Talk:Solar greenhouse/Archive 1

message: I saw a really clear and precise explanation of the greenhouse effect at a website. But I hesitate to rely on it without some checking from the Anome or Axelboldt or anyone else who really knows the science.
:of all the sunlight that passes through the atmosphere annually, only 51 % is available at the Earth's surface to do work. This energy is used to heat the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere, melt and evaporate water, and run photosynthesis in plants. Of the other 49 %, 4 % is reflected back to space by the Earth's surface, 26 % is reflected to space by clouds and atmospheric particles, and 19 % is absorbed by atmospheric gases, particles and clouds. 
:: (William M. Connolley 22:07, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-write 

message: The paragraph in the section titled "Real green house" is the most stupid and unscientific statement I have ever seen. The foundamental principle is how the glass let radiation (e.g. ultraviolet, visible light) in and then after the energy is converted into another form (e.g. infrared), the glass don't let it out.  The basic principle was dismissed by a ridiculous claim that, when you open the window the greenhouse won't work.  Hence it was concluded that the greenhouse works on the principle of convection.  Such conclusion is really laughable.  When you open the windows, you introduced the convection that carried the heat away.  It does not prove that the greenhouse works by convection, you can only claim that the greenhouse is ruined by convection.  The better set of experiments is as follow:
* eliminate the radiation and conduction from the greenhouse
:built a greenhouse with insultated, oplaque walls and roofs and see how the heat get in without conduction nor radiation.
* eliminate the conduction and convection from the greenhouse
:built a greenhouse with doublepane glass and no windows and see how the heat build up without conduction or convection.
* eliminate the radiation conversion that is the main principle of greenhouse effect.
: built a greenhouse as the last one, but coat everything inside the greenhouse with mirror surface and then measure how the greenhouse does not work when there is no infrared to trap by the glass. 
The argument about the opening window is flawed because when you open the window, you are looking at a totally different system, instead of just the greenhouse's relation with the sun, you are looking at the greenhouse plus the surround air.  If you want to compare the earth to a glass greenhouse, then you cannot open the window to vent the hot air, because you can put a giant tube that poke into outter space and pump the hot air away, you can stop the global greenhouse effect just like you open the windows of the glass house.  On the other hand, if you can build a large enough greenhouse where its roof is above the atmosphere, then whether you open the window on the roof or not will make no difference to the temperature inside the greenhouse.  Therefore the global and glass greenhouse work the same way except that the convection effect overpowers the greenhouse effect when you have a small glass house.
Kowloonese 23:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: (William M. Connolley 11:36, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I was indeed referring to the flawed Wood's experiment.  He wrote a paper, you don't have to agree, do you?  Kowloonese 08:47, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 09:28, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The argument about the opening window is flawed because when you open the window, you are looking at a totally different system, instead of just the greenhouse's relation with the sun, you are looking at the greenhouse plus the surround air. That's right. It is a different system. Exactly as a fanciful "pipe out to space" would make a totally different system: earth plus surrounding space insteads of just earth. In other words, the analogy in the article is entirely appropriate. Tannin 09:46, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Scientific works are subjected to peer reviews.  The Wood's experiment reads like baloney to me, though I am not his peer.  What is the general acceptance of his conclusion in the scientific community?  Anyone who has studied history of science knows that many convincing scientific theories were later proven wrong.  This one is not even convincing.  Why is his view stated like the gospel in this encyclopedia?  It is definitely not NPOV.  Kowloonese 21:34, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text:  (William M. Connolley 22:17, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I have a ridiculous argument that this analogous to the open window argument by Woods.  Here it goes, prepare to laugh.  I can prove that penicillin is not a cure for bacterial infection because if I cut open the patient's artery, the patient dies.  The open window green house is as silly as this. It just does not make sense at all.  Kowloonese 21:49, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 22:17, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Real green house

message: I found a good article .  It may be worth reading before this page is getting way too long.  Kowloonese 21:01, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
:An interesting read.  :)  I was going to suggest there should be a wiki page, but there already is.   — Cortonin | Talk 05:20, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  When the discussion is going nowhere ... 

