If you are ready to take the test, read below.
- Patch together some things you have read on blogs, in no particular order
- It is well known that all complex problems have simple, but wrong answers. Provide examples but explain in detail how YOUR wrong answers are right.
- Create an impression of original thought by impassioned scribbling (your answer may be ungrammatical. Extra points if the post is all CAPS).
- Does the answer to this question depend on your personal political or theological beliefs? Explain how this makes everyone else an atheist communist eco-Nazi.
- How much irrelevant scientific background can you give before addressing this question? Extra points for including references to papers that say exactly the opposite of what you claim
- Describe the consensus view of climate change and your personal view are simply two equal sides of the argument, then say what you personally feel. When it is pointed out that there is no reason to listen to you say that the atheist communists eco-Nazis hate freedom.
- Rise above the fumbling efforts of others and speculate freely on why climate is changing (it's pirates!).
- Either (a) Answer this question by announcing that it really means something different (and much easier to answer, see question 1) or (b) Give the same answer you gave in your 50 previous comments in the same thread. This is very easy using copy and post.
- Protest your convictions in the teeth of obvious and overwhelming objections.
- Insult the blog owner and then whine that you got banned.
Eli Rabett, you said
ReplyDelete"5. Extra points for including references to papers that say exactly the opposite of what you claim "
That is quite an accusation you are making against me. So far nobody has produced any details to support that accusation.
In fact nobody has discussed any of the references I provided other than to say, as you have done, that they say the opposite of what I am saying.
For those who are unaware I phoned up the writer of reference 9 on wiki and he totally supported everything I have been talking about on Wiki, Stoat and Rabitt Run.
You already know that so why have you said what you have said?
Cor, what an extraordinary fellow. And receiving so much gratifying attention, too. Doctor Choccy must be feeling miffed.
ReplyDelete"For those who are unaware I phoned up the writer of reference 9 on wiki and he totally supported everything I have been talking about on Wiki, Stoat and Rabitt Run. "
ReplyDeleteTranscript, please. Sorry to be a sceptic, but.... Otherwise, I'll have to phone him myself.
The answer is simple, the replies from others are instructive on an issue which is both complex and basic.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Arthur's replies to the troll are especially enlightening.
>>Agreed. Arthur's replies to the troll are especially enlightening.
ReplyDeleteArthur spent most of his time attempting to trick me into agreeing with his folksy version of a coat warming a tramp while telling me I was obfuscating, denying and playing with words.
That kind of attitude is not associated with an ability to learn anything
troll baiting is uninteresting--I look forward to some new science postings.
ReplyDeleteAh, but if you ignore AJ there is actually some good science going on there. It is not a trivial issue, and to some extent it is definitional.
ReplyDeleteTrue, tastes differ. Part of the problem is that the denialist position is so bankrupt that only derision is left. Even the S. Freds are trying to leave the sinking parts of the ship.
Snow Bunny says"
ReplyDeleteFWIW, Eli, Andrew successfully diverted all comments from S. Fred Singer's challenge of a bad paper. Sometimes I think more people should remember "don't feed the trolls".
Singer knows science well enough to spot real junk. I tried to read some of his papers; I never figured out how his evidence matched his conclusions. But Singer has his standards; besides he seems to enjoy criticizing.
Andrew denied the 200 year old Stephan's law. He is a total waste of electrons.
This reminds me of the argument that it doesn't make sense to talk about paying for a tax cut, embraced by proponents of lower tax rates. Pursuing what is essentially a semantic argument with such fervor belies an ideological motive.
ReplyDelete-MO
Snow Bunny comes up with
ReplyDelete>>Andrew denied the 200 year old Stephan's law. He is a total waste of electrons.
I doubt there is a 200 year old stephans law and instead you mean Stefans law which only preceded Boltzmann theoretical derivation by a few years. Boltzmann was I believe Stefans student
Well, the S. Fred is still trying.
ReplyDeleteInquiring bunnies still want to know if Cuccinelli/Russell got paleo help from VA residents.
"instead you mean Stefans law"
ReplyDeleteIt's either. If you doubt it, look it up.
Andrew, can I try an analogy to see if this makes sense and you can explain what parts aren't relevant.
ReplyDeleteIf a corporation (the sun) gives a rich man money at the rate of $1 per day and the rich man (the hot earth) gives away $1 a day to a poor man (the cold atmosphere), the rich man doesn't gain or loose wealth (heat). But if the poor man is proud and gives away most of what he gets from the rich man, throwing 60 cents away (to outer space), keeping 20 cents for himself (warming the atmosphere), and giving 20 cents per day back to the rich man, won't the rich man get richer (hotter) even though he is richer than the poor man?
It seems clear from the Beran Affadavit that Fred is no ordinary troll.
ReplyDeleteWheedling octogenarian oceanographers and nonagenarian physicists into deathbed endorsements qualifies as the work of a ghoul.
Andrew Judd,
ReplyDeletePlease answer this question...is there something hotter in a microwave oven than the food I cook with it? I mean I feel inside and it's not all that hot but the food burnt the roof of my mouth...how is that possible with your explanation of things? Did the microwave take something from the food and put it back in? Oh wait, no. Seriously dude how old are you, and what is your background besides trolling?
>>If a corporation (the sun) gives a rich man money at the rate of $1 per day and the rich man (the hot earth) gives away $1 a day to a poor man (the cold atmosphere), the rich man doesn't gain or loose wealth (heat). But if the poor man is proud and gives away most of what he gets from the rich man, throwing 60 cents away (to outer space), keeping 20 cents for himself (warming the atmosphere), and giving 20 cents per day back to the rich man, won't the rich man get richer (hotter) even though he is richer than the poor man?
ReplyDeleteI am not saying the rich man does not get richer because of what the poor man is doing. We know the greenhouse effect works.
I am saying that if you drop $100 and your wife gives some of your money back to you, then she has only reduced your losses, and it would be misleading if she said she was making you richer or paying you.
We know any heated surface with a reduction in heat loss gets hotter.
JRC
ReplyDeleteIt is better to focus on Science rather than descend, as many are doing, to the level of cheap insults.
Microwaves are a good example of why radiation does not have a temperature, and why the 'temperature of black body radiation' only refers to the temperature of the heat source that produced that curve of black body radiation or emissions.
My microwave oven is able to focus 1200W of energy upon a small volume inside the oven, which causes the atoms and molecules to oscillate and create internal heating. A very similar effect occurs when black body radiation which has no temperature, heats an object by absorption.
For the record, I am not saying I am a follower of Claes Johnson, indeed I have spent some time with him trying to show him his back-radiation ideas have no scientific basis and there are empirical reasons why quantum physics was driven to be created by Planck or eventually somebody else.
As for my age, almost certainly I am older than you.
Andrew - whether something does or does not have a temperature is not a question of the characteristics of that particular type of physical system in general, but specifically a matter of whether or not the system is in a state of (local) thermal equilibrium. That you seem to think radiation is special indicates you have a poor level of understanding of the relation between statistical and thermal physics.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the observed temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation (extremely close to a black body) tells us a lot about the temperature of the universe as a whole. It has nothing to do with emissions from any material object at that cosmic background temperature. That radiation temperature figures prominently in cosmological models going back to the big bang.
Thermal radiation is a physical system of electromagnetic fields. That physical system equilibrates with its local environment whenever that environment is strongly absorbing - a plasma, an opaque solid, the interior of the prototypical pinhole "black body", etc. The statistics of the numbers of photons of different wavelengths is determined precisely by the Bose-Einstein distribution for massless bosons, which happens to coincide with the Planck black-body spectrum in the case of photons with their energy-momentum relationship. Electromagnetic fields are real physical systems just like atoms and molecules and can certainly be in local equilibrium and have a well-defined temperature.
But often EM fields are *NOT* in thermal equilibrium - microwave generators produce strongly out-of-equilibrium local fields. So there is no well-defined temperature of the radiation part of the system there.
Andrew, if your goal (for example in editing wikipedia) is to express science in terms that make sense and clarify the underlying physics to lay people, then you need to have a very strong understanding of the science yourself first. If you continue to make claims like "radiation does not have a temperature" then it is very clear to us you simply do not possess the underlying understanding required to express the scientific terms clearly to anybody else.
Sorry, you'll find no support for your semantic crusade here.
By the way Eli, I don't think your "climate troll" list actually applies to Andrew here at all. It's more a severe case of Dunning-Kruger than anything else. At least as far as I can tell. Thick as a brick wall, he seems to me.
ReplyDeleteOn one issue though I think Andrew has stumbled on an interesting point. He asserts that the greenhouse effect is most important in the lower atmosphere because it is most absorbing (and emitting). However, he also asserts that the important quality of the effect is the degree to which it decreases the ability of the surface to cool.
Here's the problem: in the lower atmosphere the temperature is very close to the surface temperature. That means there is a very close match between what the lowest part of the atmosphere emits - both up and down - and what it absorbs from below. The spectrum of light leaving the top of the lower atmosphere is pretty much identical with the spectrum leaving the surface, because of that temperature match. So the lower atmosphere behaves little differently from what you would get by raising the surface that same height - the emission rate from the top of the system is (almost) the same. That is, the lower atmosphere, despite being strongly absorbing for thermal radiation, does almost nothing to reduce the ability of the system (surface + lower atmosphere) to cool.
So how does that work with the picture of a surface warmed by back-radiation? Because the largest part of that back-radiation is indeed coming from the lower atmosphere, not higher up. To the degree radiative energy has to move diffusively through the lower atmosphere, other energy transfers become more important. If you could somehow turn off convection, conduction and latent heat between surface and lower atmosphere and left things to radiation alone, you actually end up with a jump discontinuity in temperature between surface and lower atmosphere!
