Visualizing the "Greenhouse Effect" – Atmospheric Windows

Thanks to Phil for the skinny on what CO2 really looks like. Not being a chemist, I hadn’t appreciated that molecular shape, was all important, and also predictable from electronic configurations. But I have a couple of good Chem books now, including Linus Pauling; whom I once had the privilege of listening to ; in a lecture on the molecular causes of Sickle cell anemia; which is a problem of molecular shape (Haemoglobin). Talk about a live wire; Pauling sure was one.
Well Ira sure turned over a hornet’s nest with this thread, and maybe it didn’t go where he intended, But I know I learned a lot from thinking about it. I hope some others were able to learn something too.

Tim Folkerts says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:58 pm
I will give you the same request that I gave earlier – define precisely what you mean by “heat” (and now I will add “light”). (I guarantee your definition will be different from mine, and different definitions in the 2nd law discussion earlier). While you are at it, your definition of “thermal IR” would be helpful. You seem to throw the terms around as if they have absolute meanings with absolute properties. Perhaps if you could tell us exactly what you mean by these terms, then would could all have a productive discussion rather than talking past each other.
I refer you back to the link I gave from the original NASA site, (go there while it’s still up, they’re upset to find pages teaching non AGWScience, so when, for example, you read something like I did recently, that blue light penetrates further into water and creates heat at great depths, you (generic) will think it quite sensible). Where it says quite clearly, and importantly, because this is the Principle I’m trying to convey here as the difference between heat and light, that: Thermal IR is the heat you feel from the Sun, Near IR is not hot. Which is what I have been saying all along. Visible light is not hot, you cannot feel it, UV is not hot, you cannot feel it. Concentrated high energy light, UV naturally and even Visible artificially concentrated, can burn by creating heat on local surfaces by raising the temperature dramatically, but they do not penetrate as WARMTH, they are not hot in themselves, they are not therefore in classic physics called Heat [Energies], but called Light, which includes Visible Light. Thermal IR can cook your dinner because its heat penetrates, as the Sun’s Thermal IR penetrates into your (generic) body, warming up your insides. I don’t suggest you cook your dinner with UV and Near IR remember, from the NASA page, is not hot either, so not much use in cooking, but great for turning on your t.v.
Penetration of UV and Visible, let’s take the body first. http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/600/610/614/solar-water/idrc/01-09.html
the depths of penetration of UVR and visible light into the human skin are as follows: 0.01-0.1 mm for UV-B, 0.1-1.0 mm for UV-A, and 1.0-10.0 mm for the visible spectrum (Largent and Olishifski 1983).
Near IR penetrates more deeply, see links above. But again remember, it is not HOT, it is not conveying HEAT.
So, another point I’ve been trying to make, high energy states do not mean these have any real ability (we’re talking about global warming recall), to penetrate organic matter to create a hot Earth. So my objection to the AGWScience “Solar in Thermal IR out” scenario as begins Ira’s post. These Light energies are not hot. Their high energy states can produce heat, but in the natural world this is really only applicable to UV Light which is only effective at surface level, and stronger higher up the mountain than down because of scattering;for all intents and purposes in the natural world, Visible and Near IR and UV are cold. Therefore, the classically and easily understood division into Light and Heat energies.
Solar, Cold Light, Thermal IR, Heat.
These high energy Solar wavelengths are easily scattered, reflected, including Near IR. It takes a lot of heat to create these high energy lights, that doesn’t mean they themselves are hot. Just as well for all of us animals and plants, if they penetrated deeply as does Thermal IR, the Heat Energy, we’d all be well cooked. Microwaves don’t make it down to us in sufficient strength to cook us, nor UV to char us to a crisp.
Isn’t nature wonderful?
So for example, a Near IR camera works by capturing the Near IR that is being reflected off objects. We do not radiate Near IR, we’re not hot enough, we radiate Thermal IR, around the 10micron range as does the Earth generally. It takes another kind of IR camera to capture the heat being given off by objects, specifically to measure the Thermal IR being radiated from the object. Near IR will penetrate deeper than Visible Light, but it is still this reflected from the object which is being captured by a Near IR camera. Of course, hotter objects will also radiate Near IR, but that’s not us, your local friendly volcano perhaps, but even so, the Near IR it emits is not hot.
