(Note: this originally published on Dr. Spencer’s blog on April 25th, and I asked if I could reproduce it here. While I know some readers might argue the finer points of some items in the list, I think it is important to keep sight of these. – Anthony)
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
There are some very good arguments for being skeptical of global warming predictions. But the proliferation of bad arguments is becoming almost dizzying.
I understand and appreciate that many of the things we think we know in science end up being wrong. I get that. But some of the alternative explanations I’m seeing border on the ludicrous.
So, here’s my Top 10 list of stupid skeptic arguments. I’m sure there are more, and maybe I missed a couple important ones. Oh well.
My obvious goal here is not to change minds that are already made up, which is impossible (by definition), but to reach 1,000+ (mostly nasty) comments in response to this post. So, help me out here!
1. THERE IS NO GREENHOUSE EFFECT. Despite the fact that downwelling IR from the sky can be measured, and amounts to a level (~300 W/m2) that can be scarcely be ignored; the neglect of which would totally screw up weather forecast model runs if it was not included; and would lead to VERY cold nights if it didn’t exist; and can be easily measured directly with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at the sky (because an IR thermometer measures the IR-induced temperature change of the surface of a thermopile, QED)… Please stop the “no greenhouse effect” stuff. It’s making us skeptics look bad. I’ve blogged on this numerous times…maybe start here.
2. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT VIOLATES THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. The second law can be stated in several ways, but one way is that the net flow of energy must be from higher temperature to lower temperature. This is not violated by the greenhouse effect. The apparent violation of the 2nd Law seems to be traced to the fact that all bodies emit IR radiation…including cooler bodies toward warmer bodies. But the NET flow of thermal radiation is still from the warmer body to the cooler body. Even if you don’t believe there is 2-way flow, and only 1-way flow…the rate of flow depends upon the temperature of both bodies, and changing the cooler body’s temperature will change the cooling rate (and thus the temperature) of the warmer body. So, yes, a cooler body can make a warm body even warmer still…as evidenced by putting your clothes on.
3. CO2 CANT CAUSE WARMING BECAUSE CO2 EMITS IR AS FAST AS IT ABSORBS. No. When a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, the mean free path within the atmosphere is so short that the molecule gives up its energy to surrounding molecules before it can (on average) emit an IR photon in its temporarily excited state. See more here. Also important is the fact that the rate at which a CO2 molecule absorbs IR is mostly independent of temperature, but the rate at which it emits IR increases strongly with temperature. There is no requirement that a layer of air emits as much IR as it absorbs…in fact, in general, the the rates of IR emission and absorption are pretty far from equal.
4. CO2 COOLS, NOT WARMS, THE ATMOSPHERE. This one is a little more subtle because the net effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the upper atmosphere, and warm the lower atmosphere, compared to if no greenhouse gases were present. Since any IR absorber is also an IR emitter, a CO2 molecule can both cool and warm, because it both absorbs and emits IR photons.
5. ADDING CO2 TO THE ATMOSPHERE HAS NO EFFECT BECAUSE THE CO2 ABSORPTION BANDS ARE ALREADY 100% OPAQUE. First, no they are not, and that’s because of pressure broadening. Second, even if the atmosphere was 100% opaque, it doesn’t matter. Here’s why.
6. LOWER ATMOSPHERIC WARMTH IS DUE TO THE LAPSE RATE/ADIABATIC COMPRESSION. No, the lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of air changes from adiabatic compression/expansion of air as it sinks/rises. So, it can explain how the temperature changes during convective overturning, but not what the absolute temperature is. Explaining absolute air temperature is an energy budget question. You cannot write a physics-based equation to obtain the average temperature at any altitude without using the energy budget. If adiabatic compression explains temperature, why is the atmospheric temperature at 100 mb is nearly the same as the temperature at 1 mb, despite 100x as much atmospheric pressure? More about all this here.
