New WUWT-TV segment: Slaying the 'slayers' with Watts

We have here a really strange phenomenon: a truly fantastic claim (that our understanding of radiation is dramatically wrong) is being put forward, without any evidence, as the reason why our understanding of something derivative (namely the greenhouse effect) is mistaken. Surely it is obvious why that is so very perverse a process? It differs in no substantive way from, for example, claiming that powered flight is impossible because invisible pink unicorns block the takeoff of aircraft.
I only wish that I’d said this first. The bit about pink unicorns, I mean. The rest of it I and many others have said many times, and will say again, but I’ll go out on a limb here and make a non-physics prediction:
Nothing anyone says will make the slightest bit of difference to the Slayers of PSI because if you put them all together and pooled their knowledge of physics, it still doesn’t match the knowledge of a second year undergrad physics major.
And that is sad. One might as well put the lunatics in charge of the asylum as accept the claims of the Slayers. Or ask my 17 year old son what he thinks (a half-year of physics, no thermo).
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Is not the reason that manufacturers of open top light shades indicate a limit on the wattage of incandescant bulbs because back radiation from the shade causes the bulb to overheat and explode?

I think it has more to do with the lampshade catching fire, actually.

Gary Hladik says:
May 27, 2013 at 9:21 pm
David says (May 27, 2013 at 9:16 pm): “An interesting thought experiment is what would happen in an atmosphere with zero GHG.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
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Gary, thank you. I read Dr Spencer’s article. I admire Dr Spencer, and consider that he knows far more about climate science then I will ever know. As such I was pleased to read some very similar ideas expressed in our thought experiment. However, in order to better separate the GHG effect on earth I think we should leave the earths atmosphere the same as today, just , as a thought experiment, remove ONLY the GHG property of them.
The assertions I wish to dispute made by the good Dr Spencer are as follows… “there would be no weather on Earth without the greenhouse effect”
And this…“The global-average temperature at which this occurs would depend a lot on how reflective the Earth’s surface is to sunlight in our thought experiment. ..it could be anywhere from well below 0 deg F for a partially reflective Earth to about 45 deg. F for a totally black Earth”
(I am not openly disputing the ladder, however I am questioning the numbers.) For instance, on earth with GHG properties consider W/V alone. Per a solar spectrum chart which shows that about 98% of TSI energy lies between about 250 nm in the UV and 4.0 microns; with the remaining as 1% left over at each end. Such graphs often have superimposed on them the actual ground level (air Mass once) spectrum; that shows the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total solar energy is capture by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that.
So removing the GHG affect of W/V instantly allows about 20% more insolation to reach the surface. Throughout the tropics this is 20 percent of a far higher number then shown in the Trenbeth diagram. At the tropics in the afternoon this incoming solar insolation is closer to 960 joules/m2/second at the height of the day almost three times the 342 Wm/2 shown in the charts, then the TSI affected by water vapor alone (clear sky) could be about 200 Wm/2 during the day, and the estimated 78 Wm/2 given for evaporative latent heat transfer would also be far higher. Evaporation conduction of latent heat may vary far more then realized and set a limit on further tropical temperature increases. (Newell & Dopplick’s (1979) calculations that tropical temperatures cannot rise any further.)
Now back radiation has a lot stated above to make up for. That additional surface energy now goes into an atmosphere where it cannot escape the atmosphere by radiation, but must conduct about indefinitely, until it reaches a cooler surface and back conducts to the surface where it can radiate.
Also please consider that a far higher percentage of LWIR back radiation goes into the latent heat of evaporation, then SWR, which penetrates the ocean and incurs a far longer residence time. (Again, the GHG affect increases the residence time of radiation, but to effectively evaluate it this must be compared against the residence time of conducted energy, and the greater amount of conducted energy within an earth where the GHG affect of gases is removed.)
“It is the long-term balance of these flows across the ocean surface that determines the oceanic (and therefore the atmospheric) temperature. As a result, small sustained imbalances can cause gradual temperature shifts of the entire system Each input into the earth’s system (Land, ocean, & atmosphere) encounters different properties, based on the materials that energy contacts. A certain wave length of SW energy is reflected back to space by clouds, the equivalent energy, in a different vibrational frequency, can penetrate up to 800′ into the ocean, and remain within the earth’s system for centuries.
Every change in input into the earths energy system causing a net change in the earth’s energy balance, must be evaluated according to the energy change involved, RELATIVE TO THE RESIDENCE TIME OF SAID ENERGY of the radiations involved. Different vibrational wave lengths, travel different roads, each one having a different RESIDENCE TIME depending on the materials said energy encounters. This appears to me to be incontrovertibly true. So the W/M2 is not by any means the only factor, or the most important factor. The idea of all W/M2 forcing being equal and linear is ignoring the residence time of the forcing considered. If my very simple residence time hypothesis is correct, a reduction in SWR penetrating the ocean has (depending on the persistence of said reduction, a potentially far greater impact on the earths heat content do to the mean residence time of SWR in the system being FAR longer then LWR.
Concerning Dr Spencer’s assertion that there would be no weather I am surprised he would make this statement. We still have day and night, a heating revolving convicting conducting world with clouds rain, ocean currents, cold poles, hot equator, etc etc. (All we removed was the aspect of those atmospheric gases intercepting incoming and out going LWIR spectrum of energy.) We would certainly have weather, and more energy initially striking the surface, just less radiative energy redirected back to the surface, but more conducted energy throughout the atmosphere, with no way to cool except via back conduction to the surface.