So the point is - energy exchange between the surface and lower atmosphere is strongly affected by greenhouse absorption, yes, but the increase you would expect from the strong levels of back radiation is (for the lowest levels) essentially completely canceled out by non-radiative energy flows. It is higher in the atmosphere, where you have lower temperatures that the reduction in cooling rate of the whole system through radiation is most important.
Arthur
ReplyDeleteYour attitude is essentially one of superiority and looking down upon me as an inferior being rather than a willingness to discuss the topic.
Equilibrium is essentially a theoretical concept since nothing is in equilibrium for more than an infintessimal moment of time. You know that. I know that.
You are clearly distorting the meaning of what Planck was talking about. Planck was clearly referring to the temperature of a black body emitter for the subset of radiation that he called temperature radiation that was emitted by black bodies.
But I cannot for the life of me, begin to see why you think this is of the slightest importance for the trivial science required to explain the Greenhouse effect, where this effect can be replicated on earth without requiring 6000C Solar temperatures, and will happen whenever two bodies of different temperatures are near each other.
Talk of backradiation warming the surface, when the surface is clearly and obviously warming the atmosphere is misleading and amounts to dishonest representation.
Thermodynamics clearly talks about macro and micro as separated discussion points where macro clearly *includes* what happens at the micro level, but where in macro we never talk about two way heat exchange but instead we talk about net radiation or just heat flow.
The IPCC talks about heating of the earth at the top of the atmosphere by net radiation.
Reference 9 on Wiki says the emission from the atmosphere acts to slow down the heat losses from the surface rather like a blanket acts to slow down the heat losses of a warm person.
Endless time you have accused me of playing games, and lying and cheating (obfuscation).
The clear evidence, is that those who are so determined to say that backradiation warms the earth are obfuscating and dishonestly representing a simple process that does not need to be described in the strange thermodynamic terms that you and others have said are necessary for a forced system.
Your claim of scientific superiority, in the circumstances that we are talking about here, where we are discussing a very simple scientific phenonema, is at best very silly.
It is interesting to me, the depths to which people are prepared to go to ensure 'warming by backradiation' is going to be the language used to explain the greenhouse effect, where no scientifically trained person will believe a cold object can warm a hotter object, and no person reading an account of such a description can know what the heck is being described using this strange unscientific language.
And evidently anybody who stands up in public and points out how silly the language is, is going to get the kind of assault that you people have subjected me to.
It is just like 1984 or as my wife says it is like being in China.
Andrew:
ReplyDelete"Your attitude is essentially one of superiority and looking down upon me as an inferior being"
No, as a professional PhD physicist, his attitude is that he has a superior understanding of physics, and he's right.
You're fighting a losing battle here.
No one's going to believe that your understanding of physics is superior to the understanding of professionals like Arthur or Eli (a physical chemist), trumps physics textbooks, all of modern physics theory, etc etc.
If you'd go spend some time learning physics rather than trying to "teach" physics to physicists like Arthur that would be time fruitfully spent.
Arthur
ReplyDelete>>It's more a severe case of Dunning-Kruger than anything else.
Ha. You need a mirror. Your attitude towards me is nothing short of disgusting.
And this idea *created in your mind* that I have stumbled upon the same thing that John Tyndall wrote about 150 years ago and aviators talk about when they talk about rising currents of air and the influence of water vapour is just garbage from you.
You seem compelled to act like you are some kind of animal and unable to be civil.
What you are doing is unacceptable behaviour. You are not a child. You are the parent of 4 children.
Please stop this stupidity and act like a responsible human being
I have done my best to be polite with you all thru all the crap you have dished out to me about obfuscating and playing games and semantics
How dare you behave so disrespectfully towards me.
Stop it. Pull yourself together and act your age
Andrew, the Schwarzschild equation, which any lay description of the Greenhouse effect is trying to convey, is not at all simple. It is, as I've repeatedly tried to explain here, something that captures a combined microscopic description of the radiative portion of energy flow with a macroscopic local-thermal-equilibrium description of the atmosphere. The Greenhouse effect is, in actuality, quite complicated and difficult to explain, which is very likely why there have been so many distinct and to varying degrees inadequate attempts and analogies out there. The current wikipedia one really isn't too bad.
ReplyDeletedhogaza
ReplyDeleteArthur is a self employed IT person
"No one's going to believe that your understanding of physics is superior to the understanding of professionals like Arthur or Eli (a physical chemist), trumps physics textbooks, all of modern physics theory, etc etc."
You have no idea what you are talking about.
I have already explained a number of times that I phoned up the writer of reference 9 on Wiki.
Yochanan Kushnir fully supported what I am talking about here
The man is currently:
Director, NOAA Cooperative Institute for Climate Applications and Research (CICAR)
Doherty Senior Research Scientist, Division of Ocean and Climate Physics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA.
His reference says:
These absorbing gases and their surrounding air ***warm up***, emitting radiation downward, towards the Earth's surface, as well as upward, towards space. This effectively traps part of the IR radiation between ground and the lower 10 km of the atmosphere. ***This reduction in the efficiency of the Earth to lose heat causes the surface temperature to rise*** above the effective temperature calculated above (Te) until finally, enough heat is able to escape to space to balance the incoming solar radiation. ****The effect is analogous to that of a blanket that traps the body heat preventing it from escaping into the room and thus keeps us warm on cold nights***
It is not me who is attempting to rewrite the science.
If people like me dont defend science then you people will be the voice of the new dark ages where only ignorance is allowed.
Andrew, I am very open about who I am, where I work, my family life, even my religious beliefs if you feel you need to ask. It seems to me you've been rather wasting your time on ferreting out such details for yourself (and getting some of them wrong) rather than looking at some of the things we've suggested you study up on to come to a more informed opinion on the subject.
ReplyDeleteAs to Yochanan Kushnir's description of the Greenhouse effect - it is one of many analogies that's not too bad. But it doesn't capture some of nuances very well - for example, the word "traps" - if the atmosphere is emitting both upward and downward at the same rate, how is that a trap? Can you explain that for us?
Hn.
ReplyDeleteThe farce is strong in this one...
Arthur, I admire your patience. I doubt that you will ever be able to penetrate the Dunning-Kruger shell on this one. Or is it that the Dunning-Kruger photons are back-radiated to their source with unitary efficiency?
Either way, it appears that there might actually be something in the universe that does not follow the laws of thermodynamics...
Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.
As an aside, I hope that Arthur and others persist in attempting to educate AJ. Even if the latter individual is never able to understand the point of their generously offered enlightenment, there are probably many lurkers here who are no doubt learning well from the exchanges.
ReplyDeleteAnd the threads will provide useful links for smacking the next denialatus, freshly-graduated from the UoWWWT, who thinks that he can toss several centuries of physics out the nearest window.
Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.
The point here is that it is possible to produce a version of the text that is as near perfect as possible.
ReplyDeleteKushnir does later more correctly say:
The effect is analogous to that of a blanket that traps the body heat
The heat is trapped in the ground and atmosphere so that the quantity of heat in the Earth system is increased because the cooling rate of the surface is reduced.
So trapping used in the right context could be a helpful word.
No doubt we could get him to rephrase that text.
>And the threads will provide useful links for smacking the next denialatus, freshly-graduated from the UoWWWT, who thinks that he can toss several centuries of physics out the nearest window
ReplyDeleteA very silly statement:
1. I am not a denialist.
2. People like me are wanting the Wiki page to reflect the science of the last few hundred years rather than the uncited opinions of the mixed up editors.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI believe that this is the about page of Arthur's sadly defunct blog. If I am correct, he certainly has a far better understanding of physics than you do.
So Andrew, did you watch the two lectures from chapter 3 which I pointed you to yesterday? You really ought to since I think they will help you get an idea of the mechanisms at work.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the Wiki page, as Arthur states, pretty good. It is clear, captures the important features of the effect and alerts readers to some of the complicating factors in the real world. One thing which wasn't covered as well as it might be was the importance of the height of the effective radiating surface. Arthur alluded to this in a previous comment.
Rattus
ReplyDelete>>I believe that this is the about page of Arthur's sadly defunct blog. If I am correct, he certainly has a far better understanding of physics than you do
To Arthurs credit, he has been able to agree with an expert climatologist that:
1. The surface warms the atmosphere, which Arthur refreshingly said was a number 1 mathematical reality
2. Arthur thinks the climate expert, who totally agrees with me, has produced a reasonable description of the GHE, where both Arthur and I agree the text could be improved.
So I still have reason to believe that eventually science is going to be the winner here.
Rattus
ReplyDeleteFrom an experts point of view the Wiki page needs quite a bit of work
For example it omits or disguises the simple reality that the surface warms the surface and mysteriously hides it in a mess of language where it is clear the writer cannot assemble all the various ideas into a coherent presentation.
The GHE is a very simple phenonema, and there is no reason for it to be so poorly explained.
So far I cannot get those videos to work but should be able to eventually.
Those links download an MP4 file which you then need to open with your favorite media viewer.
ReplyDeleteit is clear the writer cannot assemble all the various ideas into a coherent presentation
ReplyDeleteSadly the author does not recognize how aptly this statement describes his own expositions, here and elsewhere.
-MO
Andrew, let's work our way through the chain of events.
ReplyDelete1) Earth's surface is warmed by absorbing photons.
Photons have no memory of their origin, and the surface can not distinguish their origin, thus the origin of those photons is irrelevant, be it the sun, another body, or the atmosphere.
