Spencer finds "the Big Picture" on cloud feedback

But, but, but – this work hasn’t been approved by The Central Committee on Climatology!
How dare you subvert the normal processes of ‘science’ and let the general public see it without their sanction. Surely there must be at least three yers of process to go through before anything like this comes into the public domain – if at all.
And to publish it at WUWT as well! You are a heretcic and an apostate and are hereby excommunicated from the One True Way. Cast into the outer darkness forever.
/sarc

For us that work in the weather we understand the “Cloud Effect” very well. From inside a climate controled enviroment through glass the effect is less. With no windows reality is realy out of perspective. When you take into account all the types of clouds and their microenviroments around the world at a given time to even think about any part being normal is out there. To even average over a period of time and call it normal climate leaves a lot.

That’s a good cue for enjoying this cartoon by Josh once again…
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/josh_spencer_teaching_dessler.jpg

Given that the list of matters it sounds like you intend to take Dessler to school on…I mean to rebutt him on…could it be possible to ask that you publish in installments? Say two or three a week for as long as it takes?
For us “interested but I’m not a PhD candidate” types, we can’t absorb the thing as fast as you can write it, and we need time to catch up. Besides, by stretching it out, you put Dessler in a real bind. He can’t cherry pick one or two minor items out of the whole paper and then claim he has debunked the whole thing (a favourite tactic of the Team I’ve noticed), he has to respond to each piece as it comes out…our look like he doesn’t have a response at all. Best of all though, when defending himself on Chapter 1, he has to respond with facts that very well may rob him of his defense in Chapter 4, and so on.
Besides, after having the media and the public at large at their beck and call for so long, watching a member of the Team twist in the wind for a few weaks instead of just one article…seems like justice.
Wolfgang Wagner, are you paying attention? The demigod you bowed down to has sent his flag bearer to do battle on his behalf, to defeat SB11, the task he assigned to you and which you failed to accomplish. You’re of little use to him now, you’ve lost credibility with the CAGW croud and the skeptics alike. Judith Curry has done the world a great service by moving from blind faith to crtitical but fair comment. You too can do some good and be remembered in the history books for doing the right thing. Or for being a patsy. Your call.

The big picture here is that it is only over the last decade that data specifically intended to accurately measure key climate values has become available, I am thinking of measuring incoming/outgoing radiation at top of atmosphere and ocean heat content.
So rather than the science being settled, it is only just getting started.
What Spencer is saying is that clouds are an important forcing in their own right.

Way ta go Doc Spencer! I got cha back, My silly little theory may explain why,
http://ourhydrogeneconomy.blogspot.com/2011/10/ipcc-down-welling-radiation-violates.html

Writing a paper and getting published are two different things , the ‘Team’ will be on the case big style so it would not be a surprise to find this papers ‘review’ moves at pace suitable to keep it out of any IPCC consideration. And I would expect another record turn around in a answer to it.

go put your stuff on Roy’s blog, Dallas. Some person of discernment is eventually going to face the blackboard and look at it. I’ve mentioned previously that Good Cartoons drive out Bad Cartoons. I reason backwards that since Trenberth is missing something, maybe this is it.
=========================

I wish the folk who post `important’ posts on this blog would take the time to draft a simple, introductory paragraph, explaining in simple terms the significance of whatever it is their post is about.
This post is (with respect) another example of `in-house’ musing that fails to inform the generally interested follower of this blog.
Ok, if there is no intention to inform the educated general public, that’s fine. Just that the Bear thought that was one of the main aims of a popular blog, such as this.
Too whiny? Too much trouble?

“I view all his work with suspicion.”
good that is how all statements of this fact or that theory should be taken, it’s only when you start to do it to one side or one source that the trouble starts !

I left the equation on Roy’s blog and asked for some emissivity information at 600mb, there seems to be a bump around -25 to -30C according to my calculations, ~0.71 ballpark. to fine tune the coefficients, e seems real close, don’t know about a and b, pretty complex PDQ relationship. Doable, if I had someone that hasn’t killed as many braincells as I have.

Actually Mr. Moderator, If you multiply the K&T DWLR, 321 by the TOA emissivity of 0.61, their budget will match and they will find the ~24Wm-2 missing in the atmosphere. Simple mistake. Using a surface frame of reference it is obvious, well, to me anyway. If K&T would check we could move move on to more exciting stuff 🙂

I may not have understood Dr. Spencers paper but if I am being told that Long Wave radiation accumulates under clouds and is then somehow forced back down to the surface of the earth and this radiation results in an increase in the temperature at the surface, I’m sorry but I just don’t believe it, however,
The albedo, i.e. the amount of solar radiation reflected back out to space, of the earths surface is given as 30% of total solar radiation. Increased cloud cover decreases solar radiation reaching the earths surface, that’s a given. Increased cloud cover also increases the amount of solar radiation (reflected from the surface) ‘trapped’ by clouds. This in turn causes solar radiation ‘trapped’ by the cloud to be reflected back towards the surface of the earth. The result is an increase in the amount of Solar radiation absorbed by the earth when clouds are present, meaning that the albedo of the troposphere is reduced when clouds are present. As reflected solar radiation is equal to solar radiation directly from the sun there is a possibility that this reflected solar radiation could travel back down, however, until evidence to prove that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is wrong, Long Wave radiation, being energy lower (colder) than Short Wave (hotter) cannot travel from an area of lower energy, i.e. the cloud to an area of higher energy, i.e. the surface of the earth.
As a member of the general public I agree with other comments that to get the facts across to more people explanations in simple English are needed.

“John Marshall says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:53 am
i wait with baited breath. But when a scientist tells me that heat will travel, by whatever method, from cold to hot as Dr. Spencer told me in an email”
John, you know that matter radiates photons as a function of its temperature and emissivity.
Cold objects radiate less energy than hot objects, if they have the same emissivity.
Take two equally sized nearby objects with the emissivity, one at 100K and one at 400K, They will both emit photons and both absorb photons, the cold object will receive photons from the hot object and the hot one will receive photons from the cold one.
In terms of the overall exchange of energy, heat, in the form of photons, will travel from the hot body to the cold body. This heat transfer is the sum sum of the fluxes, energy input – energy output. The hot body loses more heat than it gets from the cold body and the cold body gains more heat than it transfers to the hot body.
Heat is transferred in both directions, but the overall transfer is in one direction.

TBear Said: “I wish the folk who post `important’ posts on this blog would take the time to draft a simple, introductory paragraph, explaining in simple terms the significance of whatever it is their post is about.
This post is (with respect) another example of `in-house’ musing that fails to inform the generally interested follower of this blog.”
———–
Absolutely. I very much appreciate the hard work of Dr. Spencer and others who open their minds to the possibility that the “consensus science” view is far from the final answer.
Since the matter of “global warming” has become very much a political matter that has engaged the minds of non-scientific people across the globe, it is incumbent upon the reporters of new climate science achievements – such as WUWT – to cast the technical scientific discussion in language the common man (ladies, too!!) can understand.
Many thanks for all you do, Good People.

A lot of confused comments here, and one guy even advertising SKS; so here’s an SKS antidote.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/

Looking at the big picture since the 1950s with two major shifts at around 1975 and 2000 I think the primary cause of changes in the amount of solar energy getting into the oceans is variability in the behaviour of the global surface air pressure systems under combined solar and oceanic influences.
That makes the jet streams either:
i) Move towards the poles and/or become more zonal for reduced global cloudiness.
ii) Move towards the equator and/or become more meridional for increased global cloudiness.
That is how the system input varies to the extent observed.
The potential feedbacks are effectively overwhelmed by those changes in system forcing.

