UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has a comment on the paper here: Comments On The Dessler 2011 GRL Paper “Cloud Variations And The Earth’s Energy Budget also, physicist Lubos Motl has an analysis here. The press release from TAMU/Dessler has been pushed to media outlets on Eurekalert, see update below.
UPDATE2: Dessler has made a video on the paper see it here And Steve McIntyre has his take on it with The stone in Trenberth’s shoe
I’ve been given an advance copy, for which I’ve posted excerpts below. This paper appears to have been made ready in record time, with a turnaround from submission to acceptance and publication of about six weeks based on the July 26th publication date of the original Spencer and Braswell paper. We should all be so lucky to have expedited peer review service. PeerEx maybe, something like FedEx? Compare that to the two years it took to get Lindzen and Choi out the door. Or how about the WUWT story: “Science has been sitting on his [Spencer’s] critique of Dessler’s paper for months”.
If anyone needs a clear, concise, and irrefutable example of how peer review in climate science is biased for the consensus and against skeptics, this is it.
I’m sure some thorough examination will determine if the maxim “haste makes waste” applies here for Dessler’s turbo treatise.
Cloud variations and the Earth’s energy budget
A.E. Dessler
Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
Abstract: The question of whether clouds are the cause of surface temperature changes, rather than acting as a feedback in response to those temperature changes, is explored using data obtained between 2000 and 2010. An energy budget calculation shows that the energy trapped by clouds accounts for little of the observed climate variations. And observations of the lagged response of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy fluxes to surface temperature variations are not evidence that clouds are causing climate change.
Introduction
The usual way to think about clouds in the climate system is that they are a feedback — as the climate warms, clouds change in response and either amplify (positive cloud feedback) or ameliorate (negative cloud feedback) the initial change [e.g., Stephens, 2005]. In recent papers, Lindzen and Choi [2011, hereafter LC11] and Spencer and Braswell [2011, hereafter SB11] have argued that reality is reversed: clouds are the cause of, and not a feedback on, changes in surface temperature. If this claim is correct, then significant revisions to climate science may be required.
…
Conclusions
These calculations show that clouds did not cause significant climate change over the last decade (over the decades or centuries relevant for long-term climate change, on the other hand, clouds can indeed cause significant warming). Rather, the evolution of the surface and atmosphere during ENSO variations are dominated by oceanic heat transport. This means in turn that regressions of TOA fluxes vs. ΔTs can be used to accurately estimate climate sensitivity or the magnitude of climate feedbacks. In addition, observations presented by LC11 and SB11 are not in fundamental disagreement with mainstream climate models, nor do they provide evidence that clouds are causing climate change. Suggestions that significant revisions to mainstream climate science are required are therefore not supported.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported by NSF grant AGS-1012665 to Texas A&M University. I thank A. Evan, J. Fasullo, D. Murphy, K. Trenberth, M. Zelinka, and A.J. Dessler for useful comments.
h/t to Marc Hendrickx
=============================================================
UPDATE: Here is the press release from Texas A&M via Eurekalert:
Texas A&M prof says study shows that clouds don’t cause climate change
COLLEGE STATION, Sept. 6, 2011 — Clouds only amplify climate change, says a Texas A&M University professor in a study that rebuts recent claims that clouds are actually the root cause of climate change.
Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor considered one of the nation’s experts on climate variations, says decades of data support the mainstream and long-held view that clouds are primarily acting as a so-called “feedback” that amplifies warming from human activity. His work is published today in the American Geophysical Union’s peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Dessler studied El Niño and La Niña cycles over the past 10 years and calculated the Earth’s “energy budget” over this time. El Nino and La Nina are cyclical events, roughly every five years, when waters in the central Pacific Ocean tend to get warmer or colder. These changes have a huge impact on much of the world’s weather systems for months or even years.
Dessler found that clouds played a very small role in initiating these climate variations — in agreement, he says, with mainstream climate science and in direct opposition to some previous claims.
“The bottom line is that clouds have not replaced humans as the cause of the recent warming the Earth is experiencing,” Dessler says.
Texas is currently in one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, and most scientists believe it is a direct result of La Niña conditions that have lingered in the Pacific Ocean for many months.
Dessler adds, “Over a century, however, clouds can indeed play an important role amplifying climate change.”
“I hope my analysis puts an end to this claim that clouds are causing climate change,” he adds.
For more information about Dessler’s research, go to http://goo.gl/zFJmt
About Research at Texas A&M University:
As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represents an annual investment of more than $630 million, which ranks third nationally for universities without a medical school, and underwrites approximately 3,500 sponsored projects. That research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.
From what I can gather, Dessler 2011 (D11) basically restates Dessler 2010 and Trenberth et al 2010 in lines 79 – 95. All D11 has done is put the focus back on the former papers and as the results and comments of McIntyre, Illis, Spencer and many others now show early on – the Team has a problem.
The two previous papers:-
“A Determination of the Cloud Feedback from Climate Variations over the Past Decade”
A. E. Dessler, 2010 (D10)
“Relationships between tropical sea surface temperature and top‐of‐atmosphere radiation”
Trenberth et al, 2010 (T10)
Obviously there’s some oddities in D11 (“THE BAD” etc) but there’s 3 interlinked papers in question that are the big picture: D11, D10 and T10 that must be read and dissected in conjunction because they all hang together (consistent as D11 says Line 92). If the D10 – T10 “consistency” is shown to be non-existent by errors in either paper, then the Team will be at loggerheads with each other – and they can’t let that happen.
SB11 addresses D10 but is there a paper that similarly addresses T10?
There’s a lot a stake, have I got this right?
I said this in my September 13, 2011 at 5:31 pm comment
They are not the only ones. Dr Roy Spencer did just that in his backyard experiment, see: Help! Back Radiation has Invaded my Backyard!:-
What Dr Spencer has failed to do is to investigate (as I have and documented up-thread) the actual heating effect of the DLR once it encounters surface material and to compare that to solar heating and the temperature to which a solar heated material cools at night.
So from the same comment linked above I repeat this challenge:-
.
Note that in that same comment I present a paper that shows DLR heating does not overtake solar heating and even when it comes close it is day-time diffuse solar heating that really does the work – not DLR. The paper compares temperatures on two sides of the same mountain – direct solar heated side vs diffuse solar + DLR heated side. The mountain is in the Swiss Alps.