message: Well, I dug around quite a bit, and going all the way back to 1991, I was able to locate a paper which models the operation of a greenhouse in excruciating detail.  Anyone interested in the detailed 30 page thermodynamic description should
read the following paper.   — Cortonin | Talk 11:18, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: (William M. Connolley 21:53, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Or you could stop the baseless personal attacks , get the article, and read it.  I spent a long time searching for that article, solely for the purpose of explaining the matter to you.  So you can stop the petty insinuations about my incompetence and go read about the mechanism for yourself.   — Cortonin | Talk 07:21, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 20:37, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You have indicated that the references you gave provided no mechanistic detail, so there is no point in locating those texts.  I instead spent time looking for texts which DO describe mechanistic detail, since that is the dispute at hand, and found this article to be the most comprehensive.  While it is completely unrelated to this topic, I consider the work on mesospheric water vapor and its atmospheric chemistry effects informative and relevant to a complete understanding of the system, and your continued personal attack about this indicating something about my credibility is simply an ad hominem.   — Cortonin | Talk 22:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 11:34, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Uh, first, water vapor is water vapor.  The difference would be altitude, concentration, and quantity, but it's the same compound.  I do understand the difference between the troposphere and the mesosphere, and this is not particularly complicated.  The only "mistake" is a strawman you have created in which you say I have somehow claimed that the troposphere and the mesosphere are the same thing, when in reality, you are the only one who has been talking about this.  How this can be a misunderstanding on my part, when I have made no claims about it, is beyond me.   — Cortonin | Talk 21:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text:  (William M. Connolley 23:55, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: This has nothing to do with bias, and there are no political issues involving the mechanism of gardening greenhouses.  This only has to do with correct scientific description, and with ego.  Correct and thorough scientific description is found by reading the source I gave.  Ego has to do with edit warring to avoid having to admit to being wrong, and this is extremely unproductive for Wikipedia.   — Cortonin | Talk 22:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Once again, READ THE PAPER RATHER THAN EDIT WARRING!!!!!!  I provided you with a clear and unambiguous source which describes the mechanism in excruciating detail, and your chosen course of action is to continue edit warring based on not trusting me?  This is completely against all Wikipedia intents and policies of good faith and mutual cooperation.  Stop it, read the paper, understand the mechanism, and stop reverting to the physically invalid description.   — Cortonin | Talk 22:25, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 11:34, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Provide a reference which describes the mathematical details of a mechanism for convection suppression as a mechanism for greenhouse operation, and compares this to experiment, and I will gladly read it.  You have not yet provided such a reference.  I HAVE shown such a reference which shows the mechanism for heating is thermal IR absorption.  If you can provide such a reference showing that level of detail, then like I said, I will read it.  Now, will you read mine since I already provided it?   — Cortonin | Talk 21:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Notice how this argument is going, I'm calling for you to read a paper describing a mechanism, and you're just insulting me and saying I don't understand.  Which approach sounds more scientific to you?   — Cortonin | Talk 21:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text:  (William M. Connolley 23:55, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What the???  The issue is not "Is the greenhouse effect a misnomer?"  The goal is to correctly describe the mechanism of how greenhouses operate.  Is the greenhouse effect a misnomer?  In what way?  The sky is not made of glass, the sky is not a giant building made by man...  There are a dozen different ways a person could consider it a misnomer if they so choose, because obviously they are not the same system and not composed of the same parts.  But the point is, the underlying MECHANISM of the heating effect is the same in both systems, and this is thermal IR absorption.   — Cortonin | Talk 08:47, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horticern 