“So important that it needs spelling out in ultra-simple laymans language, ”
Try this:
The changes in input (forcings) to the system (represented by variations in the amount of solar shortwave getting into the oceans) are far larger than ALL the feedbacks combined and so completely overwhelm the feedbacks.
Thus the feedbacks have no climate significance. By the time the feedbacks get their collective acts together the changes in forcings have already moved on with THEIR direct effects on the system.
So anyone who thinks that feedbacks caused by human activity can affect the system significantly are wrong. That includes every climate model ever constructed and the entire climate establishment.
And all one needs to have such a profound effect on the system energy budget is to alter global cloudiness via a redistribution of the surface air pressure systems. That seems to be a natural cyclical consequence of an interplay between top down solar and bottom up oceanic variations.

Roy Spencer writes:
“I never dreamed that anyone would dispute the claim that cloud changes can cause “cloud radiative forcing” of the climate system, in addition to their role as responding to surface temperature changes (“cloud radiative feedback”). (NOTE: “Cloud radiative forcing” traditionally has multiple meanings. Caveat emptor.)
But that’s exactly what has happened. Andy Dessler’s 2010 and 2011 papers have claimed, both implicitly and explicitly, that in the context of climate, with very few exceptions, cloud changes must be the result of temperature change only.”
Warmista cannot break free from their “radiation only” models of climate. They treat clouds and all such natural phenomena as epiphenomena of radiation. In other words, clouds can only be affected by climate changes and cannot affect climate. They must learn to respect the natural phenomena and create physical hypotheses that describe them.
By the way, at some point we are going to get to real science and we will do away with charged metaphors such as “forcing” and “feedback” which are multiply ambiguous. In real science, such terms are replaced by universal generalizations that describe the flow of cause and effect among the objects under study.
Thanks again for your good work.

Thanks Dr. Spencer. You have made very clear to me that although clouds are a response to surface temperature, they are more of a cause of surface temperature. So much more, that if one was to oversimplify, it would be less of a mistake to consider clouds as just a forcing instead of as just a feedback.
As to what modulates clouds, ask Svensmark, I think he knows.

Semantics —————- often viewed as trivial, and are, that is, until it gets in the way of communication. Feedback vs forcing? Obviously there are other forces (heh) that change cloud cover other than an increase in temps. And, obviously, clouds effect our temps. I suppose it would be more correct to say energy transfer as opposed to temps. Wouldn’t that meet the explanation of a forcing? But, then, wouldn’t all factors meet that criteria, save for the external forcing, to whit, the sun?
Maybe our friends Tbear, Pete, et al are on to something. Perhaps a primer with simple explanations of terms would be of some use. Though, I’m not sure anything would actually suffice for all. The problem is that none of us entered the discussion at the same time, and, each of us has a different level of understanding when we entered. Then, we all have different perspectives, as well.
John Marshall says:@ October 9, 2011 at 1:53 am “……..”, well nothing other than to slide a snide, yet, cryptic comment into the discussion.

@Roy A web page with definitions of terms would help. Your definitions, others definitions. That way you can just link to it if people want to know what you’re talking about in any particular discussion. It seems like the argument always gets cluttered up with an inadequate definition of terms.

Re: DocMartyn says:
October 9, 2011 at 6:09 am
//////////////////////////////////////////
It is not really appropriate to get into this debate since it is O/T to the Spencer article.
I envisage that everyone accepts the statement that “…you know that matter radiates photons as a function of its temperature and emissivity. Cold objects radiate less energy than hot objects, if they have the same emissivity….”
The problem is with your further statement “Take two equally sized nearby objects with the emissivity, one at 100K and one at 400K, They will both emit photons and both absorb photons, the cold object will receive photons from the hot object and the hot one will receive photons from the cold one.” That statement may be correct but then again, it may not be. I have never seen an experiment proving the correctness of that assertion and I consider that it is mere supposition albeit it I can understand the reason why someone may conclude that it is correct. However, I consider that we know and understand and have insufficent understanding of photons to be certain that you are correct.
For example, lets consider that I have a room with an open door. I have a very powerful fan say 3 feet from the door aimed at the door. This very powerful fan blasts air at 400mph out through the door. Now outside that room say some 50 feet away from the open door I set up a similar but less powerful fan aimed at the door. This blasts air at 100mph ained towards the open door. What proportion if any of the air molecules blasted by the less powerful fan find their way through the door and into the room?
My point is this. Merely because a low temperature object radiates energy, it does not follow that that energy can pass the threshold and get absorbed by a warmer object which is radiating energy at a higher state. may be it can, but may be it does not and this can be clarified only by properly constructed experimentation which to my knowledge has not been undertaken such that we simply do not know the answer to what is a very important issue in the climate science field.

For my own understanding (and it might help others), I consider “forcings” to be inputs to a system. “Feedbacks” to be parts of the system’s output that are fed back into the system by mixing them with the inputs.
Negative feedbacks promote the stability while positive ones increase the responsiveness of the system.
In electronics, one tends to design using negative feedbacks.
Being the result of natural selection, our planet, I think, would contain mainly negative feedbacks.

“The Australian Labor Party….. The political party that taxed the air we breathe.”
When the natural inclination of people on the left, no matter where they live, is to raise taxes, and reduce liberty, what should rational people conclude about what the left really wants?
And after CO2 fades as a reason to raise taxes and reduces liberty, some future swing of the climate to being much colder will trigger what reaction from the left? To raise taxes and reduce liberty in order to restore balance to the climate!
We used to have sufficient levels of both prosperity and liberty to allow us to give in to leftists on their demands. But those days are over. We could never really afford their Utopia. It was never really “sustainable”, a concept the left loves to scold the rest of us about.

davidmhoffer says:
October 9, 2011 at 12:56 am
Given that the list of matters it sounds like you intend to take Dessler to school on…I mean to rebutt him on…could it be possible to ask that you publish in installments? Say two or three a week for as long as it takes?
For us “interested but I’m not a PhD candidate” types, we can’t absorb the thing as fast as you can write it, and we need time to catch up. Besides, by stretching it out, you put Dessler in a real bind. He can’t cherry pick one or two minor items out of the whole paper and then claim he has debunked the whole thing (a favourite tactic of the Team I’ve noticed), he has to respond to each piece as it comes out…our look like he doesn’t have a response at all. Best of all though, when defending himself on Chapter 1, he has to respond with facts that very well may rob him of his defense in Chapter 4, and so on.
————————
I second that request.

I think a glossary of terms is a good idea. As a layman, I am in a good position to list terms that are understood by the lay, and put question marks aginst those that baffle me
so Here is my starter, feel free to contribute
Al – A unit of hot air, often associated with lots of front. aka a hypocratee, or a DAISNAID (do as i say not as I do)
Albedo – Reflectiveness of stuff.
Briff – A long tongue. not of ice, that can slurp into fjords or other crevices
Canard – A fib. a big fib. see Tree rings
CO2 – a trace greenhouse gas. plant food. Supposed by some to be evil because although it is a small scale player, mankind produces some, so at last we have someone to blame. Mankind will be arrested shortly.
Denier – A fool who refuses to believe that human knowledge has peaked.
Dessler – A rapid turnaround coattail rider. See Spencer.
Energy – This is what its all about.
Finance – All sceptics are paid one million dollars per day by big oil. FACT
Gore – Inventor of the internet, the pioneer who was first to discover that the centre of the earth was millions of degrees, and the first to realise that science had stopped. We already knew everything. Schtum. stop arguing. stop questioning. schtum.
HadCrut – ?
IPCC – A body that was set up to advance the science by using anti-science methods. Unable to understand that concensus to science is like captivity to a wild animal. The AR are a torch to be lit, not a bucket to be filled.
Jones – An English unit of BS (See blivett, the US equiv. i.e. putting 2 cwt of BS in a 1 cwt bag)
Kenji – A member of the Union of concerned scientists. Neither concerned, a scientist or a real member. but has a credit card
Lysenkoism – ?
Mann – A personality disorder. Drives the subject to believe they are special, living in special times, and only they have the answer. Harmless untill a few gather together at the same place at the same time, then they can gather a momentum and produce ‘self fullfilling prophesies’.
They will never apologise for the horrors they inflict – see the Salem witch trials
Non Disclosure – A late 20C, early 21C concept designed to improve the scientific process. How this works is even more obscure than how the conjunction of mars with venus affects your love prospects.
Organisations ?
Predictions – See falsifiability
Quotes – The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
Risk Assessment ?
Spencer – Keep it up mate. Keep it up.
Travesty Trenbo – To do a ‘Travesty Trenbo’ is to paint yourself into a corner , for no apparent reason. i.e. you tell your children that the tooth fairy left the money for the tooth at midnight. But the child says ‘I was awake at midnight and I was with a friend’. To do a TT you would say ‘ah yes, but the tooth fairy works on PST’ Then when the kid says ‘it wasnt my tooth, it was my friends tooth’ To do a TT, you would say ‘ah yes, but the tooth fairy knows that some teeth are deep teeth, that wont surface for a million years’ i.e. to make increasingly unbelievably outrageous statements, instead of admitting to a wise kid that there is, in fact, no tooth fairy
UEA – a polytechnic in England, that wants to be a university
Viner – To do a viner. This is to make a claim so far in the future that you never have to worry about being caught out. Except that when you are a young acolyte, 10 years seems like a long time. It isnt. Snow will become a thing of the past ? yes . and my butt is a cream bun.
REPLY: We have a glossary in the menu below the header – Anthony

