Replicating Al Gore's Climate 101 video experiment shows that his "high school physics" could never work as advertised

Well, you do live in an interesting world. Tell me, how successful are your industries selling visible led light saunas compared with ours selling thermal infrared? How do your visible light saunas work? Do you strange people, to us in the real world, oops, not pc. to us in our physical world, have a different metabolism that somehow converts visible light into heat in your bodies raising the temp of water in your bodies which makes you sweat? Oops, maybe you don’t have water in your bodies, but some other variation of matter perhaps which is able to convert something inside you to heat you up to make you sweat? Oops, perhaps you don’t sweat, you just sit in visible light saunas and imagine you do. Do tell. I won’t spread the word that you’re a bunch of aliens, no-one’s reading this page except us few, right?
http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/lighting_daylighting/index.cfm/mytopic=12031

“”””” HenryP says:
October 25, 2011 at 12:31 am
George you are funny.
But I was asking if there was something wrong in my reasoning here: http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
I will be glad to hear your comments on that piece if there is anything in it that you don’t agree with. “””””
Henry,
It was just that your post raised the key point about “heat” or the heating process; that bumping into each other at the molecular level is what “heat” is all about. Which is why I tried to explain to Myrrh that “heat” and electromagnetic radiation are two entirely different things. “Heat” absolutely requires a physical medium made up of atoms or molecules for its transport, which is why we get no heat from the sun; there’s no medium to transport it. Now to be pedantic, and not get Leif mad at me, there is a more or less constant stream of energetic charged particles that do travel from the sun to earth, and they clearly bring kinetic energy with them, and that looks pretty much like a good facsimile of heat to me; but really not that much heat. And I showed, with a simple calculation, that if you filled the space between the sun and the earth, with type II-A diamond; the best thermal conducting material we know of, the 6,000 (or 5700) Kelvin Temperature differential can’t drive any perceptible amount of conducted “heat” from the sun to the earth.
But Electromagnetic Radiation can easily convey the ENERGY, and when it gets to planet earth; we can make plenty of heat out of that energy, and the planet itself does so by propagating the EM energy deep into the oceans, where something ultimately absorbs it, and coverts much of it to waste heat; which is what Leif explained to Myrrh.
As to the BB radiation; we are taught in Physics, that EVERYTHING that is at a Temperature higher than zero Kelvins MUST radiate a continuum EM radiation spectrum, as a direct conwsequence of that non zero Temperature, and characterized by that Temperature. Yet many climate scientists are quite willing to dismiss such emission from the ordinary atmospheric gases, as being impossible. They don’t distinguish between “thermal radiation” which is the type of (Planckian) radiation arising solely because of Temperature, and the various molecular spectral resonance types of radiation, which are the molecular equivalent of the much narrower spectra of atoms, that arise from the energy levels of the electrons in the atom, and are specific tot aht atomic species.
To the Radio-Physicist, EM radiation occurs any time a varying electric current flows in an antenna of greater than zero length. Well the antenna is really superfluous, and so long as the current is flowing a non zero distance and is also varying with time, the radiation will occur. Well Leif’s solar plasmas buzzing around in all that turmoil, are perfectly good radiating antenna systems if you want to look at it that way.
The particle Physicist, and I presume solar Physicists as well, think of it a bit differently; they see an accelerating electric charge, as being a good mechanism for radiation of EM energy; and they built a great monument to that fact up in Los Altos hills California; the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). If they tried to power up those electrons while going around in circles, the continuous radiation due to the circular acceleration, would ultimately limit the energy. With protons, you have 1837 times as much mass, so you can get a lot more energy for the same velocity.
And just what is an accelerated electric charge, if it isn’t the same thing as a varying electric current.
The Radio-Physicist needs a non zero length antena to run his current through, the particle Physicist needs a non-zero Electric Dipole Moment, to get radiation out of his accelerating charge.
And in an electrically symmetric atom or molecule you don’t have that non zero moment, until you “bump” them into each other and distort the charge distribution to make the dipole moment non-zero.
And of course CO 2 has a zero dipole moment, until you bend it or stretch it assymmetrically, to distort the charge distribution.
And one would guess from Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, that the CO2 molecule cannot remain in its perfectly symmetric shape indefinitely; the damn things have to fidget, just due to noise, becaue Heisenberg won’t allow us to find out exactly where all the pieces are, and at the same time keep them at rest; so they always have to distort and become susceptible to EM radiation.
Of course you have to delve into the quantum mechanics field to get a quantitative presentation of all of this. But I prefer to stay in the classical Physics realm whenever possible, because it s much easier to understand for the lay reader. Quantum Physics just get too bizarre at times, even for the experts; and I sure as heck am not an expert on quantum Physics.

