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.
Tim:
“* I assume “TOA” is “Top of Atmosphere”. Since the average value is ~235 W/m^2, I assume this must be the total IR emitted as measured from above the atmosphere. How do you estimate this value? I am surprised that this number varies so much, since I don’t imagine the surface, clouds, or atmosphere to vary enough form night to day to cause such a huge swing in IR radiation.”
Your definitely right on the top two comments. That is strictly a cosine weighted averaging. Used Simpson rule to integrate each hour span. It could be fined down greatly but without actual data I don’t want to just wild guess.
On the comment three above in quotes, I have no idea if that is even close, that is just what the sum of the preceding three(?) columns total of upwelling energy. If they are right, seems the total would be also but that’s bound to not be the case. If I get time I thought maybe Dr. Spencer or Dr. Christy since their instruments should narrow that down if I can get some example by-the-hour data in a spread of the seasons and conditions to average. Also the evaporation does need to rely on the surface temperature, but need data to get close, no guess, I noticed that after taking those snapshots.
That surprised me how easy that was. Can’t believe someone else has never created that, kept waiting but, darn, going to have to do this myself.
For both you and Joel, come on, translate, “increased warmth” is also “increased temperature”. It’s a habit, I try to always write in plain English as much as possible for plain courtesy for other less versed readers.
Sorry Excerpt and charpters
Chapters??? Not my day
“So, yes, energy returned to the object by reflection or “back radiation” can indeed warm the object in the sense of yielding a higher steady-state temperature as compared to when this energy is not returned to the object”
I still think this is fiction. It makes no difference if an external source provides ongoing heat. It still means that an colder heat source will raise the temperature of a hotter one
For example if the heat source A can heat an object B to 10 degrees. What you are saying is radiation can leave this source at 10 degrees and come back by back radiation and further heat source B to say 11 degrees or more
This seems like unscientific fiction no matter how you try and explain it. I appreciate your effort though but I still do not buy it. And it would be very easy to prove by a simple experiment as explained above with an oil filed heater for example. This can’t have been done otherwise this would be no disagreement on this.
RJ… woops, Postma, seems I need to make sure who I’m speaking of. Not my day either.
On your second comment about energy, your right:
“It still means that an colder heat source will raise the temperature of a hotter one”
That’s a for sure.
That topic when applied to the earth and AGW CO2 warming goes one layer deeper. Can energy already absorbed by the surface, remember, it is the surface’s energy that also setting the global temperature, very important, it’s not the atmosphere’s energy, can that exact energy from the surface go up, be absorbed and then re-radiated (nearly half) downward, but let’s say all of it, and cause the global temperature to rise above what it was before that same energy ever left the surface.
That is what I said above to Phil. Matter’s temperature cannot be raised by it’s own radiative energy. It is the same energy. If it is radiated away, it cools the matter and if it ever returns it raises it back up but never more than it was. And this is happening in a femto-second or less. AGW’s greenhouse effect says it can.
I say heck no. Not by physics. Wish Dr. Feynman was back with us right now, he would have a very fun hay-day with the others here thinking that it occurs anywhere in this universe. They should take his advice, go and find some other universe where there is self-heating matter. If they don’t burn up first they could drive their industries with “backradiation”.
Also read this above:
“The photons do not wear little tags that identify where they came from.”
Photons are not labeled BUT, the energy they contain DOES belong to where they came from, when your are tracking temperatures in quantum mechanics, photon-by-photon. They sure do, and it make critical sense to respect that or you are not talking of the physics and thermodynamics I know.
Am I reading you right? Is that the way you see it?
RJ, just realized you might not see I’m not speaking to you in most of that above. Just wanted to make sure you discerned who I was speaking to, just wanted you to follow. I think you and I are more or less parallel.
Phil – you really haven’t read my posts – photons do not always give off their energy as heat in their immediate interaction. Try absorbing the information in that link.
The AGWScience claim for the Energy Budget is that Solar converts to HEAT of the Earth, the land and ocean, this is direct heating. Unless you can successfully show that this what the UV,Visible,Nr Ir are actually doing this and so heating up the land and sea directly to raise the temperature of the Earth DIRECTLY which then radiates out the amount of Thermal IR claimed, then you’re not dealing with my question.
Photons can give heat, they can give other light, they can be used for biological processes which does not involve heat. Blue light is not hot, it is not thermal in itself so it cannot heat other matter as does Thermal IR which is heat on the move from one place to another. You can easily purchase LED Blue lights, see how long it takes to heat up water.
