Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Pushed by a commenter on another thread, I thought I’d discuss the R. W. Wood experiment, done in 1909. Many people hold that this experiment shows that CO2 absorption and/or back-radiation doesn’t exist, or at least that the poorly named “greenhouse effect” is trivially small. I say it doesn’t show anything at all. Let me show you the manifold problems with the experiment.
To start with, let me give a curious example of the greenhouse effect, that of the Steel Greenhouse. Imagine a planet in the vacuum of space. A residue of nuclear material reacting in the core warms it to where it is radiating at say 235 watts per square metre (W/m2). Figure 1 shows the situation.
Figure 1. Planet in outer space, heated from the interior. Drawing show equilibrium situation
This planet is at equilibrium. The natural reactor in the core of the planet is generating power that at the planet’s surface amounts to 235 W/m2. It is radiating the same amount, so it is neither warming nor cooling.
Now, imagine that without changing anything else, we put a steel shell around the planet. Figure 2 shows that situation, with one side of the shell temporarily removed so we can look inside.
Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but with a solid steel shell surrounding the planet. Near side of the shell temporarily removed to view interior. Vertical distance of the shell from the surface is greatly exaggerated for clarity—in reality the shell and the shell have nearly the same surface area. (A shell 6 miles (10 km) above the Earth has an exterior area only 0.3% larger than the Earth’s surface area.)
[UPDATE: Misunderstandings revealed in the comments demonstrated that I lacked clarity. To expand, let me note that because the difference in exterior surface area of the shell and the surface is only 0.3%, I am making the simplifying assumption that they are equal. This clarifies the situation greatly. Yes, it introduces a whopping error of 0.3% in the calculations, which people have jumped all over in the comments as if it meant something … really, folks, 0.3%? If you like, you can do the calculations in total watts, which comes to the same answer. I am also making the simplifying assumption that both the planet and shell are “blackbodies”, meaning they absorb all of the infrared that hits them.]
Now, note what happens when we add a shell around the planet. The shell warms up and it begins to radiate as well … but it radiates the same amount inwards and outwards. The inwards radiation warms the surface of the planet, until it is radiating at 470 W/m2. At that point the system is back in equilibrium. The planet is receiving 235 W/m2 from the interior, plus 235 W/m2 from the shell, and it is radiating the total amount, 470 W/m2. The shell is receiving 470 W/m2 from the planet, and it is radiating the same amount, half inwards back to the planet and half outwards to outer space. Note also that despite the fact that the planetary surface ends up much warmer (radiating 470 W/m2), energy is conserved. The same 235 W/m2 of power is emitted to space as in Figure 1.
And that is all that there is to the poorly named greenhouse effect. It does not require CO2 or an atmosphere, it can be built out of steel. It depends entirely on the fact that a shell has two sides and a solid body only has one side.
Now, this magical system works because there is a vacuum between the planet and the shell. As a result, the planet and the shell can take up very different temperatures. If they could not do so, if for example the shell were held up by huge thick pillars that efficiently conducted the heat from the surface to the shell, then the two would always be at the same temperature, and that temperature would be such that the system radiated at 235 W/m2. There would be no differential heating of the surface, and there would be no greenhouse effect.
Another way to lower the efficiency of the system is to introduce an atmosphere. Each watt of power lost by atmospheric convection of heat from the surface to the shell reduces the radiation temperature of the surface by the same amount. If the atmosphere can conduct the surface temperature effectively enough to the shell, the surface ends up only slightly warmer than the shell.
Let me summarize. In order for the greenhouse effect to function, the shell has to be thermally isolated from the surface so that the temperatures of the two can differ substantially. If the atmosphere or other means efficiently transfers surface heat to the shell there will be very little difference in temperature between the two.
Now, remember that I started out to discuss the R. W. Wood experiment. Here is the report of that experiment, from the author. I have highlighted the experimental setup.
Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
By Professor R. W. Wood (Communicated by the Author)
THERE appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.
I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the “open,” the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents.
To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 oC., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.
There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 oC. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 o, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped.
Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.
I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.
Here would be my interpretation of his experimental setup:
Figure 3. Cross section of the R. W. Wood experiment. The two cardboard boxes are painted black. One is covered with glass, which absorbs and re-emits infrared. The other is covered with rock salt, which is transparent to infrared. They are packed in cotton wool. Thermometers not shown.
Bearing in mind the discussion of the steel greenhouse above, I leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to work out why this is not a valid test of infrared back-radiation on a planetary scale … please consider the presence of the air in the boxes, the efficiency of the convective heat transfer through that air from the box to the cover plates, the vertical temperature profile of that air, the transfer of power from the “surface” to the “shell” through the walls of the box, and the relative temperatures of the air, the box, and the transparent cover.
Seems to me like with a few small changes it could indeed be a valid test, however.
Best regards,
w.
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jae says:
February 7, 2013 at 7:33 pm
Nice try, Huffer, but listing all the thermo books doesn’t cut it. Come on, if you have ANY integrity here, you will cite specific pages. What a piece of work!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Experimental proof was demanded and supplied.
Definitions were demanded and supplied.
Text books were demanded and supplied.
Now you want page numbers?
If you are such a genius, I’m certain that you can find the page numbers and quotes that prove what a complete idiot I am. Please do so.
davidmhoffer,
What I think jae is asking for, is for you to read it to him.
Greg House,
“The original official IPCC version has been broken since it came into existence around 1860”
This statement is simply absurd. The IPCC was created in 1988. Therefore the official IPCC version of GHE or anything else for that matter did not exist before 1988.
“the Wood experiment (1909) proves that”
Willis has demonstrated that the Wood experiment proves NOTHING. You have done noting to refute this except to keep repeating the above statement. Continually stating that the Wood experiment proves what you think it proves without even making an effort to refute anything Willis has presented in the main article brings to mind a certain definition of insanity.
MiCro says:
February 7, 2013 at 8:36 pm
davidmhoffer,
What I think jae is asking for, is for you to read it to him.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Yeah, and if I do, he’ll call it a fairy tale and ask for something else as proof. Funny thing is that Willis actually linked to the specific things being asked for upthread.
Gino says:
February 7, 2013 at 8:49 am
“P_shell_outgoing = sigma*T_shell^4*(4*pi*(R_inner^2+R_outer^2)
This is incorrect. There is no net energy flow from the shell to the core.”
It is correct. I did not say there was a net energy flow out of the shell. I said P_shell_outgoing = P_shell_incoming for equilibrium. The net is zero, because it is the outgoing minus the incoming, and they are equal. Note that the temperature of the shell is less than the temperature of the planet, so there is full consistency with the 2nd Law. Transfer of heat is only one way – outward. But, that does not mean that energy cannot pool up higher at the surface of the planet than it otherwise would without the shell, creating a higher temperature at the surface.
Failure to appreciate that last is a common misapprehension in this comment thread. A lot of people here are completely mixed up because they are not making the distinction between Joules and Watts. A Joule is a quantity of energy. A Watt is a Joule per second, the time rate of change of energy. Joules are conserved, Watts are not.
And then, other people are making a mistake thinking that temperature is proportional to radiated Watts, but it isn’t. Temperature to the fourth power is. So, you can have a big change in Watts without having a big change in temperature.
I solved the entire thing here. The question is not whether Willis is correct or not vis a vis his steel greenhouse model. He is correct. The question is whether this is a valid analogy to a situation in which the radiating bodies are not isolated from one another by a vacuum. A vacuum prevents energy swapping from any means but radiation, but that is not at all the situation with the Earth and its atmosphere.