Shrug, I’m sure quite a few here think that makes sense.. If you stuck with the million times smaller and learned the difference between electronic transitions of electrons and vibrational/rotational resonance of atoms and molecules and understood what transparent meant in transparent medium you might have a chance of seeing the difference between absorption and absorption of visible light in water and thermal infrared in water.. But, I doubt it. We now have to find a lab with 100 metres of water available to do the experiment, you really don’t know when you’re being taken for a ride, do you?
You’ve obviously never been diving..
The above experiment should be done with the two jars filled with water, heated by the heat lamp, and heated by visible light. Run it for as long as you like..

Myrrh,
If, instead of shrugging and telling people what they don’t understand, you would take the time to read the texts and articles that they and many others have directed you to instead of simply declaring them irrelevant without actually knowing what they say, you would learn that the experiments you demand to see as evidence have in fact been done, the mathematical forumulas developed over the past few centuries independantly verify each other as well as the experimental data, and that these formulas are used succesfully every single day by millions of engineers world wide designing all manner of products that work precisely as the physics predicts down to the last joule.
The only way for you to cling to your belief system is to refuse to read the articles, and to dispute the evidence put before you by declaring it impossible. Some very qualified people have read every word you have posted and have been very patient in explaining to you where your reasoning is off track, and referring you to experimental evidence and relevant texts to assist you in, for lack of a better term, seeing the light.
Who are you to demand that they read your explanations while refusing to so much as consider theirs? What do you have to fear from doing so?

davidmhoffer says:
October 26, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Myrrh,
If, instead of shrugging and telling people what they don’t understand, you would take the time to read the texts and articles that they and many others have directed you to instead of simply declaring them irrelevant without actually knowing what they say, you would learn that the experiments you demand to see as evidence have in fact been done, the mathematical forumulas developed over the past few centuries independantly verify each other as well as the experimental data, and that these formulas are used succesfully every single day by millions of engineers world wide designing all manner of products that work precisely as the physics predicts down to the last joule.
Again shrug. I’ve given you real world applications which understand the difference, for goodness sake, solar visible is used to create electricity, it isn’t used to directly heat plates and water; real electromagnetic applied scientists know the difference between the Sun’s Heat and the Sun’s Light. All it takes is one real fact to prove what I’m saying is true, real industry. If your text books and your oh so clever scientific explanations contradict that, then they can’t be right. Why should I read more of that junk which is either telling downright lies or is just more play at out of context examples. I don’t have time for more debunking when you’re still not able to grasp the basics I’m trying to explain.
What else can I say? It used to be bog standard physics, it’s still understood in the real practical world where the difference between light and heat is still bog standard physics. Water is a transparent medium to visible light, that’s still standard physics, visible light interacts with matter on an electron level, it aint’ big and powerful enough to move atoms and molecules of water into vibrational rotational resonance which is heat. I can’t get excited about your ‘references’, you think all energy is the same and from the beginning I’ve asked you to look at the differences. So, you think the water absorbs visible light and therefore visible light heats water and with all the information available to you you still think that. You see nothing amiss in the real thermal energy from the Sun which reaches us exactly the same time and which we know is the invisible thermal infrared is taken out of the energy budget by this sf meme, claiming that it doesn’t even reach us! I’m sorry, I just find that so extraordinary. But I do understand your confusion. Because the meme has been so consistently drummed in, the ‘standard’ belief now is that visible light is thermal! When Ira told me to sit in the Sun and feels the warmth from the visible light, I nearly fell off my chair! But you know what? When he added that this is what I would feel as heat from an incandescent bulb I thought I had a chance of breaking this trance you all appear to be in, some of you knew that around 95% of the energy emitted was thermal infrared, and only 5% visible, but, somehow it didn’t bother people that they couldn’t then account for why they weren’t feeling the 95% of heat from thermal infrared, but from the 5% of visible.. And then, I guess the re-education is just too strong, and you generic just couldn’t take that to the next step of wondering why the real thermal energy from the Sun, heat, thermal infrared that we feel as heat, that we know heats actual matter by moving the molecules, kinetic energy, was not in the energy budget, but, you can’t see how absurd that is because you believe visible light heats matter and you will go to any contortional length to keep believing that because naturally, you have to try and make it make sense to what you consider ‘standard physics’. And so you continue to scrabble around mixing up absorbed and absorbed meanings without scale and context and you expect me to continue to play with this silliness of more excuses for not facing the true facts here, because you can’t believe you don’t have the true physics. As if because it makes sense to you it should make sense to me. I can only take so much of talking with people living the other side of the looking glass, you really have to make some effort to step through to my side once in while, I’m trying to point out differences..
…you’ve taken out of the energy budget to real thermal energy from the Sun.
This is the energy that is capable of moving the molecules of matter, to heat matter up directly. And you can’t appreciate this because of the ubiquitous memes from the AGWScience Fiction department that ‘thermal infrared (which is heat) doesn’t reach us from the Sun’ and that ‘visible light (which is not heat) is thermal and reaches the surface in the greenhouse and converts to thermal’.. You’re so convinced this is true that everything you read you read through that paradigm. I really do understand how difficult this is to get one’s head around, I’ve seen the encyclopaedias and the Oxford geological text books which now teach that it is visible light, shortwave, which heats the surface of the Earth, the land and oceans, and from that produces thermal infrared. I’ve seen the textbooks and the pages which don’t make sense because they include this. This is why I was trying to pin it down to real textbook and example, note, and example, demonstrated. They can’t come up with an ‘experiment’ to fool you here… But maybe it’s just all too far gone for that as you keep being led away from thinking about it.
So tell me, if visible light is the heat you feel from an incandescent light bulb and you know that at best that’s only 10% of the output, what’s happening to the 90% thermal energy? Is it trapped in the greenhouse bulb that you can’t feel it? Does it suddenly change to not being thermal? And how much is visible warming the air because it is being absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen? What else can I do but shrug? If you’d just put back the into the energy budget the thermal energy direct from the Sun to us, the invisible thermal infrared we actually feel as heat and which really is what we experience warms us up, the rest falls into place, you’ll get a handle on what transparent and absorbed really mean. Then instead of it giving you the giggles or worse, you’ll be able to appreciate that visible isn’t thermal, and that’s why you can’t feel it as heat. If you can’t feel it as heat, it can’t be what’s warming you up. It’s too teeny to do that, but it has lot’s of other amazing things it can do.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/watabs.html
“Transparency of Water in the Visible Range
Water is strongly absorbing at most of the wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, but it has a narrow window of transparency which includes the visible spectrum.”
“It doesn’t absorb in the wavelength range of visible light, roughly 400-700 nm, because there is no physical mechanism which produces transitions in that region – it is too energetic for the vibrations of the water molecule and below the energies needed to cause electronic transitions.”

