Conceptualize
Fake Curve
Theoretical Concepts
Errors in Physics
Calculating 33°C Heating by the Atmosphere
Rationalizing Global Warming
Conclusions on Stephan-Boltzmann Constant (SBC)

There is supposedly an equation which will show how much infrared radiation is being given off by matter at any temperature, but it is too absurd to be used. It's the Stephan-Boltzmann Constant.

It shows 459 watts per square meter being given off at room temperature of 27°C. That's almost five 100 watt bulbs from half of a table top. Night vision equipment shows it isn't happening.

The Stephan-Boltzmann constant is this:

5.67051 x 10^-8 x K⁴

This result is the number of watts per square meter of infrared radiation supposedly given off by matter at a temperature represented by K (degrees Kelvin, which is 273 + °C).

For exactness, this calculation must include the emissivity, which means percent radiation which is blocked due to such things as reflection. But for nonmetalic surfaces, the emissivity is around 90-95%, which means it can be ignored for the rough estimates of nonmetals.

At a normal temperature of 27°C (80°F), the calculated result without emissivity is 459 W/m².

At the assumed average temperature of the earth (15°C, 59°F), it's 390 W/m².

At the freezing temperature of water (0°C, 32°F), it's 315 W/m².

On a hot day of 37°C (98°F), it's 524 W/m².

It isn't happening. Normal temperature matter is not giving off that much infrared radiation. Virtually everything in physics is in error, unless someone gets the error corrected, which requires a lot more accountability than often exists.

If freezing water were emitting and absorbing the heat of three 100 watt light bulbs per square meter, the heat would interfere with the freezing process. In some environments, water would freeze at 40°F, and elsewhere, it would freeze at 25°F depending upon how much environmental radiation there was at that location. The stability of the freezing temperature of water shows that there is not a significant amount of radiation being emitted and absorbed at that temperature.
 
Conceptualize

Here's how to conceptualize the situation. Consider an object sitting on a table. If it were giving off radiation, it would be getting colder. It's temperature equilibrates for two reasons: It absorbs some radiation, while it gives off radiation; and air molecules add heat through conduction and convection.

But air has a very low heat capacity; so it does not add heat very effectively. And there is very little convection on a flat surface. So air is not doing a lot of equilibrating.

This type of radiation is called "black body radiation" or "black box radiation," because in a black box, the same amount of radiation is absorbed as emitted. Therefore, its temperature is not changed by radiation. To some extent, the same is assumed to be occurring for the surface of the earth. But there are a lot of errors in the assumptions.

First, compare a black box to a large room. In a large room, there is not the same amount of radiation going in all directions. If a chair were near an inside corner, it would be getting radiation from two directions near by and getting hot. If it were near an outside corner, it would not be getting much radiation, and it would be getting cold. But it always appears to be equilibrated at room temperature. Is this because the radiation from the far walls produces a homogeneous environment? No, because water vapor absorbs all radiation available to it in less than a meter, carbon dioxide in less than ten meters. Also, large rooms have so many angles that not all radiation is uniformly distributed. This means that if radiation were significant, objects would have various temperatures in a large room, but they always equilibrate at room temperature. This shows that the meager effects of air molecules totally over-ride the miniscule effects of radiation.

Outdoors, the differences are even more extreme, because there are no opposite walls. Shade on a hot day shows that there is a lot of difference between areas radiated by the sun and those that are not. The sun's energy will typically be two or three times the amount as the black body radiation on the earth's surface as indicated by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant. This means that there should be a very significant differential due to black body radiation apart from the sun's energy. If so, a thermometer in the shade would not give an accurate measurement of air temperature. But the thermometer is considered to be equilibrated with the air temerature. Almost a complete absence of black body radiation would be required to get such an equilibration with air temperature in the shade.

In other words, if normal temperature matter were really giving off a significant amount of infrared radiation, as the Stephan-Boltzmann constant indicates, a thermometer in the shade would not show a reliable temperature, because radiation would be altering its temperature.

Of course, the air is emitting black body radiation apart from sunshine. But how much? Emissions from a gas are nothing resembling emissions from the surface of a solid, because a gas does not have a surface. The extreme difference between a gas and a solid means radiation would not equilibrate at the same temperature as air temperature. But everything equilibrates extremely close to air temperature, which indicates that there is, in truth, very little radiation given off by normal temperature matter.
 
Fake Curve

The Stephan-Boltzmann constant can have the right characteristics for the sun and for incandescent metals and still be wrong for normal temperature matter, as shown on the graph below. The solid line is the curve produced by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant. The dotted line shows that there needs to be less radiation given off by normal temperature matter. The difference is the error in the Stephan-Boltzmann constant.

Supposedly, the sun gives off 63 million W/m² at 5,780°K; an incandescent bulb, 4.6 million W/m² at 3,000°K; and normal matter, 459 W/m² at 300°K.

To scale, the Stephan-Boltzmann curve looks like this:

The actual curve would be S shaped, because a lot of change would occur at normal temperatures. Physicists used a smooth curve resulting from a simple exponent, and as a result, they got too much radiation at normal temperatures.