I’m sure that if Dr Spencer went through this exercise he would have a vastly revised perspective of AGW, the greenhouse effect and the downstream effect at the earth’s surface of his own papers (SB10 SB11) and that of Dessler”s (D10, D11).
Thanks for the much needed clarification. Another confusion seems to be the usage of the term adsorption and absorption. They are not interchangeable. Adsorption in a quantum sense would be closer to the term attenuation, than absorption. The chemical definition of adsorption doesn’t apply well with sub-atomic particles. GK
@ur momisugly Ulric Lyons
Re your wondering:-
“It would be interesting to know how much the downward IR-A and IR-B vary”
This from the 2011 SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) Science Meeting:-
“Robert Cahalan of the NASA Goddard Climate and Radiation Laboratory says that the Earth’s surface has been warming in recent decades, while the stratosphere has been cooling, especially the upper stratosphere. This is usually interpreted as evidence that the climate forcing is primarily due to the greenhouse effect, and not the Sun.
However, in his presentation Dr Cahalan says, evaluating the Sun’s impact on climate requires knowledge of variations not only in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI, formerly “solar constant”) but also variations in the Spectral Solar Irradiance (SSI). Initial findings indicate that multiyear changes in visible and near-infrared parts of the spectrum may be out of phase with those of TSI, while near ultraviolet changes are in phase, but larger than expected. To consider the climate impact of such changes, we compute climate responses to two classes of SSI variations, both having the same variations in TSI. We find that out-of-phase forcing leads to much larger temperature variations in the upper stratosphere, but smaller variations in the troposphere and upper ocean.”
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3868-the-sun-weather-relationship-is-becoming-increasingly-important.html
tallbloke says:
September 11, 2011 at 6:12 am
Myrrh says:
September 9, 2011 at 2:56 am
But if you do admit in AGWSF that the water in clouds is that which absorbs thermal infrared from the upwelling, how do you account for it not doing this to the thermal infrared downwelling direct from the Sun, and ditto heating the oceans?
Around half of ocean heat content derives from solar ‘near’ IR, and around half from visible.
So, prove it. I’m now really very irritated with your supercilious attitude here, you have more in common with someone whose behaviour you keep complaining about on sun threads.., than you think.
I’ve show you generic it can’t be.
I’ve shown you ” misunderstand ‘absorption’.
I’ve shown you ” have no idea of the difference in electronic transitions and molecular vibrational resonance.
I’ve shown you ” do not know the difference between a light and a thermal energy.
I’ve shown you ” don’t understand scale.
I’ve shown you ” that the story is being changed.
I’ve shown you ” etc. etc.
What more can I tell you?
All I’ve asked for, is to be shown rational logical explanation observed and tested that blue visible light heats water. NONE of you arguing that shortwave converts to heat the Earth’s oceans and lands have responded with anything even approaching scientific rigour.
SHOW ME HOW!
Because by all the properties and processes of blue visible light from the Sun, that is impossible. Which word in ‘that is impossible’ don’t you understand?
And I’ll now tell you what I think of all of you who keep slagging me off here. I think you’re kidding yourselves that you’re ‘scientists’, because, with the amount of information I’ve given and with the explanations I’ve given, that you have continued to bombard me with ill-disciplined ‘facts’ from a source I’ve shown is corrupt in this detail and when I have shown you are not taking into consideration any of the physics mechanisms I’ve gone through, shows you are no-where near being scientists, not even close. Even one example of why blue light can’t heat water should have been enough..
Show me anything, anywhere, from anyone, that this miracle in your ‘science’ actually exists.
No matter what you believe, and I don’t care that you won’t accept it. You don’t understand that the figures in the link you provided (window film) actually prove you wrong, so I’m giving up on that lost cause.
You don’t understand the mechanism. Where’s the actual facts of it? Heat a cup of water with blue light as from the Sun, you’ll be waiting a long time for your coffee.
Surface emitted long wave (‘far’ IR) is absorbed in the first few um of water, so it can heat finely divided groups of water molecules in clouds, but not the bulk of the ocean, because the mechanism needed to propogate the energy downwards isn’t adequate.
Not my argument..
Richard C (NZ) says:
September 11, 2011 at 6:40 am and previous
Myrrh, my presentation of what I understand to be radiative heating effect has the basis of the EM spectrum and it explains a number of phenomena but I make no recourse to a separate but parallel “thermal” or “heat” spectrum that you seem to require. You will need to produce that spectrum if in fact it exists to support your case.
Mid and far infrared which begins at 2.5, is thermal. That’s how infrared is divided, by what it does, thermal means heat. Thermal means heat. These energies heat up organic matter, like water. Light energies don’t. It is the actual heating energy from the Sun which has been taken out of the ‘energy budget’ created by AGWScience Fiction Inc and now in general circulation as if physical fact.
Note that GHG DLR (4000 nm/4 μm – 16000 nm/16 μm) is NOT included but Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl’s (TF&K) Earth’s Energy Budget Figure 1 ascribes 333 W.m2 to it and a status equivalent (except for the colour coding) to solar SW (161 W.m2) and diffuse solar SW is not accounted for although it is probably included in the 161 W.m2 “Absorbed by Surface”, more on this below.
I’ve kept my argument here to the basic premises of the Kiehl/Trenberth ’97 – because this is what the whole AGW scam was built on and it is clearer here, without the ‘tweaking’ of later versions which do not change the actual junk science premise it is built on – that shortwave, Visible and the UV and Near IR adjacent, a.k.a. Solar, Sunlight – is what heats the world direct from the Sun, and that Thermal Infrared direct from the Sun has nothing to do with it.
Here’s why I got serious about investigating all of this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/#comment-610576
This is now accepted, taught in schools, and means that those so taught have absolutely no idea of the difference between visible light energy and invisible thermal energy. What should be their understanding of the world around them has been destroyed. Knowledge which we have, in the history of mankind, achieved ourselves only very recently, is being deliberately withdrawn from the mass population. Even here as clearly seen, those in other ‘disciplines’ take this for granted in their own work because the deliberately introduced meme is now rampant – which means that their own work when using this information, is also junk science, how can it be otherwise? This is what bothers me. And the ongoing tweaks merely cover this in another layer of confusion, like the name change emphasis to climate change, ‘downwelling’ instead of ‘back-radiation’ has first of all made reference to the copious amount of arguments about ‘back-radiation’ difficult to find, and creates confusion, as here, speed reading, I’m being kind, easily confuses the two, which is why I’ve taken to writing, ‘direct from the Sun’.. I do point out that this is a deliberate trick, sleight of hand, on the part of those promoting AGWScienceFiction – it’s too clever by half, and consistently so, to be anything else. The NASA page comparison is a very good example of change of story of the principle premise.
