Guest post by Ira Glickstein
Albert Einstein was a great theoretical physicist, with all the requisite mathematical tools. However, he rejected purely mathematical abstraction and resorted to physical analogy for his most basic insights. For example, he imagined a man in a closed elevator being transported to space far from any external mass and then subjected to accelerating speeds. That man could not tell the difference between gravity on Earth and acceleration in space, thus, concluded Einstein, gravity and acceleration are equivalent, which is the cornerstone of his theory of relativity. Einstein never fully bought into the mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics that he and others have called quantum weirdness and spooky action at a distance.
So, if some Watts Up With That? readers have trouble accepting the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect because of the lack of a good physical analogy, you are in fine company.
For example, in the discussion following Willis Eschenbach’s excellent People Living in Glass Planets, a commenter “PJP”, challenged the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect:
“The incoming energy (from the sun) you express in w/m^2, lets simplify it even more and say that energy is delivered in truckloads. Lets say we get 2 truckloads per hour. … when we come to your semi-transparent shell [representing greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere], you are still getting two truckloads per hour, but you say that these two truckloads are delivered to both the earth and to the shell — that makes 4 truckloads/hr. Where did the extra two truckloads come from?”
In that thread, I posted a comment with an analogy of truckloads of orange juice, representing short-wave radiation from Sun to Earth, and truckloads of blueberry juice, representing longwave radiation between Earth and the Atmosphere and back out to Space. A later commenter, “davidmhoffer” said “Ira, That was a brilliant explanation. …”
This Post is a further elaboration of my physical analogy, using a pitching machine and yellow and purple balls in place of the truckfulls of juice.
Graphic 1 shows the initial conditions. The Sun is a ball pitching machine that, when we turn it on, will throw a steady stream of yellow balls towards the tray of a weight scale, which represents the Earth. The reading on the scale is analogized to “temperature” and, with the Sun turned off, reads “0” arbitrary units.
TURN ON THE “SUN”
Graphic 2 shows what happens when the Sun is turned on and there are no GHG in the Atmosphere. The stream of yellow balls impact the tray atop the weight scale and compress the springs within the well-damped scale until equilibrium is reached. The scale reads “1”. This is analogous to the temperature the Earth would reach in the absence of GHG.
The balls bounce off the tray and, for illustrative purposes, turn purple in color. This is my way of showing that Sun radiative energy is mostly in the “shortwave” visible and near-visible region (about 0.3μ to 1μ) and that radiative energy from the warmed Earth is mostly in the “longwave” infrared region (about 6μ to 20μ). The Greek letter “μ” (mu) stands for a unit of length called the “micron” which is a millionth of a meter.
Since, at this stage of my physical analogy, there are no GHG in the Atmosphere, the purple balls go off into Space where they are not heard from again. You can assume the balls simply “bounce” off like reflected light in a mirror, but, in the actual case, the energy in the visible and near-visible light from the Sun is absorbed and warms the Earth and then the Earth emits infrared radiation out towards Space. Although “bounce” is different from “absorb and re-emit” the net effect is the same in terms of energy transfer.
If we assume the balls and traytop are perfectly elastic, and if the well-damped scale does not move once the springs are compressed and equilibrium is reached, there is no work done to the weight scale. Therefore, Energy IN = Energy OUT. The purple balls going out to Space have the same amount of energy as the yellow balls that impacted the Earth.
ADD GHG TO THE “ATMOSPHERE”
Graphic 3 shows what happens when we introduce GHG into the Atmosphere. The yellow balls, representing shortwave radiation from the Sun to which GHG are transparent, whiz right through and impact the weight scale and push it down as before.
However, the purple balls, representing longwave radiation from the Earth, are intercepted by the Atmosphere. In my simplified physical analogy, the Atmosphere splits each purple ball in two, re-emiting one half-ball back towards the Earth and the other half-ball out to Space. Again, you can assume that half of the balls “bounce” off the Atmosphere back to Earth like reflected light from a half-silvered mirror and the other half pass through out towards Space. In the actual case, it is “absorb and re-emit half in each direction” but the net effect is the same in terms of energy transfer.
OK, here is the part where you should pay close attention. The purple half-balls that are re-emitted by the Atmosphere towards Earth impact the tray of the weight scale and press against the springs with about half the force of the original yellow balls. So, at this stage, when equilibrium is reached, the well-damped scale reads “1.5” arbitrary units.
But, we are not done yet. The purple half-balls are absorbed by the Earth, and re-emitted towards Space. Then they are re-absorbed by the Atmosphere and once again split into quarter-balls, half of which head back down to Earth and re-impact the weight scale. Now it reads “1.75”. As you can see, the purple balls continue to get split into ever smaller balls as they bounce back and forth and half head out to Space. The net effect on the weight scale is the sum of 1 (from the yellow balls) + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 and so on (from the purple balls). That expression has a limit of “2”, which is approximately what the scale will read when equilibrium is reached.
Again, the well-damped scale does not move once the springs are compressed and equilibrium is reached, so there is no work done to the weight scale. Therefore, Energy IN = Energy OUT. The purple balls going out to Space have the same amount of energy as the yellow balls that impacted the Earth. But the “temperature” of the Earth, as analogized by the reading on the weight scale, has increased.
