This is awesome, the wife is downstairs watching a movie, I’ve finished my work and have a little time for blogging. Not a lot, but some…
There are too many pressures in my head. Today a commenter, who is anonymous to me, left a slayer-style comment which has none of the Doug Cotton inflections about it. (new guy!) I am truly curious about the understanding of this group because I have worked hard at it and they represent something which doesn’t make any sense to me. We know slayers see global warming as a complete farce rather than the pseudo-science based money printing machine it has become. I have different replies from each individual from this group and hope to gain some understanding of where they separate from basic science.
It is an interesting challenge which I think careful second-law readers here will find ironic. — So how does one find the bulk opinion of a group of moderately independent variables? 😀
Anyway,
nope one more thermo-smiley
😀
Two beers in and I’m already having fun.
Anyway, this is the comment left on the last (very old) thread:
Climate_Science_Researcher said
If you believe that planetary surface temperatures are all to do with radiative forcing rather than non-radiative heat transfers, then you are implicitly agreeing with IPCC authors (and Dr Roy Spencer) that a column of air in the troposphere would have been isothermal but for the assumed greenhouse effect. You are believing this because you are believing the 19th century simplification of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which said heat only transfers from hot to cold – a “law” which is indeed true for all radiation, but only strictly true in a horizontal plane for non-radiative heat transfer by conduction.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics in its modern form explains a process in which thermodynamic equilibrium “spontaneously evolves” and that thermodynamic equilibrium will be the state of greatest accessible entropy.
Now, thermodynamic equilibrium is not just about temperature, which is determined by the mean kinetic energy of molecules, and nothing else. Pressure, for example, does not control temperature. Thermodynamic equilibrium is a state in which total accessible energy (including potential energy) is homogeneous, because if it were not homogeneous, then work could be done and so entropy could still increase.
When such a state of thermodynamic equilibrium evolves in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas, molecules at the top of a column will have more gravitational potential energy (PE), and so they must have less kinetic energy (KE), and so a lower temperature, than molecules at the bottom of the column. This state evolves spontaneously as molecules interchange PE and KE in free flight between collisions, and then share the adjusted KE during the next collision.
This postulate was put forward by the brilliant physicist Loschmidt in the 19th century, but has been swept under the carpet by those advocating that radiative forcing is necessary to explain the observed surface temperatures. Radiative forcing could never explain the mean temperature of the Venus surface, or that at the base of the troposphere of Uranus – or that at the surface of Earth.
The gravitationally induced temperature gradient in every planetary troposphere is fully sufficient to explain all planetary surface temperatures. All the weak attempts to disprove it, such as a thought experiment with a wire outside a cylinder of gas, are flawed, simply because they neglect the temperature gradient in the wire itself, or other similar oversights.
The gravity effect is a reality and the dispute is not an acceptable disagreement.
The issue is easy to resolve with a straight forward, correct understanding of the implications of the spontaneous process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Hence radiative forcing is not what causes the warming, and so carbon dioxide has nothing to do with what is just natural climate change.
Carrick had a very useful comment on a Lucia thread a week ago on the matter of lapse rates.
As Nick says, the g/cp = 9.86/1.006 = 9.6°C/km lapse rate is a correct theoretical result only for dry air (note the lapse rate is defined as the negative of the change in temperature with elevation, hence Nick has an extraneous minus sign). This result is satisfying in that it can be derived exactly but it really is the “spherical chicken” approximation of climate. When you include moisture, the maximum sustainable lapse rate is reduced from ~ 10 to around 6.5 °C/km. This is referred to as the “environmental lapse rate”, and can be predicted from theory fairly accurately in the troposphere using the known vertical wind-speed profile and a prescribed vertical humidity gradient.
Manabe and Strickland 1964 is the classic reference for from-first-principles calculation. It is written in a very comprehendible way for people with a physics/engineering background.
Figure 4 of their paper is especially instructive.
What you see from this is that the radiative lapse rate is even larger than the dry-air lapse rate, and hence is never physically realized in the troposphere.
I don’t think Nick is right that radiative transfer is an “underrated factor”, unless he means in the semi-lay blogosphere. I think it’s role has been well understood since Manabe’s days.
Basically radiative transfer acts to keep the tropospheric lapse rate to be maintained near the maximum stable value (the radiative equivalent of keeping tension on a string). So it plays a critical role in atmospheric dynamics and converts a dynamic calculation into basically a static one (read simpler problem), but doesn’t play a direct major role in the vertical transfer of heat energy (see below for numbers).
If convection were impossible, the temperature at the top of the atmosphere would be the same, but the surface temperature would be about 35°C warmer than it is now (using Fig 4 of Manabe). Note that a dry atmosphere it would be about 10°C warmer.
What Fig 4 is basically saying is that a radiation-only atmosphere has a much larger greenhouse gas effect than a convective dry atmosphere, and an atmosphere with moisture acts to further reduce the greenhouse gas effect from what it would be in the radiative only model. I think these are as, now well, agreed to results.
There’s a bit additional non-controverial results, which are summarized in Ramanathan 1981.
First definition of the processes
Note that about 3/4s of the net feedback effect from GHGs is due to convective heat energy transfer in this model.
I should mention there is an important controversy relate to the tropical lapse rate & the “missing hot spot”. Probably its resolution is the violation of the assumption you can treat the atmosphere as a vertical stack of air.
I think all of this is appropriately “off topic” for a thread on “DC”. Note that in online gaming, DC also mean “Dis-Connected” which also seems like an appropriate alternative moniker for the individual in question.
There is a pile of information there so nobody – except a couple of us – would literally check all of the links but the discussion doesn’t need to get this deep with those who don’t believe CO2 warming is a real effect. In order to understand this phenomenon, what we need to do is find out where the standard physics and those who don’t agree with it, part ways.
So this was my reply to the individual, whom the readers here are far more likely to know the identity of than myself.
Work, heat, entropy are all bulk concepts. The second law is a law only in the bulk context. It is a law in that after twenty trillion rolls, the probability is toward the heavy side of the die.
Backradiation is a sub-process which in no way “violates” the second law. This is a common misunderstanding from those who didn’t grok the meaning of their basic physics rules. Saying it can or can’t be explained by either theory is rather amusing to me because mathematically – en bulk – they are equivalent. Where slayers here have faltered is that they don’t give a coherent message and too many members are scientifically weak.
I would be very happy to debate this issue. We have to start with fundamentals though and work our way up from there. This is necessary because I have been taught classical physics and we need to determine where our understanding bifurcates.
Why make this post?
Tis’ a good question. Recently there was a minor kerfuffle between the slayers and Roy Spencer. Some gauntlets were thrown challenging mathematical proofs with models. I really failed to understand the point of the “modeling” — mostly because of the discontinuity of the slayer argument but there was another reason. My interpretation of the discrepency is that both standard theory and PSI theory are mathematically equivalent WRT bulk properties, yet fail on other levels. Still, not a single PSI member has succintly explained to me the difference between standard physics and their version. Tellingly, nobody from the group has demonstrated a basic working understanding of the main-stream principles of the second law of thermodynamics such that they could address and refute the discrepancies. The problem is apparent enough to shut the group out entirely and ignore them but I would rather understand the discontinuity.
The other reason for this post is that when you consider the second law, the sum of the rate of energy transfer is delta temperature only. Therefore, from my known slayer energy transfer explanations the energy transfer is the same no matter which religion you subscribe to. They have said, electromagnetic energy stops going backward when other greater energy is coming forward, thus E = E1 – E2. Standard physics also says E = E1-E2 . The real challenge for slayers should be to mathematically show any difference at all for physics rather than show how one is better. Instead we have a lot of PSI “papers”, chock full of unsupported conclusion.
I am frustrated with the whole thing.
While writing this post, the discussion continued on the previous thread. This has to be kept short because we are here to understand not nitpick. My very simple challenge to the slayers therefore is as follows, each of the 3 points with 300 words or less and no links:
1 Define and describe the probability characteristics of Second Law of Thermodynamics as interpreted in classical physics using your own words. Demonstrable understanding of the standard version of the second law is important so that we have common ground.
2 Describe standard physics interpretation of radiation absorption from a cold to hot body.
3 Describe the PSI interpretation of the Second law highlighting differences in energy transfer from the standard interpretations.
4 Describe the PSI interpretation of what happens to radiation from a cold to hot body, with focus on temperatures.
The discussion below will be open to all. 300 words, no links will be strictly enforced.
the Air Vent 
Despite the change, think it’s Doug. He left me same comment. The IP resolved to Australia. Emails containing “click-bargain” and “clickbargain” are now banned.
From the previous thread:
My readers are not interested in conclusions until the basics are established.
Can you now answer the rest of the questions such that we can have a true discussion. This is exactly the area where PSI is failing to communicate. Discussions about a 20 page paper based on some form of physics which is different from standard, yet not defined, is simply not a realistic avenue. We must define the basics to move forward.
I have explained quite clearly why the process I am talking about is the same spontaneous evolving process described in statements of The Second Law of Thermodynamics as in [SNIP — I have zero patience for this nonsense. If PSI can’t produce someone competent enough to answer 4 questions, this discussion will be over. ]
The answers to your four questions have all been in the paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” in the publications menu on the Principia Scientific International website since March 2012.
In summary, the facts are that radiation from a cooler body slows radiative cooling of a warmer body, but does not raise its temperature. Something else has to do so first. The upper limit depends upon the energy coming from this other source.
When the surface (and atmosphere) of Venus are each warming by about 5 degrees during at least the “morning” of its 4-month daylight some process has to explain how the required extra energy gets into the surface. The incident Solar radiation is nowhere near enough, because for radiation to raise the temperature of a target it must have incident flux based on the SB Law and also be from a hotter source. Even the required flux of about 16,100W/m^2 is obviously far more than is entering at the top of the atmosphere at the time. If you are trying to tell me that stored energy in the colder atmosphere is actually raising the temperature because it will remember that the energy came from radiation and thus it will cool by radiation four months later only by radiation, then you might as well try to convince me that water can flow up a creek into a lake at the top of a mountain and then down the other side, because the creek on the other side flows further down the mountain and so net entropy increases. Sorry, I don’t buy such garbage.
The “system” referred to in the Second Law of Thermodynamics must be either a single (one-way) process or a sequence of interdependent components as explained here. That’s what I have explained to my students over nearly five decades, and I’m sticking to it. There is no interdependence between back radiation supposedly raising the temperature of a warmer surface, and then subsequent non-radiative cooling maybe months later..
Now I have been discussing on the other thread a totally different process which has primarily to do with non-radiative transfers as explained in several other comments there, and the 20 page paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” in the PROM menu on the PSI website. You will have absolutely no concept of what I am talking about until you spend an hour or so studying all these and some of the cited references.
I have four questions for Jeff or anyone else and I will address these issues only, because my explanation of planetary core and surface temperatures is totally difference from that in typical energy budgets, which don’t show the non-radiative energy flows to the base of the troposphere which I explain can and must occur.
(1) If the Earth had only one-third as much water vapour and absolutely no carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, would the mean surface temperature be warmer or cooler?
(2) How does the required thermal energy get down into the atmosphere of Uranus, when virtually all the mere 3W/m^2 of incident Solar radiation is absorbed and re-emitted in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere? At 350K depth there is no surface, but the temperature has risen from about 53K at TOA to about 320K at the base of the (theoretical) troposphere. Further down (many thousands of metres) the temperatures are up into thousands of degrees. The thermal gradient (wrongly named a “lapse rate” because it has nothing to do with any lapsing by upward convection from any surface) is close to the -g/Cp value, as I have checked.
