A guest post by Ken Coffman and Mikael Cronholm
In clicking around on the Internet, I found an outstanding paper called Thermodynamics of Furnace Tubes – Killing Popular Myths about Furnace Tube Temperature Measurement written by Mikael Cronholm. The paper was clever and wise…and made a lot of sense. Clearly Mikael knows a lot about infrared radiation and I’m a guy with questions. A match made in heaven?
We exchanged e-mails. I want to be clear about this…Mikael corrected some of my wrong ideas about IR. I’ll repeat that for the slow-witted. Some of my ideas about infrared radiation were wrong. I am considered a hard-headed, stubborn old guy and that’s completely true. However, I want to learn and I can be taught, but not by knuckleheads spewing nonsense and not by authoritarians who sit on thrones and toss out insults and edicts.
Ken Coffman (KLC) is the publisher of Stairway Press (www.stairwaypress.com) and the author of novels that include Hartz String Theory and Endangered Species.
Mikael Cronholm (MC) is an industry expert on infrared radiation, a licensed, level III Infrared Training Center Instructor and holds two Bachelor of Science degrees (Economics and Business Administration).
The following is a summary of our conversation.
KLC: Hello Mikael. I found your paper called Thermodynamics of Furnace Tubes and I found it very informative, practical and interesting. I hope you’ll bear with me while I ask a couple of dumb questions. I am an electrical engineer, so I have some knowledge about thermodynamics of conduction and convection, but not so much about IR radiation. In return for your time, I would be happy to make a donation to the charity of your choice.
If I take an inexpensive IR thermometer outside, point it at the sky and get a temperature reading of minus 25°C, what am I actually measuring? Is there anything valid about doing this?
MC: Just as a matter of curiosity, how did you find my paper? I checked your website and I guess this has to do with the Dragon, no? If you want to make a donation I would be happy to receive that book. If you can, my postal address is at the bottom. I don’t follow the debate more than casually, but I am a bit skeptical to all the research that is done on climate change…it seems that the models are continuously adjusted to fit the inputs, so that you get the wanted output…and they argue “so many scientists agree with this and that”…well, science is not a democracy…anyway…
About radiation, then. There is more to this than meets the eye. Literally!
Looking at the sky with an infrared radiometer you would read what is termed “apparent temperature” (if the instrument is set to emissivity 1 and the distance setting is zero, provided the instrument has any compensation). Your instrument is then receiving the same radiation as a blackbody would do if it had a temperature of -25°C, if that is what you measure. It is a quasi-temperature of sorts, because you don’t really measure on a particular object in any particular place, but a combination of radiation, where that from outer space is the lowest, close to absolute zero, and the immediate atmosphere closest to you is the warmest. (I have once measured -96°C on the sky at 0°C ground temperature.) What we have to realize though, is that temperature can never be directly measured. We measure the height of a liquid in a common thermometer, a voltage in a thermocouple, etc, and then it is calibrated using the zeroth law of thermodynamics and assuming equilibrium with the device and the reference.
KLC: Global warming (greenhouse gas) theory depends on atmospheric CO2 molecules absorbing IR radiation and “back radiating” this energy back toward the earth. If you look at the notorious Ternberth/Keihl energy balance schematic (as shown in Figure 1 of this paper: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf ), you see the back radiation is determined to be very significant…more than 300W/m2. From your point of view as an IR expert, does this aspect of the global warming theory make any sense?
MC: The paper you sent me mentions Stefan-Boltzman’s law, but it does not talk about Planck’s law, which is necessary to understand what is happening spectrally. I suggest you read up on Planck and Stefan-Boltzman at Wikipedia or something. Wien’s law would be beneficial as well—they are all connected.
Planck’s law describes the distribution of radiated power from a blackbody over wavelength. You end up with a curve for each blackbody temperature. The sun is almost a blackbody, so it follows Planck quite well, and it has a peak at about 480nm, right in the middle of visual (Wien’s law determines that). The solar spectrum is slightly modified as it passes through the atmosphere, but still pretty close to Planckian. When the radiation hits the ground, the absorbed part heats it. The re-radiated power is going to have a different spectral distribution, with a peak around 10um (micrometer). Assuming blackbody radiation it would also follow Planck’s law.
S-B’s law is in principle the integral of Planck from zero to infinity wavelength. Instruments do not have equal response from zero to infinity, but they are calibrated against blackbodies, and whatever signal they output is considered to mean the temperature of the blackbody. And so on for a number of blackbodies until you have a calibration curve that can be fitted for conversion in the instrument.
That means that the instrument can only measure correctly on targets that are either blackbodies, or greybodies with a spectral distribution looking like a Planck curve, but at a known offset. That offset is emissivity, the epsilon in your S-B equation in that paper. It is defined as the ratio of the radiation from the greybody to that of the blackbody, both at the same temperature (and wave length, and angle…). Some targets will not be Planckian, but have a spectral distribution that is different. If you want to measure temperature of those, you need to measure the emissivity with the same instrument and at a temperature reasonably close to the one you will measure on the target later.
So, of course, the whole principle behind the greenhouse effect is that shorter wavelengths from the sun penetrates the atmosphere easily, whereas the re-radiated power—being at a longer wavelength—is reflected back at a higher degree. I have no dispute about that fact. It is reasonable. So I think the Figure 1 you refer to is correct in principle. My immediate question is raised regarding the numbers in there though. The remaining 0.9 W/m2 seems awfully close to what I would assume to be the inaccuracies in the numbers input to calculate it. You are balancing on a very thin knifes edge with such big numbers as inputs for reaching such a small one. An error of +/- 0.5% on each measurement would potentially throw it off quite a bit, in the worst case. But I don’t know what they use to measure this, only that all the instruments I use have much less accuracy than that. But with long integration times…well, maybe…but there may be an issue there.
KLC: I am interested in some rather expensive thermopile-based radiation detectors called pyrgeometers (an example is the KippZonen CGR 3 instrument http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx).
If a piece of equipment like this is pointed into the nighttime sky and reads something like 300W/m2 of downwelling IR radiation, what is it actually measuring? If I built a test rig from IR-emitting lightbulbs calibrated to emit 300W/m2 and placed this over the pyrgeometers, would I get the same reading?
MC: “What is it actually measuring?” Well, probably a voltage from those thermopiles…and that signal has to be calibrated to a bunch of blackbody reference sources to covert it either to temperature or blackbody equivalent radiation.