2) The surface is cooled by radiating photons.
It also cools by conduction to the atmosphere and by the latent heat of evaporation, but we're not concerned with those right now.
3) The surface cools the instant it radiates a photon.
Meaning once the photon has been radiated, its energy is lost to the surface. The surface has cooled all it can by emission of that photon.
4) Assume the photon is then absorbed by a greenhouse gas molecule in the atmosphere, converting the electromagnetic energy to molecular vibrational energy.
5) Assume the molecule does not first relax by collision with another gas molecule, which is most likely, but instead relaxes by spontaneously emitting a new photon, converting the vibrational energy back into electromagnetic energy, and that the photon will be emitted in any direction, including back down to the surface.
6) Assume the new photon strikes the surface.
7) Will that photon warm the surface?
Patient Bunny
ReplyDeleteNo big problem with that really until you get to
7) Will that photon warm the surface
What you mean is 'will that photon warm the molecule it is absorbed by'
You are just doing what everybody else here is doing and you are mixing up a microscopic process with a macroscopic process.
You cannot consider what is happening to 'the surface' which is a whole body, by examining a tiny detail of the process in isolation to what is happening for that whole process.
You must either consider a local tiny microscopic view or you must consider a much larger view.
In the larger view you consider all of the details *simultaneously*.
All people who are interacting me are attempting to focus myopically on a tiny detail and then force me to agree the atmosphere is warming the surface. And evidently when I object on sound thermodynamic reasons it seems to open a door for what amounts to a right good kicking.
As i mentioned earlier the IPCC talks about heating via net radiation in "the physical science basis".
The IPCC recognises that heat is never a two way exchange of energy at the macro level of the earth or the surface or the body in question.
The IPCC recognises that radiation is a two way exchange of energy for microscopic and macroscopic views.
Surfaces and in particular solids, are not usually composed of isolated molecules. Even for liquids and molecular solids, the intermolecular forces are such that photon absorption has a collective nature.
ReplyDeleteYou are well out of your depth.
Eli Rabett
ReplyDeleteYou like these phrases that i am so out of my depth.
My point about a surface is that it is not composed of a few molecules
If you want to argue that a photon is absorbed across an entire multi trillion surface then i am all ears to that rather quaint view
Please stop this rather silly method of interaction where you and the others are the great knowing ones and I am a lowly worm who can only be educated in your greatness
Andrew, if the shoe fits, wear it.
ReplyDeleteDo you admit that the temperature of the surface is proportional to the amount of energy it absorbs, as governed by the Steffan-Boltzman law?
If this is the case, what happens when more energy is absorbed by the surface?
Finally, is the surface capable of absorbing radiation in the IR bands emitted by the atmosphere?
Rattus
ReplyDeleteThis idea you have created, that even while you are vermin (ie a rat) you are a superior being to me is not likely to bring you happiness.
Stefan-Boltzmann describes emission from surfaces so since conductivity of surfaces varies I dont think you can translate watts into temperature of a surface so easily but It sounds like it can be done.
(If you have a surface temperature whatever is under the surface is irrelevant for the purposes of emission since the heat is already there at the surface to create that temperature)
Anyway i agree with your point that more absorption should increase the temperature other things being equal
When you say 'the surface' it depends on what you mean by 'the surface'. Emissivity can only be applied for each wavelength and each absorption wavelength depends on the molecules that make up the surface.
However, as a generalisation, for the purposes of discussion, 'the surface' can be considered to be capable of absorbing all atmospheric emissions.
Hey Andy, your the one who said, and Eli quotes:
ReplyDelete"7) Will that photon warm the surface
What you mean is 'will that photon warm the molecule it is absorbed by"
What will happen is that the energy will be absorbed by the surface in a way which immediately distributes it as thermal excitation.
You have no clue.
What the hell
ReplyDeletea) most surfaces have very high emissivity in the thermal IR (say 50 to 1500 cm-1
b) most of the surface is water
so emissivity is not much of an issue.
Catch a clue Andrew.
Conservation of energy and the fact that the Earth, for all practical purposes, can be treated as a blackbody is what links Steffan-Boltzman and absortion. Ein = Eout.
ReplyDeleteNow, since you've admitted both that absorbing more energy will tend to raise the temperature of a surface and that the surface is capable of absorbing energy emitted by the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that THE ATMOSPHERE WARMS THE SURFACE?
Ok, this really is bad. Andrew produces a quote from Kushnir that agrees with what we have been saying for ages now, and yet still thinks that we are wrong.
ReplyDeleteFortunately Andrew is unlikely to be in a position of importance in science, although all scientists are capable of saying stupid things at times.
Eli
ReplyDeleteThis is supposed to be a scientific discussion.
The emissivity of water is not 1
So why suggest it is?
Tyndall for example found that Ethylene gas was tremendously more powerful than water at absorbing radiation from lamp black
These continual insults from you that i need to grab a clue are inappropriate for a teacher of science.
There is a point to what i am talking about here. But all you can do is insult me.
A Director of NOAA for the last 13 years with extensive practical experiences of meterology in the Israeli navy, who is a recognised expert in his field and a practicing scientist totally agreed with everything i am saying and did not treat me like you are treating me.
Many of you here have some need to belittle me. What purpose you hope to achieve by that is unclear to me.
How about we focus on the science please?
If a photon is absorbed by the warm surface and either side of the absorption there are emissions of photons from the warm surface to the colder atmosphere there will be none of the immediate distribution of thermal energy that you are demanding I agree with. That part of the surface will simply be cooler.
Photons from the cold atmosphere have no ability to warm the surface unless the surface is receiving energy from the sun.
The photons from the colder atmosphere only act to reduce the cooling rate of the surface where the power of the sun drives the warming that is observed.
To say that the atmosphere is warming the surface is misleading
At night the surface cools less slowly because of the greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a 24 hour phenonema and has to be described as such.
Please try and take note of what your wife said about you and have a go at attempting to treat me respectfully
Rattus
ReplyDeleteIf i have Income and lose my wallet every day I am a poorer. If then I begin finding my wallet every day I dont get additional income, I just reduce my losses and my income makes me richer.
It is scientifically incorrect to say that a cold atmosphere can warm a hotter surface
The colder atmosphere only reduces the heat losses from the surface so that the income from the sun can create warming.
Andrew wrote: "No big problem with that really until you get to
ReplyDelete7) Will that photon warm the surface
What you mean is 'will that photon warm the molecule it is absorbed by' "
Andrew, that statement applies to individual photons arriving from the sun as well, yet the entire surface is in fact warmed by the sun.
That's because it is not just one photon and not just one molecule we're talking about, it is a population of photons and a population of molecules, *simultaneously*, both in the case of photons from the sun and in the case of photons from the atmosphere.
The origin of the photons is *irrelevant*.
You've just hung yourself by your own argument.
Patient
ReplyDeleteThe greenhouse effect works at night and when it is cloudy.
The greenhouse effect would carry on working even if the sun stopped producing any energy
Is it really necessary to have a different explanation of the greenhouse effect for each of these different conditions?
The cold atmosphere can never cause the hotter surface to become warmer unless energy from another source is provided to the surface.
Your insistance on an incorrect scientific explanation of the greenhouse effect is more or less unbelievable.
Sea water has an emissivity of .994@ 11 microns and about .97 across the thermal infrared.
ReplyDeleteEli calls that the limit.
Sheldon Cooper has nothing on Andrew Judd.
ReplyDelete> It is scientifically incorrect to say that a cold atmosphere can warm a hotter surface.
ReplyDeleteI believe the correct adjective is "parsomatically incorrect".
"A Director of NOAA for the last 13 years with extensive practical experiences of meterology in the Israeli navy, who is a recognised expert in his field and a practicing scientist totally agreed with everything i am saying and did not treat me like you are treating me."
ReplyDeleteNo offence, but still waiting on that transcript, even details of what you asked or explained, and details of what the responses were.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, the star chamber investigation of Drs. Monnett and Gleason lurches into it's third year.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Inspector Clouseau is still searching for a clue.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou most recent response to Patient shows that you really do not understand the greenhouse effect.
Please view the lectures I pointed you to. Once you have viewed them, come back and tell us what Professor Archer had to say.
Having noted water's high emissivity, Eli should give some future thought to its equally high absorption, and low albedo.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Judd --- Please study Ray Pierrehumbert's "Principles of Planetary Climate"
ReplyDeletehttp://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/PrinciplesPlanetaryClimate/index.html
through chapter 6.
Andrew Judd.
ReplyDelete"I am not a denialist."
For someone who is expressing such pedantry about the wording of a thermodynamic phenomenon, you are rather more lax in paying attention to what I said.
I did not call you a denialist. I was simply pointing out that the many clarifications provided to you on this and on the other thread will serve to rebut those who say that there is no 'greenhouse' effect, no global warming, because "a cold body cannot heat a warmer body". After all, it's not the atmosphere that is the distal source of the heat - the atmosphere, and specifically the 'greenhouse' gases contained within, are simply proximal redirectors of heat that originates elsewhere.
However, many ignorant folk leap at the insinuation that GHGs do not warm the planetary system. For them semantic expositions such as yours, which either actively seek to misdirect, or that unintentionally do so, are manna from heaven for their cause to delay or to prevent action to reduce 'greenhouse' gas emissions.
I do not resile from my previous comment. Whatever "people like [you]" think that they're doing, they're not the friends of science that they affect to be, and if this thread and the other Rabbet Run threads can serve as factual counters to the fluff that surrounds your semantic obfuscation, then I hope that we have more of it.
