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

Smokey says:
October 28, 2011 at 6:29 am
Myrrh,
Your comments are interesting, even if I don’t agree with them. You certainly think outside the box.
Thank you Smokey, but that does seem strange from where I am, merely repeating well known physics facts, and you make me sound something akin to pioneer in science.. 🙂
Lars P. says:
October 28, 2011 at 8:22 am
Myrrh,
I appreciate the discussion as I try to understand how the process works. As you said we should try to understand your world.
Thank you Lars, much appreciated.
What is light? According to wikipedia light is electromagnetic radiation with “wavelenght in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm”. Infrared is defined as “electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres ( µm), and extending conventionally to 300 µm”
“Sunlight at zenith provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation.”
So basically same form of energy but with different wavelenghts.
As we know infrared is what we feel and warms directly as it has properties (wavelenghts/energy) that allow this.
Not all infrared, near infrared is not hot, it’s not thermal, we can’t feel it any more than we can feel visible or UV.
As I gave links to in post October 21, 2011 at 4:19 pm NASA used to teach this difference.
“Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
As a contrast with the invisible thermal infrared that we do feel as heat from the Sun, or a stove or hot pavement which warms us. Near infrared is in the Light class of electromagnetic waves, reflective rather than absorptive, because it reflects back out of the body as does visible, while thermal infrared is absorbed by the body. The two different kinds of camera illustrate this, the image taker in infrared uses near infrared and takes a picture by capturing the near infrared that is reflected back from a body just as visible camera does visible, while the thermal infrared camera is measuring the amount of heat radiated out from a body.
Visible light, as you said is more energetic and can trigger chemical reactions (photosynthesis). It can also be transformed in heat, but possibly the process is here more complex due to its properties – as Leif and Mike Jonas above explained. As light (visible light) is also energy it cannot dissapear in the oceans without being transformed in another form of energy.
This is my big gripe here,’scuse the caps: this “can be transformed in heat, but possibly the process is here more complex due to its properties – as Leif and Mike Jonas above explained.” is balderdash. Because, we are here all talking about the cartoon energy budget which makes the specific claim that visible light (and UV and near IR) are THE PRIME MECHANISM FOR DIRECTLY HEATING THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, THE LAND AND OCEANS DIRECTLY.
Leif is continually saying that visible directly heats matter, exactly this fiction meme, his ‘more complex’ explanations are a deflection. He’s moving the goal posts here. So as you’re willing to try and understand my world you really must understand what I’m arguing here, don’t get distracted by Leif’s sleight of hand, Leif is disingenuous here, he proved that earlier by first even trying to distract by saying that I’m the only one saying the ‘greenhouse shortwave in longwave out’, as if he didn’t know it was the standard AGW/Ubiquitous claim! Even when there’s a picture of it on this very page! http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/greenhouseeffects1.jpg
Don’t expect me to trust the veracity of his arguments, because he avoids answering mine.
Any secondary or ‘more complex’ heating is irrelevant to the claims of this specific AGW energy budget, because the claim distinctly and ad nauseum says that it is these shortwaves which come through the transparent to them atmosphere to the surface of the Earth and heat the surface, the land and oceans, directly. Heating them up directly. The ‘greenhouse’ of the AGW claims – that thermal infrared does not get through the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth and so plays no part in heating the land and oceans directly from the Sun, but only these shortwaves do. So, it is these shortwaves which are DIRECTLY heating the surface which then heated radiates back out thermal infrared. Sorry for so many caps, but this is so important to understand what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against the actual claim here, as actually described, and again, as here pictured: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/greenhouseeffects1.jpg
It’s in discussions here of Ira’s that I got the full import of this, that’s why Leif has ad homd to distract by saying that I was routed in these discussions, nonsense, this is where I found out just how utterly ridiculous is this energy budget claim. What has shocked me is that it is accepted by so many without thinking and that so many have such a difficult time understanding why it doesn’t make sense.
[I gave somewhere the post of Ira’s where he said that I should go outside and feel the heat given by these rays of visible light, and that it was from the visible light of an incandescent lightbulb that I could feel the same heat – hence my question, what happens to the real invisible 95% thermal infrared, heat, radiating out from the lightbulb in my world, if it’s the 5% visible radiating out as light that’s being felt as heat…?]
Can you answer that?
