So now all those decades of tidal gauge data don't even exist? Yes, there's seasonal noise, and that's why you look only at long-term trends. Those last few report links I sent all show an increasingly-steady positive trend (Fig 4) of 3-5mm/year - does all that data not exist either?
The basic point remains: There are multiple lines of data, from multiple sources, all consistently showing that sea levels are increasing, and at a much faster rate than Tuvalu is sinking. There are dozens of studies linking global sea level rises to glacier melt and thermal expansion caused by rising temperatures. And there are multiple lines of evidence to show that it's us that's causing it, with our CO2 emissions. Hence, AGW is in large part responsible for Tuvalu's situation. Of course Tuvalu is a cherry-picked example, but all that science is global.
97% of climatologists and countless studies agree on this point. You can disagree, but without supporting evidence that's at least as solid as theirs, disagreement becomes simple denialism.
You can plainly see from the blue lines on that graph that the 1993 altimetry data does not start on "an unusually low year" - that trough is clearly the 1997 El Niño. The Funafito data starts years later, and the other data starts years earlier. Your other points about cherry picking kind of fall down when you can't even get that right. But please keep telling me how my claims are confused.
You can propose alternate hypotheses all you like, but if you want anyone to take them seriously, you'll need to actually present observational evidence that supports them. So far all you've done is claim that that Becker's data is not accurate enough, despite not having laid eyes upon that data, or knowing anything about its error bars, and despite the other studies. Why should anyone listen to you, instead of a sizeable group of scientific experts who do this for a living?
You deny my claim about linkage to AGW with nothing more than "just isn't right", but it's not even me who's making these claims. I'm just pointing out the many studies by people far more expert than I (look, here's a fewmorereports that show continuing sea rise far exceeding subsidence). If you feel you know their jobs better than they do, go right ahead and tell them that, but I expect they'll find your unsubstantiated denial even less convincing than I do.
Still selectively ignoring any inconvenient data, I see, and going with flat denials rather than attempting to refute any points (what, don't want to look at the altimetry map?)
Where is the science? Well, certainly not in any of your posts. All I can see is textbook denialism from an unknown forum poster with a self-admitted lack of knowledge, and some obvious selection and confirmation biases. Can't imagine why you think this might be convincing.
I'll stick to the verified observational data and expert analyses from dozens of respected scientists with reputations to uphold, thank you.
The request was for an example of an AGW disaster - of course it's cherry-picked. Nobody's claiming the sea level is rising this fast in all places (quite the opposite).
What's also bald-faced cherry-picking is a statement like "basically no net gain since a peak of the early 80s". You have to really try hard to ignore the clear and continuing upwards trend (more importantly for the Tuvaluans, the all-important seasonal peaks keep getting higher, resulting in worse flooding each time). You also have to carefully ignore the altimetry data, which clearly shows a 5mm/year rise since 1993 at Funafuti.
Even more impressive is how you blithely imply that a peer-reviewed study's conclusions are completely wrong, without seeing the underlying data or challenging their methodology, even though the study confirms earlier work like Church 2006. You smoothly fill in the missing GPS data with assumptions of your own that it would naturally support your pre-conceived conclusions instead. This despite your admission that you're still baffled by the long-established connection between rising CO2 levels and rising sea levels.
Did I mention that Tuvalu is cited in at least threedifferentstudies on climate change disasters? Maybe you should reassure the Tuvaluan Government that the experts are lying and/or incompetant, AGW is a massive conspiracy, and all that salt water they're seeing must be a figment of their imagination, because your glance at a graph proved that rising sea levels and subsidence "mostly stopped by 1980".
The relevant study is Becker 2011. It's based on 60 years of "good quality" tide gauge records for sea levels, satellite altimetry, and GPS precise positioning records for measuring land subsidence. Feel free to cite a more recent study, if you can find one with different conclusions.
Interesting that your reaction to presented evidence is simply disbelief, followed by the assumption that the evidence must somehow be wrong, despite the lack of counter-evidence and (I'm assuming) relevant expertise.
Didn't read the first link, did you? It explains how sea level rises are not uniform, and also shows that the sea levels at Tuvalu are rising 9 times faster than any subsidence.