Further to my previous comment, here is the bog-standard explanation of the radiative heat transfer. It says:
Note that the formula in that citation is the exact same formula I just scanned from my favorite text, the Engineer In Training Review Manual. The manual has more information per page than any other book I’ve seen. It differs from a college textbook in that if a college textbook is wrong, well, no big deal. But if the EIT Review Manual is wrong, buildings can collapse and boilers can explode and people can die … not only that, but budding engineers bitch like hell if an error in the manual makes them miss a question on the EIT exam … so it is very reliable. As you can see below, it says just what the cite above says:
Here’s another:
Now, there are three scholarly references. Every one of them makes the explicit claim that energy flows in both directions, from A to B and from B to A. That’s the physical meaning of the equation 5.10 above. We can factor that equation as follows.
q = A C s T1^4 – A C s T2^4 (5.10)
The first term reflects the flow in one direction, and the second term, the flow in the opposite direction. Note that since T1 and T2 are different temperatures, this explicitly means that energy is flowing in both directions.
SO … for all of you out there that hold on to the view that cold objects do not radiate energy to warm objects, I’ve just given three scholarly references which explicitly state that cold objects do indeed radiate energy to warm objects.
This being a scientific site, don’t bother telling me that I’m wrong. You are arguing, not with me, but with hundreds of years of people using those exact same formulas to build things from boilers and spaceships. So here’s the deal …
If you can’t come back with citations to established authorities which say that radiative energy DOESN’T flow from cold objects to warm objects … then don’t bother to come back. I’ve heard all the half-baked claims and pseudo-physics fantasies I can stand. Show up with science in your hand, citations saying cold objects CAN’T radiate to hot objects, or don’t show up at all.
w.
davidmhoffer says:
February 7, 2013 at 8:10 pm
j
While I agree with your science (the flows go both ways, hot to cold and cold to hot, but net flow only ever goes one way, hot to cold), regarding the page numbers I agree with jae. I hate it when somebody cites e.g. the IPCC Report for their claim, like somehow we’re supposed to guess what they are talking about. And that happens all the time in scientific papers, I find it shocking.
My old chemistry teacher, Mrs. Henniger, would whup our papers up and down with her red pencil if we did that, cited a reference and didn’t give page and if necessary paragraph. Science is not a guessing game, jae should not have to guess what you are referring to.
When I first started blogging, I’d do what you say above, go try to “find the page numbers and quotes” the person referred to … then after much effort I’d come back and get something along the lines of “You idiot, that’s not the information I’m talking about”.
About the third time someone tried that, I told them no, I’m not playing any more guessing games. If you have a reference, then man up and give it to me like an adult, or you lose all credibility. I’ve sworn off snipe hunts.
And you’re still right about the science … thanks for persevering.
w.
Just curious Willis,I passed my EIT exam way back in 1980 (or maybe 1981, the years get a bit cloudly with the passage of time). When exactly did you pass your EIT exam ?
YES heat fluxes flow both ways, but the NET heat flow is ALWAYS from warmer (Earth) to colder (Atmosphere) locations.
Cheers, Kevin.
Willis,
While I agree with your science (the flows go both ways, hot to cold and cold to hot, but net flow only ever goes one way, hot to cold), regarding the page numbers I agree with jae.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The specific definitions, experimental documentation, links to detailed articles and more were all supplied by me upthread, and on multiple occasions. At some point in the conversation “read it yourself” becomes a fair response.
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 6, 2013 at 5:01 pm
(to Greg House)
Greg, of course it has been proven, many times over. It’s in every college thermo textbook. Go buy one. Read it. Come back. Participate intelligently, instead of just asserting your misconceptions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Those are your words Willis. But you bust my chops for (impolitely) telling jae the same thing?
Willis Eschenbach says, February 7, 2013 at 9:11 pm: ” Show up with science in your hand, citations saying cold objects CAN’T radiate to hot objects, or don’t show up at all.”
=============================================================
It is not about whether colder objects can or can not radiate to warmer objects.
