Let`s have a vote on back radiation

polarbear

I eat morons
Jan 1, 2011
2,375
410
140
Canada
Without Roy Spencer`s "back radiation" there is no positive feed back from a cooler body to a hotter one and any "global warming" can`t come from 380 ppm CO2. Since Roy has been debunked by a whole lot of engineers he avoids debating this perpetual motion machine principle and the only way we could debate him since then is like Clint Eastwood debated Obama.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhCfjh_IlzI"]Dirty Harry debates Obama chair (anonymous style) - YouTube[/ame]
But I`m not a Hollywood movie actor so instead I`ll let Roy speak here through his quotes:
Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still « Roy Spencer, Ph. D.
Even my oldest daughter, a realtor who has an aversion to things scientific, got the right answer when I used this example on her.
IR-example-thermal-vac-2-heated-plates1.gif
If Clint Eastwood were an engineer he would have said:
Dr. Spencer:
Your thought experiment was interesting. A more accurate title would be “Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can APPEAR To Make Warmer Objects Warmer Still.” The cooler bar did not actually make the heated bar warmer. You have shown the value of insulation. You have also shown the value of how semantics plays in scientific discussion. I’m sure that those of the Catastrophic AGW faith are making great use of your blog’s title. From what I have read, one of the reasons the AGW theory fails is because it requires CO2 to be a super-insulator.
To which Roy replied:
I purposely phrased the title in a somewhat ambiguous manner because those how say the opposite (who disagree with me) do the same thing.
and adds:
Examples are All Around Us

Examples of objects with lower temperatures causing objects with higher temperatures to become even higher still are all around us.

For instance, in terms of these most basic heating and cooling concepts (energy gain and energy loss), the same thing happens when you put a blanket over yourself when it is cold. The blanket stays cooler than your skin, but it nevertheless makes your skin warmer than if the cooler blanket was not there. Even though the direction of flow of heat never changes (it is always from warmer to cooler objects), a cooler object can still make a warm object even hotter.
Even Clint Eastwood would have noticed that a insulating blanket is not the same as what Roy is trying to pass off as "back radiation" and would have grilled Roy on that point:
Roy, if all you are doing is demonstrating that thermal insulation will raise the temperature of a heated object
But Roy, you are making a different claim. You are postulating something called “radiative-insulation”, and suggesting that it will act like thermal insulation. That is much more problematical
And if Clint Eastwood would be an engineer he would have pointed out a few facts to Roy Spencer:
photons are NOT heat, not even IR photons.
I suspect this corruption of basic physics is due to ulterior motives. In your case, Roy, your work on cloud feedbacks depends on there being a greenhouse effect due to back/downdwelling IR. Take this away and much of your research and that of others becomes worthless
Roy replied:
OK, then if the IR photonic detector measures one intensity of “EM waves” from an object colder than itself, and a different intensity from the object when at a different temperature, would that be evidence that colder objects emit IR radiation toward warmer objects?
If not, why not?
I’ve discussed this issue with someone I work with, a physicist, and he pointed out there are photonic IR detectors. I see from internet searches that these can operate at room temperature.

If such photonic detectors can measure IR photons coming from a cold surface, would you consider that as evidence that IR radiation is indeed emitted by a colder object in the direction of a warmer object?
Clint Eastwood would have said:
If the greenhouse effect were real (and think about this please Dr Spencer!) then the ice would warm the vodka and the wamer vodka could cool the ice.
And if there were a few house wives and and a few cooks in the audience who have a solar oven / fridge they would have bust out laughing...:

Let me google that for you

Lets pick a couple .:

How to Make and Use the Solar Funnel Cooker
by Steven E. Jones, Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University
How to Use the Solar Funnel as a Refrigerator/Cooler
the BYU Solar Funnel Cooker can be used - at night - as a refrigerator. Here is how this is done.

The Solar Funnel Cooker is set-up just as you would during sun-light hours,
The funnel is directed at the dark night sky. It should not "see" any buildings or even trees.
It helps to place 2 (two) bags around the jar instead of just one, with air spaces between the bags and between the inner bag and the jar. HDPE and ordinary polyethylene bags work well, since polyethylene is nearly transparent to infrared radiation, allowing it to escape into the "heat sink" of the dark sky.

During the day, the sun's rays are reflected onto the cooking vessel which becomes hot quickly. At night, heat from the vessel is radiated outward, towards empty space, which is very cold indeed (a "heat sink").