Interesting link, thanks. Though I note that specific case involved Ford deliberately trying to squeeze out minority shareholders (who were using their dividends to form a competitor), so its value as precedence may vary.
Also, as the article points out, the Business Judgement Rule still applies - any suit must prove a breach of good faith, loyalty or due care, or at least a negligent wastage. E.g. if your reasons for paying full taxes are in the long-term reasonable interests of the company, then you're on firmer grounds. There are plenty of counter-examples; Steve Jobs didn't get sued by his shareholders for refusing to pay dividends like Ford did.
Fair point, though there's a big difference between negligence or self-compensation, and a deliberate choice to pay reaonable taxes because it e.g. increases publicity and good will, or is in-line with stated company policies or mission statements, or as a form of voluntary compensation to the government/community in exchange for infrastructure benefits provided, etc etc.
Point being, even public companies are not purely engines for generating money, despite some views to the contrary. Virtually all at least pay lip-service to the notion of benefiting their customers, employees and wider communities. Not many have "Maximise shareholder value" as their mission statement.
Unless by doing so you indirectly benefit the company and/or its communities, e.g. by proclaiming your choice to give back to the nation with those tax payments and turning it into a PR coup. Corporate charity, if you will.
Or your board could be a bunch of short-sighted sociopaths. No shortage of those.
In Tuvalu, sea level rises of an average of 5mm/year over the last 60 years have now resulted in regular tidal flooding of low-lying areas like the main airport. Inland salt water seeps are destroying their coconut and taro crops. Tuvalu's vulnerability to strengthening tropical cyclones is significantly increased, as in the case of Tropical Cyclone Bebe, which in 1972 sent a storm surge right over the entire main island, destroying many buildings and uprooting 90% of the trees.
There is now a regular exodus of Tuvaluans to New Zealand, which has agreed to absorb the entire population in the event that Tuvalu becomes completely uninhabitable.
So, according to this nebulous definition of yours, "back radiation" does not include radiation returned by reflection, but only radiation returned by absorption and re-emission. Not sure why you think there's some magical difference in this radiation; it's all still photon. Is it simply because re-emitted radiation can be a different/lower wavelength? What do YOU think this discussion is all about? But of course you won't and can't answer that.
You've already conceded that cooler bodies still radiate, and that warmer bodies absorb that same radiation at an atomic level (i.e. in every case), regardless of net energy transfer, just like reflected energy. So I'm at a loss as to what you're still arguing about back radiation for. But doubtless you're unclear on that yourself. Personally I think it's because you're still attempting to rationalize away bad news, only you're letting others provide the rationalizing, so long as the results match your own desired outcome.
As khayman80 says, Latour is making quite broad claims (even in his article's title) which are contradicted by trivial observation. But since you've just demonstrated you don't even know what he's actually claiming, you are unable to provide any arguments yourself ("Latour must be right, he uses math!"), you ignore any specific counter-points, and thus we've seen nothing more substantial than attempts at mockery from you for the last half-dozen posts.
And that's one of the main reasons this is being sold to *developers*, not consumers.And yes, the consumer version will of course have higher resolution.
Much more important than resolution are the Rift's large field of view and low latency response. These contribute far more to VR "immersion" than resolution does, though they're not numbers that consumers are familiar with. The experience is very different from Doom 2.
That video looks very much like a beefed-up form of Aureal's wave-tracing. A3D 2.0 required a simplified version of the geometry, with acoustic materials applied, and simulated the the main reflections, occlusions and reverb, then (optionally) applied HRTFs to the result.
This project appears capable of using the raw scene geometry and textures, and works in software with modern multicore CPUs, but it looks conceptually quite similar. I'm not aware of any commercial efforts using this approach though. One of the reasons A3D didn't take off back then was the large amount of extra developer work required; maybe this would ease that somewhat.
That's pretty much what HRTF audio cards were doing 15 years ago. Notably, Aureal's A3D 2.0 was doing full wave-traced audio in hardware, up until they got shut down by Creative.
