Open thread weekend

The History Channel gets the well-deserved South Park treatment here: http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/episodes/s15e13-a-history-channel-thanksgiving

This guy’s resemblance to Jim Hansen is creepy. I note also an equivocation between Lake Nyos (CO2) and this [unknown] source of methane. Result? Folk-science claptrap, served up on a Hollywood-style platter: San Diego buys it. Gawrsh, there’s a disaster waiting in Cauliflowernia for every day of the year. I’d love to see the credits for this History Channel expose.

Here in France, the river Loire and Garonne are both freeezing over, something not seen for 25 years at most, and since 1995 at least, depending on the zone.
http://pays-de-la-loire.france3.fr/info/froid–des-glacons-dans-la-loire-72444783.html
http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2012/02/10/1281928-la-garonne-gelee-pour-la-premiere-fois-depuis-1985.html
This after nearly two weeks of sub zero temperatures.
http://comprendre.meteofrance.com/content/2009/10/21331-48.pdf shows the years with really cold winters and you can perhaps link them to solar minimum years.
We certainly beat the electricity use
http://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/2012/02/09/05007-20120209ARTFIG00633-electricite-pourquoi-on-enregistre-des-records.php
and temperatures were also beaten or very nearly beaten
http://www.sudouest.fr/2012/02/10/au-coeur-de-la-vague-bergerac-surfe-le-record-629992-757.php
http://actualite.lachainemeteo.com/actualite-meteo/2012-02-07-03h00/vague-de-froid—des-records-mensuels-battus—15618.php
and over 600 people died in europe
http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/le-froid-et-la-neige-ont-fait-plus-de-600-morts-en-europe-11-02-2012-1430413_24.php
All these in French, so google translate them!

“Giant Methane Explosion”
Known colloquially as a “Lloyd Christmas Scenario”

Enjoyed this comment very much. Corals love CO2 and/or warming it seems…
Global Warming and CO2 make coral reefs grow at an unsustainable rate
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/germany-in-skeptical-turmoil-on-both-climate-and-windfarms/#comment-886202
( http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201202/s3423899.htm )
( http://www.aims.gov.au/latest-news/-/asset_publisher/MlU7/content/3-february-2012-ocean-warming-drives-coral-growth-rates-in-western-australia )

The german story continues, with “Welt” (the broadsheet sister of “Bild”) and Latif getting wobbly.
According to author Kuhlke the german media are treated from Berlin (Postdam) the same way as they were 75 years ago.
http://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article13861989/Die-Klimaforschung-wird-zum-neuen-Religionsersatz.html
(Translation: Climate is the new religion)

I got Rob Honeycutt to say, “So what if [Michael] Mann created errors in his code? [So] What if he was up late nights trying to figure out how to force the data to show a hockey stick?”
Yeah, I know it’s not much of a victory. But you’ve got to savor them when they come, no matter how small.
That would never happen at SkS.

On the frozen major rivers theme, the Danube’s frozen in several places, they’re even blasting the ice apart http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/dynamite-used-to-blow-apart-ice-sheets-on-white-danube-3016530.html
A week’s worth of sub -10C temps is needed to freeze the river.
It’s hit -16C last night (8am this morning, to be exact), here in Lincolnshire.

I keep reading that India is going to try thorium-based nuclear reactors. However, I don’t think GE or Westinghouse even have a prototype under design. This makes me think it’s not workable for some reason, even though India & China have allegedly approved construction. I did a little searching and couldn’t find much. Does anyone have something that looks like a technical analysis of a prototype thorium reactor?

So this man doesn’t know where the methane ‘pocket’ is but thinks it will hit San Diego?
I thought the aliens, asteroids, giant apes, dinosaurs etc. automatically homed in on New York, Metropolis and Gotham City.
A refreshing change but it makes you want to sneak up behind him, whisper “clathrate” and see if he hits his forehead.

Revisionist history channel. There’s no evidence that methane caused the Permian extinction; this is, at best a hypothesis, at worst, rank speculation. And as it’s methane, rank is the right word.

http://oilandenergyinvestor.com/2012/02/energy-crisis-looming-in-the-european-deep-freeze/
It’s getting worse in the Balkans. The rivers are completely frozen (ice is closed and not moving). We are getting new snow over the weekend.
The biggest daily paper in Bosnia has a big story about cooling, new ice age, climategate! This is the first time I see skeptical article in MSM here.

Yet the Kara and Barents Seas are unusually ice free http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/barentsz-and-kara.html

Icy winters were bygones for a while in Holland, but it looks like they are returning again. There was a record low of -23 C in one spot and even lots of ice on the shallow coastal sea in the North. For over a week a complete ice skate-frenzy took over here, as we have miles upon miles of waterways everywhere.
Well, being an ice skate lover myself, I feel if winters like this are still around, AGW isn’t that bad after all… as long as the oceans don’t start burning…

How to make your own nuclear reactor at home. Make your own Plutonium!

Nerd says:
February 11, 2012 at 12:49 pm
(Giorgio A. Tsoukalos in his voice) Who started this thread? The Aliens
This post is useless without a picture.
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/158326

All we need is for Sheldon to pop up and shout , “BAZINGA!!!” http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQPXkhcaj8VwoJriM4B_KO_msvffHEtv7ae4TtH0lG1CwQLi6k9Qbv9NT03

This is about regular meetings between Washington State and British Columbia. Just thought I would bring forward a couple of topics. I like the low carbon energy part seeing as BC is an exporter of oil, natural gas and coal and we have a carbon tax. We have it all.
BC And Washington Announce 2012 Action Plan
•specific actions to better align and maximize opportunities for energy efficiency, clean transportation, and low-carbon energy including natural gas.
http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/23200/1/bc+and+washington+announce+2012+action+plan?

http://images.memegenerator.net/Instance/Preview?imageID=305303&generatorTypeID=&panels=&text0=WUWT%20gets%20their%20information%20from&text1=Aliens&text2=&text3=
🙂
[REPLY: Cute. -REP]

http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2012/02/ipcc-receives-further-credibility-blow.html
IPCC receives a further credibility blow: Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner resigns as expert reviewer
The problems to IPCC never seems to end. Vahrenholt, the high profile German scientist made headlines last week:
‘The IPCC is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC.”
Now a Swedish scientist quits the IPCC. Here’s the letter Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner faxed the IPCC:
I hereby resign as expert-reviewer of Chapter 13: Sea Level Changes. I do this for two reasons:

I like THC’s motto: “Made up every day.”

http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/2012/02/11/debate-over-global-warmingclimate-change-heats-up/

The collapse of the Man-Made Myth continues apace. You may not read headlines as such (at least not in major dailies) but all the signs are there.
People who we never would have imagined speaking against the Big Scare Campaign are now doing so. Key glaciers are not melting and corals are happy. Governments won’t tell you it’s over, but they are behaving that way (the Australian one excepted, due to an election fluke that gave the Greens the balance of power). The Catholic Herald headlined it: Is the ‘anthropogenic global warming’ consensus on the point of collapse?
Source Barchart.
The last year of carbon trading in EUR’s continues to fall. (Click to enlarge).
Mini update: The carbon market is being referred to as “dead”. Johannes Teyssen, chief executive of Germany’s EON, urged policymakers to make fixes. “Let’s talk real: the ETS is bust, it’s dead,” Mr Teyssen said in Brussels this week, adding: “I don’t know a single person in the world that would invest a dime based on ETS signals.” [full story: Financial Times]. Point Carbon analysts have downgraded the forecast price of carbon credits for the second time in two months as the carbon market continues to slide. What was estimated to be 12 Euros, has fallen to 9 euros for 2012, and 8 euro’s for 2013. It’s a long way below $23, set by our Australian “free-market-lovin’-Labor-Party”. (If only they knew what a free market was.)

The Truth Is Out There
(On South Park)

😉

Lark says:
February 11, 2012 at 12:55 pm

I’ve seen charts of CO2 and temperature over geological history; is there such a thing for air pressure?
[…]
Very large and flying dinosaurs seem to require higher air pressure than ours. If so, how much has it changed, what caused the changes, is the change continuing, is there a possibility it might change back…? These questions interest me; they might even be important. Is this not studied because it is harder than measuring CO2 and temp – a case of looking for keys under the street light? -Or because it’s known that it’s always been the way it is now?

