I have been asked by Doug Cotton to draw attention to the paper he has written. I’m happy to do so, despite some personal reservations regarding some of the inferences drawn from observations. I request that all comments are polite, and kind-hearted. Everyone is learning about radiation, the process is ongoing.
Radiated Energy and the
Second Law of Thermodynamics
Douglas Cotton, B.Sc., B.A., Dip. Bus. Admin
March 12, 2012
ABSTRACT
The transfer of thermal energy by radiation is discussed in the context of the Earth’s
surface and its atmosphere. When considering what happens as the Sun is warming
the surface each morning, it is noted that its radiation is being directed onto the land
surfaces and some distance below the surface of the oceans. So, additional radiation
supposedly transferring further thermal energy from the cooler atmosphere to the
warmer surface would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law must
apply (on a macro scale) between any two points at any particular time. An apparent
violation cannot be excused on the basis of “net” radiation, because “net” radiation has
no corresponding physical entity and is meaningless and useless for determining heat
flow in situations when other processes are also involved.
It may be deduced that none of the radiation from a cooler body (and only a portion of
the radiation from a warmer body) has any thermodynamic effect on the other body.
All such radiation from a cooler source is rejected in some way, and it can be deduced
that resonance and scattering occurs without any conversion to thermal energy. The
radiation continues in another direction until it strikes a cooler target, which could be
in space.
Furthermore, the stability of sub-surface temperatures will tend to maintain the
observed close thermal equilibrium at the interface between the surface and the
atmosphere. Hence other heat loss mechanisms are likely to adjust, in order to
compensate for any reduced radiation.
Some commonly raised questions are answered in the Appendix, where there is also
discussion of temperature trends and climate cycles, as well as counter arguments for several possible objections to matters raised herein.
Full pdf here
br1 and others
The processes you describe regarding quantum excitation I certainly “believe in” regarding atoms, though you might wish to consider whether or not “molecular excitation” is the same thing. Excitation will of course happen when the source of radiation is warmer than the target.
The range of brightness temperatures for various molecules in any particular object is embraced in the frequency distribution represented by the Planck curve. So all this has been taken into account, as explained in the paper in Sections 3 to 5 and the energy in individual molecules need not be further considered for our purposes here.
Clearly I disagree with your description of what you believe happens when radiation from a cooler atmosphere strikes the surface of water. I have explained that it does not penetrate the water, but instead undergoes resonant (or “pseudo”) scattering at the surface and does not leave behind any extra thermal energy. There is no issue of “some of the radiation reacting with cold molecules.” The radiation itself will always have frequencies which can resonate with the warmer surface for the simple reason that the Planck curve for a cooler blackbody is always lower than and fully contained within the Planck curve for a warmer blackbody. All this is in the paper, but maybe you need to read it again.
So you can believe it’s all about a statistical distribution of rates at which molecules move, and I will believe it’s all about a statistical distribution of frequencies in the radiation.
Yes, this does matter, because it helps one to understand why carbon dioxide (with its limited frequencies) will have less effect in slowing the rate of surface cooling by radiation than does water vapour, and far less effect than a blackbody. It’s not all about counting photons or W/m^2.
So I leave you and others with these examples in which “standard physics” appears to fall short of an explanation:
(1) A spectrometer indicates that absorption takes place if and only if the gas in front is cooler than the source of spontaneous emission. It does not matter which gas or what the actual temperatures are. Only the fact that the gas is cooler or warmer determines whether absorption is observed or not.
(2) A microwave oven emits radiation comparable in power to that from an electric radiator. Yet the radiator warms metal, wood, plastic microwave containers and ice, whereas the microwave oven does not.
I suggest that the reason for each of the above is what Claes Johnson and I have been saying.
Maybe you would like to explain both using “standard physics.”
Doug Cotton:
“Yet the radiator warms metal, wood, plastic microwave containers and ice, whereas the microwave oven does not”
A microwave oven warms anything which absorbs the radiation. Concerning ice, which of course is water, to which absorption bands the emitter is tuned, of course it’s warmed – millions worldwide use this simple fact to defrost frozen food. It will also heat wood, many plastics and some ceramics – for example a “browning plate”.. Most metal absorbs the radiation which is why it can be risky to put metal objects in an oven, large sparks can be emitted. Get your facts straight.
The main problem with the whole idea of using Stefan-Botzmann for absorbing/emitting gases is that they don’t emit over an entire Planck curve, as has been mentioned. In fact, they don’t actually warm up by absorption. CO2 and H2O absorb in specific bands, which correlate with bending and flexing moments imparted to the intra-molecular bonds. That’s not HEAT, which is molecular motion. The energy absorbed is internal, not external.
GHGs form a “pumped” system, absorbing LWIR from the surface, and emitting in the same bands. In the evening, when the Sun is low, insolation is reduced, surface absorption and emission reduces, and the pumping reduces. After sunset, surface emission continues, but at a reducing rate. GHGs are now not absorbing SWIR from the Sun, and with reducing LWIR from the surface, “back radiation” drops to a very low level. We know this, as the surface cools much faster than the air above, and measurements show it.
Some sceptics have used this phenomenon to claim that the “back radiation” doesn’t exist at any time. Because the “pumping” doesn’t heat the GHGs very much (some inter-molecular collisions must transfer some of the internal energy to external motion, i.e. heat), the Second Law doesn’t apply. It doesn’t apply overall here anyway, as it’s not heat which is involved in the transfer processes, but radiation.
Doug:
“(1) A spectrometer indicates that absorption takes place if and only if the gas in front is cooler than the source of spontaneous emission. It does not matter which gas or what the actual temperatures are. Only the fact that the gas is cooler or warmer determines whether absorption is observed or not.”
This is simply a matter of statistics (!). A gas at a certain temperature will be emitting radiation at specific wavelengths, at a rate proportional to its temperature. If there is also a ‘background’ which is a blackbody, it will emit a broad range of wavelengths, at a rate proportional to its temperature. If it is colder than a gas ‘in front’ of it, the rates of emission of the blackbody at each frequency will be lower than that of the gas in front of it. Some of the BB light will be absorbed by the gas (!), but we already know that the gas is emitting at a higher rate than the BB, so a spectrometer collecting light from both the BB and the gas will see a broad spectrum with emission lines in it (peaks due to the gas spectral emission). How visible the emission lines will be will depend on the volume of gas and the relative temperatures.
In the case that the background BB is hotter than the gas, then the gas is emitting at a lower rate than the BB. The gas will absorb some of the BB light, but so long as it remains colder than the BB, then we can say that the emission rate is lower, and a spectrometer will see a broad spectrum with absorption lines in it.
In a laboratory, it is often easier to see absorption lines than emission lines, because one can turn up the intensity of a BB background (for example using a tungsten lamp at 3000 K), whereas heating up a gas to measure it’s emission lines is often problematic (how to apply the heat, thermal decomposition, volume of container, chemical reaction, …). Cooling down a BB background with a gas at room temperature to get contrast doesn’t really work either, because at cold temperatures the emission rates are so low they can be hard to detect unless you also cool the detector down to reduce noise.
“(2) A microwave oven emits radiation comparable in power to that from an electric radiator. Yet the radiator warms metal, wood, plastic microwave containers and ice, whereas the microwave oven does not.”
This is about picket fences and spectral coverage. At very long wavelengths, most non-conductive materials are fairly transparent (which is why you can receive radio indoors), and most absorption/transmission happens via vibrational/rotational molecular modes (for example, the CO2 absorption at 15 um is vibrational, not an electron energy level transition). These absorption bands are often quite narrow, as each vibrational mode acts a bit like a tuning fork, but there can be very many of them as there are different modes of vibration, and different molecular compositions add different bands to the mix. Tuning a wavelength to coincide with one of these bands will result in absorption in that band, and subsequent heating.
Conductors are significantly different in that there are ‘free electrons’ which are not nearly so well defined energetically – the free conduction electrons can have a very broad range of energies. Metal as a thermal source has very broad emission, and if put in a microwave will act as an antenna which will resistively heat the metal (so yes a microwave will heat metal – but not a good idea to try, as one can generate high electric fields, again due to the conduction electrons). The more resistive the metal, the closer to a blackbody it will be (and is the main reason why soot is black – it has both free electrons and high resistance). As radiators are usually made from metal, the broad BB spectrum will find some overlap with pretty much anything, and so can heat up pretty much anything.
I’ve no idea why you think these two examples are a problem for modern physics. What’s the problem with the above explanations?
Doug says: “As soon as the gas is warmed above the temperature of the emitter it ceases to absorb the radiation”
That is not the way to think about it. The gas can and does always absorb IR photons from the surroundings. If the gas is “thick” enough, it absorbs basically all the photons. This energy can be trnasfered to other gas molecules by collisions, or it can be emitted as IR photons a little later.
The gas also emits photons, based on its own temperature. Collisions give the molecules energy in the rotational & vibrational modes. The warmer the gas, thie more energy there is in these modes. The more energy there is, the more IR photons it can emit.
When the gas is cooler than the background, it emits fewer photons than it absorbs (creating a “bite”). When the gas is warmer than the background, it emits more photons than it absorbs (creating a “spike”).
These are basically independent processes. Consider a simple experiment. We have a tube with 300 K CO2. Let the far end of the tube be 0K. We would see a spectrum characteristic of the CO2 alone, with a band of IR photons near 15 um. Now warm the background to 299 K. According to your hypothesis, (“As soon as the gas is warmed above the temperature of the emitter it ceases to absorb the radiation”) the gas will not absorb the IR from the end of hte tube. So we will see BOTH sources — the photons from the gas, AND the background. will be a “double-size” spike. But now warm the background to 301, and the gas now absorbs the IR photons from the source. Those photons disappear, and the spike disappears.
Sorry, but that would never happen!
“The radiation undergoes what physicists are now starting to call pseudo scattering. “
What physicists? Where? Do you have a reference? Or is this another unsupported hypothesis like “resonant scattering”?
“The important thing is that the energy at no stage gets converted to thermal energy. “
If you think that is important (or even correct) then you have a lot of work to do. This would say that IR cannot heat things! Whether we are talking solids, liquids, or gases, some incoming IR does indeed get converted to thermal energy (and vice versa).
The photocell phenomenon really means this: When a radiation (light) of a certain wavelength & frequency hits the cell, the cell acts as any transformer does: In its turn it emits a radiation of a longer wavelength & lower frequency. Plug your PC transformer to check it out!
So, the Earth receives energy from the Sun, transforms it, and releases it in different ways: From You sweating to Earthquakes, and such emissions are not considered in the energy budget.
adolfogiurfa says
” the cell acts as any transformer does: In its turn it emits a radiation of a longer wavelength & lower frequency. Plug your PC transformer to check it out! ”
I would expect a transformer to change the voltage of its input to a different voltage output without changing the frequency.
For a PC transformer we would need additional components such as diodes and smoothing devices to turn an AC input to a low voltage DC output
For the benefit of those who have just joined this thread, I will summarise some of the main points in the paper, and add further explanation, such as that regarding microwave ovens. This should answer questions raised above. However, any who advocate that all radiation causes a transfer of thermal energy regardless of the temperatures of the source and target, or that there is some entity representing “net” radiation are asked to read the paper for my response.
Of course radiation can go in all directions. It does so in a microwave oven, but not everything gets warmed in the oven by normal atomic absorption. In fact there is absolutely no atomic absorption involving changes in electron energy states. Instead, liquid water molecules in the food are quickly rotated (flipped or “snapped”) through 180 degrees twice with each passing wave of radiation. It is molecular friction which warms the water, not atomic absorption such as happens in the Sun. The molecules in ice are too close to rotate, so ice is not melted this way. (See experiment in an earlier post above.) The defrost cycle turns power on and off in order to allow time for heat conduction from water to ice. The oven demonstrates that low frequency radiation does not act like high frequency radiation, even if the intensity (flux) is greater.
This is because of the main hypothesis in the paper that radiated energy from a source which is cooler than a target is not absorbed and converted to thermal energy by such changes in electron energy states at the atomic level. If the radiation from such a source is spontaneous, then the peak frequency in its Planck curve is proportional to its absolute temperature by Wien’s Displacement Law. If thermal energy were transferred from such a cooler source to a warmer target then that process, if independent, would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT.) There are several pages in the paper explaining why this is the case, so I ask you to read Sections 1 to 5 in this regard.
Radiated energy is not thermal energy. It has to be converted to thermal energy, and that only happens if the source of the radiation was warmer than the target. Some or all of the radiation can and will resonate with the target. When this happens it supplies energy to the target, yes, but the energy is used by the target to do some of its own radiating. It can use it because it is identical in frequency to what it can emit itself. And this happens because the Planck curve for a cooler body is always fully contained within that for a warmer body. So the two-way radiation which corresponds to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body just resonates in each body and gives it energy that can only be used for new radiation. Because the new radiation is identical, it looks as if the original radiation has been scattered. Hence the term “pseudo scattering” or, as I call it in my paper, “resonant scattering.”
So the process is not in any way violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT) because the radiated energy is never converted to thermal energy. However, there is additional radiation in the warmer body which corresponds to the area between the Planck curves. This is the energy which does get converted to thermal energy in a cooler target. And, since S-B calculations are based on the integrals of Planck functions, the normal calculations (subtracting the two S-B values which represent areas under the large and small curve) still apply, because the difference is the area between the curves.
So you may think of radiation being scattered each time it strikes a target, but only “dropping off” some of its thermal energy when it meets a cooler target. The new radiation then continues just as if emitted by that target, so more thermal energy is only dropped off iff the next target is cooler than the last one.
Because the incident radiation supplied radiated energy to the cooler target, that target does not have to convert some of its own thermal energy in order to radiate what it is “allowed” to radiate as per the Planck function. Hence the target’s rate of radiative cooling will be slower, as we observe. So, yes, a wooden table in your back yard may stop dew forming on the ground below it because the table is warmer than the atmosphere and thus slows the cooling more. This is because gases in the atmosphere are cooler, and also because ones like carbon dioxide don’t radiate with a full Planck spectrum. Instead they just have a few spectral lines of radiation which can resonate with the surface. So carbon dioxide is like a picket fence with most of its pickets missing, standing up against a full flood of radiation from the surface. Even water vapour molecules can do much better when it comes to slowing radiative cooling of the surface.
Whilst the calculations are the same, there are huge differences in the physical consequences. These are explained in the FAQ’s in Appendix Q.7 of my paper. Because there is no conversion to thermal energy, there can be no subsequent heat transfer to other bodies instead of radiation. Hence, in the case of radiation from a cooler atmosphere, there can be no effect upon the rates of cooling by evaporation, conduction and other sensible heat transfer mechanisms. Nor is there any slowing of the radiation that gets through the atmospheric window to space. So only about a quarter of all the surface cooling is affected, and only by a minuscule amount by carbon dioxide with its limited range of frequencies.
Now, the temperature of the surface is stabilised by both the underground temperatures and, more importantly, the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. The temperature gradient in the atmosphere is governed by the adiabatic lapse rate, and that in turn is controlled by the force of gravity. So, if that gradient is represented by a simple linear equation y = mx + b then m is fixed by gravity and b is controlled by solar insolation which only varies a little beyond our control. Thus surface climate is beyond our control and any slowing of the radiative cooling is simply compensated by an increase in sensible heat transfer.
So there is no overall slowing of the rate of surface cooling, no transfer of thermal energy from the atmosphere back to the surface, and so no greenhouse effect.
Doug, you might want to read up on the topic of “line width” because it connects intimately to your arguments. For example, try this: http://nit.colorado.edu/atoc5560/week4.pdf
I’m not an expert in the field, but in a nutshell, your ideas would be pretty good for a CO2 molecule in a nebula around a star. If it absorbed an IR photon, then some time later (on the order of 1 second) it would emit an identical photon. This is, I believe, your “resonant scattering”.
However, in the earth’s much thicker atmosphere, the CO2 molecule will collide millions (or billions) of times before such “resonant scattering” is likely to occur. This means that the extra energy CAN AND WILL be “thermalized” long before that extra energy is specifically re-emitted as an identical photon.
Doug Cotton says:
April 13, 2012 at 3:51 am
In general I concur.
I just wanted to thank Tallbloke for absorbing as much cotton back-radiation as possible. It looks like this has been quite a non-discussion and I’m glad to not have been a part of it.
Claes didn’t stand up any better at tAV than Doug did. In fact, he seemed afraid to make any real attempt.
This is almost unbelievable.
I looked in on the Air Vent blog looking for the discussion with Claes that Jeff Condon mention.
There in the post
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/dogs-puppies-and-true-skepticism/
one Graham Young introduces himself. After some comments from him we can read
(http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/dogs-puppies-and-true-skepticism/#comment-73378)
Jeff, As a newcomer here I thought all that Claes was suggesting is that you just click on his name (to see his blogspot) and then select the papers he mentioned – which I found quite interesting after studying them for over an hour in order to understand what he’s getting at. It’s good stuff in my view and explains how and why the 2nd law works for radiation..
Basically he has proved that electromagnetic energy can travel in radiation going from cold to hot objects, but it is scattered by what he calls “resonators” and is not absorbed as has been assumed by the IPCC.
A few comments later I start to get the feeling that there is something familiar with the arguments and the use of language. Before I get to the comment from one Steveta_uk it hits me, this is probably Doug Cotton taking on an alias.
(http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/dogs-puppies-and-true-skepticism/#comment-73429)
It seems to me very likely that Graham Young is not who he claims to be.
The arguments about microwaves, ice melt, tables in the garden, etc. are identical to those of another person who cannot be named (I guess due to automatic filtering?)
His manner of never letting anyone question Claes without butting on and confusing the matter is also very familiar.
Looking through the comments written by “Graham Young” I think it’s safe to say that there is far less than Planck-bar uncertainty that Doug Cotton is Graham Young.
Doug Cotton may seem to be willing to go so far that to use trolling techniques to push his ideas. From the comment I quoted above “Graham Young” want’s to make the impression that he just stumbled upon Claes work and that it is good stuff and that he understand this after some hour investigating it.
tjfolkerts
You are not talking about resonant scattering at all. You are talking about absorption and re-emission. Please read up to Section 5 of my paper for a start as you display misunderstanding of the process Prof Claes Johnson and I are discussing. You might do well to read Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation” as well.
Jeff
When you criticised my paper you denied me right of reply by deleting this post [Snip grandstanding]
[Reply] Doug, you don’t have any rights on Jeff’s site. He does. Don’t try to use my site as a platform to attack Jeff, or you’ll rapidly discover you don’t have any here either. I’ve allowed your linked comment so that your friends can nod their approval for you saying it, and Jeff’s friends can nod their approval for his deleting it.
Tor
[Snip]
a post similar to April 13, 3.51am above, which I suggest you study and comment upon, thus keeping to the subject of this thread, namely my paper [snip]
[Reply] Keeping to the subject of the thread is a good plan, so I helped you.
It is easy to see that the action of radiation in a microwave oven is very different from atomic absorption involving electron energy states.
