BanterinBoson

I'm learning just fine on the other science sites; therefore the problem must be you. You were the one who decided to throw mud and when someone resorts to chucking mudballs, it can only mean they are out of ammo. But that's ok... it was getting overwhelming attending to so many replies and discovering your limits frees time to expand mine. Learn from this experience and it won't be a total loss. The email associated with this account is not checked and further replies will not be observed since, even with an electron microscope, you could not find my interest in reading the 3rd installment of your unconstructive and ill-natured ad homs in lieu of respectful and educative counterpoint criticism.

This thread. If this site manages to attract more participants in spite of the deterrent of your existence, then the evidence will be self-evident to them.

Every debate I've seen has the deniers calmly presenting facts while the pushers fervently launch ad hominems and other fallacies in order to appeal to tribal tendencies for the rallying together in a witch hunt. Have a look at 16:00 here: https://youtu.be/2cssne9Q5KM?t=15m58s The guy presents facts which a congressman refutes by drawing attention to the fact that he isn't a Lord. Argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) is a fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority Claim: 2+2=4 Rebuttal: You're not a Lord, therefore you're wrong. But people are rallied by that sort of nonsense and it's exactly how the witch hunts proceeded in the past: appeal to emotion; not reason. Evidently, that's what scherado is trying to do. There are no cost-effective alternatives because, without the government money, alternative energies cannot compete in the free market. They are too expensive, inefficient, and prone to failure to be a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels and the insistence upon using green energy results in millions being without power. I've heard some estimates that 6 million die annually from lack of cheap electricity that coal-fired power could provide. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/05/130529-surprising-facts-about-energy-poverty/ And for what are they dying? Just to push a narrative with no basis in fact? That said, there may be a good outcome to this which is essentially-free power one day because of the investment the governments are making, but it's costing untold lives to accelerate the process. I can't tell if it's part of the plan or if it's unintended side-effect from honestly fighting a paper tiger (ie co2).

Here is a geophysicist who asserts that because UV is 48 times more energetic than IR, that ozone is the primary driver of earth's climate. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/index.html Solar energy reaching Earth when ozone is depleted is 48 times hotter than terrestrial energy absorbed by greenhouse gases. There simply is not enough energy absorbed by greenhouse gases for them to cause global warming. Plus carbon dioxide, for example, makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere, and therefore has very limited heat capacity. According to the Planck postulate, energy in radiation is equal to the frequency of oscillation contained in the radiation times a constant. The oscillatory energy involved in solar ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth with frequencies around 967 terahertz (wavelength=310 nanometers, energy=4 electron volts, eV) is 48 times greater than the oscillatory energy of infrared radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide with a frequency of 20.1 terahertz (wavelength=14.9 micrometers, energy=0.083 electron volts). Temperature in a gas is proportional to the mean velocity of all molecules within the gas. When solar ultraviolet energy causes photodissociation, the energy of oscillation contained in the molecular bonds broken is converted into translational kinetic energy of the separating molecular pieces, heating the gas. Infrared radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases increases the internal oscillatory energy of the molecule but has limited direct effect on the temperature of the gas. E=hν is the energy that must be added to a physical/chemical system, typically through radiation, in order to cause a chemical reaction. In photochemistry, hν is used in chemical equations to signify the energy absorbed that causes photoionization or photodissociation. For example, frequency must be greater than 3000 terahertz to ionize nitrogen (N2) or greater than 1237 terahertz to dissociate oxygen (O2). Infrared radiation, frequency less than 430 terahertz, does not have enough energy to penetrate glass. Visible light, frequencies between 430 and 790 terahertz, has enough energy to cause photosynthesis. Ultraviolet radiation, frequencies greater than 790 terahertz, begins to damage DNA, causing sunburn and skin cancer. X-rays with frequencies greater than 30,000 terahertz have enough energy to penetrate your body but will also destroy your body unless the amount, the dosage, is minimal. http://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/absorption-rhode.jpg I can't say I understand all the physics involved (yet), but CO2 seems completely irrelevant nonetheless. Even if CO2 doubled to 0.08% concentration, it would still be irrelevant since water vapor absorbs much more IR than CO2 (and higher-energy IR as well) and is at a 100x greater concentration in the atmosphere (4% vs 0.04%). If any gas is the primary driver of earth's climate, it would have to be O2 and O3 due to high concentrations and absorption of high-energy light, but I believe the sun is ultimately responsible for the temperature of the earth. When I stand in front of a heater, the temperature of the heater is vastly more meaningful than an extra 0.04% concentration of wool in my garments. A gas that constitutes 0.04% that absorbs relatively little low-energy radiation in order to cause a meaningful change in temperature seems very much like an extraordinary claim and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yet I see little evidence and the more I dig, the less I see. I hail from a background in assuming solar energy had been locked-up in carbon bonds (from photosynthesis) then buried in the earth and for a time I assumed that the breaking of those bonds would release heat and the carbon would insulate the escape of the heat from earth. That seemed like a reasonable assumption given that the temperatures of the distant past were indeed much higher than today before all the energy was locked in the bonds, but now I see that the heat simply escaped and the leftover carbon isn't meaningful. It was an interesting idea, but it wasn't significant in the face of much stronger forces. And now, as you know, I'm wondering if co2 can actually cool the earth like clouds of water vapor.