(3) Attempt to prove me wrong in my explanation of how the thermal energy does flow downwards by non-radiative processes, maintaining the thermodynamic equilibrium required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(4) Explain why the base of Earth’s atmosphere cools more slowly even on a calm clear night than it can do in the afternoon of a hot day.
Quote of the week (from above): “an atmosphere with moisture acts to further reduce the greenhouse gas effect from what it would be in the radiative only model
Errr? Don’t the IPCC authors say water vapour is a greenhouse gas? Is carbon dioxide warming by over 40 degrees so that “moisture acts to further reduce the greenhouse effect” and water vapour no longer warms like other GH gases?
Very confusing I would suggest..
What really happens is that surface temperatures on all planets are supported by the non-radiative transfer of thermal energy downwards which spontaneously maintains the thermodynamic equilibrium, as it must do according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It’s not hard to understand if you read Sections 4 to 9 of “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” in the PROM menu on PSI.
If you have a different opinion after reading and studying the paper, it is currently subjected to peer-review in open media, and so you are very welcome to submit to John O’Sullivan, CEO of PSI, any rebuttal you think valid. Then several of us will consider the points you raise, and I will personally ensure you receive a response based on valid physics.
In my humble opinion, PSI and IPCC commit a symmetrical error. Just a tool for reflection:
Thermodynamics, itself, does not provide a way to differentiate inflow and outflow. The second law, by its statistical nature, can only be used with net flows. A thermodynamic model of the atmosphere must therefore be able to be described effectively without recourse to the notion of backradiations (but obviously not ignoring the reality of the effect they model).
[snip – no links. Answer the questions, this is not your blog so you may not posit new questions until the first are answered. ]
.
The issue of “net flows” has been stretched literally beyond belief in the climatology world. The Second Law is talking about an isolated system (See Wikipedia – “Laws of Thermodynamics”) and any physicist should be able to tell you that a system in physics has a very specific definition. (Also see Wikipedia “System.”) It can of course have a single component (often represented by a one-way heat transfer between two objects) but if it has more than one component, then the components must be interdependent.
Now, if radiation from a cooler atmosphere were actually able to add thermal energy to a warmer target on the surface, say a rock beside a tidal lake, then that is the first “component.” The problem then to consider runs like this: if that extra energy is then stored for a while (say, until high tide) and the energy then transfers to some water on the surface by conduction, and then that same parcel of energy eventually gets back into the atmosphere with two further “components” such as evaporative cooling of the water, followed by subsequent release of latent heat, where then is the interdependence between any of these four separate components which you are in effect assuming to be all part of the one system, as defined by the Second Law? Sorry, the very first component (if it could occur) is not just a component of a larger system and it would be an outright and indisputable violation of the Second Law.
Think of Venus. Every 4-month long day its surface warms by 5 degrees, and then it cools by five degrees as the atmosphere radiates to space during the 4-month night. The surface temperatures are in the vicinity of 730K to 735K approximately. It takes a lot of energy to warm it by 5 degrees, and it doesn’t happen in the first day of sunshine, especially when you remember that such Solar radiation reaching the surface has only about one tenth of the power of that reaching Earth’s surface. So there must be a process in which energy builds up during the 4 month day.
Now we know that about 97.5% of incident Solar radiation is either reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere, so obviously the atmosphere will warm while the Sun is shining, but gradually over 4 months – say I.25 degree per month.
Clearly we are not talking about a radiative process warming the surface here, because incident radiation would have to be about 16,100W/m^2 into the surface to have any effect in that temperature range. And if it were it could probably do the job in a few hours, not 4 months. Furthermore, we at PSI would insist that any such radiation having any effect on such a hot surface would have to be directly from a hotter source, namely the Sun. We just don’t believe in non-interdependent components violating the Second Law, so we rule out radiation from the colder atmosphere. In any event, with only about 10W/m^2 of incident insolation entering the surface, there’s not a lot of energy to play with for back radiation, now is there?
Perhaps you think that the energy entering the TOA will do the trick. Well look at the figures – something like 2,600W/m^2 from memory before any is reflected away, which is much more than half of it. Perhaps we have about 1,000W/m^2 starting on its way into the atmosphere. (That’s to 1 significant figure – it doesn’t matter what the precise figure is.) How could the atmosphere somehow magnify this about 16 times before it comes out of the base of the atmosphere and into the surface, and why would it have so much more success getting through the atmosphere than did the Solar radiation? Remember – no more than 10W/m^2 could be from back radiation that was sending back energy from the surface, which was sending back energy from the Sun. By the way, Science of Doom has a totally incorrect figure of about 158W/m^2 (if I remember correctly) for the incident Solar radiation reaching the Venus surface. You’d think he would have checked the data from the Russian probes before using a figure which is at least 10 times the real one.
So the Venus surface is not heated by any “runaway greenhouse effect.” If you’re not convinced, then think about how energy gets down into the Uranus atmosphere which is mostly hydrogen and helium. I’m happy to discuss any questions you may have about my explanation of what is happening on these planets – and on Earth, where the Sun cannot heat our surface to 288K with direct Solar radiation alone. Just use SBL to convince yourself of this obvious fact.
Radiative forcing is not what is the primary determinant of Earth’s mean surface temperature. As on Uranus and Venus, and throughout the universe, temperatures in any atmosphere have a propensity to follow a temperature gradient which is between about 65% and 100% of the quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases. The level of the plot is determined by the need for radiative balance, so that Is the “starting point.” Then, at whatever temperature the plot intersects the surface, we have a pre-determined base supporting temperature which slows all radiative and non-radiative cooling at night, enabling the Sun (if applicable) to warm somewhat the next day, this being but a marginal effect, as is the slowing of cooling as the surface comes back towards the base temperature. No big changes in climate will occur without natural changes in the parameters just mentioned. That is the “New School of Thought” which we are starting to talk about at PSI. Keep watching for a new article on such within a few days.
I repeat : it is the interdependence between radiation emitted and received demonstrable by optics. Each ray received absolutely match a ray emitted. There is no way to escape it, and therefore no use to introduce the concept of backradiations which is in any way of no use in thermodynamics.
Therefore : Q = s * (Th ^ 4 – Tc ^ 4) and nothing more.
You said: “Each ray received absolutely match a ray emitted” and that’s not strictly correct. Are x-rays sent through your body matched by matching radiation which your body sends back to the machine? When the Sun warms the surface with SW radiation, the electromagnetic energy in the radiation is indeed mostly converted to thermal energy. But it could be hours later when that thermal energy comes back to the atmosphere, or another object on the surface by conduction. I see no interdependence therein.
What you have probably heard is the talk about “pseudo scattering” which was explained in a PSI paper about radiated energy in March 2012. (Cotton, D J: “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”) When radiation from a cooler source strikes a warmer target physicists now realise that the matching frequencies and intensities are immediately re-emitted, and so no energy is left over to be converted to thermal energy in the target. This has to do with the resonating process described by Prof Claes Johnson and what is now called “pseudo scattering” or “resonant scattering” as it was called in that paper which was perhaps the first paper to describe it in detail.
Doug,
You can not physically separate the two phenomena for geometric reasons. That we can construct valid models processing them independently does not change anything because it is simply not possible in thermodynamics.
Phi,
I work in optics. I am designing a lens while we write.
Radiation happens everywhere all of the time. The fact that it travels “backwards” sometimes in relation to net energy flow is not a new concept. It is the weird interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics which is NEW science.
Jeff Condon,
Yes, but the use of the concept of GHG forcing (which has the dimension of backradiations) as an independent source of energy is also NEW science. It should be acknowledged that PSI make a valid criticism of this weird process.
It isn’t new at all. Energy is energy, the warm gas absorbs and emits energy. Gas molecules are stupid so they don’t aim in any particular direction at all when that energy is emitted. Therefore, sometimes that energy goes downward resulting in a delay in energy propagation to outer space. The delay results in a collection of heat at the surface of the atmosphere. This is a normal physical process that has nothing new or weird about it.
No publishing scientist I know of contests this point in print. You can say that PSI is like Galileo and shunned by the community for their ideas, or you can say that their ideas are wrong. The difference between PSI members and Galileo, is that PSI doesn’t admit/realize that their ideas contradict basic radiative physics and can provide no explanation for it, whereas Galileo knew full well he was contradicting the norm and sought out the explanation.
Jeff Condon,
You describe the greenhouse effect, not the GHG forcing.
they are the same thing.
Not at all!
GHG forcing contains a great amount of flawed hypotheses as the absolute invariance of the temperature gradient.
Backradiation is not a truly contested aspect of AGW. PSI being the exception.
Backradiations represent a questionable modeling. No instrument can detect them at the macroscopic level (we only measure net flux).
About PSI, I have only expressed an opinion and I do not feel the need to prove the radiative effect of greenhouse gases. It’s enough for me to see that all the energy radiated into space does not come only from the surface. In addition, I do not blame you for corrupting science while the IPCC corrupts both science and our relationship to knowledge. Forgive me, therefore, that I do not make you a complete answer.
Regarding the interdependence of flow, the demonstration can be made by geometrical optics. Any flow incoming or outgoing is absolutely bound to a solid angle. There are therefore no conceptual difference between radiation and conduction.
I will try yet to express it differently. I totally agree with Nick Stokes about the underestimation of the radiative effect on the gradient. Consider Figure 4. of Manabe 1964. The 0.65 ° C per 100 m represent an empirical value. The actual gradient runs from the radiative gradient to this value with the relative increase of the role of convection. Few convection, few upswing, wide convection, wide upswing. An initial effect of the increase in greenhouse gases is to increase the part of the convective flow and thus the upswing of the gradient. IPCC, like PSI neglect this. We note in passing that the conventional modeling suffers from an internal contradiction. The concept of GHG forcing depends on the absolute invariance of the gradient while the model results show that this is not the case (even if it is insufficiently). So agree with Nick Stokes that the radiative effect is underestimated for the gradient, but do not forget the corollary is that the effect is over-estimated on surface temperatures.
Energy transfer is a function of mass, Specific Heat and temperature. Leaving aside the radiative issue for a moment, consider that humans produce 28 gigatons of annual CO2, combining by weight 27% hydrocarbons and 73% Oxygen that was already in the atmosphere. For comparison, switching from mass to volume, the Carbon portion of human CO2 would be less than a cubic mile, on planet with 259 trillion cubic miles of mostly molten rock at average 2500F temperature and 310 million cubic miles of ocean at an average 36F temperature. A one cubic mile ‘tail’ is not going to wag this giant mass ‘dog’. Thermal mass is then calculated using Specific Heat, for CO2 = 0.80 and for water SH = ~4 and higher for the solid planet material. Getting back to the three atom CO2 molecule which ‘absorbs’ energy in a vibratory mode for one billionth of a second, releasing a longer wave length, lower energy photon that cannot warm the Earth or be captured by another CO2 molecule as the ’emitted’ photon is outside the narrow CO2 absorption range. There is a matrix of bad science, imposed by financial interests that do not follow traditional scientific methods, which has created this current false paradigm. The false paradigm includes history and current events as well. The members of PSI hold more patents for functional system controls than all of the Warmists or all of the Lukes. When models for controls of our processing plants fail, bad things happen. The IPCC has a flawed non-rotating, flat disc, constant insolation model that from simple stupidity does not balance, therefore requiring a magic gas heating solution. We’ve been lied to about everything. Please approach the complex material presented by the members of PSI objectively. It is past time for a Modern Paradigm.