Since then, Creative's cards have been doing HRTFs for some time, available to any game using DirectSound 3D through CMSS-3D, but DS3D was cut from Vista & Win7. For more recent OpenAL games, products like Rapture 3D can get your HRTF fix on.
Unfortunately, carriers still have the ability to get into the source code and nerf this feature, forcing you to keep any bloatware they're especially keen on pushing:-( Verizon appears to be particularly guilty of this.
There are OEM-customised versions of Windows too, but thankfully we've been spared that level of "customisation".
Don't know why I thought you might actually read all of what I wrote, rather than ignoring the inconvenient bits and saying "duh" at the rest. Silly me.
You're looking for a mathematical proof of Newton's Law of Cooling? Go read Wikipedia.
But math doesn't help if you're starting from the wrong assumptions, as I pointed out. Latour claims cooler bodies cannot affect warmer bodies, which Newton proved wrong centuries ago. As a consequence, it's not that his math is wrong, he's just calculating the wrong equations.
Look, Latour's whole point is that cooler objects cannot make warmer objects even warmer, right? Then how does he explain the space blanket, or any reflective surface? A heat source that has all its heat reflected back at it will get hotter, regardless of the temperature of the reflector (first law of thermodynamics; energy doesn't just disappear). Not according to Latour.
If you can't even see that much, then it's pointless discussing this further.
I'm trying to address some fundamental misunderstandings that appeared to be confusing you. If you want to dismiss that as "semantics", then fine, we'll stick to high-level descriptions (though I'm betting you'll just dismiss these too, because I haven't mentioned Stefan-Boltzmann enough or some such). Still, at least you're now conceding that warmer bodies will at least absorb energy at the photon level.
The net result is still an overall transfer of energy from the warmer body to the cooler, of course. The point is, greenhouse gases are slowing the Earth's rate of cooling, even though they are cooler than the Earth itself.
This is in accordance with Newton's Law of Cooling. The Earth radiates energy as it cools, and the greenhouse gases absorb this energy, warming in the process. As the temperature difference decreases, the Earth's rate of cooling slows. The gases are also reflecting radiant energy back to Earth, much like a space blanket (which also keeps people warm, despite being colder than them).
The process by which a cooler body slows the cooling of a warmer body is termed "back radiation" - but I forgot, you're not interested in "semantics". Let's just stick to the net result - the Sun warms the Earth, but the Earth can no longer cool itself as efficiently, so the global average temperature increases until a new equilibrium is found. That's the greenhouse effect.
If I hadn't read the article, how did I produce my "astounding analysis"? Latour's math is not the problem; his basic assumptions are, and I've already made it clear exactly which ones.
But I can see you're not bothering to think about any of this for yourself, let alone respond intelligently, so there's no point me trying to reason with you, or him. You're both welcome to your misguided beliefs; I'm just helping to ensure nobody here accidently takes you seriously.
Right, so you can't explain or defend your own beliefs, you can only point to the person you heard them from. You throw around the names of scientific laws, but you can't show how they support your claims. You'll take the blog of some random engineer on the internet at face value, while dismissing the accumulated expertise and observations of centuries of scientists. Does any of this sound like confirmation bias to you?
All you've done is dodged my points and tried to cover it with bluster. Anything we say, you'll just dismiss with flat declarations as wrong or inadequate or whatever, while rationalising the dissonance as "I'm sure they're all wrong in some way because they're contradicting what I just know to be true, and no doubt Latour could prove it for me." Trying to engage your reason is pointless, because there is no reason involved, only belief.
No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.
Note my emphasis. But this is not the sole result - the transfer of energy is not one-way. There is also a (greater) transfer of energy in the other direction.
A cool body cannot transfer energy to a warm body without also absorbing energy from the warm body. Likewise, a warm body transferring energy to a cool body will also absorb some energy from it.
If cool things can give their warmth to hot things... well, I'd better build a fire in the fireplace to cool this place down.
Not only did you get that arse-backwards, you're still confusing "giving warmth to" with "making hotter". Absorbing energy does not necessarily result in an increase in temperature - not if the object is radiating energy faster than it absorbs it. But radiating energy does not mean the object reflects all incoming energy.