Yes I did. There was no stipulation regarding a basis in earth's history. The options were: 1. is simply a return to an ice age. 2. is continued warming in a direction away from 1. "Continued warming" necessarily implies "no end" to the warming and that necessarily means the earth would exceed the temperature of the sun and would never stop warming. Why would I pick that answer? Humanity could survive option 1, but not option 2. You think I'm being silly for not reading your mind? Ok, so if I suppose there is a limit to the warming, then what limit shall I assume you meant? Is the limit any less catastrophic than infinite temperatures? If not, then what is your point by complaining about my exaggeration? If so, then is the limit less catastrophic than an ice age? Whatever cataclysmic choices you give me, I'm going to pick the less-catastrophic one, but I am curious as to what sort of similarly-conceived trap the poorly-contrived bait lie before, so I'm apt to play along just for kicks.

Apologies for the late reply. "a crank"? You're throwing mud already??? I say "believe" because it's hard to have "faith" in a science that can't decide whether light is a wave or particle, whether gamma rays should be defined as source-specific or some arbitrary frequency, and an endless list of hypotheses and speculation that should prevent any reasonable person from being cocksure in his declarations. Other folks have expressed appreciation for my saying "I believe" because it leaves the possibility on the table that I could be wrong. Firstly, you paraphrased wrong. "I believe that the only difference between sound and light waves is that one is longitudinal and the other transverse, and then you go on to claim suspect that CO2 must reflect visible light." Secondly, it's less silly than dark matter which is straightly pulled out someone's bunghole with no empirical evidence for its existence whatsoever, yet everyone "believes" it exists. At least I am not being that silly lol Fill it with humidity and see my model is obviously wrong as well; therefore, clouds must warm the earth and cloudy days are hotter than sunny. Oversimplifications lead to silly conclusions. Glass is clear, right? So put a sheet of glass between a light bulb and a thermometer then see if the meter reads higher with the glass in place or without. Use an led bulb so you get very little IR emission that the glass would block. Even though the glass is transparent, it still reflects and therefore the thermometer will read cooler with the glass in place. The test tube clarity example doesn't hold water (a pun I couldn't resist). "Our model, unlike yours, works." Are we kids here??? That post appears to be mainly a display of insistence that I bow to your authority. I don't want to take things on authority. I'm not looking for religion. Don't tell me 2+2=4, but show me why and then it won't be by your authority, but on the authority of reason. Anyway, let's just move forward. Regarding your other post: So if I accelerate a charge up n down an antenna, then packets come out? How big are the packets? If they are packets, then they have dimensions. If they don't have dimensions, then they aren't packets. I don't want to eternally wrestle with that dissonance. And how does one pack those quantised photons closely enough as they leave a distant star to appear continuous to an observer on Earth without having packets occupying the same space? If you choose to think of photons as quantum particles, that's fine so long as you realize they are not in reality. If I apply a progressively larger force to an object until static friction is overcome and it falls from the table, the fall is a quantum event but the force that achieved it was continuous. There cannot be discontinuities in the structure of reality and neither can there be an infinity of smaller and smaller particles, therefore the fundamental structure of reality must be energy waves. The quantization you're seeing are resonances, but like wine glasses that only vibrate at resonance when rubbed, they can vibrate at other frequencies when a tone is played. See "forced vibrations". Molecules can vibrate at any frequency, but will only resonate at certain frequencies. When resonance happens, the resonator absorbs the EM energy which kicks an electron up to a higher energy state. If the wave is not at resonance, the molecule will still vibrate, but will not siphon enough energy to kick the electron up. When an EM wave meets a charged particle, there is going to be a force involved. Moreover: Depending on the relative phase of the original driving wave and the waves radiated by the charge motion, there are several possibilities: If the electrons emit a light wave which is 90° out of phase with the light wave shaking them, it will cause the total light wave to travel slower. This is the normal refraction of transparent materials like glass or water, and corresponds to a refractive index which is real and greater than 1.[24]If the electrons emit a light wave which is 270° out of phase with the light wave shaking them, it will cause the wave to travel faster. This is called "anomalous refraction", and is observed close to absorption lines (typically in infrared spectra), with X-rays in ordinary materials, and with radio waves in Earth's ionosphere. It corresponds to a permittivity less than 1, which causes the refractive index to be also less than unity and the phase velocity of light greater than the speed of light in vacuum c (note that the signal velocity is still less than c, as discussed above). If the response is sufficiently strong and out-of-phase, the result is a negative value of permittivity and imaginary index of refraction, as observed in metals or plasma.