It is about whether radiation of colder objects affects temperature of warmer objects. That is the point, please, note that.
I have never seen any valid link to a real scientific experiment proving it does. Nobody I talked to on various blogs was able to present such a link. No link, no description of a real scientific experiment proving that point directly, by actual temperature measurements was presented. People did present fictional stories or general references to the same unproven claims, but nothing real. The fictional stories about plates, shells etc have been around for years, but again, nothing real has come up until now.
On the other hand we have the Wood experiment where this trapped/back radiation apparently adds nothing or next to nothing to the temperature of the source. The “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is dead and no fictional shell can revive it. The question is for how long will it be possible to scare people by this dead body.
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 7, 2013 at 9:11 pm
“The first term reflects the flow in one direction, and the second term, the flow in the opposite direction.”
In large part, this is an argument of semantics, or of mental constructs which produce a particular perspective. There are not really individual flows of energy which bounce back and forth between the planet’s surface and the inside of the shell. Electromagnetic radiation is a wave phenomenon. A some points, the fields will interfere constructively, and at others destructively. So, there will be peaks of electric field and nulls at various places along the way, as there will of the magnetic fields. At equilibrium, there will be some dc level of electromagnetic energy filling the gap, as well as fluctuations from the non-stationary interference patterns which could appear to move in either direction on a finite time scale.
So, keep in mind that what you are describing is a model of what is going on, but there is no deep philosophical “truth” to it.
Let’s try something a little easier to wrap our minds around than flows of invisible energy fields.
Instead of the nuclear core, think of a spring gushing out of a cliffside into a stone channel. Beneath the source, there is some depth of water. Let’s assume that the channel is infinitely long and flat. In steady state, there is a uniform depth of water flowing outward.
Now, we put a low barrier, analogous to the steel shell, across the channel a few feet from the source. The water pools up behind it until it overcomes it. After an infinite amount of time to reach steady state again, the same volume of water, at uniform depth, is flowing downstream from the barrier. But, behind the barrier, the water is deeper.
You can think of it as that the barrier is sending water back to the source, and the water is simultaneously flowing to the barrier from the source. It’s fully equivalent to the observations. But, another way to look at it is that the water has simply pooled up behind the barrier.
Note the analogous action here: the flow rate is analogous to the Watts of power flowing out from the planet, but the water itself is analogous to the energy. We don’t have more Watts (flow of water) in the end. We have more retained energy (water).
Now, what is the analogy to filling the vacuum up with some medium which can transfer energy directly? It is akin to constructing not a barrier, but rather laying a slab in the channel below the spring at the height of the barrier. In the steady state, the water on top of the slab may only be slightly higher than the water beyond it, and this is due only to the fact that the water falling off the ledge of the slab will pick up a little energy from the change in potential, though it might lose it again due to viscous friction. But, there will not generally be much deeper water above the slab than below it, if at all.
And, that is how I see your analogy potentially failing, because it places a vacuum between the planet and the shell which is not present for the Earth and its atmosphere.
Micro asks,
This question makes no sense, Micro. The absorption or emission of a photon from CO2 does not define its temperature. CO2 will absorb radiation at any temperature and can emit at any temperature. You seem to be totally confused about the basics.
For those who want to learn, rather than just give the impression that sceptics are stupid, probably the most instructive site to teach the basics is ‘Science of Doom’
There, you can see an almost identical discussion of the Steel Shell scenario, this time with an insulated shell, at …
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/26/do-trenberth-and-kiehl-understand-the-first-law-of-thermodynamics/
…..which demonstrates that there is no limit to the temperature that can be attained in the interior if the insulation is thick enough.
Can a cold body make a warmer one warmer? This is called the 3 body problem and is explained here…
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/11/05/the-three-body-problem/
The woods experiment shows that there is no rise in temperature due to IR feedback on earth, the woods experiment does not show that feed backs do not exist, it does not show that the feedback climatologists call a “green house effect” does not exist, It shows that the “green house effect” is extremely weak, and shows the IR feedback being measured here on earth does not effect temperature or has a very weak unmeasurable effect on temperature.
