It is hard to believe this
Are Alarmists in this thread ACTUALLY going to say there are some gases that do not heat?
Who are you that make such a statement? Every gas heats --- in fact EVERY GAS absorbs radiation. NON-Greenhouse Gases contribute the vast majority of the atmosphere's warmth, about 89% of it in fact. Earth's atmosphere would warm to about 255K without any Greenhouse Gas at all.
‘Non-Greenhouse Gases’ provide about EIGHT times more warming to the atmosphere than Greenhouse Gases. Greenhouse Gases only provide about 33K of of Earth’s 288K average surface temperature
Wiki says: Earth's surface would average about 33°C colder than the present average [without Greenhouse Gases]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_...
There is not a substance known to man that does not absorb radiation and thereby heat.
NASA is propagandizing our kids with flat-out lies.
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The quote is from a section containing 3 questions. The question about whether other gases absorb heat follows one that is specific - the answer to that specific question refers to 'heat radiated from the earth'.
This is pedantry at its worst. I think most teachers, unlike skeptics, can understand the answer given the context of the questions before it.
The article you link to also contains errors itself. Heat does NOT 'consist of vibrating and colliding molecules'. That's TEMPERATURE, which is a measure of the kinetic energy of those molecules. Motion of those molecules, as stated in the article, does not jostle an atom's electrons - if it did we'd be dead because, according to this logic, the inner electrons of the gases in our atmosphere would jump about and at those energy levels they'd be emitting x-rays. What the author actually means is transitions between rotational/vibrational energy levels, which may not involve an electronic transition.
Ooops ... hard to believe someone having a pot-shot at an article for kids could make such basic errors themselves.
NASA's lessons are a bit dumbed down for 5th graders, but American Thinker's analysis is simply wrong. I'd like to hear them try to convince ANY atmospheric scientist of that nonsense--and I'm including Lindzen, Spencer, Christy, etc.
EDIT: I should explain what one of the things wrong with their analysis is. Radiation, convection, and conduction all operate at difference speeds. A characteristic speed for convection would be around a meter per second in the atmosphere; for conduction, we're talking about molecular speeds, so perhaps 100 meters per second. What about radiation? Well, that takes place at the speed of light, or about 300,000,000 meters per second. If you take away the greenhouse gases, radiation becomes the dominant energy transfer mechanism--it radiates away the energy before the others even have a chance to get started. Since as the "American Thinker" (an oxymoron?) points out, gases in the atmosphere radiate also, even the small bit that gets a chance to be conducted to the atmosphere from the surface also gets radiated away.
And James says:
"So AGW theory violates the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws of thermodynamics..."
I'm guessing that without Googling them James doesn't have a clue what the laws of thermodynamics even are. I'm quite certain he couldn't give any example of how the laws are "violated".
try reading this: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Feature... it might explain it a bit better for you.
out of curiosity, what's your explanation for seasons existing on Earth? How did you miss the fact that not all solar radiation that reaches Earth is penetrated by the atmosphere?
So AGW theory violates the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws of thermodynamics because it completely ignores conductive and convection of thermal energy through 99% of the earth's atmosphere. Got it.
In government you talk to your funding.
NASA will say whatever the Obama Administration insists upon in
order to gain more funding. NASA is now more about extremist
views than space exploration.
If you want to know what NASA teaches, NASA does have its own web sites.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp
Although, all gases can absorb heat, by convection, conduction and by collisions between molecules. It is by the absorption of infrared radiation, at wavelengths which Earth is warm enough to emit, that only certain gases like carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor can absorb and that other gases like oxygen, nitrogen and argon can't absorb.
That's pretty lame. If global warming happened naturally, as we breath in and out, the ozone layer would obviously already be gone.
I'll take NASA over American "thinker" any day.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html
It is hard to believe this