[24]If the electrons emit a light wave which is 180° out of phase with the light wave shaking them, it will destructively interfere with the original light to reduce the total light intensity. This is light absorption in opaque materials and corresponds to an imaginary refractive index. For most materials at visible-light frequencies, the phase is somewhere between 90° and 180°, corresponding to a combination of both refraction and absorption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index#Microscopic_explanation Clearly, vibrations are continuous and not discrete. Resonances are discrete locations just like energy levels. Yup, that's absorption. I am familiar with E=hv which is saying energy is a function of frequency. E=h(c/wavelength) = hf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_energy#Formula Since E=Mc^2, then Mc^2 = hf. Then M = f(h/c^2) or f = M(c^2/h). Therefore mass is a function of frequency and 2 constants. Therefore, mass has frequency and light has mass. Yes, I understand that microwaves rotate the molecules and I think what I was missing before was not seeing that microwaves do not resonate the molecule, but instead generate heat by "friction" (as it were) whereas IR light actually causes the atoms within the molecule to resonate as a function of their mass and the bond strengths. The kinetic energy from the microwave rotations translates to vibrations (resonances like rubbed wine glasses) in the molecules in the IR band. Here is an edited picture showing the bands where rotational transitions to vibrational and electronic: http://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/absorption-rhode.jpg Taken from this site https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/index.html He posits that the contribution of co2 is negligible compared to ozone because O3 blocks radiation that is 48 times hotter than IR... and he makes a lot of sense. Oh, btw, maybe you can help with this: Often molecules contain dipolar groups, but have no overall dipole moment. This occurs if there is symmetry within the molecule that causes the dipoles to cancel each other out. This occurs in molecules such as tetrachloromethane and carbon dioxide. The dipole-dipole interaction between two individual atoms is usually zero, since atoms rarely carry a permanent dipole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermolecular_force Does that mean co2 will not resonate with microwaves? I thought we established a dipole moment in co2, but that link is saying there isn't an overall moment. Does that mean a + - configuration (like water) will rotate while a - + - configuration will not? I suspect so, but request verification. Well said! Resonance and molecular behavior has to be a function of frequency and the property of mass coupled with the balance of bonding/repulsive forces in various discrete combinations because there is nothing else that exists. Honestly, the talk of energy gaps and photons, while another path for arriving at the same conclusion, only serves to confuse me. It seems much easier, for the purpose of conceptualization, to simply imagine masses and springs and then tangentially imagine resonances moving an electron to a higher excited state by virtue of the exaggerated movements at resonance. Anyway, I've studied more and realize that you are right about reflection not being a real thing. It's better said as "re-radiation" and I'm going to have to think about how this applies to sound as well. But in the case of an EM wave and glass, the wave excites the charges causing an acceleration which cause a re-emission of an EM wave at a later point in time which causes a phase shift from the original wave. The summation of the two waves causes refraction through the glass and the reflection is simply the re-radiated wave traveling in the opposite direction that isn't completely cancelled by the incident wave. In the case of opaque objects, the EM wave causes resonances which absorb the wave and hinder further propagation. The re-emission of EM waves from the excited charged particles are shifted 180 degrees out of phase and cancel the incoming wave completely. If the object is not a black body and it has a color, then the color is from light that was not cancelled by the phase shift and is re-radiated at the frequency of the color (that is why grass is green). So now, how does this apply to co2? Well, any molecule that does not absorb will reflect and refract due to the acceleration of charges produced by the force from the electric fields interacting. Since we know for sure that co2 does not absorb in the visible light band, then we know for sure that it reflects in that band. What we don't know is the amount of the reflection. So the problem has now been reduced to determining the amount of reflected 10^14 light in comparison to the amount of 10^13 light that is absorbed and re-radiated. 10^14 light has 10x more energy than 10^13 so the breakeven point would be at 1/10 reflection; therefore, if 1/10 of visible light is reflected, then it's a wash. But if we consider that the cone of IR re-emission towards earth is roughly 90 degrees, then only 1/4 of the IR re-radiation from co2 will strike earth (360/90=4). So, does that mean 1/40 of visible light needs to be reflected for it to break even? What is confusing me is energy being solely a function of frequency and dividing light in half does not halve the energy just like cutting a cake in half does not reduce its temperature, but it must have an effect on something. Someone will have to show me what that means. That's the last piece to the puzzle. Incidentally, I thought this was an illuminating video:

Would you prefer that I not breakup the post into a point-by-point format and instead write a large body of text? I can go either way. Yes, sound is longitudinal whereas light is transverse, but that's where I believe the differences end. I should say that I don't believe matter exists as a tangible thing, but instead is energy of sufficient content and frequency. E=Mc^2 says that all energy has mass, so even a 1hz radio wave will have mass (about 7.4 x 10^-51 kg according to my calculations). So what differentiates what we commonly call energy and what we commonly call matter is simply the content of energy and the frequency; that's it. Essentially, there is no such thing as matter. This is a good video describing what matter actually is My favorite part is the bit about 3:00 that says if you pull a quark apart from another quark, the added energy to do that actually creates another quark pair out of the energy field that exists everywhere. It demonstrates how matter is created by the addition of energy. Matter is basically a bottleneck of energy within the energy field and the speed of light is simply the "tipping point" where added energy no longer translates so much to frequency as it does to becoming a "particle" and that transition slows the speed. So if we begin with a radio wave at 1 hz and start adding energy, the frequency will increase until we pass the gamma rays and begin making "matter" as neutrinos, electrons, quarks which can't quite travel the speed c anymore even though they contain much more energy than a photon (and should have a higher frequency as well ie > 10^20). Here is a video showing how a photon can be slowed to walking speed: The takeaway from that video is noticing how light compresses into a particle-looking thing. So if matter is just a bottleneck of energy, then a photon can resemble a particle if it has difficulty traveling less than infinite speed because the leading edge will be compressed due to the resistance of travel through the energy field just like it does when traveling through the BEC. That resistance to travel is just the speed of causality. The speed of light is the speed of causality: So all of that just to state that I believe light is a wave traveling through a universal medium analogous to sound. And to state that there is no fundamental differentiation between matter and energy. So then light traveling through the energy field and encountering a particle is really just encountering a dense part of the energy field. Analogous to sound, we could say that sound encountering an object is really just encountering a dense section of air (the medium thru which sound travels). Other than the transverse/longitudinal objection, the analogy is perfect. The photon itself is also just a dense section of the energy field and the sound wave is just a dense section of air. ___________________________________________ On the issue of reflection, light has to reflect... because it's a wave. If light didn't reflect, we couldn't see anything but light-emitters because it would mean all light had been absorbed. As I pointed out before, grass is green because green is the only frequency that is reflected. All others are absorbed and converted into sugar and IR radiation (which we can't see). Light has to reflect. The question is does it reflect off of co2 in the 10^14 band? When light hits a co2 molecule, there are only 3 options: It reflects, absorbs, or passes straight through. We already know it does not absorb and I can't imagine how it could pass straight through because the frequency is not low enough to move the whole molecule like microwaves would, nor is it high enough to travel through the subatomic particles like gamma rays would... and that leaves no mechanism for propagation through the molecule. The only option left is to say it reflects. And if that is true, then it necessarily means that co2 cools the earth by reflecting higher-energy photons away from earth while only passing lower-energy photons. That's what clouds do and it's why cloudy days are cooler than sunny days. I'm going to address this more specifically: If the idea is that the atom is mostly empty and a photon could sneak by in what can only be described as a "vastness of space", then why does IR not simply pass by? If the photon never touches the atom, then how does the atom know what frequency the photon is and whether to absorb it or not? Conversely, if the atom knows what frequency the light is, then it must somehow "touch". And if it touches, then it can reflect. Gamma rays can propagate through an atom because they act on the subatomic particles, so atoms are transparent to gamma rays. But visible light cannot act on subatomics and have no mechanism for propagation through the atom unless the visible light can move the whole atom. Since IR moves the whole atom, then visible should not be able to and therefore should reflect. Visible light just happens to be of such frequency that it is too fast to move the whole molecule or atoms within the molecule and it's too slow to move the subatomics. So it's perfectly tuned to bounce. Sound travels in all directions until the frequency increases and it begins to act more directional, so I suspect the same is true with radio waves being omnidirectional as opposed to gamma rays and especially electrons being so super-directional that they are referred to as particles. Anyway, I don't think volume factors in and it's just a function of mass and the spring. If a wave "wraps" around an object, the object has still "stolen" some of the wave's energy either through absorption or reflection. So let's say we have a tuning fork that resonates at 200 hz and we play a tone through a speaker that is also 200hz. The fork should resonate, which is absorbing and re-emitting the sound. Now we play 2000hz and find the fork is bouncing the sound. If we play a 20hz tone, we may find that the whole fork rattles in our hand as well as the rest of the house. So in this case the fork would be like a gas molecule in a cloud that re-emits resonances, reflects above-resonances, and transmits below-resonances. There is no way to increase the surface area of the fork without increasing the mass of the fork or decreasing the density. If the mass is increased, then it won't resonate at 200. If the density is decreased in order to preserve mass, then it won't reflect as well at 2000. So it seems reflectivity is also a function of mass and not area. I haven't given much thought to directionality and it raises the question of how big is a photon? I don't think anyone really knows. I suspect it would have to be smaller than an electron, but no one really knows how big that is either. We know the mass, but the physical size of a particle that isn't really a particle is a bit of a mystery.