7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND The rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 is currently 2 ppm/yr, a rate which is 100 times as fast as any time in the 300,000 year Vostok ice core record. And we know our consumption of fossil fuels is emitting CO2 200 times as fast! So, where is the 100x as fast rise in today’s temperature causing this CO2 rise? C’mon people, think. But not to worry…CO2 is the elixir of life…let’s embrace more of it!
8. THE IPCC MODELS ARE FOR A FLAT EARTH I have no explanation where this little tidbit of misinformation comes from. Climate models address a spherical, rotating, Earth with a day-night (diurnal) cycle in solar illumination and atmospheric Coriolis force (due to both Earth curvature and rotation). Yes, you can do a global average of energy flows and show them in a flat-earth cartoon, like the Kiehl-Trenberth energy budget diagram which is a useful learning tool, but I hope most thinking people can distinguish between a handful of global-average average numbers in a conceptual diagram, and a full-blown 3D global climate model.
9. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE Really?! Is there an average temperature of your bathtub full of water? Or of a room in your house? Now, we might argue over how to do the averaging (Spatial? Mass-weighted?), but you can compute an average, and you can monitor it over time, and see if it changes. The exercise is only futile if your sampling isn’t good enough to realistically monitor changes over time. Just because we don’t know the average surface temperature of the Earth to better than, say 1 deg. C, doesn’t mean we can’t monitor changes in the average over time. We have never known exactly how many people are in the U.S., but we have useful estimates of how the number has increased in the last 50-100 years. Why is “temperature” so important? Because the thermal IR emission in response to temperature is what stabilizes the climate system….the hotter things get, the more energy is lost to outer space.
10. THE EARTH ISN’T A BLACK BODY. Well, duh. No one said it was. In the broadband IR, though, it’s close to a blackbody, with an average emissivity of around 0.95. But whether a climate model uses 0.95 or 1.0 for surface emissivity isn’t going to change the conclusions we make about the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing carbon dioxide.
I’m sure I could come up with a longer list than this, but these were the main issues that came to mind.
So why am I trying to stir up a hornets nest (again)? Because when skeptics embrace “science” that is worse that the IPCC’s science, we hurt our credibility.
NOTE: Because of the large number of negative comments this post will generate, please excuse me if I don’t respond to every one. Or even very many of them. But if I see a new point being made I haven’t addressed before, I’ll be more likely to respond.
no back warming-
Great fun, cheap and you can do it at home.
We had on open fire at home, I would sit with half my face facing the fire , so one side warm the other cool.
I had a copper spoon/bowl with a handle. If you angled it at the cool side of the face you could reflect the heat from the fire and obviously feel this heat. When I reflected it against the warm side of the face there was no increase in warmth, you could angle it on angle it off, no change in warmth on the face.
My interpretation is – if there is back radiation it will show no increase in temp on the earth surface unless the back radiation is more than the upward radiation.
Konrad 8:06pm: I see will have to report scientific method results & illuminating reasons for the DWLWIR water cooling rate lab flask experiment mod.s on my own realizing humans are very nearly blind. Can only see light in very narrow visible bands. So to Konrad eyes water is not “black” (i.e. nearly opaque in IR) and new fallen snow is observed “white” not “black” as it is in the IR.
Repeat same lab glass flask experiments w/thermometer held steady in position, starting to cool from 75C being careful allow the water free to evaporatively cool.
1) Wrap the standard foil-covered flask with wool sweater. I can report the cooling to half the temperature difference time (78min.s) increased by less than 2 percent.
Illuminating reason: Although the wool giveth, it also taketh away: wool is a much better conductive insulator than shiny aluminum foil, but a much worse radiative insulator. So the net effect of dressing the foil wrapped flask in a wool sweater is almost nil.
2) Paint one (inner) side of the aluminum foil black to test the “selective coating” hypothesis that maybe the aluminum foil slows the water cooling rate (i.e. keeps the flask warmer at the same time period) because it reflects the IR emitted by the glass. Nope, I can report the cooling time to half the temperature difference is only a few percent longer than with the unpainted shiny foil (78min.s).
