Jinan Cao has been dissecting the nature of the greenhouse effect and a key calculation that I normally just accept without questioning. This will set a few pigeons loose, but it will be interesting to see where they land. The claims analyzed here are the oft repeated ones that the Earth’s greenhouse effect already warms us by 33°C and that a doubling of CO2 directly causes a 1.1°C rise (that’s with no feedbacks taken into account).
Jinan points out that these numbers, repeated as “fact”, are merely a result of misuse of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. If Earth is not a perfect black body, but has an emissivity of 0.7 (as satellites suggest), then the temperature of the planet’s surface without any greenhouse effect would not be -18°C, but more like 5°C. That would mean the entire warming due to the greenhouse effect is only around 10°C, not the more impressive 33°C that is usually claimed. It means the greenhouse effect is probably less important than implied.
The 1.1°C direct rise that is predicted from doubling CO2 without feedbacks would also need to be recalculated. This paper does not try to do that, but if Jinan is right, that figure would be significantly lower too. Jinan looks at how that figure was derived. David Evans has been helping review Jinan’s work and writes the introduction below. — Jo
This is the official IPCC version of the Earths Energy Budget as shown in the IPCC AR4 in 2007.
Introduction by Dr David Evans
The Stefan-Boltzmann equation describes how much radiation (energy) is given off by a body, such as a planet or a layer of air. It figures extensively in climate science, especially in simple calculations of where energy is flowing on average as the earth radiates heat into space as infrared radiation.
The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is used to obtain known nostrums of the climate debate, such as “it would be 33C cooler without greenhouse gases” and “the direct (no feedbacks) effect of doubling the CO2 levels is to raise the surface temperature by about 1.1C”. The equation is a standard one in physics. Its application to radiation from the earth can be done by any physicist or scientist; only a very rudimentary knowledge of climate science is required. (No mystical climate science secret knowledge relevant here; the laws of arithmetic and physics are sufficient.)
Jinan Cao clinically dissects several of these applications of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and finds it has been sloppily applied. Do you think the errors in application by the climate science community work in the direction of understating, or overstating, the role of CO2? Jinan’s article, although technical, is not difficult.
This paper will ruffle a few feathers and deserves a fair hearing. It brings up valid points, and challenges the application of the SB equation that are, by everyone’s admission, somewhat unsatisfactory.
Today’s climate scientists will attempt to laugh off these criticisms by saying that their models are much more sophisticated and accurate than the crude 0-D models considered when applying the SB equation. (A 0-D model treats the earth as a point, with zero dimensions. A 1-D model takes account of one dimension, either height in the atmosphere or latitude. A 3-D model treats the earth as having latitude, longitude, and height.)
But there are two problems with this defense. The first is authority. We don’t know what goes on inside these models, so are we supposed to just take the word of their modelers, that they have got it right? The models are too opaque and not open to public scrutiny, so this amounts to argument by authority. As the motto of the Royal Society says, take the word of nobody. The second problem is that today’s climate science community have demonstrated a habit of exaggerating issues even as straightforward as death threats, so how might they handle issues as vital to their funding as the importance of greenhouse gases to our well-being?
————————————–
Common errors in the use of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation
Jinan Cao
Download the full paper here 8 page PDF
1. INTRODUCTION
Climate scientists frequently make technical errors in their use of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.
The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is simple: a black-body object with surface temperature, T, emits energy per unit time and unit surface area, J, the energy flux density:
J = σ T4 (1)
where σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant equal to 5.67 x 10-8 (W/m2K4).
When the Stefan-Boltzmann law is applied to the Earth-Atmosphere system, climate scientists often make one or more of these technical errors:
i) a coefficient ε in the range 0 to 1, called emissivity should multiply the right hand side, but not when applied to objects that are not black bodies;
ii) a failure to specify correctly the “surface” and “surface temperature” of the Earth-Atmosphere system;
iii) a failure to specify whether or not a layer of air is a single object or a cluster of objects.
These errors can be easily demonstrated by examining several statements (methodologies) most popular in current climate research:
1) the 33°C greenhouse warming effect for the Earth;
2) the 390 W/m2 surface radiation in the Earth Energy Budget;
3) the 1˚C CO2 non-feedback climate sensitivity; and
4) the formula for emission by a layer of air.
2. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
2.1 The 33°C greenhouse warming effect for the Earth
It is repeatedly stated that the average temperature of the Earth would be 33°C lower than today if there were no greenhouse gas warming effect [1-5]. 33°C = 15°C – (-18°C). The -18°C is obtained from equation of radiative equilibrium between the incoming flux from the Sun and the outgoing flux from the Earth:
pr2 (1- α) S0 = 4pr2 ε σ T4 (2)
where r is the radius of the Earth, α (alpha) is the albedo of the Earth, and S0 (=1368 W/m2) is the solar constant representing the incoming solar radiation energy flux density. The symbol ε is emissivity of the earth surface.
In much current climate research, ε is either missing or assumed to be 1. Inserting the values of α = 0.3 and ε = 1 into Eq. (2), and solving for T:
(K) @ 255 (K) @ -18°C (3)
By adopting ε = 1, however, we are assuming that the earth’s surface is a black-body surface, which is never true. If ε is not 1, but 0.9, 0.8, 0.7 or 0.6, T would be -11.4°C, -3.6°C, 5.5°C or 16.5°C respectively. The finding of -18°C is simply a result of a technical error. In fact, the emissivity of the earth surface can be determined ε ≈ 0.7 from satellite outgoing radiation spectra.
The Earth’s mean near-surface air temperature, as measured by global weather stations, is around 15°C (≅ 288K). N2 and O2, which are literally transparent bodies, constitute 99% of the air. This 15°C near surface air temperature is simply a different physical quantity that can not be used to subtract -18°C. White and transparent bodies emit nothing at any temperature.
This error originates from a misunderstanding of the word “surface” that is a symbolised conception of the Stefan-Boltzmann law. If there is no atmosphere, the surface means the land and water ground surface of the Earth, and T represents the mean temperature of the ground surface. If there is atmosphere that is all of nitrogen and oxygen, the surface is still the ground surface, and T still the mean temperature of the ground surface, regardless what the air temperature may be. This is because nitrogen and oxygen are non-radiative (literally ε = 0 for transparent and white bodies). 0 multiplying anything leads to 0.
When we identify the whole Earth-Atmosphere system as an object, its surface and surface temperature are no longer straightforward, but have different values for different radiation wavelengths. Over the absorption bands of water vapour and carbon dioxide (e.g. the absorption band 15 μm for CO2), the surface is a layer of air starting from the top of atmosphere (TOA) with thickness equal to absorption depth, while the “surface temperature” is the mean temperature of CO2 molecules within the air layer (≅ -50°C). Similarly one can discover the surface and surface temperature for any other absorbing bands of radiative gases. For the rest of bands, the surface and surface temperature are the ground surface and its mean temperature (≅ 12°C)
2.2 The 390 W/m2 surface radiation in the Earth Energy Budget
Figure 1 is a diagram shown in the IPCC fourth report (AR4) as an estimate of the Earth’s annual and global mean energy balance [8-13].
We examine the surface radiation 390 W/m2 leaving the earth ground surface, which is considered to correspond to a blackbody emission, p, at 15°C as per the Stefan-Boltzmann equation (1):
p = σT4 = 5.67 ´ 10-8 ´ (273.15 + 15)4 = 390.89 @ 390 (W/m2) (4)
Firstly, the earth ground is never a black-body. Emissivity for the earth ground surface, εg, is omitted in Eq. (4).
Figure 1. Earth energy budget diagram of IPCC report AR4 2007
Secondly, the Earth’s mean near-surface air temperature 15°C has been used. N2 and O2 emit literally nothing at whatever temperatures. The T in Eq. (4) must be the temperature of the earth ground surface, which is 285.04 K (11.89°C) [6, 7], as determined from outgoing spectroscopy measurements and simulations. The ground surface radiation then reads:
p = εg σT4 = εg ´ 5.67 ´ 10-8 ´ 285.044 = εg ´ 374.29 (W/m2) (5)
The emissivity of the earth ground surface, εg, is unlikely close to 1.0. Black body is an abstraction of a physical concept, hardly any substance is a black body on the Earth.
One can easily understand why the ground surface of the Earth would not completely absorb the 324 W/m2 back radiation because it is never a black body surface. As these two figures are wrong, many other figures shown on the earth emission tree are called into question.
2.3 The 1˚C CO2 non-feedback climate sensitivity
It is well accepted in current climate research that a doubling of CO2 by itself contributes about 1°C to greenhouse warming, known as CO2 non-feedback climate sensitivity, or CO2 direct climate sensitivity [14, 15]. The debate is about feedback; a positive feedback will lead to higher, a negative feedback to lower, overall climate sensitivity.
Let us examine how this statement has been derived. The energy emitted by the Earth-Atmosphere system per unit time and unit surface area (radiative flux, aka forcing), F, is written:
The derivative of F with respect to T reads:
Therefore,
Eq. (8) has been interpreted to indicate how much warming DT occurs for any forcing increment. If CO2 doubles, DF has been determined as 3.7 W/m2 by spectroscopic study. Inserting DF =3.7 W/m2, T = 255 K into Eq. (8) leads to:
Derivation including the emissivity reads,
Taking advantage of the relationship between T and S0 in Eq. (2), one obtains:
Inserting T = 255 K into Eq. (10) leads to the same answer of 0.985°C. Note that DT depends on the emissivity ε via T, even though ε is not explicit in Eq. (10). If ε is 1.0, 0.9, 0.8, 0.7 or 0.6, T would be -18°C, -11.4°C, -3.6°C, 5.5°C or 16.5°C respectively (as above), and, by Eq. (10), would be 0.98°C, 1.01°C, 1.04°C, 1.07°C or 1.11°C respectively.
The error resulting from omission of emissivity thus cannot be more than 10%; it is more a methodological issue in this case. The problem is, however, that the temperature T, is a physical quantity different from the Earth’s mean near-surface air temperature, Tair(h), which is largely the temperature of N2 and O2 that are literally transparent bodies emitting nothing at whatever temperatures. The symbol h denotes altitude, almost 0 for near surface. To estimate CO2 direct climate sensitivity, one must seek the relationship between DTair(h) ~ DF, not DT ~ DF. There are heat transfer mechanisms other than radiation linking this T and Tair(h).
All the parameters must be consistent with the object defined either explicitly or implicitly. The CO2 radiative forcing DF =3.7 W/m2 is actually the forcing of absorption by CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. The outgoing forcing that leaves the Earth-Atmosphere object remains unchanged while doubling CO2, as long as the solar constant and albedo are unchanged.
2.4 The formula for emission by a layer of air
The atmosphere is from time to time represented by a layer (or layers) of air for climate modelling [8]. Consider a given layer of air with temperature, Ta, and surface area, S, as shown in Figure 2. In current climate research the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation is straightforwardly applied to obtain σTa 4 for emitting energy flux density of the air layer. It is treated just like a sheet of solid (or condensed matter) object.
As discussed above, N2 and O2 do not emit at any temperature. Only the radiative gases in the air layer emit. One will easily realise that i) only the temperature of radiative species is relevant instead of the average temperature of the layer – different gases may have different temperatures due to different radiation properties; ii) no gas is a black body, even the radiative gases.
There is a fundamental methodological error here. Because the emitting species are so sparse in air, a given layer of air can not be identified as a single object applicable to the Stefan-Boltzmann law (strictly speaking, Planck’s law). The correct methodology is to identify each single radiative molecule as an object that emits according to its temperature and radiative bands, forming a cluster of objects within the layer of air. How much the layer of air emits must be determined by summing up all the radiation energy density emitted by each individual molecular object upon the surface S. The principle of formulation is shown in a simple example as follows.
Assume a layer of air containing n tiny spherical grey body objects with uniform radius, r, emissivity, ε, and uniform temperature T, the distance from each object to a given point on the surface of the air layer Li, where i is from 1 to n, as shown in Figure 3. On the surface of each individual object, the emission flux density (energy per unit area and unit time) must follow the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, i.e. ε σT4. The flux density decays with distance Li to (r/Li)2 ε σT4. Therefore, at a given point on the surface of the air layer the overall flux density, p, reads:
where,
is another coefficient (0 < ζ <= 1), which is missing in the current climate research. Note ζ = 0 for n = 0, and ζ approaches 1 as n is sufficiently large enough in a given volume. This coefficient applies as well for the Planck distribution function.
Eq. (11) indicates the flux density is very much depends on the number of objects within the air layer. If the radiative objects are not dense enough within the air layer, the term of summation will be a very small fraction. A strict mathematical expression can be formulised along this line but omitted in this article.
Download the full paper here 8 page PDF with References
(This html version above may contain typos or errors as it was copied from the original. If in doubt, read the pdf!)
Jinan Cao is keen for feedback.
Tamino will go spare.
10
Jo, I don’t see information on the CV of Jinan in the writeup nor on the PDF.
I found this on the web (assuming the name isn’t that common):
I think readers here would like to know, perhaps Jinan would like to make sure it is accurate and up to date.
10
Mark, as well intentioned as this is, it is ultimately an argument from authority. What matters is the content. It does not matter if Jinan Cao is a Nobel prize winning physicist or a guy who flips burgers for a living.
11
I disagree.
If I suggested you accept his conclusions only because of his credentials, THAT would be Argument from Authority.
Frankly, the sweetest revenge on the arrogant academics would be if a burger flipper demonstrated conclusively that AGW theory is false.
I was more interested in polite recognition of the accomplishments of Jinan and to deflect the snide comments from types like Craig…….
10
I agree with Truthseeker: While serving with the LAPD, I routinely examined, interviewed, and rendered opinions with regard to the symptoms and intoxication of hundreds of intoxicated suspects (PCP, cocaine, alcohol, meth, etc.). I qualified more than 50 times on voir dire before the courts and attorneys knew well enough to stipulate to my expertise. A medical doctor usually sat next to the defense counsel, ready to impeach me if my testimony conflicted with the evidence and journal reports on the subject. I was never disqualified despite being a high school graduate with some college.
As Michael Crichton wrote in 2003:
“(T)he work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, REQUIRES ONLY ONE INVESTIGATOR WHO HAPPENS TO BE RIGHT, WHICH MEANS THAT HE OR SHE HAS RESULTS THAT ARE VERIFIABLE BY REFERENCE TO THE REAL WORLD. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus… There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
Those whose opinions cannot be supported by evidence routinely use contests to avoid difficult questions (i.e. “my CV is bigger than yours”). To think otherwise assumes that Galileo has nothing to say because of his weak CV as an astrologer.
00
“Truthseeker = September 7, 2012 at 1:39 pm – Mark, as well intentioned as this is, it is ultimately an argument from authority. What matters is the content. It does not matter if Jinan Cao is a Nobel prize winning physicist or a guy who flips burgers for a living.”
Well, actually there is a very good reason for placing more trust in peer review (authority, as you call it)… it has been peer reviewed by experts in the field, and has stood up to criticism. Doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but do you seriously take your information from random sources… on the internet???
So I got as far as Cao’s first statement on page 1, and it is factually wrong.
“i) a coefficient ε in the range 0 to 1, called emissivity should multiply the right hand side, but not when applied to objects that are not black bodies”
The coefficient ε (emissivity) is a factor that must ONLY be applied to objects that are not black bodies. A black body, by definition has an emissivity of 1. I’m sorry, but if the author can not get this basic idea correct, it doesn’t pass “peer” review.
Mat L
10
Mat L, you have it wrong. Peer review means nothing if it does not look at the content. It does not matter how many people “check” the paper or what their qualifications are. Only the content matters. Now your criticism of the post is an example of questioning the content and it does not matter who you are. You seem to have picked up on a valid error of content that needs to be answered. So you have proven my point about argument from authority. Thank you very much.
The more fundamental problem is that the whole paper has no validity in observable physics (see my comment at 19.2).
01
Hang on Mat L you say on one hand that Emissivity must only be applied to Non-Black bodies (so called grey bodies) and then state by definition a black body has an emissivity of 1, So which is it, Emissivity must be omitted or should it be made equal to 1? – or (as is the fact) does it not matter how this is treated (Ie by using 1 or by omission). You are stretching it a bit far to say that you cannot treat a blackbody as a grey body with an emissivity of one as far as the maths goes.
00
This is what I would term “drive-by review”:
Let’s skip over whether you are actually a “peer” in the sense of being able to understand and critique the paper — you didn’t actually read the paper, so it’s premature to claim that
Had you bothered to read past the introduction, you would have seen that Cao indeed uses emissivity correctly — which leads to the conclusion that either 1) Cao’s statement is a typo, or 2) You are misinterpreting it. (I don’t know what Dr. Cao’s first language is, but I have had some comical misunderstandings caused by the difference in usage of negatives in Asian and Romance languages.)
This sort of “One strike (typo) and you’re out!) “reviewing” wouln’t make you very popular with journal editors, who expect you to put at least some intellectual effort into the job.
(Of course, I may be way off base assuming that anyone would ever ask you to review a paper the first time, even.)
20
Thanks for this enlightening article Dr. Cao. I featured one of your articles on my blog in the past.
–
It appears to me that proponents of the conventional greenhouse theory claim the emissivity of the Earth’s surface is close to 1 because they are talking about infrared emissivity only, not emissivity over all wavelenths as should properly be used in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. Do you agree?
For instance, this comment:
–
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/08/the-best-ever-description-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect/#comment-5361
–
“First, the infrared emissivity of the Earth’s surface is a whole lot more than 0.8. Over the 70% of the Earth that’s water, it is about 0.98. See http://www.infrared-thermography.com/material-1.htm . Over the 30% of the Earth that’s land, it is mostly well over 0.95 and only drops to around 0.8 in a few places in the Sahara and Arabian deserts. See slides 13-15 of cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/itwg/itsc/itsc17/session5/5.2_zhou.pdf .”
20
Is this another case where assumptions are made, or very rough readings are available, with the most extreme of a vast range of possible options is chosen as being the dogmatically correct one? Then, as the whole tribe of climate scientists defend that conclusion, lesser mortals are not up to questioning. This certainly seems to be true of feedbacks.
00
No, I think not.
It is a case where the maths have been done, in the form of the S-B equation; nobody so far has found any fault with that maths, so its results are used within further work.
Now, it seems, we have a challenger to the S-B equation.
I’d say it’s a tad early to be unsceptically accepting Jinan Cao’s work as fact. Based on his sparse credentials, it seems likely his work will not be overturning too many other people’s work in any hurry.
10
While I am not in a position of sufficient expertise to agree or deny the assertions Jinan makes, I suspect that even if correct, and probably especially if so, that your statement will no doubt prove absolutely true. The territorial nature of climatology, and the marriage of its proponents to the doctrine of CAGW, would not allow mere irrefutable fact to disrupt their belief system.
00
That’s just conspiracy-theory.
History is littered with examples of competing groups of scientists pushing opposed ideas with some of them ignoring inconvenient facts in the process of defending their pet theory, but eventually any new idea gathers a growing consensus of support.
Like continental drift – some scientists spent decades opposing the idea, but it’s not as if those pushing the idea were prevented from continuing to publish their observations just because they were being pooh-poohed.
Previous forays by not-so-very-well-qualified opponenents of the current consensus in the territory Jinan is exploring have been less than glorious. It’s probably a bit early to be asserting that Jinan’s is any better.
10
What you wrote was just argument from authority.
Cao’s idea stands or falls on its reasoning, not on his resume.
50
Jo,
I suggest the concepts being discussed are far beyond what Craig is capable of understanding so the only way he can defend his beliefs is teh authority argument……………now KR on the other hand………………
00
I would suggest to you, Craig, that some fields of scientific endeavour are more open than others, with climate science being one of the least open due to the evangelical nature of it’s associated neo-pagan eco-religion. Conspiracy has nothing to do with it- industrial chemists don’t espouse Gaia theory, and theoretical physicists are not Malthusians and Luddites advocating the deindustrialisation of the Western world. More importantly, none of these other hard sciences are asking for multiple trillions of dollars of the world’s economy to be diverted away from poverty abatement and delivering basic power and fuel to the substantial proportion of the world’s population that currently lacks it- all on the gloriously imprecise say so of scientists proven via Climategate emails to be guilty of scientific malfeasance and data manipulation, bullying of colleagues and attempting to distort the peer review process.
10
Craig, is the SB effect a negative or positive feedback to warming? And do the models take that feedback into account?
00
Craig,
By definition the S-B equation applies to a small flat SURFACE and is not contested by the author. He is arguing against its APPLICATION to something else
00
A small flat surface of uniform, constant temperature.
If the Earth had no atmosphere then the surface most certainly would NOT be uniform, constant temperature given that the dirt is a poor conductor of heat.
A very simple mathematical analysis should prove that plugging an arithmetic mean temperature into a fourth-power equation, does not give the same answer as a proper integration over the surface area. Thus, it is a very crude model at best.
That said, who wants to calculate what the Earth surface would be like with no atmosphere anyhow? What purpose does the answer serve?
00
Dr. Cao or Dr. Evans,
Can the earth surface be assigned an emissivity without measuring it in detail??
Stefan Boltzman is only applicable to surfaces with a geometry that does NOT self irradiate. I notice that you specify that the atmosphere cannot be given an emissivity as a whole for different but still similar reasons. Very few places on the earth are smooth enough to qualify for straight S-B computation I would think.
Could you explain how S-B can be used with a self irradiating geometry whether it be forest, grass, mountains, city, or smoothed sand??
00
The paper says that nitrogen and oxygen are completely transparent bodies that do not emit at any temperature. I take it we are talking about energy in the infrared range. For that to be true doesn’t it mean that the molecules of these gases have no infrared or far-IR spectrum, no vibrational or rotational absorption/relaxation energy bands.
Is that correct? You can heat these gases and let them cool again by radiation. What am I missing?
I am no supporter of AGW and consider the behaviour of climatologists who conceal data and model details as reprehensible. But I’d hate to see a good case stumble over a fundamental.
00
It is my understanding that all non-diatomic gaseous molecules have modes of vibration that cause them to absorb photons of specific energies relative to their composition and structure. That means that those gas molecules consisting of two atoms such as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and chlorine do not have absorption spectra for IR as they lack vibrational modes. However I would expect that they will still create IR from inter-molecular collisions with adjoining gaseous molecules and thereby cool over time.
Please correct this if I have misunderstood the situation.
01
G&T summed it up appropriately;
The 33K is a meaningless number, wrongly calculated.
01
G&T had no idea what they were talking about and ended up comprehensively debunked by people who did.
This paper looks like an even more amateurish attempt to do the same thing, although Jinan Cao has toned down his reference to the 2nd law of thermodynamics in this version….also he seems to have stopped calling himself “Dr” Jinan Cao….wonder why he’s done that….?
11
How were they debunked, Craig?
Oh, of course. The warmista simply restated the conclusions of a few of their “pal-reviewed” papers and regurgitated some favourable citations of said “pal-reviewed” papers.
Is there ANY evidence at all that would change your mindset, Craig?
No? Thought not.
Craig, I don’t give a damn what you believe but I do give a damn when your ilk insists that we wreck our economy for what most of us see here as very dubious objectives.
01
G&T’s paper was non-sensical crud and was completely demolished by the Physics community within weeks of being published. It is not I who is failing to integrate the facts with my mindset.
Whether climate change is going to affect our economy and to what extent, and whether a carbon tax will have a benefit or not are completely different matters.
Good policy, however, is less likely if developed by people who have a positive approach towards crank physics theories.
11
Craig, another logical fallacy. What has a paper put out by different people got to do with anything Cao said? If it looks so amateurish, you can explain where its wrong — so why don’t you?
22
Why don’t we ask Bryan?
Bryan, why did Cao’s paper immediately remind you of G&T?
11
Still waiting for your point-by-point rebuttals Craig. While you’re at it please identify those who you describe as “the Physics community”.
I agree, Craig! The warmist crank “scientists” should be ignored in the interests of good policy.
01
G&T’s 2nd paper is here.
Noone have touched G&T 11. In this 2nd paper G&T say
The 2ND Law argument against G&T’s first paper is therefore complete garbage.
G&T’s 2nd paper developes another approach to the issue of the direct radiative effect of CO2 as the mechanism of AGW; the point of the paper is to show that the assumptions of AGW are not consistent with the operation of the physical principles which determine climate, what G&T call the Barometric Formulas such as Navier-Stokes, Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations, electromagnetic fields, ideal gas laws etc.
By integrating the undisputed formuala for these various phenomena G&T “compute the temperature profiles of idealized atmospheres”. They do so to establish those physical principles are sufficient to explain the temperature profile of a gaseous atmosphere; G&T conclude:
CO2 is trace gas.
Comments Craig, or are you just a troll? Place your bets folks.
01
Cohenite, when you say, “Noone have touched G&T 11”, you are wrong:
http://climatephysicsforums.com/topic/3292392/2/index.html
And when you quote G & T as saying “It’s not true” that we said blablabla, you conclude “therefore” the criticism is garbage. As the response to G & T MkII points out – G & T have failed to provide any detail to support their denial of the many many valid points of rebuttal.
G & T simply cannot deny they wrote this:
Classic 2nd Law of Thermodynamics kookery.
Or this pearler:
I mean, ROTFLMAO!!!!
11
Craig Thomas chortles,
“Or this pearler:
I mean, ROTFLMAO!!!!”
Well Craig, you are well on your way to catching up with Myrhh. The solar spectrum has about 51% of its emissions in infrared and about 47% visible. Sorry your were too dumb to look that up before your chortle!!
http://www.viracon.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=161
I don’t consider myself qualified to discuss the other statement and based on this neither are you.
So, where is that refutation of G&T again??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
01
Good grief.
What on earth is the possible relevance to anything whatsoever whether the radiation is in visible wavelengths or not?
11
Ah, I get it: there seems to be a mistaken belief running around to the effect that electromagnetic radiation carries no energy if it happens to be in the visible spectrum of wavelengths.
Hands up who’s learnt something new today!?
11
Jo, even though you acknowledge there may be typos from copying the paper, it would be helpful to change (1-a) to (1-alpha) in equation (2) and the following sentence “where … a is the albedo of the Earth …”. Sorry, I don’t know how to type “alpha” from my keyboard.
From reading it, it seems the real temperature of the atmosphere near the surface is determined by the temperature of nitrogen and oxygen and the temperature of CO2 (and what it will be in the future) is nothing but a negligible imposter.
This helps me to reconcile the fact that the astronauts who walked on the Moon needed to be protected from the searing heat rather than the freezing cold.
01
You may go here, and copy/paste the character directly, e.g. α. Alternatively, you may use the html escape mechanism like so: α
cheers,
gary
11
Hmm, I’ll try again on the link. here
g
01
Alt940 will give you small alpha, while
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Greek_alphabet
will give you codes for the full Greek character set.
01
It seems counter-intuitive but the Moon has a high temperature but almost no heat. If you took a pyrometer (which measures radiation) to the sunny side of the Moon it would show a very high temperature. However if you held a shielded thermometer a metre above the surface the temperature would be extremely low due to there being no atmosphere.
The real problem keeping Moon walking astronauts cool is the inability to lose heat by convection. In the absence of an atmosphere heat loss can only occur by radiation. This is vastly less efficient than convection.
00
I meant loss of internally generated body heat.
00
Presumably that heat loss is facilitated by the relative humidity i.e. at high relative humidity you a less able to shed heat, whereas at low rh you don’t feel as cold. Which then demonstrates the very important role that water vapour has in trapping heat/energy.
00
No, you can cool them by evaporating water and venting it. I have a friend whose small company had 8 solenoid actuators in each Apollo backpack.
00
Fixed (or improved at least). Thanks. I did cut and paste from a maths symbols online site earlier, but it was very hit and miss. – Jo
00
Jo, one simple way to get awkward formulae right for your blog (if you are using Windows) is to screen shoot the page from the original article. It doesn’t matter what format it’s in, as long as you can see it on screen. Press ‘print screen’ to load the image into RAM, open a photo-editing program like Photoshop, click ‘New’ to create somewhere to put the image, click paste. You then just crop the image and save it as a jpeg or other format at whatever file size you select. I did think that was what you had done in part. Incidentally, when people copy and paste formulae into their word processors they often don’t realise that the appearance of Greek symbols may change depending on whether they use a serif or sans-serif font as their default.
00
Is this paper being prepared for publication in one of the journals?
00
Jo,
Would love to see a review of this paper by Prof. Lindzen.
Any possibility you or David might request the good Prof. to oblige?
00
I’m slowly working my way through this in an attempt to learn more, and that’s why I love sites like this.
There’s always a detailed explanation that we beginners can take in, try and decipher, and add something to our knowledge base.
I was part way through it though, and it struck me.
I wonder what our erstwhile Minister for Climate Change Greg Combet thinks of this. Hmm! He probably thinks Stefan-Boltzmann is a Queensland hairdresser, so what would he know!
Tony.
00
Combet may be devious but he isn’t an idiot. He has an honours degree in mining engineering from UNSW.
00
… has he ever used it ?
00
Combet worked as mining engineer in the Hunter valley coal industry for a few years. He then switched to OH&S.
00
He then switched to OH&S………….Hmmmmmmmmmmm
00
So he’s very good at digging himself into a deep hole?
00
Sorry, it was a weak attempt at humour that only Queenslanders might remember.
Stefan, yes Stefan
Tony.
00
FNQ or SEQ?
00
I would love to get Chris Monkton’s view!!
I also wonder if this answers the question of “where is my missing heat?”
00
James Hansen is wondering the same thing – here
00
I don’t want to be rude but this paper by Jinan Cao is merely arguing about the size of the angels dancing on the pin.
Please stop repeating the meme. There is no Greenhouse Effect because it is literally impossible for gas molecules to absorb energy from radiation.
The problem here is that none of the guest authors so far seem to know anything about chemistry (but one thinks he does). A gas molecule instantaneously re-emits any absorbed energy at the speed of light. So there is zero, nada, zip, zilch heating.
The only possible way to heat a gas is by compressing it. That is how the atmosphere is heated. The mass of the atmosphere heats the air below according to the Ideal Gas Law pV=nRT
The role of the Sun in atmospheric warming is to provide sufficient energy to keep the atmosphere in a gaseous state.
I’ll now go back to bashing my head against the wall in frustration.
00
I wouldn’t say impossible. Primarily because they can been shown by experiment to absorb radiation.
Consider for a second the practical application of the phenomenon in how absorbtion spectra are used to determine the atmospheric composition of the planets. The width of the spectrum lines apparently depends on the state of the gases; pressure and temperature; and therefore influences the total energy absorbed/emitted.
00
I was under the impression that banana bender was correct, the GHG interacts with the IR, raises the molecule to a higher energy level and then that energy is released and the molecule then drops back down to the lower energy level again and all this happens faster than a blink of teh eye.
Some of that re released energy interacts with other GHG molecules (the process repeats) and some of it actually warms N2 and O2 which maybe construed as the real green house effect??????
00
The re-emission of radiation is almost indistinguishable from transparency because of the temporal scale. The tell-tale ought to be that the re-emission is in a different direction to the incident radiation. That may be the reason why the spectral lines broaden when there are more and faster molecules of a particular gas exposed to the radiation… I’m too lazy to check.
If the molecule is “warmed”, then that, by the kinetic theory of gas temperature means that the energy of incident radiation is transformed into nett translational energy; increasing the gas molecule’s velocity. The question arises as to the likelihood of that happening. The answer is probably between “not at all” and “hardly ever”.
I suspect that bananabender was writing about the gas state changing in response to “absorbtion”. My response was to address the impossibility of absorbtion; not the conversion to molecular kinetic energy.
Perhaps, if one looks back over my ramblings in various fora over the past decade, they’ll find my overall impression that CO2, with it’s ability to radiate energy somewhat more effectively than N2 or O2, acts more in the way of cooling the surrounding atmosphere. For radiation, the necessary “trick” is in converting existing molecular translational kinetic energy into photons.
Brooksey, being a professional physicist, should be able to explain exactly how that happens, or explain that gases don’t cool by radiation. I’m only an injuneer and am not expected to know those things.
I learnt several things about physicists in my time at UWA. One of them is to beware of physicists holding solar-powered, hot-air balloons.
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You’re contradicting yourself, Bananabender.
You say gas molecules can’t absorb energy, and in the next breath you say, “A gas molecule instantaneously re-emits any absorbed energy”, meaning you admit they *do* absorb energy.
So, think about the path this radiation is taking, particularly any changes before and after absorption and re-radiation by the radiative gases.
Be sure to revise on the interaction of radiation with radiative gases at different wavelengths.
And make sure you check the relationship between wavelength and directional path of the sun’s radiation responsible for virtually all the heat that matters.
….and then tell us what the cooling stratosphere demonstrates in relation to all these other facts…
10
It is not a contardiction Craig you just take things too literal, this stuff travels at the speed of light so the time it takes to absorb and emit this energy is in the pico seconds.
00
I’m not following you – does Heat become NOTheat if it is transmitted really really quickly?
10
.
Therein lies one of the base confusions that make “climate science” more voodoo than science. If we are discussing radiated energy, it is not “heat” that is being transmitted. It is light.
Heat energy is measured in joules (amongst other things), light is measured in photons. The two are not simply interchangeable as “the same thing” in an equation. Or a sentence, for that matter.
Yes, photons of light can be turned into joules of heat energy, and vice versa. But for the purpose of the discussion you are having here with others, the transfer that is referred to is the transfer of photons from molecule to molecule.
There is no conversion to “heat” involved in the transfer being discussed.
If, at some point, light energy (photons) were converted to heat energy within a molecule (say by collision), that heated molecule would rise relative to the surrounding atmosphere, NOT re-transmit a photon.
The photon no longer exists. It is now heat.
00
Hmmmm.
You may need to enquire of Erwin Schrodinger as to his philosophy.
*Note: No cats were injured or upset as a consequence of the posting of my comment. Theoretically.
00
The apparent absorption of radiation by gases is due to an artifact of the measuring process. A small volume of gas is enclosed in a tube and irradiated by a light source of varying wavelength over a period of a few minutes. Some of the energy (EMR) is absorbed by the tube walls and this heats the confined gas by conduction and convection.
However if you irradiate an unconfined gas the electrons in the outer orbitals are simply momentarily excited to a higher energy level. The electrons instantly return to the original state re-radiating all the “absorbed” energy.
Spectroscopy textbooks often have a trick question that goes something like ‘How do you explain the Greenhouse Effect using the information in this chapter?’
The reality is that the Greenhouse Effect can’t possibly be explained by spectroscopy because it defies quantum mechanics.
00
The climate is controlled by heat transfer (phase changes in water, convection, conduction etc) processes. It is an engineering problem – not a radiative physics problem.
Sceptics who continue discuss the minutiae of the false Greenhouse Effect are unintentionally aiding and abetting the Warmists.
Sceptics shouldn’t act like Medieval theologians arguing about how many angels can dance on a pin. We should be thinking like atheists and not even consider the existence of angels.
00
Of course some gases absorb infra-red. The delay before re-emission is small, but don’t forget those energized cO2 molecules can collide with non-greenhouse molecules like O2 and N2, and that infra red gets converted to kinetic energy and transferred to other molecules. This is how greenhouse gases can warm molecules around them. In a reverse effect greenhouse molecules can also take energy from collisions, then emit infra-red to space, thus cooling the air around them. The former is more likely in the troposphere, and the latter in the stratosphere.
10
With respect Jo you need to talk to some chemists and chemical engineers to help you understand the basics of spectroscopy, physical chemistry and the properties of gases.
a) It takes about 10^-30 seconds for a molecule to re-radiate energy. This is an infinitesimally small amount of time. The probability of a CO2 molecule colliding with another molecule during this time is close to zero. Google “kinetic theory” for more information.
b) The atmosphere simply expands when kinetic energy is increased. It doesn’t become warmer. This fact is is demonstrated by the Diurnal Bulge where the atmosphere expands outwards as the Sun passes over.
c) Bulk gases, such as air, have uniform properties. They don’t act as individual molecules of H20, N2, O2, CO2 etc.
d) Virtually all heat transfer in the atmosphere is due to the evaporation and condensation of water vapour.
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“c) Bulk gases, such as air, have uniform properties. They don’t act as individual molecules of H20, N2, O2, CO2 etc.”
Some people seem to think that the slightly heavier gases might stratify, but diffusion is a very strong leveller. Air is a mixture, mostly well mixed, but still rather variable.
Everything in the atmosphere is driven by ‘differences’, in pressure, temperature, H2O concentration, individual gas concentrations etc etc
H20 is a major influence because it can undergo phase changes at atmospheric pressure and temperature. There are not many other gases that can do this.
The atmosphere is always striving to equilibriate everything, but has zero chance of doing so because it is rotating.
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2nd last sentence: “gases” should read “substances”
00
Banana bender, temperature is simply a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules. To say kinetic energy increases is the same as saying the temperature increases. To say the air simply expands without warming when kinetic energy increases is not correct. Can I draw your attention to the well known formula PV = NRT. P=pressure V= volume N= moles of gas R = gas constant and T=temperature. What drives the expansion (ie: an increase in volume) if not a rise in temperature?
00
The atmosphere is free to expand because it is only weakly constrained by gravity. The expansion exactly compensates for the increase in kinetic energy. Therefore there is no
warming.
00
Further to my previous comment, a gas layer thick enough to have an absorptivity of 1 at a given wavelength will absorb all the energy at that wavelength that impinges on it. However its level of emission at that wavelength will depend on its temperature according to Planks law. So a gas that absorbs at say 10 microns with an absorptivity of 1 if irradiated with 10 micron light will absorb all of it. If the gas is very cold it will radiate very little and the difference between what it absorbs and emits will go to heating up the gas. On the other hand if the gas is hot it may well be radiating more energy than it absorbs and will be cooling down. Absorption and emission are separate processes. Jo is correct in her comment.
20
Bananabender,
In brief Jo is totally correct in what she has said.
You say “It takes about 10^-30 seconds for a molecule to re-radiate energy” The lifetime of an excited, free radiating, CO2 molecule is about 10^-5 s. The lifetime is less than this because of collisions which as Jo also explains, carry away that energy of excitation – the original photon energy – heating other molecules and the CO2 absorbers. As the frequency of radiation increases, the lifetime decreases – in the visible region the lifetime is of the order of 10^-8, for X-rays, the lifetime is much much smaller but nowhere near as small as 10^-30!!
“The probability of a CO2 molecule colliding with another molecule during this time is close to zero.” Also wrong. The collision rate is of the order of 10^7 – 10^9 per second i.e. between 10^2 and 10^4 collisions take place most of which lead to a loss of excitation energy to heat!
b) “The atmosphere simply expands when kinetic energy is increased. It doesn’t become warmer.” It becomes warmer and it is the warming which causes some expansion and hence convection. The convection continues as long as the parcel of heated air is warmer than the surrounding air.
“This fact is is demonstrated by the Diurnal Bulge where the atmosphere expands outwards as the Sun passes over.” Certainly the warming by the sun causes a diurnal bulge, but the expansion is associated with heating first, expansion second and the expansion is never sufficient to completely cool the air to its original state.
c) Bulk gases, such as air, have uniform properties. They don’t act as individual molecules of H20, N2, O2, CO2 etc. This is not true either. CO2 and H2O absorb infra red radiation and are thus green huse gases, the absorbed energy being converted mainly into heat, with some small fraction escaping by means of re-radiation in a random direction. All of the molecules (all species) in a given body of air, acquire the same temperature. Their velocities v will be different because of their different masses M which enters the equation for the kinetic energy, a relation of the temperature. KE = 1/2 Mv^2 which is roughly related to the value kT where T is temperature and k is Boltzman’s constant (1.38 x 10^-23). But I repeat, all gases in the sample will have same temperature, and same average kinetic energy.
d) “Virtually all heat transfer in the atmosphere is due to the evaporation and condensation of water vapour.” About 60% of the energy from the sun which is subsequently taken up by the atmosphere during the day is from evaporation, about 20% is because of the cooling effect of the wind over the warmed land (and sea) surfaces, while about 20% is because of the absorption by green house gases.
However, the role of molecular radiators which COOL the atmosphere is played almost exclusively by the Green House Gases. There are other radiators in the form of aerosols and water droplets which act as black bodies but for the gases it, oxygen and nitrogen radiate negligible amounts at the temperatures of the troposphere.
I will add that the physics of radiation through the Stefan-Boltzman equation, shows that the differential heating effect between absorption of visible radiation and infra red radiation, depends on the relative emissivities e (absorbtivities are of the same value as e). If the emissivity at visible wavelengths is high (say 0.9), and the emissivity at infra red wavelengths low (say 0.60), then the temperature of the bare earth, or an earth with an atmosphere, in equilibrium, will be higher than if the values of the emissivities are reversed (Vis ~0.6 and Ir ~ 0.9). There is no way that one can avoid this conclusion.
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Thanks John, too few people with the knowledge have a knack for clear science communication, and you have it, in spades.
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John Nicol, actually Jo and the other proponents of the “greenhouse gas theory” are completely wrong about any measurable temperature effect that the gaseous composition of the atmosphere has. This is shown very clearly by comparing Earth’s and Venus’s atmospheres at equivalent air pressures and seeing the that result is very precisely in the ratio of the distance from the Sun of the two planetary bodies.
Chris M, here is clear science communication, actually communicating clear science.
10
Truthseeker,
The Venus comparison is interesting and plausible but still a hypothesis because correlation may or may not be indicitive of cause.
01
Hmmm, suppose (for argument’s sake) that we took away all the water completely, and just had a dry atmosphere of Nitrogen and Oxygen. Of course, convection would still apply and there would be, “the cooling effect of the wind over the warmed land” but the wind could not dispose of heat other than by carrying it to some cooler place and dropping it off there. Thus, convection would merely transport the heat from the equator out to the poles, but in the nett situation, dry convection can neither gain nor lose heat.