Until you produce these actual facts and figures I’ve requested to support this clearly absurd claim of AGWSolar heating the Earth, you’re just prevaricating.
As Tim continues to prevaricate because he damn well knows he can’t prove it by logical, bog standard common extremely well known science in a huge variety of fields where there is real understanding of their physical properties and the effects these can have.
If you really work with devices that can measure the heat from Visible light then show me some data of the actual temperatures of the different light waves. Nr IR is not hot, we cannot feel it as heat, ditto Visible and UV, so what temperature is the “not hot” of Blue light? If you come back again with a description which shows you’re confusing the naming of light waves by temperature which actually refers back to the heat of the object generating them, then you’re still confusing balometers with light meters. What that says about your lab..
Also to understand how blue light is scattered:
http://www.dpfwiw.com/polarizer.htm#scatter
and how light is also a wave:
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refin/u12l1a.cfm
Blue and Violet lights penetrate deeper into the oceans for the same reasons as in the Air, they are not absorbed but scattered. In water these lights are refracted better in clearer water as they are in cloudless skies, and so transmitted deeper, until they too are finally absorbed into black when their energy gives out. Just what kind of heat do you think it can generate down there even if you could prove it is so AGWScience amazingly great at heating water..?
They should take his advice, go and find some other universe where there is self-heating matter. If they don’t burn up first they could drive their industries with “backradiation”.
I do not see how logically it would not burn up. Because if a planet was say -15 degrees without GHGs. Once it rises to -14 degrees it would in effect start again and then -13 etc to +15 +16 etc etc so the increase would never stop rising. Is this right or not if say in a alternative universe energy did actually work in this GHG backradiation way.
I guess the type of IR radiation leaving alternative planet earth might change at some point as it heats up so it would all pass straight through the GHGs. But if any energy is reflected back at higher temperatures the rise would continue until the planet burnt away.
Maybe I’m confused here on this point but these were some of the logical reservations I had on the GHG backradiation theory even before reading the slayers book
I can see however that GHGs can change the average temperatures but this would have little to do with backradiation. And it would be due to reducing the rate of cooling not further warming the planet.
Wayne
“RJ, just realized you might not see I’m not speaking to you in most of that above. Just wanted to make sure you discerned who I was speaking to, just wanted you to follow. I think you and I are more or less parallel.”
I agree with everything you have posted. Including this section
“That is what I said above to Phil. Matter’s temperature cannot be raised by it’s own radiative energy. It is the same energy. If it is radiated away, it cools the matter and if it ever returns it raises it back up but never more than it was. And this is happening in a femto-second or less. AGW’s greenhouse effect says it can.”
The fact that more energy is coming in from the Sun is irrelevant. Logically it is the same energy that leaves and then comes back so it can not further heat the earth than the sun by itself can. (Unless the CO2 and water vapour etc has its own independent power source).
But I’m not a scientist. So am thankful to people like yourself and others on here who are just confirming what logically makes sense to me. It was something that was bugging me as I could not find a logical complete explanation. The slayers book was the first.
But there are still people like Monckton and Curry for example who seem to accept the GHG backradiation theory even though they do not accept CAGW. Why? This is what still confuses me. Do these people lack understanding (or even Ira or Joel etc) or is it me? Or the small but hopefully growing numbers who have doubts.
RJ says:
And yet, we have told you exactly why it is nonsense.
Is that supposed to impress us? The Slayers book is complete pseudo-scientific nonsense. And, the Slayers apparently don’t want to discuss the science in a serious manner. I went to this page http://slayingtheskydragon.com/en/sample-chapters/98-computational-blackbody-radiation on their website and had a long conversation over the past week or so with authors John O’Sullivan (who is a lawyer by training) and Claes Johnson (who is an applied mathematician). Both did not, in my opinion, honestly engage in defending the nonsense that they are peddling; they just through around lots of deceptive and irrelevant arguments. (O’Sullivan in particular is quite a piece of work.) Alas, last night, O’Sullivan (who seems to administrate the website) appears to have deleted all of the comments and disabled comments on that page. (Predicting that he might do this, I do have copies of most of our conversation from periodic saves of that webpage.)