Your experiment will fail, though! If you want to do something like that, you have to look at a target emitting a blackbody equivalent spectrum, which is what the instrument should be calibrated to. IR light bulbs emitting 300W/m2 is simply impossible, because 300W/m2 corresponds to a very low temperature! Use S-B’s law and try it yourself. Like this: room temp, 20°C = 293K. The radiated power from that is 293K raised to the power of 4. Then multiply with sigma, the constant in S-B’s law, which is 5.67*10-8, and you get 419 W/m2 or something like that, it varies with how many decimals you use for absolute zero when you convert to Kelvin. For 300 W/m2 radiation I get -23.4°C at 300 W/m2 when I calculate it (yes, minus!). Pretty cool light bulb.
I don’t know what your point is with that experiment, but if it is to check their calibration you need a lot more sophisticated blackbody reference sources if you want to do it at that temperature. But you could do a test at room temperature though. Just build a spherical object with the inside painted with flat black paint, make a small hole in it, just big enough for your sensor, and measure the temperature inside that sphere with a thermocouple, on the surface. Keep it in a stable room temperature at a steady state as well as you can and convert the temperature to radiation using S-B’s law. You should get the same as the instrument. Any difference will be attributable to inaccuracy in the thermocouple you use and/or the tested instrument. Remember that raising to the power of 4 exaggerates errors in the input a lot!
I hope I have been able to clarify things a little bit, or at least caused some creative confusion. When I teach thermography I find that the more you learn the more confused you get, but on a higher level. Every question answered raises a few more, which grows the confusion exponentially. It makes the subject interesting, though.
Let me know if you need any more help with your project!
KLC: I found your paper because one of the FLIR divisions is local and I was searching their site for reference information about IR radiation. I know what a 100W IR lamp feels like because I have one in my bathroom. If someone tells me there is 300W/m2 of IR power coming from space, and I hold out my hand…I expect to feel it. What am I missing?
MC: Yeah, you put your hand in front of a 100W bulb, but how big is your hand…not a square meter, I’m sure. It is per area unit, that is one thing you are missing. The 100W of the bulb is the electrical power consumption, not the emitted power of the visual light from it. That’s why florescent energy-saving lamps as opposed to incandescent bulbs give much more visual light per electrical Watt, because they limit the radiation to the visual part of the spectrum and lose less in the IR, which we cannot see anyway. The body absorbs both IR and visual, but a little less visual.
And, here is the other clue. Your light bulb radiation in your bathroom is added to that of the room itself, which is 419 W/m2, if the room is 20°C. Your 300 W/m2 from space is only that. You will feel those 300 W/m2, sure. It will feel like -25°C radiating towards your hand. But you don’t feel that cold because your hand is in warmer air, receiving heat (or losing less) from there too.
Actually, we cannot really feel temperature—that is a misconception. Our bodies feel heat flow rate and adjust the temperature accordingly. It is only the hypothalamus inside the brain that really has constant temperature. If you are standing nude in your bathroom, your body will radiate approximately 648 W/m2 and the room 419 W/m2, so you lose 229 W/m2. That is what you feel as being cooled by the room, from radiation only. Conduction and convection should be added of course. The earth works the same way—lose some, gain some. It is that balance that is being argued in the whole global warming debate.
KLC: I still feel like I’m missing something. IR heat lamps are pretty efficient, maybe 90%? Let’s pick a distance of 1 meter and I want to create a one-square meter flooded with an additional 300W/m2. It must be additional irradiation, doesn’t it? That’s going to take a good bunch of lamps and I would feel this heat. However, I go outside and hold out my hand. It’s cold. There’s no equivalent of 300W/m2 heater in addition to whatever has heated the ambient air.
Perhaps I’m puzzled by something that is more like a flux…something that just is as a side-effect of a temperature difference and not really something that is capable of doing any work or as a vehicle for transporting heat energy.
It’s a canard of climate science that increasing atmospheric CO2 from 390PPM to 780PPM will raise the earth’s surface temperature by about 1°C (expanded to 3°C by positive feedbacks). From my way of thinking, the only thing CO2 can do is increase coupling to space…it certainly can’t store or trap energy or increase the earth’s peak or 24-hour average temperature.
Any comments are welcome.
MC: Efficiency of a lamp depends on what you want, if heat is what want then they are 100% efficient, because all electrical energy will be converted to heat, the visible light as well, when it is absorbed by the surrounding room. If visible light is required, a light bulb loses a lot of heat compared to an energy saving lamp. Energy cannot be created or destroyed—first law of thermodynamics.
When you say W/m2 you ARE in fact talking about a flux (heat flow is what will be in W). If you have two objects radiating towards each other, the heat flow direction will be from the hotter one, radiating (emitting) more and absorbing less, to the cooler one, which radiates less and absorbs more (second law of thermodynamics). The amount of radiation emitted from each of them depends on two things ONLY, the temperature of the object and its emissivity. So radiation is not a side effect to temperature, it is THE EFFECT. Anything with a temperature will radiate according to it, and emissivity. (If something is hotter than 500°C we get incandescence, emission of visible light.) Assuming an emissivity of unity, which is what everyone seems to do in this debate, the radiation (flux. integrated from zero to infinity) will be equal to what can be calculated by Stefan-Boltzmann’s law, which is temperature in Kelvin, raised to the fourth power, multiplied by that constant sigma. It’s that simple!
With regard to your thought experiment, it is always easier to calculate what an object emits than what it absorbs, because emission will be spreading diffusely from an object, so exactly where it ends up is difficult to predict. I am not sure where you are aiming with that idea, but it does not seem to be an easy experiment to do in real life, at least not with limited resources.
CO2 is a pretty powerful absorber of radiated energy, that fact is well known. Water vapor is an even stronger absorber. In the climate debate it is also considered a reflector, which probably also true, because that is universal. Everything absorbs and reflects to a degree. So I guess that the feedback you mention has to do with the fact that increasing temperature increases the amount of water vapor, which increases absorption, and so on. But my knowledge is pretty much limited to what happens down here on earth, because that is what matters when we measure temperature using infrared radiation. However, it is important to remember, again, that we talk about different spectral bands, the influx is concentrated around a peak in the visual band and the outgoing flux is around 10 micrometer in the infrared band, and the absorption may not be the same.
With so many scientists arguing about the effects of CO2 I am not the one to think I have the answers. I really don’t know what the truth is. And the problem that all these scientists have is that they will never be able to test if their theories are correct, because the time spans are too long. For a theory to be scientifically proven, it has to be stipulated and tested, and the test must be repeatable and give the same results in successive tests for the theory to be proven.
If not, it is not science, it is guessing.
More like a horoscope…
You are conveniently setting aside the sensible transfer of heat energy to the poles via your N2 and O2, where, that surface cools by IR radiation into ‘space’ (BB radiation proportional to T to the 4th power); I do not think you can deny that …
.
