Top U.S. Scientist Calls Greenhouse Gas Theory a ‘Fallacy’
Respected retired scientist Dr. Frank Schnell, member of the American Council on Science and Health Scientific Advisory Panel comes out to publicly trash the science cornerstone of man-made global warming. Calling the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) “a fallacy” and explaining why, this former toxicologist from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry pulls no punches about the junk science behind carbon dioxide’s alleged climate impact.
Dr Schnell dismisses the GHE as “obscene fantasy” and explains in detail why, writing:
The so-called “Greenhouse effect” is one of the most persistent fallacies in popular science. It is a flawed speculation left over from the late 19th century, when it was first entertained by such scientific luminaries as Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius.
In fact, however, the so-called “greenhouse gases” do not “trap” infrared energy radiated from the surface of the Earth, as proposed; they merely slow its inevitable return to outer space.
Imagine a single packet of incident solar radiation. The fraction that reaches the surface of the Earth will be absorbed and re-radiated as infrared radiation (IR) or “heat”. Most of that emitted IR, after a circuitous “pinball” journey between molecules in the atmosphere, will eventually be lost to outer space. But, a small percentage of it will be momentarily absorbed by “greenhouse” gases (primarily water vapor), only to be re-emitted almost immediately and randomly in all directions.
The small percentage of the IR that greenhouse gases re-emit towards the Earth will again be absorbed and re-radiated, starting the next iteration of a cycle that will successively diminishing the amount of energy remaining from the original packet of incident solar radiation.
The important point here is that the interception and re-emission of ground-emitted IR by “greenhouse” gases does not add any energy to the initial packet of incoming solar radiation; it merely slows the dissipation of that packet of energy. The IR that is returned to the Earth’s surface does not represent a new source of energy in addition to the original packet of incident solar radiation. It is just a continually diminishing fraction of that original solar radiation. Thus, the “Greenhouse effect” does not result in the accumulation of energy beyond what the sun supplies. Rather, it merely slows the rate at which that energy is inexorably lost to outer space.
The result is a moderation of both daytime and nighttime temperatures, not a multiplying of the warming effect of the sun. In fact, the oft promoted specter of “tipping points” and “runaway greenhouse effects” represent nothing less than violations of the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Ironically, the conventionally described “greenhouse effect” (to the extent that it exists at all), would actually have a net cooling effect during the day, rather than a net warming effect, as invariably claimed. While excitedly promoting the absorption of ground-radiated IR by greenhouse gases, global warming enthusiasts ignore altogether the interception of incoming solar IR radiation by the same gases, which has been calculated to be several times greater than the absorption of ground-radiated IR.
Oceans, Atmospheres and Clouds:
The water in Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are the principal moderators of the surface temperature of the planet. Due to the high heat capacity of water, the Earth’s oceans store vast amounts of solar energy, releasing it only very slowly. Also, water in the atmosphere, in the form of clouds, increases the albedo of the Earth.
Both forms of water cool the Earth during daylight hours, one by temporarily sequestering heat, and the other by reflecting much of the incident solar radiation back into space before it can reach the surface of the Earth.
Conversely, the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere reduce the rate at which the planet cools at night, making nighttime on Earth warmer than it otherwise would be.
Figure 1. Temperatures and CO2 levels during the Phanerozoic.
Extraterrestrial Examples:
The easiest way to appreciate the moderating effect that water and water vapor have on climate is to look at other worlds that lack either oceans or an atmosphere.
The Moon is about the same distance from the sun as is the Earth, but it has no atmosphere and no oceans. Without the moderating effect of oceans and atmosphere, daytime temperatures on the Moon commonly exceed 200°F, and nighttime temperatures commonly sink below minus 300°F. By contrast, the average temperature on Earth is around 61°F.
Obviously, then, it is absolute nonsense to claim that greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer than the sun alone would make it. To the contrary, the sun alone (i.e., in the absence of oceans and atmosphere) would make Earth much hotter during the day and very much colder during the night than it is with the moderating influence of oceans and atmosphere.
Venus, which has an atmosphere that is 96{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} CO2 and a surface temperature of 872°F, is often cited (incorrectly) as an example of a “runaway greenhouse effect”. However, the surface of Venus is so much hotter than Earth’s, not because its atmosphere contains so much CO2, but because it is some 30{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} closer to the sun, and its atmosphere is 90 times denser at surface level than Earth’s.
