Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
This series began with a mechanical analogy for the Atmospheric “Greenhouse Effect” and progressed a bit more deeply into Atmospheric Windows and Emission Spectra. In this posting, we consider the interaction between air molecules, including Nitrogen (N2), Oxygen (O2), Water Vapor (H2O) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2), with Photons of various wavelengths. This may help us visualize how energy, in the form of Photons radiated by the Sun and the Surface of the Earth, is absorbed and re-emited by Atmospheric molecules. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE GRAPHIC
The animated graphic has eight frames, as indicated by the counter in the lower right corner. Molecules are symbolized by letter pairs or triplets and Photons by ovals and arrows. The view is of a small portion of the cloud-free Atmosphere. (Thanks to WUWT commenter davidmhoffer for some of the ideas incorporated in this graphic.)
- During the daytime, Solar energy enters the Atmosphere in the form of Photons at wavelengths from about 0.1μ (micron – millionth of a meter) to 4μ, which is called “shortwave” radiation and is represented as ~1/2μ and symbolized as orange ovals. Most of this energy gets a free pass through the cloud-free Atmosphere. It continues down to the Surface of the Earth where some is reflected back by light areas (not shown in the animation) and where most is absorbed and warms the Surface.
- Since Earth’s temperature is well above absolute zero, both day and night, the Surface radiates Photons in all directions with the energy distributed approximately according to a “blackbody” at a given temperature. This energy is in the form of Photons at wavelengths from about 4μ to 50μ, which is called “longwave” radiation and is represented as ~7μ, ~10μ, and ~15μ and symbolized as violet, light blue, and purple ovals, respectively. The primary “greenhouse” gases (GHG) are Water Vapor (H2O) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The ~7μ Photon is absorbed by an H2O molecule because Water Vapor has an absorption peak in that region, the ~10μ Photon gets a free pass because neither H2O nor CO2 absorb strongly in that region, and one of the 15μ Photons gets absorbed by an H2O molecule while the other gets absorbed by a CO2 molecule because these gases have absorption peaks in that region.
- The absorbed Photons raise the energy level of their respective molecules (symbolized by red outlines).
- The energized molecules re-emit the Photons in random directions, some upwards, some downwards, and some sideways. Some of the re-emitted Photons make their way out to Space and their energy is lost there, others back down to the Surface where their energy is absorbed, further heating the Earth, and others travel through the Atmosphere for a random distance until they encounter another GHG molecule.
- This frame and the next two illustrate another way Photons are emitted, namely due to collisions between energized GHG molecules and other air molecules. As in frame (2) the Surface radiates Photons in all directions and various wavelengths.
- The Photons cause the GHG molecules to become energized and they speed up and collide with other gas molecules, energizing them. NOTE: In a gas, the molecules are in constant motion, moving in random directions at different speeds, colliding and bouncing off one another, etc. Indeed the “temperature” of a gas is something like the average speed of the molecules. In this animation, the gas molecules are fixed in position because it would be too confusing if they were all shown moving and because the speed of the Photons is so much greater than the speed of the molecules that they hardly move in the time indicated.
- The energized air molecules emit radiation at various wavelengths and in random directions, some upwards, some downwards, and some sideways. Some of the re-emitted Photons make their way out to Space and their energy is lost there, others back down to the Surface where their energy is absorbed, further heating the Earth, and others travel through the Atmosphere for a random distance until they encounter another GHG molecule.
- Having emitted the energy, the molecules cool down.
DISCUSSION
As in the other postings in this series, only radiation effects are considered because they are the key to understanding the Atmospheric “Greenhouse Effect”. I recognize that other effects are as important, and perhaps more so, in the overall heat balance of the Earth. These include clouds which reflect much of the Sun’s radiation back out to Space, and which, due to negative feedback, counteract Global Warming. Other effects include convection (wind, thunderstorms, …), precipitation (rain, snow) and conduction that are responsible for transferring energy from the Surface to the Atmosphere. It is also important to note that the Atmospheric “Greenhouse Effect” and a physical greenhouse are similar in that they both limit the rate of thermal energy flowing out of the system, but the mechanisms by which heat is retained are different. A greenhouse works primarily by preventing absorbed heat from leaving the structure through convection, i.e. sensible heat transport. The greenhouse effect heats the earth because greenhouse gases absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards earth.
That said, how does this visualization help us understand the issue of “CO2 sensitivity” which is the additional warming of the Earth Surface due to an increase in atmospheric CO2? Well, given a greater density of CO2 (and H2O) molecules in the air, there is a greater chance that a given photon will get absorbed. Stated differently, a given photon will travel a shorter distance, on average, before being absorbed by a GHG molecule and be re-emitted in a random direction, including downwards towards the Surface. That will result in more energy being recycled back to the Surface, increasing average temperatures a bit.