Has that not been done already?
“Infrared spectroscopy” N2 – http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=%22Infrared+spectroscopy%22+N2&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
.
To Jim
No.
Either you did not read what I wrote, or you do not understand it.
Spectroscopy is common. But NOT WITH LONG WAVELENGTHS as the source.
It should be done from 8 to 50 microns or so, if possible.
There is still a great deal of thermal energy being radiated at by the earth at 17 C and lower surface temps. And a large net flow out because outer space is at on 3 or 4 Kelvin.
You have to duplicate those conditions in a laboratory.
It is not easy to do.
Thank you George E. Smith for understanding what I am trying to say. AGW is in BIG trouble if it is shown that Co2 follows temperature. The fact that we have had ice ages at much higher concentrations of Co2 in the past is a big clue.
“”””” Ken Coffman says:
February 16, 2011 at 10:38 am
Can we simply look at Dr. Pierrehumbert’s first two sentences?
In a single second, Earth absorbs 1.22 x 10^17 joules of energy from the Sun. Distributed uniformly over the mass of the planet, the absorbed energy would raise Earth’s temperature to nearly 800,000K after a billion years, if Earth had no way of getting rid of it.
– Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Infrared radiation and planetary temperature “””””
Well it seems that Peter Humbug is a bit iffy to me. He says Earth absorbs that amount of energy 1.22 E17 Watts (rate). Well it isn’t going to get distributed uniformly over the entire earth mass; and in addition the earth DOES have a way to get rid of it; simple thermal radiation; and at 800,000 K Temperature, it is going to radiate at a much faster rate, that energy arrives from the sun; so the earth would cool, extremely rapidly; well it would never get to that Temperature no matter how long oyu wait.
A rather childish example if you ask me; no; please DON’T ask me.
Domenic says:
February 15, 2011 at 7:36 pm
IR cannot penetrate into the body. It is absorbed by the skin to a minor depth. Most of skin composition is H2O. That is the main reason why.
H2O is a powerful absorber and emitter of long wavelenths. When you look at an IR image of a person’s head, you can see some arteries and other features. But it is not because the IR looks with the body, but rather because there are certain arteries that are close to the skin surface. And there are parts of the surface of the human body where there are lots of tiny arteries just below the skin, high blood perfusion, that show up as large hot spots.
Well, I think you’re on to something here, (in respect of sorting this out), though you’re not actually acknowledging it! You say that IR only penetrates the skin and that’s because most skin is composed of H2O and water you say is a powerful absorber and emitter of longwaves, but, apart from Carbon at around 20%, the rest of the body is mainly water. You’ve cracked it. I think.
This could be how IR is similar to Microwave in penetrating the body as I thought it could be somehow. Saunas of IR do penetrate the body deeply, they cause the body to heat up internally, from which there are many medical benefits.
I’m going to go back to the beginning of this, it’s getting confusing enough as it is with being distracted by Herschel and tired eyed answering izen in the wrong post and messing up codes.
I’d said in one post that UV hardly penetrates the skin, and Mikael found that interesting enough to respond to, because his view was different:
Mikael Cronholm says:
February 14, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Normally, the shorter the wavelength the better the penetration. If you consider human skin, UV, visible and IR penetrate in that order, UV the most, visible a little bit, and IR hardly at all.
[This is also the post where he mentions microwaves, and wonders why we don’t all cook. I think it might be simply the concentration of them, but, the important thing here is that microwave is also longer wavelength and does penetrate to cook.]
Anyway, Mikael’s understanding is totally at odds with what I know about IR penetration, it is much used in medical procedures of one kind or another based on the same understanding I have of it, that it penetrates more deeply than either Visible or UV light. UV light hardly penetrates the skin, about 1mm, which is within the epidermis just, which ranges from 0.5mm to 1.5mm, and there’s two more layers of skin to go. It isn’t felt as heat and so can easily burn someone unused to it.
Mikael said further on this (February 15, 2011 at 6:25 am)
Around the type of IR I work with, roughly 2.24 micron with the exception of the atmospheric absorption band at 6-8um, human skin will absorb 98%. The rest is reflected. But my knowledge stops there, so maybe at even longer wavelengths there will be penetration, I don’t know. In shorter wavelengths I would expect penetration to increase.
And then he says because of Planck, which I don’t understand.
So, back to your post. Here’s another example from the medical science world of applications using IR because of its known properties.
http://freshgasflow.com/physics/respi_gases/oxygen/pulse_oximeter.html
Which is a really good explanation of how IR penetrates deeply, beyond the skin, because it measures the IR passing through a finger to detect problems re oxygen levels in blood.
“If a finger is placed in between the light source and the light detector, the light will now have to pass through the finger to reach the detector. Part of the light will be absorbed by the finger and the part not absorbed reaches the light detector.
The amount of light that is absorbed by the finger depends on many physical properties and these properties are used by the pulse oximeter to calculate the oxygen saturation.
…
Physical property No. 3: oxyhemoglobin absorbs more infrared light than red light & deoxyhemoglobin absorbs more red light than infrared light
..
The pulse oximeter uses two lights to analyze hemoglobin.
One is a red light, which has a wavelength of approximiately 650 nm. The other is an infrared light, which has a wavelength of 950 nm.
…
In a body part such as a finger, arterial blood is not the only thing that absorbs light. Skin and other tissues also absorb some light. This poses a problem, because the pulse oximeter should only analyse arterial blood while ignoring the absorbance of light by surrounding tissues”
It then goes on to discuss difference between fat and thin fingers.. Anyway, what this shows is that IR does penetrate deeply. So, when I read a medical science reason for the use of IR and stated because it penetrates more deeply than Visible light, I have no reason to disbelieve it. This is practical applied science, used and understood, proved.
Back to your hotspots imaging. Isn’t this limited to the amount of heat emitted rather than showing actual depth of IR penetration? Although possibly in that colour range would be whatever corresponds to the innermost heat level? There’s an interesting piece on imaging using IR “due to the deep penetration of NIR radiation” http://www.springerlink.com/content/eq0pu7155011728r/fulltext.html
Long waves, contrary Planck if that’s what Mikael meant, do penetrate deeply as in microwaves, which are longer than IR. IR is known in some science disciplines and in use in practical applications, to penetrate deeply. Deep heat therapies are well known, penetrating tissue and muscle, and so on. It’s proven.
So what has Planck to do with this?
It’s interesting that here too, in the above description of how an oximeter works, that the two Laws invoked in explanation have to be greatly modified to conform to reality.