The much greater mass of Venus’ atmosphere translates into much greater adiabatic compression which, in turn, produces much higher surface temperatures. (On Earth, temperatures at Death Valley and the Dead Sea are hotter than elsewhere because of their negative elevation relative to sea level and the resulting increase in adiabatic compression.)
Furthermore, it is the high, solar-induced temperature of Venus that led inevitably to the high CO2 content of its atmosphere, and not the other way around. For, even before it had a substantial atmosphere, Venus was evidently too hot to retain water in its liquid state, so no oceans could be formed. Without oceans to absorb CO2 and sequester it in sedimentary rocks like limestone (which is only formed in sea beds), virtually all of the CO2 on Venus must reside in its atmosphere.
By contrast, on Earth, 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of which is covered by deep oceans, 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the carbon on the planet is sequestered in sea water and limestone. Earth’s atmosphere, on the other hand, contains a paltry 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} CO2, making the latter quite literally a rare gas, one which can have no significant effect on Earth’s climate. (The absence of any obligatory relationship between CO2 levels and temperature is evident throughout the last 500 million years, as shown by Figure 1. The Phanerozoic).
Therefore, while the scientifically bankrupt concepts of “Tipping Points” and a man-made, “runaway greenhouse effect” have obvious political applications, the mere existence of the Earth’s oceans make it an impossible, and obscene fantasy.
Read more at www.science20.com
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OMG'Sullivan
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Are you kidding me – a toxicologist, with no research or study to support his argument, is your idea of a climate expert?!?
Hahahahahaha
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tom0mason
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Dr. Frank Schnell makes far, far more sense than the scientific nonsense spewed out by the UN-IPCC and their advocates, regardless of his specialism.
I do note that you have not rebuttal to his argument, just an attack against the man. A classic ad hominem attack from someone hiding behind a stupid pseudonym.
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Jim McGinn
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Climatologists are mostly just geographers. Most of them have never done an experiment in their lives and the only classes they’ve had that remotely resemble the rigor of a chemist or a physicist is some statistics. Climatology is a conversational science, like anthropology or sociology. It isn’t really a science. That’s why they don’t debate. They can’t hold their own with a real scientist.
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Squidly
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I would assume by your incredibly ignorant comment that would also believe Gavin Schmidt or James Hansen is a “climate expert” as well. If so, you are sadly very ignorant of their backgrounds and specialization. Hint: It ain’t “climatology”
If you can’t rebut the content, by all means attack the author. You’re just another dumbass.
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Rosco
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I submitted an article on trying to see if Down welling Long wave Radiation is caused by the Sun many years ago which PSI chose not to publish.
It is here if anyone wishes to pull it apart.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ubrhs9qd08bjnd/DLR%20Article.docx?dl=0
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jerry krause
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Hi Rosco,
My first question about your article was about the time it was submitted. So I did som research and found that PSI did not exist before 2012.
6th line: “I have only been able to locate one experiment which attempts to measure DLR.” About which I assume that DLR is downwelling infrared radiation.
I admit I only discovered the SURFRAD (surface radiation) project only 4 years ago. But it has been in existence for more than two decades. Obviously its data is not commonly referred to even today. Just the data at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html
has been available since about 2008 and I only learn of it less than a month ago. However, that does not excuse me or you for not doing a better search for specific data.
Your argument seems to be, and it is purely an argument without basis, when you wrote: “For 1370 Wm-2 this amounts to 315 Wm-2– a figure strikingly reminiscent of the claimed value of DLR” For it seems you claim DLR is the direct result of Downwelling Solar Radiation (DWS)
For you began your article: “One of the fundamental concepts underpinning climate alarm is Down welling Long wave Radiation with a value of ~300Wm-2 which is claimed to have been measured. An equally important claim is the solar radiation is incapable of causing this.”
The fact is such a value of DRL had been routinely measured for years and we (you and I) just did not know about it. But I do not believe any founding members of PSI knew about it either.
But after your quote Nasif S. Nahle: “If we place the same pyrometer on the ground, adjusted to longwave thermal radiation, during nighttime, the recorded power flux will be around 60 Wm-2. And then you seem to question the statement: “An equally important claim is the solar radiation is incapable of causing this.” You have validated that what follows cannot be based upon any one’s efforts to measure what you claim has not been measured because you have not discovered it.