I am tempted to snip the whole mess. Can nobody from PSI answer 4 simple questions?
You can delete this comment because I’m not a PSI guy, I do not answer your questions, and I add to the mess.
You feel that those who deny the radiative effect of greenhouse gases are wrong but you can not put your finger on the precise point at issue because you yourself make the original error of reasoning in terms of backradiations . It is theoretically allowed, but it is difficult and unnecessary. Only the net flux make sense in thermodynamic, everything you can understand must be possible to be expressed with net radiative effect. If at any time you are forced to introduce the concept of backradiations, well, is that you have missed anything.
The classic modelization that you support is compelled to introduce backradiations as an independent object because it is based on the notion of forcing.
From what I understand, the PSI guy depart from the same point of view to show rightly a violation of the second principle. Unfortunately, they continue in this logic in violation of the first principle.
I am interested in a real discussion on the matter because this is where their arguments deviate from standard physics. The second law is a bulk property law and has absolutely no relevance for a single energy transaction. Therefore backradiation is not only allowed but is easily demonstrable. What I want to know is exactly where they deviate from basic electromagnetic superposition.
The Second Law relates to a “system” does it not?
A “system” is defined in physics, is it not, as having interdependent components?
Wherein lies the interdependence between one component involving radiation from the Sun transferring heat to a rock on the surface and a second component wherein that rock subsequently warms some water, and a third component wherein that water later evaporates?
I’m learning the difference between turbulent and laminar flow in a heat exchanger. The hard way. Fortunately the problem is solvable without too much difficulty. Reynolds Number. Don’t leave home without it.
1) & 3) are related, so: A closed system tends to a state of maximum entropy. Basically this means that all energy density differentials disappear and the system becomes totally useless, unable to perform any work within itself. Energy spontaneously transfers from low probability to high probability states. Low probability is high density (hot), high probability is low density (cool). This will manifest as spontaneous heat flow from hot to cold. There is no PSI difference from the traditional laws.
2) & 4) are related: Cold radiation does not heat up hot bodies as this would be a violation of the laws of thermo as discussed. It is the hot body which transfers heat to the cold and causes the cold temperature to increase. The presence of a cold body does not mean that a hot body has to warm up – the cold body just warms up until the same energy states are shared by both the cold and hot bodies, and then energy is available to transfer to other things on the far side of the cold body if some condition exists there. The PSI position is the traditional one, whereas we routinely see GHE advocates argue that radiation from a cold body has to heat up a hotter body, or, that the cold body can heat the hot body as long as the “majority net” heating is from hot to cold, which is of course sophistry, but it sounds good. Energy can be shared both ways between hot and cold, but the cold does not cause or require the hot to become hotter – the cold is simply heated by the hot.
We believe that it is PSI arguing for the traditional laws and that GHE alarmists have sought to create a separate new branch of radiative physics alien to the laws of thermodynamics. Radiative transfer of heat obeys the same limitations that the others modes of transfer do.
I personally probably won’t be back here to debate this…busy with other things. Regards.
Joseph,
Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions. Some clarification is needed though.
1 – “There is no PSI difference from the traditional laws.” — Regarding the bulk result you are right, but regarding individual electromagnetic events it is quite clear that PSI differs from traditional physics.
2 – ” Cold radiation does not heat up hot bodies as this would be a violation of the laws of thermo as discussed.” — This is not an accurate representation of thermodynamics and represents a massive bifurcation from basic physics. This is exactly the type of discussion which you NEED to have if you expect PSI to be taken seriously. If you are up to the task, I am doing you a huge favor. What I was hoping is that someone in your group would be smart enough to know both standard physics and your differences such that the rest of us could understand. Stating that there is no difference is disappointing to say the least.
Statements like this : “We believe that it is PSI arguing for the traditional laws and that GHE alarmists have sought to create a separate new branch of radiative physics alien to the laws of thermodynamics.” mean that your group doesn’t even recognize quantum radiative thermodynamics even exists outside of AGW. These radiative transfers are well understood in my world and they do not match up with your version.
—
Since we can’t agree that there are basic physics disagreements with the PSI argument, a different question may help me understand better. Lets say we have two perfect blackbodies, one at 100K, another at 200K. What happens to a single photon emitted by the cold body that strikes the warm one? Is there some quantum effect which causes the photon to be reflected 100% of the time? Is there some interaction with other photons travelling in the opposite direction? Does the photon get absorbed yet somehow remember where it came from so its energy does not add to the thermal energy of the warmer body?
Jeff, the sum of individual electromagnetic events, and all quantum events in general, is what the 2nd Law is about. Discussing individual quantum events is beside the point of the 2nd Law, as it classically applies to aggregate ensemble behaviour of a large number of entities. You’re changing the goal posts from your original question: at the classical limit, which is where most of reality is such as the atmosphere, it is the sum of all microscopic behaviour which leads to the macroscopic behaviour. It is the macroscopic behaviour where heat flow is observed in net, and no heating occurs from cold to hot. Cold doesn’t heat hot up in aggregate or in partiality at all.
“”Cold radiation does not heat up hot bodies as this would be a violation of the laws of thermo as discussed.” — This is not an accurate representation of thermodynamics and represents a massive bifurcation from basic physics.”
Exactly. It is not we who say cold radiation heats up hotter bodies, it is GHE alarmism which does so.
“Statements like this mean that your group doesn’t even recognize quantum radiative thermodynamics even exists outside of AGW. These radiative transfers are well understood in my world and they do not match up with your version.”
You are changing goal posts again. Your question was specifically about classical physics! You are no longer worth the time to have a discussion with because you have proven yourself to be a dishonest debater that changes goal posts. Good-bye.
Two bodies, one 100K and another 200K: The hotter one heats the cooler one. The rate of heating is proportional to the differential in temperature between them, and this is the effect that the cooler body has on the differential, in that as it rises in temperature, its rate of temperature increase decreases until steady state is found. This does not mean that the hotter body must or has become hotter to heat the cool body, or that the cool body heated the hot body, etc.
This post is related: http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/05/27/the-fraud-of-the-aghe-part-12-how-to-lie-with-math/
Again, good-bye. I am not wasting time having this sort of goal-post shifting debate.
Jeff said: “as interpreted in classical physics using your own words”
Then Jeff said: “this means that your group doesn’t even recognize quantum radiative thermodynamics”
Adios.
Jeff, you ask: “Does the photon get absorbed yet somehow remember where it came from “
Posing that question is as dubious as asking “How does the apple know to fall down from the tree?”
Both events happen due to natural laws. Photons need “know” no more than apples. Nature takes control. While you also must not assume photons are absorbed – remember they are also reflected and scattered, too (Rayleigh scattering, Raman scattering, Stokes, and anti-Stokes scattering).
And heat energy associated with the photon’s journey can only move from warm to cold (from the higher excitation state to the lower excitation state); just as water in a river only flows downhill – there is no backward journey (eg no back radiation heating).
As a commenter on a PSI article rightly noted: “Firstly, the energy emitted from the surface acted to “cool” the surface by a certain amount. The “back-radiated heat” at the very most could only equal what was originally lost anyway, so at best you would be back to a zero sum game, and this is assuming perfect efficiency (no lost energy). So, you still did not actually “heat” anything. Even if you subscribe to this back-radiation heating the surface hypothesis (ie greenhouse gas effect), it is still broken on extremely simple grounds. In no way could the surface ever be heated by the atmosphere to a higher temperature that it already was. Forget about all of the fancy physics (Laws of Thermo) for a second. This is 1st grade math! And “cooling slower” does NOT constitute heating.”
This is why Anthony Watts has made himself look foolish by claiming on WUWT that he wasn’t aware that Lindzen. Spencer et al were claiming a bogus doubling of energy in their models of IR re-emission (that’s precisely what they DO claim). We showed this clearly in the second half of our recent article ‘WHY DID ANTHONY WATTS PULL A BAIT AND SWITCH?’
Joseph,
Relax, I promise that I’m not trying to move ANY goalposts. I am trying to figure out what PSI’s position is. I have heard several versions of the story and it does end up boiling down to quantum interactions.
“It is not we who say cold radiation heats up hotter bodies, it is GHE alarmism which does so.” — how is it possible that radiation impinging on an absorbing body does not create heat no matter what the temperature? This is a violation of electromagnetic physics and I cannot understand your reasoning unless we discuss what happened to the photons from the colder body. If the photon didn’t make heat, what did it do?!!
Seems a reasonable question to me and one PSI NEEDS to answer to be taken seriously..
—-
John wrote this:
“And heat energy associated with the photon’s journey can only move from warm to cold (from the higher excitation state to the lower excitation state); just as water in a river only flows downhill – there is no backward journey (eg no back radiation heating).”
A photon at a specific wavelength has a fixed energy level. When it is emitted from a cold body and absorbed into a warm one, what happened to the photon’s energy? Is it PSI’s position that “heat” is not created by the photon but the energy is absorbed in some other manner?
I really wouldn’t mind getting into the other details you wrote but we have got to understand what happened to the photons of energy in order to proceed.
Jeff, surely you would agree that energy is not the same thing as heat? When photons enter a body they will not add heat if the receiver is warmer than the emitter. There are times when entering a body we see that photons may exit by subsurface scattering (or SSS), an effect evident when light enters a material and is scattered before being absorbed or reflected in a different direction. Transparent and translucent materials are examples of where we see subsurface scattering. The photons do generate light, which we can see, but there is not necessary any added heat. It is an error to assume that when a body absorbs photons it “must” be absorbing heat.
As in the case of transparent and translucent bodies, not all are heated even though they are touched by light. This is consistent with the assertion that photons emitted from a cold body can land on a hot one but do not transfer heat energy “uphill” (as per our river flow analogy).
There we go! That is exactly what I am wondering. Do Joseph and other members also agree with this or is this your own thinking?
“Jeff, surely you would agree that energy is not the same thing as heat? When photons enter a body they will not add heat if the receiver is warmer than the emitter. There are times when entering a body we see that photons may exit by subsurface scattering (or SSS), an effect evident when light enters a material and is scattered before being absorbed or reflected in a different direction. T”
” This is consistent with the assertion that photons emitted from a cold body can land on a hot one but do not transfer heat energy “uphill” (as per our river flow analogy).”
This will lead us down a new path entirely. It is similar to the one Doug Cotton attempted so I am concerned that it isn’t a widely held belief in PSI.
In standard physics, the wavelengths of light are absorbed into the electron shells or vibratory states and the energy can be transmitted harmonic oscillation, scattered by re-radiation or reflected by harmonic radiation, or even absorbed due to vibratory collisions of the materials. The wavelength of the light and the complex interaction with the atoms are all that matter. The object from which the photon was emitted doesn’t matter at all. Therefore, it is quite normal in standard physics for a hot body to absorb electromagnetic energy as heat with complete independence as to the temperature of the body which the energy was emitted from. If the PSI group is in agreement with your statement, it leads to some very interesting questions.
I really need an explanation of this sentence: When photons enter a body they will not add heat if the receiver is warmer than the emitter.
It sounds like a Doug Cotton thermalization comment. What is the physical mechanism which causes this lack of warming? How does the receiving body know to reject the photon or the sending body not to add magic heat or whatever!?