Illuminating reason: the close irrelevance of the radiative characteristics of the foil’s inner surface is that the foil and the glass are nearly the same temperature. Because of this the net radiative exchange between glass and foil is small regardless of their emissivity.
3) Paint some aluminum foil white & another piece black on both sides. Wrap as before & obtain the cooling time to half the difference again. I can report 50.8min.s painted white vs. 50 bare vs. 52.6 painted black. Thus the IR characteristics of bare glass, black paint, white paint films are nearly identical compared to the longer 78min.s of the shiny aluminum foil wrap.
Illuminating reason: At IR wavelengths the white and black painted foils are nearly identical in emissivity to lab glass – both white and black paint films are nearly black in the IR bands though our lying eyes tell us different. Shiny aluminum foil (emissivity 0.036) is highly reflecting to IR as well as visible radiation.
4) Position a low speed fan to blow some atm. air on the flask (wind speed a few knots – nautical term) to explore convective cooling rates (this shiny foil covered time was 23min.s vs. 78 – paint foil black find 25min.s same diff). This mod. I will let Konrad explain as he has the equipment. He also has a refrigerator that might be of illuminating use.
5) Dunk the 75C bare flask in a pail of tap water. Record cooling time to half difference. I believe Konrad will have the pail too.
Applications IR emissivity understanding: wrap sandwiches in shiny aluminum foil, good to keep some foil in kitchen. Wear wool sweaters on windy, cold ski trip days. Farmer’s should employ greenhouses in either cold windy, thick walled sites or calm, thin walled sites. Hot air transatlantic balloons – shiny aluminize top half.
richard 7:34am: “…you could reflect the heat from the fire and obviously feel this heat.”
This is the SW albedo of your copper spoon/bowl. No increase in warmth on fire side face as it is the same radiation integrated over the spectrum (a bit different in polarization though). Increase warmth on lee side face as you reflect the fire SW in addition to terrestrial LW (which slows the cooling rate of your lee side face). Your lee side face radiates to surroundings and the surroundings radiate to lee side face.
Trick says:
May 8, 2014 at 11:25 am
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Trick,
that was one of your more spectacular efforts!
Faced with the question of whether incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool, you go and play with coatings on the outside of a glass flask…
Glass is opaque to IR and doesn’t cool by phase change. You couldn’t have even been fooling yourself with that sorry effort.
The last person who tried something like that was Al Gore trying to show CO2 warming by illuminating the outside glass jar of CO2 with an IR lamp.
You have now descended to the level of Al Gore in defending the global warming hoax! I’m now actually fascinated to see how much lower you can go…
richard says:
May 8, 2014 at 7:34 am
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Richard,
Trick has given you a wrong answer. Your spoon was reflecting SW, SWIR and LWIR.
Back radiation does work. While LWIR from a cooler object cannot ever raise the temperature of a warmer object, it can slow it’s cooling rate. However this effect doesn’t work well on materials that can cool by phase change like our evaporatively cooled oceans.
Konrad 3:29, 3:36pm sees the light, makes spectacular progress: “Back radiation does work” Even on the sea surface skin.
“Glass is opaque to IR” …Yes, lab glass just like water and new fallen snow are all black if we humans could see better. Aluminum and copper are shiny.
“Your spoon was reflecting SW, SWIR and LWIR.” Very good Konrad, this is what “radiation integrated over the spectrum” really means. Might as well add visible band to your list, as I am speculating richard could see the fire in the shiny copper spoon/bowl reflection.
tjfolkerts says:
May 8, 2014 at 6:15 am
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“You will have to pardon me for believing multiple reliable sources, rather than one lone voice on the internet.”
One lone voice? Oh, I feel soooo isolated Mr. Alinsky….
Sorry, the cavity effect or cavity over-read is well know to engineers using thermal inspection on machinery or materials processing. Take a 10 mm thick plate of cold rolled steel with some 10mm holes drilled though it. Heat to 100C. An emissivity setting of 0.75 should give a good IR reading for the plate, but would need to be increased to over 0.95 for the holes to still read 100C.