u.k.(us) says:
May 27, 2013 at 8:56 pm
phlogiston says:
May 27, 2013 at 7:00 pm
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So, we’ve got:
Cute, holes, Faustian contract’s, wilderness and fiasco.
Leading into the big hit, wait for it…..
“Prigogine’s nonlinear thermodynamics of dissipative structures ”
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If you have something to say, just say it.
All this dancing around, only distracts.
The radiation and backradiation question is really the “holy of holies” of AGW science, and it is science, of a kind, no need to be needlessly derogatory. An internal narrative has been laboriously constructed, with billions of tax payer research dollars, into an extremely sophisticated edifice of equations and theory. So anyone arguing against AGW on the radiation-back-radiation question would have to find another inhabited planet somewhere and use its entire GDP to fund a corresponding research effort to construct an alternate body of theory. (If such a planet had not roasted to death already from alienothrogenic GW – perhaps the absence of such planets is evidence of AGW after all! – OMG we’re going to diiiiiieeee!!). Thus anyone arguing against AGW on radiation-backradiation theory is cruising for a bruising – the murderous lynching of Ferenc Miskolczi is evidence enough of that. The “Slayers” have rushed in where angels fear to tread and the inevitable has happened. But I dont think that this has all that much meaning regarding the central question of whether now – for the first time in the earth’s 4 billion year history, CO2 (still at historically low levels) should start doing something it has never done before, i.e. heat the planet.
Many arguments and taunts here take the form “but experimental data shows that back-radiation CAGW does exist – where is the slayers’ data?” But is this fair? It requires a large number of assumptions to claim that any experimental setup relates to the radiation budget of the planet. The size and chaotic complexity of the atmosphere and radiative and convective processes means that the only experimental model that will replicate the planets behaviour is the planet itself.
Many of the arguments may boil down to questions of definition and meaning. I dont think it is true that the slayers’ position is that a cold object cannot transfer radiative heat to a hotter object in the mechanistic quantum sense. This would contradict one of their own other arguments that a true black body can never exist. So everything except an object at absoute zero emits photons. Will a photon emitted from a cold object suddenly annihilate or change direction just because it is headed toward a warmer object where it will deposit hv amount of heat? No. I think the actual argument is more about the net balance of heat transfer when all processes of radiation and convection are considered together.
The more substantive argument of the slayers (and where they would be wiser to concentrate their energies, avoiding the back-radiation question) is that of the hydrological amplification that CAGW requires. CAGW science acknowledges that CO2 back-radiation warming declines logarithmically with increasing CO2 levels and is small anyway. But their get-out clause is amplification by water vapour – the hydrological cycle is accelerated by small CO2 warming and has the effect of adding further warming, multiplying the overall warming to reach alarming levels necessary for political efficacy of the narrative. This is where the thermodynamic arguments come in. It is also where nonlinear thermodymanics are relevant (a discipline started by Ilya Prigogine) – the cloud and weather systems energised by supposed CO2 warming would constitute “dissipative structures” which – as their name implies – must necessarily dissipate heat. The entropy budget – the issue of the 2nd law of thermodynamics – also demands that emergent structures from an accelerating hydrological cycle imply a decrease in entropy, so it must be balanced by increasing entropy elsewhere, most likely in a planet surrounded by vaccuum by export of heat. Looked at another way – it is an outrageous claim by AGW that a planet-warming hydrological accelleration can somehow decrease cloud (even they acknowledge that clouds increase albedo – except at the south pole – and thus cool the planet). The opposite is much more likely – increased hydrological cycle energy including thunderstorms will increase cloud cover and act as a negative, not positive feedback, and cool the planet. (Its a bit more complex than that – high cirrus cloud, which unlike lower cloud has a warming effect, was shown by Spencer himself and Christy to decrease in response to atmospheric warming excursions pointing to another cloud-based negative feedback.) This is precisely what Willis Essenbach (who is noticeably silent on this thread BTW) has argued in his very plausible thunderstorm and cloud “thermostat” theory. In nonlinear dynamics of an open, dissipative non-equilibrium system it is fundamental that emergent structures export entropy.
It is thus nonlinear dissipative thermodynamics that pose more of a threat to AGW than the backradiation question, which it is probably better to tactically ignore and side-step, General MacCarthy-style.

