how many in here do you think are truly interested in this topic?

I wouldn’t worry about of Jeff. By and large the sceptic / denier community only ever feeds off itself. To maintain the delusion it’s necessary for them to block-out evidence that conflicts with their pre-conceived notion. Thus, if you provide a perfectly rational, evidence-based response, it’s likely to be systematically rejected simply because it’s not what they want to hear. And as I’m sure you know, there are several sceptics on here who wouldn’t even read your response, they don’t want to be exposed to anything that goes against their belief, they will however be only too pleased to give you a thumbs down.

You’ve seen yourself, time and time again, how an individual sceptic, or a small number of sceptics, will latch onto a single idea a run with it. It’s inconsequential if that idea can be very easily disproved, or even if it’s contradictory to that other sceptics are saying. It’s what the individual WANTS to believe and therefore it’s what they will believe.

Don’t worry about the sceptics, they’re a relatively small number that are concerned only with what the other sceptics have to say. They’re not hear to learn anything, only to perpetuate the same failed arguments again and again. Look at their profiles, they generally have the same small group of ‘fans’ following each other around. You’ve got more fans than any of the skeptics have and the top contributors such as Dana, have more than 10 times as many fans at the top sceptics do. In other words, the sceptics are small in number and ineffectual.

<< Are you tired of giving real answers only to have them not understand or completely write them off? >>

Personally, no. I don’t provide responses solely for the benefit of the sceptics, I keep in mind that whatever gets posted here will remain for years to come and will in time be read by a significant number of people. All these questions and answers are indexed by search engines and in time many more people will read the responses.

I think lots of people are interested. I am sorry I missed the original question but I have had a quick scan of your references now. Thank you.

However, there is still a problem. The earth is retaining more radiation but, according to some data sets, the surface temperature has not increased for 17 years. So where is the energy going? How does that affect climate sensitivity? If it is not heating the surface, do we still have cause to worry?

Miscellaneous comments .........

"... Dana, have more than 10 times as many fans at the top sceptics do." Interestingly, a lot of them seem to be called Dana!

OM: "... single number for climate sensitivity?" The figure is quoted for "CO2 doubling". So it changes appropriately.

d/dx: "The number of photons absorbed equals the number of photons emitted." Is that actually true? My understanding is that the low level infra red is absorbed, then, because of the density, the excited molecules are more likely to lose energy by collision and not emission. That is what causes the heating. This implies that the number of photons emitted will be less than the number absorbed at that level. Where have I gone wrong? I find this kind of detail hard to find on the web.

EDIT: Yes, I understand that there is extra energy in the system. But, if it is not affecting surface temperatures, do we have to worry about it? Most of the "problems" that have been raised by the alarmists, melting ice, animal relocations etc are all predicated on increased surface temperature. So, even if there is more energy in the system those problems would seem to be unlikely.

Sorry, the he said/she said part of this question doesn't interest me, it doesn't afford me the opportunity to learn anything new. However the science part does.

I'm not one to promote the CO2 saturation theory since I don't have enough knowledge in that area.

However, this does bring up a question I've had for a while. If the CO2 effect is not linear, then how can we be trying to come up with a single number for climate sensitivity? Shouldn't sensitivity depend on the start and finish CO2 concentrations? How do other variables change as well like cloud processes?

When thinking further, I suppose we could define climate sensitivity to relate directly to our current situation and call the start level as pre-industrial at 280ppm and a doubling at 560ppm. Although, that would lead me to question climate sensitivity studies done using empirical data. I doubt there was past time where you could get data exactly for the 280-560 range so some adjustments would have been needed (also considering the precision of the paleo data or proxies or whatever was used).

Anyways, a bit off tangent.

1. The saturation effect is a red herring. If it were possible to tag all the 14 micron wavelength photons emitted at ground level directly upward, we would find that virtually all of them would be absorbed within 1 m by CO2 molecules. Saturation, right? However, if we measure the 14 micron wavelength photon flux 1 m above the ground, we find that the flux is the same as the flux at ground level. Why? The parcel of air close is in thermodynamic equilibrium. The number of photons absorbed equals the number of photons emitted. As the altitude increases, the air gets cooler and the photon flux will depend on the temperature of that layer. As the pressure decreases, the photon mean free path increases. There is a last absorbing layer which emits to space and the rate of emission is controlled by the temperature of that layer. With increasing CO2, the last layer is a higher altitude and lower temperature.