I still having difficulty. Maybe we should start at one end of the spectrum and move progressively to the other and describe what is happening. Here is what I currently think: Gamma rays (10^19) will affect the subatomic particles within the atoms because the frequency is too high to move masses larger than those. Xrays (19^18) will affect subatomics less than gamma but are still too fast to vibrate larger masses. UV rays (10^16) is the transition point where whole nuclei are being affected more-so than subatomics. Visible (10^14) mainly affects the atomic masses. IR (10^13) begins to transition to whole molecules Microwave (10^10) will affect larger molecules (the microwave oven is about 10^9) Radio waves (1hz up to 10^7 I guess). Not sure what they affect. My numbers may be off by a point or two, but that's the gist of how I understand reality. I previously thought IR was tuned perfectly to affect something within the co2 molecule and it was by virtue of the mass/spring combination inside that made it so. Now you're saying that it's the dipole moment and the separation of charges that causes IR to act on the whole co2 molecule and it's not by virtue of simply existing as a mass/spring setup. The source of my confusion could be from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Principles So if 2.45 x 10^9 hz acts on water molecules because of the dipole moment we were discussing and if atomic resonances occur only above 10^12, then how does IR (which are mostly above 10^12) act the same on co2 as a microwave does on water? (Specifically, IR is 3x10^11 to 4.3x10^14 which is just to the side of the visible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared ) Just for reference, dielectric heating is: No mention of IR. Am I to understand that IR heats by dielectric means? Or is IR acting upon the atoms inside molecules? If so, then that article was wrong. It seems I have conflicting information. If so, then maybe O2 and N2 can be heated by IR (but not MW). Anyway, I'm thoroughly confused by this.

