Reposted from Dr. Roger Pielke Sr’s blog
New Paper “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” By Spencer and Braswell 2011
There is a new paper published which raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions. It is
Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613.
The University of Alabama has issues a news release on it which reads [h/t to Phillip Gentry]
Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades.
In research published this week in the journal “Remote Sensing” http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf, Spencer and UA Huntsville’s Dr. Danny Braswell compared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”
Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks. Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak.
“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained,” Spencer said.
This is the first time scientists have looked at radiative balances during the months before and after these transient temperature peaks.
Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle.
Instead, the natural ebb and flow of clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and a myriad of other factors added to the different time lags in which they impact the atmosphere might make it impossible to isolate or accurately identify which piece of Earth’s changing climate is feedback from manmade greenhouse gases.
“There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that,” Spencer said. “The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.”
For this experiment, the UA Huntsville team used surface temperature data gathered by the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. The radiant energy data was collected by the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
The six climate models were chosen from those used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UA Huntsville team used the three models programmed using the greatest sensitivity to radiative forcing and the three that programmed in the least sensitivity.
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Dr. Spencer has a pdf available. He discussed the findings here.
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Tim Folkerts (july 26,2011 at 3:20pm)
Co2 certainly does absorb the sun’s IR but it does so feebly and at a total concentration of .039% by volume you can forget about it. The absorption of water vapor on the other hand when compared molecule for molecule is thousands of times more powerful.
And now for the greatest lie. The sun’s thermal power lies in the infrared and NOT in the visible.
Of course having everyone believe that visible light is responsible for heating the surface is the cornerstone of the fictional greenhouse effect. Unfortunately it’s not true. The sun does not emit an insignificant fraction in the IR range but is in fact the complete opposite.
“Solar energy can easily pass thru the gases to get to the surface, while thermal IR from the ground gets blocked!”, should read, visible light for the most part can easily pass through the atmosphere but is still subject toscattering, reflection (internal), diffusion, astronomical refraction and terrestrial refraction while the sun’s IR is absorbed by water vapor, on the way down AND on the way up (no blocking).
@Dave Springer says: July 27, 2011 at 8:25 am
////////////////////////////
If DWLWIR could potentially heat something to 300K then you could extract plenty of work. You could take a lump of ice and heatit and there would be a lot of energy release.
My neighbour has an air heat pump. In winter the ambient air temperature at night may be 2 to 8 degC (ocassionally even below zero – very rare). Even when only 2 deg C, this will produce hot water for underfloor heating capable of maintaining a room temperature of 28 to 30 degC.
Dave Springer says:
July 27, 2011 at 9:16 am
Reality bomb. Downwelling IR doesn’t warm the surface. It reduces the rate at which the surface*** can cool. For practical considerations the difference between ‘reduction of cooling rate’ and ‘warming the surface’ is pedantic.
——————————————
Dave,
Does “most” soil not contain moisture as well? As this evaporation takes place does one expect it to behave the same? I’ve seen how farmers in the warmest driest regions need to apply several inches of water thru irrigation a day to avoid a total dry out does this count? What about the water coming directly from the leaves of plants. Does this evaporation count?
Fact is most of the land is evaporating water as well. Just not nearly to the extent of the oceans. But one might even suggest that due to the higher temperatures on land the moisture on land is evaporated more quickly. For instance to make salt, sea water can be damed into a small lake and it evaporates rather quickly.
Thunderstorms = tower heatsinks (like the kinds you see on certain memory DIMMs and CPUs).
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 9:31 am
My neighbour has an air heat pump. In winter the ambient air temperature at night may be 2 to 8 degC (ocassionally even below zero – very rare). Even when only 2 deg C, this will produce hot water for underfloor heating capable of maintaining a room temperature of 28 to 30 degC.
———————————–
Thermodynamics prove how that “heat” pump works… The heat from outside is added to the very cold expanding gas. It never works the other way. Simply amazing.
@Dave Springer says: July 27, 2011 at 8:39 am
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On what page does Tyndal set out an experiment showing that heat flows from cold to hot As opposed to a reduction in the net outflow from the hot body)?