Anyway, Visible shortwave is not thermal, we do not feel it as hot and it does not heat matter. It’s not able to heat water because it doesn’t have the mechanism necessary to move the atom/molecules to vibration/rotational levels, which is what creates heat, the rapid movement of the whole molecule, kinetic energy. Visible and the Light waves work on an electron level, and even then visible doesn’t have the oomph of the higher energy ionising UV which can knock an electron out of its orbit, for example. These are piddly little things, it’s the blue visible getting bounced back out by the electrons of oxygen and nitrogen and getting scattered everywhere which makes the sky blue! The sky’s a pinball board for these tiddlers as they try to get through..
So I hope that’s made it clear now. I’m arguing against the specific claim made in the energy budget that Visible (Shortwaves) directly heat the Earth’s land and oceans and thermal infrared direct from the Sun doesn’t play any part in this. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/greenhouseeffects1.jpg
I think this is appalling physics. I’m still shocked that you generic can’t see how absurd this is.
Is light not energy in your world?
It is in mine, what it is in your world is the question that needs to be asked.. 🙂
Your claim is what has to be proved here, because it goes against traditional well known tried and tested and used in countless applications in the real world from knowing the differences physics in mine, (the Smokey test.., I gave the example of photovoltaic which has to convert the tiddler visible to electricity and the plates which directly use the oomph of thermal infrared heat energy from the Sun captured to metal heating water, visible can’t do what thermal infrared does).
In my world, Light is not Heat. In my world water is a transparent medium for visible and that means it is not absorbed, not by the electrons as it is in the atmosphere absorbed by the electrons of oxygen and nitrogen [falsifying your claim that the atmosphere is transparent to it], nor can it raise whole atoms and molecules into vibrational/rotational states because it’s not absorbed on this level either. See the Georgia uni link.
Do you see the problem I have with your world now? What you claim is impossible in my world.
Your ‘light is energy’ must be a different kind of energy, some super wearing knickers on the outside kind of energy which can do these amazing things like heat water and rocks and penetrate deeply into us to heat us from the inside..
..because you claim that Light is Heat.
You have given the properties of Heat energy in my world, to Light in your world. You have swapped them around.
That’s why I say it’s like stepping through the looking glass with Alice, into a world where the impossible things in physics in my world are happening as much as you can think up after breakfast as well..
Prove that Visible light can heat water.
Also, you claim that the atmosphere is transparent to Visible and at the same time claim that all energy creates heat when absorbed, and that therefore means that visible isn’t heating anything in the atmosphere but passing through, but, in admitting visible is reflecting/scattering you are admitting that the visible energy is being absorbed because that is the method 2 described as I gave above in wiki link, the electrons of oxygen and nitrogen absorb it. Therefore, according to your physics, visible light in your energy budget must be heating the atmosphere. Where is this amount mentioned? How much is it?
So again, thank you for engaging with me here. I hope that I have now explained it sufficiently well enough from my point of view. I think these confusions have been deliberately manufactured to support the AGW claims and are difficult to disentangle as we see in the ‘transparent’ and ‘absorbed’ use in descriptions of air and water, it quickly becomes convoluted. Simply, all you’d have to do to see all of it as I see it and where I find the parts fit together logically, coherently, is to stop giving shortwaves, Light in my world, the properties that belong only to thermal infrared, Heat in my world. The rest follows.

These water molecules, which have volume, keep shutting it out, wont’ even let it play with its electrons, and after trying valiantly for a while it moves on, a bit slower each time because this hold it up, but still the same blue package of light, it’s not changing its wavelength in the water any more than it’s changing its wavelength passing through the atmosphere, it’s still the same blue light, just slower.
If you can prove this you can go collect a Nobel prize, because everybody else thinks that the speed of light (in a given medium) is a constant.
I would however note that if it were like that, you would have proved that light heats water, as you are claiming that each encounter with a water molecule reduces the momentum of the photon a little, and since momentum is conserved it must be going somewhere.
Actually your problem is perfectly illustrated by this sentence:
Do you see the problem I have with your world now? What you claim is impossible in my world.

It seems as if it is you who is on a different world.

Myrrh, as stated above I trust you have valid points: not all wavelengths from the solar irradiance transform the same way and as efficient in heat as infrared.
From the total solar irradiance more then 50% is infrared :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MODIS_ATM_solar_irradiance.jpg
Above you explain how part of visible light is being absorbed in the atmosphere and thus direct heating the atmosphere but you do not want to accept that a similar process could work for the oceans. “Air, our fluid gaseous atmosphere, slows light down, water slows it down even more.”