DOUBLE THE GHG IN THE “ATMOSPHERE”
Graphic 4 is the final step in my physical analogy. Let us double the GHG in the Atmosphere. (NOTE: I am assuming that the doubling includes ALL the GHG, most especially water vapor, and not simply CO2!) This is represented by putting a second layer of Atmosphere into the physical analogy.
The purple balls emitted towards Space by the first layer of the Atmosphere are intercepted by the second layer, where they are absorbed, and smaller balls are re-emited in each direction. The downward heading balls from the upper atmosphere are intercepted by the lower Atmosphere and half is re-emitted down towards the weight scale that represents Earth. Once again, they compress the springs in the weight scale increasing the reading a bit, and are re-emitted back up. The purple balls get halved and bounce around up and down between Earth and the two layers of the Atmosphere, further increasing the reading on the scale once equilibrium is reached.
Again, the well-damped scale does not move once the springs are compressed and equilibrium is reached, so there is no work done to the weight scale. Therefore, Energy IN = Energy OUT. The purple balls going out to Space have the same amount of energy as the yellow balls that impacted the Earth. But the “temperature” of the Earth, as analogized by the reading on the weight scale, has increased due to the doubling of GHG in the Atmosphere.
WHAT I LEFT OUT OF THE PHYSICAL ANALOGY
Any simplified analogy is, by its very nature, much less than the very complex situation it is meant to analogize. Here is some of what is left out:
- My purple balls are re-emitted in only two directions, either up or down. In the real world, longwave radiation is emitted in all directions, including sideways.
- My purple balls are all totally absorbed by the Atmosphere and re-emitted. In the real-world, a substantial amount of longwave radiation is re-emitted from the Earth and the Atmosphere in the 9μ to 12μ band where the Atmosphere is nearly-transparent. A substantial portion of the radiation from Earth and the Atmosphere thus passes through the Atmosphere to Space without interception.
- My physical analogy addresses only radiative energy transfer. In the real-world, energy transfer from the Sun to Earth and Earth to Space is purely radiative. However, the Earth transfers a considerable amount of energy to the Atmosphere via convection and conduction, in the form of winds, precipitation, thunderstorms, etc. These effects are absent from my analogy.
- I represent the Atmosphere as a single shell, when, in fact, it has many layers with lots of interaction between layers.
- I represent doubling of GHG as adding another shell, when, in fact, doubling of GHG, if it occured (and if it included not just CO2 but also a doubling of water vapor and other GHG) would increase the density of those gases in the Atmosphere and not necessarily increase its height significantly.
- In my analogy, all the energy from the Sun strikes and is absorbed by the Earth. In the real-world, up to a third of it is reflected back to Space from light-colored surfaces (albedo) such as snow, ice, clouds, and the white roof of Energy Secretary Chu’s home :^). If a moderately warmer Earth, due to increased GHG, evaporates more water vapor into the atmosphere, and if that causes more clouds to form, that could increase the Earth’s albedo to counteract a substantial portion of the additional warming.
I am sure WUWT readers will find other issues with my physical analogy. However, the point of this posting is to convince those WUWT readers, who, like Einstein, need a physical analogy before they will accept any mathematical abstraction, that the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect is indeed real, even though estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 are most likely way over-estimated by the official climate Team. When I was an Electrical Engineering undergrad, I earned a well-deserved “D” in Fields and Waves because I could not create a physical analogy in my overly-anal mind of Maxwell’s equations or picture the “curl” or any of the other esoteric stuff in that course. Therefore, those WUWT readers who need a physical analogy are in great company – Einstein and Glickstein :^).
I plan to make additional postings in this series, addressing some implications of the 9μ to 12μ portion of the longwave radiation band where the Atmosphere is nearly-transparent, as well as other atmospheric “greenhouse” issues. I look forward to your comments!
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Alan McIntire says:
February 23, 2011 at 6:17 am
“Second- regarding Richard Smith and David M Hovver’s snow remarks. We are
confused by snow because it’s white and reflects visible light. In the infrared, snow
acts almost as a black body. That’s why snow melts much more quickly around tree trunks than farther out in the middle of a field.”
———————————————-
That’s a somewhat extravagant claim. There will always be a tree-well around a tree, where there is less snow to start with, because the branches divert snowfall to the drip-line and wind will scour close to the trunk and dump at a wider circumference.
Hence, the springtime sight of bare ground around trees.
Of course, the tree is an effective absorber and will create a micro-region of relative warmth, largely by conduction. Nevertheless, the lee-side snow mound often persists as the last vestige.
davidmhoffer:
David, I don’t want to leave the impression I was trying to correcting you, I wasn’t, just a little expanded thought. However, one statement was clearly stated wrong and there’s bound to be some other flaws in that whole line of thought. Well anyway, if you ever get a chance to listen to those lectures you might enjoy them. I find it next to impossible to discuss on a blog anyway, too easy to be taken wrong. Keep up the good and clear explanations as you did above.