Gosh. So much reading. Can I ask a question? If 99.9% of the Earth’s atmosphere, the nitrogen, oxygen and argon, cannot radiate or absorb IR at temperatures encountered, how do they cool once they have warmed?

There is another entirely different way to address the back-radiation idea. Measuring the temperature of a really hot gas is notoriously difficult, yet it is done all the time using equipment very much like the experiment above, though much more like a planet’s surface and atmosphere and back-radiating gas. This should settle the matter for the minions of Mr Postma.
The measurement of temperature with a thermocouple requires that the metal tip come up to the same temperature as the gas such as a flame. When the tip gets hot from conduction and radiation, it radiates more and more heat away at a rate that increases with temperature reducing the reported temperature value, and never reaches equilibrium with the passing gases. This is a well known phenomenon and the problem has been resolved. In order to get the ‘real’ temperature the tip is shielded in a silvered tube with a high reflectivity. A pump draws a small amount of gas through the tube so it is able to sense the flame temperature as it passes.
The outgoing IR from the hot tip is reflected from the inside of the tube back to the radiating tip and is re-absorbed by the tip, which results in an increase in temperature reading. The direct cause is a net return of IR by back radiation. Against many protestations above, IR back radiation heats the tip further until the convective temperature of the gases passing through the mirrored tube is matched by the tip temperature. The tube tends to be several times longer than the diameter. This method is routinely used in industry and is the only way to get an accurate temperature measurement from a hot gas stream. An unshielded thermocouple always reads low because it loses heat by IR emission.
This is very much like the surface of the earth and the atmosphere above it containing at least some IR absorbing gases. There is nothing special about ‘back radiation’ it is just the relabeling some of the re-radiation because it happens to be downwards. Re-radiation happens with nearly every material in the universe that is above absolute zero. It was correctly stated earlier that the net energy exchange is the key to understanding this.
The key error is to think that the concept of heat ‘flowing’ from a hot object to a colder object – which is perfectly true for heat conduction – applies to energy radiation. It is obvious from the argument from Mr Postma that the group thinks of radiation as if it is conduction, which it is not.
There are three types of heat transfer: convection, conduction and radiation. It is not possible to heat a hotter object by a colder one by conduction. Convective heat transfer will only pass heat from a hotter object to a colder one because it is a form of conduction known as ‘mass transfer’. Radiation not a form of conduction and the Hot => Cold rule does not apply. Radiation is continuous in all directions and such energy is absorbed by whatever it strikes, or is reflected away. It is not true that radiated energy from a (relative) cold object is not absorbed by a hot object. Of course it is! The colder object did not know where it will strike when it emitted the photon! The direct result is a re-radiation by the now hotter object at a higher frequency. That is why objects start to glow in the visible range if they are heated enough, eventually glowing yellow.
Long wave (low energy) IR radiated from the surface of the moon strikes the sun and (slightly) elevates its temperature. That would happen whether the sun were burning and 6000 or dead and -160 degrees. It strikes the sun. End of short story. IR is absorbed, adding energy, raising the enthalpy, resulting in a higher temperature.
No energy is conducted to the sun from the moon because there is no mechanical connection between them. Radiation from the sun hits the moon, is re-radiated to the sun, elevating the temperature of the sun very slightly – just like CO2 and the surface of the earth.
The movement of heat from the surface of the earth is largely by convection to high elevations where it is lost to the dark, nearly infinite absorber of the Rest Of The Universe – by radiation of course. That CO2 warms the surface is, as Lindzen says, trivially true and numerically insignificant.
Swallow it. It’s good for you.

