Open thread weekend

P.S. Gary: The IPCC conjecture and all their models are only mathematical. So surely they should have done an experiment to see if backradiation really does warm anything or slow its rate of cooling. So go and write to them, or show me a link to any such experiment already published.
As far as I’m concerned , if you want to promulgate their garbage in my direction you will have to show me an experiment which backs it up. I bet you can’t, even if I come back to this thread in a year from now.

it warmer, what is?
Doug Cotton says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:18 pm
When solar radiation (UV, visible and IR etc) travels through space we do not know what its end effect will be until it strikes something. We will observe its effect and say – there’s some light from the Sun – but it may be more light if it hits a white surface than a dark surface, as a camera exposure meter will confirm. It may generate thermal energy (more or less depending on what it strikes) or it may appear as light as it starts to penetrate the oceans, but end up as thermal energy in the deeper depths. Of course some will be reflected or scattered and strike another target sooner or later, and another etc.
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Doug, sorry, I couldn’t get back to this earlier, but I’ll pick up from the above you wrote because this clearly shows the problem which creates the confusion, as I see it.
The meme, and it is a meme, produced by the AGWScience Fiction meme producing department, has reduced all electromagnetic energy to a non-differentiated something to better sell it’s propaganda that carbon dioxide has supermolecule powers to change the climate and it’s therefore human’s fault for overproducing it, etc. From this, and from this meme alone, we get the reasoning you’ve given here. Please, take a bit of time to think about, I’m not the cleverest here at explaining such subtleties, so bear with me.
What you are saying is that there is no differences in electromagnetic energy from the Sun, which means that you would have to show how each subject converts that into the particular wavelengths which have the effects these have, this is nowhere shown as happening in the physical world.
For example, a plant that takes in red and blue visible light for photosynthesis would have to take in all that elecromagnetic spectrum and first convert it to the red and blue energies it required for chemical changes to create sugar, where is the mechanism in the plant which does this? If that isn’t clear enough, then, the plant would also need to convert some of it to green light which it would then release somehow through its form – but, the reason we see green light is because green light is not absorbed by the plant, it is reflected back out. If you say, well, the plant itself isn’t creating the green light out of this undifferentiated electromagnetic energy which is as the meme goes “all the same”, then there must be something else in the world that is doing this which then has to direct it towards plant life which would then not absorb it and so reflect back. Do you see where this reasoning of yours leads? You have created a completely different world from that which we observe around us. Where are the mechanisms in plant and animals and rocks which create the different effects from this ‘one all the same electromagnetic energy’?
Now, bog standard physics well understood that the electromagnetic energy we get from the Sun comes in packages that have their own particular properties and processes, a gamma ray is not the same as a radio wave, it will affect matter differently because of what it intrinsically is in itself.
WE DO KNOW, how these different packages of energy will interact with the world of matter around us.
We do know, for example, that the package categorised UV itself comes in slightly different forms which are DISTINCT as properties one from the other, some UV is so highly energetic that it will not only move an electron of a molecule, but will cause it to be ejected from the molecule – this is the difference between ionising and non-ionising. WE KNOW, what the properties are of visible light packages, how they interact with matter, we know, how some packages are invisible and the actual thermal energy of the Sun on the move, thermal infrared, which is heat. WE KNOW these things.
I’m insisting that before you dare to continue spouting the fictional fisics you are doing here regarding these points, that you produce the mechanisms in all the range of matter which changes this meme ‘all electromagnetic energy from the Sun is the same’ to its particular wavelengths as shown by its different effects.
You are right about backradiation – and you are quite right to insist on experimental, empirical proof that this is what is actually happening, and you are right that you will never be provided with this because it doesn’t exist – now, as shocking as this is to you, you are doing the same thing with regard to the claims for electromagnetic energy. You cannot prove your scenario, it has never been observed, there are no such mechanisms in place in which matter first creates the particular wavelengths before using them, or before they can have a particular effect on matter.
I’ll say this again, it really is worth repeating, that the claims made by the AGWSF department to further its fictional science about AGW are varied, they take in the whole range of science disciplines and just because someone is a ‘scientist’ doesn’t mean that they will understand the physics of another discipline, and they are just as vulnerable because of this, to being fooled by the meme targetting a different discipline.
All electromagnetic energy is not the same! For goodness sake, you only have to look at all the many many descriptions and pictures of the differences to see that, they all have different names even! But, once a fictional meme is ‘fixed’, the blindingly obvious becomes invisible..
UV rays direct from the Sun are distincly different from visible light and thermal infrared. There are some overlaps in this, some packages will have properties that are similar to another otherwise completely different package, wavelength, of properties. UV and Visible both work on the electron scale on meeting matter – for one reason because of their size. SIZE is a distinct property and varies with the different packages, do you know how big radio waves are, how small gamma rays are? Until you can appreciate the differences, you cannot say anything about them or how they react on meeting matter.
UV is not a thermal energy. The Sun’s thermal energy, the great movement of the Sun’s matter which is heat, is being radiated out from the Sun, actually this thermal energy moving from the Sun to the Earth, to us, and heating us up. Just as we get heated up by standing in front of a fire, we can feel the direct rays, beamed, they travel in straight lines, our backs could still be cold. This is the same energy, thermal energy which is heat, which is radiating out from a hot stove which is isn’t hot enough to also create any visible light – thermal energy, heat, is invisible. This is the thermal infrared package from the Sun, near infrared isn’t hot! Near infrared is in the ‘same set’ here as visible light, it is reflective in matter rather than absorptive as these are designated in the specific category difference between HEAT and LIGHT.
You can see this in how different infrared cameras work. The near infrared which is reflective works just as does a visible light camera, it takes a picture of the near infrared being reflected off the subject; the camera catching what are eyes can’t, just as a visible light camera catches the light we can see refecting off subjects, colour. Thermal infrared cameras capture the heat that is being radiated out from a subject, the internal heat radiating out on reaching the surface.
So, unless you can show in all matter the different mechanisms in place which convert this AGW meme ‘non-differentiated electromagnetic energy’ into its constituent parts and properties and processes, then I suggest you go back to traditional physics on this and see this as the Sun producing different product packages each with their own effects on meeting the diversity of matter around us.
UV ‘burns’ the skin, like a high speed drill burns wood, it does not move the molecules into vibration which is what it takes in the real physical world to heat something up, because, it can’t physically do so. It works on changes in the DNA, it works on the electronic transition level – the reason you get a tan isn’t because UV is burning you, it is because melanin, a dark substance, is being produced by your body to stop it drilling your DNA, your body is quite happy to take in loads of UV for vit D production, it just doesn’t like it when it is too intense.
Heat, conversely, is the energetic movement, kinetic energy, of molecules moving. Read that again. Read the differences between electronic transitions of light and uv which interact with the electrons of atoms and molecules, and the actual thermal vibration of atoms and molecules which is heat, of the whole molecule being moved, more rapidly as more heat is applied. See the wiki page I’ve referred to earlier.
When solar radiation (UV, visible and IR etc) travels through space we do not know what its end effect will be until it strikes something.
Wrong! We do know, we have tons and tons and tons of knowledge about how the different properties of the different wavelengths interact with all the diversity of matter around us.