So why should anyone want to publish an author who states: The Sun is responsible for DLR – there is no other logical explanation. It will heat the atmosphere significantly more than terrestrial radiation ever could. And then in his closing statement repeats: “The Sun is responsible for DLR – there is no other logical explanation.It will heat the atmosphere significantly more than terrestrial radiation ever could. Note I am saying ͞radiation͟– I do not ignore convection which is a very significant source of energy transfer to the atmosphere – this discussion simply seeks to offer another interpretation of what drives DLR.
Try this logical explanation (only my opinion): The sun heats the surface during the day and the warmer surface, during the day, heats the atmospheric in contact with the surface. The warmer surface emits more longwave infrared radiation than a cooler surface emits. So the magnitude of the emission by the ground diurnally oscillates cyclically as the air temperature generally oscillates with a diurnal period because the soil surface temperature oscillates similarly to the air temperatures oscillation. Since there is not solar radiation it cannot be the direct cause of the soil surfaces emission any more than it can be of any downward DLR. What you never mentioned once is that the atmosphere at all altitudes until it (the molecules of the atmosphere) become undetectable has a temperature which exists day and night just as the shallow atmospheric surface layer whose temperature is routinely measured has a temperature. Hence, is not logical that anything in the atmosphere that is capable of emitting longwave infrared radiation would emit it occurring to its temperature as the solid and liquid surface does? Of course, it is logical. But is it logical that magnitude of the diffuse gases and other matter of the atmosphere, which have no surface except that defined by solid or liquid matter should emit according the same radiation temperature law as the solid and liquid surfaces do? Yes and no. There is abundant evidence that cloud surfaces, even ‘thin’ clouds, emit according to their temperatures as if they were almost a theoretical black body. So, should individual cloud droplets so widely space we cannot detect them with our eyes also emit from their surfaces as if they were black bodies? My answer is yes but because there is no observable surface to this collection of particles (including trace molecules) we must accept that these particles, which condensed matter or gases, have a great variety of temperatures. But is it logical to assume that the greater the temperature of this diffuse matter, the greater the slight magnitude of its emissions? My answer is yes. It seems I can remember recently telling you how the changing temperatures are averaged by some integration process. Could not the average temperature of the atmosphere be calculated from the data of atmospheric soundings? Maybe somebody is doing this just as we did not know that radiations were routinely being measured and the soil surface temperatures and soil temperatures and soil moisture contents were routinely being measured.
But maybe you are right that PSI publishes many articles that are no better than I found your article to be. For any time I see an article with many equations, graphs (figures) of no actual data, averaged data, supposed information (data) from millions of years ago, I immediately question what this author actually knows and if the article has much purpose.
I live in the here and now and it is tough enough to understand (explain) what is going on now, to pretend someone can explain what is going now is like that of a million years ago. It is my opinion that some people have no conception of reality. But I have to accept that other people can have opinions also but we all have to live in this world of different opinions.
Which is why I bought Feynman’s book–“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”–purely because of its title, which is my opinion. But I also bought the book because in it Feynman described how his farther taught him to be a scientist.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Squidly
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One problem I have with this is that LWR does not heat the air. We have a plethora of IR heating devices that aptly demonstrate this.
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jerry krause
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Hi Squidly,
Where did I state that the LWR heats the air? I stated that the ‘warmer surface’ heats the air in contact with it.
But thanks for reading my comment and responding to what you thought I had written.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Resolving the Anomalies of H2O Meetup
Santa Clara, CA / January 31, 2018
https://www.meetup.com/Resolving-the-Anomalies-of-H2O/
Within the academic discipline of physical chemistry 70 “anomalies” of H2O have been recognized. These anomalies are inconsistent with predictions of standard theory and have no known alternative explanations. Due to a theoretical breakthrough these anomalies are now finding resolution. If at any time in your career or education you encountered the unresolved anomalies of H2O and were left wondering how something that appears to be so simple could have so many unresolved and unexplained anomalies then this will be for you. Rest assured, this is not just a discussion of H2O’s anomalies. This presentation purports to present the solution, correcting a wrong turn in theory that was made some eighty years ago, setting the stage for a new understanding of a molecule that is central to all of the natural sciences.
