Are there any "global warming" theories that point to increased telecommunications / electromagnetic radiation as the culprit instead of co2 emissions?
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Are there any "global warming" theories that point to increased telecommunications / electromagnetic radiation as the culprit instead of co2 emissions?
Order of Kilopi
Why would electromagnetic radiation cause CO2 emissions?
Order of Kilopi
Heat is a function of climate change, not emf.
Order of Kilopi
There's no data that I'm aware of that suggests that. CO2 is the major known player.Originally Posted by TOEfetish
; )...instead of co2 emissions?
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
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The line of thinking is that em rad (radiowaves and microwaves) are bouncing all around in every direction, trapped by the atmosphere, causing molecules to vibrate like a microwave oven.
Order of Kilopi
But they aren't trapped by the atmosphere, they mostly dissipate into space. A small fraction bounce off the ionosphere but the amount is too low and the wrong frequency to affect air.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Not only unhelpful, but extremely rude.
Last edited by SRH; 2012-Aug-01 at 03:50 AM.
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Ok thanks...but i didnt mean affect air.
Like a microwave oven that heats the food....then the food would heat the air.
Order of Kilopi
There's no evidence of that happening on a signifigant scale. AFAIK there's no measureable heat from everyday RF transmissions intersecting ordinary materials. The microwave frequency used to heat food is used only in very limited circumstances outside ovens.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Yeah - it would be near impossible to measure the the change in heat due to certain specific em rad vibrating water molecules, in the oceans for example....or glaciers.
Order of Kilopi
Actually, ocean temperatures are monitored pretty accurately by IR satellites. Since most frequencies don't penetrate water more than a few inches, seeing the surface temp would give a clear indication if radio heating were happening.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Radio waves don't violate conservation of energy and the total energy associated with them is tiny compared to the the infrared that is trapped by greenhouse gasses. Averaged out, the various climate forcing (which includes both warming of greenhouse gases + cooling caused by aerosols) come to about 2W per m^2. That's 10^15W, or ~100X greater than total human energy production from all sources of which radio waves are only a very tiny fraction.
Order of Kilopi
Wow - I'm on a roll. That's my third embarrassing lack of comprehension today...
As stated above, the atmosphere is basically transparent to the EM waves used for communication (which is why they are used for communication in the first place). As a result, they don't really tend to bounce around very much, nor do they deposit their energy in the atmosphere - most of the energy is simply dissipated into space.
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If they did bounce around that much then most of our RF comms systems would not work due to the massive background noise
If they were absorbed that significantly by water we would not be able to use them for comms
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There is the claim about satellite microwave transmissions:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sate...nsmissions.htm
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E-m radation we generate is just the same as the heat we generate to keep ourselves warm, indeed that heat is e-m radiation too. We consume energy to create the em radiation, from the usual sources to make electricity. It goes in to the energy balance in teh same way, and is a small component in comparison to uses fo energy such as space heating, transport and heavy industry.
Order of Kilopi
IIRC the heat given off by the electronics and wiring of a radio transmitter or cell phone are something like 200-300 times the amount of heat generated by its actual radio signal.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Most radio frequencies used by people to transmit information are the equivalent of what a black body with a temperatures of 0.001-1 Kelvin would radiate. In short, in my opinion, it is about as silly as thinking the Cassini probe can ignite Saturn and turn it into a second Sun.
Order of Kilopi
OMG! Can that happen?!?
[hmmm... smileys don't seem to be working: there is one, honest.]
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Believe it or not man, there actually was such a silly conspiracy theory, not just for Cassini for also for Gallileo.
Order of Kilopi
There's been a few threads about that. But after seeing the video which used the Silver Surfer as "proof" of interdimensional vortices (Link here, darn it was hilarious!) I now think that any statement no matter how implausible can be turned into a conspiracy theory and someone, somewhere will believe it.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
You're right, and I apologize.
At a very rough guess, the total radio emissions is less than 1% of total energy usage (according to Wikipedia total energy usage is about 15 terawatts; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption ), or about 150 gigawatts. Total insolation is about 161 petawatts, so radio emissions would be about 0.0001% of the Earth's radiation budget. Some percentage of the radio emissions will escape. FM, TV, and radars probably contribute over half of the energy of radio emissions, and they are not strongly attenuated -- turned into heat -- by the atmosphere and pass through the ionosphere.
Order of Kilopi
Sounds like someone's trying to blame AGW on HAARP.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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HAARP doesn't cause AGW. It stops the rotation of the Earth's core. Everyone knows that.
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Of course you'd say that, it's what the people controlling your mind with HAARP want you to think.
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The only frequencies that 'bounce' are long wave radio.
And that doesn't have the power to heat things.
Ultra-short wave radio (i.e. microwaves) go straight out into the universe.
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