As a result, the cooking vessel now becomes a small refrigerator. We routinely achieve cooling of about 20º F (10º C) below ambient air temperature using this remarkably simple scheme.
Or this one :
http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/tenthings/SpaceFridge.pdf

A solar oven is designed to capture solar energy to heat something to a higher temperature than the surrounding air. You put an object in a mirrored box with a glass lid. Radiation comes in, reflects, and strikes the object in the box, warming it up. Basically, the object “sees” more light from the sun than it otherwise would.
But suppose we turned this idea around. If you put an object in the solar oven but replace the top with something that transmits infrared.
Then we put the box out at night and point it at open sky.
What happens? It makes a refrigerator—a “space refrigerator.” The object cools to a lower temperature than the surrounding air!
Oh what was that You said before Roy?..:
I’ve discussed this issue with someone I work with, a physicist, and he pointed out there are photonic IR detectors. I see from internet searches that these can operate at room temperature.

If such photonic detectors can measure IR photons coming from a cold surface, would you consider that as evidence that IR radiation is indeed emitted by a colder object in the direction of a warmer object?
yes-virginia-cooler-objects-can-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still ?
Even your oldest daughter, a realtor who has an aversion to things scientific, got the right answer when You used this example on her ?

So lets vote on Roy Spencer`s "back radiation" where a cold object can make a warm object even warmer global warming back radiation miracle photons that defy all laws of thermodynamics.

Would You A.) rather sit in the desert sun under a "back radiation" sun umbrella or B.) do You prefer to "cool off" out in the open with Roy Spencer ?

And before anybody comes in here and switches the subject ( again) to the "melting glaciers" trying to prove that this crap is science..I don`t care which..don`t shoot your mouth off like Roy and his stupid "Yes Virginina" thought(less) experiment...and before You accuse us that our fossil CO2 can be linked to a "record low" glacier thickness on Greenland without first explaining where all the heat came from that evaporated all that water somewhere else so it could fall as snow and freeze to mile thick glaciers in Greenland .
If You do I`ll shoot You like fish in a barrel or worse.
Good night, I`m done and the "Yes Virginia" skeptic fridge I tried out...using a 6 inch bushnell reflector telescope wrapped with fiberglass insulation, pointed out the closed (!!) bedroom window froze a styro-foam cup full of water solid !
 
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I vote for CO2 being able to absorb and scatter certain frequencies of outbound radiation from the surface. because roughly half of this scattered radiation is directed back at the surface instead of escaping directly into space that means the efficiency of cooling by IR radiation has been reduced.

because the sun keeps adding the same amount of energy, if you reduce the outgoing energy there is a small temporary imbalance leading to the change of temperature or change of method for heat loss at different points of the pathway from input to output.

I think the change in temperature is small, and mitigated by other heat transport systems that quickly move to re-establish equilibrium of this open system.

while I must admit I did not read all of your lonnnnng and rambling post, I am interested as to why you and the engineer call the scattering of IR a perpetual motion machine. please describe the mechanism because I am sure we can easily find where your thinking has gone wrong by some simple error like Zeno's paradox.
 
Correct on the back radiation, Ian, wrong on the same energy. The total TSI has been down a bit for a while. But the warming has continued.
 
OK. I use a UV lamp for prospecting and mineral identification. A crystal of scheelite floureces brilliant star blue in shortwave UV. It does not matter whether the lamp is warm and the crystal is cold, or the lamp is cold and the crystal is warm. That is because the cause of the flourescence is at the atomic level, a quantum effect. The same for the backscatter radiation of CO2 and infrared. No matter what the temperature of the CO2 molecule, if it recieves absorbs a photon, then emits one or more photons, multiple lower energy photons, the temperature of whatever those photons hits is as irrelevant as the temperature of the emittling atom or molecule. If absorbed and not relected, it will deliver it's energy to whatever it hits. Hot, cold, or somewhere inbetween.
 
I vote for CO2 being able to absorb and scatter certain frequencies of outbound radiation from the surface. because roughly half of this scattered radiation is directed back at the surface instead of escaping directly into space that means the efficiency of cooling by IR radiation has been reduced.

because the sun keeps adding the same amount of energy, if you reduce the outgoing energy there is a small temporary imbalance leading to the change of temperature or change of method for heat loss at different points of the pathway from input to output.

So where is the hotspot and where is the inevetable warming as CO2 has steadily increased?
 
May as well vote for pigs flying as a transfer of energy from the cold atmosphere to the warm surface of the earth. One is just as likely as the other.
 