Perhaps the “slow down” is not the right expression as light speed should be constant so it must be a different phenomenon.
“what we have is bits of blue wavelengths hitting a particular point in an ocean and not a single concentration as if the Sun was directing the same one stream on that point and certainly not as if the Sun was a laser.. ” – true but each of these bits is doing something or should come out in a form or another it does not simply vanish in the dark. In this view possibly one can also accept that even visible light may be transformed in heat in certain circumstances – and would be important to measure and get more data at how and how much, even if such is not suitable for practical applications (one would need a pool of 200 meter depth in order to capture the visible lights energy according to what has been said above ion the thread).
So again I think you have a valid point in highlighting the importance of the infrared from the sun as being more then half of the incoming energy as well as the different mechanism where (possibly) the portion of visible light reflected (or not absorbed) is higher then for the infrared part.
In this respect albedo may play a different role, if I correctly understand ice is not as “white”=reflective for infrared as it is for visible light, so albedo could be important only for the portion/bandwidth of light that is reflected.
Further speaking of albedo, there was an interesting link posted by Dale Huffman on the greenhouse on Venus:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
where he compares the 2 planets Earth and Venus and finds that for same pressure the temperatures varies exactly by 17% which is explained exactly with the distance towards the Sun, no need of any adjustments for albedo.

Lars P. says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:50 am
Myrrh, as stated above I trust you have valid points: not all wavelengths from the solar irradiance transform the same way and as efficient in heat as infrared.
From the total solar irradiance more then 50% is infrared :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MODIS_ATM_solar_irradiance.jpg
From you next comment, which I’ll come to in a minute, I see that you’re not up to speed with all the argument I’m making here – it does get convoluted..
Here as you say, more than 59% is infrared, but what I’m arguing against is the ‘energy budget’ as defended here by both those who support AGW and those who don’t, it is the description of the ‘AGW greenhouse’ as given above in the picture of it: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/greenhouseeffects1.jpg
What the claim is from those who think this is a real description is that ‘Solar’, (aka Shortwave aka Visible and the two shortwaves either side of UV and Nr Infrared) is the primary heating mechanism of Earth’s land and oceans, that this directly comes to the surface and heats land and oceans, because, they say, Thermal Infrared direct from the Sun doesn’t get to the surface, therefore, plays no part in directly heating Earth. They say, look at the picture, that it is these shortwaves, Visible light and friends, which heat the ground, they say that thermal infrared from the Sun doesn’t even get to the surface. The only Thermal Infrared they have in their energy budget, it that which is produced by Visible after it has heated up the land and oceans.
You will find that most of the arguments here about ‘thermal infrared’ are only about the thermal infrared being radiated out from the surface after Visible and friends have created it. Argument about whether this upwelling thermal ir is capable of backradiating heat etc.
So, here I’m arguing that that is immediately nonsense physics on two counts, firstly that it is absolutely ridiculous to give what is classed as Light in traditional physics, these shortwaves from the Sun, the properties of what is classed as Heat in traditional physics, thermal infrared. And secondly, that the claim that thermal infrared direct from the Sun to Earth isn’t heating the Earth, doesn’t even reach it, is bizarre.
What I find astonishing is that this belief that shortwaves heat the Earth’s land and oceans is now a ubiquitous concept, in education, in majority of text and reference books, etc. They truly believe that shortwaves have the property of thermal infrared, heat. Because this is so much at odds with traditional, well known physics, it becomes very difficult to disentangle the various strands and to try and simplify my argument here I have narrowed it down to arguing about these two points, and further, to use Visible as the stand in for all the shortwaves, because Visible is better known than UV and NrIR etc. Even having narrowed it down to this, to asking for proof that Visible Light from the Sun can heat land and oceans as they claim, it’s difficult to get them to concentrate on the problem I have with it and it can all get quite confusing – I believe these claims, these memes, have been put in place by those who sought to profit by the AGW scare and so deliberately made to confuse a new generation. It is now in such ‘common’ consciousness that even scientists very clever in their own field, take these claims for granted as if they were real physics. I see a lot of that..
I have looked at other ‘common consciousness’ claims from what I’ve come to call the AGWScience Fiction Inc’s meme producing department and found they have a common problem, because they are created by swapping properties, denying properties, taking laws out of context and misapplying them and much more, these actually have no internal consistency, the logic of physics which is found in traditional teaching isn’t possible in their fictional physics, but because they claim that their version is based on real world physics it is possible to show them how illogical it is. I’ve pointed some out.
