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 of 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 $T^4$ (per unit area and time), independent of the surrounding temperature. The radiation has a Planck spectrum scaling with $T\nu^2$ with $\nu$ 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 $(T^4 - T_s^4)$, where $T_s$ 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 $T\nu^2$ directly connects with the wave nature of light with the energy of a harmonic oscillator of frequency $\nu$ scaling with $\nu^2$. 

To fit this into a particle idea Einstein suggested to view a photon as a localised wave packet of length scaling with $\frac{1}{\nu}$ and energy scaling with $\nu$ (captured in Planck's formula $E=h\nu$ with $h$ Planck's constant). The total radiation from a a stream of photons would then scale with $\nu^2$ since $\nu$ photons of length $\frac{1}{\nu}$ (traveling with the speed light) would pass in unit time. 

Einstein thus in 1905 associated the energy $E=h\nu$ to a concept of light quanta, which gave him the Nobel Prize in 1921 with the Law of Photoelectricity taking the form $E+P=h\nu$ with $P$ electron release energy and $E$ kinetic energy of an emitted electron upon impact by one photon with energy $h\nu$, 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:

• Discussion with Will Happer on Back Radiation 
• Radiation as Resonance     

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. See also this post.