On the matter of your 'explanation' of global warming, you say:
"The cold atmosphere can never cause the hotter surface to become warmer unless energy from another source is provided to the surface."
With respect to the contemporary increase in global temperature, it is salient to note that the "energy [provided] from another source" - to wit, the sun - is effectively constant. If the source of energy is constant in its output, how then is the surface of the planet warming?
Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.
>>With respect to the contemporary increase in global temperature, it is salient to note that the "energy [provided] from another source" - to wit, the sun - is effectively constant. If the source of energy is constant in its output, how then is the surface of the planet warming?
ReplyDeleteAn emitting atmosphere slows down the heat loss from the lower 'surface'
Ie day or night, winter or extreme event the earth is unable to cool at the same rate it could do before the GHG amount increased.
J Bowers said...
ReplyDelete>> "A Director of NOAA for the last 13 years with extensive practical experiences of meterology in the Israeli navy, who is a recognised expert in his field and a practicing scientist totally agreed with everything i am saying and did not treat me like you are treating me."
>> No offence, but still waiting on that transcript, even details of what you asked or explained, and details of what the responses were
The conversation began by me describing extreme difficulties I was having getting people to believe how the greenhouse effect worked where people were insisting on saying the backradiation was warming the hotter surface.
The two of us did not disagree on anything in that conversation, although he did remind me that some of the atmosphere was very hot and that was warming the lower surfaces.
Essentially he validated what he was saying in reference 9 as well as confirming what is in the following green text.
Ie no special interpretations of the laws of thermodynamics are required to correctly describe the greenhouse effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Greenhouse_effect&diff=484420617&oldid=484333962
Eli Rabett
ReplyDeleteI said.
"When you say 'the surface' it depends on what you mean by 'the surface'. Emissivity can only be applied for each wavelength and each absorption wavelength depends on the molecules that make up the surface.
However, as a generalisation, for the purposes of discussion, 'the surface' can be considered to be capable of absorbing all atmospheric emissions."
And in reply to you I said the emissivity of water is not 1, so why say it is?
You have confirmed it is not 1
Rattus
ReplyDeleteIf you dispute what i said to Patient Bunny then *you* do not understand what the Greenhouse effect is.
Perhaps you can highlight what point of the following you think is incorrect?
"The greenhouse effect works at night and when it is cloudy.
The greenhouse effect would carry on working even if the sun stopped producing any energy
Is it really necessary to have a different explanation of the greenhouse effect for each of these different conditions?
The cold atmosphere can never cause the hotter surface to become warmer unless energy from another source is provided to the surface."
Evidently you are missing part of the picture if you are going to dispute that
"The two of us did not disagree on anything in that conversation, although he did remind me that some of the atmosphere was very hot and that was warming the lower surfaces."
ReplyDeleteAccording to your interpretation, would that be below Everest Base Camp, or above?
J Bowers
ReplyDeleteDr Kursnir said
It is thermodynamically impossible for a colder atmosphere to warm a hotter surface.
When considering *the* atmosphere and *the* surface we are always taking about macroscopic concepts so that the use of two way heat exchange is an erroneous conceptualisation
Your points 2 and 3 are contradictory.
ReplyDelete>>Your points 2 and 3 are contradictory.
ReplyDeleteHow so?
Point 2 arose from the observation that the atmosphere is fairly transparant to solar radiation so that the surface is heating the lower atmosphere
point 3 just mentions that the direct solar heating of all of the atmosphere does not raise the temperature of most of the atmosphere to the point that most of the atmosphere is able to heat the surface.
The overall point is that the heat flow is moving from the surface upwards where the greenhouse effect works because heat losses from the surface are reduced, so that solar heating forces the surface temperature to rise until the same heat loss is in place.
Unless energy from another source. w/o energy from the sun (or another source and on the earth there really ain't none) there can be no greenhouse effect.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, have you watched those lectures yet. If you can't get them to work, you can sign up for the free class at the same site forecast.uchicago.edu and watch them via YouTube there. Or you can view them on YouTube, First Lecture, Second Lecture.
The important point is that for much of the time the surface is cooling because there is *no* energy of significance arriving at the surface.
ReplyDeleteThis cooling rate is reduced because of the GHE
Perhaps this discussion would be illuminated by a review of the history of our understanding of thermodynamic concepts.
ReplyDeleteThe earliest theoretical understanding of heat related to combustion and the idea that a material substance ("phlogiston") was released on burning. However, careful measurements showed closed systems not losing mass, and metals gaining mass, when burned. The discovery of oxygen gas which played an inverse role to the theoretical phlogiston resolved the measurements and allowed improved understanding of what was going on in combustion.
But there was still the heat released, which seemed to be a material substance then referred to as "caloric". Caloric was a pretty useful concept - it had describable properties; it could only flow from hotter to colder, it appeared to be a conserved substance, it allowed description of gas processes under conditions of no heat flow (adiabatic conditions) and otherwise, allowing Carnot to develop and understand his cycle showing the limitations of turning heat into mechanical work.
But caloric turned out not to be conserved in itself (the Carnot cycle being one example where heat can be repeatedly destroyed - turned into mechanical work) - Joule and others showed these were all different manifestations of one thing - energy, which is indeed conserved universally. The importance of heat as a distinct concept faded in the new theory of thermodynamics, where conservation of energy (the first law) and increase of entropy (the second law) more comprehensively accounted for all the properties that caloric theory had explained.
So in modern thermodynamics, the term "heat" has no particular special meaning. Trying to invest it with such is essentially a return to the "caloric theory" of the early 19th century. What matters are energy and entropy.
We've already discussed extensively the energy flows involved in the Greenhouse problem - and one of those is clearly a radiative energy flow from atmosphere to surface, an important part of the surface energy balance that makes the surface warmer than it would otherwise be. But what about the entropy changes in the system, how do they square with the second-law constraint that entropy must always increase?
In particular, when a quantity E1 of thermal radiation is emitted from a material body at a temperature T1 that body loses, along with the energy E1, a quantity E1/T1 of entropy (which is associated with the radiation in its travels). When that radiation is then absorbed by a second body at temperature T2, the second body's entropy then increases by a quantity E1/T2. The change in entropy associated with this process of absorption and emission is then E(1/T2 - 1/T1). If T2 is greater than T1, that entropy change is in fact negative, apparently in violation of the second law.
But radiant energy surely can travel from a colder body to be absorbed by a warmer one, so how can this process be in violation of physical laws? This is the microscopic/macroscopic problem we've been discussing here: radiant energy can never flow in only one direction. The second body, if it can absorb thermal radiation from the first, must also be emitting thermal radiation that can be absorbed in the other direction. Every photon path is reversible.
Moreover, if body 2 is at a higher temperature (T2 > T1) then the emitted energy following Planck's law must be higher (E2 > E1). So the total entropy change of the system in this exchange of radiation between the two bodies must be positive. We only see a negative entropy change when we look at just half the full process.
Of course this has been stated and restated multiple times in different ways in the past without getting through. However, I think it might help to realize the obsession with "heat" as a term is tied to the old "caloric theory" which is not exactly where our current understanding of thermodynamics lies.
Hope that helps a bit.
Truly I sense the presence of genius. This reminds me of my own crusade. I'll try to explain it in terms you all can understand.
ReplyDeleteOperators act on operands. You see, operators are like verbs and operands are like subjects (nouns). Verbs and nouns are fundamentally different.
Thus it is nonsensical on the most basic level to interchange the roles of operator and operand.
In a travesty of provincial thinking (typical among the self-appointed elite), I have been banned from the wiki page on duality in mathematics. All I sought to do was prevent the wiki authors from revealing their profound ignorance of mathematics.
-MO
Arthur
ReplyDeleteYour idea that Joule and the rest of the 19th scientists had this "strict thermodynamics" view of heat as energy is false.
Joule referred to the kinetic energy of heat as the living force. Kelvin referred to the moving force of matter that was heat as a dynamical force.
Tyndall who was instrumental in introducing the work of Clausius to english speaking audiences by arranging translations of the original work wrote 'heat as a mode of motion'
Plancks original German word for heat was KoeperWarme or what translates to body heat. Planck said that temperature was degree of heat.
Your view seems to have come from textbook Zimmerman who said said the 19th century scientists were confused by caloric and has been propagated along with the idea that students who have the same view as Joule are mixed up and confused and more or less totally ignorant.
Over on the wiki heat page I managed to get them to change heat to quantity of heat to try and get the historical record to be correctly described
It is a whole subject in itself how the new fangled heat has arisen.
Arthur
ReplyDeleteThe second law of thermodynamics as first written by Clausius and later by Kelvin is talking about the impossibility of producing work greater than what can be obtained by the flow of heat from hot to cold, so that it is impossible to do work by continually using the available heat in the earth by a process involving cooling of the earth.
This overarching process does not preclude local microscopic factors which viewed in insolation appear to be violations of SloT
Clearly the overarching process of the greenhouse effect is that the nuclear power of the sun heats the surface which is heating the atmosphere. There is no perpetual motion machine there using 'free' heat.
Once again modern text books have so far transformed the original ideas younger students appear to have no idea what was originally intended so they can understand what the law is describing.
Arthur after all of this time you appear to have no idea what i am talking about.
ReplyDeleteYou insist on maintaining a tone of superiority and seem unable to grasp what i am saying.
What i am saying is your explanation of the greenhouse effect is confusing. We both get the same result of a warming but your version involves considerable brain damage and is unhelpful for the kind of person we wish to educate on Wiki or generally when we talk about the greenhouse effect.
Many people are hugely confused by the way you explain this effect and consequently many reject the idea there is a greenhouse effect.