Lark, I think you are suggesting that because flying dinosaurs were much larger than today’s birds the air pressure must have been much greater to support their weight. I don’t agree with this suggestion but there is evidence that the oxygen levels were much higher in the past.
The first link discusses recent (60 year) variations in atmospheric pressure.
Don’t stay too long at the second link – just grab the references and get out of there.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/12/earths-changing-atmosphere/
http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/early-earth/atmosphere/
But, while you are pondering a thicker atmosphere, consider how birds today can fly at over 20,000 ft elevation without dropping out of the sky. The air must be pretty thin up there. Also, how can they breath at those elevations let alone fly 350 miles without resting? It turns out the scientists who want to study dinosaurs don’t know enough about our present day birds to realize the mistakes in their questions.
Air pressure at 20,000 ft is half that at surface. Birds breath differently than humans.

Didn’t we see a story a while back about methane erupting from the sea in unprecedented quantities? Ah yes, here it is:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats-6276278.html
I’m going to call Reuters or AP or someone to get a pre-emptive denial out, as I have 18-month-old twins, and today greenhouse gases, especially methane (I suspect this: I haven’t carried out any scientific tests) have been erupting from their “equatorial regions” in unprecedented quantities.
They, I have to say, seem rather proud of their farty achievements. Their parents are, on the other hand, worried that James E. Hansen is going to blame us for a never-seen-before rise in polar bear suicides or somesuch.

Go head-to-head with an icebreaker. Plunge down a twisting mountain gorge. Soar through the clouds in the nosecone of a jet, then speed along with a dog team as it races across a frozen Arctic lake. A sweeping, moving tribute to Canada’s stunning geography and rich cultural heritage, Momentum leaps off your screen–and touches your heart.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/icebreaker.jpg
http://www.nfb.ca/film/momentum_en/

Kakada…well spotted!

“So this man doesn’t know where the methane ‘pocket’ is but thinks it will hit San Diego?”
I know where it is. Off to the john…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I just love this graphic. The science behind a three folded cord deserves proper research, as do knots in general.
I’ve never understood why science seems to ignore knots when they are so important to all our lives.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/10/10375026-spectacular-cloud-tsunami-rolls-over-florida-high-rise-condos
From the interesting weather photo files, amazing and beautiful pics of fog rolling in off the ocean in Panama City Florida. I’ve never seen the like.

Charles Gerard Nelson says: February 11, 2012 at 5:05 pm
This site may be of interest, though Indian Ocean, there may be valuable references in some papers.
http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/events_categorydetails.asp?categoryid=6&eventid=539
History of Aceh & the Indian Ocean World
for eg Paper 2. Goksoy

I’m sadly addicted to some of the crap the history channel throws up there. Not that I believe half the claptrap they produce, but with the high production values, and amusing logical fallacies, it’s great fun to watch. “The government denies there are any aliens at all, so they must be colluding with them!!”
Their reality competition show Top Shot is actually amusing, the high speed camera work capturing the bullet flights is great. Also excited about that Full Metal Jousting show that they’re coming out with… should be a good time.
But if you believe anything they produce is really based in fact, you’re a lunatic.

As this is an Open thread weekend, I was wondering if anybody could help me.
I have been reading the following:
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf
http://www.climate.org/topics/climate-change/ocean-uptake-climate-change.html
In short, they are articles state that due to the increase of anthropogenic CO2 the oceans have absorbed more CO2 which is causing ocean acidification.
My questions:
1. How do they know that the extra CO2 absorbed by the ocean is anthropogenic CO2? Is there a difference between anthropogenic CO2 and natural CO2?
2. Isn’t there a limit on how much atmospheric CO2 can be absorbed by water independent of the amount of CO2 in the air?
3. The increase of CO2 caused by humans is about 3%. If this is correct, why does such a small increase cause such a major reaction?
4. In the past CO2 levels have been much higher. Did this also result in ocean acidification?
5. In the last few hundred years ocean temperatures have gone up. Doesn’t warmer water have less ability to absorb CO2? So how can it be that while the oceans are warming, they (As stated) are absorbing more CO2?

Ric Werme says:
February 11, 2012 at 11:02 pm
I haven’t looked at your list closely
___________________________________________
Well may I ask that you do look at the list, reading each point in order, because your response is about something altogether different and irrelevant to the whole thrust of the argument.
All points need to be read in order. They are not stand alone points as you seem to think.

Ric Werme says:
February 11, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Let me guess – these guys have been doing small scale lab experiments, not setting foot outside.
____________________________________________________________
Observations on ‘Backradiation’ During Nighttime and Daytime
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf

Ric Werme says:
February 11, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Steve from Rockwood says:
February 11, 2012 at 4:29 pm
————————————–
Ric, thanks for the links. I’m checking them out now. So I had a little fun with the Dr. He could have written a more eloquent “I just can’t take it anymore” letter rather than the “dog stole my homework”. In reflection, perhaps he was just so frustrated with the content of the chapter he jumped ship mid-voyage. But I see this thread has been hijacked by a bunny rabbit so I’ll leave it there.

@DirkH: Thanks for the info. Those were interesting, but, I have seen a few suggestions that the breeding portion of the fuel lifecycle is going to be problematic. If you remember the old hybrid approach to use un-enriched uranium (inject neutrons to sustain the reaction), the devil was in the details. I get a little worried to see so much hype on a technology without any discernible technical discussion or calculations of energy yield, etc. I guess the recent solar & wind debacle has me suspicious of all things “alternative”.

Regarding exploding methane pockets; Is there not lightning on Titan?

Ric Werme, I always read your posts and have learned a great deal from them as they are always well presented thoughtful arguments. Just wondered if you had read the Slayer’s book? If not, perhaps you could tell me why not.

DirkH says:
February 12, 2012 at 7:50 am
———————————————–
DirkH, thanks for the links. I so want to believe Mörner but I have to say it’s looking bad for his claims of no sea-level rise and no trend since 1850. See the graph below from the link you provided. OK, so the trend is 1.7 mm per year and not 3.2. But a trend is still a trend.
http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/nasa-sea-level-data-ground2.jpg

Ric Werme says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:19 am

[some interesting stuff]

—————————————-
Thanks Ric. You would think a guy like Mörner could show a graph of sea-level rise with no trend over the past 150 years when if fact there are dozens of graphs out there to the contrary (ah the consensus is right after all! – not that I agree).
And then says

I’d almost rather go back to the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus….

Haha, I’m there too. Plus I’d like to see Willis have another go at the N-Z paper. And I’d like to know why Jupiter and Saturn radiate more energy than they receive from the sun. Must be all the uranium that jorgekafkazar found when he was there.

Few interesting items I found over at eruptions@wired… Smaller stratosphere eruptions can be much more rich in SO2 than larger eruptions. Large SO2 ice crystals can drop out quickly. Fine ash aerosols may have the ability to stay in the stratosphere longer than I thought. Tried to post in tips & notes but kept getting closed.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/332612/title/Small_volcanoes_add_up_to_cooler_climate
Small volcanoes add up to cooler climate
Airborne particles help explain why temperatures rose less last decade
By Alexandra Witze August 13th, 2011; Vol.180 #4 (p. 5)
Along with sulfur emitted by coal-burning power plants, volcanic particles spewed high in the atmosphere reduced the amount of global warming otherwise expected during the 2000s, a new study finds…
Volcanoes affect upwelling and ocean currents as static heat sources
NPG – Abstract – The effect of a localized geothermal heat source on deep water formation
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/18/841/2011/npg-18-841-2011.html
Explosive volcanic eruptions triggered by cosmic rays: Volcano as a bubble chamber 10.1016/j.gr.2010.11.004 : Gondwana Research | ScienceDirect.com
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X10001966
http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/elsevier/explosive-volcanic-eruptions-triggered-by-cosmic-rays-volcano-as-a-3p053jxP0S

WUWT has never done a post on Graphene.
I have one if you want to use it as a guest post. It’s short. But it is a good outline of Graphene. I can submit it to you for review to see if it meets WUWT standards.
This is an introductory video to Graphene.

