150th Anniversary of Greenhouse Climate Theory

An anonymous reader writes "It was 150 years ago that John Tyndall, one of history's truly great physicists, published a scientific paper with the far-from-snappy title On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction. The BBC has an article on John Tyndall and his contributions 150 years ago to the physics behind the study of climate change."

Ever since blackbody radiation

[werepants]

The basic science of global warming isn't too tough or very modern(clearly), although most people don't understand it very well. This article seems to make things fairly confusing as well, although the quote from Tyndall himself is pleasantly concise and clear: "heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat." My favorite explanation, I think, is how Carl Sagan explained it in Cosmos, which is roughly as follows:
The idea is that visible light hits the earth, and warms it up. Some of that light is reflected straight back, so it leaves the atmosphere the way it came in and we're done. A lot of that light, though, gets absorbed by trees or rocks or walruses, causing them to heat up. They'll slowly re-radiate it out again because of blackbody radiation (all things radiate continually, even the universe itself) but it will be in the form of lower energy, lower frequency wavelengths. This means that energy from visible light gets absorbed and often radiated back out again as infrared.

CO2 and other "greenhouse" gases let light in the visible part of the spectrum pass unimpeded, but they don't let IR through as easily. So, energy comes in but it can't get back out again.

Re:Al Gore Busted!

[mikael_j]

Just who worships Al Gore? This must be some obscure subculture or something because I don't really know anyone who thinks very highly of Gore (they may not dislike him, they may even have some basic respect for things he's done but they don't put him on a pedestal).

Or maybe it's like the Michael Moore thing, where lots of right-wing idiots (and trolls) thought everyone left of Mussolini worshiped Moore even though the reality of it was that we were slightly impressed by his documentaries but still had some issues with the movies as well as with Moore himself.

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Re:Like all ignorant blowhards I oppose science.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

using words like truther and denier just brings in stupid partisan bullshit in what SHOULD be a healthy debate

This would be much more convincing if the rest of your post weren't exactly the kind of ignorant, paranoid rant that causes people to be labeled deniers in the first place.

Re:What truly makes me sad however...

[Eunuchswear]

Isn't the point of science to prove or disprove theories? Just because this is 150 years old doesn't mean it should be taken off the list of what can and cannot be proven.

Absolutely.

But theories that haven't been disproved in 150 years are the ones to bet on.

Disprove it - get a Nobel.

That's what all the climate scientists are trying to do.