Hans,
I have no idea why you introduced the concept of radiation density; it only complicates things to the point where you can make nonsense assertions that are far enough removed from simple understanding that perhaps some people won’t realize what nonsense it is.
We’re not talking anything complicated here – It is really simple actually. Take an object, be it a soldering iron where electrical power is converted into heat or the earth that is absorbing radiation from the sun. If you have that object radiating into the vacuum of space, it is going to come into equilibrium by finding the temperature where the radiation it emits by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law matches the incoming power (provided by the sun in the case of the earth or the electrical power in the case of the soldering iron).
Now instead, try surrounding that object by a box or shell that absorbs some of the radiation. That surrounding shell will heat up and by virtue of having a nonzero temperature, it will emit radiation. Now the object will be receiving not only the power it was originally receiving but additional power from the radiating shell; there is no way this can be avoided. Hence, in order to reach a state where energy in = energy out, it will have to emit more power. It does this by raising its temperature. It’s really that simple.
That this is the way it works can be verified by simple toy models that can be solved trivially. I presented the blackbody shell model in another thread. You speculated about what would happen but I clearly showed you how it was easy to see that your speculation was dead wrong; the mathematical solution to the energy balance problem is trivial to solve and it confirms the picture that I have given above. End of story.
It is embarrassing that there is really any serious argument here about this. If you can’t understand this stuff, how can you possibly hope to understand actual science that is anywhere near the leading edge of our current scientific understanding? It really shows a complete embrace of ideological dogma over reason.
Hans says:
No…It is impossible for it to be in equilibrium. It was in equilibrium at 400 K when it didn’t have the walls at whatever elevated temperature that they are at emitting radiation at it. How can it possibly remain in equilibrium now that it is receiving more energy? That’s mathematically impossible. If it receives more energy, it has to emit more energy…and it does this by increasing its temperature.
Exactly…which is why your solution can’t be the steady-state. If there is no net energy flow away from the soldering iron, which is still plugged into the wall and converting electrical energy into thermal energy, what is it going to do? It is going to heat up until the heat leaving it does balance the thermal energy that it is generating! How could it do otherwise?
Joel Shore says:
April 1, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Myrrh
You are presumably being ignored by Ira (and others including me up until now) because you have displayed no evidence of being teachable. It is a thankless task to try to teach someone who doesn’t want to learn..
That’s the best laugh I’ve had all week! AGWScience is nonsense, that’s an established scientific fact.
You have taken one line from one source and blown it totally out of proportion. What you are referring to is not “traditional physics”; rather, your source claims tht it is something that “many physics teachers traditionally” have said that the source itself notes is not really correct.
No, that is not what I have done. I have been arguing this for some time now on Ira’s threads and I posted it to show that what I have been saying is still traditionally taught physics – ongoing.
“Many physics teachers traditionally attribute all the heat from the Sun to infrared light.”
Many, means all those who still teach traditional physics and not this AGWScience, which mangles traditional physics in all aspects it uses to promote AGW.
I posted the NASA page which shows clearly that this is still Traditional Science teaching.
Read the NASA page, it is very clear what Traditional Science says about this. It says that the heat we feel from the Sun is Thermal IR. It says that Near IR is not hot.
What I am sharing with you here is Traditional Science which makes sense, AGWScience does not make physical sense. My question to Ira is to prove that AGWScience claims are right and have really, actually, overturned Traditional Science.
Really, please understand this, you are making a HUGE claim, altering all well known Traditional Physics in this AGWScience description of the Energy Budget. YOU NEED TO PROVE your claim. YOU NEED TO PROVE that Traditional Physics is wrong and you are right.
Ira is ignoring me because I have ASKED FOR PROOF. I am still asking.
Traditional Physics is exactly correct. Prove otherwise or get rid of teaching this AGWScience nonsense.
I am skeptical of the claim that many physics teachers traditionally say this, but who knows…I guess I was fortunate enough never to run into one of those physics techers in the course of getting my PhD in physics.
More’s the pity you didn’t, you wouldn’t have fallen for the AGWScience con, perhaps. I have already established that a PhD in physics by those who promote AGW doesn’t mean that the bearers have any real grasp of our physical world as described accurately by Traditional Science. One PhD I was questioning when wanting to discover how AGWScience could claim that CO2 could stay up in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years was convinced that a molecule of CO2 could move from the floor to diffuse into the atmosphere and there become thoroughly mixed without any work being done on it, by Brownian motion.. I don’t think you see how funny that is to someone who knows what Traditional Physics says here…
However, that it is not really correct is beyond dispute. If you want to believe otherwise, there is nothing that we can do to help you.