Steve from Rockwood says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:46 am
“DirkH, thanks for the links. I so want to believe Mörner but I have to say it’s looking bad for his claims of no sea-level rise and no trend since 1850. See the graph below from the link you provided. OK, so the trend is 1.7 mm per year and not 3.2. But a trend is still a trend.
http://climatesanity.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/nasa-sea-level-data-ground2.jpg
”
Yes, 17mm a decade or 17 cm a century. While the alarmists warn of a meter, 5 meters, 70 meters until 2100, depending on how alarmist they are.
Don’t you think that it’s rather easy to adapt to a sea level rise of 17 cm in a century? That’s a piece of cake compared to the meters of snow falling on the villages in Rumania right now IMHO…
The argument of the alarmist scientists was not to fear the 3.2 mm/year but that sea level rise would accelerate. Well, it doesn’t look like it. Now, why don’t the alarmists throw some parties; humanity’s saved again! I have yet to see my first alarmist with a smile on his face, come to think of it, not one of the Waldsterben (forest death through acid rain hysteria in Germany in the 80ies) guys of the 80ies was delighted when their prophecies turned out to be wrong…

Very amusing alarmism from 1988. Watch the full first part to get a slew of contradicting hypotheses. Sounds exactly like the flip-flopping of the alarmists from today.

DirkH says:
February 12, 2012 at 1:02 pm
Thanks for post that video!!! Too much. So the greenhouse effect should be greater in the tropics than in the Arctic? And it causes global cooling!
This thing is such a classic that it really needs to be spread far and wide.

On the subject of catastrophic methane gas releases.
CH4 is much lighter than CO2, which the History channel shows erupting in Africa.
If the same thing happened in the lake with CH4, it would have risen skyward, and nobody would have suffocated.
If it had ignited, it would have made an explosion, but most likely a fireball. It is hard to get methane gas to ignite explosively in an open environment. Too close to the source, and there isn’t enough oxygen, too far away, burning, but no explosion.

Ric Werme says:
February 12, 2012 at 6:41 am
I thought I was clear that I was talking from heat from solid ground to gaseous atmosphere
__________________________________________
Well I knew I was clear that I was talking about the opposite, so it was yourself who went off on a tangent.
You have not addressed the set of “10 steps” that I made at all.
Maybe you can state why you and the IPCC believe that while solar radiation is warming a certain area of the land surface or the ocean on a sunny morning (so the temperatureof the surface is increasing and there is net radiation going into the surface) then the additional backradiation from a cold atmosphere (also going into the surface) is claimed to do more warming and so transfer additional heat.
Answer that my friend, bearing in mind that the Second Law of Thermodynamics says it cannot because heat cannot be transferred from cold to hot. (Heat transfer is not radiation transfer, by the way.).
Then I suggest you read the first two pages of my website http://climate-change-theory.com and the linked page to Prof Claes Johnson’s Computational Radiation Theory.” as well as all the paper by Prof Nahle regarding the invalidity of backradiation measurements.
Note also another post I am about to write below this.

I have posted my “10 steps” post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609 on many other forums (both for and against AGW) with a genuine desire to see if anyone can raise a valid counter argument. The following may help explain and reinforce what I have written there.
Firstly, the actual amount of backradiation must be grossly overstated because the emissivity of the atmosphere is only about 20% I understand and it is colder than the surface and emitting in all directions into a full sphere rather than a hemisphere. So how could NASA’s energy diagram possibly be right in showing similar values for emission from the surface as from the atmosphere. I postulate that the instruments calculate the radiative flux from the temperature assuming emissivity is unity and emission into a hemisphere.
But, whatever the amount of backradiation, it cannot transfer thermal energy from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface as this would imply a heat transfer from cold to hot, which is against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. When the surface is warming on a sunny morning, for example, and net radiative flux is into the surface, how can additional heat be transferred from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface against the Second Law. It can’t and all such radiation is reflected or (mostly) scattered and thus leaves no energy behind.
It follows that, since backradiation cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface, then it cannot increase the rate of warming in the morning or slow the rate of cooling in the evening.
Backradiation is after all low energy radiation spontaneously emitted from a cold source. The peak frequency of the strongly attenuated spectrum is proportional to the absolute temperature (Wien’s Displacement Law) and such frequencies are usually lower than those in the radiation from the surface. Surface molecules “recognise” this and reject the low energy radiation which does not have enough energy to be converted to thermal energy. (See Prof Claes Johnson Computational Blackbody Radiation) http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf
We see examples of this in radio broadcasts where we know the radiation is even lower frequency than that in backradiation. It is of course artificially generated, but its frequency corresponds to much lower temperatures than normally experienced on earth or in the troposphere. For this very reason it is scattered by the surface and by the atmosphere and is not converted to thermal energy because it is “colder” even than the backradiation. If this were not the case, then it would have been quickly quenched as all its energy would have been used up warming whatever it struck. So it would not travel the distances that we know it does. Basically the same happens to backradiation and it just keeps getting scattered off molecules in both the atmosphere and the surface until it happens by chance to escape to space.
So the (latest version of) the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is (like the first version) a physical impossibility.

I’m under the impression that the CO2 (hint CO2 is NOT methane, and is not explosive; having allready done that) in that African lake was ejected from some volcanic vent under the lake, which lake is not that deep. CO2 takes something like 56 atmospheres of pressure to turn into a solid at around room Temperature or whatever (I’ll let you wikigigglers find the real numbers), so that would take say 56 times 34 feet of water or 1904 feet of water pressure to condense the CO2. So naturally CO2, which incidently is NOT methane, would of course escape quite naturally as it came from the volcanic vent, and most certainly as it exited from even a thousand feet of lake, it would do so with some considerable kinetic energy from the expansion, and buoyancy.
But then methane is not CO2, so it wouldn’t really do the same thing. So what is the liquifaction or solidification pressure of CH4 at around 4deg C or whatever they say the deep ocean Temperature actually is away from sulphur vents or black smokers.
The good professor doesn’t know where these CH4 deposits are, so how does he know what they arechemically or physically, and what is their state.

To everyone:
George E. Smith; says:
February 12, 2012 at 5:25 pm
the CO2 can’t warm the surface; but the sun can, and does.
_________________________________________________
George, whilst I do of course agree with your conclusion above, the reasons you give are not correct. It is important that all we physics people get the right message across.
Thermal energy is not radiated energy. Radiation can go in all directions, but “heat” is not energy itself and does not actually travel itself or in any way cancel out due to opposing radiation as will be explained below.
When two bodies at different temperatures radiate towards each other they are of course converting thermal or other energy into radiation. Assuming the bodies are not transparent to each other’s radiation, that radiation will be either converted to thermal energy or scattered without leaving any energy behind.
Thus “heat” only appears to travel, rather like sound being broadcast on radio waves. You see the temperature increase and say heat has travelled, but in fact thermal energy has just been “produced” on the spot by conversion of radiated energy- and we then say “Ah, we have heating happening.” We attribute some of it to what appears to be a particular hotter source, but of course the target body already has a temperature resulting from lots of radiation, conduction etc from lots of warmer sources.
The conversion to thermal energy only happens if the peak frequency of the received radiation is (significantly) greater than the peak frequency of the target. As these peak frequencies are proportional to the absolute temperatures (by Wien’s Displacement Law) we only observe conversion to thermal energy when the emitter was warmer than the target.
The important thing is that it does not matter what radiation was being sent the other way. If you could block the radiation from the cooler body with a filter that still allowed the other radiation from the warmer body to pass through you would still see the same amount of warming..
This is the correct reason why radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot be converted to thermal energy in a warmer surface.

If radiation from cooler bodies could warm warmer ones, then all the radiation from all the planets would warm the Sun a little. So the Sun would then radiate more back to all the planets, and they would get warmer from the backradiation from the Sun. So they would radiate more to the Sun and so it would radiate more back again because it got hotter stil, etc, etc ….. Sure it’s just a little bit at a time, but in billions of years who knows just how hot it’s going to get.
The only thing is, this doesn’t happen because of course the hockey stick had a level handle once upon a time. /sarc

Ric Werme:
Well I’m glad you use NASA’s net energy diagram that doesn’t show any backradiation. That solves your problem for you, unless there’s someone in the audience who challenges you on that.
Don’t forget to update Spencer’s plot and the sunspot projection.
Maybe instead of quoting someone’s out of date post at the end, you could quote those of mine here. After all, you do declare that you are seeking the truth, so why promulgate fictitious cogitations.
Didn’t I kind of warn you at the beginning that this would take time – yes mine too, and I have to finalise my book Greenhouse Land for the publishers .