So, the KT97 says Near IR but also includes short. In traditional physics the near and short are classed as ‘light’ energies, thermal begins in mid infrared. Whatever the actual cut off points, the thermal is that which moves molecules and atoms into vibration – this is what creates heat. Ergo it is called thermal energy, Heat, and not a reflective energy, Light. Thermal infrared heat energy is readily absorbed by molecules of water, through the resonance principle, near infrared isn’t, it is a light energy getting itself transmitted down through water – there are plants quite deep which use its energy instead of visible red for their red fix in photosynthesis, because visible red doesn’t get to them but near infrared does, they can get blue because it does travel deeper than visible red. Firefighters will sometimes set up a water curtain to protect themselves from the heat of great fires, the light comes through but the heat doesn’t, because the water curtain absorbs it. Here, we’d have the majority scaring themselves silly thinking they’re going to be burned by light..
Solar power peaks at approx 500nm (blue at approx 445nm) but the total solar power available is the area under the curve 300nm – 2500nm. Green and red peak further along the spectrum at approx 545nm and 575nm respectively. Sunlight at zenith provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation.
And what does ‘peak’ actually mean? How this is sold is that this peak means it is a powerful energy capable of heating land and oceans! And of the infrared how much is actually thermal? I haven’t found it at all easy to get real world information on this. http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/056/mwr-056-08-0322.pdf is the beginning of such studies, says 43% longwave, heat. But, still stands, it can’t be visible heating the oceans, because that’s not what visible does.
But what is happening with energy-per-photon? See Electromagnetic spectrum:-
Ultraviolet: 124 eV – 3 eV
Visible:- 3 eV – approx 1 eV
Infrared:- approx 1 eV – < approx 124 meV
Energy decreases as wavelength increases.
And density increases?
Just the difference in size between near infrared and thermal is microscopic and pin head size. Size matters. There is always this constant reference to visible as being ‘very energetic’, as if that equates to ‘power to do work’. It takes a heck of a lot more power to move a molecule into rotational states which thermal infrared does than it to set an electron vibrating – which is what blue light does in the electronic transition effect and is what scatters blue light all over the sky, being bounced around in reflection when the electron chucks it back out again.
There’s no sense of scale in these arguments – and still they haven’t come back with any sensible response to my challenge about ‘absorption’. Since blue light is clearly reflected/scattered all over the sky by these actual electron absorptions, where’s the heat generated accounted for in the energy budget?
You say:-
“Next, this discussion is about role of clouds, the thermal infrared heat direct from the Sun will be trapped/blocked by clouds on the way down from the Sun, because clouds are water and water is the great absorber of thermal energy”
Role of clouds yes, analysis no. Again, radiation is NOT heat, both are forms of ENERGY. Energy from the sun comes to earth via radiation, heat will only manifest when the radiation encounters matter that will absorb (not reflect or diffuse) that radiation due to the properties of the matter.
I have to warn you, I getting to a point re ‘heat’ … This is a picky too far. Traditional physics doesn’t have a problem here, different disciplines will use the term in specific ways, but, they all know that heat is what is given off by the Sun or a fire, and that this is different from the visible light which is given off (which is not hot). You can say the same for light from the Sun, it doesn’t manifest as light until it hits matter. So what? My point is that these energies are different from each other. Traditional physics understands this well, it is heat that is given off whether you can feel it or not. Heat energy, thermal energy, Heat, from the Sun, is what AGWScience Fiction says doesn’t reach the earth. And instead, AGWSF says that it’s the Light energies which heat organic matter. That’s the point I’m trying to make here. They’ve stepped through the looking glass with Alice, they’ve simply reversed properties, and now ‘everyone’ is looking for the missing heat..
So, for example:
Italics mine. When you light a fire heat is given off, whether it meets something or not. The Sun is very hot, it’s giving off a lot of heat…
And in your later post: Suddenly they switch from heat to (the more correct in this case) energy. There’s heat at both ends of the transfer but it’s energy that’s transferred by radiation – not heat. Heat transfer DOES require the presence of matter and the properties of the matter are important parameters of the transfer
So, no. It’s heat that on the move. Heat moves from hotter to colder, the Sun is very hot, it’s giving off a lot of heat, that heat is moving to colder space around it.
Clouds and atmosphere reflect 79 W.m2 and absorb 78 W.m2 of the incoming solar according to TF&K Fig 1 but clouds are also translucent so that on a very cloudy day 100% of incoming solar energy at the surface (residual of reflection and absorption) is diffuse and the energy arriving at the surface is LESS than if it were 100% direct (none reflected). TF&K omit a downward emitted component of “Absorbed by Atmosphere” (which is not diffuse note, see Transparency and translucency link above), they just show an upward emission.
That’s what I’m saying here, in response adding a ‘reflecting’ to the clouds cooling angle – bearing in mind I’m talking about direct thermal energy and KT97 doesn’t include this downwelling direct from the Sun – cloud cover does stop that to some extent or other, and as this is opposite side of clouds to us, and heat rises.. Actually when I was thinking about it earlier, I wondered how that could be shown, there must be some data perhaps from satellites on the heat coming from the tops of clouds when it’s cold beneath them?
Finally, where does GHG DLR come in (given that it is infrared)? See Doctoral Thesis. “Atmospheric downwelling longwave radiation at the surface and during cloudless and overcast conditions. Measurements and modelling”, Viudez-Mora 2011. Figure 1.1. shows the distinction between solar and terrestrial (GHG DLR) irradiance and why the threshold between both wavelengths is conventionally set at 4000nm (4μm, 4 microns) the other limit being 16μm. GHG DLR does NOT include IR-A and IR-B, see Infrared. It is only IR-C: 3000 nm–1 mm (3 µm – 1000 µm). The photon energy in the 4 – 16µm range is only around 124 meV.
OK, I’m going to have to take this back a step. “shows the distinction between solar and terrestrial” is my gripe here. It doesn’t show it since it claims that all “atmospheric infrared” is terrestrial. At least according to the blurb as I read it. In other words, I don’t know what it’s talking about at all-:
“The radiative processes in the atmosphere can be divided, depending on the wavelength, in the solar (or shortwave) band and the terrestrial (also called atmospheric, infrared, thermal, and longwave) band.”