“”””” Kevin (not a PHD) says:
February 22, 2011 at 8:51 pm
To Mr. George E. Smith;
Quoting your comment directly;
“Dosen’t (sic Doesn’t) look like the first law applies to electromagnetic radiation either.”
Again I respectfully suggest you provide references. “””””
Well Kevin, I was planning on coming back this morning, to at least provide a reference to the first two thermodynamic laws that I cited; (a) to credit the authors who wrote them in those words (I’m not a plagiarist), and also to show you where you can go and look for yourself. I learned the definitions I use almost 60 years ago so I’m sure they teach different words today.
So I cited here from “Handbook of Physics” Edited by Walter Beneson, John W. Harris, Horst Stocker, and Holger Lutz; published by AIP Press. I assume that is American Institute of Physics. It is ISBN 0-387-95269-1. I bought mine from the Stanford University Book Store; mine were all lost 50 years ago. Note that is a Handbook, and not a Text book, so it doesn’t teach Physics to people who don’t already know it.
And as for this “please provide references”, I do so, ONLY to give credit to sources I may draw from; not to assist others (you) to find it themselves. For that I suggest you refer to http://www.google.com, where you can find all the references you want; and then you can write them and ask them to provide you references for THEIR information.
When I went to school, the idea was to actually learn something; so you could do it for yourself; or even get somebody to pay you to do it for them. Nobody will give you a job based on http://www.google.com as your curriculum vitae.
@ur momisugly Frank Lee Meidere
It’s good to see you’re still there.
Yes, outside of creative book-keeping with two sets of books, you can’t make a profit and a loss at the same time.
Heat is not the only possible consequence of radiation. For two things in LTE there is no heat transfer although they are merrily tossing energy back and forth with great abandon.
Also, UV polymerization of resins in dentistry. A lot of the energy of photosynthesis is not turned into heat until you put the log on the fire.
I hope you’re following George and Richard!
“”””” davidmhoffer says:
February 23, 2011 at 3:56 am
Wayne;
Well, humm. I’m going to have a hard time explaining this to you so bear with me, I have thought much on why these people could possibly think the way they do and the only thing I keep coming up with has to do with what Feynman showed so very clearly with little simple cartoon drawings like Ira has drawn above. See this link:
http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8>>>
Sorry Wayne, I didn’t watch the series, and as for your explanation, sorry again, but the links I posted are to the explanations of laws of physics and the mathematical equations that quantify them that you can find in any physics text book. If your explanation is correct then you’ve debunked laws of physics that have been established since 1879 and been verified by experimentation thousands of times. You can hypothesise all you want about how photons do this that or the other, but the amount of energy radiated by a body at a given temperature is governed by those laws, proven repeatedly by experimentation, right down to the later work of Wiens and Planck and others that allow not only calculation of how much energy is radiated at a given temperature, but at what frequencies and the distribution of those. Go back and look at the formulas again – they are independant of the temperature of the surrounding environment. “””””
For what little it is worth, I am in complete agreement with Davidmhoffer here, the thermal EM radiation from any body depends only on that body and its Temperature; and has nothing to do with the Temperature of its surroundings. People often make the same sort of mistake when talking about evaporation (say of water). The evaporation process, depends only on the Temperature of the water (liquid). It doesn’t depend on the Temperature of the air.
But the capacity of the air to retain that evaporated water, IS a property of the air Temperature via the Clausius-Clapeyron equation.
The Temperature of the surroundings of a radiating body will influence the amount of radiation from elsewhere that can land on that body; but it has no effect on the emissions from the body.
EM radiation, is a one way process. The EM force is one of the two forces of nature that has infinite range; the other being gravitation. You launch a stream of photons, or an electromagnetic wave, and it goes on forever, unless it encounters something else made of matter. At that point, you will typically get two new waves formed; one that propagates in the forward direction (transmitted) and one that travels in the reverse direction (reflected). Free space acts like a medium with a characteristic impedance of 377 Ohms (120.pi), and if a wave encounters some new medium, that has a different impedance, then you get partial reflections just like you do in any mismatched transmission line, that is not properly terminated.
The physical universe (including biological) can absorb EM radiation and convert it into all kinds of other energy forms, such as plants, or electricity, or other photons; or even as new matter itself (pair creation); and one of the energy forms that EM energy can be converted into is what we call heat; which is mechanical energy of moving atoms or molecules. In that form the laws of thermodynamics limit where you can go from there (the heat), but they don’t determine the behavior of EM fields; nor of gravitational fields.
“There is no way – no way – that you can use kinetic processes (bouncing balls) as an analogy for thermodynamic processes such as absorption and emission of radiation.”
Well you can obviously use bouncing balls as an analogy for the thermodynamic process of heat transfer. That’s what statistical thermodynamics does. Radiation, on the other hand – I agree that it’s a little confusing. Bu it isn’t THAT confusing. He’s just representing energy packets as bouncing balls.
Maybe if he started with exactly two wavelengths of light it and dropped the physical analogy it would be easier to understand?