If I put a red-hot poker next to a white-hot stone, then obviously the stone will radiate heat on to the poker (perhaps making it hotter, depending on how fast the poker can shed its own heat). But the poker is also radiating energy. Where do you believe that energy goes, when it hits the stone? Do you think the stone would cool at the same rate if I surrounded it with ice, rather than red-hot pokers?
If you're claiming that warmer objects cannot absorb energy from cooler objects, please quote the actual wording of the physical law you believe prevents this. Not just the name of that law, but the specific wording. A Wikipedia link to that wording would also enlighten us all, I'm sure.
Maybe I should've linked to the Basic page instead. The Intermediate page seems to have bounced off you.
Stefan-Boltzmann still applies, of course - warm bodies radiate energy - but it says nothing about a warm body's ability to absorb radiant energy, even if produced by colder bodies. This is where you're going wrong. Warm bodies radiate faster than cool bodies (that's thermodynamics), but cool bodies still radiate some energy, which can of course be absorbed by the warm bodies, slowing their rate of cooling. Is this not intuitively obvious? It's certainly long-established science.
Let me break down the atmospheric situation for you, in simple language: Greenhouse gases reflect & absorb certain IR bands of sunlight,but pass higher bands, like visible light. The sunlight that gets through warms the Earth, which radiates it back in the IR bands, according to Stefan-Boltzmann. Those same greenhouse gases now reflect & absorb the IR coming from the Earth as well - trapping much of the heat that would otherwise have radiated into space.
This process is in complete accordance with thermodynamics, and has been observed and proved to virtually everyone's satisfaction long, long ago. If Latour still labours under the belief that he can challenge this, he can attempt to publish a paper, but I predict his methodology will be torn to shreds by reviewers far more capably than I could manage.
Slashdot Mirror
So now all those decades of tidal gauge data don't even exist? Yes, there's seasonal noise, and that's why you look only at long-term trends. Those last few report links I sent all show an increasingly-steady positive trend (Fig 4) of 3-5mm/year - does all that data not exist either?
The basic point remains: There are multiple lines of data, from multiple sources, all consistently showing that sea levels are increasing, and at a much faster rate than Tuvalu is sinking. There are dozens of studies linking global sea level rises to glacier melt and thermal expansion caused by rising temperatures. And there are multiple lines of evidence to show that it's us that's causing it, with our CO2 emissions. Hence, AGW is in large part responsible for Tuvalu's situation. Of course Tuvalu is a cherry-picked example, but all that science is global.
97% of climatologists and countless studies agree on this point. You can disagree, but without supporting evidence that's at least as solid as theirs, disagreement becomes simple denialism.
You can plainly see from the blue lines on that graph that the 1993 altimetry data does not start on "an unusually low year" - that trough is clearly the 1997 El Niño. The Funafito data starts years later, and the other data starts years earlier. Your other points about cherry picking kind of fall down when you can't even get that right. But please keep telling me how my claims are confused.
You can propose alternate hypotheses all you like, but if you want anyone to take them seriously, you'll need to actually present observational evidence that supports them. So far all you've done is claim that that Becker's data is not accurate enough, despite not having laid eyes upon that data, or knowing anything about its error bars, and despite the other studies. Why should anyone listen to you, instead of a sizeable group of scientific experts who do this for a living?
You deny my claim about linkage to AGW with nothing more than "just isn't right", but it's not even me who's making these claims. I'm just pointing out the many studies by people far more expert than I (look, here's a few more reports that show continuing sea rise far exceeding subsidence). If you feel you know their jobs better than they do, go right ahead and tell them that, but I expect they'll find your unsubstantiated denial even less convincing than I do.
Still selectively ignoring any inconvenient data, I see, and going with flat denials rather than attempting to refute any points (what, don't want to look at the altimetry map?)
Where is the science? Well, certainly not in any of your posts. All I can see is textbook denialism from an unknown forum poster with a self-admitted lack of knowledge, and some obvious selection and confirmation biases. Can't imagine why you think this might be convincing.
I'll stick to the verified observational data and expert analyses from dozens of respected scientists with reputations to uphold, thank you.