The principle of the thought experiment Wills is explaining above shows an extreme example of a feedback by showing a hypothetical planet with a steel shell around it that in theory works on the same principle of how lasers work. Covering up a source of radiative heat like a light bulb will raise its temperature to a certain degree as the insulation will slow down the transportation heat from the source to beyond the insulation.
When you begin to add physical parameters like the mass of the planet and ‘shell’ and then add the distance between the planet and ‘shell’, the feed back will become weaker the greater the distance is between the shell the planet.
When you begin to add the parameters of our atmosphere in place of the ‘shell’ the Feedback will become weak to the point where it has no measurable effect on temperature, as ‘The woods experiment’ shows. improving the Woods experiment and the sensitivity of the instruments may in theory show an extremely weak feedback, although, finding the feed back with highly sensitive instruments will only show that this feedback does not effect our current instruments used for recording the planets temperature.
Figure 2 above Reminded me of a Dyson sphere which is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. It should be a interesting starting point for further study exploring the theoretical principles around this subject.
“A Dyson sphere in the solar system, with a radius of one AU would have a surface area of at least 2.72e17 km^2, around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has a energy output of around 4e26 W, of which most would be available to do useful work.”
http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html
There is also a limit in physics where it is imposable for a feedback to exist depending on mass and distance, one example is; if you scale the mass of the planet in figure 2. up to a point where IR can not escape the planet, therefor it will not reach the ‘shell’ and not cause any feedback. this can be worked out using the speed of light, basically E=Mc2.
[snip . . a list of your qualifications with a series of comments telling people they are wrong is basically content free. Please post your actual arguments rather than your CV, thanks . . . mod]
A reason it is hard to get into space is that chemical reaction have a limit to how hot they
can get. Chemical reaction produce a maximum velocity of their gases.
Related to this, is that gases at a particular temperature have difference velocity, helium or hydrogen have higher velocity than oxygen or nitrogen.
An important aspect with chemical rocket is how fast gases can leave the rocket nozzle. If you get a gas to leave at the speed of light, you very efficient rocket [uses less propellant-and 90% of the mass of chemical rocket are propellant [so this is important].
So there two things- how high of heat chemical reaction can reach and types of gasses with highest velocity.
And how hot a chemical reaction can get is one factor.
So certain fuels can reach certain temperature and it does not matter how much of this fuel is being burnt- it reaches a limit in terms of temperature.
This is similar to silly argument about 911, where it is said kerosene [jet fuel] doesn’t melt steel- regardless of how much kerosene is burning. But of course the issue is not about melting steel, steel is weaken with heat well below it’s melting point- and structural members need their strength- without this, 100 stories buildings don’t work- particularly when planes crash into them destroying some of their structural support.
Point is fire has limit to how hot it gets.
So you chemical reactions is adding heat, but without them increasing the temperature.
Obviously the combustion would adding energy but they not making things hotter.
And this article is about making things hotter.
So if burn certain amount fuel you can calculate that generates a certain amount watts per square. If doing this, one can calculate that adding so much fuel and therefore watts per square meter and then converting this to a certain temperature.
But it is NOT allowing for the limit of how hot a fuel can make something.
Now, nuclear reactions are quite different in terms of how hot they can heat something- it can heat things well over the boiling point of everything in existence.
Likewise electricity can used to reach any temperature- the limitation is the temperature the filament can withstand- a reason tungsten filaments are used [tungsten has very high melting point].
Sunlight which diffused and weaken at Earth distance- is weak in regards to the maximum temperature it can heat something. But if concentrated the sunlight one reach as a maximum
the temperature of the Sun [and vaporize anything].
So unmagnified sunlight is poor cousin in terms causing things to reach their maximum temperature- as compared to chemical, electrical or nuclear reactions which generate heat.
