Re-radiation

[Ravenna]

I received this presentation by e-mail from Alan Siddons and posted it fully at my Forum here,

http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/f ... d-773.html

EXCERPT:

"One is disturbed each day by verifiably untrue statements touted as incontrovertible facts about hot-button issues." -- Richard S. Lindzen

"CO2 absorbs in the infrared and reradiates heat downward, thus heating the earth." -- Richard S. Lindzen


Okay then, let's examine that particular "incontrovertible fact." You know how a solar oven works.



By multiple reflections, the interior is exposed to more rays from the sun, so the food gets much hotter than it'd get otherwise. The operant principle is akin to how stage lighting works.

[Climate Realist]

I followed the link- good stuff! Have you seen my thread "does the greenhouse effect exist"???

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=585

So far, no one has been able to argue against the laws of thermodynamics!!!!

i think what happens is the sun heats the earths surface, this emmits IR, most IR fresquency photons escape to space as they can find no matter they are capable of interacting with (the warmists NEVER tell you that!), however, some IR is at just the right frequency to interact with CO2 in one of its modes (bond stretching, bond angle waggling etc), the CO2 absorbs the IR photon, does a bond stretch for a while (quantum time determined by the Heisenberg uncertainty priciple) then spits out an identical photon of IR at that just right frequency in a ramdon direction. Some of this hits the earths surface, but as the earth is already hot enough to emit this frequency of IR it cannot absorb the IR and convert the photon energy to kinetic heat energy so the photon is merely bounced back up in the opposite direction from which it originated. So the hotter surface of the earth acts like a mirror to those IR photons bouncing them back up (and untimately to the cold of outer space). Thus, the laws of thermodynamics are preserved and the GHE theory is falsified.

[Ravenna]

Yes I read the first post.

It will be contested because it is a new angle that has not been considered before.

I have been getting a lot of similar information on this by e-mails from Alan Siddons.Today I have created a new child board just for that purpose.

Do not be surprised at strong reactions by other skeptics on this.I have been at the private yahoo forum,where they are fighting against it.I started a thread there and Jack Barrett attacked it quickly and then vanished.They have been weak in their replies by a few skleptic scientists there.

[Climate Realist]

Why should skeptics argue against this idea??

Disprove the GHE theory and the whole rotten tree of AGW alarmism comes crashing down in one fell swoop!

Anyone that supports the greenhouse gas theory and does not at least consider that the theory may be false cannot consider themselves a realist. They must be a lukewarmer at the very least if they agree with some of the AGW ideas.

[Ravenna]

Why should skeptics argue against this idea??

Disprove the GHE theory and the whole rotten tree of AGW alarmism comes crashing down in one fell swoop!

Anyone that supports the greenhouse gas theory and does not at least consider that the theory may be false cannot consider themselves a realist. They must be a lukewarmer at the very least if they agree with some of the AGW ideas.

Some of them are and quite vocal too.

But slowly some of them are realizing that they have been contaminated with the Arrhenius paper,that has been shown to be in error.Most of them are NOT lukewarmers at all.

It takes time for people to change with the new information.

[Philip]

Hi CR and Ravenna,

I hope you'll agree that the suggestions recently proposed by Alan S and several others are basically new scientific proposals, and as such are bound to attract criticism. I imagine the basic criticism I've made of the 2nd law arguments, viewtopic.php?f=5&t=585#p9731, has been repeated by many others, and I think it is a serious and reasonable criticism. This doesn't mean that it is necessarily a correct criticism. It does however mean that a serious and reasonable response is required, if the theory is to stand any chance of being accepted by others. For myself, the criticism is definitely intended in a friendly and constructive manner, but I'm sure others are likely to be far more destructive.

I've put forward arguments -- viewtopic.php?f=5&t=585&start=10#p9777 -- explaining why I disagree with Alan S's two plate argument and I also have criticisms of the solar fridge -- http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5932 -- and mirror -- http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/ ... heory.html -- arguments as well (see below). If these new ideas are going to prosper, then good answers are needed to criticisms like these. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reason the extreme edge of the AGW crowd have got themselves into trouble is because they've failed to respond positively to reasonable criticisms. I'll be very happy to respond to any counters to my counter arguments. If the counters are convincing, then I promise I'll drop my objections immediately :-).

