide is a Greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere.’ Whoa! Whoa! Bob Carter, Spooner et al, and the composite authors of this book.
Surely this is a printing error, or something written in haste. What is generally agreed is that Carbon Dioxide is 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere and reacts to the infrared radiation from the earth; and it is this radiation that warms the molecules of carbon dioxide. So it is the gas that is warmed by the radiation. Even the Warmists do not really claim any more, because obviously a gas cannot heat itself; the atmosphere, the temperature of which is always varying – cannot heat itself.
So yes, the Carbon Dioxide molecules are warmed by the infrared radiation, all 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere. But being a gas these molecules are also subject to convection; that is to say that as they warm these molecules rise up and cool, as does the whole of the lower atmosphere.
So that begs the question: What warms the lower atmosphere? Now we come to what warmists and sceptics do agree on. They agree that the sun warms the earth and the oceans, as radiation from the Sun encounters mass. It is also generally agreed that water has a great heat capacity and that the warm oceans in particular warm the lower atmosphere. Is that OK? Not quite. And the cold oceans cool the lower atmosphere. Is that better?
The land is more complex. Hot sands warm, while cold rocks cool the atmosphere. Hot tar warms, while frosty runways cool the air. A leafy wood is often cooler than an open field or lawn. Snow-bound Siberian wastes are cooling, while the Gobi desert by day is warming the atmosphere – all by conduction.
The atmosphere is being warmed or being cooled every instant of every day. The gases of the atmosphere are being warmed primarily by contact, by conduction. So where does that leave the 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere that is Carbon Dioxide? In order to answer this question let us ask ourselves another question that I first saw posed in the book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.’ Why does the Sun warm the Earth? Answer: Because it is hotter.’ Is that agreed? Because the Sun is hotter than the Earth.