Once you bring water into the situation, it will radiate upward from the tropopause thus throwing away heat, so I think it is fair to say that this loss of heat is due to the water, not due to dry convection (on the basis that without the water, the effect would not happen).
00
Interesting comment Tel
KK
00
Thank you John Nicol! Why do I love people who know what they are talking about?
00
“This is how greenhouse gases can warm molecules around them”
But Jo, all this tiny transfer in energy does is transfer to convective heat, immediately. The Ideal gas laws allow no other action.
00
So, Andy, the CO2 molecules *aren’t* re-radiating at all, in your book?
You guys should get your stories straight before going public with this stuff, or people may mistakenly take you for confused.
10
I can see you have basically ZERO understanding about what I am saying.
Go get an education past year 10, moron!!
00
So intemperate abuse is acceptable on this blog?
[Again you seem to be wrong, this is far from intemperate. Since we have to snip your own posts for violations it almost seems fair.] ED
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You are an example of GroupThink at work, Craig. You don’t (can’t?) question the official line put out by the government-funded
propagandistsscientists. Since you have made no effort to discover if what they are saying is reasonable or true, you assume that any ‘group’ that disagrees must likewise have an official “groupthink-approved” official line.The characteristics of independent, logical analysis seem to be foreign to you, so I’ll list some of them here:
1) When an analysis indicates that an argument is wrong, it is not always clear what the right answer should be. This does not mean that the wrong argument is therefore right.
2) Likewise, when data indicate that a theory is wrong, the right theory is not necessarily illuminated. Not being able to positivily identify an alternate theory does not mean that the contra-data theory is thereby right.
3) Science is not a multiple-choice exam, with the choices limited to what your chosen ‘authorities’ tell you. To believe (or act) so is simply a way to avoid logical, rational thought.
Dr. Cao is not challenging the correctness of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation — his article maintains that it has been misapplied w.r.t the greenhouse effect on the Earth. You don’t seem to be able to address this issue, so have been illogically claiming that Cao is challenging the S-B equation itself. This position is so inane that I can only conclude that you haven’t bothered to read the article, or can’t understand it.
50
Hi Jo,
With great respect and reverence to you, let us keep in mind that the physics of what happens at quantum levels (while very, very fast) is not restricted to just one response (i.e., CO2 absorbs a 15-micron photon, then re-radiates the same, in some random direction).
One of my earliest discoveries about the physics of CO2, when I began to pay attention to this debate in earnest, was to learn that an atom or molecule might do several things with absorbed energy. Specifically, it has been shown empirically that an IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule might do any one of the following:
1) Re-radiate the photon in a random direction;
2) Stretch-and-rebound the chemical bonds between the C and O;
3) Vibrate at a higher rate for a quantum time interval;
4) Rotate at an increased rate for a quantum time interval;
5) Increase its K. E., usually until it collides with another atmospheric
molecule;
6) Emit (a finite number of) microwave- and radio-wavelength photons in radom
directions, equivalent in energy to the absorbed photon (conservation
of energy, and all that … … )
I have often thought that this needs to be an addendum to “The Skeptic’s Handbook”, but somehow never got around to discussing it with you. I bet some really pretty pictures of the whole process would go nicely into the next iteration of the “Handbook”.
Bottom line is that the warmista picture of an IR-photon, going “up” into the atmosphere, being “intercepted” by a CO2 molecule, and then immediately being “re-radiated” (nee reflection) “down” to the Earth, to be absorbed by the ground/atmosphere, and thusly “heat things up” is the purest form of fiction ever devised.
I have yet to figure out how the CO2 molecule knows which direction is “down”, so it can send the IR-photon to do its dirty, filthy, heating activity … … …
Regards,
Mark H.
00
These “warmista”s, are they talking about a representative photon, a typical photon, or a special-case photon, when they devised this fiction you just shared with us?
10
Hi Mr. Thomas:
Careful what you ask: The Warmista-in-Chief, Mr. Al “The Science is settled” Gore stands in front of his cartoon in A. I. T., and tells us (in no uncertain terms) that ALL 15-micron photons do this little song-and-dance of ‘first “up”, then “down” ‘.
I do not recall hearing or reading any disagreement within the CAGW community. It is only places like this where you can find a cogent discussion of the physical reality.
Stay tuned, and you might learn a few things.
Regards,
Mark H.
00
Al Gore is a politician, therefore he is not the source or originator of any knowledge about climate science.
When you refer to, “cogent discussion of the physical reality”, were you thinking of your previous sentence, which read,
If so, I will need help figuring out which part of that was a cogent discussion of reality, because I can’t see it.
10
It gets difficult to discuss anything with you when you do not read the response.
Gore is a mouthpiece for what the IPCC et albelieve. Maybe you should try watching his film and seeing where he says (over and over and over…) that, ” … the science is settled … “, and ” … now these scientists tell us that … “.
His presentation of the myth that ALL IR photons are captured and re-radiated back towards the surface of the Earth is masterful, and completely wrong.
I have yet to find any warmist literature which disputes Gore cartoon of the IR photon magically knowing the “down” direction (ignoring the possibility of a random walk), which was your original question.
Do you have an answer for that?
If you are unable to figure out what part of my reply to you was an attempt to point out a serious flaw in CAGW dogma, then it will be difficult to maintain a dialogue with you. Do you dispute the central thesis of 12.3.3?
Did you even look at it?
Or maybe the correct question is, did you understand it at all? Your dodgy responses almost act as if the six possibles I listed are beyond your comprehension.
Mark H.
00
Is it the case that climate science is based on the idea that, in your words,
?
Answer: No. Climate science says no such thing. If it did, a Primary School class could prove it wrong as their school project.
So, if we’ve finished hearing about whatever it is you say some fat US politician has to say, when can we expect some of the “cogent discussion of the physical reality”?
10
A good portion of this thread (absent your contributions) has been a cogent discussion. Where is your dissertation on the initial thesis by Cao?
You still refuse to read #12.3.3., don’t you? I have yet to see a response to the six possible responses of and individual CO2 molecule to an incident IR photon of 15-micron wavelength.
Your statement, refuting Gore, is the first one I have seen; despite what you say, the warmist community does in fact maintain that all IR photons (of the correct wavelength) engage in this ‘re-radiation’ trick. That is the basis for the IPCC-led assertion that CO2 is a “dangerous” ‘greenhouse gas’. Provide a citation for your statement that the warmist community does not support the picture in A. I. T., and I will retract the statement.
As I have previously posted, it get difficult to maintain a dialog with one who refuses to read the posts. You have yet to respond to my initial statements (#12.3.3) or to the original article in the first place. I see where you were snipped later in this thread. I am not responsible for your inabilities in the sciences, and your inabilities to stick to the topics.
Either respond, or take the next exit.
Mark H.
00
Poor proofreading on my part:
Paragraph two should read (in part): ” … I have yet to see a response to the six possible responses of AN individual CO2 molecule to an incident IR photon … ”
Given your penchant for making mountains out of molehills, I thought it best to head this one off at the pass.
MH
00
I think you need to prune your options by considering conservation of momentum. The molecule cant’t change momentum because the absorbed photon has none (essentially). Hence changes in vibrational modes are allowed but not rotation or linear kinetic energy. The latter 2 can only change when the molecule collides… At least that’s what my high school physics tells me…
Cheers
00
While there are many, many people,
Including the ever-present Craig Thompson
who can fit figures into the Stephan Boltzmann equation and get a result,
that’s not the point.
The problem is to fit the equation to a real life situation.
I would suspect that there may be about 10 people max who could assess the problem well in the whole of Australia.
All the rest is just wishful posturing.
KK
00
In real life; S-B doesn’t apply to gases. Gases have no surface and the molecules are not in a vacuum. Significantly; S-B only applies to emitters with a surface.
Jennifer Marohasy has an article on the applicability of S-B; which will save me a lot of explaining.
Vincent Gray commented:
The errors in the assumptions necessary to “fit” S-B are probably an order of magnitude greater than the “signal” that one is seeking. IOW: you are much more likely to find what you want than reality that conflicts.
10
Hi Bernd
It’s been 40 plus years since I had one of the best thermo teachers around.
Right now I have no real recollection of what SB does .
My main point was that thermodynamics is a real “hands on” engineering task that involves great skill in applying the right remedy in the right place.
Warmers have been taking equations with very strict boundary conditions and using them in regions way outside of their limit.
A very simple example would be an equation that gives the new volume of a given amount of water as it is heated in an open vessel.
The boundary conditions for the applicability of that equation are 0 to 100 deg C but warmers would just ignore that and use the equation up to say 150 C and tell every one the answer is 100% “scientific”.
KK
00
hey KK,
I second what you say.
Amongst my many lives, I dabbled in the world of the chemistry of gases. Contemplating something the scale of the earth, with all its variations, with a mixture such as air is a tough task.
00
I get this idea of hot little CO2 molecules (wearing miniskirts?) running around burning everything they touch. 😉
ie.. I agree with you.. A bit of chemistry , kinetic gas therory, ideal gas laws.. all that stuff,
I disagree with this statement “The mass of the atmosphere heats the air below according to the Ideal Gas Law pV=nRT” This is incorrect. The statement should be….
“The mass of the atmosphere allows the air to retain heat, according to….” and that heat comes from the incident solar radiation.
I think your statement would imply that the atmosphere was the same temperature at the poles as at the equator.
00
Just over the radio.
NSW State Energy Minister Chris Hartcher continues to prove that it is possible to live without a brain. He has restated the commitment to “renewable” energy and has told the serfs of NSW that it will be achieved without increases in energy bills.
The Walking Dead are still among us.
00
Here’s that story in the SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/pledge-to-triple-wind-and-solar-power-in-nsw-20120907-25ik3.html
00
To do a correct energy balance requires that ALL ENERGY be assessed, not just radiant energy.
Other factors which chew up inbound solar energy include:
Mass transfer losses and changes in momentum. Lifting thousands of tonnes of water up from ocean and ground
level to cloud level involves massive amounts of energy as does the horizontal movement of air and cloud in winds.
There are also friction losses.
Heat transfer and transformation: convection and energy to ground and plants are some examples.
I always laugh when I see those energy balances being balanced precisely to ZERO.
What’s going on?
KK 🙂
00
Hi KK,
Yes, from the IPCC cartoons, apparently endothermic reactions do not occur in nature, only hot CO2. Living organisms apparently don’t require energy, they just reflect it to warm up the CO2.
00
That’s the stuff Max.
KK 🙂
00
.
Agree entirely KK and Max.
We are constantly told about this “equilibrium” or “energy balance” between incoming and outgoing energy.
At the same time we are supposed to believe that sometimes the oceans heat up (net accumulation of energy) and sometimes they cool down (net loss of energy) over periods of thousands of years – and yet, all the while we have an “energy balance” between incoming and outgoing.
Several recent papers demonstrated that green vegetation (including in the oceans) is now producing 20% + more growth than previously due entirely to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. All that extra growth was caused by photosynthesis which is little more than locked-up sunlight.
Where does that figure in their “energy balance”?
00
Oddly this is not dissimilar to conflicting philosophies in economics … bear with me. Some like to think of markets as initially in a suppl&demand–>price balance with the occasional disruption causing a movement away from the old equilibrium to a new equilibrium. In reality markets spend much of their time chasing the fabled “equilibrium” but almost continuously out of balance. This is one of the major criticisms Prof Keen makes of the standard conservative model of economics. The similarities occur to me from time to time … I imagine analysing macroeconomies and the climate system are not dissimilar in many ways.
00
KK, Friction losses?
I agree completely with the other things you mention but wouldn’t friction convert energy not cause loss?
Anyone working with hydraulics knows that fluids in motion get warm from friction. The tides, tide induced currents and wave action have a friction component. Do the math on the energy required to lift the oceans several meters every high tide! I’ve never seen this considered in the energy budget. It is a constant conversion of gravitational forces.
00
Mark i agree with you that there is a lot of obviously large energy amounts being continuously taken from the tides and hydrological cycles etc, which is then radiated out into space. So I would Luv to see a logical relativity based explanation for where exactly this energy comes from.
00
Hi Mark
” KK, Friction losses?”
I had in mind the wind blowing across Earth’s surface and hitting trees, buildings, grass, mountains and such which would dissipate some of the energy.
Nothing too specific, as I said earlier, this stuff goes back 40 plus years so am just talking general principles.
My main point was that all of these energy interactions were not even considered in the diagrams purporting
to show Earths Incoming and outgoing energy balances and as such represents a gigantic ERROR in their theory.
It can’t be covered up by talking knowingly about S-B, as if he was their best friend or confidante.
S-B is dead and we have to work this out for ourselves.
KK
00
An interesting point about lifting the oceans.
This is associated with Earth’s rotational energy which may or may not be similar to the incoming solar energy budget in magnitude.
How much energy does it take to lift the Earths oceans by about a metre at the point of greatest influence once a day. Massive amount of energy there.
The moon’s gravitational pull provides energy for this and it starts to get complicated.
KK
00
Absolutely
Yet another issue I’ve been trying to fathom. The Process of evaporating water from the oceans, lifting Gigatonnes of it to the Troposhpere. Converting that potential energy (mgh) to kinetic energy in the terminal velocity of the rain, expending it in lightning, and the action of the cooling and subsequent pressure differential on wind creation (oh and the displacement of air by the rain – the energy between the terminal velocity of the rain droplets, and the kinetic energy equivalent to the potential energy of the rain droplets at the beginning of the fall is transferred to the air) and subsequent frictional effects on that the ground, all of which are eventually expended into the gravitational system are somewhere between 0.3 and 6 W/m2 and are a substantial negative feedback that is not accounted for.
My estimate is that rain converting heat to kinetic energy is a significant negative feedback of almost 1-2 W/m2 per deg K averaged over the year leaving only 1.7-2.7 W/m2 to “kill the planet” by putting the output of an LED on each square meter for 5 hours a day. Dunno about you people but 1.7 – 2.7 watts doesn’t seem like a lot when it’s hard to raise my loungeroom 1 degree in winter with a 2.4KW radiator (Assuming I can afford the electricity with the Carbon tax).
Its ridiculous that this obvious problem to the supposed feedback is not accounted – there is simply not enough greenhouse energy in the effect of CO2 to account for the energy budget for what they say is happening and deliver the heating. There are simply too many losses, and this is one of them.
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“The Greenhouse Effect” is a sleight of hand, this is what the author is arguing about, something that is non-existant.
“The Greenhouse Effect is that the Earth would be 33°C colder without ‘greenhouse gases’, that is, that ‘greenhouse gases’ warm the Earth to 15°C because these absorb thermal infrared radiation from the upwelling thermal infrared from the Earth and so trap it in a blanket/send it back to Earth where it further warms the warmer surface”
But, that -18°C figure is for the Earth without any atmosphere at all, that is, with no gases.
An Earth without the fluid ocean of gas around it which is voluminous, heavy, weighing over a ton on our shoulders.
It is real gases having volume, mass, attraction which gravity keeps around the Earth which is our real “Greenhouse”, the whole atmosphere.
AGWScienceFiction has misappropriated the term to refer only to “warming”, but our real Greenhouse atmosphere both warms and cools, just like a real greenhouse (which can be heated and has windows which can be opened to cool it.)
Without this real atmosphere temperatures would range from very, very hot to very, very cold, think Moon. The average calculated for the Earth without our complete real greenhouse gas atmosphere is -18°C. Nitrogen and Oxygen are greenhouse gases.
AGW’s “The Greenhouse Effect” sleight of hand begins by taking as its base this -18%deg;C figure not applicable to its claim, because it counts only those gases absorbing thermal radiation as ‘greenhouse gases’, but this figure is for the Earth minus nitrogen and oxygen too which make up practically around 99% of our atmosphere.
The sleight of hand continues that their ‘greenhouse gases’ can raise the temperature of the Earth 33°C to 15°C – but how can it? It’s an imaginary construct as above, but also because when taking out the main greenhouse gas water vapour the temperature of the Earth would be 67°C.
That is, our Earth with our atmosphere of the heavy voluminous fluid ocean of real gas around us of mainly nitrogen and oxygen, but without water, would be 52°C hotter. Think Deserts.
When the Earth’s water is heated by the direct thermal energy from the Sun, thermal infrared, heat, (and not the AGW fisics “shortwave” which is impossible), it becomes less dense and lighter and evaporates as water vapour rising in air where it condenses out again to water in releasing its heat in the colder heights of the troposphere (heat flows from hotter to colder).
So water with its very great heat capacity will take away an enormous amount of heat from the surface and cool the Earth from the 67°C it would be without water.
“The Greenhouse Effect” is non-existant, it is a deliberate con. A magic trick, created by tweaking real physics and misusing its terms to give the impression that such an effect exists.
Moreover, they, the creators of this fictional world, have not only removed the Water Cycle which cools the Earth 52°C from the 67°C it would be without it, but it has excised rain from the Carbon Life Cycle.
Carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle which has been excised from the real world to create AGW’s The Greenhouse Effect.
All pure clean rain is carbonic acid because in the real world where gases are real (and not the imaginary ‘ideal’ gas of the fictional AGW world with its atmosphere of empty space and not the heavy voluminous heavy fluid real gas atmosphere around us), water vapour and carbon dioxide have a great attraction for each other and so water in the atmosphere will go into a clinch with all the carbon dioxide around it and come back to Earth as rain, snow, as well as fog, dew; carbon dioxide in this sharing the same residence time in the atmosphere as water, 8-10 days.
Carbon dioxide cannot “accumulate in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years forming a blanket” where it is joined in the Water Cycle, but also, because it is a real gas and not the imaginary ideal gas of the AGWSF fisics it has real weight, and because it is one and half times heavier than the real gas Air it will separate out. You heard. It will separate out and displacing oxygen and nitrogen will naturally sink back to the Earth’s surface.
Because the real world atmosphere is a heavy voluminous fluid ocean of gas the method of heat transfer is by convection, in solids it is by conduction. It is the convection currents of our real atmosphere that transfer heat, these are called winds. Convection currents in the ocean are called currents, volumes of water on the move.
Winds are volumes of Air on the move created by differential heating from the Earth’s surface, hot air rises cold air sinks. As lighter less dense hot air rises colder heavier more dense air will flow down to sink beneath. Flow, because it is a fluid, gases and liquids are fluids.
These are our winds, volumes of the fluid gas Air on the move which primarily begin by the intense heating of land and ocean at the equator by the Heat energy direct from the Sun, thermal infrared, which heats the air first by conduction. as these volumes of hot air rise they flow towards the colder poles and the colder volumes of air at the poles sink beneath flowing towards the equator. Add in Earth’s rotation, etc. for wind patterns.
In the real world it takes the Sun’s great thermal energy, Heat, transferred by radiation direct from the Sun to the Earth’s surface to get the great intensity of heat at the equator in order to give us our massive wind system.
The “Shortwave in” of the AGW fisics can’t physically do this. Another AGW fisics sleight of hand, which has excised beam thermal infrared to create the fictional fisics to promote AGW. (So it can claim that any thermal infrared measured downwelling from the atmosphere is from the ‘backradiation’ of the upwelling thermal infrared.)
The upwelling of thermal infrared from the heated Earth plays little part in heat transfer in the fluid real gas atmosphere around us. What there is of it is waste heat, directionless and useless for doing work. The direct heat from the Sun is capable of doing work, this is the beam thermal energy, travelling in straight lines, concentrated. It takes this direct heat energy to physically heat land and oceans, just as it takes concentrated heat energy to cook your dinner.
There is no The Greenhouse Effect, it is an illusion created by various sleights of hand of fictional fisics by giving the properties on one thing to another, by taking out properties and processes and taking laws out of context and so on, all wrapped up in classic con misdirections.
Introduced into the education system and drummed in by such memes as “shortwave in longwave out” and “carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere and is well-mixed and can’t be unmixed”, and, with ‘experiments’ rigged (heating jars of air and jars of carbon dioxide) or giving fake fisics explanations of real world effects (scent bottle opened in classroom for ‘well-mixed by ideal gas diffusion with molecules travelling at great speeds under their own molecular momentum bouncing off each other, when it is actually convection currents created by volumes of molecules with different pressures), a whole generation doesn’t know what it’s talking about..
If we don’t get out of this con and stay trapped in their “radiation only” heat transfer misdirection we’re going to have a general population not only unable to appreciate the real world around us as we have now, knowledge we’ve gained recently in the history of science, but unable to create the things we can now by knowing the difference between Light and Heat.
How many reading this can see nothing wrong in being told that the visible light radiating from an incandescent lightbulb is the heat we feel? That don’t understand the difference in application as between these:
http://infraredheaters2.tripod.com/ and http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/guide3.shtml
Isn’t it time we got back to real physics? What else is going to stop this toxic AGW mindset destroying the basic food of us Carbon Life Forms? We’re around 20% carbon and the rest mainly water. We also need it to breathe, to get oxygen around our bodies we have to have around 6% carbon dioxide in each breath and we don’t get that from the atmosphere, we produce our own..
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Myrrh,
Excelent analysis and comment. Jo should highlight this comment as well in the main story.
I think that this analysis using real physics supports what you are saying here.
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Despite your enthusiasm it seems to me that a fair bit of Myrrh’s comment is incoherent nonsense. It’s better I think to accept that CO2 absorption and emission of LWIR radiation is real, but focus on the net effect of all atmospheric thermal distributive processes, radiative and otherwise, which result in warming or cooling of the lower troposphere, the only part of the atmosphere of importance to life on earth. (Apart from the ozone layer, that is.)
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Stretching the memory.. but IIRC the Ideal gas laws are basically independant of the constituents of the gas (except for large molecules and H2O, or other gases that undergo phase changes).
Certainly unchanged by a small change in a 3 atom trace gas.
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Good comment Myrrh.
Would you agree that the last remnant of last centuries solar warming is gathering at the departure lounges(poles)and will be assisted to radiate out especially during the long Arctic night, by the reduced ice cover. This not just because of “p = εg σT4” but also because water convects a bit better than ice.
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Yes, and to make it clearer, the warmer surface water is cooled by that frigid Arctic air (irrefutable fact). The now cold water goes where? Right to the deep where all that “hidden heat” lies. A double hit on the stupidity of climate sensitivity.
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Thank you. Hmm, “departure lounge” – have you come up with any time scale..? I don’t know if anyone has tried fitting the circulations to the hiccups of highs and lows of our descent down from the high at the beginning of our interglacial.
In case anyone else interested in the as above so below of the currents in the ocean, these also rise and flow from the hotter equator to the poles likewise becoming less dense and rising releasing their heat at the poles and then denser and colder flowing back to the equator sinking beneath the lighter hot water flowing above it – though not quite as obvious as above wind systems from the Coriolis Effect because of the land masses interfering it’s known as the Thermohaline Circulation and, transit times can take 1600 years..
Page here on this: http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug2007/thermohaline.html#Movement_of_thermohaline_circulation
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Phew! I’ve been waiting in despair for someone to come up with a comment like this.
I think that the person who most effectively debunks the so-called Greenhouse Effect is an electrochemist by the name of Alan Siddons who sometimes posts articles on the Web (eg. http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_Poppycock.pdf).
This brief quote from the above sums it up clearly for a layman like me to whom the infra-red theory of greenhouses never made sense:
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Correction: he’s a radiochemist, sorry.
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Found it!
This by Willis Eschenbach is a very good analysis of the Greenhouse effect, The Moon is a Cold Mistress.
Take note of influence of “swings”:
The hotter the temperature the greater the leakage (fourth power), so large temperature swings (e.g. the Moon) are partly responsible for a lower average temperature.
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Or rephrasing, for a fixed energy system, dampening of temperature swings alone will result in a higher average temperature.
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Then CO2 warming means LESS extreme weather as well as less extreme temperature because gases radiate horizontally which reduces the violence that would have occured from convection as CO2 increases.
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Anyone who quotes WE gets a big thumbs down in my book, as anyone who was dismayed by his insight-challenged attacks on Nikolov & Zeller can affirm. Thankfully he seems to be taking a break from WUWT at present, which only his fan club will care about.
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He has a habit of placing the science first and pleasantries second. I respect him for that and have a lot of time for him.
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Humid land regions have a lower mean temperature than arid regions, so the presence of more water vapour reduces not increases mean temperature. Thus water vapour is more of an anti-greehouse gas in daytime than it is as a greenhouse gas at night.
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#16.3
I should have said at the same latitude.
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I have been meaning to add more to my blog and the S-B formula is one subject that needs attention.
I will be putting definitions of black & grey bodies from the Chemical Engineering Handbook which has had numerous editions and revisions by distinguished editorial boards since it was first published in 1934. The definitions mention surfaces so clearly the S-B formula does not apply to gases. Secondly, the experiments which lead to the S-B formula were carried out in a vacuum. When a fluid is present over a surface other heat and mass transfer (eg evaporation) take place at the same time. One has to consider path length absorption and emission and apply mathematical corrections. I have said before no climate scientists (or physicists) has demonstrated any evidence that they understand the engineering subjects of thermodynamics, heat & mass transfer and fluid dynamics.
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There is no such thing as a “greenhouse effect” or “greenhouse gases” and understanding that is very straightforward.
If the atmosphere were completely transparent to infrared energy and completely incapable of absorbing or emitting infrared energy, with the planets’ surface free to radiate directly to space, the atmosphere would still warm via conduction with the planets’ surface, but it would not possess any means of cooling. That energy would be trapped in the atmosphere.
Under those conditions near-surface air temperatures would be very hot, day and night, year-round.
The existence of a “greenhouse effect” is obviously illogical, and does not make sense.
No, the infrared activity that is exhibited by the atmosphere isn’t a warming effect at all, it is a cooling effect that keeps near-surface air temperatures much cooler than they would be otherwise. It is how the atmosphere cools to space. Without this atmospheric infrared activity near-surface air temperatures would be very hot. There wouldn’t be any ice anywhere on the planet. When this infrared activity of the atmosphere increases, the cooling to space increases.
The warmistas have the science upside-down and backwards. The infrared activity of the atmosphere cools the planet. It does not warm the planet. There is no such thing as a ‘greenhouse effect”. There is no such thing as “greenhouse gases”. Humans have no effect on the weather or climate at all because, well, we are just too puny. Many people would rather believe that mankind is great and grand, capable of affecting the weather and climate, but it’s just not true.
AGW is a hoax. People are being conned and this nonsense needs to stop.
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jjfox,
I believe after conducting a number of empirical experiments relating to the claimed “greenhouse effect” that you are correct. The net effect of non condensing and condensing radiative gasses in our atmosphere is a cooling effect. Logically if our atmosphere had no way of losing energy by radiation, it would eventually rise to a temperature equal to Tmax ground temperature in the hottest dessert. It is sad that so many sceptics are still stuck in the totally false “33 degrees warmer due to green house gasses” and “1.2 degrees of forcing for a doubling of CO2” groupthink.
The first empirical experiments I conducted were to check if LWIR had an effect on the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. The answer is that LWIR can effect the cooling rate of dry materials but not liquid water. That rules out 71% of the Earth’s surface from the increased DWLWIR threat from CO2. It is notable that few warmists still use this argument. Most have moved on the the direct thermalisation of the atmosphere claim.
The answer to the absorption and thermalisation claim is a simple experiment most bloggers could build at home, just like I did. Take two insulated boxes (use EPS foam) with a double glazed SW and IR transparent windows (use microwave safe cling wrap) in their upper surface. Enclose identical matt black aluminium target plates on the floor of each box. Add identical circulation fans and k-type thermometer probes shielded from incoming and outgoing radiation. Ensure an small 5mm bleed hole in the base of each box so both boxes remain at 1 bar. Fill one box with dry air and one with 100% CO2. Illuminate the target plates in each box with identical SW sources. The temperature rise in each box is identical. Cut the SW sources. Both boxes cool at the same rate. The reason? CO2 can absorb and re radiate LWIR, however it also radiates IR from energy it has acquired conductively. In the constant pressure boxes the warming ability of CO2 is matched by its cooling ability.
Nowadays a few warmists are “moving on” to the ERL or effective radiation level argument. But this claim is complete tripe that can be disproved in the lab as well.
I have also tested the Nicolov and Zeller hypothesis. This indicates that it is the pressure of the atmosphere in contact with a surface warmed by SW that controls the rate and degree to which the atmosphere heats. My tests indicate higher pressures do lead to higher temperatures. If Earth’s atmosphere were at half the current pressure we would be freezing even if the atmosphere was 100% CO2.
The CO2 argument is based on flawed physics BS (blackboard scribbling) such as the garbage IPCC energy diagram shown in this post. Have a look at that diagram. The atmosphere is supposedly emitting 235 watts to space yet is also emitting 324 watts back towards Earth. On the real earth the actual energy being radiated by gasses in the atmosphere is far less and is emitted equally in all directions. On the real Earth far more energy is removed from the surface by convection and evapo-transpiration than radiation. On the real Earth LWIR emitted from the atmosphere does little to slow the cooling rate of surface materials.
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The CO2 argument is based on flawed physics BS (blackboard scribbling) such as the garbage IPCC energy diagram shown in this post. Have a look at that diagram. The atmosphere is supposedly emitting 235 watts to space yet is also emitting 324 watts back towards Earth.
I call it the AGW comic cartoon energy budget.
The reason there is such a discrepancy is because they have taken out the direct thermal energy from the Sun, which actually heats the land and oceans, and replaced this with the claim that shortwave does the work of beam heat, thermal infrared.
They have done this so they can pretend that the measurements they take of infrared downwelling comes from the atmosphere alone from their “back-radiation”.
They end up with missing heat, missing because they’ve excised it from the energy budget in their ludicrous claim that shortwave can heat land and oceans, the AGW meme “shortwave in longwave out”, claiming that thermal infrared direct from the Sun doesn’t reach the surface..
..it’s blocked by some unknown unexplained invisible glass shell which they call the ‘greenhouse’.
It would be funny if it was a comic cartoon, but unfortunately it’s been made into real life, introduced into the education system as if real world physics. And a whole generation thinks visible light is the heat they feel from the Sun.
Where do we go from here..?
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Hi Myrrh,
I’m surprised by your statement:
It seems like you are still pushing your hypothesis that whilst EMR (Electro-Magnetic Radiation) is a form of energy capable of transmitting a different form of energy known as heat, that this is not so for the relatively small range of frequencies defining visible light….that somehow these frequencies do NOT possess energy despite that they come from the “furnace of the sun”.
A while ago I recommended that you conduct an experiment with IR blocking glass. It seems that you did not do this.
Here is another experiment that I’ve just conducted for your benefit and which should not be too hard for you to replicate:
1) I used a thermocouple pad ~15mm diameter, part of a multifunction automotive device, and allowed it to stabilize to ambient at the test site.
2) I shone a small 9-LED pocket torch powered by three AAA batteries directly at its normal face, a few millimetres away, and there was no measured change in temperature. However its colour was white and thus highly reflective.
3) I then covered the face of the thermocouple pad with black adhesive PVC insulating tape, and in a series of tests there was an increase in temperature between 0.9-1.2 degrees C when repeating 2)
Thus, almost pure visible white light results in heating according to my experiment.
BTW, when holding the said torch to my skin there was no sensation of heat. I guess that might be because of very low power level and/or because visible light may penetrate below the sensitive nerve endings in the skin that detect heat. UV is a substantial proportion of solar radiation and according to published data it penetrates about 12 orders of magnitude less than visible light in water and thus must hit those nerve endings. (near IR is a probable candidate too)
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Bob, it is astonishing to me that Myrrh’s original statement got the number of ticks it did. It illustrates once again that basic science literacy, like any other form of literacy or numeracy, is important and needs to be taught better in our primary and secondary schools.
I would ask people whose science education is deficient, through no fault of your own, to try to base your CAGW skepticism (and here your intuition is undoubtedly correct) on verifiable facts rather than assumptions. Many of the concepts are not difficult if explained clearly, as John Nicol did in this very thread.
Blogs like Jo’s are an excellent way for all of us to expand our knowledge and improve our understanding of the world. Lifelong learning is its own reward! =)
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This is a subject on which I have posted several articles in the past. I agree with some but not all of Jinan’s claims.
Firstly, the warmists derive the -33C by assuming an albedo for earth of 0.3 as Jinan mentions however one needs to recognize that most of this albedo is due to clouds which are water vapour. Without green house gases ie: without water vapour earth’s albedo would be more like that of the moon (0.12) so the received radiation would be higher (390 * .88) leading to a surface temperature of 279K or +6C.
Now Jinan makes the point that the surface emissivity is much less than 1, in fact more like 0.7 derived from the albedo. I have to disagree with this, the albedo comes from reflection of visible light by clouds. The liquid water surface which comprises 70% of earth’s surface has an emissivity in the thermal infrared of about 0.96 which is indeed very close to 1. Land may have a somewhat lower emissivity but even there, surface covered by vegetation has a high emissivity in the thermal infrared.
Jinan makes the point that one must consider each wavelength region separately and here I totally and absolutely agree with him. This is to me is a fundamental error make by warmists when the talk about an equivalent radiation altitude. In the atmospheric window the atmosphere is transparent and the emission comes directly from the surface (or from cloud tops where the surface is covered by clouds). At green house gas absorption wavelengths the atmosphere is opaque and emission comes from the top of the green house gas column exactly as Jinan claims, and as he correctly states the temperature of the gas at this altitude is more like -50C (basically the tropopause or very low stratosphere) certainly not +14C. If anyone has any doubt about this point, I invite them to look at Earth’s emission spectrum as seen from space (Nimbus satellite). At these wavelengths the emissivity of the atmosphere is exactly 1. This comes about because emissivity always equals absorptivity. If the gas column absorbs all the energy radiated form the surface it has an absorptivity of 1 hence an emissivity of 1 as well.
It is Jinan’s point 2.4 which I disagree with most. It is not necessary to consider the emission of each molecule separately. For a layer of air thick enough to absorb all energy radiated up from below the layer as a whole has an emissivity of 1 (at that wavelength of course) and can be treated as a black body emitter at that wavelength (which means one can apply Planks law which defines energy emitted at a particular wavelength NOT Stefan Boltzman law which defines emission for an object which is a black body at all wavelengths).
As to the sensitivity to doubling CO2; we know there is a logarithmic relationship between ghg concentration and energy retained. We know how much energy CO2 currently retains simply by looking at the emission spectrum of Earth as seen by the Nimbus satellite. Without CO2 the emission temperature at around 14.7 microns would be that of the surface +14C instead of what it actually is -50C. We can either integrate Planks law over the wavelength absorption range of CO2 or graphically look at the reduction in area under the curve of the emission spectrum to space the result is 27 watts/sqM. We also know the total absorbance of the CO2 column at 280 PPM and it is about 2000 abs. That represents 10-11 doublings from the point at which the line center saturates (which is where the logarithmic relationship starts) so the incremental effect of doubling CO2 is 2.7 watts/sqM (I disagree with the warmists 3.7 watts/sqM figure). My calculation ignores the impact of clouds. If this is taken into account the 2.7 watts/sqM figure is reduced somewhat because cloud tops are cooler than the surface thus without CO2 the emission to space would be less than a surface at +14C would imply.
This comment is already too long so let me finish by re-iterating, I agree with much but not all of what Jinan states but my conclusions do indeed agree with his.
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Michael, your comment is not too long at all but is the most well informed reply on the thread. I’ve added a note in the post to point to it. So if global emissivity is 0.96, then the SB eqn would give us a temperature much closer to -15C, not -18C? So not a large change, but if the warming by CO2 is 2.7 watts/sqM and not 3.7, that would shift most calculations from models in a seismic kind of way would it not?
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Michael,
This is an excellent example of a considered response, the type of which is never made by the alarmist trolls who comment here.
However, I would like to direct you, and everyone else, to this simple and yet powerful analysis that shows that there is no “greenhouse gas” effect of any kind as shown by comparing two different planets at the same air pressure levels.
Part of the problem is an incorrect understanding of the Stefan-Boltzman equations and the meaning of a “black body” in that context. This can seen from this discussion, which includes an error correction from the author of his own work (not seen very often in recent outpourings from the scientific community.
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Michael, you say:
Monochromatic radiative equilibrium [MRE] is where there is radiative equilibrium for every wavelength as well as total column or atmosphere equilbrium with absorption and emissivity the same.
In this post Nasif Nahle looks at total column MRE for CO2 wavelengths which means that any Earth radiative imbalance must be due to other wavelengths and not CO2.
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Michael, (and Jo)
You say :
“without water vapour earth’s albedo would be more like that of the moon (0.12) so the received radiation would be higher (390 * .88) leading to a surface temperature of 279K or +6C “
From Kiehl and Trenberth’s Radiation Balance Diagram (RBD) at the head of Jo’s post, the incoming radiation is 342W/sqm not 390 W/sqm (which is the surface radiation level). So, the received radiation for an albedo of 0.12 in the absence of a greenhouse atmosphere is 342 * 0.88 W/sqm and the corresponding temperature is 270 degK, or about -3 degC . This makes the temperature rise due to a greenhouse atmosphere about 18 degC but certainly not the widely quoted 33 degC.
Also, we don’t need to use the Moon for an albedo. From the RBD, 30 W/sqm of the (30+168 = ) 198 W/sqm is reflected from the surface, so the implied (prima facie) albedo of the surface is 30/198 = 0.1515. Using this value gives received radiation of 342 * 0.8485 = 290 W/sqm and a corresponding surface temperature of 267.5deg K or -5.5deg C. The corresponding temperature rise is then 20.5 deg C.
However, in the RBD, 67 W/sqm of the downgoing shortwave radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere but none of the upgoing reflected SW radiation (77 W/sqm from clouds and 30 W/sqm from the surface). This is implausible, and perhaps the 67W/sqm is the total absorbed from both downgoing and upgoing radiation. If so, this implies the surface albedo must be higher than we have calculated – in order that the equilibrium conditions shown in the diagram are not violated. It is straightforward algebra to calculate that the implied albedo is 0.1725. Using this albedo gives a surface temperature of 265.8 degK (-7.2degC) and a temperature rise of 22.2 degC – still well below the conventional 33 degC.
Adding in some value for emissivity will change these figures a little.
And any comment on this speculation?:
In the RBD, (which represents equilibrium conditions ie after all feedbacks have equilibrated) the outgoing LW radiation to space is 235 W/sqm. In the no-greenhouse-atmosphere cases above, the outgoing radiation to space (also at equilibrium) is in the range 283 – 301 W/sqm. I’m still thinking about this but I suspect that the difference, 48 to 66 W/sqm is equivalent to the total forcing for the atmosphere’s entire content of greenhouse gases and this suggests average equilibrium sensitivities of 18.5/48 = 0.39 to 22.2/66 = 0.34 degC per W/sqm.
This is the gross average from zero to current concentrations of greenhouse gases. However, the main greenhouse gases, water vapour and carbon dioxide, are in the logarithmic part of the absorption curve, where the response curve is flattening out and further additions of greenhouse gases have progressively smaller effects, so that 0.39 – 0.34 degC per W/sqm should be a maximum estimate of the likely current climate sensitivity parameter.
Dave
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I am a bit facinated that they only use the water vapor as a non greenhous gas and negative feedback effect(low clods/albedo/24 deg C cooling)to give a greenhouseffect of 33 deg C and at the same time only use the water vapour positive feedback to increase a hypothetical CO2 warming 3 fold?
How is that possible?
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Michael, thank you very much for your interest in the article and comments. I would like to respond some of your comments as follows.
The earth-atmosphere emissivity can be determined from the satellite outgoing radiation spectra, which is a figure close to 0.7. It is an overall value of emissivity, there is no need to make distinction of each component’s contribution.
Most earthly substances have a high emissivity over the wavelength range 4-16 um, perhaps 0.96, but much lower outside this range. When using Eqs. (2) and (3), one must use the correct value to obtain meaningful results.
The point for §2.4 is that for a given layer of air, it can not be treated in the same way as a sheet of solid. For any given layer of air without any conditions such as “think enough, ” there will have another coefficient zeta in the general formula. Simply assume a layer of non-radiative air with temperature T and surface area S, how much will this layer of air emit? Of course 0. Adding CO2 molecules one by one to the layer leads to Eq. (12). Bearing this concept in mind, one can easily understand how much a layer of air in the thermosphere, where the temperature reaches 1000 K, should emit. We shall also easily understand why the statement that the 240 W/m2 of -18C is the characteristic emission of the air layer 6 km high altitude is not really physical meaningful.
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Right below equation 2 you state that you set alpha to equal 0.3. There is no alpha in equation 2. What gives?
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OK. In equation 2 if “p” is alpha and the albedo of earth is about 0.3, then I get 255C. Is that right?
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Sorry, 255K not 255C.
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Sorry, I didn’t know that I had to download the PDF to get the text correct.
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————————-
Sorry Scott. There are limits to what I can do with html. The “alpha” was a problem. Sorry it threw you. It was unclear.
Jo
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As pointed out by previous commentors, I believe the computation of a 33 degree Centigrade Earth surface temperature difference with and without a greenhouse gas atmosphere is incorrect. To arrive at the 33 degree number, an emissivity of 0.7 is used to compute the rate energy is absorbed by the Earth’s surface and an emissivity of 1 is used to compute the rate energy is radiated from the Earth’s surface. This methodology is wrong for two reasons.
First, the Stephan-Boltzmann rule that the rate energy is radiated per unit area is proportional to the temperature T (of the area) to the fourth power is valid only for radiation whose radiated power in the frequency interval between f and f+df is given by
k1*(f^3)*df/[e^(k2*f/T)-1] (1),
where k1 and k2 are constants. This rule is true for both blackbody surface areas and graybody surface areas, neither of which exists in the real world. [For blackbodies and graybodies, the radiated power dependence as a function of frequency are the same–see equation (1). The only difference between graybodies and blackbodies is the value of the constant k1, where “k1graybody” is always less than “k1blackbody“.] In general the ratio of “k1graybody” to “k1blackbody” (i.e., “k1graybody/k1blackbody“) is the emissivity. The “temperature to the fourth power” rule doesn’t apply to the rate energy is radiated from gases for two reasons: (1) gases exist in a volume for which the concept of “area” doesn’t exist, and (2) the frequency dependence of the rate energy is radiated from a gas does not behave as equation (1).