For example, as I’ve given before about the above claim that Visible light heats the Earth and produces thermal infrared, when I first heard it and questioned it and told to go outside and sit in the Sun and feel the heat from the Visible light I could see coming from the Sun, which in my world of traditional physics isn’t possible. Because Visible light cannot even be felt, certainly not as a thermal energy; Light in traditional physics isn’t capable of heating land and oceans. It was added, that I could feel the same heat from the light radiating out from an incandescent bulb, the visible light. So, I ask the question, if the visible light which is around 5% of the radiation from an incandescent bulb is what they feel as heat, what has happened to the 95% thermal infrared which is being radiated out, and which really is heat? I have imagined, putting myself in their world, that it must be trapped within the glass of the bulb as it is trapped by the glass of their greenhouse.. So far, none has chosen to answer me.. The reason there is this logical disjunct is not because we’re arguing about different views, but because they are using bits of information from real physics but out of context, and their parts don’t fit into a coherent whole because of it. [I’ve seen your next post on this, it seems to me that this would be such a simple experiment for them to do to convince me of their physics… :)]
And so, all this to set the scene to answer your next question, I’ve pointed out the logic fail in their claim that the atmosphere is transparent to Visible light and that because it is transparent it doesn’t heat anything on the way down from the Sun, but only when it reaches the surface, and concurrently with that, their claim that Visible light heats the waters of the oceans, because, they also claim that all absorption of energy creates heat.
Above you explain how part of visible light is being absorbed in the atmosphere and thus direct heating the atmosphere but you do not want to accept that a similar process could work for the oceans.
Not that, I’m not making any such claim, I have rather gone to some effort to explain to them there are different uses of visible energy absorbed which don’t create heat, photosynthesis for example, is the creation of sugars in a chemical energy, and in giving the kinds of electronic transitions that are possible for Visible I’ve pointed out that absorption by the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere results in the light being reflected/scattered, such as blue light scattered in the sky. What I am saying to them is, if they believe that all absorption of visible energy results in the creation of heat, as they claim for visible light being absorbed by the oceans, then they must include the absorption of visible light in the atmosphere, because it is being absorbed by the electrons it must therefore according to their beliefs be creating heat, yet they claim that the atmosphere is transparent to Visible light so not being heating by it. I have asked them to give me the amount of heat so generated, but so far none has replied.
Further, I have said, since they make this claim for Visible light not heating the atmosphere but passing straight through because they say the atmosphere is transparent to it, and being transparent means there is no absorption, then they must also say the same for visible light travelling through water, because water is a transparent medium for Visible light. They so don’t want to admit water is a transparent medium, and we have lots of confusion being generated because they they want to read the word ‘absorbed’ in water, as if it means that in the real physical science meaning that the molecules of water absorb the energy and so are heated. But, since water is really a transparent medium, it cannot mean this.
Anyway, they do like to argue about whether or not water is a transparent medium, so I have also insisted that because they claim all absorptions of energy create heat then they must give me the figure of how much Visible light is creating in the atmosphere, because I have shown that reflection/scattering is by physical absorption on the electron scale and they have included reflection/scattering in their energy budget. In other words, their claim that the atmosphere is transparent to visible light is false and they must account for it.
“Air, our fluid gaseous atmosphere, slows light down, water slows it down even more.”
Perhaps the “slow down” is not the right expression as light speed should be constant so it must be a different phenomenon.
It is slowed down, that is how it is described because that is what is happening, it is slowed a great deal more in water than in air, but slowed down it is. I have tried to explain it in my ‘stories’, technically it’s to do with the respective energy levels etc., as mentioned on the Georgia university page I linked to, but simply in story form what happens in a real transparent medium which water is to visible, is that visible can’t get in to play on the electron level (which because of its size etc. is the level it interacts with matter, electronic transitions as outlined on the wiki page on translucency I quoted above). It does get to play with the electrons of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, and bumping into them raises their energy levels and getting ejected out by them, which is reflection/scattering, but it can’t get into the molecule of water to do this, so it isn’t absorbed even on the electron level. The volume, the field, of the water molecule is somewhat ‘sticky’ to the visible light, there are various ways people have tried to describe this, ‘friction’ is another. It can be thought of in a couple of ways, that the visible, remember it is highly energetic, tries to get in and so uses up time in attempts to do so before being passed on through to the next, or that the volume of the molecules is like for us walking through a muddy field, the friction of trying to get through slows the light down. The amount it is slowed down through various transparent mediums is calculated as the index of refraction. A solid diamond which is much denser than water slows visible down to a far greater extent, the light breaking up into different colours and refracting like mad trying to get out, so we have the beautiful colours diamonds are noted for because it is trapped inside longer before it can exit the other side, and of course clever cutting enhancing that.