One other thought as to meeting the level of understanding of both the interested/layman and intelligent, and the highly knowledgable with regards to the scientific terms/details. Give it to us both ways. Toss out the details for the geek type and a summary for the layman. I’m on the border.
Thank you WUWT and Dr. Spencer. This is what we have been waiting for!

more statistics. oh, joy.
the statistics have stared everyone in the face to death.
i know it was never about science – but wondering why people still pretend it is – and that statistics IS science.
one good experiment would be far more useful and significant than all the statistics ever shoveled. but who wants to actually make sense and lose fame & funding?

“i wait with baited breath. But when a scientist tells me that heat will travel, by whatever method, from cold to hot as Dr. Spencer told me in an email, I view all his work with suspicion.”
And with what do you bait your breath? If you were waiting with bated breath, now, you might make more sense.
I look forward to more on the cloud forcing debate, but not being a climate scientist, but instead an interested layman, I wouldn’t mind someone translating the more obscure language into plain English.

i know it was never about science – but wondering why people still pretend it is – and that statistics IS science.
Do you think you can get over this bee in your bonnet and move into the century the rest of us are in? Please?
Statistics are scientific. They generate knowledge that literally could not be found any other way, because direct experiment is not always possible. (Or in many quantum cases, literally never possible.)
How do you prove smoking increases the risk of lung cancer when it is fairly easy to find 100 year olds who smoke without lung cancer? Do we say : an experiment has been performed, and the theory falsified? So people can smoke and won’t die young?
Statistical data needs to be properly examined by experts in statistics, for sure. But to throw all the modern advances out just because you don’t understand/like them is just idiotic.

Sensible:
M.A.Vukcevic (October 9, 2011 at 1:05 am) wrote:
“Temperature, humidity, clouds, atmospheric pressure,… etc. are the internal inter-dependent components of the climate system, with all feedbacks automatically factored in by nature, the laws of physics and the strong modulation by the annual insolation cycle.
Only the external factors can be the long term causes of the climate oscillations.”
Thanks for sharing.

Although I, too, would love to be kept in the loop as Spencer is addressing Dessler issues, I don’t think it’s a good idea. If Spencer “spills the beans” on a Blog before submitting a paper, some journals will refuse to publish it because the idea is no longer novel, or because they want to publish what has not already been published. Even when, in the case of the first reason, the idea is actually contradictory (blogs don’t count, you know), the reason has actually been used before.
It’s better to give journals as little excuse as possible, so that when they do reject, the rejection looks silly.

Matt G says:
October 9, 2011 at 2:37 pm
********
Wait, so are there more clouds because of rising temperatures or not? I ask because in the same paragraph you said, first, that “with warmer temperatures, there should be more clouds,” but then said that ” the change in global cloud levels had nothing to do with caused by [sic] warming.” Care to clarify?
Also, I’m pretty sure you agree that clouds have a negative net forcing capacity. But despite having more clouds now than the past (due to warming, which, again, I’m only kind of sure you agree has happened), temperatures continue to rise. Shouldn’t that tell us that there is another culprit whose net forcing capacity is not only positive, but bigger than the absolute value of the forcing capacity of clouds?

Where does the red dashed line of “Natural Radiative Forcing” come from?
I assume the CERES NET is the measured difference (black line).
The blue line is modeled feedback?

Dr Roy…..give ’em hell!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

izen;
Contingent responses of clouds to warming as a negative feedback require the warming to occur for the feedback to happen.
Unless you have a system with precognition that somehow manages to respond to a potential 1degC rise with a negative feedback that COMPLETELY negates it….>>>
Of course, but that isn’t the point. The point is that the direct effects of CO2 increasing are in and of themselves inconsequential. They are simply too small to be of concern, UNLESS they trigger massive positive feedback that amplifies their effect. That is the basis of the alarmism regarding CO2 increases, and it is the basis of the science quoted by the IPCC and other sources.
The mere fact that the largest positive feedback claimed is being shown by observational research to be negative rather than positive in and of itself negates the alarmist position. Feedbacks need not negate entirely the effects of CO2, and I don’t recall Dr Spencer or anyone else trying to claim they did. The simple fact that they are likely negative at all rather than positive defeats the CAGW meme.

Scott Brim says:
October 9, 2011 at 10:21 am

kim says:
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
===========
Someone needs to write a primer text on this topic entitled Clouds for Dummies.
This book could include a discussion of the cloud modeling philosophies employed by climate modelers under a sub-chapter entitled Cloud Computing.

I’m afraid that sub-chapter is excluded from every book the climate modelers read (and they avoid Clouds for Dummies entirely). To them, it would only confuse their approach and negate their results. Can’t have a chapter like that…

“We have a well established physical mechanism that is adding energy to the surface for reasons independent of any inherent climate process.”
We also have a well established physical mechanism that is removing energy from the surface for reasons independent of any inherent climate process.
Does anyone have any evidence that there is any energy left over after the negative evaporative process has done its work ?
The so called ocean skin effect which proposes a reduction in energy flow from ocean to air doesn’t work because the faster rate of evaporation is capable of offsetting the otherwise applicable effect of Fourier’s Law as I have explained elsewhere.
The oft used illustration of a warming water surface when a cloud passes over doesn’t work either because a cloud overhead reduces evaporation whereas DLR from a clear sky increases evaporation.

“But the 1LoT means that energy is now as latent heat of water vapor. And the water vapor as a GHG is adding to the ‘greenhouse’ effect.”
Apparently not because global humidity seems not to change much. Instead the water cycle gets faster (or larger) with no significant increase in total water vapour at any given time. The extra evaporation is matched by extra condensation. AGW theory somehow leaves out the condensation side of things.
“No, the latent heat energy is returned to the atmosphere at a lower temperature than the temperature at evaporation so the rate of energy emission is much less than it would be from the evaporating surface.”
The extra condensation at higher levels makes the energy content of those higher levels greater than it otherwise would have been. The air above is proportionately thinner than the air below so energy goes upward and out of the system faster than it would have done from the surface. You suggest that evaporation and condensation have a net warming effect for the system as a whole. That is not correct or possible and there is lots of established physics confirming that.

“Wrong, satellite measurement have detected an increase in specific humidity”
Very little and not accompanied by surface warming for more than 10 years which suggests natural forces dominate. Anyway the net position is unclear due to variability at different levels.
“If energy is transfered to a higher altitude but at a lower temperature half is STILL emitted downwards.”
But the downward portion does not all get as far downward as the surface because the atmosphere below is much denser than the atmosphere above. The net effect is faster loss to space than if the energy had remained at the surface all along.

