Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
What should a responsible Skeptic say to an astute audience? When recently invited by the “Technology, Engineering, and Science Plus” group in my community to give a talk and answer questions, I knew I would have an attentive room of tech-savvy professionals. However, they might not be fully tuned in to the details of the Global Warming controversy. Furthermore, they were likely to have opinions closer to the supposed “mainsteam science” orientation than mine.
In this posting, I’ve summarized the main points I think are most likely to align people who are both intelligent and reasonable to the Skeptic side. My Powerpoint (with talking points for each chart in the Notes section under each slide) is available [click here] for you to use and adapt as you wish.
A. Basic Climate Science – Water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and other “greenhouse” gases cause the Earth Surface to be warmer than it would be if the Atmosphere was just nitrogen.
- Light energy from the Sun warms the Earth System, which consists of our Atmosphere and the Surface. Based on satellite measurements, the Sun provides 1366 Watts per square meter (W/m^2) at the Top of the Atmosphere. After accounting for the Earth’s spherical shape and albedo (reflectiveness), the absorbed energy averages out to about 240 W/m^2 for each square meter.
- To maintain a relatively constant mean temperature, Output Energy must equal Input Energy, so the Earth System must emit about 240 W/m^2 out to Space, which it does.
- We call the Input Energy “light” because we can see (much of) it. We call the Output Energy “heat” because we can feel it. However, whether it is “short wave” energy from the very hot Sun, or “long wave” from the more moderate Earth System, we know that energy is fungible. 240 W/m^2 of one type is equal, power-wise, to 240 W/m^2 of the other. A Watt is a Watt, no matter what :^)
- But, there is an “issue” – if we consider the Earth System as a “black body”, according to the laws of physics, for the Earth System to emit 240 W/m^2, it would have to be at a temperature of only 255 Kelvin, where Kelvins are degrees Celsius above absolute zero. (The Earth System is not exactly a black body, but it is close enough for our purposes here.)
- You may remember that anything above absolute zero emits radiant energy and that 0.0 Kelvin corresponds to -273ºC or -460ºF. The “issue” is that the Earth Surface has a mean temperature closer to 288 Kelvin, corresponding to about +15ºC or +59ºF. In other words, the Surface is about 33ºC or 58ºF warmer than the “black body” formula would indicate. How to explain this added warmth?
- The generally accepted explanation is the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect”. This is true science, but the name is somewhat misleading because a glass greenhouse works mostly by restricting convection while the Atmospheric effect works mostly by restricting radiation. I use “scare quotes” around “greenhouse” to acknowledge this semantic issue.
- The Atmosphere passes most of the “short wave” energy from the Sun and absorbs most of the “long wave” energy from the Surface. The absorbed energy warms the Atmosphere and is re-emitted in all directions at a variety of “long wave” wavelengths. A portion of radiation from the Atmosphere passes out the Top of the Atmosphere to Space. A portion is emitted in the downward direction and is absorbed by the Surface. This absorbed radiant energy accounts for most of the extra 33ºC or 58ºF.
- A variety of gases in the Atmosphere, primarily water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2), absorb and re-emit “long wave” radiation. These are called “greenhouse gases”.
B. Divergent Views – There is a valid, science-based argument between people I refer to as Warmists, Lukewarmers, and Skeptics. I distinguish their reasoned views from the far out, unscientific rantings of people I refer to as Alarmists and their equal and opposite reaction opponents, who I call Disbelievers.
- VP Al Gore was not the first Alarmist, but his public lectures and his Nobel and Oscar-winning movie, An “Inconvenient” Truth, probably did more than anything else to bring Global Warming Alarmism to the fore in the consciousness of the major media and the general population.
- The scene depicted above was the highlight of his presentation.
- Gore displays the Ice Core record of the past 600,000 years for CO2 (red) and Temperature (blue). He points out the undoubted correlation between the two parameters. When one goes up so does the other. When one goes down, the other does as well. He points out that the then current CO2 level is considerably higher than that of the past 600,000 years, and he projects the future levels of CO2 assuming it continues to rise at current rates. So far, this is all true.
- Dramatically ascending high above the stage on his motorized platform, he implies that mean temperatures will rise in proportion to the CO2. (My graphic is annotated in dashed blue to show the implied warming.) If that happens, he warns, more and more of the polar ice will melt, causing the seas to rise and flooding coastal areas. The ground under the polar ice will be exposed, further reducing the albedo of the Surface and causing further warming. We will reach a tipping point with runaway Global Warming.
- The villain of Gore’s story is the human race and our habit of burning ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) that release unprecedented amounts of CO2. This scene, more than any other event, is most likely responsible for the birth of what has come to be known as Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, CAGW. In other words, catastrophe due to human-caused Global Warming. It has become the mantra of the Alarmists and an excuse for governments to regulate all fossil fuels as well as land use that affects albedo. Since all industry and agriculture and civilized life itself depends upon fossil fuels and land use, the Alarmists give suitably oriented politicos an excuse to regulate and tax and restrict virtually everything. We outdoors types will need an indulgence from the government every time we pass wind. And, we can forget about lighting a campfire :^).
- But, as the annotations in my graphic above show, there is a fundamental “Inconvenient” truth about the ice core data. It has absolutely nothing to say about the current Global Warming controversy! Gore was misleading the media and the public when he implied that rising CO2 levels would cause corresponding increases in mean temperatures. In particular, as any scientist who took a close look at the ice core data would see, and as I show in the inset graph in the upper left corner, Temperature always rises eight-hundred or more years before CO2 increases. The same is true in the other direction. The Temperature falls eight-hundred or more years prior to CO2 decreases. What this shows, if anything, is that TEMPERATURE CAUSES CO2, or, that something else causes both to change, with CO2 lagging by hundreds of years. Gore got the direction of causation backwards.
