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stoat | July 29, 2010Header shamelessly stolen from Coby. But his post is so wonderful that I can't help re-saying it.
So: Roy Spencer says that the basic greenhouse effect mechanism is sound; or perhaps, more weakly, that the basic mechanism is phyically possible. You might think that is not very strange, after all it isn't really very dificult. But alas so many poor innocent young and not-so-young wannabe "skeptics" have been exposed to the denialist meme "cold things can't make warm things warmer; the upper atmophere is colder than the surface; therefore the atmosphere doesn't heat the surface; therefore the…
illconsidered | September 11, 2008This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
The so called "Greenhouse Effect" which is the underpinning of the entire theory of anthropogenic global warming claims that greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere absorb outgoing long wave radiation from the surface and reradiate it back, thereby warming the climate. But the upper atmosphere is colder than the lower atmosphere and the surface and the second law of thermodynamics clearly requires that heat flow from warmer areas of a…