What governs temperature changes?

Question

"Trevor is right, you are wrong. The reason you are wrong is that you are using the analogy that CO2 is a thermostat and there is some sort of thermal lag in climate like there would be in a house. However, you are mistaken in that assumption. In fact, a thermostat controls the energy input to the house (the furnace). Shut off the furnace (i.e., the energy input into the house) and the house starts to cool immediately. In climate, CO2 is the furnace. Reduce CO2, and the cooling begins immediately. The thermostats in climate are the feedbacks and heat sinks like the ocean and cryosphere. But regardless of how big those are, if you shut off the furnace, the house cools. "

Well, let's discuss this.

First, the analogy is wrong.  If you have a room at 40 degrees and you turn the thermostat up to 90 degrees and then immediately turn it down to 80 degrees the furnace does not shut down.  The room is, let's say at 42 degrees, and since 42 is less than 80 the thermostat does not turn off the furnace.  The furnace shuts off when the room reaches 80.    So even though you drops the thermostat setting from 90 to a lower number, the room temperature *increases*.

Right now if the CO2 level held constant the Earth's temperature would continue to rise.  That is because we have not reached equilibrium--there is still less outgoing radiation than there is incoming radiation.  A decrease in CO2, unless it was sufficiently large, would just make the imbalance les strong.  But there would still be an imbalance, and the Earth would continue to heat..

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

The temperature of a planet will depend on three basic things. One is its nearness to the sun. The second is the type and age of that sun. The last is the planet's internal and surface/atmospheric characteristics.
As the sun (the star in a given planet's system) will be a heat source, what kind of star is it? And how old is it? How far along in its life cycle? These will determine how much energy it radiates. This will affect all the planets in that solar system.
The distance a given planet is from the star will determine the amount of stellar energy that reaches that planet and that bathes it. It's reasonably obvious. The farther away it is, the less the amount of energy that it will get per unit of exposed area. More straight forward stuff.
The surface and atmospheric conditions on the planet (and its size, too) will determine how much energy is "caught" by the planet and how much reflected back into space. Also, the atmosphere will determine how much captured heat energy is radiated back into space. Remember that just because heat energy is captured by a planet, that doesn't mean the planet will keep it. Some of it will be radiated back out into space, and the atmospheric characteristics have everything to do with this re-radiation phenomenon. In sum, there are two things at work as regards the atmosphere. The atmosphere can, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect energy before the planet has a chance to capture it, and the atmosphere can, to a greater or lesser degree, keep in the captured energy and prevent it from being re-radiated.
Lastly, the internal conditions of the planet will have an effect on the temperature of that body. Certainly the age of the planet will determine how much it has cooled since it formed. For example, earth has a molten core. On a younger earth (a few million years ago), the heat there did contribute to surface temperature a bit when surface volcanic action ran amok. Out on Mars, that planet has pretty much cooled and "gone solid" as regards its core. No internal heating is contributing to the planet's surface temperatue. Some planets have internal temperatures that have contributions from the radioactive decay of unstable elements. These heavy radioisotopes were incorporated into the planet's makeup (depending on the availability in the stellar system) when material agregated to form the planetary body.
There may be some contributions of heat from heavy collisions with large bodies at different times in the planet's life. For instance, if something the size of a small moon strikes a planet, It will add a lot of energy to the planet. A massive strike could turn the whole surface of a planet molten by the time the absorbed energy "evens out" across the whole of the surface. Certainly the amount of time that has elapsed since the event will have an effect on surface temperatures because the planet will cool. But you knew that.

Pat · Answer

The Earth governs its own temperature. Yes! The argument is that CO2 is one thermostat that controls the Earth's temperature. How many others are there?

You act as if humans have an extreme effect and, therefore, are controlling it. 

How many other variables in conjunction with H2O have an affect on the planet's temperature?

Do you really think there is no escape for all of the heat?

john m · Answer

Hi Paul " temperature and heat are NOT the same thing. Heat is the total amount of kinetic motion in a substance, whereas temperature is the average amount of kinetic motion per atom. " 
http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/technical/p18.htm
Edit If you measure the heat of a fire (the constant source of heat) the temperature drops as you move away from the source Temperature is a reading of the heat souse at a distance .

Edit Paul So lets look at things a bit closer and go to the source, how the molecule heats. It all comes down to how fast the electron moves in the outer shell, the faster it moves the more voltage it carries. So heat is a molecules electric potential and temperature is the measurement of the electric potential of a mass

Kano · Answer

Paul it is known that CO2's warming effect is minor, even the IPCC admits this and practically all the warming That CO2 can do has already been done.
The hypothesis was that the minor rise in temps caused by CO2 would cause an increase in water vapor (a warmer atmosphere can hold a lot more water vapor) which is much stronger greenhouse gas, but it didn't work out like that as this article I showed yesterday explains http://www.biocab.org/Radiative_Forcing_and_Heat_Stored.html

Trevor · Answer

Q: What governs temperature changes?

A: A change in the amount of thermal energy in the atoms/molecules of matter.

Pindar · Answer

Q What governs temperature changes?

A Those of us who dabble in physics call that the Sun.

Dollar · Answer

wow

Sagebrush · Answer

God!

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What governs temperature changes?

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