- When the falsehood of this implied causation was pointed out, Gore’s apologists claimed that it was a minor matter and, after all, despite the 800-year lag, both Temperature and CO2 were up together and down together for about 5/6ths of the record. Besides, they said, we are currently burning historically unprecedented amounts of fossil fuel, and, we know that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas”, and so on and on. But, the truth is still that the ice core record is of a time when there were no humans to burn fossil fuels, so why did Gore bring it up since it has no relationship to our current situation? Raw, unfettered Alarmism has had its effect on the media, the political class, and we common citizens who have to pay the costs of the phony CAGW panic.
- In politics, as in physics, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. In the Case of CAGW, that opposite (and equally false) reaction is what I call Disbeliever AGW or DAGW. These are people who use pseudo-scientific arguments in their claim that humans have had absolutely no hand in the mean temperature rise of the past century, or that there has been no temperature rise, or that the basic science of the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” is untrue, and so on. I do not like to be to critical of the DAGW crowd because, when it comes to general political decisions, they are more likely than not to agree with me than my opponents, but my academic integrity and ethical duty as a licensed professional engineer require me to state what I see as the error of their arguments. (As I have in my WUWT Visualizing series [1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
- Having dismissed what I regard as the unscientific Alarmists and Disbelievers, that leaves us with three groups that, for the most part, use rational science-base arguments for their diverse views. Of course, every member of each group has somewhat different views, and any attempt to divide them into three distinct types is bound to cross some lines. So, please consider my grouping as approximate.
- Carbon sensitivity, which is the estimate of how much mean temperatures will increase if CO2 doubles from historical or current levels, is one way to determine which of the the three groups a person belongs to. The Warmists tend to accept the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate of 2.0ºC to 4.5ºC. The Skeptics tend to set carbon sensitivity much lower, perhaps 0.2ºC to 1ºC. The third group, which I call Lukewarmers, would suggest 1ºC to 3ºC.
- How much of the rise in CO2 is attributable to human use of fossil fuels is also estimated differently. Warmists would blame humans for nearly all of it, while Skeptics would say less than half. Similarly, the blame for the supposed 0.8ºC rise in mean temperatures since 1880 is mostly attributed to human activities, while Skeptics say that data bias “adjustments” by the official climate record keepers is responsible for about a third of the supposed warming, and that natural cycles, over which humans have no control, are responsible for about half of it, leaving only 0.1ºC (or maybe up to 0.2ºC) to human responsibility. Lukewarmers are somewhere in-between.
- Skeptics have well-justified suspicions that the official climate data keepers were “cooking the books” to lend whatever support they could to the highest estimates of carbon sensitivity. Around the year 2000, US Mean Temperature data was “adjusted” down by 0.1 to 0.2ºC for years prior to the 1970’s, and upwards by 0.2 to 0.3ºC for years after the 1970’s, increasing supposed warming by 0.3 to 0.5ºC.
- The surfacestations.org project published photos of official temperature measurement stations that were very near artificial sources of heat, with most being in the lowest two of the five quality levels established by the government. The poor quality stations were compared to nearby well-located stations. There were large temperature deltas that could only be accounted for if the the stations now poorly-located were originally well-located, but had been influenced by nearby development, such as paved parking lots, buildings, and air conditioning vents.
- According to a figure in the 1990 IPCC report, 1100 to 1300 AD saw temperatures in the northern hemisphere that were higher than current levels. However, the IPCC 2001 report included the infamous so-called “hockey stick” chart that managed to make the Medieval Warm Period of about 1000 years ago disappear! (My Powerpoint set includes charts with evidence of each of the aforementioned issues.)
- These suspicions were not fully confirmed until 2009 when someone (probably an inside whistle-blower) released emails and computer code from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, and, later that year, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request yielded a stash from the US NASA-GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies).
C. Climategate – UK Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails and the US NASA GISS FOIA emails. What they tell us about the published Global Warming data.
- I refer to the CRU as the Climategate Research Unit or, more simply, the Fudge Factory because the words “fudge factor” appear in their computer code. Phil Jones, PhD, is the CRU Director. He confirmed suspicions about the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph when, in an email, he called it “Mike’s Nature trick” (because a version of that graph appeared in a paper by Dr. Michael Mann in the prestigious journal Nature ). He also wrote that the “trick” was designed to “hide the decline” in tree ring proxy data. The tree-ring expert associated with CRU, Keith Brifa, PhD, admits, in one of the emails that “the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago”. (My Powerpoint set includes slides with direct quotes from the Climategate materials.)
- Moving on to the FOIA emails from GISS, it is interesting to note that their HQ, in New York City, happens to be in the same building as the famous restaurant where Jerry Seinfeld dined with George, Kramer, and Elaine. (It was never revealed what Kramer did for a living – perhaps he was the chief analyst at GISS :^)
- The most revealing email from GISS is reproduced above. It was from Makiko Sato, PhD to her Boss, GISS-Director James Hansen, PhD, detailing the seven different analyses and comparisons of US mean temperatures for 1934 and 1998. The later year was the hottest in the 1990’s, so it was, let us say “inconvenient” that 1934, according to data published by GISS in 1999, was over 0.5ºC warmer. If Global Warming was almost entirely due to recent human activities, and was accelerating, how could the 1930 have been warmer?
- Just as the Hockey Stick made the Medieval Warm Period disappear, GISS tried mightily to make 1934 cooler than 1998, but only succeeded in reducing the 0.5ºC lead into a dead heat. Notice that the 0.5ºC “adjustment” is more than half the supposed total warming since 1880.
- I would like to trust the work of taxpayer-supported science, but, it seems, we must rely on President Reagan’s advice regarding the old Soviet Union, “Trust, but verify!”