(1) I place a black china mug full of water at 21.7 deg.C in a 750 watt MW oven and, in 2 minutes, it is heated to about 78 deg.C whilst the air warms by about 2 C degrees.
(2) I hold an 800 watt halogen radiator against the open door of the oven for 2 minutes and it warms another mug of water only from 21.7 to 22.1 deg.C, and warms the air by just over 3 C degrees.
In each case the radiative flux is of a similar order of magnitude, but the effect on temperatures is very different. In fact, when the MV oven is operating, no objects of any solid, liquid or gas material are actually warmed by absorption at the atomic level, such as happens when the Sun warms these objects. The process by which water molecules (and not much else) are warmed is totally different, involving friction between molecules.
This is empirical data which supports what Claes and I are saying, but cannot be explained by S-B calculations unless you acknowledge that the absorptivity of such long wavelength (12.2cm) radiation is zero (0.00000,,) for all matter other than water molecules (and a few fat and sugar ones) that are warmer than the brightness temperature of the microwave radiation, this being about 0.024K.
It is easy to see that the action of radiation in a microwave oven is very different from atomic absorption involving electron energy states.
What ever gave you the idea that microwave ovens have anything to do with atomic absorption?
Conventional physics explains this excitation with the fact that water molecules have a moment of inertia I (in the quantum mechanical sense) that gives the possibility of quantized rotational excitation.
Cotton’s “paper”, nor his comments here (and elsewhere, by the thousand, as he admits and Google confirms) have no scientific merit whatsoever. In that “paper” he makes assertions, which are to be taken as fact, without any inline citations. The reader has no way of knowing which of the very few sources he lists at the end of the “paper” (mostly Wikipedia) are supposed to support his assertions, and therefore no way of knowing whether they do or not. he’s asking (no, telling ) readers to trust him, HE KNOWS.
Most of his assertions are a mixture of scientific fact and misinterpretaion at best, or ill-informed and erroneous at worst. Worse, little more than a casual scrutiny of the paper, and just a sample of the thousands of comments he’s made in the last few months reveal obvious contradictions. Ignoring those for a moment, let’s just take one assertion in particular. He thinks his analysis of what happens in a microwave oven “proves” something concerning absorption of microwave radiation, and by extension, what happens in the Earth/atmosphere system.
He said in a comment earlier
“Of course radiation can go in all directions. It does so in a microwave oven, but not everything gets warmed in the oven by normal atomic absorption. In fact there is absolutely no atomic absorption involving changes in electron energy states. Instead, liquid water molecules in the food are quickly rotated (flipped or “snapped”) through 180 degrees twice with each passing wave of radiation. It is molecular friction which warms the water, not atomic absorption such as happens in the Sun. The molecules in ice are too close to rotate, so ice is not melted this way. (See experiment in an earlier post above.) The defrost cycle turns power on and off in order to allow time for heat conduction from water to ice. The oven demonstrates that low frequency radiation does not act like high frequency radiation, even if the intensity (flux) is greater.”
There IS no absorption involving changes in electron energy states, but water molecules are NOT “flipped or “snapped” through 180 degrees, the internal OH bonds stretch or bend, resulting in libration, slight rotational oscillaton back and forth. http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/images/vibr.gif
“Water Absorption Spectrum”
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
Water molecules in ice are not “too close to rotate”, ice is a crystal, and while the molecules have limited freedom to vibrate, they are bonded to the adjacent molecules, and cannot rotate. That doesn’t need a citation (even Wikipedia), it’s very well known. The linked source above also shows the absoption spectra of water in all three phases.
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/images/vibrat.gif
“The defrost cycle turns power on and off in order to allow time for heat conduction from water to ice. The oven demonstrates that low frequency radiation does not act like high frequency radiation, even if the intensity (flux) is greater.”
The defrost cycle turns power on and off in order to allow time for heat conduction to the interior alright, as otherwise the water in the outer surface would evaporate, and that surface would dry out and burn. THAT’s a well-known fact. “Dragon Slayers” and their ilk are very fond of “kitchen experiments” it seems, but usually draw incorrect conclusions from them, usually through a lack of general knowledge of physics, or ignorance of the application of physical laws. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.
Cotton’s kitchen experiment monitoring the temperature of water and ice in a microwave oven is a case in point. The water warms up, but the ice does not, just melts a little – ice doen’t absorb microwave radiation – case proven? Not quite, he’s ignored latent heat of fusion of ice, which is 80 times the specific heat of water. The amount of energy to warm one gram of water by 1°C will result in the conversion of one-eithtieth of a gram of ice at 0°C to water. It The gram of ice will have entirely melted when the water has been heated by 80°C, assuming equal absorption of the radiation (ice does in fact absorb less than water at oven frequencies).
There are may other fallacies and obvious mis-statements which would take too much time to refute here. Cotton and the Slayers have irritated me so much recently I think I’ll have to “work it out” in a comprehensive refutation of most, if not all of their unscientific and often simply illogical claims. One such is that radiometers,which they usually refer to as “infrared cameras”, Claes Johnsons’s term. Cameras produce images, radiometers produce digital readout. Cotton says that radiometers “measure ferquency”, another of Johnsons lies (I’m not afraid to call a lie a lie). He and Johnson claim that they measure frequency, which is then input to Wien’s Law to calculate radiative flux. Measuring frequency of electromagnetic radiation is very difficult and costly, yet they claim this is done in simple IR thermometers costing a few tens of dollars. Johnson claims that an IR thermometer measures frequency of radiation, which is then input to Wien’s law to derive the flux, which is in turn input to Stefan-Boltzmann to calculate temperature. Slight problem, even if such thermometers could measure frequency, all that results is a single or set of frequency measurements, and no way of deducing or calculating anything from them.
Wien’s law relates the frequency and flux of a point on a Planck curve. Any particular frequency might relate to a point on an infinite number of Planck curves. In turn, Johnson claims that radiometers, or as he calls them “IR cameras – WTF?” measure temperature, presumably by the aforementioned method, which is applied to Stefan-Boltzmann to calculate flux, yet the IR thermometer is claimed to use frequency to calulate flux using Wien’s Law? Back to square one, it seems. Circular reasoning going nowhere, which is where Cotton’s going with his interminable off-topic trolling across blogs and anywhere else he can lay his assertions. Bloggers and their readers are tiring of his blather.
TB
I do sincerely apologise for being of topic. It was only that you allowed Tor’s comment (10:04pm) to stick that I felt an explanation of my actions to which he referred was required to protect my credibility in regard to this thread. In many ways I regret ever wasting so much time on that site.
[Reply] Ok Doug, I understand your urge to counter Tor’s comment. Using a sock puppet doesn’t do your credibility any good however.
Tor
I didn’t have an “idea that microwave ovens have anything to do with atomic absorption.” What gave you the idea that I did? This post on April 5th should make it clear that we both agree that the process involves rotational motion of whole molecules, rather than excitation of atoms.
The relevance to atmospheric physics is that this is an example of at least one form of LW radiation which does not get absorbed (in the usual sense of excitation at the atomic level) and yet is not fully reflected or transmitted. My purpose is to demonstrate that there is a fourth process, maybe even five processes, rather than just the IPCC concept that if radiation is neither reflected nor transmitted, then it must be absorbed. So do you agree with this deduction – which is, of course, what Claes and I are saying about resonant (or pseudo) scattering? I postulate that the atoms in water scatter the microwave radiation, as the Earth’ surface also scatters radiation from a cooler atmosphere. It is only because whole molecules of water have room to rotate that frictional warming occurs in a microwave oven.
Now, is it then appropriate for the IPCC models to apply measurements of surface absorptivity and emissivity that are made with visible light (having far higher frequencies) to radiation from the atmosphere that strikes the surface? I say “in no way.” Not even water is warmed in any way by such radiation, where “warmed” implies that there is a conversion of electromagnetic energy to thermal energy, which could then be transferred to other objects by any process including conduction.
Have you read all my paper and Claes Johnson’s yet?
There is a new post which implies that backradiation delivers “just a little” heat to the surface.
“Just a little” is just a little too much.
In fact the whole point of my paper is to show why nothing is “delivered.” I do in fact discuss the microbolometer instrument (to which the post refers) in my Appendix Q.4.
This process does not prove that radiation from a cooler cloud is transferring thermal energy to a warmer detector, as I explain in Appendix Q.4
Radiation from the atmosphere slows the rate of radiative cooling of the plate (and the surface) by varying amounts, depending upon the temperature of the clouds and the percentage of cloud cover. This is because the incident radiation supplies energy which the plate (or surface) can use for no other purpose than to generate an equivalent amount of its own S-B “quota” of radiation. So it uses the energy in the incident radiation instead of having to convert its own energy. (Analogy: If a friend you’re giving a lift offers to pay cash for a tank full, it’s easier and quicker for you to hand over his cash, rather than use a card transaction to extract money from your bank account. So your bank account is depleted at a slower rate.)
It is usually necessary to add a small steady flow of (electrical) energy in such instruments so that the plate stays at a similar temperature. Taking into account this additional energy, the rate of loss of energy to the atmosphere can be computed.
But my point is that there is no conversion of the electromagnetic energy in the incident radiation to thermal energy in the plate, nor is there in Earth’s surface.
The big difference is that, firstly there is no violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT) because the energy never became thermal energy, and secondly, there can be no escape of thermal energy to other molecules. Thus there can be no affect on sensible heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere, and in fact the rate of cooling due to sensible heat transfer will increase and compensate. Thus there is no overall effect on the total rate of cooling of the surface. The reasons are explained in more detail in the paper.
So, frankly, this article is just about microbolometer technology, and it proves nothing in particular about atmospheric physics which is not already known and discussed in far more detail in the above linked paper.
[Reply] I’m being deliberately provocative with the title to encourage the warmies to turn up and see how small the magnitudes are from the experiment compared to sunlight. I go with ‘slowing the rate of cooling’ myself.
Doug
Put your main energy in a response to MostlyHarmless comment. He/she is writing what I want to write but does not have the time to compose nor the ability to express.
Just one quick question from my side though, explain how energy conservation can be maintained if radiation that is neither transmitted or reflected doesn’t get absorbed?
Just put up a control surface outside the body and count input-output.
Mostlyharmless
You imply my paper does not indicate which references apply to what. Yet all through the paper there are numbers in square brackets which relate to the reference numbers. Then, in the Appendix, there are several hyperlinked words to yet more references.
Please re-read Section 2, paragraph 2 which clearly refers to the main paper that is basically the subject matter for my paper, namely Prof Claes Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation
You need to be understanding of the fact that this is all ground-breaking physics and, as such, there simply are not other papers yet published thereon. So you are merely invited to read my paper and Prof Johnson’s and form your own opinion as to whether or not this new hypothesis fits better or not with observed data and your personal feel for atmospheric physics.
I suggest that you have no more empirical evidence for any other viewpoint such as the IPCC conjecture about what “backradiation” does when it strikes the surface.
I don’t know why you wrote about, and linked graphics relating to absorption of visible light by water and ice when I was talking about radiation in a microwave oven. This seems a helpful article for you on how a microwave oven warms water molecules. You will see diagrams of the 180 degree rotation which Tor also mentioned, and several other sites do also. My kitchen experiment is explained in the linked comment in the above reply to Tor. If you would kindly read that you will see that I did take account of the need for phase change energy by subsequently placing the ice cubes in the hot water and observing that the oven had delivered ample energy to melt the ice and warm the water significantly. I have repeated it since with five times the water for more than two minutes. Have you tried it yourself yet? Try measuring the temperature of the ice if it starts at around -4 deg.C. One of my microwave ovens has a black metal plate. It warms by less than 2 degrees which to me seems significant compared with the water. If I place them both in the Sun, the metal warms more than the water. So would you agree there must be a difference in the absorptivity of solar and microwave radiation?
Wien’s Displacement Law says that the peak frequency in blackbody radiation is proportional to the absolute temperature. The original (and more expensive) IR thermometers which measured temperatures based on emitted radiation from an object did in fact determine this peak frequency, so I stand by my statement. After all, it is obvious that frequency could be used to determine temperature, so why could not an IR thermometer be designed to make use of this fact? Note however that the newer, cheaper and more convenient microbolometers measure temperature by determining the rate of radiative cooling of their sensors, as explained in Appendix Q.4. This does however take longer than the much more expensive instruments that measure frequency and require a cooling unit. Infra red cameras form images by applying different artificial colours for areas of different temperature.
So, you have not in fact refuted any point that I have made yet, but you are welcome to keep trying. It would be mostly harmless to do so.
Tor and others
I was indeed replying to MH as you wrote. Could you please put your time into reading this comment above in which the fourth paragraph answers your question about the First Law – which I am hardly likely to overlook.
But do please read to the end of that comment, and then you may find that re-reading my paper may make it all clearer for you, and reduce the time I need to spend replying to your questions which are already answered in comments and in the paper. See Claes Johnson’s paper (Ref [3]) also.
After all, my paper is the subject of this thread and you cannot expect me to re-write 6,600 words, (complete with graphics and links) in comments like this.
Is that fair enough?
Once again you answer a direct question with a vacuous non-answer.
Your reply does not answer my objection and only further cements the assumption that you actually have a confused understanding of basic physics.
So no, that is not fair enough.
Nobody is asking you to rewrite your text. You are asked to clarify issues in your text that are obscure and not understandable.
[snip] Ok Tor, no need to labour that issue further, stick with the science please – TB
TB (and others)
I guess I would have used a title like “Yes Virginia, backradiation does slow surface cooling – just a little.”
As you would have read in my comments, carbon dioxide (with its limited range of frequencies) is like a picket fence with most of its pickets missing, standing up against a blast of full spectrum radiation from the surface. Even its effect on radiative cooling is absolutely minuscule, and nowhere near as effective on a per molecule basis as water vapour, which has many more frequencies under its Planck curve. So, with about 20 to 50 times as many water vapour molecules for every CO2 molecule, and each WV molecule having far greater effect, where does that place CO2 and its colleagues, which I refuse to call GHG’s?
Furthermore, if you imagine a Planck curve for whatever temperature layer you wish to select in the atmosphere, then it is highly unlikely that any particular spectral line for CO2 will correspond with the peak frequency in that Planck curve. But nothing can radiate more than a blackbody, so no frequency can extend beyond the top of the Planck curve for that frequency. If it did, it would be possible to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (In fact this concept of single low frequencies being emitted at far greater intensities than in spontaneous emission explains how CO2 laser beams heat metal and cut thin sheets of it. But this does not violate SLoT because electrical energy was added to the system, just as in a microwave oven.
Hence, what CO2 does radiate most of the time is in fact a few spectral lines out to the side of the Planck curve, and thus having much low intensity compared with what a blackbody would emit at the peak. It can, however, radiate at just about any temperature, so these ideas about altitudes at which it does most radiating are also inaccurate.
And of course all this only applies to radiative cooling, not to sensible heat transfer or evaporative cooling. Ooops, make that radiative cooling except that which gets through the atmospheric window to space. Now we are down to less than 30% of total surface cooling by all processes. And what’s to stop the other 70% speeding up to compensate?
So the whole effect gets minusculer and minusculer.
I’m always happy to do a brief article on all this exclusively for this site if you wish. Then there’s the cooling effects, such as indicated when water vapour leaks into a double glazed window and causes it to “fail” and allow faster heat transfer because of the cooling radiation from WV which must be acquiring thermal energy by diffusion from the other air molecules – just like it does in the atmosphere as it radiates away the energy previously brought up by convection in O2 and N2 molecules. Water vapour even absorbs quite a bit of incoming solar IR and thus stops it warming the surface. Yes WV slows radiative surface cooling, but that is compensated by faster sensible heat transfer. But what it does most effectively is help cool the atmosphere.
If you or anyone feels there is any single point in any comment in the 250 or so already on this thread that I have not countered correctly, please bring it to my attention and I’ll try to explain what I meant in more detail. You must be starting to see that Claes has been correct all along.
[Reply] We already knew much of what is in your paper and much of what Claes says. It’s his novel claim repeated by you concerning ‘pseudo-scattering’ that seems to be the issue.
Tor
I pointed you not only to a comment above, but specifically to the fourth paragraph therein which I shall copy below. Please explain to me why you cannot understand that the energy comes and goes just as if the pseudo scaterring had been diffuse reflection, at least as far as energy is concerned. So here’s the paragraph with some bold added to be even more specific ….
Radiated energy is not thermal energy. It has to be converted to thermal energy, and that only happens if the source of the radiation was warmer than the target. Some or all of the radiation can and will resonate with the target. When this happens it supplies energy to the target, yes, but the energy is used by the target to do some of its own radiating. It can use it because it is identical in frequency to what it can emit itself. And this happens because the Planck curve for a cooler body is always fully contained within that for a warmer body. So the two-way radiation which corresponds to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body just resonates in each body and gives it energy that can only be used for new radiation. Because the new radiation is identical, it looks as if the original radiation has been scattered. Hence the term “pseudo scattering” or, as I call it in my paper, “resonant scattering.”
Tor, MH and others
If you feel that my paper, in conjunction with comments on this thread, does not answer some specific relevant question(s) then please keep your comments straight forward with a list of numbered questions each in separate paragraphs. Then, if the answer is already written in the paper or some comment, I shall copy and paste the relevant excerpts with Section and paragraph numbers, or FAQ numbers from the Appendix, or links to the comment(s) in this thread. Please understand that I have limited time (as anyone does) so this simple copy and paste method will save time and, perhaps at the same time, test whether my paper has in fact covered all points. If I need to write more explanation, then that will in fact be helpful to me in regards to any future revision.
TB
It’s his novel claim repeated by you concerning ‘pseudo-scattering’ that seems to be the issue.
Yes, of course, because that is the crux of the matter. But it is also the only possible and plausible process that I have found (from quite extensive research) which can explain how nature ensures that the SLoT is in fact not violated. This is because it provides a very neat and plausible alternative to the concept of heat transfer in each direction, one of which is impossible.
And it fits with all observations, with another very neat and plausible concept that absorptivity approaches zero as the temperature of the source approaches that of the target, and absorptivity remains zero whilever the source is cooler. Gases demonstrate this with spectroscopy. Microwave ovens demonstrate it. Radar and radio waves demonstrate it.
Nothing whatever in any known physical experiment demonstrates that the concept of two way heat transfer is any more plausible. But the overriding point I make is that the concept of two way independent heat transfer, which has to involved conversion to thermal energy, followed by an independent (and not mandatory) return of more energy only by radiation, absolutely and undoubtedly violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There are no two ways about it.
Signing out for the night, now.
[Reply] You are tilting at windmills. No-one says heat is transferred both ways. Energy is, and the net result represents the heat flow. The fact you can’t find another plausible explanation isn’t evidence for your correctness. Phil Jones tried that trick with CO2. I recommend you read the further comments on the ‘Yes Virginia thread’ and have a long think.
I looked at the paper, and I thought I had replied, but I will try once again. Overall, I find very little in the paper that agrees with reality.
“We can postulate that there will be natural maximum frequencies with which the electrons can vibrate between energy states.”