Imagine if you then tried to use the 0.95 figure to calculate the radiative cooling rate of the steel plate in vacuum with 3K background IR. You’d get entirely the wrong answer. This is what climastrologists have done for the oceans.
Emissivity figures over 0.9 are for in situ measurements of water. Water is radiating from a “cavity” 100 microns deep. Further as it reflects IR from within this layer it is also subject to Hohlraum effect.
“You still don’t seem to realize that you are comparing apples and oranges. And then you are comparing apples and bananas!”
No, my examples are entirely fruit free. I am however comparing evaporatively constrained solar ponds to an ocean without atmospheric cooling 😉
“Furthermore, even water at the TOP of the pond will not average -18 C because it DOES get back radiation. The top SHOULD have an average temperature near ambient (~15 C) for the same reasons that ambient temperature are near 15 C.”
You want to throw DWLWIR back in the mix for a surface temp of ~15C? That’s ok, Vanna has some lovely consolation prizes for you on the way out..
And that would be your problem right there, Tim. In evaporation constrained solar ponds surface temperature is on average higher than the rest of the pond, as convection is constantly occurring. The deeper the pond the higher that surface temperature. A deep evaporation constrained solar pond will have an average surface temp far higher than 15C. So that’s game over for AGW.
Trick says:
May 8, 2014 at 4:25 pm
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First the Al Gore effort and now this –
“Might as well add visible band to your list..”
SW includes visible wavelengths.
You’re just not putting in the effort these days. Even the condescension is getting slack –
“..sees the light, makes spectacular progress..”
Why not tell me I can’t possibly run an empirical experiment without an ISO certified kitchen with brushed stainless German tapware. You know, for old times sake 😉
Konrad says: “Water is radiating from a “cavity” 100 microns deep.”
Yes, ‘cavity radiation’ is well-known, and yes, we could go this route. So now anytime you are talking about talking about layers of water significantly less than 100 um thick, we can worry about the emissivity not being approximately 1.
“In evaporation constrained solar ponds surface temperature is on average higher than the rest of the pond, as convection is constantly occurring. “
You are still making this to simplistic.
* If the top were hotter than the bottom, the water would stop convecting. For the water at the top to convect back down, it would have to be cooler and denser than the water below to sink back down. At best, the top should be the same temperature as the rest.
* Your “constraint” will add an insulating/IR blocking layer, moving the “surface” of the overall system above the top of the water. The measured outgoing IR for the “system” will not be at the temperature of the interior water layer, but at the temperature of the exterior glass cover. (Even if the cover is IR transparent, you will still get much of the IR from the cooler saturated water vapor above the pond.)
* For the most part, your experiments (and real solar ponds) are in relatively warm & sunny areas, so that by it self will put the “average
“I am however comparing evaporatively constrained solar ponds to an ocean without atmospheric cooling”
In such a comparison, the “evaporative constraint” would be the thin layer of atmosphere over the oceans. The INTERIOR of the system (ie the oceans) can and will be warmer than the EXTERIOR. It is the LW radiation from the EXTERIOR surface of the system that has to balance the SW radiation that enters into the EXTERIOR surface. (If you want to look at an interior surface like the top of the ocean, then you would have to balance the LW leaving the ocean surface with the SW fro mthe sun AND the LW from the atmosphere above — which should and will be warmer than the exterior surface.)
Rather than “game over for AGW”, your solar ponds are in fact examples of the same “greenhouse effect” principles! SW easily penetrates deep into the INTERIOR of the system; an insulating & LW blocking layer separates the INTERIOR from the EXTERIOR; the LW energy loss occurs (at least in part) from cooler EXTERIOR surface.
Konrad 4:33pm: “An emissivity setting of 0.75 should give a good IR reading for the plate, but would need to be increased to over 0.95 for the holes to still read 100C.Imagine if you then tried to use the 0.95 figure to calculate the radiative cooling rate of the steel plate in vacuum with 3K background IR. You’d get entirely the wrong answer. This is what climastrologists have done for the oceans.”