The same for the backscatter radiation of CO2 and infrared. No matter what the temperature of the CO2 molecule, if it recieves absorbs a photon, then emits one or more photons, multiple lower energy photons, the temperature of whatever those photons hits is as irrelevant as the temperature of the emittling atom or molecule. If absorbed and not relected, it will deliver it's energy to whatever it hits. Hot, cold, or somewhere inbetween.

Can you prove that? Assumptions, even assumptions by physicists are just that and shouldn't be confused with observed fact.
 
So according to the kooks, the last century of physics is all completely wrong.

Why? Because their political cult has declared it must be so. And they're the only one's who see it. All those egghead scientists are just soooooo stupid.

Good luck with that.
 
So according to the kooks, the last century of physics is all completely wrong.

Why? Because their political cult has declared it must be so. And they're the only one's who see it. All those egghead scientists are just soooooo stupid.

Good luck with that.

The last 40 years or so of atmospheric "physics" is wrong. Atmospheric physics ie climate science has deviated from classical physics. You won't find backradiation being taught in classical physics.
 
I vote for CO2 being able to absorb and scatter certain frequencies of outbound radiation from the surface. because roughly half of this scattered radiation is directed back at the surface instead of escaping directly into space that means the efficiency of cooling by IR radiation has been reduced.

because the sun keeps adding the same amount of energy, if you reduce the outgoing energy there is a small temporary imbalance leading to the change of temperature or change of method for heat loss at different points of the pathway from input to output.

So where is the hotspot and where is the inevetable warming as CO2 has steadily increased?

Why am I accountable for a faulty computer model prediction? When did I say there was s hotspot?
 
Why am I accountable for a faulty computer model prediction? When did I say there was s hotspot?

A hotspot, or at least a warm spot would be the inevetable result of your idea of slowing heat's escape from the atmosphere.

How about the fact that you can only measure downdwelling radiation if you cool the instrument to a temperature far below the ambient? All of those so called measurements of downdwelling radiation have been made with instruments cooled with liquid nitrogen.
 
Without Roy Spencer`s "back radiation" there is no positive feed back from a cooler body to a hotter one and any "global warming" can`t come from 380 ppm CO2. Since Roy has been debunked by a whole lot of engineers he avoids debating this perpetual motion machine principle and the only way we could debate him since then is like Clint Eastwood debated Obama.

Before we leap off into the vote and the big finale --- I've got an issue with the question.

Part of the hubbub here is that -- There is a diff between ENERGY and POWER. Both of these apply to thermal transfers. When you look only at STEADY STATE endpoints, you may know where the energy went -- but you don't account for the RATE of transfer.

In your simple example -- introducing the cooler bar doesn't affect the thermal energy in the hotter bar, but it changes the discharge rate (power) that is lost from the hotter bar. Because the introduction of another heat source changes the relative thermal potentials in the tank.

You need NOT have transfers from colder to warmer objects to make redeem Spencer's ego and reputation.. You only have to IMPEDE the rate of thermal discharge and therefore raise the heat RETENTION of the hot bar.
 
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So where is the hotspot and where is the inevetable warming as CO2 has steadily increased?

The inevitable warming has been amply demonstrated by amazing devices called "thermometers".

The hotspot is more complicated. There never was a "hotspot" predicted. More like a "warmspot" in the upper troposphere over the tropics. And data seems to say the warmspot is there. It's a remarkably difficult thing to measure. Satellite measurements of the upper troposphere are a recent thing. Previous measurements could only be done by weather balloons, and those have major issues concerning lack of coverage in the tropics and different calibration schemes over different areas and different decades. The balloon data to work with just isn't there, so they've had to use different proxies, and those seem to show the upper tropospheric warming in the tropics. Like this study.

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n12/full/ngeo1025.html

The more interesting thing is the stratospheric cooling. That's completely counter-intuitive, but it's exactly what the models predicted, and it's been measured beyond any shadow of doubt. Major, major win there for AGW theory, and nobody has come up with any theory to explain it aside from AGW theory. AGW theory successfully explains the observed data and other theories don't, which is why AGW theory has the credibility.
 
The same for the backscatter radiation of CO2 and infrared. No matter what the temperature of the CO2 molecule, if it recieves absorbs a photon, then emits one or more photons, multiple lower energy photons, the temperature of whatever those photons hits is as irrelevant as the temperature of the emittling atom or molecule. If absorbed and not relected, it will deliver it's energy to whatever it hits. Hot, cold, or somewhere inbetween.