Joule and others would *never* have used the language you are using that the cold atmosphere is warming the surface.
Your strange idea this is only semantics and i am obfuscating is just silly
There is a point to what i am talking about here.
ReplyDeleteIn 10,000+ words you've failed to make your point, let alone convince anyone.
You might want to rethink your strategy.
MO,
ReplyDeleteYour crusade needs to be heard:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/20673250758
Best of luck,
w
***
> Joule and others would *never* have used the language you are using that the cold atmosphere is warming the surface.
Citation needed. Most hits for "cold atmosphere" are authored by the one who argues against using this expression.
Andrew, do tell us, please, "how the new fangled heat has arisen". If you can cite a textbook published after 1950 on the subject, so much the better. ScienceOfDoom for example excerpted from half a dozen different textbooks on heat transfer all of which either use the term "net heat", "net radiative heat flux", etc. or directly say the bodies "lose heat by radiation"... Heat is used quite loosely in modern thermodynamics to refer to content or change of thermal energy. It does not have the strict definition of the old "caloric" theory any more.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about science (which is quite different from some branches of scholarship) is that it does not actually matter what the original intent of such luminaries as Joule, Kelvin, Clausius, Einstein or anybody else was when they expressed their ideas. Those ideas have been incorporated into a body of practice within the field (usually explicated most completely in the latest textbooks) such that useful ideas and terms and equations and mechanisms for representing real physical systems are retained and expanded upon and better and better understood over time, and things that are not found useful in such ways are left behind. They may still be valid in their own limited contexts - the "caloric" view is still an excellent way to think about the flow of thermal energy when LTE conditions apply. But those old methods are fundamentally limited in what they can describe, just as Newtonian mechanics is limited by a range of constraints on velocity, mass, temperature, etc.
In particular, in modern science the laws of thermodynamics are so ingrained (in fact they are widely believed to be more fundamental than any other known physical law) that working scientists take for granted they have to be obeyed. In discussion of the greenhouse effect, it should always be taken for granted that this is under constraints of conservation of energy and steadily increasing entropy. There's no other way things could happen.
So when you say "your version involves considerable brain damage and is unhelpful for the kind of person we wish to educate on Wiki or generally when we talk about the greenhouse effect. Many people are hugely confused by the way you explain this effect and consequently many reject the idea there is a greenhouse effect." you appear to be arguing that the standard explanation seems to involve violation of the second law. But it does not, we agree it does not, the underlying math shows it does not, every working scientist knows they cannot violate that fundamental law. So where is this "brain damage" and "reject the idea" coming from? Do you seriously think some minor wording change will alleviate that problem? What is your evidence, on the one hand for damage, and on the other that what you propose will have any effect?
(PS feeling a little odd spending so much time on Eli Rabett's site this weekend - happy Easter!)
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ReplyDeleteHey Andrew, what happened? Cat got your tongue? Did you give up arguing indefensible positions for Lent?
ReplyDeleteArthur,
ReplyDeleteI must say the the thread linked to by Sod (at the HockeySchtick) is even more hilarious than SoD's attempts to deal with the fools.
And thank you for your reply to AJ. I was going to say pretty much the same things, but you did it far better than I ever could have. Mine would have been laced with invective and accusations about still living in the 19th century (wait, I think I said that somewhere in the earlier thread).
Andrew:
We (the collective we and yourself) seem to agree on the following:
1) Radiation emitted from the sun is
2) Absorbed by the surface and
3) reemitted as IR radiation which is
4) absorbed by the atomsphere which is then
5) reemitted as IR, 1/2 up and 1/2 down then is
6) absorbed by the surface which
At this point reality differs from your approach. In the real world the next steps are
7) Increases the temperature of the surface because it is absorbing more radiation than it did before.
In Andrew world what happens is:
7) ???
Please explain step 7. And BTW, did you watch those lectures yet?
And Andrew, just to make you happy, read "is absorbed by" as "heats". It really is all about energy, though.
ReplyDeleteizen says-
ReplyDeleteIt looks like this thread is whimpering to a close, but as one of the first to post to AJ and having followed the exchanges, well it has been interesting !
First, I think Andrew Judd is right, or at least has a point. There is an implicit contradiction between the statement that the 'atmosphere warms the surface' and the scientific understanding of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
The many lucid explanations of the GHE and the concepts underlying it have not necessarily engaged with that point.
It is largely a matter of semantics. The problem disappears in any numerical description of the GHE. The most accurate version of the GHE is expressed in mathematical symbols, values and formula. The written version will always be a metaphorical approximation.
When as children we complain of the cold at night, parents will put another blanket on the bed to make us warmer. Our empirical experience is that the blanket warms us up. Perhaps we form a naive concept that things that make us warmer are an additional source of 'heat'...
As students coming to understand thermodynamics we recognize that an object A(person) can be warmer in the presence of object B(blanket) without object B adding any energy to the system. By altering the rate of energy flows in the system the temperature of A is higher with object B than without. We come to understand that the tacit implication that there is a 'heat' source making the blanket warm us is false. That the blanket, coat, roof or GHG works only with the energy already in the system and all temperature changes are fully in compliance with the 1st and 2nd LoTs.
This doesn't change the basic empirical experience that they make us warmer....
AJ's concern that the contradiction or dichotomy between the statement that 'the atmosphere warms the surface' and our understanding of the underlying thermodynamics is misplaced. It is not going to make the reader of any such statement dubious - unless they come with that presupposition. If they know enough thermodynamics to understand the potential contradiction between describing object B as 'warming' object A when it contributes no extra energy then as with blankets, coats and other insulators they know they cause warming by altering the flow of energy, not by being a source.
And as a simile will understand that the phrase 'the atmosphere warms the surface' is referring to the empirical experience and is not a detailed description of the underlying flow/rates of change of entropy.
izen (why does my wordpress signin not work!?)
Arthur, You are muddled up. Caloric meant 'Heat was a substance called Caloric'. Kelvin and Co were talking about 'heat in a substance'.
ReplyDeleteBy the 1970's Zimmerman was saying that people who thought like Kelvin were muddled up.
Obviously it was Zimmerman who was muddled up.
Almost nobody today on the internet seems aware of this change.
You just presumed to lecture me while showing your own lack of knoledge and now you want to obfuscate by saying pre 1950 views dont count.
Rattus and others
ReplyDeleteIf you construct a ray diagram of the radiation coming from the atmosphere and the radiation coming from the surface you cannot justifiably say the absorption by the surface is warming the surface because far more energy leaves the surface either side of the absorption, so that these suface emissions act to cool the surface and warm the atmosphere,
The warming is coming from the sun and the energy from the atmosphere only serves to reduce the heat loss from the surface.
It is absurd to say the atmosphere warms the surface
We have to say the presence of an emitting atmosphere causes the surface to warm when heated by the sun.
Saying the atmosphere warms the surface is at best misleading and at worse it is down right obfuscation. Ie dishonest.
The videos have told me nothing new - he did have very good handwriting however.
And thus we have it. Crusader Judd insists upon his own, limited understanding of history of science and creationist like adhesion to the original wordings by the founding fathers. Never mind the maths which is the real point; never mind how science moves on, as Arthur detailed.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Andrew had better get a life, preferably somewhere far away from children and science students?
Arthur
ReplyDeletePeople like you can authoritatively talk nonsense while imagining anybody who disagrees has a deep psychological condition which you and your chums can be amused by.
Humility is not one of your stronger points. Indeed humility seems to be lacking throughout this blog, Stoat and Wiki.
What I am objecting to is the strange use of unscientific imprecise language.
If the surface is cooling at night or thru the winter, then saying the atmosphere is warming the surface is just a peculiar use of language which is not scientific and just leads to confusion.
1. Things are not being warmed, when they are cooling more slowly,
and
2. They are not being warmed when they are cooling more slowly, while they are *heating* the thing that is said to be warming them.
It is this amazingly bizarre use of language that I am objecting to.
No reasonable person can possibly think this use of warming is helpful or accurate for the various situations that the GHE has to describe.
And for the record most people realise the Earth is not a flat surface with a half powered sun that has as surface that never cools.
Guthrie
ReplyDelete>Perhaps Andrew had better get a life, preferably somewhere far away from children and science students?
You evidently have no interest in Scientific accuracy and seem to imagine that your ability to issue toxicity gives you an authority in this matter.
We can only hope that you are not ever a teacher of children. But that *is* the nature of todays problem. People like you and Arthur *are* the teacher of children, and the adults like me are getting older and we will no longer be around to *help* you when we are gone.
Indeed humility seems to be lacking throughout this blog, Stoat and Wiki.
ReplyDeleteIt's amusing that the author can't see any lack of humility in his own childish rants.
Wisdom emitters on high. Receptors set to zero. Impart.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteOn the lectures: you are saying you didn't understand the implications of the equations which Dr. Archer derived during the lecture?
On step 7. What mechanism do you propose for "slowing down the cooling" if it is not DLR from the atmosphere being absorbed by the surface?
Izen says-
ReplyDeleteIn reply to AJ's statement -
@-" It is this amazingly bizarre use of language that I am objecting to.
No reasonable person can possibly think this use of warming is helpful or accurate for the various situations that the GHE has to describe."
There is nothing amazing or bizarre about the use of language in this instance. As with blankets, coats and other insulators the common usage in language is to talk of them warming the user - because that is the direct experience of those that benefit from the warming effect of using a coat, blanket or insulator.
And of course our direct experience in the case of the climate is that the increase in GHG's HAS made it warmer. Describing the GHE as warming the surface is an entirely accurate description of what has happened.
