"Back Radiation" as Violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

A new article by Martin Herzberg in Energy&Environment reviews & summarizes the NIPCC Report Climate Change Reconsidered -Physical Science. In particular, Herzberg gives the following devastating review of the phenomenon of "back radiation" supposedly being the "heating mechanism" of the "greenhouse effect:

• The most prevalent definition or heating mechanism involves what is referred to as “back radiation”. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the IR radiation that the Earth’s surface radiates toward free space after it is heated by solar radiation. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, ”reradiated energy in the IR portion of the spectrum is trapped within the atmosphere keeping the surface temperature warm.” 
• This mechanism has the colder atmosphere blithely and spontaneously emitting radiant energy toward the warmer surface. 
• That energy is supposed to be absorbed by the Earth’s surface and heat it further. 
• Thus the warmer surface should get even warmer by absorbing energy from a colder source: in direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Advocates of CO2 alarmism work hard to meet this argument claiming that the violation of the 2nd Law is only apparent: "Back radiation" always comes along with "forward radiation" and the net radiation is always from warm to cold and so the 2nd law is not violated. The trouble with this way of handling the objection expressed by Herzberg (and myself), is that "back radiation" and "forward radiation" are supposed to be independent physical processes as "two-way flow of infrared photons",  and at the same dependent coupled processes guaranteeing the the 2nd laws is not violated. 

But independent processes which are dependent, is a contradiction and so the effort to save "back radiation" from joining phlogistons in the wardrobe of unphysical processes, comes to nil and so the "greenhouse effect" is "hanging in the air" without scientific basis.       

Radiation Double-Speak

In politics it is necessary to use words with multiple meaning to allow different people to make different interpretations of words like "equality", "liberty" and "justice". The society of Orwell's 1984 can only exist with doublespeak.

Doublespeak is also used in science, although in principle scientific terms are supposed to be well defined. An example of a term with double meaning is "radiation" which is used in two different ways:

1. as immaterial electromagnetic wave
2. as transfer of heat energy between material bodies.

In a wave model it is possible to make a distinction between 1. an electromagnetic wave as an immaterial carrier or medium for the 2. transfer of heat energy between material bodies. An essential scientific question the concerns the interaction of emission and absorption between the immaterial wave and the material body as the heat energy is transferred.

It is possible to allow the waves to be two-way, while the transfer of heat energy is one-way from warm to cold, as shown in Computational Blackbody Radiation and Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation.

This distinction is however not possible if a particle model is used, if radiation is viewed as a stream of "energy quanta" or photon particles, since then the carrier is the same as the carried energy (in analogy with Marshall Macluhans "the medium is the message").

In a particle model the processes of emission and absorption are viewed as as a "spitting out" and "swallowing" of photons or "packets of heat energy" or "quanta", in a primitive line of thought. The transfer of heat energy like particle motion becomes two-way, with the body spitting the most winning a game of heat transfer.

The confusion in the debate on DLR/backradiation as the basis of the greenhouse effect of CO2 alarmism, comes from the doublespeak of radiation as both 1. and 2. This makes it possible to speak about "radiation from the colder atmosphere to the warmer Earth surface" as "Downwelling Longwave Radiation" even if such a transfer would violate the 2nd law.

The particle model of light introduced by Newton was replaced by Maxwell's wave model in the late 19th century, but was then surprisingly reintroduced by the early Einstein and Planck while the late Einstein did not accept that idea of light as a stream of particle quanta.

A particle model of light is indeed very primitive and lacks in particular for IR or microwaves, all rationale because the wave length is millions of times larger than the atomic dimensions.

A primitive particle model allows doublespeak flipping back and forth between 1. and 2.

and this is cleverly used by CO2 alarmists to meet critique that DLR/backradiation

violates the 2nd law. But this is primitive and is no longer possible if a less primitive wave model is used.

Note that Planck in the Faustian deal of previous post made in the preface to his Theory of Heat Radiation, struggles to explain why he has given up a wave model of radiation, in order to give the impression that he is not using doublespeak of both particle and wave.

But Planck did not save modern physics from doublespeak, with the wave-particle duality as

the ultimate expression of doublespeak, elevated to virtue in modern physics.

Notice that an electromagnetic wave cannot store energy, while a material body can store energy as heat: As soon as the light emission form a material body is turned off, the light goes off, and there is no light to be absorbed. This shows that the electromagnetic wave is a carrier of energy without capacity to store energy itself. An electrical circuit with capacitor and inductor can store energy, but not a light wave.

In a particle model the stream of particles as energy quanta represent stored energy, and again the distinction between the immaterial transmitter of energy and and material energy becomes muddled.

Result of Debate on Fiction of Backradiation

After 6 months and 2000 comments on Judy Curry's blog about my refutation of the basic postulate of CO2 climate alarmism of backradiation, I can make the following sum up:

1. My new derivation of Planck's radiation law has stood the test. Nobody has shown that it is incorrect.
2. In my version of Planck's law there is no radiative transfer of heat from one blackbody to a warmer blackbody, only from a warmer to a colder. In other words, there is no backradiation.
3. The reason is that such a process would be unstable and real physics cannot operate with unstable processes. Backradiation thus is fiction without reality.
4. Backradiation is not described in the physics literature.
5. Backradiation has been invented out of the blue to serve CO2 alarmism by supplying gross two-way radiative transfer of heat energy back and forth between the Earth surface and the atmosphere, and the instability of this exchange is the root of the alarmism.
6. CO2 alarmism based on a fiction of backradiation is fiction.

I ask Judy to make her own sum up of the debate and compare with mine.

PS Measuring backradiation or DLR by an IR camera is also fiction. DLR is computed by Stefan-Boltzmann Q = sigma T^4 from measured temperature T and thus is self-fulfilling: Since Stefan-Boltzmann in the alarmist version is postulated to include backradiation/DLR, the instrument records DLR because it uses Stefan-Boltzmann and not because it directly measures real backradiation. DS