@phlogiston says:
>…No. I think the actual argument is more about the net balance of heat transfer when all processes of radiation and convection are considered together.
Unfortunately a close reading of their premises shows they believe that radiation is the same as conduction, ruling out in principle a transfer of heat from a cold to a hot object. It is a very simple error made very early on. The rest is wordy defenses of the misunderstanding.
It is not even interesting.

It is quite possible to tell the temperature from the spectrum of the photons

In theory. If, on the other hand, the emissivity of whatever is doing the emitting varies widely over the spectrum, not so much in fact. In the particular case of light bulb glass, I don’t know. I would think it’s a given that even if the setup doesn’t measure temperature accurately, the fact that there is a significant observed change in instrumented temperature means that it’s getting hotter rather than colder or staying constant.
There’s where I think the value of this experiment is: not that this is a radiometrically accurate setup from which we can compute how much energy is going back into the light bulb, but that (instead) we can deduce that substantial energy IS going back into it.

The TOA is constantly losing matter with mass, at escape velocity….which is ENERGY, not counted in radiative only analysis. This is quantified in “Empirical Model of the Thermosphere” at Springer.com. Mass x velocity^2 = energy….which should be added to radiative loss to balance the energy equation.
OMG! An equation! Good job. Now, your next job is to compute the actual magnitude of this “evaporative cooling” of the Earth. The equations you will want to use are: The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of velocities at typical very-upper-atmosphere temperatures. The mass density at typical very-upper-atmosphere pressures. Escape velocity (that would be 11.2 km/second). Oooo, damn, not within orders of magnitude of being relevant. Damn, foiled again by that pesky arithmetic!
Now, let’s return to a discussion of the actual mechanisms that contribute to the Earth’s cooling and heating that are large enough to pay attention to. That would be insolation — ignore tidal forces, the stupendous rate of thermonuclear fusion in the Earth’s mantel (that would be what, zero?), exaggerated claims of the rate of fission (or any other internal) energy being conducted out of the Earth’s core, etc etc, and radiative loss, ignoring evaporative cooling through TOA loss of atmospheric mass.
We ignore these things because they are orders (plural) of magnitude less than insolation (incoming radiation) and radiative heat loss (outgoing radiation). So I guess that in the end, all we have to do is balance outgoing radiation integrated over the entire solid angle of the Earth and all frequencies and incoming radiation integrated over the entire solid angle of the Earth and all frequencies, because the Earth is sitting there in a gravitationally bound vacuum so conduction is nonexistent, convection is nonexistent, and evaporative loss (from molecules at the tail of the MB distribution that happen to have escape energy) is completely, utterly, negligible on any timescale of interest.
But still, an equation! Good job! Now if you would just invest in a calculator (and learn a few more equations)…
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