Imagine a sun sized energy source that is emitting nothing but green light (pick your wavelength of green, doesn’t really matter). Except for what is blocked by objects visible under green light (clouds, soot, …) this light gets to the surface of the earth and heats it, but miraculously the heat is radiated as one and only one wavelength of infrared light. So at some point right above the top of atmosphere, we observe a given energy of green light coming in from the sun, and a given energy of reflected green plus infrared light coming out from the earth. If the two balance then equilibrium has been reached and the earth is as hot as it’s going to get. If there is an imbalance then the earth’s average temp is either rising or falling, depending on the sign of the imbalance. (And no, you can’t determine this by one atmospheric measurement. Heat is radiating in all directions, so you have to balance total input with total output).
Now if you add particles to the atmosphere that are only visible under our one wavelength of infrared light, what happens? The energy reaching the surface from the sun is unchanged – our particles don’t reflect green light. The particles will be excited by the infrared light, though. That means they will bounce around and hit neighboring particles – kinetic energy aka heat. And they’ll still radiate the energy they’ve absorbed as they cool off. So you have added particles to your atmosphere that are still radiating all of the incoming energy, just as before, but only after that energy has excited them. Even if 100% of the energy that they radiate is directly out of the atmosphere (not 50% back down) you’ll get a temperature increase in your atmosphere, because you have particles excited by radiation that were not there before. The average kinetic energy, aka temperature, of your atmosphere has increased. The energy flow through the atmosphere hasn’t changed one bit, but radiative energy has been converted to kinetic energy. Your atmosphere is now doing more work than it previously was.
Between the point in time that we add these particles and they reach their “maximum bounciness” (temperature) from the infrared radiation we will detect an imbalance in the total energy input/output. Input will be ever so slightly higher than output until our particles are as excited as they can get under that wavelength of infrared light.
So with only two wavelengths it really is that simple. There’s no violation of the laws of thermodynamics here. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for… move along.
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
February 22, 2011 at 5:54 pm
hehe that analogy gave me a chuckle, very good.
This will read flippant but I really am not trying to be.
Here’s my problem with lab experiments being extrapolated to an incredibly complex and large system as our climate.
Your water fight analogy sounds quite reasonable, however in the REAL world, when I hit you with the gush of water from my fire hose, you’ll be knocked over on your a$$ and wouldn’t hit me with even a drop of water from your puny little garden hose.
And so with our wonderfully huge and complex climate/weather system. There are so many other large heat/energy exchanges happenning that the puny little back radiation is knocked over on it’s a$$.
The only place where radiation is formidable is very high in the atmosphere where the big boys don’t play (with their big fire hoses) and even then it’s game is to lose energy to space, i.e. it cools the earth.
George E. Smith:
February 23, 2011 at 9:27 am
Thank George, I was already perfectly aware of everything you just said. Should not have tried to take deeper. My mistake.
Here’s a most illuminating citation from that same Physics Handbook that I referenced above, in the Thermodynamics section.
“Electric energy may be converted loss free into heat by the Ohmic resistance of a conductor; but heat energy cannot be converted completely into electric energy. ”
Perhaps that is the key message of Thermodynamics. “Heat”, is the end of the line as far as energy usage is concerned. You can convert other energy forms to heat with good efficiency; but once you have the heat; you can’t go backto where you started; and the thermodynamic laws describe the limits of that process; and it is in the second law that you find that you can’t go up in tempertaure; only down; and the whole thing eventually grinds to a halt at absolute zero.
That is why I have often said that using electricity to generate heat for cooking or washing etc should be a Federal felony offence. It is wasteful. Electricity is obtained from other energy souces, at great expense, and we should only be using it for things that use electricity; like your electric toothbrush or your ipaeioud. And may I also add, it is also insane to use electricity for transportation.
I’m rather partial to Clausius’s form of statement of the second Law of Thermodynamics; well he said it in German of course; and my German is quite inadequate.
“No cyclic machine, may have no other effect, than to transport heat from a source at one Temperature to a sink at a higher Temperature. ”
Weird English to be sure; but that “other effect” which must accompany any uphill transport of heat, would be the doing of “work” on the sytem. That;s what Clausius meant by his ‘may not have no other effect’. And of course we know that refrigerators DO function; but they need a compressor to do the work necessary to drive the heat uphill from the cold box to the hot outside.
Incidently Clausius, is also known to have first derived the Optical Invariant from the second law. That invariant of all optical systems, whether imaging or not, basically affirms that the “brightness” of a source cannot be increased by optical transformations. Now brightness is the wrong word to use, because it has lay meanings which are quite difefrent from its scientific meaning so we don’t use “brightness” any more. Radiance (or Luminance photometrically) is Watts (lumens) per steradian, per square metre of a source area. It is of course what black bodies put out from an exit surface or aperture.
If an optical system could form an image that was of higher radiance than the source, you could take two black bodies, one at a Temperature T, and use the super optical system to image it at a higher radiance on the aperture of the second black body, and thereby drive the second BB to a higher Temperature; whcih the second law forbids.
But notice the second law applies to cyclic systems; which aren’t the same as one way systems; and EM radiation is one way; from source to the end of the universe (unless it hits something).
RichardSmith;
‘Someday perhaps you will come winter camping with me?’