* You can postulate whatever you want. You need experimental backing before it means anything. You need to show that your answer is BETTER than the current answers from science.
* The energy states for IR radiation involve vibrations and rotations of MOLECULES, not electron orbits. You are not off to a good start …
* So do you mean that the molecule switches between different vibrational modes with different energies? But that would take continuous input of energy (to add the energy) and continuous removal of energy.
“So radiation with a matching frequency can resonate with molecules in the target.”
Match WHICH frequency?
* The vibrational frequency of the atom in the lower energy state?
* The vibrational frequency of the atom in the upper energy state?
* The frequency that the molecule switches back and forth between the two states?
“But the radiated energy in each photon is proportional to the frequency of the associated radiation …”
OK – There is something that is clear and that clearly agrees with science.
“and that energy will be just the right amount to excite an electron to a particular higher statestate, but not enough to go the extra distance required for any the radiated energy to be converted to thermal energy.”
First, do you really mean “electron state”, or do you mean “molecular vibrational state?”
And now for the math. For some specific situation for CO2, could you calculate for us
* this “just right amount” of energy?
* the “extra distance”, and what is moving this distance?
* how much photon energy would be converted to thermal energy?
“a photon in the incident radiation excites an electron to a higher state, let’s say at the crest of the wave, and then immediately lets it relax back to its original state at the trough.”
Again – “vibrational state”, not vibrational state.
If the photon does indeed excite the molecule to a higher state, that requires the photon to be absorbed. There is no photon left to “let it relax back.” The molecule can certainly relax back on its own, but only after ~ 1 second, which is definitely not “immediately.
tjfolkerts
As requested above, could you please number any future questions so that I can save a bit of time answering them. I will copy them this time, but not again.
You need to show that your answer is BETTER than the current answers from science
It has to be because the current answers regarding simplistic assumptions (made 100+ years ago in the absence of any better suggestion) namely that radiated heat transfers occur both ways and thus result in a net transfer of heat, violate SLoT and thus have to be eliminated as possibilities. My reasons for saying this are in Section 2. So now why don’t you try to put forward a better postulate, or to disprove Claes Johnson’s computations which would appear to prove our hypothesis?
The energy states for IR radiation involve vibrations and rotations of MOLECULES
Where did you get this “information.” You need to back up what say.
Match WHICH frequency?
Frequencies represented by the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body resonate in each body and there is no conversion of thermal energy for these, only for those represented by the area between the Planck curves. See Sections 3 & 4 – it is far too involved to explain briefly and you will really need to think about what I have said there if you are interested in learning.
First, do you really mean “electron state”, or do you mean “molecular vibrational state?”
Why do you keep talking about molecules? Are you thinking about the totally different process that happens in a microwave oven? Show me some reference in some paper which talks about how carbon dioxide captures radiation, for example. In any event, I am not talking about absorption. There are four processes: (1) reflection (2) transmission (3) absorption (4) pseudo scattering.
* how much photon energy would be converted to thermal energy?
This is covered in Section 4 – that represented by the area between the Planck curves, as per long established physics, backed up by experimental results and used in instruments like bolometers.
The molecule can certainly relax back on its own, but only after ~ 1 second
How do you know that? I am not talking about absorption. A second is a very long time at the micro level. If it waited around for 1 second then its energy would have to have been converted to thermal energy or new radiated energy by then. If you allow the possibility of conversion to thermal energy, then you allow the possibility of violation of SLoT. Hence, what you suggest cannot happen except for absorption. Immediate re-radiation in pseudo scattering is a totally different process happening within the passing of one wave – that is, in a time of 1 second divided by the frequency.
For further response on these issues and any similar questions you feel are unanswered I would have to ask you to read Prof Claes Johnson’s paper, Ref [3] in the paper. You can always discuss his paper on his blog site. Please remember that my paper builds upon his paper, which contains the necessary computations – and proof I would suggest..
The question of whether the SLoT is violated or not is discussed in great detail in the paper. After all, that’s what it is about as the title suggests. I’m sorry, TB, but your footnote is not correct. You have to investigate and fully explain just exactly what happens to the energy being radiated from cold to hot. At what point and by what mechanism does it come into the equation? Yes the calculations give the right result, but that does not mean they represent actual heat flows in each direction. And if you say heat is not assumed to transfer in each direction, how then is it compounded to get a net result? You can add heat, but not add radiation unless you work in seven dimensions rather than three. Please re-read the early sections of the paper for the detailed logic. I certainly have had “a long think.” For example, if new radiation from the atmosphere warmed a layer of water just below the surface, where is there a need for instantaneous transfer of more energy by radiation (and no other process) back to the atmosphere? The truth is that the radiation never even penetrates the water at all, because it undergoes pseudo scattering right at the surface and none of its energy becomes additional thermal energy in the warmer water.
The process of “pseudo” (or resonant) scattering is much more like diffuse reflection than absorption. Because it only involves electromagnetic energy, it most likely only involves electrons.
Once you start talking about vibrational and rotational states of whole molecules you are talking about kinetic energy. In other words, you have assumed that there has already been a conversion of electromagnetic energy (in the incident radiation) into thermal energy. This is exactly what can not happen, because once there has been such a conversion then who knows what will happen next to that parcel of energy? It could be transferred by conduction, for example.
My paper sets out an argument in logic. There is nothing else documented to support it except Claes Johnson’s papers. This is new thinking which you may find in textbooks in 20 years or so, but not yet. I suggest the logic is sound. You don’t have to believe it, but if you really study both Claes and my papers and think about it for a few days, you might start to appreciate that this scattering is the only possible explanation of how and why the SLoT works for heat transfer by radiation, just as it does for heat transfer by conduction, but not by the same mechanism of course.
The logic cannot be explained briefly. You have to study Sections 1 to 5 in detail and realise that there has to be some process whereby some or all of the incident radiation is scattered without its energy having a chance to be converted to thermal energy, and yet, in that process, using up an equivalent amount of the target’s S-B quota of radiation (in accord with its Planck distribution) and thus supplying energy which saves the need for the target to supply such energy from its own store of thermal energy, thus slowing its radiative rate of cooling – as is observed to happen.
(It’s Sunday and I’ll be out for the day now.)
>>The energy states for IR radiation involve vibrations and rotations of MOLECULES
>Where did you get this “information.” You need to back up what say.
My Goodness! Can you really be this ignorant of IR spectroscopy, yet claim to have a new, improved theory? I know about this because, unlike you, I have actually taken some quantum mechanics classes that discussed molecules and calculated their vibrational and rotational energy levels. This is “entry level” background to understand IR photons interacting with molecules.
“This information” can also be found by googling “CO2 molecular vibration”.
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/stuhome/derekk/resonance/pages/co2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_vibration
http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrared.htm
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/archer.ch4.greenhouse_gases.pdf
These all come from the first page ot hits. You could also get a book on quantum mechanics or IR spectroscopy. This theory explain the absorption bands in CO2 & H20. This theory explains explain why N2 & O2 are effectively transparent to IR.
This is all the time I am going to invest in this discussion. It is quite clear to me that you are not going to provide any actual numerical answers because you have neither the mathematical or the scientific background to show that any specific number is wrong. That might sound a little harsh, but the simple truth is that numbers and equations are needed, not some self-defined jargon. Until I see an equation and numbers that are better than the old, established, textbook results, I have no reason to invest my time.
As for the SLoT, the same applies. Until I see an equation and numbers calculating entropy and showing the the old, established textbook theories lead to a decrease in entropy of the universe, I no reason to reject the old approach. The simple fact is that 1000′s of professors and students have confirmed that there is indeed no violation. The burden is on you. You are the one making the extraordinary claims. Provide one calculation of one specific system where standard “back-radiation” leads to a decrease in the entropy of the system. One specific example is all that is needed to overthrow the old understanding.
No, Virginia. Backradiation does not deliver heat – not even a little
Consider a layer of the atmosphere at, say, -25 deg.C. When there is a half Moon there would be some section of the surface facing Earth which is also at about -25 deg.C. So let’s consider just the radiation from that section of the Moon and let’s assume it gets through our atmosphere and strikes the surface of a lake which is warmer than that.
(1) Does it penetrate the water even just a little?
(2) Does any of its energy get converted to thermal energy in the water of the lake?
Answers are both “No” for reasons in Section 2 of the paper, copied below. Feel free to discuss:
Does radiation transfer heat in both directions simultaneously?
It is well known that, when two parallel plates at different temperatures radiate towards each other, the warmer one cools and the cooler one warms until the temperatures are equal. So there appears to be some feedback mechanism, but is it really a two-way heat transfer?
If thermal energy could transfer from cold to hot, then what happens when radiation from the atmosphere penetrates some small distance into the ocean waters? Does it warm the water which then rises to the surface by convection and causes more evaporation? Such a scenario can not be right and the only feasible explanation is that, even though there may be two-way radiated energy transfer, the radiation from the cooler body to the warmer one cannot be absorbed and converted to thermal energy when it reaches the warmer body. This is the conclusion drawn by Professor Claes Johnson in his Computational Blackbody Radiation where he suggests that such radiation merely resonates with the warmer body. [3]
When calculations are done to estimate the amount of radiation (radiative flux) between two plates, it is normal to use the Stefan-Boltzmann Law to calculate the flux in each direction and assume that the difference is “net” radiation, from which is derived “net heat flow.” [4]
It is further assumed that, because this net radiation is in the same direction as the observed heat flow (from the warmer plate to the cooler one) then there is no violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says this is how it should be.
But does the radiation in each direction somehow cancel out to give a “net” radiative flux in the direction of the heat transfer, or are there still two distinct radiation beams? Or could there be a separate transfer of thermal energy in each direction leading to a net effect?
If you have a beam of sunlight coming into your room you can still shine torch light right through the sunlight and see the effect of the torch light on the wall. It is not affected in any way if the Sun’s rays are then blocked. In the atmosphere are numerous radiation beams for radio broadcasts and television transmissions, but they do not affect each other. So radiation with different directions and different wavelengths does not appear to combine into any “net” radiation with a net radiative flux, transferring a net amount of thermal energy.
When the Sun is warming the surface on a clear morning at, say, 11.00am we know that there is a net energy inflow into the surface, simply because it is getting hotter. This heat transfer is calculated even after deducting the outflow, which may be a mixture of radiation, evaporative cooling, chemical processes, conduction or diffusion followed by convection. [5]
What happens if we then “add” radiation from the cooler atmosphere into the surface? This process is clearly independent of the solar radiation and other transfers of thermal energy out of the surface.
The models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assume this happens 24 hours a day, and that it either increases the warming rate in the morning, for example, or decreases the cooling rate later in the 24 hour cycle. But, when the surface is already warming and there is a net inward flow of energy, then clearly such radiation from the cooler atmosphere cannot transfer thermal energy to the warmer surface, for to do so would amount to heat flow from cool to warm, which violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law must apply between any two points for each and every separate transfer of thermal energy at any given time. Clearly, if radiation from the atmosphere were to penetrate a small distance into an ocean and then be converted to thermal energy beneath the surface, there is no question of any simultaneous “balancing” flow of thermal energy out of the surface. Even if it took only a second for the warm water to rise and evaporate, this would be a separate process with no “memory” of the first one. You cannot say the Second Law is obeyed because of any subsequent transfer of thermal energy in the other direction. It would be like parking your car in a one hour spot for 80 minutes, and then in another spot for only 20 minutes, hoping you did not break the law because your average stay was 50 minutes.
So the assumptions of current physics that either radiation is compounded into “net” radiation, or that thermal energy is transferred each way must be incorrect.
Neither happens.
The critical issue in a situation of two way radiation between a warm surface and a cool atmosphere is, firstly, to understand that absolutely none of the electromagnetic energy travelling to the surface can be deposited in the surface. Hence the title in the previous post. There is no heat delivered. Even if you only work with the S-B calculations, you subtract the flux of the cooler body from that of the warmer body. So you have used up all the energy in calculating the net energy flow, and so there is not the slightest amount of energy left over to “warm” the surface.
But as I keep saying, all you are doing here is using computations which are, in effect, calculating the radiation represented by the area between the two Planck curves.
You simply cannot allow the full amounts of radiated energy for each object to be actually converted to thermal energy. Because then that thermal energy would be free to escape and remain stored in the surface for some time and/or exit the surface by some other non-radiative process. And you would have violated SLoT in the cold to hot transfer.
So there has to be a mechanism whereby energy is taken in from the incident radiation right where it can be used immediately in new radiation that was about to use the thermal energy stores of the surface, but now does not need to do so.
(Analogy: You are not just putting less fuel in the car so it doesn’t go as far: you are acting where the rubber hits the road, applying the brakes at the wheels. Or, you are not putting more fuel in the car to go further: you ran out of fuel and got a tow truck to use its fuel to complete your journey. If you had put more fuel in, then that fuel could leak out of the tank or be siphoned into another car. You cannot ensure that it will be used in your car. But the action of the brakes and tow truck were applied directly to your car;s motion. The motion of your car represents radiated energy: the fuel represents thermal energy.)
I say this process is resonant scattering using the “resonators” about which Prof Claes Johnson writes. He too very clearly explains that the radiation from the cooler source is not absorbed..
You cannot “allow” the incident radiation to be absorbed, for that implies a conversion of its energy to thermal energy. If that happened, you would have completed an independent, stand-alone process, and have thus definitely got a violation of the SLoT. So you have to conceptualise another more direct process that must happen, because we know it must from what we observe.
Once we realise that absorptivity goes to zero as the source temperature comes down to the target temperature, and remains at zero when it gets colder, then, and only then can we explain observed results such as a microwave oven not warming ice directly, and in fact not warming anything but water, fat and sugar molecules by a totally different process to atomic absorption.
tjfolkerts
You still keep missing the point. Of course I know about vibrational and rotational energy levels in molecules. But I’m trying to get across the message that changes in such relate to absorption, and we are not talking about absorption. I am talking about resonant scattering which cannot involve changes in kinetic energy. As I said, scattering is much more like reflection which involves electrons in individual molecules. I quote from Wikipedia regarding reflection.
“In the classical electrodynamics, light is considered as electromagnetic wave, which is governed by the Maxwell Equations. Light waves incident on a material induce small oscillations of polarisation in the individual atoms (or oscillation of electrons, in metals), causing each particle to radiate a small secondary wave (in all directions, like a dipole antenna). All these waves add up to give specular reflection and refraction, according to the Huygens-Fresnel principle.”
I have also said several times that I am not in need of any new equations. The existing equations for flux and heat transfer between hot and cold plates, for example, still apply. Read my paper and I have made that perfectly clear in the section about quantification, and I even linked another paper with the standard equations in case any reader needs to refer to same.
I have written at length about the SLoT in the above two posts and also in the paper, as you might expect from the title. You are welcome to address the logical argument and the examples which you asked for which are already in the paper. I am not starting from scratch again on that issue. If you don’t agree with the logical development in the paper then please point out at which step I lose you.
I’m sure we both agree that radiation between two parallel plates may be thought of as going both ways (actually in all directions) and that (net) heat transfer is in only in one direction. But what is the physical mechanism which ensures that this two-way energy flow results in correct heat flow?
My question to anyone is …
Consider the standard “two parallel plate” example where the plates are at different temperatures and send radiation each way, even though the standard calculations show net energy one way.
What is your personal belief as to what is the physical mechanism that ensures that the system reacts according to the algebraic sum of the two opposite radiation flows containing radiated electromagnetic energy?
I suggest that these are the issues you need to address in answering …
(a) Electromagnetic energy in two opposing rays does not compound in transit when two waves oppose each other. In other words, the radiation with the greater power doesn’t turn the other radiation around and automatically send a smaller “net’ amount back.
(b) So something must happen when each lot of radiation meets its respective target.
(c) We know that the rate of radiative cooling of the warmer body slows down and, at equilibrium, the two bodies end up at the same temperature. So you need to explain the mechanism which slows the rate of radiative cooling, but cannot slow other sensible heat cooling rates, or can it?
(d) We know from the quantitative observations that the existing equations do give the right results. But all the energy is used up, and so no energy is left to be deposited in the warmer body. But what is the physical mechanism that ensures no additional thermal energy is deposited in the warmer body?
(e) Now,if any of the electromagnetic energy had been converted to thermal energy in the warmer target, then it could have diffused or been transferred in some way other than radiation to a third body, or even just the surrounding air. So we know that any actual existence of any such residual escaped thermal energy would constitute a violation of the SLoT.
(f) We also know that normal absorption with conversion to thermal energy does not take place with one way low frequency radiation such as in a microwave oven. So your hypothesis also needs to explain this lack of warming of many dry substances, including ice.
So do you have a better explanation than the resonant scattering described in my paper.?
Genuine statement through current NASA employee …
“My son is a nuclear physicist with NASA and knows GHG theory is bogus and NASA distorts AGW data. BHO won’t allow Civil Servants to express skepticism. James Hanson is actual spokesman for NASA on GHG theory, picked by Al Gore and BHO”
This was said by a father to a contact I have who spoke personally with that father on April 13th.
As I have said, the standard S-B equations still work and my hypothesis is not trying to change these. So I thought I’d set out the following not using my hypothesis at all – just standard physics, which shows why the effect of carbon dioxide on surface temperatures is zero.
1. No solid, liquid or gas can radiate more than a perfect blackbody.
2. A gas will radiate certain frequencies only, but the intensity of each frequency will still be limited by the Planck function, which itself is a function of temperature. (S-B is derived from the integral of the Planck function.)
3. So, depending on the temperature of the region, carbon dioxide will emit at frequencies which may well be (and usually will be) off to one side or the other under a Planck curve – thus strongly attenuated.
4. Hence, over all temperatures in the atmosphere, the mean intensity of carbon dioxide radiation falls a long way short of a true blackbody. (Whereas a blackbody radiates with the full filled in area under the curve, CO2 has just a few thin lines, most of which are not near the top of the curve, but instead have lower intensity at the sides.)
5. Hence its emissivity must be very small. I suspect most likely less than 0.01.
6. When using standard S-B calculations to determine the effect on the rate of radiative cooling, you need to take into account both the temperature of the region from which the radiation comes, and the emissivity.
7. So, when such low figures for emissivity are used in the standard S-B calculations it is obvious that carbon dioxide can have very little effect.
8. Considering the fact that some radiation from the surface goes through the atmospheric window to space, the remaining radiative cooling is well under half (maybe under 30%) of all surface cooling processes.
9. The effect of carbon dioxide is absolutely minuscule and, even then, it only affects the cooling effect of radiation that is absorbed by itself in the atmosphere.
10. Various considerations (such as in the Appendix of my paper) present very plausible reasons for other non-radiative cooling rates to increase. Thus the effect on overall cooling rates is most likely zero.
