Firstly, this isn't an argument. It's more a rant.
Secondly, if there is an argument being made, I'm not sure what that argument is.
Thirdly .... well let's get into it.
The author states the following "Climate science blundered into a blind alley by assuming the Earth emits IR as an isolated black body in a vacuum by abusing the ‘back radiation’ concept, an imaginary signal which only appears because of the shield behind the detector."
This is complete nonsense. The whole point of climate science is that they included a little thing called 'the atmosphere' which sort of renders the 'blackbody in vacuum' argument silly. I simply don't understand this 'signal which only appears because of the shield behind the detector' nonsense. Either something radiates energy or it doesn't. You don't get to ignore that by appealing to mystical shields and waving your hands saying it's imaginary.
Now, having made this statement the author goes on to discuss convection. So which is it? An isolated earth in a vacuum OR an earth with an atmosphere? How does one have convection with no medium to transfer heat? Oops ... seems like the author changed his/her tune and decided that there *IS* an atmosphere involved in it all, which makes the 'isolated blackbody in a vacuum' a contradiction in his/her own argument.
So, let's take it that the author is talking about a blackbody surrounded by an atmosphere. I suspect that they don't really have a PhD in Applied Physics ... if they do, they should go back to their second year electromag notes and look at the Poynting vector. You see, if the author actually read the chapter, they'd find that the equation they've used for the Poynting vector includes "epsilon nought" or the permittivity of free space. Ooops, free space isn't an atmosphere.
Even if you wanted to use the Poynting vector, you'd have problems. You could insert the permittivity of the atmosphere but then there's an issue. That permittivity would be for a homogeneous, isotropic, dielectric medium. The atmosphere density changes with depth, and it is composed of a mixture of gases. So you'd have to include a permittivity that is dependent on location. Now Maxwell did that ... you include the polarizability of the medium which then has the effect of making the permittivity wavelength and wavevector dependent. So, in other words, to do the Poynting vector calculation correctly you'd have to include the dispersion relationship for electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths passing through the atmosphere.
So either he/she is wrong about what climatologists believe (blackbody earth in vacuum) or he contradicts himself/herself with discussions on convection and Poynting vectors without accounting for the atmosphere.
In short ... it's nonsense.
The original post is by "spartacusisfree" AKA mydogsgotnonose or AlecM. His expositions crop up all over the web and I am never sure about them.
However, I am also not sure that the point about the permittivity of the atmosphere not being the same as the permittivity of free space is a valid debunking either. The relative permittivity of air is almost exactly 1. In other words the permittivity of free space and air are essentially the same.
The problem is that it's mostly a bunch of double-talk, signifying very little. Whoever the author is is stringing together technical terms in a more or less meaningless fashion, designed to impress people that don't know a Poynting vector from a pointing vector. He uses terms without being at all precise about them (e.g. "annihilated"). The weird thing is that he doesn't even seem to know what process engineers do
If he really thinks he's onto something he needs to write it up--including the math--and publish it. As it is this is little more than gibberish sprinkled with terms from physics.
Hmm I am surprised that they left out evaporation, that is a major transport system for heat from the surface to the top of the troposphere, maybe that is classed as part of convection.
Makes nonsense of the claim, you go against the laws of physics, thermodynamics and chemistry.
What does mother Earth have to say about this? perhaps I am not warming anymore.
Global Warming ended in 2012 and earth's environment is safe. Mike
It violates the Rothschild angle of the dangle of Al Gore's Socialist Beach Mansion.
I'll check back in 6 hours to see if anyone can answer. I pass.
".... There can be very little GHG-AGW by a ‘GHG blanket’ because GHG thermal emission from the atmosphere annihilates most of that band emission from the surface. The physics is simple and is taught to all process engineers in decent engineering schools: e.g. MIT, Imperial, Cambridge. The most basic axiom from Maxwell’s Equations is that the net IR energy flow at any point is the vector sum of the Poynting vectors arriving at that point in space.
Engineers calculate it as the difference between the theoretical S-B emission for the isolated bodies in radiative equilibrium. Because IR surface IR emission is much reduced, the Aarhenius GHG blanket is not possible and anyone who believes in it betrays lack of basic physics’ knowledge.
The real GHE is mostly the rise in temperature needed to overcome reduced surface emissivity. Climate science blundered into a blind alley by assuming the Earth emits IR as an isolated black body in a vacuum by abusing the ‘back radiation’ concept, an imaginary signal which only appears because of the shield behind the detector.
Adding it to net UP IR recreates the UP PV, most of which can do no work. The Schwarzchild approximation in Houghton’s treatise fails at boundaries because there the errors can’t cancel out. In time, us engineering professionals expect a heartfelt apology from those in climate science and other disciplines who persist in their calamitous heat transfer and generation mistakes, born out of ignorance.
Climate science dismisses reality. It’s the Poynting vector argument.
At the Earth’s surface, at any wavelength, net radiative energy flux is the vector sum of all Poynting vectors, see the Wikipedia article. There is subtle additional physics but climate science’s ‘black body’ claim can’t be true. Sorry, but this is heat transfer reality. Most heat transfer in the atmosphere is convective. You would have to heat a 0.85 emissivity solid to ~100 deg. C before IR radiation exceeds natural convection.
This Thermopedia article is a good primer for coupled convection and radiation: http://www.thermopedia.com/content/204/ If only climate science had looked at the process engineering literature, it wouldn’t have led us on an expensive wild goose chase and the humiliation of its predictions being overturned by empirical observation. Step 1 to recovery will be to accept that the pyrgeometers measure the vector sum of the Poynting vectors in the view angle, not real energy flux.
The average Poynting vector for a plane wave is epsilon0.c.E0^2/2 W/m^2 and is in the direction of propagation. The net IR radiative energy at the Earth’s surface is the vector sum of all IR PVs arriving at that point. This is elementary physics derived from Maxwell’s Equations which apply to all electromagnetic phenomena, of which light is but one manifestation. Meteorologists are taught incorrect physics: there is no ‘downwelling LW’ energy; it’s the vector sum of the PVs in the viewing angle of the detector and if from a lower temperature atmosphere can do no thermodynamic work because it is completely annihilated at the surface. This is well known to the pyrgeometer manufacturers who specify you need two, back to back,to measure net radiative energy flux: http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx This failure by Meteorology and Climate Science is probably the biggest scientific cock up in History, a fact not opinion. And my PhD is in Applied Physics.
The spectrometric data showing the atmosphere emits thermal IR in GHG bands is real. However, because the measurement is of the vector sum of the Poynting Vectors in the viewing angle, it is no measurement of real energy flux. If the atmosphere is at a lower temperature than the Earth’s surface, all that ‘downwelling energy’ is annihilated at the Earth’s surface by its IR emission, the net result being reduced surface emissivity in those bands. This is self-evident to any competent physicist or engineer. The fact that it has been misinterpreted is not proof of incorrect physics. Ask any objective professional physicist to comment on this argument, and they will agree there has been an awfully big cock up.
As an aside, read up the reports by professional physicists on climate issues and they are full of caveats to distance the authors from the incorrect physics. A good example is here, an official APS publication: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm In Eq 14 they analyse the lower atmosphere emissivity needed to make an energy balance with the Earth’s surface emissivity = 1. This is a fudge because there is no analytical solution because the Earth’s emissivity can also fall and there is an infinite set of solutions. The reality is that the atmosphere model based on ‘back radiation’ doing work and DOWN TOA emissivity = 1 is false and has to be corrected. ..."
