There IS backradiation... Has to be.. Photons don't decide where to go depending on the destination temperature. NET FLOW is upwards. Doesn't violate ANY damn principle.. The warming of the lower trop simply acts to SLOW DOWN the ENERGY transfered from the Gray Body Surface upwards.. Remember the diff between POWER (instantaneous) and ENERGY (over time).
You and ssdd are stuck on the paradigm that this means the net warming direction changes. It doesn't.. Take the sun out of the picture. Desert at night.
1) What is the surface COOLING profile (over time) on a cloudless night?
2) What is the surface COOLING profile (over time) on a cloudy night?
THere's your backradiation effect..
THe reason your backradiation oven doesn't work >>>>>>> --- there's NO NET DOWNWARD FLOW --- ever..
((OK maybe BRIEFLY LOCALLY with warmer air aloft and other weather transients. ))
Check the plug.. That's what an electronics engineer always does first..
No you are missing the point here. Net flow, or absolute, IF there is back-radiation yet it cannot warm it's source it's a moot claim as far as AGW theory goes. If the process slows heat loss as you just said, and Ian now claims (despite past claims to the contrary by him) than it's an insulator and NOT a secondary heating mechanism.
An insulator does not create more heat, it slows heat loss. Now if Ian's previous claim via Dr. Spencer and co. is to be believed, backradiation can produce additional warming of the source. IF Ian is now claiming that it doesn't warm the source more but only slows heat loss, which we claimed all along, then he is in fact backpeddling from his previous claims..
Thermal properties of gases (especially GH gases due to additional the molecular bonds), are directly effected by their temperature. Meaning more heat in, the faster it sheds that heat. Same thing in reverse, less heat in the better an insulator they are. Further, and at that same time Add heat, and convection increases, remove heat and convection decreases.
Air minus convection is a great thermal insulator, add convection and it's a great heat dissipation/transfer system. We aren't discussing solid, liquid, or a porous material with trapped air pockets inside here, we are discussing air moving relatively freely and able to convect heat away very well.
As I said before and will continue to say, the entire system is an excellent heat pump, with limited thermal insulating properties. Limited by air flow and the inherent thermal properties of gases.
Compress the gasses to the point they are near liquid, a different story. But they aren't here and so they react as gases do to heat.
You can call it "net flow" all you want, the fact remains if the "back-radiation" that is claimed is actually going on, and as you and Ian say it has no effect on the warmer source, than it's a moot claim..
All things radiate some amount of heat, yet that does not mean that radiated heat can warm it's warmer heat source. Call it phase differential, call it wavelength variance, call it magic for all I care, the point remains it doesn't effect noticeable change in it's source.
If you heat up a iron bar until it's red hot, and wrap it in a blanket, it will still cool down, slower than without the blanket, but it won't get hotter, it will cool.
That's the very reason we cannot create perfect or even near-perfect heat engines. The entire process would require infinite or near-infinite reusable energy from a source.
PS.. Before I forget again. You're forgetting the wave-like properties of EM radiation. You are doing what Ian and Spencer does and treating it as a particle only. As SSD pointed out before if it's a particle, it can flow back due to the shear space available to miss the incoming source particle. But if it's a wave than it is a wave and cannot flow back towards it's greater source. What we have in our understanding right now is wave-particle duality, meaning to our understanding it shows properties of both equally. Dismissing the wave property to suit a theory makes the theory dubious at best. As I said before, the entire system reacts and responds more like a heat pump than an insulator. The thermal properties of gases and convection alone would lead to this conclusion, add in the complete failure of climate modeling and predictions based on them, the failure of rises in GH gases to show additional warming in the last decade and a half, and then realize that 180 years of CO2 increases and we have not even a 2 degree rise in temps globally.. Yet every year in my state we go from 90 degree and up summers and 30 degree and below winters, and this drastic drop is due to our position relative to the sun. SOmething which warmers and luke-warmers claim to have less an impact on climate then a trace gas...