I fail to see the relevance of the “Theory and Operation of NDIR CO2 Sensors” especially as it does not explain how the product records results without the aid of an external energy source such as a battery.
Is there any photo-electric cell which rather than being tuned to the bandwidth of solar radiance, is instead tuned to the bandwith of IR emissions from GHGs? If not why not? After all, such photo electric cells could provide energy at night which is one of the limitations of solar photo-electric cells. Even if such cells were not that powerful, with such a cell, one could have completely free street lighting (substantial expense is incurred in providing street lighting in cities, towns and trunk roads) and of course all domestic lighting.
Ged says:
July 27, 2011 at 8:34 am
“No computer can accurately simulate the folding of a protein”
True. At least for any interesting protein.
“and that’s far simpler, far more straightforward physics than the Earth’s climate”
I wouldn’t go that far. There are many dimensions involved in protein folding. They are generally the placement of hydrophilic and hydrophobic amino acids as well as electrostatic forces to consider. Compounding that is the varying speed at which the unfolded chain emerges from the ribosome. Think of it like grease coming out of a grease gun. Changing the speed of the grease changes the shape it folds into. Redundant RNA triplets that all code for the same amino sequence are not processed at exactly the same speed by the ribosome and it’s also dependent on the exact structure of the ribosome. One thing that used to confound attempts to get bacteria to produce mammalian proteins (like say, insulin) is codon preference. An identical RNA sequence going through a eukaryote ribosome would produce a properly folded protein but going through a prokaryote ribosome produced a useless insoluble product that precipitated out of solution even though it’s amino acid sequence was a perfect copy – it didn’t fold right. What was discovered was that redundant codons matching the prokaryotic ribosome codon preference had to be substituted into the DNA-resident gene coding for that protein so that the polymer folded properly.
More recently it has been discovered that there’s a vast array of helper molecules some of which are called siRNA (small interfering RNA) and miRNA (microRNA) which temporarily bind with the emerging polymer to help it fold properly. These very small RNA molecules composed of just a small number of amino acids, can be translated from a gillion different sites on the DNA molecule and don’t require any of the standard start/stop sequences or adjacent upregulating regions to be transcribed. Moreover these same small RNA sequences can also attach themselves to the DNA molecule itself changing the transcription rates of genes and/or they can bind with transcribed RNA molecules on the way to a ribosome to block the production of the protein they code for. Even more complication is that these small RNAs are heritable from mother to daughter cell during cell division. The kind and ratio of these small RNA molecules floating around in the cytoplasm vary by cell type, cell health, environment, and God only knows how many other ways. When the cell actually divides a portion of the cytoplasm is given to the daughter cell so it’s heritable via that mechanism. Lamarckian evolution, the inheritance of characteristics acquired during the lifetime, long thought disproven has been resurrected in ways we have only begun to understand. The central dogma of molecular biology which states that the flow of information is from DNA to RNA to Protein has been turned on it’s ear by all this which generally falls under the classification of epigenetics. I studied this stuff for several years between 2000 and 2006. There is seemingly no end to the complexity of life at the molecular level and the more we learn the more we discover how little we actually do know. Other deep mysteries are that many genes produce functional proteins when transcribed in one direction, produce a wholly different functional protein when read in the opposite direction, and produce yet other functional proteins when the reading frame is shifted by one or two nucleaic acids. This is known as polyfunctionality and how the hell something that complex ever “evolved” by accident beggars belief. Yet more (I’m just scratching the surface) is exons and introns which are regions in eukaryote genes which direct the transcription to proceed by a snippet from this gene and a snippet from another gene to gather together an ensemble of small portions of many different genes and/or partial collections of an existing gene. Then there is the three dimensional aspect of DNA folding where the insertion of meaningless “junk” such as a retrovirus remnant or repetitive sequences changes the distance between genes in three dimensions which can have large effects on transcription rates for those genes. Then there’s the conservation problem which was discovered about 5 years ago. Used to be it was axiomatically accepted that when DNA sequences are conserved between species with large reproductive isolation the DNA must have some important function that caused its conservation. So knowing that so-called junk (non-coding) DNA actually has a lot of functionality some enterprising researchers cut out a chunk 1.5 million base pair chunk of non-coding DNA from a mouse that has been conserved between mice and humans with the reasonable expectation that with 100 million years of reproductive isolation between mice and men there must some important functionality in that conserved DNA and when they raised the GM mice they’d find all sorts of genetic abnormalities that would help with identification and treatment of human genetic disorders. To the very great surprise of the researchers they couldn’t find a single thing wrong with the GM mice which pretty much trashed the notion that conservation requires function. The list goes on and on and on. The climate system seems like a tinkertoy construction in comparison.