And, quite honestly, I couldn’t give any tacit credibility to any figures generated from work done by people who say this. If they are measuring thermal infrared direct from the Sun, let them say so unambiguously, I really have no time for this AGWScience Fiction meme… How does this compare, for example, with http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/1425chap4.htm ? http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/energybudget.jpg
Now to some people that DO understand radiative heating effect. From Microwaves101.com “Biological effects of electromagnetic radiation”:-
Electromagnetic energy is carried by photons. The higher the frequency, the higher the energy in each photon. When a certain energy level is reached, the photon has enough energy to knock off electrons from molecules that it encounters. At this point it is called ionizing radiation. The critical energy level is 10 electron volts (eV). One Joule is 6.2x10E18 electron volts, so a single electron volt is immeasurably small. Here’s how to calculate the energy of a photon, depending on its frequency:
E=hV
h=Planck’s constant = 6.626E-34 Joule-seconds
For the ISM band (2.45 GHz) where your microwave oven operates, energy of each photon is therefore 0.00001 electron volts. The power needed to ionize a molecule is one million times higher than this, so it simply won’t happen.
Sunlight is far higher in frequency than microwaves, it doesn’t penetrate the body, so it is more dangerous at the same power level. Sunlight provides a power level of 100 mW/cm2 during the summer months, mostly infrared, but with some visible and ultraviolet energy
What they mean by “it doesn’t penetrate the body” is that it doesn’t migrate evenly throughout the innards thereby facilitating useful cooking – it just cooks the outer layers (sunburn) and warms a little deeper. Further down see “The following table shows the effects of exposure to certain power levels”:-
Nope, what they mean by it doesn’t penetrate the body is that it doesn’t penetrate the body. UV doesn’t make it past the first layer of skin, the epidermis, and works on the DNA level, and visible light goes a teeny bit further before being reflected out. They may well be ‘higher energy’, but that just means they travel faster.. You can see this phenomenon in the use of near infrared cameras because near infrared is also reflective, not absorptive. If visible was absorbed you’d see the insides of everyone and none would cast a shadow. Neither UV nor Visible are hot, they don’t carry heat.
Note what it says about ionising – higher energy can knock off an electron, visible in the sky can’t even do that it’s not powerful enough, it can set an electron vibrating, but then gets bounced back by this. Higher Energy, does not, equate to Higher Power. Calling thermal infrared ‘lower energy’ is a misnomer here if imagining that means lower power. It has far greater power (to do work), it doesn’t just tap an electron, it doesn’t even just send an electron flying away, it moves the whole molecule (rotational/vibrational/resonance). That’s power.
Neither UV nor Visible can cook.
Ergo, DLR does NOT “heat the earth” as NASA, the Team and every AGW/Warmist blog commentator and national institution that parrots the meme would have the world believe.
This is a typical AGWSF meme – DLR actually means Downwelling Longwave Radiation – and that is technically what is downwelling direct from the Sun in energy budgets and should only therefore apply to thermal infrared direct from the Sun to Earth. This term is now used, it appears, to have totally usurped the earlier meme of ‘back-radiation’, which they said was that bounced back from the Earth’s upwelling infrared. AGWSF has a penchant for flipping meanings, it is something to watch out for..
So, yes, I would argue coming from traditional science, of course DLR heats the Earth! See the problem?
The problem is also, that several years of arguments in discussions such as these on ‘back-radiation’, are now out of the loop. They do so like people to talk at cross purposes.
What we first have to do, is get back the real downwelling direct from the Sun thermal infrared. Which is where I came in on all this.
But, until both pro and antis AGW get a grip and really make an effort to understand that ‘Solar’ aka shortwave, visible, etc. cannot heat water and land because these are very different energies from thermal, it ain’t going to happen. Especially as none of those who keep insisting it can heat water makes any damn effort to prove it to me.
They believe in impossible physics. Size matters..
Apologies, I’m trying to concentrate on this, but have been distracted and I can’t print it out so I think I’ve got muddled, if I haven’t understood something you’ve said, and so have given an irrelevant answer.., or left something out, let me know.
G. Karst says:
September 11, 2011 at 8:56 am
Myrrh:
You seem to acknowledge that blue light is indeed adsorbed and re-emitted or transmitted again, from the now excited particle. However, you do not seem to recognize that entropy is at work as in all things. If a particle adsorbs light (blue), entropy dictates that 100% of the light energy is not retransmitted. What are you proposing is the end result of the missing energy if it does not show up as increased kinetic energy of the molecule/atom (vibration)? Molecules/atom kinetic energy (movement) is the very definition of sensible heat.
Great! So, you can answer my question re the claim that the atmosphere is transparent to visible light [therefore it does not heat the atmosphere etc as per AGW] – how much is visible light heating the atmosphere on the way down from the Sun?
Blue light is being scattered around at a great rate of knots, must be generating a lot of heat.
Are you maintaining that energy re-transmission is perfect and entropy does not apply, for this special circumstance?
Nope.
My point, in pointing this out, was that this too exists. Conversely, water is classed, in traditional physics, as really transparent to visible light. Therefore, blue light does not jog the electrons of the molecules of water, they don’t admit blue light to their molecular dance..
Now, this all happens at tremendous speed, slower in water than in air, but still extremely rapid, this is what slows visible light in water in first principle, there is a slight delay before it is tranmitted to the next molecule and so on.
Btw, I do not think you are in error, simply because many disagree. I think everyone here knows how frustrating it is to argue a minority position. GK
Thank you for that. It does seem strange to be arguing from a ‘minority’ position when all I’m doing is giving information on tried and tested and well understood traditional physics..
Any thoughts on this:
And I’d just like to remind if anyone is interested in how the con of reversing properties is being achieved, I posted this earlier here but maybe lost in the traffic – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
This comes from an organisation which has the reputation of being cutting edge in science, clearly, to those who can follow what I’m saying here, NASA on its ‘climate relevant pages’ is being run by people fully committed to the AGW scam. This isn’t just a manipulation of Mannlike figures, this is a manipulation of core, basic physical properties of the world around us. In effect, all these arguments between pro and con AGW are based on the same science fictional world created by the scam manufacturing department, and serve, therefore, only to create more confusion which is, istm, the prime objective of twisting science into fictional memes.