Second, when computing the difference between two temperatures one must have a method for determining the two temperatures. In the case of the Earth surface temperature with and without greenhouse gases, the two temperatures are (1) the Earth surface temperature in the presence of greenhouse gases, and (2) the Earth surface temperature in the absence of greenhouse gases. The former temperature can be measured; and for the sake of argument, I’ll assume is 15 degrees centigrade. The latter temperature can’t be measured because we cannot create an Earth that is devoid of all greenhouse gases. In lieu of a measurement, we must model the latter temperature.
Such a model contains three elements: (a) the assumption that the Earth is in energy-rate equilibrium—i.e., the assumption that the rate the Earth receives thermal energy (incoming thermal energy rate or rate of heating) is equal to the rate the Earth loses thermal energy (outgoing thermal energy rate or rate of cooling); (b) a computation of the rate of heating in the absence of greenhouse gases, and (c) a computation of the Earth surface temperature that in the absence of greenhouse gases produces a rate of cooling that is equal to the rate of heating in the absence of greenhouse gases.
Using the above three-element model, AGW alarmists (and even a few AGW skeptics) compute the Earth surface temperature in the absence of greenhouse gases to be minus 18 degrees centigrade—a difference of 33 degrees centigrade relative to the measured average Earth surface temperature of 15 degrees centigrade. When computing the Earth surface temperature in the absence of atmospheric greenhouse gases, both the model used to compute the rate of heating and the model used to compute the rate of cooling should employ an atmosphere model devoid of greenhouse gases. I believe the alarmist model (which for brevity I call the “33 degree model”) for computing the Earth surface temperature in the absence of atmospheric greenhouse gases is invalid because the “33 degree model” computes the rate of heating using a water vapor based atmosphere model–i.e., uses a model that depends on the presence of greenhouse gases. Water vapor is not only a greenhouse gas, it is the most important greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. Bottom line, to determine the Earth surface temperature in the absence of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the “33 degree model” uses a greenhouse gas atmosphere model.
You say: “That can’t be right. How can anyone make such a fundamental error in logic?” The only answer I can think of is the “arguer” is not interested in truth arrived at via logic; but rather is interested in promoting a cause.
The details of their logic error are as follows. In the absence of an atmosphere, the Earth’s rate of heating will equal the rate solar energy impinges on the Earth at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). An atmosphere (greenhouse or non-greenhouse) has the potential to reflect some of the solar energy at the TOA back to space, and thus has the potential to reduce the Earth’s rate of heating. It is generally agreed that approximately 30% of the incoming solar energy at the TOA is reflected back to space and does not contribute to the Earth’s rate of heating. Furthermore, it is generally agreed that most of this reflected energy is reflected by clouds. When computing the Earth’s rate of heating in the absence of atmospheric greenhouse gases the rate of solar energy at the TOA should not be reduced by 30% because (a) in the absence of atmospheric greenhouse gases there will be no water vapor in the atmosphere, (b) in the absence of atmospheric water vapor there will be no clouds, and (c) in the absence of clouds, a much smaller fraction of solar energy will be reflected back to space. To arrive at the 33 degree centigrade temperature difference, the “33 degree model” uses the reduced rate of heating—an obvious logical error.
A more detailed discussion of this problem can be found at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/26/a-controvrsial-look-at-blackbody-radiation-and-earth-minus-ghgs/
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Thank you Jo, how very inconvenient for the fraudsters.
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Hmmm?
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/auror3.htm
I came to the perhaps wrong conclusion long ago, that the commonly accepted explanation for why the sky is blue would actually make it violet.
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It is violet, if you look at it with an appropriate instrument. The human eye is much better at registering blue than violet, so we see it as blue.
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Dear Joanne.
Have you read Joseph Postma’s “The Model Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect”? If you haven’t, I would really appreciate if you visit this link: http://principia-scientific.org/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
But be careful because you need an updated version of Adobe Reader to adequately visualize this PDF, otherwise some important parts will appear covered by a black screen…I don’t know why…
In my opinion, Postma’s paper truly refutes the Cold Earth Fallacy and is important to understand the Greenhouse Effect Fallacy because it shows that the logic of the standard atmospheric greenhouse effect model is wrong (and he corrects it). Therefore, all the models are wrong, because all of them rely on the same PREMISES, and they consider that trace gases are important “a priori”. It doesn’t matter the complexity of the 3-D program, neither the resolution, nor the capacity of the supercomputer. If the premises are unphysical, then the results are unphysical. GIGO.
There are other very good papers about greenhouse effect at the Principia Scientific International’s website: http://principia-scientific.org/
…(at “Publications”)
Well, I think that we, skepticals, should not be so careful on questioning the existance of the radiative greenhouse effect. There must be no boundaries for critical thinking, and to argue about it doesn’t make us “radicals” or “fundamentalists”. On the contrary! We must change the paradigm and formulate a theory that truly describes the climate, without preconceptions, without dogmatic assumptions, without appeal to authority, without reductionism and without crazy ad hoc hypothesis… The “truth is in the middle” style will not help at this point, because for logic (and for physics) there is no “more or less”. Something exists, or it doesn’t… It is right or wrong… True or false…
I perceive that the greenhouse effect itself has become, as some people say here in Brasil, a “talismanic term”, an amulet to disarm the spirit, like kryptonite for Superman. The meaning of the expression is twisted to adjust to the situation. A few examples: sometimes they say backradiation warms the surface, sometimes that it slows the cooling rate… Sometimes they say that the energy is “re-emited” by the molecules to the surface, sometimes that the radiation is directly used to increase the thermal energy of the air…sometimes both… Everything to avoid refutation. Hasn’t anyone ever asked where is the falsification point of the theory? Is the greenhouse effect falsifiable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
There is another good paper that I’ve just remembered: http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_on_the_Moon.pdf
Finally, I’d like to say that I love your blog and is a pleasure to write to you.
Thanks. 🙂
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Vinicius, There’s one of Postma’s articles you didn’t mention, “Copernicus Meets the Greenhouse Effect” and it’s an important one. It can be found on a number of sites, notably: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/joseph-postma/
The interesting thing he shows is how complex and coherent paradigms and mathematical iterations can be built up on false premisses, the example he takes being Ptolemy’s model of an earth-centred universe. Also what I understand is that any questioning of such primary assumptions is more a matter of judgment (and common sense) than pure mathematical iteration – and today, GIGO computer models.
At one point the Gordian knot has to be cut. I think people like Alan Siddons I mentioned above have done so, but it will be a long time before many sceptics (most warmists never) or the public at large realise it or gain access to any other paradigm than what has now become the standard one.
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Thanks for the highlight Jo; To answer your question whether an emissivity of around 1 would give a number closer to the claimed 33C of warming? No not really. One could of course claim (and I am sure warmists do) that if the green house effect is considered in isolation the result is 33C of warming but doing that implies changing the laws of physics and if one is prepared to do that anything becomes possible. The point is that water vapour acts in several ways. One way is to cause green house warming but another way is to form clouds which are highly reflective to visible light. The only way one can get rid of the green house warming is to get rid of the water vapour which also gets rid of clouds (or as I said earlier, change the laws of physics). Put another way, one can argue that the green house component contributes 33C of warming but at the same time the clouds contribute 25C of cooling leaving a net 8C of warming. Pretty much the number Jinin is claiming. In a way he is saying the same thing as I am, just expressing it rather differently.
This is an extremely important point because the green house warming is logarithmic in nature while the cloud cooling is probably much closer to linear. Given that the total impact of both is so similar it is very likely that the incremental impact of cloud cooling will be larger than the incremental impact of green house warming ie: negative feedback not positive feedback. In fact, if one looks at this in a bit more depth, what we find is that water sets an operating point for our climate. Too cold (very low water vapour so almost no clouds) and the incremental green house effect is larger than the incremental cloud effect and the water vapour promotes warming. Too hot and the far higher water vapour results in only a moderate increase in green house warming (logarithmic) but a major change in cloud cooling (linear) so that now cloud cooling dominates and the incremental impact is to cause net cooling. Chalk up another amazing property of water to add to all the other amazing properties.
Now some of the warmist claims I have seen suggest that rising temperatures will cause stronger convection forcing the water vapour higher in the atmosphere so that we form more high level cloud and less low level cloud – high level cloud is claimed to be warming whereas low level cloud is cooling hence they claim positive feedback from water vapour. He is the dilemma with that scenario. The stronger convection comes about because water vapour is considerably less dense than air (molecular weight 18 vs air at around 29) but that means the water vapour is rising. Thus if the stronger convection is to be maintained there must be continuously more water evaporating. Unless we postulate all the oceans ending up in the sky, more evaporation has to be balanced by more precipitation ie: rain and rain comes from low clouds not high clouds. That means there must be more low cloud mass not less.
So how to reconcile the two arguments? Easy, yes more water vapour means the air starts to rise faster but as it rises it cools and the altitude where the water vapour starts to precipitate depends only on the initial relative humidity. Since the warmists claims this does not change with warming, precipitation starts at exactly the same altitude as it does now and once it does, air containing liquid water droplets is considerably more dense than dry air. More water droplets means even higher density so the air containing the extra water vapour does not rise higher it simply rises more strongly and decelerates more strongly and just deposits more water droplets (clouds) at exactly the same altitude as it does right now.
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This ratio of 8C for CO2 to ~25C for H2O in producing the Greenhouse temperature of 33C has been around for a long time; see Ramanatan’s 1978 paper, Table 6.
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The point is that water vapour acts in several ways. One way is to cause green house warming but another way is to form clouds which are highly reflective to visible light. The only way one can get rid of the green house warming is to get rid of the water vapour which also gets rid of clouds (or as I said earlier, change the laws of physics). Put another way, one can argue that the green house component contributes 33C of warming but at the same time the clouds contribute 25C of cooling leaving a net 8C of warming. Pretty much the number Jinin is claiming. In a way he is saying the same thing as I am, just expressing it rather differently.
What does it take for you sceptics to see there is no physics in the AGW claim that there’s a “The Greenhouse Effect” and energy budget comic cartoon?
The main effect of water, so the gas water vapour, is that it removes heat from the Earth’s surface – it’s called the Water Cycle, it’s a very well understood physical phenomenon of our real world. As heated water evaporates it becomes lighter, less dense, and rises up into the colder heights of the troposphere where it gives up its heat, heat flows from hotter to colder, and condenses back into water or ice, and now colder comes down as rain.
Which is carbonic acid, all pure clean rain is carbonic acid, water brings down all the carbon dioxide around. The residence time of water in the atmosphere is 8-10 days, so carbon dioxide in this has the same residence time, and, same effect, that of cooling the Earth. The temperature of our Earth would be 67°C with our atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and oxygen but without water – think Deserts. The clouds are cold and a stage in the Water Cycle which cools the Earth.
All gases when heated become less dense and lighter so the Earth heated at the surface, land and oceans, will heat the volume of air above and this will rise because now lighter less dense and as it rises it takes away heat from the Earth which it gives up in the colder heights of the troposphere, but, additionally, as it rises volumes of the colder air above it being denser and heavier displaces it and sinks beneath, flows beneath to the surface – this is called WIND.
Winds are convection currents, convection currents are formed in fluids, gases and liquids are fluids. This is how heat is transferred in fluids. Hence, our real world Water Cycle without which the Earth would be a desert. And you don’t need the complicated maths of SB to understand that…
Without the ‘greenhouse gas’ water, the Earth would be a desert. It would be hotter. Much hotter.
And, this meme of ‘clouds a negative feedback cooling by reflecting light’ is more nonsense physics – so which is it – if your AGW fisics claim is that visible light heats the water of the oceans then this light would not be reflected it would be absorbed by the clouds, heating them..
You, generic, don’t realise how muddled your arguments because the fisics basics you use are fictional, made up. You can do the most complicated maths calculations, but when these are based on impossible physical properties and process then you’re not going to get real world understanding.
The meme ‘clouds reflect light so stop heat getting to the surface’ is, quite frankly, nonsense fisics, it’s Alice through the looking glass imposssible in the real world.
Visible light cannot heat matter in the real world. Water is transparent to visible light in the real world, it does not absorb visible light in any way – neither on the whole molecular level which is what it takes to heat water, putting the whole molecule into vibration, kinetic energy (heat), nor absorbed on the electronic transition level, which is how we get our blue sky.
We get out blue sky by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen absorbing visible energy and briefly becoming more energised they send the visible light back out when they come back to their ground state. In effect like a pin ball machine, the electrons of the molecules bounce the light back out. Blue visible light more highly energetic (this does not mean more powerful to do work, being tinier and nervier than the longer wavelength colours is bounced around the most.
So, which is it? If visible light heats the water of the oceans as per your generic AGW comic cartoon, then it is heating the clouds, being absorbed and not being reflected back off them.
And, if as your comic cartoon claims ‘visible light heats when it is absorbed’, then how much is it heating the atmosphere because it is being continually absorbed by the molecules of the practically 100% nitrogen and oxygen..?
The atmosphere is not a transparent medium for visible light, because of this. Another blatant fib in your fictional fisics. Water is transparent to visible light, it is transmitted through water unchanged because not absorbed.
You have taken out the real thermal energy from the Sun which is capable of heating the Earth’s ocean and land, and in the real world does, and claim that it doesn’t get to the surface and plays no part in heating the Earth!
Creating some imaginary ‘greenhouse glass shell’ to explain this, though you’ve never explained what that barrier is to the Sun’s direct heat, which in the real world reaches us in around 8 minutes..
And, you have given its property and processes to Shortwave! And you can’t understand how nonsensical that is because your thinking is bound into the AGWScienceFiction meme “shortwave in longwave out”.
Shortwave from the Sun does not have the POWER to heat matter, it cannot move the molecules of matter of land and ocean, and us, into vibrational states which is what it takes to heat up matter. It takes the POWER of heat, the Sun’s thermal energy, heat energy, on the move to heat us up as we absorb it. This is what is heating us up in the real world, the real heat from the Sun which is the invisible thermal infrared, which we feel as heat because it is heat. We cannot feel shortwave.
You’re arguing from the same fictional fisics which has deliberately created this ‘radiation only’ scenario by tampering with real world physics. You have to first come back to real world physics to see this..
So, which is it? If clouds are highly reflective to visible light then visible light cannot be heating the oceans and land, because clouds are water and particles of matter.
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Great post Myrrh,
“You can do the most complicated maths calculations, but when these are based on impossible physical properties and process then you’re not going to get real world understanding.”
I guess great minds think alike, no, not yours and mine, but yours and this fellow –
“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”
– Nikola Tesla
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Thank you MaxL! ..comparison with Tesla brought me back to reality… 🙂
And many thanks to the others who commented positively to my first post. I was amazed to find so much support, that so many knew what I was talking about. There have got to be more of us out there somewhere…
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Myrrh has noticed the slight of hand involved with equating thermal radiation with other forms of electromagnetic waves.
He has documented proof of the rewrite of information sheets on the electromagnetic spectrum to make them more acceptable for IPCC science.
Free electrons are an essential part in any of the examples of light photons being absorbed and the energy transformed into heat.
There is an explanation given here by Michael Fowler part of his excellent series on thermodynamics.
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/black_body_radiation.html
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Hi Myrrh,
Yes I’m sure there are more of “us” out there somewhere, but I think the last thing we want to create is a consensus. I enjoy reading other people’s thoughts on these issues, I don’t necessarily agree with them all, but I enjoy reading those who put in the effort to be reasonable and considerate when expressing their opinions. When we state our opinion as if it is a fact, we are in fact merely stating our opinion.
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MaxL
September 10, 2012 at 12:23 am
Hi Myrrh,
Yes I’m sure there are more of “us” out there somewhere, but I think the last thing we want to create is a consensus. .. When we state our opinion as if it is a fact, we are in fact merely stating our opinion.
——————————————————————————–
That’s why the real science in this isn’t from consensus, but from empirical work. We know the difference between heat and light from applied science, it’s not an opinion.
It is tried and tested in all kinds of industries and applications – we have grow lights for use in greenhouses that produce the visible light the plant needs for photosynthesis, but adapted to take out the thermal infrared, water cooled because .. What would an AGW fisics boffin design? These grow lights wouldn’t make much of a sauna.., so I’d go to a real world physics boffin who have already designed thermal infrared saunas.
But, how do we change this nonsense teaching that visible light from the Sun is heat? That takes numbers.
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Bryan
I’m not sure what your point is but on a quick flick through your reference the author seems to say, (paraphrasing), that visible light passes through glass OK but is absorbed by other stuff like soot.
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Myrrh,
You say, and presumably you do not include shortwave UV?
Here you go again, and I repeat what I’ve said before;
I’m surprised by your statement:
It seems like you are still pushing your hypothesis that whilst EMR (Electro-Magnetic Radiation) is a form of energy capable of transmitting a different form of energy known as heat, that this is not so for the relatively small range of frequencies defining visible light….that somehow these frequencies do NOT possess energy despite that they come from the “furnace of the sun”.
A while ago I recommended that you conduct an experiment with IR blocking glass. It seems that you did not do this.
Here is another experiment that I’ve just conducted for your benefit and which should not be too hard for you to replicate:
1) I used a thermocouple pad ~15mm diameter, part of a multifunction automotive device, and allowed it to stabilize to ambient at the test site.
2) I shone a small 9-LED pocket torch powered by three AAA batteries directly at its normal face, a few millimetres away, and there was no measured change in temperature. However its colour was white and thus highly reflective.
3) I then covered the face of the thermocouple pad with black adhesive PVC insulating tape, and in a series of tests there was an increase in temperature between 0.9-1.2 degrees C when repeating 2)
Thus, almost pure visible white light results in heating according to my experiment.
BTW, when holding the said torch to my skin there was no sensation of heat. I guess that might be because of very low power level and/or because visible light may penetrate below the sensitive nerve endings in the skin that detect heat. UV is a substantial proportion of solar radiation and according to published data it penetrates about 12 orders of magnitude less than visible light in water and thus must hit those nerve endings. (near IR is a probable candidate too)
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You say, and presumably you do not include shortwave UV?
Of course I include shortwave UV, it’s in the “Solar” of “Shortwave In Longwave Out”, Visible and the two shortwaves either side of UV and Nr Infrared. Why? Do you think it’s a ‘heat energy’ because it ‘burns the skin’?
It doesn’t burn the skin, we can’t feel it, because it’s not a heat energy. That’s the reason we don’t know how much it is affecting us if we’re not used to it. It works on a DNA level, too much UV scrambles it when melanin production can’t keep up to protect DNA damage, that’s not a heat burn. That’s how UV works on destroying microbes in bad water. If we acclimatise to greater amounts of it we don’t get burned, or if we use UV blocking creams, but careful, UV’s prime property and process for us is in the creation of Vitamin D (and no, we can’t overdose on the natural stuff..) –
http://rense.com/general48/sunlight1.htm
You, generic, have lost all sense of scale in this because you’ve been told that “all electromagnetic radiation is the same, all on being absorbed creates heat” – which is not true. Try comparing the size of gamma to radio. The size of Nr Infrared, which is not hot and classed as Light and not Heat, is microscopic compared with thermal which is pinhead size and bigger. It takes a powerful energy to move a molecule of matter into vibration and Light does not work on this level, but on the electronic transition, much much smaller, scale. The science of Light is Optics, not Thermodynamics..
You have been misled by the meme “Visible has great energy”, this does not equate to power to do work, to raise the temperature of matter, all it means it is tiny, moving in smaller quicker waves than longer waves to distance, fitting in with the speed of electromagnetic wave travelling. (Whichever way you choose to look at this, wavelengths, photons, particles..).
Gamma radiation is even smaller than UV and dangerous too on a DNA level, large amounts of it absorbed will do immense physical damage on genetic levels besides the cancers even when in dissipated form, but, put large amounts into a small area at the same time and it will vapourise everything – Hiroshima was called Ground Zero for nothing.. There was nothing left. All the buildings and all that was in the buildings and all the people in the immediate centre were vapourised to nothing, the extreme of what an intense UV ‘sunburn’ does.
The different wavelengths have different properties and processes on meeting matter, for example in photosynthesis where visible light energy, primarily blue and red, is converted to chemical energy in the creation of sugars from carbon dioxide and water and in sight where its energy converts to nerve impulse. These are not heat, it is not converting to heat as the AGW fisics claims. In the real world water is transparent to visible light.
So let’s get back sense of scale – the AGW claim is that Shortwave is the energy which directly heats land and oceans, but the electronic transition scale it works on can’t achieve this. Visible for example gets bounced around the sky just by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, it isn’t big enough to impact the whole molecule to vibration, which is kinetic energy, which is heat.
Thermal Infrared is heat energy, which is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move via radiation, which is why thermal infrared is called that, this is physically capable of moving the molecules of matter into vibration, to heat up matter. Rub your hands together, that is mechanical energy making the molecules in your skin vibrate, kinetic energy the energy of motion which is heat.
Thermal infrared is invisible, it is what we feel as heat because it is heat and we can tell the difference. As we absorb thermal infrared it heats us up internally as well as heating up our skin, because water is a very strong absorber of thermal infrared and we are mostly water (and c20% carbon).
It takes this great heat energy from the Sun to heat the oceans and land, but you have no idea of the sense of scale in this because actual weather has been excised from the AGW ‘climate science’ energy budget..
..our whole real gas atmosphere has been excised to be replaced by empty space so you have no convection, no way of getting huge amounts of air heated in one place to rise and be displaced by huge volumes of colder air which is what winds are, massive volumes of the gas Air moving through the heavy massive volume of the fluid Gas Air subject to gravity which is our atmosphere. It takes powerful energy to do the work of heating the land and oceans which in turn heat the air above them to get our dramatic weather and wind patterns.
Show us how “Shortwave in” on its electronic transition scale meeting with matter can achieve this effect..
As I’ve said, the real direct heat energy from the Sun has been excised in this reduced to property-less, process-less AGW world so that it can pretend that any thermal infrared measured ‘coming from the atmosphere’ is from ‘backradiation’.
This isn’t some aberration from a few scientists, this was deliberately introduced into the education system by people who knew what they were doing, it has now become the ‘norm basic physics’ and all the science bodies are pushing it – all done to confuse the general population in order to promote AGW.
The politics of why it was introduced is interesting, complicated by how many jumped onto or were enticed onto the bandwagon, but what still bothers me the most as it did when I first began questioning the idea that a heavier than air molecule could accumulate for hundreds and even thousands of years in the atmosphere, is that knowledge of the real world is being deliberately denied to the general population. Not only now unable to appreciate how weather works, but to the point where they couldn’t make the things we make now and we still have industries producing all around us, because their fisics doesn’t work in the real world.
Knowledge that was built up by centuries of dedicated work from real scientists exploring our physical reality has been trashed and we’re all the losers here because the majority of this generation can’t pass on what it doesn’t know, but worse, this generation has been taught to believe that the basic food of us Carbon Life Forms is a poison, a toxic. That’s what makes me really angry.
Anyway, we in the real physical world around us still have the direct heat, thermal infrared from the Sun heating us as traditional physics still teaches and makes sense because internally consistent, and so, as this is your AGW claim to the contrary, you have to show and tell empirically how “shortwave in” can physically heat land and oceans at the equator to get us our weather, our great winds, our great storms.
And, because until you attempt this you won’t realise that by your torch experiment you show you have no sense of scale of how much heat is necessary to achieve this.
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Nah Myrrh. Of course short wave radiation can heat up matter. If you have helium gas, then most radiation will pass straight through it, because it can only be absorbed if it has a frequency corresponding to a transition between two orbitals in a helium atom. But once matter is solid, there are a continuum of available energy levels, so just about any incident photon can be absorbed. And once absorbed, can be transferred to lots of other energy levels, ending up in a warming of the substance. I’m making an assumption here – that the mechanism exists within a solid for the excitations to ultimately end up as kinetic energy of the atoms/molecules. But I reckon that is a reasonable assumption (except that some excitations will be re-emitted as photons, so the energy from them will be lost.
Still, an experiment would be interesting. Get two identical surfaces, and put them out in the sun. Then use a UV filter on one, but not the other. Compare their temperatures. You’d have to be careful to ensure that the only difference was that one surface did not get UV – that might be hard to do.
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Myrrh, please don’t misinform people. An atomic bomb is a bomb, with very powerful blast and thermal effects that do most of the damage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions
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Chris M
And of course a petrol fire can vapourise whole solid steel constructed buildings a quarter of a mile high and all contents including people at freefall speed and turn it all to white powder blowin in the wind..
The comparison was with the way UV ‘burns’, it’s not a burn by heat, and if you ever get sunburnt check it out, the skin does not feel hot, it’s an energy ‘burn’ by the way it works on the tiny level it exists, that it destroys DNA and wrecks the skin, but gamma rays are even better at wrecking the structure of matter. There used to be good descriptions of how this worked, but after recent events..
Here’s something on:
It turns stuff to dust practically instantly at the centre of explosion. This is why Hiroshima was first described as ‘ground zero’, because everything had been vapourised into powder.
Anyway, the point of it was in reply to the idea, meme, that UV giving sunburn is proof that shortwaves heat matter..
Matter is heated by the molecules being put into vibration, not by wrecking them on some other level.
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This is absolute rubbish.
From the original Nuclear Handbook:
Ground Zero: The point on the surface of land or water vertically below or above the centre of a burst of a nuclear weapon.
“Zero” was called “Zero” by the Manhattan Project because all distances were calculated from the epicentre of the blast to measure effects such as the speed of propagation of the shock wave, pressure of the shock wave, intensity of the nuclear and thermal radiation, propagation of Mach Stem effect, wind velocity, crater formation, etc…
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When was this “original nuclear handbook” published?
Accounts tell that the New York Times was the first to use the term “ground zero”, and it was from this it came to mean the area directly beneath an exploding bomb.
This is not the same as calculating an epicentre as zero, it came from descriptions of what was left at Hiroshima at that point, what was left on the ground at point zero, nothing, zero.
Because everything, building and people and animals and plants, were all instantly vapourised.
From that, from the periphery, were extremely damaged people and building, but at ground zero, nothing.
The key to understanding what happened there is to first get a grip on what “instantaneous” means. Not all articles will go into this detail..
“The three energies─heat ray, blast, and radiation─caused instantaneous mass destruction and indiscriminate mass slaughter”
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/kids/KPSH_E/hiroshima_e/sadako_e/subcontents_e/08higai_1_e.html
“anything even around the point of which the bomb was detonated, would literally be instantly vaporized to nothing,” http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_hot_is_a_nuclear_explosion
The second also mentions that sometimes there’s an odd effect of petrification, of a body becoming charcoal and hard as rock.
Anyway, much like lasers are given as ‘proof’ from AGWs that “visible heats land and ocean”, this is an extreme energy.
I’m still asking for empirical proof of the AGW claim that “shortwave in is the heat energy from the Sun heat energy heating land and oceans”.
Why haven’t any of you fetched it?
Can’t you find it..?
Gosh, after all this time no one can give me a rational physics explanation. How long does it take visible light to raise the temperature of water one degree?
Come on now, look for it.
10
Although this seems self-evident, experimental evidence shows it is not true. (I always like to rely on observed data — it so often belies the “obvious” theoretical results.)
That massive objects can (under the right circumstances) survive undamaged a nuclear explosion only a few FEET away was accidently discovered during ground tests in the SouthWest: Massive steel spheres were hung a few feet away from a test bomb — the thought was that the vaporized iron would cause visible effects on the fireball development. No effects were seen, but several of the spheres were later discovered in the desert, undamaged, miles from the test site. The only effect of the atomic blast had, apparently, been to transfer a massive amount of kinetic energy to the spheres.
It was later found that a thin coating of oil (even a fingerprint) was the key to preventing any ablation of the steel. This (plus the discovery of how to build directional atomic explosives) became the basis of the Orion Spaceship project — which, if it weren’t for the Atmospheric Test Ban treaty, would have resulted in regular manned travel throughout the Solar System over the last 50 years.
00
Although this seems self-evident, experimental evidence shows it is not true. (I always like to rely on observed data — it so often belies the “obvious” theoretical results.)
That massive objects can (under the right circumstances) survive undamaged a nuclear explosion only a few FEET away was accidently discovered during ground tests in the SouthWest: Massive steel spheres..
For goodness sake, so instant vapourisation is not true because you say that ‘under exceptional circumstances some things have been known to survive’?
Instant vapourisation is what happens, instantly, everything, all the buildings, all the contents, all the vegetation, all the people – vapourised.
Have you never read this before?:
The US government cover up on the effects began immediately, but continue reading the piece for more on that aspect, on how McArthur dealt with those trying to report what happened and the part William L. Laurence played:
Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Governments lie.
— I. F. Stone, Journalist
So your: “Although this seems self-evident, experimental evidence shows it is not true.”
It’s not above ‘seeming self-evident’, it’s about being evident. That is what a nuclear bomb does, this is the effect is has.
‘Depleted’ uranium might ‘seem benign’, but it isn’t, it is having the same effects on the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia. Our governments are still covering this up.
They’ve become very skilled at producing mis-information, creating the fake fisics of AGW and getting it believed by so many was a doddle..
00
First, I said that “instant vaporisation of everything has been shown to be incorrect.
Second, the ‘exceptional circumstances’ happened to be steel with oil on it — not too exceptional in the real world.
Third, I linked my sources.
How, then, do you explain the steel and stone skeletons of buildings standing at ground zero — not to mention all the (non-vaporized) rubbish laying on the ground?
Physical effects are not what you would like to believe they are — they are what they are observed to be. Apparently, you missed my point so I’ll repeat it:
******************
“The US government cover up on the effects began immediately…”
You need to calm down, Myrrh; The effects of nuclear weapons have been studied and published in thousands of books and papers (many by the government — I have a 500 page book on “The effects of Nuclear Weapons” published by the government in 1964) — there is no cover up.
Here is a rational historian’s view of the bombings — he repeats the uncontroversial belief (among anyone who bothers to study the history of Imperial Japan and its control over its citizenry) that millions of Japanese lives were saved by the bombing of Hiroshama and Nagasaki. The atomic bombings killed as many Japanese as another 3 weeks of war would have — not counting twice that many non-Japanese asians and Western allies.
If you read the book, you will find that it was necessary to bomb Nagasaki as the Japanese Military commanders wouldn’t believe that the US would ask for surrender after dropping one bomb, if they had others — the Japanese would have used all the bombs they had to exterminate their enemy. The concept of “rules of warfare” and “honorable surrender” were non-existent in WWII Japan.
Save your moral outrage for the people and philosophies that really have caused hundreds of millions of deaths in the last century. (Not to mention the tens of millions killed by Imperial Japan’s war of conquest.)
00
Myrrh, the term “Ground Zero” may well have been “first used in public print” by the New York Times in 1946.
This has nothing to do with the fact that the term originated at the Manhattan project prior to any bombing being carried out.
Why you are in denial of this basic fact is mysterious. But interesting.
Here is an eyewitness account from July 1945,
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/manhattan-project/trinity/eyewitness-philip-morrison_1945-07-16.htm
Now, just admit you are wrong and move on.
It simply is not true that the term “Ground Zero” was created to describe a spot where everything has been vapourised.
10
Myrrh has also said:
Photons in the visible light spectrum carry energy and produce power, same as those in other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Were you unaware of this?
10
John Brookes: Of course short wave radiation can heat up matter. If you have helium gas, then most radiation will pass straight through it, because it can only be absorbed if it has a frequency corresponding to a transition between two orbitals in a helium atom. But once matter is solid, there are a continuum of available energy levels, so just about any incident photon can be absorbed. And once absorbed, can be transferred to lots of other energy levels, ending up in a warming of the substance.I’m making an assumption here – that the mechanism exists within a solid for the excitations to ultimately end up as kinetic energy of the atoms/molecules. But I reckon that is a reasonable assumption (except that some excitations will be re-emitted as photons, so the energy from them will be lost.
Well, I’m a little tired of assumptions for this claim.. You, generic, have had long enough to put together show and tell, and the constant refrain from AGW fisics believers is that these exist as proven by experiment and there are lots and lots of them, but they’re never fetched…
In the real world water is a transparent medium for visible light. Please, keep a sense of perspective here, don’t come back with that ubiquitous absorption graph and point to the insignificant amount at the red end of the spectrum.. Water is a transparent medium for visible light, this means, visible light is not absorbed. How then is visible energy heating the ocean when it can’t, when it is transmitted through unchanged? It doesn’t even get to play with the electrons of the molecules of water, let alone powerful enough to move the whole water molecule into vibration, kinetic energy, heat. And it takes an awful lot of heat energy to raise the temperature of water.
It stands to reason that the cartoon “shortwave in longwave out” is nonsense – giving the great thermal energy of the Sun to shortwave and claiming this great thermal energy of the Sun doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface when we’ve known since Herschel that the Sun’s thermal energy is the invisible thermal infrared.
Put a pan of water onto the stove – how long will you have to wait for ‘backradiation’ because ‘everything above absolute zero emits heat’ to bring it to the boil? What it takes is concentrated heat energy, when you turn the stove on. Now recall, if you have such a memory.., (we had about four days of summer here), standing in the hot Sun feeling its great heat on you and heating you up. That’s concentrated invisible thermal infrared, concentrated heat energy direct from the Sun because travelling in straight lines, called beam. AGW claims this doesn’t reach the surface! It’s blocked by some yet to be explained ‘invisible glass shell’ preventing it from reaching us.
And do you know just how cold absolute zero is? To say that everything above absolute zero radiates heat is one of the brainwashing memes from AGW in this. I was seriously told, because the AGW fisics extrapolates to it, that a hunter could leave a lump of raw meat in his igloo for a few hours and when he returned the backradiation from the ice would have cooked it!
The problem is the concept of heat has been so distorted by AGW fisics that all sense of heat has been lost.
Anyway, that’s heat, the thermal kinetic energy of something that can be transferred by conduction, convection and radiation, and tranferred by radiation that’s thermal infrared and the effect it has on meeting matter is to heat it, to send the molecules of matter into vibrational states which raises the temperature, passes on the heat. Visible light is not Heat, we can’t even feel it. It gets reflected out of us, or don’t you cast a shadow..?
It’s getting harder, nearly impossible, to find any descriptions of this which haven’t become garbled to fit in with the AGW fisics memes. It used to be standard elementary level teaching that the heat we feel from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared, now that has been conflated with visible light and so those arguing for AGW fisics say visible light is the heat we feel from the Sun.
You have to come back to traditional teaching on this to appreciate how much this is garbled, and to understand older traditional papers which used the word “heat” for thermal infrared because they didn’t get it muddled up with Light. That’s why the two basic categories, Light and Heat, the sciences of Optics and Thermodynamics respectively.
Here’s an example of a garbled page: http://www.clavius.org/heatxfer.html
It uses the traditional word “heat” (as traditionally meaning “thermal infrared”) and gives a good description of the heat transfer by radiation as traditionally taught, “radiative heat transfer”; actual heat, thermal energy kinetic being transferred, but, it is so warped by AGW pc that it brings in references to “light” where there shouldn’t be any and never makes the distinction clear. It’s difficult to tell whether or not they know the difference.
We can’t feel Light as heat, we can’t feel shortwave at all. We can’t feel near infrared because it isn’t hot, it’s classed with Light as reflective not thermal. So we have near infrared cameras which work on the same principle as visible light cameras, they capture the near infrared reflected back from the subject, not absorbed.
I can ramble on about how UV barely penetrates the second layer of epidermis, which has three layers while thermal infrared penetrates several inches, but what I’ve found in these discussions is that this “shortwave in longwave out” is so ingrained in the general population that it’s a practically impossible paradigm shift to get back to traditional physics which built whole industries on knowing the difference between Heat and Light. I can only suggest that you try to get back to that by understanding the light we get from the Sun isn’t the heat we’re feeling from it.
NASA used to teach it: “Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared. … Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
The AGW trick here is very simple, it has given the property of thermal infrared to shortwave, how you come to grips with this I don’t know. It’s getting back an appreciation of the great differences between wavelengths and what they can and can’t do which AGW has taken out to make it appear ‘all radiation is the same’.
I often put up the challenge to explain how blue light from the Sun heats the water of the oceans because water is a transparent medium to visible in the real world and this can be readily seen for the lie it is, because, the meme is that ‘all electromagnetic energy is the same and all on being absorbed creates heat’, and if you realise that water can’t be heated at all because it’s not absorbed..
..then at the very least you have to take that energy out of the ‘shortwave in heats land and oceans’..
Remember – “Although infrared radiation is not visible, humans can sense it – as heat. Put your hand next to a hot oven if you want to experience infrared radiation “first-hand!”
http://www.gemini.edu/public/infrared.html
10
Sorry, but you are wrong. Visible light is absorbed by water. Maybe not by pure water, but certainly by the stuff in the sea. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t get darker and darker the deeper you go – which it does. So whatever the mechanism, visible light is absorbed by water.
01
That’s some interesting logic there John.
Firstly you state your conclusion. “Visible light is absorbed by water”.
Then you identify a possible exception to your conclusion. “Maybe not by pure water”
Then you talk about something other than the exception. “…the stuff in the sea”.
Then you repeat your conclusion. “visible light is absorbed by water”
10
MaxL
On this occasion John is correct!…..perhaps you should read what he wrote more carefully.
You might also care to study this graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Water_absorption_spectrum.png
Note that it uses non-linear log scales and that it claims that water is not totally transparent.
Additionally the seas have all sorts of tiny biota, dissolved minerals and suspended muck that make the water far from pure and clear.
If you have the time I recommend that you chase the source of this graph back through all its references, however, you will need a lot of time to do so
00
Hi Bob,
Thank you for the advice that I should read more carefully. However I was commenting on the logic of John’s argument, not whether he is right or wrong.
On the transparency of pure water, I’m not surprised to find that it’s not totally transparent to all frequencies in the visible spectrum. Is anything totally transparent to all frequencies, visible or otherwise?
One cannot argue that visible light may not be absorbed by pure water and then give as evidence, the transparency of water that is impure.
00
Well, Max, seeing as Myrrh was specifically talking about, “…the water of the oceans…”, then John’s comment was perfectly apt.
“Pure water” was mentioned by John as a possible exception to the generic truth that the water of the oceans absorbs light.
You seem to have misread his post.
10
John is correct here — if visible light weren’t absorbed by sea water (meaning the totality of stuff in ocean water), then it would continue unabated as you went deeper.
Anyone who has ever dived in the ocean knows that visible light only penetrates so far — it gets darker with depth.
Since we all believe (I hope) in the Law of Conservation of Energy, the energy of the absorbed light must go somewhere — it would be strange indeed if it didn’t end up as thermal heating, like absorbed radiation does in every other situation.
00
Thank you Craig and BobC for your polite feedback.
I realize that Myrrh had made a statement which I disagreed with, ie, “Water is a transparent medium for visible light, this means, visible light is not absorbed. How then is visible energy heating the ocean when it can’t…”.
Pure water is transparent to visible light, but his conclusion that the oceans can’t therefore be heated by visible light is invalid. He is trying to equate pure (transparent) water with sea water.
Also, John made the statement that “Visible light is absorbed by water.”, and then identified the possible exception of pure water.
I don’t disagree with John’s conclusion relative to sea water, I was simply questioning whether his logic was sound. Both Myrrh and John’s statements, as I read them, are incorrect. Should I have questioned Myrrh about his assertion, probably yes, but John’s logic seemed more blatant.
Again, thank you both for your feedback. If you still think I’ve misinterpreted John’s post I’d appreciate your comments.
00
If you go scuba diving below 5 meters, you won’t see the colour of red fish unless you shine a torch on them as all the red visible from sunlight is absorbed by that depth. Go down to 50 meters and you’ll lose the orange and yellow too. After 110 meters down all that’s left is blue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba_diving#Light_underwater
00
Fantastic observation, Fred. You demonstrate that longer wavelengths are absorbed by water (or by whatever is in water) more readily than shorter wavelengths.
It might be worth noting that the energy on the photons in visible light increases from 1.7eV in the Red to 3.3eV in the Violet.
Even shorter wavelengths (where you get sunburn from) increase to 120eV at 10nm.
10
Truthseeker; just read your comment. I have to disagree with what you say – I am a skeptic not a warmist but I know beyond doubt that there is most certainly a green house effect. Without trying to get into the details of the spectrscopy, just look at the Nibmus plot of emission to space. There is a huge notch in the emission spectrum at 14.7 microns. What causes that if not the green house effect? There are of course other regions of reduced emission due to water vapour as well.
The warmist argument is not wrong from start to finish, if it was it would have been debunked years ago. Rather I liken it to the following scenario. You come home with a friend and find the house is really cold. Your fried says you can fix that by lighting a candle. You point out that a candle is not going to warm the house. He responds that clearly a candle releases heat, don’t believe me? stick your finger in the flame; and if you release heat inside the house it will warm the house so he is right and you are wrong. In absolute terms yes but in practical terms the amount of warming is so trivial it might as well be zero. That’s about how I see the CAGW issue, rising CO2 causes some warming (about 0.8C per doubling before feedback by my calculations) but there is strong negative feedback in the climate system which reduces that to an insignificant level (assuming the 0.8C was significant in the first place).
10
Michael, I think that you and many other people in this area make the same mistake regarding spectroscopy when looking at the Earth from space. The “notch” or “bite” that you can see is a raidiative effect and you cannot make the assumption that this has a thermal effect. Using your candle analogy, any actual effect that an individual gas has when talking about temperature is clearly not measurable and therefore it can be ignored. I am still to find anyone that can deal with the simple point that, apart from a very minor variation at the cloud layer, the ratio of the observed temperature of the atmosphere of Venus to the standard model of the Earth atmosphere at the same levels of air pressure, is very precisely defined by the ratio of the difference of the distances to the sun for the two planets. There is no other variable that matters a damn.
The warmist argument has been debunked for years, it is just that the voice of reason has been shouted down by the voice of money and politics.
