Jeff ID's monumentally silly heat exchange example

[Climate Realist]

UPDATE: Ids poll answers -

Question 1 – Would a minus 180 C block of ice the size of the moon and in lunar orbit warm or cool the Earth.

"Ids Answer – It would warm the Earth. No matter what you assumed the definition of lunar orbit to mean for the majority of the time, the ice chunk would find itself blocking a view of the blackness of space at 3K or minus 270C. In place of that minus 270C radiation which continually strikes the earth, a small section of the sky has a hotter, brighter minus 180C emission. Therefore – the Earth Warms.

Question 2 – Would it warm the Sun.

Ids Answer – It would warm the Sun for the same reasons as above. The tiny little pinpoint in the distance would probably add as much as a distant star, but it would add a little and that is all it takes.

Now, if you get all caught up in how much and could it be measured etc. etc. and so on, you are probably lousy at story problems. The answers are actually quite simple. It will be interesting to learn where I am wrong in the inevitable follow up comments ."

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/06...ment-51349

Jeff ID yet another Lukewarmer who claims to be a akeptic! He vigorously defends the Greenhouse effect and continues to falsely argue that a cold body can heat a warm body. I am posting on this thread as the anonymous answers (I have not registered to this forum). Read to the end where Jeff falsely brings in a Boloscope camera as "proof" (or to try and divert the discussion) and I shoot him down, using his own evidence links by pointing out that the detector requires a voltage to be passed over it for it to detect EM Radiation, therefore work input is involved. He then goes on from the sublime to the ridiculous by invoking some silly example involving opening your freezer door and "feeling colder from the freezer radiation". When people who claim to be "skeptics" cling so vigorously to the GHE theory and start spouting nonsense, one wonders..............!

If you read to the end, myself , Climate Realist posting as anonymous.

P.S. I have toned down this post.

[Richard111]

Here's how I see it. Photons from a -180C source (93K) will indeed arrive at the earth. The question is; can that radiation penetrate the atmosphere?

According to Wein's Law this will be radiation peaking at 31microns, way down in the long wave region of the IR band. The earth's surface is assumed to be at +15C, radiation peaking at 10microns (right in the window!), but it will also be radiating at 31microns, but 31microns seems to be well and truly blocked by water vapour!

So there may be some very slight effect on water vapour in the upper atmosphere but I very much doubt any of that specific radiation would reach the earth's surface.

I guess that was really a trick question involving NET radiation, so technically he can claim to be right.

[Climate Realist]

No he is not right, because the water molecule energy level that corresponds to 31microns will already be filled. The atmosphere will just scatter the long wave radiation. It cannot warm the earth or the earths atmosphere because the earth and atmosphere are already warmer than this.

Jeff ID is wrong, very wrong. Is the rest of his blog as poor as this?

Please don't fall into the warmists trap of confusing radiation with heat! Just because EM radiation arrives at a point it does not mean that the EM radiation will warm that point of matter. The EM radiation has to be of sufficient energy to be able to raise that point of matter higher than its previous energy state or the radiation will just be scattered.

I will now illustrate with an abstract example:-

Let's say we live in an imaginary world of free items moving along the road, and you make take an item if you do not already posses that item. Bicycles are moving along the road by themselves waiting for bicycleless people to pick them up, use them and this raise their personal energy level. If you already have one bicycle and don't need another, in fact if you don't even have the room in your shed or garage to store the bicycle you cannot take another bicycle because you can only ride one bike at a time. However, if a car comes along them you will take the car, as it raises your personal energy level further, but you don't need, nor can you drive two cars at once etc. BTW the rules are that you have to have shoes before you can have a bike, and a bike before you can have a car etc. You must raise your personal energy level stepwise by discrete quanta.

Thus it is with EM radiation and matter. The 15C earth and it's atmosphere will simply ignore the EM radiation from the -180C moon.

[Richard111]

Be aware! I am NOT a warmist! I prefer to talk science. I don't understand it all, I just do the best I can.

Now let us consider a parcel of air at some temperature and pressure appropriate to the upper troposphere where radiation can easily escape to space and likewise enter from space.

If we assume our parcel of air to occupy a volume of 1 cubic metre we can look up the total number of molecules. We can also derive the number of H2O molecules in that parcel of air. Some starting figures; at 8,500 metres altitude the pressure will be about 0.3315 bar and the temperature will be 233K (-40C) and molecule count will be 1.0305x10^25.

