A little knowledge is a dangerous thing ...

I want to highlight my recent response to recent comments posted HERE.
--Denis Rancourt

@Doug Cotton:

Doug, on your website (http://www.climate-change-theory.com/) you are simply describing the known phenomenon of "lapse rate" arising from convective atmospheric cooling with a heated surface in a gravitational field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate

This in no way disproves the separate known phenomenon of greenhouse warming of a planetary surface. You cannot disprove something by asserting that something else also occurs. (You also confuse atmospheric temperature gradient with mechanisms establishing the earth-surface temperature.)

The correct calculation of earth's mean surface temperature takes both convective cooling (of the surface) and radiation-balance (including greenhouse effect) into account, as here:

https://archive.org/details/RadiationPhysicsConstraintsOnGlobalWarmingCo2IncreaseHasLittleEffect

Find a fundamental physics error in the latter calculation, then you will have made a "great discovery".

The small group of deniers that insists that the planetary greenhouse effect mechanism itself does not exist is wrong. Completely wrong. It is the dominant mechanism of earth-surface warming above the no-atmosphere value. There is no doubt about this. The statement of "no warming from a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere" is correctly viewed as crazy and does a disservice to the debate about warming.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"...