This is from Simon Conway Smith:
Can an idiot immediately contradict himself?
It seems the answer is a resounding YES! How can you be that much of a moron? I just can’t comprehend the stupid…it burns.
And besides “run the numbers”….what numbers!? We have, and even experimentally tested them, and found no backradiation heating, and then Mr. Watts even did it too with his light bulbs, and found no additional heating either, confirming our earlier results. I would love to see Mr. Watts “run the numbers with CO2 to zero”! The guy can’t run a freaking lightbulb! It’s just a catch-phrase he’s trying to use to make even stupider people think he knows what he’s talking about.
He is defending the basis of alarm. Without climate alarm Mr. Watts has no job. And Mr. Watts has no job because running a blog and getting paid for it from who knows where about climate alarm is not a real job, but propaganda. Maybe it’s well known…but who pays Watts’ salary?
This is the trick guys and it is very obvious: you pretend to be the biggest skeptic group out there, yet 1) you have no actual scientific expertise: Mr. Watts – doesn’t know how to run a lightbulb, and has no credentials in physics even at an high-school level, etc; Mr. Spencer – doesn’t know what a time-dependent differential thermal equation is, etc, 2) you never question and never allow questioning of and you defend with a fearsome, loud, rancorous, religious fervor the fundamental basis of the consequences you otherwise criticize. You criticize the consequences, but you never allow questioning of the initial premise.
This creates the appearance of “expert criticism” and “critical review”, but it is all simply a feign to defending the initial premise – that 0.04% of the atmosphere causes 33K of heating on the surface, or, twice the heating power of the Sun (etc etc), when this 0.04% of the atmosphere is a) colder than the surface and the flux of sunshine b) not a source of energy like sunshine.
The existence of the debate legitimizes its pretenses. Do you see that that is how this works? That is Mr. Watts’ paid-for role – legitimize climate alarm by debating it, and then most obviously and openly when you really press him, in his absolute, totally unscientific, completely irrational given the pretenses, refusal to question or even merely criticize the fraudulent basis of the debate, the greenhouse effect.
You know you’re pressing the sore spot, a very sensitive area, when all of the sudden people get totally crazy, mad, angry, and vitriolic when you question a very peculiar aspect of their belief system.
Update:
Does Mr. Watts’ reply even make sense? A device that measures IR absorption by CO2 doesn’t mean that CO2 is heating up the device. Let’s put this into climate terms: the ground surface is a device that emits IR, and CO2 absorbs and scatters some of it… This does not mean that CO2 is heating the surface.
To put it simply: They’re planning to control you with the greenhouse effect. It is a fiction which they manufactured and control, and if you believe in it, then automatically you are likewise controlled. It is a subtle and devious form of control and that makes it the most powerful, and we have all the history of religion and political movements to provide precedent. This isn’t anything new – it is simply trying out new language. The test for humanity is if we’re smart enough to reject such control. Who are the “they” – well, it’s whoever the sickos are that have invented fake religions, fake money, fake work, fake political movements, fake government, fake wars, etc., all of which lend to the ultimate purpose of some form of control, in all our history. Lyndon LaRouche would say it is the “Monetarist Oligarchy” radiating now from the British Empire/Monarchy, and extending back from the Venetian system and elsewhere.
Climate of Sophistry 
Can you describe in a bit more detail what you mean about there being no greenhouse effect? Take planet Venus, for instance. I always learned that it was so hot because of the greenhouse effect, but obviously Venus is not planet Earth. Where is my gap in understanding how this applies or doesn’t apply?
@urbster1 One obvious gap in your understanding, since you ask, is that Venus does not have the benefit of a water cycle. Earth does.
You need to understand that the earth, if it had no atmosphere, would be considerably WARMER than it currently is. Our rarified atmosphere lets the right amount of energy in to start the water cycle, which causes surface cooling, so we don’t get too hot. Read about it here.
Click to access PSI_Miatello_Refutation_GHE.pdf
The UNIPCC has bamboozled the public, especially politicians, with the incorrect notion that earth would be freezing cold if there was no atmosphere; however, they argue, as we aren’t freezing cold, the atmosphere must be warming us via the GHE. See how it works yet?
@Joe – I’m putting your stuff everywhere. Could I trouble you for a Janet & John monosyllabic explanation of what the liars do to the geometry, or whatever, such that they reduce the incoming solar flux (or energy?) by a factor of 4? Thanks.
Thanks for the paper, I’ll definitely check that out!
In the long tradition of science Knut Ångström (1857 – 1910), a Swedish physicist empirically tested Arrhenius’ postulation that carbon dioxide might cause atmospheric warming and published his findings in a paper entitled “On The Importance Of Water Vapor And Carbon Dioxide In The Absorption Of The Atmosphere” in 1900 (Ångström, Knut, 1900, “Ueber die Bedeutung des Wasserdampfes und der Kohlensäure bei der Absorption der Erdatmosphäre”, Annalen der Physik, Volume 308 Issue 12, Pages 720 – 732)
Ångström’s experiment was to fill a tube with the amount of carbon dioxide that would be present in a column of air reaching to the TOA and then running infrared radiation through it. He first doubled and then halved that amount and repeated the test, which demonstrated virtually no temperature change between these differing amounts of carbon dioxide.
Ergo, just four years after Arrhenius postulated that carbon dioxide might cause atmospheric warming his hypothetical was falsified experimentally. Even today the total hypothetical “radiative forcing” that humanity is presumed to have created within the atmosphere (~1.6 W/m^2) since the beginning of the industrial age is less than that of background interstellar cosmic radiation.
Beyond that a spectrometer is not itself a thermometer. Converting a spectrometer reading to a precise temperature reading requires exact knowledge of the emissivity of the matter emitting the radiation. For example, even a 0.01 change in the emissivity of sea level air at 15 C creates a 3 W/m^2 difference in the amount of IR radiation that it emits with no change in temperature.
In one study that I did comparing the emissivity of arid Nevada air to humid Mississippi air an increase in the relative humidity from 10% to 60% increased the emissivity of the ground level air from 0.703 to 0.837. This, in turn, increased the amount of IR radiation that the ground level air in Mississippi was emitting compared to Nevada by 53W/m^2. This massive increase in atmospheric emission of IR radiation was accompanied, not by a rise in temperature, but rather by a 2 C drop in the temperature of the more humid Mississippi air under clear skies.
Thus, one cannot just look at an increase in the amount of IR radiation that the atmosphere emits due to an increase in the concentration of GHG’s and assume that this forces the air temperature to rise unless you assume that “greenhouse gases” can increase the absorptivity of the air without increasing its emissivity as well, which would be contrary to Kirchhoff’s Law.
Carl
Carl, I guess you still do not know what the greenhouse effect as presented by the IPCC is. It is not warming the air by absorption of IR radiation by “greenhouse gases”, hence your reference to Ångström’s experiment is irrelevant.
The “greenhouse effect”, as presented by the IPCC it is warming of the source (the Earth surface) by back radiation (from the so called “greenhouse gases), which is a physically impossible process. Back radiation, Carl. Look up in their reports: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#1) the IPCC second assessment report, 1995, “Working Group I: The Science of Climate Change” page 58, (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1gFp6Ioo3aka3NsaFQ3YlE3XzA). Or imgur.com/gDRQL15. And http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-1.html.
Hey urbster1,
The “greenhouse effect on Venus” is simply an expression, just some words that are used to indicate that it is hot on Venus’ surface, hot like the inside of a greenhouse. That’s all. It is only an analogy, but it isn’t physically meaningful, because a real greenhouse and an atmosphere do the opposite thing of each other. See Understanding the Atmosphere Effect and Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.
AS:
The IPCC, climate modelers in general, and all greenhouse effect diagrams, spread the incoming sunshine over the entire Earth at once in order to make what they think is a simplifying approximation. The approximation is a flat, non-moving Earth, without day and night, as opposed to the much more mathematically difficult reality of a rotating round Earth with day and night. Mathematically their “flat-Earth physics” works out to a factor of 4 reduction in the true power of Sunshine. Somehow, they accidentally failed to recognize that this is an invalid approximation. Approximations are used everywhere in physics, but in this case, this one is wrong, because the Sun does things in the mathematically-difficult real-time, such as melting ice and evaporating water, that the cold low-power sunshine can’t do in their flat-Earth models (which is why they create a greenhouse effect to make up the difference). It makes a big difference because in physics, modelling reality is more important than modelling an approximation to reality, especially when the approximation isn’t like reality at all or can do the things reality does.
Great stuff Carl, thanks for that excellent research and highlight!
Greg, there’s so many sides to this fake science, we all throw our axes into the mass.
I would agree that it is good to pin THEM on an actual fixed definition of the greenhouse effect, since their strength is that they change definitions so easily as every other one is debunked.
Every one of the GHE believers has their own version.
@Joe Thanks for taking time to reply. Sorry to reattack. I get where half of the x4 error comes from – only a hemisphere is lit at any one time, easy peasy. If I’m trying to explain the other half to a lentil-sucking fuckwit, how, in terms they would understand, do I account for the other half of the error? I’ve a feeling it’s just geometry, but a lot of Stella has gone over the dam since I used to recite formulas for areas/volumes of various shapes. Thanks for your patience.
Joe, on blogs they change definitions, right, but the IPCC does not, and the only political relevant “greenhouse effect” is the IPCC’s one, since all that climate policy is based on the IPCC reports.
Fighting other 999 definitions is not necessary, it is a waste of time and a distraction. The governments do not refer to those definitions, they refer to the IPCC, and if you make the politicians understand what sort of unscientific crap the IPCC’s “greenhouse effect” is, the climate liars are done.
@AS:
Oh I see. The surface of the entire globe is 4 times the area of a plane, and 2 times the area of a hemisphere. They use the entire surface area for the Earth as the area that sunlight is intercepted by Earth…but because the intercepted sunlight is actually a disk with the radius of the Earth and this is fixed, then this sunlight gets spread over four-times more area than it should. If you spread it over just a hemisphere, which is better, then you get a factor of two and a temperature of +30C with 30% albedo; I’ve shown this in my papers and here. This is more physical since sunlight makes more sense in its heating strength, but it still isn’t as good as real-time.
Yes that’s true Greg…we shouldn’t be so gracious to them. Pin THEM on THEIR consensus. We have done that sometimes. When you tell them to take it up with each other…they don’t, because they know that they don’t need to have any actual logic or science, they just need the appearance of belief.
But for the public this may make a difference.
@AS: see here:
@Joe
Thanks. Fully with that now, right up until you said in your reply “but because the intercepted sunlight is actually a disk with the radius of the Earth”.
Might you have meant … a disk with the diameter of the earth?
I’m still putting your stuff ueber alles. You’re in the Guardian (UK) at present. They haven’t yet ‘moderated’ me.
Joe, I do not understand how you get the spherical average -18C in the picture. I thought you criticized such an approach.
Thanks for spreading it around AS! Yes, radius or diameter, whichever you please. When using radius in the context of something round, the implication is a full rotation of the radius, which is obviously the diameter. Typically we just prefer to say “radius” because “r” is always the unit that gets used in geometry and physics, as is P = 2 pi r, A = pi r^2, etc etc.
@Greg – it is only valid in the context of average output, of the average flux leaving the system; it is invalid to use it in reverse, as if that is what enters the system – it is NOT what enters the system. The IPCC and GHE diagrams think it is what enters the system, but this is wrong – it is only the output, and is only the average global temperature as measured as an effective blackbody, from space.
Joe, they say the average temperature of the Earth (without “greenhouse effect”, just as a result of the solar warming) would be -18C and you have given the same number, as far as I can see using essentially the same approach, referring to the area of the sphere. You can not do that.
Maybe you should look at this simplified example demonstrating why it is incorrect: http://principia-scientific.org/latest-news/320-do-we-really-have-a-33-c-greenhouse-effect.html#comment-2024.
The temperature of the dark side is determined only by the rate of cooling there, since there is no solar input on the dark side (if we ignore air movements etc.). If the rate of cooling was like 1°C an hour, you would have (simplified) (30+30-12)/2 = 24°C average, but not -18°C.
@Greg, The difference is that when I refer to -18C, that is for the global average temperature of everything above the surface including the atmosphere to 20km (top of tropopause) because this is where basically all of the thermal radiation comes from. So, in terms of an effective blackbody temperature, this aggregate of radiation has a temperature value of -18C…of the 3-dimensional radiating volume above the surface. That is the only way the physics of radiation and temperature for the Earth makes sense…though they of course gloss over all that because it is technical…though scientifically and mathematically accurate.
But this temperature is not ever to be thought of as synonymous with the ground surface. THAT is the sleight of hand the IPCC and GHE people slip in…that -18C is supposed to be found at the surface. It isn’t. It will be found somewhere ABOVE the surface, in the atmosphere, due to the law of averages.
The temperature above and below -18C is simply due to the lapse rate gradient (and the law of averages), and the ground surface is exactly as expected, without a GHE. The GHE people and the IPCC try to say that the difference between -18C and +15C is “due to the greenhouse effect”; it is not, it is just due to the lapse rate, which has no dependence on backradiation or a greenhouse effect, although latent heat trapping from H2O does have an effect on it – it makes the surface COOLER.
Joe, in your picture you have made a simple dividing by 4 referring, I guess, to the disk/sphere relationship. Apart from that you considered the solar constant, albedo and SB law referring to a hypothetical black body. That is all.
What I am saying is you can not refer to the disk/sphere relationship. You can refer only to the disk/hemisphere relationship, so that you can determine the temperature on the side facing the sun, but not to the disk/sphere relationship. You have got a false number and assigning this number to the whole system does not make it right.
Or let us clarify that this way. If there was no atmosphere, what would be the average temperature of the Earth assuming the same solar power and the same albedo?
Joe, I have just looked at your picture again. I guess, the error is in the falsely determined “spherical average system output”. To simplify the process, given that there are in fact 2 different things warmed by the sun, first one hemisphere and then the other one, the “spherical average system output” would be equal to “hemispherical average system output”. Just like 2 things having the same temperature. In the real world, like I said, the rate of cooling on the dark side would determine it’s temperature and thus the whole average.
Joe,
I hardly know where to start. Your reference to conspiracy of Climate Clowns
for the purpose of some form of control, in all our history. and reference to the sayings of Lyndon LaRouche (perennial presidential candidate, and monumental conspiracy kook) detracts
from any scientific legitimacy. You give others much more intelegence while depreciating yourown. The Clowns are simply not that intelligent!
Joe,
You insist that the Climaste Clown model is incorrect. It is most correct for their purpose.
Their purpose.is not scientific, but only an effective way of influencing popular and political opinion for personel profit. You Joe, have not proposed any model that is more correct yet
understandable by folk and politicions, you only say theirs in wrong. No traction.
Greg House,
You seem to have better understanding of politics than science, but are improving markedly
in both. Please keep up the good work!
Carl Allen,
Yes indeed A colum of air with 4000 ppmv water vapor and 300m ppmv CO2
versus A colum of air with 4000 ppmv water vapor and 400m ppmv CO2
Will show no measurable temperature difference from any exposure to wideband thermal radiation. All of this has been well demonstrated in the 1970-1980s. The results of such measurement is still classified so thr Russians do not know, although they know much more than “we” otherwise known as “US”.
\
Greg, looks like you’re starting to see what I am talking about. The diagram goes through the whole sequence of energy flow etc, and real-time is the end-point of it all. Trying to make something realistic, as opposed to the IPCC and GHE diagram fictions.
Hi Will,
Sorry to disagree, but Lyndon LaRouche and his science group are some of the smartest people on the planet. They deal with facts and other fundamental truths about human nature. The current manifestation of the climate fraud is merely one of the latest forms of attempts to control by some of the very same people who’ve done it in the past. Indeed, the whole point of LaRouche’s work is that these people ARE NOT that intelligent…they just smart enough to be stupid.
I understand that their model is “correct for their purpose”. In truth, it is incorrect in fact, and I will continue to say so. The diagram that appears up this thread is indeed a model that is more correct and is more understandable.