The Maxwell_Boltzmann kinetic energy distribution curves show that there will be molecules above and below the average kinetic energy. Statistically there will always be H2O molecules, in our parcel of air, moving below and above the energy level where photons at the 31micron band can be absorbed/emitted. Since our parcel of air is at -40C, considerably warmer than -180C, the photon intensity at the 31micron band departing from our parcel of air will be higher than the photon level from the -180C source. So our parcel of, while not being warmed by that incoming radiation, will be cooling that tiny fraction slower.

Our parcel of air, though very small, is still a part of the whole earth system.

[Climate Realist]

In the case of the 1 cubic meter or air, yes, some molecules will be below the average and some above, as you correctly point out due to the Maxwell_Boltzmann kinetic energy distribution curve, but these molecules are not PERMANENTLY below or above the average energy state for the temperature the energy states will be in a constant state of flux with energy, mostly in the form of kinetic collisions passing between the molecules in the imaginary 1M3 of air. The kinetic collisional energy alone (let alone any IR emitted by IRIGs) will be way above the temperature/ energy of the radiation from the -180C moon.

Therefore as the mass of air is in a constant state of energy exchange flux within itself the cold photon may be momentarily absorbed then very quickly re-emitted and scattered. This photon cannot warm the 1 meter cubed mass of air, because the air is already too hot to be warmed by the "cold" (lower energy) photon, and I doubt that there is much probability of the photon finding a -180C energy state in a molecule with which it can interact.

As I said cold cannot heat warm. Matter in a higher energy state cannot be heated by a lower energy state photon. The end result will be that the photon will merely be scattered until it finds a below -180C object it can warm.


Maxwell_Boltzmann kinetic energy distribution curve is not something to get hung up on, it is simply a measure of distribution of energy states in matter, it cannot in itself contravene the 2nd law of thermodynamics! It cannot allow the Greenhouse theory to exist either!

[Scpg02.]

Here is a part of a heat exchange thread on cycle 24 forum. GLC is a known warmer who believes that a cold body can radiate to a warm body and increase the heat. thought you guys might enjoy picking apart this post.

http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/ind...e=11#69348

Icefisher

You're wasting my time.

You are confusing lots of different issues and have completely moved from the original point (your usual tactic) which was whether the 'greenhouse ' effect violates the 2nd Law.

Clearly it doesn't. As shown, Spencer (and 99.9% of other physicists and climate scientists) know it doesn't. In your post you include this RS quote


In fact, this is happening all around us, all the time. The reason why we might be confused by the apparent incongruity of the statement is that we don’t spend enough time thinking about why the temperature of something is what it is.

Somehow you've then tried to justify the G&T paper with some garbled nonsense about convection not being included in models. The reason convection is not given the same prominence as radiation is because it is by radiation - and radiation alone - that the earth's climate system warms and cools. Convection shifts energy around but the Radiation balance determines earth's temperature. That is

The Incoming Radiation (from the Sun) Vs The Outgoing Radiation (from the surface and atmosphere).

A key factor in determining this balance is the Outgoing Radiation emitted from the drier, colder regions near the top of the atmosphere. It is here that radiation emission is dominated by CO2 (see any emission spectra graph) CO2 is, therefore, a sort of control knob. More CO2 means more emission from higher colder regions which means a lower amount of energy is emitted (S-B Law) and there is an imbalance. This will cause the surface and the lower atmosphere to warm until equilibrium is reached.

If there were no CO2 in the atmosphere there would be far less water vapour (some say none at all) and far less clouds so any speculation about the role of clouds (reflection or otherwise) and water vapour would be redundant.

CO2 does absorb LWIR. This can be shown in actual (not 'thought') experiments.
CO2 is present throughout the atmosphere but it's presence is particularly relevant at higher altitudes where water vapour is much more scarce (refer to Steve McIntyre's comment).
CO2 does absorb and emit radiation from the higher regions of the atmosphere as can be clearly seen from emission spectra graphs.
CO2 emits both upwards and downwards. This does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodyamics.

This is the dominant process in terms of outgoing energy emission. The rest is just fiddling at the margins. In fact the 'rest' is pretty much a feedback effect of CO2 (and solar).

[Sunsettommy]

Icefisher is already effectively kicking glc's butt.

Just read the last few pages to see that.It is a painful beating that must be read to see it.

I will soon start reading from the start for ALL the fascinating exchanges.

[Climate Realist]

That is even more stupid than the Jeff ID example!

Clearly the false AGW theory is starting to corrupt other areas of science.