I'm glad you asked. It is because frequencies higher than resonance are attenuated. If a mass vibrates at resonant frequency, then trying to vibrate it faster is going to be progressively harder. That is interesting. The mass itself is a low-pass filter and the spring is a high pass. Hmm... I guess I never thought of it that way (thanks for sharing). But saying the whole atmosphere acts as a capacitor isn't correct, I think. What is at issue is a mass/spring combination that resonates at 10^13 should resist vibrations progressively higher (10^14), but not so high as to vibrate the subatomics within the co2 (10^19 gamma rays) which is an entirely new system of mass/springs. This can be illustrated easily if you have a ported subwoofer box. As the frequency starts low (10-20hz), you should feel air moving in the port. As the frequency rises to the port frequency, you will feel lots of air moving. As the frequency rises further, you will feel less air until no air movement is felt at all. Frequencies higher than resonance will not move the air because the column of air has too much mass to be moved so quickly. (The spring is the volume of air inside the box) One could fashion a bandpass box, but the same principles would still apply. It would merely be a dual port-frequency emitter while all other frequencies would be attenuated by the mass of air in the ports. I can't remember how to make an acoustic notch filter, but the same principles would certainly apply. If the spring is a volume of air and the mass is a column of air, then frequencies higher than the port frequency will be attenuated.

I still don't understand the distinction between IR and any other band of frequencies as it relates to dipole moments, but I'll take your word for it in this case. Conduction is merely the transference of vibrations by means of "touch" (like one guitar string transferring its vibrations to another string by touching). "Touch" in this case is defined as the van der waals contact distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force Convection is the "stirring up" of vibrational bodies where the resulting heat transfers are still radiative and conductive. So there are only 2 means of transferring vibrations (ie heat): touch and radiative. One means of transferring vibrations from one atom to another in the atmosphere is by radiative waves propagating through a ubiquitous energy field which is directly analogous to the transference of sound from a speaker to an eardrum through the ubiquitous atmosphere on earth. The other means is the collision of atoms where vibrations are directly transferred which is analogous to the guitar string example above. (I have to admit that I didn't consider "touch" in questioning the heating of O and N, but in my defense, I was just considering the heating by radiation and, in hindsight, should have phrased my question differently.)

If my choice is an ice age or runaway heating until the earth reaches the temp of the sun and beyond, then I suppose preferring an ice age is an obvious answer. Titles must be succinct. I want to know about vibrational frequencies of atoms and molecules regarding transference of varying frequencies of solar radiation as it relates to the warming and/or cooling of planetary objects, but all that wouldn't fit. Think of my title as a collection of "tags".

Thanks for posting. That makes sense! Btw, Laphroaig 10yr is my fav. I tried Bowmore once and it was seemingly just as good for half the price. I'll have to give it a more thorough examination soon ;) Caol ila is another I like as well as a blend of the same known as Peat Monster. The Ardbegs are good, but a little over the top in my opinion. I'm sure glad I ran into you exchemist! Got a good feeling about the future. On that note, I'm off to have a dram

OK, that is confusing. So can we infer that it's impossible to heat O2 and N2 because there is no dipole moment? I'm lost because on one hand the article is saying that the differential of charges is what causes interaction with the EMR, but if there are no differential in charges then the molecule can never get hot by EMR. Therefore O2 and N2 can never absorb energy and will forever be cold. That doesn't seem right.