I have mentioned many times Jeff that all this has been sitting on the PSI website in a peer-reviewed paper of mine published there (and on some other sites) in March 2012. The “recognition” by the target of the temperature of the source of spontaneous radiation comes down to which frequencies and intensities resonate, and these are those which correspond with the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body The energy represented by the area above that curve and under the Planck curve for the warmer body is that which does not resonate and for which the electromagnetic energy is converted to thermal energy. Obviously using the area between the Planck curves gives the same result as the difference in the SBL calculations, as they are integrals of the Planck functions. So only that thermal energy transfers, and only one way from hot to cold.
Now there are more interesting developments which are in this February’s paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” which I’ve been discussing and which is in the PROM menu at PSI. Whether you choose to learn about all these matters, and/or attempt to answer the questions which I’ve posed to test your understanding, that is of course all your prerogative. Your knowledge Is your business, but I suggest you be careful in what you, like SoD, Cook and Spencer and, to some extent, Watts may be doing in misleading others.
The Second Law relates to a “system” as stated therein. A “system” in physics comprises interdependent components. There is no interdependence between radiation going one way and then energy coming back to some third point possibly by non-radiative processes. The First Law says energy will be conserved, sure. But the Second Law imposes far greater restrictions which are ignored in climatology modelling.
.
Doug
I really hope Doug isn’t the best scientist at PSI. At least he is trying to explain the phenomenon in bulk context. I would like to know if the rest of the group agrees with Doug’s brand new theory of physics before debating though.
Doug,
I’m glad to see that you have finally gone in the direction I expected when you first debated here. Is it then your opinion that this lack of absorption of energy from the cooler body causes a lack of emission from the warmer body (over the integrated area of the spectral curve) such that the warmer body emits less but the basic bulk equations still work?
Jeff,
Correct me if I’m wrong but Joe Postma rightly limited himself – as per your original requirements – to a discussion within the realms of classical physics. But as soon as Postma gave you his answer in accordance with classical physics you moved the goal posts to suddenly include quantum physics.
Please do keep this discussion on the terms you created or some people may begin accusing you of intellectual dishonesty or sloppiness.
John,
I shouldn’t have used the word “classical” and should instead have used the term “standard”. Joseph answered the questions in a manner which is completely unclear to those of us who understand backradiation. Compounding the problem, there doesn’t seem to be anyone from the PSI group that actually realizes that despite the discussion, their conclusions are at times profoundly against classical physics as it is understood by the rest of us.
If we can all understand what is happening to the cold to hot photons, perhaps an agreement can be reached.
Jeff,
For some strange reason you seem to want to focus on a SINGLE photon from cold to hot – when this still isn’t even what the laws of thermo are because the laws are about the whole behaviour of a large ensemble of trillions of trillions of entities and interactions etc. A 100W bulb flashed for 1 second emits ~1033 photons (10 to the power 33!) There’s no thermodynamic concern that is relevant with a single photon.
But if you believe you can show a standard thermo textbook (not a publication from climate science) used in the ‘hard’ sciences, with equations and explanations addressing and quantifying the transactions of single photons we would love to see it. Otherwise we will get nowhere going down that blind alley (one that even Max Planck shunned).
Just to add – Besides, Postma already did give the answer when he said heat flow is proportional to a temperature differential – this still doesn’t mean that photons from the cold source cause heating, it means the two objects find equilibrium, but the cold object does not heat the hotter object. What the photons from the cold source are doing is expressed in this equation: Q = s*(Th^4 – Tc^4). This does not mean that the cold source raises the temperature of the hot source. GHE alarmist think, somehow, that that heat flow equation means that cold is heating up hot while hot is heating cold – they make no sense whatsoever and have abandoned physics.
There are hundreds of books on the interactions of single photons. If you like I will find references for you but my point is that the bulk equations in basic thermodynamic texts represent the probability of heat transactions, not an absolute. Your recent answers to my other questions demand 1 – significant implications to the bulk transaction equations or 2 – significant implications to quantum interactions or 3 – both.
Jeff, Max Planck never cracked the problem on the microcosmic level of individual photons and I’m not aware of anyone who has. Sure, there may well be “hundreds of books on the interactions of single photons” but they speculate on what goes on. The matter is not resolved and as such doesn’t appear in accepted standard textbook on thermodynamics. This is the rub – greenhouse gas effect promoters push the basic (unsupported) contention that sunlight doesn’t provide enough heat to account for the Earth’s temperature. They say additional radiation from about 1% of the atmosphere’s gases does account for it. They want us to believe gases respond to the heat radiated by the Earth’s surface and send that energy back, which makes the surface warmer. Thus in effect they claim the Earth is heated by its own radiation, much like a battery charging itself with the electricity it produces.
You’ve tried to take the debate down the blind alley of speculating on what individual photons do to rescue the GHE but there is nothing in standard science to back you.
Recently PSI took on Roy Spencer’s challenge to provides an alternative earth energy budget that doesn’t require any supposed GHE. Please contrast and compare our truly time dependent 3-dimensional model against Spencer’s so-called “time-dependent” flat Earth 2-dimensional model. PSIs model is truly time dependent but Spencer’s isn’t. His is not even capable of generating enough heat for clouds to form — let alone enough heat to melt ice. Pointedly, why did Spencer feel the need to create his own model rather than rely on any “standard” GHE model? The answer is simple: Spencer has lost confidence in the “standard” GHE model and has now retreated into devising his own pet theory about the GHE. Sadly, Spencer, Lindzen and others are increasingly in disarray and unable to agree on what their supposed GHE is. This retreat is in large part due to PSI putting their claims under the microscope and finding them wanting.
John,
I have tried to take the debate to the central issue with PSI. I have thus far discovered that PSI isn’t good enough at thermodynamics to recognize that this is the central issue. The fact that Roy Spencer didn’t challenge you properly doesn’t matter at all to me. No, that is not an admission of your success, I was frustrated enough with the challenge that I didn’t bother with the replies. I have been buried in enough weird claims here that I tried to read some other PSI work and failed to find any compelling results. I have read enough though to know that there is a problem in PSI’s communication of thermodynamics. Probably far more of it that Roy Spencer so I know which questions to ask.
In my opinion, this post was your biggest challenge and your best opportunity to explain your message.
I have concluded that you (and everyone who commmented here from PSI) are very confused regarding the thermal interactions of photons and matter. It is better defined than you realize but I don’t see how I can get into the math with you when more simple (and less mathematical) concepts are being thrown out by the dozen.
To give an example of the problem, here are just a few from your single reply and short correction:
” but they speculate on what goes on” — no they mathematically characterize them.
“The matter is not resolved and as such doesn’t appear in accepted standard textbook on thermodynamics” — It is resolved and the bulk responses are characterized in basic thermo texts.
“They want us to believe gases respond to the heat radiated by the Earth’s surface” — You want us to believe that radiation doesn’t affect gas but have not given any mechanism to describe how this actually works.
“Thus in effect they claim the Earth is heated by its own radiation, much like a battery charging itself with the electricity it produces.” — This analogy is not accurate. No energy is being created by backradiation.
” but there is nothing in standard science to back you” — Everything in standard science backs me, that is my problem with your discussion. You are contradicting a mountain of physics but don’t seem to realize it.
Do you have anyone in your group that can handle thermodynamics well enough to answer my 4 questions accurately? Who is your best scientist?
Hello Jeff,
A few weeks ago, I let myself, probably against my better judgment, get dragged into arguments with the PSI folks over at Roy Spencer’s blog. It has been a surreal experience.
There is a part of me that thinks that there are a couple of clowns behind PSI who (a) want to see how many gullible fools they can lead on a snipe hunt, and (b) want to see how many of us will waste our time saying “there’s no such thing as snipes”. Be that as it may, I don’t want to see people played for gullible fools, whether by clowns intentionally doing it or by people who are serious but completely wrong.
After some arguments at Roy’s that went nowhere (although hopefully some onlookers were helped), I realized that I had the capability to do some experiments to test these propositions. So I did the experiments and Anthony agreed to put up the results. (I think Roy wasn’t ready to manage the resulting food fight – he did like the experiments.) I’m sure you have seen it at WUWT by now.
My fundamental conclusion is that the PSI folks have confusions at such basic levels that it is impossible to have a reasonable technical discussion with them. You and I, having formally studied thermodynamics and heat transfer long ago, have the method of analysis of systems so deeply embedded within us that it is difficult for us to realize that a lot of people are either completely unfamiliar with it or are unable to master it.
If you think back to your early problems in your first thermodynamics class, the teacher spent a lot of effort getting you to set up the problem properly, defining your system and subsystems rigorously, and accurately keeping track of the energy flows between them. A lot of kids struggled with this at first, but most would eventually get it. In almost every class, however, there are a few students who never get the hang of it. Most of these realize it themselves and figure out that this is not the field for them. Some, however, don’t get that they don’t get it, and the professor or the dean has to sit down with them to tell them.
What I see with the PSI folks is a complete inability to define and keep consistent what the conditions of their system are, what their subsystems are, and what the energy flows between the subsystems are. You try to discuss one configuration with them, and they have shifted to another. You point out an inconsistency in their arguments, and they treat it as your inconsistency. You show them real-world examples that contradict their arguments, and they say “that can’t be, because that would be impossible!”
Most of them seem to accept the standard equation for the (net, although they hate that term) radiative transfer from a “hot” body of temperature Th and a “cold” body of temperature Tc as being of the form K(Th^4 – Tc^4), but they don’t understand that the –K*Tc^4 term is the “back radiation”. They don’t understand that this equation doesn’t make any sense without accepting that the warmer body is absorbing that much power from the colder body.
They also don’t realize that the (poorly named) greenhouse effect is embedded in that equation, that with the radiatively active gases at a much higher Tc temperature than the cosmic background’s Tc, this lessens the radiative losses from the earth’s surface.
And since they cannot set up a decent energy balance, they fail to see that, with another power source (i.e. the sun), this lessened radiative power loss means that the temperature will be higher than without these radiative gases.
I set up a simple lab experiment to show this effect, using both reflected and absorbed/re-radiated radiation on a light bulb showing that it did, in fact, increase the temperature of the bulb (since the bulb had an electric power source), and I got not a single real rebuttal point from the PSI folk. Really all they said is that it couldn’t be true because it’s impossible.
The equation you cite for heat transfer between blackbodies is totally agreed upon within PSI and in fact appeared with detailed discussion in a paper on radiated energy published on our site over a year ago in March 2012. Get your facts right. There will be an article I’ve written appearing on PSI clarifying what is said about a variety of matters.
Already written in section (c) is the sentence: “We totally agree with the well known fact of physics that radiative cooling of the warmer surface will be slowed down.”
What Curt has written so eloquently is exactly my impression of PSI. I haven’t read all of the replies yet this morning so hopefully I will find myself surprised. Several comments from your comrades contradict standard physics, I am looking for someone who can explain “standard” physics and the differences from the PSI perspective. instead, I read a lot of claims that “backradiation” is not “standard” and that is simply not true.
This is one small example of why it’s impossible to have any reasonable discussion with the PSI folks. I say, “Most of them seem to accept the standard equation for the (net, although they hate that term) radiative transfer from a “hot” body of temperature Th and a “cold” body of temperature Tc as being of the form K(Th^4 – Tc^4).”
PhysicsObserver says in response, “The equation you cite for heat transfer between blackbodies is totally agreed upon within PSI and in fact appeared with detailed discussion in a paper on radiated energy published on our site over a year ago in March 2012. Get your facts right.”
