Carbon is an Element
Carbon is an element of the Periodic Table. Is that a fact? Yes, it is a fact. It is not an opinion. Anyone can look it up, as I just have. Not only that, it has an Atomic number, which is 6. Incidentally Hydrogen is 1 and Oxygen is 8.
So there is no doubt about it at all. Anybody, just anybody these days can look it up in an instant on a smartphone, on a computer. So why do I labour the point? I shall tell you. For the last two decades we have all been bombarded by voices calling for a Carbon Free environment. We have been threatened lest we use up our Carbon Footprint. This has been the battle cry of all those acolytes of the Arch Priest and one-time Vice President of the United States, Al Gore. Liberal politicians and thousands of camp followers demand that we should be Carbon free.
Funny! Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen.(Wikipedia).
Now is that a fact? The fourth most abundant element in the Universe after Hydrogen, Helium and Oxygen! Yet my good, no doubt well meaning, friends, wish to be Carbon free. Am I crazy or are they?
I do not like to criticise my fellow men, since it is rightly considered a sin, but there is a strange aberration when human beings refuse to acknowledge facts and the conclusions that must follow from these facts. It is called cognitive dissonance.
From the moment a baby is born into this world until the time of his or her final breath, this being is inhaling Oxygen and mixing it with Carbon, in order to produce energy, and exhaling a clear transparent gas called Carbon Dioxide. A few years ago in the USA some bright sparks in the EPA had a vote as to whether Carbon Dioxide should be called a pollutant, and such was the political atmosphere at the time that the vote went 3:2 in favour of calling this noble Gas a pollutant.
This surely must have been one of the most colossal mistakes ever perpetrated on the human race. Since there are now some nine billion humans living on this Planet Earth and since they are exhaling Carbon Dioxide at the rate of circa 20 breaths a minute, to call this exhalation a pollutant is not just a misnomer but also a crime against humanity itself. It is a direct affront to Great Nature – it is like spitting in the face of God the Creator.
Since there is also a well-known Carbon Cycle, where we know that green plants feed on Carbon Dioxide and produce Oxygen as a by-product for all mankind to breathe, it must surely be the most ridiculous error ever to have been perpetrated.
Far from being a pollutant, this gas is a source of life, without which we, and all the animal kingdom, would have been decimated long ago. Yet this false doctrine has even been taught in schools and young kids indoctrinated with the idea that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant. Furthermore, through some obscure references to the work of Svante Arrhenius, some people have been persuaded that the Earth is getting hotter and hotter, owing to the presence of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere, even though it is only a trace gas at 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the whole. This is indeed curious, since this gas is used to make Dry Ice; it is used in Fire Extinguishers and also in Nurseries to speed up the growth of tomatoes, for example.
It is true that Nitrogen and Oxygen, which together comprise 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere, are transparent to infrared radiation, whereas the Greenhouse gases are opaque, so a bizarre and totally illogical conclusion is reached that Greenhouse gases cause warming.
Aha! Say these Physicists, since Carbon Dioxide absorbs infrared and be it said emits it, therefore it follows that these molecules high up in the atmosphere get hot, stay hot and prevent heat ebbing away. They even form a barrier called the Greenhouse Effect. Now since we all know from experience that heat flows by itself from hot to cold – which is the second law of Thermodynamics – and which has just been impressed on me again as my wife just prepared a hot supper, urging me to get to the table in time, the very idea that these tiny molecules become a barrier high up in the atmosphere to cause warming is just a ridiculous conclusion.
The fact that the molecules of the entire Greenhouse Gases are just one in one hundred, and that at altitude they are farther and farther apart, with ‘nothing’ in between the molecules, means that the whole idea of a Greenhouse block suspended high up in the Troposphere is just a non-starter. It is totally absurd. Is that a scientific conclusion? It is both scientific and logical. Most of the conclusions of the Warmists can be shown to be not only unscientific, but also totally illogical. Their reasoning is puerile.
Had these Warmists concentrated on Water Vapour then indeed they might have had a case, since it is clearly observable that in a hot dry climate there is an abrupt decline in temperature when the sun goes down, whereas in a muggy damp atmosphere the temperature declines slowly. So why do the Warmists not blame Water Vapour? The answer is simple – you have it in one. There is no way that they could blame the human race for Water Vapour. There is no way that the Warmists could blame clouds, as the IPCC simply does not ‘do’ clouds.
All the trash that is trumpeted about emissions of Carbon Dioxide is just that – trash! Only gullible simpletons can believe that the temperature of the Planet Earth is controlled by a few molecules of Carbon Dioxide – just 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} – in the atmosphere, when we have a raging Sun only some 90 million miles away that is 3,600 times as big as Planet Earth.