An S curve would be required to reduce the radiation given off by normal temperature matter while maintaining assumed temperatures for the surface of the sun and incandescent lights. An S curve would be logical, because increased heat would create complexities and forces which would change radiation emission.

The evolution of life required a temperature range where radiation interacts with matter effectively influencing chemical reactions. These interactions create a steeper slope than occurs at other temperatures, and the result is an S curve rather than the simple exponential curve produced by the Stephan-Boltzmann constant.

The exponential curve of the Stephan-Boltzmann constant requires nearly horizontal change from the temperatures of life to absolute zero. It requires too much radiation given off by cold temperatures for smoothing the line.

It is logical to assume that chemical bonds reduce the tendency of molecules to emit radiation, and that increased molecular weight would reduce emission of radiation, since there is less velocity with more energy when mass increases. For these reasons, in the temperature range of life (roughly between freezing and boiling of water) the radiation curve would have a smaller exponent than the power of four being used in the Stephan-Bolltzmann equation.

Perhaps the actual curve is not so much S shaped as varying with molecular structure. It looks to me like non-metals give off a lot less radiation at a particular temperature than metals do. Perhaps the free electrons in metals amplify the emitted radiation.

The perspective on this subject is that nature has a large amount of complexity, such as variations in molecular weight and bonding causing variations in emitted radiation. But physicists are accustomed to reducing their tasks to simple equations. They cannot account for all of the complexities, and they don't want to admit it; so they contrive unreal math which they adapt for a purpose but which does not come close to properly representing nature.
 
Theoretical Concepts

Physicists do not do conception analysis. They despise intuitive logic. Instead, they apply math without regard for the resulting absurdities. The problem is that the math has a high tendency to be wrong, incomplete or over-simplified.

Besides the Stephan-Boltzmann constant resulting in too high of a quantity at low temperatures, the constant is applied to solids and gasses equally, which is absurd. Gasses have a three dimensional surface and low density, which promote the escape of radiation. Therefore, gasses should have a much higher quantity for radiation emission than solids. But there would not be a single constant for gasses, because the chemical composition would determine how radiation escapes, as greenhouse gasses demonstrate.

These points should be quite secondary and not much relevance to global warming, because other factors determine the result. But fake scientists rely heavily upon the Stephan-Boltzmann constant as a rationalization gimmick. They focus upon such claims as radiation leaving the earth at a height of 5km attempting to create a concept in minds of there being a greenhouse effect. Global warming propaganda is all about impressions and a dark pit of unaccountable rationalizations.
 
Errors in Physics

Why is the Stephan-Boltzmann constant so far off? Observable evidence shows that errors in science, particularly physics, are the maximum which accountability will allow. In physics, there is far less accountability than in biology due to its highly abstract nature.

Consider this simple example. Physicists claim that the Burnelli principle shows that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to velocity, and this allows airplane wings to lift weight due to the high velocity of the air over the top. The velocity is lower under the wing due to less curvature and less distance to travel. You can prove the physicists wrong by blowing on one side of a sheet of paper. Nothing happens. But fold a crease in the paper, and then blow across it. The paper is rapidly pulled by the crease. The crease creates a vacuum pump in the shaded area. High velocity air pulls air molecules out of a shaded area creating a vacuum pump. It is not the velocity alone but the shaded area that creates the force. This means physical shape, not raw velocity, determines the pressure effects of moving air, contrary to the claims of physicists.

This is why an airplane wing needs its bulge near the front instead of the back. If it were raw velocity creating the lift, the bulge would need to be near the back of the wing to increase the surface over which the high velocity air travels. But if it is a vacuum pump creating the lift, the bulge needs to be near the front, so there is more area for the vacuum behind the bulge. The wings have the bulge in front showing that it is the vacuum behind the bulge, not the high velocity in front of the bulge, which does the lifting.
 
The Atmosphere Supposedly adds 33C to the Earth's Surface.

In truth, greenhouse gasses add no heat to the atmosphere, because heat as radiation cools the planet by going around them, not through them. The atmosphere does not need greenhouse gasses to absorb and hold heat, as explained on the page titled Summary in Simple Words.

With a corrected Stephan-Boltzmann constant, the surface of the earth without an atmosphere would emit 235 W/m² at a temperature of something like 50°C, not -19°C. With an atmosphere, the surface average is 15°C. The atmosphere cools, as it should, because it is like a heat sink. This means the atmosphere picks up energy through conduction and convection, which removes heat much faster than radiation alone. Heat sinks (usually made of aluminum) are used for this reason throughout electronics to speed cooling.
 
How the Stephan-Boltzmann Constant is used to Rationalize Global Warming

Fakes use the Stephan-Boltzmann constant (SBC) in their computer models as the pretext for their conclusions. The SBC is in error at normal temperatures, which produces an exaggerated effect for greenhouse gasses. That error does not justify their conclusions, because there are a thousand other points of evidence. But throughout the physics side of science, fraudulent equations are used as a god factor for drawing any fraudulent conclusion, such as wormholes in space allowing aliens to travel throughout the universe. So global warming fakes use the erroneous SBC as a justification for exaggerating and contriving all elements of global warming to draw them into alignment with the erroneous SBC.
 
