Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Follow the photon! Is this right?

So much to say, to these insightful and remarkably coherent replies, yet so little time!

Thank you, Orac, for focusing on how the greenhouse-effect operates.
It is an important topic, which is why I’ve spent years posting information hoping to correct, or fill in, some of the many misguided misconceptions about the greenhouse effect that I often find being promoted, as if they were valid and complete, on the internet.

Back in late 2013, iirc, a report from NASA verified that CO2 has a cooling effect up in the stratosphere (which climate science already expected and predicted), and a few bloggers took that (perhaps as an excuse) to mean it wasn’t true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Anyway, some of that confused viewpoint, and rhetoric, turned up here at SAGG in 2014. With my old chemistry/biochemistry degrees, and having taken some university-level climate science classes fairly recently, in 2011 and 2014, I thought I should try helping where I could see obvious or common mistakes.
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Several of these points, which you are trying to lead us to discover, have already been hashed out extensively.
For instance, you mention one point that I “…missed is for Earth that is two directional incoming and outgoing.”
There are many posts, such as those on Paul's thread, “Carbon Dioxide Trapping of Earth's Heat,” where I’ve endeavored to explain those specific points—the difference between the incoming and outgoing radiation—to Paul, regarding the greenhouse effect.

And ...I may have made some or many mistakes, or been unclear, myself in any of those posts where I try to explain the necessary details and/or nuances needed to fully understand, as Paul seeks to do—or thinks he has done—the true physical mechanisms that underlay the terminology and models used by the sciences.
....Or words to that effect. So please feel free to correct anything you might find.

I’ve also posted about, roughly, how as you said “IR bands like 7u an 15u will be very high in the back radiation but you will find very little 10u,”
when trying to explain to Paul about the difference between “atomic” absorption and “molecular” absorption of energy,
in Paul's thread, “NASA report verifies CO2 cools atmosphere.”
I’m fairly sure that this specific confusion, on Paul’s part, is why he thinks (erroneously)
that a molecule must always emit a photon of exactly the same energy as it absorbed.
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In fact, that is why I thought this topic in the physics forum, where we try to follow a photon, would be helpful. It is clear from Paul’s post, quoted in the OP, as well as comments he’s made following up, that there are a few gap or oversimplifications or mix-ups, in his views related to radiative heat transfer, to say the least.

As I’ve repeated, even if Paul’s description is wrong, or “regardless of its validity” or lack of validity, I want to start with Paul’s description, and use his language,
to begin pinning down the misconceptions he operates under.
Then, with the fundamental root of the problem identified, my hope is to fill in the gaps, or correct the misunderstandings, so Paul can see
the science isn’t wrong or backwards, as he occasionally claims.

It’s become apparent, in discussing the greenhouse effect with Paul on the climate-science forum, (as you may notice on this forum) that he doesn’t correctly or completely enough, understand the actual processes or mechanisms by which physical reality operates; and yet he uses his misconceptions as proof …to disprove the validity of the physical sciences needed to understand climate.

That is why I think it is still worth following a photon, even if we are starting out with a very unrealistic description. I expect to pick out certain points, which when corrected or fully explained or properly understood, will turn the hypothetical journey of a photon (or some energy) into a more realistic, as well as more fully informative and instructive, description.

For instance, the notion that, as Paul says,
"...at this point the object retains some of the heat energy
that it initially received from sunlight.
because the object released energy when it emitted the infrared light"
clearly indicate a confusion of some sort relating to how energy is absorbed, partitioned, or distributed.
That is also why his numbers, associated with the different steps, don't seem to make sense, istm, and need to be
questioned and more fully explained ...mañana.

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