I found this with certain descriptions from AGW about CO2 in which they used Ideal Gas laws to explain CO2 (as e.g. travelling at great speed through the atmosphere and by colliding and bouncing off other molecules also travelling at great speed and so becoming well mixed, everywhere in the same proportion ppm), when Ideal Gas laws are imaginary and do not describe Real gases, (which are subject to gravity, pressure, have volume, etc., which Ideal gases aren’t) and those actually working with gases know they have to modify Ideal gas laws in their calculations to get to Real gas conditions, and if I recall, even then the best is still approximation. So like Averages, these laws have their uses, but they do not actually describe Reality. There are mentions here and elsewhere on WUWT that the Stephan Bolzmann Law is irrelevant, but I haven’t yet got into exploring this aspect.
But, I wrote a post yesterday re Feet2theFire February 14, 2011 at 2:12 am, which I now can’t find, I thought I posted it, congratulating him on falsifying the Stephan Bolzmann Law by his experience of emissivity re heat/temperature. And wondered what other of the Laws are falsified by real life.
http://www.omega.com/techref/iredtempmeasur.html
There’s 4 of them under the heading: “Theoretical Basis for IR Temperature Measurement”.
At lunchtime today, I talked at a later Starbucks coffee shop, with a high powered PhD Physicist. Make that a Particle Physicist; and I stumbled across him recently when I noticed him reading a text book containing pictures that looked a whole lot like Feynman Diagrams. So I quipped; “You’re not studying Particle Physics are you ?” Well actually yes he replied.
He recommeneded that I read a small popular physics book “QED” by Richard P. Feynman, which I just received.
No QED does not mean “Quite Easily Done”, or even the Latin equivalent. It stands for Quantum Electrodynamics; the theory of the interrraction between Photons, and Electrons, is how Feynmann puts it; and he was one of the primary instigators of QED at CalTech. It’s the most thoroughly proven (by experiment) physics theory that we have; well almost anyhow; so I told him today that he probably needed QCD or Quantum Chromodynamics to do what he was doing. He seldom pokes his head outside the Nucleus; so QED is passe for him; but he agreeed that QED was all I needed to completely understand molecular spectroscopy; and also to fully understand BB like thermal radiation. He fully agrees with me; that thermal radiation; that is Electromagnetic Radiation following Maxwells equations and emitted from ALL materiasl at above absolute zero, including ALL gases; including N2 and O2 and even Ar; and he agrees that the fundamental Physical mechanism is simply accelerated electric charges following Maxwell’s Equations for the EM field.
You see the molecules/atoms in a gas are zipping this way and that, and colliding with each other; and everytime two molecules collide, they take off in some unknown direction with some unknown velocity; but with a Maxwell Boltzmann distribution of energies, and it is the impulse of that collision; and the “time of engagement” I f I could use that term, to determine the acceleration that occurs for each colliding molecule; and it is that acceleration of the electric charge contained in the molecule that sets up the EM field that becomes the Thermal Radiation.
Now Maxwell’s EM theory explanation came under fire with the postulation of the Bohr atom to explain the observed line spectra of gases. Maxwell insists that the electron running around in its Bohr atom orbit, must continuously radiate, so it would run down.
So Nils Bohr dismissed that objection with a quite unwarranted assertion that his orbital electrons did not radiate while they stayed in their orbit; but if they moved to a different orbit, then they radiated the energy difference as the E= h. nu radiation photon. Well the theory was a spectacular success in predicting the line spectra of Hydrogen and other atoms.
Now Bohr’s “transgression” was not his insistence that the photon was emitted only when an orbit change took place; that part worked spectacularly. But you see he put the kibosh on Maxwell’s insistence that accelerating charges must radiate; so Maxwell’s equations looked like they were headed for the dust bin. And Bohr’s assertion was totally without any supporting evidence; he just dreamed it up.
Well history salvaged both Maxwell’s equations and also the Bohr Atom; or what it evolved into.
Bohr’s planetary accelerating and radiating “Orbits” morphed into today’s “Orbitals” or whatever we call them these days. Simply probability clouds mapping where the electron might be found, and the probability of it being there.
Voilla !! Say Guv’nor, who said anything about the electron moving around; it’s just there somewhere Mate; why would it move around ?
Wonderful; if Bohr’s energy levelled Orbitals are just parking garages, and the electron is there somewhere and parked; it isn’t accelerating, so it doesn’t need to radiate per Maxwell’s equations.
Well understand this is very much a stick in the desert island sandy beach sketch of what is going on. So QED to the rescue to explain it in ways that neither you nor I, nor even Feynmann can really understand.
So forget Bohr’s planetary like Orbits; but NOT completely. the role they played in understanding Atomic structure and atomic spectra can not be underestimated. The Bohr Atom IS one of the Crown Jewels of modern Physics; and Maxwell’s equations survived it with little damage. Arnold Sommerfeld of course added much insight to Bohr’s model; including the invention of the “fine structure constant” that has had a checkered life of its own.
So Maxwell survived, and accelerated charges DO radiate EM radiation, and at the molecular level, that manifests itself at ordinary Temperatures in the LWIR emissions that we get form the earth surface, and the oceans, and from the atmospheric gases themselves.
Keep in mind, that the capture of LWIR photons by GHGs, and the re-emission of thermal radiation from N2 or O2, or Ar, are continuous processes; so even though the gases have low thermal mass, and would cool rapidly on emission of a photon; they quickly pick up more energy from the collisions, as well as the continual capture by GHGs. So the atmosphere doesn’t simply go chilly because it radiates; it is resupplied immediately in a continuous cylic process.
And I freely invite any of the Physicist PhDs to polish off the rough edges of my somewhat sketchy tale here.
One more post on my argument about colours carrying heat, as in, IR in near is not felt as heat because it isn’t hot, remote control, which here has been dismissed as mixing ‘psychological feeling’ about colours with temperature..
The Herschel experiment shows that colours do have a temperature of heat greater the more into infrared we go, IR is known as heat energy. It’s proven, isn’t it? It isn’t anything to do with some imaginary ‘perception’ of heat or cold from colours, but our perception of them has to do with the relative amounts of heat they give out.
Yet, Mikael isn’t the only one, who promotes the idea that lighter lights are hotter, even while pointing to Herschel. There’s a NASA page on IR which says that the further we go into the long waves the more the decrease of energy and temperature. It’s official..
It also contradicts Herschel and contradicts all practical experience of light which knows that blue light is cooler than infrared by actual measurements. So what’s happening?