Those who believe that thermal energy “moves” in the direction of net radiation should consider what happens when a blackbody faces another body, say, 10 degrees warmer but with much lower emissivity out in space, say. Suppose S-B calculations are such that the warmer body emits less than the cooler one because the warmer one’s flux is reduced by the lower emissivity. Hence the direction of net radiative flux is from the cooler one to the warmer one.
(1) What happens to the extra radiation that the warmer body does not absorb because of its low absorptivity?
(2) Does the warmer body convert to thermal energy any of the remaining radiation from the cooler body? If not all, what happens to that radiation?
(3) Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics obeyed or does the warmer body get warmer still?
(4) Does heat transfer from the cooler one to the warmer one, or vice versa?
.

See – owe to Rich says:February 12, 2012 at 12:40 am
For your entertainment, here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my son’s geography teacher, answering some of the questions she put in a pamphlet to encourage students to continue with geography studies to age 16.
4. Is Toowoomba a victim of climate change?
Where? Oh, that town near Brisbane which was deluged in January 2011. Now this is actually quite an interesting question. But these are not the climate changes you are looking for.
The second aspect is an awful human culpability bordering on the criminal, because it probably cost lives.
While not Toowoomba, but an example of town planning or lack of infrastructure expenditure or auditing of actual assets or assessing risk management correctly….
Perhaps pges 21, 30-31 are of interest?
http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/86595/cif-landue-s-reid-g-doolan-s-20050209.pdf

From Doug Cotton on February 12, 2012 at 9:36 pm:

If radiation from cooler bodies could warm warmer ones, then all the radiation from all the planets would warm the Sun a little. So the Sun would then radiate more back to all the planets, and they would get warmer from the backradiation from the Sun. So they would radiate more to the Sun and so it would radiate more back again because it got hotter stil, etc, etc ….. Sure it’s just a little bit at a time, but in billions of years who knows just how hot it’s going to get.

Thanks for posting this, saves me from scouring through your long list to gauge how sensible your claims can be.
I’ll crank out some numbers for just the Earth and the Sun:
Info:
Area of sphere = 4*pi*radius^2
Area of circle = pi*radius^2
Mean distance Earth to Sun 1.496×10^8 km
Mean radius of Earth 6,371.0 km
Mean diameter of Sun 1.392×10^6 km, thus mean radius 6.960*10^5 km
Calculated values:
Area of sphere with Earth-to-Sun radius: 2.812*10^17 km^2
Earth cross-sectional area (flat disk) 1.275*10^8 km^2
Sun CSA 1.522*10^12 km^2
The longwave radiation from Earth is going out in all directions. For your mechanism, a photon leaving Earth would have to hit the “target” of the Sun. Dividing the disk area of the Sun by the area of the Earth-Sun sphere yields the amount of radiation from the Earth that’d hit the Sun.
1.522*10^12 / 2.812*10^17 = 5.413*10^(-6)
Of the radiation leaving Earth, only 0.000005413 (0.0005413%) of it hits the Sun.
For that radiation coming back from the Sun, we use the disk area of the Earth.
1.275*10^8 / 2.812*10^17 = 4.534*10^(-10)
0.0000000004534 which is 0.00000004534%, of the radiation leaving the Sun, only that much hits the Earth. Well, that’s the longwave radiation under consideration, for this it’ll be assumed that all of it hits the Earth rather than reducing the figure with incidence angles on the edges and other figuring. Which shouldn’t matter anyway, since we’re considering that energy as going right back out into space again, same as with the longwave hitting the Sun, so using flat disk areas for the amount received is acceptable.
For a single Earth-to-Sun-to-Earth transit, the amount of longwave radiation leaving the Earth that returns to the Earth after hitting the Sun is 5.413*10^(-6) * 4.534*10^(-10) = 2.454*10(-15).
0.000000000000002454 which is 0.0000000000002454%.
For two round trips, we square that. Three trips, cube it. Etc.
You should be able to note how quickly the longwave radiation is lost to deep space, the remainder becoming infinitesimal. Heck, you could add in everything else to figure out the “local” solar system heating, like longwave going from Jupiter to the Sun to Europa to the Earth and back to the Sun, etc. The result would still be infinitesimal.
You specified such warming as evidence that colder bodies can warm warmer bodies. Well, such warming could very well be there. But the amount would be so tiny, far less than a rounding error, that it’s currently undetectable and likely will remain so. So if you’re looking for something to disprove that by radiation a cooler object can warm a warmer one, well, you better pick something else.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:49 am
which is 0.00000004534%, of the radiation leaving the Sun, only that much hits the Earth
______________________________________________________________
I don’t care how small your finite answer is or how much energy that represents over 4 billion years in the past .. the point is your wrong assumption has led you to claim incorrectly that energy has been created.
The correct answer zero.
The reason is that the spectrum of emitted radiation from the Earth has frequencies which are below those in the spectrum of emitted radiation from the Sun. Thus none of the radiation from the Earth that strikes the Sun is converted to additional thermal energy in the Sun. [Explained with links to proof in my website and other post.]
You cannot prove otherwise, just as you cannot prove in any experiment that radiation from the atmosphere is actually slowing the rate of cooling or increasing the rate of warming of the surface. There is no empirical evidence of such in any published experiment because it cannot happen: it would be in breach of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the reasons being explained in my previous posts which I suggest you read before replying.
.

Agile Aspect says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm
George E. Smith; says:
February 12, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“”””” JC says:
Electromagnetic radiation IS NOT HEAT.
;————————————————————————————————-
False.
Electromagnetic radiation is heat (or energy.)
All thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
It’s a question of wavelength.
And all matter radiates.
=============================
This is getting to be really ridiculous.
Electromagnetic radiation is electromagnetic radiation. These come in discrete packages with their own distinct properties and processes, distinct ways they interact with matter. They are neither not all heat nor not all heat.
Those who say they are all heat are talking nonsense, they are not all thermal energy, thermal infrared is thermal energy, it is heat.
Those who say they are not heat are talking nonsense, thermal infrared is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move, which is heat.
Those saying that it’s ‘all the same electromagnetic energy and then converted to heat on meeting matter’ are talking nonsense. That’s like saying, say, that gamma rays are just electromagnetic radiation and then the body receiving them converts them to gamma rays which then wreck the DNA.
Am getting more and more amazed at how widespread the disinformation about this, through all the education system from kindergarden to university to scientific bodies and associations, all put in place to stop rational science thinking in the promotion of AGW. Has it only taken so few decades to destroy all the hard earned knowledge we’ve gained about the differences between Light and Heat?
What an amazing con.
Here’s something I’ve posted on this – if you can get your heads around what traditional well tried and tested and used in countless real world applications differences are between Light and Heat, you’ll be able to see through the scam.
Important, I think because of the confusion, that you get your heads around HEAT first, then you’ll see why that isn’t LIGHT.
“Heat” and “Light” are the traditional physics category differences, thermodynamics and optics.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/#comment-890886
“Ridiculous. Tim don’t bother with such utter codswallop – the direct heat from the Sun warms the oceans. The direct heat from the Sun is thermal infrared, if this didn’t heat the oceans because it couldn’t penetrate more than a few microns there would be no such thing as swimming in really warm tropical waters – it would be cold water with a thin layer of heat on it! Utter nonsense.
“Ocean Regions
Heat from the sun warms the world’s oceans near the Equator. This heat is gradually circulated through the oceans by currents. Since these waters are always being warmed, they maintain high year round temperatures (21° – 30° C, 69.8° – 86° F) and are known as the Tropical Regions of the world’s oceans.” http://oceanofk.org/tag/Tagmigrate/ddisttemp.html
My bold.
The heat we feel direct from the Sun is thermal infrared, this is the same radiated heat energy used in countless applications to heat water, including us, as in infrared saunas because we are so much water – It penetrates out skin and into the body by inches! And it can’t get past the surface tension of the ocean!?
Thermal infrared, heat has the ability to move the molecules of water into vibrational resonance, this is kinetic energy, which is also heat. Water is a very great absorber of heat, it has a very high heat capacity, it takes in a lot of heat before it shows temperature changes and it takes longer to heat up than land and so takes longer to lose heat, from this we get the inshore and offshore breezes.
http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Heat Transfer
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Using the word heat helps physicists to make a distinction relative to the system they are talking about.”
http://thermalenergy.org/
Thermal Energy Explained
“What is thermal energy ?
Thermal Energy: A specialized term that refers to the part of the internal energy of a system which is the total present kinetic energy resulting from the random movements of atoms and molecules.
The ultimate source of thermal energy available to mankind is the sun, the huge thermo-nuclear furnace that supplies the earth with the heat and light that are essential to life. The nuclear fusion in the sun increases the sun’s thermal energy. Once the thermal energy leaves the sun (in the form of radiation) it is called heat. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.
At a more basic level, thermal energy comes form the movement of atoms and molecules in matter. It is a form of kinetic energy produced from the random movements of those molecules. Thermal energy of a system can be increased or decreased.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer.”
An ordinary incandescent lightbulb produces around 95% heat, and 5% light.
http://www.commonsensepress.com/GSA-sample_lesson/lesson_ocean.htm
The direct heat from the Sun, the direct thermal energy of the Sun in transfer, is what directly heats the oceans and lands.
NASA: “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.”
Stand in front of a fire, it’s the invisible thermal infrared, invisible heat, you feel. That’s exactly what we get from the Sun at the speed of light, heat, thermal energy in transfer. You cannot feel visible light! It doesn’t heat you up!
The junk energy budget you’re (generic) working to is junk because it has given the properties of real heat which thermal infrared, the thermal energy on the move direct from the Sun – to visible light and shortwave!
Until you can see the difference here, and so realise what has been done to science education, you won’t really get a grip on the enormity of this greenie/watemelon/military/industrial agenda.
At least reclaim the real science for yourselves, give your heads something real to work with and continue the traditions of real science, observation and testing.
And then you can put back the water cycle too….