R. Gates says:
October 9, 2011 at 11:16 am
Taken directly from Dessler’s paper:
“And since most of the climate variations over this
period were due to ENSO, this suggests that the ability to
reproduce ENSO is what’s being tested here, not anything
directly related to equilibrium climate sensitivity.”
Question: Do you or do you not agree with this? Why or why not?
Over the short time period observed, it seems Dessler is quite correct: ENSO changes (specifically heat transport by the ocean) drives changes in surface temperatures which drive cloud formation. In short, during the short time frame involved, clouds are reacting to heat transport by the oceans, with whatever affects of clouds on actual surface temperatures to be very small when compared to the effects of ocean heat transport on surface temperatures.
————————————
And what makes the ENSO oscillate between warm and cool phases?
You skipped that step. Any CO2-based radiation involved in that?
And we are testing climate sensitivity here. A real world situation with real world measurements over a real time-frame.
Climate science relies on theory and CO2-based climate models while empirical measurements tells the real world story. Why does climate science seem to discount and ignore empirical measurements so often. The science would prefer to just change the measurements instead of trying to explain what is really going on.

I think you need a better explanation of exactly what the 3 lines in the graph represent.
I also think you might omit the words “forcing” and “feedback” and give a narration of the events and their causal connections in accurate temporal sequence.

In reply to Matt G @ October 9, 2011 at 4:32 pm:
Can you provide a reference for your statement that clouds have declined about 5% from 1983 to 2001?

“”””” richard verney says:
October 9, 2011 at 8:12 am
Re: DocMartyn says:
October 9, 2011 at 6:09 am
//////////////////////////////////////////
It is not really appropriate to get into this debate since it is O/T to the Spencer article.
I envisage that everyone accepts the statement that “…you know that matter radiates photons as a function of its temperature and emissivity. Cold objects radiate less energy than hot objects, if they have the same emissivity….” “””””
I’m not going to waste the space to post all of your post; you can go back and re-read it. But both of you are in need of some elementary physics schooling, that should be well understood by anybody who is reading here at WUWT.
For starters “heat” and “electromagnetic radiation” are not synonyms; in fact they have nothing to do with each other.
The earth receives virtually ZERO “heat” from the sun; it does receive vast amounts of “electromagnetic radiation”. EM Radiation in turn knows absolutely nothing about “Temperature”, which is a property that is uniquely confined to real matter (maybe anti-matter too). “Heat” is also a process (verb); not an object (noun). It is the process that increases the “Temperature” of some body of material. EM radiation requires NO material for its propagation, and it propagates at a velocity that is entirely dependent on the electrical and magnetic properties of free space; containing no real material at all.
Temperature is a measure of the mean kinetic (mechanical) energy of particles of real matter; and absent that matter, the word Temperature has no meaning whatsoever.
The heating process of course cannot (absent some outside influence) proceed from a source at one Temperature to a sink at some higher Temperature; the second law of thermodynamics precludes that; but EM radiation can freely travel from any source body to any sink, regardless of the Temperatures of either the source or the sink.
If you hold up a 16 ounce bottle of drinking water at about room Temperature, it will radiate (EM radiation) in all directons, at about 400 W/m^2, and some of that LWIR emission will eventually escape from the earth and proceed through space to the moon. let’s say we have a half moon, half in dark, and half in daylight. The day side is much hotter than your water bottle, while the dark side is much colder. Both halves will receive, and absorb the same amount of the LWIR from your water bottle.
Meanwhile, in a different direction, the same solid angle cone of EM radiation will proceed towards the sun, which is much higher Temperature than either side of the moon, as well as your water bottle. The sun will also receive and absorb the same amount of EM radiation as the moon did..
It is the “heating” process, which cannot proceed without expenditure of work from a cold body to a hot body. EM radiation which has NO understanding of Temperature whatsoever, can propagate from anywhere to anywhere else. LWIR emissions from high cold clouds, can and do radiate down to earth and get absorbed. The Temperatures have no effect on the transmission. The cloud source Temperature will determine HOW MUCH EM radiation is emitted from the clouds, or from the atmospheric gases for that matter; but that has no effect on where that radiation can travel.

“(for the detail-oriented folks, forcing = Net + feedback…where Net is very close to the negative of [LW+SW]).”
Synaptic overload? No, my seizures occur in the right hemisphere. OK, try again. Net is negative, feedback is small, so forcing must be negative. Yep, it still doesn’t make sense.

Stephen Wilde: iv) Poleward shifts occur and the system gains energy from more sunshine into the oceans. Equatorward shifts occur and the system loses energy from less siunshine into the oceans.
Poleward shifts of clouds? Did Dr. Spencer’s post mention poleward shifts of clouds?

I’m curious, why no mention of ENSO? Several studies now (not just the recent one by Dessler) have discussed the importance of ENSO, especially on decadal time-scales. How can you simply ignore what is known to be an important modulator on ocean and atmospheric temperatures?

Stephen Wilde: It is what Roy could have written if he were to put his observations into a wider context.
Could you explain for him what the red and black lines on the graph are?

50.richard verney says:
October 9, 2011 at 8:12 am
My point is this. Merely because a low temperature object radiates energy, it does not follow that that energy can pass the threshold and get absorbed by a warmer object which is radiating energy at a higher state. may be it can, but may be it does not and this can be clarified only by properly constructed experimentation which to my knowledge has not been undertaken such that we simply do not know the answer to what is a very important issue in the climate science field.
This is a law, that heat always flows from hot to cold, because that is what is always observed, isn’t it? Like, rivers always flow downhill. It takes work to alter that. Sure locally, the river might hit a rock and some water forced back against the stream, but that is work done to change the direction. Heat always flows from hot to cold unless work is done to alter this. I thought this was basic knowledge. I really don’t know what to say about George E. Smith’s summary of what he thinks it is, but I too would like to see some real physical experiments proving it.. I hope he can provide these.

George E. Smith; says:
October 10, 2011 at 9:59 am
———————–
Thank you. Your explanation was my understanding. Total confidence now.

@eyesonu Oct 10 9:10pm
I love WUWT, and I think I have learned a lot too, but I am plagued by the question of whether I have learned what is true.
Each logical statement is followed by other logical statements with increasing depth and intensity borne of the convictions of the contributor. As it says in Proverbs 18:17 “The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.” ad infinitum.
Take the ongoing discussion about heat transfer from cold to hot. It seems silly to suggest that it is possible, yet radiation is emitted by anything above absolute zero as I understand it. Nevertheless, the issue is about heat and this is a net effect. Heat cannot go from cold to warm but a warm object in a cold environment, some distance from a cool but not cold object, will of course lose less heat, so………
The point is, there must be simple ways of defining what is true in the world of basic physics, and many other subjects. My guess is that many of us learn a lot from the blogs but we don’t know how much of it is true.
It is great that both sides of the debate can be seen on this blog, unlike the totally biased warmist blogs, but somehow some firm and true conclusions need to be drawn. Climate skeptics should not be in the business of creating new modern day myths to combat the myths of the warmists. Thr truth is what is needed and it needs to be made very clear.
I was shocked to see CNN broadcast the prediction of decades of colder weather coming. This was supported by their favourite weatherman and a Prof. from the UK. The weatherman clevery skipped the question about global warming from Becky, but the question was strong on the air all the way through. If CNN have finally realised that the global warming fox is dead, they may be changing their position and it is sure to be followed by the BBC and ABC in time albeit with much chagrin, but this could be a new phase in the whole debate.

BargHumer says:
October 10, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Each logical statement is followed by other logical statements with increasing depth and intensity borne of the convictions of the contributor. As it says in Proverbs 18:17 “The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.” ad infinitum.
🙂 The trick is to sit in the middle and not get pulled one way or the other, I had a very bad case of sea-sickness for a few weeks when I first began to compare the arguments..