I think there’s some kind of disjunct between energy and heat here, and perhaps those here with more science under belts can describe it better, but, the ‘official’ measures the heat from first taking black body and making hotter, the hotter it becomes the more the light changes from red to yellow. But what is this actually measuring? Only that it takes more energy to produce these colours, not that the colours are this temperature.
So this I think is what Mikael was referring to by mentioning Planck, that he assumes the higher the energy states the more they can penetrate and the hotter they are.
In AGW this is what is used to say that Visible light heats the Earth which then gives off IR. But, as I’ve quoted from somewhere, it is IR that penetrates organic matter better than Visible light. It is IR from the Sun which really heats the Earth, not Visible light.
It is IR from the Sun which is ignored, dismissed, downplayed, by AGW in their models. Because they have confused energy with heat.
Yes?
George E. Smith says:
February 16, 2011 at 11:24 am
Whoaa … I was following along quite nicely to you said that :-). Can you expand on this please? Correct me if I’m wrong; we have temperature rising/density falling as we ascend through the stratosphere then temperature falling and gradual physical stratification (with H2O coming out on top) through the Mesosphere. How does all this fit together radiatively and what (if anything) is the apparent increased incidence of noctilucent clouds telling us?
———–
George E. Smith,
Appreciate your focus and energy on these discussions.
The pieces are falling into place with the concept that N2 and O2 (and all other) gases in our atmosphere emit EM radiation in a continuous spectrum when they collide with any other molecule in the atmosphere, including with the spectral IR absorbing CO2 molecule.
Now I am starting to appreciate much more what Tom Vonk was saying way back when during his post here at WUWT [“CO2 heats the atmosphere…a counter view”, posted on August 5, 2010].
CO2 does not appear to heat the atmosphere.
John
George E. Smith,
Heat or energy in the form of photons or radiation travels in ALL directions including from cold to hot, otherwise it would be impossible to see yourself in a mirror which is colder than you are.
Isn’t that due to reflection and not radiation?
Here you say:
And the second law of Thermodynamics as stated by Clausius, refers to cyclic machines. “No cyclic machine can have no other effect, than to transport “HEAT” from a source at one Temperature, to a sink at a higher Temperature.” doesn’t say anything about EM radiation; just “HEAT”.
But here you say:
So the atmosphere doesn’t simply go chilly because it radiates; it is resupplied immediately in a continuous cylic process.
If our atmosphere is comprised of both EM radiation and heat, and is cyclic, doesn’t the 2nd law of thermodynamics rule our atmosphere by default?
It seems to me that the heat reflecting properties of clouds, working in conjunction with the 2nd law, is what creates our atmospheric spin cycle.
CO2 doesn’t have reflective properties like a solid, does it?
Respectfully.
George, I imagine there was no discussion of rarefied molecules storing IR, or slowing IR radiation’s escape to space (there can be delay, sure, but it’s on the order of a millisecond?), possessing amazing insulating properties or IR “back radiation”…all things AGW experts achieved consensus on…
To Myrrh
The pulse oximeter is an excellent example. You can get an idea of how that works by simply placing a tiny powerful flashlight on your finger tip. You will notice how it ‘glows’ on the other side. Some visible light is pentrating through the finger.
However, strictly speaking, the wavelengths they use are visible, and very near visible, or near infrared, not what is commonly known as ‘infrared’. Notice they are using 650 to 950 nm wavelength light sources. That is simply .650 to .950 micrometers, or .65 to .95 microns.
Infrared wavelengths are roughly .70 to 1000 microns. When the term ‘long wavelength infrared’ or ‘far infrared’ is used, it means much, much longer wavelengths than those near the visible.
Now ‘microwaves’ wavelengths are much longer still than even infrared: from 1000 microns to 1,000,000 microns, or rather from 1000 microns to 1 meter in length!
In general, much of the stuff from the bulk of the infrared range will not penetrate the human body. It simply heats the surface. But microwaves can penetrate deeply into the body depending on the wavelengths used.
So, notice the situation: short wavelength visible light can penetrate the flesh to some extent as shown with the oximeter. Then most of infrared cannot. Then microwaves can, etc. Do you see the pattern? Short wavelengths penetrate. Medium do not. Then longer still do penetrate. etc, etc.
‘Transmissivity’ through materials is wavelength dependent. So is emission, reflection, absorption. It is ALL material specific, depending on the atom and/or molecule.
To make it all even more complicated it is also ANGULARLY dependent, depending on the angle that the thermal radiation strikes the atom or molecule. Some atoms and molecules are very reflective of IR at certain angles of incidence, and highly absorptive at other angles of incidence. But you probably have enough to chew on for now.
@ur momisugly John Whitman,
Ditto on George’s contributions.
I can’t agree about the Tom Vonk thread. I was convinced that it was all just a question of semantics and that nobody quarreled with CO2 absorbing some energy and passing it on to the other gases.
All the craziness built on that premise is what keeps us entertained.
To George E. Smith
Yes, now you are getting it.
Now, also in regards to Peter Humbug’s (great play on the name!) paper.
The angular effects from the energy of the sun striking the earth are very significant.
When the sun is directly overhead, the absorption by water of the visible components of the total energy are MUCH greater than when the sun is near the horizon. You can ‘see’ that for yourself if you look out over the ocean at noon and then at dawn or dusk on a clear day. At noon, you will see almost no reflection of the sun on the water. Some of it, of course is reflected straight back upwards skyward, but a lot of it simply penetrates straight into the water.
In the tropics, the sun spends a great deal of time in the overhead position, penetrating water deeply.
In the polar regions, however, the sun only goes up to a very narrow angle over the horizon. Hence, it’s ability to penetrate the polar water mass and ice mass with thermal energy is GREATLY diminished. Much visible solar energy that could be absorbed is NOT. It is simply reflected away back into space because of the narrow angle. (Snow blindness, etc.)
So, there is a HUGE difference from solar effects on the tropics compared to the polar regions.
@Domenic
That is very reasonable for planet Earth, but it’s clearly different on a planet with a temperature of 288K at all locations, at all times.
It seems that, although mention is made of latitudes and hemispheres and even diurnal variation, the planet AGW is an accretion of averages, with Earth-like phenomena painted on the surface for decoration.
This why the equator will be glaciated if we don’t get the whole CO2 elimination trick just right.
To Oliver Ramsay
They do indeed live on a different planet.
Those Peter Humbug types who simply hang around their comfy little offices and other artificial environments. To them, it must be easy to envision a uniform 288 K world.
But it’s not the Earth.
It’s a figment of their imagination.
It’s also called delusion.
@ur momisugly Myrrh.
I think you are being very argumentative and stubborn, and as I have no obligation to teach you, nor any obligation to investigate things that don’t interest me, I will discontinue this discussion with a piece of advice.