D. What We Can and Should Do – Energy policy (cap and trade scam vs carbon tax). Efficiency, conservation, “green“, and renewable sources.
- I am quite sure that Global Warming is REAL (i.e. the mean temperature of the Surface has increased by 0.5 to 0.6ºC since 1880) but, most of that increase is due to Natural Cycles over which we humans have no control.
- However, the warming is PARTLY Due to Rising CO2 Levels and human actions are PART of the Cause.
- There is not and never has been any real danger of catastrophe or even of serious net detriment to human life due to increased CO2 levels. Indeed, modest increases in these parameters are most likely a net benefit.
- However, we Skeptics have to be realistic in the current political climate. Like it or not (and I do not like it) the official climate “Team” (i.e., the “Hockey Team” :^) has convinced the political and media establishment, and much of the population that something has to be done. We cannot fight something with nothing, so we need something more than a passive policy of do nothing because nothing is necessary.
- Therefore, I favor reduction of the carbon footprint by efficiency, conservation, recycling, and so on, plus the introduction, if and when economically practical of so-called “Green” energy, including Nuclear, Water, Wind, Biomass and, particularly, “Clean” Coal.
- If nothing else, these will do minimum harm and, if successful, will reduce US dependence upon foreign oil. We have spent, and continue to sacrifice too much blood and treasure protecting our access, and that of our allies, to energy from unstable regions of the world.
- As for the Cap and Trade scam, it is a Politician’s Delight that rewards powerful Interests, wrecks the economy, and will NOT significantly reduce carbon emissions. It seems to me that some countries and US states that have adopted Cap and Trade have realized their folly and are backing away from it.
- You may be surprised that I favor some version of a straight Carbon Tax, collected at the mine, well, and port, with the proceeds returned on an equal basis to citizens and legal residents. Yes, James Hansen and (pardon the expression Ralph Nader) also favor it, but, so do conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal, and others on the right. My support for this tax is based on what I wrote above, “We cannot fight something with nothing” and “We have spent, and continue to sacrifice too much blood and treasure protecting our access, and that of our allies, to energy from unstable regions of the world.”
I’m interested in your critique and comments. (My Powerpoint presentation is available [click here] for you to use and adapt as you wish..)
Jim Masterson says:
” By the way, since light travelling through water or glass goes slower than c, are the photons aware of passing time? 🙂 ”
I’ve asked my pet photon. He says there’s no time elapsed between emission and absorption. It’s in the nature of photons, no matter how fast we think they’re traveling. To them it’s all the same. 🙂
# # #
Tim Folkerts,
Since you never disputed my post of June 5, 2011 at 8:42 pm, are we in agreement that my hypothesis remains unfalsified?
Matt G:
Except near IR is not red-visible as you just stated, it is invisible IR. Some people and even some climatologists and books try so hard to totally ignore all of this solar IR warming but none of their definitions are correct, it is manufactured words to prove a fallacy, a figment in someone’s imagination. IR is not visible and much of solar radiation is IR..
wayne says:
June 8, 2011 at 2:21 pm
I thought near IR was in this range (0.7-1) to 5 µm?
Matt G says:
June 8, 2011 at 10:44 am
I have looked further into the absorption coefficients for water and this link near the bottom shows them quite well. Firstly, I have to agree with your doubts about blue visible light with water. It is not good at absorbing blue visible light, but incorrect to suggest that it doesn’t absorb at all. It is fair to say that blue visible light is the poorest at absorption in visible band because it has the lowest coefficient, travels the furthest and the colour we see with out own eyes, is mainly the one which is generally not being absorbed. It is absorbed eventually, but takes much further to absorb it. This is turn causes the water to warm per mm much less than other visible bands, but warms this little amount for a much further distance.
Firstly, I don’t have any doubts at all about how Blue light acts in water, it is bog standard real world science, it doesn’t heat water. Blue light is transmitted through water by being briefly ‘absorbed’, its miniscule wavelength impinging only long enough to shoot it back out again, to reflect it, as do the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the sky. I am using the word reflect loosely here, specific types of reflection have specific terms attached depending on the way light travels, suffice to say that here reflection is merely passing along the colour, in other words, its energy is being used to ‘create’ light. It is not strong enough to do anything else in water any more than it can pit is puny energy against the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the sky, which ‘bounce’, absorb briefly and reflect back out scattering it. The blue colour we see the sea is blue light that has not been absorbed to be used in chemical changes such as photosynthesis and is being reflected back at us from the water molecules, just as the green we see plants is the colour that plants do not absorb but reflect back out. Highly energetic means only that a wavelength moves more rapidly in the the same distance, it is smaller. Blue light travels further in water because of this, until it gets to a depth where its energy can’t take it any further.
So, ‘absorption’ includes being reflected out back the way it came, which our eyes pick up in seeing the sea as blue, of being actually absorbed and used as in chemical transformations of water and carbon dioxide into sugars in photosynthesis, and by running out of puff. The depths of the ocean are dark because no more light reaches them, which can also be described as ‘absorption’.
This new system of posting is extremely irritating, there must be something wrong with their coding.
Please see http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/light/u12l2c.cfm on how light reflects back out, scatters and transmits. I don’t know how this fits in with your absorption coefficients, too much maths and I don’t have time to translate into english. Ditto what Wayne noticed, infrared is invisible. Near infrared behaves as do the shorter wavelengths of visible, which is how near infrared cameras work, because the camera captures the light reflected back from the subject, thermal infrared cameras are different, they pick up on the heat coming out from the subject.
Sorry, the first paragraph should be in italics, quoting Matt G, the rest is mine.
I was searching around in the files on my laptop and discovered that there is more to the insight the character in my novel had. For some reason the full insight did not make it into the free online version of my novel.