And now I have to take a break from active participation here for a while. Will check back just to read the blog, Anthony and contributors do come up with great discussions, but I don’t have the time at the moment to concentrate on this. I do try not to be ad hom type offensive, if I have slipped up with anyone, I’m sorry.
@ur momisugly Myrrh
You make 2 fundamental errors that give us the clue as to why you have gone off at a tangent but first note that we understand that radiation and matter must be “tuned” for heating to occur i.e. we understand that blue light (or visible light) is not the agent that heats the ocean and that the energy for that comes from UV, IR-A, IR-B and a small part of MWIR, IR-C (see Infrared and Electromagnetic spectrum) in the SOLAR spectral range 200-4000nm. This article “New Paper: Solar UV activity increased almost 50% over past 400 years” shows why UV is much more important than IR in respect to ocean heating:-
Note that IR-A, IR-B and 1000nm of MWIR IR-C are within the SOLAR EM spectral range (< 4000nm) and contribute to water heating but are minor agents, UV being the major agent and visible sunlight (also within the SOLAR spectrum) is ineffective. MWIR IR-C in the range 3000 – 8000nm (there’s a 1000nm overlap with the solar spectrum) is mostly NOT in the SOLAR spectrum (except for the 3000-4000nm overlap) and GHG DLR is IR-C in the range MWIR 3000-8000nm and LWIR 8000-15,000nm giving a total DLR range of 3000-15,000nm but conventionally the DLR range for clouds and GHGs is the range 4000-16,000nm i.e. if it’s greater than 4000nm, it ain’t solar. More on this below but error 1 first.
Error 1, you say:-
Really? What then is the temperature of that space? About 3°K (-270°C). That 3° is only due to the very few particles of matter present in it but put a spacecraft in space and the bare metal (matter) can reach 260°C (533° K) i.e. the sun is hot yes, but it is giving off energy in the form of radiation (the SOLAR range of the EM spectrum that INCLUDES the visible light range). The radiation moves through space at the speed of light (being the only way, no conduction or convection in a vacuum), the heat only manifests on an encounter by the radiation with matter (say a spacecraft).
In summary, it’s energy that’s on the move in the form of radiation and some of that radiation will convert to heat depending on the properties of the matter it encounters being “tuned” to a thermal heating effect of any part of the solar spectral range (the visible range not “tuned” and therefore ineffective).
Error 2, you say:-
Almost correct but not quite. DLR actually means Downwelling Longwave [Infrared] Radiation, the “Infrared” being IR-C MWIR and LWIR only – not IR-A or IR-B and NOT within the SOLAR EM spectral range except for the 1000nm MWIR overlap.
Then following on you say:-
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The solar spectral EM range that is “downwelling direct from the Sun” is 200-4000nm. DLR is 4000-16,000nm. If radiation is in the EM spectral range 4000-16,000nm and greater, it’s NOT solar radiation.
You say (quoting a blog):-
My thoughts? BOGUS
First, radiation in the EM spectral range 8000-12,000nm is outside the solar EM spectral range so it is neither direct solar nor diffuse solar (161 W.m2 TF&K global average) and therefore (in this case) it is DLR from GHGs and clouds (333 W.m2 TF&K global average).
Second, solar radiation “heats things up” – not DLR. Calculations for solar energy collectors add direct and diffuse solar to arrive at the useful flux – you do NOT add the DLR flux to the direct+diffuse solar flux to arrive at the total useful flux.
The second point is what I believe to be the gigantic error that climate science (including Spencer, Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl) and AGW make. They do not understand real, apparent and Watt-less power the way electrical engineers, technicians and electricians do. They assume that 1 W.m2 of DLR power has equivalent heating effect to 1 W.m2 of solar power on geologic material (including ocean) but clearly it doesn’t. All they have to do is consult the Electromagnetic spectrum to find out what the difference is. The energy decreases as wavelength increases (no Myrrh, no “density” increase either, that’s concentration as in a laser – I think you mean an increase in INTENSITY of flux say to 50 W.m2 that is required for MW cooking). So moving from EUV to FIR, the energy-per-photon is:-
100nm: 12.4 eV
1000nm: 1.24 eV (in solar EM spectral range)
10,000nm: 12.4 meV (in DLR EM spectral range)
I.e. there’s negligible useful heating power in the DLR power flux at earth’s surface – it’s apparent power, not real power.
I tried to make this point to Lubus Motl at The Reference Frame under his “Why is there energy and what it isn’t” post but his blog does not accept HTML so I stuffed up the comment. That comment is reproduced in my next comment in this thread.
[This comment duplicated at CCG here]
Refer to the bottom of my previous comment to make sense of why this is posted here
——————————————————————–
Lubos, most of this is way above my level but I do have a question in regard to energy and climate science that may be worthwhile answering in a separate post.
From your post:-
Climate science, in Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl’s (TF&K) 2009 “Earth’s Global Energy Budget” Figure 1 ascribe 333 W.m2 to DLR vs 161 W.m2 to incoming solar and goes to great lengths to measure DLR (Dr Roy Spencer included, see – Help! Back Radiation has Invaded my Backyard) because in AGW parlance it “warms the earth”. NASA says this on their Clouds and Radiation page:-
I cannot see how DLR can do work (heat) geologic material (we know it doesn’t heat the ocean in bulk) anywhere near what solar already does due to the energy-per-photon in the DLR range of the EM spectrum. As far as I can make out very approximately, the eV values are these:-
Ultraviolet: 124 eV – 3 eV
Visible:- 3 eV – approx 1 eV
Infrared:- approx 1 eV – < approx 124 meV
And the spectral ranges are these:-
Solar: 200 – 4000nm
DLR: 4000 – 16000nm
IR-A and B occurring in the solar spectrum but IR-C is DLR
If DLR was an effective heating agent at the earth's surface, it would have been harnessed as is solar energy but it obviously isn't. For example the annual mean DLR measurement at Darwin, Australia is 409 W.m2.
So the question is this: is climate science making a gigantic error by not considering the actual heating effect on geologic material of DLR?
Additionally, is the Earth's Global Energy Budget in the wrong units? They use W.m2 radiative fluxes but it should be Joules. It seems to me that the budget should be in terms of work so that the work expended by solar SW at the earth's surface is accounted for (e.g. energy stored in the ocean) and the illusion that solar, OLR and DLR are able to do work equally is removed. Alternatively, the TF&K budget should be renamed Earth's Global Radiation Budget and a separate budget prepared in units of Joules titled Earth's Global Energy Budget.