You need to study Planck’s Law, Stefan-Boltzman’s Law, and Wien’s Law and how they are connected. Look at Planck curves and make sure you notice the log scale normally used. Before you understand those things, you will be blind to everything else.
You also need to be specific about wavelength when you discuss “IR”. You say that “IR” does this and that, but it is of no value if you don’t say what kind of IR you are talking about. Nomenclature of IR bands is useless because different disciplines have different nomenclature – I have noticed that you know that, but yet… Numbers count, not names. You have been trying to tell me that “IR is deep penetrating” without specifying what IR you are talking about. Then you ask me to find out, and when I don’t you call me a fraud. Enough of that.
And as general comment, I am not here to prove anything, one way or the other. I want to contribute what I can from my perspective, and learn what I can learn that may be interesting and useful to me. I am not sure, but it seems that those who have taken sides in the issue are all accusing me of being on the other side. I see that as a good sign 🙂
@ur momisugly George E. Smith. I would very much appreciate if you would send me those curves in some form by e-mail. You can use an e-mail address consisting of my name and write both first and second together in lower case, and add “at” and gmail dot com. (Just avoiding spambots…)
Ken at 10:38 am Feb 16
Thank you for mentioning the ridiculous nature of the humbug paper’s first paragraph, it does indeed make reading the rest of it feel like a waste of life.
Oliver at 12:36pm Feb 16
Thank you for the inspirational line, I allowed a few to follow it, just to see where it went…
I named it…
HELIOCENTRIC HUMBUGGERY
An atmosphere is a mixed gas of matter and photons, dreams and aspirations, airplanes and the rumble of history
The blogosphere is a mixed matter of gas and phlogiston, nightmares and fears, chem.-trails and the neon visions of the future
Neo post modernistic philosophers search for the stone unturned, the poet for the phrase yet learned but still realistic
Warmest warmonger alarmists still shill; shrieking and striking at all they do not understand and cannot tell
Listening to the voices only they can hear, turning the light of truth aside, no reason to reason only to hide
In dark terror despising all thoughts arising, potentially disguising for a brief moment their hatred of life
Do these “experts” really believe that if you add 2 pans of water that are both 95C they will become 190C?
Have they never heard of laws that stand unmolested, standing the tests of time and engineering our life comforts?
Shading our eyes from an incandescent source, our fingers held tight but glowing with the light seemingly flowing
So many everyday proofs that what the fearful refuse to believe, it is out of our hands and into the face of the sun that we stare
Blinded by the force of authority, no room for a thought, no time for a dream, just time for terror and voice to silently scream
Taking out the extraneous, adding in the superfluous, searching for the essence of what lays hidden in plain vision
Poetry is the mathematics of a language, weird as that sounds. Minimal enough to be nothing but exactly zero and still be found
Sometimes a wave is as good as a particle to a blind bat, the spiraling nature of insanity is lost on the long winded fans
Cabalistic and cannibalistic biting the hand that feeds them, the leeches launch caution into the path of the principled precautionary
Humbuggery overwhelmed peers of consensual consensus, pal reviewed policies of global genocide so reckless
NoIdea
Domenic says:
February 16, 2011 at 5:00 pm
The pulse oximeter is an excellent example. You can get an idea of how that works by simply placing a tiny powerful flashlight on your finger tip. you will notice how it ‘glows’ on the other side. Some visible light is pentrating through the finger.
However, strictly speaking, the wavelengths they use are visible, and very near visible, or near infrared, not what is commonly known as ‘infrared’. Notice they are using 650 to 950 nm wavelength light sources. That is simply .650 to .950 micrometers, or .65 to .95 microns.
Bull. Of course it’s what is commonly known as Infrared. You claim that “IR cannot penetrate into the body. It is absorbed by the skin to a minor depth” (Feb 15, 7:36 pm) and when I provide evidence to the contrary you begin claiming that it’s not really infrared.. Together with, “Notice they are using”..
There is a ‘great’ difference between the red visible being used and the invisible IR in terms of microns; at this end of the spectrum the differences between the colours are fine, violet, .38 to .45, blue .45 to .495 microns, etc.
Infrared wavelenths are roughly .70 to 1000 microns. When the term ‘long wavelength infrared’ or ‘far infrared’ is used, it means much, much longer wavelengths than those near the visible.
? So? Have I shown myself ignorant about this is my previous posts? To my, obviously very stupid recollection, I’ve been using the differences in my argument about the relative heat these carry..
In general, much of the stuff from the bulk of the infrared range will not penetrate the human body. It simply heats the surface.
Prove that.
It is contrary to well known, in some science fields, characteristics of IR. So prove it. As I have been showing proof for what I’m saying. And, remember you were wrong about IR not penetrating beyond the skin..
To help you, two can play at this game, look up How it Works: Science and Technology by Marshall Cavendish Corporation and go to page 743.
“Just as human skin is lightly transparent to red light, it is even more transparent to light of longer wavelength. Infrared can therefore penetrate to some depth, and infrared lamps are used by physiotherapists in the heat treatment of muscles and tissues.”
Have you really been missing all my references to the medical sciences?
Both you and Mikael are wrong. Why not simply admit it and move on?
And, since this is an important point re the AGW arguments, because they ignore that the bulk of the energy coming from the Sun is in IR which is what warms up the organic Earth and instead promote a strange idea of Visible light heating the earth coupled with a strange twisting of ‘greenhouse’ to ‘prove’ it, I think it worth sorting out. See posts above for examples of this confusion. (Which is why I came into the discussion.)
But microwaves can penetrate deeply into the body depending on the wavelength used.
Yes.., which was my other point, and what I had been trying to discuss with Mikael, that these are even longer wavelengths than IR, so, like the Herschel and temperature of colours, we have already proven science to falsify the notion that it is because Visible and UV have higher energies and hotter that they ‘penetrate more deeply than IR’.
So, notice the situation: short wavelength visible light can penetrate the flesh to some extent as shown with the oximeter. Then most of infrared cannot. Then microwaves can, etc. Do you see the pattern? Short wavelengths penetrate. Medium do not. Then longer still do penetrate. etc, etc.
Nope, I don’t see that pattern… I see garbled thinking equalling the best AGWScience comes up with to explain their miraculous and magic ideas about the world and CO2.
Etc. But you probably have enough to chew on for now.
When you finally let go of this already falsified assumption, for which you offer no proof, that IR does not penetrate deeply and Visible light and UV are deeply penetrating, you might like to re-read my previous post to you and engage in my thoughts about how this confusion has arisen. Up to you.