Here is the full version of the insight. Anyone know what it means?
Spacetime curves, but light goes straight
Just as Time is incoherent without motion, Space is incoherent without material.
So, there must be an equivalency relationship between motion and material.
I think it may apply to gravitational lensing, as the material in the Universe is what causes “Space to curve” and motion is what causes “Time to advance”.
I know most of the range that I was discussing is actually near IR, only around 0.7-1.0µm that it seems there is a little overlapping going through red visible into near IR. (only meant some of this range to be red visible) Most of the thermal infrared where warms the one meter depth of the ocean was in the near IR band. (shortwave)
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
The visble light interacts with the rotational bonds of water, this is how it warms the ocean. (near IR is even more effective) The reason why blue visible light is still absorbed is due too that not only was this actually measured, but the blue colour you see is not that convincing. If it was 100 percent reflected you would see a much more complete blue.
Matt G
Re range of near IR.
If if wasn’t odd enough having this conversation in two places on WUWT, I misposted a reply to Wayne and you and on JoNova’s site, you might have missed it because I meant to but forgot to mention here it was also to you. Anyway, it’s about IR bands: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/so-what-is-the-second-darn-law/comment-page-9/#comment-332060
Matt G – please see the wikipedia page Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water.
It makes the point that all absorption is in the infrared and the rest of the spectrum having no effect to speak of. This is because visible is reflected while thermal ir is absorbed and has the power to move the molecules creating heat. This is the simple division in traditional physics between Light and Heat energies as encapsulated on the NASA page, which simply divides it into far and near. Far the thermal, the heat we feel from the Sun and from a fire, near not felt hot.
Near ir is reflective as are the visible colours and do not created heat, but builds up to thermal – all the longer heat energies are around the peak amount. Since AGWScience says thermal IR does not reach the Earth’s surface and is not creating heat here we know it is spouting BS. If we can feel the heat from the sun so can the oceans and land.
Be aware too, as demonstrated here, that there are some promoting AGWScience who really do know traditional physics, and actively work to confuse. As Ira catching Tim’s ‘in joke’ about the ocean being blue because all the blue light is absorbed and none escapes, came back with the real reason we see the sea as blue, because blue light is reflected, but then added a /sarc to make it appear not true. Make of them what you will.
We see the sea as blue because it reflects the sky, which is blue because blue light from the sun scatters in the atmosphere and appears to come from all directions (because of blue light’s short wavelength). Nothing to do with the sea water. Except that it’s reflective.
Brian Hall – please see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1312335/posts
See Figure 2 on that page for further explanation, same as the wiki extra info:
Water doesn’t absorb the visible spectrum but reflects it, within that the minute differences between the different colours are enough to give us a blue sea. Our world is full of such wonders, be aware that some are deliberately working to prevent your true appreciation of it.
Water is a very strong absorber of thermal infrared, Heat, and reflects back and transmits through visible light, it is transparent to visible light and near infrared which acts as these shorter waves do. See transmission here: http://ledlight.osram-os.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Optical-Principals.pdf
Thanks Myrrh for your link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water which does indeed have a graph that shows that the absorption of water is minimum for Blue Light. However, since the reflectivity of water is less than 10% for light at angles within +/- 55º of normal, over 90% of Blue light is NOT reflected and the light energy must therefore be absorbed by the water.
The main impact of the low absorption of water for Blue light is that Blue light must penetrate further down before all of it gets absorbed. That is why, when we see photos of deep-sea divers, the water looks Blue. The other colors of visible light are absorbed nearer the surface and therefore it is mainly the Blue light that penetrates down to their level. However, given deep water, the 90% or more of Blue light that is not reflected by the water surface is eventually absorbed, adding to the Solar energy contribution to the temperature of the Earth.
Brian Hall is also correct that the reason the sky looks Blue is because the Atmosphere scatters Blue light more than other visible light and the reflectivity of the sea surface, particularly for light that strikes the surface at shallow angles, is mainly of the Blue sky.
Brian Hall – happened yesterday and today, I kept typing brain instead of brian.. Don’t be confused by the Ira/Tim duet being played out in these discussions, they both know very well that blue light can’t heat water because they’re not powerful enough to move heavy water molecules into vibrational/rotational states and the confusion created by the terms used in different contexts is a muddy puddle for them to splash around in to promote and even create more nonsense memes, all to keep pushing that Light energies from the Sun which are not capable of creating heat in organic matter and that actual real thermal energies from the Sun, Heat transported by electromagnetic waves which do heat organic matter especially so water, plays no part in this. This is AGWScience, it is basic gobbledegook. It is the same basic gobbledegook creation which has people believing that oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide behave as ideal gases. Until you look closely into this, or unless you are already a practical applied scientist in the particular field or otherwise well educated in it, it can be difficult to see the joins where a real statement is followed by gobbledegook and the gobbledegook promoted by association.
Please see my analysis above of the way this has been done with temperatures of the Earth with and without ‘greenhouse’ gases – what is the meme in popular current usage from that? That the Earth would be -18°C without greenhouse gases. What are the ‘greenhouse gases’ which actually give that figure? The REAL greenhouse gases of our atmosphere, all of them, nitrogen and oxygen predominantly. Our whole atmosphere is the real greenhouse around the planet Earth, and like a real greenhouse where we have to regulate the temperature by opening and shutting windows, putting in and taking out heat, our Earth does this naturally. Mixing up contexts is the method used to create belief in the imaginary AGWScience world, through the looking glass with them they attempt to make you believe any number of impossible things.
The context they are mixing up here are these, the use of the concept reflection in the difference between Light and Heat in thermal understanding of these energies, and reflection in the specific sense it is also used in optics and the science of reflection of light waves.