Whilst we wait a few days to see if anyone has any counter arguments regarding the above 10 points, or the questions (a) to (f) two posts earlier, let me discuss terminology such as I do in Section 1 of the paper. I came across this description of what “heat” means and it is in agreement with the usage in my paper …
“What Heat Is and Is Not
“Thermal energy is actually a form of kinetic energy generated by the movement of particles at the atomic or molecular level: the greater the movement of these particles, the greater the thermal energy. Heat is internal thermal energy that flows from one body of matter to another—or, more specifically, from a system at a higher temperature to one at a lower temperature. Thus, temperature, like heat, requires a scientific definition quite different from its common meaning: temperature measures the average molecular kinetic energy of a system, and governs the direction of internal energy flow between them.
“Two systems at the same temperature are said to be in a state of thermal equilibrium. When this occurs, there is no exchange of heat. Though in common usage, “heat” is an expression of relative warmth or coldness, in physical terms, heat exists only in transfer between two systems. What people really mean by “heat” is the internal energy of a system—energy that is a property of that system rather than a property of transferred internal energy.” source
Terms like “heat content” and “latent heat” should never be used, because these are not measures of some supposed constant energy content. Potential energy and kinetic energy are interchangeable, so the KE in a parcel of air decreases as it rises and KE is converted to PE. Only KE is reflected in temperature measurements, so the parcel of air appears to cool. The same happens as ocean currents and convection move water to different levels.
Sorry if I stick to valid atmospheric physics, it is because that is my specialty and there is a need to communicate and think in precise terminology. Failure to do so has led to the confusion over AGW and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, when and when not to treat something as a blackbody, how emissivity and absorptivity vary with temperature and are not always the same, and many physical processes that affect climate.
Doug:
“The processes you describe regarding quantum excitation I certainly “believe in” regarding atoms, though you might wish to consider whether or not “molecular excitation” is the same thing.”
Great! Now we can agree that Claes’ model is incorrect in describing how the world really works, as it doesn’t have excitations of atoms or molecules.
And therein lies the crux of the disagreements for the last few days – if one describes how the actual atoms or molecules behave, then one ends up with statistics and two way energy transfer. This was one of the reasons I asked you if you believed in water molecules, because if they exist and can be in different states, then one needs statistics to describe them. Next stop is statistical thermodynamics.
If on the other hand, one takes Claes’ approach then one ignores atoms and molecules, approximates their existence with continuous functions including uncalculated phenomenological fudge factors, ending up with only the net ‘continuous’ effect. In such a model, water is an infinitely divisible fluid with continuous function ‘u’, and one cannot tell what the individual molecules are doing. But as we know that molecules exist, then we know that this is incorrect.
I had a read of Claes’ blogspot – the discussions were very thin, and the answers even thinner. One of the comments that Claes himself wrote in defence of his parameter ‘h’ was that it could be calculated by quantum mechanics! The irony is intense, seeing as that is the physics he is disagreeing with.
“So do you have a better explanation than the resonant scattering described in my paper.?”
Sure, as written in my replies on April 12th.
br1
In my paper I have in a sense gone further than Claes in explaining the splitting of the energy in the radiation from the warmer body into …
(1) that which is represented by the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body
(2) that which is represented by the area between the Planck curves.
The processes are then …
(1) This radiation resonates and its energy supplies all the energy needed for the cooler body’s own radiation, as represented by its own Planck curve. So that part of the incident radiation appears to be scattered, because what goes in also comes out, energy wise and frequency wise.
(2) This additional radiation transfers the energy which does the warming of the cooler body. This does cause excitation and that excitation leads to conversion to thermal energy.
This is how and why the Second Law of Thermodynamics always applies and is never violated when there is heat transfer by radiation. This heat transfer is not accomplished through two separate physical heat transfers in opposite directions. Only radiated energy travels in each direction. Mathematically, yes, that is the calculation you do, but you are really just deriving a result from the area between the Planck curves, because the total flux calculated by S-B is just the integral of the Planck function. When you calculate the difference in the S-B functions (which we know gives the right empirical result) you are subtracting the area under the smaller curve from the area under the larger curve, thus deriving the area between the curves, because the smaller curve is always fully contained within the larger one – a corollary of Wien’s Displacement Law.
When you talk about two-way energy flow, it is only electromagnetic energy in the radiation which goes both ways. As I have said, and Claes has said, that energy may or may not be converted to thermal energy in the target. Please re-read my Sections 2 to 5 more carefully as I don’t feel that you have understood them yet.
I don’t see anything in Prof Claes Johnson’s writing which denies excitation processes. He very clearly accepts that solar radiation warms the oceans and land surfaces because it excites atoms so that its energy then goes through the process of being converted to thermal energy in the target. But both Claes and I deny that this happens when radiation from a cooler region of the atmosphere strikes a warmer region on the surface.
And let me remind you that low frequency radiation in a microwave oven (brightness temperature < 1K) does not cause any significant warming in ice, regardless of the intensity. It does not excite the H2O molecules in the ice and nor can it rotate them (as it does in liquid water) because they are too tightly packed in the solid form. Such radiation is not all reflected or transmitted. There is definitely some that enters the ice cubes in the experiment I outlined in an earlier post. Claes and I say it must be scattered and not have any of its energy converted to thermal energy. This, I suggest, proves the existence of the resonant scattering process.
Please give me your explanation of what you think happens after reading this post above.
In your reply on April 12 you went through a detailed discussion of how you thought radiation from a cooler region of the atmosphere could penetrate water in, say, a lake and warm a layer of water just below the surface. You said “if the energy is absorbed then the molecule has gained in energy in order to satisfy 1lot.” but in all your argument you have ignored the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT). That law is not about conservation of energy.
There is nothing wrong with the traditional thermodynamic explanation of the SLoT as in the Wikipedia item I linked in the paper, from which I quote ,,,,
“In classical thermodynamics, the second law is a basic postulate applicable to any system involving measurable heat transfer …
“spontaneously, heat always flows to regions of lower temperature, never to regions of higher temperature without external work being performed on the system.
“The second law of thermodynamics may be expressed in many specific ways,[4] the most prominent classical statements[3] being the statement by Rudolph Clausius (1850), …. These statements cast the law in general physical terms citing the impossibility of certain processes. They have been shown to be equivalent.
“Clausius statement
“No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.[note 1] Spontaneously, heat cannot flow from cold regions to hot regions without external work being performed
Doug:
While I stand by all I said so far, I had a re-read of your and Claes’ arguments, in order to be clearer about the big picture you are trying to paint. To help clarify, I made a list of your points (as I interpret them), feel free to correct as you see fit:
1, All objects emit radiation.
2, Two objects next to each other emit radiation towards each other.
3, Heat flows from hot to cold according to the difference in radiation/difference in the Planck curves.
4, If a hot object H1 is placed next to object C1, then H1 will cool down at rate R1. If H1 is placed next to cold object C2 it will cool down at rate R2. The rate of cooling has a dependence on the relative temperatures of H1, C1 and C2.
5, This heat flow agrees with SB.
Up to here I have no complaints, even though we will still disagree about the microscopic details.
Then comes
6, Hot objects cannot thermalise radiation from colder sources.
7, If they could then there would be a SLoT violation.
In my view this has caused much of the arguments on this thread, as one needs to discuss the microscopic details to sort this out. We can carry on arguing over that if you like, but it may be more constructive to get to where this seems to be headed –
8, DWLR comes from a colder source than the surface of Earth, therefore cannot heat it (see points 6 and 7).
Which I sort of agree with. The main problem with this statement is related to equilibrium temperature. From reading Claes’ blog, I know others have tried to argue what happens, but let me try by just using the points 1-5 that I presume we both agree with. Maybe the scenario below has been discussed before, I can’t remember exact details, but let’s make this quantitative in order to see what the implications are. I would like to hear your answers.
Take three plates, A, B, C which emit as blackbodies (sorry for introducing more labels!). Temperatures on plates A and C are thermostatically controlled, while plate B is thin and highly thermally conductive (so that it has an equal temperature throughout), has no thermostat, and is placed between A and C with only a very small gap separating them. They are all in vacuum so the only transfer they have is radiation. Now take four scenarios:
Scenario1: Thermostats on A and C are set to 350 K.
Scenario2: Thermostats on A and C are set to 300 K.
Scenario3: Thermostat on A is set to 300 K and thermostat on C is set to 350 K.
Scenario4: Thermostat on A is set to 310 K and thermostat on C is set to 350 K.
The exercise is to find the equilibrium temperature of B in each case, using only the points 1-5 that we agree on. Use any form of SB equation you like. My answers are:
Scenario1: Temperature of B is 350.00 K.
Scenario2: Temperature of B is 300.00 K.
Scenario3: Temperature of B is 327.85 K.
Scenario4: Temperature of B is 331.80 K.
What answers do you get?
If you get the same answers, how do you explain that if the system is in Scenario3, and then the thermostat on A is changed to Scenario4, that plate B heats up, even though plate A is colder than it at all times?
If you don’t get the same answers, then what equations were you using, and do they agree with point 5 above? Do we actually agree on the first five points listed above, or do you have a different opinion?
I’m with you, br1.
Br1
Because you are controlling temperatures of A and C thermostatically, you are in fact adding energy to match the rate of cooling of each. When you warm C with extra energy it will reduce the rate of cooling of B. But A is still delivering the same amount of thermal energy to B, so B will start to warm because it is now losing less to C. Hence B will warm (using energy you are feeding into A) until it reaches a new equilibrium. At that new equilibrium B will be slowing down the radiative cooling of A, and so you will be feeding less energy into A, but still feeding more into C. If A represents the surface, B some layer in the atmosphere and C is space, you have turned down the Sun and warmed up space, so this example is not relevant to climate.
How about answering the question about why microwave ovens don’t warm everything like the Sun does.
Here’s one last attempt (at least fora while) to bring Doug around.
Energy can and does get transferred from cooler objects to warmer objects, but on average, the net transfer is from warmer to cooler. For example, when a warmer piece of metal touches a cooler piece of metal, the transfer of energy is accomplished by collisions of atoms where they are touching. When a fast atom hits a slower atom, the fast atom loses energy and the slower atom gains energy. Often the faster atom is in the warmer object, but not always. Billions of times per second, collisions will transfer energy “backwards” from cooler to warmer. But when averaged out, more collision will transfer energy forward. The net transfer of energy (when averaged over billions of collisions) is always from warmer to cooler, ie the heat is from warmer to cooler.
The 2nd Law does not forbid energy moving from the cool side to the warm side. It only forbids more energy moving cool to warm than moves from warm to cool
Interchange A and C in the above answer. I was obviously treating A as the 350 deg.C in 3 & 4.
In more than a week now, nobody has raised any valid objection to my analogy involving a microwave oven.
Nor has anyone produced an alternative hypothesis to what Claes and I have. What we say is that the frequency is too low (below cut-off) for the radiation to be converted to thermal energy by the normal mechanism at the atomic level. In other words, absorptivity of all objects in a microwave oven is zero (0.0000..) for the very low frequency radiation which has a brightness temperature < 1K. So it doesn't matter that its intensity is in fact far greater than the Sun's.
If, for example, you took the oven outside into the Sun and set it up at an angle so that sunlight filled it at the right angle (without shadows) then you placed ice cubes, water (in a separate container) and a plastic microwave bowl inside, then these would all warm, or absorb energy for phase change in the case of ice. And the effect would be noticeable even within 15 minutes, though the water would not warm more than a few degrees.
So obviously the oven delivers more energy in 90 seconds than the Sun does in 15 minutes, because we can see that the water nearly boils. But why don't the plastic and ice absorb any noticeable energy?
Again I say, only our hypothesis explains what happens. Yes, there is warming of H2O molecules, but not by atomic absorption. Such molecules only warm at a narrow band of frequencies which cause them to rotate in resonance with the waves of radiation. If you altered the frequency significantly there would be no such warming.
In complete contrast, if you think that some flood of "photons" in any radiation will warm any solid object that doesn't reflect or transmit all the radiation, then the MV ovens proves your conjecture to be mistaken. Little wonder Einstein did not like the concept of particles in radiation which Planck had dreamt up because he was desperate for a solution for the UV catastrophe.
Frankly, I don't care what you believe in this regard. But just don't believe that spontaneous radiation from a cooler source can transfer thermal energy to a warmer target, anywhere, any time.
Many people in the past have tried to dream up "examples" such as br1 did above, but these are nothing more than dreams. No one in about 150 years of physics has ever found that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is ever violated between any two small regions where temperature can be measured.
The SLoT is all about independent processes, and all processes of radiation between any two regions in the universe are independent one-way processes, whether or not there are other similar processes in the opposite direction. There is no dependence. The radiation the other way is not a mandatory result of the first radiation. The Sun sends energy which is absorbed by the surface. That energy subsequently exits the surface and enters the atmosphere by a variety of processes, most not even by radiation – and at any subsequent time, none of which is determined by the original radiation.
In contrast, in a Carnot cycle you have dependent sub-processes which make up what is really a single integrated process which would fail to operate if any one of the sub-processes were removed. Perhaps the simplest example is a siphon in which the first dependent sub-process causes water to flow upwards against gravity, whilst the second dependent sub-process involves a greater mass of water falling under the force of gravity on the other side of the siphon. Yes, the net entropy increases, just as if you had a linear downhill path from the start to the end of the siphon. But if you cut the siphon hose at the top, the sub-processes become independent and it no longer works. In the same way, a process involving radiation from the atmosphere to the surface is not connected to another process involving a larger heat transfer (perhaps some by sensible heat) in the other direction. The hose is cut. There is no dependence relationship allowing you to combine two processes into one. So you cannot just look at a net increase in entropy and claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was not violated.
It is not violated in br1's example, and it never is. It has the status of a Law as the result of about 150 years of physics which "post physics" used by climatologists is trying to overturn. These people are seriously mistaken.
Doug:
I swapped around you’re A and C, as we agree they should be.
“Because you are controlling temperatures of A and C thermostatically, you are in fact adding energy to match the rate of cooling of each.”
agreed.
“ When you warm A with extra energy it will reduce the rate of cooling of B. But C is still delivering the same amount of thermal energy to B, so B will start to warm because it is now losing less to A.”
agreed
“ Hence B will warm (using energy you are feeding into C) until it reaches a new equilibrium. At that new equilibrium B will be slowing down the radiative cooling of C, and so you will be feeding less energy into C, but still feeding more into A.”
agreed. Excellent – we have come to an agreement in a physical example!
“ If C represents the surface, B some layer in the atmosphere and A is space, you have turned down the Sun and warmed up space, so this example is not relevant to climate.”
disagree.
In this example, A represent the atmosphere, B represents the planet surface, and C the sun. So the sun is hottest and remains at constant temperature, the atmosphere is always coldest, while the planet surface temperature is intermediate.
You have just agreed that if the atmosphere warms up a little (emits more radiation towards the planet surface), that the equilibrium planet surface temperature will increase even though the atmosphere is colder than the planet surface at all times. Thank you for the correct answer.
“How about answering the question about why microwave ovens don’t warm everything like the Sun does.”
I’m surprised you’re still asking this. Seeing as you don’t seem to have read it, here’s the link, see second half of post:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-22946
Doug:
We even agree that the three plate example does not violate SLoT and never will.
Seems like progress!
tjfolkerts
In conduction processes the energy is already in the form of thermal energy. In any event, the Second Law has always referred to measurable heat transfer. You will never measure a heat flow from cold to hot by either conduction or radiation.
When you say Energy can and does get transferred from cooler objects to warmer objects, but on average, the net transfer is from warmer to cooler I have to ask what type of energy you are referring to and what process is involved? And how do you add the two lots of electromagnetic energy going in opposite directions? Of course you can do so on paper, but by what physical process to you think they somehow combine to get a net flow of electromagnetic energy? And at what point is some of the energy involved actually converted to thermal energy? Bear in mind what happens in your microwave oven – lots of radiation but no heating of many objects.
Of course electromagnetic energy can travel by radiation from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface. But that does not mean the energy will be converted to thermal energy when it gets there.
We can have radiation from the atmosphere to the surface, but it does not transfer thermal energy. The only transfer of thermal energy takes place in radiation and other processes that go from warm to cool. For example, there may be a little less radiation back to the atmosphere, but a bit of evaporative cooling and conduction or diffusion followed by convection.
Only the processes going from hot to cold transfer thermal energy. That’s what the SLoT says, and that’s explained and proved by Prof Claes Johnson. There’s no two ways about it.
And I guess you’d like to say the radiation from -30 deg.C in the atmosphere can warm a layer of water just below the surface by some fraction of a degree? Well you’d be disproving the SLoT which has never been disproved in about 150 years of physics, so, as I say, claim your Nobel prize.
If you have two distinct regions of gas or liquid, small solid objects whose temperature is uniform within and measurable, you will never measure a heat flow by radiation from the cooler one to the warmer one. See my more detailed post above regarding independent processes.
So, as in my paper and many comments above, electromagnetic energy is not thermal energy. So, yes, I totally agree electromagnetic energy can travel anywhere, including from a cooler body to a warmer body, but, just like the low frequency radiation in a microwave oven, it does not necessarily get converted into thermal energy by atomic absorption, and, in fact, never does if the source is cooler than the target. That is the reason and the mechanism whereby nature ensures that the SLoT works for transfers by radiation. So the Sun’s radiation warms the objects which the microwave oven’s radiation cannot warm, despite its greater intensity.
If you think you have any other explanation for this, be the first to tell as all at PSI about it, because it’s sure to be worth a Nobel prize. Meanwhile I’ll stick with Prof Claes Johnson’s explanation and computational proof. Have you read it yet?
Br1
Firstly, the atmosphere cannot warm on any long-term basis as would be required to affect climate. The temperature gradient is determined by the adiabatic lapse rate, which is itself a function of the acceleration due to gravity. The mean temperature, which sets the level of the whole temperature trend in the atmosphere, is determined by the mean solar intensity. None of this has anything to do with carbon dioxide which, in fact, helps to radiate away any temporary excess thermal energy (above the trend set by the lapse rate) so everything settles back to the temperature plot fixed by gravity. See also Appendix Q.3 in my paper.
The original concept of CO2 “trapping” heat in the atmosphere was dismissed a long time ago by the IPCC. They had to admit there was no empirical evidence to support it. So they came up with the conjecture that backradiation “warms” the surface, though they never really said just how.
Secondly, once again you display no comprehension of the points I have made over and over again about the minuscule effect of carbon dioxide upon the rate of radiative cooling of the surface. The atmosphere is not a metal plate. Carbon dioxide does not radiate a full filled in spectrum taking up all the area under a Planck curve, as a true blackbody would.
Thirdly, your example specifically rules out other heat transfer mechanisms of a non radiative nature. The whole point and reason why I say CO2 has zero effect is that the other cooling processes (which account for at least half of all energy transfer from the surface to the atmosphere) will speed up and compensate. The word “compensate” means there will be no overall effect on the rate of cooling of the surface. All of this is in my paper and several comments in this thread.
br1
Regarding what you claimed about microwaves ….
most non-conductive materials are fairly transparent (which is why you can receive radio indoors),
No. Radio waves actually get scattered around by solids and they can in fact be detected in short tunnels for example. So, if they pass through a wall, they have done so in a zig zag path being scattered by many molecules on the way, but never having their energy absorbed and converted to thermal energy. This is yet another example of what Claes and I are talking about, and still you don’t get it, do you?