You old smoothie! But – and here I have to be brutally frank, I’m afraid – there’s a very long list of people (starting with Keira Knightley) that I’d rather go into the woods and melt snow with than you.>>>
Ah, such an amusing, clever response. I give you two examples of real world instances where people keep warm by using snow that is much colder than they are. Examples that you can test for yourself, and which, by the way, kept thousands of people from early settlers to plains natives to the Inuit warm enough to live through the harshest winters for centuries. Your devastating scientific rebuttal? A poorly crafted personal inuendo.
I’m thinking that it is a very good thing that that all those people couldn’t read and didn’t have your education. Because if they did, they would have known that the snow was colder than they were, so no point building a quinzy or an igloo to stay warm in. I guess that’s an example of what you don’t know can’t hurt you? Or maybe its faith based physics? They just BELIEVE that they can stay warm inside of a pile of snow that is colder than they are and their faith sustains them? If they lose their faith in the middle of the night, do they suddenly freeze to death?
Your education in physics is useless to you unless you can observe the real world around you and understand how the physics you have been taught fits into the real world. Physics is just a way to describe how the real world works mathematicaly. If you apply the math and get something different than the real world observations, either your math is wrong or the real world is.
There is only one real world example of a warm body being unable to be warmed by a colder body that I can think of. It is an instantaneous condition that occurs when a class M entity incorrectly responds to a stimulation from a class F entity which can loosely be describes as “does this dress make me look fat?” Any error in response by the class M entity will trigger the class F entity to cease radiating warmth across all frequencies including communication bands. There are no known explanations in physics for the phenomenon although experimentation suggests the effect may be biological as certain flowering plant species brought into proximity with the class F entity seem to mitigate the condition.
Steve says: February 23, 2011 at 9:30 am
‘Maybe if he … dropped the physical analogy it would be easier to understand?’
My point exactly, Steve. Glad you agree: Ira Glickstein PhD’s analogy is a crock.
‘…this light gets to the surface of the earth and heats it, but miraculously the heat is radiated as one and only one wavelength of infrared light.’
What? The wavelength of the photons emitted by the surface is a function of its temperature, not the wavelength of the incident light. Is that what you meant with ‘miraculously’? I don’t understand why having only one wavelength of insolation simplifies things.
‘There’s no violation of the laws of thermodynamics here.’ Where did I write that the laws of thermodynamics were being violated? I wrote that ‘Ira Glickstein PhD’s balls don’t even obey the laws of motion’.
As I noted in my first comment in this post, the greenhouse effect is a perfectly clear phenomenon for which there is plenty of evidence (which you shouldn’t interpret to mean that I accept all the evils that the AGW fanatics ascribe to CO2 – I don’t). I haven’t a clue why you have served me up this garbled explanation – ‘kinetic energy aka heat’, ‘average kinetic energy, aka temperature’, ‘ The energy flow through the atmosphere hasn’t changed one bit, but radiative energy has been converted to kinetic energy. Your atmosphere is now doing more work than it previously was.’
Your final ‘move along’ I just illustrates your arrogance. Learn some physics – and learn it well – before you start lecturing others. You should also learn to read and comprehend what people write instead of just listening to the voices in your head.
Yep, still here. And George’s remarks about the sun sending energy, but not heat, to Earth also helped. I feel like I’ve got the idea if I stand very still and don’t turn my head at all to either side. But then my eyes move and I suddenly think I can see heat transfer from cooler to warmer — just not in quite the same way I was thinking of it before.
Let me stick with the “profit” analogy for a minute. While finances of any kind usually throw me for a loop, I can at least see that “money,” like energy, can be moved about, but does not become “profit,” or heat, except in some situations.
So we have bank accounts A, B, and C.
Bank account A (BA-A) has $1,000 to start. Bank account B (BA-B) has $500. Bank account C (BA-C) has $100.
Now in normal banking, funds are withdrawn and transferred according to conscious intent, but in this case the computers have gone haywire. Once every minute, the computers transfer 1/100 of the money in each account to another account. It does this in increments of $1. Furthermore, the computers believe there are ten accounts, which mean most of the time they’re transferring money to nothing, and it’s lost.
This represents objects randomly radiating energy in discrete units, only some of which are picked up by nearby objects. It also reflects the fact that objects with more energy radiate more energy.
In the first minute, the computer makes ten transfers from BA-A (1/100th of $1,000), each equalling $1. Two dollars end up in BA-B, one dollar ends up in BA-C. The rest are lost. So:
BA-A = 1,000 – 10 = 990 // Net effect is “cooler.”
BA-B = 500 + 2 = 502 // Net effect is “warmer.”
BA-C = 100 + 1 = 1001 // Net effect is “warmer.”
But in that same minute, the computer makes five transfers from BA-B, which started with $500. One dollar ends up in BA-C. The rest is lost.
BA-A = (1,000 – 10) + 0 = 990 // Net effect is “cooler.”
BA-B = (500 + 2) – 5 = 497 // Net effect is “cooler.”
BA-C = (100 + 1) + 1 = 102 // Net effect is “warmer.”
And in that same minute, the computer makes one transfer of one dollar from BA-C which is simply lost.