Konrad’s interpretation doesn’t hold water, fails to give a physical illuminating reason for such statements; as a result draws inapplicable conclusions. Now have top 11 reasons for not holding water.
Imagine that flat plate of oxidized steel viewed in an IR thermometer with emissivity set 0.75. The brightness temperature readout from remote sensing will be ~same as a properly calibrated thermocouple in thermal contact with the oxidized steel. The IR thermometer will display a smooth readout.
Now drill 2mm, 4mm, 6mm deep 1/8″ holes into the steel plate & wait for uniform oxidation. I predict the IR thermometer will display hotter spots at the holes. Konrad predicting the emissivity goes up is unfounded as emissivity of oxidized steel will stay the same in the holes; actually IR thermometer results (meaning Planck radiation law) are inapplicable at the holes.
Illuminating reason: the steel surfaces in the holes are radiating to same body. This is example of a basic assumption of Planck radiation being ignored, bodies radiating to themselves are ruled out in the theory.
Which is also why the nested steel sphere arguments are unfounded – but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Being on a sphere surface, the ocean is not radiating terrestrial LW to itself, Planck radiation law IS applicable. Now in the wind caused waves, yes some ocean surfaces radiate to themselves – this is a problem and a very, very small one as the ocean emissivity measured varies ~0.005 over a range of terrestrial wind speeds – out of 0.97 – so can be lived with.
Trick, you are criticizing the wrong aspect of Konrad’s IR thermometer comments (IMHO).
An IR thermometer picks up all IR coming into its sensor — IR created by material in it field-of-view, and IR reflected into its field of view. If the IR thermometer sees a “blackbody” then there are no problems — the material creates a perfect spectrum and reflects nothing. At the opposite extreme, if the material is perfectly reflecting, then the IR thermometer is ONLY seeing the reflected IR and hence measuring the temperature of the surroundings — completely unable to determine the temperature of the reflecting surface.
So the surface of the steel above would MOSTLY be creating its own thermal IR, but would PARTIALLY be reflecting ambient IR, so the measured temperature would be a combination of the two. (If the steel is significantly warmer than the surroundings, then the reflected IR will be small anyway and not important).
For a “cavity” or “hole” then the reflected IR will mostly be coming from other parts of the hole (since little can get in the top of the hole, and even less can reflect back out). The net effect is that any moderately large/deep cavity will act like a blackbody — even if the emissivity of the walls is quite low.
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Near as I can tell, Konrad is arguing that “emissivity of water is only close to 1.0 when the water is significantly more than 100 um thick (so that it acts like a “hole” rather than a “surface”), so we can’t use that number for the oceans.” ???
Trick says:
May 9, 2014 at 5:40 am
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Remind me Trick is it “out of your depth on a wet pavement” or “so far out of your depth the fish have lights on their noses”?
“I predict the IR thermometer will display hotter spots at the holes.”
That is just repeating what I already said.
“bodies radiating to themselves are ruled out in the theory.”
The oceans are radiating to themselves both within the 100 micron skin layer and between wave surfaces.
“Which is also why the nested steel sphere arguments are unfounded”
Wrong, the two shell radiative model works, I have tested it and given Tim the build diagram on this very thread. It just cannot be applied to our planet. (steam engineers do however use it.)
“…this is a problem and a very, very small one as the ocean emissivity measured varies ~0.005 over a range of terrestrial wind speeds – out of 0.97 – so can be lived with.”
Wrong again. Emissivity changes as great as 0.1 have been measured at lower viewing angles for wind speeds above 5 m/s.
And 0.97? You seem incapable of understanding. That is the environmental emissivity setting for IR measurements at the surface of our planet. It has nothing to do with the actual radiative cooling ability of water. You only use that number for measuring the temperature of water, not calculating it’s radiative cooling rate.
tjfolkerts says:
May 9, 2014 at 4:34 am
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Tim, on the issue of the solar pond comparison it really is no use with the hand waving. We can do the Atacama desert experiment. The solar pond surface temps won’t be significantly below sea level tests.