WORDS HAVE MEANING !!!
“”””””Myrrh says:
October 10, 2011 at 7:31 pm
50.richard verney says:
October 9, 2011 at 8:12 am
My point is this. Merely because a low temperature object radiates energy, it does not follow that that energy can pass the threshold and get absorbed by a warmer object which is radiating energy at a higher state. may be it can, but may be it does not and this can be clarified only by properly constructed experimentation which to my knowledge has not been undertaken such that we simply do not know the answer to what is a very important issue in the climate science field.
This is a law, that heat always flows from hot to cold, because that is what is always observed, isn’t it? Like, rivers always flow downhill. It takes work to alter that. Sure locally, the river might hit a rock and some water forced back against the stream, but that is work done to change the direction. Heat always flows from hot to cold unless work is done to alter this. I thought this was basic knowledge. I really don’t know what to say about George E. Smith’s summary of what he thinks it is, but I too would like to see some real physical experiments proving it.. I hope he can provide these. “””””
This exchange between Myrrh and Richard illustrates, how easy it is to miscommunicate, when TECHNICAL TERMS are misused or used “loosely”.. Now both Myrrh and Richard may understand completely, exactly what each of them is saying, but that does not mean that everyone else, specially “lay” readers will, and nothing miscommunicates more than less than pedantic use of technical terms that have VERY SPECIFIC technical meanings, that may differ from colloquial usage.
So without being critical of either, let’s examine this exchange.
So in Richard’s second sentence, we get the following words:- (low) temperature, object, radiates, energy, energy, threshold, absorbed, warmer, object, radiating, energy, higher, state .
To this flow of words, (presumably), Myrrh responds with:- law, heat, flows, hot, cold, (flow) downhill, work, heat, flows, hot, cold, work.
Now in this context, I would not qualify as ” a lay person”, since I have both formal education in the subject matter, and a somewhat lengthy career of field application of such matters.
So I have no problem whatsoever in grasping exactly what Myrrh is saying; and I have NO great problem with exactly how Myrrh chose to state his response; and no-one with formal Physics training should be put out by Myrr’s statement; although some may wish for a more pedantic statement. A specific absence from Myrr’s statement is the word Temperature. “Hot” and “cold” are a little too colloquial, compared to “high(er) Temperature” and “low(er) Temperature”, WHEN ADDRESSING LAY FOLKS. The cognoscenti will simply roll with Myrr’s language, as perfectly satisfactory. We know exactly what he means; and also we feel confident, that HE knows what he means. Also absent from the statement is the word “energy”.
So Myrrh is clearly talking about the PROCESS of “heating”, which will often be described as “heat” flow, making “heat” a noun rather than a verb. He also does not use the words “object” or “medium”. And the process he describes clearly REQUIRES real objects or media to propagate the purely mechanical kinetic “energy” that is the signature of both Temperature and “heat” in its noun manifestation.
And the transport of that mechanical energy from place to place, is not possible without a real physical material medium or media between the “source” and the “sink”.
The process Myrr describes IS a process, which is constrained by the second law of thermodynamics. I like the exotic form as stated (English translation) by Rudolph Clausius.
“No cyclic machine can have no other effect, than to transport “heat” from a source at one Temperature, to a sink, at a higher Temperature.”
The necessary “other” effect to result in such a transport, IS, as Myrrh said, “work” which requires the investment of “energy”.
So now back to what Richard had said. He does use the word “Temperature”, which is uniquely a function of real physical materials, and he uses the colloquial “warmer”, and unlike Myrrh, he does use the word “energy”.
But Richard says NOTHING about “heating” or even “heat”, and he talks about RADIATING “energy”. He also talks of a warmer object radiating at a “higher state” , (presumably than his “low temperature” object.
Well here we have a clear misdirection. Higher “rate” would be accurate; “higher state” is simply incorrect usage, and can only confuse.
But Richard is quite accurate in suggesting that his “low temperature” object radiates at a lower rate (not state) than his “warmer object”.
What Richard is describing is the emission and propagation of “Electro-magnetic radiation” which is a form of ENERGY that is described in detail in Maxwell’s equations which govern “radio” and like emissions.
Also we are taught that EVERY “body”, that is at a Temperature higher than zero Kelvins, MUST radiate EM radiation. The basic radiation mechanism can be described as in Radio-Physics as a varying “electric current” flowing for some non-zero distance (antenna length); which we can also describe as an accelerating “electric charge”, travelling for some distance; or associated with some non-zero “electric dipole moment” (the antenna).
Either description with the application of Maxwell’s equations suffice to describe in some form the readiation and propagation of electromagnetic waves; which if we choose, can also be described in terms of photon emission.
And Planck’s radiation law, leads to the Stefan-Boltzmann 4th power of Temperature law for total emission in certain ideal cases.
Nothing in Maxwell’s equations limits EM wave transmission, propagation, and reception as a consequence of Temperature.
There is NO “threshold” for EM waves to surmount. They do interract with physical media, which can thereby absorb the energy, and convert it to some other form; which certainly could be simply waste “heat”, but could also be the release of an energetic electron, as in the photo-electric effect.
The point is Richard’s subject matter, and Myrrh’s response, are simply not related to one another. They are two entirely different subjects.
As for demonstrative experiments; a waste of time. The remedy is in a contrary result demonstration; not any finite number of supportive experiments.
The problem of a lack of pedantry was demonstrated by a recent post by Phil related to the “discovery” of Ozone on Venus. Phil noted the larger TSI for Venus, because of its closer solar distance; but he was mis interpreted to be asserting that closeness to the sun raised the photon energies incident on the Venusian atmosphere.
So we have to choose our words carefully, to avoid confusion of “lay” readers.

Myrrh
I don’t know why you are talking about rivers, our topic is radiative heat transfer.
A1. All objects emit photons (or EM radiation) independent of its surroundings.
A2. An object may absorb a photon regardless of where the photon came from.
A3. When a body emits photons, it loses energy.
A4. When a body absorbs photons, it gains energy.
Scenario #1: Two objects in a vacuum separated by a small distance, object A and object B at temperatures Ta and Tb, Ta > Tb.
Q. Why does the net radiative energy flow between body A and body B depend on the temperatures (among others) of both bodies?
A. Because _both_ bodies emit and absorb photons, albeit at different rates and energies. (direction of _net_ energy transfer: from A to B)
Scenario #2:Object A in a vacuum at temperature Ta, no energy source. It will cool down as it emits photons. Introduce object B near A at temperature Tb, Ta > Tb.
Q. Do you think object A will decay at the same rate as before? If not, why?
If you cannot accept that warmer bodies can accept photons from colder bodies then you cannot explain why net energy transfer between two bodies depends on the temperatures of both bodies and why the rate of energy loss is affected by the presence of nearby objects.
I refer you to the heat transfer textbook freely available in the web : http://web.mit.edu/lienhard/www/ahtt.html
In page 44 of pdf or page 32 of book, it says:
“Suppose that a heated object (1) radiates only to some other object (2) and that both objects are thermally black. All heat leaving object 1 arrives at object 2 and all heat arriving at object 1 comes from object 2. Thus the net heat transferred between object 1 and object 2 is …”
In page 553 of pdf or page 541 of book it says:
For two bodies:
Qnet = Q12 – Q21. where Qnet = net heat exchange, Q12 = heat exchange from 1 to 2, Q21 = heat exchange from 2 to 1. for radiative heat transfer:
Qnet = k (T1^4 – T2^4), where k = a factor for area, emittance, stefan-boltzmann constant, etc..
This book has no problem with objects _exchanging_ radiative heat.
note: the authors’ email address are on that page.