BA-A = [(1,000 – 10) + 0] + 0 = 990 // Net effect is “cooler.”
BA-B = [(500 + 2) – 5] = 497 // Net effect is “cooler.”
Ba-C = [(100 + 1) + 1] = 101 // Net effect is “warmer.”
As time goes on, it seems obvious that a few things will happen. First, BA-A will lose money more quickly than the rest. This is equivalent to the idea that the hotter an object is, the more quickly it will lose its heat (and the source of that whole “when-should-you-put-cream-in-coffee-too-keep-it-warm-longer” thing).
It also seems obvious that each bank account will, at various points of time during the process, both gain and lose money, meaning that while they are all losing money (going into bankruptcy), there are steps along the way in which each will temporarily gain a short term profit. In other words, while they are all cooling off, each one is also periodically getting some “heat” from the others. Most of this profit/heat will come from BA-A, which has the most money/energy to give off.
Eventually, of course, all the accounts will reach a state of equilibrium. I think there’s a problem in my analogy with the amount. Because I’ve set the computer to send out 1/100 every minute, while setting the least increment to be $1, I think we might end up with BA-A coming to a standstill with more money than the rest, whereas in real life objects would come to equal each other in the amount of heat (even if each contains more or less energy), but I don’t feel like working it out and this is a damned analogy for crying out loud and my head hurts.
So I’m left with these questions:
1. Was “heat” transferred from a cooler object to a warmer object or not?
2. If this analogy doesn’t fit, what areas are wrong?
3. Can any of this be transformed into an equation that would tell us where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is?
Thanks for putting up with me.
No, I’m wrong. Although BA-A may end up with more money than the rest when they all reach the end of their transfers, this is simply reflecting the fact that objects can have different energy levels while still having the same amount of heat. In this case, all bank accounts will come to equilibrium when they are no longer “radiating” dollars — hence the heat/profit will be the same.
RichardSmith;
You should also learn to read and comprehend what people write instead of just listening to the voices in your head.>>>
Physician, heal thyself.
RichardSmith: “What? The wavelength of the photons emitted by the surface is a function of its temperature, not the wavelength of the incident light. Is that what you meant with ‘miraculously’? I don’t understand why having only one wavelength of insolation simplifies things.”
It’s pretty obvious that in the real world the surface of the earth does not have a uniform temperature. Even if the surface were one uniform material, it’s a rotating sphere – hence “miraculously”. I only want to deal with two possible wavelengths of light, and you can’t understand how that’s simpler than reality? To question my motives for such an obvious fact makes you sound intentionally obtuse.
“Where did I write that the laws of thermodynamics were being violated?… etc… etc… blah blah blah…You should also learn to read and comprehend what people write instead of just listening to the voices in your head.”
I was actually addressing the comments in total, Mr. Kettle. The only comment of yours that I was addressing is the notion that Newton’s laws of motion can’t be used in an analogy to explain heat transfer.
In cased you haven’t noticed, WUWT commenters have been debating whether or not a “greenhouse effect” is physically possible for too long, and it’s embarrassing. An appeal was even made directly to you in these comments, to which you replied, “I’m not going to do this, nor am I going to write an alternative description of the ‘greenhouse effect’ in a comment that will disappear out of view about ten minutes after posting.”
So you flay Ira’s explanation, despite that commenters affirmed that it helps them understand, and then you refuse to provide a more helpful explanation. That is called “being a part of the problem.”
“”””” Frank Lee Meidere says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Oliver Ramsay says:
February 23, 2011 at 9:12 am
Yep, still here. And George’s remarks about the sun sending energy, but not heat, to Earth also helped. I feel like I’ve got the idea if I stand very still and don’t turn my head at all to either side. But then my eyes move and I suddenly think I can see heat transfer from cooler to warmer — just not in quite the same way I was thinking of it before. “””””
Hey Frank, if just ONE person can gain some insight that he didn’t previously have, from my chicken scratchings, then I will consider my time to have been well spent.
As I have said on may occasions:- Ignorance, is NOT a disease; we are ALL born with it. But stupidity has to be taught, and unfortunately there are far too many who are willing and able to teach stupidity.
I’m not here to debate with PhD physcists (I’m not one); I’d love to learn from them whatever they would like to teach; that’s one reason I’m here, but I’m also here to try and help others whose education paths took a different course. Hey I hire a mechanic to fix my cars; I can fix most stuff myself; but not as efficiently as he can; so I gladly pay him for his inestimable skills.
It’s not about what you know, but what you make out of what you know; whatever it is that you know and do.
Ira, I have read through the answers you have made to some of the comments above. All of them very good and important
But, the one which to my way of thinking is the most important of all your answers is; (Ira Glickstein, PhD says on “February 22, 2011 at 6:53 pm in an answer to what PJP says on February 22, 2011 at 9:30 am: “THANKS “PJP – ——- Good to “see” you again! ———- Really? Someone said “It is better to light one little candle rather than curse the darkness.””
And then comes the important bit -: “If I light a candle and take it near the Sun, will the Sun not get even a teeny, tiny bit warmer?”