This is a completely religious belief on your part and not at all scientific. You don’t even have to do new experiments since you already have implicitly performed such experiments before. You just have to think about why you wear a jacket when it is cold. And, if you found someone who was out in the cold and suffering from hypothermia and you had a jacket you could give him, would you choose not to because there is no way that his body temperature could possibly warm up if you put the jacket on him?
It doesn’t burn up for the same reason that the geometric series 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + … doesn’t diverge. Try as you might, you will never get the sum to go beyond 2.
In physics, there are sometimes different ways to see the same thing. These points-of-view are basically complementary. If you like the 2nd one better then fine. In some ways, it gives a more accurate picture in the sense that the “back-radiation” picture gets one wondering about how the surface temperature can be changed also due to changes in other heat flows such as convection (in concert with evaporation / condensation of water).
And indeed, the cleaner way to figure out what is going to happen is to consider the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere rather than the surface, since we know that the only communication the entire earth system (earth + atmosphere) can have with what is outside of it is via radiation. Then, to consider how the temperature will change at the surface, one ends up considering the lapse rate in the troposphere, as I described in previous posts.
wayne says:
But, here is where you are confused: You are right in saying that you can never end up with more energy than you would have had if the energy had not been radiated away. However, here is the part you are apparently missing: If the earth did not radiate the energy away that it received from the sun, it would just heat up more and more. The steady-state temperature is determined by a balance between what it receives and what it radiates away. If some of what it radiates away is returned to it, then the heat flow away from it is less and the only way it can compensate for this is to continue warming…i.e., increasing its temperature…until it is once again has as much heat going away from it as it is receiving from the sun.
If you think Feynman would actually think anything you are saying in this regard makes sense, you are really, really deceiving yourself. Frankly, it is an insult to Feynman to even imply that he would agree with this nonsense.
RJ, great, finally someone gets where I’m coming from! I said bad day, nope, a good one.
Take a look at those two tinypics at this comment http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/#comment-647305 and see what you now think. If you notice they are using Trenberth’s numbers that come from the satellites but there is no backradiation involved at all, that whole misconstrued concept is not even necessary (almost like it was conjured up!) ☺
Well, not really, there is radiative resonance in each very thin layer (resonance) but the tiny residuals are the energy that the atmosphere absorbed from the sun and all of that energy supports the atmospheres mass and always moves upward for temperatures decease with height. Now think of the layer thickness approaching zero.
Different picture, right? That is Miskolczi’s picture, not mine. He’s the atmosphere physicist. It just took me month’s to finally “get it”. What’s weird is you have to be patient enough to read much of that from between the lines of his paper, it is never explicitly explained in that manner.
I’m going to get some sleep now!
RJ says:
April 25, 2011 at 12:55 am
This seems like unscientific fiction no matter how you try and explain it. I appreciate your effort though but I still do not buy it. And it would be very easy to prove by a simple experiment as explained above with an oil filed heater for example. This can’t have been done otherwise this would be no disagreement on this.
Read any textbook on radiational heat transfer, Hottel for example, ample examples, it’s routine, the disagreement is with people like Myrrh who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
Myrrh says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:24 am
If you really work with devices that can measure the heat from Visible light then show me some data of the actual temperatures of the different light waves.
You’re so confused it’s unbelievable, light doesn’t have temperature, it carries energy, E=hν. The bolometer works like a calorimeter and the temperature rise is calibrated to an energy flux in watts/m^2.
Nr IR is not hot, we cannot feel it as heat, ditto Visible and UV, so what temperature is the “not hot” of Blue light? If you come back again with a description which shows you’re confusing the naming of light waves by temperature which actually refers back to the heat of the object generating them, then you’re still confusing balometers with light meters. What that says about your lab..
It says nothing about my lab but it says a lot about you, you’re hopelessly confused about the science and you think the way light interacts with human skin is a fundamental property!
Also to understand how blue light is scattered:
http://www.dpfwiw.com/polarizer.htm#scatter
and how light is also a wave:
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refin/u12l1a.cfm
I must have at least 20 scientific publications on light scattering, have been a consultant with major companies and government facilities and speaker at international conferences on the subject of light scattering, so I don’t need to read photography web sites about it! By the way it’s wrong, light is not absorbed and re-emitted in the process of Rayleigh scattering. I suggest you read some real science textbooks not hobbyist web sites, you might learn some science instead of the rubbish you’re pushing on here.