10
Thanks for your responses Truthseeker. It all makes perfect sense to me. The pressure and temperature data from Venus is in excellent agreement with that from Earth. I have never liked the “greenhouse effect” term.
One difficulty I have is the notion of an Earth without an atmosphere. What would it really be like? Not the Moon, surely, seeing as all that water exists. There would be no vegetation, but there would still be lots of ice at the poles as there would still be seasons. So I reckon the albedo would be lower than that claimed by Michael Hammer above. But it really is a pointless notion anyway because of the presence of water and Earth’s size.
10
No Ian.
It is the atmosphere that provides the vehicle for the oceans to lose heat to space via evaporation and convection. Without the atmosphere we have the oceans would have boiled away long ago regardless of “atmospheric pressures” or the lack thereof.
The atmosphere does not “warm” the planet like a blanket. Together with the oceans it is a giant evaporative air conditioner that cools the planet during sunlight hours and slows down (via water vapour and clouds) the cooling of the planet during the periods of darkness.
It really is THAT simple.
Everything else is, as others have pointed out, debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
00
I agree with you MV. I prefer the idea of the atmosphere being a cooling device rather than a blanket.
I still don’t see the point of even considering the Earth as we know it without an atmosphere though.
Also, if the oceans had boiled away then the temperature without the atmosphere is NOT -18C, is it?
00
Ian.. if there is no atmosphere, water would evaporate. If you have a strong enough vacuum you can evaporate water at very low temperatures (almost at freezing iirc)
Now here’s the reality. The evaporation of water in air is all about solubility products, driven by temperature, pressure and concentration differences, that is why water evaporates at temperatures less than 100C. (I think I have mentioned before, that differences drive all actions within the atmposphere)
If you increase the pressure, you increase the boiling temperature. Decrease the pressure, decrease the boiling point.
Dry air will evaporate water more readily than warm air at the same temp and pressure..
Its all about differences, and nature trying to balance those difference.
00
but from -18C.. .. that’s a curly one, and I haven’t got time to work it out..
I’m guessing siblimation. ie straight from solid to gas
What does happen if you put ice in a vacuum?……………………… (no, not in a vacuum cleaner, dummy)
Since Mars has ice, but no apparent water, I’m still guessing sublimation.
00
Well I can’t reply to you directly Andy so I’ll reply here.
Yes, the boiling point would be lower with no air pressure. Ice in a vacuum? Well comets are a pretty good approximation, and the material sublimates and forms the coma and tail. Water ice would be part of that.
I guess I was thinking of that book “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman which I read in 2008 before I’d ever heard of James Hanson or the IPCC. It theorises what would happen if humans (only) instantaneously disappeared from the planet. Similarly if the atmosphere just went away, what would happen? Everything depending on it would die of course. Fish may survive for awhile though. I think a new atmosphere would appear because the Earth’s gravity would keep the gases close to it.
00
These two videos bring a different perspective of this argument and put a different quantities on that ratio and cloud layer problem.
I like the way the guy seems to have to fight back the tears in the second video(5 of 5).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uFJK4wbWMg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSChap64n40
Found thanks to Louis Hissink.
Will make a lot more sense if you have read this.
http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Worlds_in_Collision.html?id=FJst27kSVBgC
00
All IR radiation from the surface is absorbed by the lowest 20m of atmosphere. The satellites are only measuring the temperature at the very top of the atmosphere.
NOTE: temperature is simply the wavelengths of light. It is not the HEAT of the atmosphere.
00
In other words, Michael, you agree the consensus on climate science is absolutely correct in every detail except that you believe in:
– 20% less direct warming per doubling of CO2
– the feedbacks are negative
The problem with your 2nd belief, though, is that there is no cooling signal detectable in the current patterns of climate change and no association between rising CO2 and any global cooling.
There is however, good evidence of stratospheric cooling, which doesn’t really fit in with what you believe.
A lot of what many people believe is currently true will obviously be shown to be untrue or inaccurate. Your assertions aren’t exactly in the thick of the Bell curve of belief, though, so I’d be happy to put money on them being proven wrong sooner rather than later.
10
Michael Hammer,
Your radiative argument has been totally destroyed by this excellent and detailed analysis.
Gaseous composition of the atmosphere has no effect on the temperature of it. Vapour (water vapour on Earth and methane vapour on Venus) has a mild and measurable effect, purely because vapour is much denser than gas.
QED
10
Totally off topic I know but an interesting snippet to consider. We talk about the surface heating the air above it which starts convection carrying heat up into the upper atmosphere. Now how does the surface heat the air above it? Is it by conduction? Conduction between a solid and a gas is pretty slow. I suspect there is a much more potent mechanism. The surface radiates and the radiation at the green house gas wavelengths is absorbed almost immediately by the atmosphere (within a meter or two) and it this energy that heats the air.
Completely trivial issue of course but it is interesting to speculate on. If true, it would mean without any ghg there would be much less heating of the atmosphere so much less convection, much less rainfall, much less global circulation, much less energy transported from the tropic to the poles so greater temperature difference between poles and equator etc. A very different world. I suspect we are very fortunate to have green house gases in our atmosphere.
00
“Conduction between a solid and a gas is pretty slow.”
The conduction happening inside my Air Conditioner doesn’t seem all that slow to me.
00
Not really. A car radiator can easily transfer several hundred thousand joules of energy per second to the atmosphere.
00
Hmm Bananabender several hundred thousand joules per second. 100,000 joules per second = 100,000 watts equivalent to 134 Horsepower. Several times 134 horsepower? Car engines used in boats require significantly higher capacity cooling systems to prevent overheating than used for the same engine in a car – intermittent versus continuous power output. Then again lets not forget the very large surface area deliberately created in a car radiator to facilitate such transfer plus the fact of forced air circulation which dramatically increases the rate of energy transfer and a temperature differential of close to 100C. Disconnect the fan, leave the car stationary, rev the engine and see how long it takes to overheat. Similar arguments (lower deta T of course)also apply to air conditioners. Non the less I accept conduction occurs and plays a part. As I stated I was speculating (not stating a proven fact) whether absorption of energy radiated from the surface plays a role and is it major or minor. If it is major, what are the implications. I accept you disagree. It would be interesting to see if the energy transfer from a warm surface to overlying gas was as fast using say dry nitrogen as it is for air with water vapour and CO2 present.
00
Friendly note: He didn’t say how large the radiator was or how big the engine. A race car can generate over 1000 HP and at 30% lost to coolant………
Interesting to note what would happen if the radiator were turned horizontal in your scenario.
By the way, what would happen if the radiator were positioned in a 100% co2 filled space?
00
CO2 is a coolant. Was used as a refigerant before more efficient CFCs were developed (the same CFCs that are supposed to be much more potent greenhouse gasses), so I assume CO2 would cool the radiator better than plain jane air.
00
These are acts that reduce the air flow and show that you know that conduction is not the problem.
That would help a lot!
What would happen if you rode a motorcycle with an air cooled motor and had no radiator at all?
00
Interesting theory. Now devise an experiment to show if this is true. I know some people who could run it.
00
.
No.
Most of the “surface” of the planet (71%) is water, and most of the transfer of energy between the “surface” and the “atmosphere” is via phase change from water to water vapour – that is, evaporation NOT radiation or conduction.
There is no “secret ingredient”.
00
It would seem to me that heat transfer to O2 and N2 molecules would have to be by conduction, as they don’t absorb radiation of the wavelength emitted by hot ground. But of course MV is right – add liquid water into the equation.
None the less, in a totally dry desert, the air can be hot, and it needs a mechanism to get hot – and there is no water there. So I’d go with conduction and convection. Molecules in the air near the hot surface are speeded up by collisions with the hot surface, so they are hotter. This hot air near the surface rises, and is replaced by cooler air from above, which in turn is warmed.
10
Congratulations on your discovery of some actual physical principles, John.
Of course this same mechanism is taught to every student pilot during ground school instruction in aviation meteorology. And it’s easily demonstrated by a short flight on the right day.
00
THIS WHAT THE COMMUNIST NSW PREMIER & GOVERNMENT WANTS TO DO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pledge to triple wind and solar power in NSW
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/pledge-to-triple-wind-and-solar-power-in-nsw-20120907-25ik3.html
[snip angry shouting, though point taken that this is worth looking at -Jo]
SHAME SHAME SHAME !!!!!!!!!!
[I can understand why you’re angry Angry, but please stay on topic. There are other threads to which these types of comments can be posted. Mod oggi]
00
.
Sorry Angry, but you must be wrong.
Everybody here knows voting Liberal in the next election will mean an end to all this “climate change” madness.
That’s why Abbott and the Liberals have scrapped their commitment to an ETS with a floor price of $15.00 a tonne, and the even more ludicrous and economically damaging commitment to the Renewable Energy Target (RET) of a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020.
.
. . . oh wait . .
00
Craig Thomas asks at September 7, 2012 at 1:29 pm
“Why don’t we ask Bryan?
Bryan, why did Cao’s paper immediately remind you of G&T?”
Well both papers find that 33K is a random meaningless number.
The people who still claim it is relevant choose to ignore the fact that several of the conditions used to derive the 33K are not met.
The G&T paper was peer reviewed in an international journal read by physicists.
The only comment paper that attempted a G&T rebuttal was by chemist Josh Halpern and 5 others.
One of the others Joel Shore later admitted that the Halpern paper was in error when it said that heat transfer could spontaneously occur from a colder to a warmer surface.
10
Cao has made a great contribution by pointing out a problem with the calculation of the size of the green House Effect. One problem I have is that the emissivity of the earth is simplistically calculated on a supposed average temperature of 15C. Given the extreme sensitivity of the radiative energy (Tx4), shouldn’t the emission of a hot desert region far outweigh the effect of a corresponding cool region. That should invalidate calculations based on simple average temperatures.
Peter C
10
Each point on the Earth has it’s own temperature and albedo. It is therefore impossible to calculate the average temperature of the Earth .
It gets even more complex because snow, for example, reflects nearly all visible light and absorbs almost all IR radiation. Snow will also sublime without melting at high altitudes
00
Every contributor to this blog is of a different height, weight, girth, and density, so it is therefore impossible to calculate the average BMI for all of us.
Seriously, BB, what are you on about?
“Professor, to solve this equation, we need to calculate the average albedo of a planetary body”
“Impossible. It can’t be done. Give up now. Let’s quit the Dept. of Physics and all go and get jobs as bus drivers.”
“What? Why?”
“A bloke calling himself Bananabender on a blog says it’s impossible”
“oh, OK then”.
10
Dr John Nicol presented a plausible, quantified explanation (2010)of the “greenhouse” effect and of the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. He addressed the relevant principles of spectroscopy and thermodynamics in reaching the conclusion that more CO2 has little or no effect on surface temperature.
Nicol’s conclusions together with the useful results Svensmark is getting at CERN lead me to the conclusion that 22nd century earthlings will be amused by the carbon tax antics of their 21st century forebears. Unfortunately we have to live through the misguided writhings of our current crop of scientifically undernourished politicians.
00
RoHa:
“Is this paper being prepared for publication in one of the journals?”
Indeed Roha, a reasonable question, but as I have noted before, Joanne often fails to answer the most simple questions. It’s highly frustrating!
00
Bananabender @ September 7,2:29 pm,
Quickly; I’m a simple soul; could you please elaborate on what you assert?
Perhaps you should put aside your chemistry and study quantum theory.
Are you claiming that only GHG molecules are raised in kinetic energy level (temperature) as a consequence of photon absorption (EMR) even if only momentarily and without any secondary effects?
Since GHG’s are only a tiny proportion of the atmosphere, how could there be any detectable GH effect if they are the only molecules affected? Or are you claiming that O2 & N2 molecules remain cold and thus there is NO detectable GH effect?
You have not heard of thermalization theorized from quantum theory molecular collisions? Wow!
Molecules of O2 or N2 are whizzing around all over the place and can surely collide with GHG molecules resulting in two-way changes in KE!
I think that it has been demonstrated in lab that there are grounds for thinking that there is a GH effect!
Puzzled
00
Are we talking about the greenhouse effect, considered as a sort of barrier at the top of the troposphere (yet to be empirically observed) and the thermostatic effect of the whole atmospheric gas mix from the ground up? – Just asking.
00
As I have explained below to imagine that you can transfer quantised resonance energy in dribs and drabs by collisions with symmetrical molecules such as O2 and N2 indicates a severe failing in fundamental physics’ knowledge. The fact that this crackpot concept is taught in the psudo-sciences like climate, meteorology and environmental is why the IPCC ‘consensus’ is so badly wrong.
Please go and tell whoever you got this nonsensical idea from that they are wrong and they should consult a proper physics’ text because no proper scientist would get away with this rubbish.
PS there is no proof in the lab of direct thermalisation. What Tyndall observed was the absorption which does occur. However, last year Nahle showed using a Mylar balloon [which did not warm above detectability] that the apparent thermalisation shown in PET and glass bottles is indirect as the pseudo-scattered energy is absorbed at the walls. Another part of the heating is from the constant volume meaning a rise in temperature because of increased pressure. Slacken the cap and heating is much less.
You must realise that the IPCC ‘consensus’ is based on 6 basic mistakes in physics and has been absurd from 1981 when Hansen claimed the present GHE is 3.7 times higher than reality. This was unprofessional on his part because he is a competent physicist.
My work shows why it is much lower and fixed by the first ~1000 ppmV water vapour.
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Turnedoutnice,
In the dim recesses of my mind I seem to recall that the hotter a gas is, the faster the molecules whizz around and that it has been demonstrated in the lab that for a given temperature individual molecules have varying speeds distributed as under a bell curve. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that these variations are the result of collisions although of course this is quantum theory, a term that I prefer to the more presumptive quantum mechanics. I do have a difficulty in understanding how molecules “bounce” off each other like in the imperfect analogy of billiard balls, but remain satisfied with the theory of collisions.
Havaniceday
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Yes, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. However the absorbed resonance energy can only be transferred as a whole in a collision with another GHG with exactly the right energy sink. Simultaneously, that quantum may transfer to extra kinetic energy for both molecules. This is low probability and in the meantime the energy has left that bit of the atmosphere as a photon which randomly walks by similar processes to be absorbed at heterogeneous interfaces or goes to space.
The reason is that components in a statistical continuum have have no memory. Look up ‘Gibb’s Paradox’ and you will come across the ‘Principle of Indistinguishability’. So, there can be no direct thermalisation, only indirect. What’s more the IR absorbed is only a fifth of that claimed because of the stupidly wrong ‘back radiation’ argument.
In the cloud that mainly thermal IR is converted to grey body energy, much of it in the ‘atmospheric window’, a cooling mechanism and the DOWN emissivity above the cloud level falls to zero as height increases.
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As I understand it, the CO2 molecule absorbs energy at precise frequencies because of the vibrational modes inherent in the C-O bond. This energy does not affect the kinetic energy of the CO2 molecule and therefore has no effect on the temperature of the atmosphere in which the CO2 exists. The bond energy relaxes to its ground state by releasing a quantum of energy at precisely the same frequency as it absorbed it. (Water vapour behaves in a similar manner).
In a closed vessel, the released quanta will probably be absorbed at the surface and thus the surface will warm. The atmosphere is not a closed vessel, and I visualise the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere as a scattering phenomen, driven by rapid absorption and re-emission of energy as the quanta travel (at the speed of light between absorption events) from the surface of the earth to outer space.
Of course a very large contributor to heat transfer earth to the upper atmosphere is via the water cycle from the oceans (70% of the earth’surface.)
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Turnrdoutnice,
You seem to want to change the subject. If the bell-curve distribution of molecule velocity is not a consequence of collisions, then do you have a different hypothesis?
If that is too hard, perhaps instead you could advise the price of cheese today?
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Bob: as pointed out by Ronaldo, the bell curve is the kinetic energy distribution. The absorbed IR quanta are internal energy. The only way the latter can form part of the bell curve is by a tortuous route. The IPCC’s idea of 1000 collisions is simply impossible.
The next stage of the argument is the pseudo-scattering restoring Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium, with absorption in clouds. The latter gives part of the output energy as the atmospheric window so clouds disperse atmospheric thermal energy to space.
There is no possibility that the ‘GHG blanket’ can exist. See below for the real GHE.
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I’m having trouble finding where this paper was peer-reviewed and published. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
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Why would you presume it has been published in formal peer review? All the evidence (i.e. this blog entry) is telling me that it hasn’t. But it is published here, and you’re free to knock yourself out reviewing it.
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Thanks for the offer Dave, but I prefer to have those that actually publish science review this “paper” (assuming it ever gets to the point of being published). The web is full of self-proclaimed experts making grand claims, and to debunk them I would have to spend countless hours. Firstly to learn the science, then to examine their claims, then to explain their errors.
The sensible thing to do is take heed of the consensus and watch as new science, properly peer reviewed, builds upon our knowledge.
Jumping, as Joanne has done with glee, and with admitted ignorance of whether Jinan is right or not, is not a sensible approach.
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Obviously by “peer-reviewed” you mean like the recent Gergis “peer-reviewed” paper that survived two days on the internet before being discredited by a high school student and withdrawn.
Or maybe you are referring to the likes of the more recent Lewandowsky peer-reviewed paper, which, despite being less that a week old, is already the subject of multiple (challenged) FOIA requests, and at least two formal professional misconduct complaints to the UWA.
Climate Science Peer Review.
The review you have when you’re not having a review.
Perhaps we should just call it a “Claytons” and be done with it.
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No memoryvault, I meant peer-reviewed as in the hundreds of thousands of papers that do not get debunked. But thanks for your few examples.
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The REALLY scary thing is I think you actually believe that
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You’re right, I underestimate, probably an order of magnitude or more. For example …
http://ukpmc.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/european-research-funders-throw-weight.html
Science build upon years and years of peer-reviewed research. Web blogger science is no substitute.
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Hi Chris
“biomedical and life sciences research.”
I see there is NO MENTION of “Climate Science” ?
KK
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KinkyKeith, the peer-review process is not limited to climate science.
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No, but the debate we are having is.
Your first quite ridiculous assumption is that all 1.7 million papers are about “climate science”.
There are, for instance, over 20,000 published papers just on the effects of statins.
Your second, even more ridiculous assumption is that ALL the published papers on “climate science”, however many or few there might be, are all supportive of your cultist, catastrophic, “end of the world” religious point of view, and that is simply not the case.
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memoryvault, I said there were hundreds of thousands of papers – I did not say that they were related to climate science. You wish to cast doubt on the peer-review process, but as I have pointed out, your few examples are a tiny fraction of all papers.
My comment still stands, the peer-review process, although not perfect, will by far produce better science than having any random person on the internet give their inexperienced opinion.
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Hi Chris
Go away
You are what has been termed in the past a spacer.
You have nothing to offer.
Go and offer it somewhere else.
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Chris,
You might care to visit this website. It is disturbing just how many publications make retractions,especially in bio-medicine:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/
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There are few things more entertaining than watching a cultist squirm in the web of his own deceit.
You write:
At no time did I “cast doubt on the peer review process” per se. What I wrote was:
Note the highlighted words “Climate Science” Chris?
I think I was pretty clear and specific about what I was “casting doubt” on.
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@KinkyKeith – no.
@Bob Fernley-Jones – retraction is a healthy part of science. It’s good that people can understand their mistakes. If only web blog science had the same healthy process.
@memoryvault – so you think the peer-review for climate science is different to that of other disciplines? Nice conspiracy theory you have going there! Now you just need to support your claim and show why we should treat web blogger science on par with the peer-reviewed science.
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It isn’t called “pal-review” for nothing.
Here is a link to a whole collection of emails about the “pal-review” process, written by the “pal-reviewers” themselves. Take your pick.
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er, it’s not called Pal-review. Adding a link to the old emails, which have been repeatedly and independantly found to be innocuous, and saying “take your pick” seems a lazy way to try and support your case.
But let’s follow your lead for a moment; I scroll randomly towards the end of the list and pick this :
http://www.assassinationscience.com/climategate/1/FOIA/mail/1255095172.txt
But it does not support your case as to why web blogger science is a valid as peer-reviewed. In fact it’s got nothing to do with our discussion at all.
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Pal review … hilarious!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pal-review.htm
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Interesting book MV
KK
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MY CASE????
Chris, the ONLY person who has used the term “web blogger science” in any context whatsoever on this thread is YOU.
Absolutely bloody true – which raises the obvious question, why did YOU introduce and why have YOU repeated it three times in previous comments?
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Here is the only “case” I made:
The state of “climate science
peerpal-review” has become something of a standing joke amongst both the scientific community at large, and the public generally. You can deny it all you like, but you can’t change it.00
@memoryvault, I call it “web blogger science” because that’s what Jinan is conducting. It’s not peer reviewed.
The only place I see the “peer(pal)-review” term used in on anti-science website.
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What you “call it” is bloody irrelevant. The relevant thing is you trying to attribute YOUR strawman to me.
Let me repeat what you recently posted:
So the question remains; why did you attempt to attribute to me, an irrelevant strawman argument created entirely by yourself?
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Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, and even your new-found (or more correctly, manufactured) hero, Muller, not to mention Lomberg, have all used the term “pal-reviewed” to describe what happens in “climate science”.
These people are all “anti-science”??
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It really gets to me Chris that you can be so mean heated as to support this patent waste of money clamoring for “Climate Action”. For the record which of the following statements do you believe.
1. I Believe we should use our food for fuel and let the poor go hungry
2. I believe we should spend 100 Billion dollars on green schemes instead of on cures to cancer, malaria, ameliorating world hunger and other morbidities
3. I am comfortable with Pensioners freezing to death because they cant afford to run their heaters
4. I am comfortable with Pensioners dying in heatwaves because they can’t afford to run their airconditioners
5. I Believe that spending one Quadrillion dollars a year globally to mitigate temperature rise (using Australia’s carbon tax economics) by 2 degrees in 2100 is achievable and is a good investment – (hint look up Global GDP)
6. The last 100PPM rise in temperature caused 0.7 deg warming, I expect the next 100PPM rise to cause more than that warming in spite of the logarithmic relationship between CO2 and H2O atmospheric concentration.
7. I believe that decreased CO2, resultant decreases in Photosynthesis by plants and resultant reduced Oxygen production is good for the human race.
8. I believe that burying the worlds atmospheric oxygen in massive geosequestration schemes is a good idea.
Please answer so we understand your moral standpoint
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I’ll assume you meant “mean hearted”?
No I’m not mean hearted, but I also don’t believe in basing your actions upon web blogger science and ignoring mainstream science.
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I have concluded there can be no atmospheric GHE and that the spectroscopy data purporting to show 3.7 W/m^2 ‘forcing’ for a doubling of [CO2] is (a) a wrong interpretation and (b) is irrelevant because the earth’s surface does not emit that IR.
1. IR absorption. There is no doubt that IR energy is absorbed by GHGs. However, it cannot be directly thermalised. This us because at the same time as the ‘photon’ is absorbed, an equal energy photon is thermally emitted restoring Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium. This the GHGs act as an energy transfer medium.
The IPCC ‘consensus’ claim that the absorbed energy is lost in dribs and drabs shows a total failure to understand basic physics. Because this energy is resonance in the molecule, it can only be transferred in one go to another GHG. It is possible that the energy will be converted entirely to kinetic energy but that is a very low probability event compared with the pseudo-scattering. Hence most thermalisation must be indirect at clouds which translates much of that energy to the atmospheric window.
2. The real GHE. The fact that the earth’s albedo is ~0.7 should not be taken as proving the Earth radiates IR as if it were a grey body. The Energy budget shows that IR radiation is but 40% of the heat loss and of that only 23 W/m^2 is absorbed in the lower atmosphere. The issue here is that connection and radiation are coupled, from the same sites. To get radiation to exceed convection/evaporation, you must increase temperature to >100 °C. All process engineers know this. Most physicists, obsessed with the text book which leaves out the hard bit like convection, imagine radiation has to be much more than reality because they forget the mechanism of the conversion of kinetic energy.
So, the de facto emissivity is really ~0.16. Why is this so? The answer is that the GHGs which radiate in their bands back to the surface, switch off emission at the surface. Again, process engineers know this because if you have two bodies at the same temperature, the de facto emissivity in the IR band is zero. <b<Yes, zero.
Do this for all the self-absorbing GHGs [there’s an obscure bit of physics here which you derive in a similar way to this paper] and the IR and the convection can only be emitted from the atmospheric window and the unsaturated side-bands, mostly water vapour. So, there can be no CO2-AGW because its IR is not emitted. Furthermore, humidity switches off CO2 IR emission: http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/07/epic-warmist-fail-modtran-doubling-co2-will-do-nothing-to-increase-long-wave-radiation-from-sky/
To summarise; the IPCC science has 6 physics’ errors. This paper is a good attempt at explaining some but its still off the mark because the real GHE must be because GHG band IR is switched off at the surface and what you see at TOA is self-absorption [no water vapour at TOA means the CO2 an emit its IR].
A corollary is that the 23 W/m^2 absorbed IR is in non self-absorbing water vapour side-bands.
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PS readers must accept that my argument is based on the measured IR emission in the Trenberth energy budget, 63 W/m^2. The claimed 333 W/m^2 ‘back radiation’ is phoney physics from meteorology. It does not exist because in reality the IR which is supposedly emitted from the cooler body according to S-B is annihilated by equal and opposite IR from the hotter body meaning the net radiation is the only bit which can do thermodynamic work.
The poor idiots in the pseudo-sciences imagine that just because a pyrgeometer is calibrated in W/m^2, it measures this radiation. However, it’s an artefact because of the radiation shield behind the detector cuts off radiation from the other direction which, if that is from the hotter body, makes the real energy transfer by radiation from the atmosphere zero.
The makers of these instruments specifically point out that you need two instruments back to back to measure net energy flow [bottom of the page]: http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx
This more than anything else illustrates serial incompetence in climate science of such a level that in my view it must have been a deliberate fraud by insiders from the early 1980s.
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PPS This APS document picks up on the emissivity error: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
To get the energy to balance [for 14 °C] they calculate in eq 14 that you would need an emissivity of 0.76 for the lower atmosphere. But this illustrates the absurdity of the ‘back radiation’ concept in that if you were to change the atmospheric emissivity, you also have to change it for the Earth’s surface. Because convection and radiation are coupled, this means there is no analytical solution to this part of the problem.
The IPCC climate models are a total waste of time and money, the biggest scientific fraud in History.
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The IPCC doesn’t develop climate models.
I’d say criticising people on account of responsibilities they don’t hold is a waste of time.
Incidentally, if somebody’s climate model forecast 2012 would be the coldest year since 1952, would you say that model was a good one, or a bad one?
Be interested in your comments on the models used by Roy Spencer, while you are at it.
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“without any ghg there would be … much less rainfall”
Michael, I suspect that without any GHG, including water, there would be no rainfall.
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Ahh Steve T – touche. Of course you are absolutely right.
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Ah the true beauty of skeptics! There is no consensus but we love the truth and will admit error.
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Wait a minute, section 2.1 isn’t correct, N2 and O2 are NOT white bodies.
Heating up the atmosphere pretty much means heating up N2 and O2, the most common compounds in the atmosphere. When CO2 or H2O absorb a photon in the infrared spectrum , the energy gain is expressed as kinetic energy in the form of rotational, vibrational and vibronic motions. The amplitude of these motions is what determines the temperature of the molecule.
A photon is then emitted in the infrared, but at a lower frequency, that is, lower energy level. The net energy gain is the temperature gain of the molecule.
The recoil of that photon also sets the CO2 or H2O molecule in motion through the gas, where it will collide with other molecules, mostly N2 and then O2 molecules, because of their abundance. This is the Kinetic Theory of Gases.
When they collide, the N2 or O2 molecule will gain some of the energy of the CO2 molecule, which will lose a proportional amount of energy. The temperature of the N2 or O2 molecule will go up; the temperature of the CO2 molecule will go down. This will happen throughout the gas until thermal equilibrium is reached, and all molecules have the same temperature.
The now heated N2 and O2 molecules will then emit some of their higher temperature in the form of infrared. This will happen until they reach absolute zero.
The phrase that N2 and O2 do not emit at any temperature is completely wrong. They do at EVERY temperature excepting absolute zero. N2 and O2 do not absorb infrared from emitting CO2 and H2O, but they do absorb kinetic energy, a portion of which is radiated in the infrared.
Different gases do not have different temperatures because of their radiative properties; they have different radiative properties at a given temperature. They only have different temperatures if the gas mixture as a whole is not in thermal equilibrium. The temperature of the whole gas mixture is relevant, and a given layer of air can and should be treated as a single object applicable to the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
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nice outline
KK
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Correction: the resonant vibration of an asymmetrical molecule does not contribute to kinetic energy therefore temperature. Whilst the photon emitted by a GHG molecule will be slightly different in energy than the absorbed energy, the difference is small.
O2 and N2 do not emit in the infra-red because there is no mechanism for this. They will emit from their electronic valence bands and this is very low at atmospheric temperatures.
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I’ve been looking up data on carbon dioxide. A TRACE gas (0.04%) in the atmosphere. What can a carbon dioxide molecule do? Not much. It can absorb or emitt radiation at 2.7, 4.3 and 15 um. (also 1.9 um slightly) Radiation at 2.7 and 4.3 microns is from the SUN ONLY!!! The carbon dioxide absorbs energy in those two bands preventing that energy reaching the surface.
But the 15 micron band is certainly available from the earth’s surface at all times, day and night. The question is; does carbon dioxide absorb any of this radiation? Umm… not really. The carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, up to the altitude of 9 kilometres, is already too warm to absorb much of that radiation. You see, peak radiation at 15 microns is -80C (yes minus!). Look up radiative heat transfer.
BUT, carbon dioxide is radiating at 15 microns because most of it is way ABOVE -80C. But this is NOT ‘back radiation’. It is perfectly natural.
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turnrdoutnice
Your analysis of emission/absorption of 15um photons would be correct if the gas sample was pure CO2.
However the atmosphere is roughly 99% N2 and O2 which have very limited (almost non existent) IR activity.
However they gain KE through collisions with CO2.
Also typically the ratio of H2O molecules/CO2 molecules is 40.
H20 is even more IR active than CO2 particularly in wavelengths > 15um.
These are longer wavelength, lower energy, hence more probable events.
Thus the 15um band thermalises the air and the ongoing radiative wavelengths is shifted to longer wavelengths.
This all checks out with Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics.
Even more convincing is the large ‘bite’ out of the outgoing atmospheric spectrum around 15um as seen by satellite.
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CO2 cannot impart kinetic energy to symmetrical molecules. There is no mechanism to do so and kinetic effects take over, giving pseudo-scattering and thermalisation at clouds and bare aerosols.
As for the TOA spectrum, it’s simply self-absorption of thermal IR. The proof is subtle. See this: http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/07/epic-warmist-fail-modtran-doubling-co2-will-do-nothing-to-increase-long-wave-radiation-from-sky/
Water vapour above ~10% RH at ambient stops CO2 emitting its band IR. So, the fact that you see CO2 band absorption at TOA means it is thermally emitted and self-absorbed from the dry upper atmosphere, thereby disproving the idea that it’s due to IR from the Earth’s surface being absorbed.
The real GHE is from turning off GHG band IR emission at the surface. There is no ‘GHG blanket’.
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turnrdoutnice says
“CO2 cannot impart kinetic energy to symmetrical molecules.”
That’s a rather improbable claim you are making.
For instance Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner say the radiative effects of CO2 in theatmosphere are NEGLIGABLE however at the temperature of furnaces they must be taken into account
“Falsification Of the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effects within the frame Of Physics” by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner; International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) pages 275-364.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
However you are saying that any thermalisation is impossible!
As proof you offer a model run on a computer to back your assertion.
Surely you realise that the mess we are in is down to over reliance on computer models.
Get back to real experimental evidence based conclusions.
Read the reference given to Professor Schack in link above.
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But G & T are straight out wrong.
(You are turning into a blog thread bomber today with little worthwhile to say.Please refrain from posting short one line phrases that is unsupported and meaningless) CTS
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Sorry, my bad.
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A CO2 molecule that has absorbed an IR photon cannot transfer that energy to a symmetrical model directly because that internal, non-kinetic energy has to transferred all at once.
The only way to transfer it to kinetic energy is to do a transfer to another GHG molecule with exactly the right energy state, then for that energy to be transferred during to collision to extra kinetic energy of both GHG molecules involved in the collision or perhaps with a a third molecule, an even rarer event.
During the time the activated GHG molecule is around before the internal energy is ejected, another activated GHG molecule ejects the same energy photon in a random direction, restoring LTE so no thermalisation.
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turnrdoutnice says
“A CO2 molecule that has absorbed an IR photon cannot transfer that energy to a symmetrical model directly because that internal, non-kinetic energy has to transferred all at once.”
It DOESNT have to be directly!!!!
A CO2 molecule can have its vibrational mode activated by COLLISION.
Imagine a single CO2 molecule with 100 N2 molecules.
When activated the CO2 molecule will have reduced the average KE of the N2 molecules.
Likewise the CO2 can be de-activted by collision with the energy shared out among the N2 molecule increasing the average temperature slightly.
This is what is termed as thermalisation.
Now add a H2O molecule.
Since the H2O molecule requires less collision energy to activate some vibrational modes it will occur more often than the CO2 activation.
This longer wavelenght more frequent event supplants the likelihood of CO2 15um emission.
Thus the 15um band thermalises the air and the ongoing radiative wavelengths is shifted to longer wavelengths.
Increase the CO2,H2O and N2 and O2 to atmospheric values.
Checks it out with Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics.
Even more convincing is the large ‘bite’ out of the outgoing atmospheric spectrum around 15um as seen by satellite
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The energy received by the co2 molecue from 15um infrared frequency is too low to bring an electron in the Co2 molecule to a higher energy level. This means that re-emiting a foton is not possible. Backradation is therefore not possible.
The energy from infrared is used to make the co2 molecule vibrate. Radiation energy is converted into internal energy of the molecule. This will not give any warming effect.
An increase in the temperature of the atmosphere is only possible if the kinetic energy of the molecules are increased and this is not happening.
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Does the radiation raise an electron to a higher energy level? I rather imagine that it is a different sort of excitation. Most likely a vibration of the whole molecule.
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The energy absorption shifts the vibrational energy of the C-O bond to a higher permitted level, hence the quantisation, relaxation of this higher level vibration results in the release of a quantum of energy at the same frequnecy as the absorbed frequency. This radiated thermal energy has no relationship to the kinetic energy of the CO2 molecule and thus it is incorrect to use the SB relationship to define it.
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Oops. Didn’t read your whole comment. But since a photon is absorbed causing the molecule to vibrate, why can’t the vibrating molecule re-emit the photon? And there is you your back radiation.
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Thanks John for your comment.
I am a physicist and was very surprised about the global warming theory based on back radiation. I think that an electron has to bounce between energy levels in a molecule to emit or re emit fotons. Maybe I am wrong.
This article explains the vibrations in the Co2 molecule.
http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrared.htm
Hank
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Around about his time a hundred years ago scientific giants postulated many things. The grand theory of the universe and all things big and small set in concrete .
Oddly I have been waiting for new scientific giants to show us a new paradigm , for half a century or prove the old one. Alas I await in vain.
Spin and charm and up an down are more like a political statement than a reasoned objectivity, thus I await a real explanation of matter, and the electromagnetic spectrum including gravity.
The relationships between all these things have been manipulated by practical engineers and given us some clever stuff, such as our internet.
The understanding of the relationships by observation between all these forces has given us our modern world, but science can not yet tell us what it all is.
I am running out of life time waiting for the scientific community to come to terms with basic things, like electricity, magnetism, light and gravity. Umteen billions spent on CO2 research and we are in the dark about gravity magnetism and light?
One hundred years of billions of dollars of science have given us heart burn not answers.
People like Jinian are people the world needs to break the nexus of one hundred years of strangulated thinking.
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Wayne, I feel your grief.
In the Sixties when I was in high school, it seemed we stood on the edge of a wondrous new cliff, like a hang-glider about to launch himself from the top of a mountain into a new age. We had gone to the moon for chrissake.
Today the world is run by the likes of Lewandansky and Gillard, Hansen and Flannery, Abbott and Steffen; people whose imaginations stretch only as far as examining the lint in their belly-buttons.
What the hell happened?
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MV, your non-sequitur conflation of Abbott with the usual suspects (the guy has promised to repeal the carbon tax FFS!) makes me wonder:
Is this an example of the adage, once a rusted-on LIE-BORE-ite, always a rusted-on LIE-BORE-ite?
Politicians, like other human beings, all have flaws; going with the more acceptable, or least worst, alternative is just plain common sense.
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Rusted to what?
My interest in politics dates back to my high school years when Menzies retired. What followed was six years and four Liberal Prime Ministers attempting to outdo each other in the vote-buying, pork-barrelling business. These were the people who dismantled Australia’s first national compulsory superannuation scheme and subsequent State Housing Commissions, which financed a generation into affordable housing.
Ultimately all they gave us was increased public spending, increased taxes, more laws and an expanded public service to police them. So it was “time for change”.
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So the people voted for the Whitlam Labor government and got even more increased public spending, increased taxes, even more laws and an even bigger public service to police them.
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By 1975 the people had had enough of that, so they voted in Liberal Malcolm Fraser with the biggest majority ever to change it all. In return Malcolm gave us record increased public spending, record increased taxes, more laws and a record increase in public servants to administer them.
As a consolation prize his side-kick, John Howard, gave us retrospective legislation, surely the second-biggest threat to democratic government that there is.
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By 1982 the Australian people had decided they wanted “a new deal” so they voted in the drover’s dog, Labor’s Bob Hawke. Bob promptly gave us increased public spending, increased taxes, more laws and an increase in public servants to administer them.
Out of the goodness of his heart he also gave us a permanent cut in real wages disguised as a compulsory superannuation scheme, signed us up to the Yanks wet dream surveillance system now known as Project Echelon, and gave us the ID Card legislation.
As a parting gift he gave us Paul Keating, world’s greatest pig farmer, or something. Regardless, Paul gave us the “recession we had to have” with 18%+ interest on home mortgages, when 30% of Australians lost their homes and Australian bank capitalisation went from $32 billion to $280 in five years, in the greatest transfer of (stolen) wealth in this country’s history.
Did I mention that Paul managed to increase public spending, increase taxes, and increase the number of laws and the number of public servants to administer them?
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In 1996 Australians decided they had had enough of Labor’s Paul Keating, and voted for the Liberals little Johnny Howard instead. Johnny promised all the usual things, and once elected, promptly gave us increased public spending, increased taxes – including the GST, increased laws and an increase in the number of public servants to administer them.
Not to be overshadowed by his previous attempts at being a little dictator with his retrospective legislation, Johnny also also disarmed the civilian population – the main wet dream of all dictators – and gave us Workchoices, which basically gave employers the right to destroy employees, their lives and their families.
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So, in 2007 Australians voted in the Rudd Labor government which subsequently has become the Gillard Labor government. And what did the Australian people get in return for their efforts? Why, increased public spending, increased taxes, more laws and more public servants to administer them, of course.
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One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For over forty years Australians have been alternately electing Liberal and Labor governments and getting the same result – increased public spending, increased taxes, increased laws and an increase in the public servants to administer them.
Tony Abbott represents just more of the same. A politician driven by public opinion polls. In this he is no different than Turnbull, Gillard or Rudd. So no mattter which one wins the next election, we just get more of the same.
Yes, Abbott has promised to scrap the carbon tax. However, he has not made the same committment about the ETS and he has specifically ruled out any changes to the RET which is the REAL elephant pushing up home power, gas and petrol prices.
I am non-partisan. I believe EVERY serving Australian federal politician should be lined up against a wall and shot.
Now, which one of these parties is it that you believe I am “rusted to”?
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I am running out of life time waiting for the scientific community to come to terms with basic things, like electricity, magnetism, light and gravity. Umteen billions spent on CO2 research and we are in the dark about gravity magnetism and light?
Interestingly as now it appears it was too difficult for them, the consensus, when these were first being explored – look up Maxwell’s missing quaternion equations.
I’d stumbled into this recently and so from my notes, first a bit of background history on the arguments:
And what this means:
And this is the page I first stumbled across to discover Maxwell’s equations which gives a good explanation of what all the above means as it relates to a battery:
I also found this on the Tom Bearden pages, that magnets have memory:
“The case of the disappearing magnetic boots. The Radus boot with an interesting twist, magnets with memory:”
http://www.cheniere.org/misc/astroboots.htm
Enjoy! The work Maxwell did from his great insights hasn’t been lost, it’s just outside of the consensus..
p.s. I didn’t notice for a while when bookmarking http://www.cheniere.org pages I needed to put in subject descriptions myself, they got overwritten by the next..
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Thank you sir, That is why I said one hundred years ago it all fell apart. I am aware of all this stuff and yet billions are wasted for a hundred years trying to prove the consensus. The gnomes in the tunnels smashing energy into energy and expecting to find a particle from the debris field which can only be very short lived bits of energy is a case in point.
The magic qualities of the CO2 molecule is a similar stupidity, where consensus is more defined as the madness of mobs.
We are in desperate need of some original thinkers, a century without them is a long time between drinks.
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Stop it.
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Interesting study and I think it is great to continually challenge current thought. If you are going to question the 33 degree C. increase in the earth’s average temperature due to greenhouse gases, it is reasonable to challenge the 3 degree C. increase due to carbon dioxide.
Water vapor is by far the overwhelming greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and contributes most to the 33 degree C. temperature rise. Everywhere you see guesses on the amount of the earth’s atmospheric water vapor(like IPPC reports), you see the amount of water vapor as 10,000 ppm versus 393 ppm of carbon dioxide today.
10,000 ppm water vapor corresponds to a dew point of 45 degrees F. If you examine other dew pointls, you have 6000 ppm water vapor at 32 degrees F, 12100 ppm water vapor at 50 degrees F.,17400 ppm water vapor at 60 degrees F, and 24700 ppm water vapor at 70 degrees F.