“Solar” as differentiated between in AGWScience’s “Solar in, Thermal Infrared out”, is the Visible Light spectrum, plus the two short waves either side of UV and Near IR.
These do not heat the Earth. Ira really must change his graphic to make sense of the principles here on the real Earth. The idea that it’s Solar in and Thermal out is beyond nonsense (as the Energy Balance of the Earth). It’s Thermal energy, Heat, which heats the Earth.
And it really doesn’t matter how you define it, or what you narrow down to by examining it in minute detail, if you (generic) don’t fully appreciate this Distinction of Principle between Heat and Light energies, you’ll get horribly lost. And unable to see that the AGWScience Solar in Thermal out is through the looking glass with Alice.
Heat itself, in the classic physics as explained in the difference between temperature and heat. Heat is that which flows from a hotter to a colder object. Solar energies are not hot, heat does not flow from them to colder objects. UV is not hot, there is no heat flowing from it to a colder object. It’s high energy state is what creates heat of temperature, that something is Hot, by whatever way you want to describe it in the detail, but remembering that it’s a surface thing. I’m happy enough to ‘picture’ it as a high powered drill, localised burning, or as making a fire by rapidly turning a stick into another piece of wood, by friction, as distinct from, see old NASA page, the heat I physically feel: from the Sun, which heat disappears behind a cloud and leaves me shivering on a bright sunny day; from fire, which I can feel on one part of my body while the part away from the fire is not feeling it; from a stove not hot enough in temperature to produce even any Visible light, but can still warm me up. Penetrating Heat, is hot in temperature. It flows to a colder body. It raises an objects temperature.
We’re only 8 minutes away from a very hot Stove in the Sky.
And remember the lightbulb, 95% Heat which is Thermal IR, and only 5% Visible light, in other words, there is a heck of a lot more Heat being emitted than Visible Light, there is very little Visible Light being emitted compared with the AMOUNT of Heat, Thermal IR.
And remember the billet of steel, at 1500F the radiance is 100,000 times greater in the infrared spectrum than in the visible.
I don’t believe the Sun is radiating Thermal IR in the proportions given by AGWScience. It doesn’t compute.
And I think that all this analysis of ‘blackbody giving of IR’ therefore photons create heat and ‘net’ mangling in 2nd Law, and whatever else, is on a highway to nowhere. It’s truly in gaga land already because it’s created a world being heated by Light!
To be continued, in the cold light of day..

Tim Folkerts:
March 7, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Tim, your link re penetration in water, I have no idea what it’s about. Do you have an explanation accompanying it?
I’ve tried to find it on the site and the only sensible link was to one of the contributors, from which: http://www.hashemifamily.com/Kevan/Climate/#Climate%20Models
I don’t have time to look any further for it.
OK, your: 3) Most significantly, the “penetrating” thermal IR gets stopped within 0.1 millimeter of the surface. It penetrates far shorter distances into water than the “non-penetrating” visible light.
Doesn’t ring true. But, there are two things at play here re this and I’ll try and make myself a bit clearer on them.
In the atmosphere on a foggy day, visible light will find it more and more difficult to get through the foggier mistier the conditions, while the longer wave lengths of IR will get through. This is well known and used in the weapons industry for example, where this property of longer wave Near IR is utilised for targetting through the atmosphere because a laser of Visible light will not be as effective through variable conditions because of its property of reflecting/scattering. The same holds true for bodies of water. The murkier the water the more visible light is reflected, the clearer the more it is able to ‘penetrate’, it penetrates in clearer water by its ability to “pass through” water unchanged, see above for the different ways light reacts on meeting matter. One property exercised does not preclude another at the same time. A clear still body of water will have a greater direct reflective effect on the higher energies, a rougher surface will cause this to be scattered, and this is happening through the water also.
What is also happening here is “absorption”, the longer wave lengths of light get absorbed by water earlier than the shorter waves lengths, red light doesn’t penetrate as deeply as blue light because it gets absorbed more readily. The blue light is not being absorbed in its penetration into deeper water, it is passing through unchanged, until finally it gives up too and all light is absorbed into the black depths.
So, bearing in mind that my point is that Heat energies are readily absorbed by organic matter including water, that Light energies do not heat, raise the temperature of, organic matter because they themselves are not hot, that blue light can pass through water into deeper depths than Thermal is not relevant. This blue light is not hot, it does not heat, raise the temperature, in these greater depths, any more than it does at the surface.