Much as it is interesting to look into the optical detail where the paths of reflection of Light have different names, they are all kinds of REFLECTION. The paths through water have both internal and external reflections, the difference between a clear still lake reflecting the mountains around is obvious direct reflection, the lake acting like a mirror, while in the oceans the transmission of light include refraction when the speed of the medium, the difference between air and water changes the speed light travels and therefore changes the path of light by splitting it at the boundary, some to be reflected back and some to transmit through the water, where there is internal reflection exiting in different paths in diffusion. Like a rainbow created by light which travels at different speeds through a medium depending on the colour gets split up by defraction and re-emitted by internal reflection scattered in all directions. These Light energies are highly energetic because they are very small, being very small they do not carry any punch, they act on the atomic level and briefly agitate such which then emits the same lightwave as it settles down, no heat is being created, merely Light being Reflected.
The energies carrying Heat are bigger, longer, more powerful, not only able to withstand being knocked every which way by molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the gas Air of our atmosphere, which scatter the puny Light energies and spit them out remaining unaffected by them, but the Heat energies are powerful enough to move the molecules of water themselves, to agitate them, to affect them. Which is how water in both our atmosphere and in our oceans gets heated by these electromagnetic energies carrying Heat, by actually moving them, agitating them which creates heat, raises their temperature.
The difference in size between Near Infrared which is closer to the shorter smaller more energetic meaning moving more quickly in the same distance puny nervy Visible and the bigger, longer, slower more powerful Thermal Infrared, is between the microscopic size of near and the pin head size of thermal. Which then do you think is actually carrying more energy to affect organic matter when energy means power to change something?
So, interesting as this foray into optics has been, the bottom line is that the “Solar” energies of the AGWScience fiction Energy Budget are REFLECTIVE, not THERMAL, they do not get ABSORBED but REFLECTED by the big heavy molecules of nitrogen, oxygen and water. The thermal energies get absorbed when their energy is used up creating heat.
So Ira’s nonsense in the opening to this discussion that ‘light from the Sun is called light because we see so much of it’, is gobbledegook and an insult to real science analysis which has already categorised Light as REFLECTIVE because they are reflected away; puny speedy pin balls in a pin ball machine of big weighty molecules of nitrogen and oxygen scattered across the sky and the heavy molecules of water in the oceans. They are not absorbed, they are reflected away by these heavy molecules in the transparent to Light mediums of the fluid gaseous Air of our atmosphere and the fluid liquid water of our oceans. (Our atmosphere is not empty space, but the FLUID gas AIR; liquid Water is also a FLUID, in contrast to SOLID, and stuff moves different through fluids and solids; CONVECTION is the method of transport through FLUIDS.)
Water has an extremely big capacity to HOLD HEAT. Thermal infrared radiation having heated the molecules of water by moving them and so giving up the heat energy it is carrying plays no further part, it is absorbed in this, and the heated water molecules then pass on the heat through convection. Heat always travels from the hotter to the colder, so these will pass that heat energy on by moving the colder molecules around them, raising their temperature by giving up, losing, their some or all of their heat and so on. This is the real NET effect of heat tranfer, in molecules gaining from the molecules losing heat by giving up their own as they in turn do, until an equilibrium comes about.
Light waves are not absorbed by the water in oceans as Ira says in his last post to me, blue light travels the furthest but eventually simply stops, its energy is not eternal that ‘something has to absorb it to make it stop’ giving the opportunity for more science fiction deliberate confusion by playing with the word ‘absorb’.
Blue and Red Visible, and also near IR at greater depths than visible red can reach, is ABSORBED by plant life in the oceans in photosynthesis, where their energy is used not to create heat but to effect a chemical change, to produce sugars. These do not have any noticeable affect on actual water molecules, see chart, they are NOT ABSORBED BY THE MOLECULES OF WATER, THEY ARE REFLECTED AWAY. Heat energy of thermal infrared is absorbed by water in the creation of heat.
It’s these invisible Heat energies, Thermal Infrared, which warm you up by penetrating your body and causing the water of which we’re predominantly composed, to heat up. Light energies enter and are quickly reflected back out of the body, that’s why you cast a shadow and we can’t see inside you.
REFLECTIVE and THERMAL are the
But back to this and the deliberate confusion being generated by AGWScience fiction supporters.
We see colours because they are the wavelengths being reflected back to our eyes.
This new system is utterly daft. I have lost half of my last post and the box below input is showing my previous post to Brian Hall, not the one with the lost second half. Unless someone is messing with it. I have lost several posts I had written while trying to get replies out to Matt G.
[nobody is messing with anything . . kb]
Ah, OK, my bad this last call. But, then why have I been losing posts and now still seeing the same post to Brain, aka Brian I posted yesterday rather than the latest?
Myrrh, do you accept the scientific concept of conservation of energy (and matter)? If so, you have to explain where the energy in the Blue light goes as it travels down through the depths of the water and becomes dimer and dimmer until it cannot be seen. Yes, some of it is taken up in chemical reactions by bacteria in the sea, but most of that energy is absorbed by water molecules.
Indeed, as I acknowledged, your link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water shows that absorption of Blue light by water is much less than that of other visible light, but it is not zero. Therefore, as we both agree, the Blue light penetrates further below the surface, but, eventually, in your words it “eventually simply stops”, and in my words (and scientific truth) it is eventually totally absorbed.
Consider a straight and level section of railroad track. Take a train car (or carriage as you might call it) and impart it with kinetic energy by giving it a hefty push so it is moving at 1 MPH. Of course, we both know it will eventually stop. But why? The only reasonable, scientific explanation is that the kinetic energy we imparted to the train car must be conserved. Therefore, it did not “simply stop”, but it kept moving until every Joule of energy was transformed, by friction, to heat, in the wheel bearings, along the tracks, and even into the air as the train car moved along from the place where it started until it stopped. If we ran this experiment in a vacuum and with perfectly friction-less bearings and hard, smooth tracks, the train car would never stop.