Unless you make an effort to understand the bog standard basic mechanism, what this really means, what these words really mean in this real context, and don’t get distracted until you do, everything else you read has no reference point, and becomes just so much gobbledegook, and, sadly, easily used by some to continue to confuse. Stay away from the minutiae until you get the broad principles of catergories straight. Remember, AGWSF eliminates differences, one dimensional, and swaps properties and processes, but you don’t have to believe that just because I’ve said so. Imagine instead that I’m just presenting an alternative universe, a different world, and this is how it works in my world, and compare it with yours..
Once more of how it is in my world and then I’m gone, you can discuss it further amongst yourselves or not. The atmosphere is not transparent to visible light, visible light gets reflected/scattered because it is absorbed by the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen. This is one of the four possible effects of this wavelength on meeting matter. Now, the energy is actually absorbed by the electron, but it is sent back out again, blue being more highly energetic, smaller and moving more quickly than the other colours, is more easily scattered. Visible light isn’t thermal, this isn’t producing heat, just scattering light.
Water is transparent to visible light. You can see this in clear water, in a stream, maybe in your bathtub.., you can see through it. Visible light here, “because there is no physical mechanism which produces transitions in that region”, doesn’t even get in to play with the electrons. The molecules of water keep it out. Two ways of looking at this, it tries, in its own sweet energetic way, and wastes a bit of time doing so, gives up and moves on, or, the field of the molecule to it is like walking through mud for us, visible light can’t get in to play but is slowed down by the ‘friction’ of the water it is travelling through, it doesn’t stop being the visible colour it is, they all travel at different speeds through the same medium, and blue too just slows down to a final stop, somewhere in the medium if there is enough of it. It’s still the cold light of day, it doesn’t heat any of the water no matter how deep it goes down..
My world, OK? You don’t have to believe it real. But these are the things I agree with as descriptions of my world. I’ve linked to these following descriptions before because I think they are an excellent summary of the category differences. (That doesn’t mean I agree with everything in wiki, or even on that page.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_and_translucency
“Mechanisms of selective light wave absorption include:
Electronic: Transitions in electron energy levels within the atom (e.g., pigments). These transitions are typically in the ultraviolet (UV) and/or visible portions of the spectrum.
Vibrational: Resonance in atomic/molecular vibrational modes. These transitions are typically in the infrared portion of the spectrum.”