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 10:16 am
@Dave Springer says: July 27, 2011 at 8:39 am
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“On what page does Tyndal set out an experiment showing that heat flows from cold to hot As opposed to a reduction in the net outflow from the hot body)?”
Wherever he describes the experimental setup which basically consists of a LWIR heat lamp (he used a black copper plate heated by boiling water) a mirror finished brass tube with rock salt windows on each end, and a galvonmeter on the opposite side. Tyndal then used different tube lengths, different gases, and different pressures to record the difference in energy received by the galvanometer. If he used say oxygen in the tube the galvanometer reading was no different than a vacuum in the tube. If he used say methane or water vapor in the tube the galvanometer reading was greatly reduced. This raises the question of what’s different between oxygen and methane. As we know now the difference is that methane absorbs some of the energy coming from the heat lamp and emits it back towards the heat lamp whereas oxygen or a vacuum absorbs nothing and just passes the energy straight through.
An NDIR CO2 sensor uses a light source either generated or filtered to a wavelength in CO2’s primary absorption band. It then splits the beam and directs it through two tubes where one tube contains a hermetically sealed air sample with known CO2 concentration and a tube filled with ambient air. Photo-transisters at the end of each tube produce a voltage commensurate with the energy in the output. The difference in voltage between the two is formulaically compared to determine the CO2 concentration in the ambient air. It’s highly accurate and precise, much more so than Tyndall’s primitive setup but the theory of operation is precisely similar – CO2 absorbs some fraction of the energy travelling down the tube and reemits a portion of it back towards the source and the reduction in energy coming out the far end of the tube is proportional to the number of CO2 atoms in the test chamber.
If you don’t understand that I can’ t help you and you need to go take a high school physics book and read it until you do understand. It’s painfully obvious at this point that you know about as much physics as a fifth grader.
I fail to see the relevance of the “Theory and Operation of NDIR CO2 Sensors” especially as it does not explain how the product records results without the aid of an external energy source such as a battery.
Dave Springer,
Interesting post on protein folding, thanks. I wouldn’t compare computer models of the climate with protein folding, though, but rather with something like the stock market. Better yet, with a much simpler universe, say, a specific commodity like wheat, where the variables are mostly known. With Google Earth the prospective crop can be accurately determined, and the demand estimated based on prior years and population growth.
But even with that information available, there is no computer model extant that can predict the future wheat price accurately enough to make a financial killing. If there was the programmer would corner the market in short order. Yet the alarmist crowd hangs their hat on computer climate models, which have been shown to be consistently wrong. The climate is much more complex than a simple commodity.
Empirical evidence along with the null hypothesis is the gold standard of the scientific method – not computer climate models, which are based on many unkown factors, and programmed by people with a vested interest in the outcome.
Brian W says: July 27, 2011 at 9:24 am
“Co2 certainly does absorb the sun’s IR but it does so feebly and at a total concentration of .039% by volume you can forget about it. ”
You have the right answer, but the wrong reason. CO2 absorbs solar IR poorly because solar IR is mostly shorter than 3 um, while CO2 absorbs IR mostly at wavelengths above 3 um. See http://oz.deichman.net/uploaded_images/molecular_absorption_spectra-739540.gif.
The 390 ppm CO2 are quite able to absorb nearly 100% of the IR in the ranges that CO2 can absorb. IR detectors pointed up from the surface and down from space clearly show this effect. Some graphs can be found here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/07/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-light-and-heat/
And now for the greatest lie. The sun’s thermal power lies in the infrared and NOT in the visible.