Thus, the portion of the Solar spectrum that is in the wavelength range we call “Blue” has X amount of energy when it enters the top of the Atmosphere. Some of that energy is reflected back to Space by the air molecules, some by clouds, and some by light colored materials on the Surface. Some of that energy is scattered and eventually comes down to the Surface at shallow angles which is why the sky looks Blue. Some of that energy is absorbed by air molecules.
However, the majority of the Blue light energy comes down at angles that are steep enough such that, when the Blue light strikes the ocean surface, 90% or more of it penetrates and is gradually absorbed by the water. Since energy is conserved, that Blue light energy must warm the water and is partially responsible for the mean Surface temperature of the Earth.
If you accept the scientific principle of conservation of energy (and matter) you should accept the basic truth of this explanation. If you do not believe in conservation of energy (and matter), and you think that energy can “simply stop” and go away with no further trace, you (IMHO) have no right to be part of a science-based conversation.
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
June 12, 2011 at 10:31 am
Re my: “Light waves are not absorbed by the water in oceans as Ira says in his last post to me, blue light ravels the furthest but eventually simply stops, its energy is not eternal that ‘something has to absorb it to make it stop’ giving the opportunity for more science fiction deliberate confusion by playing with the word ‘absorb’.”
Myrrh, do you accept the scientific concept of conservation of energy ( and matter)?
Irrelevant whether I do or don’t. This isn’t about what I accept or don’t accept, it’s about what real science says about energy/matter in our world against what is claimed by AGWScience fiction..
If so, you have to explain where the energy in the Blue light goes as it travels down through the depths of the water and becomes dimer and dimmer until it cannot be seen.
As before Ira, I don’t have to explain anything, I’m just hanging around waiting for my coffee that you’re going to make me when you prove that Blue visible light heats water..
Who says it gets dimmer and dimmer? Scattering doesn’t make the light dimmer. The light is simply reflected off into another direction. If you like, you can think of its energy being used to propel it in another direction, there, energy conserved, happy now? But, you really need to stop thinking about ‘highly energetic’ as meaning ‘more powerful’, your shirt stops the even more highly energetic UV. These waves are tiny tiny tiny. They bounce off atoms. They’re not big or strong enough to move molecules around. They’re the tiny balls whizzing around a pin ball machine, bouncing off the atoms which hardly move at all because these light waves are so piddlingly small and insignificant to them.
Indeed, as I acknowledged, your link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_absorption_by_water shows that absorption of Blue light by water is much less than that of other visible light, but it is not zero.
Not my link, I didn’t put it in as a link and deliberately so. Come off it Ira, it is for all practical purposes zero. Visible is not absorptive. Absorptive is all in the Infrared. That’s exactly what it is saying.
These are LIGHT energies, they’re REFLECTIVE, in contrast to HEAT energies, which are ABSORPTIVE.
Heat energy changes, affects, the whole MOLECULE, sets it spinning and vibrating, the electromagnetic energy carrying HEAT is used in raising the temperature of the molecule AND IN DOING SO IT IS ABSORBED. That’s what is meant when we talk of absorbed and not absorbed here in the difference. Thermal Infrared is the energy which converts to heat, that’s what it does in the real world. Visible and the shortwave either side cannot do this, because they are incapable of doing it. They are not absorbed. They are reflected.
These energies are QUITE DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER. Light energies are electronic, Heat energies vibrational. Going into further detail is irrelevant here, what is important is to understand that these are different and the one can’t do the job of the other. Visible Light in the AGWScience Energy Budget CANNOT convert to heat the land and oceans as it is claimed.
Stick with the basic bog standard traditional understanding of the differences, one is Light the other is Heat. If you remember Light is Reflective, Heat is Absorptive, then you can’t go wrong.
Therefore, as we both agree, the Blue light penetrates further below the surface, but, eventually, in your words it “eventually simply stops”, and in my words (and scientific truth) it is eventually totally absorbed.
But it’s not a scientific truth when it comes to using absorbed in the context of the difference between Light and Heat energies.
Don’t get hung up on ‘absorbed’ any more than getting hung up on ‘reflected’, in the fine detail these are used and further divided into different effects in relation to different matter. It is more than sufficient to remember that Light is reflective and does not create heat, their energies are bounced away, Heat energies create heat, convert to heat, they are absorbed.
The AGWScience fiction Energy Budget is Gobbledegook because the qualities and properties of HEAT have been given to LIGHT.
AGWScience fiction is constantly doing this, misappropriating terms from one context and applying to something in another.
Yes, some of it is taken up in chemical reactions by bacteria in the sea, but most of that energy is absorbed by water molecules.
Some estimate the photosynthesis of the oceans to be 75% of the total of land and seas. There’s more than ‘bacteria’ in the oceans.. As photosynthesis produces 98% of our Oxygen in addition to helping create abundant life, I’d say this is where most of that energy goes.
Water does not absorb light energies, they go through one bounce too many relative to their wavelength under more pressure of water the deeper they go and they run out of puff to move any further, and stop. AGAIN, how they actually physically do this in all its fascinating but irrelevant detail you can explore at your leisure.
Light energies do not get absorbed to create heat in water, water is a transparent medium for them, they just pass right on through, reflecting as they go.
Bouncy bouncy every which way down until they’re stopped. And when they’re stopped, they are not creating heat any more than could do when they were moving. Lights go out, where does their energy go when you switch off the light?
Don’t get hung up on ‘absorbed’, the OCEAN absorbs the Light, it doesn’t notice it any more when it’s done so, than we notice the bacteria in us working busily away keeping us healthy.
