Photon Foolishness and CO2 Alarmism
Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his 1905 discovery of the Law of Photoelectricity (discovered by Hertz already in 1887) based on an idea of light as a stream of light particles or light quanta later named photons, in a return to an idea of Newton abandoned since the discovery of light as an electromagnetic wave phenomenon captured by Maxwell’s equations published in 1873.
Einstein was not happy with the Prize motivation, since it explicitly stated that he was not awarded because of his theory of relativity, which he considered to be his main work, while he viewed his early work on photoelectricity rather as a misconception, since concerning photons/light quanta he confessed in 1951:
- All these 50 years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, “What are light quanta”? Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.
Unfortunately, the Tom, Dick and Harry misconceived idea of light as a stream of photon particles has survived into our days, in parallel with the wave picture, and has come to serve as the basis of CO2 alarmism in the form of Downwelling Long Wave Radiation DLWR of Back Radiation as a stream photons from the atmosphere to a warmer Earth surface with a massive global warming effect.
In the spirit of Bohr the particle and wave nature of light are not considered contradictory but simply complementary although behaving differently:
The Tom, Dick and Harry particle misconception is captured in an incorrect Planck-Stefan-Boltzmann Law PSBL stating that a black body at temperature T Kelvin emits/radiates heat energy in the form of light quanta/photons scaling with T4 (per unit area and time), independent of the surrounding temperature. The radiation has a Planck spectrum scaling with Tν2 with ν frequency (modulo high-frequency cut-off scaling with T).
The misconception is that the radiation is independent of the surrounding temperature based on a primitive idea of radiation as a stream of photon particles being ejected independent of surrounding. This misconception is widely spread and embraced by otherwise very knowledgable physicists and laymen.
A correct PSBL states black body radiation scaling with (T4−T4s), where Ts is the surrounding temperature. In this form the radiation can be seen as a wave resonance phenomenon between black body and surrounding, see Computational Blackbody Radiation.
The Planck spectrum scaling with Tν2 directly connects with the wave nature of light with the energy of a harmonic oscillator of frequency ν scaling with ν2.
To fit this into a particle idea Einstein suggested to view a photon as a localised wave packet of length scaling with 1ν and energy scaling with ν (captured in Planck’s formula E=hν with h Planck’s constant). The total radiation from a a stream of photons would then scale with ν2 since ν photons of length 1ν (traveling with the speed light) would pass in unit time.
Einstein thus in 1905 associated the energy E=hν to a concept of light quanta, which gave him the Nobel Prize in 1921 with the Law of Photoelectricity taking the form E+P=hν with P electron release energy and E kinetic energy of an emitted electron upon impact by one photon with energy hν, but then misled generations of physicists into a misconception of PSBL misused by CO2 alarmism, while his insight in 1951 that light quanta has no physical meaning passed by without notice.
This post directly connects to the following recent posts:
and to a wave analysis of the photoelectric effect (p 97). The idea of light as a stream of photon particles is as misconceived as an idea of sound as a stream of phonon particles which you spit out when you speak, while we all know that sound is transmitted by sound waves as a resonance phenomenon from loud speaker to your eardrums carried by air.
The idea of light from Proxima Centauri as the closest star to our own as a stream of photon particles traveling at the speed of light one by one all alone 40,208,000,000,000 km on a journey taking 4.37 years without ever getting lost in cosmic dust or atmosphere until finally being captured by a human eye, is to fantastic to be credible. Light as particles is not physics, as Einstein said.
PS Typical misconception of photon particles each one ejecting an electron thus creating photoelectricity:
Compare with Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation describing instead photoelectricity as a wave threshold phenomenon asking for a high enough frequency for electron ejection.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Claes and PSI Readers,,
At https://principia-scientific.com/buying-a-tesla-vs-pyrgeometer-realities/ I reviewed the NOAA Surfrad project and that their designers had initially goofed. And I had written: “If you do not go the link to review this early data [Fort Peck, July whatever date, 1995) measured and reported by this NOAA project, please do not criticize the honesty of the NOAA scientists and engineers. For you will find that these scientists and engineers, when they SAW the first data being measured realized that they had GOOFED.” And I asked: “What was their [the] goof?” And I added: “if there are no replies I must conclude that you doubters are all talk and NO GO.”