James McGinn
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jerry krause
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Hi James,
Could we have a list of the 70 “anomalies” of H2O for which physical chemists have no explanation. This is so we (I) could judge if we might learn something at your meeting which we do not already know and therefore consider there might not be any need of alternative explanations. Sure would like seeing (reading) such a list.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jim McGinn
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Jerry: Could we have a list of the 70 “anomalies” of H2O for which physical chemists have no explanation.
JMcG: Thanks for the question. Sure. Of course. I’ve posted aspects to it over and over again. But people are dumb. They don’t get it. People want to believe water is simple and well understood so they just ignore the plethora of evidence that it is highly complex and severely misunderstood. And I’m not just talking abot the brain-dead, stupid supposition that water magically becomes gaseous at temperature below its known boiling temperature/pressure. (This retarded notion has been put into all the meteorological textbooks and is even more pervasive than the retarded notion that CO2 causes the atmosphere to heat up.)
Many of these anomalies are so obscure and occur only under extreme conditions, but here are 41 of them:
https://fathersergio.wordpress.com/2006/01/29/forty-one-anomalies-of-water/
Forty-one Anomalies of Water
Jan 2006
Posted by Father Sergio (Not Serg)
As water is so common-place, it is often regarded as a ‘typical’ liquid. In reality water is most atypical as a liquid, with its properties at low temperatures quite different from its properties when hot. It has often been stated that life depends on these anomalous properties of water. In particular, the large heat capacity, high thermal conductivity and high water content in organisms contribute to thermal regulation and prevent local temperature fluctuations, thus allowing us to more easily control our body temperature. The high latent heat of evaporation gives resistance to dehydration and considerable evaporative cooling. Water is an excellent solvent due to its polarity, high dielectric constant and small size, particularly for polar and ionic compounds and salts. It has unique hydration properties towards biological macromolecules (particularly proteins and nucleic acids) that determine their three-dimensional structures, and hence their functions, in solution. This hydration forms gels that can reversibly undergo the gel-sol phase transitions that underlie many cellular mechanisms. Water ionizes and allows easy proton exchange between molecules, so contributing to the richness of the ionic interactions in biology.
At 4°C water expands on heating or cooling. This density maximum together with the low ice density results in
the necessity that all of a body of fresh water (not just its surface) is close to 4°C before any freezing can occur, the freezing of rivers, lakes and oceans is from the top down, so permitting survival of the bottom ecology, insulating the water from further freezing, reflecting back sunlight into space and allowing rapid thawing, and density driven thermal convection causing seasonal mixing in deeper temperate waters carrying life-providing oxygen into the depths. The large heat capacity of the oceans and seas allows them to act as heat reservoirs such that sea temperatures vary only a third as much as land temperatures and so moderate our climate (e.g. the Gulf stream carries tropical warmth to northwestern Europe). The compressibility of water reduces the sea level by about 40 m giving us 5% more land. Water’s high surface tension plus its expansion on freezing encourages the erosion of rocks to give soil for our agriculture.
Notable amongst the anomalies of water are the opposite properties of hot and cold water, with the anomalous behavior more accentuated at low temperatures where the properties of supercooled water often diverge from those of hexagonal ice. As cold liquid water is heated it shrinks, it becomes less easy to compress, its refractive index increases, the speed of sound within it increases, gasses become less soluble and it is easier to heat and conducts heat better. In contrast as hot liquid water is heated it expands, it becomes easier to compress, its refractive index reduces, the speed of sound within it decreases, gasses become more soluble and it is harder to heat and a poorer conductor of heat. With increasing pressure, cold water molecules move faster but hot water molecules move slower. Hot water freezes faster than cold water and ice melts when compressed except at high pressures when liquid water freezes when compressed. No other material is commonly found as solid, liquid and gas.
The anomalies:
Water has unusually high melting point.
Water has unusually high boiling point.
Water has unusually high critical point.
Water has unusually high surface tension and can bounce.
Water has unusually high viscosity.
Water has unusually high heat of vaporization.
Water shrinks on melting.
Water has a high density that increases on heating (up to 3.984°C).
The number of nearest neighbors increases on melting.
The number of nearest neighbors increases with temperature.
Pressure reduces its melting point (13.35 MPa gives a melting point of -1°C)
Pressure reduces the temperature of maximum density.