Climastrologists went and treated the oceans as a near blackbody not a selective surface. -18C compared to 80C? That is a fist-biting error. Nit picking about glass of LDPE film cannot erase it.
Go back and look at the solar pond diagram I showed you. According to standard S-B calc having layer 2 matt black should work better as it would reflect less SW. Empirical experiment proves layer 3 black works far far better.
It truly is game over for the global warming hoax. Without atmospheric cooling our oceans super heat. Climastrologist are on record as claiming that they would be at -18C without DWLWIR. The Internet will never forget.
Tim Folkerts says:
May 9, 2014 at 9:31 am
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“Near as I can tell, Konrad is arguing that “emissivity of water is only close to 1.0 when the water is significantly more than 100 um thick (so that it acts like a “hole” rather than a “surface”), so we can’t use that number for the oceans.” ???”
No, you can’t use emissivity ~1 for calculating the radiative cooling rate of water. Those figures are only for measuring water temp in a sea of radiation. ie: calibration for cavity effect and Hohlraum effect.
Try this simple experiment and you may understand…
You will need an IR thermometer with laser targeting and 0.1C resolution.
– Place a 100mm x 100mm x 10mm water sample to cool to room temperature (20C).
– Place a similar sized sample of dry packed charcoal powder beside it.
– Freeze a similar sized block of ice in a very thin walled container to below -10C
– Now hold the thermometer 100mm above the surface of the water at 10 degrees from vertical
– Use an emissivity setting of 1 to read ~20C
– Now hold the ice over the water sample where the laser reflects into it
– You should note the reading drops by ~1C
– Try the same over the charcoal. You should see little variation in the reading for ice/no ice
What is happening is that water is reflecting IR from the ceiling in the initial reading. How much do you need to lower the emissivity setting on the instrument to get a 19C reading without ice? About 0.1. Now imagine how far out an emissivity setting of 1.0 would be if the ceiling was at 3K not 293K?
Using emissivity of 0.97 is for IR measurement of water in a sea of radiation. This figure cannot be used for calculating radiative cooling of water in absence of DWLWIR.
Tim 9:31am – Not sure of your point relative to #10 in top post. Sure the oxidized holes will have reflections but the un-holed surface would have them too. The Earth L&O emissivity measure ~0.97 and rounding to 1.0 for simplicity loses miniscule fidelity for basic understanding.
Suppose we have an instrument that can measure radiant power over some range of frequencies anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum. For simplicity we assume a narrow field of view for the instrument, but this is not necessary.
If we were to point the instrument in a particular direction at a source of radiation (e.g. Konrad’s oxidized steel plate in earth atm.), which could, but need not, be a measurably emitting body, the instrument would dutifully measure a radiant power. Now we can ask: What temperature must a blackbody have in order for the instrument reading to be the same? This temperature is called the brightness temperature of the source, not to be confused with the ordinary (or thermodynamic) temperature (from the thermocouple).
Even if the radiation measured is mostly or entirely emitted (as opposed to reflected) by a body, its brightness temperature is not the same as its ordinary temperature unless we happen to choose a frequency range over which the emissivity of the body is almost 1. A brightness temperature always exists but a blackbody never exists although blackbody radiation bath does exist in an opaque cavity like the concentric steel spheres.
In Planck’s original paper: objects under consideration do not radiate to themselves (he wrote macro positive radii) & the macro bodies are significantly larger than wavelength light under consideration. Both limiting conditions are good to close approximation for the earth L&O surface being measured as a near BB.
Konrad’s holes in the oxidized steel plate will show up as hot spots due the hole cylinder surfaces radiating to themselves; try the experiment with holes drilled if you have access to an IR thermometer. The IR thermometer is faked out by non-Planckian assumptions. This is well known in IR thermometer land – pointing it at an electrical circuit board for instance. Hot spots may be ruled out as spurious if they are shown radiating to themselves.