I've tried to get traction with this at WUWT up and down from this comment but got nowhere (I was off-topic to be fair but was responding to a comment by someone else). I introduced the electrical concepts of real, apparent and Watt-less power and issued a challenge re peer-reviewed papers on geologic heating by DLR (the closest I’ve got is Gruber 2005) but so far no takers and the herd has moved on.
I’ve also documented an extensive investigation of this topic at Climate Conversations Group (CCG) starting at this thread header but I’ve taken it about as far as I can go and would appreciate your input (advancement or correction of argument – whatever) at this stage.
Cheers,
Richard Cumming (NZ)
Richard C (NZ) says:
September 17, 2011 at 6:42 pm
@ur momisugly Myrrh
You make 2 fundamental errors that give us the clue as to why you have gone off at a tangent but first note that we understand that radiation and matter must be “tuned” for heating to occur i.e. we understand that blue light (or visible light) is not the agent that heats the ocean and that the energy for that comes from UV, IR-A, IR-B and a small part of MWIR, IR-C (see Infrared and Electromagnetic spectrum) in the SOLAR spectral range 200-4000nm. This article “New Paper: Solar UV activity increased almost 50% over past 400 years” shows why UV is much more important than IR in respect to ocean heating:-
Richard, I am arguing against AGW as I read about it and as I have been presented with it for the last few years. I am not arguing about your version of it…
These arguments are always confusing because, as I have pointed out before, there is a deliberate imput from AGWSF designed to confuse.
You must have missed the example I gave you a few posts up: “Here’s why I got serious about investigating all of this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/#comment-610576”
Which says,
Now, I should be grateful if you would read that really carefully, because this is what is being taught now and against which I am arguing. The shorthand version meme is :shortwave in, longwave out.
From the wiki page on the Greenhouse Effect:
Note well, “visible light passes through the atmosphere to warm the planetary surface.”
..
All of which is to tell you something you already know. If you put your hand on a patch of dark soil at the end of a sunny day, the soil feels warm. In fact, if you place your hand just above the soil, you can feel heat being given off by the soil. The reason is that objects that are heated by sunlight behave in the same way as the ground in a greenhouse. Those objects give back energy picked up from sunlight, but in a different form. Instead of reradiating the energy in the form of visible light, the objects give the energy back off in the form of heat.
Do you see? Heated by sunlight. It’s visible light which is promoted as being the heat source of the land and oceans.
“we understand that blue light (or visible light) is not the agent that heats the ocean” ?
That’s not the arguments I get from this AGWSF meme gone rampant…
tallbloke: “Around half of ocean heat content derives from solar ‘near’ IR, and around half from visible.”
Look, Richard, with the best will in the world I really don’t have time for this. I think you have missed my point here, which is, that the energy budget claim created by AGWScience Fiction and taken to be normal physical by the majority of non-thinking scientists and non-scientists around now and especially those arguing pro and con AGW, is that visible light converts to heat land and oceans of Earth and that thermal infrared direct from the Sun plays no part in this.
As interesting as it is what AGWSF says about UV or Near IR is A DISTRACTION to my point, which is, that AGWScience Fiction has created a meme which has turned upside down the known physics of light and heat from the Sun.
So who is the “we” in “we understand that blue light (or visible light) is not the agent that heats the ocean”? Because it sure as hell isn’t in any of decades of teaching on this scam, not in any of the encyclopaedias, not in any of the books and teaching currently in ‘science’ that I’ve seen, and not in any of the arguments I’ve had..
I’ll say it again. This is now the bog standard science teaching in classrooms and university lecture halls, REAL science has been corrupted. So efficiently corrupted that the Sun’s LIGHT is now thought to be the source of heating the Earth’s surfaces, land and oceans.
It’s everywhere. The whole education system world-wide has been turned upside down and is teaching this junk science, that light, shortwave, is heating the Earth, and, that longwave is a result of that, not a cause in its own right of heating the Earth direct from the Sun.
This is highly significant because the UV portion of the solar spectrum is the most important for heating of the oceans due to the greatest penetration beyond the surface and highest energy levels. Solar UV is capable of penetrating the ocean to depths of several meters to cause ocean heating. whereas long wave infrared emission from “greenhouse gases” or the sun is only capable of penetrating the ocean surface a few microns with all energy lost to the phase change of evaporation with no net heating of the ocean.
Shrug. I refer you back to the wiki page on translucency – please read the section on UV/Visible and electronic transitions. UV is no more capable of heating water than visible. They don’t have the oomph. That’s, by the way, the same argument I get re blue light, that it penetrates deeper and therefore it heats deeper down…
All I can suggest is that you (and generic) step through the looking glass from your side where you’re imagining all kinds of impossible things before breakfast and come back, if you were ever here, into the real world where you’ll still find traditional physics and countless real world applications based on it. For example, if you understood the difference in properties of energy from the Sun, you’d know that UV is very useful as a disinfectant, because the tiny highly energetic waves act on a DNA level it is used in many water purifying plants – this is not creating heat, but using the UV energy to dismantle the structures of microbuggy thingies that can give us a nasty bout of the runs, or worse. Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_water_disinfection
Please, take some time to mull over the difference between electronic transitions and rotational resonance, the first uses short energy wavelengths of UV and Visible to effect changes which do not create heat. UV is not hot – you cannot feel UV.
You can feel Thermal Infrared, because that is HEAT carried in an electromagnetic wave. UV, Visible, Near Infrared, do not carry heat. UV does not cook the microbes. UV does not heat the water. It takes a lot of heat in the Sun to create them..
Observation, chemical uses of energy which do not create heat, as for example, the use of visible energy to effect a chemical change to sugars in photosynthesis, this does not create heat. Do let me know how successful you are at heating a cup of water with UV.
As I’ve said before – the problem here is that people believe the ‘memes’ circulated, to the point where their reasoning is a jumbled mess, but they can’t see this. Two of the memes propagandised to promote this corruption of science is ‘highly energetic equals more power’ and ‘all energy is the same’..
Here’s an example, and quite honestly, unless you make the effort to get to grips with the differences between electromagnetic waves, the actual properties of scale and effects and processes, you’ll just go round in your own circle and will fail to spot the disjuncts.