D2O and T2O differ from H2O in their physical properties much more than might be expected from their increased mass; e.g. they have increasing temperatures of maximum density (11.185°C and 13.4°C respectively).
Water shows an unusually large viscosity increase but diffusion decrease as the temperature is lowered.
Water’s viscosity decreases with pressure (at temperatures below 33°C).
Water has unusually low compressibility.
The compressibility drops as temperature increases down to a minimum at about 46.5°C. Below this temperature, water is easier to compress as the temperature is lowered.
Water has a low coefficient of expansion (thermal expansivity).
Water’s thermal expansivity reduces increasingly (becoming negative) at low temperatures.
The speed of sound increases with temperature (up to a maximum at 74°C).
Water has over twice the specific heat capacity of ice or steam.
The specific heat capacity (CP and CV) is unusually high.
Specific heat capacity; CP has a minimum.
NMR spin-lattice relaxation time is very small at low temperatures.
Solutes have varying effects on properties such as density and viscosity.
None of its solutions even approach thermodynamic ideality; even D2O in H2O is not ideal.
X-ray diffraction shows an unusually detailed structure.
Supercooled water has two phases and a second critical point at about -91°C.
Liquid water may be supercooled, in tiny droplets, down to about -70°C. It may also be produced from glassy amorphous ice between -123°C and – 149°C [74] and may coexist with cubic ice up to -63°C [137].
Solid water exists in a wider variety of stable (and metastable) crystal and amorphous structures than other materials.
Hot water may freeze faster than cold water; the Mpemba effect.
The refractive index of water has a maximum value at just below 0°C.
The solubilities of non-polar gases in water decrease with temperature to a minimum and then rise.
At low temperatures, the self-diffusion of water increases as the density and pressure increase.
The thermal conductivity of water is high and rises to a maximum at about 130°C.
Proton and hydroxide ion mobilities are anomalously fast in an electric field
The heat of fusion of water with temperature exhibits a maximum at -17°C [15].
The dielectric constant is high and behaves anomalously with temperature.
Under high pressure water molecules move further away from each other with increasing pressure.
The electrical conductivity of water rises to a maximum at about 230°C and then falls.
Warm water vibrates longer than cold water.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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jerry krause
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Hi James,
I only write this so others might read it. At one time water’s unusual properties could not be explained. The longest known of its unusual properties, because it is the easiest to commonly observe, is that solid water (ice) floats on liquid water.
It was only concluded by the general scientific community, on the basis of reproducible observations (measurements), that matter (solid, liquid, gas) was composed of atoms in 1803. “Dalton, who set forth his atomic theory in 1803, regarded the atom as hard and indivisible. I wasn’t long, however, before evidence accumulated to show that matter is electrical in nature. Indeed, the electrolytic decomposition of water by Nicholson and Carlisle in 1800 had already indicated as much. … Further detail in the structure of atoms had to wait for the development of gas discharge tubes and of still more powerful sources of electrical voltage. By 1875 … William Crookes passed an electric current through such a tube. The beam of current traveled in straight lines from cathode to anode. This beam was said to be composed of cathode rays. But just what are these cathode rays? Streams of particles, the British scientists stoutly maintained. No, they were much more likely to be a form of light made up of waves, the Germans insisted. Who was right? The answer in such cases comes—at least it should come—from experimentation, not politics. An Englishman, Joseph John Thomson, provided the answer in 1897. He showed that he cathode rays were deflected in an electric field. Since they were deflected toward the positive plate, the rays must be composed of negatively charged particles. Each particle carried an identical charge. The name electron was given to those units of negative charge. Thomson also was able to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of the cathode ray particle by determining the amount of deflection in a magnetic field of known strength. … In 1886, a German scientist name Eugen Goldstein experimented was gas discharge tubes that had perforated cathodes. He found that while electrons were formed and sped off toward the anode, positive rays were formed and shot in the opposite direction through the holes in the cathode. It was not until 1907, however, that a study of the deflection of these particles in a magnetic field revealed that they were of varying mass. The lightest, formed when there was little hydrogen gas in the tube, was found later to be 1837 times as massive as an electron. The charge of an electron was determined by an American, Robert A. Millikan, in 1909. … From Millikan’s value of the charge and Thomson’s value of the mass-to-charge ratio, the mass of the electron was readily calculated. Electrons are extremely light particles … Many scientific discoveries often are described as happy accidents. Have you ever wondered