Water vapor has to vary considerably around the earth with an average maximum on the equator and average minimums on the North and South poles. If you divide the earth into slices based on latitude, the slice with the largest surface area will be on the equator and slices on the poles will be tiny. It is my guess an average water vapor content in the atmosphere of 10,000 ppm is too low. Probably 15,000 ppm or more. This should diminish the importance of carbon dioxide as a green house gas.
In addition to its overwhelming amount in the atmosphere, water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas due to its molecular structure. Carbon dioxide is a linear molecule; while water vapor has its hydrogen atoms attached at 45 degree angles to oxygen. I thought I read water vapor is 8 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide.
These two factors would indicate the assumption that carbon dioxide contributes 3 degree C. of the global warming due to greenhouse gases is an over estimate.
To add more mud to the water, I think you could challege the importance of burning coal as a contributor to global warming. When you burn natural gas(methane), you get two water vapor molecules for every carbon dioxide molecule. When you burn petrol, you get one water vapor molecule for every carbon dioxide molecule. Thus coal is getting an undeserved reputation in the fight against global warming.
Naturally you will argue water vapor is already in the atmosphere, so water vapor from burning oil and natural gas is unimportant. Well, the computer models that predict global warming from burning fossil fuels also predict small warming due to carbon dioxide increases. The models predict the small temperature rises increase atmospheric water vapor which causes large temperature increases. This is the “positive feedback” effect that is necessary for alarmists to claim we must savagely disrupt developed countries economies and consign developing countries to perpetual poverty. For the first time in the world’s history with human presence, progress will go backwards.
Sorry to use degrees F., as a Yank we know nothing else. I spent four marvelous, long vacations in Australia and drove over 20,000 miles on the wrong side of the road. The next time you are “shouting”, tip one for me.
James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering
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Excellent discussion. A few addenda, if I may:
The global “average” water vapor is generally reported as about 1%, but as you, I feel that might be too low. We know that perfectly dry air has 0% water vapor, and the maximum water vapor content is around 4%; so most areas of the globe are somewhere between those two extremes.
I believe you are correct that comparing directly their IR absorbent cross-sections, water vapor is about 8 – 10 times the absorber/emitter as carbon dioxide. BUT, as you point out, the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is quite a bit more than CO2.
Taking the two factors together, one can easily see that water vapor may be orders of magnitude more effective as a “greenhouse gas” than CO2 ever thought of being; and that does not even factor in the asymptotic nature of CO2 IR response.
Our (now retired) state climatologist told a meeting of scientific practitioners that, “… water vapor is OVER 100 times more effective of a greenhouse gas than CO2 …”. We are fortunate that his influence over that department is still in place, with our State Geological Survey and Climate Information Office solidly in the “skeptic” camp.
Best to all,
Mark H.
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James,
The “Trenberth Cartoon” at the head of this article claims that ~46% of the heat loss from the surface is from evapo-transpiration, to which there is arguably some cross linkage with thermals, another ~14%. I had exchanges with Roy Spencer a couple of years ago, (since it would appear to be in his area of interest), as to why is it that if these factors have a high significance in cooling the surface, there was apparently little research in it. His paraphrased responses implied, yes it’s important but we are all too busy competing on the radiative stuff.
Do you find that to be odd?
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Veeerrry interesting.
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I recall reading that and thinking, “he knows the Water Cycle is missing…”
It’s one of the aspects that has puzzled me in exploring all this, that scientists, applied and otherwise, at an age where they would have gone through the education system before the introduction of this strange fisics appear not to know elementary real world physics basics.
I was appalled to be told by a young PhD physics, and he taught the subject, that the atmosphere was empty space and the gases ideal and so they would spontaneously diffuse into this under their own molecular momentum and thoroughly mix by bouncing off each other as per ideal gas descriptions and couldn’t separate out, etc., but when a retired PhD told me to go outside and bask in the visible light of the Sun because that was the heat I was feeling..
Very odd, I think that some of it is because ‘climate science’ has attracted people from so many different fields and although they may be quite knowledgeable in their own they may have forgotten information from childhood, such as gases can be lighter or heavier than air and so separate out and the heat we feel from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared (the last which NASA has now stopped teaching but used to on its children’s pages), and have simply bought into the fictional fisics of AGW, because it is presented as ‘basic’. They have no reason to doubt it.
Latour says something along these lines to Spencer in his “No Virginia” reply to Spencer’s “Yes Virginia” – he puts it down to Spencer not knowing that particular field and so extrapolating from ignorance of it.
But also the Spencer’s in this won’t listen to those who are experts in these fields. Spencer’s mind experiment has never been physically done, yet he won’t except, or doesn’t let it bother him, that in all our practical applications in industry we have rather a lot of years of observing that no such critter as heating by backradiation exists.
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Hi James
Good outline on atm water content.
As a trainee Metallurgist many years ago I was able to observed coke being quenched with 2 tons
(excuse the non-metric comment) of water at a distant plant and was constantly given an idea of what 2 tons of steam looked like.
This is very rough, but reinforces the point that there is a huge mass of water hanging about up there that
has always been pushed sideways by the Global Warming proponents so that it doesn’t cloud the issue and let
people get at the truth.
There is more to “Global Warming” than CO2.
🙂
Keith
Newcastle NSW
.
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Climate scientists could have the greenhouse effect calculation right or wrong – Cao and Postma say wrong. Regardless of this argument, I have still not seen any experimental verification of thermalization of IR by an IR absorbing/emitting/scattering gas. The only evidence quoted is the radiative transfer data measured within IR reflective chambers. Surely somewhere on earth there is a real physicist interested in real physics experiments, or else a burger flipper will have to do one…..
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Bluey, suggest an experiment that would prove what you want.
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Oops, assuming this is correct thats Game, Set, Match for CAGW.
Consider that CO2 is 85% energy saturated = 15% Energy left to absorb.
Greenhouse warming due to GHGs -at emissivity of 0.7 as measured by the satellites = 10 deg K
Boundary test: what is the maximum warming that could happen if energy in CO2 absorption band were 100% absorbed
15/85 x 10 = 1.7 degrees – Ever, even for a 100% CO2 Atmosphere (at 1 atm pressure). That is, CO2 is incapable of warming the climate by more than 1.7 deg Kelvin
The debate is now OVER! CAGW is disproved….
Now, Julia – About that tax?
(Save some mystical Mann fairy dust or a Lewandosky imagined conspiracy)
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Venus.
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Incredible John, did you somehow fail to notice that pressure at Venus surface is a little more than 1 ATM…. By a factor of 100, oh and that its atmosphere is reasonably opaque
Hm, maybe you missed that news story from Nasa
One Apple, one Orange and oh gee where all going to die
Best laugh I had all day
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Oh and that it is just a little closer to the sun?
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Craig Thomas,
1) Jinan Cao is NOT attacking Stefan-Boltzman. He is attacking the fools who misuse it to prove ridiculous things. Sorry you have such extreme comprehension problems.
2) G&T were never debunked. Go and try to find that debunking paper. It was WITHDRAWN!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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[snip… off topic ad hom. Craig, if you have nothing to say about what is posted above, then don’t post a comment. What is right and wrong scientifically about what Cao posted above? Attacking things he said on other topics printed elsewhere is the mark of a smear artist, not a scientist. – Jo]
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[SNIP stick to the topic. Write about what Cao published on this site.You can’t find any flaws with it which is why you continue to attack the man.
Craig, we don’t moderate many people on this site. If you cannot self edit, and you bomb threads with waste of time repetitive junk, we will put your name in the spam filter. We can’t edit you. Do it yourself, or you lose the right to post. – Jo]
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Wayne, s. Job,
Check out Miles Mathis physics papers. He probably isn’t right about everything (no one is perfect), but, at least he is questioning and trying to clean up the mess left by self interested egoists!!
http://milesmathis.com/
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Thank you
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Sorry, but he is a crackpot. An impressive, enthusiastic, hard working nutter.
OMG. Mathematicians decided that the derivative of 1/x is 1/x2 because it looked right on the graph! This is breathtakingly bad.
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Actually the derivative of 1/x is -1/x^2, not 1/x^2. The signs of numbers do matter. 🙂
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John,
you should head over to his site and set him straight. Love to see the exchange.
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[…] issue. Reader comments have been lively, one in particular by ‘Myrrh’ stood out for me: September 7, 2012 at 11:34 am · […]
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I’m so pleased you liked it. I’ve been surprised by the positive responses it got, not the usual reaction I get to my posts..
And thanks for correcting the worst of the typos, makes it much easier to read without the italics runaway..
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Myrrh,
I’ve described above (twice) an experiment I conducted specially for your benefit using an LED torch shining onto a black coloured thermocouple. It repeatedly showed a significant increase in temperature read-out between stabilizations. Because an LED torch is very efficient, it emits rather pure white (visible) EMR. (and that visible EMR results in heating)
I don’t think that you have responded to this and you otherwise multiply continue to claim that visible light can’t be absorbed as heat.
DO YOU THINK THAT I AM LYING ABOUT THIS CONCLUSIVE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE?
BTW I’m a retired professional engineer with much experience in lab work
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Well, it says here that LED lights do give off some heat, so what were you measuring?
: http://www.ledlights.org/FAQ/Do-LED-Lights-Give-Off-Heat.html
So as before, visible light is not a thermal energy, it works on the electronic transition level (bounced around by electrons in sky for example in reflection/scattering) and does not move the whole molecule into vibration which is what it takes to heat up matter. Kinetic Energy is thermal energy is heat and transfer of heat by radiation is thermal infrared. Thermal infrared is heat energy on the move. From hotter to colder..
Unless you can come up with something better.., I shall assume as I always do when the information I have actually requested isn’t forthcoming – you can’t find it because it doesn’t exist.
All I generally get is the unsubstantiated claim that shortwave heating land and ocean is well-proven, tons of experiments, but where are these?
They can’t exist because visible light is not physically capable of doing this.
Let’s look at it again: in the real world atmosphere visible is actually absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, so how much is this heating the atmosphere? Why isn’t it in the AGW energy budget?
Water is a transparent medium for visible light, which means it is not absorbed, but transmitted through. That’s what transparent means. It is not absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of water nor by the molecule as a whole, that is, it is not reflected/scattered by the electrons and it does not move the whole molecule into vibration.
Unless you can provide show and tell that “shortwave in” is actually heating land and oceans I’ll stick with traditional physics which has yet to design heating systems using this oh so powerful Light energy..
..and look to Optics and Biology to explore what it can do.
Your claim is that visible light is a thermal energy, it isn’t, it’s classed as Light, reflective, but because of this sleight of hand a whole generation now thinks it is and that it can do what the Sun’s heat does:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/tg/wglobale/wglobale.htm
“Sun’s heat powers weather” “Overheated equator drives weather”
But notice too, because it is AGWfisics friendly, it also says: “Solar energy heats equator more than the poles”
In AGWScienceFiction fisics, “Solar” specifically refers to the “shortwave in” of Visible and adjacent UV and Nr Infrared. Because they have excised the actual “Sun’s heat” thermal infrared to pretend that only their fictional “backradiation” exists downwelling.
AGW fisics has deliberately confused here so the disjuncts are difficult to spot. But you’ll sometimes get teasers that Connolly (sp?) hasn’t edited out..
We know that heat is capable of heating land and oceans – we heat our houses with it, we cook our dinners with it, the industrial revolution was powered with it.
If you could take all the heat energy out of your torch how long would it take to heat a cup of water? Do you think I should wait for you to make a cup of coffee by heating the water with visible light..? How many of your torch lights would it take to cook your dinner?
As I said above, the fib is easier to see in the “visible light heats ocean” meme because you can still find fairly easily that water is a transparent medium, so visible light can’t be heating it. And we’re talking about climate, so real intense heating is what must be shown.
Unless you can show how “shortwave in” can actually intensely heats land and ocean at the equator you do not have any winds or weather in your world.
That’s the bottom line.
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Myrrh,
Did you overlook the fact that I also, just especially for you, conducted a test with the thermocouple coloured white, an excellent reflector of visible light? (there was no observable response!)
Any infrared from the LED torch on the other hand would be substantially absorbed. (very low power level and would I guess be in the mid IR range. (Oh and battery heat would not be an issue because of insufficient soak-time)
Your reference to a supplier of LED lighting gives this:
“Do LED lights give off heat? Although this may be a bit confusing at first, the answer is yes and no! LED lights do produce a very small amount of heat, but not as we have come to expect it with traditional methods of lighting. Yes, they are cool to the touch and can be easily handled even after being on for long periods of time, but there is a small release of heat during the process of producing light.” I suggest you check out some technical literature.
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As I’ve said.., you, generic, are so confused between heat and light that you don’t see the disjuncts. Why are rooftops painted white? To reflect HEAT.
What is the difference between photovoltaic and thermal panel? Photo comes from the Greek phos, meaning Light, thermal comes from the Greek therme meaning Heat. These are the two category divisions used in traditional physics, which doesn’t get them muddled up because we know what each is capable of DOING.
AGWSF has deliberately muddled them up.
What you have to show is proof for your claim that “Visible light is heat” – because, in the real world, in applied science that works, we KNOW that HEAT FROM THE SUN IS THE INVISIBLE THERMAL INFRARED.
You’re the one’s claiming something different from that which traditional science still teaches. (*)
I’m sorry you’re unable to see the tweaks in the ‘experiments’ AGWSF tells you to regurgitate, such white car and black car..
Your experiment proves nothing because you’ve set out with the premise that visible light heats and you’ve taken out real world that white also reflects thermal infrared.
Try designing an experiment that actually shows visible light heating matter, water and land.
As I said above in another post, show me the industries using visible light to heat matter, where are all the visible light saunas?
You don’t realise that you are confused about this because you have been deliberately confused, it is a very, very, clever sleight of hand. Someone had to know real traditional physics extremely well to produced the fake fisics of AGW, the tweaks of real physics are ingeniously simple. See how many you can spot when you realise you have no way of providing what I’m asking for:
Show how visible light heats water.
Explain the physics, produce the experiments.
I have already told you why it can’t, because water is a transparent medium for visible light. If water wasn’t transparent visible light could not travel through it, we would have no life in the oceans at all.
And, we would not have the life on land now because it began in the oceans, by photosynthesis, using visible light to convert to chemical energy, not heat energy, to sugars.
You don’t realise, yet, how these AGW memes are hindering you from being objective here..
Thermal Infrared, the real heat energy, is in resonance with water, it does not pass through but moves water into vibrational states raising the temperature. This is how it heats us up internally too, because we a large part water (c20% carbon). We absorb it as it penetrates several inches into our bodies and heats up our watery selves.
What is happening in a transparent medium to visible light?
That’s how visible light travels through a transparent medium like water unchanged, is transmitted through is the technical term for this.
(*)
Someone from NASA is still keeping this page up, it was supposed to be taken down when replaced.., a bit of a kerfuffle when it disappeared for a few days and then made still available.
Traditional physics is still teaching the difference between Heat and Light, Light is not thermal, it is not hot, we can’t feel light at all.
When you stand in the Sun all the Heat you feel is the invisible thermal infrared.
Here’s something I saved earlier, do you see what it’s saying?
AGWSF messes with this all the time, swaps around tweaking sometimes using correct physics of light and then claiming something for light which is impossible – it’s only when you bring these together that you can see the disjunct. As I pointed out in my post above –
“So, which is it? If clouds are highly reflective to visible light then visible light cannot be heating the oceans and land, because clouds are water and particles of matter.”
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http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
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Richard,
if you are replying to Myrhh you are wasting your time. I posted the “Absorption coefficients of water” for him over at WUWT a while back. He denies it is real.
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Kuhnkat,
Yep, Myrrh has been banging away on his personal hypothesis for a very long time now and various physicists have given up trying to explain the physically obvious to him. A good while back I recommended to him that he obtain a piece of IR blocking glass and conduct an experiment. I never heard any more.
Maybe he doesn’t realize that the Sun is very hot and drives big chunks of EMR, a form of energy, in our direction. He also describes just some wavelengths of that energy as heat whereas by definition none of it is heat. It is in reality a transport mechanism of energy which can be taken up as heat under certain circumstances, an analogy being like with electricity which is also not heat but which can generate heat.
I think his confusion might arise from the sloppy sustained habit of some climate scientists describing terrestrial radiation as thermal radiation. His quote from above seems to reflect that to some degree:
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As it says, water is a strong absorber of infrared. In real life applications this knowledge is used to produce water cooled engines, water cooled lights.
Water absorbs Heat. Water is Transparent to Visible Light. Transparent means that it is Transmitted Through without being Absorbed.
The AGWScienceFiction claim is that the atmosphere is transparent to visible light, it isn’t, because reflection/scattering is from electrons first absorbing it.
Why is this so difficult? That absorption spectrum of water shows the great absorption of thermal infrared and that visible light isn’t absorbed to anything at all significant, it confirms that water is transparent to visible light..
But this is another page which is garbled for pc correctness to the AGW meme – note how the billions of tons of infrared absorbing water in the atmosphere is stressed as if this doesn’t apply to the oceans..
..water makes up a very small percentage of the atmosphere, roughly 1-5%, that leaves 95% plus of the atmosphere where the invisible thermal infrared from the Sun isn’t being delayed from reaching the oceans and land to heat us directly, beam. The Sun’s actual thermal energy, heat, reaching us in around 8 minutes. That’s one heck of a hot fire up there.(*)
Visible light can’t move the molecules of water into vibration because it isn’t absorbed on the molecular level which is what it takes to make something hot, to raise its temperature. Visible light can’t even get in to get absorbed by the electrons, which it does do in the atmosphere because the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen absorb it, this is called reflection/scattering.
Water is a transparent medium for visible light is simply a real physical fact.
The heat we feel direct from the Sun is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move to us which is the invisible thermal infrared, this is simply a real physical fact.
This is still taught in traditional physics, and whole industries are built on these actual still well known physical facts because they work.
If shortwave is the great heating energy as AGWScienceFiction claims can heat land and oceans, where is this in our industries? Where in the applied science world around us? Do we heat our homes with LED light? Do we cook our dinners with it? Why not?
I can appreciate that this entails a dramatic change of paradigm shift for those brought up on AGWSF fictional fisics because introduced into your education, but I think I’ve given enough information to show there is a real physics still traditionally taught which contradicts the AGWSF claim. And I’ve explained why, that in order to promote AGW ‘backradiation’ they’ve had to take out the direct thermal infrared from the Sun.
I’m trying to explain how they’ve created their con.
And I appreciate that it is very difficult now to find traditionally taught physics on this which used to be very well known, but look around you for the empirical evidence to determine which version is true.
Are thermal infrared heat lamps used to keep food hot in restaurants, or LED lights? Is there anyone building saunas using LED light? There’s a huge industry building thermal infrared saunas..
And, it is simply not good enough for you to claim there is proven empirical proof that shortwave heats land and oceans but never fetching it.
What you are claiming goes against traditional well tested used extensively in all kinds of real world applied science – it’s for you to prove real world world wrong by showing that shortwave from the Sun can do what you claim.
And, please, get a sense of perspective here, try to understand how our great weather systems work, by intense heating of land and oceans. How many LED torches does it take to heat the land and oceans to get the temperatures we have at the equator?
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Myrth,
Presuming that you are responding to Richard111, does it (the graph) not also say that UV is absorbed about three orders of magnitude higher than mid IR?
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How absorbed? Is it heating the water? How much is it heating the water?
This is still your AGW claim, you show how and how much.
As I’ve requested you show for visible light – so where are your answers to me?
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I find all this fascinating but am not qualified to comment on it being more from the arts world. But one small point does occur to me so I’ll throw it in my two-penn’orth for what it’s worth.
The water in itself does not cool an IC engine. It it is circulated either through the old-fashioned syphon effect or by an impeller and transports the heat away from it to the air-cooled radiator. If the circulation stops for any reason, what happens? — The water boils, doesn’t it? But I imagine any number of liquids could be used; water is just abundant and cheap (less so with antifreeze). I also fail to see what IR would have to do with it – surely the heat is just transmitted by conduction as the heat transfer takes place in the total darkness of the water passages.
As to what seems to be your main point that light should not be confused with heat, that seem reasonable to me speaking as as one who has no dog in this race.
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After reading some comments by Mrrrth and others i am a little confused……….(yes i know i am always confused haha)
Does the theory go like this.
Visible light enters the atmosphere, travels through the atmosphere hits the surface, warms the surface, then this heat is given off as infra red (far) which is then absorbed by GHG.
OR
Does the sun emit infra red (near) which goes through the atmosphere uninhibited strikes the surface, warms the surface then is given off as infra red (far) which then gets absorned by GHG.
OR
Is it a combination of both
OR
None of the above
A little clarification here would be appreciated
Cheers
Crakar
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None of the above. Incoming solar radiation heats the atmosphere regardless of composition and the measureable temperature is dependant on pressure levels. This is why the Earth and Venus atmospheres have measured temperatures in the precise ratio of their relative distances from the Sun at the same pressure levels. See my comment at 19.2.
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OK let me rephrase, which of the above if any best fits the IPCC version of reality.
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Hi Crakar24,
Just to add to your confusion, I think the first version is the one supported by the IPCC and some sceptics. The only difference being, the amount of the resultant heating.
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Ah, what you seem to be missing is that different gases are opaque to radiation at different wavelengths.
10
The AGWScienceFiction claim is “shortwave in longwave out”, this is defined by them as being mainly visible light with the two shortwaves either side, with the shortwave infrared negligible, the usual figure quoted is 1% – sometimes missed out all together:
Traditional physics understands very well indeed, since Herschel, that the great heat we feel heating us up from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared, “thermal” which means “of heat”. When first discovered it was referred to as “dark light”, now called “infra” red meaning below red, beyond red.
AGWScienceFiction has created a different world, an imaginary one with its fisics impossible in this real world around us.
It has done two things here. Firstly it claims that no thermal infrared, heat, reaches us from the Sun and so plays no part in heating land and oceans. Secondly it has given this property to visible light which is not thermal and can’t physically do the work of thermal in the real world.
It’s a deliberate sleight of hand to change real world physics in order to promote the AGW con, in order to confuse the majority population who would never have a need to use it practically to see it was a con.
It has been very successful, because it was introduced into the education system some decades ago. The politics of who introduced gets very complicated. The important thing to understand here is that it is a con, that the fisics it claims is impossible, and, to get out of the con and to get back our hard won appreciation of the real physical world around us for the general population. The general population has been deliberately dumbed down for this con.
Traditional physics is still being taught, as the applied science industry shows, but, this generation brought up on AGW fisics couldn’t create any of it. They may even be working in it, but without understanding. And what it doesn’t know it can’t pass on to the next generation.
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You are mostly correct except for one thing: the IR from the sun is mostly absorbed in the atmosphere before that in the ‘atmospheric window’ reaches the surface. This adds in with the visible to heat the earth’s surface and that energy is transferred to the atmosphere mostly by convection and evaporation.
The fraud at the heart of the IPCC ‘consensus’ is actually from another direction. Possibly from mistakes by Trenberth and Houghton, exaggerated by what looks like willful lack of professionalism by Hansen, the models exaggerate the small real IR heating [23 W/m^2 from the 2009 ‘Energy Budget’]by a factor of 5 by adding 333 – 238.5 = 94.5 W/m^2.
This is done by wrongly assuming TOA DOWN emissivity = 1 [Houghton’s mistake] and imaginary ‘back radiation’, really the failure to understand that single pyrgeometers measure temperature, not energy flow. This is what exaggerates evaporation from sunlit seas whilst temperature is purported to be correct by using exaggerated cloud albedo.
So, the scam is to exaggerate the IR from the Earth’s surface.
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You are mostly correct except for one thing: the IR from the sun is mostly absorbed in the atmosphere before that in the ‘atmospheric window’ reaches the surface. This adds in with the visible to heat the earth’s surface and that energy is transferred to the atmosphere mostly by convection and evaporation.
What am I “mostly correct” about since you’ve just contradicted everything I’ve said?
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Myrrh, I would tend to agree that using the word “mostly” isn’t very good, however you’ve linked to a non-science site whose purpose seems to be merely to give a broad understanding of these radiative issues using non-science language, which it does successfully.
Perhaps if you are criticising AGW as a “con”, it might be better to criticise the science?
Here is a basic education on the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun. It explains – with a picture – that “shortwave” and “longwave” are, in this context, appropriate shorthand descriptions for radiation emitted by the Sun and the Earth, respectively.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397952§ion=1.2.1
Whether you’re feeling any of this as “heat” or whether any of it is “visible” is entirely irrelevant.
10
Well Craig Thomas, maybe the OU is embarrassed about saying that now – the page has disappeared and reverts to front page.
Its pushing of AGW “Shortwave in Longwave out” with Shortwave being given the propeties of thermal infrared, the direct thermal energy of the Sun is nonsense fictional fisics. They should not only be embarrassed about it, they should be thoroughly ashamed.
Read Herschel’s experiment for yourself. We’ve known this AGWScienceFiction fisics is rubbish since 1800.
http://ia700600.us.archive.org/23/items/philtrans08733349/08733349.pdf
00
Golly gosh Myrth,
Catching-up on some of your stuff: If the page has disappeared, how are you able to comment on it?
Oh BTW it has not disappeared on my system. Honest!….. I swear on my left testicle; it’s still there!
00
Hi Bob,
I fully concur with your frustration and comments above.
It seems as though you and I are the only one’s with access to Craig’s link, and Craig must be otherwise occupied, or has missed my question.
I wonder if I might ask for your thoughts on my question at #55.2.2.2 below.
TIA
00
Hi MaxL,
I think it was a trick question to get readers intrigued or involved, and I’ll repeat the Q&A with my added bold emphasis:
However, further down it describes how terrestrial radiation balances the incoming solar radiation….. so no problem.
00
Ahrrr! (That’s me screaming.)
Thank you Bob, silly me (totally embarrassed).
I guess, seeing the figure, then reading the question, I had already determined that there should be no increase in temperature and their answer threw me.
00
Hi Craig, thanks for the link.
However I have a question. The site states:
If the incoming radiation equals the outgoing radiation, why would the surface get progressively hotter and hotter?
To get hotter and hotter I would expect the incoming radiation to exceed the outgoing.
00
Ooh Myrrh,
You seem to be naughty again!
Did you not notice my two comments just above at:
September 10, 2012 at 12:09 pm, and;
September 10, 2012 at 7:17 pm?
00
Where’s the information I’ve requested from you?
I’ve now replied to your 12:09 pm post, your 7:17 wasn’t addressed to me.
Now, stop avoiding my questions. Show and tell how visible light from the Sun heats the real Earth’s land and oceans.
00
Bob, we are wasting our time with Myrrh – time to call it quits I think.
There is a big difference between a hypothesis with some plausible science behind it – Truthseeker’s derived from Huffman’s and turnrdoutnice/AlecM/sparticusisfree/mdgnn’s are in that category – and a wild grab-bag of ideas which is detrimental to the skeptic defence of rationality. I even found myself on the same side as John Brookes in his debunking of some of the nonsense. (Thanks John, really!)
This thread seems to have entered a twilight zone of non-science – better find a way out of here, and quick!
00
Shrug, so stay dumbed down.
Stay in your fantasy impossible world through the looking glass with Al: with no water cycle, where heat and light have been swapped around, where there is no rain in the carbon life cycle, where carbon dioxide wears its knickers on the outside and defies gravity to accumulate in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousands of years, where heat travels from colder to hotter and meat left in an igloo for a few hours will cook by backradiation…
..who’s really in the “twilight world of non-science”?
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Chris M,
Yes, what a great diversity of views above, and Myrrh’s are so astonishing that it makes me wonder if he is a troll. As far as I know he is the only one to think that some EMR from that hot thing, the Sun, is not energy.
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BFJ,
I think i understand what Myrrrrrrh is trying to say, i do not agree with his/her thoughts on sunlight absorption in water maybe Myrrrrh can clarify this a bit for us all . When it comes to IR V sunlight i do understand what they are trying to say.
When i played football i injured my ankle and was given a heat lamp as part of the treatment, the heat lamp produced infra red waves, not visible (well it wa sred of course) but the globe had the properties that allowed it to produce IR.
We feel heat as infra red not visible light so they make a valid point i feel. So the question is how much IR from the sun warms the surface/us and has this bee included in the models/IPCC mumbo jumbo?
For example if approx 50% of the Earths surface is heated by IR and the rest by visible light do they both result in the same (giving off of IR that is absobed by GHG’s?). Or are we only looking at the visible light aspect?
00
Crakar24,
I think those old near-infrared lamps have been replaced by “deep heat” treatment from microwaves or ultrasound. I also think that the reason you could feel those old lamps is that most nerve endings that sense heat are in or near the skin. This is probably where infrared Electro Magnetic Radiation (EMR) is largely absorbed and converted to heat. Visible light (EMR) on the other hand can penetrate a lot deeper as I’ve found with my (white) LED pocket torch which shines pink through my cheek when placed inside my mouth and hence largely misses those nerve endings. These heat-sensing nerve endings cannot sense EMR which is a different form of energy to heat.
The Earth’s surface absorbs visible light inversely proportional to its albedo, and then emits only infrared EMR energy as a consequence of its lower surface temperature. (compared to the sun)
BTW, that does not make me a believer in CAGW
00
BFJ,
I have no interest in what you believe in as it does not matter and i agree with what you have said but how much IR does leave the sun and hit the surface of earth? If there is some where is that accounted for in the cartoon at the top of this thread? What happens to this IR does it stay in the surface or does it escape as heat? If so what kind of heat (IR, evaporation etc).
Cheers
00
Crakar24
Well thanks for that, but since you brought it up, I thought you might be interested as to why those old fashioned infrared lamps (and for that matter tungsten incandescent lamps with a lot of IR) feel warm on the skin. (as distinguishable from other wavelengths)
The basis for suggesting this can be found in the first graph in the following link, which I hope that you can understand, has a non-linear logarithmic scaling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water
It implies that mid-IR has nano-penetration in water, and near-IR mostly maybe a millimetre or so. Thus it seems very reasonable to speculate that absorbed IR radiation in the skin area will be converted to heat very near to the most sensitive nerve endings. However, on a quick web-search I cannot confirm that biology, which is why I said “I think”. Too bad that you are not interested.
You then asked a question which is very complex and controversial, but according to the same source linked to above it may provide some data that you seek within the second graph. Whether it is precise I do not know and you can make-up your own mind or do additional research.
Oh, and the near-IR runs to the right of wavelength ~750 nm on that graph.
There has apparently been little research on non-radiative heat loss. (search this page for Roy Spencer for my enquiries to him)
00
no need to get nasty i am just asking questions.
00
Crakar,
I’m sorry if you thought I was being nasty; it was not my intention and I thought I was giving you some useful information. Sorry.
00
think those old near-infrared lamps have been replaced by “deep heat” treatment from microwaves or ultrasound.
Heat lamps are thermal infrared, heat, not near infrared, which is not thermal – we cannot feel near infrared as heat, because it isn’t heat.
Heat, thermal infrared, penetrates the body several inches, it is absorbed by the body.
This deep longwave infrared penetration of direct heat is still used to warm up muscles and blood, rather than cooking them by microwave or diagnosis by ultrasound..
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Crakar 24,
If you are interested in what Myrhh says @ September 12, 2012 at 10:40 am, it would be good because it does have bearing on his dogma concerning EMR, and I’ll clarify a few points. The last time I saw an infrared lamp was decades ago and it was a fairly bright red tungsten type. Since then I’ve had various professional treatments for a badly hurt ankle and knee (skiing/running) and it was always “deep heat” therapy at two different physiotherapy centres. According to the following Epharmacy link, IR lamps are still available but with some cautionary comments and this opening statement gives; with my bold:
http://www.epharmacy.com.au/healthinfo/article.asp?ID=657
According to the following medical site, having 12 references, “Deep Heat” comes in three entirely different forms and requires professional expertise to apply, which is probably one reason why Epharmacy does not offer them to the public:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1829233-overview#a01
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I think i understand what Myrrrrrrh is trying to say, i do not agree with his/her thoughts on sunlight absorption in water maybe Myrrrrh can clarify this a bit for us all .
Why don’t you agree?
00
Because the deeper you go the darker it gets, sunlight (visible light) is absorbed by water to the point where it is pitch black, of course it does depend on the angle of incidence i suppose. Some of the sunlight does reflect of the oceans surface so there are a lot of variables in this i think.
Can you explain why you disgaree with the above?
Cheers
Crakar
00
Because the deeper you go the darker it gets, sunlight (visible light) is absorbed by water to the point where it is pitch black, of course it does depend on the angle of incidence i suppose. Some of the sunlight does reflect of the oceans surface so there are a lot of variables in this i think.
Can you explain why you disgaree with the above?
——————————————————————————–
Another sleight of hand from AGWScienceFiction’s meme producing department..
This time, it’s a play on the word “absorbed”.
The way light disappears in the ocean is called “absorbed” in a general sense, meaning “attenuation”, but AGWSF promotes this general sense as if the specific use of “absorbed” in molecules absorbing electromagnetism –
so, although in real-life water is a transparent medium to visible light which means that its energy is not absorbed by the molecule, AGWSF by using the general term associates it with the technical.
A magicians/conman’s trick.
The AGW meme is “all electromagnetism is the same and when absorbed heats”. If one points out that reflection/scattering of visible light in the atmosphere is by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen actually, physically, absorbing its energy, and one then asks how much this is heating the atmosphere as it doesn’t appear in the cartoon AGW energy budget, one doesn’t get a reply.
September 10 at 10:42pm I posted a description of how visible light acts in a transparent medium.
In the wiki page on translucency there’s a description of UV/Visible possible outcomes on meeting matter, it does this on an electronic transition level, that is, on the electron level. Thermal infrared, heat, much bigger, acts on the vibrational level on meeting matter, moving the whole molecule into vibration (kinetic/heat). The same effect as when one uses mechanical energy to create it, as in rubbing hands together. Heat is punchy..
The second is reflection/scattering as visible light is reflected/scattered when absorbed by the electrons of the nitrogen and oxygen molecules, and the third is transmission through a transparent medium such as water. The technical use of the word “transmitted” always signifies transparent mediums.
In the description of how visible light can’t get in to play with the electrons of the molecules of water (it’s not big enough to move the whole molecule), it explains this slows down the light. Light is slowed down by different mediums, it is slowed down in the fluid gas air and some fourteen times more than that in water. The different colours will have different speeds and this is more obvious in the waters of the ocean, so apparently it is “absorbed” differently, the blue and violet light travelling further.
The thing to remember is that if water wasn’t transparent to visible light, that is, if water really absorbed visible light on a vibrational level to heat the water, we wouldn’t see it in the ocean, it would be all dark.
The life in the ocean requires that visible light is not absorbed by water, it likes to use it. Different figures given for this, but I’ve seen up to 90% of the oxygen we have in the atmosphere is from photosynthesis in the ocean.
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Crakar24,
After grinding through Myrths long rant, I had to smile and I repeat something he wrote earlier
Well for a start, no EMR, is heat in itself by definition!
According to various sources including this link offered by Craig Thomas:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397952§ion=1.2.1
Figure 5 therein suggests that the solar energy from that great hot globe in the sky; the Sun; comprises UV +visible +near infrared +a weenie bit of mid IR . (‘tis true, near infrared is fairly loosely defined over several sources, but what the heck happened to the law of conservation of energy!)
00
Well for a start, no EMR, is heat in itself by definition!
According to various sources including this link offered by Craig Thomas:
——————————————————————————–
The page Craig gave doesn’t come up when I try it, it’s on some kind of catch and immediately goes to the Open University home page.
Here, in your “no EMR, is heat in itself by definition!”
is AGWScienceFiction definition which is its meme “all energy is same and doesn’t become something until it is absorbed” (Which it then claims always converts to heat.)
How does that work? Oh right, visible light and radio waves are the same, it’s on meeting matter that matter somehow magically (because no method given) transforms it to visible light and not a radio wave.
How? How does it squash it to make it shorter and more energetic than radio and in the different wave lengths a plant requires for photsynthesis? And why does it bother creating green which it doesn’t need for photosynthesis but in real life reflects back out? How does a brick wall make it longer than visible so it can pass through it? So there’s not sound until a brick wall creates it?
What is it in each different forms of matter which converts this “all electromagnetic energy is the same” before it even reaches matter because by observation we see it is the particular wavelength existing before reaching matter which then acts in particular ways on meeting it, and how does it do it only on the “all electromagnetic energy is same” reaches it? What is this ‘”all the same”?
It’s scientific idiocy.
It’s a meme created by the meme creating department of AGWScienceFiction and repeated ad nauseum which simple analysis shows has no internal coherence. Which is why we get garbled incoherent explanations of the the physical world from you.
It’s all magic in la la land in AGW fictional fisics which shows in these extrapolations from it, like a lump of raw meat being cooked by a few hours in an igloo by backradiation, (seriously told to me as example of how backradiation was from colder to hotter and would heat the hotter), we have matter creating all the differences in electromagnetic radiation before it meets with it but only when it meets with it and reacts to it. Magic.
What is it in every form of matter which can do this? Where is the show and tell?
Where is the show and tell that this “all electromagnetic energy is the same and all creates heat on being absorbed by matter” when we know just from photosynthesis that only certain visible colours are capable of converting to chemical energy, not heat energy, in the creation of sugars from carbon dioxide and water?
Now add to that an explanation of how a plant creates the visible light is uses and doesn’t use before sending it out so it can absorb it or reject it on re-entry, and what is it that sends it back in again, does the plant create this too?
Since Newton we’ve known that Light has distinct properties of colour and that these can be separated out from and will merge into white light. We’ve known since Herschel that these are not hot, that they are not thermal energies but that invisible electromagnetic energy reaching us direct from the Sun with visible but separate from it has the distinct property of heat, is hot.
Real SCIENCE is investigating the REAL world around us, the DIFFERENCES IN PROPERTIES and what these can and cannot do.
REAL science knows the difference between Light and Heat, knows the real property of thermal infrared is HEAT and that this is NOT THE SAME as LIGHT, BUT DIFFERENT.
What is HEAT? Heat is Thermal Energy. It is the movement of molecules in KINETIC energy, kinetic energy is HEAT.
So by definition thermal infrared of the EMR is heat, it is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move, radiated out.
It is the HEAT of the Sun, it’s kinetic energy which is heat which radiates out as thermal infrared. It is this actual heat of the Sun which is the Sun’s thermal energy which reaches us which we can feel as heat on our skin because we have an internal sense of telling the difference between internal and external temperature which is average kinetic energy which is molecules in vibration which is molecules in motion which is heat and which we can feel as heat when we absorb this heat as it penetrates deep into our bodies and warms up our internal matter raising its temperature by making our molecules of matter vibrate which is kinetic energy which is heat. And which if this heat which is thermal energy heats us up too much for comfort we sweat away to cool us down.
Heat is not Light. Light is not thermal energy, it is not hot, it is not heat, it is not kinetic energy, we do not feel it as heat, we do not absorb it, but reflect it back out. That’s why we cast shadows..
In the un-real world of AGWSF you do not have shadows – what does that make you..?
And here you still can’t come back with any show and tell how “all electromagnetic energy creates heat on being absorbed”, nor deal rationally with the real world examples which where I’ve shown why and how it doesn’t.
AGWScienceFiction is totally irrational, it’s a make believe world of impossible physics.
We don’t have any physical mechanism to create visible light outside of ourselves out of “all electromagnetic energy is the same” before it reaches us before then sending it in so we can then reflect it back out.
Show us how a brick wall creates radio waves outside of itself from “all electromagnetic energy is the same from the Sun” once this makes contact with the brick wall and then allows these newly created radio waves to pass through itself and how a brick wall creates visible light outside of itself on making contact with it and then blocks it from entering.
There’s a Nobel Prize in Physics waiting for you if you can show how all matter does this..
00
For those that gave the thumbs-up for Myrrh,
1) please be advised that Craig’s link works fine on my system, and fig 5 is down the page a bit. (Keystroke Fn +PgDn x5 for me)
Alternatively, here is the figure itself, but of course without the text: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/2805/!via/oucontent/course/254/s250_3_004i.jpg
Notice that most of the IR from the sun is near infrared which Myrrh claims is not thermal IR and thus just as with his dogma on visible light would not heat the earth. The small amount of mid IR is also at a low energy level.
2) Re the experiment I conducted above showing that white LED light does significantly heat a black but not white thermocouple, this link shows a fairly typical spectrum from a regular type of white LED: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecoxotic/6431606949
It illustrates that even this cheaper (blue + yellow phosphor) type does not emit measureable IR.
3) In my September 12, 2012 at 2:56 pm further above, I pointed out some other assertions of his that are contradicted. He has not responded; can’t think why.
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Bob Fernley-Jones
When are you going to answer my questions?
You claim that the AGW fisics of “Shortwave in Longwave Out” is real physics. So prove it.
Billions and Trillions of taxpayers money is being grabbed because of this claim and ever more draconian restrictions are being put on all of us ruining businesses and private lives because of people like you. YOU.
Damn well show the proof that AGWScienceFiction’s “Shortwave in” can actually heat the water of the ocean and the ground of the Earth to the intense degree necessary daily to achieve our wind and weather systems.
Show and tell how Visible Light as direct from the Sun heats water.
Show and tell how Visible Light as direct from the Sun heats water.
00
If you examine the KT diagram above you will notice the simplistic science of the IPCC.
It appears there is nobody left here to defend the 33K meaningless IPCC number, well done Jinan Cao.
The diagram also appears to show a dead planet where photosynthesis does not exist!
On the topic of water and EM absorption.
IPCC science says all EM energy entering the water is almost instantly thermalised.
It has been pointed out that pure water is a very poor absorber of light.
Pure water takes on a slightly blue colour when transmitting light showing that SCATTERING of that wavelength is occurring.
Why is sea water a better absorber of light?
Well sea water contains lots of particulates of organic and inorganic materials.