2. OM made some valid comments about the climate sensitivity number. It is properly a function rather than a single number. The climate modelers have shown that the function is slowly varying in the region of interest to justify using a single number. However, these details are not included in the popular press. Incidentally, the CO2 absorption vs concentration in a planetary atmosphere is not a logarithmic function. The theoretical profile is well approximated by a logarithmic function by an analytic fit in a region with upper and lower bounds. It is often convenient to use simplified models in science, but these models need to be used with a solid understanding about the range of applicability. For example, in QM one might use a simplified 6-12 (LJ) potential on the understanding that the error is less than 5% within the range of interaction distances considered. To an outside observer, these approximations might seem troublesome because the basis for the approximation is not made explicit. However, scientists with many years of experience in the field know what the approximations are and do not make them explicit in publications. Scientific publications presume a certain level of background knowledge and can be misunderstood by those without a deep background (PhD) in the subject material.

Few questions and are interesting and I often check any statements people make regardless who makes them. What I do find interesting is how people argue.

One thing I did not expect is that WUWT would rewrite a submission made by one of the climate scientists and his colleagues in order to misrepresent what they wrote. I have come to expected childish behavior like misrepresenting what people said on yahoo answers, (One guy in this section does it more then a U.S. presidential candidate's super pac) but in contrast to WUWT, on yahoo answers, I can go back through the history and see what was said.

We even have one top contributer here, who still? does not know why a greenhouse gas is different from other gases. Don't get me wrong I am sure he is a very nice (and gullible) person but to become top contributer on a science forum, I would have expected that you'd would have to know at least the basics.

The benefit for me is to learn new words (English is not my native language) a little about science, history and how people (including me) think and argue. I now have a little understanding why evil people like Hitler and Stalin rose to power. I always thought facts would trump ideology, but since coming here I have seen how science is dismissed as ideology by what can only be described as bigots.

Ottawa Mike, the climate sensitivity is based on start and finish CO2 concentrations. They report based on a doubling, and this numbers tends to get conflated with warming by 2100.

Making any conclusions of measurements of outbound IR during the 80,s and or 90's is subject to the effects of El Chichon and Pinatubo and subsequent changes in stratospheric humidity that are too complicated to draw any conclusions on yet. Climate models accurately model that Mt Pinatubo injected 18 Million Metric Tons of SO2 into the stratosphere and its cooling effect, but to my knowledge the 491 Million Metric Tons of H2O that was also injected into the stratosphere and it's long term warming effects are not compensated for. Multi decadal variations in stratospheric water vapor could account for all of the changed in outbound LW radiation that your references point to. I doubt many climate scientists would like it if it turned out that highly eruptive volcanoes had a long term warming effect. There is simply too many unknowns and a severe bias in the climate community to actually care about the truth on this subject. The science is far from settled.

Jeff:

From your referenced paper

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-...

Every single energy band referenced in the paper that showed declining outbound energy is clearly overlapped by water vapor in the absorption spectrum below. The only wavelengths that water vapor does not interact with is the 4-5 uM range, but Nitrous Oxide also interacts with that region, so it seems the research has some problems. I do not understand how you can say that this represents any proof of anything except a change in some greenhouse components in the atmosphere.

It could be that the outbound energy at the frequencies CO2 absorbs at is decreasing and still it is mostly saturated. I don't see that as an adequate explanation. It also discounts other natural causes that might overwhelm the effects of CO2 and it discounts the effects that CO2 might have on other factors such as cloud formation that might mitigate any warming.

Jeff M: The earth's temperature is going down and has been for a decade or more. Meanwhile the CO2 level has increased.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2...

I don't care how many frequencies are retained or what is a greenhouse gas or any fancy chart you might have. They are all BOGUS! Mother Earth has proven your thinking wrong. Who are you going to believe, the Earth or Al Gore? Ha! Ha! We all know who you believe. Ha! Ha!

Welcome back Billy.

Embracing ambiguity and contradiction as evidence for support is a foriegn concept for most of us.