George E. Smith; says:
October 11, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Well Myrrh; I’m going to let you have the last word on this. I have a rule to never get between a man and the cliff he is racing towards to jump off..
“objects” and “media” need no introduction. They comprise some form of the 92 elements of the periodic table of the elements (you can also have all the transUranics too; be my guest.
They transport mechanical (thermal) energy the same way a car conveys mechanical energy to a bridge abuttment; through collisions, which is the process of “Conduction”.
You could list the ten most common of these elements that fill the space between the sun and the earth to transport “heat” from the sun to earth.
EM radiation doesn’t do it,, it conveys EM energy. What the earth does with that energy is a function of the materials of the planet. Yes a good part of that energy is eventually wasted in the mechanical form some call “heat”. Strangely PV solar cells convert only a portion of the EM energy to “heat”. A significant part of it is converted to electricity instead. Some of it is even converted to “light” by the human eye.
But as I said, I’ll stand aside, and let you charge on. My apologies to all of the innocents who jump off the cliff with you.
? As I’ve tried to point out before, you are taking all em energy to be the same and have created a world in which matter takes this and in some unspecified way creates stuff from it.. Where do you see this happening?
The energy from the Sun has different properties. It is these properties as distinct attributes which on meeting matter will act in certain ways particular to that energy and the matter it meets. Heat is the thermal energy of the Sun, that is what moves out from the Sun, it is the same thermal energy on the move and it doesn’t need a medium to move through, it travels through space to reach us. This is not the same as UV or gamma or radio or xray, which have properties distinct to themselves and from each other. Visible light doesn’t penetrate you body the way xrays can. They are different from each other. They are different sizes etc. Photo-voltaic cells don’t convert visible light to heat, that would mean visible was moving the molecules of the photo-voltaic cells.. If they’re getting a tad hot it will be from the thermal energy of the Sun heating them up.
Anyway, what I see you’re doing is junking well understood physical properties as still taught in traditional physics, and replacing it with concepts which you have still failed to back up with any rational explanation let alone empirical evidence. Saying ‘it must be this’ doesn’t cut it in real science. Why don’t you deal with this aspect I’ve asked you to produce?
LouN says
October 11, 2011 at 10:05 pm
[examples] If you cannot accept that warmer bodies can accept photons from colder bodies then you cannot explain why net energy transfer between two bodies depends on the temperatures of both bodies and why the rate of energy loss is affected by the presence of nearby objects.
Ah, the ol’ ‘it must x because we don’t know what else it could be’ clincher..
Because heat always flows from hotter to colder. The real net here is in this exchange between the bodies in that principle. As heat flows from A to B, A will be losing heat at the same time as B is gaining and if there is a hotter C around it will have an effect in the exchanges happening. The REAL net is in this exchange, as can be visually better understood in convection, say of a hotter liquid being poured into a colder. That’s how we get weather in our atmosphere, which is a fluid gaseous ‘ocean’ above us, convection currents. It doesn’t need any such ‘scenario’ as ‘photons’ flow from colder to hotter – photons, if such a thing actually exists.., are not all equal.., they are the product of the body emitting them. A colder body is not emitting the same ‘photons’ as a warmer body, and these will be restricted to behaving depending on their properties and the properties and states of whatever matter it meets, such as for example visible light being slowed down by our fluid gaseous atmosphere and fluid liquid water oceans.
“Suppose that a heated object (1) radiates only to some other object (2) and that both objects are thermally black. All heat leaving object 1 arrives at object 2 and all heat arriving at object 1 comes from object 2. Thus the net heat transferred between object 1 and object 2 is …”
In page 553 of pdf or page 541 of book it says:
For two bodies:
Qnet = Q12 – Q21. where Qnet = net heat exchange, Q12 = heat exchange from 1 to 2, Q21 = heat exchange from 2 to 1. for radiative heat transfer:
Qnet = k (T1^4 – T2^4), where k = a factor for area, emittance, stefan-boltzmann constant, etc..
As I said earlier, you’ll have to spell out in detail in English what you mean if you post maths formulae as answers to me. I don’t know what you’re mean by it.
Again, it doesn’t require any such construct as you give, it is more than adequately explained by the real 2nd law.
As you said:
A1. All objects emit photons (or EM radiation) independent of its surroundings.
A2. An object may absorb a photon regardless of where the photon came from.
A3. When a body emits photons, it loses energy.
A4. When a body absorbs photons, it gains energy.
+
A5 All these move relative to their surroundings. If you block visible light by using a filter for example.
addendum:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/thermo.html
quote:
“Thermodynamics is a branch of physics which deals with the energy and work of a system. … Thermodynamics deals only with the _large scale_ response of a system which we can observe and measure in experiments.”
Proof?
You’re all (generic) claiming known tried and tested traditional physics is wrong and will not provide one iota of rational explanation for disagreeing with it nor provide one iota of evidence that what you’re replacing this with is even possible!
Why don’t you for an experiment, if you’re able, put aside what you think you know about all this and try to objectively understand what traditional physics teaches. If you can do that you will find that traditional physics is internally consistent, the parts all fit together, it already has answers for these so called ‘questions’, you don’t have to introduce unknowns to answer them.
What, sadly, I see happening, is that with these strange ideas about properties and processes we will end up with a generation who not only have lost the knowledge we’ve gained in the last few centuries about the physical world around around us, but who will have no way of building on that solid foundation when we meet something new to us.

Myrrh
No one has implied that the 2nd law is wrong. It is just a matter of interpretation i think. In all the examples the net heat transfer is still from higher temperature to lower temperature.
I did not imply that the cooler object can increase the temperature of the warmer object higher that its temperature before the event. Even though the colder object can transfer heat to the warmer object, this heat is not enough to warm the warmer object to its temperature before the transfer. This is because the warmer object will cool down when it transfers heat to the cooler object at the moment of transfer. When it receives heat (q) from the cooler object, it has already given up a larger amount heat (Q). The amount of heat it receives from the colder object is less than the heat it has given up (Q > q). The result is that instead of cooling by Q amount, it will cool by (Q-q) amount. The net effect is the warmer object will not warm at all, but cool down less slowly. (The analysis assumes no external sources)
Also, consider two bodies at T1 and T2, T1 > T2. Assuming the amount of heat transferred from T1 to T2 is dQ, the net change in entropy of the system is dS = dQ/T2 + -dQ/T1 (the change in entropy of body 2 plus the change in entropy of body 1). dS (change in entropy of system) is a positive number (because T1 > T2) as required by the second law. But, if you consider the bodies individually, the second body (T2) increased entropy (heat gain) while the first body (T1) decreased entropy (heat loss). It is a mistake to invalidate the process by saying that body 1 violated the second law of thermodynamics (because its entropy change is negative). the system must be considered as a whole.
I might be mixing things up (signs are confusing) but let me just say that the second law must be applied to the whole system, the sub-systems may violate it. The only requirement is the change in system entropy must be positive.