Cr*p! You really must get this straight in you mind, all of you here arguing for AGW, Traditional Physics says you’re talking nonsense! I am now DEMANDING that you prove your claim, and that means you too Ira.
######
Wayne – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/#comment-621497
I wasn’t that surprised to see that Miskolczi had simply assumed that the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram meant downwelling Thermal IR. Why would anyone schooled in Traditional Science think otherwise? He thought they were real scientists..
So, Joel, in your next post you say to my “You are saying that Thermal IR is NOT heating the Earth”
No.. He is not saying that. The intensity of solar radiation is found by integrating over all wavelengths.
Nope. I am saying that’s what he is saying because he is saying AGWScience which says that what heats the Earth is Solar energy and this is defined as being the Visible spectrum plus the two shortwaves either side, i.e., UV and Near IR. The AGW energy diagram says it is these which heat the earth, and that Thermal IR is what is radiated back from the Earth heated by these shortwave energies. These energies are not Thermal. Therefore, Thermal is excluded. Saying Solar energies heat the Earth is saying that Thermal IR does not heat the Earth. That is what he is saying.
OK?
Now, what I want proof of is that these energies defined as Solar on the AGWScience energy budget diagram actually heat the Earth.
We are already aware from the NASA description that Near IR is not hot, think your remote control, you cannot feel it. What we feel as heat from the Sun, from fire, from the stove etc., is Thermal IR. Shortwave like the Visible are not Thermal. So, let’s keep this simple. Prove that Visible Light, heats the Earth, is capable of heating the Earth.
Because until you, genericAGW, do so, that Energy Budget remains nonsense by the real Scientific Standard as still taught traditionally.
When Ira was still talking to me, he said (in the discussion linked here to Wayne), March 1, 2011 at 6:11 am
“Myrrh, you really need to get outside more and sit in the Sunshine and feel the warmth! That is how visible and near-visible (“shortwave”) light warms he Earth.”
Has AGWScience also reversed the sex of Earth..?
So, this is what I am asking y’all to prove. This is what AGWScience claims is fact in the Energy Budget. It is patent scientific nonsense. Attributing Thermal quality, heat, to shortwave energies we cannot feel, and which belongs to Thermal IR.
It is Thermal IR which we feel as heat from the Sun – WE CANNOT FEEL SHORTWAVE SOLAR (“Sunshine”).
Do you see the problem I’m having here? AGWScience is teaching rubbish according to traditional Physics.
We cannot feel Visible light, or UV, or Near IR at all. We certainly do not feel them as the Warmth from the Sun! What we feel as warmth from the Sun, is Thermal IR. AGWScience has excluded Thermal IR from downwelling Solar energies.
Here’s the diagram Ira posted in the linked-to discussion: “Sunlight Energy In = Thermal Energy Out http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gw-spectrum-123a.gif
So, two things immediately y’all have to grasp. The Energy Budget of AGW is make-believe according to traditional Science and therefore all calculations done on this AGW premise of Solar energy (“Sunlight” of Ira’s diagram) heating the Earth and excluding Thermal IR, will also be nonsensical. And secondly, that y’all are making one hellava Scientific claim here, counter all that Traditional Science understands and still teaches.
I hope you can now see the enormity of the AGWclaim.
Prove It.
Myrhh says:
Myrhh, you may think your use of the term “AGWScience” is cute, but frankly to those of us who actually know science, it is immature and more than a little paranoid. As has been pointed out to you, we are talking about stuff that has been understood at least since Einstein won the Nobel prize for the photoelectric effect, establishing the connection between the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation and the energy of the corresponding photons. (And, really, even before photons were understood, there was already a pretty good understanding of the energy associated with electromagnetic radiation…except for the quantization part. Heck, they even had empirically-determined the formula for the blackbody spectrum even if they could not explain why it didn’t blow up on the UV side [the so-called “ultraviolet catastrophe].)
Fine, how about I take a nice strong laser source and shine it on you? Heck, you won’t feel a thing! I’ll even be generous and use a visible laser, which you seem to think if anything has less ability to heat than the near IR!
The reason you don’t feel your remote control is because the power involved is so small. If you have enough power, then believe me, you are going to feel it!
By the way, the one thing that I have learned from you is that NASA really had some web pages written up by some science educator or engineer who didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. (Out of principle, I refuse to believe it was possibly a physicist who wrote that; however, given that Gerlich and Tscheuschner are physicists, I guess I have to admit that such disciplinary bigotry on my part is probably not justifiable.) I am surprised what a poor job NASA did on that website that you found…and now unfortunately there are gullible people like you who are thinking that such nonsense is actually the one example of unsanitized gospel truth before the great AGW conspiracy came through and swept all of the physical sciences clean of the correct understanding of electromagnetic radiation! To NASA’s credit, they do say that that site is obsolete and the new web page seems to have actually tried to get the physics correct, but no doubt that only adds to the nefariousness of the conspiracy in your mind.