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jerry krause
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Hi Anthony,
Very, Very good!!!
While there is no truth, only briefs; there are observed facts which cannot be debated. And yes one of these observed facts are clouds.
Yet, John O’Sullivan has posted two essay’s in which I reviewed the observed influence of cloud upon the incident solar radiation and air temperatures and surface temperatures as measured at two different NOAA USCRN project sites and these postings (https://principia-scientific.com/record-temperature-result-of-cloud-revised-updated/) and (https://principia-scientific.com/the-corvallis-or-uscrn-site-a-natural-laboratory/) and, as yet, no has made a comment relative to them, not even you. So, I have no idea that anyone has actually read about the observed facts that are reviewed.
And I believe your essay deserves more comments than they have received. For you direct a reader’s attention to important facts.
I came to my computer this morning after pondering the fact that the designers of the USCRN natural laboratories placed three identical air temperature measuring instruments at the vertexes of an equilateral triangle to get a better estimate of the ‘actual’ air temperature. For they had observed the fact that air temperatures could vary by degrees over a short time span in such a natural laboratory. And of course, a purpose of these natural laboratories was to verify the average temperature (to the hundredths or even thousands of a degree) of the earth being measured from satellite platforms in space.
It is evident the designers focused upon the air temperatures because of the tradition that air temperature had been from the beginning been accepted as a proxy for the earth’s surface temperature in the S-B radiation law.
However, another fact is that the designers of the USCRN natural laboratories also boldly placed it an instrument claimed to be capable of measuring surface temperatures.
And I am aware there are some skeptics who question that it is not possible to measure the temperature of natural surfaces. So I question why these people have not expressed their beliefs relative to these measured surface temperatures which are reviewed in these two postings.
There is a great need for a detail conversation about these temperature measurements; which right or wrong are facts reported by instruments and therefore not opinions.
Have a good day, Jerry
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jerry krause
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Hi Possible Readers,
While is did proofread this comment and corrected several mistakes I missed that ‘briefs’ in the first sentence should have been ‘beliefs’.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Peter C
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Dear Jerry,
Thansk you for your work on the possible effect of clouds on surface temperatures at USCRN sites. I just read both of your articles.
The first one seems to have no comments section but I will ask a question at the second one.
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Alan Stewart
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Close to finishing a piece that disputes Chaos in the I.P.C.C definiton of climate, the improper mechanical use of Greenhouse and Water Vapor vs C02.
Peculiar math: 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% Trace gases = 100% Trace gases are termed Greenhouse gases, the so called temperature Control Knob. But, Water Vapor at a disperson of 0-4% of the Atmosphere is ALSO TERMED AS A GREENHOUSE GAS. (source; Wiki, I.P.C.C. various others) I can direct you to several 100 pie charts of atmospheric content where not one mentions Water Vapor!! Could someone explain the math????
Cheers
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Ed Bo
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Alan:
Because the water vapor content is so variable, the percentages of the other gases are customarily given for “dry air” — no water vapor content.
So if the water vapor content is 4%, as can happen in the humid tropics, nitrogen is reduced to about 75%, and oxygen to about 20%.
By the way, the 1% trace gas component is overwhelmingly argon, which is completely transparent to IR.
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Alan Stewart
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Thanks Ed,
Yes, Ar @ ~ .934%. C02 @ .04% with CH4 @ .00018 – .04018 total. STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFCANT – what Anthony and others are hammering at.
The earth’s atmosphere is ABUNDANT with Water Vapor, ~100x greater in quantity than C02 yet by design, obfuscation, the Climatitstas BURY THAT FACT. There has been a strange madness with only comparing C02 to temperature in arguments. Your answer is correct Ed, but that is a LABORATORY numer, not the real world.
Cheers
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Ed Bo
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Alan:
Take 1 liter of water in a glass container. Now add food coloring a drop at a time. Each drop is about 50 microliters, of which about 10 microliters is colorant. So each drop adds 10ppm of a substance that is absorptive of some wavelengths of visible light.
Long before you get to 400ppm, you will see dramatic differences in the transmission of visible light, even over a fraction of a meter.
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BigWaveDave
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Liquid water is more than 1000 times as dense as the atmosphere. So what is your point?
Ed Bo
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A few ppm of absorptive molecules in water provide significant attenuation in just a few tens of millimeters.
With air about 1/1000 the density of water, a few ppm of absorptive molecules, such as H2O and CO2, in air provide significant attenuation in just a few tens of meters.