Of course having everyone believe that visible light is responsible for heating the surface is the cornerstone of the fictional greenhouse effect.
Anyone who studies this knows that ~ 10 of the sun’s energy is UV, ~ 40% is visible, and 50% is IR. No one in the field would claim that visible light is the only contributor, nor that this belief is a cornerstone” of the greenhouse effect. The sun’s power indeed lies almost equally in the IR and the visible.
Strawman arguments are not effective.
“Solar energy can easily pass thru the gases to get to the surface, while thermal IR from the ground gets blocked!”, should read, visible light for the most part can easily pass through the atmosphere but is still subject toscattering, reflection (internal), diffusion, astronomical refraction and terrestrial refraction while the sun’s IR is absorbed by water vapor, on the way down AND on the way up (no blocking).
Again this seems like a combination of a red herring and incorrect science.
1) It is well known that some of the sunlight (both visible and IR) gets reflected, scattered, etc before reaching the surface. The rest (both visible and IR) gets absorbed and heats the surface. So the discussion about scattering is correct, but not really germain since everyone already agrees– ie a red herring
2) As explained above, the sun’s IR (mostly 0.7 – 3 um) DOES mostly get thru the CO2 and H2O and CH4 to reach the ground. The earth’s IR (mostly 4- 60 um) does get at least partially blocked by CO2 (mostly in a band around 15 um).
An alternate method of building an electronic CO2 sensor that would be much more expensive would be to use an electrically heated pair of lamps like Tyndal’s with thermocouple feedback to keep the temperatures exactly the same and shine the beams one through the control chamber and the other through the ambient chamber. The amount of electricity needed to keep the two lamps at exactly the same temperature would differ according to the amount of so-called greenhouse gases in the two tubes. I have no idea how I’d discriminate between different species of greenhouse gases in that setup but it would certainly work well to determine aggregate amounts. I’d also have to somehow calibrate the two lamps to account for any difference in conductive heat coupling through the mounting hardware. It’s far easier to do it by comparing the output energy from a split beam from a single lamp tuned to the absorption frequency of CO2 (or the absorption frequency of any other gas of interest).
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
July 27, 2011 at 8:51 am
“1/2*m*[(100kph)^2] + 1/2*m*[(50kph)^2] = 1/2*m*(10000+2500 k^2/h^2)
= 1/2*m*(12500 k^2/h^2)
= 1/2*m*[(111.8kph)^2]”
Since the balls are the same mass, we can drop the “m” and just look at specific energy, and specific momentum as well. Let v10 = 100 KPH be the faster ball gaining on the slower one with speed v20 = 50 KPH. After the collision, the first ball is going at v1f, and the second one at v2f. Assume the collision is inelastic with an energy loss of dE which manifests as heat in the balls. The energy balance is
E = 0.5*v10^2 + 0.5*v20^2 = 0.5*v1f^2 + 0.5*v2f^2 + dE
We calculate E = 6250 KPH^2. Now, we do the momentum balance
p = v10 + v20 = v1f + v2f = 150 KPH
Suppose dE = 1 KPH^2. The final velocities are
v1f = p/2 – sqrt(E-dE-(p/2)^2) = 50.02 KPH
v2f = p/2 + sqrt(E-dE-(p/2)^2) = 99.98 KPH
The final kinetic energy is 0.5*v1f^2 + 0.5*v2f^2 = 6249 KPH^2. One KPH^2 has been converted into heat.
Now, suppose the collision is not only inelastic, but there is no rebound, i.e., the balls stick together. Then, the energy balance is
E = 0.5*v10^2 + 0.5*v20^2 = vf^2 + dE
where vf is the speed of the combined balls (which has double the mass). From momentum conservation, vf = (v10+v20)/2 = 75 KPH. Therefore dE = 0.5*v10^2 + 0.5*v20^2 – vf^2 = 625 KPH^2 which has been converted into heat. This is the maximum dE which can occur, as anything greater would make the square root in the equations above for v1f and v2f imaginary.
Didn’t really want to take sides in your discussion, just wanted to help out a little with the math.
What amazes me in all of this, and I may be wrong on this, but it appears that despite the huge research grants, no one is carrying out empirical experiments.