No. My microwave oven has a large black circular metal tray which does not get warm. It is not “transparent” to long wave radiation at all. Instead it scatters it without converting any of its energy to thermal energy. The same goes for ice and just about any solid without liquid water molecules in it, These items are not transparent, and nor do they reflect. I explained all this in subsequent posts after yours above.
The low frequency radiation in a microwave oven does what low frequency radiation from a cold atmosphere does – it all gets scattered by warmer targets and its electromagnetic energy is never converted to thermal energy by atomic absorption (capture) processes. The oven clearly demonstrates that it is not intensity that matters, rather it is frequency which carries temperature information. Hence the SLoT is obeyed.
There is plenty of one-way radiation in the universe, or at least that is the case for all practical purposes. This is how and why the SLoT is obeyed when radiation carries electromagnetic energy from one body to another. We don’t get warmed by radiation from the cool hemisphere of the Moon. If and only if the target is cooler, some of the energy is converted to thermal energy, Why do you have so much difficulty in understanding such a straight forward concept which obviously has to be what happens?
Doug:
Forgive the snips, but we don’t want to make this too long winded. You said:
“the minuscule effect of carbon dioxide upon the rate of radiative cooling of the surface. The atmosphere is not a metal plate. Carbon dioxide does not radiate a full filled in spectrum taking up all the area under a Planck curve, as a true blackbody would”
all of your post to here raises questions of magnitude, not principle. Magnitudes require detailed calculation, but I’m glad we agree that in principle more radiation will cause an increase in surface temperature even if it comes from a cold source. It seemed for a while that you disagreed with such a principle.
“your example specifically rules out other heat transfer mechanisms of a non radiative nature.”
sure. The title of this thread is “Radiated energy and the second law of thermodynamics”, remember?
“So, if they pass through a wall, they have done so in a zig zag path being scattered by many molecules on the way”
and this is true for 3 km long radio waves? Are you sure you want to say that? And are you sure you want to say that when a piece of metal acts as an antenna, the current induced gives no resistive heating???
Everyone:
Br1 continues to misinterpret what I say. I most certainly do not agree that increasing the radiation from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will warm the surface. That should be totally clear from my paper and any comment I have written above on that topic. It cannot transfer thermal energy to the surface and it does not slow the overall rate of cooling because other rates increase for reasons outlined in my paper, particularly Appendix Q.3 which is further supported on the ‘Explanation’ page of my website.
The exact quantification of the minuscule amount of slowing of only the radiative component of surface cooling would require data which is not available. But neither has the IPCC quantified any warming effect using any valid physics. Their assumption that their so-called greenhouse gases are solely responsible for a 33 degree rise of surface temperatures is absolutely ludicrous and a complete travesty of physics. It is the automatic adiabatic lapse rate which is totally responsible and the effect would be just the same, even if there were only nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, because this lapse rate is a function of the force of gravity acting through pressure.
I have pointed out why the effect of carbon dioxide is related to the intensity of just a few spectral lines compared with full blast complete Planck spectrum radiation from the surface. Add to that the fact that CO2 is only one molecule in over 2,500 and it is blatantly obvious that its effect is close enough to zero, even before considering the compensating effect. It is also, in total, less than 1% of the effect of all the water vapour which has more spectral lines, so that fact alone puts it in its place.
As to quantification, there is ample quantification of the adiabatic lapse rate in the literature. One needs only to Google it. This is the key parameter which determines how much warmer the surface is than the mean temperature of the whole Earth-plus-atmosphere system. This mean temperature cannot increase unless the intensity of solar radiation reaching the atmosphere and surface also increases, so you would have to turn up the Sun. That seems to be what br1 thinks we can do. …
His arguments are typical of those of scores of climatologists I have come across in recent times who pull out their first year physics formulas and apply them without regard to the prerequisites or prevailing conditions.
In his three plate example he talks about thermostatically controlled temperatures in plates. Well, if you turn up your thermostatically controlled electric hotplate on your stove, guess what – you need more power = more energy per second in order to maintain the new equilibrium. So when he claims his three plate experiment simulates the Sun / Earth system and he suddenly turns up the temperature of one plate, then that is equivalent to turning up the Sun. Where else could the extra power come from?
Then he wants to eliminate other heat transfer mechanisms purely because of the title of my paper. Well, in fact my paper does go on and apply the theory to atmospheric physics and so it also discusses related topics that go beyond the title. (How long would you like the title to be?) For example, in the Appendix it provides computational data deduced from climate records which shows that there has been no increase in the rate of warming in all the years since 1900. In fact, the underlying trend has decreased from about 0.06 C / decade around 1900 to 1930 to only 0.05 C / decade in recent decades. This is because the world is heading for another 1,000 year maximum, similar to the Roman and Medieval Warming Periods and many before that. If the world warmed at a mean rate of 0.06 C / decade, then it would warm by 3 C degrees in 500 years between the Little Ice Age and the approaching maximum of the current warming period. Is that in any way unrealistic or unbearable? How much more quantitative evidence would it be reasonable to expect showing that carbon dioxide has no effect?
There is only one issue in which I believe the early scientists were in error. Their mistake is understandable, but a better explanation is now available.
They have concentrated on two-way radiation examples, such as between two metal plates. Certainly we know that electromagnetic radiation transports radiated electromagnetic energy. And we also know that this energy is quite different from kinetic energy within molecules which gives us a temperature reading.
So, in classical thermodynamics the SLoT talks about any “process” between two “regions” in each of which there is a “measurable” temperature. It is not talking about energy conservation – that’s the First law. It is clearly talking about an independent, spontaneous process (without external energy being added) in which thermal energy is decreasing in one region and increasing by a corresponding amount in the other region. And it says that this can only happen if that second region is cooler and not being warmed above the temperature of the warmer region. This is what physics has said for about 150 years, well before Einstein and Co.
These physicists assumed that we could treat two independent processes (radiation A to B and B to A) as if they were one process with a net result. They realised that we could not physically combine the energy in the radiation itself into a net effect, so they assumed the compounding was done by first converting the radiated energy to thermal energy in each target. Sure, it’s easy to then add the thermal energy to what was already there and get a net effect showing what does in fact happen.
However, the cold to hot transfer, if it does involve conversion to thermal energy in the hot target, would be an independent process which would violate the SLoT.
So Claes and I deduce that the SLoT can only be upheld if in fact the only actual physical heat transfer is from hot to cold. This means that the energy in the cold to hot radiation cannot be converted to thermal energy, only that in the hot to cold radiation. That in the cold to hot radiation must be scattered or in some way immediately re-emitted before it can be converted to thermal energy.
br1 and others
Regarding your radio waves, if the wall is “transparent” then why would not the antenna also be transparent? How far will radio waves, in your view, sink into the Earth’s surface or the oceans? And if they do go far into what you think is transparent bricks or clay, then why don’t they eventually get absorbed and thus disappear, so we could not expect any reception at all a few hundred miles or Km away? How do all those photons “miss” all the molecules closely packed in a solid?
Anyway, if they don’t get absorbed then you are agreeing that it is possible to have an absorptivity measurement of zero for some long wave radiation. Why not also for LW from the cold atmosphere to the surface? It’s a bit hard to imagine it being transmitted into the depths of the Earth, so scattering (whereby there is a probability that it will come back out again) seems more feasible. But at least we seem to agree that it is not absorbed and its energy is not converted to thermal energy. That’s one giant leap beyond what the IPCC and many climatologists seem to think about backradiation and its supposed warming of the surface.
As I have said, radiation from the cooler atmosphere can only have an effect on the radiative component of surface cooling. That effect depends on just how similar or otherwise the source is to a true blackbody. A gas like CO2 with just a few spectral lines is way short of acting like a blackbody in which all frequencies within its Planck spectrum are represented. So CO2 offers minimal resistance to surface radiation, far less per molecule even than water vapour molecules, of which there are about 20 to 50 times as many, each having a greater effect. And there are other “gates” for the energy to escape from the surface by non-radiative means. The rates of evaporation and diffusion can be quantified with standard physics formulas, and will increase if the temperature gap widens due to any slowing of radiative cooling.
I remind you that your three plate experiment does not emulate the Sun + Earth system. By thermostatically controlling and increasing the temperature of the coolest plate you are increasing the net power input to the whole system, which would be like turning up the Sun. Atmospheric physics is far more complex than three metal plates, and is very unlikely to be emulated by any lab experiment such as the one you described.
The surface temperature is determined by both the solar intensity (fairly fixed in the long run) and the adiabatic lapse rate based on the force of gravity (even more fixed) and not by backradiation from water vapour or trace gases. The accusation that such WV and gases cause 33 degrees of warming is a complete travesty of physics.
The process in a radio antenna is somewhat similar to that in water molecules in a microwave oven. Neither is actually atomic absorption involving capture of photons and conversion of their energy to thermal energy. Instead, the antenna is of a certain length that helps it to resonate with the radio band (AM, FM, CB etc) that it is intended to receive. In the case of CB, for example, its length will usually be a quarter or an eighth of the wavelength. Being metal, it has free electrons on the surface which can resonate in a similar way to what happens in reflection. There is a sinusoidal wave which provides the exact phase, amplitude and frequency for tuning purposes, as well as a superimposed wave carrying the signal. The signal forms fringes around the sinusoidal wave. All of this “information” is picked up in the oscillations of the above electrons, and these oscillations are then processed and amplified with electrical input. If there is some energy loss in the antenna due to generation of heat, that is similar to the heat generated by friction in the water molecules in the microwave oven.
None of these processes, radio waves, radar waves or microwaves disprove the hypothesis that radiation which has wavelengths corresponding to spontaneous emission from a cooler source is not absorbed (in the usual atomic sense) in a warmer target, and its energy is not converted to thermal energy by electron capture processes at the atomic level. In fact, such radiation supports the hypothesis because of the lack of normal absorption.
Doug:
You can squirm all you like about magnitudes and compensating factors, but the fact remains that your principle that radiation from a cold source will scatter off a warmer body and so not affect its temperature is busted.
Please, please, please, think about it before posting more large quantities of nonsense.
I’m out of here. See you in another thread, maybe.
Well you certainly haven’t “busted” it. Clausius first stated the SLoT in 1850 and it has stood the test of time. It;s the IPCC and people like yourself who are posting “large quantities of nonsense” as dozens of scientists, not just those at PSI, now realise.
I can’t stop anyone continuing to believe the hoax, but the climate itself supports what we are saying, and never has supported the IPCC, now has it?
Even the fact that all the water vapour (with more spectral lines) has a potential effect on the rate of radiative cooling which is more than 100 times that of carbon dioxide ought to make you think.
As shown in the Appendix of my paper, there is still an underlying long-term natural warming trend at the rate of about half a degree per century, for at most another two centuries before global cooling sets in for the other half of the ~1,000 natural cycle. This cycle appears to be controlled by mechanisms not yet understood, but apparently related to the orbit of Jupiter and possibly its eccentricity. We don’t have to understand the mechanism – we just observe it, rather like gravity was just observed at first.
Think about the type of project $100 million would pay for at low labour rates in a developing country: maybe a dam for more clean water, maybe a hospital or the annual running costs of one. How many lives could that save? Now think of 1,000 such projects. That’s what could be bought with the $100,000,000,0000 which has been promised for such countries every year from 2020.
Those who keep propagating what is the biggest hoax in the history of mankind serve no other purpose than, at the very most, to prevent slowing of the rate of radiative cooling each night by a few seconds. It won’t stop the surface still cooling more by other means – well established physics formulas prove that evaporation and diffusion rates increase if slow radiative cooling leaves a bigger temperature gap between the surface and adjoining air layers. So, overall, it will achieve nothing – nothing but the biggest waste of money in modern human history.
Before you continue propagating the hoax for which you have fallen because of a lack of solid understanding of atmospheric physics, take a look at what I have explained, and take a look at what it is that you hope to achieve. I’m sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but I have compassion for the human race. People are people, wherever they live, and we should not be even thinking of saving our sea-side mansions at the expense of their lives.
Consider 100 billion carbon dioxide molecules clustered together as a small region of the gas at a typical atmospheric temperature of, say, -25 deg.C.
Can that region of gas radiate more than a true blackbody?
Hardly! The main spectral emission line which peaks at about -80 deg.C up in the mesosphere would be well off to one side of its Planck distribution. No particular line would be near the peak and there would be a lot of space unoccupied in the area under the Planck curve, unlike a true blackbody where the whole area would be filled in.
Now a true blackbody at -25 deg.C could indeed have a very small influence on some of the radiative cooling rate of the surface (which is 40 degrees warmer) though much would not be affected because nearly 30% of the radiation gets through the atmospheric window straight to space.
But how much effect is the carbon dioxide going to have compared with the small effect of a true blackbody?
And then, remember that only 1 in over 2,500 molecules is carbon dioxide anyway. And how many of them are due to mankind’s emission?
If you’d never heard of AGW, would you be convinced if I argued along these lines and tried to claim that, in effect, this slowing of just 25% of the total cooling rate of the Earth’s surface is going to cause a steeper adiabatic lapse rate – even though physics says that rate is a function of the force of gravity. If I put this forward as a new theory would you believe me?
How much longer are you going to be bluffed?
Climatologists have been wasting their time if they thought there is some connection between climate change and carbon dioxide levels, rather than planetary orbits or other natural cycles beyond the control of mankind.
Instead, they should have been looking at atmospheric physics. No warming of the surface and the surface layer of the atmosphere can occur unless there is additional thermal energy from somewhere. You cannot get additional energy from the Sun, and you cannot alter the adiabatic lapse rate (ALR) which determines the gradient, and thus the surface temperature, because the ALR is a function of the force of gravity acting through pressure.
Radiation from the atmosphere cannot transfer additional thermal energy to the surface, it can only slow down a portion of the cooling rate, that portion being less than 30%. But radiation from carbon dioxide has only a minuscule effect anyway because of its limited spectral lines as I explained in the last post above.
Physics also tells us (with exact equations for quantification) that, if the radiative rate of cooling slowed down, there would be a bigger temperature gap at the surface/atmosphere interface, and so evaporative cooling and diffusion rates would increase to compensate. Thus there is no effect at all on the overall rate of cooling. This is further supported by the fact that the level of Solar flux and the force of gravity acting on the ALR are going to ensure stability of climate.
“Physics also tells us (with exact equations for quantification)”
Pray tell us, what those exact equations are, and the “quantification” of them at the surface. What
“Climatologists have been wasting their time if they thought there is some connection between climate change and carbon dioxide levels, rather than planetary orbits or other natural cycles beyond the control of mankind.
Instead, they should have been looking at atmospheric physics. “
So …. planetary orbits are the sort of “atmospheric physics” that they should have been looking at, rather then studying actual components of the atmosphere???
“You cannot get additional energy from the Sun”
True enough, but since the sun is 5780K, you could in principle warm the surface of the earth up to this temperature without violating the 2nd Law. Anything that slows the cooling of the earth can help the sun raise the temperature of the earth toward that limit..
“you cannot alter the adiabatic lapse rate”
Since the “adiabatic lapse rate” is a theoretical result, based on idealizations, then it will indeed not change. But that is sort of like saying “cannot change the fact that the area of a circle is pi r^2″ or “you cannot change the Ideal Gas Law.” On the other hand, the environmental lapse rate can and does change. Heck you can even have temperature inversions where the lapse rate not only changes value, it changes sign!
“If you’d never heard of AGW, would you be convinced if I argued along these lines … ?”
Nope. Your arguments would not have convinced me of much.
The quantification for heat transfer between blackbodies is the standard calculation derived from the difference in the S-B calculations for the hot and cold bodies. There is a link to such in my paper – see Sections 2 to 4 for more detail, and my hypothesis uses the same quantification.
There are other posts here on tallbloke regarding the apparent correlation of planetary orbits with long-term solar cycles and climate. There are also linked documents on my first site and in the paper.
You display a serious misunderstanding of the physics relating to solar flux and how it diminishes with distance and is thus a function of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Yes, adiabatic lapse rates change with weather conditions, notably relative humidity, but we are talking climate not weather.
There is no process by which carbon dioxide can cause the surface to get warmer or to cool more slowly, as I have explained in the paper and in various posts in this thread.
“You display a serious misunderstanding of the physics relating to solar flux and how it diminishes with distance and is thus a function of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.”
I assume that you mean the line about the max temperature from the sun, in which case you display a serious misunderstanding of what I said. If you focus the sunlight (for example, with a lens or parabolic mirror) the maximum possible temperature you could reach is the temperature of the sun. Heating anything above this temperature WOULD be a violation of the 2nd Law. (Similarly, heating anything above the temperature of the atmosphere with lenses and/or mirrors is ALSO impossible, which is why you cannot hope to use IR from the atmosphere to boil water, even though there might me more W/m^2 of IR than sunlight at any given moment).
So, for example, I could heat a rock to 2000 C, and then put it inside an insulated container. Repeat. I could get an arbitrarily large collection of rocks inside the insulated container, with the average temperature approaching 2000 C. The theoretical maximum temperature is the temperature of the sun (ie the hottest object around), which is exactly what I claimed.
Even without mirrors or lenses, the noon temperature of rocks on a clear day would be ~ 120 C (394 K) (for a black body absorbing 1360 W/m^2). With clever insulation, we could heat an entire layer of the earth or moon to 120 C (even if the interior was cold to start with). We just have to let the sunlight in until the layer gets that hot, then insulate the layer so it can’t loose energy. Every day at noon, you re-warm the layer and then cover it with great insulation. The TOP of the insulation would have to be ~ 255 K on average to radiate enough energy, but layers that are under the insulation could be up to 120 C (or up to 5780 K with mirrors).
The earth naturally has a bit of such insulation. Greenhouse gases let the sunlight in (but not quite the full 1360 W/m^2), but then “insulate” the rocks so they can’t lose the energy as well. This leads to an average temperature between -18 C (with no insulation) and 120 C (with perfect insulation).
“There is no process by which carbon dioxide can cause the surface to get warmer or to cool more slowly … ”
The process is IR radiation, which is the topic of this whole thread. CO2 (along with gaseous water, liquid water droplets, O3, CH4 ….) send energy downward via IR radiation, slowing the loss energy. The rest is explained above.
You have obviously not read or understood my whole point about the minuscule degree to which spontaneous radiation from CO2 at atmospheric temperatures can in fact slow just a portion of the radiative component of surface cooling.
It cannot transfer thermal energy to the surface.
It cannot slow the portion of radiative cooling that goes through the atmospheric window to space.
It cannot slow the process of evaporative cooling of the surface
It cannot slow the process of cooling by diffusion (molecular collision) followed by convection
It cannot be anywhere near as effective as a true blackbody because it has far fewer spectral lines which represent a far smaller proportion of the area under its Planck curve, and thus affect the rate of radiative surface cooling far less than a blackbody would.
Finally, basic physics tells us that if the radiative rate were to slow by this minuscule amount, then the other rates would simply accelerate to compensate.