To Myrrh
You just don’t seem to ‘get it’.
The ‘medical field’ is still loaded with lots of ‘quackery’.
I don’t have to ‘prove’ anything to you.
It is up to you to learn.
But keep studying, and maybe you will.
Or you can get out there and spend 20+ years dealing with IR in the field taking measurements, looking at thousands of applications, designing IR detectors, IR filters, as I have.
Then you will be better able to judge who out there is knowledgeable or not.
Good luck to you.
Mikael Cronholm says:
February 15, 2011 at 8:59 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/13/a-conversation-with-an-infrared-radiation-expert/#comment-599845
“Glass will start to lose transmissivity around 2 um and nosedive completely at 2.3um. Over 3um there is hardly any transmissivity AT ALL!!!!!! How can I know for sure? Because glass is totally opaque to any IR camera I use, in addition to all the spectral charts that are available. Can’t see through it at all.”
Opaque, meaning the glass appears black in IR imagery?
http://www.absorblearning.com/advancedphysics/demo/units/040104.html#Infraredradiation
All the windows in this IR image in figure 6 all appear lighter than the surroundings. Not black as they would do if they were opaque to IR.
Also infra-red detectors on security lights which are filtered to detect between 8-14 µm will still work perfectly well with a thick piece of glass covering the sensor even when the housing is encased in tinfoil. This is a test I have carried out many times.
http://www.glolab.com/pirparts/infrared.html
So you are wrong I’m afraid. Glass is not opaque to IR at all. If it were then there would be no need for IR reflective coatings (LW and SW IR) for architectural glass.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2G-4TNTN33-3&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1643861542&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5edd31ac18b15d1d108fde9b876d280f&searchtype=a
Will you stand corrected? I doubt it.
Will you answer directly my earlier question? For the same reason I doubt it.
The AGW fraud rests to a large part on the claim that glass is opaque to IR. This way it can be implied that the opacity of glass blocks IR inside greenhouses. This is the foundation of the fallacy of the greenhouse effect.
The fallacy of the IR opacity of glass hides the fact that it is the air inside which is saturated with IR in a three-dimensional environment and that it is the reduced probability of emission through the two-dimensional barrier that the glass presents which acts as a resistance to emission.
The resistance occurs because the IR has to transverse from a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional environment to escape the enclosure of the greenhouse or interior of a building. It is the reduced probability factor of emission towards and through the 2D glass barrier, as molecules move away from the glass surface, which is responsible for the temperature difference in greenhouses and in fact ALL interiors with 2D surfaces (windows, walls, floors and ceilings).
The fallacy of glass opacity serves to hide the fact that IR is absorbed into all air molecules and therefore cannot pass through the glass barrier until emission occurs close enough to the glass surface that it does not become re-absorbed by another air molecule. The further the molecules are from the glass the lower the probability of emission through it. This effect, though still fleeting, is what is responsible for elevated temperatures of all interiors. This effect is the “greenhouse effect”. There is no such effect in the open atmosphere.
As you have already stated, any substance above 0K emits IR. Or in other words IR penetrates all substances. Your equipment as you have alluded to, is calibrated to ignore the specific fingerprint absorption bands of O2 and N2. Lets face it, it would not be much use if it were not.
Which brings me back to my original question.
Which part of the atmosphere is it that absorbs at 6-8 µm?
You have said that Domenic has answered this question by stating H2O. But this is not what you meant is it Mikael? Since when did we start referring to H2O absorption as “atmospheric absorption”?
If H2O only absorbed at 6-8 µm that answer may have been acceptable but H2O absorption is not limited to 6-8 µm. There is also a very large peak at 2.5-3 µm. So why not exclude that also if you were really talking about H2O ?
You say quote:
“the absorption rates and wavelength bands of N2 and O2 are unknown to me, they are accounted for in the models we use together with all the rest in the air. “
So for 99% of the atmosphere you don’t know which part of the IR spectrum it absorbs and emits, yet all your equipment has to be calibrated to ignore this part of the spectrum in order to detect anything at all.
I have long suspected your industry and its various offshoots, of co-conspiring to hide the fact that O2 and N2 are what is referred to as “participating gases”, in that they freely absorb and emit IR as do all substances. AGW fraud has relied on the claim that the main components of the atmosphere O2 and N2 are “non-participating” such that they can only be warmed kinetically. This argument has slowly fallen apart as people realise that kinetic energy transfer could not keep pace with light-speed energy emission. Kinetic energy transfer is conduction. Air is a poor conductor but is a near perfect 3D radiator.
There are millions of human lives in the balance and hundreds of trillions of dollars tied up in AGW fraud. When the day of reckoning arrives, and that day is coming faster than most realise, the question your industry will be called upon to answer will be this:
Which specific absorption bands do you calibrate your equipment to ignore, in order to make the atmosphere appear transparent enough to detect gases and/or substance other than O2 and N2?
The answer: “I do not need to know that to do my job”, will NOT be an acceptable answer.
George E. Smith says:
February 16, 2011 at 2:45 pm
… thermal radiation; that is Electromagnetic Radiation following Maxwells equations are emitted from ALL materials at above absolute zero, including ALL gases; including N2 and O2 and even Ar; and he agrees that the fundamental Physical mechanism is simply accelerated electric charges following Maxwell’s Equations for the EM field.
You see the molecules/atoms in a gas are zipping this way and that, and colliding with each other; and everytime two molecules collide, …
—————————————————-
At sea level pressure, each atmospheric molecule collides with another molecule 6.7 billion times per second. A rate that is 33,000 times faster than the average emission time for CO2. So, an excited CO2 molecule (which is now effectively many times warmer than the surrounding air) crashes into another atmospheric molecule 33,000 times before it can emit. In the troposphere, the numbers are not much different, 10,000 times.
So, if N2 and O2 and Argon are actually emitters and absorbers of IR (albeit at a far reduced level than the specific absorption and emission frequencies of CO2), and are crashing into CO2 at a far faster rate than CO2 emits at, the entire picture of atmospheric radiation changes.
There is less emission at the CO2 and H2O specific absorption frequencies (because it is getting siphoned off by all the other molecules before being emitted) and, instead there will be increased emissions in the blackbody spectrum of the Earth’s effective temperature where N2 and O2 are operating like blackbodies.
And that is exactly what the emission spectrum of Earth shows. The effective emission temperature in the CO2 bands is only 220K. While the blackbody atmospheric windows are 290K (while the average is supposed to reflect 255K).
This is a different perspective than is commonly explained in the greenhouse radiation theory.