Curt,
Your homespun experiment has been studied by PSI scientists and we are soon to publish a rebuttal showing the numerous errors you made. Below is my personal take down of it. Please be so kind to understand PSI has over 300 members who live around the world and it takes more than a few days to carefully analyze and dissect all the myriad errors you made. Also, please stop the ad hom about us not being qualified in thermo. PSI has dozens of members with PhD’s in “hard” sciences applying thermo calculations every day of their careers. Indeed, many are literally rocket scientists employed by national space agencies.
You used aluminum foil to cover the light. Aluminum foil is the tried and true medium used to “rest” meats – it continues the cooking process at lower temperatures than the oven demonstrating it effectively traps “heat” – i.e. it slows down cooling compared to nothing.
As the only source of energy is the filament in the bulb the simple fact is all of the heating has to be caused by it – certainly initially you cannot argue with this – there is no other energy source (outside of ambient air temperature).
All that has happened in both the Watts experiment and yours is that light that normally escapes the glass bulb with minimal thermal effect is transformed by absorption into “heat”.
If this is not true extra energy must be created – where did it come from ?
“The internal energy of an isolated system is constant and energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.”
I know this does not really qualify as an isolated system but only an idiot would argue that energy from the ambient air temperature played any more than a tiny part – the whole system is losing energy in every case.
But it is supplied with a constant energy input – the electrical current and constant air temperature!
You demonstrate increased temperature.
Increased temperature clearly requires more energy.
You appear to claim 105 degrees represents the bulbs maximum due to restricted convection.
105 C means ~1100 Watts per square metre is emitted by the glass of the bulb – 0.95 emissivitiy.
177 C is the maximum temperature recorded ~2208 watts per square metre – 0.95 emissivitiy.
That requires an extra 1100 watts per square metre.
If this does not originate in the filament it is a clear challenge to the first law of thermodynamics !
The temperatures recorded are also the fourth root of 2 higher
105 C = 378 K x ~1.19 = ~450 K = ~177 C.
No matter what, your claimed reasons for the temperature increase violate the first law. So have you proven the first law of thermodynamics wrong ? I don’t think so. But please wait a little longer and we will publish our team agreed full rebuttal on the PSI website.
Now, when you say “They also don’t realize that the (poorly named) greenhouse effect is embedded in that equation” we at PSI are indeed aware that people like yourself (who don’t see the big picture and who don’t understand the physics which can be used to show that non-radiative cooling cannot be affected by radiation) love to expound such oversimplifications.
Empirical evidence (such as in a study in the Appendix of “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” in the PROM menu) shows with statistical significance that higher levels of water vapour lead to cooler daily maximum and minimum temperatures.
Whilst the mechanism which controls surface temperatures explained in that paper has not been explained in such detail elsewhere to my knowledge, it is based on sound physics which I defy you to refute with physics. Words such as in your previous comment are not physics in my books, and not one word addresses any point of physics which was in the comment to which you were responding, the comment being based on that paper.
So two questions for you …
(1) If you think water vapour causes radiative forcing (being a GHG) which leads to mean surface temperatures being warmed by about 30 degrees, then why don’t dry regions have far cooler temperatures than moist ones which may have 10 times as much water vapour?
(2) Uranus appears to have no internal energy generation. It receives only about 3W/m^2 of solar radiation nearly all of which is absorbed in the upper atmosphere where temperatures are colder than 60K. Yet there are temperatures of 320K about 350Km below that, and temperatures of thousands of degrees further down where no incident solar radiation is reaching. So how does the require energy get down there?
I see that no one has been able to answer my previous four questions, so I’ll cut it down to two.
PS Jeff – I had trouble posting a comment with the C_S_R name, so changed it and used another email address. It was probably just a technical problem, but I was in a hurry. I assume you’ve worked out who I am.
I do like your experiment. I sent a suggestion to Anthony that instead of introducing a mirror and no mirror, that he try a black and white board or a black board and a mirror. This eliminates any questions about convection.
Actually Curt’s results proved PSI’s position, as we will show mathematically with standard physics once we have agreed among our team the final draft. Ive asked my colleagues to try to have it ready for publication this coming week. Thanks for your patience.
John, the take home is everything proves your position.
Perhaps if you wrote down a quantifiable and empirically testable set of predictions you’d help your credibility here a bit.
Carrick, we’ve done better than that. We’ve produced a time dependent earth energy budget that accounts for all the energy entering and leaving earth’s atmosphere without the need to factor in any ‘greenhouse gas effect’
Curt:
You said “They don’t understand that this equation doesn’t make any sense without accepting that the warmer body is absorbing that much power from the colder body.”
This issue is discussed at great length over several sections in my paper [SNIP: This isn’t going to be a link fest. Especially to papers full of unsubstantiated claims. If you can explain the mechanism in your own words <300 of em, you can put it here. Also, doug, I have allowed your comments on this thread because PSI is the topic. This does not change your banned status on other threads.
If you want to continue on this thread, there are now 5 questions you need to answer. The four above and what is the difference in the mechanism which causes identical wavelength photons to be exchanged differently between a cooler body and a warmer one.]
Jeff, firstly, I’m sorry I did not realise there was a 300 word limit.
As other comments I have made here should indicate, I think totally “outside the square” of radiative forcing. I recognise that there cannot possibly be a “runaway greenhouse effect” on Venus, or any radiative forcing causing the Uranus atmosphere to get hotter and hotter – or the Venus atmosphere and surface – or Earth’s.. In short, Jeff, I think about what must be the real explanation of planetary temperatures, not just in the atmosphere and surface, but in the crust and mantle also.
I find a common physical process is the sole cause of such temperatures. It is a non-radiative process which is the very process described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is a spontaneous process which occurs at the molecular level and it is the process in which thermodynamic equilibrium evolves – just as the Second Law says.
That equilibrium is of absolute necessity one in which there is a thermal gradient in a gravitational field. This directly implies that there must be an underlying thermal plot which supports atmospheric temperatures at all altitudes. If there happens to be a surface at some altitude, then the temperature of the atmosphere at that altitude plays the major role in determining that planet’s surface temperature. How else could 10W/m^2 of direct Solar radiation cause the Venus surface to be 730K? Why else would it only cool by 5 degrees during the 4-month night? Think Jeff.
I am not going to be drawn into discussions of radiation, even though I did study that topic very extensively the year before last and wrote a comprehensive paper about it as a result of my research. (298. words)
Curt said: “I got not a single real rebuttal point from the PSI folk.”
We told everyone multiple times that we were going to write up a reply in an article, you must have seen that. The time that it takes is in explaining your experiment to you. It nicely proves our position.
For a discussion of Q = s*(Th^4 – Tc^4), and how GHE people lie with it and don’t understand it,[snip – I was going to allow this link, until I read it and realized it was chock full of conclusion with no supporting math. Typical of many PSI papers it was far too cocky for my reading. If you have the wits, answer my questions.]
Tc plays the role that it does in that equation. It doesn’t cause Th to increase nor does it “heat” Th. The problem is in not understanding the physics of that equation and what it is used for.
Joseph, can you post your CV? We have.
why do you want his cv? Seems an odd request in a debate about science. Or perhaps you want to switch to attacking the man?
Probably because he went to the link and read Joe’s demeaning of those with lesser degrees than himself (undergrads in particular).
This blog is too prominent for PSI to ignore, the readers here are too sharp to fall for sideshows. I can post the main questions I have asked as a headpost or they can be answered here. I do plan to continue asking about the discontinuity between PSI and standard physics, until we work it out.
Here’s the link:
https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/reader-background/
The issue of “net flows” has been stretched literally beyond belief in the climatology world. The Second Law is talking about an isolated system (See Wikipedia – “Laws of Thermodynamics”) and any physicist should be able to tell you that a system in physics has a very specific definition. (Also see Wikipedia “System.”) It can of course have a single component (often represented by a one-way heat transfer between two objects) but if it has more than one component, then the components must be interdependent.
Now, if radiation from a cooler atmosphere were actually able to add thermal energy to a warmer target on the surface, say a rock beside a tidal lake, then that is the first “component.” The problem then to consider runs like this: if that extra energy is then stored for a while (say, until high tide) and the energy then transfers to some water on the surface by conduction, and then that same parcel of energy eventually gets back into the atmosphere with two further “components” such as evaporative cooling of the water, followed by subsequent release of latent heat, where then is the interdependence between any of these four separate components which you are in effect assuming to be all part of the one system, as defined by the Second Law? Sorry, the very first component (if it could occur) is not just a component of a larger system and it would be an outright and indisputable violation of the Second Law.
Think of Venus. Every 4-month long day its surface warms by 5 degrees, and then it cools by five degrees as the atmosphere radiates to space during the 4-month night. The surface temperatures are in the vicinity of 730K to 735K approximately. It takes a lot of energy to warm it by 5 degrees, and it doesn’t happen in the first day of sunshine, especially when you remember that such Solar radiation reaching the surface has only about one tenth of the power of that reaching Earth’s surface. So there must be a process in which energy builds up during the 4 month day.
Now we know that about 97.5% of incident Solar radiation is either reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere, so obviously the atmosphere will warm while the Sun is shining, but gradually over 4 months – say I.25 degree per month.
Clearly we are not talking about a radiative process warming the surface here, because incident radiation would have to be about 16,100W/m^2 into the surface to have any effect in that temperature range. And if it were it could probably do the job in a few hours, not 4 months. Furthermore, we at PSI would insist that any such radiation having any effect on such a hot surface would have to be directly from a hotter source, namely the Sun. We just don’t believe in non-interdependent components violating the Second Law, so we rule out radiation from the colder atmosphere. In any event, with only about 10W/m^2 of incident insolation entering the surface, there’s not a lot of energy to play with for back radiation, now is there?
Perhaps you think that the energy entering the TOA will do the trick. Well look at the figures – something like 2,600W/m^2 from memory before any is reflected away, which is much more than half of it. Perhaps we have about 1,000W/m^2 starting on its way into the atmosphere. (That’s to 1 significant figure – it doesn’t matter what the precise figure is.) How could the atmosphere somehow magnify this about 16 times before it comes out of the base of the atmosphere and into the surface, and why would it have so much more success getting through the atmosphere than did the Solar radiation? Remember – no more than 10W/m^2 could be from back radiation that was sending back energy from the surface, which was sending back energy from the Sun. By the way, Science of Doom has a totally incorrect figure of about 158W/m^2 (if I remember correctly) for the incident Solar radiation reaching the Venus surface. You’d think he would have checked the data from the Russian probes before using a figure which is at least 10 times the real one.
So the Venus surface is not heated by any “runaway greenhouse effect.” If you’re not convinced, then think about how energy gets down into the Uranus atmosphere which is mostly hydrogen and helium. I’m happy to discuss any questions you may have about my explanation of what is happening on these planets – and on Earth, where the Sun cannot heat our surface to 288K with direct Solar radiation alone. Just use SBL to convince yourself of this obvious fact.
Radiative forcing is not what is the primary determinant of Earth’s mean surface temperature. As on Uranus and Venus, and throughout the universe, temperatures in any atmosphere have a propensity to follow a temperature gradient which is between about 65% and 100% of the quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases. The level of the plot is determined by the need for radiative balance, so that Is the “starting point.” Then, at whatever temperature the plot intersects the surface, we have a pre-determined base supporting temperature which slows all radiative and non-radiative cooling at night, enabling the Sun (if applicable) to warm somewhat the next day, this being but a marginal effect, as is the slowing of cooling as the surface comes back towards the base temperature. No big changes in climate will occur without natural changes in the parameters just mentioned. That is the “New School of Thought” which we are starting to talk about at PSI. Keep watching for a new article on such within a few days.