“what we have is bits of blue wavelengths hitting a particular point in an ocean and not a single concentration as if the Sun was directing the same one stream on that point and certainly not as if the Sun was a laser.. ” – true but each of these bits is doing something or should come out in a form or another it does not simply vanish in the dark. In this view possibly one can also accept that even visible light may be transformed in heat in certain circumstances – and would be important to measure and get more data at how and how much, even if such is not suitable for practical applications (one would need a pool of 200 meter depth in order to capture the visible lights energy according to what has been said above ion the thread).
Well, ‘certain circumstances’ really don’t apply here, water is fundamentally known to be a real transparent medium for Visible, it has to taken at that basic value in these calculations. This isn’t about oh maybe visible light in some circumstances will heat this drop of water, the claim is that Visible light is the PRIMARY heating mechanism of all the oceans and all the lakes and all the rivers and all the ponds and all the puddles on all the Earth’s surface..
One really does have to maintain one’s sense of perspective here. The claim is that because blue light goes even deeper into the oceans it is heating the waters of the oceans even deeper down than the other colours, they take this visible heats all water seriously. Water is a transparent medium for Visible light, which means, transparent means, that it is not absorbed, therefore, it is not heating the oceans. Full stop. Even if electronic transitions, which is the level visible light acts on matter, is even capable of having that great an effect.. Is it? I say it isn’t. Because it takes much more oomph than piddling electronic transitions to move atoms and molecules into vibrational states which is how real heat is created.. So also in the atmosphere, no heat is being created by visible being absorbed by the electrons in reflection/scattering, just the same light out again, only.., since they believe visible light is thermal, that doesn’t let them off the hook! How much is this heating the atmosphere in their energy budget..? Again, as on the wiki page, it is thermal infrared which has the oomph to act on this heat creating level, with the whole molecule of water, moving the whole molecule of water, electronic transitions just don’t do this.
Back to your: “true but each of these bits is doing something or should come out in a form or another it does not simply vanish in the dark”.
But it does. What happens when you switch the light off in your room? Is the package of light looking desperately around for something to heat before it can go out? No, it simply goes out, it stops. To think in terms that it must somehow change or do something is to give it the quality of eternal light. Those bits were created, whether we take them from the moment they appear in the radiation from the Sun or from the moment they appear at some intersection where we first get them, and what is created is not eternal, it has an end. And sometimes that’s as simple as the going out of a light.. 🙂
But here also, because they have this one dimensional idea that all energy absorbed creates heat, they don’t appreciate the different forms energy can take, such as chemical, and here the energy required for movement through a medium.
So again I think you have a valid point in highlighting the importance of the infrared from the sun as being more then half of the incoming energy as well as the different mechanism where (possibly) the portion of visible light reflected (or not absorbed) is higher then for the infrared part.
Sadly, it’s more than that I’m trying to highlight. The fact is they believe in their greenhouse world that no thermal infrared reaches us as in the greenhouse picture, and they believe instead that visible light is thermal energy. This has been deliberately introduced into the education system and it is this basic science fiction meme which is creating such confusion here, because most have never thought about it before. They haven’t been allowed to think about it because the fictional meme is constantly taught as if real world physics.
In this respect albedo may play a different role, if I correctly understand ice is not as “white”=reflective for infrared as it is for visible light, so albedo could be important only for the portion/bandwidth of light that is reflected.
I’ve heard something along those lines, that white is black to infrared, but haven’t explored it.
Further speaking of albedo, there was an interesting link posted by Dale Huffman on the greenhouse on Venus:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
where he compares the 2 planets Earth and Venus and finds that for same pressure the temperatures varies exactly by 17% which is explained exactly with the distance towards the Sun, no need of any adjustments for albedo.