The real problem here, in and through all AGWScience fiction, is there is absolutely zero appreciation of scale. You’re all so one dimensional in your beliefs about the properties of stuff, you don’t have any. Because one dimensional stuff isn’t anything. Your AGWScience understanding of energy is all fiction because of it, because your energy is one dimensional. None of your one dimensional stuff has any properties particular to it and which relate to and interact in different ways with other real stuff.
Consider a straight and level section of railroad track. …..but it kept moving until every Joule of energy was transformed, by friction, to heat, in the wheel bearing, along the tracks, … If we ran this experiment in a vacuum and with perfectly friction-less bearings and hard, smooth tracks, the train car would never stop.
See? Regardless of how many times I’ve mentioned it here, even though you’ve repeated some in agreement as you acknowledge there are chemical changes, but you’ve not quite appreciated that energy can produce simply more non thermal Light, you’re still stuck in your one dimensional AGWScience fiction world where only heat is created by energy, ever hear of work? There are other uses of the energy in that scenario. AGWScience fiction creates perpetual motion here too? Amazing. I really wish your fiction was true, I’m spending even more money than ever having to buy oil to heat my home and it’s bloody cold outside and its June and it should be hot. You think you can create eternal light, where does it go when you switch off your lamp?
Didn’t someone try something like inventing a car that used every bit of energy it genenerated and lost unused and ended up with something that went about 3 miles an hour? Walking speed.
However, the majority of the Blue light energy comes down at angles that are steep enough such that, when the Blue light strikes the ocean surface, 90% or more of it penetrates and is gradually absorbed by the water. Since energy is conserved, that Blue light energy must warm the water and is partially responsible for the mean Surface temperature of the Earth.
Blue Visible Light is Reflective, it does not have the power to move molecules of water to heat. It’s energy is used in bouncing around making such a small impact that it is for all practical purposes, no impact at all, hence transmitted through water which is a transparent medium for it.
Unlike Thermal Infrared, which has a very great affinity for resonating with water (vibrational resonance energy) which means that water is therefore strongly absorbing to Thermal IR. Thermal ir with its more powerful bigger wavelengths gets water molecules into moving and so heats them up. Heat is a powerful energy, you can feel how powerful it is when you stand too close to an open fire, or put your hand on a hot plate that is not quite glowing in visible red and that’s why you spit on an iron rather than use your hand to test if it’s hot enough to iron your shirt which you want to put on to stop those pesky little blighters UV rays from burning you when you go outside. Aha, another oldie but goodie. That’s why we talk of Light rays, not Light energy as if it is like energies capable of doing heavy duty work, internal combustion engine.
If you accept the scientific principle of conservation of energy (and matter) you should accept the basic truth of this explanation. If you do not believe in conservation of energy (and matter), and you think that energy can “simply stop” and go away with no further trace, you (IMHO) have no right to be part of a science-based conversation.
Your one dimensional ‘conservation of energy (and matter)’ is meaningless drivel when you come up to real traditional science which understands there are different ways energy can be conserved because traditional science lives in the real world where energy (and matter) are different shapes and sizes and weights and able to things that another can’t do and affect and interact with each other; not all processes, uses of energy, create heat. Since in your ‘science’ you have none of these things, what makes you think you’ve any right to be part of a science-based conversation?
That’s why AGWScience fiction can think totally nonsensical things about matter without noticing it can’t exist in the real world. That oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide have the qualities of an ideal gas and obey ideal gas law. duh. That Heat flows from colder to hotter. duh. That Light energies convert to heat water. duh. That molecules are moved by Brownian motion to mix thoroughly in the atmosphere which is empty space. double duh
You, generic, really can’t have any idea whatsoever what a ludicrous world these AGWScience fiction premises conjour up because you have no idea of real physics in the real world. You don’t have sound in the AGWScience fiction world, did you know that?
Can you hear me?
Further to what Ira says, you are fundamentally wrong, not even slightly correct, when you say that light and heat radiation are different. From gamma rays down to radio and electrical waves, it’s all EM, it’s all the same stuff, just different frequencies.
And it all ends up as heat. No exceptions. Some delays and side-excursions, which permit life to exploit it etc., but NO DIFFERENCE OTHERWISE.
Get over it. You have thoroughly high-jacked and messed up several interesting threads with your obdurate refusal to learn basic thermodynamics.
Myrrh;
More verbose nonsense.
Move your hand with a small single wave motion about 1 foot, right to left, taking 1 second to do so.
Now, repeat, but move it up and down twice, still in one second, keeping the wave height the same.
Now, again, but with 4 cycles in the same distance and time.
Now with eight cycles. Still hangin’ in?
Now try for sixteen.
When your arm and shoulder cramps and twitches ease off enough, come back and report your observations and conclusions.
Here: wiki/Transparency_and_translucency
Visible Light in Water – reflection and scattering by briefly ‘absorbing’ and bouncing it back out the way it came in, transmission (provided no other absorption mechanisms active) when an electron cannot absorb the energy of the photon and the photon continues on its path.
The selectively absorbs a portion of the photon is what happens when light meets life waiting to absorb some colours in photosynthesis, no heat created in the chemical use of the selected colours and the rest reflected back out.
All ways of Light showing its Reflective properties. Heat creation is zero for Visible and for all practical purposes with all the shortwave. Even UV which can have the effect of burning the skin, is still not felt as heat because it is not a thermal energy – we do not feel it as heat even as it ‘burns’ by messing with the DNA. UV doesn’t penetrate the skin beyond the first layer, the epidermis, it is reflected out. Only when intense in amount, such as high up in mountains or skin unused to it, does it ‘burn’. Sure, even Visible can be artificially intensified to create a high energy drill to burn through something, but this is not Heat energy, but reflective Light which is thoroughly unburning and benign in the natural world.