The category difference, UV and Visible are in the category Light, reflective rather than absorptive, see another use of absorptive.., here specifically difference between Light and Heat. Near Infrared is in with these, we can’t feel it, and although it is more penetrating than visible, it too gets reflected back out (see near infrared cameras). Vibration resonance, heat, kinetic energy, temperature, created by heat, thermal infrared. And, don’t quote me, I think the optimum for water resonance is 9.4, thermal saunas for example will usually have a span from mid 4 (which is thermal) to around 14, and these penetrate around two and half to 4 inches (UV doesn’t get beyond the first layer of skin, the epidermis, visible a bit further, and so on). The reason far infrared saunas do what it says on the tin, is because water is the great absorber of thermal infrared, and we’re mostly water, and carbon. It continues:

“UV-Vis: Electronic transitions
In electronic absorption, the frequency of the incoming light wave is at or near the energy levels of the electrons within the atoms which compose the substance. In this case, the electrons will absorb the energy of the light wave and increase their energy state, often moving outward from the nucleus of the atom into an outer shell or orbital.
The atoms that bind together to make the molecules of any particular substance contain a number of electrons (given by the atomic number Z in the periodic chart). Recall that all light waves are electromagnetic in origin. Thus they are affected strongly when coming into contact with negatively charged electrons in matter. When photons (individual packets of light energy) come in contact with the valence electrons of atom, one of several things can and will occur:
*An electron absorbs all of the energy of the photon and re-emits it with different color. This gives rise to luminescence, fluorescence and phosphorescence.
*An electron absorbs the energy of the photon and sends it back out the way it came in. This results in reflection or scattering.
*An electron cannot absorb the energy of the photon and the photon continues on its path. This results in transmission (provided no other absorption mechanisms are active).
*An electron selectively absorbs a portion of the photon, and the remaining frequencies are transmitted in the form of spectral color.”

The second and third are descriptions as I gave of visible light in the atmosphere and visible light in water.
In water: “An electron cannot absorb the energy of the photon and the photon continues on its path. This results in transmission (provided no other absorption mechanisms are active).”
Water is a transparent medium for visible, it does not absorb visible, visible is transmitted through without being absorbed. That’s what “transmitted” means. Blue visible more highly energetic than red will get further before being ‘absorbed’, i.e., not absorbed in the technical sense it just disappears; its energy is transmitted because it isn’t absorbed in the physics of this sense, but absorbed in a general descriptive sense, because the ocean stops it.
And, I might as well put in the thermal here so you don’t have to keep flipping to the link:

Infrared: Bond stretching
“The primary physical mechanism for storing mechanical energy of motion in condensed matter is through heat, or thermal energy. Thermal energy manifests itself as energy of motion. Thus, heat is motion at the atomic and molecular levels. The primary mode of motion in crystalline substances is vibration. Any given atom will vibrate around some mean or average position within a crystalline structure, surrounded by its nearest neighbors. This vibration in 2-dimensions is equivalent to the oscillation of a clock’s pendulum. It swings back and forth symmetrically about some mean or average (vertical) position. Atomic and molecular vibrational frequencies may average on the order of 1012 cycles per second (hertz).
When a light wave of a given frequency strikes a material with particles having the same or (resonant) vibrational frequencies, then those particles will absorb the energy of the light wave and transform it into thermal energy of vibrational motion. Since different atoms and molecules have different natural frequencies of vibration, they will selectively absorb different frequencies (or portions of the spectrum) of infrared light. Reflection and transmission of light waves occur because the frequencies of the light waves do not match the natural resonant frequencies of vibration of the objects. When infrared light of these frequencies strikes an object, the energy is reflected or transmitted.
If the object is transparent, then the light waves are passed on to neighboring atoms through the bulk of the material and re-emitted on the opposite side of the object. Such frequencies of light waves are said to be transmitted.”