Can you prove that? Assumptions, even assumptions by physicists are just that and shouldn't be confused with observed fact.

You really are that fucking dumb.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
 
So according to the kooks, the last century of physics is all completely wrong.

Why? Because their political cult has declared it must be so. And they're the only one's who see it. All those egghead scientists are just soooooo stupid.

Good luck with that.

The last 40 years or so of atmospheric "physics" is wrong. Atmospheric physics ie climate science has deviated from classical physics. You won't find backradiation being taught in classical physics.

Can't find plate tectonics being taught prior to 1950, either. As for your statement that the physics being taught for the last 40 years is wrong, are you an atmospheric physicist? Are you a physicist at all? And if you are not, why should I consider your unsupported opinion equal to that of atmospheric physicists?
 
polarbear's experiment-
A solar oven is designed to capture solar energy to heat something to a higher temperature than the surrounding air. You put an object in a mirrored box with a glass lid. Radiation comes in, reflects, and strikes the object in the box, warming it up. Basically, the object “sees” more light from the sun than it otherwise would.
But suppose we turned this idea around. If you put an object in the solar oven but replace the top with something that transmits infrared.
Then we put the box out at night and point it at open sky.
What happens? It makes a refrigerator—a “space refrigerator.” The object cools to a lower temperature than the surrounding air!

why are you presenting examples to support my side? the low emissivity of the mirrors, coupled with the easy egress of radiation from all sides of the object will of course allow it to become cooler. that's the point! you have effectively increased the radiating surface, and created a virtual cooler environment by the use of mirrors to send most of the radiation straight out in the coldest direction.

this is the reverse of Spencer's experiment. instead of adding a plate to increase the first object's temperature, you are subtracting a plate in a virtual way to decrease its temperature. thanks for the help but I am not sure why you did it.
 
why are you presenting examples to support my side? the low emissivity of the mirrors, coupled with the easy egress of radiation from all sides of the object will of course allow it to become cooler. that's the point! you have effectively increased the radiating surface, and created a virtual cooler environment by the use of mirrors to send most of the radiation straight out in the coldest direction.

If there were downdwelling radiation, it would not be the coldest direction. Downdwelling radiation would prevent the cooling. There is no way that the interior of the box could drop to a temperature below the ambient if it were capturing downdwelling radiation of the magnitude that warmists and lukewarmers claim.
 
I have been sitting back watching the responses. So far even the responses the defenders of AGW have been far more intelligent than many of the responses that Roy Spencer, who originated the WARMING "back-radiation" effect gave.
For example OldRocks said:
OK. I use a UV lamp for prospecting and mineral identification. A crystal of scheelite floureces brilliant star blue in shortwave UV. It does not matter whether the lamp is warm and the crystal is cold, or the lamp is cold and the crystal is warm. That is because the cause of the flourescence is at the atomic level, a quantum effect. The same for the backscatter radiation of CO2 and infrared. No matter what the temperature of the CO2 molecule, if it recieves absorbs a photon, then emits one or more photons, multiple lower energy photons, the temperature of whatever those photons hits is as irrelevant as the temperature of the emittling atom or molecule. If absorbed and not relected, it will deliver it's energy to whatever it hits. Hot, cold, or somewhere inbetween.

There is no implicit violation of Kirchhoffs second law or any violation of the second law of thermodynamics in the way he has interpreted his observation.
If I wanted to split hairs in order to unfairly discredit a counter argument like that I could harp on a few minor & irrelevant errors.

On the other hand the above statement does not substantiate Roy Spencer`s claim that photons emitted from a colder object can warm a warmer object.
So if OldRocks would have handed in a paper like that in a thermodynamics exam I would not have failed it...but as an engineer I have to point out that photons are not HEAT energy, no matter at what wavelength.
Yes, any photon at any wavelength represents an EQUIVALENT amount of "heat energy" but that does not mean that it is CONVERTED into heat and can elevate temperature, which is what Roy Spencer is doing in his "Yes Virginia" deception.

No matter how often and how many engineers,...also NASA engineers have reminded Roy that a photon detector is not a thermometer he keeps insisting that it is, because it is possible to calibrate a photon detector so it can be used as a thermometer.
A Thermometer however is an entirely different principle because it can not only register the heat flow it receives from surrounding matter by conduction, but also responds, however only in part to the "heat" it registers from photons that can be transmitted through a vacuum. But only the part of the energy of these photons that have been converted into heat with the material of the thermometer .
Like the glass and the red dye and alcohol.
A photon detector for example a light sensitive diode or a "photo-transistor" or any "photo-multiplier" does not have to convert photons into heat energy and actually warm up anything in order to measure the energy photons carry.