The request was for an example of an AGW disaster - of course it's cherry-picked. Nobody's claiming the sea level is rising this fast in all places (quite the opposite).
What's also bald-faced cherry-picking is a statement like "basically no net gain since a peak of the early 80s". You have to really try hard to ignore the clear and continuing upwards trend (more importantly for the Tuvaluans, the all-important seasonal peaks keep getting higher, resulting in worse flooding each time). You also have to carefully ignore the altimetry data, which clearly shows a 5mm/year rise since 1993 at Funafuti.
Even more impressive is how you blithely imply that a peer-reviewed study's conclusions are completely wrong, without seeing the underlying data or challenging their methodology, even though the study confirms earlier work like Church 2006. You smoothly fill in the missing GPS data with assumptions of your own that it would naturally support your pre-conceived conclusions instead. This despite your admission that you're still baffled by the long-established connection between rising CO2 levels and rising sea levels.
Did I mention that Tuvalu is cited in at least three different studies on climate change disasters? Maybe you should reassure the Tuvaluan Government that the experts are lying and/or incompetant, AGW is a massive conspiracy, and all that salt water they're seeing must be a figment of their imagination, because your glance at a graph proved that rising sea levels and subsidence "mostly stopped by 1980".
The relevant study is Becker 2011. It's based on 60 years of "good quality" tide gauge records for sea levels, satellite altimetry, and GPS precise positioning records for measuring land subsidence. Feel free to cite a more recent study, if you can find one with different conclusions.
Interesting that your reaction to presented evidence is simply disbelief, followed by the assumption that the evidence must somehow be wrong, despite the lack of counter-evidence and (I'm assuming) relevant expertise.
Didn't read the first link, did you? It explains how sea level rises are not uniform, and also shows that the sea levels at Tuvalu are rising 9 times faster than any subsidence.
Interesting link, thanks. Though I note that specific case involved Ford deliberately trying to squeeze out minority shareholders (who were using their dividends to form a competitor), so its value as precedence may vary.
Also, as the article points out, the Business Judgement Rule still applies - any suit must prove a breach of good faith, loyalty or due care, or at least a negligent wastage. E.g. if your reasons for paying full taxes are in the long-term reasonable interests of the company, then you're on firmer grounds. There are plenty of counter-examples; Steve Jobs didn't get sued by his shareholders for refusing to pay dividends like Ford did.
Fair point, though there's a big difference between negligence or self-compensation, and a deliberate choice to pay reaonable taxes because it e.g. increases publicity and good will, or is in-line with stated company policies or mission statements, or as a form of voluntary compensation to the government/community in exchange for infrastructure benefits provided, etc etc.
Point being, even public companies are not purely engines for generating money, despite some views to the contrary. Virtually all at least pay lip-service to the notion of benefiting their customers, employees and wider communities. Not many have "Maximise shareholder value" as their mission statement.
Unless by doing so you indirectly benefit the company and/or its communities, e.g. by proclaiming your choice to give back to the nation with those tax payments and turning it into a PR coup. Corporate charity, if you will.
Or your board could be a bunch of short-sighted sociopaths. No shortage of those.
That's a common fallacy. There is no US statute, state or federal, that requires "maximising shareholder value"
is here. Maldives encouraged to request assistance with infrastructure projects worth $50M, in exchange for supporting the US climate agenda.
In Tuvalu, sea level rises of an average of 5mm/year over the last 60 years have now resulted in regular tidal flooding of low-lying areas like the main airport. Inland salt water seeps are destroying their coconut and taro crops. Tuvalu's vulnerability to strengthening tropical cyclones is significantly increased, as in the case of Tropical Cyclone Bebe, which in 1972 sent a storm surge right over the entire main island, destroying many buildings and uprooting 90% of the trees.
There is now a regular exodus of Tuvaluans to New Zealand, which has agreed to absorb the entire population in the event that Tuvalu becomes completely uninhabitable.
So, according to this nebulous definition of yours, "back radiation" does not include radiation returned by reflection, but only radiation returned by absorption and re-emission. Not sure why you think there's some magical difference in this radiation; it's all still photon. Is it simply because re-emitted radiation can be a different/lower wavelength? What do YOU think this discussion is all about? But of course you won't and can't answer that.
