I’m taking a blog holiday this weekend. Right now I’m watching the History channel 2 (H2) while some off the rails eco-scientist explains to us why we are all going to die because of “what might happen if a gigantic methane-gas explosion occurred in the Pacific.” Methane Explosion (2007) watch the video:
I had to laugh at the YouTube description (bold mine):
History Channel “Mega Disasters” series. This explores the controversial paper published by Northwestern University’s Gregory Ryskin. His thesis: the oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas… enough to cause global catastrophe on a regular basis!
Discuss the methane explosions or whatever you like, within site policy. If you want to submit a guest post, flag a moderator.
WUWT will return to its regularly scheduled programming Sunday evening.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ric Werme:
If you care to read my posts above to your meeting, especially this last one http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891159 I would be very happy to respond through a phone hookup to any questions, laughter or genuine interest from any attendees, whatever the time may be (day or night) here in Sydney. Just advised the expected Sydney DS time and I’ll let you know the phone number. Invite the media to report too if you wish.
If radiation from cooler bodies could warm warmer ones, then all the radiation from all the planets would warm the Sun a little. So the Sun would then radiate more back to all the planets, and they would get warmer from the backradiation from the Sun. So they would radiate more to the Sun and so it would radiate more back again because it got hotter stil, etc, etc ….. Sure it’s just a little bit at a time, but in billions of years who knows just how hot it’s going to get.
The only thing is, this doesn’t happen because of course the hockey stick had a level handle once upon a time. /sarc
> Ric Werme says:
> February 12, 2012 at 6:41 am
(1) I had always figured that scatter was essentially reflection, with surface roughness the main determinant. (Stuff like forward scatter in aerosol might be a bit different.) Is reflection based on the ratios of indexes of refraction and scatter is not? Your concept of photons emitted from an object of one temperature bouncing off a hotter object sounds really bizarre. If we consider objects hot enough to glow in visible light, you’re saying that something like an oven heating element glowing red emits photons that can’t be absorbed by an incandescent light. What about blue photons emitted from a (cold) blue LED? can those be absorbed by a hot tungsten filament?
How can that be? Kirchoff’s law of thermal radiation says that emissivity equals absorptivity, I assume at each wavelength. Am I misreading that?
That would be enough to make my (2) be false. What happens when the blackbody spectrum of the cold object overlaps that of the warm object? Would only the shorter wavelength photons be absorbed? If so, the GHGs would be able to deliver some energy to heat the ground. IIRC, there’s a fair amount of overlap in the blackbody spectra in a column of the atmosphere.
No, can’t say I’ve ever worried much about radio waves thinking the atmosphere is not transparent. (*) I have been regaled with stories about friends in the Navy claiming they could drop steaks through high energy radar beams and catch them cooked beneath. I don’t have any trouble thinking that steak is not completely transparent.
(*) Well, not entirely true. One of the problems with UHF analog TV channels is that atmospheric absorption was a problem, also they weren’t as prone to skip. I remember one day in Ohio picking up low VHF (channels 2-6) stations broadcasting from Texas. That was with a “box” antenna, a very poorly directional antenna.
(*) And microwave signals get absorbed by clouds and other things that medium wave signals sail through.
Also, EEs worry about radiation patterns of antennae, e.g. the FCC often mandates that AM stations not transmit toward some other area served by a station on the same frequency. That’s usually dealt with by having multiple “sticks” to create a moire pattern to protect the other station and to deliver a stronger signal toward their target market. We should add diffraction to reflect/refract/scatter/absorb.
Doug Cotton says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:24 pm
Ric Werme:
The talk won’t be anywhere near this deep. I didn’t get much at all done on it today, this discussion, bill paying, grocery shopping, and dog walk ate up most of the day.
I’ll be lucky if I can update my talk from three years ago, which basically introduced http://wermenh.com/climate/climate2009.pdf
Ric Werme:
If you just want to write “hand-waving” ideas such as you do, rather than reading, for example, http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf then I have no time to keep repeating the truth of what does happen in the real world. Go argue with Johnson (Professor of Applied Mathematics) abou this mathematical proof of what I have said. Then confirm in your own backyard, as I have, that ground which is shielded from backradiation at night cools at exactly the same rate as unshielded ground. And yes, you do not understand the conditions required for SBL and KL to apply.
Regarding the “overlap” I have used the word “significantly” to imply the two narrow spectra are not significantly overlapping.