Blue and Violet lights penetrate deeper into the oceans for the same reasons as in the Air, they are not absorbed but scattered. In water these lights are refracted better in clearer water as they are in cloudless skies, and so transmitted deeper, until they too are finally absorbed into black when their energy gives out. Just what kind of heat do you think it can generate down there even if you could prove it is so AGWScience amazingly great at heating water..?
They’re still absorbed as heat, their energy doesn’t “give out”.
RJ says:
In the case of Monckton, probably for the same reason why the intelligent design folks differentiate themselves from the Young Earth creationists. He doesn’t want to be associated with something so ridiculously scientifically-incorrect that endorsement of it essentially brands you as scientifically illiterate.
For Curry and other scientists, it is not only tactical reasons…but also presumably because they have scientific standards and don’t want to endorse something that they know to be nonsense.
RJ says:
April 25, 2011 at 6:26 am
I agree with everything you have posted. Including this section
“That is what I said above to Phil. Matter’s temperature cannot be raised by it’s own radiative energy. It is the same energy. If it is radiated away, it cools the matter and if it ever returns it raises it back up but never more than it was.
OK that’s your assertion, now show a heat balance on an object (with equations) that demonstrates that, try a heated black surface with IR reflected back with a dichroic mirror.
State any assumptions you make.
RJ says:
April 25, 2011 at 5:54 am
They should take his advice, go and find some other universe where there is self-heating matter. If they don’t burn up first they could drive their industries with “backradiation”.
I do not see how logically it would not burn up. Because if a planet was say -15 degrees without GHGs. Once it rises to -14 degrees it would in effect start again and then -13 etc to +15 +16 etc etc so the increase would never stop rising. Is this right or not if say in a alternative universe energy did actually work in this GHG backradiation way.
It’s feedback, consider you’re flowing 100 l/minute of water through a pipe, and you feedback 10% of it to the start of the pipe, what’s the throughput of the pipe:
100+10=110 but now the feedback is 11, ∴ 100+11=111…….. eventually 111.1111111
Now what if it’s 20% feedback:
100+20=120, 100+24=124, 100+24.8=124.8, ……….. 125
In general it becomes 100/(1-f)
So for 50% feedback (f=0.5) =200
for 75% ” (f=0.75) =400
Note that the series always converges.
All that’s happening here is that light (energy) is being recycled.
Wayne says:
“For both you and Joel, come on, translate, “increased warmth” is also “increased temperature”. It’s a habit, I try to always write in plain English as much as possible for plain courtesy for other less versed readers.”
While speaking in plain English has advantages, it also can create problems when trying to be scientifically precise. For example you state a postulate like “Matter cannot add any warmth to itself with it’s own radiation. ” which is rather imprecise.
This seems to be related to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy can only increase (or stay the same). An alternate statement is “No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.” Heat (the net flow of energy due to a temperature difference) is always from hot to cold; ENERGY is “added” or “subtracted”, not TEMPERATURE. And this is about TWO objects, not one object and its own radiation.
“Until you produce these actual facts and figures I’ve requested to support this clearly absurd claim of AGWSolar heating the Earth, you’re just prevaricating.”
Translation:
Until you can explain every last insignificant factor in the earth’s energy balance using no math and using my incorrect definitions of terms like “heat”; until you correct every last imprecise web page that mentions IR and the 2nd law of thermodynamics; until you tell me a precise value for the undefined idea of the “temperature of blue light”; well, I’ll just keep spouting my sound-bite science and assume you just aren’t as smart as me.
Joel Shore says:
….”The one note that I should make on my original post is that when I say “greenhouse gases”, that should really also include the condensed greenhouse gas of water vapor, i.e., clouds.)”……
Joel any condensed matter radiates whether it is greenhouse or not.
Further solids and liquids radiate the full characteristic temperature spectrum not the line spectrum of gases.
This is kind of stuff is usually taught in schools!
Joel and Phil often confuse the first law with the second law.
For instance we will look at the Halpern et al conflation of both laws.
Joel has distanced himself from this crude error but not yet consistently.
Over and over again the Halpern interpretation goes something like this…..
A hot object transfers heat to a colder surface for example 100J.
The colder surface transfer heat to the warmer surface say 99J.
This they say satisfies the second law of thermodynamics.
Their reasoning is that the NET HEAT is from hot to cold.
I hope by now everyone who has paid attention knows that this is nonsense.
Bryan says: April 25, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“This is kind of stuff is usually taught in schools!”