The AGWScience fiction Energy Budget KT97 and its ilk, is unabashed gobbledegook.
You need to start again.
You will have to work out for yourself when it comes to the description of thermal infrared on that page that water is one such with a strong resonance with it and so highly absorbing. Water also has a high heat capacity, takes longer to heat up and longer to lose the heat. Water is so strange.
Myrrh says:
June 12, 2011 at 3:54 pm
“That’s why AGWScience fiction can think totally nonsensical things about matter without noticing it can’t exist in the real world. That oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide have the qualities of an ideal gas and obey ideal gas law. duh. That Heat flows from colder to hotter. duh. That Light energies convert to heat water. duh. That molecules are moved by Brownian motion to mix thoroughly in the atmosphere which is empty space. double duh
You, generic, really can’t have any idea whatsoever what a ludicrous world these AGWScience fiction premises conjour up because you have no idea of real physics in the real world. You don’t have sound in the AGWScience fiction world, did you know that?
Can you hear me?”
Myrrh
Thanks for your comments and this post.
You are partly answering some of the questions I still had after reading the slayers book and the Postma paper. Not all because I still can not see what happens to light if it does not turn to heat. But I can see logically that it must not be absorbed by the water otherwise it would be black fairly quickly. Is it used in other ways (to create images in the brain) but just not to generate heat.
Hopefully this is not a dumb question. Where does the light go when the light is turned off.
RJ, your last question is a famous one, as is the answer:. It goes the same place your fist goes when you shake hands.
As for your comment that light “must not be absorbed by the water otherwise it would be black fairly quickly”, when divers go down far enough in the sea it does become almost perfectly black and dark. All the Sunlight is absorbed and it as dark as it is at night. They have to bring searchlights to see anything.
RJ – doesn’t look like you’ve seen my last post, should help in sorting out what happens to Visible as it gives the different things it says can and will occur, under UV-Vis: Electronic transitions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency
The ones I’ve been talking about here particularly because relevant to Light v Heat in water are the two in the middle- straight reflection/scattering and transmission.
The reflection/scattering using the energy to simply bounce the photon back out the way it came in, how that actually relates to the angle of incidence/angle of reflection I haven’t looked into, but there are all kinds of internal reflections possible which an optics should explain somewhere. The transmission is the explanation for the photon travelling in the transparent medium water which is the standard term, description of it, how visible light travels through water. The default if nothing else is happening which is using or doing something else with the energy, which means that it has no effect at all on the electrons as it simply passes through the water.
The last of the four has photosynthesis as an example. In photosynthesis the plant selectively takes out blue and red and uses that energy for a chemical change in creating sugars out of carbon dioxide and water. Heat isn’t created directly, this is not heating the plant up, but heat is then later created when the sugars are used to fuel growth and so on. The colours not selected are reflected out, this in plants is the green we see them as the light is reflected back to our eyes. Chemical changes are ‘rearrangements’ of the constituent parts to create something different. As with all these things, it gets more complex the more detailed one goes in it.
The first of the four is a vast field, the links on the wiki page to luminescence, fluorescence and phosphorescence are fascinating reads.
Where does light go when the light is turned off?
Perhaps someone here can enlighten us both..
Myrrh says:
June 12, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
June 12, 2011 at 10:31 am
Re my: “Light waves are not absorbed by the water in oceans as Ira says in his last post to me, blue light ravels the furthest but eventually simply stops, its energy is not eternal that ‘something has to absorb it to make it stop’ giving the opportunity for more science fiction deliberate confusion by playing with the word ‘absorb’.”
Myrrh, do you accept the scientific concept of conservation of energy ( and matter)?
Irrelevant whether I do or don’t. This isn’t about what I accept or don’t accept, it’s about what real science says about energy/matter in our world against what is claimed by AGWScience fiction..,
Yes and real science is something you don’t know the first thing about Myrrh!
Not my link, I didn’t put it in as a link and deliberately so. Come off it Ira, it is for all practical purposes zero. Visible is not absorptive. Absorptive is all in the Infrared. That’s exactly what it is saying.
Absolute crap, visible is typically absorbed in electronic transitions, infrared absorbs in the vibrational spectrum, they both absorb.
These are LIGHT energies, they’re REFLECTIVE, in contrast to HEAT energies, which are ABSORPTIVE.
More nonsense there is no such distinction.
Phil – Visible Light cannot and therefore does not convert to heat the land and oceans of Earth. That comes from bog standard traditional science which I have outlined above. I have also gone to some considerable effort to show that “absorb” is used in different contexts, the context of “absorb” here is in the difference between Light and Heat electromagnetic energy. In this context, Visible is not absorbed to convert to heat as the AGWScience Energy Budget KT97 claims. Because it cannot. It physically cannot. It physically does not. It is Light. Light energies are used, affect, react with matter in a completely different way from the Thermal Infrared electromagnetic wave carrying Heat.
Re my: ” These are LIGHT energies, which are REFLECTIVE, in contrast to HEAT energies which are ABSORPTIVE.”
More nonsense there is no such distinction.
But I’ve just given you the distinction.
You don’t have any distinction in AGWScience fiction, because you’re one dimensional., you don’t have differences between properties of matter and energy.
Read the wiki piece I gave about how real Visible light waves/photons act in the real world. Read the links to the pages on luminescence etc. That information has been gathered over considerable time by a considerable amount of people who have done real work and real thinking exploring the differences between Light and Heat energies. The myriad applications of this knowledge are in real use by real people who all live in our real world.
That there is a difference is a CATEGORY distinction in REAL TRADITIONAL SCIENCE.
mods – i THINK THE INTERFERENCE IS KEY STROKE HACKING.
aND IT’S BLOODY Iirritating.