Will, climate liars have been highly successful, conspiracy or not. I would not call them stupid. They and their propaganda and their smoke screens should be taken seriously.
Joseph E Postma says, 2013/10/18 at 4:58 PM:
“The “greenhouse effect on Venus” is simply an expression, just some words that are used to indicate that it is hot on Venus’ surface, hot like the inside of a greenhouse. That’s all. It is only an analogy, but it isn’t physically meaningful, because a real greenhouse and an atmosphere do the opposite thing of each other.”
I beg to differ, Joe! The expression is almost spot on! It simply doesn’t have anything to do with restricting outgoing thermal radiation. An atmosphere in principle does work just like a greenhouse – by restricting convective heat loss. The real greenhouse does it with its glass roof and walls, the atmosphere does it with its weight on the surface.
A heavier atmosphere forces the planetary surface to raise its temperature to enable convective heat loss to perform as efficiently with equal incoming solar input as with a lighter atmosphere on top.
Kristian, there’s no point in confusing things up like that. The lapse rate gradient IS NOT DUE TO CONVECTIVE RESTRICTION. The lapse rate gradient is what sets the surface air temperature, and it has nothing to do with convection, only with gravity and thermal capacity.
A real greenhouse works by preventing the atmosphere from doing what it wants to do, which is convect and rise to cool, and it does this with a glass roof. No free atmosphere is like a glass roof and the lapse rate gradient is not due to the atmospheric gas restricting its own convection – that latter is a physically meaningless assertion…gas doesn’t behave that way.
Joseph E Postma says, 2013/10/18 at 10:04 PM:
“@Greg – it is only valid in the context of average output, of the average flux leaving the system; it is invalid to use it in reverse, as if that is what enters the system – it is NOT what enters the system. The IPCC and GHE diagrams think it is what enters the system, but this is wrong – it is only the output, and is only the average global temperature as measured as an effective blackbody, from space.”
And still, if you do average the solar input flux across the globe, the diurnal cycle and the year, you end up with the same 239 W/m^2 -> 255K figures.
It just shows the balance. From a standard budget point of view.
You’re right of course, the flux coming in from the Sun is hardly that steady. To put it mildly. It’s the total amount of energy coming in during an average day or year or whatever that needs to balance the outgoing amount of energy over that same period for there to be no change in internal energy for Earth.
But I see no inherent problem with simplifying the standard budget for Earth by averaging out the energy input and output into mean fluxes. As long as you stick to HEAT FLUXES and skip those nonsensical up and down radiative fluxes between the surface and the atmosphere. And as long as you don’t try to pin a temperature to those averaged out flux values (which is what the IPCC is doing, I agree). There is no connection between the average heat flux coming in to or going out from the global Earth surface and its physical mean temperature. The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is non-applicable. There is (on average) 165 W/m^2 worth of HEAT flux coming in to the global surface of our planet. There is (53+112=) 165 W/m^2 worth of HEAT flux going out from the global surface of our planet. The mean surface temperature happens to be (by estimation) 289K. It could never have gotten there with the Sun alone. Just look at the Moon. 80% more incoming on average than the Earth’s surface, yet about 90K colder!
The huge heat capacity of the oceans. The weight of the atmosphere on the surface. The spreading of heat from equator to poles and from dayside to nightside through the ocean and the atmosphere, including the water cycle.
This combined with the burning sunshine of day explains it all.
Joseph E Postma says, 2013/10/19 at 11:05 AM:
“Kristian, there’s no point in confusing things up like that. The lapse rate gradient IS NOT DUE TO CONVECTIVE RESTRICTION. The lapse rate gradient is what sets the surface air temperature, and it has nothing to do with convection, only with gravity and thermal capacity.”
Hmm, it looks like we’re talking past each other here, Joe.
I did not mention the lapse rate gradient. The lapse rate gradient is NOT what sets the surface air temperature. The temperature profile of the troposphere STARTS WITH the surface air temperature, climbing up to the tropopause via the lapse rate gradient. The surface warms first. Then the troposphere. But the equilibrium surface temperature has to be set somehow. And it cannot be by the Sun alone. It needs help.
The weight of the atmosphere on the surface provides a constant force from above which the upward buoyant acceleration of the conductively heated surface air needs to overcome FAST ENOUGH for the surface to be able to shed its heat adequately in order for it to balance the incoming. It cannot manage that if the temperature’s too low, because the kinetic level would be insufficient. So energy is coming in from the Sun to the surface at a faster pace than is being successfully carried away from it by the movement of air. It leads to piling up of energy at and below the surface. That’s where the heat capacity comes in handy. Until a temperature (kinetic) level is reached where convective (this also goes for evaporation) heat loss successfully and sufficiently balances the transport of heat up and away from the surface with the incoming solar heat.
“A real greenhouse works by preventing the atmosphere from doing what it wants to do, which is convect and rise to cool, and it does this with a glass roof.”
And the atmosphere does it with its weight on the surface. Lighter atmosphere, easier for surface air to rise at equal temperature. And vice versa.
Of course a heavy atmosphere doesn’t stop convection. It is not LIKE a glass window. That’s why I said ‘almost spot on’ and ‘in principle’. But it slows convection down compared to a lighter one. At equal surface temperatures.
Kristian your physics is wrong. We are not talking past each other at all, in the slightest. The lapse rate is not set by heating at the surface – it is set by gravity and the thermal capacity of the gas. The law of averages then requires that the bottom be warmer than the middle and the middle than the top…the average is the middle. This works on any planet, such as Venus. On Earth, there is also heating directly at the surface to create the water cycle etc. and keep the system from freezing out.
What you are trying to describe is just another version of the radiative greenhouse effect…except you replace radiative trapping thus requiring a hotter temperature to overcome backradiation, with atmospheric weight convective reduction requiring a hotter surface to overcome and convect at the rate it “should”. You have produced precisely yet another version of the greenhouse effect using precisely the same argument, and as Greg would point out, a version which the IPCC and as far as I know, few other people subscribe to. Clever, but I’m not buying it, because I don’t need to. The natural lapse rate from gravity and thermal capacity, -g/Cp, and the law of averages, already explains everything.
Any more posts on this subject from you will be trashed, for sophistry. Reducing convection does not produce a higher temperature than the input, as a real greenhouse proves.
“Carl, I guess you still do not know what the greenhouse effect as presented by the IPCC is. It is not warming the air by absorption of IR radiation by ‘greenhouse gases’, hence your reference to Ångström’s experiment is irrelevant.”
_
“Joe, on blogs they change definitions, right, but the IPCC does not, and the only political relevant “greenhouse effect” is the IPCC’s one, since all that climate policy is based on the IPCC reports.”
_
Hi Greg,
If I understand these two statements correctly it is your perception that 1) that the IPCC reports contain a coherent, unified scientific definition of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis that is presumably exclusively centered on “back radiation” warming of the earth’s surface and 2) that climate policy everywhere, even in the USA, is based solely on the IPCC’s singular definition of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis, therefore addressing and/or testing alternative versions of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is a waste of time or irrelevant.
_
Certainly within the various climate reports written by the IPCC one can find references that assert that down-welling IR radiation from the atmosphere acts as a secondary heat source and warms the surface beyond what the sun can do on its own, but one can also find references that identify the absorption of heat by “greenhouse gases” as the mechanism by which they cause global warming. Here are some examples of that from AR4:
_
“ . . . energy is transferred to the atmosphere by warming the air in contact with the surface (thermals), by evapotranspiration and by longwave radiation that is absorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases.” AR-4 Frequently Asked Questions
_
“The forcings for all greenhouse gas increases, which are the best understood of those due to human activities, are positive because each gas absorbs outgoing infrared radiation in the atmosphere.” AR-4 Frequently Asked Questions
_
“Human-made PFCs, HFCs and SF6 are very effective absorbers of infrared radiation, so that even small amounts of these gases contribute significantly to the RF of the climate system.” AR4 WG1 Chapter 2
_
Then there are those statements within IPCC reports that assert that the “greenhouse effect’s” mechanism of action is that these gases causes the atmosphere to cool from progressively higher and higher altitudes.
_
Then there are those statements that abandon the name “greenhouse effect” all together in lieu of the phrase “radiative forcing” whose rather opaque mechanism of action has little to do with what is happening at ground level, but rather what is happening at the TOA and stratosphere. “”Radiative Forcing is defined as the change in net irradiance at the tropopause since 1750 after allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, while holding surface and tropospheric temperatures and state variables fixed at the unperturbed values. Positive forcing tends to warm the surface while negative forcing tends to cool it.” AR5 draft
_
I would therefore not agree that the IPCC reports have themselves presented a coherent, unified definition of why they believe that carbon dioxide and water vapor cause global warming.
_
Beyond that, it is not the IPCC that is setting climate policy in the USA but rather the EPA based on the 2007 US Supreme Court decision Massachusetts vs. the EPA in which the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis was defined this way: ” . . . when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat.”
_
This statement which legally binds the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide within the USA is silent on the question of “back radiation” but rather asserts that carbon dioxide “traps energy”, i.e., absorbs outgoing IR radiation. If you doubt that here is the EPA’s own statement: “For each greenhouse gas, a Global Warming Potential (GWP) has been calculated to reflect how long it remains in the atmosphere, on average, and how strongly it absorbs energy. Gases with a higher GWP absorb more energy, per pound, than gases with a lower GWP, and thus contribute more to warming Earth.”
_
Since neither the US Supreme Court nor the EPA are politically irrelevant neither is Ångström’s experiment that tested their assertions a full century before they were made. Ångström of course had no idea what today’s political institutions would be up to; he was simply testing a hypothetical advanced by Arrhenius who said the following in his paper (1896). “A great deal has been written on the influence of the absorption of the atmosphere upon the climate,” and, “Is the mean temperature of the ground in any way influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere?” And again, “ . . . some of the atmospheric gases absorb considerable quantities of heat.”
_
Your assertion therefore that the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis, even as defined by the IPCC, has nothing to do with the notion that “greenhouse gases” warm the atmosphere because they absorb heat simply isn’t true.
_
The idea that “greenhouse gases” warm the atmosphere because they absorb IR radiation is also being taught in a number of Universities and universities are not politically irrelevant since they are the ones who are indoctrinating the next generation of world leaders.
_
From The Unisersity Corporation for Atmospheric Research:
“The earth’s atmosphere contains trace gases, some of which absorb heat.”
_
From the University of Hawaii at Manoa:
“Accumulation of these heat-absorbing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can result in an enhanced greenhouse effect and consequent global warming amplified by human activities.”
_
From the University of Illinois:
“We also know that carbon dioxide absorbs heat from the Earth’s surface, slowing the escape of heat from the Earth’s surface to space.”
_
That having been said, there are, indeed, a number of definitions of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis that do talk about the mechanism of the “greenhouse effect” being surface warming by down-welling IR radiation. To address those assertions my post mentioned that the 53 W/m^2 increase in down-welling IR radiation that I observed in the humid Mississippi air compared to Nevada air that didn’t result in any extra warming of the surface on the same cloud free days.
_
I was therefore simply attempting to cover both bases: 1) the idea that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere because it absorbs enough heat to do so and 2) that an increase in down-welling IR radiation due to “greenhouse gases” causes additional ground level warming.
_
Carl
-Trashed for sophistry-
Well, I’m no scientist, but I can spot a liar at a thousand decibels, so it was refreshing to read this article from Mr. John L. Casey, a former White House space program advisor, consultant to NASA Headquarters. He makes it plain, we’re going into a mini ice age. And it’s the sun that drives it all. Here’s the link, it’s a good read. Best to all the truth tellers out there. . . .
http://watchdogwire.com/florida/2013/10/17/the-most-important-news-story-of-the-21st-century/
Carl Brehmer says: “Certainly within the various climate reports written by the IPCC one can find references that assert that down-welling IR radiation from the atmosphere acts as a secondary heat source and warms the surface beyond what the sun can do on its own, but one can also find references that identify the absorption of heat by “greenhouse gases” as the mechanism by which they cause global warming.”
===========================================================
Thanks, Carl. So, they did mention warming by absorption in their reports, here you are apparently right, but they have not presented any numbers to that mechanism (for a good reason). Despite that, their central point is warming of the surface by back radiation from the so called “greenhouse gases”, here they gave numbers, as you can see if you click on the links I gave above. Back radiation warming the surface with the power 324 W/m², which is much more then the Sun does in their presentation.
As for CO2 warming the air direct by mere absorption of IR radiation, you do not need to compare Nevada and Mississippi, because thermal properties of CO2 and other gases are well known. CO2 in it’s usual concentration changes the heat capacity of the air to an absolutely negligible extent and the result is like 0.0001°C, so it is no surprise that Ångström was unable to measure anything.
So, even if you take this negligible thing away from them, it does not hurt their central point, back radiation. I am looking forward to your dealing with this central point.
As for my criticism in your direction, I should make some correction. It is not that you have been dealing with a non-existing point on blogs for years, it looks like you just have been dealing with a negligible secondary point, omitting the central one.
Kristian says 2013/10/19 at 11:26 AM: “The mean surface temperature … could never have gotten there with the Sun alone.”
======================================================
It must have gotten there with the Sun alone, there is no other way. Getting a higher temperate would require a more powerful source than the Sun, and there is none.
Wait, warmists invented “back radiation warming”, there they claim the surface warms itself with the twice as much power it itself produces. Totally unscientific crap, it must be obvious to any sane person. But, if you like, we can talk about that.
Carl Brehmer says: “Beyond that, it is not the IPCC that is setting climate policy in the USA but rather the EPA based on the 2007 US Supreme Court decision Massachusetts vs. the EPA in which the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis was defined this way: ” . . . when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat.””
==============================================
EPA’s policies are not based on the definition given by the US Supreme Court. As far as I know, that decision was just a confirmation of EPA’s right to apply the “clean air act” to CO2.
EPA’s actions are based on their “endangerment finding 2009”. I have not found the document yet, but I have found a critical review of it: http://is.gd/MOuPpF. There they quote EPA as saying: “EPA has developed a technical support document which synthesizes major findings from the best available scientific assessments that have gone through rigorous and transparent
peer review. The TSD therefore relies most heavily on the major assessment reports of both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change
Science Program. EPA took this approach rather than conducting a new assessment of the scientific literature [EPA 2009a: 18894].”
So, EPA relies “most heavily” on the IPCC and the IPCC relies heavily on the “greenhouse effect”, which is according to them back radiation warming. EPA’s CO2 regulation stands and falls with this absurd unscientific concept. This should be dealt with, not the 0.0001° effect of direct absorption.
Hi Joe,
Are you going to comment on this latest offering on WUWT which give the impression of being very scientific? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/21/radiative-forcing-radiative-feedbacks-and-radiative-imbalance-the-2013-wg1-ipcc-report-failed-to-properly-report-on-this-issue/
There seems to be lots of adding and subtracting of flux densities, and even a reference to watts/sq.m as heat input. It seems to me that in “climate science” you only have to be able to add and subtract numbers and everyone is mesmerised by the result. Can you really calculate a meaningful average flux density by adding 2 flux densities and dividing by 2?
I look forward to your usual educational demolition.
Greg,
Quote: “CO2 in it’s usual concentration changes the heat capacity of the air to an absolutely negligible extent and the result is like 0.0001°C, ”
Actually CO2 has a lower specific heat capacity than air. Therefore increasing atmospheric concentrations will result in lower average temperatures if anything. Besides I don’t know where you get the figure 0.0001º C from but I was not aware that such small increments of temperature can even be measured in a lab let alone in the atmosphere. Calculating as apposed to measuring is the same as hypothesis as apposed to empirical observation.
I have a copy of the technical support document somewhere if you would like it. The TSD is in-fact an indictment of the “GHE” as it references a study which shows water vapour, the main “GHG” is, as Carl has also verified and we always knew, a negative feedback mechanism.
