What is Energy?
Not “Watt is energy”. In physics, and what should be everywhere else in anything calling itself science, what is the unit of energy? The unit of energy has a name, and it is called a Joule, after English physicist James Prescott Joule. A Joule, or Joules, are the unit of energy in science. There are other equivalent metrics for energy such as “ergs” or “electron volts” but they are all equivalent to a certain number of Joules.
Watts, on the other hand, are a unit of flux. In particular, the temporal flux of Joules, meaning the number of Joules being “used” or “passing by” in one second. The fundamental definition and unit of a Watt is a Joule per second, so, W = J/s where the letters abbreviate the relevant quantities. So, one Watt is one Joule of energy used in one particular second. We call this flux.
When we get to radiation or light, and the measure of its strength, these are measured in Watts per square meter, which means Joules per second per square meter, and this is called flux density. It is a number of Joules, being used each second, over the area of a square meter. W/m2 = J/s/m2. These are the units for the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation which is the single equation that exists for converting radiation, or light, into temperature. Why I mean by that is that the equation tells you the temperature of the light given its intensity, or conversely, the intensity of the light given its temperature. The equation tells you that light has a direct equivalence to temperature, just like mass has a direct equivalence to energy. The latter equation is Einstein’s E = mc2, which shows that mass has an equivalence to energy. Likewise, radiation has an equivalence to temperature via the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, which is F = σT4, where F is the Flux density of the radiation, σ is a constant, and T is the temperature.
So then what’s wrong with the IPCC energy budget? Let’s have a look at it again (see diagram):
What they’re doing to get this thing to “work”, is adding together the flux densities of light. Given the Stefan-Boltzmann equation which shows us that light flux density has an equivalence to temperature, then what this diagram is doing is adding temperatures together, to make it work. When it adds 168 J/s/m2 from sunlight with 324 J/s/m2 from the atmosphere, it is saying that sunlight is -400C and that the atmosphere is 1.80C (because that is the equivalent temperature of those light flux densities), and that if you add together something that is -400C to something that’s +1.80C, you get +150C. Not just that – the diagram tries to say that air is hotter than sunlight!
Only in academic science and in luke-warmism and alarmism, do you find people who think that adding something that is cold (-400C) to something that is warmer (1.80C) will make the warmer thing warmer still. This isn’t because they’re smart, but it is because modern science has failed and it has failed society.
It is still totally true and totally smart to understand that adding an ice-cube to a hot cup of coffee doesn’t make the coffee hotter. All normal, sane, working-class people understand this. Only the welfare-state scientists and luke-warmist blog writers who can’t actually do an honest day of labour, let alone thinking, are confused about adding temperatures. By extension they must also think that adding two ice-cubes together should make something hotter than either original ice-cube…this is a direct and literal inference of their beliefs.
You can add energy, but you can not add energy flux density and temperatures. Energy flux density is another animal entirely and especially in terms of its relation to temperature, it does not just add together like simple energy does.
Energy itself is a very simple and abstract concept; it quantifies something we call action or the potential for action, but the energy itself is not quantified until you also specify in how much time it will be used and over what volume or area of space and matter. That is what flux and flux density does to quantify the physical effect energy, and in terms of radiation (light energy) the physical effect of energy on matter is temperature. You cannot get a higher temperature than the single hottest temperature; lower temperatures can not add to higher temperatures and so lower flux densities do not add to higher flux densities to create higher temperature.
Balancing Energy, not Watts
What they want to do is create a diagram that conserves energy. Instead, they create a diagram that conserves energy flux density and then they mix in the mistake of distributing that flux over a surface area that it never falls upon, and make all the mistakes which have been discussed at length previously. It makes them think that the sun is freezing cold and that the atmosphere provides almost twice the energy of the Sun, etc. (Again, welfare-scientist eggheads that have no connection to reality, because ANY other normal person knows there is a problem there.)
Their basic premise is that if an “average” for the planet Earth exists, then any particular second of time should be indistinguishable from any other particular second of time, and any particular location on the planet should be indistinguishable from any other particular location on the planet.
Well, first of all, the “average of the system” is an abstraction and it does not actually exist. Secondly, each particular second of time IS distinguishable from any other particular second of time. And third, each particular location on the planet IS distinguishable from any other particular location on the planet. It’s called weather and geography, day and night, etc. Isn’t it kind of surprising that welfare-state scientists don’t understand that, that they literally can’t comprehend the scientific and mathematical importance of…FACTS? That you can’t just average it all together?
What are the units of the intensity of light? We’ve just seen this, they are Joules per second per square meter. That means that the effect that light has on matter does dependon WHEN and WHERE the light is falling. When is the “per second”, and where is the “per square meter”. Therefore, if you want to make an “energy budget” diagram that correctly balances energy flux density, you have to make a diagram that looks like this (see diagram):
Of course we’ve seen this diagram lots of times on here. When you do it this way, then the energy flux density of sunlight DOES have the real power it actually has and can make you feel very warm and can melt ice into water and evaporate water into vapour etc. etc., instead of being -400C, and you would never imagine something like the atmosphere being hotter than sunlight and providing twice as much energy as the sun does.
Conservation of Energy
The attempt of the IPCC energy budget is to balance energy, but since the only energy source is the Sun, then how is it possible that the atmosphere emits twice the energy of the Sun? First, they incorrectly try to balance energy flux density instead of energy, and in terms of energy flux density, they do it wrong, by ignoring the units of energy flux density. Second, their scheme results in the atmosphere emitting twice the energy of the Sun, which is a violation of conservation of energy because how can it emit more than comes in?
Once you have a realistic diagram like that above, then you realize you have to go to a real-time, time and location dependent, form of mathematics and physics that can describe that.
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The above excerpt is taken from the original article by Joe Postma found here.
Read more articles by Joe Postma at his blog: climateofsophistry.com
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