I’ve just taken a look at it and I think I understand what he’s saying, I don’t speak maths, but what struck me as interesting is the 66°C he’s got for Venus which brings its temps more to Earthlike levels, he’s far more exact than I think he knows.. The figures I’ve seen for the temps for the Earth with an atmosphere but without the water cycle, is 67°C… How’s that?! So Venus with it’s carbon dioxide and Earth with around 100% nitrogen and oxygen are on a level playing field without water doing the cooling, which is what brings Earth’s temperature down to the 15 mark..
I haven’t gone through all the discussion on it so I don’t know if this point has been made.

Myrrrh
There is a great deal of difference between the statements “the speed of light is less in water than in a vacuum” and “light slows down and stops in water”. The first is correct. The latter, which you are making, is nonsense.

Lars P. says:
October 30, 2011 at 3:30 am
Myrrh says:
Myrrh, energy is eternal to my understanding of the universe, what I learned so far. It is not created or destroyed, it transforms.
Since Lavoisier we understand the conservation of mass which was then extended to energy-mass conservation with the relativity theory (E=mc^2) . It does not go out or simply stop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass
It transforms to other forms of energy. This is the basis on which we can talk – if we agree on this it makes sense to continue talking, else our positions are too divergent to have a dialogue. I could only curiously read comments but not be able to follow-up the logic.
To what form of energy it transforms and how this is a different question.
And if we don’t get it there’s nothing to transform. The problem is that energy from the Sun is being confused with ‘energy’ the stuff neither created nor destroyed, but that comes in various forms, electromagnetic wavelengths are just some of the forms. The energy from the Sun comes in discrete packages, which in themselves are not eternal, having beginnings and ends, one of those ends is that it is not created, which is what I was giving as one response to ‘well what happens to it it is eternal it has to change into something and since we can’t think of anything else it must be heat if it stops’. Anyway, those discrete visible energy packages in the oceans can be used in various ways which do not heat the matter which is absorbing it, such as photosynthesis, I get distracted enough from keeping to my own points as much as, if not more so, than any I’m trying to keep to the point, so I’ll pass on discussing it further than in this post.
The distraction was to get involved in what happens to the visible light if it isn’t heating the water in response to those claiming it is heating the water by being absorbed by the water. It is not being absorbed by the water because water is a transparent medium for it, so it is not heating the water directly. Is it leaving its energy in some form or other while in the ocean? Of course it is, photosynthesis and chemical changes generally, absorption and reflection by other matter in the oceans, but this is irrelevant to my point which is that “the claim visible light is directly heating the water is balderdash”. So, keeping that in mind, I have already mentioned that in slowing down the visible light waves are expending energy, in this they are putting energy into the system, the ocean. How much actual work that is, how much energy transferred by forces, fascinating though it is, is still irrelevant to the arguments I’m making here. Anyway, this would have to be subtracted from all other ‘transformations’ which are not directly heating those absorbing it, as in photosynthesis, and, it would still only be a part of the total work being done in the oceans by everything else in it. So, I’m leaving it there.
My argument here is:
– that the claim visible light is the primary energy from the Sun directly heating land and oceans is cobblers. My example of visible light heating the water of the oceans is only part of that, you, generic, still have to produce mechanism and proof that it is directly heating the land..
– that the claim that thermal infrared isn’t the primary energy from the Sun directly heating land and oceans is cobblers. Heat energy of the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy, which reaches us at the same time as visible light is heat on the move, thermal infrared, it is what we feel as heat from the Sun, it is invisible. It is the energy direct from the Sun, in direct, straight lines from the Sun (i.e. not this supposed ‘backradiated going off in all directions from the upwelling thermal ir from the Earth) and is the energy actually, physically, capable of moving atoms and molecules which is how matter heats up. Visible light working on electronic transition levels is not capable of this.
So. I am still awaiting proof that shortwaves directly heat land and oceans and thermal infrared doesn’t even get here and plays no part in heating land and oceans.
To this end I have simplified it to asking for proof that visible light is capable of heating water. Water is a real, really real, transparent medium for visible light, that is, transparency means the visible light is not absorbed but transmitted through.

Darn. I go away for a few days thinking that it was all settled and visible light does heat water. Then I came back and read the link you provided Myrrh which shows visible light does not heat water.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/chemical/watabs.html

Zac says:
October 31, 2011 at 6:57 am
Darn. I go away for a few days thinking that it was all settled and visible light does heat water. Then I came back and read the link you provided Myrrh which shows visible light does not heat water.
Yeah, they scrabble around looking for any little thing and in their best convoluted illogical jargon make it sound like they know what they’re talking about.. 🙂 It gets easier to recognise the symptoms after a while.