So there are a lot of different aspects in play here, besides the difference between light which is not hot and light which is, light has size and how that size reacts in the different organic materials of the Earth will differ as in violet and blue light gets scattered by the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, while the longer wavelengths of red and yellow get through, that doesn’t mean that no blue light makes it into oceans. But the principles hold in difference between shorter and longer waves, that shorter more energetic wavelengths are reflective and longer absorbtive in matter generally as seen in the difference between the longer IR and shorter IR (as in Near IR cameras work by reflecting back from the object, even though it will penetrate a body better than the shorter Visible or UV, it’s still Reflective, not hot, not like Thermal longer waves which penetrate deeper into the body and which are capable of raising the temperature of that body.)
This is a fun description of size matters: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/questions/mikep.html
Shorter wavelengths though more energetic does not mean that they are therefore more powerful in penetrating matter, they are much weaker than the longer waves depending on the make up of the matter as more likely to get reflected and scattered because of their tiny size, and here, my point, is that the Solar energy balance graphic is wrong, because it has reversed the properties by giving Light energies the ability to penetrate and heat matter which is the actual, real, property of Thermal IR.
Regardless how this is then argued for, it is nonsense to begin with so all the reasoning to ‘prove’ it isn’t, will also be nonsense; as this itself is proved by the artificial creation of ‘net balance’ in the 2nd Law. Carbon Dioxide is heavier than Air, it cannot stay up in the Air accumulating, nor can it get ‘diffused’ through the Air by Brownian motion.. AGWScience does this, it mixes up properties and then takes out of context laws as examples to prove them, or simply makes it up.
So, where is the proof that Solar energy actually heats the Earth? You, nor Ira nor any AGWScience claim for it, can actually show that this is a physical real world phenomenon. I can explain, as best I’m able, that it can’t do this because the properties of the constituent parts aren’t capable of it, but you’re going to have to produce better evidence for the AGW claim than half-baked experiments and mangled laws.

Re: Light penentration in the ocean, there’s this page on Visible light, http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/La-Mi/Light-Transmission-in-the-Ocean.html
Re: Visible/IR penetration, http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/01/two-views-of-a-cosmic-whirlpool.html
It’s in astronomy where the difference in penetration is most obvious, and most dramatic. Where Visible light is stopped by dust, the IR penetrates and reveals a whole other world teeming with stars.
I’ve also been looking at studies comparing visible light penetration v IR, such as http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/105/m105p139.pdf where IR is shown to penetrate deeper than Visible when etc. but not until I found this page, did I realise that there’s more to this: http://www.world-builders.org/worlds/planets01/laga/lagapages/LWATERECOLOGY.HTM
There are plants in the deeper parts of the ocean here which use infrared to photosynthesise! (Plants above ground take in blue and red light for photosynthesis, reflect green.) So, istm, that as the red visible is absorbed in oceans before yellow and orange and blue, these plants at deeper levels are still getting their fix of red, but from the longer wavelength red, invisible IR.
It’s the Rastrera algae, and the colour is reflecting back mostly violet which makes sense as violet penetrates deeper than blue and, like green for plants above ground, not requiring it for photosynthesis it reflects this back which is what we see, and, a bit of blueygreen, which main green is absorbed in oceans before the shorter blue and violet wavelengths. Fascinating.
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Wayne, re Miskolczi’s 2007 paper and Eddington’s solution and continuing from my – This is the kind of thing I’ve been picking up in the AGWScience explanations in all kinds of areas, what I mean by ‘using out of context laws’, and ‘mangling of laws’.
This is my first real foray into looking at light in any depth for myself in the AGWScience rendering of it, but as with Miskolczi’s discovery re Eddington, it’s a pattern I’ve seen repeated in the aspects I have looked at, that laws/properties are consistently used out of context/without regard to actual physical qualities, and, that these have become the new ‘memes’ through deliberate mis-education so much so that they are accepted at face value in the telling even by scientists in other fields.
