I realised why I made the mistake – I was thinking of flux in terms of a quantity of energy – forgot that W/m^2 already contains a term removing the area aspect. Flux is flux, it’s the same in all directions. Since the atmosphere near the ground is at a similar temperature as the ground, the flux will be similar, I get it. Silly me. Confusing work per area with Joules.

Incidentally, I wasn’t criticising GH theory in my original post. I class myself as lukewarmer, and spend a great deal of time explaining back radiation to people on Bishophill myself – so I like to have my ducks in a row, and those flux values unnerved me for a while. It was a genuine mistake, though.

Having read a lot of comments here, I do understand why you knee-jerked, though. But I really was asking for my own information.

Post albedo solar power absorbed in the atmosphere and non-radiative flux moved from the surface into the atmosphere (convection and latent heat primarily).

The values are correct. And observation and theory match.

The theory you have implies something different so of course you expect a different result.

What theory leads to your statement: “..The quantity coming back from GHG in the atmosphere must be less than half of what went up, surely..” ?

A surface of water at 15′C (288K) will emit at about 374 W/m². (Emissivity = 0.95).

Why must the atmosphere emit “less than half” of this value?

In fact, the atmosphere will emit according to its temperature and its emissivity. This is the critical point to understand. This is the fundamental of emission of thermal radiation

You tell me:
- What do you think is the temperature of the atmosphere?
- What do you think is the emissivity of the atmosphere?

If the surface is emitting LR at around 350 W/m^2, surely the DLR readings should only be a fraction of this? The quantity coming back from GHG in the atmosphere must be less than half of what went up, surely? So I wil thinking in the order of 150 W/m^2 or thereabouts.

So why are the average annual readings for DLR all in the 300s? How can that be? Have I missed something fundamental?

We are sending you this because we were hoping you have something to contribute to a new web page we have just launched: warmingcheck.org

The purpose behind WarmingCheck.org is to collect good arguments regarding global warming, and let the public be able to compare arguments against each other.
By using that approach we believe people will start to see the science behind each side, and base their opinion/belief on the science and not what the media tells them.

We don’t want to influence the public with our own arguments, since it can be regarded as influencing one view.
We therefore hope you would have the time to an argument (or more) to one of the questions.

If you don’t have the time or energy for this, we thank you for reading this and hope you might be able to forward it to someone who you think might have something to contribute.

In science we trust,
WarmingCheck.org

Yes indeed it will – up to a certain intensity limited by the Planck curve. Now go and re-read the comment I linked above, which you still don’t comprehend.

This means that there is a two way energy transfer.

Who said there was no two way flow of electromagnetic energy flow in your ABC example? Not me. After all, you defined the scenario.

Its remarkable that microwave ovens have waited for 70years before someone(Claes Johnson) explained how they worked.!

We all know how microwave ovens work heating water molecules by rotation. But that is not what I was asking – and not what Claes’ scattering explained.

He is regarded as a hopeless case

If you can’t knock the physics, knock the person, eh? A typical arrogant approach that I’ve noticed is common among AGW hoaxers. You can always argue over there on the tallbloke thread where a certain peer-reviewed paper is being discussed.

You show less and less understanding of what I have written and asked with every post you write.

Well, I see no one has explained yet why that MV radiation passes right through the plastic without heating it. It seems you are all still stumped – as I knew you would be.

Goodbye

What would happen if the 2LoT actually prevented a transfer of a photon from a molecule of higher kinetic energy to a molecule of lower kinetic energy? DLR would still be possible! Due to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecular velocities, at least 40% of the faster-moving molecules in the cooler atmosphere have more kinetic energy than the slower-moving half of the molecules on the warmer surface. DLR can flow from faster-moving molecules in the atmosphere to the slower-moving molecules on the warmer surface without violating this version of the 2LoT. Upward radiation from the surface to the atmosphere would do the opposite.

For the 2LoT to prevent DLR photons from traveling from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface, the following would need to happen: a) The emitting molecule would need to know the LOCAL temperature by somehow determining the mean kinetic energy of its neighbors. b) It would need to emit a photon containing this information. This information can’t be the frequency of the photon, because objects with a given temperature emit photons with a range of frequencies. c) A molecule on the surface would need to know its local temperature by somehow determining the mean kinetic energy of its neighbors and decide whether to absorb or scatter an incoming photon based on the temperature information that is contained in the photon. Alternatively, one could abandon the kinetic theory of gases and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution and postulate that all molecules in the atmosphere have a kinetic energy that is lower than those on the surface.

From my perspective, applying the 2LoT to molecules and photons quickly leads to apparent absurdities that appear unnecessary when one understands what is NOW meant by the words “higher temperatures” and “lower temperatures” in the above version of the 2LoT.