Cheers
Will
Oh I don’t think I’ll bother with that one D.M. You nailed it anyway 🙂
That’s true – it seems adding and subtracting is the extent of IPCC and climate science, lol. As we know, actual heat flow equations have never seemed to enter their field at all…this keeps it simple enough to be stupid, but complex enough to fool the stupid.
Joe says,
Quote: “The existence of the debate legitimizes its pretenses.”
Exactly, Watts is a gatekeeper. To end AGW fraud we need to get closure. Closure is an integral element in a healthy functioning society. Without closure we get the kind of rot that leads to fascism, communism, criminal elitism and kleptocracy.
It is the job of the gatekeepers simply to keep the so called “debate” in flux. This moves the “debate” away from closure. Gatekeepers like Watts, are the true enablers of AGW fraud. As long as the “debate” remains in flux AGW fraud will continue.
Closure can only come from burying the “GHE” hypothesis. The “GHE” hypothesis is dead. However it still walks, albeit like a zombie, but it must be buried once and for all.
Closure, get it?
Precisely, Will.
This is from an email I sent to someone else, discussing the same issue:
“Yah you know, I think I’ve noticed that the GHE/alarm adherents are many of the same people too…it is amazing how the same new styles of arguments get tried out on me from “widely different” sources all the time, with slight tweaks and changes of phrasing. It’s taken a long time but they now have no argument left that I haven’t refuted.
That’s exactly what it is – a gravy train – which is a HUGE RED LIGHT conflict of interest for anyone pretending to be a skeptic, whose fame, importance, and name depends on the existence of the debate. So many of these people will be fameless, nameless, and irrelevant if “skepticism” actually defeated alarmism…their niche is in *maintaining* the debate. It’s clever…grant you that. It is also obvious once you apply some simple critical thinking to the situation.”
Hi Samm, Joe, and Carl;
Samm, your reference is very good. A highly politicalized essay, from someone that has been observing and thinking. but not necessarily believing..the words of such a creature should always be considered. Myself I believe very little, but I dis-believe way less. Believeing is bad,
observing is good. Peer from behind the berry bush and observe what the tiger does!
Joe,
Please, get rid of your idea that the early Climate Clown papers from 1981 are valid. There is not one word of scientific truth in any of those papers from NASA Goddard. The S-B equation cannot be used to estimate the atmospheric or surface radiative temperature of any planet. The Moon at the same distance as the Earth has a “measured” (average of surface temperature kilometer by kilometer) of less than 200 Kelvin. No way to balance in and out radiative flux using average temperature. The T^4 is way to nonliniear,. even for small changes.
Joe and Carl,.
The “radiative”: flux between two flat black Lambertian isotherms with a delta T of 50 degree Celsius, with a transmissive media between, that absorbs 50% of the thermal “radiation” (not heat) cannot be calculated. Any radiative absorptive media must have a temperature, mass,
and specific heat. The conductive and convective transfer is much greater than any radiative effect. Some specific examples have been measured and are in thermodynamic handbooks. The 50% number at the surface is 50 cm for 14.6 micron CO2. It is approx 10 meters for all other other wavelengths, except for 8-13 microns where it is 20 Kilometers.
Please try to do some science. -will-
I think the Climate Clown papers are valid? 😉
As DM pointed out…all they do is add and subtract…and haven’t seen a real heat flow equation that would handle the things you reference for the life of them…
Joe,
“:I think the Climate Clown papers are valid? ;-)”
How can you say that, even in humor?
In the early papers from NASA Goddard, not one word, phrase,
sentence, paragraph, or section has any truth.
Even the punctuation is suspect!
Anyhow keep trying! Ask if youn want help in your way of thinking.
It seems to be better than mine. (grin)!
When this high school dropout (class of 1950) first came to this subject a few years ago it struck him that a radiative gas was routinely referred to as “absorptive”, the relationship between absorbing and emitting being studiously ignored. It seemed to him that the GHE was at least doubtful, as no one had bothered to attempt to falsify the first law of thermodynamics. It seemed to him that if such an effect existed, then those living in northern climes would long since has sealed their attics and pumped these totally with carbon dioxide. Their house would get so hot from back and forth radiation that they would be obliged to open up the windows to let the heat out. He would have to abandon his belief that the temperature of Venus was primarily governed by the pull of gravity on its atmosphere. This all very simple stuff, or so it seemed to this ignoramus. Either the greenhousers were wrong or we live not in an electric universe but a magic carbon dioxide universe. Of the hundreds of thousands of words that he has read on the subject, not one has tempted him to change his mind…
Greetings Ken! It is simply, all just incredibly bad science.
Sorry about the mistypes there but the meaning should be clear. Time I was in bed.
[JP – Fixed them for ya]
Correction, it is all just incredibly bad, science it is not.
Good point!
Joe, the next time someone brings up Venus and a “runaway Greenhouse effect”, just direct them to this analysis which uses publicly available data and well used scientific principles to show that the composition of a planetary atmosphere has no measurable effect on the ambient temperature of the atmosphere.
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Carl Bremmer,
” That having been said, there are, indeed, a number of definitions of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis that do talk about the mechanism of the “greenhouse effect” being surface warming by down-welling IR radiation. To address those assertions my post mentioned that the 53 W/m^2 increase in down-welling IR radiation that I observed in the humid Mississippi air compared to Nevada air that didn’t result in any extra warming of the surface on the same cloud free days.”
Carl, could you please explain how you measured a “53 W/m^2 increase in down-welling IR radiation that I observed”? What instruments were used to measure radiative flux that is directed toward the surface from the atmosphere? I agree with all you say about the overwhelming effect of the hydrologic cycle. Broadband “back or downwelling thermal radiative flux” from a lower to a higher to a lowe rtemperature has never been observed let alone measured. You give credit to the Climate Clown conjecture that all with a temperature always radiates is every direction
the highest flux possible to a surface at zero kelvin. Such conjecture has been dismissed as it has not even one verifiable example. Radiance is a potential not a flux. (radiance does have sometimes the same units as a flux) .The proper units always have a solid angle term, even if PI steradian is assumed, as in the S-B equation.
A year or so ago I had a debate with a CCAGW believer who assured me that the trend in Arctic Sea ice coverage was now irreversible, and it would become ice free. I suggested to him that the larger area of open ocean with its higher temperature, and the Arctic night over the winter would result in more radiative cooling into space, and the possibility that sea ice coverage would be higher this year. He could only think in one dimension.
“Carl, could you please explain how you measured a “53 W/m^2 increase in down-welling IR radiation that I observed”? What instruments were used to measure radiative flux that is directed toward the surface from the atmosphere?”
The data that I used is publicly available and is gathered at two separate surface radiation monitoring stations (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/sitepage.html): one at Desert Rock, Nevada and the other at Goodwin Creek, Mississippi. The specific instrument used in both locations to monitor both up-going and down-going IR radiation is the “PRECISION INFRARED RADIOMETER” (PIR) manufactured by Eppley and is described as a Pyrgeometer that “is intended for unidirectional operation in the measurement, separately, of incoming or outgoing terrestrial radiation as distinct from net long-wave flux.” (http://eppleylab.com/instrumentation/precision_infrared_radiometer.htm)
My interest was in observing the affect that water vapor has on air temperatures on cloud free days so I focused on the period between mid June and mid July 2012. One can tell by looking at the insolation readings also being taken at these sites which days are cloud free because the insolation waveform will be undisturbed. I then downloaded the down-welling IR radiation readings from both sites for those cloud free days, averaged them and subtracted the Nevada reading from the Mississippi reading. The average, constant down-welling IR radiation level in Mississippi exceeded the level in Nevada by ~53 W/m^2 24/7 according to the Eppley PIR. I also downloaded the ground level air temperatures at both sites for the same days and averaged them to determine the mean temperature and found that the Mississippi site was on average ~2 °C cooler than the Nevada site even though the Nevada station is about 700 meters higher in altitude and a little further north.
One popular version of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis asserts that an increase in the amount of down-welling IR radiation, i.e., “back radiation”, especially from “greenhouse gases” (and water vapor is the “most powerful of all the greenhouse gases”) will force ground level temperatures to increase. Such an effect was not observed in this study. (The mean relative humidity level in Nevada was 10% and in Mississippi was 60% on these same days.)
Be aware that the IPCC has estimated that the total “radiative forcing”, i.e., increase in down-welling IR radiation, that human activity is currently causing is < 2W/m^2. These SURFRAD sites demonstrate that humidity routinely increases “radiative forcing” by 25 times that much without any increase in temperature what so ever and, in fact, is associated with a decrease in ground level temperature. Why?
The addition of water vapor to the air increases its emissivity and even as there is an increase in down-welling IR radiation from a more emissive atmosphere there is also an increase in up-welling IR radiation from a more emissive atmosphere, which increases the atmosphere’s up-going “net radiation heat loss.” The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis does not take into consideration the fact that “greenhouse gases” increase the emissivity of the atmosphere, which enhances its ability to cool via IR radiation to space.
Also be aware that when the Eppley PIR says that there is ~333 W/m^2 of down-welling IR radiation it is not measuring a down-going flow of heat. IR radiation is not heat. Heat is the actual spontaneous transfer of energy from warm matter to cool matter and when this occurs via IR radiation it is quantified by the formula for “net radiation heat loss.”
q = e σ A [(ΔT)^4]
“Where q is the heat transferred by radiation, e is the emissivity of the system, σ is the constant of Stephan-Boltzmann, A is the area involved in the heat transfer by radiation, and (ΔT)^4 is the difference of temperature between two systems to the fourth or higher power.” Taken from Professor Nasif Nahle recent article at PSI — “Heat Transfer: What Is Heat?”
The concept of “net radiation heat loss” is itself an element of “Prevost’s Theory Of Heat Exchange” (named after Pierre Prévost, 3 March 1751 – 8 April 1839) which states, “A theory according to which a body is constantly exchanging heat with its surroundings, radiating an amount of energy which is independent of its surroundings, and increasing or decreasing its temperature depending on whether it absorbs more radiation than it emits, or vice versa.”
The Eppley PIR measurements themselves have Prevost’s Theory of Heat Exchange programmed into them. When this instrument is pointed skyward what it is actually sensing is the up-going “net radiation heat loss” from the thermocouple under the dome that encases it. Based on the temperature of the thermocouple, the temperature of the case and the temperature of the dome the PIR calculates what the “net radiation heat loss” would be if there where no counter radiation coming from the air. It subtracts one “net radiation heat loss” number from the other to yield an estimate of the down-welling IR radiation (or “back radiation” if you will) that the air at ground level is presumed to be emitting.
What my study shows is that one does not have to deny the existence of down-welling IR radiation to observe that its increase due to “greenhouse gases” does not cause in increase in ground level temperatures—does not cause a “greenhouse effect”. Thus another fallacy is uncovered, which asserts that if one acknowledges the existence of down-welling IR radiation one must by default acknowledge the existence of an atmospheric “greenhouse effect.”
You seem to be of the school that believes that since the “greenhouse effect” does not exist than neither does “back radiation”, because if “back radiation” existed then so would the “greenhouse effect.” Indeed, many of the arguments that go on between different skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming center around whether or not down-welling IR radiation exists under the premise that its existence causes a “greenhouse effect.” I do not yield to that premise. What I have observed in other studies that I have done is that the rate at which the ground cools at night is relative to the temperature differential that exists between the ground and the air that is touching it and is not relative to the down-welling IR reading seen on Eppley PIR’s.
Carl
Great stuff Carl. There just needs to be a correction in the one formula for radiant heat transfer: it is (T1^4 – T2^4), not (T1 – T2)^4.
Excellent piece!
Carl, I have serious reservations about all this averaging being able to demonstrate either presence or absence of any effect. You took average temperatures, average radiation, average humidity and I am not sure that the comparisons on such a basis are valid, because the relationship is not linear. What you used are samples and I have not seen yet, how the problem of their of representativeness can be solved.
As for back radiation allegedly warming the source (“greenhouse effect”), it is impossible for pure physical reasons. You do not need any questionable punctual local samples to investigate that, besides, the other side might be able to pick up other questionable punctual local samples and “prove” the opposite.
“As for back radiation allegedly warming the source (“greenhouse effect”), it is impossible for pure physical reasons. You do not need any questionable punctual local samples to investigate that, besides, the other side might be able to pick up other questionable punctual local samples and “prove” the opposite.”
This is like saying my well reasoned hypothesis is so sound it is in no need of empirical data. The reality is, all empirical thermodynamic measurements are “punctual” and “local.” A thermometer only takes the temperature of matter in a specific location at a specific moment in time. A radiometer only measures the presence of IR radiation that enters the dome of the instrument in a specific location at a specific moment in time. If drawing conclusions based on “punctual local” data is scientifically invalid then there is no such thing valid empirical data and therefore no way to test any hypotheses via the scientific method.
You assert that it is impossible for “back radiation” to warm a source “for purely physical reasons.” Even though I agree with that assertion without any empirical data to back it up that statement it is nothing more than a counter hypothesis. “Reason” is not now nor ever has been scientific evidence. “The other side” reasons that the ground can be warmed by “back radiation” and you reason that it can’t.
If the “greenhouse effect” were real it would also be a “punctual local” phenomenon because an increase in humidity would cause an increase in temperature both when and where the humidity is—Mississippi in June under clear skies for example. You say that my study is of questionable value because the “other side might be able to pick up other questionable punctual local samples and ‘prove’ the opposite.” I would like to see that data if they do, but as far as I am aware no one on “the other side” has even bothered to look or if they have any data that conflicts with their hypothetical is just dismissed as being “punctual local” data and is seen as being nothing more than a local anomaly.
Carl
Carl Brehmer says: “This is like saying my well reasoned hypothesis is so sound it is in no need of empirical data.
…If drawing conclusions based on “punctual local” data is scientifically invalid then there is no such thing valid empirical data and therefore no way to test any hypotheses via the scientific method.
…You assert that it is impossible for “back radiation” to warm a source “for purely physical reasons.” Even though I agree with that assertion without any empirical data to back it up that statement it is nothing more than a counter hypothesis.
=====================================================
Carl, an example of an assertion that can be proven wrong without any empirical data: “2,000,000 apples + 2,000,000 apples = 5,000,000 apples”. You can go buying apples to prove it wrong if you wish.
Proving back radiation warming wrong does not require any empirical data, it can be easily demonstrated on the high school level based on known physical laws and common sense.
As for averaging punctual local measurements, I specifically mentioned the problem of representativeness and still do not see how it can be solved. E.g. you can not measure the outside temperature twice a day, then average it and claim it is the “mean temperature” of that day. What about sample error, Carl? Attributing this measurement to a large area looks even more outrageous.
So, yes, since back radiation warming is physically impossible it is theoretically possible to prove it wrong experimentally, however this alone dies not mean yet that your experiment or what you derived from punctual local measurements is sound. Besides, given tolerances of measurements you can never measure a zero back radiation warming. But again, if back radiation warming is clearly impossible on the theoretical level, referring to statistics is beyond reason.
Well what I think is useful is showing that increasing emissivity decreases temperature, as could be expected. True, this shouldn’t need to be empirically demonstrated, but, it does prove the GHE assertions wrong. For due diligence and tradition of science, I think it is fine to button everything up – theory proves the GHE claims wrong, and observation supports that disproof. Of course, neither theory nor observation make a difference to alarmist and GHE theory.
So here’s my question for you then, Greg: Given that neither theory, common sense, nor observation, makes a difference to defeating the alarmists and the GHE fraud, what do you propose is the best way for honest scientists and people in general such as yourself, me, Carl, etc., to spend our time exposing this fraud? If we can’t use theory, if we can’t use common sense, if we can’t use data, then what do we do? Of course, what “they” do is use propaganda, because propaganda is the only thing left to use if you don’t use theory, common sense, or data. Propaganda includes lies, make-pretend, false pretences, etc etc. What do WE do?
Joe, sorry, I am a little bit busy at the moment, so in short. First, we should clearly understand what the target audience is. Second, we should take into consideration their level. Third, we should not use fictions to debunk a fiction. More to come 🙂 .
