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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (19075)	12/27/2007 5:57:22 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

But it is cooled (and thus the temperature regulated) by suppressing convection: Yes. A very important distinction. It can of course be cooled by other methods, such as radiation, or conduction as well. Just like it can be heated by a boiler. The point remains, that junkscience, which the bashers love to quote, tried to claim that "greenhouse" was a poor metaphor for the AGW, but it is only poor if you focus on how a greenhouse is typically cooled and note this is very different than how the earth looses energy. A greenhouse operated to stay warm is in fact operating on very similar methods, hence the metaphor is good. Think of a greenhouse that can't quite get warm enough, i.e. it always need a little supplemental heat from a boiler. How does it operate? Very much like the earth. It never uses convection to cool down. All metaphors have limits, and when people fail to constrain the metaphor for the similarities, but instead highlight the differences, it does become worthless. But it is a poor or dishonest argument. IMO, it was a typical junkscience description. Designed to cause confusion, not illumination. And the people who read his site want to be confused, not illuminated, so they typically are happy with the outcome. I don't really have a problem with the description of warming by suppressing convection, but it is a little like saying you accumulate money by not spending it. True, if you have money coming in, and you spend it you don't accumulate. But you fundamentally don't accumulate if you don't have money coming it. You can't push on a rope. It is very simple to show where the money comes from, just like it is very simple to show the greenhouse obtains its energy from radiation. There are many ways to lose money or energy, but you have to have both first in order to lose them.