For example, an obvious experiment to conduct would be to take two square slabs of like material and dimensions (say 1m x 1m a 1cm) but with one coated mirror shiny white, and the other matt black. Cool these slabs to 273K. On a night when the ambient air temperature is 300K, place the slabs in an open top enclosure made of material that is opaque to IR at GHG bandwidth and which is filled with air at 273K. Measure the IR temperature of the sky above the open top enclosure and measure the temperature of the slabs over time and see how this changes. repeat the experiment this time covering the top of the enclosure with glass which is transparent to IR at GHGs bandwidth. Repeat the experiment but this time enclose the top of the enclosure with glass that is opaque to IR of GHGs bandwidth. Keep track of ambient air temperature as well as the air temperature in the enclosure, over time. Evaluate the results.and compare the results with what would be expected if the matt black slab is behaving like a black body receiving ‘X’ w per sq m of DWLWIR (‘X’ being the w per sqare m as measured when looking up at the sky above the enclosure).
The theory being that the mirrored white slab will absorb less 300K DWLWIR due to its albedo and reflective characteristics and the matt black slab will absorb more 300K DWLWIR. Lets see whether DWLWIR can heat the black slab more than the white slab and how this compares with the theoretical energy available.
Of course, such an experiemnt does not take into account the real world phenomena such as convection, evaporation, phase change etc, but it would look at some of the theoretics. I would like to see the 300K DWLWIR heating something in the absence of assistance by conduction from ambient air.
I am sure that there are many better experiments since I have given no real thought to this and there are many far more competent than I to design a relevant experiment.. .
With an as yet undetermined appendage Verney writes:
“Is there any photo-electric cell which rather than being tuned to the bandwidth of solar radiance, is instead tuned to the bandwith of IR emissions from GHGs? If not why not?”
Sure. They’re cheap and there’s millions of them. They’re called infrared thermometers.
Here’s one of lord only knows how many brands.
http://www.amazon.com/Actron-CP7876-Non-contact-Infrared-Thermometer/dp/B001KYW2XI
Less than $50 and has free super-saver shipping too! What a deal.
You can point it up at a clear night sky when the air is dry and read one temperature then repeat the experiment another night when the air temperature is exactly the same at the surface but the humidity is higher. It’ll give you a higher temperature on the humid night because the greater amount of water vapor is absorbing some of the upwelling radiation from the ground and reemitting it downwards into the window of the IR thermometer.
I doubt you want to undertake this experiment as you seem to revel in your ignorance.
Dave Springer (july 27, 2011 at 8:16pm)
“Disproven by experiment circa 1850 by John Tyndall.” Hey Springerdude instead of handwaving Tyndall’s work why not give an example. What experiment? Where? What work? What page?
(july 27, 2011 at 8:02am)
Here we go again handwaving Tyndall’s work. Hey bud why don’t you answer Richards question with a real answer. By the way its circa 1873 not 1879 and the library received its copy in 1895.
(july 27, 2011 at 8:49am)
“Tyndall’s 1850 laboratory experimental setup to investigate the longwave absorptive properties of gases occupied a space the size of a basketball court. The size of a BASKETBALL COURT! Woohahaha! Go ahead point me the way to a picture or a description.
“This is so factual” Oh yeah, I bet it is. Pulses and IQ’s. Uh, let’s not go there! By the way if you think Tyndall was inaccurate with what he had then check out the appendix to chapter one page 18 and look at how he calibrates the galvanometer.
stanb999 says:
July 27, 2011 at 8:30 am
“If your going with the insulation model of GW theory. Which isn’t what AGW promotes. AGW expects a cold object to “heat” a hot one.”
But, I guess I should take sides. This is hooey. The atmosphere isn’t doing the heating, the Sun is. The steady state temperature of the Earth’s surface depends on how fast it can dissipate the input energy from the Sun. That rate of dissipation depends, in part, on the makeup of the atmosphere. There are real problems with the CAGW theory, because the rate of dissipation depends on a lot of other stuff, too, particularly the reflectivity of clouds. Violation of the 2nd law is not one of the problems.