Unless you are denying that the last century of temperature trend is completely independent of any change in the GHE ?!
izen
Rattus
ReplyDelete>On the lectures: you are saying you didn't understand the implications of the equations which Dr. Archer derived during the lecture?
ho ho ho ho
You just cannot stop being a slimely little rat
Izen
ReplyDeleteI dont know what aspect of the Greenhouse effect makes the earth warmer, that you dont understand, but i dont feel i cannot help you any further.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI am making an honest attempt to understand your thinking. I think the problem is that you don't understand real second law of thermodynamics. Arthur pointed you to this page several comments back, I recommend you read it. I am still awaiting an answer from you about what you think the mechanism is for "slowing the rate of cooling" if it is not warming of the surface through absorption of additional energy by the surface, energy which is supplied by the DLR from the GHE.
Rattus
ReplyDelete>>On step 7. What mechanism do you propose for "slowing down the cooling" if it is not DLR from the atmosphere being absorbed by the surface?
Confucius he say, a photon absorbed by a surface causes local warming of that surface.
Confucius he say, a man can believe he gets richer, by giving 100 to fool who give him 50.
Confucius he say, I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteWhen an object absorbs a photon, is it warmed by the process? How does it know whether the photon came from the Sun or a CO2 molecule?
Andrew, you say:
ReplyDelete"Confucius he say, a photon absorbed by a surface causes local warming of that surface."
So then you do admit that the DLR warms the surface above what it would be in the absence of the DLR? So this really is only about you trying to obscure what the effect is because you don't like saying this in the most direct way?
Give me a break, you really are an idiot.
Rattus
ReplyDeleteNo matter how much your tiny mind wants to ram it up my arse that DLR warms the surface, I will keep on telling you that the surface warms the atmosphere.
If you want to obfuscate that reality for ever, you can be that moron for ever. Your call.
Step 4 Andrew, step 4. The energy flows tell the story.
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ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteLet's look at this in stasis. Let's say that a square meter of the surface receives 100W. In the absence of the greenhouse effect it will radiate 100W and have it's temperature determined by the Steffan-Boltzmann law. Is this your understanding?
Now, in the presence of the GHE the surface also receives the same 100W from the sun, but it also receives 50W in DLR from the atmosphere. It is now absorbing 150W and therefore must radiate 150W. By Steffan-Boltzman it's temperature *must* be warmer, since it is now radiating more energy -- it has to, conservation of energy dictates that.
No matter how you want to say it, the surface has warmed relative to the non-greenhouse state. It really is simple math, not even algebra at this point.
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ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteI realize that you are not denying that the GHE exists, but you seem to have a disconnect in your understanding of the actual mechanism, thus your insistence that it does not "warm the surface" but rather it "slows the cooling". You haven't been able to show a physical mechanism for your interpretation of the effect other than "warms the surface" since you admit that the DLR from the atmosphere does warm the surface, as it must. Your own words are at odds with your argument.
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ReplyDeleteAndrew with this:
ReplyDelete"The DLR cannot be warming the surface because more energy leaves the surface than is received by the fucking atmosphere"
You show that you really don't seem to understand what is happening with the surface energy budget in the greenhouse vs. non-greenhouse case. Yes in the greenhouse case the surface loses more than in the non-greenhouse case, but it also absorbs more which necessarily means that it's temperature is higher. Watch that lecture again and work through the math.
Andrew, your correction:
ReplyDelete"The DLR cannot be warming the surface because more energy leaves the surface to warm the atmosphere than is received by the fucking DLR"
is just as bad.
One of the reasons why I think Andrew isn't actually trolling is that proper trolling, the really raelly good stuff that I've seen once or twice, involces starting an argument, giving it a couple of little prods, then sitting back and laughing. Andrew has invested far too much time posting on this topic to be trolling.
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ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteI will leave your last highly confused and self-contradictory statement to stand on it's own.
Is it like a beer festival where the surface stamps the photon's wrist so it can't come back for more of the really good stuff?
ReplyDeleteWell, Andrew has pretty much degraded into arguing that the resident scientists are wrong because he's willing to say "fucking" and "cunt".
ReplyDeleteHow low does he need to to go until the thread's closed? Must he describe physicists as being "niggers" rather than "cunts"? Surely there's some limit ...
To be fair dhogaza, I did say he was confused and an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAt some point in your lives you might eventually realise that continually insulting and mocking people does not change reality or make you better people
ReplyDeleteAnyway we are never going to agree on this.
ReplyDeleteThe IPCC says the earth is heated by Net Radiation.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYour point of view on this issue is standing in the way of your understanding.
The energy flux emitted by a black body is determined by the Stefan-Boltzmann and Planck laws. In the absence of any external radiation flux, this would determine the rate of cooling for the body. In equilibrium and with no external atmosphere, solar (or other) radiation would have to supply the same amount of radiation to be absorbed by the body.
With greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, some IR bands will be prevented from leaving the atmosphere. This in and of itself, however, cannot warm the surface. Rather, the greenhouse gas temperature is raised by the absorption. The greenhouse molecules relax, either by collision with (mostly) N2 molecules or via radiation. Some of that radiation in turn falls on the surface.
Now there is no way to know whether the incident radiation is from the Sun or from a greenhouse molecule. Photons, after all, are indistinguishable particles. So, the greenhouse molecules merely add to the total radiation field incident on the surface--and this is what warms the surface.
It makes no sense to talk of "cooling more slowly" for the surface. Follow the energy--it is a lot easier to understand than entropy.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteDo you have a specific section number for the IPCC statement so we can go read it and find out exactly how you are confused on this issue?
The net radiation deficit at TOA is indicative of an enhanced greenhouse effect and a warming climate, but does not in and of itself warm the system.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteThe surface if often cooling even when it is very strongly heated by the sun, and the greenhouse effect still operates because the surface is heating the atmosphere.
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ReplyDeleteRattus
ReplyDeleteCorrection:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=CERES_NETFLUX_M
Net radiation is what heats the earth system
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter7.pdf
IPCC the physical science basis Box 7.1
There is a difference between the "earth system" and the surface. The Earth System includes surface + oceans + atmosphere. It is quite consistent to say that the heating of the Earth System is due to net radiation balance and that the surface is heated by backradiation as well as solar radiation.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, your reference doesn't say what you think it does.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteBoth references show that Net radiation is the term used for heating
The nasa one describes heating of the global system. The IPCC one describes heating of the surface
Are you saying you do not realise that the surface is heating the atmosphere?? Please make sure you answer this.
What point do you wish to make to me?
Clearly in net radiation heating terms, used by the IPCC and NASA the atmosphere is not heating or warming the surface.
The surface is heating the atmosphere.
Sigh! The Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, would the surface heat the atmosphere if there were no greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere?
Yes, of course the surface heats the atmosphere.
Now, when a photon is absorbed by the surface, does it heat the surface?
Please answer this.
Now, how does the surface know whether the photon originated on Sol or in the atmosphere?
A-ray nails it.
ReplyDeleteI think we can agree that Andrew's statement that the greenhouse effect "slows cooling" does fairly describe what happens to the coupled surface-atmosphere system as a whole. There is no increase in the energy being added to the system, but rather energy is being retained longer within the coupled system before ultimately being radiated out of the system. Cooling of the system has been slowed, and thus the coupled system warms until it reaches radiative equilibrium. Increase the greenhouse effect and the delay will be longer and thus the system will warm further until it once again reaches radiative equilibrium.
The problem arises when Andrew insists on splitting the coupled system into it's constituent components, the surface and the atmosphere. In that case the stand-alone surface sheds energy the instant it radiates. In other words, it cools regardless of the greenhouse effect. When that radiated energy is absorbed by the atmosphere, reradiated, and then absorbed by the surface, it is gaining energy that it had already radiated away. It is warming. To call that "slowed cooling" is to play juvenile semantic games.
The surface is often cooling very rapidly even when it is very strongly heated by the sun.
ReplyDeleteIf a hotter object is radiating energy to its cooler surroundings the heat loss rate is expressed as
q = ε σ (Th4 - Tc4) Area
Patient Bunny
ReplyDeleteIf you were more patient you might have realised by now that I am objecting to the expression 'the atmosphere warms the surface'
Obviously the surface can get warmer, but often it just cools more slowly. But the constant result of the GHE is that the surface cools more slowly.
A heated surface that cools more slowly *can* get hotter *or* it can cool more slowly even *while* being heated.
But emphasising a warming via the green house effect is misleading and usually it is simply wrong.
For example John Tyndall reported that in Central Australia on 2nd June 1845 the surface cooled to -11.6C by sunrise and was heated to 19.6C by 4pm.
Were it not for the greenhouse effect then the extreme temperature range of that day would have been higher because the surface would have cooled even more rapidly.
Endlessly repeating that the surface is warmed by the GHE or that the atmosphere warms the surface is nuts given these realities.
Andrew seems bent on diluting dementia with disinformation.
ReplyDeleteit wasn't minus 11 in 'central australia'
It was the middle of the Snowy Mountains.
The record low in Central Australia was -7.5 at Ayers Rock
Russell
ReplyDeleteMitchell supposedly reported that temperature from the N.W. interior rather than central Australia but what evidence have you got that John Tyndalls information was wrong or amounts to misinformation?
Russell
ReplyDeleteI found the original source for Tyndalls comment
http://books.google.fi/books?id=GMoNAAAAQAAJ&dq=mitchell%20australia%20interior&pg=PA188#v=onepage&q=temperature&f=false
Mitchell was surveyor general of new South Wales and was looking for a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria and was somewhere near Mitchell in Queensland at about 1300 feet on 2nd June 1846 when he recorded 11F at sunrise and 67F at 4pm
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteOK, let's look at it this way. Consider two spheres in orbit at the same distance around a star. Both are black bodies and are identical in every way, except:
Sphere 1 has no atmosphere, while sphere 2 has an atmosphere containing greenhouse gasses.