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Konrad 5:25pm: “The oceans are radiating to themselves…within the 100 micron skin layer…” There are no 100micron holes observed in the ocean surface as the ones drilled in the steel plate. The oceans do not radiate to themselves except for the measured negligible amount wave to wave.
“Wrong, the two shell radiative model works, I have tested it…”
You have tested it but have not provided an illuminating reason why it works. Planck radiation law cannot be applied to outer shell inner surface as the outer steel inner shell radiates to itself; Planck rules it out in his orig. paper as I just wrote (the macro radii are not positive). The inner steel real body is bathed in blackbody radiation within the cavity of the outer shell so since it absorbs BB radiation then the inner real body emits BB radiation as close as you can measure to 1.0 emissivity. Sure a glancing photon will be likely reflected here and there but as you attest this is typically not measurable. Try it. Experimentation illuminated by reason is good for you.
“Wrong again. Emissivity changes as great as 0.1 have been measured at lower viewing angles for wind speeds above 5 m/s.”
Citation? These would be included in situ measurements over various windy conditions showing large expanses sea surface emit/absorb ~0.97-0.98 integrated over the spectrum of interest I already cited.
#10: Trying to convince the earth L&O surface isn’t a near black body is an argument that doesn’t hold water.
Trick says:
May 10, 2014 at 7:49 am
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“Trying to convince the earth L&O surface isn’t a near black body is an argument that doesn’t hold water.”
Actually it holds a lot of water. Try 71% of the planet’s surface to a depth of 4 km. I just posted the instructions above for anyone with a $100 IR thermometer can easily replicate it and utterly disprove your claim.
Using emissivity of 0.97 is for IR measurement of water in a sea of radiation. This figure cannot be used for calculating radiative cooling of water in absence of DWLWIR.
The simplest empirical experiment proves that liquid water doesn’t have an actual emissivity anywhere close to 1.
Liquid water is a selective surface not a blackbody. It’s ability to heat via UV/SW absorption exceeds its ability to cool via IR radiation. Worse, because it absorbs UV/SW at depth and has a slow rate of non-radiative return to the surface, it can accumulate energy in a way a near blackbody cannot.
Climastrologists went and used the in situ emissivity setting for measuring water as the actual emissivity of liquid water. My claim that “97% of climastrologists are assclowns” is therefore proved correct.
Konrad 6:04pm: “..charcoal powder…”
Doesn’t hold water. I just informed you Planck’s original paper states his radiation law is inapplicable to macro bodies with size on the order of wavelength of interest, as in case of any powder. Planck specifically eliminated diffraction controlled optical processes from consideration in the first few paragraphs of his paper.
“..imagine how far out…”
Imagination is not physical proof, doesn’t hold water. You need to get the ceiling to 3K for proof. Which of course isn’t naturally found in the near surface atm. So wouldn’t be proof in any case.
#10: Trying to convince the earth L&O surface isn’t a near black body is an argument that doesn’t hold water.
Trick says:
May 11, 2014 at 5:55 am
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“Imagination is not physical proof, doesn’t hold water. You need to get the ceiling to 3K for proof. “
Bwahahahah..
You are going to lose this one just like you always do 😉
I just tried with a peltier cooled plate at -20C. Next up is cryo cooling to -50C. I’ve just found a way for others to replicate for less than $50. E=0.97? you can forget that…
And no, I don’t need to get down to 3K. IR emission drops with the 4th power of temperature. -50C is quite sufficient to trash your “near blackbody” claims.
“Which of course isn’t naturally found in the near surface atm. So wouldn’t be proof in any case.”
Oh please, why even try that. If reducing environmental IR over water reduces its apparent emissivity without reducing its temperature (as I have already empirically demonstrated) then it is proof that climastrologists should not have been using 0.97 in any calculation.
All that remains now is to find out just how badly they got it wrong. Is it 0.85 like glass? Or 0.67 as shown in old texts…