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
“What amazes me in all of this, and I may be wrong on this, but it appears that despite the huge research grants, no one is carrying out empirical experiments.
I suspect that no big research grants are going to this because the science is well understood and this is an engineering project/high school science project.
This is not exactly what you were proposing, but here is one experiment that shows the reality of DWLWIR heating/cooling.
http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/docs/CMMAP/tenthings/SpaceFridge.pdf
Tim Folkerts says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:03 am
“You have the right answer, but the wrong reason. CO2 absorbs solar IR poorly because solar IR is mostly shorter than 3 um, while CO2 absorbs IR mostly at wavelengths above 3 um.”
Mostly shorter is an understatement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
Power at 550nm (visible, yellow) is nearly 2w/m^2/nm while power at 2000nm is less than 0.2w/m^2/nm. 2000nm (2um) is the first IR absorption band of CO2 and it’s very weak even there. There’s essentially nothing left to absorb from insolation by 3um which is the first strong CO2 absorption band. The earth doesn’t emit much of anything at 3um either so it’s of very little interest. 3um is a total overlap with water vapor absorption band too. The only band of significant interest is 15um which only partially overlaps with water vapor and is relatively close to peak power frequency of LWIR emission from the earth’s surface.
Dave Springer says: July 27, 2011 at 10:49 am
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 10:16 am
@Dave Springer says: July 27, 2011 at 8:39 am
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“On what page does Tyndal set out an experiment showing that heat flows from cold to hot As opposed to a reduction in the net outflow from the hot body)?”
//////////////////////////////////////
Dave
Your answer does not appear to address the point regarding energy flow. As you will have noted from an earlier post of mine, I have no problem that certain gases absorb IR (and also re-radiate the IR which they had earlier absorbed) and I have no problem with the contention that when a hot IR lamp bombards IR absorbing gases with hot photons those gases heat up. But that tells you nothing about whether heat can flow from a cold body to a hot body or whether there is simply a reduction in the flow rate from hot to cold.
I have no problem that there are products on the market that can detect CO2. But that does not mean that IR being radiated from CO2 can be used as a power source. As I understand those devices, the collector does not independent of an applied power source (battery or mains) collect/convert the IR being emitted by the IR radiating gas into electricity or some other form of work. The comparator to which you refer “Photo-transisters at the end of each tube produce a voltage commensurate with the energy in the output. The difference in voltage between the two is formulaically compared to determine the CO2 concentration in the ambient air.” relies upon an applied energy source from within the equipment (battery or mains power). If it did not rely upon an applied power source, then the NDIR sensor could be scaled up on an industrial scale and could generate electricity on an industrial scale.
I am not challenging what you are sayinng, it just does not addres or answer the question raised. You will note from one of my earlier posts that I am not actually denying that may be heat flow is a 2 way street and that a warmer object can absorb and be heated by a cooler photon (at least for some fraction of a second before the warmer object radiates a photon which photon now has an even slightly higher temperature than it would otherwise have had but for the absorbibg of the cooler photon) . I am just saying that I have seen no experiment establishing this and as such it must remain a moot point. If you know of a real experiment proving that a warm object actually absorbs cooler photons (and not simply that a cool object radiates cool photons in all directions) thereby ever so slightly raising its temperature (which increased temperature is then cooled down by the warm object radiating an even warmer photon) then I would like to review it.
I have watched the Ferryman lectures on photons and read a fair bit about them but their properties still appear to be a mystery.
Incidentally, whilst I am sceptical of some of the underlying physics, I note that we have rather similar views on a water world and the effects of convection, evaporation and phase changes in water etc and that the water cycle is the key to the AGW debate, As regards DWLWIR and the oceans, this (and not the underlying physics) is my prime reason behind my sceptism to AGW (as well as being a firm believer that warm is good and the fact that we are here blogging some 4.5 millions after the earth was created means that within reason there are no catastrophic tipping points although it is inevitable that we shall at some stage revert to an ice age which of course would be a calamity), You may have noticed in many older comments that I have made on different articles, that I would go even slightly further than you do, since I consider the top few microns of the oceans to be predominantly spray and wind swept spume. It is this spray/spume layer which is immediatey evaporated by DWLWIR. Given the wavelength, I can see no mechanism whereby the oceans can absorb any significant DWLWIR and as you say, the oceans are essentioally opaque to this. Further the temperature of the air above the oceans is controlled by the ocean itself and that is why there is rarely a diurnal temperature difference over the oceans. The ocean is a massive heat reservoir continually giving up the solar energy that it has stored over a lengthy period and the Earth is essentially one large heat pump with ocean currents (which in turn cause air strems/jets) pumping the heat around the planet. .