But if agree that Sunlight is weak in regards to heating stuff up in temperature, it’s spectrum
radiation is not all the same in this regard. The most amount energy and ability to heat anything is in the visible and near infrared part of spectrum.
The sun emits X-rays, UV, visible, infrared, microwave and radio. A photon of Xray is the most
powerful, followed by UV, visible, Near infrared, Mid- infrared, longwave IR, microwave and finally radio.
But even though the Sun emits X-rays it does not emit enough of them to up things, and the
sun emits more UV but not a lot:
“Sunlight’s composition at ground level, per square meter, with the sun at the zenith, is about 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
So because one has more infrared radiation [which mostly Near infrared] it does most of the warming.
But if you were to split sunlight and magnify only the infrared radiation, it would reach a lower
maximum temperature as compared to visible light. It would like magnifying the sunlight from a red star. It’s still hot enough melt almost anything, but it would not vaporize everything.
So infrared part gives the most heat, but is not the hottest light to use.
Which bring us to longwave IR [which there is so much fuss about]. We have lasers which use longwave IR and there are real niffy because the don’t destroy stuff you want to examine- if instead bounced say greenlight laser at something it heats it up and makes it more difficult to study.
It seems to be that if something is radiating a bodybody temperature then generally that is neighborhood of it’s max temperature. I think that was sort of the whole point of blackbody temperature stuff- find the max temperature of sunlight and such.
So for instance take a lightbulb with it’s filament at 3000 C, you should not be able to heat up the filament with something cooler than the filament temperature. Nor can magnify the light of filament to higher temperature than the filament.
Well I took the trouble to look at Willis’ shell model again last night and whilst I think it is a rather inaccurate model of the greenhouse effect it does rather demonstrate that you are ALL right and really arguing about the same point from different model perspectives. However, you are wrong if you think Willis’ model demonstrates GHE is real – it actually demontrates the opposite. Here are the two perspectives spelt out, starting with Willis model:
1] The Willis model is based on IR and therefore can be considered a qunatum mechanical model. Notice that in the first diagram the heat being lost to space is 235W/sqm. Willis tells us it is a black body so you could work out its temperature but there’s no real need. It will have a temperature related to its emissions which is fixed. In the second diagram the back radiation is 235W/sqm. However, notice similarly that in order to create an energy balance the rate of COOLING of the planet’s surface has also DOUBLED. Thus the NET emissions from the planets surface are exactly as they were before. Thus the temperature of the planet’s surface is exactly the same – all that is happening is that the back-radiation that is reflected towards the planet from the shell is simply reflected back towards the shell again (maybe the energy is absorbed and then re-emitted again but from an energy balance poitn of view we don’t need to worry about those details). In effect, Willis simple energy balance model demonstrates that back radiation of IR cannot heat the surface of the planet, even when it is 100% – it simply increases the local radiative losses from the surface of the planet.
2] Everyone else is using the classical model of thermodynamics based on heat flux. In this case heat flux cannot flow from a cold body to a hot body so there can be no net flow of heat from the shell to the planet. This means that the presence of the shell cannot impact the temperature of the surface of the planet and the temperature of the planet must remain the same regardless of the presence of the shell. You will notice that this is the same conclusion as in the Willis model. Similarly the conclusion is that the greenhouse effect cannot warm the surface of the planet.
The confusion that is causing so much argument here is the mixing of classical and quantum mechanical models. However, there is no disagreement in reality between the two approaches. The classical models talk about “heat flux” but heat flux doesn’t exist in a real manner in a system where radiation is the method of heat transfer except that there “appears” to be a net flow of heat between two objects – in reality this is an imaginary heat flux because in reality the radiative model involves a conversion from heat energy to photonic energy and then from photonic energy to heat energy in a 100% efficient process. The classical model doesn’t know anything about the details of how the heat flows from one body to another but it doesn’t need to – the laws still apply no matter the details.