John says:
February 12, 2012 at 2:25 pm
The wheels of Real Climate are beginning to come off – they are starting to consume their own. Too funny.
[Moderator’s Note: John, this does not seem to be a response to anything else on this thread. Could you elaborate, perhaps, and supply a link to whatever it is you are referring to? -REP]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/free-speech-and-academic-freedom/
This article wishes to defend Pachauri post 14 for example is a great starting point – accountability is the gist.

Myrrh says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:34 am
This is getting to be really ridiculous.
;——————————————————————–
See “Heat and Thermodynamics” by M. Zemansky and R. Dittmann.

Myrrh (and others who don’t understand what physics says “heat” means, should consider the fact that, when EM radiation (UV, visible or IR, for example) goes from Point A to Point B it does not necessarily mean that Point B will experience a rise in temperature.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891159

Agile Aspect:
Did I ever say there was no energy in radiative flux? See the ‘Radiation’ page of my website http://climate-change-theory.com and read my posts above, starting from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609

Agile Aspect says:
February 13, 2012 at 11:25 am
Myrrh says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:34 am
This is getting to be really ridiculous.
;——————————————————————–
See “Heat and Thermodynamics” by M. Zemansky and R. Dittmann.
==========
Go outside when the SUN is shining, bask in its warmth – that’s heat and thermodynamics. That’s heat you’re feeling direct, beam, from the Sun, it is HEAT, it is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move, it is heat, it is invisible thermal infrared, it is heat, it is warming you up because that’s what heat does.
It reaches the surface because you can feel it – AGW junk energy budget says it doesn’t reach the surface!
Visible light direct from the Sun can’t warm you up.
Heat, the invisible thermal infrared direct from the Sun is what warms up land and oceans, because it CAN.
Water is transparent to visible light, visible light is transmitted through without being absorbed, visible light cannot heat the oceans. You cannot feel visible light from the Sun, because it isn’t thermal energy on the move from the Sun. You can’t even feel near infrared because it isn’t thermal. Thermal – of Heat.
Visible light is Light.
You’re working to a junk energy budget of fictional fantasy fisics.
And you’ve missed out the Water Cycle completely.

Kadaka:
You are talking about disributions of wavelengths v. temperature. I suggest you look up typical plots of frequency v. temperature as shown under “Wien’s Displacement Law” in Wikipedia for example. No doubt you know that peak frequency is proportional to absolute temperature, but the distribution is strongly attenuated and does in fact have a maximum cut-off frequency that can be accurately determined.
Considering the worldwide average effect, the atmosphere is certainly sufficiently cooler than the surface to ensure no significant overlap of the frequency distributions of the two.
As proven by Claes Johnson (Professor of Applied Mathematics) in his Computational Blackbody Radiation” there can be no conversion of radiated energy to thermal energy in such circumstances. Hence there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Your argument about which molecules might or might not “absorb” radiation says nothing about whether additional thermal energy will be the result, or just immediate re-emission of radiation which thus has no effect on temperature, any more than reflection would have.
As I have explained in earlier posts, net radiative flux in one direction does not mean that net heat transfer has to be in the same direction. Regardless of the direction of net flux, heat will only ever “flow” from warm to cool as per the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Every sunny morning there is net flux into the surface from the Sun. Extra flux from the atmosphere cannot increase the rate of warming. So please now read my “10 steps” post above before responding further. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609
If cooler bodies could warm warmer ones (as in my example of the “backradiation” from the Earth to the Sun) then energy would be created out of nothing in the process.
If you wish to argue about Johnson’s mathematical computations (with which I find no fault) then I suggest you communicate with him directly. A link to his paper is on the second page of my site http://climate-change-theory.com and you will easily find his blogs.

The other day in my job as a two way telecommunications maintenance, troubleshooting-repair-calibration-instrumentation-“please invent us a ______________ so we can _______ or control ____________ by _______________” guy,
I sat down as any mere mortal would, near the door to the climatology department, down at the University.
Since I’m not a – a climatologist, and I know it, I feel inadequate with a mere electronic engineering/troubleshooting-of-all-things-with-a-dial-or-place-to-install-ANYTHING-with-ANY-kinda bell, buzzer, button, or other appliance to help keep the people who use it from hurting/embarrassing themselves/their equipment/humanity@large
background, I’m going to put it into the terms I THINK I heard. You might know more, hence be able to understand it all.
I paraphrase but as nearly as possible, I quote:
“Hay.”
“Wat.”
“Yew think thim Hockie Stik Prognostifukashus iz poW’r’FUL?”
“WaYYYL, YEW bETCHA!!11! Thay’z REEL AS A T.R.E.E.M.O.M.I.T.ER. an YEW NO THAIR AINT NUTHIN KIN MAYZUR uh TREEMOMiTER but tha moST POWWWWER’fUL uv Prognostufukashuns.”
“Yeah. Hay.”
“Wat.”
How Yew no wat tree yews’about’tuh dreel, so yew kin look in yer borehole, an’ tayl wat time it wuz ‘zakly wat temperchur a hunnerd yeerzago?”
“Caws.”
“Caws wat.”
“CAWS THISN’S uh’WUN IMAFIXIN tuh BE BORIN, BOY, NOW GIT BACK!11!! Git BACK!!1”
“wOW.”
“wOW waT.”
“‘eMz sum POW’eR’Ful Prognostifukashuns tuh ‘terpritize thim’AIr CLIMIT tungs.”
“Shore is. Now gimme sum borehole greece, i caint see whut ima doin down heeyur tah muh BOREHOLE.”
Then to my utter surprise, something I felt scantily knowledgeable about-the power of the largest heater ever heard of, cooking the atmosphere by force of one of, a class of gases, the main constituent of which class is of course water – the atmospheric-pressures phase-change REFRIGERANT –
covering in it’s liquid/solid formes some 70+ percent of the earth’s surface – well anyway we all already know about that but the point they discussed you see, was this …magic gas, CO2, which somehow, comprising a T.I.N.Y. FRACTION of all these gases of this one class – the ones which most well accept/re-radiate the spectrum of light in the low-power, infrared class –
this magic gas of course, is going to make all the water evaporate and the sky will, most certainly father Gore, has told us, catch on fire. To put it mildy and assuming, there’s no REAL critical problem like someone’s prius being damaged by falling flaming birds.
Anyhow I digress and these two um, ‘fellERs uv CLIMITAWLUGIE’ were discussing the relative merits, of carbon sin, vs. carbon virtue.
A vision of Al Gore just appeared to me warning me that
(1)I’m not a climatologist
(2)this heeyur aint no peer ruhvew
(3)I caint reed a thermomuhter without sum hayulp
(4)shut up Gaia was having – and I quite – ever more urgent hotness and wetness enough without me makin her feel worse from me makin her ‘time-of-the-month’ worse from self indulgence in USING FIRE, to do things like feed my kids, heat my dog, wife, kids, and friends at night, etc
so I’m not allowed to reveal more about our cherch but lemme tayl yew: thim thair climit prognostifukashuns dun by al thim sintists?
Thays fer reel. And the Sasquatches, and thuh Abominable Snowmen? Thay ar cryin.
And I just felt so overwhelmed right thin in thuh climatologie unaversatee that I ruhpentid an i meen right now. And so shud yew.
Amen
Tuh muhsayulf.
Aynd to thuh sky helpin Gaia wipe yew all out so me and my prius can go to werk and not see no extra peeple.
Oh: also Al Gore told me “THEEZ HEEYUR IS SUM UV tha SMARTIST MINN ON ERTH, FOLKS!1!!”
Now yew caint fake that.
No sir yew caint.
Caws global warmin is reel evun if there aint no tropusferic hotspot and evun if thuh atmosferic downwelling of infrared has DROPPED in the last 15 years.
And even if the instrumental record hasn’t warmed for more than 15 years.
And even if .it aint reel it’s reel so thair i sed it. So i buhleave yew shud to.
Thank yew I am going to skeptikuhl sints and git me a carbon sin online anxiety jr pastor of apocalypse counseler
sertifuhkit.
So I can cownsul all yew wat wont buhleave.