There are now a whole range of absorption possibilities.
Photochemical and photosynthetic processes will lock in the energy of appropriate light wavelengths.
Its clear that on closer examination, scattering, photochemical and photosynthetic processes can account for some of the solar energy penetrating the sea.
Once again IPCC science suffers from gross oversimplification.
10
Understanding the physical impossibility of P/4 is so much simpler when all said and done. Then, GH and AGW “theories” have no starting point in the world we live in.
ie,
1) Can you evenly illuminate all of a football (globe) with just one torch? NO, that is impossible.
2) One cooks a 4lb chicken in an oven at 200C for one hour. Would you get the same effect by “cooking” a chicken in an oven at 50C for 4 hours??? NO.
There are no GH or AGW “theories”, they do not have a starting point in reality. End of story.
00
“Do greenhouse gases warm the planet by 33°C?”
Only if they can raise mean sea surface temperature, which for the 20th century average was 7.55 deg C above the mean land temperature (Jan/July mean).
00
Funny how odd research comes back. A while back I was investigating the US of IR cameras for the identification of archaeological remains. One of the key things I had to understand was “why was soil dark” and particularly when wet.
See: http://scottishsceptic.scef.org.uk/2011/04/01/scientists-discover-why-wet-soil-is-dark/
Unfortunately the link the original article is lost, but the implication is that the main effect of wetting soils is to extend the optical path through the water coating to soil particles. Each time it reflects the emissivity gets closer and closer to 1. But that means that a lot of dry soils will have relatively low emissivity.
However, much of what can be seen in the IR is due to emissivity changes and not differences in temperature between objects because there is quite a spread of emissivity from different surfaces.
Something else I would like to add is that the atmosphere is in fact a heat engine. Much of that heat is latent heat of vaporisation … which we see as the cooling effect of water. Paradoxically, when that water condenses into cloud it heats … that will seem odd because we associate due with it being cold and if you ever climb into a cloud because it seems cool, but the actual effect of condensation is to HEAT the atmosphere more than it would be already. That heat then radiated to space by IR (It has to be because it is the energy of evaporisation that drives the uplift of air and it has to go somewhere … Oh no you won’t believe this either, wet air is lighter (http://scottishsceptic.scef.org.uk/2011/08/26/how-to-get-off-the-ground-with-nothing-but-water-almost/)
I know you will be asking “Who is this madman”, but honestly wet air is lighter and condensation heats.
The thing is its one huge heat engine. At the surface (the heat source), the sunlight replaces the heat lost to evaporisation so that the moist air is light enough to rise. It then rises and as it does it expands and cools. At a critical level the air cannot hold the water at which point it dumps all its heat into the air producing water droplets – it must then loose enough heat so that it descends to repeat the cycle.
So, that air at the top of the cloud is the “heat sink”, but obviously all that heat has to go somewhere, so it must radiate to space, allowing the air to cool and then sink in an endless cycle. Of course, it’s even closer to a heat engine, because the whole lot turns creating anti-cyclones (and hurricanes)… all powered by water and IR emission to space.
The strange thing (for me) is that this heat engine is really the thing that blocks emission to space of heat. And I still find it difficult to think that the actual source of heat radiated to space is at a lower temperature than it would be if it were directly radiated from the ground. So, this heat engine, I so suppose we could call it “the weather” because those anticyclones are the weather are actually blocking the flow of heat and reducing the output. In other words THEY are forming a blanket, and the rate of flow through that blanket it dependent on the rate of circulation of the air through the weather system.
Notice how this is a completely different “blanket” from the greenhouse warming … not one I’ve ever seen discussed on climate blogs.
Of course there are two extra bits in this. First, the whole process works only if the droplets form. Cloud forming nuclei aren’t that common, and that brings in the whole issue of cosmic rays. The main point is that if there aren’t sufficient nuclei, the column of cloud will rise more, condense at a higher level where it is colder. So, the prevalence of cloud nuclei could dramatically change the rate of heat flow through this blanket
The other point is that CO2 has an entirely different effect in this system. CO2 is a good absorber of IR. That also means it is a good emitter of IR. The effect at the ground is limited by cloud and the rest of the atmosphere. But at cloud level the effect is much higher because there is less atmosphere to block the path to space and its above the cloud/water layer. Where it becomes important is air GOING INTO high pressure zones. OK, sure you will be freaked out, but where do you think all the air coming out of a high pressure system at ground level comes from?
The answer is that it is part of this atmospheric heat engine. The air that rose lost its moisture fairly quickly and is now pushed out from the low pressure zone (yes it goes out from low pressure areas). But it is at a level where there isn’t much water vapour and the other gases like Oxygen and Nitrogen are pretty poor emitters of CO2. So how does it loose its heat? It needs gases like CO2 which are good emitters of CO2 otherwise there is very little way to emit heat and allow the air to cool and press down on the high pressure zones. So, CO2 would possibly have a far more important role in the planets cooling system than it does in keeping us warm. Indeed, as one of the few gases able to emit IR high up, it may be a very important “vector” to allow other “clear” gases to emit IR.
The climate academics have this static view of a blanket (comfort blanket?). But the atmosphere is really a dynamic system and in such a system the cloud layer is an active emitter of heat … you could almost view the lower atmosphere as loads and loads of people at a football game barging to the front trying to “see” the view, discharging their cargo of heat and then being pushed down by others barging to the front. In this model, CO2 has almost no effect as a blanket because that job is performed mostly by the clouds but it could have a critical role in cooling the air high in the astmosphere.
To summarize what we have learnt:
wet air is light
Condensation warms
Air goes out of low pressure systems
And into high pressure zones
And CO2 is a cooling gas
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Mike Haseler
Excellent summary of the vertical heat flow in the atmosphere.
Good enough to be expanded int a major post(Jo?)
With some graphics and links it could form a basis for a good discussion article.
00
Errr, would it be more accurate to describe earth’s surface as a solar and geothermal powered refrigerator?
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1530.html
In short, “it” is all about the power of latent heat losses of water vapourisation from earth’s surface by the water cycle, which acts as an incredably powerful, and adaptable, heat pipe. Not a popular view this though as it is obvious that water vapour is, AND MUST BE a massive negative feedback within earth’s climate system. This alone utterly scuppers ANY version of a supposed “greenhouse effect”..ANY version, UTTERLY.
00
For the oceans, any greenhouse effect can be ruled out because of the inability of the sea surface to absorb LWIR further in than few micron, and that the IR emission band from water is right in the atmospheric window (with a minimal overlap at 13-14um).
For land, clouds and water vapour reduce daytime heating more than they slow night cooling so both have a negative net effect.
CO2 will only have any effect daytime where relative humidity is less than 10%, and it will be the first to run out of energy during the night due to its very low heat capacity.
So it should be quite clear that it is the vast heat capacity of the oceans that maintain the surface and tropospheric temperature of our planet.
The greenhouse effect is purely the luxury of a warmer night, at the cost of a cooler day, and a cooler planet.
00
Fred
For the oceans, any greenhouse effect can be ruled out because of the inability of the sea surface to absorb LWIR further in than few micron, and that the IR emission band from water is right in the atmospheric window (with a minimal overlap at 13-14um).
Another AGWScienceFiction fisics meme to keep the ‘backradiation’ arguments going – water is the great absorber of thermal infrared, radiant heat.
The Sun’s heat is the Sun’s thermal energy. The Sun’s thermal energy radiating out is longwave infrared aka thermal infrared. The Sun’s thermal infrared heats the oceans because water is a great absorber of thermal infrared and because it reaches us, we can feel it on the surface of our bodies and being large part water we can feel it internally. We can feel the temperature difference on our skin and as it penetrates several inches into our bodies to heat up our blood and tissue.
But it can’t get through a bit of “surface tension” on the ocean?
So what’s the sleight of hand here with the meme “because of the inability of the sea surface to absorb LWIR further in than few micron,”? Where does this measurement come from?
Anyway, my last attempt in this discussion to point out the difference. Shortwave can’t heat the oceans, water is a transparent medium to visible light, so if it’s as the AGW fake fisics meme has it ‘that thermal infrared from the Sun plays no part in heating the ocean because it doesn’t reach the surface but is stopped by some invisible glass barrier’, then your oceans are not being heated by the Sun and you do not have the wind and weather systems of the real Earth which take intense heating by the Sun’s thermal energy to exist.
Absorbs Heat from the Sun. The AGWSF meme has given the Sun’s real heat to visible light and UV, it’s “shortwave in”, this is ridiculous. Visible energy from the Sun is Light not Heat. We’ve known the difference since Herschel, see his experiment I posted above.
Visible light is not the Sun’s thermal energy – what does it take to get this through to you all? Visible light is not hot, we can’t feel it.
It’s the Sun’s thermal energy radiated out as thermal infrared which is the direct heat heating the oceans and land and us. In the real world in real applied science they know this very well indeed, they are still taught traditional physics which knows the difference between the Sun’s thermal energy and visible light, between Heat and Light.
To be able to create the different systems of photovoltaic and thermal panels you have to grasp of the difference between heat and light in real world physics. You have to know what they can and cannot do.
When this finally sinks in, if it ever does, you will begin to realise the extent of this scam. You have not been taught traditional physics as understood since Herchel and used daily in applied science.
Bear in mind the sleight of hand AGW meme that “shortwave is the Sun’s heat” and read this page, that great heat energy it takes to raise the temperature of the oceans is not by visible light but by the thermal infrared, longwave direct from the Sun [this is different from dissipated undirected upwelling heat going off in all directions, this is concentrated beam thermal energy travelling in straight lines direct from the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy tranferred by radiation]:
Evaporation and convection moving heat around the Earth, not radiation. Once you get that AGWSF has swapped Light and Heat around, then you’ll be able to read such a page with real understanding of what is being said – LWIR is not blocked from reaching the Earth’s surface, it is this which actually heats land and oceans. And it takes an immense amount of this to heat the oceans and land at the equator to the intensity required to give us our huge, powerful weather, our massive winds from equator to the poles, our massive thunderstorms, hurricanes which transfer heat around the atmosphere.
Do yourselves a favour, try to prove for yourself that shortwave from the Sun is capable of heating the oceans and land as this is being heated to get our weather. Real world physics knows it’s impossible.
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Will, I have suffered a nasty burn from green light from an argon laser. How, exactly, did that happen if visible light can’t heat anything up?
Wish I’d know that before I stuck my hand in the laser beam — no doubt it would have prevented my burn. /sarc
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What don’t you understand in the words “visible light as from the Sun”?
The Sun is not a laser.
Show the physical mechanism by which visible light from the Sun heats water.
In the real world, where Light is light and Heat is heat, water is a transparent medium for visible light.
Do you understand what that means?
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What, exactly, is your argument here? The argon line that burned me was 568.2nm wavelength (green) — the Sun’s spectrum peaks at about 550nm, also green. Are you suggesting that some wavelengths from the Sun (568.2 +/-?) do cause heating, but the others do not? Do you have any evidence of this remarkable effect? How would one determine the bandwidth where it is active? Why would it even exist, except in your mind to prevent you from having to accept that your concept of visible light is wrong?
Perhaps you could borrow an argon laser and re-do the experiment (put your hand in the beam) at some of the other wavelengths (406.7, 413.1, 415,4, 468.0, 476.2, 482.5, 520.8, 530.9, 647.1, or 676.4). Be sure to have a burn kit handy.
Well, Rayleigh scattering comes to mind — When a photon bounces off an atom, it is going to exchange momentum and energy with the atom, hence change its temperature.
But, actually, the effect has been observed, so whatever the mechanism is, it exists.
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So, why can’t sunlight penetrate sea water for more than a few score yards? Do YOU understand that the sea is not composed of ultra-pure water?
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Hi Bob,
And the upper graph that Fred links to below:
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html#d gives that water is actually partly opaque to visible light. (if comparatively much less than for IR and UV)
And Myrrh seems to assume that the photon diminution with water depth is not an energy loss, and that the molecular kinetic energy is not raised by molecular or photon collisions.
That’s putting aside that as you said, sea water is full of absorbent other stuff anyway.
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Are you guys trying to get this post onto the most commented chart. You might like to look at the last few hundred comments in the most commented post. Deja vu all over again.
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Do you mean, like the fish ?
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Gee Aye,
I think you should look at it through the prism of the puzzles expounded in the profound wisdoms coming from one Myrrh. Does it originate from a bizarre form of troll-myrth, or does that traffic propagator actually believe what he/she claims? Whatever, it has provided some extended entertainment and a fascination to explore that enigma.
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“Will, I have suffered a nasty burn from green light from an argon laser. How, exactly, did that happen if visible light can’t heat anything up?
”
Sorry to hear about your laser burn. I’m still trying to get rid of a nasty burn from water vapour as it rose out of the jug.
Which proves that clouds trap heat, and not just in the fluffy ‘cotton wool’ blanket sense, but in maintaining their gaseous structure.
Of course the clouds give this up as they condense and turn to rain.
.
Isn’t the absorption of energy by state changes in water remarkable.
The planetary cooling system after all.
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Not sure what your point is here Eddie: What I did was dumb — what you said is dumb. Hopefully, you are being sarcastic.
I’m not going to do anything as dumb as stick my hand in a multiple-watt laser beam again — will you take the same pledge vis-a-vis dumb statements? (Or, at least make use of the ‘/sarc’ tag, so this thread won’t look completely insane to casual lurkers.)
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Myrrh said: “So what’s the sleight of hand here with the meme “because of the inability of the sea surface to absorb LWIR further in than [a] few micron,”? Where does this measurement come from?
Here: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html#d
(do a mouse over on the big graph for the names of different infrared bands)
Near InfraRed up to about 2500nm is apparently 51% of the incoming solar EMR, and the bands that do not get absorbed in the atmosphere will depending on frequency penetrate up to a few meters into the ocean and cause the larger part of the near surface warming. If you look up the proper terminology you find it is also called “reflected infrared”. LWIR comes off cooler things than the Sun, like the Earth’s surface, and it bounces around in atmosphere too, but really can’t penetrate more than a few micron into the surface of water where it can only hasten evapouration. So past your confusion about near IR and far IR, the main issue would seem to be to get you to see that visible EMR does actually heat the ocean to great depth, and also heats solid surfaces.
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Hi Fred
Interesting looking paper.
Have printed off a copy and will have a squiz later , maybe over a beer.
KK
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To add to http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
also these:
http://www.infraredheaters.com/page12.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmosfaerisk_spredning.gif
http://cat.middlebury.edu/~chem/chemistry/ch2cl2/vib.html#question
from the last, answering the question posed “Would water (H2O) absorb strongly in the infrared?(1)
There’s also this poster with a variety of info on infrared, including the standard divisions for infrared into reflective and thermal:
http://spie.org/Documents/resources/Free%20Posters/Infrared-Poster.pdf
Thermal infrared begins at 3µm
As the NASA quote said, shortwave infrared is not thermal, is not hot, we can’t feel it.
It is reflective, like visible light, in our bodies it penetrates further than visible before being reflected back out, this is what infrared cameras pick up reflecting off matter. Which is different from thermal infrared cameras which measure the heat radiating out from matter.
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What’s your point? Your links show that visible light is, in fact, partially absorbed by pure water. (i.e., the wiki link on “Electromagnetic Absorption by Water”). Even at the wavelength where water is the most transparent — ~500 nm — the absorption coefficient is greater than 0.0001/cm, which implies that 37% of that wavelength would be absorbed in 100 meters of pure water, and essentially all would have been absorbed by the time it had traveled the average depth of the ocean (4000 meters).
These links contradict your claim that water absorbs no visible light from the Sun.
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the main issue would seem to be to get you to see that visible EMR does actually heat the ocean to great depth, and also heats solid surfaces.
——————————————————————————–
Which is what I ask for, time after time after time, and have never received this.
Prove it. Prove that visible light as from the Sun does what you say, that it heats the ocean to a great depth and heats solid surfaces.
Show and Tell. Show the experiments. Show the applications. Tell the mechanism.
..if you go to the page you linked to, what does it say about visible light?
Do you understand what transparent means?
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Myrhh,
you have not shown to us that YOU understand how transparent is commonly used in the real world. When the terms transparent and opaque are used please tell us exactly what is the cut off for percentage of electromagenetic radiation at what wavelengths has to be passed for the terms use??
You apparently aren’t smart enough to be able to understand plain english. Want to prove you are actually using the terms correctly you throw around??
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Myrhh said: “As the NASA quote said, shortwave infrared is not thermal, is not hot, we can’t feel it.”
All InfraRed bands provide heating as does visible:
Quote: “Ordinary household white incandescent bulbs can also be used as heat lamps,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_heater
Near IR is probably better for keeping food warm as it will not dry the product as much as mid IR.
Myrhh said: “Prove that visible light as from the Sun does what you say,that it heats the ocean to a great depth and heats solid surfaces.”
Prove it for yourself with a prism as in the Herschel experiment in your link and note your thermometer warm up when placed in the visible part of the spectrum.
Sunlight heats the sea daily to a greater depth than even visible red can travel:
http://ghrsst-pp.metoffice.com/pages/sst_definitions/sst_definitions.png
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All right Myrrh, I’ll do just that — and I expect you to reply, acknowledging that you are wrong.
Raman Scattering, is the name for the inelastic scattering of photons from molecules — a photon can lose energy when scattering from a molecule by exciting a low internal energy state in the molecule. What that means is that it is possible for short wavelength photons (say, in the visible) to excite internal energy states in molecules that are of much less energy than the photons. ALL of the deep IR resonant internal energy states of molecules (rotational and vibrational — which are rapidly transfered to thermal energy by collisions with other molecules) can be excited by photons of ANY WAVELENGTH, so long as they have more energy than the molecular state being excited.
Hence, all of the thermal interactions possible between molecules and longwave IR photons can also be excited by visible photons. This result is described theoretically by Quantum Mechanical Pertubation Theory.
This is not a new discovery: It was first published by physicist C.V. Raman in the Indian Journal of Physics on March 31, 1928.
This is not just a theoretical result: Raman spectroscopy is a well-established field in spectroscopy and practical instrumentation for it is widely available commercially. (Raman spectroscopy is attractive since 1) Molecular species are redily identified by their deep IR specta, and 2) Narrow-band sources and wavelength selective detectors are readily available in the visible, but much harder to achieve in the deep IR. Raman scattering, however, allows the deep IR spectrum of molecules to be measured by using visible light — the visible photons are scattered from the target molecules and their loss of energy measured.)
And, yes, Raman scattering happens in pure water, demonstrating that visible light photons excite all the same resonances in water molecules that deep IR photons do, with exactly the same result — the water is heated up.
Waiting for your reply…
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Bob C
Keep in mind the big picture here.
IPCC ‘science’ says water absorbs light and thermalises it 100%.
This particular headline topic is on how such oversimplifications gives the now largely discredited 33K greenhouse effect number.
In the case of pure water the attenuation of light caused by scattering is predominately by Rayleigh(elastic) scattering as your Hyper Physics link clearly states.
Sea water contains particulates organic and inorganic and so photochemical and photosynthetic which can account for further energy absorption other than thermalisation.
So on the big picture scale Myrrh is correct in pointing this out and asking for experimental evidence of 100% thermalisation.
Put it another way, IPCC advocates often say that N2and O2 have no IR response.
What they should say is their IR activity is very small.
I suspect the Raman scattering effect is of the same order of magnitude.
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Myrr doesn’t claim that the absorption of visible light by water is very small — he claims it is zero. He is wrong.
Raman scattering is about one millionth (10^-6) as likely as absorption by the corresponding resonant deep IR photon. Deep IR photons are absorbed in about the first 2 mm of water, so don’t contribute much to heating the oceans — mostly they simply increase evaporation. A photon of visible light has to encounter a million times as many water molecules to have the same probablility of interacting.
One million times 2 mm is 2,000 meters.
The average depth of the oceans is 4,000 meters.
Actual measurements (which include all forms of absorption) show that the wavelength at which water is most transparent (550 nm — green) still has a finite absorption coefficient of 100 meters (the distance over which ~37% of the light will be absorbed). This shows that almost all visible light is absorbed in the first 500 meters of the ocean — which is why it is extremely dark at depth.
So, in the “big picture” near 100% thermalization of visible photons (those not reflected from the surface) is highly probable, when you are talking about the oceans.
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Bob C you say
“So, in the “big picture” near 100% thermalization of visible photons (those not reflected from the surface) is highly probable, when you are talking about the oceans.”
You repeat the IPCC gross oversimplification.
Your Hyper Physics link clearly states that the overwhelming scattering process is by Rayleigh (elastic) scattering.
What fraction of of the incident light ever reaches 2000m after being Rayleigh scattered?
What fraction of light in sea water is involved in photochemical and photosynthetic processes before reaching a depth of 2000m.
These two facts alone make the “100% thermalization” highly improbable
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BobC,
Thank you for drawing my attention to Raman “inelastic scattering”. I now realize that Bryan and I have been talking at cross purposes further down the page.
Bryan,
If you had not been so very insulting to me I might have paid better attention to you. I have an intolerance of what I term “cross-disciplinary-elitist-arrogance” and if you are a physicist as you seem to infer then you should have seen immediately that I described “elastic collisions”, not that rather strange thing “elastic scattering”. BTW in what I’ve read so-far it does not seem to have any elasticity involved, and I always thought that it was simply collisional or deflective just as you said somewhere below!
On September 16, 2012 at 6:23 pm you described my comment on elastic collision as tiresome gobbledegook and a prime example of pseudo-science despite that the concept is well accepted in quantum theory. That is hardly the way to conduct a proper discussion.
I’ll probably have more to say later, further down the page.
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Light that undergoes Rayleigh scattering is not destroyed or absorbed — it merely changes direction. (Of course, in order to change direction, it must exchange momentum (and hence energy) with the scattering molecule, so there is some chance of losing energy to the water.)
A small fraction of visible sunlight is reflected from the surface of the water.
A small fraction of the light that enters the water is scattered back to and through the surface.
The great majority of the light that enters the water proceeds on from scattering event to scattering event until it finally “disappears”.
What happens to the energy in that light, Bryan? It is not a “gross oversimplification” to assume that conservation of energy holds here and it ends up as thermal energy or chemical potential energy (which eventually also ends up as thermal energy). Myrrh wanted to see a mechanism that could convert visible photons directly to thermal energy — I gave him one that has been known and exploited for 80 years.
So now you want to talk about sea water. The measured absorption of visible light in pure water shows that virtually none would ever reach a depth of 2000 m.
My understanding of photosynthesis is that it is about 4% efficient — hence it could reduce the immediate thermalization of the energy by that amount, at most.
Well, given the light that is reflected from and re-scattered back through the surface (as I described above), “100% thermalization” is actually impossible. I actually said “near 100% thermalization”. Let’s be conservative and say “80% or more thermalization”. Disagreeing with something I never said is not an argument.
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Re-read the post: Cao does not make any argument connecting the heating of sea water by the sun with the correct calculation of the greenhouse effect. What he does is show that the 33K figure incorrectly assumes the Earth, as a whole, is a perfect blackbody — an assumption that satelite measurements (among others) falsifies. The average emissivity of the Earth is only weakly connected (if at all) with thermalization of visible light in the oceans.
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Bob C says
“Re-read the post: Cao does not make any argument connecting the heating of sea water by the sun with the correct calculation of the greenhouse effect. ”
I said
“This particular headline topic is on how SUCH oversimplifications”
Meaning here (in the case of 100% light absorption in pure water) is another gross oversimplification.
Bob C says
“Light that undergoes Rayleigh scattering is not destroyed or absorbed — it merely changes direction. (Of course, in order to change direction, it must exchange momentum (and hence energy) with the scattering molecule, so there is some chance of losing energy to the water.)”
Try working out the change in momentum of a water molecule on impact with a photon.
This tiny change can be up or down
Net result is totally negligible, so no chance of losing photo-energy.
Also Rayleigh scattering is predominantly in forward and backward cones.
This means that a large fraction of the light leaves the water almost immediately.
Lets try a little IPCC type science on this one.
50% leaves ‘back’ in the first 10m
50% of 50% leaves ‘back’ in the next 10m and so on.
If you look at the IPCC pseudoscience poster above the back-radiation from the atmosphere is almost as large as the upward thermal radiation from the Earth.
Yet IPCC science say that all light entering the water is thermalised.
No mention of photochemistry or photosynthesis.
Seaweed and Algae don’t exist in the sea.
For that matter trees, animals and grass don’t exist on land.
Too late to add them in now because the science is settled.
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Fred,
I wonder if Myrrh as a kid used to use a magnifying glass (glass lense) to burn and kill insects. He may have noticed that it is necessary to focus and concentrate the light onto a small area to make them smoke well. He/she will of course insist that it is the tiny amount of mid-IR that is doing the work. (since he claims that near-IR cannot result in heating). I wonder if she/he is aware that glass is partially opaque to IR, and in IR optics they consequently use germanium and that the refractive index of IR is much higher than visible light?
Oh, and albedo and reflectivity of visible light of various solids can be measured. Most of them have modest reflectivity and are opaque, so somehow some of the light must “go into” them. I would hazard a guess that they would thus absorb that energy and get hotter, but no doubt Myrth will make us smile if he responds.
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Fred, He/she will of course insist that it is the tiny amount of mid-IR that is doing the work. (since he claims that near-IR cannot result in heating). I wonder if she/he is aware that glass is partially opaque to IR, and in IR optics they consequently use germanium and that the refractive index of IR is much higher than visible light?
Fred, they really can’t take in anything. They missed out “begins”, I said: “Thermal infrared begins at 3µm”
Gosh, Bob you say glass is partially opaque to IR? So how many degrees heat extra do we have add to the temperatures of IR Herschel measured through his glass prism?
Tell me Bob, what is this AGW glass greenhouse ceiling around the atmosphere that stops you getting any direct heat from the Sun, which people in the real world know isn’t blocked because they can feel it and see its heating effects?
Where exactly is this imaginary world you’re living in?
In whose head?
Oh, and albedo and reflectivity of visible light of various solids can be measured. Most of them have modest reflectivity and are opaque, so somehow some of the light must “go into” them. I would hazard a guess that they would thus absorb that energy and get hotter, but no doubt Myrth will make us smile if he responds.
Oh wow, “so somehow some of the light must “go into” them.”
I’ve been requesting you tell me exactly what happens in your world, how visible heats land and oceans.
“I would hazard a guess that they would thus absorb that energy and get hotter,”
Hazard a guess isn’t good enough. I’ve been asking for specific details. Surely you must have it? I keep being told it is well proven by lots of experiments..
..go fetch. I’m not interested in your guesses.
This is your claim. Show and tell the science to your claim that visible light heats land and oceans.
And I remind you, in the real world water is a transparent medium to visible light, as I have explained above, water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through unchanged.
Water doesn’t even allow visible light to get in to play with its electrons.
This means visible light can’t physically heat water, it can’t physically move the molecules into vibration to raise water’s temperature.
Visible light cannot be heating the oceans.
Your comic cartoon imaginary world is just downright, stupid.
Which explains the level of your comments.
00
Sorry mods, I didn’t spot I’d missed closing italic.
Fred, He/she will of course insist that it is the tiny amount of mid-IR that is doing the work. (since he claims that near-IR cannot result in heating). I wonder if she/he is aware that glass is partially opaque to IR, and in IR optics they consequently use germanium and that the refractive index of IR is much higher than visible light?
Fred, they really can’t take in anything. They missed out “begins”, I said: “Thermal infrared begins at 3µm”
Gosh, Bob you say glass is partially opaque to IR? So how many degrees heat extra do we have add to the temperatures of IR Herschel measured through his glass prism?
Tell me Bob, what is this AGW glass greenhouse ceiling around the atmosphere that stops you getting any direct heat from the Sun, which people in the real world know isn’t blocked because they can feel it and see its heating effects?
Where exactly is this imaginary world you’re living in?
In whose head?
Oh, and albedo and reflectivity of visible light of various solids can be measured. Most of them have modest reflectivity and are opaque, so somehow some of the light must “go into” them. I would hazard a guess that they would thus absorb that energy and get hotter, but no doubt Myrth will make us smile if he responds.
Oh wow, “so somehow some of the light must “go into” them.”
I’ve been requesting you tell me exactly what happens in your world, how visible heats land and oceans.
“I would hazard a guess that they would thus absorb that energy and get hotter,”
Hazard a guess isn’t good enough. I’ve been asking for specific details. Surely you must have it? I keep being told it is well proven by lots of experiments..
..go fetch. I’m not interested in your guesses.
This is your claim. Show and tell the science to your claim that visible light heats land and oceans.
And I remind you, in the real world water is a transparent medium to visible light, as I have explained above, water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through unchanged.
Water doesn’t even allow visible light to get in to play with its electrons.
This means visible light can’t physically heat water, it can’t physically move the molecules into vibration to raise water’s temperature.
Visible light cannot be heating the oceans.
Your comic cartoon imaginary world is just downright, stupid.
Which explains the level of your comments.
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Brilliant, spot on, well said. At last someone talking sense, and sense we can actually observe.
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Myrhh,
you are funny man.
Here is one for you.
You claim Mid-Infrared is the only thermal energy band apparently. A lot of thermal energy should easily melt steel and other metals. In fact a lot of thermal energy should melt or vaporize darn near anything.
Tell me, why does an infrared laser require a much higher energy level to effectively melt or vaporize metals?
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You claim Mid-Infrared is the only thermal energy band apparently.
That’s not what I said. Correct your straw man.
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What?? I set up a Strawman???
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
First off Myrth, I remember you ranting about how only THERMAL IR did anything because the scientist that discovered it set those bands. Just a reminder, THERMAL IR is 8-15. Above you claim that IR causes effects down to about 3. 3-8 is Mid IR. Have you now expanded your Thermal only to now include both Mid and Long wave (Thermal) IR??
Hey, that would be an improvement. What has changed your mind so that you expanded your horizons??
Now, so that I don’t set up another STRAWMAN to attack you, maybe you can tell us about what range of wave lengths YOU claim have thermal effects???
While you are thinking about that, let me tell you that your use of terms is silly. You talk about THERMAL IR and TRANSPARENT like they were magic or something!! Let me show you something about transparent. We have already shown you that pure water is not totally transparent to visible light. Take a look at the graphs in the glass manufacturers Optical Glass tech info:
http://www.schott.com/advanced_optics/english/download/tie-35_transmittance.pdf
Surprise surprise. Similar to black bodies, perfectly transparent is a concept not often met in reality whether it is pure water or pure glass. Oh, and don’t miss the section on IR absorptivity.
You keep talking about experiments. Here is a rather straight forward one that even you should be able to do. Stole it from a commenter a while back. Take a bucket of water. Place a thermometer in the bottom where you can read it. Now select your favorite IR source and time how long it takes to warm a couple of gallons of water 10c.
That’s it. let us know how it goes.
Oh yeah, you can start thinking about what else might be warming the oceans while you are waiting for the bucket to warm. Between 200 and 1000 meter depth the oceans drop from about 23c to 5c going on donw to 2c. They are COOLED by downwelling 0c water at the poles. Even with all the volcanic action and geothermal heat from the earth they are COLD!!! What heats that thin upper layer????
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/temp.html
Oh, and by the way, your reading comprehension is lousy. Look up the word apparently and then tell me again I was unequivocally stating you believed Mid IR was the only thing you believed is thermal.
As far as what you believe with photosynthesis, you accept that it operates on VISIBLE light not in the near IR?
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Gentlemen,
you should ask Myrhh about photosynthesis. Back on a WUWT thread he was denying that the wavelengths the botanists/chemist/biologists claimed drove photosynthesis really did!!! He seemed to think they were in on the gorebull warming scam!!!
I can’t remember what he had to say about the photoelectric effect, but, it will probably be another hooter!!
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Kuhnkat,
I don’t like to talk directly to Myrrh, but to you, I see that he/she has severally on this thread referred to photosynthesis inferring I think that it is an important factor in global energy balance. A page search here currently finds 11 matches of that word, in which Myrrh is a leader.
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you should ask Myrhh about photosynthesis. Back on a WUWT thread he was denying that the wavelengths the botanists/chemist/biologists claimed drove photosynthesis really did!!! He seemed to think they were in on the gorebull warming scam!!!
I have never said that, or anything like it. I would never say anything like that. Go fetch where you say I did.
You appear to have difficulties in reading, or comprehension, so have created your own version of what I said. You have done the same again here in this discussion.
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Myrrh said: ” water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through unchanged.”
If that were true the ocean floor would be fully illuminated by the midday Sun. Again, visible red makes it no further than 5 meters down and blue is fully absorbed by 275 meters depth and this absorption has to result in heating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba_diving#Light_underwater
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Myrrh said: ” water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through unchanged.”
If that were true the ocean floor would be fully illuminated by the midday Sun. Again, visible red makes it no further than 5 meters down and blue is fully absorbed by 275 meters depth and this absorption has to result in heating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba_diving#Light_underwater
——————————————————————————–
As I’ve explained before, the AGWScienceFiction memes are created by sleights of hand, here the magic trick is to confuse those without basic physics understanding by using the general term “absorbed” as a description of visible light attenuation in the ocean, with the technical term “absorbed” as used in the molecules actually absorbing visible energy. Sleights of hand are by their nature clever manipulations, subtle, and you will not be able to see these without a basic physics understanding, real physics in the real world. And please bear in mind here what I’m trying to explain is complicated by the fact that AGW memes have tweaked all the basic terms in creating the fictional world of The Greenhouse Effect in swapping properties around, taking laws out of context etc., so none of this is easy to explain because there are often several different tweaks from different science areas for one meme.
I have given the difference between absorption on a whole molecule level and absorption on an electron level before, perhaps you missed it, but without understanding this real world physics basic you won’t be able to see how the memes are created.
Visible light works on the electronic transition level on meeting matter, that is, it interacts, or doesn’t, on the electron level of a molecule. Visible light is tiny.
The difference in size between Near Infrared and Thermal Infrared is between microscopic and pinhead, Visible light is even tinier than Near Infrared, the cartoons showing the electromagnetic spectrum can’t show the relative size between the different wavelengths, you’ll have to use your imaginative abilities to picture the difference in size between as big as a house and miles long and microscopic..
The first sleight of hand AGW meme here is by excising all the differences between these, in the meme “all electromagnetic energy is the same”, because if you ever twig that they’re not the same, that they have different properties and processes, you’ll see through the con.
Science, real physics, is about exploring the differences, how these act on meeting matter is critical information about them, what they can and cannot do. Near Infrared is classed with Visible as Light and not Heat because these are different energies; Reflective not Thermal.
Heat is actually the thermal energy of matter, kinetic movement which is heat, matter actually vibrating on a molecular level, and, this on the move, called transfer, by electromagnetism is thermal radiation. The thermal, heat, energy of something can be transferred by conduction, convection or radiation.
The Visible light from the Sun has been created by this immense heat energy of the Sun, its immense thermal energy which is its kinetic energy, all these are the same thing, heat – kinetic energy is the energy of motion and can be measured, the average is the temperature of something.
Visible is a product of this, it does not have the heat of that which created it and it’s no longer of a form big enough to impact matter on a molecular level, it’s become too small – the AGW meme that this is “peak energy and therefore more powerful” is a deliberate sleight of hand to distract from the fact that visible from the Sun is now so tiny that it only meets matter on an electron level, on which level it is powerless to move the whole molecule into vibration which is what it takes to create heat, to heat up matter.
The example I’ve been giving of how visible works on this electonic transition level shows up another AGW fiction meme, which claims that “the atmosphere is transparent to visible and it passes through this as through the glass of a greenhouse” (“where it then gets absorbed by the land and oceans and heats these up”).
Again, you’ll have to bear in mind I’m saying that AGW tweaks real physics, for example, its sleights of hand will sometimes refer to light as in real physics and sometimes not, to confuse the unwary.. See my post here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/do-greenhouse-gases-warm-the-planet-by-33c-jinan-cao-checks-the-numbers/#comment-1123981 and see if you can answer the question I pose at the end.
So, AGW describes the atmosphere as “transparent to visible light”, but also says it is being reflected in the atmosphere. The use of the term reflected in real physics shows visible is not passing through a transparent medium, because reflection is created by the electrons of the molecules first absorbing visible. Transparent specifically means that it is transmitted through without being absorbed.
This of course is avoided by AGW because it would interfere with its claim that “all absorption of electromagnetic energy creates heat”. AGW thus uses the technical term transparent incorrectly when it describes visible travelling through the atmosphere, a deliberate fib.
What is actually happening in the real world, is that visible light is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen which become more energetic and when they return to their ground state they emit the same light energy which energised them. In effect, the electrons bounce visible light out again. This is called reflection/scattering.
If you ask how much visible light is heating the atmosphere in AGW fisics you won’t get a reply..
So, AGWSF lies the atmosphere being transparent to visible light and then lies about the ocean which really is transparent to visible light, by the play on the word “absorbed”.
A transparent medium means that the energy is not absorbed, not even on the electron scale. The molecules of a transparent medium won’t let the energy into its dance. Think of a dancefloor with individual groups of dancers in some reel together, the visible light can’t get in to impact the electrons, it tries but can’t and moves on to the next group until it comes out the other side, in the trying it is slowed down. I posted a description of this earlier.
Visible light is slowed down by the atmosphere, it is slowed down some 14 times more by water, in slowing down the different wavelengths separate out. In the atmosphere of our gas air, blue visible light being more energetic, think nervy, is being bounced around more by the electrons of nitrogen and oxygen so we have our blue sky and in the ocean travels deeper before it stops, this is called attenuation.
The general descriptive term “absorbed” is used by AGWSF of visible light in the oceans to pretend that it is describing real physical absorption by the molecules, but it’s simply not true. Water is a transparent medium for visible light because it transmits visible light through unchanged. Visible light is transmitted through unchanged because it is not absorbed on the whole molecular level or the smaller electron level.
Water is a transparent medium to visible because visible isn’t big enough to impact its molecules as a whole to make them vibrate, kinetic heat the heat of motion, nor is visible able to get to the electrons of the water molecules to be absorbed which would result in reflection/scattering.
So water does not even reflect/scatter visible light as does the gas air of our atmosphere where visible light is actually absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen which make up some 98% of our atmosphere, our heavy fluid subject to gravity real gas air.
Visible light heating the ocean 275 metres down is impossible, in the real world, because its not possible at any depth. It’s the medium that matters.
Visible light cannot be absorbed by water on the molecular level to raise the whole molecule’s energy level which is what it takes to heat matter – rub your hands together, that is mechanical energy doing this – nor is it absorbed even on the smaller electron level which produces reflection/scattering.
And if you say ‘it must be absorbed because it disappears’, then you’re postulating that created energy is eternal.. What happens when you switch off the light?
If visible light was absorbed to heat by the ocean and not tranmitted through unchanged, we would have no life in the oceans – which needs visible light unchanged to exist. This is simple logical proof which falsifies the AGWSF fisics claim.
Essentially visible is used in photosynthesis which some give in the ocean as responsible for 90% of the oxygen in our atmosphere, and which began the evolution of life into the abundant flora and fauna we have now and have had in the past.
Not all absorption converts to heat, visible light in photosynthesis is used by the plant in the conversion to chemical energy, not kinetic, in the creation of sugars out of water and carbon dioxide.
In sight visible light converts to nerve impulses, not heat.
And if you still say that “all electromagnetic energy is the same and when absorbed heats”, then tell me how much visible light is heating our atmosphere, because it’s not in your cartoon energy budget..
I noticed when I began this reply to you that I haven’t answered a post from you in 61 – so will go back to that later today. I don’t know where you got that information from, but I’ve posted Herschel’s experiment, I suggest you find and read it.
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Myrrh said:
“If visible light was absorbed to heat by the ocean and not tranmitted through unchanged, we would have no life in the oceans – which needs visible light unchanged to exist. This is simple logical proof which falsifies the AGWSF fisics claim.”
Don’t be silly, there’s plenty of life below 275 meters in complete darkness. Now if I dive down 5 meters in daytime, there is no red light left, so where has it gone?
Get yourself a prism and thermometer, do the Herschel experiment, and measure the temperature of the visible parts of the spectrum.
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Fred, and your post 61.1.2.2.2
I’ve posted the Herschel experiment, his own paper where he describes exactly what he did in his own words. If you’re really interested you would read it.
It was Herschel who first discovered that there was an invisible energy from the Sun outside of the visible spectrum below red and that this energy was heat, he called it dark light. It is now called thermal infrared, radiated Heat.
Read also Tyndall’s experiments on this, and remember this, at that time they didn’t know that thermal infrared was bigger than the visible wavelengths, so although Herschel could eliminate visible from his measurements of thermal, he wasn’t eliminating thermal from the measurements of visible.
We now know that the shortwaves are not thermal, they are not hot at all, we cannot feel them. We have known this fact for rather a long time in real science. That you have changed it, by saying shortwave is hot and that the real heat we feel from the Sun doesn’t reach the surface, is thus obviously a con.
It is a con created to promote AGW, it dumbs you down in basic science. It was created to dumb you down in basic science.
I can only suggest that you find a traditional physics teacher who would be willing to teach you and show you.
I am not going to give any more explanations about this, I’ve done enough of that in this discussion and I can see by your responses that you either haven’t understood any of it or simply ignored it.
There remains only one thing, that you still have not proved in any way that visible heats land and oceans as in your comic cartoon Greenhouse Effect energy budget.
You have all consistently failed to do this.
I know you can’t, because I do know basic real world physics, which I’ve tried to pass on to you.
I know you can’t fetch the claimed “lots of experiments, it’s proved” because these do not exist.
If these did exist I would not have had to keep asking you to fetch it..
When all’s said and done, the only people you’re fooling are yourselves.
So, goodbye.
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Myrth posts his ridiculous strawman yet again and runs away. Is he starting to realize how wrong he is??
“We now know that the shortwaves are not thermal, they are not hot at all, we cannot feel them.”