The only way that one can possibly interpret that outdated NASA web page as saying anything logical in regards to radiation is that it is true that most objects tend to have higher emissivities (and hence absorptivities) in the thermal IR than in the visible and near-infrared. So, you do have the possibility of reflecting more visible radiation than you do for the thermal IR; radiation that you reflect will indeed not heat you up. Also, visible light and near-IR photons actually have enough energy to do things like cause chemical changes, so there are more pathways for the energy than just direct conversion to thermal energy…although, the Second Law pretty much dictates that most of it is going to end up as thermal energy eventually, and often sooner rather than later.
Ira is just taking into account what I showed in this post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/#comment-634654 , namely that a negligibly-small amount of the solar energy is in the thermal IR because that is the nature of the blackbody spectrum of an object of about 6000K.
Myrrh;
We cannot feel Visible light, or UV, or Near IR at all>>>
Myrrh, sorry, but your feelings have nothing at all to do with it. You can’t “feel” the IR from your television remote because is very low power. Low doesn’t mean zero, and how many w/m2 come out of your remote has nothing to do with the sun. The range of human senses (what you can feel) doesn’t define the facts. You can’t “see” UV or IR, does that mean they don’t exist? No more than you not being able to feel them means they don’t transfer energy.
Ira’s ignoring you I’m thinking because what you’ve “proven” so far with all your rants is that you don’t understand Traditional Physics OR AGW Physics. You don’t even appear to understand your own arguments. I’m not certain if you understand arithmetic.
What you should understand is that Joel Shore and I are on as opposite sides of the fence on AGW as one can get, and we’re both telling you stop spouting idiotic nonsense, and for the exact same reasons.
Yes Joel, that was a compliment from me, don’t have a heart attack. Wanted to commend you on participating in a positive fashion. Much improved value from your comments as far as I am concerned.
Tim Folkerts says:
April1, 2011 at 8:41 pm
No, I am saying that ALL wavelengths of sunlight are part of the energy going to earth, and therefore ALL wavelengths are providing heating to the earth. Please show ONE place where I said thermal IR is not part of the heating. (Thermal IR is a very SMALL part, but it is a part).
I took it from your use of “Sunlight” as Ira has it, meaning the AGW Solar energies which exclude Thermal IR. So, right, if you’re not actually meaning this, but are using your own variation then my question still applies, because a “SMALL part” of Thermal IR, is for or all intents and purposes in this argument, discounting it. So, prove that the shortwave Visible, UV and Near IR which we cannot feel, are heating the Earth.
On the other hand, you say “No matter how far Blue Light, for example, penetrates into the ocean, it will not heat it. UV may burn surfaces, as artificially intensified Blue light can also burn, but these do not raise the temperature of matter the was that Thermal IR does.”
This seems pretty clear – you do not think blue light (or visible light in general) can help raise the temperature of the land or the oceans.
“Thermal IR heating the Earth is excluded from the AGW Energy Budget.”
Not sure how you came to this conclusion.
See above my previous post. As per Ira’s description, it is the standard teaching of AGWScience in their Energy Budget, see Trenberth diagram. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
“the Earth receives energy from the Sun in the form UV, visible and Near IR radiation, most of which passes through the atmosphere without being absorbed. Of the total amount of energy available at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), about 50% is absorbed at the Earth’s surface. Because it is warm, the surface radiates far IR thermal radiation that consists of wavelengths that are predominantly much longer than the wavelengths that were absorbed. Most of this thermal radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere and re-radiated both upwards and downwards; that radiated downwards is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. This trapping of long-wavelength thermal radiation leads to a higher equilibrium temperature than if the atmosphere were absent.”
So, as Ira has it, the AGW energy budget is “Solar” /”Sunlight” radiation – which is UV, Visible and Near IR, downwelling to Earth. This then heats the Earth’s surface which radiates out Thermal IR.
One the one hand, thermal IR is effectively excluded from the energy budget when looking at sunlight. This is NOT due to some nefarious AGW scheme or poorly understood science. It is simply because thermal IR (specifically, I am referring to 4 um or longer), is less than 1% of the incoming solar radiation and hence is only a minor player in the overall energy budget.
Which is as I said, you’ve excluded it. Technically picky add “effectively” if you want…
On the other hand, thermal IR is BOLDLY included in the energy budget, since thermal IR is the 390 W/m^2 upward radiation from the earth and the 324 W/m^2 downward radiation from the atmosphere.
Which is b*sh*t as you’ve ‘effectively’ excluded Thermal IR in heating the Earth, bear in mind it is what you feel as heat from the Sun, and you’ve yet to prove that the shortwave Visible, UV and Near IR which are not thermal are capable of and actually heating the earth.