message: Convection is NOT the dominant heat mechanism for a greenhouse.  First, suppression of convection does not ever generate heat.  Second, even if convection is low, such as in the case of low wind speed, the greenhouse heats significantly.  In fact, a well insulated greenhouse does not heat up much more or less when the windspeed is high (see Horticern paper), which shows that convection is not significantly changing the temperature difference between the inside and the outside of the greenhouse, which shows that the localized outside air temperature is not being changed much by localized outside convection, and thus its suppression is not significantly contributing to the heat difference.   — Cortonin | Talk 07:46, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No one said that covection is a heat mechanism, dominant or otherwise. You ar either mis-reading or simply trying to find an excuse to revert. The only heat source in the greenhouse is the incoming solar radiation and the absorption of it. Convection, conduction, and secondary radiation are only heat transfer mechanisms that move heat around within and eventually out of the structure. I have no clue why you keep switching the discussion from the blocking of convection by the glazing to something rather irrelevant about outside wind speed. Localized outside convection is irrelevant and not mentioned in the article. Vsmith 14:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Because if you want to experimentally measure the effect of convection, you do it by isolating that variable.  This means you consider the changes to the temperature difference under various wind speeds.  AND, when that is done, as it is explicitely done in the Horticern paper, it is found that in a well-insulated greenhouse, the contributions of convection are small.  Sometimes convection removes heat energy from the greenhouse, and sometimes it ADDS heat energy to the greenhouse since the very outer surface of the greenhouse can actually be cooler than the air around, due to its radiative coupling with the upper sky.   — Cortonin | Talk 19:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I'll be... Can you stay with the program. We are not discussing convection outside of the greenhouse, we are talking about the simple concept that heat is retained within the greenhouse because the air inside cannot convect away and take the heat with it. What is so difficult about that simple fact? If I want to keep my house warm in the winter, I don’t leave the door open. Vsmith 02:43, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Convection outside IS what you're talking about, you just haven't realized it yet.  In your model, there are two systems.  System A, the outside, has incoming solar radiation striking the ground, and convection with surrounding areas.  System B, the greenhouse, has incoming solar radiation striking the ground, and no convection with surrounding areas.  Then what you are saying is that the lack of convection allows system B to become hotter than A.  What this statement really is, is a backwards way of formulating the statement that the convection in system A cools it.  So we are INDEED discussing convection outside, and the question at hand is whether wind outside produces a cooling effect to the outside.  The answer is, not always, and not significantly, and it is covered in the Horticern paper.   — Cortonin | Talk 10:46, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: There are indeed three mechanisms for heat redistribution, convection, conduction, and thermal IR.  When convection is stopped, and conduction is reduced by a well-insulated barrier (a prerequisite for having a thermodynamically isolated system), then you can see the results of thermal IR imbalancing most effectively.  At this point you find out (by measuring, as pointed out above), that the temperature increases produced by thermal IR absorbtion far exceed the contributions of convection to the external atmospheric temperature.  See, the outside also has three mechanisms for heat removal, convection, conduction, and thermal IR.  The outside does not have the thermal IR barrier of the gardening greenhouse, and so the outside air couples with the upper sky (which can be pretty far below freezing) through thermal IR exchange, and this lowers the temperature of the outside in a way that the greenhouse does not experience.  (Compare a cloudy night and a clear night, and the greenhouse's absorption can significantly exceed this.)  And if you don't trust the thermodynamics, then convection's effects on the relative temperatures can be measured by correlating temperatures with windspeed, and when that's done, the results show what I have stated (see Horticern).   — Cortonin | Talk 20:53, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Twice now you have tried to distort the statement ... Of course convection is significant in the atmosphere - think weather, but it is not the significant part of the global greenhouse effect, don't know where you are trying to go with that - confusion of the issue, maybe. Vsmith 14:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Convection is not a part of the "global greenhouse effect", because convection has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, but global atmospheric convection DOES reduce OVER 50% of the warming due to the greenhouse effect.  (Check the numbers in that paragraph.)  It is not quite right to say that something is the "major thermal control" when over half of its contribution is erased by something else.   — Cortonin | Talk 19:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: Duh - anything that stops heated air from rising and thus keeps it confined to a localized area is convection based by limiting or impeding convection. Again you try to imply that I'm saying convection produces heat - nonsense, see above. And the plastic sheeting - no matter how it's designed and advertized - doesn't produce heat either, you are starting to sound like a high-tech greenhouse glazing promoter here. The gh in a gh is convection based by limiting convection. Vsmith 14:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ??  The plastic sheeting yields measureably DIFFERENT temperatures based on the thermal IR coating placed upon it.  Based on the coating type selected, the temperature can be made greater than, equal to, or less than the outside temperature, clearly indicating a wide range of temperature selections which have nothing at all to do with convection.  Greenhouse experts disagree with you.  Greenhouse manufacturers disagree with you.  Greenhouse glazing sheet and panel manufacturers disagree with you.  The researchers publishing papers about finding new materials to make greenhouses out of disagree with you.  The researchers publishing papers modeling the way a greenhouse works and then comparing this to experiment disagree with you.  And you have presented no detailed physical model to contradict the weight of these people.  I assume you know how to do a literature search, so I'm going to ask you to not revert back to the convection-dominant version without presenting a detailed study which outlines a physical model for convection suppression as a mechanism for greenhouse operation, has equations representing this, and preferrably compares this result to experiment.  It's the least you could do.  I've spent countless hours here explaining the physical model and digging up sources to explain the mechanism here, and apparently it's being dismissed as commercialism somehow?  So if you somehow think there's all this science out there which supports convection suppression, then you go find it.  You get that model description which says convection suppression is how a greenhouse works, writes equations describing it, and compares it to experiment, and then you present it here.  Otherwise this entire convection argument is just a bunch of... convection.   — Cortonin | Talk 19:57, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'll be again... wasn't that a lot of blather! Why don't we start with some common sense (a scientifically risky place to start, but...). Greenhouses were in use and working quite well before the existence of plastics or all this high-tech coating stuff (I'll admit my ignorance here and note that I exist in a rural area without easy access to all that scientific research and industry hype). My grandfather used greenhouse technology in northern Minnesota almost 100 years ago. So why don't we at first stick to the fundamentals of a simple greenhouse as it would have worked then. In future sections we can add all the high-tech plastics and coatings which appear to be obscuring your understanding of the basics I'm trying to focus on. Then you can perhaps expound on heating a greenhouse with moonlight :-) Vsmith 02:43, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer to that is that glass behaves the same as the plastics with the IR absorbant coating.  I'm trying to explain it to you in terms of the more advanced materials, because this should make it clearer what the actual cause for the effect is.  If you can explicitely manipulate one, and only one variable, namely the optical properties of the glazing, and in doing so change the resulting temperature, then you have isolated the mechanism of operation.   — Cortonin | Talk 10:46, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: First, I don't think threats are proper wikiquette.  Second, I have not seen any articles put forward by anyone which describe a detailed mechanism for greenhouse function by convection suppression.  There is however a detailed description of greenhouse function showing its IR absorbent nature in the Horticern paper.  Have you read it yet?  You said you would.   — Cortonin | Talk 11:59, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 12:16, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Convection 