Yup, this kind of twisted BS is typical of Myrth and his strawmen. He claims if it isn’t HOT, whatever that means it isn’t thermal. He also claims that if he can’t FEEL IT it isn’t thermal. While he can SAY what he wants the fact that it IS thermal but simply is at magnitudes that HE can’t feel is not changed by his declaration. So, I guess according to Myrth the Microwave background Radiation, that is only a little above 0K is not thermal??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I guess those gamma rays from his nuclear bombs don’t exist either because he can’t feel them. He is just scared to death when it goes off in reasonable proximity!!!!
Oh Myrth, those nuclear bombs were air bursts dufus!!! They couldn’t have vaporised anything due to their distance from the buildings. Even the descriptions you copied were for buildings and material mostly pulverised from the shockwave and ignited by the fireball not VAPORIZED by a close explosion. The fireball didn’t even reach the ground dufus!! If you fire a nuke at ground level you lose a large amount of effectiveness to digging a large crater that actually decreases the area of effectiveness!!! Little Boy was detonated at about 600m and Fat Boy at about 500m, heights larger than the radii of the fireballs!!!
How can you so consistently misinterpret what you read?!
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HELP! Found it again and I’m confused; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation
Way down the page there is a photo in visible light of a guy wearing clear spectacles and with a black plastic bag over one arm. If I understand the wisdom of Myrrh correctly, this visible light is not transmitted through the bag and neither is it reflected to any significance. Can someone help me please! Where does that light go? Does it disappear like some comments do on alarmist blogs?
Interestingly the second photo in infrared reveals that the bag is transparent in those wavelengths, and the visible clear spectacles are opaque
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Bob,
I think Myrth’s problem is that he put the black bag over his head and the glasses on his arm.
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Kuhnkat
I hope you weren’t making a death threat to Myrth.
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In pure water light will be gradually attenuated.
Some think that the attenuated part is therefore absorbed.
Up thread someone gave Rayleigh scattering as an example of absorption.
It is not Rayleigh scattering is elastic.
The photons are deflected without losing any energy.
Rayleigh scattering – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IPCC science works on the assumption that water is a black body with absorbency/emissivity of 1.
It is not and Myrrh is right when he points this out.
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Thank you Bryan.
It’s the biggest con so far in the history of science, the Missing Link held back that field for nearly half a century – until the old codgers who’d taught it and made their reputations on it had retired from the scene.
What this is though is much, much worse, it is a brainswashing through the normal educational channels to deliberately dumb down basic science for the general population. All believing this faked fisics are incapable of designing the applications we see around us where we still have applied scientists with real physics who understand the difference between radiated light and heat and so can build photovoltaic and thermal panels to capture these.
But it’s in all their basic science and they don’t know how much they have missing. They think the gases in our atmosphere are ideal so they don’t know the difference between their empty space and the real world’s heavy fluid real gas ocean and have from that no concept of convection, no weather or sound in their world..
If these believing AGWScienceFiction don’t break out of this deliberately created delusion the world’s population which learns its basic physics from them will be set back several hundred years. They’ll end up the drones working for an elite who will continue to be taught real physics, and to the drones this will appear as if magic.
At the moment there a still lots of traditional teachers around accessible to the general population, but if the plans for destruction of industries continues these too will begin to disappear. This is just a clever, Fabian inspired, alternative to the usual method of dumbing down the general population, the mass killing of teachers and the burning of books.
As Lenin said, ‘we’ll just send them to sleep and then come in with an iron fist’..
I can only hope they make the effort to actually try and prove me wrong so they can work out the truth for themselves.
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Bryan,
WRONG! The quantum theory concept of elastic collisions is that there is no net loss of energy and billiard balls bouncing off each other has been a useful conceptual analogy. (deflection hysteresis is much less than say with tennis balls) The velocity of both balls is affected and also direction if the collision is not normal. In the case of a photon colliding with a molecule, the change is far greater to the photon than to the molecule, but lots of tiny hits all add-up. Was it that guy Newton who reckoned that for every force there is an opposite and equal reaction?
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Bob Fernley-Jones says
“WRONG! The quantum theory concept of elastic collisions is that there is no net loss of energy and billiard balls bouncing off each other has been a useful conceptual analogy. (deflection hysteresis is much less than say with tennis balls) The velocity of both balls is affected and also direction if the collision is not normal. In the case of a photon colliding with a molecule, the change is far greater to the photon than to the molecule, but lots of tiny hits all add-up. Was it that guy Newton who reckoned that for every force there is an opposite and equal reaction?”
Tiresome gobbledygook !!!
After reading this prime example of pseudo -science it is evident that.
1. You have never taken a course in quantum mechanics
2. You do not have access to a physics textbook.
3. you have far too much time on your hands which you waste by stringing random technical terms together in the remote chance that they impress the uninformed.
4. Prime bit of nonsense is to suggest that the photon loses speed.
Look up the speed of light!!!
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Bryan,
REALLY? There is much written that whilst photons have a fixed speed in a vacuum, they are affected by matter in various ways. For instance upon hitting a perfect mirror they change direction and if at normal, they reverse 180 degrees. If they strike a black body they are absorbed and cease to exist as photons. (Oh, and incidentally the tiny impact force or pressure-of-light is half that of a mirror.) If they transmit through a transparent material (gas, liquid or solid) they slow down versus speed in a vacuum.
BTW, since you also seem to have difficulty with understanding “billiard ball collision” being almost perfectly “elastic”, (as meant in physics), I’ve just Googled that and it gave 95,500 hits….Try it.
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Bob Fernley-Jones
Sorry to be so blunt, but you are floundering.
In you previous posts you say that Raleigh scattering is not elastic.
This is acheived (so you say) by the photon slowing down in the material
This is despite every physics book on the planet saying that it the scattering is elastic and that the speed of light in a particular refractive index is constant.
You offer no reputable source for your odd ideas.
You will need to take a course in physics to understand the points I am making.
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Bryan,
Sorry, my composition crossed yours and I’ll get back to you on your latest domani
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Bryan,
NOT TRUE: I explained how in such theorised elastic collisions both particles experience a change of speed, with no change in net energy.
WHAT? I thought you were claiming that the speed of light is invariable, and I pointed out that when encountering matter (from a vacuum), it is changed
Your exchange with BobC is interesting
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Bryan,
Whilst waiting for your wise response to my September 17, 2012 at 6:21 pm I’ll meanwhile address another point of yours:
I’ve studied what I wrote and which you deprecate and wonder what technical incongruences you allude to. Could it be my phrase “deflection hysteresis”? Whilst the term hysteresis has a bunch of applications that might have confused you, I was specifically referring to the difference between tennis ball rubbery deflections when bouncing that result in significant heat losses, and the miniscule deflections between billiard balls that are almost devoid of deflective hysteresis. Both comparators emit sound energy of course but the argument is that billiard balls do hardly any WORK in collision to generate HEAT, because of their great hardness and smoothness. Of course there is a very different perception of elasticity between physicists and lay people, and perhaps you could check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis#Elastic_hysteresis
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#61.1.2.2.2
Fred
September 14, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Myrhh said: “As the NASA quote said, shortwave infrared is not thermal, is not hot, we can’t feel it.”
All InfraRed bands provide heating as does visible:
Quote: “Ordinary household white incandescent bulbs can also be used as heat lamps,”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_heater
Near IR is probably better for keeping food warm as it will not dry the product as much as mid IR.
A quick p.s. to answer this which I missed.
An incandescent light bulb emits around 95% Heat, thermal infrared, and so around 5% visible light, Light.
It is the thermal infrared which is doing the heating..
Do try and get your head around the fact that visible light is not a thermal energy, it is not hot, cannot heat up matter, then, you’ll begin to get to grips with the con..
There are lots of modern lights specifically designed to maximise Light and take out Heat – check out greenhouse grow lights, etc., etc., etc.
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Myrrh said: “A quick p.s. to answer this which I missed.”
What you missed was the fact that Near InfraRed does heat things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_heater
You have misread the Herschel experiment, it may have said it was found to be warmer in the IR range, i.e. warmer than the visible, so the visible did heat the thermometer, try it for yourself.
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HELP please once more,
I remain puzzled by Myrrh’s hypothesis that seawater is the same as pure liquid water and that EMR with a wavelength shorter than mid-IR, whilst it comes mostly from that big hot thing; the sun; does not transfer heat and whatnot.
The literature describes Planck Curves for both terrestrial and solar EMR which when temporally and spatially normalised to each other would sensibly both contain about the same area (= lots of ergs)
If we consult the following article from a warmist site, particularly the two lowest graphs, it seems that the solar energy contains only a very small proportion of mid-IR so that the great bulk of solar cannot transport heat, according to Myrrh.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/25/the-sun-and-max-planck-agree-part-two/
Why am I confused?
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I would say it is Myrrh that is confused.
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This is something I wrote earlier, I’m posting it here as a direct open challenge to you here arguing with me and to all AGW/CAGW believers of their fictional fisics.
You’re, as always, generic and specific, avoiding providing the proof requested of you – I ask a simple specific question which will determine who is b*llsh*tt*ng here.
Prove your fictional fisics isn’t, prove it hasn’t been conjured up in someone’s mind and isn’t impossible in the real world.
Fetch proof from all the experiments which I’ve been told confirm it, show exactly how blue visible light from the Sun intensely heats the oceans and land in our real physical world to get the massive winds and weather we have in our real world.
In our real world in real physics the great direct invisible thermal infrared heat from our Sun heats land and oceans intensely at the equator, and you’ve taken this out to create your fictional AGW world and fictional fisics of “shortwave in longwave out”.
All these your AGW claims of basic physics are idiotic science. That’s why no empirical proof is ever fetched.
Because there isn’t any proof in the real world physics where we still have applied scientists with rational minds who not only know the difference between heat and light from the Sun, but use the difference to create applications that work, that actually work; that have created photovoltaic cells and thermal panels because they know what photo and thermal mean..
..and what they can and can’t do.
This is a challenge.
Your claim, it should be easy to fetch. This is your basics fisics. What’s the problem in fetching a proper empirical physics explanation as I’ve requested, to one simple little question?
So prove your fictional fisics instead of wasting my time with irrelevant comments.
Show blue visible light from the Sun heats land and water.
Fetch.
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Here you go — Check out my answer at 61.1.2.2.3
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Water is a transparent medium for visible light. For all practical purposes of doing work to heat water that means it is impossible, because, visible is transmitted unchanged, because transmitted means that it is not absorbed so it is passed through unchanged.
But, anyway, visible light works on the tinier electronic transition scale, this is not the scale on which an electromagnetic wave is able to move the whole molecule of matter into vibration which is what it takes to heat matter, to raise its temperature, which is the average kinetic energy which is the energy of motion, of vibration.
Rub your hands together, that is mechanical energy heating your skin, by physically moving the molecules into vibration. Heat energy can and does move molecules of matter into vibration. That’s how your dinners get cooked.
Thermal infrared is called thermal because it is heat, it is hot, it is the thermal energy of the Sun on the move, it is the Heat of the Sun being transferred by radiation.
What is being transferred is the Sun’s heat energy which is matter in vibration, its thermal energy is its heat energy and it is called heat because it is heat, thermal means heat, and heat is able to move other molecules of matter into vibration to raise matter’s temperature, which is average kinetic energy which is heat, which is the heat energy of motion which is matter in vibration which is heat. Heat is heat and it heats. It is Heat and not Light.
It is the immense heating of ocean and land at the equator by the Sun’s heat which gives us our massive, vast, huge, great, wind system, which happens when huge amounts, huge volumes, of hot fluid gas air rise at the equator becoming less dense, hot air rises, and, because heat always flows from hotter to colder, these huge hot volumes of air rise and flow to the cold poles where they lose their heat and where, because cold air sinks, the huge heavy volumes of dense cold air at the poles sink below the volumes of hot air, displacing hot air, and flow back to the equator where they are heated up again and the cycle continues.
Volumes of the fluid gas air on the move are called winds, these are convection currents in a fluid medium. As above so below.
In the ocean these are called currents, huge volumes of the fluid liquid water on the move. Gases and liquids are fluids. As huge volumes of the fluid liquid water get heated at the equator and become less dense these flow towards the poles, because heat always flows from hotter to colder, where they rise to the surface and the huge volumes of cold heavy fluid liquid water at the poles displaces them, sinking beneath, and these flow back towards the equator where they get heated up again; the basic thermohaline circulation.
It takes immense heating of matter at the equator by thermal energy to give us our basic huge wind system. Winds are volumes of the fluid gas air on the move. Our basic wind system is huge volumes of air heated at the equator becoming lighter rising and flowing towards the poles replaced by huge cold heavy volumes of air sinking beneath them flowing from the poles to the equator, staying in their own hemispheres.
This is how heat is transferred in the atmosphere around the Earth, by convection, in convection currents which are called winds which are volumes of the fluid gas air on the move. As huge volumes of the fluid gas air get hot and rise and huge volumes of cold air sink flowing beneath, and locally all around the Earth.
Now, add in that it takes a huge amount of thermal energy to heat up matter to get us our massive, vast, huge, great thunderstorms, hurricanes, and you show me how visible light from the Sun can do all that.
When on the tiny electronic transition level it operates on it can’t move the whole molecule of matter into the vibrational states of motion which is heat. When in the atmosphere the tiny visible energy is absorbed by the tiny electrons of the nitrogen and oxygen molecules which spit it back out again reflecting and scattering it, bouncing it all over the sky.
AGWSF says the atmosphere is transparent to visible light, but reflection/scattering is from visible light being absorbed by the electrons..
AGWScienceFiction has taken out the great thermal energy of the Sun which is the Sun’s heat on the move to us by radiation which is thermal infrared which is physically capable of heating matter, which actually physically heats water and land in the real world around us, and says it doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface so plays no part in heating land and oceans to give us our huge, massive, vast, dramatic, wind and ocean currents and weather systems created by the movement of huge volumes of fluid heated matter rising and huge volumes of fluid cold matter sinking and flowing beneath.
AGWScienceFiction says Shortwave visible light does this heating and it says that the actual thermal energy from the Sun doesn’t.
AGWScienceFiction says there is an invisible glass barrier, unexplained, around the Earth which is so powerful it stops the huge thermal energy of the Sun from reaching the surface so it can’t play any part in the immense heating of land and oceans which it what it takes to get our huge wind and weather system.
AGWScienceFiction says Shortwave from the Sun is so powerful it heats land and oceans instead.
AGWSF says that visible light from the Sun, Light, is heating land and oceans and not thermal infrared from the Sun, Heat, which is says doesn’t reach us.
Thermal infrared is the invisible heat energy of the Sun which we all feel as the Sun’s thermal energy, we know it reaches us. AGWSF has given visible light from the Sun the property properly belonging to thermal infrared. This is how the con was made, by this sleight of hand. A magic trick which you won’t see until you’re able to grasp the magnitude of the difference between them.
It takes a lot of powerful heat energy to heat up land and oceans to get us our wind and weather systems.
So, let’s get a sense of perspective here, a sense of scale.
Show how blue visible light from the Sun heats land and water.
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Myrth,
Outside of your continued emphasis on misunderstanding the english usage of transparent and your continued repetition of the falsity that visible light cannot heat water ALSO ignoring that the oceans are NOT pure water you now add the ludicrous:
“But, anyway, visible light works on the tinier electronic transition scale, this is not the scale on which an electromagnetic wave is able to move the whole molecule of matter into vibration which is what it takes to heat matter, to raise its temperature, which is the average kinetic energy which is the energy of motion, of vibration.”
Would you please find someone to at least teach you basic physics???? You just left out a bunch with your claim that only molecular vibration is heat. I guess atoms can’t have the property heat in your world???
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Oh, and Myrth,
I notice that you used to ask for proof that VISIBLE light could heat the oceans and you have now changed that to BLUE VISIBLE light. You are learning apparently as blue is the least absorbed. Would you like to change that to violet now or later.
Irregardless, from Wikipedia whom you appear to like to quote:
The absorption (measured as absorption coefficient on the right) increases along with the electromagnetic waves length from blue to red color. In pure water the lowest absorption (or highest transmittance) lies at about 0.0044 m−1 for 418 nm wavelength which is perceived as violet by human eye.[19][20][6] and this is the absolute minimum of absorption for liquid water, not only in the visual range of radiation. [3] Such a low attenuation coefficient means that for intensity of 418 nm violet light to drop to one thousandth of the initial value it has to travel 1570 meters in pure water, nearly a mile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_absorption
No Rayleigh scattering or reflection, ABSORPTION within 1570 meter of PURE WATER!!
You lose as usual.
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kuhnkat
Unfortunately your Wiki link mixes up attenuation and absorption coefficients.
Click ob attenuation coefficient (the vertical axis) and further links gets you to this
…………………………………….
Attenuation versus absorption
The terms “attenuation coefficient” and “absorption coefficient” are generally used interchangeably. However, in certain situations they are distinguished, as follows.[4]
When a narrow (collimated) beam of light passes through a substance, the beam will lose intensity due to two processes: The light can be absorbed by the substance, or the light can be scattered (i.e., the photons can change direction) by the substance. Just looking at the narrow beam itself, the two processes cannot be distinguished. However, if a detector is set up to measure light leaving in different directions, or conversely using a non-narrow beam, one can measure how much of the lost intensity was scattered, and how much was absorbed.
In this context, the “absorption coefficient” measures how quickly the beam would lose intensity due to the absorption alone, while “attenuation coefficient” measures the total loss of narrow-beam intensity, including scattering as well. “Narrow-beam attenuation coefficient” always unambiguously refers to the latter. The attenuation coefficient is always larger than the absorption coefficient, although they are equal in the idealized case of no scattering.
……………………………
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Here’s something to think about Bryan:
If scattered light in the ocean wasn’t ever absorbed, then the level of such light would build up until the oceans were emitting as much scattered light as was entering via sunlight. However, as is easily observed in a glass-bottomed boat, most of the light you see the oceans by is reflected from the surface. When you look below the surface, the ocean is significantly darker. If you are diving, at any depth (as long as the bottom is far away) there is much more light coming down from the surface than coming up from below.
This is a clear indication that most of the light entering the ocean is absorbed eventually, not just recycled by endless scattering.
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BobC
Here is what Kuhnkats link says
“In the visible range of electromagnetic radiation absorption is very weak.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_absorption
When you read further this very weak effect is carried out by overtones of possible fundamental transitions.
This very weak effect as I said previously can be compared to the very weak IR response of N2 and O2.
That is for practical purposes it can be ignored.
So what happens to the bulk of the visible frequencies?
Rayleigh scattering is certainly happening.
This scattering is not random in direction but predominantly in the forward and backward direction.
This means that a significant proportion goes back out into the atmosphere.
Photochemical and photosynthetic absorption can also happen in sea water.
MichaelFowler gives a note on black body radiation pointing out that certain materials like soot have an electronic arrangement that allows electronic level transitions to ‘rattle’ the molecular structure thermalising the visible photons energy.
However he points out that this is unusual and not the general case for materials.
Its true as Kelvin pointed out that eventually all energy will be thermal in the ‘heat death of the universe’.
But that’s not what the IPCC talk about when they say the Oceans are a black body thermalising very quickly all radiation passing through water.
So in the ‘big picture’ Myrrh is correct in pointing this out
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Your missing an important point here Bryan. As I point out below, visible light absorption is also very weak in window glass (why we use it for windows) — but 2.5 miles of window glass will pass a vanishingly small fraction of incident light.
Likewise, the absorption of visible light by pure water is also weak — for example, green light can travel 100 meters through water before 37% is absorbed. The oceans, however, have an average depth of 2.5 miles, so even ‘weak’ absorption is enough to insure near total absorption of whatever light is not reflected from the surface or scattered back from shallow depths. For green light, less than 1 part in 10^14 would be left after 2.5 miles of PURE water.
The ocean is certainly not a perfect blackbody (particularly due to significant reflection from the surface), but neither is it simply ‘transparent’ to visible light as you and Myrrh are claiming. 2.5 miles of water (just like 2.5 miles of window glass) constitutes a completely absorbing layer for visible light.
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So, what don’t you understand about Raman Scattering?
To summarize (since you obviously didn’t read any of the links I supplied, or didn’t understand them if you did):
Raman Scattering is the excitation of low energy molecular vibrational and rotational states (what deep IR photons are able to excite, and what you identify with heat energy) by high energy (short wavelength) photons such as visible light.
So, what you claim is impossible (blue light exciting thermal vibrations) has been known and observed for 85 years, is the basis for a widely used analytical technique, Raman Spectroscopy and an associated industry supplying the required instrumentation.
Your views, Myrrh, seem to be based on misunderstanding the use of common words like “transparency” — for example:
1) Window glass is commonly described as “transparent” to visible light. However, you would not be able to see anything through a mile of window glass.
2) You could, however, see through a mile of the glass used in optical fibers. This glass is typically more transparent than the atmosphere on average. The creation of glass this transparent is what made optical fibers practical.
Obviously, there are degrees of transparency. A single window would not absorb much visible light, but a mile of such glass would absorb virtually all light that entered it.
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Where in the heck are you getting this “information”?
The Solar spectrum has been well measured both above the atmosphere and at sea level. It does not resemble your statement above. The peak energy is at about 550 nm — green light, both above and at the bottom of the atmosphere. Plenty of wavelengths in the infrared also penetrate, but most of the Sun’s radiant energy is in the visible.
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BobC,
you gotta be careful addressing Myrth. The solar spectrum puts about 50% of its energy into IR even though the peak energies are in the visible spectrum. Most of that in turn is in the NEAR IR. Please be clear with the dufus and clarify that solar energy reaching the surface is mostly visible and near IR or he will call you a liar. Well, he might do that anyway cause he apparently believes the atmosphere is TRANSPARENT to Mid and Far IR since he seems to think that is what heats the earth!!
(Hey Myrth, if I got that wrong I’m sorry bud, but, that is the best I can do with your rantings. Maybe you should do some short clear posts on exactly what you believe is happening rather than your usual everything including the lab sink posts?)
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Perhaps the difference between absorption and attenuation is just too difficult because this is a very clever scam, perhaps I haven’t explained it well enough.
Anyway, you’re still avoiding giving me any explanation of how “shortwave in” heats land and oceans in place of the direct thermal energy from the Sun which is excluded and which in the real world is the heat from the Sun which physically can and does heat land and oceans.
There’s obviously no weather in this imaginary AGW world since they’ve taken out the water cycle and you haven’t missed it, so maybe it’s just that, you can’t imagine it because you have no concept that absorption can be something that doesn’t creates heat.
Perhaps it is simply that the sleight of hand play on the word “absorb” associating it with “heating” has been enough to confuse and objectivity isn’t any longer possible. It’s an interesting phenomenon, this constant avoidance of actually avoiding fetching any physics detail of how visible heats water and land. Have you looked for it? Aren’t you curious? Or are you simply content to continue to fall for the sleights of hands as in the wiki page because you don’t want your boat rocked?
I do know that it is very difficult to find straight simply expressed traditional physics on this, and even on pages I’ve found which do give it they more often than not put in a milk sop to the pc agenda, but, these aren’t easy to spot unless one can separate the ideas out by having traditional teaching in mind too. This has been too well ingrained through the general education system, a whole generation now..
In Hinduism the faculty of discrimination in searching out the truth from falsehood is symbolised by the swan Hamsa who could separate out the milk to drink from the water which had been mixed in with it. AGW fisics is that thoroughly mixed, not like the carbon dioxide in the real atmosphere which isn’t..
This is a very clever scam not just because it takes in so many different fields of science so the confusions multiply, but because it’s all built on repetition of the simple confusion of the basics; like taking out the Water Cycle to create the idea of ‘greenhouse gases warm’ only, and so no rain in the Carbon Life Cycle, taking out the direct heat from the Sun and saying it doesn’t reach the surface and giving visible light its properties, giving carbon dioxide supermolecule powers of defying gravity, which of course since they’ve reduced the molecules of air to ideal gas without properties they don’t have gravity anyway so you don’t notice it’s missing in their empty space volumeless weightless attractionless atmosphere – how can you possibly imagine what convection is when they have created an atmosphere in which there’s nothing to convect? How can you appreciate they have no sound in their imaginary AGW world? How can you see how nonsensical it is to say that there’s an invisible barrier, unexplained, which blocks the great heat from the Sun reaching Earth’s surface, when you think visible is this heat? When fiction becomes fact in someone’s thinking, it’s no longer fiction for them.
And like all belief systems where faith takes the place of science and the claims can’t be falsified you make up doctrine against each other – the “invisible barrier to thermal infrared from the Sun” is the original dogma, but I was told recently that this was the “CAGW” belief, and that it wasn’t true, not because real physics falsified it, oh no, but because AGW’s say “the Sun gives off very little infrared and we get only a tiny part that”..
That they can’t extrapolate this into real life physics to see that what they’re actually saying is the Sun gives off very little heat doesn’t bother them because they share the same fictional concept that visible heats the Earth. Give it another generation and we’ll likely to get as many AGW based sects arguing about the minutiae of their dogmas as Protestantism which has split into the hundreds..
So I’ll leave you with this:
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Myrth,
exactly what don’t you understand about a chart that shows absorption at about 10^-4??? I mean, it isn’t exactly going to boil the water but it IS ABSORPTION!!! Are you really so STUPID that you can’t understand basic stuff like that?!?!?!
Another thing, you were so upset that I might be setting up a strawman on you and you keep responding to people not addressing Gorebull Warming as if we are raving lunatics like Al Gore. You are really not helping yourself with this STUPIDITY!!! I’ve been a denier for over 10 years. That doesn’t mean I deny proveable, repeatable science.
Oh and Myrth, speaking of solar spectrum, you apparently miss the fact that at the surface most of that IR has been absorbed or reflected. At the surface the emitted IR is about as powerful as the incoming IR in the 3-4 range and falling. You said you think IR can cause heating down to about 3. Sorry bud, after the atmosphere there just ain’t much solar Mid and Far IR at ground level whether over land or oceans. Again, your delusional physics fails on reality. The large amount of IR energy from the sun is in the NEAR INFRARED not even the Mid and especially not in your preferred THERMAL range!!!
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/ideas/Insolation.html
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No one is EXCLUDING IR from the Sun — this is a fantasy of yours. Actual measurements of the Solar spectrum at sea level show IR wavelengths (which are, however, decreasing rapidly in intensity as the wavelength increases). This is a measurment Myrrh — it’s not a conspiracy.
So, you’ve found someone else who is also ignorant of Raman Scattering and the fact that ANY wavelength photon (with sufficient energy) can excite ANY resonance, however much less energy that takes (by the mechanism of inelastic scattering). The statement “…too energetic for the vibrations of the water molecule…” has been shown to be false at least since 1928. It’s getting tiresome pointing this out and having you completely ignore it. Everyone with an operating brain has, by now (assuming they have any interest), looked up the physics and seen that the claim that blue light (say) can’t excite low energy vibrational and rotational modes in water molecules is just wrong. That’s how Raman Spectroscopy works. There is a significant industry dedicated to supplying analytical equipment for it. It is routinely used to measure the deep IR absorption spectrum of compounds using only visible light.
The reason you are unable to grasp this is much more obscure.
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exactly what don’t you understand about a chart that shows absorption at about 10^-4??? I mean, it isn’t exactly going to boil the water but it IS ABSORPTION!!! Are you really so STUPID that you can’t understand basic stuff like that?!?!?!
Neither of us is stupid, I’m trying to explain a con trick here. By its nature a con is a trick, a sleight of hand created by substituting the truth for a lie and in the best there’s always just enough truth in it so it appears logical.
But you can’t yet see what I see, just how nonsensical the AGW fisics claims as those conned extrapolate from that lie. There’s a good example above in post 28 and my question 28.2 shows the disjunct:
These sleights of hand aren’t easily seen because the fake fisics is full of distractions as it has the range of science fields to play with and the arguments get convoluted, it takes concentration to see the tricks which here come back to the trick of ‘play on word meaning’ of “absorbed” and actual real physics that light is reflective off clouds – but you really have to take on board first real world physics facts to be able to see that there is no internal coherence in the AGW fisics, as in this example.
The reason it is successful is because the lies substituted for real physics basics were introduced into the general education system so are ubiquitous, they are simply ‘in the background’ as if they are real physics basics and so no one bothers to examine them. The only ones who can spot them are those who’ve had traditional physics basics in their education or are in applied science in a particular field where its obvious that AGW fisics is faked because stuff wouldn’t work. And, this gets complicated because even those who in one field can see an AGW trick will still take on ‘general trust’ that another trick basic is real because it’s out of their field.
I’ve only spotted those I have because I wondered how they explained their AGW basics and I couldn’t find discussions about them. Firstly I questioned the reasoning behind the basic “carbon dioxide accumulates for hundreds and thousands of years” and then I found the AGW fisics basic “shortwave in” because a PhD told me that the heat I feel from the Sun is the visible light.
Now, I have enough traditional basic physics under my belt to see that these are nonsense statements, but explaining why they’re nonsense isn’t easy, because the sleights of hand are created by all kinds of tricks, of substituting properties, of taking properties out, of taking laws out of context – just to explain how AGW has confused physics in “well-mixed” would require you to know the difference between ideal and real gases and to know what real Brownian motion is and to know how our wind systems stay in their own hemisphere and more, because AGW fisics mixes up everything deliberately and relies on that confusion to distract and send everyone arguing about the tangents.
Here, in our discussion, the trick is on the ‘play on word meaning’ of “absorbed”.
This play on word is built on one AGW meme, the AGW meme that “all electromagnetic energy is the same and all create heat when absorbed”.
AGW deliberately confuses the general with the particular. The general meaning of “absorbed” of visible light decreasing in the ocean really means the technical term attenuation, in itself meaning loss of intensity for various reasons.
This is deliberately confused by AGW with the particular meaning of absorbed by the whole molecule on a vibrational level which is converting to heat, actually heating the molecules as when mechanical energy is heating your skin when you rub your hands together.
So one of the AGW lies here in the “play on the word absorbed” package, is hiding the fact that water is a transparent medium to visible and so doesn’t absorb its energy to convert to heat, by confusing it with general attenuation which can have ‘absorption’ as one of its reasons.
The reasons I’ve already given of visible light attenuating in the ocean, because water is a transparent medium, is that at each encounter with the molecules of water it tries to join in the ‘dance’ of the electrons but can’t, and after a few attempts of the molecule to capture it the molecule passes it on. This is what happens in a transparent medium and this passed on without being absorbed is called transmitted.
Added to this, is the density of the water in the ocean as gravity exerts greater pressure effect the deeper the ocean and light slows down around 14 times more than in the atmosphere, because the greater the density the more of these encounters, and, as in the atmosphere, the different wavelengths of visible will have slightly different travelling times from the difference in their wavelengths.
As Newton found white light split into different colours on passing through a transparent glass prism, we now know that this is because each of these wavelengths is different from the others, on recombining they will all merge together to become white light again. In the atmosphere visible blue being more energetic than those below it on the spectrum will get bounced around more because it will have more encounters. But, in the atmosphere light is slowed down for a different reason than visible in the ocean, because, visible light is actually absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen and briefly energise the electrons which as they come back down to ground state release a photon of the same energy they absorbed; hence our blue sky, this is called reflection/scattering.
Because the first step to the AGW play on “absorbed” is the meme “all electromagnetic energy is the same and all create heat when absorbed”, AGW has to add another meme here to distract from the fact that it is actually physically absorbed by the molecules in the atmosphere, it simply lies and says “the atmosphere is a transparent medium to visible light”.
So these are the tweaks added to its first important basic ‘lie substituted for the truth’ in the steps AGW takes to create confusion in the ‘play on word meaning’ of “absorbed”, in the meme “all electromagnetic energy is the same and all on being absorbed creates heat”.
The electromagnetic waves are not “all the same”, they are clearly different, have different properties, different in size and different in how they act on meeting different matter which can be seen in the difference between visible light travelling through a transparent medium such as water where it is not absorbed at any level and a medium such as the atmosphere where it is absorbed on the smaller electron scale and reflected/scattered.
There’s also another tweak in the “play on word absorbed” in the basic AGW meme “all electromagnetic radiation is the same and is absorbed and creates heat”
Water does not convert visible light to heat because it doesn’t absorb it on the molecular vibrational level, as visible just ain’t big enough to affect the molecule that way, and the atmosphere does absorb it on an electronic transition level, but, this isn’t a creation of heat either, because, conservation of energy, it just converts it to another photon of the same energy which results in reflecting/scattering.
AGW’s hides this absorption in the atmosphere by saying the atmosphere is transparent to keep intact its basic meme ‘that all absorption of visible creates heat’ because it has substituted visible for the thermal energy from the Sun to make it appear that this is the energy that heats matter, that heats land and oceans, because its fiction requires it to have no real heat energy from the Sun as it needs all real measurements of thermal infrared from the ‘direction of the atmosphere’ to Earth, downwelling, to be associated with “backradiation” (in which there’s another play on the word “downwelling).
See how quickly it gets complicated, such simple tweaks..
The other real world physics which falsifies this basic AGW meme on “visible absorbed creates heat” is photosynthesis, which has a different reason than visible being absorbed by nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere and not creating heat. Here, it’s because visible light is used to convert to chemical energy, in the creation of sugars, which is not conversion to heat energy either.
In photosynthesis the visible light energy is used to convert to chemical energy, sugars, this isn’t creating heat, it’s not directly heating the plant, raising its temperature. In sight, the other important real world physics effect of visible on matter, the energy is conversion to nerve impulses, this isn’t creating heat either.
Visible as from the Sun isn’t a direct heat creating energy but that is the claim It is not classed as a thermal energy in traditional physics. It is Light not Heat.
To see the sleights of hand this has to be kept on the very basic levels of this, distractions into tangents quickly lose all sense of scale.. It takes a lot of concentration, on both our parts, and, it has to take a willingness on your part to give me the benefit of the doubt, that what I’m saying is basic physics could be the truth and what you say could be a lie.
When you’ve got several disjuncts, like the example question I repeated in this post and the explanations I’ve given, I hope now well enough, of the play on the word “absorbed”, then you’ll be able to see more easily that the AGW fisics tweaks real physics in all kinds of ways across a range of different science disciplines and come to appreciate more how complicated it is to explain because of this. Its an amazingly clever con built on establishing fake fisics basics so well that they are simply accepted as being real physics basics. Most don’t question them because they don’t have any reason to.
These AGW fake fisics memes are bolstered through the education system by the creation of “explanations through experiments”, such as “carbon dioxide is shown to be well-mixed by opening a bottle of scent in a classroom” – in real world physics this is basic convection in a fluid medium, gases and liquids are fluids, and the difference in evaporation times and weights of the molecules in the scent, but, AGW memes give ideal gas and Brownian motion scenarios to explain it. Neither applicable in real physics and contradicting each other anyway, but that “voiceover” meme becomes ingrained, associated with that effect, another example of sleight of hand. There is no convection in AGW, they’ve taken it out as they have the Water Cycle etc.
And, there is a meme producing department of AGWScienceFiction that bolsters this by churning out rebuttal memes which includes the creation of a separate fisics between CAGW and AGW.. Again, it’s simply a distraction to stop people examining the actual basic fake fisics claims, it gives them something to argue about but they’re both working to the same fake fisics basics which they don’t question.
As in the example I gave of different reasons between CAGW and AGW of why “there is no thermal infrared reaching Earth from the Sun”, it distracts them from exploring the basic which would in the end come back to real physics facts that all the heat we feel from the Sun is actually the invisible thermal infrared and not visible/shortwave and that visible/shortwave can’t heat land and oceans…
So back to what I’m requesting.
The simple true physics fact is that water is a transparent medium for visible light, that chart is reading is distraction from this, the scale is irrelevant to what I’m asking for – real physics that visible light is the energy from the Sun which actually heats vast volumes of matter intensely, which is essential to give us the huge weather systems we have. I’m asking you to show that visible light from the Sun, which is not a laser.., physically cooks the land and ocean at the equator.
Because, AGW fisics has taken out the real heat energy from the Sun capable of doing this, it simply lies about thermal infrared not reaching the surface. And in its place it says that shortwave does this, which in real world physics is impossible. Shortwave from the Sun cannot cook the land and oceans, that’s why in traditional physics it is categorised as Light, not Heat. The real physics heat energy reaching us from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared.
Now, prove that your basic fisics is real and mine not. Show how visible light from the Sun heats land and oceans as AGW fisics claims.
I have shown that it’s your AGW fisics which is fake. I have explained why and I have given examples from the real world. Where is the real world example of visible being this great heating energy from the Sun as AGW claims?
Where is visible light sauna which will raise my body temperature because it is “deeply absorbed by the water” and muscle and tissue in me and make me sweat? There’s a whole industry producing thermal infrared saunas as from the Sun which will do exactly that.
Where is the real world visible light heating systems for homes? There’s a whole industry producing thermal infrared heaters for use in the home and even outside. Very efficient at heating because thermal infrared directly heats the matter in the room, the walls, the furniture, the people..
How many LED lights, (which have the least amount of thermal infrared energy designed to produce light not heat), do I need to heat my house?
That’s the scale I require of your proof.
Show how visible light from the Sun heats land and water at the equator to the intensity necessary to get our great winds and weather systems.
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I got this one:
As many LED’s as will draw about 10,000 watts (if you live where I do and have average size house).
By the way, this will be a lot of LED’s. One may need dark glasses to be in the room.
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Not what I accept as an answer.
You have to show how visible light actually heats the house.
Conservation of energy, all you’re producing is more light and Light is not Heat in real world physics.
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Myrrh, I think all of this discussion is worthwhile. I think to some extent you all are shooting over the same target. It isn’t going to work to make broad sweeping claims about the physics based on a fine detail such as particles in the ocean which behave differently than the attenuation due to water depth. You all are probably broadly skeptical of AGW but you all get stuck in a fight over minute details. Work it out! Do it with recognition that you can’t ignore small details in favor of broad simplification.
Now:
That is troublesome because it HAS to work. If you want to argue otherwise you’ll have bigger problems. (And I think you know better)
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Mark D – how do you cook your dinner and heat your house? You use heat energy, right? Heat energy is transferred by conduction, convection and radiation. Thermal infrared is the transfer of heat energy, the Sun’s thermal energy, by radiation – this is what heats matter on Earth, including us. It is invisible, we feel it as heat because it is heat, it is hot. What we feel hot from the Sun is this invisible thermal infrared, heat. It heats us up.
We cannot feel visible light from the Sun, it is not a thermal energy, it is not hot, it does not heat us up.
It is for those pushing the fake fisics of AGWScienceFiction to show their claim that it is visible light from the Sun which heats matter on Earth, land and oceans and us. They have excised, taken out, the direct heat energy from the Sun which is transferred to us, reaches us, by radiation.
This is an extraordinary claim!
It is the opposite of what is still taught in traditional physics and still understood from use in real life in our day to day applications and in the industries around us – that it is heat energy which heats.
Light is not Heat.
It takes an enormous amount of heat energy to raise the temperature of land and ocean at the equator to give us the wind and weather systems we have, how can visible light from the Sun do this?
It takes a lot of heat energy to cook my dinners and heat my house – how can visible light from LED do this?
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How I cook or even heat my house isn’t the question you asked. I answered your question using 5th grade physics and you said
Well my friend, the physical world doesn’t follow only what you accept.
The fact is that very well accepted principles already explain that power in = power out. Yes I could heat my house with LED’s, it is up to you to explain how this wouldn’t work. Otherwise you have discovered something profound in the physical world where energy is not conserved. Call me skeptical.
OK, but energy routinely changes form for example you can generate electricity from heat. You can make light from electricity. you can make electricity from light and you can make heat from electricity. All these transformations of energy will equal the amount of energy first introduced to the system (when you include “losses”). If you want to dissect efficiencies (why we don’t use light for cooking) that is a different matter. However, efficiencies aside, you have no basis for suggesting that “visible light can’t heat”
Truth:
Visible light has energy. (otherwise photovoltaic wouldn’t work and they don’t coat the glass with carbon either)
Truth: Energy must be conserved in any system.
Truth: visible light (having energy) will be absorbed to some degree by anything that isn’t a perfect reflector. That absorbed energy MUST be conserved. Barring some other conversion (photochemical for example) it will manifest as HEAT.
Truth: Visible light IS absorbed (attenuated) by water to various degrees depending on many variables.
Truth: You can and will be burned by lasers operating in visible light spectrum.
Simple really.
Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t agree that IPCC has made gross mistakes. That doesn’t mean that I believe that the total effect of sunlight on global warming is well understood. It doesn’t mean that I agree with applying blackbody calculations to the globe Earth. In other words, you and I might agree on plenty of points. On this little matter of light having “no ability to heat” you are plain wrong. You need to shake this line of thinking and move on or NO ONE will believe a word you say or a link you provide as reference.
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BobC says
” for example, green light can travel 100 meters through water before 37% is absorbed.”
Where is your evidence that the 37% green light is ABSORBED by 100M of pure water.
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Bryan,
when did you become infected with Myrthism?? When a chart says ABSORPTION doesn’t it mean ABSORPTION?? Do you really believe that EVERY scientist out there that works with spectroscopy is LYING to you when they give ABSORPTION numbers for materials??? The chart at Wikipedia I only used because Myrth uses Wiki. Try this one:
http://www.wetlabs.com/iopdescript/abslvl2.htm
It links to this:
http://www.wetlabs.com/appnotes/v4v4ch1.pdf
Are these guys part of the AGW conspiracy??
http://hep.ucsb.edu/people/hnn/n/absorbwater.pdf
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/La-Mi/Light-Transmission-in-the-Ocean.html
(Good info on actual depths different wavelengths reach!!)
http://scholarsarchive.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/27852/ZaneveldRonaldCEOASAbsorptionAttenuationVisible.pdf?sequence=1
Or this one??
http://www.d-a-instruments.com/light_absorption.html
“The scattering coefficient of pure water is less than 0.003 cm-1 so light scattering has an immeasurably small influence on an OBS sensor compared to absorption. Pure water is scarce and particles are ubiquitous in the environment and light scattering from a miniscule amount (< 100 gl-1) will cause consistent response from an OBS sensor."