It would be appreciated if you could read my posts above regarding this. I appreciate that it was only mentioned in a few places in my paper (the Abstract, the last paragraph of Section 5 and Appendix Q.3) but I have said all the above in more than one earlier post in this thread.
And, no, your thought experiment supposedly heating a whole layer of the Earth’s surface with or without lenses, but just with “clever insulation” would not work. Firstly, lenses could not capture more than the total Solar insolation striking the Earth’s system. Secondly, your 1,360 W/m^2 could never be a mean power flux. It applies without an atmosphere only when and where the Sun is overhead.
If you had “clever insulation” it would also prevent the warming. In fact the water vapour and carbon dioxide do just that to some extent when they absorb some of the incident solar IR radiation and send its energy to space in upwelling backradiation. (See the graphic of Solar Radiation in my paper.) And, seeing that the oceans would be boiling at your 120 deg.C, there would be quite a bit of evaporation and thus more water vapour absorbing more incident radiation and having a greater cooling effect. And you could not stop heat losses by diffusion from the surface. Your whole thought experiment is so removed from reality that it is not worth discussing.
But you then glossed over the whole main point of my argument with your laconic statement (which is so typical of climatologists discussing AGW) “send energy downward via IR radiation, slowing the loss energy.” I have spent over 1,000 hours in research, and written 6.600 words in my paper explaining why your 10 words here are not correct in what they claim.
Furthermore, I back it up with facts such as that there is absolutely no evidence in the climate records since the year 1900 of any additional global warming above that which was to be expected and could have been predicted from the natural cycles clearly observed for thousands of years. There are other posts here on TT that provide evidence of such cycles and correlations with planetary events.
You still have not explained why the intense LW radiation in a microwave oven is not absorbed at the atomic level (ie in the same manner in which solar insolation is absorbed) and does not warm anything by any such absorption, even though the same objects (plastic, black metal etc) do get warmed in the Sun. Why is absorptivity apparently zero for these objects (even for ice cubes) and, given that it is, why could not the Earth’s surface also exhibit zero absorptivity for LW radiation from a cooler atmosphere?
I say that any radiation with peak frequency less than that being emitted by the surface does not get absorbed and have its energy converted to thermal energy in the surface. In due course there may be an experiment proving this, so what would you say then?
What is your explanation of the mechanism whereby radiation from a cooler object does in fact slow the rate of radiative cooling of a warmer body? Will your explanation stand if it is proved that there is no conversion to thermal energy in the surface?
“Finally, basic physics tells us that if the radiative rate were to slow by this minuscule amount, then the other rates would simply accelerate to compensate.”
There is lots I could say, but let me focus here on this one little comment.
Yes, the evaporation rate would increase, ut only in response to a slight increase in temperature.
Yes, thermals would increase, but only becasue the surface did, indeed get a tiny bit warmer.
Yes, IR radiatoin from the surface would increase, but that requires a warmer surface.
So if an extra 1 W/m^2 of downward IR radiation was suddenly added, the surface would have to eventually compensate, by adding a total of 1 W/m^2 of extra power leaving, ie
(extra evaporation + extra thermals + extra IR) = 1 W/m^2
But these number can only go up if the surface temperature goes up, at least a little. In order for “the other rates would simply accelerate to compensate”, the temperature must rise at least a bit to create the “acceleration”.
“What is your explanation of the mechanism whereby radiation from a cooler object does in fact slow the rate of radiative cooling of a warmer body?”
This is partly a semantic issue.
More specifically, I would say the radiation from the cooler object “slows” (ie decreases) the OVERALL rate of cooling. The radiation from the warm object continues pretty much the same with or without the “back radiation”, so the “radiative energy loss rate from the warm surface” would be considered constant. It is the “radiative energy gain rate” that changes by putting another object (of any temperature — hotter or cooler) nearby. The mechanism is absorption of photons.
The cooling rate is determined by the NET energy rates.
* no back IR –> large net energy loss –> “fast cooling”
* some back IR — > smaller net energy loss –> “slower cooling”
“You still have not explained why the intense LW radiation in a microwave oven is not absorbed at the atomic level…”
There is no reason to expect every material to absorb every wavelength. Some materials can be transparent to visible light; some are transparent to IR; some are transparent to microwaves. Is that really surprising? There are well-documented explanations for absorption of photons of various wavelengths (electrons jumpting to new levels, vibrations & rotations within molectules, dielectric hearing …). If there are things you don’t understand, go read up on these ideas.
“If you had “clever insulation” it would also prevent the warming. ”
My “clever insulation” is clearly more clever than your insulation.
Set a large rock out at noon — it warms to ~ 100 C. Then move the rock to an insulated styrofoam chest. The rock could easily stay warm until the next day if the insulation is good enough. Then open the box again to rewarm the rock. Then cover again ….
The OUTSIDE of the box would radiate slowly because it is relatively cool, but the inside can remain well above the “effective blackbody temperature”.
And for that matter, a traditional greenhouse is an example of “clever insulation”, since the interior remains at a higher average temperature than the surroundings
(You could do the same thing in reverse. It is like the old ice-houses. You could harvest ice in the winter and store it underground (‘well-insulated”). even in the summer the layer underground where the ice is stored could be well below the temperature determined by the radiation balance at the surface.
You said So if an extra 1 W/m^2 of downward IR radiation was suddenly added …
If such radiation from a cooler atmosphere is added, then exactly the same amount (with the same low frequency and low energy) will be “pseudo scattered” and the effect, energy-wise is exactly the same as if it had been reflected. So, no, it does not cause extra evaporation and thermals, because its energy is never converted to thermal energy.. That is where climatologists go very wrong in their thinking.
Hence your statement I would say the radiation from the cooler object “slows” (ie decreases) the OVERALL rate of cooling. is also wrong because you keep assuming thermal energy is added, but it isn’t, and if it were, then that would violate the SLoT.
Actually there are not well documented measurements of absorptivity for radiation with wavelengths typical of those coming from the cold atmosphere. In fact there is none, because absolutely none of it is absorbed and converted to thermal energy by absolutely any object which is warmer. So you have absolutely no data from which you can deduce that any radiation from the atmosphere would be absorbed – just like the microwave radiation is not absorbed and converted to thermal energy at the atomic level by anything.
Your assumption of a natural greenhouse effect depends upon your assumption that radiation from the atmosphere has any effect on surface temperatures. That assumption is incorrect, and so is the greenhouse conjecture.
Furthermore, there is no evidence in the climate data of any surplus warming above natural cycles at any time since 1900. In fact, the underlying rate of increase in the ~1,000 year cyclic trend is decreasing because it is approaching a maximum within the next 50 to 200 years, after which there is expected cooling for 500 years.
Regarding the insulating effect of the atmosphere, according to this net energy budget diagram, the atmosphere and clouds absorb or reflect a total of 45% of the energy in the total incident solar radiation, and the atmosphere and clouds also receive 45% of such energy from the surface, including “latent heat” and “thermals.” As I said, insulation works both ways. Remember also that carbon dioxide absorbs some IR solar insolation in the 2 micron band, and thus CO2 has a cooling effect resulting from some radiation of solar energy back to space. Each photon in the 2 micron band has five times the energy of each photon in the 10 micron band leaving the surface.
“If such radiation from a cooler atmosphere is added, then exactly the same amount (with the same low frequency and low energy) will be “pseudo scattered” “
You are still ignoring and/or missing a critical point. (It looks like one point I was trying to make earlier didn’t get through, so let me try one last time.)
Absoprtion (or reflection or transmission) depends on individual photons interacting with individual molecules. Individual photons do not have “distributions of frequencies”. An individual photon interacting with and individual molecules cares nothing about the “distrubution” of other photons or molecules that may be around.
Suppose a single IR photon with a wavelength of 6.0 um strikes an atom. We want to know if it will get absorbed. Do we need to know whether that photon came from a black body at 400 K vs a black body at 200K? Indeed, that is impossible to know since every 6.0 um photon is identical to every other 6.0 um photon. There is no little tag on the photon saying “I came from a 400 K black body, you can absorb me”. There is no little tag on the photon saying “I came from a 200 K black body, you must pseudo-scatter me”.
For that matter, you can’t define a “temperature” of the individual molecule that is doing the absorbing. That molecule has a specific speed, but that speed could correspond to a slow molecule in a hot material, or a fast molecule in a cool object. Does a molecule moving at 400 m/s “know” whether it is part of a 300K object or a 400 K object or a 200 K object?
So the individual photon doesn’t “know” what temperature it came from.
The individual molecule doesn’t “know” what temperature it is part of.
Yet somehow, they do know whether they should absorb or pseudo-scatter when they meet, based on these two unknown temperatures? Riiiiiight.
And with that I think I need to sign out here. You seem to be dead-set on ignoring 100+ years of physics and replacing broad swaths with your own physics. We are clearly never going to agree on much of anything, so there is really no point it continuing to try to point out the errors that I (and numerous others) see in your “paper” and in your reasoning.
No, it is climatologists who are ignoring physics that dates back to Clausius’ statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in 1850. You are entitled to your opinion, but you are mistaken. Your conjectures provide no explanation whatsoever as to how one-way radiation (in an independent process) only transfers heat when the SLoT says it can, namely if it is travelling from hot to cold objects. You cannot assume there will be some compensating radiation the other way and, even if there were, you cannot combine two independent processes into one. Clausius spoke of a single “process” and his statement has stood the test of time ever since. But now “post physics” is trying to overturn it by …
(a) Claiming that it is OK to excuse a violation of the SLoT by assuming a subsequent process can combine to give a net effect. (That is like parking your car for 80 minutes in a one hour spot, then assuming you won’t break the law if you then park it for only 20 minutes in another one hour spot, so that your average time was 50 minutes.)
(b) Thinking only of individual photons and ignoring the fact that the radiation is made up of a range of frequencies, as is well documented in the physics relating to Planck distributions. Corresponding frequencies in the source and target can and do resonate without having their EM energy converted to thermal energy. There is no need to “determine” the exact source temperature because the intensity of individual frequencies determines whether of not heat is transferred.
You have absolutely no empirical proof of …
(a) Any one-way radiation (such as from the atmosphere to a sub-surface layer of a lake) actually transferring heat.
(b) Any significant effect on the rate of radiative cooling due to radiation from CO2
(c) Any proof that the cooling effect due to absorption by CO2 of incident IR solar radiation is less than any warming effect
(d) Any empirical measurements of absorptivity by objects which are warmer than the source of spontaneous radiation.
(e) Any empirical proof of any global warming that is over and above what could easily have been predicted and attributed to long-term (~1,000 year) natural climate cycles.
To cap it all, you admit that a photon has an associated wavelength (because you qualify it with a wavelength in microns) and yet you then try to say that there is no associated brightness temperature. Yet basic physics (in the form of Wien’s Displacement Law) clearly states that the absolute temperature of the source is proportional to the peak frequency in the Planck curve associated with the radiation.
I never said one single photon provides this information, or that one single molecule determines the temperature of a region. But the SLoT was never applicable to one photon or one molecule. It does however apply to quite small regions which may have total mass of only a few picograms, so it certainly applies to climate and you will never be able to demonstrate that it does not apply for a single one-way process involving radiation. But, whilst I have explained a very plausible mechanism which would ensure this, you have not, because you think only in terms of two-way radiation which is not always applicable, and certainly is not relevant in a microwave oven, just for starters.
It’s simply mind-boggling ….
As an example, you say “Absorption (or reflection or transmission) depends on individual photons interacting with individual molecules.”
This is very clearly simply incorrect in the case of radiation in a microwave oven, for example. The heating of water molecules has nothing to do with individual photons. It has to do entirely with passing waves of radiation. The water molecules flip through 180 degrees as each half wave passes. That is, they make a complete rotation as they resonate with every full wave.
In similar fashion, there are “resonators” (which Prof Claes Johnson refers to) which cause resonance between incident radiation with frequencies which match the frequencies which the target itself is about to radiate. If two objects are at the same temperature, all radiation between them (each way) merely resonates like this and none of its energy is converted to thermal energy. Maybe you need to think of photons as being like drops of water which merge together into waves in the ocean. You can’t ignore the waves.
Because radiation travels one-way quite independently of any opposing radiation, every passage of (one way) radiation must obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT). We cannot assume that one lot of radiation “knows” there will be compensating heat transfer (some not even by radiation) the other way. That would be like water running up a hill because it knows it will run further down the other side. Yet that is what “post physics” tries to get us to accept when it talks about “net” flows!
The only way the SLoT can be obeyed is if the EM energy is not converted to thermal energy when the source is colder than the target. This is a perfectly logical deduction and what is observed when predominantly one way radiation occurs, such as in a microwave oven. It cannot be explained in any other way. It would be ludicrous to assume that absorptivity of water molecules was high just for a limited range of very low frequency radiation, not for radiation with frequencies either side. Reflection would have to vary in the opposite way, and there seems no reason for such. And if it were so for water, why not ice or numerous other materials? If is far more likely that nature obeys a simple rule of not converting the energy of radiation from a cooler source (or radiation with frequencies equivalent to a cooler source) because this also explains how nature observes the SLoT.
The importance of this is discussed in the final Q.7 in the FAQ’s in the Appendix of my paper. Briefly, it explains why radiation from carbon dioxide can only affect that component of surface cooling which results from radiation which does not get through to space, but is absorbed by the atmosphere. This component is less than 30% of all surface cooling for a start. But CO2′s effect is far, far less than a blackbody because it emits only a very limited range of frequencies which can resonate, compared with a blackbody or even a water vapour molecule. It is highly likely that the cooling effects of CO2 (discussed in Section 6) far outweigh the warming effect due to slowing radiative surface cooling.
“You can’t ignore the waves.”
Sorry, I have been silently following your conversation, and I also just came upon a great video you might want to watch. In Dr. Feynman’s four ancient videos on Q.E.D. (http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8) he is so adamant on the fact that it is photons, not waves, photons. “Ok”, he says, “photons!”. But later in his life, in fact just days before his death there was a video made on his attempts to take an adventure and visit a tiny, mostly un-heard-of country called Taunnu Tuva (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn4_40hAAr0). That is the video you should watch. You can skip into it to about the 34th minute where he starts speaking of the amazing complexity of radiative e/m waves, light, IR, radio waves, they are all the same. Waves, only e/m waves, not one single mention this time of photons, apparently he seems to have mellowed a bit in his older and wiser years, and he has a great description that parallels where you are trying to get Tim to see, the light of reality. But I have spoken with Tim for years now and I’m afraid he will never see the opposite but very important side on this subject, the cancellation (or as Feynman would put it, the zero amplitude due to the local surrounding matter that changes the space that does, in fact, affect whether a “photon” can even exist at that point of not, and it is always in flux). Well, I just thought that video might help or at least be deemed interesting to you, your conversation brought this to mind.
BTW, it’s a great video in it’s entirety, if you have the hour, as are his six hours on the theory of quantum electrodynamics in the first link above. I get more of them every time I take the time to listen one more time.
[Reply] Thanks Wayne! I saw the Tuva documentary when it was broadcast in the UK many years ago, and have always wanted to see it again. Now I can.
“This is very clearly simply incorrect in the case of radiation in a microwave oven, for example. The heating of water molecules has nothing to do with individual photons. It has to do entirely with passing waves of radiation. ”
This is a lot like saying “water spinning a turbine has nothing to do with individual water molecules. It has entirely to do with the viscosity, density, speed, etc of the passing fluid.”
It is often easier to deal with macroscopic properties like viscosity, but ultimately there are still individual water molecules hitting individual metal molecules of the turbine.
It is often easier to deal with macroscopic properties like EM fields, but ultimately there are still individual photons interacting with individual molecules in the microwave.
“Because radiation travels one-way quite independently of any opposing radiation …
Photons certainly pass each other in opposite directions without significant interaction. So I agree with this (as far as it goes).
“That would be like water running up a hill because it knows it will run further down the other side.
But water DOES run uphill all the time! Consider a stream moving “downhill” at 1 m/s. If you look microscopically, it is easy to find individual molecules moving at hundreds of m/s “upstream”. In fact, something like 49.9% of the atoms would be moving “upstream” at any instant, with something like 50.1% moving “downstream”.
It does not violate any law of physics for a single water molecule to move “upstream”. It does not violate any law of physics for a single photon to move from a “cold atom” to a “warm” atom.
“The only way the SLoT can be obeyed is if the EM energy is not converted to thermal energy when the source is colder than the target.
This is akin to saying “the only way for the SLoT to be obeyed when two objects touch is if atoms from the cooler object never transfer energy to the warmer object.” This would require Maxwell’s demon to cleverly prevent every atomic collision where the atom in the cooler object is going faster than the atom in the warmer object.
The process (atoms from the cold object hit atoms in the hot object) cannot to separated from the process (atoms from the hot object hit atoms in the cold object).
Similarly, the process (atoms from the cold object emit photons that hit atoms in the warm object) cannot be separated from the process (atoms from the cold object emit photons that hit atoms in the warm object). If one happens, the other must also happen!
If you truly think they can be separated, then state an experiment that could allow one process while preventing the other process. How will you allow photons one way, but not the other?
I fear this is once again going to fall on deaf ears, but others might think about it and start developing a deeper and more subtle understanding of thermodynamics.
In a microwave oven the individual photons are not captured (as in normal atomic absorption) and they do not raise atomic energy levels or in any way have their energy converted to thermal energy in the same manner as would happen if the same object were placed in the Sun. Instead, the whole molecule snaps through 180 degrees with each half wavelength, and heat is generated by the physical process of friction with other molecules. Ice is not affected because there is insufficient space for the molecules to rotate like this. So that is the sense of what I meant.
Your example of water molecules moving uphill is irrelevant because these movements are not independent. Obviously I am talking about dependency. If you have water moving upwards (on a macro scale) in a siphon it only happens because of a dependent process whereby more water goes downwards on the other side of the siphon. If you cut the siphon hose at the top you then have two independent processes, so the water no longer goes upwards. This is a reasonable analogy regarding the radiation as considered on a macro scale. The SLoT does not, and never has been intended to apply on an atom by atom basis – only for regions of measurable temperature which would normally have mass of at least several picograms.
You attempt to draw an analogy with conduction in saying “when two objects touch,” but such an analogy is not applicable to heat transfer by radiation.
The “experiment” you ask me to think about is happening all the time in the surface / atmosphere system. I have given examples of radiation from a cold atmosphere supposedly penetrating just below the surface of a lake and supposedly warming water there which does not radiate straight back to the atmosphere. Every sunny morning there is far more radiative flux into the surface because we know it is getting hotter. So how could extra flux from the atmosphere add further thermal energy to the surface in such a situation?