Cool, Greg, looking forward to it. 🙂
Joe, actually that’s it. I could go into details, like who the target audience should be and what should be done or avoided when talking to them. To me, they should be politicians and journalists in the first place. Their typical background should be taken into consideration.
As for empirical demonstrations and observations, yes, of course it might be useful. E.g. I suggested people stand in front of a mirror and enjoy the back radiation warming. However, comparing things like Carl did does not seem scientifically valid to me and secondly, the target audience can not check such things themselves. Besides, the other side has come up with some fake experiments recently, so the target audience might be confused by all that.
Yes true, Greg, the idea you mentioned was really self-explanatory.
@Greg House and Joe…
[“Joe, actually that’s it. I could go into details, like who the target audience should be and what should be done or avoided when talking to them. To me, they should be politicians and journalists in the first place. Their typical background should be taken into consideration.”]
I humbly suggest that the target audience can be practically and effectively limited to the journalists. If the journalists are in agreement with you, then the politicians will follow. This is the nature and power of the media influence in current society.
Good discussion Greg, Joe and Carl.
Hey Joe, I have spent the last few weeks reading through your stuff, and I am most intrigued. I have some questions for you, respectfully.
1. I have read through some of your exchanges with Spencer and Curry, and I am at a loss to understand why those exchanges seem to unravel into nothing with there being no advancement of any of the concepts. Certainly they have no agenda, right?
2. If what you say is true, shouldn’t there be a way to prove it more simply?
3. How is Venus warmer than Mercury?
4. Why can’t CO2 molecules reflect outgoing radiation back to the earth and cause it to warm?
5. If I took 10,000 light sources that were cooler than the Earth, and focused them on a small area of the Earth, would that area be warmer?
Hi JK, 1. At the least, this is academic entrenchment and paradigm defense. Scientists don’t actually like new ideas…they just like to talk about the old ideas and do science and get a salary talking about old ideas that other people produced. That in itself explains the cognitive functioning ability aspect. And then perhaps they actually are purposefully defending the basis of alarm. 2. Yes there should be simple experimental proofs, for example the possibility for a surface or enclosed box to become hotter than the radiant source given adjustment for emissivity etc. This would be evidence FOR the greenhouse effect. There is no experiment out there that demonstrates this simple concept. Lack of evidence in this case IS evidence of absence because the theory (GHE) does predict a simple observation. We also did the experiments ourselves with the atmosphere and surface, and found there was no backradiation heating etc. Then there’s the light-bulbs situation, and the basic physics thermodynamic theory. We’ll keep looking for simpler demonstrations that the GHE is wrong, but note, that there is no simple demonstration that the GHE exists in the first place. 3. The radiant temperature of Venus is much colder than that of Mercury. It is cooler than that of Earth, too. This is important to keep in mind because what you would have been assuming is a reference to ground surface temperature. Since radiation is the only way energy leaves the planets, and thus their temperature will be determined by that radiation, then for planets with atmospheres the surface is not the ground surface, because radiation thinks the atmosphere is the surface too. We (humans, unless you’re a good physicist like me) always assume an incorrect reference to the ground surface due to our physical sense-perception based definitions. For Venus, the radiant surface is very high up in the atmosphere, at like 70km altitude or something. For Earth, is is 5-6km. Then, since atmospheres have a lapse rate so that it gets warmer and warmer with depth, then the bottom of the atmosphere will be warmer than the average and the top. Also note that there is an ongoing ambiguity in the usage of the term “surface temperature” – what is actually usually referred to by this term is the near-surface air temperature (within a few meters of the surface), rather than the actual physical surface temperature. The near-surface-air and physical surface do not have the same average temperatures. 4. Because that would be a perpetual motion machine. The radiation the CO2 might reflect can only be the same spectral thermal signature as the source of radiation…this is a very redundant statement. So, the radiation being reflected back to the surface would have the same thermal signature as the surface, and same temperatures have no effect on each other. If things worked this way with radiation, then we could build a steam engine that used internally-reflected light to make itself hotter than the temperature the combustion of coal was providing in the first place. If such a thing can be designed, then I will happily say that I was wrong about such limits, because I would be wrong in the class of people like Carnot, etc., and because of the benefits humanity would subsequently be able to exploit from such technology – free energy, basically. 5. This question can be generalized to: can you focus thermal radiant energy from a source to produce a warmer temperature than the source? Could you focus thermal radiant energy from ice-cubes to produce a warmer temperature than the ice-cubes? The answer to that is “no” as far as I know, because if we could, I would think we would have done it. That’s the cheapest answer of course, but such a procedure would be an obvious thing to try out, and more importantly, would be an obvious result or possibility given the basic theory of optics etc. Actually, there are experiments which show that focusing the radiant energy from ice-cubes, on something warmer, will cause the warmer thing to cool down.
Joe, I like your answers, but since I mentioned target audience previously, I am not sure an average politician would agree with you on (5) immediately, because as a child he played with a magnifying glass in the sun and burned things. He might say “but I did get a higher temperature!”.
Well that’s why I referenced ice cubes…did he try it with ice cubes? Think of how neat that would be!
Or ever try it with the night sky?
Joe, he did not try it with ice cubes, but he made his experience with the magnifying glass, therefore he is not convinced and might decide to vote for cutting the CO2 emissions (and imprisonment of deniers later, maybe). Just imagine they invited you to the congressional hearing. You can not tell them there “just try it with ice cubes”. Even if you did, they would probably ask you to explain the difference.
Hmm I thought it should be intuitive, but yes that wouldn’t suffice. Could I point out the difference between the sun and an ice cube? The experiments which show focusing ice cube radiation causes faster cooling? That you’re only focusing the temperature you have available? Why didn’t focusing the sky without the sun work?
Joseph E Postma says: “Hmm I thoght it should be intuitive, but yes that wouldn’t suffice.”
==================================
Exactly. There is a huge gap between what people like you can say and what people like typical journalists and politicians can understand. If we want results, we need to keep it in mind.
Joe,
Thanks for your reply. Please forgive my ignorance, but I have two points of confusion.
Earth is radiating a certain amount of infrared radiation. (As a side question, where did this IR radiation come from? Was it originally shortwave radiation from the sun that was absorbed by the Earth and re-emitted as longwave IR? Or did it come from the Suna as longwave IR?)
The more the Earth radiates, the cooler it will be. The less it radiates, the warmer it will be. Is that correct? So, if one takes some of that infrared radiation being radiated and turns it back at the earth, won’t that require the Earth to re-radiate that energy in order not to warm? Why wouldn’t that energy cause it to warm?
And, if I have thousands of small IR energy sources radiating towards the Earth, why wouldn’t the Earth warm from that additional energy? What difference does it make what the temperatures are of the individual IR energy sources?
And let’s say the Earth did “warm” as a result of IR radiation originally having come from the Earth being redirected back towards the Earth. Why would that cause a “perpetual motion” machine?
If I may, let me use an analogy of a Lake. The rain is incoming IR, the rivers flowing out of it are outgoing IR radiation, and the level of the Lake is its “temperature.” Let’s say I take some water from one of the rivers, and I divert it right back into the Lake. Won’t that cause the Lake to “rise?” But it will not rise forever, just enough to balance the water level. In fact, the other rivers will now flow a little faster due to the increased water level from the first river being diverted. There is no conservation of matter problem here. It is just the same water that would have left the lake via river number one.
So is the same with CO2 in the atmosphere. Why can’t it divert some IR radiation that would otherwise be lost in space back onto the Earth? That would cause the Earth’s temperature to rise a little, but only until it finds a radiative “balance” because now more IR is being radiated.
Where am I thinking about this incorrectly?
Thanks again.
@JK
“Where am I thinking about this incorrectly?”
Everywhere. Analogies can only be taken so far before a critical lack of knowledge and understanding of basic physics is exposed, like in the analogy you just gave.
“Let’s say I take some water from one of the rivers, and I divert it right back into the Lake”
Where I come from, rivers flow downhill. In order for you to “divert it right back in to the lake”, you have to make water flow uphill, against gravity. Therefore, if you want to increase the level of the lake by this diversion, and by analogy its temperature, you would have to introduce a NEW ENERGY SOURCE in to the system. I’m not going any further with the explanation, as I’ve given enough of my time to educating cretins.
You should post this sort of drivel over at wattsup. They’d showcase it as plausible.
@AS
We should thank JK for presenting this sort of argumentation, because it is wide spread and has a sort of convincing effect on lay persons. If we do not learn to deal with it effectively, warmists will win the (unprepared) minds of important lay persons like journalists and politicians.
Hi JK,
For your analogy, please read AS’ comment above…that was an excellent explanation. You can’t just “divert water back upstream to the lake” without putting in some work and energy from somewhere else, and, that energy can’t just come from the downhill flow of the water out of the lake because entropy doesn’t let you capture all of the necessary energy. But let’s say you could somehow convert the increase in kinetic energy from the falling water perfectly back into potential energy by magically reversing its “flow” and having it raise itself back to the height it started. What would happen then? Well, the water would just fall back down, and wouldn’t back up the lake at all. The water could only be raised back to the height from which it fell, and then fall back down again, and as this height is at the bottom/exit of the lake and not the top/input, then it can’t refill the lake. If the input and exit of the lake are at the same altitude, then no flow occurs at all, of course, just like no heat flows when temperatures are equal.
As AS and GH point out, you have to be very careful with analogies, particularly in this context. Why? Because these types of analogies mix up bosons (light) with fermions (matter). As AS rightly points out, and this is not meant as an insult or anything like that, just a matter of fact:
“Analogies can only be taken so far before a critical lack of knowledge and understanding of basic physics turns the analogy into sophistry.”
So think about it – do photons and matter behave the same? If you have two iron swords, they clash against each other with quite the clang…matter (fermions) can’t occupy the same states, meaning the same position, etc. Matter can’t overlap. Well then what about two flashlights, or lasers? How do these “swords of light” interact? Well they pass right through each other of course.
Is that not a pretty amazing difference in behaviour? Matter repels other matter; but photons just overlap other photons. So, can these analogies which use ideas about physical matter and the pressure and forces and volumes they have to occupy and conserve, be valid for what photons will do? No, they can’t be. Also, who says your analogy is valid or has any relevance in the first place? Why should temperature be represented by the level of the lake? Why just make things up randomly and assume they have something to say about physics? I would go further than AS and say that analogies should have no place in physics WHATSOEVER. Deal with the real facts and the real science…going to analogies can easily result in sophistry and simulacra, almost by definition. For example, the IPCC energy budget is an analogy of the Earth…and the analogy gets everything wrong and destroys the physics. Interestingly, essentially ALL of greenhouse theory is argued with analogy, instead of real physics! The IPCC and GHE energy budgets use an analogy of the Earth and an analogy of the physics, rather than the real physics! That’s what you just tried to do to – I already gave you the scientific answer, but you came back to discuss an analogy.
Science and physics does not exist by “argumentum ad analogy”. It exists by Q ~ (Th^4 – Tc^4), and that proves and states that heat flows from hot to cold and cold doesn’t increase the temperature of hot…and that’s it; there’s is no justification for analogizing invented concepts beyond this.
Do you know how a blackbody spectrum is produced in the lab? By trapping a continuous output of photons from a thermal radiant source, inside a small cavity. This causes a distribution of the energy states of the photons to produce a blackbody spectrum, and the discovery of the math which describes this was the origin of quantum theory. The trapped photons don’t exert more and more force and make their source hotter and hotter, they just distribute their energy states in the most optimum way possible given quantization and the source temperature, and this produces the Plank curve spectrum. Now, what would happen if you tried trapping a continuous production of matter inside a small cavity? The cavity would blow up as the matter pushed its way out. These are pretty big differences in behaviour. So, be wary of those brand of analogies.
CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t, and can’t, cause any heat to move back up the temperature gradient. CO2 doesn’t do any work or produce any energy…it is just a passive molecule doing nothing, responding to the forces exerted on it by things which do produce energy and do produce temperature gradients. That is, CO2 doesn’t make water flow back up the river. We use power from outside the river to make that happen in real life, with pumps consuming energy supplied ultimately from fossil fuels or nuclear power. CO2 isn’t doing anything like that…it is just passively floating around in the air.
You can’t just say the Earth might “radiate more” or “radiate less”. Please see this: there is a single mechanism for increasing or decreasing radiation from a thermal source at a constant/single temperature, and that is via emissivity. Emissivity is the only thing that modulates thermal radiant energy. Low emissivity means a higher kinetic (matter) temperature can be held for a given radiant output. Oxygen and nitrogen, 99% of the atmosphere, have almost zero emissivity. That is, the vast majority of the atmosphere already has a property that would allow it to hold a higher kinetic temperature than its radiant output would correspond to as a perfect blackbody. CO2 might increase the emissivity and certainly no one has ever claimed that it decreases emissivity, because if CO2 can radiate that means it has high emissivity, not low.
I already answered why radiation from CO2 won’t cause the surface to warm, in my previous reply to you. At best, that radiation would have the same thermal characteristics as the surface in the first place, and the same temperatures have no effect on each other. In practice, CO2 emits at a much lower temperature, and might reflect/scatter only a portion of the surface radiation, and so this is less energy than the surface is emitting. The heat flow is still from surface to atmosphere to space, and as long as heat flow is from surface to atmosphere to space, the surface won’t warm from the atmosphere. CO2 does not change that. And I also already gave you the answer for why the near-surface-air temperature is warmer than the average column or blackbody temperature. Basic and real physics already explains everything…there is no need to use analogies to come up with alternative mechanics, that can only be explained by analogy.
JK says: “If I may, let me use an analogy of a Lake.”
=================================================
Your “analogue of a Lake” has no basis in real science. Radiation and it’s effects are simply not analogous to water and it’s effects. Or, in other words, we can only know if radiation behaves like water AFTER we have studied both. Before that we do not know if the “analogy” you presented is correct. In fact, by referring to this “analogy” you just assumed the very thing to be correct that needs to be proven correct first. We certainly can not prove something to be correct just by assuming it to be correct, can we?
What you certainly may do is ASKING if radiation behaves like water, no problem with that, and the answer would be “no, it does not”.
JK says: “The more the Earth radiates, the cooler it will be. The less it radiates, the warmer it will be. Is that correct?”
============================================
This is absolutely incorrect. I do not understand how can anyone believe that. If the object gets warmer it radiates more, this is how infrared heating works e.g..
Only in GHE analogy land does the Steffan-Boltzmann equation work BACKWARDS! The GHE analogy to physics completely inverts actual physics. Great posts Greg.
JK says: “So, if one takes some of that infrared radiation being radiated and turns it back at the earth, won’t that require the Earth to re-radiate that energy in order not to warm? Why wouldn’t that energy cause it to warm?”
===========================================================
This is a very important question, actually this is the key point of the whole climate scare. The IPCC’s “greenhouse gases” as presented in their reports allegedly do exactly that: warming the source of radiation (surface) by “back radiation” ( http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-1-figure-1.html, http://imgur.com/gDRQL15 (2nd report) and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-1.html). An absolutely crazy and unscientific idea.
My favorite explanation is this: the assumption of such a warming leads inevitably to production of energy out of nothing as a result, which is physically impossible. It can be demonstrated with numbers (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/19/friday-funny-reflections-on-the-greenhouse-effect/#comment-1367119) or without numbers. Even if we place a perfect reflector in front of an object and it returns back to the object exactly the radiation the object radiates, it will be just like if we place instead of the reflector another object of equal properties and temperature. I guess, everyone knows from the everyday life that two objects of the same temperature do not warm each other. So, this is really very easy.
I think I must have missed that post from WUWT at the time. I looked at a few comments, then found Robert Brown: “It takes around 100 ky for a photon produced in the Sun’s core to get to the surface and escape. Now that’s a greenhouse effect!”
