How Climate Physics Paints Light Where It Never Shines

[Written with assistance from Microsoft Copilot AI]

Teaching the Science  

     Climate physics often begins with a discussion of the greenhouse effect, using a diagram where sunlight illuminates a flat disc with the same diameter as Earth. The solar flux on this flat disc is averaged by smearing it across the surface area of the entire planetary sphere. Scientists, educators, and policy makers present this mathematical maneuver as elegant, efficient, and pedagogically sound. But it's a sleight of hand. It paints light where light never shines, and in doing so, it commits the foundational error of divorcing the concept of energy from its actual existence. Confronting this error is not a quibble over notation, but a reckoning with a serious breakdown in human reasoning.

The Geometry of Reality

     Before getting to how much or how well Earth receives energy from the sun, we first have to recognize exactly where Earth receives that energy. In the case of parallel incoming sunlight on a rotating sphere, a schematic of a half-lit globe maps cleanly to a snapshot of reality. The schematic of a fully lit flat disc does not. After establishing this most fundamental understanding of reality, we next ask:

• How does that light actually land across curved geometry?

• What kind of physics and philosophy do we allow or exclude by treating illumination as binary (i.e., half lit, half not)? 

Additionally, at this most elemental level of inquiry, we must understand that sunlight is energy, energy is sunlight, and neither can exist without conveying the other—they are fused in a conceptual ensemble as the same category.

Beyond Binary Light 

     What we call "light" is a particular expression of electromagnetic radiation, which is conveyed by photons, and every photon that travels from the sun carries energy proportional to its frequency:

E = hv where E is energy, h is Planck’s constant, and v (Greek letter "nu") is the frequency of the photon. When we speak of "light" from the sun, therefore, we are unavoidably speaking of electromagnetic radiation and photons at the same time.

     So, even in its most stripped-down conceptual form, whether visualized as illumination or modeled as a flow, light always implies an energetic transaction. In fact, the moment we visually represent sunlight, we're already gesturing toward an energy transaction. That’s why the act of diagramming carries hidden ontological weight, which means it testifies to what humans designate as existing in the physical universe.

Diagram as Declaration of What Exists 

     What exists is Sunlight and its energy, bound together as expressions of electromagnetic radiation. Consequently, when one hemisphere of a planet is illuminated, it is because radiant energy from the sun is actively arriving at and interacting with that part of the planetary surface or atmosphere. The lit side is instantaneously energetically engaged; the dark side is not. In that moment, the lit hemisphere receives energy as solar photons, while the dark hemisphere does not. There’s no mysterious bypass or spectral leakage. The energy we’re concerned with—the photonic delivery from the sun—is not some background hum smeared evenly around the sphere. It's a directional, time-bound event.  The common abstraction blurs this truth with the idea that “average energy” somehow washes evenly across the whole planet, even in moments when half is literally dark.

Energy Arrives Where Light Strikes 

     The proposition is simple: If there's no light striking a region, then there's no energy being received from the sun in that region during that time. Simply stated, the geometry of light equals the geometry of energetic delivery.

Conceptual Laundering 

     The averaging maneuver of mainstream climate science performs a kind of conceptual laundering that cleans away complexity by smearing directional energy over the whole sphere regardless of actual energy exposure. It retrofits geometry to suit simple symmetry, sacrificing the integrity of physical process for the seduction of artificial elegance. What's worse: once baked into the pedagogical canon and embedded in diagrams, this maneuver becomes a silent dogma. Few question it, because its neatness makes it look like reason. But it isn't reason--it's ritual. Going further, it's an intellectual crime that demands accountability from a community of thinkers who too often dismiss criticism as aesthetic or semantic disagreements. The criticism here most assuredly applies much deeper to the very fabric of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity.

Where the Sun Doesn't Shine  

     Planet Earth, of course, is shaped like a sphere. It faces one star—the Sun—which instantaneously illuminates one hemisphere at a time, leaving the other in darkness. This means instantaneous sunlight exists on one half of the planet, while it does not exist on the other. The presence or absence of light on a hemisphere automatically describes the presence or absence of light energy.The energy of the Sun, thus, cannot be separated from its light. “Sunlight” and “Sun energy” name distinct points of view of the same reality, just as “water” and “wet” do. A reasonable person would not claim the existence of wet grass where water does not exist. Yet in climate science, reasonable people claim the existence of the Sun’s energy where the Sun doesn’t shine.