Of course if you light a candle and take it near the Sun, the Sun will then get a teeny, or even a tiny bit warmer. This is because the candle + flame brings “new or added energy“ to the Sun. If however you was to take your best saw up to the Sun and cut a big lump out of it (energy and all) and then put it back a couple of days later, I doubt very much if you would have made the Sun any warmer than it was before. -Please think about that one -.
Ok, so “sawing a bit off the Sun including it’s energy” may sound ridicules, but that is quite a good analogy of what radiation does; it constantly takes a proportion of enrgy away from a heat-source and “throws it away”. The Sun’s radiation transports, or emits, short-wave electro-magnetic radiation away and thus avoids “a big bang” – (There may also be back radiation from planets etc. provided the radiative forces are strong enough to reach the Sun)
On a smaller scale the same “Energy Transport System” or radiative principles work here on Earth too. But here the back radiation is caused by GHGs and not “space debris”. The principle however is the same. In other words; “you cannot increase either the power or the effect of solar irradiation by the introduction of any kind of back radiation.
However -here follows a few sentences by which I stand to earn an extra PhD or even a Doctorate in Climatology from the IPCC – please read on; – “A study shows that by burning fossil fuels we are in fact re-introducing heat-energy into the Earth’s atmospheric system. This is heat-energy which should have been returned back to space eons ago but never did so until humns interferred. The study further finds that this kind of radiation is eternally damned to remain in the atmosphere and therefore cannot be re-radiated back to space as confirmed by well established energy flow budget plans. (see Trenberth & al 1997).
One of my favorite jokes is about the physics major and engineering major who are waiting for a bus outside a building. While they wait, four people enter the building and six come out.
“Hey,” asks the physicist, “Do you know how many people are in the building?”
“No,” answers the engineer, “I have no way of knowing how many people are in the building right now, but I can tell you there were at least two in the building before we came here and started observing.”
“Dumb engineer,” snorted the physicist, “Four went in and six came out, so there are exactly minus two people in there! Want to check my math?”
PS: I am an engineer, but my PhD advisor and some of my best friends happen to have been physicists, and I have the highest respect for them. My little joke was simply to illustrate how some people can ignore their experience in the real world and believe that physics theories and mathematical equations govern everything. It takes a physicist to believe quantum wierdness and spooky action at a distance and Schrodinger’s cat and other things that I have difficulty believing without some kind of physical analogy. However, I know that my knowledge base is far from complete, as is the knowledge base of all humanity, so, some of the stuff I cannot fathom may turn out to be actual truth. Einstein’s prediction of how the EPR paradox would come out if actually tested turned out to be wrong when, well after his death, it was finally checked in the mid-1980’s.
In Reply to Dan (circa: February 22, 2011 at 10:53 pm)
I agree with your statements. I try to isolate what happens to a single photon (or small packet of energy) to make it more clear how the “Greenhouse Effect” cannot create any “Extra Energy”. If it cannot cause this at a microscopic scale, the fact that there are billions and billions of photons (apologies to Carl Sagan) makes no difference. And the fact that it “all happens very fast” also makes no difference.
Quoting yourself;
”We need to somehow explain why cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights and other similar phenomena.”
It is already explained, the clouds do indeed slow some forms of EM radiation. This change in the “speed of heat” varies with the amount of cloudiness. EM radiation is absorbed and remitted backwards towards the surface and it has to try again to escape. Slower cooling == Temporary Higher temperatures. The operative word here is temporary. In the case of clouds this happens across a broad wavelength range. Also the clouds have a larger thermal capacity and require more energy from the surface to raise their temperature which also slows the heat flow away from the Earth.
Unfortunately the “Greenhouse Effect” is credited with slowing this heat on a “permanent” basis with a resulting “Higher Equilibrium Temperature”. This is explained in some references as a “Net Energy Gain”, or in the press as “Heat is Trapped”. Neither of these is possible.
Ironically enough (IMHO), the actual effect of increases in (non-water vapor) GHG’s (especially CO2) is that energy actually travels through the atmosphere faster since it is travelling at the speed of light (quite speedy) versus the speed of heat (comparatively sluggish) through the non-GHG’s via conduction and convection. Yes the non-GHG’s may not emit IR radiation to cool the Earth, but the energy that travels through them can (and does) return to the surface and is can then be emitted through “windows” in the atmosphere. This slows the energy much more than a few more bounces as EM radition.
So increases in manmade GHG’s (again IMHO) causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm up faster after sunrise and to cool faster after sunset. In my humble opinion this effect is so small that we could not possibly spend enough money to observe, measure and model it. The historical temperature data does not contain the necessary information, even after being waterboarded into confessing to AGW.
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback.
Cheers, Kevin.
“”””” Kevin (not a PHD) says:
February 23, 2011 at 5:21 pm
In Reply to Dan (circa: February 22, 2011 at 10:53 pm)
I agree with your statements. I try to isolate what happens to a single photon (or small packet of energy) to make it more clear how the “Greenhouse Effect” cannot create any “Extra Energy”. If it cannot cause this at a microscopic scale, the fact that there are billions and billions of photons (apologies to Carl Sagan) makes no difference. And the fact that it “all happens very fast” also makes no difference.