HOW THE H is that a greenhouse effect, and have anything to do with the GHE? The time it takes for “a photon” to get from the core to the surface is a function of the mean-free-path a theoretical photon would have to go through to travel that distance, given the scattering/absorption/reemission etc. it would have to go through. This has nothing at all to do with the greenhouse effect.
See what I mean – these guys just LIE through their teeth. Is Robert Brown really that incompetent and insane of physicist, or does he know he’s creating sophistry and BS? Just amazing.
Second, Watts’ example and cited sources for filaments don’t even address the issue or what the implication of what they should address. Watts cites a T5-HO lamp behaviour in the context of incandescent bulbs…T5-HO lamps are fluorescents!! And the overheating is caused not by backradiation, but by having OTHER lightbulbs nearby (i..e independent sources of energy, not backradiation)!
Can you believe how they LIE like this? They must have been very careful to not let us see that post, somehow.
Upcoming post: Anthony Watts is a Liar.
Amazing ****ing liars! I can’t believe how they just LIE, outright. Despicable people.
Joseph E Postma says: “…HOW THE H is that a greenhouse effect, and have anything to do with the GHE?”
==================================================
Well, they understandably need to obfuscate the relevant “greenhouse effect”, I mean the one was presented by the IPCC in their reports. I guess, the most people does not know exactly what nonsense the IPCC sold as the “greenhouse effect”.
As for “Amazing ****ing liars”, I am sure you missed this statement of Mr.Watts’ he made long ago: “Let me make this simple, the greenhouse effect is a well established property of radiative physics in our atmosphere, one that I have observed firsthand through experimentation.”(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/21/some-thoughts-on-radiative-transfer-and-ghgs/#comment-1041167).
Well they just say whatever they want, independent of any truth or meaning or anything. They just say things and then think that what they said justifies their pre-existing beliefs. Like we just witnessed with the water in the lake example – just say something to make yourself believe in your own theory since your analogy proves the proposition of the analogy.
We’re in zombie land…we actually literally live with zombies all around us. Some of them have mustaches even, and can turn light bulbs on and off. We literally are living around people who don’t have minds. I mean it’s settled now. I’m no longer wondering about this. It’s no longer a cynical idea…it’s really reality. It’s like the movie “They Live”, except the glasses are a metaphor for intelligence and the aliens are a metaphor for zombies.
AS says “I’m not going any further with the explanation, as I’ve given enough of my time to educating cretins.”
Well, AS, that certainly is not very nice. I stumbled upon Joe’s site, found his writings interesting, and wanted to learn further. I have seen Joe try to discuss these issues with other science minded people, and it seems that he has been less than successful in convincing them.
For all I know, AS, you hold the answer to disproving the GHE theory, but it is a shame that you can’t seem to get people to buy into it. Maybe a little work in this area is all that is standing between you and a Nobel Prize. What a shame it is that you hold the key to preventing economic devastation and saving lives but are too much of an ass to be able to make use of it. These CAGW nutjobs want to divest the world from the life giving benefits of fossil fuels that would bring billions of people out of poverty. People that have no access to electricity or clean water let alone flat screen tvs, computers and automobiles.
Now, maybe it is just that you and Joe are just so much more intelligent than Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and all those you have been discussing this with. For me, it has been some 25 years since I took physics and thermodynamics etc. as part of my Mechanical Engineering degree, so I am trying to catch up. I hope you can be patient with my tiny little brain. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not appealing to the authority of Spencer and Curry. They can be wrong as easily as anyone else. But what I find strange is that you guys had them wanting to believe. But you guys just couldn’t get them over the hump. Spencer was falling all over himself wanting to belief that there is no GHE.
And here is the thing. I am on your side. Well, maybe not your side, but I am not on their side. That is the side of nutjobs like James Hansen who can’t decide whether all the water will boil from planet Earth in four centuries or will it be millions of years? Or fraudsters like Mann & Co who seek to re-write the paleontological record record with no regard to the actual truth. I am not on their side. Now, Earth’s temperature record pretty convincingly shows that CO2 is not a primary driver of climate (if it has any effect at all). In fact, the record would actually make more sense if it were causing cooling. Hansen tries to explain the whole “lag” issue by just glossing over it saying “it is exactly what we would expect to see.” No matter what the facts, they find a way to make them fit their doomsday theories.
But what if their whole GHE theory turned out to be complete nonsense? Wow, wouldn’t that be ironic.
So basically here is the thing. If you can’t show someone like me how your disproof works, you aren’t going to be able to ever convince anyone of anything. And you are the ones that have so much invested, not me.
And, I have presented no arguments here, no positions, but rather just questions. I just want to understand what you guys are saying because, if true, it would be quite revolutionary.
By the way, my analogy would be consistent if I just dammed off river number one. No extra energy is needed to be put back into the system.
It’s not revolutionary though JK and it certainly isn’t worth a Nobel Prize. It isn’t a new discovery. It is simply stating the correct physics. The alarmists just made something up, just invented something, and through the use of sophistic analogy and a morally-defunct populace and the appearance of a “liberal cause”, has simply tricked a lot of people into assuming the statements have physical validity.
Cold doesn’t heat hot. That’s all YOU or any lay-person should need to understand there is no GHE. Why is it so difficult for us to communicate that cold doesn’t heat hot, is due to the reasons stated, and human reasons.
GHE doesn’t need to be disproved…it is simply wrong. In fact, GHE theory has no proof to begin with. It only exists by arguing via analogy. There is no experimental or theoretical proof that the GHE exists…it simply doesn’t exist. How can we disprove a theory that has no proof to begin with? It’s a belief system…that’s the only thing it is.
Well Joe, if it is really wrong, it ought to be disproved. This issue isn’t just an intellectual exercise, real lives are hanging in the balance. Or at least they would be if the fraudsters had their way. I would like to know the truth, whatever it is. But man would it be great if you guys are right.
But, again, what I don’t understand is how other skeptics like Spencer don’t understand simple concepts like “cold doesn’t heat hot.” Certainly he has no agenda. Like I said, he seemed falling all over himself wanting to believe.
So, JK, please help us out then: How do WE communicate to people that cold doesn’t heat hot?
The cold atmosphere doesn’t heat the warmer surface…only the warmer surface heats the colder atmosphere. This is what we’ve all been saying for years but apparently this isn’t enough. How can we use even more simple words? Do ice-cubes burn your hand? Does radiation from ice cubes make you hotter? Does your own reflected light from a mirror make you hotter?
These are all trivial for me, or Greg, or AS, and apparently only a small number of people to answer. We don’t understand why you are unable to answer them or understand the implications for the GHE theory.
If saying that “cold doesn’t heat hot” is not sufficient, then it is quite true that it is impossible for us to defeat the fraud of the greenhouse effect. That doesn’t mean the GHE is correct. Cold still doesn’t heat up hot.
JK says: “I have seen Joe try to discuss these issues with other science minded people, and it seems that he has been less than successful in convincing them.”
=================================================
This is definitely not true. I remember people thanking Joe for his articles and explanations. Could he be more successful? Yes, I guess, because many people have some difficulties with understanding references to opossums and pheromones, sorry, I mean references to bosons and fermions 😀 .
We have disproved it. Watts disproved it with his light bulbs experiment, we disproved it with observation of surface temperature and solar insolation, Wood disproved it with his boxes and repeated attempts have never shown backradiation temperature amplification above the solar input, real greenhouses disprove it, everyday experience disproves it, basic theory disproves it, Q ~ (Th^4 – Tc^4) disproves it, cold doesn’t heat up hot disproves it, etc.
The problem is, people want to be told by someone who randomly appears to be an authority, that it is OK to stop believing in it, rather than just stop believing in it. Herd instinct…stupidity…conformity…etc.
So where are YOU at? Do you get it? Do you understand? Do you see what went wrong? You’ve read this blog? What are YOU waiting for? You waiting for someone else to tell you its OK to stop believing in it? You’re not capable of making the judgement yourself? It’s fine if you’re not, but at least tell us that, then. If “cold doesn’t heat hot” doesn’t do it for you, then what would? If my blog hasn’t done it for you, then what would? If all the disproofs discussed on this blog and mentioned here don’t do it for you, then what would? If the atmospheric vertical lapse rate and definition of what an average is doesn’t do it for you, then what would?
The atmosphere is colder than the surface. It doesn’t matter WHAT is inside the atmosphere. It doesn’t matter if the atmosphere radiated with 100% emissivity. The surface heats the atmosphere and the atmosphere doesn’t heat the surface, because the atmosphere is colder than the surface. It doesn’t matter what the surface is made of or what the atmosphere has in it – the colder atmosphere does not heat up the surface.
If YOU are not convinced of that, then it is you and it is the GHE that need to experimentally demonstrate the opposite. You can’t assume the GHE is correct because people seem to believe in it – we’ve done empirical experiments to look for it, and didn’t find it, when its own theory said we should have found it. So, where’s its own (scientifically and empirically correct and contextual) experiment to demonstrate it? None exists. It only exists in the mind of analogy, when existing physics already explains what was meant to be explained.
“As a side question, where did this IR radiation come from? Was it originally shortwave radiation from the sun that was absorbed by the Earth and re-emitted as longwave IR? Or did it come from the Sun as longwave IR?”
–
When matter absorbs sunlight the sunlight is converted to internal thermal energy within that matter, provided that that matter is not itself emitting equivalent wavelengths of EMR (two equivalents suns shining at one another will not raise the internal energy of either.) At the instant of absorption the sunlight ceases to exist as a discrete reality since it was a form of energy that has since converted to a different form of energy. (Internal thermal energy is not electromagnetic energy and vise versa.)
–
All matter that contains internal thermal energy will emit electromagnetic energy of its own relative to its temperature and emissivity, which is wavelength specific. As such there is no such thing as “re-emitted” IR radiation since all electromagnetic energy originates from within the matter that is emitting it. In other words, matter does not store electromagnetic radiation, which it re-emits at some future time. It disappears when it is absorbed and it is recreated when it is emitted. Many definitions of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis assert that “greenhouse gases” absorb up-going IR radiation and then “re-emit” that radiation in all directions. Such mental constructs are imaginary.
–
The “greenhouse effect” mental construct also assumes that all of the thermal energy that is present within ground level air comes from the up-going longwave radiation that is emitted by the ground and subsequently absorbed by “greenhouse gases.” The fact is 100% of the air that is in direct contact with the ground is warmed through conduction. This warmed air expands and ascends skyward to be replaced by cooler air, which keeps the air in contact with the ground perpetually cooler than the ground. The enthalpy of vaporization is also released into 100% of the air when water vapor condenses. Also, if you look at an incoming absorption spectrum of the atmosphere you will see that a good deal of thermal energy is absorbed from sunlight on its way to the ground; this also heats the air. Also, when the above mentioned upward convection currents draw cool air down from aloft 100% of that air warms via the adiabatic process as the work that is done on that air converts to internal thermal energy.
–
All of this thermal energy from all of these different sources combine to induce “greenhouse gases” to emit far more IR radiation than they would if they were only being heated by up-going longwave radiation. The IR radiation that “greenhouse gases” emit downward does not cool the atmosphere, but the IR radiation that they emit upwards towards space does. It has been estimated that somewhere between 70-85% of the 240 W/m^2 of outgoing longwave radiation that is present at the top of the atmosphere is being emitted by the atmosphere. Since “greenhouse gases” increase the emissivity of air they enhance the ability of the atmosphere to cool radiatively into space. This, in turn, off-sets any warming affect that a narrowing of the “atmospheric window” might other wise cause.
–
Carl
“This, in turn, off-sets any warming affect that a narrowing of the “atmospheric window” might other wise cause.”
If such a concept might actually produce the warming of the source surface as is claimed in the first place, which of course it would not. Though I understand referencing the claim…I’m just trying to preempt Greg here a bit 🙂
Thanks for the reply Carl…excellent as always.
“And, if I have thousands of small IR energy sources radiating towards the Earth, why wouldn’t the Earth warm from that additional energy?”
–
Thus we have the central flaw that is contained within the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis: the idea that “greenhouse gases” are a secondary energy source, which adds additional energy to the system.
If you set up two radiometers within a wine cellar and direct one at the east and the other at the west walls their readouts will say that each wall at equilibrium is radiating ~300 W/m^2 of IR radiation. Why doesn’t the 300W/m^2 of IR radiation from the west wall combine with the 300 W/m^2 from the east wall to create 600 W/m^2 of IR radiation? Isn’t each wall a separate energy source since each is emitting IR radiation?
–
Carl
JK says: “But, again, what I don’t understand is how other skeptics like Spencer don’t understand simple concepts like “cold doesn’t heat hot.” Certainly he has no agenda. Like I said, he seemed falling all over himself wanting to believe.”
===============================================
So, JK, after Joe and I have provided you with scientific argumentation on why the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC does not exist, you did not react to that and instead chose to switch to non-scientific argumentation.
The issue of what Spencer said and why is a political and psychological one. Do you really want us to buy the idea that Spencer definitely does not intentionally mislead people because he allegedly “has no agenda”? Here you have turned things upside down again, like with your absurd analogy a few comments ago. The right logical succession would be this: Since no “greenhouse effect” (back radiation warming”) is physically possible, people who state otherwise are wrong, and the explanation why they state that could be that they are either stupid or evil or do not think properly and just believe someone else. Your idea that Spencer’s not admitting the absurdity of the “greenhouse effect” publicly somehow proves the “greenhouse effect” is absolutely ridiculous.
Carl I think that your example proves the same even if the walls ARE energy sources…they are already in any case – behind the walls is an infinite heat sink/pot, and any emission from the walls is immediately replaced with energy from the pot, i.e. mass of the Earth. A bread toaster might be a good example: do the elements, powered from outside, facing each other at the same temperature, heat each other up even more? Your excellent example works whether the sources are powered or not.
It is a GREAT question:
“Why doesn’t the 300W/m^2 of IR radiation from the west wall combine with the 300 W/m^2 from the east wall to create 600 W/m^2 of IR radiation?”
But you have to understand, and at a fairly advanced level, the Planck thermal curve to answer it. The expected question from the GHE advocate, upon hearing the correct answer, “Well then what happened to the energy?”, is simple: Nothing. Nothing happens to the energy and it doesn’t do anything. Where does it go? It overlaps with itself. How would you guys answer that later question?
@JK, or is that @Schizo, as you seem to be sucking and blowing at the same time.
First things first. If you ‘dammed off river number one’, river number one would cease to exist. There would be no ‘river number one’, so it could never refill your ‘Lake’, even if it depended on unicorn dust, which underpinned your opening non-argument that a river could flow uphill, in the absence of an independent source of energy. Your beliefs are cretinous.
I could end it here, as I take no pleasure from the intellectual equivalent of clubbing a baby seal; however, you proudly display a special mix of cretinism and dissemblance such that your particular brand of stupidity needs to be showcased.
Next, you know nothing about the “Scientific Method”. The CAGW hypothesis is demonstrably unproven. For example, when atmospheric CO2 ppmV concentrations were between 4000 and 7000, the planet experienced glaciation. Any number of attempts to prove CAGW beyond doubt have failed because it is impossible to demonstrate a verifiable, repeatable, observable and unfalsifiable relationship that CO2 (or other alleged ‘greenhouse’ gases) in the atmosphere control ‘average’ surface temperature.
It is simply not for me to defend my position against an unproven (bollocks) hypothesis. The onus of proof is on fantasists such as yourself. Real greenhouses work by physically blocking the natural cooling process known as convection. Ask yourself this: how much greenhouse effect would you expect from a greenhouse which had no roof, or walls?
I’m curious as to why you persist in making a thundering tit of yourself in public.
Joseph E Postma says: “…How would you guys answer that later question?”
===========================================
I would probably answer that later question by presenting reductio ad absurdum, that is I would assume that those things do warm each other and then I would demonstrate that it leads to an absurd result like production of energy out of nothing. When talking to a lay person my first choice would be suggestion to hold two hands not too close to each other (to avoid suppression of convection) and enjoy the non-existing mutual warming. No plank :).
Yah good point…because hands ARE a continuous source of energy, that DO emit thermal IR.