Myrrh and others:
It is important when we argue that there is no greenhouse effect that we get our facts right.
(1) Only about half the radiative flux energy in solar insolation is in the infra-red spectrum.
(2) This does indeed cause about half the warming on the surface, and that is why carbon dioxide has a slight cooling effect when it absorbs some IR from the Sun and sends it back to space. It is a deliberate “oversight” on the part of the IPCC that they do not mention this. The frequency of virtually all IR radiation from the Sun is well above the peak frequency of IR radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, and so the solar IR radiation can be converted to thermal energy in the surface.
(3) But the other half of the solar insolation (in the visible and UV spectra) does also contain about as much energy and that energy will also be converted to thermal energy when it penetrates the oceans and land surfaces because its frequency is also higher than the peak frequency emitted by the surface. So indeed we do have heat transfer from the Sun to the surface.
(4) But radiation at lower IR frequencies which comes from a cold atmosphere will not normally be converted to thermal energy when it reaches a warmer surface. This is the major error made in the greenhouse conjecture. The Second Law confirms that heat transfer cannot be from cold to hot. Some radiation certainly does go from the atmosphere to the surface, but the energy it contains does not get converted to thermal energy unless it travels at a low angle to the horizon and strikes an area (perhaps in Antarctica) which might be colder than that part of the atmosphere from which it originated – fairly unlikely.
Read my book Greenhouse Land when it is published soon.

Prof Claes Johnson has proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation* that energy in radiation only gets converted to thermal energy if the peak frequency of the radiation from the source is above the peak frequency of the radiation from the target.
This essentially provides a mechanism which explains why the Second Law of Thermodynamics also applies for radiative heat transfer, as it does for heat transferred by conduction.
It is not the net radiative flux (or even its direction) which determines whether (and in which direction) thermal energy is transferred. For example, if the emissivity of two bodies is very different, there can be more radiative flux from the cooler one. But all that flux will be scattered by the warmer one and not converted to thermal energy. Only the flux from the warmer one (no matter how weak) will be converted to thermal energy in the cooler one. This “ensures” that the Second Law is valid in all cases because it depends on peak frequency which is proportional to absolute temperature – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law
* http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html

Doug Cotton says:
February 13, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Myrrh (and others who don’t understand what physics says “heat” means, should consider the fact that, when EM radiation (UV, visible or IR, for example) goes from Point A to Point B it does not necessarily mean that Point B will experience a rise in temperature.
Well, that’s not really saying anything. For example, water has a really high heat capacity, it can absorb huge amounts of heat, whether that’s transmitted by conduction, convection or radiation, so is slow to raise its temperature all the while taking in large amounts of thermal energy, it is therefore also slow to release heat, this is why it is used in central heating systems, for example. Carbon dioxide which has even less heat capacity than oxygen and nitrogen, can’t ‘trap’ heat, it releases it practically instantaneously. And then there’s visible and UV you mention, these are Light energies, not thermal, not heat. They are not hot and don’t have the power to move molecules and atoms to kinetic energy, and please, don’t go into nit picking ‘it’s not zero’, and ‘it’s maybe somewhere in the shash’, – these are claimed to be THE MAIN SOURCE OF DIRECTLY HEATING LAND AND OCEANS IN YOUR JUNK ENERGY BUDGET. So, where are the figures for each of these and details of their ability to heat land and water? Please fetch. This isn’t a rhetorical question.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891159
You mean this?: You have a lot to learn about physics. You say “The heat that we feel from sunlight … is infrared.” Well, I tend to get sunburnt from the UV part of solar insolation more than the IR.
You can’t feel UV, it isn’t hot. It does not warm you up as thermal infrared does – thermal infrared warms you up inside, because it has this thing going with water molecules, they resonate together….
Look, for goodness sake, it won’t take you long to actually look at UV and find how it gives you a tan, you get a tan because the melanin in your body acts to try and stop it burning your skin by damaging your DNA. YOU CAN’T FEEL IT BURNING YOU. Because its not heating up your skin. UV is TINY! It may well be highly energetic, even more so than Visible light, but the scale it works on is TINY. Sorry, I’ve had a long day… But it is so frustrating that none of you has any sense of scale.
UV doesn’t even get through the first of the three layers of our skin – highly energetic?? Put on a shirt and you STOP IT. That’s how not powerful it is. It is tiny, it works on the DNA level. It’s energy is used to create Vitamin D. It is not a thermal energy, it does not heat, doesn’t move the molecules of matter. Rub your hands together, that’s mechanical energy creating heat, moving the molecules in your skin into vibration, kinetic energy, that’s what thermal infrared does – especially to the water in you because it penetrates the body and has a special affinity with water – this is the real source of heating the oceans by the Sun.
The claim of your energy budget is that it is the shortwave, Solar, which is Visible and the two shortwaves either side or UV and Nr IR, which directly heat ALL the land and oceans.
So, where are the figures for these individually? Where is the mechanism by which these heat water and land, rocks, soil? Come on now – step up to the plate all of you who claim this, produce the evidence.
Water is a transparent medium for Visible, this means that the energy isn’t absorbed, it is transmitted through, but, Visible is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere…
Here, the basic difference between HEAT and LIGHT:
======================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency
Electronic: Transitions in electron energy levels within the atom (e.g., pigments). These transitions are typically in the ultraviolet (UV) and/or visible portions of the spectrum.
Vibrational: Resonance in atomic/molecular vibrational modes. These transitions are typically in the infrared portion of the spectrum.
UV-Vis: Electronic transitions In electronic absorption, the frequency of the incoming light wave is at or near the energy levels of the electrons within the atoms which compose the substance. In this case, the electrons will absorb the energy of the light wave and increase their energy state, often moving outward from the nucleus of the atom into an outer shell or orbital.
The atoms that bind together to make the molecules of any particular substance contain a number of electrons (given by the atomic number Z in the periodic chart). Recall that all light waves are electromagnetic in origin. Thus they are affected strongly when coming into contact with negatively charged electrons in matter. When photons (individual packets of light energy) come in contact with the valence electrons of atom, one of several things can and will occur:
*An electron absorbs all of the energy of the photon and re-emits it with different color. This gives rise to luminescence, fluorescence and phosphorescence.
*An electron absorbs the energy of the photon and sends it back out the way it came in. This results in reflection or scattering.
*An electron cannot absorb the energy of the photon and the photon continues on its path. This results in transmission (provided no other absorption mechanisms are active).
*An electron selectively absorbs a portion of the photon, and the remaining frequencies are transmitted in the form of spectral color.
Infrared: Bond stretching
etc.
===============
That’s what Visible light from the Sun does, it’s tiny, highly energetic may well be, but look at the second of those, this is what visible does in the atmosphere – it gets bounced around by the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen – like trying to get through a pin ball machine – they’re reflected/scattered, all over the sky – blue visible, more highly energetic, gets bounced around even more as the electrons spit it back out again, hence our lovely blue sky.
Yes, really powerful peak energy visible! OK, so this is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules in the atmosphere – your junk energy budget say the atmosphere is transparent to it, fibs again, now tell us how much Blue Visible is heating the Sky since y’all claim that absorption means heating?
Now look at the third one. That’s what happens when visible meets water, it is transmitted through, it is not absorbed, not even by the electrons of the water molecules, because water is a transparent medium for visible, (and not, look in the next section for infrared vibrational, it is not big enough to move the whole molecules of water into vibration).
“A transparent material is one in which the charged particles
can’t permanently absorb any photons of visible light. While these
charged particles all try to absorb the visible light photons, they
find that there are no permanent quantum states available to them when
they do. Instead, they play with the photons briefly and then let them
continue on their way. This playing process slows the light down.” http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may98/893732585.Ph.r.html
In photosynthesis, the energy of Visible light is used for a chemical energy process, creating sugars, it does not create heat. Carbon dioxide plus water plus visible light makes sugar. Green visible isn’t used, is reflected back out. Check out an optics page or two, we see the world and colour because visible is reflected differently from objects around us, and that comes into our eyes and registers.
Doug Cotton says:
February 13, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Myrrh.
You have a lot to learn about physics. You say “The heat that we feel from sunlight … is infrared.” Well, I tend to get sunburnt from the UV part of solar insolation more than the IR.
You haven’t even begun to learn anything about physics, you, and you generic, don’t even know what the different wavelengths do – to you they’re all the same and all magically creating heat. Learn the difference between heat and light.
UV is not a thermal energy, it does not move your molecules into vibration, you might get enough Vitamin D out of it if you get enough sunlight – there’s been a spate of rickets among children here, Britain and Ireland, because parents have been frightened by the cancer scares about being out in the sun and by the ads for sun creams which urge using higher and higher blocking power against UV..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning
http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/33/17/white/
UV is not a thermal energy, its energy is used in chemical processes, working on the small DNA level. It’s also very good for sterilising water, by wrecking the DNA of the microbes. Highly energetic, certainly, but on a tiny scale of matter.
But it is true that about half of the solar spectrum is indeed in the IR spectrum, which a lot of climatologists don’t seem to realise, because they never mention the fact that carbon dioxide absorbs some of this incoming solar insolation and thus has a cooling effect. It is a small effect, however, because there is more energy in UV and visible light photons than in IR photons due to the higher frequencies. Physics tells us that photon energy increases with frequency – which is why UV causes sunburn much more than IR.
You can’t even feel yourself getting sunburnt, it is not hot, and it isn’t heating you up, ‘increased energy with frequency’ is giving you the wrong impression. In overdose more than your personal levels of melanin can cope with, your skin will fry, just as it would with gamma rays. Gamma rays are thousands of times as energetic as Visible – and still they won’t heat you up! They’ll destroy your DNA. Enough of it in huge amounts and it will vaporise you completely, that’s why they called the point of impact in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ground zero – because there was nothing left.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5554168_gamma-radiation-health-effects.html
The IR radiation coming from a cooler atmosphere is incapable of transferring thermal energy to a warmer surface – meaning that there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Something we agree on.
I really think this has to be taken back to the real differences between light and heat. I can only suggest that you re-read what I posted above about heat, and compare that with what you now know about UV.
Heat direct from the Sun is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move.
Thermal Energy Explained
http://thermalenergy.org/
http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing.