message: A rather unfortunate consequence I'd say. If Cortonin could only have backed off a bit and added suggestions here rather than impatiently trying to do a gradual revert this could have been avoided. When someone steps in to try and mediate a dispute the disputees should show a bit of patience and keep a hands off mode for a little while. Cortonin was unable or unwilling to do that. I was still in the process of learning and revising to improve the article and include more discussion of the importance of glazing absorbence, but he was unwilling to let me try to work it out - don't rightly know what the hurry was. I fail to see the purpose of his contrary impatience. Maybe it was just a fishing expedition. Vsmith 13:14, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You made wide sweeping changes to the article, which I then worked with, despite this erasing most of my previous work.  (That's how cooperation actually works here.)  I took the edits you had made, and I went through them fixing the areas you added which had phrasing problems or physical inaccuracies (and carefully explaining the edits along the way).  The ego games that are being played here are ridiculous, with shouts like "fine then I'll revert to my version" or "don't edit my version while I try to figure out how to fix it."  Please read Wikipedia:Ownership of articles.   — Cortonin | Talk 17:58, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  'ell I be - what a fine mess :-) 

message: Document the following points with detailed mechanistic descriptions from the literature, or stop reverting to them, because they contradict documentation already present in the article:
*The actual maintaining of higher temperatures inside of a greenhouse is due most importantly to the inability of the natural convective flow to carry away the excess heat. and Unlike a real greenhouse where the blocking of convection is a dominant heat maintaining factor
:*Contradicted by the Horticern paper which shows temperature difference does not change significantly as rate of convection increases, and sometimes reduces.   — Cortonin | Talk 05:17, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *Contradicted by the numbers RIGHT BENEATH it, which show that global atmospheric convection reduces the temperature from 72C to 15C, meaning that atmospheric convection eliminates over half of the warming effect of the greenhouse effect.  It would not be appropriate to call infrared absorption the major thermal control here when a larger portion of the temperature difference is attributed to atmospheric convection.   — Cortonin | Talk 05:17, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: *It is not correct to say "thermal frequences".  First, when discussing spectra effects, these are typically described in terms of wavelengths.  Second, there are "IR wavelengths", of which "thermal IR wavelengths" are a subset.  Separating them like this makes no logical sense.  The term "thermal frequency" has meaning which is well outside of the scope of this article, and for this topic, is simply a non-existent term.   — Cortonin | Talk 05:17, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: *Plastic sheeting DOES NOT WORK BY CONVECTION SUPPRESSION.  This is contradicted by the Horticern paper's description of the greenhouse effect, and by the very description of the plastic sheeting products themselves, as seen here.   — Cortonin | Talk 05:17, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

text: (William M. Connolley 11:23, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I will repeat:  Find a detailed mechanistic description of the greenhouse which supports the above particular statements.  You have not.  "It's a misnomer" is not a detailed mechanistic description, and tells you nothing about the function of a greenhouse.  Those statements remain undocumented.  If you're going to try to argue from the position of science, then try to argue with scientific descriptions rather than fiat!  Find a description in the literature which describes that "model" of operation for any of those four statements.   — Cortonin | Talk 14:49, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Points of contention 

message: Vsmith added this reference.  I'll note firstly that this is not a publication in the literature, so it still does not address the lack of documentation for the above points of contention.  But secondly, it contains errors.  It begins with the premise that polyethylene greenhouse covers are transparent to IR, which is incorrect.  Some are available with lower IR absorption because they contain no coating or embedded absorption material, as can be seen in the table of R values here (note the polyethylene single film's low value on this table), and those would result in much more significant heat loss, by up to a factor of 3.  But glazings are purchased for their IR absorption properties, as seen here.  Greenhouses which do not use appropriate glazings for their surfaces require supplemental heating to maintain their temperatures, because they cannot do it by virtue of the greenhouse effect, and this is not part of the material that has been described in this article so far.  The Bowling webpage correctly asserts that thermal IR absorption in the glazing is the primary factor which keeps a greenhouse from losing heat at night, but it fails to correctly extend this to daytime consideration, when the greenhouse is losing heat energy to the sky at essentially the same rate, but is simply obtaining more incoming energy from the sun than it is losing.  This is why it's good to stick with peer reviewed material when trying to discern how a greenhouse actually operates.  They actually test what they write down.   — Cortonin | Talk 19:41, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sue Ann Bowling webpage 

message: There are some calculations out there on the internet which attempt to calculate the rate of energy loss due to IR exchange with the sky.  Unfortunately, some of them either make the mistake of assuming the IR exchange occurs with the ambient environment, or the equivalent mistake of assuming the sky temperature is equal to the ambient temperature.  However, all the peer reviewed papers which point an IR thermometer up at the sky agree that the radiative sky temperature varies between about 6-26 degrees celsius below the ambient temperature (depending on cloud cover), with an average somewhere around 15 or 16 degrees celsius below the ambient temperature.  This is the cooling force which cools the outside environment, but which doesn't cool the inside of the greenhouse, because the inside of the greenhouse is isolated from that strong cooling influence.  Any calculation which attempts to IR balance between the greenhouse and its surroundings will yield a significantly incorrect result, since the actual physical system IR balances with the much cooler upper sky.  I just leave this as a notice for future editors to be aware of.   — Cortonin | Talk 19:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  IR Calculations and Sky Temperature 

message: Copied here from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/William M. Connolley and Cortonin#Temporary injunction:
Since revert wars between the Cortonin and William M. Connolley have continued through this arbitration, both users are hereby barred from reverting any article related to climate change more than once per 24 hour period. Each and every revert (partial or full) needs to be backed up on the relevant talk page with reliable sources (such as peer reviewed journals/works, where appropriate). Administrators can regard failure to abide by this ruling as a violation of the WP:3RR and act accordingly. Recent reverts by Cortonin
 
by William M. Connolley
 
 
 
Additional reverts by others involved in these revert wars may result in them joining this case. 
--mav 22:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporary injunction