Two things to note in the above extract. Firstly that it does give a description based on the difference between electronic transitions and rotational resonance, the power of heat energy to move the actual molecule and the electronic transition of an ionising highly energic shortwave capable of hitting an electron with enough energy to expel it from the molecule. But, with the AGWSF meme in place, it presents this as the electronic transition equalling more power. You might not see anything wrong in that because you are so used to hearing this meme without actually ever thinking about it. What is the real difference here? The heat energy is capable of moving a whole large molecule into rotation which is what converts energy to heat, that makes it more POWERFUL than the UV which is smaller in size and CANNOT move the whole molecule into rotation, so cannot heat up the molecule. UV works on a much smaller scale. It is more energetic than visible which can only knock an electron around a bit, which is how blue light is scattered every which way in the atmosphere by the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen. More energetic only means that it is moving more rapidly in the same space, since all these electromagnetic waves travel at the same speed this means it has got to be smaller. The more highly energetic, the smaller the waves. The smaller they are the more larger things can stop them (until they become so small they can slip inbetween). UV doesn’t penetrate deeper than the first layer of skin. You can stop UV by putting on a shirt.
You can stop UV by putting on a shirt.
Error 1, you say:-
“So, no. It’s heat that on the move. Heat moves from hotter to colder, the Sun is very hot, it’s giving off a lot of heat, that heat is moving to colder space around it.”
Really? What then is the temperature of that space? About 3°K (-270°C). That 3° is only due to the very few particles of matter present in it but put a spacecraft in space and the bare metal (matter) can reach 260°C (533° K) i.e. the sun is hot yes, but it is giving off energy in the form of radiation (the SOLAR range of the EM spectrum that INCLUDES the visible light range). The radiation moves through space at the speed of light (being the only way, no conduction or convection in a vacuum), the heat only manifests on an encounter by the radiation with matter (say a spacecraft).
This AGWSF meme is as irritating as the ‘everything gives off infrared heat above absolute zero’…
So nope. You refuse to take in that this is not what is happening, as you’ve argued further above. The Sun is giving off HEAT. This is HEAT energy. If there is something in its way which can be heated it will heat it. Put a spaceship in its way and the spaceship will heat up, put a piece of asbestos in its way and what happens?
In summary, it’s energy that’s on the move in the form of radiation and some of that radiation will convert to heat depending on the properties of the matter it encounters being “tuned” to a thermal heating effect of any part of the solar spectral range (the visible range not “tuned” and therefore ineffective).
The problem here is that you’re repeating a version of the AGWSF meme that ‘all energy is the same’, so you try to find ways to make it fit, but all energy is not the same. The Sun is producing gamma rays which are different in size and abilities to the thermal infrared heat rays it is producing and these are different from the visible rays it is producing, they do different things. An x-ray doesn’t become an x-ray when it hits a particular piece of matter ‘tuned’ to it, it is an x-ray and because it is an x-ray it will do certain things when it hits variety of matter. The matter isn’t creating the x-ray. Matter isn’t creating heat out of ‘radiation’, it is reacting to the heat it is receiving if it’s capable of receiving it.
Sorry, this is yer bog standard traditional physics. You are giving an argument created by the AGWSF factory – it is a particular slant to distract from the actual facts that energy is different in the different wavelengths, this makes it all the easier for them to pretend that ‘all radiation creates heat’ in encounters because they’ve taken the real heat from the Sun out of the energy budget. It’s a non argument really, but what it has done is confuse those genuinely seeking to understand the world around us.
Error 2, you say:-
“DLR actually means Downwelling Longwave Radiation”
Almost correct but not quite. DLR actually means Downwelling Longwave [Infrared] Radiation, the “Infrared” being IR-C MWIR and LWIR only – not IR-A or IR-B and NOT within the SOLAR EM spectral range except for the 1000nm MWIR overlap.
L stands for Longwave which in context of the real energy budget means thermal, longwave infrared, heat. Again, I don’t much care to argue against your version. My argument is that this term, DLR, which technically in trad science stands for downwelling from the Sun, has been usurped now and replaces the the previous term used in the AGWSF arguments, back-radiating. All the arguments I’ve seen in the last few years were about the ‘back-radiating’ longwave, thermal. Until this discussion I hadn’t seen DLR substituted for ‘back-radiating’, which I noted when I first came into the discussion. All the arguments now changed – second law anyone..?
Then following on you say:-
“– and that is technically what is downwelling direct from the Sun in energy budgets and should only therefore apply to thermal infrared direct from the Sun to Earth.”
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The solar spectral EM range that is “downwelling direct from the Sun” is 200-4000nm. DLR is 4000-16,000nm. If radiation is in the EM spectral range 4000-16,000nm and greater, it’s NOT solar radiation.
Sigh, I do wish you’d at least read my arguments, and my references, for comprehension to my point..
That is precisely the problem.
They have taken thermal infrared out of the REAL DOWNWELLING from the Sun. I’m not going to fetch it again. Find the comparison I posted on NASA’s teaching. Traditional REAL EFFIN PHYSICS, STILL teaches that the HEAT we feel from the Sun is THERMAL INFRARED. IF WE CAN FEEL IT THEN IT IS IN THE EFFIN DOWNWELLING FROM THE SUN
GOT IT?
MY POINT IS THAT SCIENCE HAS BEEN CORRUPTED.
You say (quoting a blog):-
“Any thoughts on this:
‘There is a band of wavelengths between 8 and 12 microns where little infrared radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere. Radiation in this band of wavelengths is what reaches the ground to heat things up.'”
My thoughts? BOGUS
You could try re-reading what I’ve said. At the very least you should be questioning why traditional science still teaches that the heat we get on the surface of the Earth, the heat we feel downwelling from the Sun which reaches us at the same time as visible light from the Sun, is the invisible thermal, longwave, infrared. That Herschel found…
Sadly, it’s your confused science that is bogus. If you ever come to appreciating that, I bet you’re going to be very annoyed.
So your following, I shan’t bother to deconstruct. First you must make some effort to comprehend the actual points I’m trying to make.
First, radiation in the EM spectral range 8000-12,000nm is outside the solar EM spectral range so it is neither direct solar nor diffuse solar (161 W.m2 TF&K global average) and therefore (in this case) it is DLR from GHGs and clouds (333 W.m2 TF&K global average).