Doug, you left the same comment on my blog here: http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/that-warmer-feeling/#comment-5338
Were you the sort of student who didn’t read exam questions properly but just wrote essays on what he had learned then complained when you were marked down?
Verity, we’ve had several complaints about Doug at PSI from our own members. We have given him a warning about his tactics and we will revoke his membership of PSI if he doesn’t respond to our requests.
And note all the interesting discussion starting to appear here, and probably boosting Jeff’s ratings. That’s what happens when there is real physics discussion, rather than articles about how they’ve changed the colours on maps (such on your site) where I note there was just one other comment on the thread. How about you try answering the questions I pose, or maybe running your own critique of what I have written in that post and/or my articles and papers on the PSI site – provided of course that you allow right of reply.
Doug, that’s exactly my point – it is my blog and I’ll put on it what I want to write, not what you want me (or others) to discuss there.
I have no interest in answering the questions you pose. That is partly down to the fact that your whole attitude and demeanour has put me off doing so, but it is also that I am not a mathematician or physicist and while I will read, observe and learn from such debate elsewhere, i will not take responsibility for it on my own blog. You’ll note I allowed gallopingcamel a platform but refrained from commenting much myself. I’ve come to know Peter well enough that I like his attitudes and respect his opinions and interest in exploring new theories. Now, just because I don’t have the depth of knowledge to debate these issues, does not mean I have to take your, or anyones else’s ‘expert opinion’ as gospel. I have enough technical knowledge to call BS at times and to appreciate both sides of the debate. As this is OT, in deference to Jeff, I’ll stop here.
In that you asked about my education, Verity, I was highly placed in physics in the state of NSW in the 1962 Leaving Certificate, then won a physics scholarship under Prof Harry Messel (among a total of four scholarships in my academic career which included nine years of university education) and then, after completing my first degree majoring in physics, I have continued with ongoing study and research and helped many physics students to do exceptionally well.
I did not mean to imply you’d not achieved, it was merely a rather facetious comment, from noting you had not observed Jeff’s 300 word limit. Doug again I presume.
PSI has at least one thing right. All planets with a significant atmosphere have tropospheres where the temperature gradient is equal to -Cp/g. In regions where vapors are present the temperature gradient is reduced (Damp Adiabatic Lapse Rate).
This is physics that I was taught in high school over 50 years ago. Probably they are teaching the same stuff today in first year college courses. Carl Sagan used this approach to correctly predict the surface temperature of Venus even though he was not sure whether nitrogen or CO2 was the main constituent of the Lunar atmosphere:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/149625
This is a correction to an earlier paper. The correction results from the fact that the Cp of CO2 is more pressure dependent than the Cp of nitrogen at the high pressures encountered in the lower atmosphere of Venus. Notice there is no mention of Arrhenius or radiative heat transfer.
You are right to doubt the “Slayers”. They are are guilty of the same error as their opponents (Consensus Scientists)………oversimplification.
GC: You got the -g/Cp inverted, but I’ll excuse that. Yes it also works very well for Uranus, being between 95% and 100%. The reason for the reduction on some planets is because inter-molecular radiation has a levelling effect on temperatures as the thermodynamic equilibrium is evolving spontaneously. It’s not latent heat release on Earth.
But my question is, why? How does the energy get down there on Uranus, when there is no evidence of any energy source in the core?
I suggest that my explanation is based on solid physics. The question has been posted on quite a few blogs under the heading “The Uranus Dilemma” and no one has either disproved it or come up with a better explanation than what is in the 20 page paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures.”. Is that paper oversimplified?
Now, please explain this issue of oversimplification with examples, because I’m about to have published an article summarising what we at PSI believe on various issues, so your feedback may help me clarify some misunderstandings. Frankly I think the way the IPCC models are contrived is the greatest oversimplification you could imagine – flat disk Earth, constant cold Sun etc etc. and a wishy-washy meaningless explanation of the greenhouse effect in their Glossary of Terms.
You didn’t learn it very well in school then did you? You inverted the quotient.
Anyway, that little mistake forgiven, please clarify what you see to be “oversimplifications” in what any particular members of PSI have written.
I’d appreciate such feedback for an article about what PSI is actually saying, because there’s a lot of misleading accusations about such on climate blogs.
I note our CEO, John O’Sullivan has just commented above.
Doug & Co,
Thanks for pointing out my schoolboy howler; -Cp/g indeed! I used to put deliberate mistakes into my presenattions to see if the students were paying attention. In my dotage I make plenty of mistakes through carelessness of too much single malt scotch late at night.
Jeff has asked some questions that seem quite reasonable to me but I never was very good at thermodynamics. Consequently my questions are of a simpler nature and they have to do with making predictions that match what is observed. I would like you to have a go at using your theory to answer them. If you fail I will have to do it for you and that is likely to be something you won’t like one bit.
AAA – Predict the GHE for Venus, Earth and Triton.
BBB – Predict the effect of changing the partial pressure of CO2 on a planet while keeping the total surface pressure at 1 bar for Earth and 92 bars for Venus.
You said: “Each ray received absolutely match a ray emitted” and that’s not strictly correct. Are x-rays sent through your body matched by matching radiation which your body sends back to the machine? When the Sun warms the surface with SW radiation, the electromagnetic energy in the radiation is indeed mostly converted to thermal energy. But it could be hours later when that thermal energy comes back to the atmosphere, or another object on the surface by conduction. I see no interdependence therein.
What you have probably heard is the talk about “pseudo scattering” which was explained in a PSI paper about radiated energy in March 2012. (Cotton, D J: “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”) When radiation from a cooler source strikes a warmer target physicists now realise that the matching frequencies and intensities are immediately re-emitted, and so no energy is left over to be converted to thermal energy in the target. This has to do with the resonating process described by Prof Claes Johnson and what is now called “pseudo scattering” or “resonant scattering” as it was called in that paper which was perhaps the first paper to describe it in detail.
Sadly even on this thread Doug Cotton doesn’t know when the f**k to shut up so that somebody else, even fellow PSI’ers, can get a word in.
Jeff—recommend you reban this guy and delete his comments or move them to a “surely I’m brilliant Douglas Cotton” thread, so we can actually see the other viewpoints.
Seeing these other people’s views is at least marginally interesting.
I agree.
He’s been trying to post at my blog too. The IP resolves to Australia. Just sayin’.
The only way mr. “click-bargains” will be allowed to post is if he gives a real name. Because I suspect it’s Doug Cotton.
Yes I’m Doug Cotton. Tell me,why do you say the greenhouse effect is real? If it were real on Earth then it should operate on any planet with a significant atmosphere. Back radiation can indeed slow radiative surface cooling. So too can oxygen and nitrogen slow non-radiative cooling by conduction at the surface-atmosphere boundary. But something else has to raise a planet’s surface temperature before we worry about how slowly its cooling. That “something else” sets the maximum temperature. If it were direct incident Solar radiation, then it certainly is not raising the Venus surface to 730K with only about 10W/m^2 reaching the surface. And it would only get to about 255K (not 288K) on Earth, now wouldn’t it?
Consider Uranus, then. It receives about 3W/m^2 of Solar radiation which is nearly all absorbed and re-emitted in the uppermost layers of its atmosphere. There the temperature is about 53K whilst the radiating temperature is similar at about 59K. (See Wiki)
About 350Km further down is the base of the theoretical troposphere where, according to the Wikipedia article “Uranus” sub-heading “Troposphere” the temperature is about 320K. But of course there is no significant Solar radiation reaching down there, and no surface anyway, and so it is not a greenhouse effect which is supplying the necessary energy to keep it that hot. Nor is there any evidence of significant net outward energy flow from the centre. So it’s not a hot planet cooling off, and it’s not generating energy in its centre or core.
I have explained the heat transfer by the spontaneous process described in statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What’s your explanation?
Jeff, firstly, I’m sorry I did not realise there was a 300 word limit.
As other comments I have made here should indicate, I think totally “outside the square” of radiative forcing. I recognise that there cannot possibly be a “runaway greenhouse effect” on Venus, or any radiative forcing causing the Uranus atmosphere to get hotter and hotter – or the Venus atmosphere and surface – or Earth’s.. In short, Jeff, I think about what must be the real explanation of planetary temperatures, not just in the atmosphere and surface, but in the crust and mantle also.
I find a common physical process is the sole cause of such temperatures. It is a non-radiative process which is the very process described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is a spontaneous process which occurs at the molecular level and it is the process in which thermodynamic equilibrium evolves – just as the Second Law says.
That equilibrium is of absolute necessity one in which there is a thermal gradient in a gravitational field. This directly implies that there must be an underlying thermal plot which supports atmospheric temperatures at all altitudes. If there happens to be a surface at some altitude, then the temperature of the atmosphere at that altitude plays the major role in determining that planet’s surface temperature. How else could 10W/m^2 of direct Solar radiation cause the Venus surface to be 730K? Why else would it only cool by 5 degrees during the 4-month night? Think Jeff.
I am not going to be drawn into discussions of radiation, even though I did study that topic very extensively the year before last and wrote a comprehensive paper about it as a result of my research. (298. words)
Doug,
I have enforced the limit on noone. The problem with PSI is that the discussion of climate tends toward the verbose and there are simple, very basic matters to resolve. It is too easy to ask about Venus when there is the simple matter of photon absorption to address. I see that we haven’t done that yet. If the discussion goes in the direction of complex climate isses, I have nice scissors.
I also see that you have modified your climate argument greatly since we first met. That’s good you are getting closer. It also seems you are taking it a step beyond to crust and mantle, that is ridiculous with respect to climate change. No matter the heat emitted, the crust and mantle must be fairly static energy outputs and a few miles of rock is a pretty good insulator.
AGW is caused by radiative physics. I have repeatedly read PSI words which are in direct contradiction to radiative physics. After PSI explains how this process of absorption works – in a few words not Joe style verbose conclusion with no supporting math – then we can have a serious physics discussion.
Answer my direct questions to you.
Oh and ‘think Jeff’ — seriously dude, at this point you ought to know better.
The simple matter of photon absorption is not a matter which I believe has any significant effect on planetary surface temperatures, for the reasons it took me 20 pages to explain in my February 2013 paper.
Planetary surface temperatures are not in my opinion controlled by radiative forcing. But, for the record, I agree with Prof Claes Johnson that the energy in radiation from a cooler source is not converted to thermal energy in a warmer target.
\
Heat transfer by radiation was, however, a matter which I researched and explained in great detail in my March 2012 paper, and that topic also took several pages to cover in an adequate and understandable manner. So 300 word comments are not going to do justice to either matter. The papers are there for anyone to read.
Yes, indeed I have moved into a whole new paradigm of research and understanding of planetary atmospheric, surface, crust,mantle and core temperatures. I make no apology for that. I have been the first in the world, as best I can determine, to explain the mechanism for which I coined the term “heat creep” and I firmly believe it is the mechanism by which thermal energy passes up the shallow thermal gradient in an atmosphere, moving towards the surface and supporting the surface temperature. Yes, Jeff, this is new stuff. We learn when we study and think.