Thanks, Bryan, for the little lecture which AGAIN does not contradict anything that Joel said in earlier posts. Although I must say it is refreshing to see basic science acknowledged by all sides.
P.S. Bryan, I’m still waiting for you to either support your accusation or apologize: “This raises the possibility that you [Tim] know fine well that a lot of your input at this site is without a firm scientific basis.” What specific statements did I make that were without firm scientific basis?
Bryan says:
Fine…but you are nitpicking again. I used “condensed greenhouse gas” as a reference to water, which is far and away the dominant condensed matter in the atmosphere and hence the one substance besides the greenhouse gases that we most need to worry about absorbing IR radiation.
Bryan,
Yes, I already admitted that there was some inconsistent usage of the word “heat” in our paper. But, can you find any instances of such wording of our paper that cannot be remedied by simple word changes that are easy to figure out? For example, we can change the wording in the above to:
See, you are still playing the pseudo-science game again: You are trying to make a huge point of the fact that our wording was imperfect to distract from the fact that this can be easily remedied with no fundamental changes in anything that we said…and to hide the fact that G&T get the physics ***totally*** wrong. They embarrassingly claim that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law when it does no such thing.
It is just too enticing for you, isn’t it Bryan? Because it is the only game you’ve got. You are the lawyer who knows his client is guilty and is just desperately trying to distract the jury with all sorts of technicalities. Pathetic.
Normal science:
* Someone notes an imprecise use of language.
* That language is corrected or (for something already published) it is discussed how the language can easily be corrected.
* Everyone moves on to discuss the science.
Pseudoscience:
* Someone notes an imprecise use of language.
* That language is corrected.
* Person peddling pseudoscience continues to harp incessantly about the use of language…and to purposely misinterpret anything that is or was said rather than seeing if the well-discussed way to correct the language now allows for a sensible interpretation of what was said.
* In the meantime, the same person peddling pseudoscience continues to refuse to explain what was meant in a scientific paper (G&T) in which it was the physics, not the language, that was the problem. He hopes that maybe people won’t notice that there is NO plausible interpretation of this paper that makes any sense. As long as he doesn’t have to provide one, then continuing to attack those who have pointed out the fatal errors in this paper may leave people believing this paper (G&T) is not nonsense.
Pseudoscience is disingenuous and morally bankrupt. Those who peddle it are the enemies of true scientific discourse. Their goal is not to instill knowledge but to help spread ignorance.
Tim – as disingenuous as ever.
###
Phil – what is so difficult to understand about Light energies not producing heat?
Are you still confusing artificial intensity as in lasers with the natural world?
Reflection and Absorption:
http://replay.web.archive.org/20080613152223/http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/SCHOOL/mt/mt001b_1.html
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/soes/staff/tt/eh/optics.html
http://www.pol-us.net/lllt/phototherapy.html
From the above: “When a photon is absorbed by a molecule, the electrons of that molecule are raised to a higher energy state. This excited molecule must lose its extra energy, and it can do this either by re-emitting a photon of longer wavelength (i.e, lower energy than the absorbed photon) as fluorescence or phosphorescence, or it can lose energy by giving off heat, or it can lose energy by undergoing photochemistry. Photobiological responses are the result of photochemical and/or photophysical changes produced by the absorption of nonionizing radiation.”
So, different wavelengths from the Sun have photons of different sizes and other distinct properties one from the other with different effects in organic matter, the Earth.
Light energies are not in themselves thermal. Thermal IR is Heat is Thermal IR on the move from one location to another.
Light energies are highly reflective. What is not absorbed by plant life on land and in seas and their energies used or stored for photosynthesis is reflected and continues to be reflected and transmitted – they are not heat producing energies. They are benign. Just like Carbon Dioxide is benign.. During photosynthesis Oxygen is released, half of our Oxygen in the atmosphere produced by plants life on land, half by plant life in the oceans.
These energies, the Solar of the AGWScience Energy Budget KT97 as depicted, CANNOT convert to heat the land and oceans to raise the Earth’s global temperature the amount claimed, or produce the amount of Thermal IR claimed radiated out from the Earth because of this.
The Heat we feel from the Sun is Thermal IR.
The Solar energies of AGWScience as above Energy Budget claim and here again claimed by Ira, are not Thermal, we do not feel these as Heat, not from the Sun, not from a lightbulb. They are not hot.
Pigs can fly in AGWScience Ga-Ga Land.