Given the fact you have written this new article and not replied to my request, I write this comment to warn any PSI Reader that it a waste their time to read what you, a mathematician, writes about any scientific topic.
For I remind (have written this before) a Reader that Richard Feynman, a physicist who helped design the first three nuclear bombs, which worked the first times they were tested, stated: “The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But “prove” used in this way really means “test,” in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, “The exception tests the rule.” Or, put another way, “The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.” (The Meaning of it All,1963, pp 15-16)
Have a good day, Jerry
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Claes Johnson
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Hi Jerry. I suggest that you read the material on Computational Blackbody Radiation https://computationalblackbody.wordpress.com
and the 18 pyrgeometer posts on my main blog https://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/search/label/pyrgeometer
and then we can have a discussion. In short, a pyrgeometer measures the temperature difference between instrument and object (Earth surface and atmospheric layer) in Kelvin, but reports radiative flux in W/m2 (massive Back Radiation double size of that absorbed by Earth surface from the Sun) based on a computation which lacks physics. It is fraud on massive scale!
Read, think and return with questions! Have a good day, Claes.
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Greg Spinolae
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Why are mathematicians (being one myself) reticent to accommodate the multi-state notions of physics.
LIGHT, under some conditions, BEHAVES like particles.
LIGHT, under some conditions, BEHAVES like a wave.
LIGHT, under some conditions, BEHAVES like both simultaneously.
At picoscopic magnitudes BOTH behave differently to how they behave at the macroscopic.
The physics AND mathematics of both physical “barriers” and diffracttion CHANGE at picoscopic magnitudes.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Claes,
At https://principia-scientific.com/buying-a-tesla-vs-pyrgeometer-realities/ I reviewed the NOAA Surfrad project and that their designers had initially goofed.
And I had written: “If you do not go the link to review this early data [Fort Peck, July whatever date, 1995) measured and reported by this NOAA project, please do not criticize the honesty of the NOAA scientists and engineers. For you will find that these scientists and engineers, when they SAW the first data being measured realized that they had GOOFED.” And I asked: “What was their [the] goof?” And I added: “if there are no replies I must conclude that you doubters are all talk and NO GO.”
Given the fact you have written this new article and not replied to my request as to what NOAA scientists immediately saw, why should any PSI Reader waste their time reading what you, a mathematician, writes about a scientific topic.
For I remind a PSI Reader that Richard Feynman, a physicist who helped design the first three nuclear bombs, which worked the first times they were tested, stated: “The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But “prove” used in this way really means “test,” in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, “The exception tests the rule.” Or, put another way, “The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.” (The Meaning of it All,1963, pp 15-16)
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Claes,
“Total downwelling (global) solar radiation is measured on the main platform by an upward looking broadband pyranometer. The direct component is monitored with a normal incidence pyrheliometer (or NIP) mounted on an automatic sun tracker, and the diffuse component is measured by a shaded pyranometer that rides on the solar tracker. Diffuse solar was not in the original suite of SURFRAD measurements. The shaded pyranometer was added in 1996 when a support platform with a shade arm mechanism was fitted to the trackers. A third pyranometer is mounted facing downward on a crossarm near the top of the 10-meter tower to measure solar radiation reflected from the surface. Another pyrgeometer, mounted facing downward on the crossarm atop the tower, senses upwelling long wave radiation. These measurements of upwelling and downwelling in the solar and infrared wavebands constitute the complete surface radiation budget.” (https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/surfrad/overview.html)
You just wrote; “In short, a pyrgeometer measures the temperature difference between instrument and object (Earth surface and atmospheric layer) in Kelvin, but reports radiative flux in W/m2.”