I’m sorry, but I disagree with you when you say assertively that “AGW is caused by radiative physics.” You will find reasons why in the comments already written here, and I have no wish nor need to keep re-writing what is in my paper anyway. You are welcome to submit an attempted rebuttal to PSI and I hope I will be among those who respond. (299 words)
Jeff – you said quite correctly “No matter the heat emitted, the crust and mantle must be fairly static energy outputs and a few miles of rock is a pretty good insulator.”
If anything, the net heat from the surface is less than scientists think, because they “determine” it from a temperature gradient in the outer crust. But that gradient evolves spontaneously in a gravitational field (as explained in the process described in statements of The Second Law of Thermodynamics) and so we really don’t even know for certain if heat is flowing up or down that gradient (which is in thermodynamic equilibrium) at any particular time.
But once again you make assumptions about what you think I am saying without reading and/or understanding such. In this case you are way off track. I am explaining why there are temperature gradients determined by -g/Cp even in Earth’s crust and mantle, as has been measured in the outer 10Km or so of the crust, and estimated below that. I am talking about why the crust and mantle are as hot as they are. Why, for example, Uranus has such a hot centre, even though there is no evidence of internal energy generation.
Jeff
Your assumption that electro-magnetic energy in photons is always converted to thermal energy even in warmer targets leads to the fallacious assumption that radiation from a colder atmosphere can actually transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface and keep on heating it and increasing its temperature. On Venus the implication is that the surface could be heated this way to 730K.
Radiation from a cooler source can do nothing other than slow that portion of the rate of cooling of the surface which is itself by radiation. Non-radiative processes can and do actually accelerate if radiative cooling slows, and thus compensate somewhat. None of this compensating is in the simplistic IPCC models.
Because such radiation from the cooler atmosphere can only slow radiative cooling of the surface, there needs to be another source of energy that raises the temperature before any slowing of cooling can make any difference.
It would have to raise the mean surface temperature to 288K on Earth, or 730K on Venus, or 230K at the base of the (theoretical) Uranus troposphere, where there is no surface anyway.
Now, the other source that is needed to raise the surface temperature in the first place will do so if and only if there is sufficient flux reaching the surface (as per Stefan-Boltzmann Law) and also the source of the radiation was hotter. Clearly, on Venus and Uranus direct Solar radiation is ruled out due to insufficient flux, but it’s a bit of a close shave on Earth, where direct Solar radiation could raise the surface to 255K, but, unfortunately for the IPCC, Dr Spencer and all, the direct Solar radiation cannot raise Earth’s surface to a mean of 288K. And neither can the cold back radiation.
Doug
(295 words)
Doug,
Your comments are in moderation still. I am going to let other PSI members comment first. Carrick is right, we need to hear from the rest of the group.
Please understand that I am at variance with virtually all others in the group at PSI over this matter of “heat creep” but I am in accord with the process which the Second Law of Thermodynamics clearly states evolves spontaneously.
So I have no motive to discuss or defend PSI papers, articles and comments which pertain to radiative forcing, simply because such forcing in my opinion is not what controls planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures.
The mechanism of “heat creep” does so very precisely in accord with observations above and below Earth’s surface and, as best science can determine, in the atmospheres of other planets. Uranus is the best evidence I can find of a planet whose atmosphere obviously could not have been heated by radiative forcing. And if another mechanism (namely “heat creep”) can explain the method by which energy penetrates down into the Uranus atmosphere then, so too, can energy do likewise on other planets, including Earth. The process of “heat creep” requires the diagrams in my paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” and I am not reproducing such here, or attempting to explain “heat creep” in short comments.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the farce — that is, the farce of thermodynamics as it is taught. I will, of course, explain.
My university thermodynamics course was a huge thrill. It explained everything so perfectly! Enthalpy and entropy were the key to understanding, a veritable TOE (theory of everything) in a box! I vaguely wondered why that mathematically-perfect approach was not used more widely throughout science.
Many years later it dawned on me, slowly at first, then with a clap of finality, what a hoax it all was. “Entropy” is in fact nothing more than the gap between observation and calculation, a fudge only, science’s first “dark energy”. They call it the measure of randomness — an explanation which is pseudo-science in full regalia.
So what damage does it do? What damage is done when science dons a masquerade to be more than it is? Maybe the “slayers” are the roadkill of pseudo-thermodynamics, educated intellects who built their foundations on the charade because they never realized the truth.
I don’t suppose you are joking?
No joke at all — but good luck in isolating what make those slayers tick. Other areas like radiative transfer also are less-well understood physically than is averred.
Nearly everyone, (including myself until a year ago) is still sucked into the line of thinking first thrust upon the world by the AGW crowd, namely that it is all to do with radiative forcing. Yes, this includes virtually all other PSI members..
I have been thinking this through for a long time and am now firmly of the opinion that all these energy budgets are incomplete, mainly because they don’t show the missing link. On Venus and Uranus that missing link Is a huge amount of energy which must flow downwards in the atmosphere. It’s quite a lot on Earth too. Over the life of these planets there has been a build up of thermal energy from the Sun which can’t escape.
So these planets (Uranus, Venus, Earth) are not still cooling off. It’s cold out there where Uranus is because it only receives about 3W/m^2 in the very top of its atmosphere. It could easily have cooled off, but for the one thing that stops it. And that one thing is the gravitationally induced thermal gradient which forms by diffusion at the molecular level,, because molecules in free flight between collisions interchange kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. In just two lines of calculations, you can derive the -g/Cp value by equating PE and -KE. Kinetic energy will tend towards being homogeneous during collisions, but only at each altitude. Inter-molecular radiation reduces the gradient by up to about a third,, but by less than 5% on Uranus where there is just a little methane causing that.
The Clausius (hot to cold) statement of the Second Law is not comprehensive and for conduction and diffusion it only applies in a horizontal plane. The process described in the Second Law means that thermodynamic equilibrium evolves spontaneously, and, in the process of maintaining such equilibrium there must evolve a temperature gradient. Most importantly, extra energy absorbed at higher altitudes can actually flow up this gradient because that will help restore the equilibrium. DJC
Jeff,
You said “AGW is caused by radiative physics.”
According to the IPCC that is true. My question is do you believe that CO2 causes AGW and if so to what extent?
According to the IPCC’s AR4 the sensitivity coefficient is +1.5 to +4.5 Kelvin/doubling of CO2. A range of vlaues like that can hardly qualify as “Science”. I would call it “Curve Fitting” or “Guesswork”.
Temperature drove CO2 for the last 850,000 years so why should things suddenly change in 1850?
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
As I have written for the past 4 years, CO2 obviously causes warming, I don’t know how much.
It appears to be substantially less warming than most climate models predict.
Great answer! You continue to amaze me with your wit and wisdom.
My attempt to reply to some earlier comments got stuck in “Moderation” so I will try again.
I thank those people who noticed my schoolboy “Howler”; -Cp/g indeed! My excuse is old age and/or excessive consumption of single malt scotch late at night.
IMHO Jeff has asked some reasonable questions of a technical nature. I hope the PSI will have a stab at answering in terms that I can understand (I have problems with entropy and enthalpy).
I ask the same questions of the various theories relating to climate (Sagan, Arrhenius, N&K, Nicola Scafetta etc). The main ones are these:
AAA – Predict the GHE on Venus, Earth and Triton.
BBB – Predict the effect on surface temperature if the proportion of CO2 is changed while maintaining total atmospheric pressure constant (1 bar for Earth and 92 bars for Venus).
I hope the PSI advocates can come up with some calculations as I find equations much more satisfying than lengthy essays.
I can’t speak for other PSI members – see my comment above. It’s not all about radiative forcing.
The primary determinants of atmospheric and surface temperatures are then based on the autonomous thermal gradient and the overall level of the plot of temperature against altitude. This level is set by the need for radiative balance and, in general, radiative balance cannot be disturbed by internal processes, such as back radiation.
A planet’s surface temperature just depends on where the plot of temperature against altitude intersects the surface. On Uranus the temperature at the base of the theoretical troposphere is about 320K. This is all in line with calculations, and, if there were a surface there, then it too would be 320K – hotter than Earth’s surface, even though no direct solar radiation even reaches down there through 350Km of atmosphere that’s mostly hydrogen and helium. There is thought to be a solid core with about half the mass of Earth, but that’s roughly 20,000Km further down and it may be about 5000K.
So, as on Venus also, where it’s about 730K at the surface, the temperature of a surface is all to do with the height of the atmosphere through which the temperature plot reaches hotter and hotter temperatures the closer it gets towards the surface. It has nothing to do with radiative forcing. It has nothing to do with any greenhouse effect. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. (DC)
I agree with much of what you say. That will probably be enough to have me defenestrated by people I respect (Jeff, Lucia, Verity, Chiefio, Tony Brown, DeWitt Payne, Leonard Weinstein, H.D. Huffman and many more).
I totally get it that a rising molecule in a planet’s atmosphere does work against gravity and therefore temperature should fall with altitude. Thermodynamics tells us what the temperature gradient should be in planetary tropospheres and “Lo and Behold” the theory matches observations on Venus, Earth and Triton.
At low pressures the adiabatic lapse rate (stratosphere) no longer works so your theory should have some way to explain that. IMHO it can’t be done without invoking RTEs (Radiative Transfer Equations) which you shun.
I don’t quite understand your fixation with Uranus considering that the temperature gradient on Jupiter is within 0.1 Kelvin/km of the calculated “Dry Adiabat” all the way down to -250 km when the probe stopped transmitting:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/unified-theory-of-climate/
Jupiter is indeed a good example too. Uranus, however, only receives 3W/m^2 which is all re-emitted from the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. Hence we know there is no incident Solar radiation even reaching the vast majority of the Uranus atmosphere. Also there is not the added complication of extra energy coming out of Jupiter because it is continuously contracting and more PE is converted to KE. Also, Uranus is well known for not exhibiting any other internal heat generation, so all this eliminates some possible red herrings.
The issue of the stratosphere is no problem to explain. Just search the word in my paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures.” Basically, excessive absorption over-rides the slow diffusion process, just as wind does. All known counter arguments like this are rebutted in the paper.
Turning to your statement about Venus, let me comment sentence by sentence:
“So, as on Venus also, where it’s about 730K at the surface, the temperature of a surface is all to do with the height of the atmosphere through which the temperature plot reaches hotter and hotter temperatures the closer it gets towards the surface.”
I agree. You are restating what Carl Sagan said in the late 1960s:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/149625
“It has nothing to do with radiative forcing.”
True. Radiative forcing has no effect whatsoever on planets with 100% cloud cover. The surface may be radiating 16,500 W/square meter but none of that can be radiated directly into space. The radiation emitted from planets like Venus is determined by the temperature at the cloud tops.
“It has nothing to do with any greenhouse effect.”
This makes no sense. How can you deny that there is a GHE on Venus when Sagan predicted it so accurately even though he did not even know the composition of the atmosphere?
“It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. ”
True. Sagan showed that the surface of Venus would have been hotter if the atmosphere had been composed of nitrogen instead of CO2. I did the calculations on the extreme assumption that the CO2 was replaced by helium and got an even higher surface temperature. The reason for this has to do with the fact that the Cp for gases is affected by pressure with CO2 being more affected than nitrogen, while helium is not affected at all.