Actually, I can’t let this one pass. Re-read that. Do you really believe that we do not receive heat direct from the Sun??!
Then we can’t be receiving light from the Sun either.
That massive huge fireball in the sky chucking out all that heat! And what? There’s a shield or something around the Earth which stops that heat from reaching us?? What? How?
Is this from your thinking that matter creates heat out of ‘radiation’?
Second, solar radiation “heats things up” – not DLR. Calculations for solar energy collectors add direct and diffuse solar to arrive at the useful flux – you do NOT add the DLR flux to the direct+diffuse solar flux to arrive at the total useful flux.
Downwelling Longwave Radiation is that coming DIRECT from the Sun. You are misusing the term. The energy budget is what comes in DIRECT from the Sun against what goes out from the Earth.
We can feel the heat direct from the Sun. It is downwelling heat direct from the Sun. AND my point is that this has been EXCLUDED by the AGW Science Fiction corruption of real physics. Your ‘energy budget’ is pure fiction because your base premises are corrupted. They were deliberately corrupted.
You are repeating a corruption of real physics. Please, do make an effort to check it out for yourself.
The second point is what I believe to be the gigantic error that climate science (including Spencer, Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl) and AGW make. They do not understand real, apparent and Watt-less power the way electrical engineers, technicians and electricians do. They assume that 1 W.m2 of DLR power has equivalent heating effect to 1 W.m2 of solar power on geologic material (including ocean) but clearly it doesn’t. All they have to do is consult the Electromagnetic spectrum to find out what the difference is. The energy decreases as wavelength increases (no Myrrh, no “density” increase either, that’s concentration as in a laser – I think you mean an increase in INTENSITY of flux say to 50 W.m2 that is required for MW cooking). So moving from EUV to FIR, the energy-per-photon is:- …
No, I don’t mean intensity, I’m not talking about lasars…. 🙂
For example as amount of stuff in a given area, a dense material has more stuff closer together and visible light is but a very tiny part of the spectrum and so much less of it than heat from the Sun in the energy that reaches us.., 🙂 but as here:
So of the same intensity, the density of photons is greater the longer the wavelength.
Anyway, again you’re equating ‘energy decreases as wavelength increases’ with ‘less power to do work’. Just how much power to move a molecule of water into rotation, which is the way energy converts matter to heat, see kinetic, do you think the non-thermal near infrared has, which is microscopic compared with the bigger pin head size of thermal infrared? And you’re not being internally consistent here either, by saying that UV is capable of converting oceans to heat and visible isn’t, and then your breakdown of ir which you say can also heat is on the other side of visible…? How do you account for visible not heating the oceans in your version?
What these diagrams don’t show.. What frequency looks like.
Somewhere I read that ‘holes’ in a material less than one tenth the size of the wave are effectively a solid to the electromagnetic wave – so for gamma rays the requirement is denser material as a shield, lead is an effective shield for x-rays which go easily through the soft tissue of a body but are stopped by bone. Sound travels through walls, light doesn’t.
It’s a sense of scale that’s missing here, and that, as I’ve said, has been deliberately promoted to confuse the issue. You have to bear in mind that AGW is junk science as a hypothesis. CO2 has been shown to be of no relevance to ‘global warming’, the 800 years time lag and the vast, rapid and dramatic changes in and out of interglacials with really high sea level rises all happening while claiming that ‘CO2 levels have been the same for 800,000 years and now we’re pumping in more we’re going to go into runaway heating’. To support that fiction, rather a lot of ‘proofs’ have been produced by the AGWSF department – and there’s deliberately no internal consistency to them, they’re not real science just ‘sound-bites’ of misinformation, and they’ll use two contradictory explanations. Like using ‘Brownian’ motion to describe ‘carbon dioxide diffusing in the atmosphere’ when they’re quoting ideal gas laws, when this is not applicable to gases and liquids but a description of particles in such fluid mediums. What they do is create an impossible physical world, taken together a complete jumble.
Just as here with excluding from the Earth’s energy budget the real downwelling of heat from the Sun and giving visible light (or in your version a variation of this), the properties of thermal infrared which is the real heat from the Sun, so they do with carbon dioxide – it’s now taught that this and oxygen and nitrogen are ideal gases – so everyone thinks, and please, don’t give a variation here I really don’t have any more time for this at the moment.. :), that we are surrounded in empty space with molecules zipping across the atmosphere at tremendous speeds because they’ve excluded the real properties of real gas molecules and substituted an imaginary ‘ideal’ which no real gas obeys (You have to go through a lot of tweaking to put reality back in calcualations). AGWSF has taken out the properties of these gases such things as volume and weight and interactions by describing them only in ‘ideal’ gas terms, an impossible imaginary world. So ask them how sound travels in their world and they’re stumped.
People who promote lies don’t care about the confusion they create, the more confusion the easier it is for the lie to believed, and this lie has megabucks backing because the perceived rewards are even more mega, and, they’ve had time to put this into the ‘general background’ by shouting loudest and longest and creating panic and fear and shutting out everyone who objected along the way. I do hope you take the time to test their basic science premises in this –
– and I wish you luck.
In the real world the difference between heat and light from the Sun is understood very well indeed. Halogen lights:
Shortwave visible, uv and nr ir are not hot. They are not thermal energies. Heat is invisible.
@ur momisugly Myrrh
We’re obviously poles apart on most points but our understanding seems to converge at photon flux so I’ll just make a short response now and address your entire comment later (working 11/7 for the next week)
You say:-
Not in the solar spectrum, see Solar spectral photon flux densities. The photon flux density coincides with the power flux density, see the solar reference spectrum up-thread and SOLAR RADIATION.
You say:-
Please see the very first sentence in the first paragraph of my comment here that I duplicate below because you obviously missed it:-
I.e., for a heating effect to occur, matter matters.
In the meantime, here’s 2 questions for you:-
1) How do YOU account for the temperature of space being 3°K but the temperature of bare metal on a spacecraft can reach 533°K when (as you say) “That massive huge fireball in the sky chucking out all that heat!”?
[“all that heat” seems to be making space very cold]
2) Have you patented a device to collect the downwelling energy that you insist exists at the surface of the earth in the 4000nm – 16,000nm range of the EM spectrum which you say is real power and direct from the sun and I say is apparent power and emitted by GHGs and clouds?
[You can make a fortune if you’re correct and make the AGW folks deliriously happy as well]