Let me say one more time – the “Traditional Physics” you keep referring to is NOT traditional physics. There are several people in this discussion who have shown a pretty good level of scientific understanding – none of them seem to agree with your conclusions. I teach “traditional physics” and I know lots of other people who teach “traditional physics” and none of us teach that you can’t feel heat from visible light.
Then neither you nor they are teaching TRADITIONAL BOG STANDARD physics.
AS per the NASA page, you cannot feel Near IR. If you are feeling heat, it is Thermal IR.
You cannot feel UV. You can feel the effects when too much of it burns you, BUT, you cannot feel it burning you, because you cannot feel it. It is not Thermal. Do you understand that? Visible light in between these, likewise. They are not Thermal. You cannot feel them, they are not hot. See NASA page, Near IR is not hot.
See NASA page, it is Thermal IR which is used to warm foods.. Near IR from the Sun will not warm you. Visible light will not warm you.
Is that specific enough?
Do you now understand my attempts to show this in real life real science physical application? For example, grow lights for plants?
##############
davidmhoffer says:
April 1, 2011 at 11:35 pm
You are some piece of work bud. Take a look at one of your own sentences:
“For example, when I’ve explained that Visible Light is not thermal, but if concentrated in intensity it can burn.”
So…it isn’t thermal, but if concentrated…it is thermal.
Magic.
No, even when it burns it is not Thermal, it does not warm, it does not heat up matter as does Thermal IR energy.
Thermal IR is absorbed by organic matter and heats it. Visible light is reflective rather than absorptive, it will penetrate organic matter only a little, say human skin, that’s why you cast a shadow. Near IR will penetrate further, UV hardly penetrates at all, you cannot feel it. If these non thermal energies of Visible and Near IR are artificially intensified they can burn, but they do not heat up organic matter naturally, they are not the heating mechanism for the Earth because they are incapable of it. UV is capable of burning because naturally intense. What is the difference? In the wavelengths. The even higher frequency shorter wavelength of UV is, like the friction of creating fire by drilling a stick into a log, it burns the surface, but it does not heat up organic matter; you will not feel warm from intense UV until you get sunstroke… Which is a secondary effect..
What warms you up, absorbed by you and the Earth, is Thermal IR.
The AGWScience Energy Budget is PHYSICAL NONSENSE.
The Thermal IR radiated from the Earth is because the Earth has been heated by Thermal IR. Solar/Sunlight AGW’s UV, Visible, Near IR CANNOT raise the temperature of organic matter. At best, UV is able to burn the surface. If UV could penetrate further naturally we’d all be burned to a crisp inside.
AGWScience has no concept of the real physical world around us. That’s a proven scientific fact, from observation of its claims..
See again the NASA page and look at the description of size of IR, from the size of the pin head of far thermal to microscopic near non-thermal. Perhaps this will help?
@ur momisugly Myrrh
See the enormity? I do. But, for you and I to get perfectly parallel you would have be willing to have a back and forth here for ten, maybe twenty steps. Staying on each point till we either agree or disagree. If I try to toss it all into one single comment it gets far to complex and leaves so many branches of possible misunderstanding. At the end I think we will both agree on many fronts, one that the energy budgets are misleading and in places a figment of someone’s imagination. Are you willing? Maybe we can both get our views so clear that others can see them.
I’ll start out by telling you of an advantage I might have over you, on the subject of the higher frequencies of E/M. I have a major in physiology, though never followed, and I had to dig out of the garage my old books and read a bit. Seems the nerves that sense heat are mid to far-IR sensitive but not much to the shorter wavelengths. So, you might be getting severely burned and you won’t even sense it until the damaged cells start to pour out the histamine, then you will feel it, for sure, but more as a deep ache at first, the real pain comes later. Those frequencies go deeper than mid and far IR so the burn would be deeper. That’s from a pretty old book so you might look it up in a more recent one, but I don’t think the human body has changed that much but the knowledge may have.
Now you know why with normal white light, UV, near-IR, you never feel it, the warm energy is spread vertically deep over many millimeters and the blood simply carries the warmth (energy) away too fast to matter. Focus that same amount of light, same type, with a magnifying glass on your skin and it does burn, and you do feel the warmth then, too much energy so fast that the heat then causes the nerves to fire, you feel not just warmth but immediate pain.
So, I know from physics that these frequencies do carry energy and if ever absorbed or scattered and split this energy does warm. As shown above but too weak for us to “feel” it though it might be nearly the same intensity. But most of the strictly ‘albedo’ takes away from the mainly visible (or close to) frequencies so much of it is simply reflected back to space. Agree so far?