A colder sky cannot possibly heat a warmer surface, any more than a trillion 1 ton blocks of frozen CO2 radiating at 194.56 K could melt a 1 inch water ice cube radiating at 273.15 K.
“CLASSICAL THERMODYNAMICS IS THE ONLY PHYSICAL THEORY OF UNIVERSAL CONTENT WHICH I AM CONVINCED WILL NEVER BE OVERTHROWN”….A Einstein.
Greg House:
At February 7, 2013 at 6:30 pm you write
That is not true. I conduct such an experiment most days and I use apparatus which I keep in my kitchen. The apparatus is called a microwave oven.
I put things in the apparatus, provide a power supply, and the apparatus heats the things I inserted to temperatures higher than the temperature of the apparatus.
In my experiment, as in “Willis shell”, the increase in temperature of the cooler object is induced by an effect of electromagnetic radiation and a supply of energy flow.
Richard
The things
*** all two-way entropic flow arguments fail at is dual***
(1) they won’t try to show you a diagrammatic explanation of how they conceive a low energy flux displacing another higher one in either free space or a matrix,
and
(2) when it comes time to check what they’re saying through experiment, the energy they always claim’s going to be there, never is.
You’ve got amateurs throwing around arguments all day long,
but the fact is,
the equations describing entropy are one-way. Bullshoot claims by wannabes aside, there’s no such phrase in mathematics, “and then, when entropy reverses…”
If there was math to describe the reversal of charge density progression, we’d all know what it is. Those of us who have to know if they exist, to keep our jobs, would know.
The proper diagrammatic representations of the events cried to the heavens to be occurring, never appear in the literature – although those purporting the mechanism to be very real, have had years to describe it, diagram it, and enter it into the literature.
Because I can diagram for a child how energy distribution in a solid winds up. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Why can’t reverse-entropy people just give me a diagram showing where the charges distribute and I’ll teach it to my child. Ok my youngest child’s 22. I’ll draw it for my grandchild.
Why won’t they ever lay out exactly what they’re describing to you, properly notated and competently explained?
Answer: because they can’t, because there’s no such thing.
The predicted end result – that when THE INSTRUMENTS COME ON, the ENERGY is where they SAY it’s gonna be,
is always missing.
———-
Finally, look at the people purporting the two competing concepts:
the people who claimed to be satisfied with Woods’ experiment, went on to invent the electronic, and it’s associated, wireless, radiation-based space age.
The people who now claim entropy goes two directions are also, universally, associated with bad science. Fraud, intentional non-disclosure after fantastic claims, repeated evidence of gross incompetence.
Who are you going to believe: every equation ever devised showing energy flow in nature being from higher to lower,
every experiment ever done to check on the “Greenhouse Gas Effect Reverse Radiation,”
by the people who – literally – brought you the radiative transfer mechanism age?
Or the people who brought you Mannian Statistics, the entire Global Temperature Database at CRU trashed, and Manmade Catastrophic Global Warming? Which by the way ALSO: does not exist. Because it is based on – what?
Magical backward flowing energy.
It’s a scam, and the protests that the whole world hasn’t understood when we declared entropy to be a one way street, are as intelligent as the rest of the bad science surrounding the whole fraudulent debacle.
Greg House wrote “The original official IPCC version has been broken since it came into existence around 1860, the Wood experiment (1909) proves that.”
This is incorrect. The current understanding of the greenhouse effect stems from the work of Callendar, Kaplan and Plass in the 1950s and 60s, and involves energy balance at the top of the atmosphere, not the bottom. Therefore Woods experiment in no way refutes this, as the column of air inside the box is too small to exhibit a lapse rate, which is a key feature of the “official IPPC version” (not that there is such a thing).
Please read Spencer Wearts excellent book on the history of the discovery of global warming, also available on-line, see e.g. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm .
Allen B. Eltor,
Your entire post above seems to be an Appeal to Authority — your own ‘authority’.
I can follow Willis Eschenbach’s and David Hoffer’s comments, but yours? Your comment addresses none of the substantive issues, except in extremely general terms.
If you want to be credible, comment on specifics. Your self-promoting wears thin. So you got a degree, so what? Scientific truth is the issue here. Your chest-thumping gets old fast.
MOD’s my comment has disappeared! I’ve tried to repost it but WP says it’s a duplicate.
[Reply: Sorry, nothing in the spam folder. Please re-submit, and always keep a copy of your comment until it is posted. — mod.]
For those who claim that a cooler object cannot radiate energy to a warmer object, the challenge for them is to explain how the cooler object can know in which directions it can safely radiate photons without them hitting a warmer object. This will be tricky as, for example, the warmer object may not be stationary, so the cooler object will need to be able to predict the trajectory of the warmer object to be sure that none of the photons that it radiates will hit it.
The conventional “net transfer” mechanism has no such difficulty; all bodies radiate energy in all directions, according to their temperature and emissivity, however more energy is radiated from the warm object to the cool object than vice versa, so the laws of thermodynamics are satisfied in terms of net averages over large numbers of photons.
It is not surprising that early work on thermodynamics did not stipulate “net” fluxes, because photons are a 20th century concept, so the idea that the measurable transfer of heat was actually the net result of an invisible exchange in both directions would have been an unnecessary complication.
The woods experiment shows that there is no rise in temperature due to IR feedback on earth, the woods experiment does not show that feed backs do not exist, it does not show that the feedback climatologists call a “green house effect” does not exist, It shows that the “green house effect” is extremely weak, and shows the IR feedback being measured here on earth does not effect temperature or has a very weak unmeasurable effect on temperature.
The principle of the thought experiment Wills is explaining above as I see it shows an extreme example of a feedback by showing a hypothetical planet with a steel shell around it that in theory works on the same principle of how lasers work. Covering up a source of radiative heat like a light bulb will raise its temperature to a certain degree as the insulation will slow down the transportation heat from the source to beyond the insulation.
When you begin to add physical parameters like the mass of the planet and ‘shell’ and then add the distance between the planet and ‘shell’, the feed back will become weaker the greater the distance is between the shell the planet.
When you begin to add the parameters of our atmosphere in place of the ‘shell’ the Feedback will become weak to the point where it has no measurable effect on temperature, as ‘The woods experiment’ shows. improving the Woods experiment and the sensitivity of the instruments may in theory show an extremely weak feedback, although, finding the feed back with highly sensitive instruments will only show that this feedback does not effect our current instruments used for recording the planets temperature.
Figure 2 above Reminded me of a Dyson sphere which is a hypothetical mega-structure originally described by Freeman Dyson. It should be a interesting starting point for further study.
A Dyson sphere in the solar system, with a radius of one AU would have a surface area of at least 2.72e17 km^2, around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has a energy output of around 4e26 W, of which most would be available to do useful work.
http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html
There is also a limit in physics where it is imposable for a feedback to exist depending on mass and distance, one example is; if you scale the mass of the planet in figure 2. up to a point where IR can not escape the planet there for it will not reach the ‘shell’ and not cause any feedback. this can be worked out using the mass of an object and the speed of light, basically E=Mc2.
I have extensively checked out the greenhouse effect supposition (GHE). At the end of the day, however, I side with individuals such as astrophysicist, Joseph E. Postma, in relation to this issue. His work is sufficiently authoritative to dismiss the GHE supposition
Just one point… it is important to understand that the earth’s atmosphere does not act like a an actual greenhouse which, unlike the atmosphere, is a ‘closed system’. Consequently, at an elementary level, and using basic common sense, it becomes apparent that the GHE supposition is not valid.
The mother of all the heat-retention in the atmosphere is undoubtedly water vapour. CO2 is irrelevant in the overall scheme of things.