Anonymous coward Brian W says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:26 am
Dave Springer (july 27, 2011 at 8:16pm)
“Disproven by experiment circa 1850 by John Tyndall.” Hey Springerdude instead of handwaving Tyndall’s work why not give an example. What experiment? Where? What work? What page?
Beginning on page 323. Figure 100.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3DUJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA323
“Here we go again handwaving Tyndall’s work. Hey bud why don’t you answer Richards question with a real answer. By the way its circa 1873 not 1879 and the library received its copy in 1895.”
The first edition was 1869. The actual experiments on gases took place beginning in 1859. Like that makes much difference. I said the experiments were circa 1850.
“Tyndall’s 1850 laboratory experimental setup to investigate the longwave absorptive properties of gases occupied a space the size of a basketball court. The size of a BASKETBALL COURT! Woohahaha! Go ahead point me the way to a picture or a description.
See above. The basketball court size includes the setback distance from which Tyndal read the galvanometer. It was sensitive enough that a human body near the apparatus skewed the galvanometer reading so he read it from a distance using a telescope.
“This is so factual” Oh yeah, I bet it is. Pulses and IQ’s. Uh, let’s not go there! By the way if you think Tyndall was inaccurate with what he had then check out the appendix to chapter one page 18 and look at how he calibrates the galvanometer.
I’m quite familiar with how he calibrated his galvanometer. He used an adjustable aperture to keep it in its most sensitive, linear mid-point needle range with widely varying amounts of power emerging from the sample tube. It struck me as ingenius but I suppose to an anonymous buffoon it’s something to mock.
Dave Springer says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:24 am
//////////////////////////////////////////////
Does it need a battery?
Can I use it to power my house lighting when I point it up at the night sky?
I suspect that you are confusing circuitry that can detect IR signals from thiose that produce power when bombarded by IR.
Bart says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:37 am
“The steady state temperature of the Earth’s surface depends on how fast it can dissipate the input energy from the Sun. That rate of dissipation depends, in part, on the makeup of the atmosphere.”
Just a small part on a water world. The big Kahuna is the global ocean. In the big picture the sun heats the ocean, the ocean heats the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is cooled by deep cold of empty space. Energy from downwelling IR from GHGs are rejected by the ocean surface as fast as they arrive through increased rate of evaporation and carried back aloft in latent heat of vaporization. The whole CAGW theory hangs on cloud modeling which presumes that clouds cause more warming at night than they do cooling by day. Empirical evidence indicates they do not. The most recent contribution here by Roy Spencer points out the large discrepancy between GCM prediction of troposphere temperature over the ocean and good agreement with prediction over land. “Water vapor amplification” is the big fiction. It just doesn’t exist.
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Dave Springer says:
July 27, 2011 at 11:24 am
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“Does it need a battery?”
Only if you want to be able to read the LCD display. If you wanted you could read the voltage off the thermoelectric pile with a battery-free analog voltmeter but why would you want to?
Stop digging, Richard. You just appear more and more foolish and ignorant with each successive comment.
And yeah, Richard Verney, you could power your house lighting with thermoelectric piles at night. It would take about a thousand of those employed in infrared thermometers to light up a single christmas tree bulb you could read a book by it. I suggest it be an introductory physics book.
richard verney says:
July 27, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Can I use it to power my house lighting when I point it up at the night sky?
I suspect that you are confusing circuitry that can detect IR signals from thiose that produce power when bombarded by IR.
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No, of course you can’t. There just isn’t enough energy coming back down. There is energy, i.e. the greenhouse effect is real, but it is not enough to use as a power source. Who on Earth ever said it was?