Example of Problem with BackRad
As another example, your body at 98.6oF, radiates long-wavelength IR energy. If you stand in front of a mirror, there will be “back-radiation” from the mirror. Does it warm you? Clearly it does not.
Another case to consider is a coffee thermos, which will bring the discussion of “back-radiation” violating Thermodynamics, into everyone’s experience. A thermos has an evacuated, double-wall glass container to eliminate heat conduction as a heat loss mechanism.
Hot coffee will warm the interior glass wall, which in turn will radiate long-wavelength IR radiation toward the outer glass wall. The outer glass wall is silvered and will act as a mirror, “back-radiating” IR back to the interior glass wall. The outer glass wall is cooler that the glass wall in contact with the hot coffee. Will the “back-radiated” IR further heat the interior glass wall, thereby further heating the coffee? Thermodynamics states that there cannot be a net energy transfer from the cooler outer glass wall to the warmer inner glass wall.
Your own experience will also say this does not happen. The coffee still cools down, but slowly, because the conduction heat-loss mechanism has been virtually eliminated. In the atmosphere, “back-radiation” does not, and cannot, further warm the Earth’s surface. The physics are the same.
Interesting question: If you fill the vacuum region of the thermos, with CO2, would that change the situation? Actually it would, as the gas-filled space would now allow thermal conduction with the result that the hot coffee would now cool down faster than with the vacuum in that space. (However, the thermal conduction loss for CO2, would be less than if it were just air. The thermal conductivity of CO2 is 0.0146 Watts/m/oK, compared to air at 0.024 Watts/m/oK. But certainly the presence of CO2 would still cool the coffee faster than with a vacuum.)
There would be no heating of the coffee with “back-radiation”, “augmented” by CO2, as a GHG.
We should revisit occasionally what the proper role of government is. As the constitution was a good sense of direction, we need a core set of principles to add in order to deal with the future.
So many want to engineer society, remove risk, assist certain groups, rather than let individuals thrive and raise communities. Why?
Is Democracy where we all "get it good and hard" or is it the best means to a free society?
Should we roll with the special interests, or make the government achieve its proper role, what is that role, and how to do this?
When do deficits and governments become too large?
Government is becoming more elitist while trying to sell corrections to problems it created, what makes this possible?