Funny, that one completely contradicts you Bryan. They all say attenuation is a combination of ABSORPTION and scattering processes. I think I will stay with the experts on this one.
Why did you ignore BobC's attempt to clarify the issue?? If it isn't absorption then the light is still going somewhere. Are you also saying that there is a property of water that somehow over about 1000 meters ends up sending ALL the visible light back out of the water??? What happens to that scattered light at 1000 meters?? Does it all magically manage to make it back out to the surface?? Wouldn't the spectrum going up over the oceans include a substantially larger amount of visible if that is happening. In other words, shouldn't you be able to SHOW that is happening??
Bottom line, whether it is scattered or absorbed it will still be absorbed by the particulate and other impurities in the water. Myrth is out of his head. Don't get caught up in his mental issues.
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There is a graph of “Light absorbance by water” that has been linked in this thread multiple times. It shows the minimum absorbance at about 550 nm (green) and the corresponding absorbance coefficient is about 0.0001/cm. In the usual exponential definition of the absorption coefficient, that means that 1/e (about 0.37) of the initial light is absorbed in 10,000 cm, or 100 meters.
You appear to be claiming that nobody who makes these kinds of measurements knows the difference between absorption and attenuation of a beam by scattering. You are wrong. I just got through measuring the transmittance of a polymer film with a lot of surface scattering effects — we had to take steps to avoid letting scattered light bias the measurment. This stuff is covered in undergraduate labs, if not totally obvious anyway.
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Bob C
I have just read Myrrh’s quotation from Hyper Physics.
It backs him 100%
Hyper Physics is a reputable source and indeed you have quoted from it yourself.
The unwarranted personal abuse that comes Myrrh’s way is out of order.
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Gee, Hyper Physics says that Raman Spectroscopy is impossible! Someone better tell these guys before they make any more millions selling the equipment!
Get real.
This is just Myrrh’s technique: Surf the web until you find a statement that agrees with what you already want to believe, then link that as “proof” you are right. Reality is out there, Bryan — you’re goal should be to discover what it is, not convince yourself it is what you want. Raman scattering has not ceased to exist because someone at Hyper Physics hasn’t ever heard of it.
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Bryan,
didn’t you look at the chart showing the MEASUREMENTS?? Like Myrth, are you going to DENY the reality?? Because they use sloppy language because in most cases we can ignore the slight absorption in pure water does not mean it isn’t happening. This is a continuing problem with Myrth. Are you going to start misunderstanding plain english and the charts accompanying them??
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Bryan,
Could you please clear my addled brain on this extract from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature
Are there possible mechanisms that might increase the velocity of molecules and whatnot, other than solely the various molecular excitations or absorptions as dictated by Myrth as the forerunner of T increase?
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Bob C
Your link is of very poor quality.
You must be very embarrassed if that the best you can come up with.
I looked at the source it was based on and found;
“Absorption spectrum (attenuation coefficient vs. wavelength) of liquid water (red) [4][5][6], atmospheric water vapor (green)”
They are making NO distinction between attenuation and absorption.
The ONLY physical process involving light to possible thermal you have come up with is Raman Scattering .
Your own links point out that this form of scattering is very weak.
Much stronger scattering is of the Rayleigh (elastic) type.
This means that the vast amount of attenuation is due to Rayleigh scattering in pure water.
This coupled with the directional properties of Rayleigh scattering means that backscattering accounts for almost 50% of the loss in intensity of the light beam.
Having failed to produce any substantial mechanism for light to thermal you must concede that Myrrh is entitled to feel that his physics is correct
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And you are assuming that the people who make these measurements don’t know what they are doing — kindly find some evidence of that. Having made many such measurements myself, I know that assumption is BS — scattered light must be taken into account (by various means, which are checked against each other) in order to find the actual absorption. A plot of “attenuation” due to scatter would be highly dependent on the exact physical setup of the measuring apparatus, and would be meaningless without describing the setup. You can find these kinds of measurements (with setup descriptions) in journals discussing communication links.
Oh, and light that is absorbed is also “attenuated”, so you are grasping at semantic straws.
You still don’t get that the oceans are deep. Light absorption by ordinary window glass is also weak (why it works in windows), but a mile of such glass would absorb vitually all the light that entered it.
Simple observation shows that there is more light entering the ocean than leaving it: Go below the surface (any depth) wearing a diving mask; Look both upwards and downwards; There is much more light coming down than going up. This is true at every depth (that you can reach diving, anyway). Since the light carries energy, that energy is being deposited in the ocean — it doesn’t matter what some guy at Hyper Physics says, or that Myrrh thinks water is 100% transparent. Reality is determined by observation, not rhetoric.
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Bob C says
“Reality is determined by observation, not rhetoric.”
I agree with you there.
So what is the evidence?
Quality of sources
Hyper Physics is top quality and often cited
Your source says
“This is a candidate to be copied to Wikimedia Commons.”
Sounds like an individual unreviewed submission and seems a bit dodgy to me.
Physical Mechanism
The only one you can find is Raman Scattering which is much weaker than Rayleigh scattering which is occurring at the same time.
The Rayleigh scattering, I would observe, would account for the vast bulk of the attenuation in pure water.
You consistently refuse to accept this.
In fact you seem to ignore Rayleigh scattering.
So to a neutral observer (such as myself) Myrrh seems to have made the strongest case.
You can either accept this or come up with stronger evidence if you can.
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Posted this last night but apparently had too many other links and it was eaten.
http://www.d-a-instruments.com/light_absorption.html
“The scattering coefficient of pure water is less than 0.003 cm-1 so light scattering has an immeasurably small influence on an OBS sensor compared to absorption. Pure water is scarce and particles are ubiquitous in the environment and light scattering from a miniscule amount (< 100 gl-1) will cause consistent response from an OBS sensor."
Looks like another "poor quality link" disagrees with your Myrth inspired junk science.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Oh, and Bryan, what is YOUR and Myrth’s PHYSICAL MECHANISM for the light disappearing in the ocean?? It doesn’t go down as the depths are dark and cold. It doesn’t come out cause we would SEE the radiance. Where does it go Bryan?!?!?!?!
We have offered you reasonable links showing a physical property that would explain the observations. I have offered a link which would seem to show that scattering is even smaller than absorption. You are not able to disprove this property. Your only route is to show an alternative.
So far all you offer is denial. Myrth SEEMS to offer an easily disprovable theory that mid and far ir from the sun heats the oceans and land. Yeah, you are a neutral observer!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Here is a description of Sir Frederick Herschel’s 1800 experiment (where he discovered infrared light). Please note that he found that ALL COLORS of light (including blue light) caused his thermometer to heat up.
Herschel’s experiment is trivially easy to repeat — it is done in most High School physics labs. Here is a site where you can buy inexpensive, high quality prisms, diffraction gratings, and laboratory grade thermometers.
If you really agree with my statement “Reality is determined by observation, not rhetoric”, then:
DO the experiment;
OBSERVE that blue light causes the thermometer to heat up (also green, red, etc). (Notice that you can’t argue the thermometer out of doing so, even if you quote Hyper Physics at it — reality is like that.)
REALIZE that your observation is reality and Myrrh’s rhetoric is empty B.S.
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Gosh, how did he measure the invisible thermal infrared at all, it couldn’t get through his glass greenhouse prism..
We’ve moved on since then, since his brilliant discovery of dark light which we now call thermal infrared. We now know how heat and light are different, different sizes for a start. Visible light is much much tinier than the invisible heat energy, thermal infrared.
Although he went to great effort to measure as accurately as he could from the end of visible to take the temperature of the invisible thermal infrared, he didn’t, because he couldn’t, take into account the amount of invisible heat infrared was spilling into his visible light measurements.
Now we have these defined – that’s why we have the categories Light and Heat in traditional physics, why we say that Light isn’t thermal (but reflective). We know the differences. Visible light isn’t hot, it is not thermal, it is not heat energy.
The heat energy of the Sun, its thermal energy, is transferred to us by radiation. It is the same heat energy which cooks yours dinners by conduction and heats your house by convection. We know what heat energy can and can’t do. Heat energy raises the temperature of matter.
We know what non-thermal light energy can and can’t do – it can’t cook your dinners by conduction, it can’t heat your house by convection and it can’t heat the vast amounts of land and ocean at the equator to raise the temperature to give us our huge winds and and weather systems.
You say it can. So show how.
Fetch
I’m challenging your AGWScienceFiction fisics claim.
Fetch.
00
You’re becoming incoherent Myrrh. What is a “greenhouse prism”, and how does it differ from an ordinary glass prism? Do you even know what you are talking about?
If you think Herschel’s experiment was ill-performed and got the wrong answers, then tell us why you think that. Perhaps you can describe a modified experiment that would be better? It sounds like you think that electromagnetic radiation in the infrared range behaves completely differently than all other EM radiation. Maybe you have a special version of Maxwell’s Equations that describes it and identifies the boundarys?
Or, maybe, you’re just being incoherent as usual.
This may have been “traditional physics” back when the Phlogiston Theory was a part of traditional physics — but we’ve moved on a bit since the 17th century. You need to catch up.
Still haven’t tried (nor can you explain the results of) my ill-conceived “experiment” of sticking my hand in a multi-watt green laser beam I see.
No Myrrh, you are simply demonstrating your inability to comprehend what you read.
First; I don’t know what ‘fisics’ is — perhaps you could explain? (Probably not.)
Second; I have made no statements (in my ‘conversation’ with you) even remotely related to the AGW hypothesis — I have simply supplied evidence for the non-controversal and well-documented fact that ALL EM radiation (even blue light) creates heat when absorbed: A fact you deny for reasons you are apparently unable to articulate or support with evidence. Indeed, you simply ignore evidence to the contrary.
I’ve already given you plenty of evidence that your 17th century physics ideas are incorrect — to do more would be a fool’s errand. Why don’t YOU describe how Herschel’s experiment should be done, if that’s not too much of an intellectual strain? ( Here’s how High School kids do it, and here’s why Herschel found the maximum temperature in the infrared — the dispersion of glass decreases with increasing wavelength, so the spectrum is less spread out at longer wavelengths.)
People like you Myrrh, think that their imaginings are fact. I’m an engineer, and fact is what the world imposes on you regardless of what you think or would like. Things either work or they don’t. Incoherent raving has no effect.
If you think that visible light can’t heat anything up, then explain where the energy goes when it is absorbed? Explain why green light can burn you. (If you don’t think you can be burned by a multiple-watt visible laser beam, give it a try yourself — have the courage of your convictions and expose your beliefs to the test.)
Simply posting abusive, incoherent rants about how YOU think the world should be is useless (and, increasingly, boring).
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BTY Bryan,
Judging what is true by the “quality of sources” is NOT observation — it is simply relying upon authority. I refered you to an easy experiment (Herschel’s) where you can test Myrrh’s claim that visible light has no thermal effects. Doing that experiment is observation.
(So far, every repetition (since 1800) has shown that visible light DOES cause heating. Are you willing to put your rhetoric to the test?)
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kuhnkat
Your reading comprehension sucks so lets try to decode your link
“The scattering coefficient of pure water is less than 0.003 cm-1”
Means that Rayleigh scattering (elastic) will not over short distance attenuate the light beam much.
Your link completely ignores Raman scattering as being not worth discussing.
“Pure water is scarce” means that in practical terms we will be dealing with water with particulates
“particles are ubiquitous in the environment”
These particulates, organic and inorganic absorb light by photochemical and photosynthetic processes.
Nothing here to contradict Myrrh.
You say “Myrth inspired junk science”
Well Myrrh quoted Hyper Physics link which agrees with him completely so your statement says more about you than it does him.
Dont reply as you fall into the category of posts that I ignore!
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Well Bryan, I would concede now after that vicious reparte ripping my argument to shreds.
Oh wait, you have offered ZERO proof of the magnitude of Rayleigh scattering in Pure Water!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Here is some more educational material for you dufus!!
http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/5828/etd-tamu-2006A-PHYS-LU.pdf?sequence=1
measuring the absorptivity of water in blue and UV. Interestingly you agree with Myrth that there is no mechanism in the water molecule to interact with visible light frequencies other than scattering. In this paper he not only computes these modes but appears to show their computations match observations. His method for quantifying scattering by observation is pretty cool also.
http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/water/abs/
http://scholarsarchive.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/27852/ZaneveldRonaldCEOASAbsorptionAttenuationVisible.pdf?sequence=1
This paper also talks about absorption shoulders and shows them along with how they are created.
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Yasee Bryan,
you are ASSuming that all of these people dealing with spectroscopy and absorption measurements are too STUPID to take into consideration what a few numbnutz like us come up with on blogs. Ya really think they are that stupid?? Often the quality of the product they are producing depends on their expertise, yet, you seem to think they don’t know anything about their subject!!
Consider this a non-reply as I am not agreeing with the silliness of you and Myrth!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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KuhnKat;
A lot of those measurements are either made by, or used by engineers. If they were seriously wrong, lots of stuff wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t go unnoticed. As I have pointed out repeatedly, there is a large industry that revolves around the usefulness of Raman spectroscopy. What does it take to simply assume that the main phenomonon this industry is based on doesn’t exist? (I guess, for some, simply seeing it on Hyper Physics is enough to believe that a multi-billion dollar industry doesn’t really exist.) If you can imagine that, you can get into Myrrh’s head.
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For anyone still so bored they are reading this, notice that Bryan and Myrth use the same tactics. They bring up KNOWN physics and suggest it disproves what is presented just by stating it. They present no DATA or OBSERVATIONS to prove their statements and depend on others simply accepting their allegations.
What a great way to argue!!
It goes like this, hey Bryan and Myrth, the oceans are heated by the suns magnetic field and gravity. You are lying about the thermal energy!!!
Nope, I don’t have to present any data or studies proving anything, I just need to strongly state it and deny that any data they present to the contrary is false!! What fun!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Bob C
Brings up Herschel’s 1800 experiment.
Perhaps he would note that mercury thermometers had their bulbs coated in soot black.
Now why did he go to that amount of trouble?
Because without the bootblack covering the thermometers would not detect light radiation.
Now I posted this link below earlier but it appears to have been ignored.
This is your last chance as I have already wasted too much time on the topic.
Micheal Fowler goes into the reasons why carbon (soot)is a special case.
Here is his simplified explanation.
Its valence electrons which have absorbed the light energy have just enough freedom to move a short distance through the crystal lattice before being stopped by collision with the lattice.
This ‘rattles’ the molcule.
This transfers the energy to the lattice causing thermal motion of the molecule.
Would this mechanism work with metals?
No, the electrons have too much freedom.
Would this mechanism work with pure water?
No, the electrons of the water molecule are too tightly bound to allow this mechanism.
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/black_body_radiation.html
00
Apparently nothing but soot can absorb visible light — one wonders what happens to it then if it doesn’t happen to encounter soot? Why doesn’t everything — except soot — appear bright and shiny like aluminum foil, since it isn’t capable of absorbing light?
(Why do you and Myrrh seem incapable of subjecting these ideas to the simplest smell test?)
If you think that soot represents a special case, then re-do the experiment with another type of absorber:
It is quite easy to make a pretty good blackbody absorber by bolting a stack of double-edged razor blades together. When you look at the edges straight on, you can’t see anything. This device absorbs by imposing a great many reflections on the incoming light — only a small percent is absorbed on each reflection, but the total effect is near 100% perfect absorption. This works on any visible or IR wavelength. It only fails when the wavelength gets similar in size to the separation between razor edges.
(This is the same concept used, in the audio domain, to create anechoic chambers.)
Such “beam dumps”, when thermally insulated from the surroundings and fitted with a thermocouple (to measure the temperature rise caused by absorption of the light), are often used as a power sensor for high power lasers, where more sensitive detectors would be damaged. They work equally well for all wavelengths, visible, UV, IR.
You could test your hypothesis that visible light can only create heat when absorbed by soot by using these easily built “blackbodys”. (Of course, my ill-conceived “stick your hand in the laser beam” test has already falsified your claim — my hand was not covered in soot.)
“Testing your ideas against reality”, however, is not really in the list of concepts you acknowledge. You and Myrrh seem to think that rationalization creates reality.
We are fortunate that you are not engineers.
00
BobC, Soot works because of carbon and it’s unique “back radiation” property.
Sarc
00
Bob C
I wonder at what point responding to your posts is justified.
You seem to deliberately misconstrue any information that challenges your pseudoscience.
My previous link gave a mechanism for light and higher frequency photons to transfer energy to molecular motion or thermal energy.
Soot a carbon based substance is ofter quoted as being the nearest substance to a black body.
Now perhaps I should then have added that any similar material with the same electronic arrangement would to some extent do the same.
I thought that was rather obvious but apparently I was wrong.
Now back to the main point.
Is there such a mechanism in pure water?
The answer is, NO!
The only mechanism you have suggested is Raman Scattering but the effect is so weak that it would be swamped by Rayleigh scattering for all practical purposes.
Your next bit of pseudo-science is to bring up the topic of lasers and microwaves.
Now these are very clever machines but we are talking about natural spontaneous conditions on Earth and they have no relevance to the discussion.
For that matter why not throw in the refrigerator to disprove the second law of thermodynamics while your at it.
You will impress only the gullible.
You say
“We are fortunate that you are not engineers.”
Its not smart to set up engineering in opposition to physics, there is no conflict.
On the pure water and light question you have been supplied with two links to orthodox physics sources
1. Hyper Physics
2. Michael Fowlers lecture notes.
If you continue to ignore the framework of physics you are beyond help.
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Bob C
I am now at the point of wondering if its worth the effort in responding to your posts.
You don’t reply to points I raise other than to willfully misconstrue them and instead advocate pseudo -science.
Soot (Carbon substance) is often quoted as being the nearest thing to a perfect black body.
However any substance with a SIMILAR ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE will to some extent act in the same way.
I would have thought that was ‘bleedin’ obvious but obviously I misjudged your comprehension.
Now back to the main topic.
Is there such a mechanism in pure water?
The answer is NO!
The electronic transition levels (and corresponding photons) and electron binding arrangement are not suitable.
The only mechanism you have come up with is Raman scattering which is a very weak effect, much smaller than Rayleigh scattering.
So any scattering that causes attenuation must overwhelmingly be attributed to Rayleigh scattering.
You have been supplied with two links to orthodox physics making these points.
Hyper Physics and Michael Fowlers lecture notes.
Why continue to act like an ostrich with your head in the sand?
You bring up lasers and microwave ovens to advance pseudoscience.
These are clever machines but have no relevance to natural spontaneous processes on Earth.
You might as well bring up the refrigerator and disprove the second law of thermodynamics while you are it.
You say
“We are fortunate that you are not engineers.”
There is no point in trying to set up a false conflict between physics and engineering.
If you continue to try to operate outside the framework of physics you are beyond help.
00
We do seem to be talking past each other:
You keep bringing up theoretical discussions — Hyper Physics’ claims that visible light can’t excite molecular resonances in water; Michael Fowler’s claims that light only heats carbon black because of a unique electronic configuration; Myrrh’s unsupported claims that visible light can’t be converted to heat by absorption.
I keep bringing up physical phenomena that falsifies the theoretical claims — The existance of the multi-billion dollar Raman Spectroscopy industry being based on an effect Hyper Physics claims doesn’t exist; The fact that shiny steel razor blades can be assembled into a better blackbody than soot, even though Fowler claims it is impossible for metals to absorb light; That said razor blades can be used to measure visible laser power by observing their temperature increase when they absorb visible light, and that visible light lasers are capable of causing burns, and of course, Herschel’s 1800 experiment which settled the issue of visible light being able to heat things over 200 years ago.
Reality, for me, is what can be observed — for you, it is apparently more like political talking points. Which of us has our head in the sand depends on which concept you think actually represents reality — what you say, or what you observe.
Like I said, you’re obviously not an engineer.
I prefer to operate within the framework of reality. Your “help” I don’t need, particularly as you don’t seem to be very familiar with physical theory.
Mark D has a pretty good summation — I’ll let that speak for me as well.
00
Bryan,
“I am now at the point of wondering if its worth the effort in responding to your posts.”
what effort?? No links, no math, not even a cartoon to break the ice. No nothing but arm waving!!!
00
BobC,
Thank you for taking the time to give us a little knowledge.
20
A double post saying much the same thing.
The first appeared to be lost for 15 minutes so I recomposed it
00
Difficult to believe that people interested in science have zilch sense of scale..
..difficult not to think they’re being payed per post – the alternative is an engineer who doesn’t understand the difference between a laser and light from the Sun, another scrabbling to find an inconsequential amount of ‘heating’ by visible light thinks this enough for the intense heating of land and oceans at the equator to give us our vast and dramatic wind and weather systems, another..
Enjoyed your posts Bryan, bye for now.
00
Everything gets explained by Quantum Mechanics in the end Myrrh. What’s strange is your belief that physics at large scales is somehow completely different than at small scales, or that the large scale phenomena are not composed of small scale ones.
And speaking of no sense of scale: You and Bryan seem to have trouble realizing that the absorbance of 2 miles of water is actually greater than a couple of feet of water.
Really Myrrh — there is zero market for talking to you. Who would pay for that?
If you were able to read for content, and browsed around this site a while, you would find that I believe that the AGW hypothesis is total B.S. and am willing to explain exactly why. It is an ignorant conceit to think that, because I also think what you say is B.S., that therefore I must be a warmist.
Sure, I’d love to hear you explain the difference — concentrate on why green light from a laser can be absorbed and produce heat, but the exact same wavelengh of light from the Sun can’t. Bonus points if you can show how it follows from Maxwell’s Equations. It wouldn’t be the craziest piece of B.S. that has been seen on this site.
Who has claimed that? Give a link to the comment, if you can. You are simply showing that you don’t (or can’t) comprehend what you read. This idea you have — that to disagree with anything you dream up constitutes full-blown agreement with the IPCC borders on Megalomania.
00
MarkD, BobC, Kuhnkat,
A strange thing with Myrrh and Bryan is that they seem to be reluctant to replicate several simple experiments suggested here that prove that visible light does heat common materials or to accept certain published data such as that white LED’s almost totally emit visible light. I suggested perhaps the easiest approach using IR blocking glass (such as automotive) a long time ago but I heard nothing in response. With all the effort he puts into his lengthy rants one would think he would want to prove us and all those physicists out there wrong with some empirical stuff
BTW, I’ve just confirmed a dim recollection from my engineering studies that pure water is quite a good electrical resistor whereas seawater is quite a good conductor because of its various ions and free electrons. I suspect that photons are quite friendly with these guys but sniffing around out there I find it a tad ambiguous or contradictory within. For instance Compton scattering collisions are variously described as elastic or inelastic and the required energy levels of the photon are far from clear, although X & Gamma rays seem to be popular.
00
Is this a valid experiment?
On a really hot day touch a white car note how hot it is then touch a black car and note how hot is it then compare results.
00
It’s a valid experiment, but I think that all it proves is that black paint absorbs light (visible and IR) better than white paint.
00
Crakar24,
Well, it would not be good enough for Myrrh or Bryan because they would assert that the tiny amount of mid infrared from the sun would be reflected from the white paint.
I repeat a comment I made above which should negate that escape clause but neither of them showed any interest:
• HELP! Found it again and I’m confused; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation
Way down the page there is a photo in visible light of a guy wearing clear spectacles and with a black plastic bag over one arm. If I understand the wisdom of Myrrh correctly, this visible light is not transmitted through the bag and neither is it reflected to any significance. Can someone help me please! Where does that light go? Does it disappear like some comments do on alarmist blogs?
Interestingly the second photo in infrared reveals that the bag is transparent in those wavelengths, and the visible clear spectacles are opaque
00
Myrrh apparently thinks that it simply disappears, along with its energy. See my comment #80 below for the quote. He should read “Physics for Dummies” (I’m being serious — it’s a good book).
00
I’m beginning to think that these two are planted here intending to make Jo’s site look very “fringy”.
Perhaps we should watch them more closely in the future. There was a troll a week or so ago that actually asked the audience “what would Bryan say” or something to that effect.
Recently there has been cross posting of material here to extreme warmist sites: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/antarctic-sea-ice-trends-at-record-highs-fears-for-shrinking-southern-ocean-right/#comment-1128874
http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/
Could it be an organized effort?
00
Myrrh’s problem appears to be that he knows nothing about physics.
Consider this statement:
Uh Myrrh — that is exactly what the Law of Conservation of Energy (First law of Thermodynamics) does postulate.
Perhaps you should read a freshman physics book.
00
BobC,
Yeah, that is a classic.
I wonder if he thinks all the light in the universe that came from a star stops existing when the star dies???
What about a light source that varies in intensity?? If the intensity changes does that mean the light already emitted that is miles away changes or just disappears??
The knock on from that statement is simply unbelievable!!!
Bobc, while looking for educational papers for myself and Bryan abd Myrth I ran across this one:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15214.full.pdf+html
any thoughts on how this might affect our discussion here??
00
Interesting paper — I had heard of these transitory structures that water keeps pulling itself into before. This is thought to contribute to water’s strange characteristics: liquid at far higher temperatures than any other compound that is as light-weight, and perhaps its ability to dissolve nearly anything. (Both characteristics that life makes extensive use of.)
The “memory” of water structures is also invoked as a hypothesis for Homeopathy.
These structures would, however, have much lower energies than even molecular vibrations. I wonder if even Rayleigh scattering imparts enough energy to water to change them.
Anyway, nothing here would change Myrrh’s or Bryan’s mind about anything. (Indeed, it isn’t certain that anything could do that.)
00
Bryan, I see you are continuing your Argumentum ad stupidum. You appear to agree with the crack head Myrth who seems to think there are no transitions so there can’t be any absorption. You claim to know QM and QT. Well they USED to think that absorption and emission could only happen on specific guanta, yet, Raman scattering disproves that. Raman scattering is generally where a photon is absorbed and a photon of lesser energy is emitted creating a frequency shift that is easily detected when using a laser source.
Now if you actually want to learn something rather than just parroting out of date pronouncements, this dissertation:
http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/5828/etd-tamu-2006A-PHYS-LU.pdf?sequence=1
shows how to compute harmonics to determine the absorption shoulders. It also goes into detail as to how they control for scattering and other issues.
00
Bob C, kuhnkat and Bob Fernley-Jones deserve one another.
They are dedicated to preserve their delusions.
No amount of references from orthodox physics will convince them.
This is my last post on this thread.
00
Bryan,
still unable to handle English?? What is your primary language so I can get someone to tell you that DATA in the CHART on Hyperphysics shows exactly what we are telling you!!
Or is it that your are Chart, Data, and Math Challenged? If so I apologize for making fun of you!!
So, let me try and explain again. When you look up the definitions of Transparent they don’t actually include a scientific or engineering QUANTIFIED meaning!!
“trans·par·ent [trans-pair-uhnt, -par-] Show IPA adjective
1. having the property of transmitting rays of light through its substance so that bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen.
2. admitting the passage of light through interstices.
3. so sheer as to permit light to pass through; diaphanous.
4. easily seen through, recognized, or detected: transparent excuses.
5. manifest; obvious: a story with a transparent plot. ”
So, which of these definitions would lead you to believe that there is NO ABSORPTION OF VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS AT ALL???
There, does that help or are you so involved in Myrth’s insanity that you can’t pull back??
You funny dufus!!
00
There is a kernel of truth here — no amount of references, from anyone whatsoever, will convince me that the billion dollar industry associated with Raman Spectroscopy doesn’t exist. Apparently, someone on Hyper Physics who says that, effectively, Raman Scattering is impossible is sufficient to convince you of that. I can’t imagine what world you think you are living in.
Hallelujah! What with your inexplicable inability to process data contrary to your claims, I have been thinking that Mark D’s hypothesis about you and Myrrh may well be correct — especially as, apparently, your delusional material has started showing up as cross-postings on warmist blogs.
00
Myrth,
Please show us measurements of the downwelling (from the sun) mid and far IR that you seem to think is heating the earth. Your measurement will need to be equivalent to the claimed W/M2 that is made up primarily of visible and near IR for you to have a chance of convincing anyone that your hallucinations have any basis.
I won’t even ask you to prove that none of your measurement is “backradiation!”
00
Silly still. Just answering to put this straight for others, if there are any, reading this.
I don’t have to give you any information at all.
[SNIP. well yes you do if you want to keep posting here.] ED
00
Myrrh,
It’s a pity that you can’t talk to Kirchhoff, Planck, Stefan, Boltzmann, Wien, and a few other people who all died before some cliquey “climate scientists” started using sloppy language distinguishing terrestrial radiation as thermal radiation.
This Wikipedia article entitled “Thermal Radiation” explains well with references to such founding scientists and literature that ALL wavelengths of EMR including visible are thermal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation
00
I have already given them lots and lots and lots of information, telling them exactly how real world physics falsifies their claims. I am trying to get them to concentrate on my question – which they continue to avoid.
My challenge stands.
The AGWScienceFiction has excised the thermal infrared heat direct from the Sun, Heat, and claim that shortwave from the Sun, Light, heats land and oceans.
In real world physics, as I have already explained, this is absurd. There is no “invisible barrier like a greenhouse glass blocking direct thermal infrared from the Sun”. Thermal infrared direct from the Sun is the Sun’s great thermal energy, Heat, radiating out to us. It is what we feel as heat, because it is heat. It is what heats us up, because that is what heat does. It heats up matter, it heats up the land and water at the equator intensely to give us our great winds and weather systems. We cannot feel visible light, we cannot feel shortwave, these are not thermal energies; they cannot do this.
In the real world.
I have explained the difference in effect on the electronic transition level and vibration level of these wavelengths meeting matter, I have explained how temperature of matter is raised.
Etc. Etc.
I suggest you re-read my posts. I have given sufficient explanation.
And my point remains, that this is a science challenge, explanations from me are irrelevant to this challenge.
This is the AGW fisics claim, they are saying it is the true, real world physical fact that shortwave heats land and water. So they should prove it.
As I posted the challenge in my last post, which was crafted to be specific.
10
No Myrrth, you simply prattle on about how all the modern physics are LIES by the IPCC and weave fanciful tales about how the energy levels are wrong for the atoms and molecules to absorb them. The links I provided for Bryan even showed how to compute the absorption harmonics for PURE WATER!!!
The fact that you simply do not ACCEPT all the PHYSICAL DATA that I and many more people, much smarter than I, have taken their time to present to you in no way means you are correct about anything or that we need to pay attention to your childish rants about Challenges that have already been met multiple times.
IT IS YOUR TIME TO PROVE THAT THERMAL ENERGY IS HEATING THE EARTH AND OCEANS!!!
Anything less ahows you are a fatuous DOLT that spits on the honest efforts of knowledgeable people to educate you!!!
00
LOL!
One day, when all this AGW fictional fisics has come crashing down, there will be books written on the effectiveness of the brainwashing, but more, on the gullibility of those who have so lost touch with the reality around them, they can no longer think outside of the straightjacket memes they’ve been fed.
I’m the one asking the question, stop avoiding it. I don’t have to give you any information at all (I’ve already given it).
I am the one asking you to show how your fisics works in real life.
So, “PROVE THAT THERMAL ENERGY IS HEATING THE EARTH AND OCEANS”, you can prove it yourself.. Stand outside in the Sun and remember that since Herschel we know that the Sun’s heat comes to us by the invisible thermal infrared wavelength. Feel it heating you up? That’s what it does to the land and ocean around you.
This is elementary traditional, well-understood, well-proven, fact. Our industries have countless applications from this knowledge. The heat we feel from the Sun is the invisible thermal infrared.
We cannot feel shortwave, do you understand what I’m saying? We do not feel visible light at all, let alone as heat because it isn’t hot, it isn’t heat.
It takes thermal energy to heat up matter. Since Herschel we’ve, in traditional physics, differentiated between the Sun’s thermal energy and its visible light energy, in texts books still you will read this as the Sun’s heat and light.
Heat and Light. They are different from each other, light cannot do what heat can do. Heat can heat matter to make it hot. It moves the whole molecule into vibration, which is kinetic energy, the energy of motion, which is heat.
Light is not thermal.
That’s why it isn’t in the same category as heat, light is reflective not thermal.
But, in the real world where this is understood, knowing the difference between heat and light energies, shortwave from the Sun can be used to create electricity, photovoltaic cells were designed for this, photo means light.
In the real world industries around us where knowledge of the difference between the Sun’s heat and light are standard, thermal panels were designed to, yes, you guessed it, to capture the heat, because thermal means of heat.
What is so difficult here? Are you so deeply in the AGWSF trap that you can’t even be objective about this?
Do you use thermal energy to cook your dinners? So, you know what real heat is..
Heat is transferred in three ways, by conduction, by convection and by radiation. Heat, the Sun’s actual thermal energy, it’s kinetic energy of motion which is heat, radiates out to us in the invisible thermal infrared.
The heat of the Sun, the thermal energy of the Sun, is the direct beam invisible thermal infrared and reaches us in around 8 minutes. It travels in straight lines, concentrated, it can do work, it heats up matter.
If you can grasp this, then you’ll be able to see the point I’m making, that this is a very clever con to promote AGW. And yes, it took organisation and time to get it into the education system, but they were determined..
Now, I’m asking you to prove what you’re claiming – and you have, all of you, consistently failed to produce the proof. Instead you keep distracting from it.
This is your AGW claim that visible light from the Sun physically heats land and ocean – until you can prove it, until you actually come back with the empirical detail, then you are claiming something that you cannot even prove to yourself.
That doesn’t impress me.
Show how visible light from the Sun actually physically heats land and water at the equator to get us the immense wind and weather systems we have.
Please, make an effort to answer this.
I’ll check back here every couple of weeks or so.
00
@Myrrh
visible light causes heating
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod3.html
00
[…] of true openness, Jo Nova, has recently led the way on this matter. In September she hosted the superb paper by Dr Jinan Cao that questioned the applicability of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation in the formation […]
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It has been said in the comments that emissivity of water to IR is 0.96. I wonder if it includes the fact that IR are absorbed in the first few millimeters of water so they increase evaporation. In the real macroscopic world, the energy that leaves through evaporation is not absorbed, so it should lower emissivity. Does anybody know if this fact is considered? Said in another way, if I send 1kwh of IR heat to a volume of water, how much will stay in the water after a few seconds?
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Marc77,
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of the process.
IR IS ABSORBED by the molecules at the surface which is what drives the evaporation!!! Water vapor is also very active in IR so does not stop absorbing and emitting. The energy that caused the evaporation is then typically CONVECTED away from the surface wiht the water vapor making up the largest energy flow.
Virtually none of the 1kwh of IR will remain in the water. This is the experiment that Myrrh will not do as it disproves his arm waving.
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I might have expressed myself wrong, I’m not that great in English.
What I mean goes like this:
Evaporation of surface water is partly proportional to incident light and partly proportional to the temperature of the first few meters of the water body. In terms of energy transfers, an emission that is proportional to incident light is equivalent to a reflexion and an emission that is proportional to the temperature of the body is equivalent to thermal radiation.
So when an entity evaporates water easily(oceans, wet lands, living things). Their response to an increase of IR is not only to increase their whole temperature in order to radiate more energy as a whole. Their response is also to evaporate more water which is a reflexion because the increase in emission was not related to an increase of the temperature of the body.
Now, if we look at emissions from the atmosphere. The emissions toward space are lost forever and the emissions toward the ground will come back in part without heating the surface because of evaporation of water. Does it look like an inverted greenhouse effect? A lot of people like to point to the fact that GHGs decrease the amount of energy lost from the ground to space. But they never see that more emissions from the atmosphere leads to a greater transfer from atmosphere to space that from atmosphere to the ground.
So as the ground looses less energy to space, the atmosphere looses more energy to space.
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“The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is used to obtain known nostrums of the climate debate, such as “it would be 33C cooler without greenhouse gases” and “the direct (no feedbacks) effect of doubling the CO2 levels is to raise the surface temperature by about 1.1C”.”
The problem with all this is that we are starting off with a flat, non-rotating, “black body”, twice as far from the sun as earth currently is, where its noon all the time. We are talking about this body’s SURFACE TEMPERATURE. And we are excluding the electrical energy that works its way down from our ionosphere to the ground. So where is the alleged temperature anomaly coming from? Its nice to have the dexterity to apply these laws and tools. But here there is simply too many heroic leaps in reasoning to apply them very well. How did we get from a surface temperature model of a non-rotating body to an ATMOSPHERIC temperature of a rotating one? How did we leap from surface temperature to gas temperatures?
Lets go back to this flat black-body where its noon all the time. Would the addition of an atmosphere warm the surface temperature? No I don’t think so. I think in all cases the atmosphere would reduce that surface temperature from what it would be were it noon all the time. I don’t think there is any logical foundation in averaging the earths temperature and then crying anomaly in this story. Where is it said that the temperature had to average out with reference to zero degrees Kelvin? Would this make no difference if the rotation of the earth was twice as fast? Half as fast? Where does the averaging law come in?
What I’m driving at is that we don’t have an anomaly in the first place to hang all these scientific tools on.
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In taking up this alleged 33 degrees anomaly and ascribing it to “backradiation” (in god-of-gaps fashion) there is also another glaring oversight. One which I suspect Louis Hissink may have ventured to point out from time to time. That is that we are ignoring the thermal effects of electrical energy making its way down from the ionosphere to deep in the earth. Should anyone doubt that this is a real phenomenon think of the sort of energy we have in hurricanes or cyclones. Often the media will point out that the energy being expended is something like that of a nuclear weapon every few seconds. Yet the official story behind this could be named the “tepid water” theory of hurricanes. In this story there is held to be so many joules in the tepid water of the ocean. All those dangerous joules in the form of tepid water. Yet in denial of all we know about energy this tepid water winds up powering a hurricane. In reality this doesn’t happen. Extreme natural events occur because of the electrical potential difference between the ionosphere and the deep earth. When there is too much electrical energy to be absorbed readily by the ground you get these extreme natural events.
If you imagine a tornado, its an upside-down pattern of the vortex created in the bath-tub where the force of gravity wants to take the water down the plug-hole, but because it cannot all go down at once you get that swirling. The cyclone is a larger version of that. At sea it cannot ground its electrical energy, but it will usually peter out after landfall. The energy buildup for the cyclone can usually be traced to events on the sun. Its all about the electrical energy not being able to ground so having to go back upwards and/or swirl around and around. There is simply no other energy source available except the ionosphere that can plausibly create this phenomenon. Now we know that the earth has an electrical field. We know it has a magnetic field. We know that electricity is always homesick and wants to head to earth. So this implies a constant electrical flow. Why is this energy therefore not being used to reduce this already dubious 33 degree anomaly?
Once we know that the 33 degrees anomaly is all fiction, then the doubling leading to a 1.1 degrees increase is also rendered fictional.
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Hi Graeme
I like the term “heroic leaps” !
I have never really thought much of the “doubling of CO2 gives “x” number of degrees increase in atmospheric
temperature” estimates.
To start with there is an asymptotic REDUCTION in effectiveness of all additional CO2 for which humans can
only claim about 4% of the input and then there are all of the uncontrolled factors.
Any additional temperature increase, if it could be induced by extra CO2, would bring about additional
convective removal of energy to upper reaches of the atmosphere for dumping into space as just one example.
KK 🙂
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Well right. I know that you get marked down in a year 9 test if you say “heat rises”. I myself think its reasonable English. Radiation isn’t the only way thermal energy is going to escape. I just find this whole controversy very embarrassing. I thought we used to be able to rely on the CSIRO once upon of time. Maybe thats bad history?
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There is clear cut evidence that, not only is the 33 degrees wrong because the 255K is wrong because it’s based on a flat Earth – but no backradiation or Greenhouse Effect conjecture has anything whatsoever to do with the warming.
If it did, then it should also explain why the surface of Venus is raised by about 500 degrees. There is not a hope in Hades that the insolation reaching the Venus surface could do that – it is only about 10% of that reaching Earth’s surface.
As scientists from the fast growing PSI have found, the temperature difference can be fully explained for each planet by the naturally occurring adiabatic lapse rate. Standard physics shows that this is a function of (and caused by) the acceleration due to gravity, g. It follows that backradiation has nothing to do with it.
For more information visit our website.
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The heat profile of Venus makes it absolutely clear that Venus is hot from the inside out. Venus must be appreciated as a special case. The pristine nature of its craters and other evidence shows Venus to be “new” in its current form.
The major point is that back radiation theorists have no temperature anomaly to plug with their theorizing.
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Today we read the Academy of Science says the greenhouse effect does not exist and this dates back 33 years, but this has been supressed. The explanation for the extra 33 degrees may be as simple as the Boltzmann equation PV= nRT . The pressure of the atmosphere under its own weight from gravity causes the faster movement of molecules, which equals heat. A lot of the extreme heat of Venus can be explained by the pressure which is 92 times that on earth. Simple experiment is to put CO2 under 92x pressure and measure the heat produced, which should be quite a bit. Interesting to note that on Venus and on earth, higher altitude which has lower air pressure has lower temperatures, until higher altitudes where direct cosmic radiation takes over.I dare say any physicist should be able to put in the variables of higher w per square metre that Venus receives against earth, black body temperature- seen conflicting numbers on the net and Earth’s lower grams per mole in the atmosphere to determine the validity of the entire greenhouse theory.The way warmists rely on “the science is settled” to avoid debate and claim “victory” is of itself totally unscientific. I think the Nazis also claimed scientific victory claiming the science of Jewish inferiority was settled. Hopefully heads will roll when the &$;: hits the fan that AGW is a total politically motivated fraud orchestrated by the UN . remember, it was the Fabians who founded the League of Nations and United Nations and pull the strings.Keep you eyes open for UN resolution 1618, which basically states that nothing can be done that harms a Muslim, including verbally. Bye bye freedom of speech, bye bye democracy, society’s going down.
I am betting that the Greenhouse Effect cannot explain the whole 33 degrees and some, if not all is from the high school science PV =nRT.
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