Did you ever look at that tinypic mentioned above? It clearly shows the solar IR you keep speaking of, though that representation might magnify it’s influence too much. It’s hard to trust any of these representations as spectrum. More on that later. That’s topic two.
Joel – that NASA page was written by someone who had more than a clue, had real grounding in the real science of our real physical world. ‘AGWScience’ is not some attempt to be cute, it is to make a real distinction between the real science of our physical reality and the junk that passes itself off as science by AGW which describes an imaginary, impossible world.
I really hope, perhaps my last post to David will help, that you can begin to grasp there is a huge difference in concept between the two.
But anyway, prove that visible light warms the Earth. I’m still waiting.
Myrrh says:
Fascinating…So, like a few Watts/m^2 at most of thermal IR from the sun are enough to result in the emission of many hundreds of Watts/m^2 from the earth? How does this work exactly?
Sorry…Science doesn’t work on proof; that’s the realm of mathematics. Science is inductive. For this reason, it is not possible to demonstrate science to someone who showed utter unwillingness to comprehend it. (Although I am not very confident I would even be able to “prove” something in mathematics to someone who refuse to abandon his mental blocks.) What’s the saying…”You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”? Those of us spanning a whole gamut of opinions on AGW as a whole have led you to vast lakes of fresh water. Now it’s your turn to demonstrate some ability to actually be worthy of our spending the time to even respond to your semi-coherent ramblings of scientific nonsense.
Myrrh;
No, even when it burns it is not Thermal, it does not warm, it does not heat up matter>>>
Then….(choke, splutter)…Then how…(caugh, caugh, jeeez is he for caugh caugh real)…Then how does (ROFLMAO)…..pant, pant, tears in eyes…OK, got myself together again…. Then how does (LOL LOL LOL ohmigod I can’t breath wheeze wheeze wheeze)…OK, now then how does it burn the matter if it doesn’t heat up the matter? Please don’t answer, I don’t know if I can take anymore of this.
Myrrh, somehow I missed a comment you wrote to me on Miskolczi back in #2 of this series, on Atmospheric Window at the bottom. You seem to understand all of this just fine, much deeper than many are giving you credit. I’m don’t think you and I need to go further, so skip that last comment and invitation to discuss I made. I’m already parallel to you on nearly everything you said.
Myrrh
“So, prove that the shortwave Visible, UV and Near IR which we cannot feel, are heating the Earth.”
You really ARE unteachable — or more likely an intentional troll having fun getting smart people to engage your meaningless rants.
It has been explained numerous times how these wavelengths CAN be felt and DO help heat the earth – warm sunshine (even after passing thru glass which will remove most of the IR) and E=hf and dark objects being warmer than light objects and lasers which cut things with heat. I for one am not going to continue to engage to other than to occasionally warn people about your lack of understanding if you try to post in other threads.
David and Joel, it is totally pointless trying to reason with this man, he has absolutely no idea about science. The best policy is just to let him post this gibberish since he just responds with the same lunacy. Unfortunately any thread on GHE is going to be disrupted by this craziness, but Anthony lets it persist so what can you do?
Myrrh, after a post here and in a previous forum you have yet to address my “proof”. If anything is “traditional physics”, it is the conservation of energy.
So I repeat, look up at the sky and then look down at your feet. If you really want to get technical, look at a photo of earth from space. There is quite a bit of intense visible light coming from the sky (so much that it would blind you to stare at the sun), yet the ground isn’t nearly this bright. The visible light isn’t being reflected as visible light, and it isn’t passing through the earth, so what is happening to the energy of all that visible light? According to your “it isn’t heating the earth” hypothesis – poof, it disappears. How is that consistent with “traditional physics”?
Phil;
David and Joel, it is totally pointless trying to reason with this man>>>
Well I for one have given up and am just laughing. Joel seems to have concluded the man is unteachable, said so, and then continues to try. Stubborn guy that Joel, gotta give him some credit.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a dear old lady in the family who insisted that man had never been to the moon, it was all faked. Said she could prove it. OK, so I was dumb enough to ask.
“They can’t even get rid of mosquitos, how could they possibly get to the moon if they can’t even get rid of tiny little mosquitos!” she said triumphantly.
Now she really was a very sweet old lady. And you have to admit, she won that argument hands down. I had….nothing.
But Myrrh I can make fun of!
DavidM
Do you believe an oven like this is possible
http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/111-a-pictures-worth-a-1000-words
And if not why not if backradiation does add additional heat or energy to the earth’s surface.
RJ says:
April 3, 2011 at 3:19 am
DavidM
Do you believe an oven like this is possible
http://www.slayingtheskydragon.com/en/blog/111-a-pictures-worth-a-1000-words>>>
Absolutely Not!