@Greg @Joe Take a suitably shaped thermometer. Hold it with one hand. Wait until the reading stabilises. It will indicate body temperature. Next, grasp the suitably shaped thermometer with the other hand, still grasping it with the first hand. Wait until the reading stabilizes ………. zzzzzzzzzzz
The difference between energy and energy flux. Right there. People need jailing for the CAGW scam. I am determined to make this happen,
Great example AS…precisely.
AS says:
“Next, you know nothing about the “Scientific Method”. The CAGW hypothesis is demonstrably unproven. For example, when atmospheric CO2 ppmV concentrations were between 4000 and 7000, the planet experienced glaciation. Any number of attempts to prove CAGW beyond doubt have failed because it is impossible to demonstrate a verifiable, repeatable, observable and unfalsifiable relationship that CO2 (or other alleged ‘greenhouse’ gases) in the atmosphere control ‘average’ surface temperature.”
Who is alleging that CO2 drives temperature? Who is supporting the CAGW thesis? Just out of curiosity, when was there a glaciation with CO2 levels between 4000 and 7000? (I am not saying there wasn’t a glaciation during the Ordovician, but there seems to be some paper out there that the CAGW crowd are waving around that contends that CO2 was not really that high.)
But I digress. From observational data, it is clear to me that CO2 does not drive temperature in any significant way. Didn’t we already cover this? I find the CAGW scam every bit as criminal as you. Radiative heat transfer is, however, not my field. That does not mean that I can’t understand it with a little investigation. I would like to. It has been 20 something years since I looked at it. I speak several languages, but now I would like to learn a little French, and I have some French jerkoff lambasting me for asking some questions about basic French. Whatever.
AS also says: “Right there. People need jailing for the CAGW scam. I am determined to make this happen,”
So let me get this straight. You have the key to disproving the biggest crime against humanity in 50 years, but you can’t seem to get anyone interested. Who is the idiot?
Well obviously JK, the idiots are the people who are unable to understand the crime, and also the people perpetrating it, and the gatekeepers preventing the truth from getting out, and the sophists creating false analogies (not you…you’re not the first, not about you…this has been ongoing from day 1) to keep promoting the crime. What is more idiotic – stating that cold can’t heat hot, or, not understanding that cold can’t heat hot? Honest question. Maybe I should start believing that cold heats hot.
JK says: “So let me get this straight. You have the key to disproving the biggest crime against humanity in 50 years, but you can’t seem to get anyone interested. Who is the idiot?”
============================================
JK, I find it revealing that you are not interested in scientific aspects of the non-existing “greenhouse effect” (warming by back radiation) any longer.
As for crime or not, the whole climate scare is proven to be based on a fiction, which the IPCC’s “greenhouse effect” is. Many people share responsibility for that, this is clear. As I said, some of them lied deliberately, some others knew that but did not protest, some of them just believed the liars or other mislead persons. It is not just “idiot” or not. Many people simply do not know that the “greenhouse effect” they believe in is in fact the absurd notion of self-heating. It is more complicated than just being an idiot.
Joe says “So, JK, please help us out then: How do WE communicate to people that cold doesn’t heat hot?”
I have some ideas on that. I would like nothing more than to see the whole house of cards crumble. I just want to understand radiative heat transfer a little better. I clearly get how cold can’t heat hot via conduction or convection. I just don’t understand how this applies to radiative heat transfer. It doesn’t mean any of you are wrong about it, it just means that I don’t understand why cold can’t heat hot in that scenario. My questions are not designed to prove anything to you, but just to try to understand why it is that what you say is true. To that end, Carl, thanks for your replies above.
So what you are saying is that the electromagnetic radiation coming from the Earth has the temperature of the Earth. That radiation hits CO2 and is absorbed. CO2 then emits radiation that is the temperature of itself. And no matter how many CO2 molecules at a certain temperature that are emitting radiation back down to Earth, because that light is at a lower temperature than the Earth, it can’t cause the Earth to warm any more than if that light never hit the Earth. Is that right?
Thanks.
Greg says “JK, I find it revealing that you are not interested in scientific aspects of the non-existing “greenhouse effect” (warming by back radiation) any longer.
As for crime or not, the whole climate scare is proven to be based on a fiction, which the IPCC’s “greenhouse effect” is. Many people share responsibility for that, this is clear. ”
Greg, whoever said I wasn’t interested?
As for the climate scare being a crime, I couldn’t agree more. It is a crime against poor people, and I am thoroughly disgusted by it. Some of the CAGW crowd are fraudsters and some are just deluded. Many just have this self loathing perception of mankind. If we did it, it must be bad for the planet. Whatever. I don’t buy any of it. The record shows pretty clearly that CO2 doesn’t drive temperature in any significant way. I think that Roe demonstrates this. Beyond that, CO2 is good for the planet as it has caused it to green since 1980 which can be seen by satellite. More CO2, more rainfall, and incidentally a little more temperature, and the plants love it.
Yes that is pretty much correct JK. Radiation is limited by the same limits as would apply for conduction. If the atmosphere were completely opaque from the bottom, and emitted with full emissivity, it still wouldn’t heat up a warmer surface…it would still be the warmer surface heating the atmosphere.
The emission of energy from the Earth to space is Q = Qs + Qa, where “Q” is the total going to space, “Qs” is the part of the energy from the surface going directly to space, and “Qa” is the part of the energy from the atmosphere going to space. Q is constant, set by the solar input from outside. If Qs decreases because the atmosphere blocks some of it, this doesn’t increase the temperature of the surface (which is what the greenhouse effect requires), it just increases the emission from the atmosphere, Qa. If the atmosphere perfectly absorbed all the energy from the surface, then this would simply make the atmosphere and surface the same temperature. Qs would be zero but then Qa would just be emitting all the energy it got from Qs, to outerpsace. The best this would mean is that the surface and atmosphere were the same temperature, not that the atmosphere warmed up the surface.
JK says: “…I don’t understand why cold can’t heat hot in that scenario. … So what you are saying is that the electromagnetic radiation coming from the Earth has the temperature of the Earth. That radiation hits CO2 and is absorbed. CO2 then emits radiation that is the temperature of itself. And no matter how many CO2 molecules at a certain temperature that are emitting radiation back down to Earth, because that light is at a lower temperature than the Earth, it can’t cause the Earth to warm any more than if that light never hit the Earth. Is that right?”
=============================================
JK, the answer has been given already, and I just hope that you are not repeating the question in hope to get something ambiguous in the answer.
Basically, although light does not have temperature, the idea is right. The case where warm air moves to a cold region and warms the surface there is not included, of course, because this is not “greenhouse effect”.
Now, cold can not warm hot, because we know that hot warms cold. If we assume that it goes both ways, then the assumption that cold warms hot as well leads to infinite mutual warming or production of energy out of nothing, which is absurd. This is very simple and belongs to basic knowledge at the high school level.
The same goes for back radiation warming, read my example with a reflector. Self-heating is impossible and absurd.
Greg,
Light does not have temperature? I thought that the key to all of this was that light DOES have temperature. The radiation being emitted has the temperature of the body emitting it. The light coming from the Sun has a temperature of 5500K, etc.
Joe, so here is one for you. If the light leaving the Sun is 5500C, how does it heat the Sun’s corona to 1,000,000C? I am reading that this is the only case in the Universe where the thing being heated is hotter than the thing doing the heating.
The corona is not heated by the main solar flux at 5500C. This is a well known problem, and it is well known that the main solar flux is not and can not be the source of the high-temperature of the corona. The corona temperature is due to “plasma” and “acoustic” effects, and I will leave it at that, but you can probably get a basic read from Wiki on the corona. It is not from the cooler photosphere creating a higher temperature than its own thermal output.
JK says: “The record shows pretty clearly that CO2 doesn’t drive temperature in any significant way.”
=======================================================
Well, my position on that is that “the record” is apparently another fiction, so what it shows has nothing to do with science. Besides, the references to “the record” are absolutely unnecessary and even counterproductive, for 2 reasons. First, the IPCC “greenhouse effect” is very easy to debunk on the lay person level and second, practically no journalist or politician can verify any claims about “the record” himself, so he would have to choose who to believe and the bad guys have already created the consensus fiction, so we can only lose this way.
JK: In regards to your question to Greg on the temperature of light, it is a careful matter of definitions that is probably best left to professionals. Light itself does not have temperature because temperature is something usually associated with matter. However, light will induce a temperature in the matter on a surface when absorbed, given the reduction in flux from distance and the absorption percentage, and the direction of heat flow (that is, the surface must be emitting less heat than it will receive from the light). This is the context we always speak in so usually we just say the “temperature of the radiation/light/etc”. The spectral signature of sunlight always corresponds to the Sun at 5500C; but the actual locally induced temperature depends on distance and absorptivity. Raw sunlight can’t induce 5500C at the Earth, unless the inverse-square dilution from distance is reversed, with a magnifying glass or mirror etc.
Do you mean with respect to Mann’s attempts to “recreate” the record such as his attempt at eliminating the medieval warming period? Have you seen that new paper that the CAGW crowd are waving around about the Pacific Ocean Heat content during the last 10,000 years? Well it seems that the Ocean was 2C warmer during the Holocene Optimum and also it was warmer than today during the medieval warming period. This is pretty good evidence that the medieval warming period was not regional but rather global like we knew all along.
JK, my personal opinion about those alleged “periods” is that all that looks very much like total crap, if you ask them how they know that. The so called “climate science” is a liability and this branch should be closed, at least for 70 years. So, I am not going to accept any reference to “global temperature” in the present and in the past as evidence, until they have been proven to be valid, and I do not see any possibility to prove that.
Nothing that the CAGW crowd does is about legitimate science…it is pure politics and made-up appearances. It is not worth finding the few percent of their science which might be correct…such percentage wouldn’t support the alarmism or GHE is any case. It is best to begin to realize that it is all just a fraud and that it doesn’t intersect the actual scientific method at any point. It is a high-jack…an abuse of the entire academic system. At best, it exposes the academic science flaw; at worst, it is seeking to exploit it in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and to arbitrarily control people and divorce education and science and human cognition from reality altogether.
Joseph E Postma says: “…at worst, it is seeking to exploit it in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer,”
=================================================
Generally, rich getting richer does not necessarily lead to poor getting poorer. In the properlyfunctioning market economy both rich and poor get richer.
As for climate scare, of course it is possible to make money on it, but this makes also some of the rich poorer.
@JK
“Who is alleging that CO2 drives temperature? Who is supporting the CAGW thesis?”
Do you live in a cave, or are you just a pathetic bait-and-switch, faux victim, ‘I just want to understand’ tosser? Do I need to list the ‘professional’ bodies, governments, government ‘scientific’ advisers and media outlets which assert that CO2 drives temperature? That question was entirely rhetorical. Print your own list and waste your own time.
Your attempt via your comments at portraying yourself as a fellow ‘sceptic’, whilst never missing an opportunity to prolong the myth of the atmospheric GHE is truly amusing. There is only one ‘idiot’ in this exchange. Why not eyeball him, whilst getting some free, water-flows-uphill-all by-itself warmth by looking in a mirror?
Joe,
So then if I somehow directed all of the sun’s rays onto a single point, the temperature could never exceed that of the Sun itself?
AS wrote: “Do you live in a cave, or are you just a pathetic bait-and-switch, faux victim, ‘I just want to understand’ tosser? Do I need to list the ‘professional’ bodies, governments, government ‘scientific’ advisers and media outlets which assert that CO2 drives temperature? That question was entirely rhetorical. Print your own list and waste your own time.”
Now AS, correct me if I am wrong. Did you not direct a post towards me telling me that I don’t understand the Scientific Method and then went on to talk about the absurdity of the CAGW thesis? If you were not directing that towards me, why did you bring it up at all? Just wasting time? Also, when was there a glaciation with CO2 between 4000 and 7000 ppm?
Who’s wasting time? You really must be a troglodyte, seemingly never having heard of search engines. I’m not your researcher; get back to me when you’ve discovered what the atmospheric CO2 ppmV were during the glaciation in the late Ordovician period. Then tell me how a multi-billion $$ industry sustains itself by milking a 400 ppmV mouse.
“I’m not your researcher; get back to me when you’ve discovered what the atmospheric CO2 ppmV were during the glaciation in the late Ordovician period.” According to Seth Young (2009) and (2010), under 3000 ppm.
JK: “if we directed all of the sun’s rays onto a single point, the temperature could never exceed that of the Sun itself?”
This is an interesting point, because GHE advocates like Robert Brown and Joel Shore have both agreed that this wouldn’t occur either, when their own greenhouse effect physics says it could happen. They’ve used the temperature of the Sun to try to argue that the greenhouse effect could make the surface of the Earth as hot as the Sun, that that was the upper limit, however, their own math for the GHE does not specify that this should be a limit, and the GHE is all about making a source of heat hotter than itself (which obviously makes no sense…Greg the logician can tell you that!). These guys have little consistency…or sense.
Recall there is existing research out there that shows that focusing the thermal output from an icecube over to another point in space, where there is something warmer, doesn’t warm up the warmer thing more, but causes it to cool down faster. So, it seems that the thermal characteristic of the source are simply transferred to another point in space by focusing.
With standard optics, no, you can not focus the solar energy to make a hotter point than the temperature of the spectrum itself.
@JK
And according to others, eg Berner (2001), there is a range of uncertainty as to exact CO2 levels that far back. 4000 ppmV is near enough in the middle of the quoted range for that period. The point is, the concentration was well in to the 1000s of ppmV, such that, if there was a shred of validity to the Magic Self-Heating Gas fiction, the so-called temperature runaway would have already occurred. It didn’t. The exact opposite happened.
If that isn’t another view of the death of the ‘warming by GHE backradiation’ hypothesis then what is it?
“If that isn’t another view of the death of the ‘warming by GHE backradiation’ hypothesis then what is it?”
Agreed.
Joe, going further. If I were to arrange 10,000,000 suns each with a temperature of 6000K and we focused every single light ray onto a single point, I assume that it is impossible for that point to heat in excess of 6000K. That, I guess, goes to the original lightbulb challenge, right?”
Thanks.
JK says: “Joe, going further. If I were to arrange 10,000,000 suns…”
==================================
JK, what you are doing is pure obfuscation of a clear point. The IPCC’s “greenhouse effect” is not about focusing, it is about the surface of the Earth as the source of radiation heating itself (by back radiation, “greenhouse gases” serving only as passive reflectors). This is an impossible process, as I told you twice, because it is equal to infinite heating and production of energy out of nothing. You imaginable setup with many Suns has nothing to do with that.
“JK, what you are doing is pure obfuscation of a clear point.”
Well I don’t intend to do that. I am just trying to ask some questions to gain an understanding. The answer must be that the point can’t be heated in excess of 6000K no matter how much radiation shines on it from sources that are 6000k or less in temperature, right?
JK, Greg does have a point that these analogies and examples are getting away from the actual greenhouse effect. This, again, is par for the course. First, GHE argumentation uses analogies which are wrong, then, uses analogies which don’t even have to do with the greenhouse effect. Again, argumentation by proxy, rather than just directly discussing the darned postulate directly! If it can even be identified…and Greg does identify it, and the postulate is absurd on the face of it. And so when one brand of analogy is proven wrong, then simply another analogy is created to manufacture another proxy argument – this is such sophistic bullshit. (Not blaming or referencing you…this is just how it has been for years.)
I can make your example as perfect as it can be: create a shell at 6000K so that ALL vectors when viewed from the interior center of the shell looking outward intersect a source of 6000K. This is like arranging your 10,000,000 suns so that they perfectly cover the sky. In this case, what you get is a uniform radiation field of 6000K spectrum and no inverse-square decrease in flux, because the source comes from all angles and is not a point source. That is, anything at any position in the interior of the shell will get to 6000K (assuming unit absorptivity etc.).