All they have to do now is prove how visible light heats earth and rocks and… Their science fictional world gets more and more silly, but there’s never any internal consistency and they always avoid these when the logic fails are pointed out.
So how much is blue visible light heating the fluid gaseous atmosphere since for them absorption means heating and reflection/scattering is the visible being absorbed by the electrons of nitrogen and oxygen molecules? Why isn’t it in their ‘energy budget’?
What has happened to the 95% thermal infrared radiated out from an incandescent lightbulb if the visible is the heat we feel?
No sense of scale, no sense of differences between properties and process, no sense of physics generally, they can’t even tell the difference between heat and light.
Mostly it’s not their fault, they are merely working to what they believe is real physical fact, and most genuinely believe it so in looking for reasons to confirm it will view it from that paradigm, it has been indoctrinated into them over the last decades through the education system so it’s well ingrained – and scientists in other fields take it for granted because it’s constantly repeated, and unless they have a reason to explore it, like applied scientists who can actually build solar shortwave and thermal infrared appliances coherently because they understand the respective properties, they just don’t think about it. AGW has reduced all of this to a one dimensional reality, taken out all the differences between electromagnetic waves so they can reduce the argument to the level of their cartoon just as they have taken out all the differences between real gases so they can pretend that carbon dioxide is well mixed and can stay up in the atmosphere for hundreds and even thousands of years accumulating (there they simply give real gases the properties of ideal (imaginary) gas, which has no properties, no volume, no weight, the atmosphere just empty space with no inelastic encounters, their imaginary carbon dioxide is either diffusing at vast speeds in ideal gas empty space or being bumped around by oxygen and nitrogen as in the fluid medium of Brownian motion, no, don’t bother looking for internal coherence..) So, thinking it is real, the Light from the Sun is Heat and Heat from the Sun doesn’t even reach us, that has to logically mean to them that Light is thermal, which brings us back to the lightbulb and then of course it just all collapses into a heap of ridiculousness. They can pretend that the Sun’s thermal energy doesn’t reach us, even produce lots of studies.., and so claim that the heat we feel is from visible light, but can’t then explain how thermal infrared, exactly the same heat energy as from the Sun, doesn’t get out of the lightbulb. Of course, it’s trapped by the glass …
..backradiating like mad into runaway globe lightbulb warming. All achieved by the simple method of giving non-thermal Light, shortwave, which we actually cannot feel, the properties and processes of Heat, which is the real thermal energy of the Sun, the invisible thermal infrared, which we do feel as heat and which we actually feel heats us up; from the Sun, from a stove hot but not glowing with any light.., from a warm pavement.. Amazing.
All done to support the AGW meme as a means to other ends.
It’s quite a shock to realise what has actually been done here.

jimmi_the_dalek says:
October 31, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Myrrh, You don’t even know what ‘thermal radiation’ is, yet you feel you can lecture everyone else on how wrong they are.
Zac, don’t believe everything you read on the internet – some of it is wrong!
Thermal radiation is what its name says it is. It is radiation of heat, from thermos hot, from therme heat. What you are suffering from here is a malady created by those who want to confuse you about this, they spout the nonsense that ‘all radiation is the same’ and ‘heat is so complicated and everyone uses it in different ways’.
For the first that is explained by saying that all is “the same electromagnetism” and that it only ‘becomes heat’ when matter uses it’ – how is not explained when questioned about the method that matter has in turning this one size fits all electromagnetism.. How does your radio turn it into radio waves before you can hear anything? What is the mechanism which turns one size fits all electromagnetism into radio waves before a programme can be sent out to you? And how then does it convert to being one size fits all electromagnetism before it reaches your radio as it’s travelling and what happens to the information it is carrying? How does your radio convert it back to radio waves and how does it recreate the message that it was carrying? How do your plants turn it into red and blue light before they use it for photosynthesis? What produces the green light that reflects off them..? Again, no internal consistency, logic fail when simple physics is attempted to extrapolate from this fictional meme. The radio wave being sent out is a radio wave, it is not a blue light, it is not a gamma ray, it is produced a radio energy, it travels as a radio energy and it is received as a radio energy by matter. It impacts matter depending on what it is and what the matter is. Thermal radiation is heat when it is produced, it is this heat travelling, it is this heat when it impacts matter and it does so depending on its own properties and the kind of matter it meets, it is a wave of heat.