You've already conceded that cooler bodies still radiate, and that warmer bodies absorb that same radiation at an atomic level (i.e. in every case), regardless of net energy transfer, just like reflected energy. So I'm at a loss as to what you're still arguing about back radiation for. But doubtless you're unclear on that yourself. Personally I think it's because you're still attempting to rationalize away bad news, only you're letting others provide the rationalizing, so long as the results match your own desired outcome.
As khayman80 says, Latour is making quite broad claims (even in his article's title) which are contradicted by trivial observation. But since you've just demonstrated you don't even know what he's actually claiming, you are unable to provide any arguments yourself ("Latour must be right, he uses math!"), you ignore any specific counter-points, and thus we've seen nothing more substantial than attempts at mockery from you for the last half-dozen posts.
And that's one of the main reasons this is being sold to *developers*, not consumers.And yes, the consumer version will of course have higher resolution.
Much more important than resolution are the Rift's large field of view and low latency response. These contribute far more to VR "immersion" than resolution does, though they're not numbers that consumers are familiar with. The experience is very different from Doom 2.
That video looks very much like a beefed-up form of Aureal's wave-tracing. A3D 2.0 required a simplified version of the geometry, with acoustic materials applied, and simulated the the main reflections, occlusions and reverb, then (optionally) applied HRTFs to the result.
This project appears capable of using the raw scene geometry and textures, and works in software with modern multicore CPUs, but it looks conceptually quite similar. I'm not aware of any commercial efforts using this approach though. One of the reasons A3D didn't take off back then was the large amount of extra developer work required; maybe this would ease that somewhat.
That's pretty much what HRTF audio cards were doing 15 years ago. Notably, Aureal's A3D 2.0 was doing full wave-traced audio in hardware, up until they got shut down by Creative.
Since then, Creative's cards have been doing HRTFs for some time, available to any game using DirectSound 3D through CMSS-3D, but DS3D was cut from Vista & Win7. For more recent OpenAL games, products like Rapture 3D can get your HRTF fix on.
Unfortunately, carriers still have the ability to get into the source code and nerf this feature, forcing you to keep any bloatware they're especially keen on pushing :-( Verizon appears to be particularly guilty of this.
There are OEM-customised versions of Windows too, but thankfully we've been spared that level of "customisation".
As of Ice Cream Sandwich:
- Settings / Apps / All
- Select the unwanted app/service
- Click Disable.
It's still in ROM of course, but it won't show up in the App Draw, it won't be started on boot, and it won't consume any memory or CPU time.
Don't know why I thought you might actually read all of what I wrote, rather than ignoring the inconvenient bits and saying "duh" at the rest. Silly me.
You're looking for a mathematical proof of Newton's Law of Cooling? Go read Wikipedia.
But math doesn't help if you're starting from the wrong assumptions, as I pointed out. Latour claims cooler bodies cannot affect warmer bodies, which Newton proved wrong centuries ago. As a consequence, it's not that his math is wrong, he's just calculating the wrong equations.
Look, Latour's whole point is that cooler objects cannot make warmer objects even warmer, right? Then how does he explain the space blanket, or any reflective surface? A heat source that has all its heat reflected back at it will get hotter, regardless of the temperature of the reflector (first law of thermodynamics; energy doesn't just disappear). Not according to Latour.
If you can't even see that much, then it's pointless discussing this further.
I'm trying to address some fundamental misunderstandings that appeared to be confusing you. If you want to dismiss that as "semantics", then fine, we'll stick to high-level descriptions (though I'm betting you'll just dismiss these too, because I haven't mentioned Stefan-Boltzmann enough or some such). Still, at least you're now conceding that warmer bodies will at least absorb energy at the photon level.
The net result is still an overall transfer of energy from the warmer body to the cooler, of course. The point is, greenhouse gases are slowing the Earth's rate of cooling, even though they are cooler than the Earth itself.