Its just that you cannot find anywhere on the internet, someone that shows N2 and O2 and Argon absorb any IR at all. Everyone seems to believe/has been taught, that N2 and O2 do not absorb any IR at all, even blackbody-type radiation.
Midael Cronholm says:
February 16, 2011 at 8:15 pm
I think you are being very argumentative and stubborn, and as I have no obligation to teach you, nor any obligation to investigate things that don’t interest me, I will discontinue this discussion with a piece of advice.
I’m not looking for a teacher..
The last ‘expert’ I discussed something with had a different way of handling the contradicting facts I presented, they were turned around and given back to me as if they were being taught to me and I didn’t understand them… The arrogance of some who think themselves teachers and experts. I am exploring a subject, to which end I ask questions and listen to what other people think and know about it. I make up my own mind from this. However, here on this site there’s an added dimension, one of free and frank exchange of views with the flexibility of mind to explore and learn from the others. It really is a very good Science resource even for those not in any science field and unable to speak the language of maths, and most posters recognise that doesn’t mean anything more than someone can’t speak the language and adjust replies accordingly. I’m sure you would recognise this difference if some replied to your posts partly in Sanskrit. “If you can’t explain your concepts to your grandmother, you don’t understand them.” So someone said, it’s been attributed, with variations, to several.
So far, I have found you wanting in your claim to be an expert in IR and some important ‘facts’ you have given me to be contradicted by real world practical and well known science. As in my reply to Domenic, if you want to accept that real world science but in a different field shows you are wrong and you want to continue discussing this aspect, which interests me, of how these already falsified ‘facts’ bandied around and used in AGW arguments as if real science came to be, where I have spotted a disjunct, then I’d be willing to continue discussing this with you. Until such time, let me give you a piece of advice.
Ignorance about your subject in the person you’re talking to does not mean they’re argumentative or stubborn, or too stupid, to understand what you’re saying when they disagree with you.
What you have to deal with is that I have shown you’re wrong re penetration and heat of colours. That I can’t help you with except to say that I’ve found it quite common that scientists in one discipline will take as fact something from another, assume to be correct, which if actually important in their own they would know was incorrect.
This AGWScience promotes many such ‘facts’ about science as if they were real, and, re your list of what I should read, presents many of these by referring back to “the Laws” as if they support their claims. When looked at in more detail these are found to be taken out of context, an example I gave above such as using an Ideal gas law, which starkly says its molecules have no volume and are not subject to gravity or pressure and don’t interact with other molecules, out of context to describe the movement of CO2 in our atmosphere where molecules are Real not Imagined, and do interact with other molecules, and are subject to gravity and pressure, and do have volume.
As an example, from misapplying Ideal gas laws AGWScience confidently says that CO2 diffuses into the atmosphere without any work being done and there it therefore thoroughly mixes in with the other molecules of Oxygen and Nitrogen and can’t be unmixed, the proportions being everywhere the same. The latter also includes confusion about what average means, but the main gist is that they cannot get their minds around the fact that CO2 is heavier than air and therefore will always sink through air, displacing it, and come to the ground if there is no work being done to alter that (such as wind, etc.). They have to think this, because another claim from AGWScience is that Carbon Dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere staying up for hundreds and even thousands of years, forming their mythic ‘blanket’ trapping heat and bouncing it back to warm the earth. I have had a PhD physicist tell me that CO2 pooled on the ground would diffuse into the atmosphere without any work being done, (he finally conceded that CO2 could pool, then excised his own post where he said it couldn’t because it was so well mixed, and came up with a strange explanation for how it did this).
From this mistaken AGWScience fact which is really fiction, AGW’s can’t understand that gases will separate out in the atmosphere and one such AGWScientist was determined to prove, admirable in itself, that gases were well mixed. As examples that CO2 is heavier than air and displacing air pools on the ground, RealScience gives breweries, volcanic activity, pits and mines, and it’s in the latter that the lighter than air gas Methane is shown to gather at ceilings of mines. So this AGWSc went to a mine and introduced Methane, and he couldn’t understand why it didn’t become well mixed given the amount of time he gave it for this to happen.. He concluded, because he was so sure his AGWScience hadn’t lied to him about it, that there must have been a separate source of Methane entering the mine and so in temporarily rising to the ceiling, as CO2 ‘temporarily pools on the ground’, it was replenishing that which was becoming thoroughly mixed. As I recall, he didn’t continue checking to see if that conclusion was viable, he didn’t test the levels of Methane in the air below that which had separated out at the ceiling, and so on. He remains ignorant, as far as I know, of the real properties of gases as do all those who subscribe to AGW in the ‘climate sciences’.
This is the quality and level of science now being indoctrinated into our schoolchildren by the AGW Greens takeover of the system, determined to teach that the trace Carbon Dioxide is harmful in all kinds of ways. Teachers who do know the difference have to be wary of being hounded if they object too loudly. It has even been put on some government lists of toxic hazards.
You also need to be specific about the wavelength when you discuss “IR”. etc.
I was. In context.
You have been trying to tell me that “IR is deep penetrating” without specifying what IR you are talking about.
All IR, I was specific. In contrast to Visible and UV. In other words, I was saying the opposite of what you claimed. Both in penetration and temperature re colour.
Then you ask me to find out, and when I don’t you call me a fraud.
? You mean this?:
I give you pukkha medical references which contradict your claim that UV penetration and Visible light penetration [is] greater than IR, practical applications, and you want me to find all the detail. You’re the expert on IR, so you say. These examples falsify your claims.
First of all, your reply to which I was responding was an obfuscation, my reply is in response to that. You are not dealing with the argument. Secondly, I did not call you a fraud.
Thirdly, you followed this with more obfuscation, this time implying that I was questioning ‘steam giving off latent heat’ – when I did no such thing. What you avoided responding to.. was my conclusion.
Enough of that
Yes please, from you. Deal with the dichotomy that what you say about penetration by IR, Visible and UV is the opposite of what I say. I have given proof from known and working scientific knowledge of the principle in use to back up what I say, so far you have not proved anything, you merely claim that it is so because you’re the expert.
And as general comment, I am not here to prove anything, one way or the other. I want to contribute what I can from my perspective, and learn what I can learn that may be interesting and useful for me. I am not sure, but it seems that those have taken sides in the issue are all accusing me of being on the other side. I see that as a good sign 🙂
Hmm, you refuse to consider my evidence against your opinions and point me to Herschel and when I show that he is confirming what I say about heat of colours you simply ignore the contradiction and much else I’ve been complaining about and to top it all you call me stubborn and argumentative from your superior self-assumed role of expert and teacher. And refuse to discuss it further. Belies the above… 🙂