Ladies and gentleman,

the Information Resource Center of the Embassy of the United States of America in Berlin gave me your address. I’m writing you because I‘m very much interested in air and space sensors, especially infrared sensors for purposes of remote sensing.

My question is: If you want to detect during a dark night a body on earth by high flying aircrafts or satellites you can do this only by absorbing the infrared radiation of that body, the so-called temperature radiation. First essential is that the sky is clear and no clouds or fog can obstruct the view. Second essential must be the fact that there are no gases in the atmosphere like the “greenhouse gases” absorb the long wave electromagnetic radiation. With other words, there must always exist an open radiation window in the atmosphere.

The next question is: Which “windows” the used infrared cameras need when photographing the earth surface? Is this the “window” between 7 and 13 mm or 8 and 12 mm, or is this window even smaller? Can the gases water vapour H₂O, carbon dioxide CO₂, methane CH₄ or ozone O₃ close this “window” by their absorbing lines or bands and, if not, why? Alter the named gases their absorbing power if the concentration in the air is increasing in number?

One more question: Is it right, that all the energy emitted by a ‘black body’ can be calculated with Stefan’s law? Is it also right, that the maximum wave length of the emitted radiation can be obtained by Wien’s law? How do you transform the measured infrared waves into temperatures for mapping the temperature distribution of the earth surface and other hidden objects?

These questions seem naïve and absolutely superfluous but they are of big importance in the public interest and therefore undesired in politics and amongst the climate change community. This community is propagating the natural and man-made greenhouse effect by the emission of carbon dioxide and therefore the warming of the earth. They operate cleverly with global temperatures but avoid strictly physical facts. With the greenhouse hypothesis they can’t declare why all over the world each afternoon with sinking sun the warmth of the earth escapes into the space and the air temperatures near the ground sink till the sun rises next morning. If the body temperature sinks under the dew point the water vapour in the air condenses and liquid droplets are created.

I would be very much obliged to you if you would answer my questions as completely as possible and if you could give me the exact absorption lines of all so-called greenhouse gases, especially the carbon dioxide, the methane and naturally the water vapour.

With many thanks in advance

sincerely yours

Dr. Wolfgang Thüne

wolfgang@thuene.com