Scattering in the sense I have used it is not the same as reflection where angles of incidence equal angles of reflection even if the surface is rough. Totally different processes are involved. If you prefer, just say “not converted to thermal energy”
For radio waves to go around the curve of the Earth it is well known that they “bounce” off the surface and the atmosphere. They are not reflected, however. So why are they not converted to thermal energy?. The answer lies in what I have explained.
Ric Werme:
Well I’m glad you use NASA’s net energy diagram that doesn’t show any backradiation. That solves your problem for you, unless there’s someone in the audience who challenges you on that.
Don’t forget to update Spencer’s plot and the sunspot projection.
Maybe instead of quoting someone’s out of date post at the end, you could quote those of mine here. After all, you do declare that you are seeking the truth, so why promulgate fictitious cogitations.
Didn’t I kind of warn you at the beginning that this would take time – yes mine too, and I have to finalise my book Greenhouse Land for the publishers .
George E. Smith; says:
February 12, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“”””” JC says:
Electromagnetic radiation IS NOT HEAT.
;————————————————————————————————-
False.
Electromagnetic radiation is heat (or energy.)
All thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
It’s a question of wavelength.
And all matter radiates.
So how does UAH measure the temperature of the troposphere by looking at oxygen?
Those who believe that thermal energy “moves” in the direction of net radiation should consider what happens when a blackbody faces another body, say, 10 degrees warmer but with much lower emissivity out in space, say. Suppose S-B calculations are such that the warmer body emits less than the cooler one because the warmer one’s flux is reduced by the lower emissivity. Hence the direction of net radiative flux is from the cooler one to the warmer one.
(1) What happens to the extra radiation that the warmer body does not absorb because of its low absorptivity?
(2) Does the warmer body convert to thermal energy any of the remaining radiation from the cooler body? If not all, what happens to that radiation?
(3) Is the Second Law of Thermodynamics obeyed or does the warmer body get warmer still?
(4) Does heat transfer from the cooler one to the warmer one, or vice versa?
.
Agile Aspect says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Sorry, but electromagnetic radiation transmits radiative flux energy – that’s not “heat” as explained in one of my posts above. Net heat transfer can be in the opposite direction to net radiative flux – see my other post above with those 4 questions.
You are assuming instruments are looking at oxygen, but in fact they take an average over a large area of the atmosphere that is visible and tend to detect warmer globules of hot air which include water vapour and other radiating molecules.*
That said, oxygen does in fact radiate at low levels, not by quantum steps but by generation of a field due to the acceleration imposed on electrons in collision processes.
* http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
See – owe to Rich says:February 12, 2012 at 12:40 am
For your entertainment, here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my son’s geography teacher, answering some of the questions she put in a pamphlet to encourage students to continue with geography studies to age 16.
4. Is Toowoomba a victim of climate change?
Where? Oh, that town near Brisbane which was deluged in January 2011. Now this is actually quite an interesting question. But these are not the climate changes you are looking for.
The second aspect is an awful human culpability bordering on the criminal, because it probably cost lives.
While not Toowoomba, but an example of town planning or lack of infrastructure expenditure or auditing of actual assets or assessing risk management correctly….
Perhaps pges 21, 30-31 are of interest?
http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/86595/cif-landue-s-reid-g-doolan-s-20050209.pdf
Ric Werme at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891194
________________________________
Just in case you think lasers or microwave ovens or radar prove me wrong, the reason lies in other unique mechanisms to do with such things as stimulated emission (rather than spontaneous emission) and resonance in just certain molecules (mainly water molecules in the food) caused by microwaves which don’t heat everything as you know. So these are very different from so-called “blackbody” (spontaneous) radiation such as occurs naturally.
Anyone not knowing what stimulated (or induced) emission is can look up Wikipedia. Basically a laser beam is produced by stimulated emission and it will cause stimulated emission in a target such as sheet metal. Stimulated radiation arrives at such an intensity that additional radiation is generated in the same direction as the incident beam, and so more radiation penetrates deeper and such is more than the material can scatter to regions outside its boundaries, so it converts this unnatural surplus to thermal energy. (Whilst it might not fully penetrate the sheet, a cut can be made using holes that are first cut and filled with special materials.) This is not usually a natural process having been generated artificially.
From Doug Cotton on February 12, 2012 at 9:36 pm:
Thanks for posting this, saves me from scouring through your long list to gauge how sensible your claims can be.