George E. Smith; says:
October 12, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Well as I said, Myrrh, I’m standing out of your way, so go for it. Just DO NOT go claiming that “I” said ANY of those things that YOU cited in your post after the word “Proof ?” I did not; I suggest you read what I did say, including at the start “Words have meaning”.
? I realise you think you’re giving me real physics, but you’re going against real physics, as traditionally taught, and so, it does apply to u, because “You’re all (generic) claiming known tried and tested traditional physics is wrong and will not provide one iota of rational explanation for disagreeing with it nor provide one iota of evidence that what you’re replacing this with is even possible!”
You seem to think I’m coming up with something new, how many times do I have to tell you I’m giving you “traditional” physics – words mean something, I mean something by using the word “traditional”. You’re the ones giving un-traditional science explanations. And I keep asking you to prove them and you keep not replying with proof.
#
LouN says:
October 12, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Myrrh
No one has implied that the 2nd law is wrong. It is just a matter of interpretation i think. In all the examples the net heat transfer is still from higher temperature to lower temperature.
I have stated quite clearly that your ‘interpretation’ of the 2nd law is wrong, because within this “net heat transfer” you include heat from the colder to the hotter. There’s nothing wrong with the 2nd law, except that you’re breaking it.
I did not imply that the cooler object can increase the temperature of the warmer object higher that its temperature before the event. Even though the colder object can transfer heat to the warmer object, this heat is not enough to warm the warmer object to its temperature before the transfer.
Why can’t it increase the temperature of the warmer object? This is what I have asked you to explain, you have not given any mechanism for this ‘heat flow from the colder to the hotter’ ever stopping. You have not shown any proof that the real 2nd law as taught in traditional physics is wrong and it contradicts you here. You are claiming that heat flows from the colder to the hotter. This is breaking the law. Either show and explain how, logically and present proof that such a thing is happening, or admit that you have broken the real 2nd law.
All both of you here are doing is just making claims contradicting traditional physics and not presenting any proof of your claims.
This is because the warmer object will cool down when it transfers heat to the cooler object at the moment of transfer. When it receives heat (q) from the cooler object, it has already given up a larger amount heat (Q). The amount of heat it receives from the colder object is less than the heat it has given up (Q > q). The result is that instead of cooling by Q amount, it will cool by (Q-q) amount. The net effect is the warmer object will not warm at all, but cool down less slowly. (The analysis assumes no external sources)
Again, all you’re trying to do here is incorporate something of what I have described happens in the real net exchange, but you’re still including the claim that ‘heat flows from colder to hotter’, which breaks the second law.
And until you come up with something actually proving that this is happening you’re not being scientifically rational here. And you still have to come up with a rational explanation of why it comes out ‘net’ hotter to colder.
The claim that “heat flows from colder to hotter” is NOVEL to traditional physics. I do understand that you are surrounded by people who teach this and think it real physics, but it is novel. You have to prove that traditional physics is wrong first.
And if you’re confused by the following maths you posted…
I might be mixing things up (signs are confusing) but let me just say that the second law must be applied to the whole system, the sub-systems may violate it. The only requirement is the change in system entropy must be positive.
Rubbish according to the second law. You are simply claiming such a thing which breaks the second law and then twisting out of the conundrum you’ve created by postulating a ‘requirement’ without showing the mechanism, any logic, in how that ‘requirement’ can come into existence. Can you see that’s what you’re doing? All you’re saying is that heat flows from colder to hotter and somehow the net turns out as per the 2nd law, but you’ve broken the second law. It only comes out ‘net hotter to colder’ per your new version of the second law, which begins with the premise that heat flows from colder to hotter and you can’t show how it becomes ‘net hotter to colder’.
You have no way of stopping heat flowing from colder to hotter ad infinitum.
You don’t have a ‘different interpretation’, you’ve broken the 2nd law.
All your reasoning about the subject is based on your new version.
When you have a new version of anything in physics, you are required to prove it.
#
George E. Smith; says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:02 pm
And like you LouN; nothing I have said implies any problems with either the second law or ANY other Physical laws.
Not for you.. For me you’re talking gobbledegook. You can’t see that because you really haven’t taken on board what I’ve been trying to tell you here, that you are giving scenarios based on first breaking the second law and other things you claim which are contrary to traditional physics.
I’m going to take one more look at this with you, and then I’m quitting this discussion, there is still plenty of information from traditional physics available, but you’ll have to first be objective enough to take on board that what you are saying contradicts it.
ALL that I have said (using other words) is that just as “heat” cannot travel through the vaccuum of an ordinary thermos bottle; (but can slowly be CONDUCTED around the low conductivity (continuous) glass envelope), nor can it travel through the even sparser vaccuum of space to get from the sun to the earth; and in that case there IS no continuous glass conductive path like in the thermos bottle.
So for all practical purposes, “heat” CANNOT propagate from the sun to the earth. And it doesn’t need to, because we are perfectly capable of making ALL of the “heat” that we need right here on earth.
The sun can and does send us copious supplies of energy in the form of Electromagnetic Waves, which can propagate over infinite distances without ANY intervening medium containing ANY real matter. Those waves range in frequency and/or wavelength from near zero to near infinity; excluding both end points; and ANY of that Radiant energy can be converted into “heat” by common processes right here on this planet; so we don’t need to get ANY “heat”
from the sun, and can’t anyway.
Heat is an electromagnetic wave.
Who told you it wasn’t?
And from that misinformation you’ve been given, comes the scenario that matter takes this ‘new stuff which can travel through space and creates stuff out of it’
Now, please, this really is the last time I’m posting on this thread, you can’t understand what I’m saying because you believe this, but, I’m telling you that you are saying something that is not in traditional science which teaches that heat, thermal infrared, thermal energy of the Sun on the move, is an electromagnetic wave, part of the electromagnetic spectrum:

http://www.ehow.com/about_6401680_definition-heat-wave-energy.html
Energy appears in many forms within the physical environment. Heat is also a form of energy that you can’t see, but you can feel it through the sense of touch. All forms of energy consist of waves of particles that carry energy inside them. Heat waves are characterized by certain wavelengths that move at particular speeds and intensities.
Electromagnetic Spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is made-up of different types of energy waves or wavelengths that appear in various forms within the physical environment. Sounds, colors and microwaves are all different types of energy waves according to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Heat wave energy–also known as infrared waves–sits just below the color or visible light portion of the spectrum. With radio wavelengths being the slowest and gamma rays being the fastest, heat energy waves move just a little slower than those that make up visible light.
Read more: Definition of Heat Wave Energy | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6401680_definition-heat-wave-energy.html#ixzz1ahPKxSTc

Please, do take time to read this, and to re-read what I’ve posted before on heat. Really, what I’ve posted is bog standard traditional physics. You keep coming up with all kinds of claims about things that are utterly different, that contradict traditional physics. You’re not arguing against me, you’re arguing against tried and tested and very well known traditional physics basics. That’s why the scenarios you present don’t make any sense in traditional physics. Words mean something to me too, please do take on board what I mean by traditional, I’ve given you more than sufficient examples, the rest is for you to explore.
One last example:

http://www.ftexploring.com/energy/heatflow.htm
There are two basic ways that energy can be transferred from one place to another through the heat flow process – radiation and conduction.
Radiation is a type of energy that can travel through space. It doesn’t need matter to conduct it from place to place. It can travel through a vacuum, no trouble. It can also travel through air, no trouble.
When you stand near hot molten lava, the heat you feel on your skin is mostly radiant heat. This type of heat doesn’t need air to travel through. Even if you were standing in a vacuum (no air) you would feel the heat (except you’d be unconscious, or worse, from lack of air).
Almost all of the energy from the sun that travels 93 million miles in 8 and 1/2 minutes through the vacuum of space is radiant energy. When you stand outside on a sunny day feeling the warm rays, remember that only 8 and 1/2 minutes ago it left the sun. Scientists call it electromagnetic radiation. Infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light are examples of electromagnetic radiation that can transfer energy from one object to another object.
Believe it or not, your body and all other objects are always giving off or absorbing heat by radiation. Heat transfer by radiation goes from a hotter object to a cooler object – like from the sun to earth, or from hot coals to you, or from your body to the cold walls of a lonely castle on a dark and stormy night.