Both start at the same temperature. Thus they are emitting the same outgoing IR, n'est ce pas?
Are the radiation fields incident on the two spheres identical?
If not, which sphere will have the higher density of radiation energy?
What is the source of this extra energy? Whence did it come?
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI read box 7.1 which doesn't really define what "net radiation" is. Since the box is describing the processes which govern the surface energy budget (SEB) my guess is that it refers to the combination of solar irradiance and DLR. Sensible heat is the IR budget we have been talking about in this thread. Latent heat is the heat that is stored in water vapor as a result of evaporation. These are the major processes by which heat is lost from the surface to the atmosphere.
The net radiation talked about at the NASA page is the radiative imbalance which I referred to in my first comment on this subject. It is the radiation deficit at the TOA, which is current about .6 Wm**2. This is basically a diagnostic which tells us that we are enhancing the GHE.
Here's a compromise:
ReplyDeletelet us say that
the blanket does not
warm, but keeps warm.
Let us talk about
Anthropogenic Global
Keeping Warm instead:
much more scientific that way.
I believe the preferred term is Anthropogenic Global Less Rapid Cooling.
ReplyDelete-MO
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteArthur used the same method you are using to require me to believe that when the Earth is being cooled rapidly by the atmosphere that it is acceptable scientific language to say the atmosphere was warming the surface.
This language is wrong, unhelpful and scientifically inept.
I am not going to be assimilated into your world by any more of this type of Arthur P Smith example.
The source of energy for both planetary surfaces is the sun
Rattus
ReplyDeleteThe NASA and IPCC pages are simply using net radiated power in the usual scientific/engineering manner
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html#c2
Ie net radiated power when a hot surface (h) is in the presence of a colder atmospheric surface (c) is expressed as
P = ε σ (Th4 - Tc4) Area
Therefore, if the temperature of an emitting atmosphere rises, net radiated power reduces.
As I said we are never going to agree. The IPCC and NASA are using standard scientific terms and you and the others are not.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteAnother thing Arthur and I have in common: we are both PhDs in physics with long careers behind us.
Do you at least agree that the surface is warmed by backradiation? I find it hard to understand how you could disagree with that statement, as it is incontrovertibly true that the surface is 33 degrees warmer than would be in vacuum.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteThe backradiation flow is exactly equal to a forwards radiation flow.
So the surface is always cooling by the amount the backradiation heats the surface. The result is neither heating or cooling, because the backradiation flow depends on the forwards radiation flow.
What is happening is that an amount of surface emission has been prevented from escaping to space.
It is this reduced cooling rate that drives the surface to rise in temperature *when* it is heated by the sun or subsurface layers.
This is not just semantics.
Your wording is fundamentally incorrect.
As I have repeatedly said if the atmosphere is cooling the surface of the earth, and the surface is reducing in temperature we cannot say the atmosphere warms the surface of the earth. Plainly it does not make the surface warmer in these situations
The *constant* of the GHE is that the ability of the surface to cool is reduced by the backradiation flow, because an amount of forwards radiation flow no longer escapes to space.
The constant of the GHE can not be that the atmosphere makes the surface warmer. Clearly the surface is often cooling.
People who say 'backradiation warms the surface of the earth' are at best twisting words and at worse scientifically ignorant.
Andrew, Bless your little heart, you are so lost! OK, read your last post. It is utterly incoherent. THAT is what an incorrect, unphysical idea does. Let go of it.
ReplyDeleteThe surface emits the same amount of radiation for a given temperature regardless of the atmosphere. Once this radiation has left the surface, it has left the surface. Elvis has left the fricking building!!!
What the radiation does not leave is the "CLIMATE SYSTEM", which includes the atmosphere. Some of the radiation excites GHGs in that atmosphere. GHGs relax either by colliding with another gas molecule, or by emitting a photon. Some of that "backradiation" from the atmosphere is incident on the surface, is absorbed by it and so warms the surface.
That is NOT ignorant. That is physics. If you do not agree with it, then explain the mechanism you think is operating.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteIf you want to understand my position then you can learn more about it by reading all my previous answers.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteYou have yet to state your mechanism clearly. You merely say that GHGs prevent the surface from cooling as rapidly. You do not say how--particularly as they do not affect the blackbody spectrum emitted from the surface.
State your mechanism clearly--otherwise you are simple "not even wrong".
Well color me stoopid.
ReplyDeleteA most interesting thread.
Here, we see a foolish denialati troll, show complete ignorance of the laws of physics and the properties of matter, every time it puts pen to paper. In addition, makes a complete ass of itself, as it refuses to learn and self contradicts itself, in succeeding posts.
Ah, watt a tangled web of self deception AJ weaves. One of complete ignorance and clinging to a blind creative delusional faith, it's nonsense alchemy pseudo science is correct and the world of knowledge, facts and evidence from the real world is completely wrong or part of an evil conspiracy to stop ignorance and incompetence from ruling the world.
In short, an interesting demonstration of the 'Peter Principle' and the 'Dunning-Kruger Effect'-"illusory superiority" by a denialati troll too.
Thanks for the fine entertainment Eli and friends, you certainly know how to troll the denialati trolls. ;)
Well color me stoopid.
ReplyDeleteA most interesting thread.
Here, we see a foolish denialati troll, show complete ignorance of the laws of physics and the properties of matter, every time it puts pen to paper. In addition, makes a complete ass of itself, as it refuses to learn and self contradicts itself, in succeeding posts.
Ah, watt a tangled web of self deception AJ weaves. One of complete ignorance and clinging to a blind creative delusional faith, it's nonsense alchemy pseudo science is correct and the world of knowledge, facts and evidence from the real world is completely wrong or part of an evil conspiracy to stop ignorance and incompetence from ruling the world.
In short, an interesting demonstration of the 'Peter Principle' and the 'Dunning-Kruger Effect'-"illusory superiority" by a denialati troll too.
Thanks for the fine entertainment Eli and friends, you certainly know how to troll the denialati trolls. ;)
AJ, I think you could do with reading your previous answers :)
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteThe equation you show is correct, just not for this case -- the earth's radiation budget. In box 7.1, although never defined, I am certain that they are talking about the net radiation which impinges on the earth's surface. I am able to do this because of the subject of box 7.1 which also talks about outflows, mainly latent and sensible heat. It is a skill you should learn: reading in context.
The NASA use of the term refers to the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). As I've stated an imbalance here is a a diagnostic, an indication, of the existence of an enhanced greenhouse effect. Currently the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation is about .6Wm**2, with incoming outweighing outgoing by that amount.
The physical mechanism involved is not that described by your equation, but is rather more complext. In brief what happens is the following:
1) More CO2 causes the effective radiating height of the atmosphere to increase to higher, colder regions.
2) The colder atmosphere is less efficient at radiating energy (remember Stefan-Boltzman)
3) As a result the atmosphere traps additional energy and warms until the atmosphere at the effective radiating height has warmed to such an extent that it can once again radiate enough energy to bring the system back into balance.
Finally, you may want to take a look at this. This is a diagram of the earth's energy budget. The greenhouse effect consists of the two huge pipes in and out of the surface at the right.
Tyndall never went there.
ReplyDeleteI did.
As an homage to the great man, Andrew should try to stay warm using a blanket of rock salt.
Russell
ReplyDeleteAs we both now know,
1. Tyndalls report of an extreme temperature difference on 2nd of June 1846 observed by Mitchell, have nothing much to do with Tyndall.
2. Mitchell, the surveyor general of NSW, was near Mitchell in Queensland and not South of Canberra, almost in Victoria
3. A blanket of rock salt will enable me to be warmer.
Rattus
ReplyDeleteNASA and the IPCC are clearly talking about heating by Net radiation. The Nasa map shows summer heating and winter cooling away from the equator, the text describes this for you in simple terms.
No matter how you obfuscate that, and no matter how superior you think your ability to read is, that is what is written.
The IPCC page specifically says heating of the surface by net radiation.
The atmosphere is *cooling* the surface because the surface heats the cold air touching it, and the atmosphere brings cold water to the surface. If there was not a strong positive net radiation heating the surface, the surface would get cooler and cooler.
Instead, because there *is* a strong net radiation heating of the surface, the surface although constantly cooled by the atmosphere does not get cooler and cooler.
The equation I gave describes the difference in the power leaving the surface minus the power received by the surface from the atmosphere.
The point being, far more power leaves the surface, which is being heated by a *different* net radiation calculation, than is ever received by the colder atmosphere. So all the atmosphere can ever do **as a constant** is to reduce the ability of the surface to cool.
The cold atmosphere can *never* heat the warm surface.
To say otherwise is a bastardisation of science and the English language.
Either way you want to work it, NASA and the IPCC use net radiation for heating. The cold atmosphere is never heating the warm surface with this useage.
In any case, in macroscopic terms we *never* say a cold object heats a hotter object with radiation or without radiation. People who say otherwise are simply ignorant.
If in response to the above, people begin talking about individual photons, they are now talking about microscopic terms and have already lost the plot. Far more photons are leaving the surface to go to the atmosphere than are ever received from the atmosphere.
Taking a detail from this process and attempting to create meaning from it, is myopic and is a form of blindness where you project your personal view and cannot see what is real.
Would a 50C heat source, placed above a pan of water boiling at 90C, add more heat to the water in the pan or not?