I’ll crank out some numbers for just the Earth and the Sun:
Info:
Area of sphere = 4*pi*radius^2
Area of circle = pi*radius^2
Mean distance Earth to Sun 1.496×10^8 km
Mean radius of Earth 6,371.0 km
Mean diameter of Sun 1.392×10^6 km, thus mean radius 6.960*10^5 km
Calculated values:
Area of sphere with Earth-to-Sun radius: 2.812*10^17 km^2
Earth cross-sectional area (flat disk) 1.275*10^8 km^2
Sun CSA 1.522*10^12 km^2
The longwave radiation from Earth is going out in all directions. For your mechanism, a photon leaving Earth would have to hit the “target” of the Sun. Dividing the disk area of the Sun by the area of the Earth-Sun sphere yields the amount of radiation from the Earth that’d hit the Sun.
1.522*10^12 / 2.812*10^17 = 5.413*10^(-6)
Of the radiation leaving Earth, only 0.000005413 (0.0005413%) of it hits the Sun.
For that radiation coming back from the Sun, we use the disk area of the Earth.
1.275*10^8 / 2.812*10^17 = 4.534*10^(-10)
0.0000000004534 which is 0.00000004534%, of the radiation leaving the Sun, only that much hits the Earth. Well, that’s the longwave radiation under consideration, for this it’ll be assumed that all of it hits the Earth rather than reducing the figure with incidence angles on the edges and other figuring. Which shouldn’t matter anyway, since we’re considering that energy as going right back out into space again, same as with the longwave hitting the Sun, so using flat disk areas for the amount received is acceptable.
For a single Earth-to-Sun-to-Earth transit, the amount of longwave radiation leaving the Earth that returns to the Earth after hitting the Sun is 5.413*10^(-6) * 4.534*10^(-10) = 2.454*10(-15).
0.000000000000002454 which is 0.0000000000002454%.
For two round trips, we square that. Three trips, cube it. Etc.
You should be able to note how quickly the longwave radiation is lost to deep space, the remainder becoming infinitesimal. Heck, you could add in everything else to figure out the “local” solar system heating, like longwave going from Jupiter to the Sun to Europa to the Earth and back to the Sun, etc. The result would still be infinitesimal.
You specified such warming as evidence that colder bodies can warm warmer bodies. Well, such warming could very well be there. But the amount would be so tiny, far less than a rounding error, that it’s currently undetectable and likely will remain so. So if you’re looking for something to disprove that by radiation a cooler object can warm a warmer one, well, you better pick something else.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
So if you’re looking for something to disprove that by radiation a cooler object can warm a warmer one, well, you better pick something else.
____________________________________________________________________
You’ll find plenty else if you actually read my sites and all the above posts – start with answering the four questions at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891251
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:49 am
which is 0.00000004534%, of the radiation leaving the Sun, only that much hits the Earth
______________________________________________________________
I don’t care how small your finite answer is or how much energy that represents over 4 billion years in the past .. the point is your wrong assumption has led you to claim incorrectly that energy has been created.
The correct answer zero.
The reason is that the spectrum of emitted radiation from the Earth has frequencies which are below those in the spectrum of emitted radiation from the Sun. Thus none of the radiation from the Earth that strikes the Sun is converted to additional thermal energy in the Sun. [Explained with links to proof in my website and other post.]
You cannot prove otherwise, just as you cannot prove in any experiment that radiation from the atmosphere is actually slowing the rate of cooling or increasing the rate of warming of the surface. There is no empirical evidence of such in any published experiment because it cannot happen: it would be in breach of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the reasons being explained in my previous posts which I suggest you read before replying.
.
Doug Cotton says:
February 12, 2012 at 10:55 pm
Look, I know the whole page is out of date, that’s why I wanted to work on it yesterday!
I was thinking of replacing the the old comment
With Typhoon’s from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/04/andrea-rossis-e-cat-fusion-device-on-target/#comment-713494
You haven’t been able to improve on that yet. 🙂
I was thinking about noting GHGs are import radiators at the top of the atmosphere, but given my precious convection only reaches the tropopause, it would likely take some work to figure out how readily CO2 radiation makes it through the stratosphere. The stratosphere is dry, maybe I’ll just talk about the top of water vapor. Don’t have time to check that either.
Agile Aspect says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm
George E. Smith; says:
February 12, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“”””” JC says:
Electromagnetic radiation IS NOT HEAT.
;————————————————————————————————-
False.
Electromagnetic radiation is heat (or energy.)
All thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation.
It’s a question of wavelength.
And all matter radiates.
=============================
This is getting to be really ridiculous.
Electromagnetic radiation is electromagnetic radiation. These come in discrete packages with their own distinct properties and processes, distinct ways they interact with matter. They are neither not all heat nor not all heat.
Those who say they are all heat are talking nonsense, they are not all thermal energy, thermal infrared is thermal energy, it is heat.