This contradicts you. It’s not just me, it’s not just these, there’s a whole body of people who have been teaching this and using the knowledge of it, applied science. You’re contradicting this, in the last couple of decades it’s become ubiquitous.., but it’s the real knowledge of traditional physics about light and heat which could created photo-voltaic cells to capture visible light to turn it into electricity, because it knows that that’s visible light isn’t capable of directly heating water and earth…
Now, one word of warning, be careful how some things are written, here in the middle of talking about heat in a traditional explanation, UV and visible have been thrown in, and remember what I’ve said about that. These are not thermal energies, they do not move molecules which is what is necessary to creat heat. Therefore, they do not heat the land and oceans of Earth as claimed in the ‘energy budget’. He does explain that heat moves the molecules. But if you didn’t know that UV and visible can’t do this, you might think that is how they worked and/or they were creating heat, by heating up objects.
These “novel” ideas, claims, which you are both presenting here are the “memes” created by those who created the AGW scare. That these are now taught in schools as if they are traditional science and real basic physical fact shows how successful they have been in taking over the education system.
As an example, one of the AGWScience Fiction Inc’s memes you keep repeating George is that ‘all electromagnetic energy is the same’, and so you come up with the novel idea of matter taking this and creating different things out of it, rather than as traditional physics teaches, there are differences between the different wavelengths, and it is these differences as the properties of the wavelength which impact matter interacting in various ways, the processes. It might appear that matter ‘creates’ out of a bog standard same energy if that’s what you’re taught to believe is basic physics, but it doesn’t, in reality it utilises or is affected by the differences in the properties. Electromagnetic energy has distinct properties just as matter has.
The electromagnetic wave thermal infrared, heat, thermal energy, will move molecules to heat, the visible light energy can’t do this because it doesn’t have enough power to move molecules, but gets to be a pin ball in the atmosphere bouncing off electrons or used in photosynthesis, its energy used to create chemical energy, the creation of sugars, which is not creation of heat.
Anyway, I hope at least that you can see that I’m giving you traditional physics and it’s consistent. The arguments about this are not about ‘interpretation’, but about the fact that AGWScienceFiction has introduced memes about physics basics that contradict traditional science, and you don’t realise that you’re repeating them, but think they are real physics.
I can only hope that if and when you do take that on board, examine it for yourselves, that you will be as annoyed as I am that such a deliberate confusion has been introduced into science education.
http://www.ftexploring.com/energy/heatflow.htm

Well Myrrh, thank you for all those highly informative treatises on Physics.
When I graduated in 1957, with two majors in Mathematics (pure and applied), plus three majors in Physics, (plus Radio-Physics and Mathematical Physics) I was Senior Scholar in Physics that year.
And over 50 years ago, I was teaching (pre-med freshman) Physics to a class of two hundred students. The least competent, of the 35 or so students who were just there for the social life, could easily blow you out of the water, with half their brain tied behind their back.
For one last time “heat” IS NOT an “Electromagnetic Wave”, even if one accepts it as a noun rather than a verb; please note the RadioPhysics major mentioned above; half of which related to the generation, Propagation and detection of ELECTRO-MAGNETIC WAVES per Maxwell’s Equations.
“Heat” is the process of raising the Temperature OF A COLLECTION OF PARTICLES (matter) by increasing the mean Kinetic energy of that collection of particles; by any of a variety of processes; such as placing in contact with another collection of particles that have a higher mean kinetic energy per particle, which is the mechanism commonly called conduction.
Absent the collection of particles there is NO kinetic energy, so NO “heat” (noun) and also NO TEMPERATURE.
Another way of raising the Temperature (mean kinetic energy per particle) is through the absorption of Electromagnetic Waves (of virtually any wavelength or frquency) through the Einstein relation ; E = h (nu) or hf if you prefer or hc/lambda..
Such EM waves might come from the quartz “radiator” across your room, or from the sun 93 million miles away; but NO “heat” (noun) accompanies the latter; and only a miniscule amount in the former case, because of the intervening atmosphere in the room.
But as I have said many times at WUWT; Ignorance is not a disease; we are all born with it; but stupidity has to be taught, and there are many willing and able to teach it; and you are one of the better practitioners of that.

George E. Smith; says:
October 13, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Well Myrrh, thank you for all those highly informative treatises on Physics.
When I graduated in 1957, with two majors in Mathematics (pure and applied), plus three majors in Physics, (plus Radio-Physics and Mathematical Physics) I was Senior Scholar in Physics that year.
And over 50 years ago, I was teaching (pre-med freshman) Physics to a class of two hundred students. The least competent, of the 35 or so students who were just there for the social life, could easily blow you out of the water, with half their brain tied behind their back.
Yeah George, I’m really impressed – it was early on when I was puzzled by the AGW claims made for carbon dioxide and found that none was discussing the questions I had that I asked such a ‘well educated PhD in physics pushing AGW memes’ who taught the subject, tested on this, “how can carbon dioxide stay up in the atmosphere when it is heavier than air and will therefore always sink displacing air unless work is done to change this?” First of all he refused to acknowledge that carbon dioxide could separate out, until I provided real world well-known tried and tested examples, breweries, volcanic venting, mines etc., and then he edited out his claim where he said it didn’t, but he kept arguing, this is what he taught as real physics, that carbon dioxide was an ideal gas and with a mangled mix of ideal gas descriptions, which have no volume, and including Brownian motion, which assumes gases have volume, he said that if carbon dioxide had pooled on the floor in a room then without any work being done, no window opened, no fan put on, no change from the conditions which existed when the carbon dioxide pooled, the carbon dioxide would spontaneously rise from the floor and mix thoroughly in the atmosphere of the room because it was an ideal gas and so moved rapidly and randomly knocking all the other molecules in elastic encounters in empty space around them until they all became thoroughly mixed and couldn’t be unmixed without work being done.
Your qualifications don’t impress me, your lack of understanding of our physical reality in the areas you claim to have knowledge is testament that your qualifications are based on pseudo science or that you have since acquiring them changed the traditional physics basics your original qualifications were examined on. If the latter, it means that you know you are promoting a different physics. Even less reason for me to be impressed if so, because you are not admitting it and so making it appear that your claims here are traditional, and one then has to wonder, why? So which is it? Were you taught this pseudo science? You must have quite a collection of text books from that time teaching it..
For one last time “heat” IS NOT an “Electromagnetic Wave”, even if one accepts it as a noun rather than a verb; ….
“Heat” is the process of raising the Temperature OF A COLLECTION OF PARTICLES (matter) by increasing the mean Kinetic energy of that collection of particles; by any of a variety of processes; such as placing in contact with another collection of particles that have a higher mean kinetic energy per particle, which is the mechanism commonly called conduction. etc.
As before:

http://thermalenergy.org/heattransfer.php
Heat Transfer
Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing. Heat is always the thermal energy of some system. Using the word heat helps physicists to make a distinction relative to the system they are talking about.
Heat: Term used to describe the transfer of thermal energy between two thermodynamic systems at different temperatures.
</blockquote
“Thermal energy and heat are often confused. Rightly so because they are physically the same thing.”
You are confused because you don't understand this basic physics principle as taught traditionally or know it very well and are deliberately teaching confusion by now saying they are different.
Well Myrrh; I’m going to let you have the last word on this.

But not to get too far off track. My posts at WUWT, are virtually always straight out of my head. There is always standard textbook backup; because that’s how I learned much of it; and anybody can readily consult those texts for themselves.
So bring the textbooks here, to this discussion, answer my questions, prove your claims.
You can’t. Because AGWScience Fiction Inc doesn’t have any proof for any of your claims. It is science fiction, fantasy, and the proof it is fiction not real world physics is in your replies, or rather lack of them…
So, how does matter convert this “electromagnetic energy” into heat (thermal infrared, thermal energy), light, x-rays, radio waves, gamma, UV..? How does a plant create blue and red light out of this “electromagnetic energy” to enable it to use the energies to create sugars? What is creating the green visible light out of these electomagnetic energies which the plant reflects?
What is the mechanism which stops “and heat travels from colder to hotter” to make the outcome obey the 2nd Law that Heat always travels from hotter to colder..?
Show me evidence that visible light heats water. Show me any textbook which explains how it does it.
Etc.
You’re full of misinformation. You have never provided one rational explanation for all your claims. You continually use ad hominem instead of giving rational, logical, proven physics. You continually avoid producing evidence or rational physics as your last post shows. You are merely posturing. You cannot be taken seriously.
But not to get too far off track. My posts at WUWT, are virtually always straight out of my head. There is always standard textbook backup; because that’s how I learned much of it; and anybody can readily consult those texts for themselves.
Bring them to this discussion. This, for any wondering, is an oft used ploy to distract from not being able to produce any such textbook.
Enough prevarication, interesting though your stream of consciousness is.. I have given detailed information from traditional physics which contradicts you.
You go fetch your textbooks and we’ll have a look at them.