You have become far too influenced by false “post physics” aired by climatologists. Thermal energy is never transferred on a macro scale from a cooler region to a warmer region. Hence, the extremely limited radiation (due to limited frequencies) from carbon dioxide can never affect the rate of non-radiative cooling of the surface. The rate of radiative cooling which relates to just that radiation which is absorbed by the atmosphere could be affected, but the effect is far less than that of a blackbody and even far less per molecule than that of water vapour. I have maintained that this portion of radiative cooling is less than 30% of all surface cooling. This article today says it is only 20%. You may do well to read that article because it also confirms empirically that carbon dioxide is having no significant effect in the stratosphere, backing up what I have been saying.
In Section 6 of my paper I refer to the cooling effect of carbon dioxide due to its absorption of infra-red radiation from the Sun in the 2 micron range. It would appear from this article that much of this absorption is taking place in the stratosphere where temperatures increase in synch with solar radiation intensity.
There is little water vapour in the stratosphere, so most of the warming must be due to absorption of solar radiation by trace gases, and perhaps most of this is due to carbon dioxide. With the solar perihelion being around January 3, we in the Southern Hemisphere can probably be grateful that carbon dioxide would appear to be preventing our summer months getting quite as hot as they might otherwise have done. Put away that C tax, Australia!
Basically it comes down to this.
Every time you have an objection, I can provide a Real Physics™ explanation that seems to be in accord with textbooks and practicing physicists. You would rather create Cotton Physics™ where atoms seem to know the temperature of distant surfaces and adjust their behavior accordingly. In many ways, your explanation does work, and can be shoehorned with the SLoT. But it fails Occam’s Razor.
It is possible that I am wrong (I know I do make mistakes from time to time). It is possible that all the physics textbooks are missing some fundamental idea that a trained business administrator has uncovered. It is possible that the 5 people who reviewed your paper are sharper than the 1000′s of people who review papers for physics journals around the world.
After all, a patent clerk did turn the world of physics upside down. Like you, he joined a small group that discussed science. And like you, he published a paper on his work. Oh, but he published his subsequent paper in a highly respected journal. And then spent several years obtaining a PhD. And then published several more papers in highly respected journals, winning the respect of the scientific community.
It would be cool if you actually have discovered something new. Science always needs exciting new ideas. But you have a lot further to go to prove your point (like actually doing some math and showing precisely where you paradigm works while the others fail). Go to a university or two, and see who you can convince of your interpretation of thermodynamics and photons. I strongly suspect they will all try to gently convince you that you are badly mistaken.
There’s nothing new about the Second Law of Thermodynamics stated initially by Clausius in 1850.
There’s nothing new about Wien’s Displacement Law which tells us that the peak frequency (in a typical Planck distribution of frequencies emitted spontaneously) is proportional to the absolute temperature. How do you think scientists determine the temperature of a star?
I never said an atom had to determine the temperature of a distant source. Once again, you totally misunderstand the process of resonant scattering which I have described in my paper. But I’m surprised that you don’t realise that atoms act in a statistical fashion. What do you think the Planck distribution is based upon and caused by? Why is it so surprising that two blackbodies at the same temperature could emit the same distribution of frequencies, which thus resonate?
You might think Prof Claes Johnson’s work is “new.” OK, I accept that and my paper is built around his key concept therein. That’s the only “new” thing that requires any mathematics, and Claes has done the computations, so why do I need to do so? Any necessary calculations are already done and linked from my paper. Given that Johnson’s conclusions are obviously in keeping with the SLoT, whereas the earlier scientists (Boltzmann, Planck & Co) appear to be incorrect in their thinking on this particular issue, I’m happy to make use of those conclusions. There’s nothing else that is “new” in my paper which needs any further computations.
Scientists have been wrong on hundreds of issues in various fields in the past. Quite often this has led to the phenomenon of “Groupthink” and if you wish to cling to such that’s your prerogative. Others can read about it here.
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There is no a single “argument” that you have proposed which I have not in my mind countered in a subsequent comment above, Tim.
But let’s turn to what you call the “science.” How about you provide just one link to the best “scientific” paper which you consider uses standard physics to explain the mechanism by which carbon dioxide is supposed to cause global warming.
I would expect such a paper to discuss these points ….
(1) Regarding non radiative warming of the surface, whether and by what mechanism any “trapped” energy in the atmosphere could affect surface temperatures
(2) Regarding radiative warming – whether (a) thermal energy is actually added to a warmer surface by radiation from a cooler atmosphere, and/or (b) whether the non-radiative component of surface cooling is affected.
(3) Regarding the radiative component of surface cooling, what quantification there is as to the effect of carbon dioxide radiation from the atmosphere. This should include empirical measurements of both (a) emissivity of carbon dioxide at various atmospheric temperatures and (b) empirical measurements of absorptivity of the surface for such radiation from a cooler atmosphere.
(4) Quantification of the cooling effect of carbon dioxide as it emits towards space energy acquired by diffusion from other air molecules.
(5) Quantification of the cooling effect of carbon dioxide due to its absorption of incident IR solar radiation in the 2 micron range.
Doug, have you read the article from which Trenberth’s energy balance comes?
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/BAMSmarTrenberth.pdf
It describes in considerable detail the measurements and calculations they used (and references other papers for more details on specific topics.) It tends to be looking at the “big picture” rather than the individual effects of CO2 on the balance. Is there a specific calculation or experimental measurement you disagree with?
Beyond that, I am not sure what else I could say. Science is not done is one comprehensive paper. There are thousands of papers, each of which is one thread in a larger tapestry. Around the edges there are loose ends that people work to better weave into the overall picture. Your theories are basically proposing to rip big holes through the fabric, claiming they are wrong. This means a major unraveling of many ideas.
Now, such changes do come about from time to time. Relativity is one example. Quantum mechanics is another. Your “resonant scattering” would not be such a major rip, but it would require rewriting a considerable chunk of physics. Without extraordinary experimental and theoretical evidence of the superiority of your approach, you cannot expect people to accept your extraordinary claims.
>But I’m surprised that you don’t realise that atoms act in a statistical fashion.
[Sigh]. I have been trying to get you to accept the statistical nature of thermodynamics! That statistical nature says that “cold atoms” can send photons to “hot atoms” even though a single such event would lower the entropy of the universe and violate the SLoT. In fact, the SLoT is violated all the time in individual events, but the statistics of large numbers always shows an increase in entropy. The field is known as “Statistical Mechanics” and requires a statistical approach to understand what the SLoT is actually about !
>What do you think the Planck distribution is based upon and caused by?
>Why is it so surprising that two blackbodies at the same temperature could
>emit the same distribution of frequencies,
You had me this far …
>which thus resonate?”
And then you lost me. One guitar string can resonate with another guitar string. A sound wave can resonate in a chamber, leading to a standing wave. Cavity radiation is sometimes described standing waves “resonating” inside a conducting box.
But I still don;t know what you mean for a “distribution of frequencies” to “resonate” with another distribution of frequencies.
And at this point, I don;t think I ever will understand ….
“There’s nothing new about the Second Law of Thermodynamics stated initially by Clausius in 1850.”
Yes, there is!
* There are other statements that sound different, but are equivalent (eg Kelvin). This is only a minor advancement.
* There is an equation that quantifies entropy dS = dQ/T. This allows calculations, which is a big step forward
* There is the fundamental postulate of statistical mechanics. The SLoT is now considered a result of this more fundamental idea, rather than the SLoT being a fundamental idea. This is a huge leap in understanding!
In particular, if you don’t understand the fundamental postulate of statistical mechanics, you don’t really understand the modern interpretation of the SLoT.
I need to stop catching glimpses of past posts! Time for me to sign out of this discussion …
Tim, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you cannot point me to even just some review of the various papers which brings it all together, and if you can’t point me to anything which verifies or quantifies any of the above five points, then the “warmist” chain has several weak links.
Do you really want to know just some of the things which are wrong with the Trenberth energy analysis? OK, here goes …
(1) Order of uncertainty: TOA net radiative flux rarely in practice goes outside the range of plus or minus 0.5% of total incident solar radiation. Yet KT et al seem to think they can put together several “measurements” each of which is acknowledged to have at least 1% uncertainty, calculate a difference and somehow end up with a result like plus 0.5% instead of -0.5%. Basic statistics says the uncertainty in the result is far greater than 0.5% and so they cannot determine whether it is positive or negative with any reasonable certainty.
(2) TOA net flux is highly likely in the long run merely to reflect what we already know, namely that for the period since the Little Ice Age the World has been warming at a mean rate of about 0.06 C degrees per decade, now reduced to about 0.05 C deg / decade in SST data, based on the gradient of the trend in 60 year moving averages. If there is in fact a 1,000 year natural cycle (probably related in some way to planetary orbits) then KT is telling us absolutely nothing that we could not deduce from the long-term records and historical information about such things as Roman and Medieval warming.
(3) When thermal energy transfers from the surface to the atmosphere at least 70% does so by non-radiative processes This can be confirmed by the various laws of physics for evaporation, conduction (or diffusion) and radiation. KT diagram shows nothing like this breakdown, because he assumes that when “backradiation” is absorbed by the surface that its energy is converted to thermal energy, but he then assumes that all that new thermal energy acts differently from the other thermal energy in the surface. Apparently this new thermal energy remembers that it came from backradiation and thus exits 100% by radiation alone. (Now if he acknowledged that backradiation is in fact scattered then I would actually agree, but he doesn’t.)
(4) Now look at the comparison of energy “absorbed by the surface” namely, 161 W/m^2 direct from the Sun and 333 W/m^2 from the atmosphere. With so much more from the atmosphere, why does a wooden table prevent frost forming beneath it when it shields the ground from some of this backradiation at night? Why can frost remain on the ground all day long in the shade of a tree, whilst the Sun quickly melts that which is not shaded? Why can’t we detect any warming whatsoever by backradiation at night, even in the most sensitive instruments? All we can detect in a bolometer, for example, is different rates of cooling of its plates.
(5) The flux of backradiation is in fact “measured” by mere calculations which have to start with determining the mean temperature of the atmosphere. They then assume that carbon dioxide and its colleagues have a far higher emissivity than is the case, without having any empirical data to support this assumption. It is absurd to assume that a gas like carbon dioxide (emitting just a few spectral lines) can radiate anywhere near as much as a blackbody which emits all frequencies in its Planck distribution. Try inserting emissivity of, say, 0.02 and see how much backradiation you get from carbon dioxide. Obviously the vast majority (over 99%) is from water vapour.
(6) Likewise KT assumes that the absorptivity of the surface is the same for backradiation as it is for solar radiation. This is absurd, when you acknowledge that absorptivity varies with the brightness temperature of the source, such as we see in a microwave oven.
(7) At no point are most of my five points even discussed, let alone quantified. It is obviously critical to quantify the cooling effects of carbon dioxide as it captures 2 micron photons from the Sun which have five times the energy of 10 micron photons from the surface.
Overall, whatever is calculated from energy diagrams and models based on such false assumptions is a matter of garbage in = garbage out.
If you do not accurately consider the role of long-term and short-term natural cycles you are merely observing that these are happening and wrongly attributing the effect to anthropogenic causes. There is absolutely no basis for assuming from standard physics and statistics that carbon dioxide can have any effect whatsoever.
For a real energy diagram and further reasons why AGW is a hoax see this page written last year on my initial website.
Regarding the “resonant scattering” I believe that, between Claes Johnson’s paper and my own you should be able to get a better understanding than you apparently have. That radiation which resonates corresponds to the identical radiation which both the hot and cold bodies radiate as represented by the area under the Planck curve for the cold one. (The Planck function is of course a statistical distribution, so that should make you happy.) That lower curve is fully contained within the larger area under the Planck curve for the hot body. Only the radiation represented by the area between the curves represents the one-way transfer of thermal energy from hot to cold which will happen, even if there is no radiation from cold to hot. In fact, it happens all the time with solar radiation warming the surface each sunny morning, well before any of it gets back to the Sun 16 minutes after it first set out from there.
Let me assure all readers that I am quite aware of the statistical mechanics approach to explaining the general Second Law of Physics relating to entropy. My point, however, is that the original Clausius statement of the more narrow Second Law of Thermodynamics is still applicable and far from being “new” simply because it was proposed in 1850 and has stood the test of time.
We do not need to extend our considerations to entropy when we are merely questioning whether or not thermal energy is transferred from a cooler region of the atmosphere to a warmer region of the surface by radiation or any other spontaneous heat transfer mechanism. The SLoT says it cannot be transferred by such mechanisms, and that is all we need to know.
We do not need to understand how or why the SLoT works for radiation. Claes and I have discussed a reasonable postulate as to a resonance mechanism causing scattering, but whether anyone chooses to believe this or not, it does not alter the fact the the SLoT cannot be violated.
Yet Trenberth energy budget diagrams clearly show backradiation “absorbed by the surface” and thus they imply thermal energy is transferred from the atmosphere to the warmer surface. They then make a further blunder in assuming that all this new thermal energy then comes back to the atmosphere as radiation, none of it causing additional evaporation of the water it strikes, or additional sensible heat transfer from the land surfaces it supposedly warms.
It is standard physics which tells us Trenberth is wrong about this. Physics also tells us about Planck distributions for which the area under the Planck curve represents a continuous spread of frequencies being radiated by a blackbody. And physics tells us that carbon dioxide has very limited frequencies at which it radiates, none of which are at their peaks at typical atmospheric temperatures, so CO2 has no hope of radiating anywhere near as much as a blackbody.
There is nothing new in the physics mentioned here, which is quite sufficient to demonstrate the fact that AGW is a complete fabrication and travesty of physics.
(1) Statistics is a tricky beast. Sometimes putting together multiple measurements leads to larger errors, but sometimes it reduces errors.
Which specific calculations or estimates do you disagree with?
(2) “If there is … probably related … ” Sounds pretty vague. What evidence do you have for a 1000 year cycle? What REASON are we “coming out of the LIA”?
(3) “he then assumes that all that new thermal energy acts differently from the other thermal energy”. REALLY? Can you show any quote from his paper that would support your claim?
(4) “why does a wooden table prevent frost forming beneath it when it shields the ground from some of this backradiation at night?”
Seriously? If this causes you difficulties, you have no understanding of radiation! The table, being at roughly the surface temperature EMITS ITS OWN THERMAL RADIATION! In fact, since the wood is a) warmer than the atmosphere and b) a higher emissivity than the atmosphere, putting a table over the ground will provide MORE thermal radiation to the ground (and hence keep the ground warmer under the table). (This is why cars parked under unheated covers are often frost-free on mornings when cars in the open are frosted over.)
(5)
>The flux of backradiation is in fact “measured” by mere calculations
No, it is measured with IR spectrometers. You can get a rough measurement with a $50 IR thermometer.
>They then assume that carbon dioxide and its colleagues have a far higher
>emissivity than is the case, without having any empirical data to support this assumption.
Really? Or are you just assuming without any empircal evidence? What do you think the “emissivity” of CO2 is (and in what conditions)? What value do “they” assume?
>It is absurd to assume that a gas like carbon dioxide (emitting just a few spectral
>lines) can radiate anywhere near as much as a blackbody …
I say it is absurd that you assume that they assume such a thing. Who makes this assumption, and where? “Everyone who is anyone” knows CO2 radiates much less than a blackbody. Perhaps you are confusing CO2 with clouds (which DO radiate much like a blackbody!)
>Try inserting emissivity of, say, 0.02 ..
Why should I do that??? Provide a reference that gives such a value for CO2 several km deep in the atmosphere.
>Obviously the vast majority (over 99%) is from water vapour.
Mathematicians joke that whenever some one says “obviously” it signals the most promising spot to look for flaws. Please provide any sort of justification for this bold claim. (And while you are at it, could you clarify if you mean “over 99% of the IR radiation from the atmosphere to the surface”.)
(6)
>Likewise KT assumes that the absorptivity of the surface is the same for
>backradiation as it is for solar radiation.
No. Wrong again. The surface reflects (23/184) = 12.5%, or absorptivity of 0.875. Absorptivity of IR “backradiation” is typically taken to be around 0.95 (often 1.0 for simplicity in some rough estimates.)
>There is absolutely no basis for assuming from standard physics and statistics that
>carbon dioxide can have any effect whatsoever.
This one made me laugh. The prominent expert Doug Cotton disagrees with you, saying “It is obviously critical to quantify the cooling effects of carbon dioxide as it captures 2 micron photons from the Sun which have five times the energy of 10 micron photons from the surface.” He obviously believes CO2 can have a cooling effect dues to 2 um photons (and presumably a warming effect from those 10 um photons).
Finally, as near as I can tell, “resonant scattering” means “subtraction”. You take the upward flux and subtract the downward flux and get the net flux.
Ah .. but this is pointless. We both know what we think, and nothing the other says is likely to make a difference. I admire your passion, but I think you need more background in science before claiming that the entire physics community understands thermodynamics and thermal radiation less well than you do.
The following attempts to rebutt Claes and myself, citing our papers …
http://www.prlog.org/11863098-global-warming-skeptics-misinterpret-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics.html
The author of the article is mistaken. The SLoT has to apply (on a statistical basis over many molecules) no matter what. It is not about conservation of energy – that’s the First Law.
In fact CO2 frequencies correspond to very low temperatures anyway, mostly only found in the mesosphere around -70 to -90 deg.C.
No solid, liquid or gas can radiate any frequency at a greater intensity than that determined by the Planck curve. If it did it would indeed be possible to violate the SLoT. But this article is just hand waving and the author appears to be unaware of this important fact of physics.
In fact, the spectral lines for CO2 are off to one side or the other in the Planck curve for its current temperature, and this means its total intensity of radiation is very restricted at atmospheric temperatures.
Notice how the article fails to mention any of this basic physics.
The resonating (resonant scattering) process does not require specific heat capacity because the energy that is re-radiated never became thermal energy. Individual atoms are just as capable of doing this radiating as are atoms in molecules of pure gases. There will be of course a statistical distribution involved.
Tim – I really don’t need to go through all your “points” yet again as I have already made a response in the paper and in earlier posts.
But I will just comment briefly on some …
Handwaving comments about statistics don’t negate the simple addition of error bars in both subtraction and addition, this giving a near enough indication of the error in the result.
If you think they assume carbon dioxide only emits a very small proportion of all that backradiation shown, then what is all the fuss about? If you don’t think they are assuming that all the backradiation exits again as radiation, then why is the radiation from the surface about double what the Sun provides into the surface?
A spectrometer will of course determine frequency first. Then that is converted to temperature using Wien’s Displacement Law. Then we need emissivity assumptions to determine radiative flux. IR thermometers of the nature of the cheaper microbolometers measure the rate of cooling of their plates, in order to determine temperature, as I said. Nothing measures actual intensity of radiation. That is why all such measurements have to be calibrated and assumed values of emissivity inserted into the instrument in order to convert temperature estimates to assumed radiative flux. Prof Nasif Nahle’s paper linked from mine discusses backradiation measurements in plenty of detail.
You say Absorptivity of IR “backradiation” is typically taken to be around 0.95 (often 1.0 for simplicity in some rough estimates.)
If there is one thing I seriously challenge you to produce, it would be empirical evidence that absorptivity of backradiation by a warmer surface has been measured as anything like 0.95.