Solar Fridge

If there is a reasonable explanation of the solar fridge in terms of back radiation, then this means that the fridge cannot convincingly be used to demonstrate the non-existence of back radiation. Here is one possible explanation.

If you accept that photons are emitted from absorbing molecules equally in all directions, then downwards directed photons will impact the earth's surface from all possible angles. Solar photons on the other hand, impact the earth's surface from one direction only, because they all originate in the sun.

The funnel in a solar cooker acts to focus the incoming photons into the entrance to the cooker. However, if the funnel is angled away from the direction of the incoming photons, then it will instead prevent them from entering. For some angles, this is because the funnel places the entrance into shadow, whilst for others it acts as a mirror reflecting the photons away from the entrance.

Meanwhile, the inside of the cooker acts as a black body, emitting energy in the form of IR photons into the cooker's cavity. These photons will bounce around inside the cooker and whilst some will be reabsorbed, others will pass back through the entrance and escape. Black body emission therefore allows energy to escape from the inside of the cooker. In daytime and when the funnel is pointing at the sun, I imagine that the heat-gain due to funnel-focused photons overwhelms the heat-loss due to black body emission and hence the inside of the cooker heats up.

To understand how the cooker might operate as a refrigerator at nighttime, think first of all about what happens when the funnel is removed. If you accept that IR photons both inside and outside the cooker are travelling in all directions then it seems likely that on average the same number of photons will enter the cooker as leave it, and hence the temperature of the inside of the cooker will be the same as the temperature immediately outside. Now think about what happens when the funnel is replaced. Now the only photons to enter the cooker are those coming from directly above the funnel. All of the IR photons travelling downwards at other angles are either shadowed or reflected away by the funnel. Hence the funnel acts to reduce the number of photons entering the cooker. On the other hand, the funnel does not modify the number of photons escaping from the cooker. Hence there is an overall cooling effect on the inside of the cooker.

Siddon's Mirror

The basic reason I am sceptical of the Mirror argument is because I can't see any mechanism by which the stage or paper could distinguish between the photons from the torch and the reflected photons - although I agree that QM can sometimes yield unintuitive results. Light is reflected from most surfaces -- including walls and paper -- in all directions leading away from the surface. Photons from a torch, on the other hand, all travel in the same direction, because the mirror behind the bulb focuses them. Because the light reflected from the stage or paper in Alan's experiment is diffuse, I think it is more likely that it is undetectable by the eye when combined with the original torch beam. To check this, the experiment could be repeated using a sensitive light meter - being careful to ensure that the meter is sensitive enough to detect the reflected glow visible when the mirror is removed.

Philip.

[Brian H]

...
Some of this hits the earths surface, but as the earth is already hot enough to emit this frequency of IR it cannot absorb the IR and convert the photon energy to kinetic heat energy so the photon is merely bounced back up in the opposite direction from which it originated. So the hotter surface of the earth acts like a mirror to those IR photons bouncing them back up (and untimately to the cold of outer space).
...

I think that is incorrect and unnecessary. The photon would be absorbed, but the heating it causes would increase the radiation of the earth by an equivalent amount, so its heating effect is very brief -- just the time gap between absorption and new emission. BTW, the CO2 molecule which emitted IR is cooled and chills the atmosphere around it by absorbing heat by conduction (impacts). So normal cooling balancing the solar input is occurring, but with a tiny lag due to the time gap mentioned above.

[Climate Realist]

Brian, what you say, sounds quite reasonable! I think that is on the lines of what I am trying to grasp. The heating of the ground could be considered "quantum" heating as it occurs so fast that it is immesurable, and the IR photon, as you say is emmitted almost instantaneously due to the temperature of the ground, thus the hot ground as a body is not heated by the cooler air as a body and the 2nd law of thermodynamics is not broken.

So, the ground, being hot enough, in effect acts like an IR mirror to those pesky back radiation IR photons and the greenhouse effect is still broken!

Brian, welcome to the forum! You have made an excellent first contribution!

[Climate Realist]

We need an expert in atmospheric physics and radiation to do some experiments, publish and start presenting the results at conferences!