OK? Now, in my world, and it’s from here I’m arguing against the AGWScience Fiction energy budget which says shortwave is the primary mechanism for heating Earth’s land and oceans:
“The primary physical mechanism for storing mechanical energy of motion in condensed matter is through heat, or thermal energy. Thermal energy manifests itself as energy of motion. Thus, heat is motion at the atomic and molecular levels.”
And, quite frankly, until you can appreciate, make the effort to appreciate, the great difference changing this makes to my world by what is now being taught as the mechanism of the ‘energy budget that shortwave is the primary mechanism for heating land and oceans’, there’s no point in discussing this further. I understand your world, the problem is you don’t yet understand mine.

HenryP says:
October 27, 2011 at 11:57 am
Henry at Myrrh
I have a system warming my pool that goes through a maize of small tubes inside (black) poolmats on my roof. The only problem I have is that the UV light from the sun causes algae to grow on the sides of the pool where it gets the warmest.
Any ideas as to what is happening and what I can do (besides adding more chlorine)?
Sounds like it might be a spot that isn’t getting enough circulation, splash around there more often… 🙂 Don’t have a swimming pool now, but, forgotten what they’re called, those little robots that run along the bottom to vacuum up grot, maybe something like that to get all the water circulated. You could try an ozone system instead of chlorine, some info on them, http://www.ozonate.co.za/poolfaq.html and here, if it’s good enough for polar bears in San Diego zoo – http://swimmingpoolozone.blogspot.com/
Mike Jonas says:
October 27, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Myrrh – “The Sun creates eternal energy??”
Yes.
As I understand it, the sun’s energy comes mainly from nuclear reactions, ie. it converts matter to energy (as per Einstein’s theory).
Energy is eternal (unless converted back into matter) as per the law of Conservation of Mass-Energy (http://physics.about.com/od/physics101thebasics/p/PhysicsLaws.htm).
wrt your last comment, everything flows from this.
Y’all do seem to have this problem with context and confusion with the same words used in different context, and.
The Sun is not creating eternal lightwaves, the waves had a beginning and they have an end. The Sun may well be producing them constantly, but that doesn’t mean they are eternal, the Earth only has to move and the wave stops arriving – it’s called night. Where does light go when you turn off the switch? Do you think the blue visible is eternal and so accumulates 100 metres down like AGWSF says carbon dioxide (which is heavier than air) accumulates in the atmosphere? The Sun itself is something that was created, it too will come to an end. You do really have to stop looking at ‘energy’ as if it is all the same and ignoring the differences in it, it comes in different packages and those packages are different sizes and so on, have different properties and process, things they can and things they can’t do when they meet other energies, like matter. You need UV for the creation of Vitamin D in you for example, you won’t get that from gamma rays, and you can’t use blue and red light for photsynthesis. Can you? It’s just that I’ve been wondering if you lot were really human since you can use visible to warm up..

jimmi_the_dalek says:
October 28, 2011 at 5:49 am
Myrrh
and you can’t use blue and red light for photosynthesis.
Another thing you have exactly backwards…..
Plants are green because that is the part of the spectrum they do not absorb, the green is reflected.
? The context was that difference energies have different uses, I wasn’t talking about the greenness of plants, but that you, you personally for example, can’t use the energies of blue and red for photosynthesis, because you’re not a plant. I then added the thought, continuing from a previous theme, that, implied, maybe you could use it for photosynthesis because maybe you’re a plant, as previously I thought maybe you, all generic, were aliens and not human since you claim that visible light can heat matter. Perhaps aliens have a different metabolism, or something.. So, sorry, that was just a bit of tongue in cheek.
Anyway, easy enough to test, shine visible on one jar of water and see how long it takes to heat it, compare with shining thermal infrared.

@Lars…
Visible light is dynamic energy which, once absorbed, is transformed into static energy that could be any form of stationary energy of the system, i.e. kinetic energy, potential energy, chemical energy, internal energy, deformation energy, or electromagnetic energy. The latter form of energy is easily found; for example, during photosynthesis; as soon as a quantum/wave of visible light is absorbed by Light Harvesting Complexes (LHCs), a donor of electrons (Chloropyll ) captures the energy of the photon and emits an electron that is captured by a primary aceptor of electrons (Quinone, in this case) and an irreversible charge differential (irreversible charge separation) is established .
Regarding water absorption of visible light, the absorption spectrum of liquid water shows a very high level of absorption at 10 to 100 nanometers (nm); however, liquid water absorptivity of thermal radiation at visible light wavelengths sharply decreases; anyway, there is an amount of absorbed visible light energy:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Water_absorption_spectrum.png
It is not zero.