Those who say they are not heat are talking nonsense, thermal infrared is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move, which is heat.
Those saying that it’s ‘all the same electromagnetic energy and then converted to heat on meeting matter’ are talking nonsense. That’s like saying, say, that gamma rays are just electromagnetic radiation and then the body receiving them converts them to gamma rays which then wreck the DNA.
Am getting more and more amazed at how widespread the disinformation about this, through all the education system from kindergarden to university to scientific bodies and associations, all put in place to stop rational science thinking in the promotion of AGW. Has it only taken so few decades to destroy all the hard earned knowledge we’ve gained about the differences between Light and Heat?
What an amazing con.
Here’s something I’ve posted on this – if you can get your heads around what traditional well tried and tested and used in countless real world applications differences are between Light and Heat, you’ll be able to see through the scam.
Important, I think because of the confusion, that you get your heads around HEAT first, then you’ll see why that isn’t LIGHT.
“Heat” and “Light” are the traditional physics category differences, thermodynamics and optics.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/12/argo-and-the-ocean-temperature-maximum/#comment-890886
“Ridiculous. Tim don’t bother with such utter codswallop – the direct heat from the Sun warms the oceans. The direct heat from the Sun is thermal infrared, if this didn’t heat the oceans because it couldn’t penetrate more than a few microns there would be no such thing as swimming in really warm tropical waters – it would be cold water with a thin layer of heat on it! Utter nonsense.
“Ocean Regions
Heat from the sun warms the world’s oceans near the Equator. This heat is gradually circulated through the oceans by currents. Since these waters are always being warmed, they maintain high year round temperatures (21° – 30° C, 69.8° – 86° F) and are known as the Tropical Regions of the world’s oceans.” http://oceanofk.org/tag/Tagmigrate/ddisttemp.html
My bold.
The heat we feel direct from the Sun is thermal infrared, this is the same radiated heat energy used in countless applications to heat water, including us, as in infrared saunas because we are so much water – It penetrates out skin and into the body by inches! And it can’t get past the surface tension of the ocean!?
Thermal infrared, heat has the ability to move the molecules of water into vibrational resonance, this is kinetic energy, which is also heat. Water is a very great absorber of heat, it has a very high heat capacity, it takes in a lot of heat before it shows temperature changes and it takes longer to heat up than land and so takes longer to lose heat, from this we get the inshore and offshore breezes.
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.”
http://thermalenergy.org/
Thermal Energy Explained
“What is thermal energy ?
Thermal Energy: A specialized term that refers to the part of the internal energy of a system which is the total present kinetic energy resulting from the random movements of atoms and molecules.
The ultimate source of thermal energy available to mankind is the sun, the huge thermo-nuclear furnace that supplies the earth with the heat and light that are essential to life. The nuclear fusion in the sun increases the sun’s thermal energy. Once the thermal energy leaves the sun (in the form of radiation) it is called heat. Heat is thermal energy in transfer. Thermal energy is part of the overall internal energy of a system.
At a more basic level, thermal energy comes form the movement of atoms and molecules in matter. It is a form of kinetic energy produced from the random movements of those molecules. Thermal energy of a system can be increased or decreased.
When you put your hand over a hot stove you can feel the heat. You are feeling thermal energy in transfer.”
An ordinary incandescent lightbulb produces around 95% heat, and 5% light.
http://www.commonsensepress.com/GSA-sample_lesson/lesson_ocean.htm
The direct heat from the Sun, the direct thermal energy of the Sun in transfer, is what directly heats the oceans and lands.
NASA: “Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.
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.”
Stand in front of a fire, it’s the invisible thermal infrared, invisible heat, you feel. That’s exactly what we get from the Sun at the speed of light, heat, thermal energy in transfer. You cannot feel visible light! It doesn’t heat you up!
The junk energy budget you’re (generic) working to is junk because it has given the properties of real heat which thermal infrared, the thermal energy on the move direct from the Sun – to visible light and shortwave!
Until you can see the difference here, and so realise what has been done to science education, you won’t really get a grip on the enormity of this greenie/watemelon/military/industrial agenda.
At least reclaim the real science for yourselves, give your heads something real to work with and continue the traditions of real science, observation and testing.
And then you can put back the water cycle too….
Doug Cotton says:
February 13, 2012 at 4:11 am
Now, now, be kind – you started the thought experiment, KD was just trying to point out how little of the extra radiation would get back to the planets. (Feedback less than one, in the EE sense.) You opened the thought experiment with:
John says:
February 12, 2012 at 2:25 pm
The wheels of Real Climate are beginning to come off – they are starting to consume their own. Too funny.