Here's how the SBC is applied through computer models: The average intensity of the sun's energy everywhere on earth is 235 watts per square meter. The SBC says 235 W/m² is emitted from all matter at -19°C (-2°F). So energy radiates into space from a surface which is -19°C.

At this time, -19°C is located at a height of 5 kilometers in the atmosphere, while the lower atmosphere is warmer. But if there were no greenhouse gasses, something of the following would supposedly occur: The surface of the earth would be some low temperature, such as -40°C , and would emit 167 W/m², while the atmosphere emits 68 W/m² at an average temperature of -87°C.

An atmosphere composed only of nitrogen and oxygen without greenhouse gasses would supposedly cool the surface from -19°C to some low temperature such as -40°C, because the atmosphere would draw in heat through conduction, convection and sublimation while emitting it into space as radiation. The atmosphere would be like a huge refrigerant.

But when greenhouse gasses are added, the following supposedly happens: The average surface temperature is 15°C (59°F), which causes it to emit 390 W/m² of radiation. Nearby atmosphere picks up heat through conduction, convection and evaporation and also is 15°C and emitting some radiation. But greenhouse gasses absorb 91% of the radiation within a few meters preventing it from getting into space. At a height of 5 km, the temperature is -19°C, and 235 W/m² are emitted into space. Maybe modelers reduce 235 W/m² by 91% to 214 W/m², which would emit at -25°C, which might be 6 or 7 km height. The absurdities are argued throughout the global warming issue.

What then happens when the SBC is corrected? It appears to be off by about a factor of ten at normal temperatures. When correcting the SBC by reducing it to 1/10 and ignoring absorption of radiation by nitrogen and oxygen and greenhouse gasses, a surface at 15°C would emit 39 W/m². The atmosphere would be the same temperature near the surface and cool at normally observed rates with height due to emission of blackbody radiation from the atmosphere. The first kilometer of atmosphere might emit 39 W/m², the second 35 W/m², the fifteenth (in the stratosphere) about 4 W/m², etc until all 235 W/m² were emitted into space. No greenhouse gasses are required to get a normal looking result. Whatever greenhouse gasses do under these conditions can be evaluated on its own merit without using exaggerations to align the result upon the SBC.

It's impossible to say what the significance of greenhouse gasses is, because the complexities are too illusive, but I assume that all greenhouse gasses combined add about 1-5°C of heat to the atmosphere, and the first 1-10% of the greenhouse gasses did 99% of what greenhouse gasses do. The human addition is virtually irrelevant. I explain how I make these estimates on the page titled Crunching the Numbers.

Greenhouse gasses can only be relevant at the starting point and end point of emission, which means the surface of the earth and high in the stratosphere. Greenhouse gasses are not relevant to radiation within the atmosphere, because blocking is in all directions including down as well as up, so there is no change in location of the heat.

If there is one tenth as much radiation leaving the surface of the earth, then there is one tenth as much being blocked by greenhouse gasses. 91% of 39 W/m is only 35 W/m being blocked, while 91% of 390 W/m is 355 W/m being blocked.

The corrected 35 W/m leaving the earth's surface and being absorbed by greenhouse gasses is 15% of the 235 W/m which goes into space. But this doesn't mean greenhouse gasses are responsible for 15% of the heat in the atmosphere, because most of the heat gets into the atmosphere through conduction, convection and evaporation, not radiation. Also, radiation which does not leave at one frequency will leave at another frequency. If it doesn't leave from one height in the atmosphere, it will leave from a different height.
 
Conclusions on Stephan-Boltzmann Constant (SBC)

It's not that the SBC proves climatologists wrong. It's that the SBC is irrelevant to climatology.

In fact, climatologists can't go from the SBC to global warming and get a number. There are too many complexities and random effects.

So the only thing the SBC is doing is creating a psychological effect—getting climatologists lathered up over some math which they can't use. They fall back on it as a justification, being the closest thing to holy communion on the subject, as consecrated by Max Planck, who is the equivalent of the pope, Christ, Moses and Abraham all in one. While Einstein is God in physics, Max Planck is the human incarnation of God.

Since the SBC has no practical value in climatology, climatologists start at the end point and make up numbers which look like "climate change." Then they write fake equations which produce those numbers. And then they pretend that the equations relate back to the SBC and Max Planck, while they have no relationship to them.

Climatologists didn't originated the scam. Scam is the only thing physics has consisted of since James P. Joule contrived Joule's constant in the mid nineteenth century.

What climatologists did was analogous to selling a house where they only had floor plans for the kitchen. They said the kitchen is 12.43 feet wide and 23.56 feet long. Therefore, it is 293 square feet. This size kitchen would feed five people. So the house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry room, living room, study and garage. The total size is 2,875 square feet. But if you assume there are four people, it might be 2,758 square feet. Tell us the hippies and crazies know better than we do what size a house should be. The gall of saying it could be a duplex, apartment or restaurant, not to mention yacht, oil tanker or submarine.