No matter how often that is explained to Roy Spencer he either just pretends not to understand the difference or he really does not understand.
For the last 6 months he simply refuses to engage in any debate which centers on that point.

Okay now to IanC`s comment:
I vote for CO2 being able to absorb and scatter certain frequencies of outbound radiation from the surface.
That`s not what we are voting on here. CO2 absorbs IR, so do many other substances and and an entire sector of modern analytical chemistry relies on that fact.
And then You added:
while I must admit I did not read all of your lonnnnng and rambling post, I am interested as to why you and the engineer call the scattering of IR a perpetual motion machine.

Which tells me it was`nt long enough because You still did not catch on at which point Roy Spencer has either gone off the deep end or started to lie and cheat deliberately.
If You consider the length of the text it takes to quote even only a minimum of the part of thermodynamics where Roy Spencer is totally full of b.s. then I`ll try and explain it to You the way I`ld have to explain it to someone who has no back ground in science instead of quoting the science itself.

Let me google that for you

Pick any one and in almost every one has a "user manual instruction " similar to this one

How to Use the Solar Funnel as a Refrigerator/Cooler

1. The funnel is directed at the dark night sky. It should not "see" any buildings or even trees. (The thermal radiation from walls, trees, or even clouds will diminish the cooling effect.).

See this is the part where Roy Spencer still manages to fool You.

Diminishing
the (radiative) cooling is stating it correctly.
But that`s not what Roy is claiming. Roy claims :
"Yes Virgina cold objects can warm a warmer object even warmer still"
And at that point any engineer will tell You flat out that he has gone from photon & quantum physics to fiction and perpetual motion:
Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Equivalence of the statements
Derive Kelvin Statement from Clausius Statement

Suppose there is an engine violating the Kelvin statement: i.e.,one that drains heat and converts it completely into work in a cyclic fashion without any other result. Now pair it with a reversed Carnot engine as shown by the graph. The net and sole effect of this newly created engine consisting of the two engines mentioned is transferring heat \Delta Q=Q\left(\frac{1}{\eta}-1\right) from the cooler reservoir to the hotter one, which violates the Clausius statement. Thus a violation of the Kelvin statement implies a violation of the Clausius statement, i.e. the Clausius statement implies the Kelvin statement. We can prove in a similar manner that the Kelvin statement implies the Clausius statement, and hence the two are equivalent.
300px-Deriving_Kelvin_Statement_from_Clausius_Statement.svg.png


And the radiative transfer equivalent of the above law that Roy Spencer is either too stupid to comprehend or is deliberately falsifying and "explained" it to a "Virginia" which has no science background and he managed to convince with that diminishing radiative transfer is the same as warming an object.

So then what`s happening here....?
The funnel is directed at the dark night sky. It should not "see" any buildings or even trees. (The thermal radiation from walls, trees, or even clouds will diminish the cooling effect.).

Why don`t You just go ahead and try it out...
If You had, then You would observe that the object You want to cool in a "solar fridge" will drop to a minimum temperature which is the same as the cloud or the building where the "extra" photons came from that DIMINISH the cooling You would get if Your solar fridge reflector is pointed at a clear night sky.
There is no way You can make the object in the solar fridge warmer than the object that emitted the "Yes Virginina" photons....and actually heat the warm object with a colder one...now You are smack in the middle of what engineers call the perpetual motion principle and what climate science has been selling to the public.
I`m an engineer and I say yes, CO2 can in fact DIMINISH a very tiny fraction of the radiative transfer, but that is a an entirely insignificant fraction in comparison to what water vapor DIMINISHES .
The important thing is to understand the difference between diminish and WARMING !
Spencer`s dumb "Virginia" may never be able to understand it,...and I`m not sure if Spencer can`t either or is hoping that no engineer can explain that difference to all these "Virginias" .....because their first response is similar to You`s when You say:

while I must admit I did not read all of your lonnnnng and rambling post
Well IanC, at least I have tried !
The important thing is that Roy or any of the other quacks that use these "Spencer photons" to make a case for AGW can`t fool any engineers and that these "Spencer" photons exist only in "Virginia`s" Lalah Land and not in the real universe..
else this could really happen:
tvmeltedversion2bymaste.jpg


melted+face.jpg
 

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