As I’ve said, AGWSF meme producing department reduces everything to one dimensional nonsense, it has done so here so it can confuse that visible light creates heat, that visible is thermal, because it only wants you to think of thermal infrared that is radiated out by the Earth heated from it and ‘backradiated’ by carbon dioxide to earth to heat it further and here again no internal consistency, when that argument fails to convince when someone shows that the second law can’t be broken, they’ll say carbon dioxide traps heat like an insulating blanket, and when that is shown to be mostly holes.., or when that it shown to be nonsense because carbon dioxide has even a lower heat capacity than oxygen and nitrogen, it releases any heat practically instantly, or that carbon dioxide can’t stay up in the air because it is heavier than air, they say that all electromagnetism is just photons and these travel in all directions and it is the net of these exchanges which abides by the second law, though again they can’t produce any mechanism which tells the photons to stop exchanging randomly to fit that.., and so on ad nauseum of junk science which neither makes sense in real physics in the first claim, as here ‘visible light is thermal’ nor in examining how this claim fits in which all the other well known basics about matter and energy.
Except they give all these contradictory ‘physics’ at the same time, and arguing with them is like wading through a bog of sticky glue because of this, because at every junk science fiction meme about property or process you have to counter with the real physics. That’s why these arguments get so convoluted, that’s why they never, never ever, come back to deal with the logic fails – no proof of show and tell that visible light heats water, no explanation of what happens to the 95% heat radiated out from an incandescent bulb if what they are feeling as heat is the visible waves..
Do you see the problem? None of your science is based on reality in the first place. That’s why nothing fits together in a coherent whole. This was all created to be confusing, whoever put the pieces together in these memes must have known real physics extremely well, it was designed to confuse by constant repetition of the science fiction memes. ‘Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere for hundreds and thousand of years building an insulating blanket trapping/radiating back photons/heat’ has to bring in so many different areas of physics that these arguments are guaranteed to last.. You only have to look at the arguments about temperature readings.., all about .0 something of a degree, and all it takes is to cook the data in the first place and produce models which can say what they want and produce analysis from ‘research’ which make the most stupid conclusions out of the data all to bog everyone down in arguing about it as if it is serious science, so on and so on. But every bit of it is junk science, it is built on junk science fiction memes, it is maintained by producing more of these junk science fiction memes in defending the junk science memes, it doesn’t care that there is no internal consistency, as long as enough people are taking it seriously because they don’t notice it. Or they notice it in their own field and get bogged down discussing that, while not questioning the junk science fiction memes in other science fields which they use in their own arguments!
Visible light heating water is a junk science fiction meme. Prove it can do this, physically heat water, because if it can’t heat a bowl of water it can’t do it to a hundred metres of water, water is what water is, it does not absorb visible light. The only thing that changes in deeper water is that it gets denser, and light is slowed depending on the density of matter. See? Already I have to bring in real physics to counter the stupid memes, like Liefs ‘pure water’ experiments, how well did they exclude thermal contribution? It is easy to make these fictitious claims, these junk science memes, to take studies out of context to ‘show they’re true’, it takes a lot of hard slog to counter this. They rely on this to keep the scam going, the longer they can keep it going the longer they get to put the money grabbing schemes into operation on the political and financial global scale.
So, let’s keep it simple, I’m asking you a few simple questions here, answer them.
In fact, I insist that in your next post you repeat them to show that you have actually taken my points seriously. Until you do you’re just proving that you’re avoiding them.
Answer my questions, don’t you dare come back arguing about any particular point I’ve made in this post, answer the actual questions I have asked in asking for you generic to prove it physically.
In fact, I insist that in your next post you repeat them to show that you have actually taken my points seriously. Until you do you’re just proving that you’re avoiding them.
Or that you get easily distracted…
In fact, I insist that in your next post you repeat them to show that you have actually taken my points seriously. Until you do you’re just proving that you’re avoiding them.

Seems to me that a practical experiment is needed. I just loved science at school where by simple experiment the science was proven.

Climate change 101 repeat performance.
As you say the glass negated the”experiment” from the beginning so why did you persist?
Al Gore’s “experiment” is supposed to llustrate the theory and should be marked as for illustrative purposes only. He is a communicator not a Scientist and makes elementary mistakes. I fear the poor fellow needs a bit of distance from the issue so he can think but no one will allow him that. Another instance of being blinded by answers. What do you think of the Mythbusters experiment along the same lines?