Eric (skeptic) says (February 16, 2012 at 2:14 am): “To do the experiment, the shield would have to be as cold as possible otherwise it will radiate and nullify the experiment.”
It might be possible to use a solar cooker/cooler in the experiment:
http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm
To cool effectively, the makers say it must be pointed at the empty night sky, away from IR sources like trees, buildings, clouds (!), etc. In this experiment, four identical ovens with “payload” at ambient air temp could be pointed at:
1) Melting ice, 0 degrees C
2) The night sky, say -20 degrees C(?)
3) Dry ice, -78.5 degrees C
4) Liquid nitrogen, -196 degrees C
Assume night ambient air temp remains well above freezing. According to conventional physics, the fastest temperature drop and lowest final temp should be found in oven #4, the slowest cooling and highest final temp in #1. According to bizarro physics (as I understand it), all 4 should behave identically.

Gary Hladik says:
February 16, 2012 at 10:37 am
The more I think about it, the more baffled I am that you, Johnson, and Latour haven’t performed a definitive experiment to prove your claims.
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Prof Nahle is doing the experiments for us with more to be published this year. You may start with this one: http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
Meanwhile I note that you are not able to point me to any experiment which demonstrates backradiation actually warming anything or slowing its rate of cooling as is claimed in the “explanation” of the radiative greenhouse effect.
Where I choose to publish my own experiment is my prerogative. I act with my own money and marketing expertise, and my motives are directed towards influencing those who make decisions. I am not the slightest bit interested in Nobel Prizes, thank you.

Gary Hladik says February 16, 2012 at 10:37 am
Until then, scientists on both sides of the CAGW issue are laughing at you
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And I would be laughing at them if it weren’t such a serious blunder that has been made by what was initially a small number who, perhaps like yourself, did not have a proper understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anyway, my current post is on the next Open thread, so feel free to continue there, but next time some appropriate discussion based on physics would be more desirable, because comments such as you have made in this post are like water off a duck’s back.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/open-thread-weekend-8/#comment-897342
The linked post was originally one written for Leonard Weinstein, and below is a further one if he happens to read this. It won’t hurt for those who are laughing to read this as well …
PS Leonard
If the warming in the morning were increased by the addition of extra thermal energy (which had been converted from radiation from a colder atmosphere) then that extra thermal energy can remain in the surface for hours or even days or months.
When it does exit (usually by that evening) it may do so by other processes such as evaporation, conduction or diffusion followed by convection. So there has indeed been a warming effect and it is not just cancelled out by subsequent radiation that evening.
And so there are two scenarios …
(a) If you say the warming does happen in the morning then it is a clear cut violation of the Second Law at that time.
(b) If you agree with me that warming by the atmosphere does not happen on a sunny morning, then you are in effect agreeing that the whole conjecture that backradiation can do anything at all is wrong, and thus the whole concept of the radiative greenhouse effect is wrong, as are the models..
Don’t sit on the fence, Sir! Take a stand one way or the other!