Quoting yourself;
”We need to somehow explain why cloudy nights are warmer than clear nights and other similar phenomena.” “””””
Well Kevin (not a PhD), once again a wrong conclusion. Sure cloudy nights are warmer than non cloudy nights; other things being equal.
BUT The cloudy night is not the cause of the warmer night; it is the other way round.
The warmer moister daylight conditions the day before, set up the surface conditions for those clouds to form when the sun goes down. The hotter the surface Temepratures the day before, the higher the water vapor laden air has to rise to reach the dew point so the clouds form higher when it is hotter the day before, as is observed. Adn the lower the humidity, is the day before, the higher still that the moisture there is has to rise, so the clouds are even higher.
The surface conditions form the clouds, the clouds DO NOT form the surface conditions.
In response to George E. Smith;
I apologize if my earlier posts in reply to your insights were a little curt. I get a little sensitive about that “ignorant fool” thing (not necessarily from one of your posts, but the term was deployed here), guess I need a thicker skin sometimes.
Let me clarify a few things about EM radiation and the Laws of Thermodynamics as I understand them;
1) A single EM wave (or a photon, they are considered as equivalent explanations of observed physical effects, i.e. a duality) travelling in “free space” (sparky (electrical engineer) talk for a vacuum) is not AFFECTED by the laws of thermodynamics. Therefore it automatically complies with the laws. For example, if I walk along a road I am not affected by the speed limit, but I do comply with it, unless I’m really frisky and can beat a 5 mph limit someplace.
2) Outside of a vacuum the EM wave is affected by the laws, for example once it interacts with air some amount of the EM energy is lost by conversion to heat in the air molecules. This is one of the many reasons you can only drive so far away from your favorite radio station before the signal goes away. Usually these effects are relatively small and are ignored when a “first order” analysis is performed.
3) The laws do indeed affect multiple EM waves, for example, when two laser beams (same wavelength) meet there are locations is space where they destructively interfere. At these locations there is no energy (at least from those beams) present. However at another location (exactly 1 laser wavelength away) the beams are constructively interfering and twice the energy is present.
4) Once an EM wave (or photon) interacts in any way with matter (i.e. absorption with the ground or the gases) ALL of the laws of thermodynamics apply. Any references that refute this would be welcome, because if this is not true I will be richer than Buffet and Gates by a factor of billions and billions (hahahahaha, anybody got an emoticon for an evil laugh????)*
Cheers, Kevin.
[*Reply: “MUA-A-A HA HA HA-A-A-A!!” might work. A washing motion with your hands helps. ~dbs :- ) ]
In reply to Ira Glickstein, PhD;
I apologize if my posts have been “strong”; however I still feel that your analogy explaining the “Greenhouse Effect” has several flaws. Of course, if you have read my posts you can see my feedback.
But on another topic, here’s a good expansion on your joke;
A building inspector wants to find out the height of an office building to update the database at the department of building heights, widths, mass and attractiveness. This is in response to directive 123.21/5/8-99.2345.
He has a budget of $100 to obtain this information.
He goes to the building with an engineer, a scientist, and a car salesman.
He says I’ll give $50 to the first person that can tell me the height of this building.
The engineer runs off as fast as he can to rent a surveyors transit to directly measure the height.
The scientist quickly runs up to the roof and throws a coin off the top, He measures the transit time to the bottom and starts calculating the height of the building.
The car salesman, he runs into the building and finds the building manager, He says, Hey Buddy I’ll give you $25 bucks if you tell me how tall this building is.
Cheers, Kevin.
“”””” 4) Once an EM wave (or photon) interacts in any way with matter (i.e. absorption with the ground or the gases) ALL of the laws of thermodynamics apply. Any references that refute this would be welcome, because if this is not true I will be richer than Buffet and Gates by a factor of billions and billions (hahahahaha, anybody got an emoticon for an evil laugh????)
Cheers, Kevin. “””””
Once the photon interracts with matter (ie by absortpion with the ground or the gases) then it is no longer a photon. After that you can do with it whatever you please, and make your fortune.
And the energy in an EM wave goes as the square of the amplitude. Unless your two laser beams are generated from the same laser, they will not form standing waves; with stable amlitude zeros; they would have to be phase locked sources to do that.
But since you already know it all, then I will save my further comments for others who maybe don’t already know it all like you do.
But after ten years of formal training in Physics, including three different Physics majors in my degree, not to mention the two majors in Mathematics; followed by 50 years of in the field practicing in Industry; I seem to have become somewhat adept at convincing my several employers that I have some idea what I’m doing.
I’ve even got nine US Patent placques cluttering up my desk shelf, plus four more at home that I don’t have room for; and two more on the way from the Patent office. So they’ll probably catch up with me soon, and ask for them all back.
I’m obviously working in the wrong field.
And if you had two phase locked laser beams forming a standing wave with zero amplitude at some point, the chances are very good it will still be zero at exactly one laser wavelength away, or even at one half wavelength away. You might find a more sizeable signal just 1/4 wavelength away; well but don’t quote me on that; that is just my opinion, and I offer no references in support of that.