[Moderator’s Note: John, this does not seem to be a response to anything else on this thread. Could you elaborate, perhaps, and supply a link to whatever it is you are referring to? -REP]
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/free-speech-and-academic-freedom/
This article wishes to defend Pachauri post 14 for example is a great starting point – accountability is the gist.
Doug Cotton says:
February 13, 2012 at 12:34 am
Agile Aspect says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Sorry, but electromagnetic radiation transmits radiative flux energy – that’s not “heat” as explained in one of my posts above.
; —————————————————————————————————————-
False.
To calculate the energy from the flux, you simply multiply the flux by the area and time interval. Look at the units.
Flux falls off as 1/r^2 and is not conserved but energy is always conserved.
See textbook “Heat and Thermodynamics” by M. Zemansky and R. Dittmann.
They can even show you how to calculate the flux for a non-blackbody object.
Myrrh says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:34 am
This is getting to be really ridiculous.
;——————————————————————–
See “Heat and Thermodynamics” by M. Zemansky and R. Dittmann.
Ric Werme says:
February 13, 2012 at 5:57 am
KD was just trying to point out how little of the extra radiation would get back to the planets.
___________________________________________________________________
And I was just trying to point out why “little” is too much. My “zero” was meant to imply “none” gets back, but it seems I was still not making myself clear. This is basic physics supported by empirical results and computational proof, all of which is supported on the ‘Radiation’ page of my website.
(1) Thermal radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a (significantly) warmer surface does not transfer any thermal energy to the warmer surface.
(2) Thermal radiation from a colder planet to a (significantly) hotter Sun does not transfer any thermal energy to the hotter Sun.
Neither of you can possibly produce any empirical evidence to the contrary, for such would be in breach of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which explains that heat flows flows only from hot to cold.
Before you say, “Ah but it is net flow that matters” I suggest you read my “10 steps” post which I am happy to discuss if you don’t understand it. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609
Myrrh (and others who don’t understand what physics says “heat” means, should consider the fact that, when EM radiation (UV, visible or IR, for example) goes from Point A to Point B it does not necessarily mean that Point B will experience a rise in temperature.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-891159
Myrrh.
You have a lot to learn about physics. You say “The heat that we feel from sunlight … is infrared.” Well, I tend to get sunburnt from the UV part of solar insolation more than the IR.
But it is true that about half of the solar spectrum is indeed in the IR spectrum, which a lot of climatologists don’t seem to realise, because they never mention the fact that carbon dioxide absorbs some of this incoming solar insolation and thus has a cooling effect. It is a small effect, however, because there is more energy in UV and visible light photons than in IR photons due to the higher frequencies. Physics tells us that photon energy increases with frequency – which is why UV causes sunburn much more than IR.
The IR radiation coming from a cooler atmosphere is incapable of transferring thermal energy to a warmer surface – meaning that there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect.
“
Agile Aspect:
Did I ever say there was no energy in radiative flux? See the ‘Radiation’ page of my website http://climate-change-theory.com and read my posts above, starting from http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609
From Doug Cotton on February 13, 2012 at 4:11 am:
What Ric Werme said. Your thought experiment dealt with retained longwave energy and I made no assumption of energy being created.
Essentially zero, currently undetectable. So with your proposed thought experiment, we are unable to prove or disprove the effect, thus your thought experiment isn’t a good one.
Thus I know you must be full of it, which can be easily seen by looking at a graph of blackbody radiation spectra at different temperatures.
.
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/lecture-3/stellar_spectra.html (Also note the Solar Spectrum graph below.)
http://www.egglescliffe.org.uk/physics/astronomy/blackbody/bbody.html Figure 2.
As the temperature increases the intensity increases and the peak wavelength gets shorter, but there remains the long tail going off into the longer wavelengths. Thus the blackbody spectrum of a cooler object is contained within the spectrum of a warmer object. Thus the spectrum of emitted radiation from the Earth does not have frequencies that are below those of the emitted radiation from a warmer blackbody, and the Sun, for all general intents and purposes, is a blackbody radiator.
You could try arguing that specific frequencies (wavelengths) are not in the observed solar spectrum, which match certain emitted frequencies from the Earth. Except those would be the Fraunhofer lines, which are absorption lines. Those gaps are there because chemical elements in the solar atmosphere are absorbing those wavelengths so they are not in the emitted spectrum. Thus if radiation from Earth of those wavelengths would hit the Sun, those “missing frequencies” would be absorbed by those chemical elements in the solar atmosphere.
So all in all, your “reason” is junk.