This is in accordance with Newton's Law of Cooling. The Earth radiates energy as it cools, and the greenhouse gases absorb this energy, warming in the process. As the temperature difference decreases, the Earth's rate of cooling slows. The gases are also reflecting radiant energy back to Earth, much like a space blanket (which also keeps people warm, despite being colder than them).
The process by which a cooler body slows the cooling of a warmer body is termed "back radiation" - but I forgot, you're not interested in "semantics". Let's just stick to the net result - the Sun warms the Earth, but the Earth can no longer cool itself as efficiently, so the global average temperature increases until a new equilibrium is found. That's the greenhouse effect.
If I hadn't read the article, how did I produce my "astounding analysis"? Latour's math is not the problem; his basic assumptions are, and I've already made it clear exactly which ones.
But I can see you're not bothering to think about any of this for yourself, let alone respond intelligently, so there's no point me trying to reason with you, or him. You're both welcome to your misguided beliefs; I'm just helping to ensure nobody here accidently takes you seriously.
Right, so you can't explain or defend your own beliefs, you can only point to the person you heard them from. You throw around the names of scientific laws, but you can't show how they support your claims. You'll take the blog of some random engineer on the internet at face value, while dismissing the accumulated expertise and observations of centuries of scientists. Does any of this sound like confirmation bias to you?
All you've done is dodged my points and tried to cover it with bluster. Anything we say, you'll just dismiss with flat declarations as wrong or inadequate or whatever, while rationalising the dissonance as "I'm sure they're all wrong in some way because they're contradicting what I just know to be true, and no doubt Latour could prove it for me." Trying to engage your reason is pointless, because there is no reason involved, only belief.
They're not white bodies either. They absorb some energy, radiate some energy, and reflect some energy. Your point?
Here, let me draw your attention to the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.
Note my emphasis. But this is not the sole result - the transfer of energy is not one-way. There is also a (greater) transfer of energy in the other direction.
A cool body cannot transfer energy to a warm body without also absorbing energy from the warm body. Likewise, a warm body transferring energy to a cool body will also absorb some energy from it.
If cool things can give their warmth to hot things... well, I'd better build a fire in the fireplace to cool this place down.
Not only did you get that arse-backwards, you're still confusing "giving warmth to" with "making hotter". Absorbing energy does not necessarily result in an increase in temperature - not if the object is radiating energy faster than it absorbs it. But radiating energy does not mean the object reflects all incoming energy.
If I put a red-hot poker next to a white-hot stone, then obviously the stone will radiate heat on to the poker (perhaps making it hotter, depending on how fast the poker can shed its own heat). But the poker is also radiating energy. Where do you believe that energy goes, when it hits the stone? Do you think the stone would cool at the same rate if I surrounded it with ice, rather than red-hot pokers?
If you're claiming that warmer objects cannot absorb energy from cooler objects, please quote the actual wording of the physical law you believe prevents this. Not just the name of that law, but the specific wording. A Wikipedia link to that wording would also enlighten us all, I'm sure.
Maybe I should've linked to the Basic page instead. The Intermediate page seems to have bounced off you.
Stefan-Boltzmann still applies, of course - warm bodies radiate energy - but it says nothing about a warm body's ability to absorb radiant energy, even if produced by colder bodies. This is where you're going wrong. Warm bodies radiate faster than cool bodies (that's thermodynamics), but cool bodies still radiate some energy, which can of course be absorbed by the warm bodies, slowing their rate of cooling. Is this not intuitively obvious? It's certainly long-established science.
Let me break down the atmospheric situation for you, in simple language: Greenhouse gases reflect & absorb certain IR bands of sunlight,but pass higher bands, like visible light. The sunlight that gets through warms the Earth, which radiates it back in the IR bands, according to Stefan-Boltzmann. Those same greenhouse gases now reflect & absorb the IR coming from the Earth as well - trapping much of the heat that would otherwise have radiated into space.
This process is in complete accordance with thermodynamics, and has been observed and proved to virtually everyone's satisfaction long, long ago. If Latour still labours under the belief that he can challenge this, he can attempt to publish a paper, but I predict his methodology will be torn to shreds by reviewers far more capably than I could manage.