One question: it is easy to directly measure the temperature of the instrument; how is the temperature of the downward object (earth surface, grass leaves, dew) directly measured? Is not the pyrgeometer measuring the intensity of upward IR radiation flux being emitted by these various surfaces and converting the flux measurement into temperature with Planck’s law (equation), which assumes the radiation is discrete photons (not waves) and using some assumed emissivity of the surfaces emitting the IR radiation.
I doubt if anyone seriously questions the measurement of the upward IR radiation flux. Hence, it seems the pyrgeometer is working as expected when pointed downward. So, how can one claim that it is not working as expected when pointed upward. For here we know that the atmosphere commonly cools with increasing altitude so we really do not, standing on the ground, know what temperature of the cloud base is.
Here, I most borrow the common knowledge of the meteorologist R.C. Sutcliffe who wrote Weather & Climate (1966): “the clouds themselves emit heat continuously according to their temperature, almost as if they were black bodies.” Here we have observed evidence that the pyrgeometer performs as expected. For well before 1966 we had airplanes that could fly below the cloud and then fly in the base of the cloud to directly measure its temperature. And obviously the same plane with the same instrumentation could fly above the cloud and then in the top of the cloud. And if the cloud layer was reasonably thick, the temperature difference could be significant.
Thus, confirming that your attempted arguments about the pyrgeometer had to be absolutely WRONG.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Lit
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Have a look at the equation in the instruction sheet under downloads in the link. They use the SB-equation in a form that´s not correct. They add the rate of transfer from the surface to the emissive power of the atmosphere. Like this:
Atmosphere temperature:255K
Surface temperature:288K
Net transfer is calculated like this: σ(255^4-288^4)= -150W/m^2
The DLR is then calculated as -150W+σ(255^4)=89W/m^2
This means that on a cloudy day when the net transfer from the surface can be 0W/m^2(according to the pyrgeometer which only has a reach of 25m), the transfer from the atmosphere increases to several hundred watts. Surface transfers nothing according to Kipp&Zonen, and the atmosphere transfer hundreds of watts to the surface. Do you think that´s reasonable?
Transfer from the atmosphere shall be calculated the same way as net transfer from the surface, σ(T1^4-T1^4). The -150W/m^2 is the correct transfer for the atmosphere to surface, nothing shall be added to it. Transfer from the atmosphere is
σ(255^4-288^4)= -150W/m^2, and transfer from the surface to atmosphere is
σ(288^4-255^4)= 150W/m^2.
Claes is on point with his critique.
https://www.kippzonen.com/Product/16/CGR3-Pyrgeometer#.Ywc4eXFBxaQ
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Lit
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Edit button would be nice. σ(T1^4-T1^4) should be σ(T1^4-T2^4)
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Lit
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If you apply their version of the SB-equation to the surface the surface transfers to the atmosphere:
σ(288^4-255^4)+σ(288^4)=540W/m^2
Do you see the problem?
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Lit
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Actually, Claes link shows it differently. In his post the net radiation is calculated as
σ(255^4-288^4)+σ(288^4)=240W/m^2
They claim that the atmosphere transfers more to the surface even though it´s colder.
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Claes Johnson
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Hi Jerry, I appreciate that you are open to discussion about the design of a pyrgeometer supposed to measure massive back radiation or Downwelling Long Wave Radiation DWLR of a magnitude of two extra Suns. Massive. If you read the manual of Kipp and Zonen pyrgeometer displayed in the discussion with Will Happer (which was terminated by Will before any conclusion was reached) you see that temperature is measured by a thermopile (which measures the difference of temperature at its two ends scaling with a voltage) which is then translated to massive DWLR by assuming that the pyrgeometer radiates massive Upwelling Long Wave Radiation to outer space at 0 Kelvin, which is however not the case since it is in radiative contact with the atmosphere and not with outer space (modulo the small atmospheric window). Massive DWLR is thus reported on the display of the pyrgeometer from a massively false premise, which is used as massive fraud to propagate massive CO2 alarmism. I think you can understand this if you read the pyrgeometer manual. Ok? Have a good day, Claes
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