PS Myrrh
The amount of warmth you feel depends on the intensity of the radiation as well as the frequency . You don’t feel much from the IR backradiation at night, or even the upward IR radiation at night. You won’t however get sunburnt standing in front of an electric radiator, but you will under a UV light.
What do you suppose happens to the energy in UV and visible light when it penetrates and eventually gets absorbed in the oceans? You can’t destroy energy.
People with 50 years experience in Physics like myself, who have done university degrees majoring in physics like myself and who have tutored university students and marked university assignments like myself do know that most energy in UV and light gets converted to thermal energy when it strikes a surface or penetrates an ocean. What other type of energy do you suppose it ends up as? Even the potential energy in your car rolling down a hill gets converted to thermal energy when you apply the brakes – the same stuff the radiative flux energy in all that IR radiation gets converted to when it strikes your skin.

From Doug Cotton on February 13, 2012 at 3:33 pm:

You are talking about disributions of wavelengths v. temperature. I suggest you look up typical plots of frequency v. temperature as shown under “Wien’s Displacement Law” in Wikipedia for example. No doubt you know that peak frequency is proportional to absolute temperature, but the distribution is strongly attenuated and does in fact have a maximum cut-off frequency that can be accurately determined.

There you go again. That Wikipedia entry shows a graph just like the ones I linked to, which tells me you didn’t even bother to look. You’re arguing the wrong end, talking about maximum frequency (highest frequency, shortest wavelength) when I’m discussing minimum frequencies (longer wavelengths). As I mentioned, those long tails into the longer wavelengths are still there. You’re still wrong.
So not only is your understanding of physics still whack, you’ve shown you can’t be bothered to read a reply well enough to intelligently respond, resorting instead to dismissal with an amount of extraneous verbiage representative of the burgeoning size of your ego as you pedantically attempt educating the ignorant unwashed masses without seriously considering the arguments presented.
Thanks for notifying us about your eventually-to-be-published book, so we know it’s not worth buying and we should look for real science elsewhere.

Kadaka – yes, sorry, Wikipedia does only show a wavelength plot and comments underneath that it does not show Wien’s Displacement Law like a frequency plot does. A bit sloppy of them – it was a while since I’d read their page and probably forgot that the best plot actually showing how peak frequency is proportional to absolute temperature is the left hand one on this site: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/WiensDisplacementLaw.html
However, I take it that you accept that Wien’s Displacement Law is valid.
All your “tails” don’t have a significant impact in the mean observed results in the real macro world. Otherwise the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which with very low probability may be slightly out due to the tails) would not be generally observed to apply. But it does, so no significant warming can happen, especially when the atmosphere is generally at least several degrees cooler than the surface. There can be nothing like the 100% warming effect that IPCC conjectures for “backradiation.” The very vast majority (say, >98%) of backradiation is merely scattered. I don’t think we need worry about any temporary warming from the rest.
I realise this is new ground-breaking computational physics as derived by Prof Claes Johnson, so if you wish to argue with him go to his blog.
It is however the only plausible explanation for the observed Second Law of Thermodynamics for radiation.
Give me an alternative explanation, considering two bodies with very different emissivity. You can’t, can you?

I think the lesson here is “Better drill it out and use it.” Seriously, I don’t see anything wrong with the theory. The term “Regularly,” could mean merely periodically. Life has been around a long time. I like this guy’s idea, though I wouldn’t waste trillions on stopping it. I suppose that’s the point.

See – owe to Rich says:
February 12, 2012 at 12:40 am
For your entertainment, here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my son’s geography teacher, answering some of the questions she put in a pamphlet to encourage students to continue with geography studies to age 16.
1. Does it matter that 1998 was the warmest year on record, since 1861?

Not even. Quietly, 1934 (or so) has been re-instated. IAC, 1998 was a one-off super-El Nino “anomaly”. Ignore it.

Doug Cotton says:
February 13, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Agile Aspect:
Did I ever say there was no energy in radiative flux?
;——————————————————————————————————–
Flux is the result of a measurement with an associated uncertainty, requires a well defined surface, and the measurement occurs after the radiation has arrived at the surface.
Your statement “electromagnetic radiation transmits radiative flux energy” violates causality and has units of Watts/m^*Joules.
If you drop the word “flux”, then it would read “electromagnetic radiation transmits radiative energy” which makes sense and has units of Joules.