Your 10,000,000 suns can’t all occupy the same point in space, and so you can’t focus all their light into a single position. Even if you had two 6000K suns right beside each other, the 2nd Sun wouldn’t focus as well as the first Sun, nor at the same spot, through a magnifying glass. And then if you used a second magnifying glass, it would not focus the 2nd Sun in the same position as the first Sun.
So you see how we can create ideas, that seem to make sense, but if you actually think about it physically, the idea/analogy/etc isn’t actually realistic? These physical limits are part of what keeps the universe sane…and they’re as logical as they are physical….the physical wouldn’t be able to exist without its logic of natural limitations. This is what science is about learning.
JK says: “I am just trying to ask some questions to gain an understanding.”
==============================================
I would say “misunderstanding”. Even if it were possible to focus the radiation coming from certain area of the source on a smaller area of another body and achieve a higher temperature, considering back radiation you would get the same result as in case of a simple reflector without focusing, because you would have dispersion in the opposite direction. You simply can not produce energy out of nothing, and your imaginable process of self-heating via focusing and re-focusing combined possibly with reflection would lead to exactly that absurd outcome.
Regardless of how complicated/obfuscated you can present the process of self-heating, it remains absurd, because the result would be production of energy out of nothing. There is no way around it.
Also if you used mirrors it still wouldn’t work. Aside from the theory and logic, real-world examples of this are known in solar power generation stations in deserts – they use 1000’s of mirrors to focus the sun’s energy, essentially replicating 1000 sun’s, and they all get focused to the same spot. This gets damned hot but it doesn’t get hotter than the surface of the Sun. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Efficiency The maximum temperature with maximum concentration is still just the solar temperature.
JK said: “Some of the CAGW crowd are fraudsters and some are just deluded. Many just have this self loathing perception of mankind. If we did it, it must be bad for the planet.”
Some are frauds and some are deluded, and this leaves few of them to do actual science. The ones that do are always skeptics.
The self-loathing perception of mankind is an important aspect and probably has connections to religious original sin…except it is the modern atheist liberal who now holds this religious belief and thinks it is more believable because it uses words you find in science. Not that they actually understand it. As someone pointed out, they’re just driven by ideology and “causes” rather than any sense of correctness or usefulness.
The triumph of materialism is to completely and utterly devalue human life, and that specifically translates to rejecting cognitive rational thought and intellectualism, philosophy and its history, since that is what defines human life.
And this vector exists, has come from, and is promoted exclusively from liberal academia and especially academic science, and particularly in climate science. It is within academic science today that you find the most intellectually and philosophically uninformed people in ALL of society. I know train drivers that have more philosophical and intellectual rational competence than liberal academic PhD scientists have.
Ok, so here is why I am even asking the question, and I am really not intending to play games or over complicate this. If my limited understanding of their position is close to correct, they would say this. Heat is not transferred from cold to hot. Radiative energy is. It goes both ways. Heat transfer is the difference between the amount of radiative energy emitted by one body and absorbed by the other. The total net difference will always cause heat to flow from the hot body to the cold body. They call this their energy budget, right?
They would say that temperature is the result of energy gain vs. energy loss. So, they would argue that placing a colder object near a hot object wont heat the hot object, but it will cause it to cool more slowly. Or if the warmer object is already in equilibrium because it has other sources of incoming energy that equals its outgoing energy, then the warmer object will warm up until the new equilibrium is reached.
Is that not their position?
And would you say that incoming radiation from colder objects has no effect on the warmer object at all? The “overlap?”
Again, just asking. Thanks.
JK says: …So, they would argue that placing a colder object near a hot object wont heat the hot object, but it will cause it to cool more slowly. … And would you say that incoming radiation from colder objects has no effect on the warmer object at all?”
===========================================
JK, whatever “they” would say to obfuscate the simple clear fact that their “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is physically impossible and absurd, we do not need to seriously react to it. Right, they create a lot of smoke screen and distraction, and too many of us fall into the trap chasing all the nonsense they produce. Let us stick to the key point, which is their self-heating of the surface by back radiation, this is all we need.
@JK: Yah so that is a very good smorgasbord of GHE arguments that come up…you’re obviously very familiar with this debate.
“Heat is not transferred from cold to hot. Radiative energy is.”
They do say that. But they say it with the backhand to imply that radiative energy MUST cause heat transfer, since you might agree to the latter. It’s ambiguous sophistry. The first sentence defines the relevance of the second with regards to temperature influence: Heat is not transferred from cold to hot. And radiative heat is not transferred from cold to hot. Radiative energy from the cold side does balance the heat flow equation, Q ~ (Th^4 – Tc^4), but this does not mean that cold is heating hot!
“Heat transfer is the difference between the amount of radiative energy emitted by one body and absorbed by the other.”
Yes that is the basic equation…but with this statement the GHE advocate typically starts getting uncomfortable.
“The total net difference will always cause heat to flow from the hot body to the cold body. They call this their energy budget, right?”
The net difference IS the heat flow, and it determines the direction of the influence on temperature. The influence on temperature does not occur in the opposite direction of the heat flow. No this isn’t their energy budget. Their energy budget does the opposite of this, and creates heat out of nowhere. They have the surface receiving the equivalent of -40F radiative heating, and then the atmosphere is magically some number much higher than this, and creates a surface even warmer than that.
“They would say that temperature is the result of energy gain vs. energy loss.”
They do say this, but the statement is incomplete because temperature is really the result of internally held kinetic energy of the molecules vibrating. Temperature change is the result of gains vs. loss. So what they do is say that the emission from the surface needs to remain constant, and if CO2 traps emission from the surface then the surface needs to increase in temperature in order to compensate, just like your lake & river analogy. This is incorrect though because it is heat transfer from the surface plus atmosphere to space which needs to be constant, not heat transfer from the surface to atmosphere. Heat transfer from the surface to atmosphere simply follows Q ~ (Ts^4 – Ta^4), and if the atmosphere warms up, then the heat transfer becomes smaller. Energy is still conserved because the warmer atmosphere emits to space what it “blocked” or gained from the surface: Qtot = Qs + Qa. So their argument for surface heating isn’t logical in the first place, and when made logical, circumvents any idea of a GHE while conserving energy with basic standard physics.
“So, they would argue that placing a colder object near a hot object wont heat the hot object, but it will cause it to cool more slowly.”
Causing it to cool more slowly is not heating of the object to higher temperature than the source which is what the GHE requires. This is the typical progression of the argument as it begins to flail around looking for alternative proxies and concepts to analogize itself, but it starts to have to abandon its own initial precepts. This is an important exposure of the fraud. Few people see it. You seem to be very well aware of it. Adding mass to a system will cause it to cool more slowly (once it is heated up to equilibrium with the source, then the source removed) simply because you have a greater accumulated internal energy because U = m*Cp*T, i.e. more mass, more energy, and then a longer time to cool. This is not the GHE.
“Or if the warmer object is already in equilibrium because it has other sources of incoming energy that equals its outgoing energy, then the warmer object will warm up until the new equilibrium is reached.”
If a colder object is brought near, then the warmer object already in equilibrium will heat up the cooler object until the cooler object comes to equilibrium. This does not require or mean that the warmer object had to or did become hotter. If a warmer object became warmer as and because they warmed a cooler object, this would have no end-point. On the face of it it is absurd.
“Is that not their position?”
Yes those are some of the things they say. It is almost a perfect play-by-play of the sequence of argument. You are very well studied… It ends with them throwing a hissy fit and appeal to authority…exclusively.
“And would you say that incoming radiation from colder objects has no effect on the warmer object at all? The “overlap?””
Incoming radiation from a cooler object does not warm up – increase the temperature, transfer heat to – a warmer object. The warmer object transfers heat to the cooler and raises the cooler’s temperature. The cooler object can set the new equilibrium temperature if it has its own source of energy and the source of heat for the warmer object is removed. The warmer object would then cool down to equilibrium with the cooler object and the cool object would now be the source of heat. CO2 and the atmosphere is not its own source of energy…there is no energy being created by the atmosphere or CO2, and thus no heat.
In regards to the thermal mass presented by the atmosphere and how much this might reduce cooling at the ground surface overnight, direct measurement and direct theory shows that the ground surface cools by ten-times the amount expected given radiative loss alone. The explanation for the enhanced cooling at the surface is of course convection. There is no delayed or reduced cooling…not that this is what the GHE is in any case…not that GHE advocates won’t immediately and arbitrarily use different versions and definitions of the GHE at their convenience, to squirm their way out of uncomfortable positions and attempt to keep themselves from being pinned down on any actual science or logic.
At this point, however, I have defeated every single one of their arguments. This exchange with you is a most excellent review of it all. You are VERY familiar, intimately and precisely so, with the facets of the debate.
“So what you are saying is that the electromagnetic radiation coming from the Earth has the temperature of the Earth. That radiation hits CO2 and is absorbed. CO2 then emits radiation that is the temperature of itself. And no matter how many CO2 molecules at a certain temperature that are emitting radiation back down to Earth, because that light is at a lower temperature than the Earth, it can’t cause the Earth to warm any more than if that light never hit the Earth. Is that right?”
Beyond the fact that only certain wavelengths of the up-going IR radiation are absorbed by atmospheric CO2 and the fact that electro-magnetic radiation does not have a temperature, rather the temperature and emissivity of the matter emitting it will determine the emission’s wavelengths, the structure of your question implies that the ground and the air are physically separated by a vacuum in which case the thermal relationship between the ground and the atmosphere would purely be a function of the Stefan-Boltzmann formula and the rate of ground cooling would be solely a matter of Net Radiative Heat Loss.
What I have observed through studying the thermal relationship between the earth and atmosphere via direct instrument readings from thermometers, humidity meters and radiometers is that the operative law of physics that regulates the rate at which the ground cools at night is Newton’s Law of Cooling. A good definition of this law is: “Newton’s Law of Cooling states that the rate of change of the temperature of an object is proportional to the difference between its own temperature and the ambient temperature (i.e. the temperature of its surroundings).” In this case the “object” is the solid ground and oceans and “its surroundings” is the atmosphere. In neither science nor mathematics can one get the right answer if one is applying the wrong law and/or using the wrong formula.
Within Newton’s Law of Cooling the amount of IR radiation the “surroundings” is emitting is irrelevant because the atmosphere is in direct contact with the ground. It is the temperature differential that exists between the ground and the air that is in contact with the ground that regulates the ground’s rate of cooling at night (that along with the heat capacity of the particular soil in question.) That having been said, changing the absorptivity/emissivity/transmissivity/opacity of the air by adding “greenhouse gases” seems to enhance the ability of the atmosphere to cool more efficiently under clear skies. Consequently, in two out of three studies that I have done on the rate of ground cooling under clear skies on humid vs. arid nights the rate of cooling was faster on the humid night, i. e., the nights during which the air was emitting a higher level of IR radiation.
I emphasis “clear” nights because the presence of clouds can reduce the temperature differential between the ground and the air just above the ground by 50% thus slowing the rate at which the ground cools on cloudy nights. Of course, this delayed nighttime cooling on cloudy nights is more than offset by the inhibition of daytime warming that clouds also provide. Stated another way, clouds only narrow the diurnal temperature swing; they do not cause a net increase in ground level temperatures. (Remember that the current climate alarm is not over the prediction of a catastrophic narrowing of the diurnal temperature swing, which is the most significant affect that the presence of water has on a climate system, beyond cooling it slightly.)
I postulate that the inhibition of nighttime cooling caused by clouds is itself a quasi-greenhouse effect in that clouds act as a false ceiling of sorts and inhibit the nighttime subsidence of cool air from aloft. The physical evidence for this is the fact that nighttime ground-level temperature inversions are less pronounced on cloudy nights.
Carl
That’s excellent Carl but I would strongly disagree with referencing any sort of “quasi-greenhouse effect” since the “proper” atmospheric greenhouse effect isn’t real in the first place. It would only give them the opportunity to sophize and change definitions, as we have seen, etc. Standard physics explains and describes what happens when clouds are around and this does not go by the name of the greenhouse effect nor is it the greenhouse effect.
Now that we’ve had this review of GHE argumentum-ad-proxy (argumentation by analogy) with JK, I highly recommend everyone to be on the look out for new arguments and new analogies and new proxy arguments. This review was probably to determine why and how the existing arguments have failed, and so they might be looking for new ways to spin things. Now, having been through this process with others already, the analogies have always gotten so ridiculous that it becomes a simple matter to simply ridicule them for idiocy.
For example, at Jo Nova once, after having gone through the same sequence as has been reviewed with JK here, a fellow (“BobC”? I think) then started arguing that underwater cavitation from boat propellers was evidence for the greenhouse effect. And this just came in from from another PSI member, who tells us that he was in a debate with a GHE believer who used the argument that since you can see snow, it proves that backradiation exists and can cause heating, and the light from Fireflies also demonstrates backradiation. Of course, you see reflected light from snow, not the thermal output from snow, and Fireflies use a chemical reaction to emit visible photons, not backradiation. But these are examples of the irrational and anti-scientific lengths believers will go to to defend their faith. They say ridiculous things like this just to try to throw you off.
So, keep an eye out for anything new that comes out now. We’ve defeated PhD-trained people (Roy Spencer, Robert Brown, etc.) on this stuff at this point and all of their arguments, so it will be very difficult for them to come up with new sophistry, but they will certainly try.
Joe, I like your last comment, because it is a step towards developing a strategy.
Yah well your suggestion (@Greg) of PINNING them on an actual fixed definition for the greenhouse effect would be a good start. One of their great sophist strengths is to change definitions and argument mid-stream. So, be on the lookout and ready to identify such tactics, and bring it back to the IPCC definition (which is the standard and traditional) of the greenhouse effect via backradiation. If individuals come up with their own new versions or analogies for the GHE, ask THEM to reconcile it with the IPCC and question why they would believe in a contradictory version of the official GHE, etc. Stuff like that would make it easier for us. As for the alternative analogies and arguments they might invent, simply dismiss them then as irrelevant, and brefily and merely identify their typical stupidity (such as the “seeing snow” example etc).
But, this has all already been done too, really, here and elsewhere, anyway. No debate really needs to continue. It shouldn’t be legitimized any longer. We’ve been through the ENTIRE gauntlet. Every single GHE argument has been debunked.
We’re finished debunking 101 versions of the GHE and the 1’st version. The strategy should now be to attack and expose.
Well said, Joe. Except I would not call the IPCC’s “greenhouse effect” standard and traditional, because I do not know how traditional it is, maybe it is something marginal even within the “climate science”. I would rather consider it to be of primary importance because it is politically relevant, since governments around the world refer to the IPCC reports when justifying their CO2 reduction policy. Demonstrating that the key point of the IPCC’s is a pure fiction would remove any reason for continuing such a policy.
JK,
I have far less science training than you do but able to grasp the obvious that a light bulb and four walls are not going to make a furnace happen,The light bulb emits radiation and heat which is at least 2,500 + degrees F at the filament and yet the room despite all those crazy backradiation claims fails to make the walls warm to the touch of my 98 degree hand.Think of it as a drop from 2,000 + degrees to 98 degrees and not feeling it.
Energy level goes from high to low as my hand well know when I touch the allegedly continuously backradiated wall that always feels cooler than my hand despite being an alleged “secondary” heating source. The room never gets hot even with a closed door and windows setting because there is no secondary heating source and the walls never get as hot as my hand.The ONLY energy source,the light bulb is Hot enough to burn the hand yet can barely warm the rooms air since air in the room are low in mass and few in molecules to energize.The much higher mass wall SHOULD have heated up significantly IF backradiation exist to make those cool walls warm up to the point of reaching a much higher temperature level if not a run away heating curve.But the bulb still works and the walls never get as warm as my hand.
Well we know it doesn’t happen because walls and the air of a room doesn’t get hotter and hotter and hotter over time.They quickly reach a negligibly higher temperature level after the bulb is on and then no warmer.
Joe & Carl,
Thanks for taking the time to provide such detailed explanations. I appreciate it.
Joe,
So I am going through your posts and the arguments of the opposition regarding this whole greenhouse theory.