I suggest the onus is upon the IPCC to produce such empirical evidence which has never been forthcoming. Absorptivity “measurements” are all done with light as far as I can ascertain, and this has absolutely no applicability for LW radiation from a cooler source.
That, as I say in Section 7, is where the models go wrong. Absorptivity by the surface of low frequency radiation from cooler regions of the atmosphere is zero (0.000…) because if that were not the case then the SLoT would be violated. It is also zero for low frequency radiation in a microwave oven, which is the reason for the discussion thereon.
It is not unrealistic to “guess” that the area under the Planck curve is at least 50 times the area of fine spectral lines of CO2 – thus my 0.02 figure. Show me empirical data proving anything much greater. Likewise, water vapour could easily have five times the area in its spectral lines, and seeing that it has at least 20 times the number of molecules, that is how I get the 1% figure. Obviously these are just order of magnitude guesses, but as far as I can ascertain, there is no empirical data for such at typical atmospheric temperatures. These are things which the IPCC should have verified empirically right from the word “go” before launching their AGW conjecture.
And when you refer to the “entire physics community” you might do well to remember that there are already 9,000 signatures from persons with PhD’s who consider CAGW to be false – plenty in physics I would suggest.
Finally, yes I should have said “carbon dioxide can have no net warming effect” but I thought it would have been obvious that was what I meant in the context of discussing A G Warming. Personally I believe it has a small net cooling effect which is not detectable, but I’m not trying to push this, let alone quantify it as that would be next to impossible with the data available..
“It is not unrealistic to “guess” that the area under the Planck curve is at least 50 times the area of fine spectral lines of CO2 – thus my 0.02 figure.”
1) Guessing is never a good idea in science. With a lot of experience, then sometimes guessing can produce reasonable results
2) It is easy to find graphics of atmospheric absorption. I am sure you are familiar with pictuers like this: http://oz.deichman.net/uploaded_images/molecular_absorption_spectra-739540.gif
or this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/infrared_spectrum.jpg
A casual glance suggests the CO2 absorption is way over 2%
3) More detailed data is available, for example here: http://thesis.library.caltech.edu/2809/1/Lapp_m_1960.pdf
In particular, a column of atmosphere ~ 12 feet tall at 400 PPM CO2 would have the emissivity of 0.02 you “guessed”. So the first 12 feet would provide the radiation you expect.
The lowest 120 feet has an emissivity of ~ 0.07.
The lowest 1200 feet has an emissivity of ~ 0.15
“If there is one thing I seriously challenge you to produce, it would be empirical evidence that absorptivity of backradiation by a warmer surface has been measured as anything like 0.95.”
The empirical evidence is that you can look up the measured emissivity in dozens of places for dozens of materials. None of these say “These are the emissivity values when the other other object is cooler. If it mattered, at least SOME of the tables would mention how the OTHER temperature affected things.
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“And when you refer to the “entire physics community” you might do well to remember that there are already 9,000 signatures from persons with PhD’s who consider CAGW to be false – plenty in physics I would suggest.”
And your point is ….?
You think that just because many people question the catastrophic aspects of global warming, that they automatically question every single aspect? You think that they all think that since one part or other is wrong, that they automatically think your alternate is right?
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Sorry, Doug, but it is just not worth it any more.
Warmists make the huge mistake of assuming they can add the emissivities of various mixed gases in the atmosphere. If you did that for all the elements in the surface you would get a total above 1.0 which is impossible, because no frequency can be radiated at an intensity of more than that which a blackbody would radiate, and so its intensity is limited by the Planck curve.
If you think of the total area under the Planck curve as representing true blackbody radiation, then the area of the thin emission lines of a gas represent its emission. If, as is the case, the emission lines for CO2 mostly overlap those for water vapour, then adding CO2 to existing water vapour may have little or no additional effect on the amount of radiation from the atmosphere.
This paper gives information about just how low is the emissivity of carbon dioxide. If there is one single point that really knocks AGW on the head, it is this.
Tim, before reading your response I had written the above post which I would ask you to read as well as Prof Nahle’s linked document. The important point is that, for those frequencies for which water vapour is already emitting, carbon dioxide can emit no more. So you cannot just consider the emissivity of an isolated gas and assume that you can calculate the additional radiation it will produce when mixed with other gases.
You are mistaken if you think absorptivity does not vary with the temperature of the source. Of course the papers you refer to don’t mention this, if the authors even know it. After all, they have an agenda, as do the peers who review them. If you actually have understood the first few sections of my paper you would see why I differ strongly with you on this issue and stand firm in my statement that any absorption of radiation by a warmer surface which were to lead to additional thermal energy being transferred to a region of that surface from a cooler region of the atmosphere would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics as stated by Clausius in 1850 and still true today. All the statistical mechanics approaches to the SLoT gloss over errors they in fact make in their original assumptions that appear to consider that independent processes (such as opposing radiation) can be treated as a single process and only a net effect considered relevant.
As I have said, it’s garbage in, garbage out. If you assume surface absorptivity of radiation from a cooler source > 0 (where “absorptivity” is assumed to imply conversion of electromagnetic energy to thermal energy – as distinct from immediate, dependent re-emission) then you are assuming that the SLoT can be violated by such a process. Nowhere in the Statistical Mechanics analysis is the restriction of the SLoT actually imposed on each process. All they consider is energy conservation as per the First Law of Thermodynamics, not the Second. Instead of imposing the condition that the SLoT must apply for each one way independent process, they merely look at the end result of two or more such processes and say “Ah, the SLoT did apply after all for the “net” result.”
But nature doesn’t work that way. Sorry, but you’re wrong, and so are all who claim such.
This is interesting and relevant …
An internal study by the U.S. EPA completed by Dr. Alan Carlin and John Davidson concluded the IPCC was wrong about global warming. One statement in the executive summary stated that a 2009 paper found that the crucial assumption in the Greenhouse Climate Models (GCM) used by the IPCC concerning a strong positive feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence and that the feedback is actually negative. Water vapor in the atmosphere causes a cooling effect, not a warming one. Carbon dioxide also causes a slight cooling effect but it so small it could never be measured by man’s instrumentation.
EPA tried to bury the report. An email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Dr. Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbade him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues. In a March 17 email from McGartland to Carlin, stated that he will not forward Carlin’s study. “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator (Lisa Jackson) and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. …. I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” A second email from McGartland stated “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”
McGartland’s emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Dr. Carlin’s study because its conclusions ran counter to the EPA’s current position. Yet this study had its basis in three prior reports by Carlin (two in 2007 and one in 2008) that were accepted. Another government cover-up, just what the United States does not need.
Eliminate this regulation immediately. This is a scientific tragedy.
Doug
This is interesting for two reasons.
1.The post itself.
2. The fact that its a straight lift, word for word, from a post on potential temperature on Science of Doom.
Its good courtesy to give credit to your source!
I originally received it on May 5th in a widely circulated email from Bob Ashworth.
[reply] This Bob Ashworth? http://www.energypulse.net/centers/author.cfm?at_id=1100
Consider this: water vapour molecules are roughly 20 to 50 times more prolific than carbon dioxide molecules. H2O also radiates in many more frequency bands, so the radiation from each molecule must be several times as effective as that from a CO2 molecule. Put these facts together and all the water vapour is probably at least of the order of 100 times or more more effective than all the carbon dioxide molecules.
Effective at what? Effective at slowing just the radiative component of surface cooling.
But, wait there’s more!
We measure “climate” in just the first 2m of the atmosphere because weather station specifications say thermometers should be in enclosures which are 1.5 to 2 metres above the ground.
If radiation from the surface is absorbed at various altitudes and more of it where the temperatures are colder, what very small percentage is going to be absorbed in the first 2 metres?
Could this very minute amount of the radiation which is playing a part in cooling the surface actually maintain that first two metres at a similar temperature to the surface itself? Hardly. Convection would take the energy up into the sky far faster.
Now evaporation really doesn’t have much net effect. Why? Because most rain and snow returns to the surface at roughly the same temperature as the surface. This in fact is the only physical heat transfer from the atmosphere to the surface and, ironically, the IPCC diagrams don’t show it! Instead they show radiation transferring heat to the surface which it cannot do from a cooler atmosphere because entropy would decrease if it could.
So what keeps the air we breathe at nearly the same temperature as the surface, day or night?
Molecular collisions at the surface/air interface – otherwise known as conduction or diffusion.
And carbon dioxide can have absolutely no effect upon the rate at which heat transfers from the surface to that air by such physical, non-radiative processes.
There’s an interesting experiment being discussed among my colleagues that demonstrates how radiation in a microwave oven passes right through the material in those plastic bowls shown in this photo and heats water inside just as quickly as it heats the water in the two glasses on the outside. Pour two glasses of water into the lower container and tape an identical container upside-down above it as shown. Operate the oven for 4 to 5 minutes and measure the temperatures of all the water. That in the glasses may even be a couple of degrees cooler.
So, for those who think that low frequency radiation warms everything, this shows not that it is transmitted in the usual way (because the containers are opaque even to sunlight) but that the radiation undergoes resonant (or pseudo) scattering, which means some follows random paths and gets through to the other side. This confirms the existence of this scattering process which Prof Claes Johnson explained.
My paper has been cited in Joe Postma’s new paper, including a quote from myself pp 47-49.
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Absence_Measureable_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
All should read Joe’s excellent publication.
IN SUMMARY …
Those who still believe the carbon dioxide hoax need to come to realise that energy balance does not determine climate. It’s the other way round. Climate determines energy balance. Climate itself is determined by the incident solar energy which fluctuates in long term natural cycles probably related to planetary orbits.
Earth’s surface temperature cools as heat from the Sun is transferred back to the atmosphere. This process is dominated by sensible heat transfer, not by radiation which accounts for less than 30% of such transfers.
All that backradiation can possibly do (according to physics) is slow that 30% of cooling which is due to radiation. Meanwhile, the other 70% merely accelerates to compensate, thus leaving no net effect on the overall rate of cooling. What comes in from the Sun will get out again by one means or another. When there are long periods of natural warming there will of course be a build up of energy being retained. The thermometers tell us that, without even having to measure the energy balance. But the opposite is the case when cooling sets in.
Backradiation is not the cause, because it cannot transfer heat to a warmer surface. It can only slow radiative cooling. See my peer-reviewed paper linked at the top of this thread, recently cited by Joseph Postma in his October 2012 paper.
Doug Cotton
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Following the paper by Joe Postma, please do read my paper:
http://www.tech-know-group.com/papers/IR-absorption_updated.pdf
It deals also with the suggestions of Claes Johnson.
Avoid two-way heat flow, it gives spurious absorption!
Doug Cotton,
I communicated with the designer, fabricator, and user of an AERI instrument used in the ARM Program. Here are the main points:
1) The instrument measures equal radiations day and night for wave lengths longer than 5 microns.
2) At night some of the measured radiations come from the instrument itself.
When you calculate how much are the radiations from the instrument to the IR detector, you will find that it is around 200 W/m2. Therefore, at night, the measured backradiations are from the instrument itself and not from the atmosphere. Infrared astronomy, which is very accurate in measuring the downwelling infrared radiations, shows no IR backradiations from the atmosphere at night.
Obviously we made a mistake in interpreting the data measured by the AERI instrument. You are more than welcome to conduct your own investigation, and I would be pleased to give you contact information to save you time.
The concept of backradiations inherently adds energy to the atmosphere from nowhere, which is impossible. It is approximately equal to heating the atmosphere by 70 degrees centigrade above that of the surface. This is a huge energy term, in the order of 3.7E23 Joules, incorrectly added to the energy equation of the earth.
We must discontinue using the concept of backradiations and move on to another that makes physical, scientific, and mathematical sense. And you should stop mentioning the backradiations term because backradiations do not exist.
Nabil – what you say is interesting, but what I am saying is that you are incorrect in saying that the concept of backradiation “inherently adds energy to the atmosphere from nowehere.” Instead, it is much more akin to light being reflected back and forth between two parallel mirrors facing each other. There is no gain in total energy of course, but still plenty of radiation in each direction. If you have water vapour molecules up there radiating, then that radiation will be in all directions. There is no doubt that such radiation from low clouds temporarily slows the rate of radiative cooling of the surface. So there must be some of it.
The last 14 years of world climate records clearly indicate that there has been no net warming since this time in 1998. That is, there has been no net accumulation of energy in the Earth system – probably a slight loss in fact. So net radiative imbalance at TOA must also have been in accord with a cooling climate, not a warming one.
But all those energy diagrams and models “predicted” carbon dioxide would cause extra warming. If this fails to happen in 14 years, it can also fail to happen in the next 600 years, by which time I predict the world will be back at a minimum similar to the Little Ice Age.
The reason the energy diagrams are wrong is because they assume (and clearly indicate) dual heat flows between the surface and the atmosphere. They imply that radiation always transfers heat in the same direction. They assume that, if the net heat transfer is from hot to cold, then all is OK. But the two processes they assume happen are independent. A heat flow by radiation from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface does not force a greater flow of radiation out of the surface which is due to the surface being warmed more. Any such preliminary warming, no matter how infinitesimal, would be a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The only possible correct physical explanation is that which I have summarised starting on p.47 of Joseph Postma’s October 2012 paper. My reasons for such are also therein.
Unless and until scientists understand when and by how much radiation transfers heat, they will continue to fumble with hypothetical, invalid concepts which mislead the world with their carbon dioxide hoax.
“Unless and until scientists understand when and by how much radiation transfers heat, they will continue to fumble with hypothetical, invalid concepts which mislead the world with their carbon dioxide hoax.”
Doug, the climate researchers and scientists have been working on the subject for over a century and at a cost that has exceeded 50 billion dollars. If they have been unable to find an answer to your question with all of the resources and time provided, then when will they?
They cannot all be stupid, there must be something wrong with the concepts themselves.
The concepts relating to transfer of energy by radiation left Einstein baffled all his life. The early physicists were indeed not correct in assuming there was two-way transfer of heat. It took the brilliance of Claes Johnson, Professor of Applied Mathematics, to analyse the process computationally and come up with a very different explanation – an explanation which, unlike that of the early scientists, did not involve a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. My paper (linked at the top) was intended to help explain to the public the consequences of what Claes had shown. Like all new discoveries, it can be many years before they are accepted by a consensus.
It is very clear that “scientists” can be very wrong (“stupid” if you like to call it that), as they have been in attributing warming to carbon dioxide and saying it acts like a blanket. Click here to see a net energy budget diagram which is on page 2 of my first website. Note that conduction is shown as 7% of incoming solar radiation, latent heat as 23% and the total from the surface is 51%. So this diagram implies (7+23)/51 or about 59% of energy from the surface is by other than radiation. I say 60% to 70% in fact because I believe, from other reading, that the diagram understates conduction and evaporation.
Either way, it is clear that a lot of energy is not radiated from the surface but, instead, finds its way into the atmosphere via oxygen, nitrogen and water vapor molecules, not by photon capture in carbon dioxide molecules.
Non-radiating molecules, mostly oxygen and nitrogen, thus act like an insulating blanket. Carbon dioxide does the opposite..
When CO2 molecules do capture, they are more likely to then radiate that energy away, or transfer it by diffusion to cooler oxygen or nitrogen molecules. It can then diffuse to water vapor and be radiated away. Without radiating molecules (the holes in the blanket) things would get very hot up there. I assure you.
In Maxwell’s Theory of Heat on pages 244 & 245 he describes how a gas only absorbs radiation when it is cooler than the emitter. This is what Prof Claes Johnson has established computationally. It is the reason why energy in backradiation from a cooler atmosphere is not converted to thermal energy in a warmer surface, so there is no heat transfer. You can read Maxwell with these links p.244 and p.245
Conclusion
In response to a question about the article published today (to which I contributed) I will summarise what would happen in a hypothetical Earth with no water and an atmosphere of only nitrogen and oxygen, assumed not to radiate or absorb.
If this were the case the Earth’s surface would receive more radiation during the day because there would be (virtually) no absorption of incident solar radiation. When you then apply S-B (using integration on a real-world spherical surface) the majority of the radiation would take place directly from the surface at these hotter temperatures.
But there would still be an adiabatic lapse rate ensuring that the nitrogen and oxygen are much warmer at the base of the atmosphere than at the top, even if no energy flows in and out of the atmosphere. Thus is because an adiabatic lapse rate is just that – adiabatic – and so requires no energy input to maintain the temperature gradient. Thus the surface would not cool anywhere near as much as the Moon’s surface does at night. In fact, the surface temperature would be stabilised by conduction both from the atmosphere and the mass below the surface. There is no reason to believe its mean temperature would be much different, even though its temperature would vary more between day and night.
In a nutshell, this is why the accusation that radiating gases produce a GHE and raise the mean surface temperature is all garbage.
You can’t raise or lower the mean surface temperature significantly (within a few thousand years) without transferring an impossible amount of energy into or out of the whole Earth system, including all the mass beneath the crust, right down to the core.
That is the core of my argument.
See the big picture!
Doug Cotton says:
November 16, 2012 at 12:39 am
In Maxwell’s Theory of Heat on pages 244 & 245 he describes how a gas only absorbs radiation when it is cooler than the emitter.
Where precisely on those two pages does he say that?
As I will demonstrate below, the planet Venus provides an interesting example of what would be a major dilemma if one tried to apply the concepts which are used to construct the “standard” radiative greenhouse conjecture.
You will be aware of how the IPCC and others claim that water vapour, carbon dioxide and other similar radiating gases send backradiation to the surface, and this backradiation supposedly slows the overall rate of cooling of the surface. Somehow, as a result, this is meant to raise the temperature of the surface by 33 degrees. This is the essence of the current description of the “Greenhouse Effect.”
Does something similar happen on Venus? Many claim that it does.
However, on Venus the “slowing of the cooling” is supposed to account for about 500 degrees, because that is about how much hotter the surface is than the equivalent radiating temperature of the whole planet.
But the interesting thing is that, because the atmosphere on Venus is about 94 times the mass of the Earth’s atmosphere, scientists have been able to calculate that only about 2.5% of the Solar radiation at the top of the Venus atmosphere gets through to its surface. That amount would be roughly 10% of the mean radiative flux received at the Earth’s surface.
Now the radiation received at the Earth’s surface warms it and causes some upwelling radiation, and that in turn leads to downwelling radiation. But obviously the latter could not have more energy than the original radiation reaching the surface.
Even if the amount of radiation on Earth were able to raise the Earth’s surface by 33 degrees, how could 10% of that radiation raise the Venus temperature by 500 degrees?
You see, on Earth it is not hard to understand, because we know that the Sun at noon can raise the surface temperature up to and above 288 K, and so we can accept that slowing of the cooling from a temperature higher than 288 K could lead to a mean of 288 K.
But on Venus, there is no initial boost in temperature (caused by the Sun) that could raise the surface more than 500 degrees using only 10% of the radiative flux we receive on Earth.
Yet, that is what the temperature is, so how does it get so hot on the Venus surface?
An explanation, based on empirical results in scientific experiments, will follow in the next day or two when perhaps some readers may have made suggestions as to the mechanism involved.