How about addressing these issues ..
(1) The direction of net radiative energy flow can be the opposite of the direction of heat transfer. if you have a warmer object (say 310 K) with low emissivity (say 0.2) and a cooler object (say 300 K) with much higher emissivity (say 0.9) then net radiative energy flow is from the cooler to the warmer object. Yet the Second Law says heat transfer is from hot to cold.
(2) Any warming of a warmer surface by radiation from a cooler atmosphere violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Consider the situation when the surface is being warmed by the Sun at 11am somewhere. Its temperature is rising and net radiative energy flow is into the surface. How could additional thermal energy transfer from the cooler atmosphere to make the surface warm at a faster rate?
Clearly radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface. The surface molecules scatter radiation which has a peak frequency lower than the peak frequency of their own emission, and so no radiative energy from that radiation is converted to thermal energy. (This was proved in Johnson’s <Computational Blackbody Radiation.), So the atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility.

I was quoting a Professor of physics and of course was using the term as the fraction that is emitted v. that emitted by a perfect blackbody. If you wish to continue to believe that those white clouds and thin atmosphere act like a perfect blackbody producing 100% “cavity” emission, then keep to your beliefs and just consider the two points in today’s post which are independent of the amount of radiation from the atmosphere. But you would do well to remember that a perfect blackbody has to be perfectly insulated from its surrounds so that there can be no transfer of thermal energy by diffusion, conduction, convection, phase change etc. That means your carbon dioxide molecules can’t share their thermal energy with any other air molecules, because then they won’t have that energy to re-emit.
In the real atmosphere there is plenty of thermal energy transfer by diffusion and convection for a start. So it is totally impossible that a layer of the atmosphere acts like a perfect blackbody with emissivity 1.0.
Furthermore, if there is a warmer layer below it, then correct application of SBL (including multiplying by the emissivity) means that net radiation would be from the warmer layer to the cooler one above.
In short, there is no way that the atmosphere can radiate downwards anything like the amount shown in energy diagrams. No actual experiments have ever found any warming effect from backradiation. You cannot point me to one, yet the IPCC should have tested such before going off into Greenhouse Land – the title of the book I’m now publishing.
So, if you treat the atmosphere’s emissivity as being 1.0 (highly improbable) then absolutely no energy is left up there to do any warming of other air because you are calling it a perfect blackbody. In reality it is no more like a true blackbody than is the surface, which also sheds energy by all the above processes, as well as what’s left by radiation.
Your problem is that you work with formulas for which you don’t fully understand the prerequisites and conditions necessary for such formulas to apply. You appear to be indoctrinated by climatologists who do the same when they assume they can apply Stefan-Boltzmann Law to the Earth’s surface.
If you had had 50 years experience in studying and teaching physics as I have, then maybe you’d have a better feel for things.
For the moment, though, you have a lot to learn, so I suggest you start by thinking about the two issues in my earlier post today. I’m only trying to help you and others understand reality.

Doug Cotton says (February 14, 2012 at 1:59 pm): “How about addressing these issues ..
(1) The direction of net radiative energy flow can be the opposite of the direction of heat transfer. if you have a warmer object (say 310 K) with low emissivity (say 0.2) and a cooler object (say 300 K) with much higher emissivity (say 0.9) then net radiative energy flow is from the cooler to the warmer object. Yet the Second Law says heat transfer is from hot to cold.”
If emissivity is less than 1, then so is aborbance. Why not make it easy and calculate for black bodies, emissivity = 1?

Gary Hladik says:
February 14, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Aaaargh! The word “aborbance” above should be “absorbance” (sic)
_____________________________________________________________
Actually it should have been “absorptivity.” But we already know that you don’t know much physics. Your post also indicates you don’t understand my point, as others will realise.
.

Doug Cotton says (February 14, 2012 at 7:35 pm): “Actually it should have been “absorptivity.” But we already know that you don’t know much physics. Your post also indicates you don’t understand my point, as others will realise.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorptivity
Doug, I don’t think God Himself understands your point.
Or should that be “pointity”?

Gary Hladik says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Doug Cotton says (February 14, 2012 at 7:35 pm): “Actually it should have been “absorptivity.”
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I stand by my statement because it is preferable to use “absorptivity” as the opposite of “emissivity.”
Absorbance (with a “b”) has a different meaning altogether, so the item in Wikipedia which you linked is in error. In fact it is contradictory to the Wikipedia entry they linked which reads…
Absorptance[5] (not absorbance) is defined as: The ratio of the radiant flux absorbed by a body to that incident upon it. Also called [absorption] factor. Compare absorptivity.
Note the all-important “p” in absorptance which gives it an altogether different meaning to absorbance. (See Wikipedia “absorbance’)

Doug Cotton’s 4 questions are (1) What happens to the extra radiation that the warmer body does not absorb because of its low absorptivity? (2) Does the warmer body convert to thermal energy any of the remaining radiation from the cooler body? If not all, what happens to that radiation? (3) Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics obeyed or does the warmer body get warmer still? (4) Does heat transfer from the cooler one to the warmer one, or vice versa?
As pointed out above for (1), the absorption is based on the spectrum of the radiation and the surface of the body that the radiation is impacting. Extra radiation is reflected which does not depend on the temperature of the body. For (2) some is absorbed and some reflected. (3) the Second Law is obeyed since the warmer body does not warm but cools more slowly. (4) Net heat transfer is from warmer to cooler, but slower transfer due to the cooler body being above 0K.

Eric (skeptic) says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:42 am
The flux from the warm atmosphere (relative to space) lowers the net heat outflow from the surface.
_____________________________________________________________
What “net heat outflow” from the surface? How can there be a net heat outflow when the surface is getting hotter at 11am? Go for a walk on the beach and see if the sand gets hotter and hotter on a warm sunny morning. It does in my part of the world.
Next time, when you don’t understand my points, don’t bother to write about something different and irrelevant. I think like a physicist – obviously you don’t.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot work anywhere where there is matter in the universe unless the radiation from cold to hot has absolutely no effect and only the radiation from hot to cold leads to the conversion of the energy in that radiation to thermal energy in the colder body. There is no such conversion when radiation from a colder body meets a warmer one. “Heat” does not “travel” in the direction of net radiative flux, as I have demonstrated above, and because it does not do so, the veracity of the first statement is confirmed.

Doug, I think like an engineer. There is not much point in discussing a warm sunny morning since back radiation doesn’t really matter then. The better example is at night. Do you agree that clouds generally make it warmer at night? The clouds are almost always colder than the surface. The sign of that difference never matters although the cloud temperatures matter. If downward radiation is not what is keeping it warmer, what is?

Doug, regarding your statement “This happens only for those frequencies in the radiation which are above the natural frequencies that can be emitted by the target. (The hotter the source of spontaneous radiation, the higher will be the peak frequency.)”
What happens when a frequency from the source exactly matches the natural frequency of the target? What happens when the source frequency is 0.000001% above the natural frequency of the target and what happens when it is 0.000001% below? Will there be a discontinuity?
Also please answer if clouds at night will keep the surface warmer and if so, how.

Eric (skeptic) says
February 15, 2012 at 4:36 pm
What happens when a frequency from the source exactly matches the natural frequency of the target? What happens when the source frequency is 0.000001% above the natural frequency of the target and what happens when it is 0.000001% below? Will there be a discontinuity?
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Good question. There is resonance or near resonance. The concept of near resonance is explained in more detail by Prof Claes Johnson – see link to his paper on the ‘Radiation’ page on my site http://climate-change-theory.com
Basically that’s what it’s all aboout. The radiation resonates with the target and is not absorbed in the sense that there is no conversion to thermal energy. Higher frequencies that cannot resonate cause a type of “chaos” which leads to conversion to thermal energy, rather like when x-rays cause ionization.

The conjecture that “backradiation” (or even reflected radiation sent back to its source) can warm the original source (which is warmer than the source of the backradiation) is not to be found anywhere in conventional physics papers or textbooks.
It is something invented by climatologists. Yet, despite its lack of status as any kind of established theory, the IPCC launched it upon the world without so much as a single empirical experiment to confirm it happened. Yet they call it science, and say the science is settled.
Now even if people like Gary are not prepared to test it themselves (as I have and found it failed) then at least you would think there ought to be some experiment somewhere that the IPCC was hanging its hat on. But there isn’t.
End of story. End of Greenhouse fantasy.