And if not why not if backradiation does add additional heat or energy to the earth’s surface.>>>
This is a classic case of a ligitimate explanaton being twisted into something its not with the dilberate attempt to mislead. I find it sad that critics of AGW are stooping to the same tactics as the alarmists. Put a warm chicken on the counter and it will cool off. Put a warm chicken in that make believe oven and…. it will cool off. Not only will it cool off, but it will cool off to the temperature of the local surroundings, exactly like the chicken on the counter. BUT (pay attention now) the chicken in the make believe oven will cool off SLOWER than the chicken on the counter.
The difference between that and the earth’s surface is that the chicken in the make believe oven has no in coming source of heat to off set what it is losing. The earth does. So let’s extend the analogy to something meaningful. Shine a 500 watt IR beam at both chickens. One on the counter and one through the glass door (special glass so IR could go through) of the make believe oven. The chicken on the counter heats up until it reached a new equilibrium temperature where it is radiating as much heat as it is abosrbing from the beam. The chicken in the make believe oven also heats up, but it heats up faster, and to a higher temperature than the chicken on the counter.
Now if you want to be usefull at all in discussing AGW, put aside these childish, sarcastic, bullarky remarks that don’t represent a single thing Ira, or I, or Joel, or Phil or anyone of a number of people have said. The AGW debate is not if the chicken in the oven cooks itself, that stupendously rediculous. The AGW debate is about how much slower the chicken in the make believe oven cools off compared to the one on the counter, and how much hotter it gets when you fire a 500 watt IR beam at it.
The CAGW crowd wants to claim a lot, the skeptics say bull, much smaller number, and with feedbacks included properly it may be negative. The battle ground is not IF the battleground is HOW MUCH and FEEDBACK NET EFFECT.
Wayne – ta. You and I are obviously old school, with a sense of height and depth and width, and weight and volume..
Unlike the opening reply here whose world is composed of an atmosphere of empty space with molecules rushing around having billions of collisions and so thoroughly mixing as they bounce off each other, as per ideal gas law.. Perhaps it’s now become practically impossible to convey a sense of the real physical world to AGWScience boffs who are so adept and ingrained in the misapplication of laws.
I found this page earlier when I was trying to explain that molecules might well be moving at tremendous speed, but in the real un-ideal gas world they’re going nowhere fast..
http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/sound-waves.html
But still, they insist it’s Brownian motion moving the molecules around through our atmosphere, because no concept of the weight of the fluid gas Air above us in which these molecules have to move, no feel for volume or scale. So scent diffuses by Brownian motion through the room and Carbon Dioxide heavier than Air will by this motion diffuse through the atmosphere. Or sometimes, wind is like a wooden spoon constantly churning up Air and thoroughly mixing it… 🙂 So of course, no explanation of convection gets through to them and the 2nd Law clearly proves to their satisfaction that a photon from a cold molecule of CO2 bounces back and heats the Earth, or, that CO2 sits up there accumulating, defying gravity and its own weight and heat capacity to trap Heat in an insulating blanket practically 100% holes.
If you can believe that, and more absurdities, then of course it makes perfect sense to think of Solar energies being absorbed by the Earth and warming its organic matter by converting to heat energies, which are admitted as being Thermal IR…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_green_house_effect.svg
Just don’t ask them to design a bright not hot light with neglible heat, not in their reading of the laws..
Myrrh says:
April 3, 2011 at 4:17 am
Wayne – ta. You and I are obviously old school, with a sense of height and depth and width, and weight and volume..
Unlike the opening reply here whose world is composed of an atmosphere of empty space with molecules rushing around having billions of collisions and so thoroughly mixing as they bounce off each other, as per ideal gas law.. Perhaps it’s now become practically impossible to convey a sense of the real physical world to AGWScience boffs who are so adept and ingrained in the misapplication of laws.
Yes the real world as described by Einstein in 1905! Enough of this foolishness.
Steve at April 2, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Sorry, nearly missed your post twice.
Visible light is easily reflected, so the blue sky as this spreads through the atmosphere.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/light/u12l2f.cfm
“The atmosphere is a gaseous sea that contains a variety of types of particles; the two most common types of matter present in the atmosphere are gaseous nitrogen and oxygen. These particles are most effective in scattering the higher frequency and shorter wavelength portions of the visible light spectrum. etc.”
What we see as colour in our world is what is reflected. The green light is reflected by plants, which absorb blue and red light for photosynthesis, so in reflecting back at us we see green.
davidmhoffer says:
Alas, this phenomena is well-summarized by what might well be the best cartoon ever: http://xkcd.com/386/ But I think I should really try to adopt your approach in this case!
davidmhoffer says:
“The chicken in the make believe oven also heats up, but it heats up faster, and to a higher temperature than the chicken on the counter.”