And it seems the whole issue boils down to 2 issues which really become one issue:
1. Do the models make erroneous assumptions about how the Earth and the Sun interact?
2. Does the radiation, if any, back radiating from CO2 in the atmosphere affect the temperature of the Earth?
As far as issue 1 goes, I have not examined the IPCC models, but I have read that they do, in fact, use a very detailed breakdown of the spherical surface of the Earth factoring in the actual sunlight hitting the Earth over time while the Earth rotates taking into account the direct sunlight at the equator and the weaker sunlight towards the poles. It is only some of the simple explanations that over simplify the process. To me this is just a question of setting up the model as accurately as possible. They either do this or they don’t. It is sort of like finite element analysis to determine the stress profile of an object. It can be very detailed and accurate, or simple and inaccurate.
Issue 2 seems to be the real issue. It seems that the temperature of the Earth is determined by a relationship between the amount of the incoming radiation and the amount of outgoing radiation.
Their view is that the CO2 in the atmosphere somehow sends what would normally be outgoing radiation back to the surface to be added back into the incoming radiation that determines temperature above. It is not cold heating hot, but cold slowing the rate of cooling of the hot, etc. Your view is that whatever radiation is coming back from the CO2 doesn’t get included because it is different – it has a lower temperature signal or whatever. Radiation from cold can’t affect hot in any way.
Either that additional radiation affects the temperature of the earth or it doesn’t. It is just that simple.
I don’t find persuasive the perpetual motion concept, creating energy out of nothing etc. The energy coming back from the CO2 didn’t appear out of nowhere, and it is not creating itself. And, the system can’t runaway. If CO2 behaves that way, it only sends a portion back.
So, there ought to be very simple experiments that can be done to show whether this is possible or not. I think you may have referenced some, but I have not gotten that far yet. The issue boils down to a very simple concept that a six year old could understand.
Finally, even if CO2 has this special ability, the question would become what effect this has on the overall energy budget of the Earth. The idea that an extra couple hundred parts per million of CO2 could cause a measurable difference in the Earth’s temperature seems pretty preposterous. If the Earth were that sensitive, the whole thing would have collapsed long ago. Take, for example, Jimmy Hansen’s tipping point scare tactics. If the Earth could runaway this easily, it already would have. If CO2 played an important role in driving climate, it would have runaway. The whole basis of the CAGW theory is that since they can’t figure out what caused the warming of the interglacial periods, it must be the CO2. Well what causes the cooling? At the times when the Earth starts to cool, CO2 is high and getting higher. If natural factors are not strong enough to warm the Earth without “mighty CO2” then how can natural factors counter act the “mighty CO2” when it is just getting going? That is where Hansen, Skeptical Science and Peter Sinclair all fall all over themselves spouting incoherent nonsense. A few years ago when first diving into this issue, I communicated with Peter Sinclair, and he couldn’t give me any good explanation for the cooling issue. But that didn’t stop him from acting like it was a non issue in his crock videos.
Then if there is any effect of back radiation, It raises all sorts of other questions like what about incoming IR radiation. I realize that “most” of the sun’s energy is shortwave, but I have been reading that there is a significant amount of long wave radiation too. If so, it would seem that CO2 would be reflecting more away from the Earth than redirecting back to it. But that is just my own speculation.
I don’t yet know the answer to some of these questions. But right out of the box, the way they are doing science is criminal. Science seeks answers. They seek to advance their cause. A very small example is this recent post on Skeptical Science:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/oceans-heating-up-faster-than-past-10000-years.html
Oh my, the Pacific is heating up way faster than we ever thought. But, take a look at the actual article. In the abstract, it states that the Pacific, near Indonesia or wherever was like 2C warmer than now just 10,000 years ago. And it was warmer during the Medieval warming period. Yet that is glossed over in the SS writeup. The main point of the paper is barely mentioned in the SS write up?
Then, when someone commented on this, they get lambasted. The implications are huge, and even the editor of Science correctly caught on to them:
“The findings support the view that the Holocene Thermal Maximum, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age were global events, and they provide a long-term perspective for evaluating the role of ocean heat content in various warming scenarios for the future.”
So instead of giving a fair portrayal of the article, SS spins it to further their agenda. That is not science, and these people have no credibility whatsoever. It would be criminal to put the fate of the world in their hands. As you know, this is not just about my ability to ride my waverunner for recreation, but rather whether or not poor people get electricity and clean water.
Thanks again for listening.
JK says: “2. Does the radiation, if any, back radiating from CO2 in the atmosphere affect the temperature of the Earth? … Issue 2 seems to be the real issue. It seems that the temperature of the Earth is determined by a relationship between the amount of the incoming radiation and the amount of outgoing radiation. Their view is that the CO2 in the atmosphere somehow sends what would normally be outgoing radiation back to the surface to be added back into the incoming radiation that determines temperature above. It is not cold heating hot, but cold slowing the rate of cooling of the hot, etc.”
==================================================
JK, now you have misinterpreted the key warmists point, but you can not take them off the hook so easily.
No, their key point is not “cold slowing the rate of cooling of the hot”. Again, their key point as presented in the IPCC reports is that the Earth surface heats itself with twice as much power it produces (!), “greenhouse gases” serving only as passive reflectors (www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-1-figure-1.html). It is obvious to everyone that such a process is absolutely impossible. Things do not heat themselves by their own heat, even the stupidest person knows it from the everyday life.
The rest of your comment is typical obfuscation and an attempt to redirect the discussion to irrelevant or unimportant points.
@JK – yes your comment is just about correct in every way…even your speculations, which are actually confirmed by NASA. CO2 does indeed reflect solar energy from coming in. Any terrestrial radiation is might trap CAN NOT make up for that because the terrestrial radiation is of a much lower temperature spectrum.
Yes indeed sites like SS are put-up-jobs, they’re totally fake. They use the words of science but not the method of science. Or basic honesty.
Climate “science” has been manufactured as a field to PRETEND the appearance of science. It’s the “Chicken Little” strategy. Create an idea and make it appear legitimate by using the words of science but not the methodology. Since the populace, and, ironically enough, even most of academic science, is unable to distinguish between the words of science and the methodology of science, then you can control the whole narrative, and simply use the usual strategies of verbal abuse (etc.) to diminish and sideline the voices of the few who might see through it.
With an issue as large as, humorously and amazingly enough, almost perfectly literally, “the sky is falling”, well then they will be able to get government to do very significant things about it, which they incidentally suggest and control.
Well it’s been said elsewhere many times: it is all a manufactured policy for yet more wealth distribution, away from the poor, made affordable (energy) only for the rich, like Al Gore, etc.
I guess I haven’t stated it clearly enough, but the point of the difference between the flat-Earth GHE models and energy budgets, and a true 3-D rotating simulation, is that the 3-D simulation does not have to contain a GHE, and it CAN NOT POSSIBLY contain the GHE as promoted by the flat-Earth models. They admit the flat-Earth model is just for “teaching the concept”, but the flat Earth model 1) doesn’t obey the laws of physics, 2) couldn’t exist the same way in a real 3-D model. I’ve also discussed the GCM models with experts and they’ve told me that the solar input is averaged in those models. Tests to see if the flat-Earth GHE radiative trapping/backradiation idea actually functions like that, do not show the effect. Thermodynamics would say that local surface radiant thermal emission can not have an energy gradient relative to itself (obviously), and so, with no gradient, there can be no heat flow, and so the radiant heat from a surface can’t flow back into itself to raise its own source’s temperature.
So for your #1, yes the flat-Earth GHE models do make erroneous statements, their physics doesn’t correspond to reality in the first place, and they don’t transfer over to a 3-D model. We’ve asked to see, from the “experts” themselves, where the GHE is modeled or arises in their GCM code, and they can’t show it. For you #2, yes that is the same as the first. Backradiation/radiation trapping is an erroneous statement in physics. You can TEST for it, EASILY. The radiative postulate should be the EASIEST thing to demonstrate. High-school kids could do it. It has never been demonstrated. Experiments designed to make the postulate observable, do not observe it. The reason again is thermodynamics: local radiation has the energy spectrum of its source, by definition; therefore, there can be no heat or energy gradient between the emitted radiation and its source. With no gradient, no heat can flow, and hence no temperature can change. The photons just pass through each other because they’re bosons not fermions…they don’t crowd up, push each other around, make each other over flow, etc etc. They don’t mind or notice each other at all.
Hope that captures enough of your comment.
Speaking of abuse from “fake science” sites, I was politely having a discussion about thermodynamics on WUWT, and then Fat Watts figured it all out, and responded:
[SNIP – It turns out “Anomalatys” IS Joe Postma. This is confirmed by cross referencing IP addresses. The IP addresses used by “Anomalatys” cross reference and match IP adresses used by Joe Postma previously on WUWT. Joe you’ve been banned here prior for bad behavior and thread bombing with your dreck, and your lie is exposed. Now get the hell off my blog once and for all and take your defective theories with you. – Anthony Watts]
Of course, Watts can’t actually identify any lies from me, while HE’S been exposed lying about his results, and his results actually prove that his theory is defective. lol these guys.
Search here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/10/towards-a-theory-of-climate for “Anomalatys” comments, for a good read, and to see what made Anthony so upset. Unless they go through and cut them all out, which they might do lest their lies be exposed.
Off topic but I was having fun and wanted to post it somewhere before it got taken down,
me ridiculing one of the global warmers at Watts’ place today and having him go get Anthony to ban me LoL good stuff although I was typing hurriedly and accidentally spammed some things that aren’t technically correct which dramatically reduces the fun factor overall but LoL anyway –
Anthony Watts saves a global warmer at his site from being eviscerated:
=======
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/28/climate-as-a-heat-engine/#comment-1518213
Bill from Nevada says:
December 30, 2013 at 3:25 pm
“You feel free to go get whoever you think you have to have near you so you feel safe TB.
Then answer the questions.”
===
TB says:
December 30, 2013 at 4:14 pm
“Excuse me??”
===
Bill from Nevada says:
December 30, 2013 at 4:26 pm
[snip – OK that’s it – this is just another slayer rant complete with insults. You’re done here – Anthony]
======
Bill from Nevada says:
December 30, 2013 at 4:31 pm
TB says: “What is you don’t/can’t understand about Coriolis/convergence aloft INEVITABLY causing divergence below. That all the world’s Met organisations incorporate into NWP models?”
Changing the subject from me catching you claiming the geometries, velocities, volumes of air handling in the lower troposphere aren’t associated with the energy handling and release of water isn’t going to make time go back and you be right.”
=======
Mario Lento says:
December 30, 2013 at 4:35 pm
“Looks like Bill from Nev’ slipped one more in before he was done. It was getting tiring sifting through his creative sarcasm and negative slams.”
Bill from Nevada says:
December 30, 2013 at 4:36 pm
“Claiming putting insulation between the heat of an illumination source and a rock, makes more heat come out of the rock, is what you’ve been seen trying to do, and it’s absurdity on it’s face.
The fact is you’re here to declare to the world you know of an insulation that reduces energy in, yet makes the object it sits blocking energy to, act as if more energy arrived on it.
That’s just impossible no matter how many climatologists said they did it, and it’s why the pseudo science called warm atmosphere doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory inspection.
“Incorrect appreciation of the GHE. GHG’s absorb IR from the Earth’s surface then re-emit it, some of it making it back to the surface again – thus SLOWING the rate of cooling and NOT heating it.”
Can you say,
“PWNT!”
?
LoL.
What a buncha just,
well … you know.
It starts with an H
and ends with them believing somebody dipped a sphere heated in vacuum to full temp, into a thermally conductive, frigid nitrogen/oxygen bath, shot with refrigerant boiling off in eddies,
and the temperature of every energy sensor on the sphere jumped up 90F/30C
Some more hilarity had at Watts’ expense, we’ll see if it gets through his moderation.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/02/if-99-doctors-said/#comments
Bill from Nevada says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 2, 2014 at 7:19 am
If 99 doctors told me ephemeral humors were clogging up my humories
(1)I’d check and see how many of them ever had the term “quack” used near them or the people they associated with. In the real world the finest of any art or science associate with the finest: the dopers and cheats associate with the dopers and cheats.
(2)I’d check to see
if even one other field of science tried to tell me about fundamental reality
using “quack” level pseudo-scientific “facts”
they claimed were true in their field,
but not one
single
other field
on earth.
Things like
“Spheres heated to full temp in vacuum,
growing warmer
when the sphere is immersed and spun
in frigid nitrogen/oxygen,
phase change refrigerated with water.
Warmer than when there was heating in vacuum alone.
Warmer than the cold nitrogen bath itself.
In climatology it is regularly taught, that “It is possible to heat an object that was already pre-heated to full temperature in vacuum, by immersing and spinning it in frigid nitrogen/oxygen gas.”
Statements incorporating such bizarre claims are obvious, instant tips:
Is there any real science that teaches this?
If not, then it’s quack pseudo-science.
End of Story.
In climatology it’s regularly taught that it is possible to suspend reflective insulation
between a fire illuminating a rock, making that rock hotter because of energy kept from the rock.
Is there any other field which teaches it’s possible to suspend reflective insulation between a light from a fire, and a rock, and cause less light to reach the rock,
but make every heat sensor on the surface of the rock show more energy from the fire arriving on the rock?
Of couse not. That’s two strikes – big strikes – easily compared to real science –
– making it quack pseudo-science.
I’d check those doctors’ thinking against the real scientific facts of the universe.
against the dictionary definitions of “delusional” and “quack” and “charlatan” and “fraud.”
Particularly I’d look at them against the definitions of those words.
(3)I’d check to see what people generally thought of what being a doctor in that field actually meant to others. How good is their reputation for being right vs being corrected by people so often, they have code words they don’t tolerate associated with them or they storm out –
“code words” and phrases like ”fraud,” ”scam,”
”against laws of physics”
“against laws of science”
“against laws of thermodynamics”
“against laws of nature”
“against universally known law”
(4)I’d check to see what the quality of the review boards who ok’d the doctors’ credentials and work. If their review boards are widely reputed to be simply con games, I’d look for evidence.
If I saw evidence of them knowingly participating in scam science or, knowingly covering up errors, I’d know they were practicing scam pseudo-science.
(5)I’d check to see if they actually could predict what the instruments of their self professed field would do under test conditions.
If simply asking them to predict which way a thermometer would go under certain conditions made them lock up like petrified deer in midnight headlights – I’d seek expertise from a real doctor.
Just because you’re a witch doctor
Just because you’re with a witch doctor
Just because you’re a government doctor
doesn’t mean you’re a real doctor.
Here’s another one from me, Joe, telling Watts what real science thinks about
that GOOD OL’ MAGIC GAiS!”
Enjoy.
http://goo.gl/tb04kb
============================
Bill from Nevada says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
February 9, 2014 at 11:49 pm
It’s funny, because – whenever I make fun of some “Green House Gas Effect” believer in public, looking around to sorta tell the joke to the corner of the restaurant,
with my
“So I said, “Yeah, YOU REMIND ME of the OTHER science that teaches kids you can heat a sensor covered sphere
in a vacuum
to full temperature
with light from a fire, -the Sun,
add a cold nitrogen oxygen bath,
and refrigerate it with a phase change water cycle,
and make the temperature of every sensor on it go UP, and we’ll see what you’ve got,”
it never fails to start people smiling. When I say that, almost never fails, someone speaks up and says, “They’re crazy.”
What kind of crazies try to repeatedly tell you,
they really really really
believe it’s real,
someone somehow suspended reflective gas envelope around a sphere, blocking 20% energy
from ever arriving on sensors,
causing every sensor on the sphere to show
more energy on sensors when 20% less arrives,
than when there was
more energy on sensors when 20% more arrived?
Who tells you these sort of things not separately but both, as part of a single, claim?
Only the Green House Gas believer.
No one else.
Here’s what shows up a few minutes later:
============================
Bill from Nevada says:
February 9, 2014 at 11:49 pm
[snip – more slayers junk – mod]