Are you really confused by the name "greenhouse effect?

Let's face it, people in general, and deniers in particular, are confused about science. Greenhouse effect is not the best name, but it's not uncommon to use terminology which is misleading. You just need to understand what's going on, and that's not that difficult if know some science, but for the most part people don't understand either math or science.

Look at what Pindar says in the answer to this question

"co2 as well as being a minute portion of the atmosphere is also the heaviest part of the atmosphere so it concentrates near ground level(FACT)"

Well, no, that's not a fact Pindar--it's not even true except under unusual circumstances. Did you ever think to check this "fact"? Why don't you look up the concentration of CO2 way up in the stratosphere? You'd find it was almost the same as it is right on the ground.

Jerry claims in another question that during the warm season it gets up to 96 degrees, 90% humidity every day in Orlando, when in fact such conditions NEVER occur ANYWHERE in North America.

Others claim that hurricanes are a battleground between hot and cold air (no).

Rush Limbaugh and his disciples believe that heat index is liberal plot to promote global warming, ignoring the fact that it dates back to 1978--at the same time they claim scientists were promoting global cooling!

PQ claims that the increase in CO2 is only 0.01% (although that's not really because of ignorance, that's based on deceit).

To be honest, I think there are many people that believe in AGW that are ignorant of science too, but the difference is that they have chosen to believe scientists, rather than to believe their own flawed and erroneous view of science.

EDIT for Pindar: I'm sorry you feel insulted, but I'm tired of people spreading false information about science. From your mocking tone I can't tell whether you even understand that what you said is incorrect. If I say something incorrect on here (and I have, once or twice) I WANT to be corrected. Basically though, there are some people that spread false information on here because they don't know any better (hopefully you fall into that category) and others spread false information intentionally. It needs to stop--CO2 doesn't collect on the ground, volcanoes don't emit more CO2 than humans, the observed temperature increase it not due to the heat island effect, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, a consensus of scientists was NOT predicting a new ice age during the 70's...the list goes on and on.

I try to be helpful to people I believe are honestly mistaken, but when I see a pattern of misinformation being spread by a person I become less civil about it.

I guess there will be a great many people who wouldn’t be able to describe the greenhouse effect in either the context of a glasshouse or atmospheric warming. Not that it matters in the slightest, unless of course they’re an atmospheric physicist or similar.

If a person has the knowledge to understand how a glasshouse retains heat then clearly they’ll be aware that the atmosphere doesn’t retain heat for the same reason. Similarly, if someone understands the mechanics of global warming they’ll know that the warming inside a glasshouse is different.

The fact that someone doesn’t understand why warming occurs is of no consequence to the vast majority of people. All the gardener needs to know is that his glasshouse is a nice warm place to grow tomatoes – he doesn’t need to know the science behind it. Similarly, people can be aware that greenhouse gas emissions lead to a warmer atmosphere, they don’t need to know the hows and whys.

Whilst the term ‘greenhouse effect’ isn’t ideal, I don’t think there’s anyone who is going to be confused about what it is. Similarly, nobody is confused about what a prehistoric man but if you want to play with semantics then there’s no such thing, its literal translation is man before man.

If we take the ‘greenhouse effect’ argument a step further then surely it must be logical to claim that my car warms up on a sunny day for some other reason. After all, my car isn’t a greenhouse therefore it can’t be warmed by the greenhouse effect.

I’ll reserve judgement on Mike’s question until he asks part two, but when similar questions have been asked in the past they’ve been nothing more than pointless nitpicking.

What I would add is that these obscure questions and answers that prevail from the deniers and skeptics are a clear illustration that they have no real arguments to put forward against the theory of global warming. If they have something of substance then why not present it, all we seem to get nowadays are ad-hominem attacks, abstract concepts, logical and illogical fallacies, semantics, obfuscation and just about any ploy to avoid addressing the real issues.

Oh, and to answer your question, I’m not confused by the term ‘greenhouse effect’.

The premise of mikes question was flawed from the start, with the use of a quite flawed study by a mexican scientist that was meant to show how Co2 was not a warming gas, although he did this test without actually using Co2 (go figure).

Instead he used different materials, a test that really only shows you what is a good insulator if you plan on building a 'real' greenhouse, but pretty meaningless when it comes to relating to climate change. But deniers seem to think it means something important, as they usually do with any little scrape of misinformation denier groups throw at them.

I for one can't speak for what mike thinks (thank god), but I don't know of anybody who thinks a normal greenhouse heats up due to Co2, they heat up for the same reason the Earth does sunlight strikes objects and the ground inside the greenhouse and is converted into heat, mike is partially right in that the glass stops convective mixing with the atmosphere but as much of the effect is also caused by the nature of glass (and some plastics) at allowing light in, but slow the heat loss, the effect can be enhanced if the glasshouse is double or triple glazed.

Infrared energy (in the EM spectrum) starts just above visible light and indeed in this range it does pass through glass, remotes etc will work through glass, but higher up the spectrum glass effectively blocks Infrared this is "far infrared"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared#Different_re...

I would have thought deniers would know this, as most seem to claim science knowledge and this sort of stuff is taught even at high school level.

As to names, I think deniers are no more confused over this than they are over that other time waster they keep asking about the name change from global warming to climate change, one they stubbornly refuse to stop asking no matter how many times it is explained to them that it is a figment of their own imaginations, the IPCC is the IPCC, it has been called that for over 20 years. These are just the childish games deniers play.

In some ways yes,greenhouse effect implies that high in air heat is trapped and reflected back,BUT co2 as well as being a minute portion of the atmosphere is also the heaviest part of the atmosphere so it concentrates near ground level(FACT),so if it causes a runaway greenhouse effect does all that happen in the first foot above ground level? Yes I'm confused.

PEGMINER , why do you feel the need to insult other users,I know that you are clearly the most intelligent person on the planet and obviously only those very intelligent people who can understand the science can be believers. Thanks for putting me straight about gravity oh wise one. There was silly old me thinking that due to gravity larger molecules are attracted more to the ground than lighter ones but now I understand ,co2 is obviously so evil that it reverses gravities effect. Perhaps one day i'll be able to understand the science of which you speak

Not at all!

I assume this is the question you are referring to;

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Arvn....

I did see it but didn't consider it worth answering, partly because this was discussed a few days ago and should have been laid to rest then. In a nutshell, the atmosphere doesn't behave in the same way as a greenhouse and this is well known and accepted by most people here, regardless of which side they are on.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An55q...

I hope OM does ask part two of the question; I'm really looking forward to answering it as it will be an opportunity to test my understanding against that of the real experts such as Trevor, Dana, d/dx, to mention a few; also to see the 'skeptics' views!

Hopefully it will help the many here who seem to have a poor understanding of this subject.

So come on Mike; you have one star already!

The fantastic thing about greenhouse effect is is greening the planet and there will be mire food for every one

The good thing about the greenhouse effect we're getting is that it's holding off the next ice age. This will mean that we won't have to hear people sing Ice Ice Baby again for a few more years.

If it wasn't for global warming, Chicago would still be under a mile of ice.

No, I'm not confused at all.

i thought it was green color house