You know more than I :) I don't understand by what mechanism the co2 molecule can act as a medium for the transference of 10^14 frequency light while being a resonator at the frequency of 10^13. Do you see my problem? If a thing resonates at 10^13, it should resist vibrations at 10^14 by virtue of the mass/spring combination that causes the resonance at 10^13. Btw, if it's ok with you, I strongly prefer talking in terms of frequency rather than wavelength if at all possible because that is the way I've come to understand sound and waves in general. When light hits the ground, some of it is reflected otherwise we wouldn't see the ground ;) But yes, I understand that the ground absorbs the light and grass absorbs all but the green part of light; hence why it is green. Temperature is a measure of vibrations (kinetic energy), is that right? And so the hotter a body becomes, the higher the frequency of the light emitted. Isn't it true that they can emit frequencies of EMR correlated to their temperatures? It doesn't always have to be IR and MW radiation, does it? Yes, millions of webpages says that. It's the "why" that I am after ;) My problem is that if co2 resonates at IR frequency, then it should not transfer visible light. Therefore the addition of co2 would be a net-reduction of heat on the ground by virtue of resisting the passage of visible light... and by a second mechanism which is that the re-emittance of IR will have more paths leading to space than to earth due to the curvature of the earth. I'm far from an expert on quantum theory, but isn't that just the probability of finding a particle in any one location? So it's a probability distribution wave and not an actual wave through a real medium like light and sound. I understand that light travels through an energy field medium (perhaps the higgs field) because a wave without a medium doesn't make sense. So all waves are propagations through mediums and will have relatable and analogous properties. I thought it was resonance causing the absorption, which is a function of mass/spring combinations of the whole atom or molecule(s). For instance, gamma rays (10^19) will ionize atoms by acting on the electrons due to their extremely high frequencies, but UV (10^16) is too slow (vibrations or too slow) to act on electrons and will begin to transition to acting on the whole atom. "Vibrational excitation can occur in conjunction with electronic excitation in the ultraviolet-visible region. The combined excitation is known as a vibronic transition, giving vibrational fine structure to electronic transitions, particularly for molecules in the gas state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_vibration I can see that. IR and MW are probably the transitions from atomic resonances to molecular and bonded-molecular resonances. By "bonded" I mean like a pane of glass... rigidly bonded and held tightly in position. "The frequency of the periodic motion is known as a vibration frequency, and the typical frequencies of molecular vibrations range from less than 1013 to approximately 1014 Hz" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_vibration 10^14 is visible and 10^13 is IR. A heavy atom bound tightly should resonate faster than in free space and therefore would absorb different frequencies of light, but gases in the atmosphere I'm assuming are free space except for the bonds between the C and O. So if we have O=C=O, then the C in the middle will have different resonant properties than a C by itself. It must be that the collection of C and O just happen to resonate in the 10^13 range by virtue of the mass/spring combination and if true, then it should also resist vibrations in the 10^14 range which will prevent passage of visible light. The whole O=C=O molecule should resonate in the MW range (maybe 10^9) like water. I'd like to learn as much as I can.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware I had replies. Let me get caught up and we'll have a good conversation ;)

I am unsure if I'm posting this in the right section, but nonetheless I require specialized assistance in verifying my understanding of vibrational frequencies of molecules and atoms with regard to the atmospheric insulative effects of various gases. My current understanding is that "vibrational frequency" is what I've formerly called "resonant frequency" with regard to the effects of sound, but if I am in error, please correct me. Now, relating light to sound, frequencies above resonance should reflect off of the particle since the particle is too massive to move at that frequency and frequencies below resonance should pass through the particle with minimal interference since the particle doesn't contain enough mass with which to interact with the wave. I have edited a graph to aid in illustrating my problem: Original graph found here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png Am I correct? Why or why not? Summarily, the problem I am having is in visualizing how high-frequency light (ie visible) will pass through CO2, hit the earth, and then radiate back to the CO2 as lower-frequency IR-light where it then becomes trapped, seemingly forming a runaway heating effect. So, what I need to know is how light interacts with particles differently than sound and why one energy-wave (light) behaves differently from another (sound) because my current understanding demands that if CO2 will insulate at IR frequencies (ie resonate), then it simply must reflect at visible (and higher) frequencies and therefore it would have a cooling effect, not warming, just like clouds of water vapor do. To further clarify, high-energy light should be reflected away while only retaining low-energy IR light and therefore the overall effect is cooling. What am I missing? For if sound behaved in the way I am being asked to understand light, then a 20K tone would pass completely unimpeded through a wall, strike an object which would produce a vibration lower than 20K, say 100hz, then the lower frequency tone would somehow become trapped by the same wall that was transparent to the 20k tone. It makes absolutely no sense. :confused: Help!