The temperature of the chicken cannot be higher than that determined by the quantity of thermal radiation it is receiving whether it inside an oven or not. This is similar to Ira’s misunderstanding when he wrote about a soldering iron in a box reaching a higher temperature than one in the open. If the flow of radiation is blocked by the box it does not result in the heated object achieving a higher temperature than that determined by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (taking account of emissivity). If it did then, as Hans says, we have a perpetuum mobile. The plausible theory (first advocated by Fourier?) that if you block the escape of heat then this will add to the heat content is false as it contravenes the laws of the conservation of energy. Blocking the flow of radiation may reduce the rate of cooling (which is why there is an infra-red reflector inside a thermos flask) but it cannot add heat even where there is a source of heat inside the thermos. When the maximum temperature determined by the S-B constant is reached (let’s assume a blackbody chicken for simplicity) further heating stops. More energy is required to raise the temperature further – reflection or backradiation merely reflects exactly the same amount of energy so there can be no additional heating. (I wouldn’t recommend eating the chicken.)
Phil – the atmosphere is the liquid gas Air, it has volume and it has weight, it is pressing down on us with a tremendous amount of pressure, around 14 lbs/square inch, around a ton pressing down on our shoulders. The molecules of Air, mainly nitrogen and oxygen, do not move very fast at all through all this.
I haven’t checked how this compares with standing at the bottom of a swimming pool with 10 ft of water, if you know how much that weighs, but this is a description I’ve seen to explain our atmosphere. That going then and standing in the middle of a field in the open air is equivalent. We have a gaseous sea of Air above us. This is not empty space, because real gases have volume and weight and are subject to pressure and gravity, unlike the imaginary ideal gas which takes up no space at all..
This is how sound manages to travel. The molecules of Air are a fluid moving ‘on the spot’ under all this pressure and gravity, sound travels by hitting a bunch of them setting them vibrating, still ‘on the spot’, they in turn bash into the next molecules which start vibrating hitting the molecules of Air next to them – it’s the energy of sound travelling, just like waves travelling in the sea. The water does not move very far from where it is en masse, it vibrates by the energy travelling through it and passes this wave along through the rest of the ocean to finally break on a shore somewhere.
Read descriptions of the ideal gas, a good page on this will point out that it is an imaginary construct and describes no real gas and will explain that real gases have molecular weight and molecular volume, not attributes of this imaginary ideal gas. To scale up from this imaginary gas into ‘the atmosphere’, is creating an imaginary atmosphere.
Ideal gas has no real gas interactions, there is no force of attraction or repulsion between them, they occupy no space, they do not have volume, they obey all gas laws at all temperatures and pressures. This is not a description of the REAL world. These may well be of use, if you understand the maths.., in calculations, but only by compensating for all the stuff that’s missing.
Neither ideal gas laws nor Brownian motion, which is the movement of particles in a fluid (a gas or liquid), can be extrapolated without regard to real properties of weight and volume of real gases in the real atmosphere. (*)
I’ll leave you to argue with others whether or not the 2nd Law actually breaks down on a molecular level..
..but as far as Solar energies being absorbed by the Earth heating it – I’m still demanding proof that Visible light from the Sun can actually do this, prove it can or take it out of the “Solar” energy budget in the AGWScience claim. Then do the same for UV and Near IR…
(*) to grasp the concept of the tiny scale in which Brownian motion exists see the wiki page on Diffusion:
“Under normal conditions, molecular diffusion is relevant only on length scales between nanometer and millimeter. On larger length scales, transport in liquids and gases is normally due to another transport phenomenon, convection.
Therefore, some often cited examples of diffusion are wrong: If cologne is sprayed in one place, it will soon be smelled in the entire room, but simple calculation shows that this cannot be due to diffusion; the cause can only be convection. If ink is dropped in water, one usually observes an inhomogeneous evolution of the spatial distribution, which clearly indicates convection; diffusion dominates only in perfect thermal equilibrium.”
CO2 cannot diffuse through our real world atmosphere, neither by giving it attributes of the ideal gas without volume or weight etc. and zipping through an atmosphere of empty space, nor by being diffused by Brownian motion. It has weight, the lighter molecules of nitrogen and oxygen are not strong enough to move it anywhere, they instead get displaced by the heavier than Air molecules of CO2 as these sink to the ground. It takes work from something stronger to move CO2, and it’s not always windy..
Sorry, should be technically “fluid gas Air” in opening sentence. Liquids and gases are fluids in contrast to solids. I was thinking of the description “gaseous sea” from my previous post. But liquid Air as a description of the atmosphere above us is this “gaseous sea”, appreciating that as a concept is basic to seeing where AGWScience deviates from Traditional, by misapplying physical laws. By taking them out of context we get the impossible through the looking glass with Alice world where something heavier than air doesn’t sink..