400ppm of CO2 absorb virtually all 15um radiation within one meter of travel in air (at STP).
Ed Bo
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Anthony:
The US Air Force has spent many millions of dollars over decades measuring the IR absorption/transmission in the atmosphere under a wide variety of conditions because this knowledge is critical to the success of its heat-seeking missiles, which track IR emissions from planes and the like.
The detailed knowledge from these measurements is embedded in the MODTRAN and HITRAN databases, which present in great detail how much IR is absorbed at different wavelengths under different atmospheric conditions.
Their heat-seeking missiles work VERY well.
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jerry krause
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Hi Ed,
Interesting information about the ‘absorption’ of IR radiation during different atmospheric conditions. But I would guess the studies do not question about what happens to the IR radiation that is absorbed.
In this context I believe we need to consider the follow from The Feynman Lectures of Physics (pp 42-9). “Thus, Einstein assumed that there are three processes: an absorption proportional to the intensity of light, an emission proportional to the intensity of light, called induced emission or sometimes stimulated emission, and a spontaneous emission independent of light.” Hence, I understand that the straight line IR radiation that is absorbed (or scattered by ‘cloud’ droplets) is given a ‘new’ direction by a scattering phenomenon or by the induced emission which follows the absorption which is proportional to the intensity of this straight line being emitted from a small, hot, surface (of small volume of a very hot gas whose water vapor composition is far greater than that of the surrounding atmosphere).
Have a good day, Jerry
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Ed Bo
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Hi Jerry:
When Feynman (and others) talk about induced or stimulated emission, they are talking about phenomena such as fluorescence, which are not relevant here.
The absorption is proportional to the intensity of incoming light, and as he notes, the spontaneous emission is NOT. (Scattering is NOT absorption.) They are two separate processes.
As a simple example, if the absorbing object is half the absolute temperature of the original source of the light, its subsequent spontaneous emission will be 1/16 (1/2^4) of the absorbed (for the same emissivity). Note that this may not be a steady-state case — I just bring it up as an understandable example.
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jerry krause
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Hi Ed,
You believe I do not know that scattering is not absorption? The words are definitely different.
You wrote: “When Feynman (and others) talk about induced or stimulated emission, they are talking about phenomena such as fluorescence, which are not relevant here.” Long ago Newton wrote (The Principia as translation by Motte): “Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.”
Have a good day, Jerry
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Ross Handsaker
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Anthony, regarding water vapour as a greenhouse gas, below is a comparison of climate data between Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia.
Phoenix latitude 33.4: altitude 1106 feet
Atlanta latitude 33.7: altitude 1050 feet
There is little difference in latitude and altutude between the two cities. However, the climate of Phoenix is described as dry desert with low levels of humidity (water vapour) while Atlanta is described as humid, sub-tropical.
Average max/min temperatures Phoenix Atlanta
January 20/7 12/0
February 22/9 14/2
March 25/11 19/6
April 30/15 23/9
May 35/20 27/14
June 40/24 30/18
July 41/28 32/21
August 40/27 31/20
September 38/24 28/17
October 32/18 23/10
November 25/10 18/5
December 20/7 13/2
Average relative humidity 37 68
Atlanta is partly cloudy year round.
If the radiative greenhouse effect of back radiation is correct the higher water vapour levels (and cloud) at Atlanta should cause that city to be warmer than Phoenix.
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Ed Bo
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Ross:
I’m afraid you neglected the thermodynamic implications of humidity in your arguments. You really need to compare the “moist enthalpy” (which includes the latent heat of vaporization of water) for the two cities.
For example, air at 30C and 80% relative humidity (typical for Atlanta in the summer) has a moist enthalpy of 85.8 kJ/kg (relative to dry air at 0C).
Air at 40C and 20% relative humidity (typical for Phoenix in the summer) has a moist enthalpy of 64.5 kJ/kg.
And this is true even with Atlanta’s greater cloud cover, which you mention, but don’t consider itscooling effect.
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Ross Handsaker
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Ed. “And this is true even with Atlanta’s greater cloud cover, which you mention, but don’t consider its cooling effect”.
I was under the impression clouds had a warming effect at night.
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Ed Bo
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But a bigger cooling effect during the day.
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jerry krause
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Hi Ross,
Your data is valid; your reasoning: “If the radiative greenhouse effect of back radiation is correct” is suspect. An observed fact is the downwelling IR is seldom ever greater than the upwelling radiation from the surface. Hence, the maximum possible downwelling IR at Atlanta is limited by its surface’s lower temperatures even if the water vapor content of its atmosphere might be greater. But is Atlanta’s atmosphere’s water vapor significantly greater than that of Phoenix as it implied on the basis of the yearly average relative humidity data ?