I found out just how convoluted AGWScience went in this mangling when I began wondering why AGWS described Carbon Dioxide as being capable of staying up in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years (depending on the spiel) when I knew it was heavier than air. Although I occasionally saw a response in discussions mentioning this, I couldn’t find any tackling it. There were, and still are, gazillion discussions on the energy balance and ‘backradiating’ IR and quite a lot on CO2 already at saturated levels, and a bit on CO2 and heat capacity, but not, when I was looking, on the actual CO2 molecule re weight. When I had an opportunity to question a physics phd who was an avid supporter of AGW I discovered that he truly believed that CO2 could rise of the floor and thoroughly diffuse into the atmosphere without any work being done, because AGWScience teaches that CO2 is an ideal gas in our atmosphere. Hence all the claims that it is well-mixed and can’t be unmixed and can stay up for yonks and its weight irrelevant. And really as here, it’s a hard slog to continue to give examples from real science where this can’t possibly be a property of a real gas molecule, so convinced are AGW’s that a combination of Brownian motion and ideal gas properties apply, that they can no longer even imagine the real world.
The whole atmosphere to them is empty space with molecules zipping around at great speeds colliding with each other and bouncing off and thoroughly mixing up, and/or, wind is a huge wooden spoon continually stirring up the atmosphere so everything is well-mixed, and, the idea of gases being lighter or heavier relative to each other becomes a source of great merriment as they picture the atmosphere separating out into layers like a cake.. They’ve no sense of gravity, of weight of the atmosphere, really, of nothing that is actually our real physical world, and as here, it seems perfectly normal because it is ‘well-known’ that Solar energy heats the Earth and with an extra bit added to the 2nd Law to explain it, and argued for, it’s hardly ever questioned in depth to get to the principles at the heart of the problem.
I’ve been much influenced by the replies to AGW claims from applied scientists, engineers and such who understood radiation and the real 2nd Law, in seeing how they spotted where the errors were being made. I suppose what I’m saying here is that every claim from AGWScience even the most basic which many take for granted as if true, needs to be looked at – even of those I’ve spotted, taken together this really is like stepping through the looking glass with Alice into such a strange world that even Josh would be hard pressed to picture it for us.
So, in your first link, I think Miskolczi is simply assuming the temperature of the Earth without greenhouse gases, because of the ‘well-known meme’ of -18°C. Some geologists, however, explain the water cycle, the main greenhouse gas as Miskolczi uses it, as the efficient cooler of our atmosphere. That without it our Earth would be at around, from memory which has hiccups, 67°C.
This because water vapour being lighter than air anyway and readily absorbing thermal energies, takes the heat from the surface to higher in the atmosphere where it then condenses and comes down as rain, the Water Cycle. While water in the atmosphere such as cloud cover can certainly ‘trap’ heat beneath it, and by its ability to hold heat longer than dry air contributes to the heat in hot and humid places, these are local and or temporary events. A desert is the condition most resembling an Earth without the real Greenhouse Atmosphere, which depends on the vast body of water to balance the great heat from the Sun.
I don’t think this affects the general principle he’s making that the Earth already has an optimum Greenhouse balance via the water cycle, but his explanation that any CO2 contributing to rise in temps in the period has been countered by loss of humidity is assuming that CO2 also only contributes to warming, but it, like the water cycle generally, will also be contributing to cooling. The AGW meme of ‘greenhouse gases create heat’ is pervasive..
But anyway, in the first of his three findings I think interesting also he’s saying his measurements are based on downwelling thermal IR as the heating energy of Earth, “there in the Kiehl-Trenberth 1997 distribution implicitly” is the voice-over, but as we’ve seen here, it’s actually argued that it doesn’t exist in the Kiehl-Trenberth because Solar is described by AGW as being the Visible with the two shortwaves either side, and moreover, that this makes the claim explicitly that Light is thermal. I wonder what he’d think of the Kiehl-Trenberth if he realised that?
Anyway, as Miskolczi found, that laws taken out of context can’t be used in the real world, for real applied science problems we need to know that an ideal gas is imaginary, like ‘average’, and not real, and NASA and the Stefan-Bolzmann saga is another example, which uses flat earth physics thinking it describes a 3-dimensional universe. But this also shows how the duplicity of NASA is entrenched from decades of practice in promoting AGW.
http://sppilblog.org/tag/stefan-boltzmann-equations from which it links to article on this: http://www.suite101.com/content/apollo-mission-a-giant-leap-to-discredit-greenhouse-gas-theory-a241363
Thanks again for providing links in English I can actually follow. I still think the best word in any language is “why”? All the whens and hows follow on from it because because on its own is the most irritating as an answer. Try it on the next child that asks, why?