A radiative greenhouse effect would have to multiply the mere 2.5W/m^2 of incident Solar radiation reaching the Venus surface up to 16,100W/m^2 in order to maintain 730K. In fact the surface gets heated by a further 5 degrees during each 4-month day, and cools at night. So we are not even just talking about slowing cooling – we are heating the surface. That definitely needs an input of more than 16,000W//m^2 or some alternative input from non radiative processes. After all, the 16,100 is far more than the total insolation even reaching the surface. What stops the surface cooling? The answer is in Section 9 of my paper, “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” but you’d need to read Sections 4 to 8 first. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to answer any more questions which are already covered therein.
PS: Predicting a surface temperature from incident insolation and the -g/Cp gradient is of course easy. I can predict the 320K temperature 350Km down in the Uranus atmosphere – my calculations showed about 312K – close enough. But so what. That is not explaining how the energy gets there.
You could have a long iron rod, measure the temperature at the cold end, and in the middle, and predict the temperature at the hot end. But that doesn’t tell you why it’s hot or how the required energy gets to the hot end. Is it in a fire or heated by electricity or what?
The last two comments show what is wrong with the “Physics-o-Climate ” theory. The -g/Cp relationship holds regardless of “how the heat gets there”. Even Einstein was impressed by thermodynamics!
The weakness in Sagan’s approach is that he needed two observations in addition to the -g/Cp temperature gradient. These observations are the temperature of the cloud tops and their altitude.
If Sagan (or anyone else) had a way to calculate these two quantities from first principles we would now have a complete mathematical explanation of the GHE.
The effect of a planet’s rate of rotation or pole to equator temperature differences are interesting questions. However, the immediate task is to find a credible theory for predicting GHEs and the extent that CO2 affects climate.
Direct Solar radiation from the Sun cannot …
(1) Heat the base of the Uranus troposphere to 320K
(2) Heat the surface of Venus to a mean of 730K
(3) Heat the surface of Earth to a mean of 288K
Hence there is simply no issue regarding radiation from the atmosphere slowing cooling that was caused by direct insolation. You have to look for another process that can and does warm all (1) to (3) and you will learn about it in my paper about planetary temperatures.
The fallacies of global warming by atmospheric CO2
There are 3 fallacies promoted by various warmists:
1)Some claim that back-radiation from CO2 warms the earth’s surface;
2) Others claim that by absorbing IR from the surface, CO2 “traps heat”, thereby warming the air;
3) Others claim that more CO2 in the air raises the effective radiating level at the top of the atmosphere, thereby reducing the cooling effect and resulting in warming.
1) On the first point, there is downwelling IR (DWIR) from the atmosphere incident upon the surface, most of it from water vapor. In circumstances when surface objects are cooler than the nearby air, that radiation can warm those objects, although most of the warming is due to conduction.
However, CO2 radiation is mostly 15 microns, at the weak end of the IR range. It turns out that most materials found on the earth’s surface can not absorb IR between 6-25 microns, and thus CO2 back radiation is reflected, and no surface warming occurs from it.
2) In a parcel of air, each CO2 molecule is surrounded by 2500 other molecules, 99% of them N2 and O2 which are radiatively inactive. The temperature of the air parcel is set by conduction, convection, and latent heat transfers from water. The lapse rate measures the fact that the air cools and thins with altitude. When a CO2 molecule succeeds to emit a photon, it loses energy, which is immediately replaced by collisions with N2 and O2 molecules. The heat transfer in the troposphere is mostly from N2 and O2 to CO2, and not the other way around.
3) Satellite measurements of Earth emission data show that the IR photons absorbed by CO2 molecules are not re-emitted before the energy gained is redistributed by collisions with other non-greenhouse gas molecules. We know this because the re-emission of radiation does not occur at a black body temperature of 288K and instead occurs at a black body temperature of about 210 to 220K characteristic of general air temperatures at altitudes from 10.5 km to 22 km.
This part of the atmosphere is called the tropopause, where the temperature does not vary much from an average of 217K. Any change in the effective radiating level in the tropopause will not lower the temperature, and not cause warming.
Ron C:
I’d double check your detective work on this one. 😉
I’d start with Jeff ID’s post.
First CO2 absorbs energy in a band around 15µm, however this energy is thermalized, which means that it gets distributed equally across all available degrees of freedom in the system (known as “equipartition of energy”).
The photons associated with the thermalized IR radiation from the top of the atmosphere is emitted uniformly in all directions, but they follow an approximate black-body (Maxwellian) radiation distribution, and are not limited to the absorption band of CO2. (See Fig 4 from Jeff’s poist.)
Thus any arguments based on a so-called missing absorption band of “materials found on the earth’s surface” is a non-issue.
Anyway the argument is wrong about “most materials found on the earth’s surface can not absorb IR between 6-25 microns”. link
And H2O.
A long winded way of saying most vertical heat energy transport is from convection rather than radiation. Or at least this is what I think you’re trying to say.
This is because the radiative heat lapse rate is unstable for Earth-like atmospheric conditions.
But this has nothing to do with the primary mechanism of the inappropriately named GHG effect. That is associated with the appropriately-named backwards radiation of thermal radiation (backwards = opposite the direction of the net flux of thermal radiation) which is reabsorbed by the surface of the Earth.
(There is an additional feedback which is linked to in my comments that Jeff replicated in his post associated with water vapor. This water vapor feedback is associated with a perturbation of the moist adiabatic lapse rate. But that is not technically the GHG effect, and unlike the GHG effect is not something that can be directly tested in a laboratory setting.)
See my comment on your first enumerated point. This is not a problem.
Carrick, thanks for the comment and referral to the previous Air Vent post. The comments and links therein were informative.
My first point above is that the actual earth’s surface is not a black or gray body, but absorbs and emits radiation selectively, and in fact absorbs very little CO2 radiation. Your link shows soil samples that do absorb longer wavelengths than 6 microns, but I note that in the study, most of the absorption was below 12 and nothing was absorbed above 14. So the stated range was in error, but the point is confirmed: 15 micron radiation was not absorbed.
There are additional spectra graphs on this point from a materials physicist at this llnk:
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.ca/2013/05/what-if-atmosphere-had-no-greenhouse.html
On the interaction between air molecules, I note this paper by Dr. Jinan Cao, who explains that CO2 is in thermal deficit to N2 and O2 in the troposphere.
Click to access JCao_N2O2GreenGases_Blog.pdf
There is no “inevitable climate catastrophe” supposedly due to carbon dioxide which does nothing but have a net cooling effect of the order of 0.002 C degree.
You all need to make a paradigm shift in thinking, and find the real reason why temperatures are as they are on all planets, both above and below any surface.
I’m still waiting for anyone on any of these* climate blogs to try to explain the Uranus dilemma under the old radiative forcing / greenhouse effect conjecture.
It can only be explained by the new paradigm (in my paper on planetary temperatures in the PROM menu at PSI) which shows why planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures are all able to be calculated the same way, and are all supported by the process whereby thermodynamic equilibrium evolves spontaneously, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics says it will.
* Judith Curry, JoNova, DrRoySpencer.com, PSI forum, The Air Vent (here)
Ron:
This depends on the material doest it?
So I gave it more thought…and decided the relative parameter is reflectivity:
Quartz reflectivity.
Olivines.
Remember that you can get absorption of radiative energy by other mechanisms besides molecular absorption, e.g., any of a variety of inelastic scattering mechanism.
Even with a perfectly reflective material, because of surface roughness and porosity, you’ll still get a substantial amount of forward scattered energy, which will get absorbed by inelastic scattering.
I think this is a long road to climb up to argue against the GHG effect, but fortunately it’s one that is experimentally testable—as long as you are willing to accept data that doesn’t conform to your prior expectations that is.
I think we can agree a simple experiment would be to irradiate soil, water and/or other materials with 15 µm IR radiation and measure whether we get a temperature increase.
Objections to this?
* relevant parameter
Carrick, the test has already been done.
From your same resource:
That’s just reflectivity and only goes to 2.5 µm, so it fails to address your hypothesis that 15 µm IR radiation does not heat up the surface of the Earth. If you think I’m stating the hypothesis incorrectly, please state it more clearly and exactly… no explanations needed, just the testable hypothesis.
I would be satisfied with a test that showed that soil didn’t heat up in response to 15 µm IR radiation.
The question is would you?
Serious question.
Isn’t absorption the absence of reflectivity? I thought that was how spectroscopy worked. The spectrum of light is shined, and the absorption lines show up compared to wavelengths reflected. (I did this in the lab a looong time ago.) The chart, like most of those in that report stopped at 2.5 microns, presumably because nothing of interest happens above that.
Why not measure absorption directly, rather than try to test for heat, which can be transferred in many other ways?
Ron:
It’s a bit more complicated that that. see this figure.
If you want to posit that all energy not specularly reflected is absorbed, then we can use your figure, as long as we recognize it’s an upper bounds on the absorbed IR radiation that was converted to heat. You can also get diffuse reflection and transmission. (For the Earth you can neglect transmission of course.) Diffuse radiation won’t even occur necessarily at the same wavelength due to
Depends on your definition of “nothing of interest”. We’re interested. 😉
My guess is it has to do with the propers of the moist atmosphere in the near infrared, or to do with limitations of the measurement system.
In any case, the figure you linked has a reflectivity that goes to zero above 2.5 µm…. seriously doubt that continues to 15 µm.
If you accept a previous measurement of minerals that are commonly present in soil as a proxy for the experiment, that would serve too.
I admit I am interested in the question of what laboratory tests can be done to test various aspects of the atmospheric GHG effect just out of general interest (and with an eye for a physics lab course).
I agree that experimental results would be interesting to test the assertion that 15 micron radiation can itself warm typical land materials. I believe it has already been shown that water (70 per cent of earth’s surface) cannot be heated in this way. The challenge is to design an experiment that truly excludes heat transfer by other means
Water would be interesting to test too, though it would be a challenge:
My expectations — reflectivity near zero, molecular absorption around 15 µm near zero, so mostly absorbed via inelastic scattering. Rayleigh scattering attenuation length ~ 10s of meter.
Ocean surface would efficiently absorb at these wavelengths, assuming my SWAG on attenuation length is right, because that’s on the order the wind-driven surface mixed layer of the ocean.
If the attenuation length were much larger, most of the extra heat would go into then stable layer (where it would essentially have no interesting dynamic effects on climate, at least on human time scales).
Sorry cut off sentence (preview for the win): “Diffuse radiation won’t even occur necessarily at the same wavelength due to inelastic scattering effects.“
Carrick
With respect to LWIR absorption by water, Roy Clark has this to say:
“Water is almost completely opaque to LWIR radiation. The LWIR absorption/emission depth is less than 1 mm, so the interaction volume is at most 10 cm3. An increase in downward LWIR flux at the ocean surface of 1.7 W.m-2 heats the surface layer at a rate of at least 2.4 C per minute. The ocean responds by rapidly increasing the surface evaporation rate by 1.7 W.m-2, or 2.7 g.hr-1 of water for ideal ‘clear sky’ conditions.”
Click to access EPA_Submission_RClark.pdf
Note that he is not distinguishing CO2 by its radiation wavelength, only taking the amount of wm-2 projecting from doubling, and estimating the impact on ocean warming.
Therefore, there is no room in this theory for the crazy idea that colder bodies have no effect on hotter bodies. To demonstrate the opposite, the interested student would have to find a flaw in one of the two basic elements of thermodynamics described above. And just a note, there’s no point reciting a mantra (e.g., “The second law says this doesn’t happen”) upon reading this. Instead, be constructive. Explain what happens to the emitting body and the absorbing body with reference to these elementary thermodynamics theories.