First you wrote: “dry desert with low levels of humidity” and then you reported relative humidity data. . Humidity is not the same as relative humidity. So your quantitative argument is fundamentally flawed from the beginning.
Have a good day, Jerry
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augustin coppey
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Not trying to distract from the message or the debate, but there are a few points that demand clarifying:
– 9B population seems high. Wikipedia says 7.8B as of May 2018, which sounds a bit more realistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
– Heat flows from hot to cold.
Yes, but I believe that’s mostly in the case of a closed system with boundaries (eg a rod, or a tube full of gas or liquid). I’m not sure the same can be said about the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, with the “empty universe” on one side, all in a low density medium. I think that accurate measurements (if possible at all!), might be useful to confirm this assertion. It appears in climate-warming debates, but it doesn’t seem to be really proven by science.
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Al Shelton
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Here is my question. It is my understanding that a weak radio signal can be “jammed” by a more powerful transmitter at the same frequency.
A small plane trying to contact the ground could have its signal jammed by a ground based transmitter of higher power. Agreed?
Then why would any CO2 that absorbs IR; which is then thermalized; and re-radiated at other wavelengths; not be “jammed” by the stronger outgoing IR from earth?
Hence .. no back radiation can exist to warm the earth.
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Alan Stewart
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Here are two questions. It is understood that the max. temps and water vapor are concentrated adjacent to the equator and are dispersed towards each pole in a regular cycle with the minimums at those poles.
#l: How is C02 dispersed globally and equally important, at what altitudes.
#2: My understanding is that C02 re-radiates heat 360 degrees. Would that then mean that 50% is staying within our lower atmospher and the balance is escaping into space???
Cheers
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Ed Bo
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Al:
The signal (message) in the radiation can be jammed, but not the radiation itself.
If I am trying to communicate with you in the dark with a flashlight using Morse code, a bank of bright flashing lights behind me would make it difficult for you to decipher my message (signal).
However, if I am just shining a flashlight at you, the fact that you are shining a brighter flashlight at me in no way diminishes how you perceive my light.
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Al Shelton
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Thanks for that……..
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Ross Handsaker
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Thanks Jerry for your comments. I am aware that relative humidity is not the same as humidity (details of which I have not found). I should have relied on the climate description for each city. The purpose of my argument was to show that cities which are humid, are not necessarily warmer than cities with a dry atmosphere. If there is less water vapour in the atmosphere there should be less back radiation and a lower surface temperature (according to the radiative greenhouse effect).
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jerry krause
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Hi Folks,
Anthony wrote an excellent essay and for whatever reasons, a fair number of different people have contributed comments. When my essays are posted there are usually 20 fewer comments, if there are any, than there are now.
So maybe this comment will be read by more than there is evidence that my previous essays have. The fundamental issue is the greenhouse effect and it does not matter what the greenhouse gases are.
When Svante Arrhenius made his radiation balance calculation, he made two fundamental mistakes which lead to his conclusion that the earth’s average surface temperature should be 33C less than the earth’s average air temperature.
One mistake was that the average surface temperature is not the average air temperature. Two postings (https://principia-scientific.com/record-temperature-result-of-cloud-revised-updated/) and (https://principia-scientific.com/the-corvallis-or-uscrn-site-a-natural-laboratory/) review actual data from NOAA’s two projects (SURFRAD and USCRN). This data clearly shows that air temperatures are not valid proxy for surface temperatures.
The second fundamental mistake was that he reduced the average incident solar radiation upon the earth’s surface by the measured albedo which had been observed at that time and he could see, as we do, that one of these albedo factors was cloud.
However, no one could, or can, directly see that cloud scatters some portion of the invisible infrared IR radiation being emitted from the surface (because of the surface’s temperature) back toward the surface. Since there was no way for Arrhenius to know how much of the invisible radiation might be scattered back toward the surface by cloud, he ignored this back scattering and attributed the portion of the IR radiation necessary to balance the absorbed solar radiation to the actions of the greenhouse gases and thereby concluded that the earth’s air (surface?) temperature would be 33C less if not for the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere..
And based upon the lack of comments relative to the two posting to which I have directed attention, who can claim to have studied the data which was not available to Arrhenius and needed by him to properly do his radiation balance calculation. Which radiation balance should occur locally just as well as globally?.
Have a good day, Jerry
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