ReplyDeleteWould that pan of water become hotter than an identical pan of boiling water on the stove which is insulated from the additional heat source above?
J Bowers
ReplyDeleteYou are mixing apples with oranges
The boiling water supplies more energy to the 50C source than the 50C source supplies to the boiling water.
The pan becomes warmer because a 50C source supplies more energy to the water than a 49C source
The water is not heated by the 50C source. The water had a greater ability to cool when it was heating a colder surface, therefore it was colder.
The water becomes warmer because it is no longer cooling so rapidly while it is heated by a stove
Andrew, I think the problem you are having is that you are not distinguishing between the surface and the climate system as a whole. Yes, the heating/cooling of the entire climate system is determined by the TOA net energy flux.
ReplyDeleteThere is more going on at the surface, though. Energy is lost by thermal (~blackbody) radiation, but also by evaporation, etc. Energy returns to the surface via backradiation, mechanical energy (wind, rain, etc) and by sunlight. All of these incoming energy sources warm the surface.
You would not say that falling rain "slows energy loss due to evaporation". Likewise, backradiation warms the surface. It has zero effect on how much radiation is emitted from the surface (other than by raising the temperature).
Another problem you are having is that you are trying to argue from "entropy" rather than energy. Entropy is a difficult concept to grasp. Even most physicists don't fully grasp it. If you have a choice of analyzing a problem from the point of view of energy, it will be a much simpler problem.
But hey, why listen to me, right? I've only been doing physics for 3 and a half decades.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteSince you have been doing physics for 35 years you might have forgotten the earth is not a flat surface heated by a half power sun.
The surface temperature is constantly rising and falling.
During the day the cold atmosphere is nearly always massively cooling the surface to prevent it becoming massively more hotter.
There is no ability of the cold atmosphere to warm the surface without solar energy.
Whatever photons arrive from the atmosphere are *massively* outnumbered by photons that heat the atmosphere, where emission is proportional to temperature to the fourth power.
Only an amateur is going to say the atmosphere warms the surface in the way you are saying that.
is you gay or just a drunk?
ReplyDeleteWell, congratulations, Andrew. You've achieved that state coveted by morons where you are incapable of learning anything. Your learning curve has zero slope.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying "the atmosphere warms the surface". I have said all along that backradiation from the atmosphere warms the surface. As said radiation carries energy and is absorbed by the surface, that seems a pretty straightforward corollary to the 1st law of Thermo.
You however, refuse to even consider what I am writing and choose to stick your fingers in your ear and say "la-la-la-la". Fine. Stay ignorant.
My head hurts. I'm questioning reality.
ReplyDeleteDilbert
ReplyDelete>>I have said all along that backradiation from the atmosphere warms the surface.
Yes. And i keep pointing out that the earth is not flat and heated by a half power sun
Most of the time the backradiation is not associated with a warming surface.
Most of the time the backradiation is helping the surface to cool more slowly.
Which is why I say only an amateur would say the backradiation or the atmosphere warms the surface.
The expression is misleading and unhelpful.
J Bowers: "I'm questioning reality."
ReplyDeleteMe, too. Andrew appears to violate SLoT, he's a perpetual bullshit machine!
Andrew, I can be warmed by a fire and still be losing heat. Is English, perhaps, not your first language?
ReplyDeleteOK Mr Judd your last comment has me a bit confused. Its almost like you are saying yes but your mother wears combat boots. I hope you don't work at the post office. I was trying to think of something else that would garner a few hundred comments and thought maybe the term ocean acidification might work.
ReplyDeletea_ray_in_dilbert_space,
ReplyDeleteEnglish may not be his first language, but thought is definitely not his strong point. I think he failed Abstraction 101.
Why is anyone still talking to the doorknob? It can't hear you.
ReplyDeleteDilbert
ReplyDeletePart of the problem between us, is that you dont think this is a scientific discussion. Therefore most of your answers are abusive, and what you dont say to me you say to the other abusers.
A fire warms the surfaces it heats, and the surfaces of your body that are not so heated are cooling.
The same reasoning would apply to a terrestial surface which has some cold locations and some warm locations.
But in neither case can cold heat hot.
You seem unable to realise the importance of distinquishing between microscopic processes and macroscopic processes.
It grows clearer with each exchange that Madame Judd's taste in combat footwear is less at fault than her failure to tie the laces together.
ReplyDeleteAJ:
ReplyDelete"3. A blanket of rock salt will enable me to be warmer."
By allowing unimpeded loss of thermal IR ?
A rock salt blanket would prevent the arrival of new cold air, where my body has a small ability to heat large amounts of air but can usefully warm smaller amounts of air - my skin would have a reduced wind chill or draft chill factor.
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteJust curious, but have you ever even known a scientist? We aren't a polite or reserved lot in general. When a colleague reveals himself to be full of a certain brown organic material that is the natural product of metabolizing food, we let him know about it in no uncertain terms.
At my age, Andrew, I will exercise my prerogative not to suffer fools gladly. That fool would be you, Andrew.
Let us look at the logical knots your position has tied you in. By your contention--since it is only net radiation that can warm--the Sun does not warm the hemisphere experiencing winter. Earth's core cannot warm the mantle, since the mantle is losing just as much energy through the crust. A pot of boiling water is not being warmed from below by the flame, as it is shedding just as much energy in water vapor. And on and on.
Your intransigence in this matter is not merely a matter of silliness. It is actually preventing you from understanding the science. You are a Dunning-Kruger poster child.
Dilbert
ReplyDeleteDo you know what net radiation is?
The net radiation that NASA is measuring is an average amount. When the sun shines upon the surface there is often a net radiation heating, but during the long winter nights there is not.
Children can understand these ideas so even you should be able to understand them
We dont talk about net radiation between objects like the core, the crust and the mantle of the earth. We talk about conduction
The net radiation heating of a pot of boiling water is relatively huge because water vapour carries with it the relatively enormous latent heat of condensation.
If you want to talk about children then I can tell you I am 56 and you behave like a very silly little boy.
In the real world if you keep on going on about Dunning-Kruger you get a good hiding.
Now stop hiding behind the silly name and act like an adult
I'm just curious about the terms micro and macro being thrown around a lot lately. Are these the new buzz words. It seems they make it possible to say yes its happening but its not significant. Because of the GHE caused by the GHG CO2 earth is warming. I would consider that macro. Most of us don't care about the GHE caused by low clouds at night.
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteRadiation is only one mode of heat transfer--and heat transfer is what drives changes in energy content of the system.
Heat flowing in warms the system. Heat flowing out cools the system. Get used to it.
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd.
ReplyDeletehahahaha, this is actually hilarious, well done Eli.
Can the good doctor get +5pts for at least coming up with his own arguments?
I count myself among an elite few who tirelessly demand that we use the entire history of earth's temperature. So I therefore have concluded that because earth is below GAT, we cannot attribute the below average temperatures to human activity because the earth has hit these temperatures already, but naturally.
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd.
ReplyDelete10. Insult the blog owner and then whine that you got banned.
that is the best one. Getting banned is a sign of intelligence.
Eli in pure honesty I do think you have a wicked sense of humor.
Well, I have been entertained and educated by the exchanges here and elsewhere with Andrew Judd. Let me say at once that I have no PhD, but I am older than AJ claims to be, so perhaps I have gained wisdom by osmosis: perhaps not.
ReplyDeleteAJ seems to be obsessed by the meme that the atmosphere does not warm the surface, but forces it to cool more slowly. To quote AJ: "Most of the time the backradiation is helping the surface to cool more slowly". How, exactly, does this 'cool more slowly' take place? I can only assume that AJ considers that the presence of a radiating atmosphere somehow forces surface atoms to delay the emission of their IR photons: that is the only way I can interpret his 'more slowly' claim.
Earlier, he said: "The greenhouse effect would carry on working even if the sun stopped producing any energy". Presumably, the greenhouse effect referred to is the afore-mentioned photon emission delay, for which no formula has been offered.
He went on to say: "The cold atmosphere can never cause the hotter surface to become warmer unless energy from another source is provided to the surface". Why does it have to be 'another source'? If I have understood the conversation so far:
1. A population of photons arrives at the surface from the sun.
2. These photons are absorbed by the surface, raising its energy level, which can also be expressed as raising its temperature.
3. At its new, elevated temperature, the surface radiates IR photons, thereby cooling the surface.
4. Some of the emitted photons are absorbed by the (cooler) atmosphere, thereby increasing the energy level (temperature to dumb bunnies like me).
5. The atmosphere emits some of its new energy as photons of IR, but these are emitted in random directions. Approximately half of them are directed back to the surface.
6. The atmospheric photons (I know, imprecise terminology, but I am just a dumb bunny) are absorbed by the surface just as readily as the photons from the sun. The surface now has a temperature forced by solar photons plus atmospheric photons (see, I am consistent), so its new temperature is greater than that it would have exhibited if it had only received solar photons.
To my higgorant way of thinking, this means the (cooler) atmosphere warms the (hotter) surface, just not as much as the (even hotter) sun.
If this simplistic view is close to reality, I can only thank Eli for allowing the conversation to proceed, because I think I have learned something.
Eli now awaits the onslaught from the proponents of Intelligent Photon Theory. Thems little devils know how to avoid being absorbed on a hotter surface.
ReplyDeleteAs in "Intelligent Design" = "Intelligent, de Sun".
ReplyDeleteStop demonizing Maxwell's photons
ReplyDelete~Dr Jay ~PhD sez:
ReplyDelete"Getting banned is a sign of intelligence."
Now I understand why you've never been banned ...