Making Sense of Sunshine 

     In the study of Earth's long-term weather patterns, climate science considers a central question: How does Earth deal with energy received from the Sun to avoid overheating? The answer turns to a guiding principle of thermodynamics—energy in must equal energy out. But the planet is not a simple object. It spins, it tilts, it breathes. Sunlight strikes only one side at a time, and the distribution of that light is uneven, shaped by geometry and motion. To make sense of this complexity, scientists introduce the concept of “energy balance”—a way to compare incoming solar energy with outgoing thermal radiation (i.e., heat energy). It’s a powerful idea, but human minds beg for simplification. And that’s where the trouble begins.

The Flat Disc Delusion 

      To model Earth’s energy flows, climate-science educators often construct what’s called an “energy budget”—a way of accounting for how much solar energy the planet receives and how much it emits back into space. This budget is built on the principle of energy balance: energy in must equal energy out (mentioned earlier). To simplify the math, they focus on the sunlight incident on a disc with the same diameter as Earth—claiming to model the light itself, not the planet. But in doing so, they flatten the geometry of illumination, transforming the convenient disc into a flat stand-in for a spherical Earth without acknowledging what they are actually doing. This initial move is not merely a mathematical convenience; it’s a conceptual misstep that divorces light from the surface it actually strikes. By abstracting the light as if it exists independently of Earth’s curvature, scientists avoid admitting that they are, in effect, imagining the planet as flat. The error lies not in the use of a disc per se, but in the denial that this disc has become a surrogate for the Earth itself—flattening not just the geometry, but the design of the entire model. 

     Such a maneuver is not benign. It contrives light where it never shines, thereby assigning energy to the dark side of Earth, to polar regions in winter, and to angles where sunlight barely grazes. It erases the drama of day and night, the asymmetry of seasons, the choreography of tilt and spin. In short, what begins as a mathematical convenience becomes a sanctioned delusion that reduces the dynamic dance of sunlight into a monotonal static abstraction. The delusion comforts, but it misleads.

Restoring the Geometry of Illumination

     To move beyond the delusion of smeared sunlight, we must return to the actual geometry of solar energy delivery. The diagram below offers such a restoration. It models Earth not as a uniformly lit sphere, but as a rotating body receiving directional, time-bound energy across its sunlit hemisphere. This framework respects the asymmetry of illumination, the episodic nature of solar input, and the thermodynamic consequences of altitude and angle. It does not average light across darkness. It does not paint energy where none arrives. It begins with reality—and builds from there.

Diagram Commentary: Reclaiming the Physics of Illumination

     The diagram above offers a radically different account of Earth’s energy dynamics. Rather than averaging solar input across the entire globe, it models illumination as a directional, episodic process—delivered to a rotating, hemispherically lit Earth.

     At its core, this model restores the **angular specificity of solar flux**. Energy arrives at full intensity only at the subsolar point, diminishes with angle, and vanishes entirely on the night side. This gradient is not a mathematical artifact—it is the thermodynamic reality that drives weather, climate, and life.

     Unlike legacy visuals that flatten Earth into a disc and smear sunlight across darkness, this diagram respects the **geometry of exposure**. It shows that solar energy interacts with the planet in real time, across space, and through depth. The vertical axis—often neglected—is foregrounded here, revealing how energy is absorbed, scattered, and re-emitted through atmospheric layers.

Key features include:

• Zenithal vs. Hemispherical Input  
  Clarifies the distinction between peak solar flux and distributed daytime energy.

• Thermodynamic Gradients
  Highlights how temperature and energy vary with altitude and angle.

• Rotational Dynamics
  Emphasizes that energy delivery is time-bound, not static.

This is not a diagram of static equilibrium—it is a diagram of active flux. As such, it demands that we think in terms of dynamic processes, not motionless averages; in terms of varying directionality, not stationary symmetry. It unapologetically does not paint light where none arrives. Most importantly, it depicts reality—and exposes the cost of ignoring it.

     Constructing a proper diagram such as this does more than correct the physics of illumination; it takes a vital step toward building a better worldview—one in which energy arrives with direction, consequence, and thermodynamic potential. The legacy model, in its flattening impulse, launders away the very asymmetries that make Earth a living system. What Postma’s geometry offers is not merely correction, but a wake-up call: to see sunlight not as a scalar average, but as a sculptor of cycles, seasons, and life itself. In restoring the geometry, we restore the story—and with it, the integrity of climate science as a discipline worthy of both precision and wonder.

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