why these accidents always seem to happen to scientists? It is probably because scientists are trained observers. … Two such happy accidents occurred in the last years of the nineteenth century. In 1895, a German scientist, Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, was working in a dark room, studying the glow produced in certain substances by cathode rays. To his surprise, he noted this glow on a chemically treated piece of paper some distance from the cathode ray tube. The paper even glowed when taken to the next room. Roentgen had discovered a new type of ray that could travel through walls. The rays were given off from the anode whenever the cathode ray tube was operating. With seeming lack of imagination, Roentgen called the mysterious, penetrating rays X rays. … Antoine Henri Becquerel, a Frenchman, was studying fluorescence. … Before Becquerel found out very much about fluorescence, he accidently made an important discovery. He was testing a crystal of a uranium compound. When placed in sunlight, the compound fogged the photographic film. On several cloudy days when work in the sunlight was impossible, Becquerel prepared samples and place them in a drawer. To his great surprise, the photographic film was exposed even though the uranium compound had not been exposed to sunlight. … Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander, working at McGill University in Montreal, … soon used the positively charged alpha particles to make an important discovery. He placed some highly radioactive material in a lead-lined box with a tiny hole. Most of the alpha particles were absorbed by the lead, but those escaping through the hole made up a narrow stream of very high energy particles. This apparatus, then, could be aimed like a gun at some target. One target Rutherford selected was a thin piece of gold foil. He expected most of the positively charged alpha particles to be deflected only slightly by the positive charges in the atoms of the gold foil. What he found was that most of the alpha particles went through the foil—which was about 2000 atoms thick—without being deflected at all. This result is understandable if one assumes that the positive charges in the atom are rather thinly spread and no match … Rutherford’s nuclear theory of the atom, set forth in 1911, was revolutionary indeed.” (Chemistry for Changing Times 4th Ed, John W. Hill)
I have reviewed this history, written by Hill, of the atom up to 1911 to establish to issues. Our knowledge of the atom is not old. And it took about the same time to get from 1903 to 1911 as it is from 1911 to 2018.
I now return to Hill’s review of the history of the atom. “The first satisfactory explanation of line spectra [which he has described] was set forth by Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, in 1913. He made the revolutionary suggestion that electrons cannot have just any amount of energy, but can have only certain specified values; that is to say, the total energy of an electron is quantized. … It was the young French physicist Louis de Broglie who first suggested (in 1924) that the electron should have wavelike properties. … A model of the atom based on the wave nature of the electron was developed during the late 1920s, principally by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger.”
In 1939, the book—The Nature of The Chemical Bond—by Linus Pauling, born and educated in the USA, was published. In his preface of June 1938 Pauling wrote: “For a long time I have been planning to write a book on the structure of molecules and crystals and the nature of the chemical bond. With the development of the theory of quantum mechanics and its application to chemical problems it became evident that a decision would have to be made regarding the extent to which the mathematical methods of the theory would be incorporated in this book. I formed the opinion that, even though much of the recent progress in structural chemistry has been due to quantum mechanics, it should be possible to describe the new developments in a thorough-going and satisfactory manner without the use of advanced mathematics. A small part only of the body of the contributions of quantum mechanics to chemistry has been purely quantum-mechanical in character; only in a few cases, for example, have results of direct chemical interest been obtained by the accurate solution of the Schrödinger wave equation. The advances which have been made have been in the main the result of essentially chemical arguments—the assumption of a simple hypothesis, which is tested by empirical comparison with available chemical information, and used in the prediction of new phenomena. The principal contribution of quantum mechanics to chemistry has been the suggestion of new ideas, such as the resonance of molecules among several electronic structures with an accompanying increase in stability. … The opportunity and incentive to prepare this work for publication have been provided my tenure of the George Fisher Baker Non-resident Professorship of Chemistry at Cornell University during the Fall Semester of 1937-38.”
Given this book and Pauling’s later ‘introduction to chemistry’ textbooks, I doubt that James McGinn could explain any anomalies of water not already explained by Pauling in his books.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Jerry: I only write this so others might read it.
JMcG: I hope you don’t have a problem with me reading it also.
Jerry: The longest known of its unusual properties, because it is the easiest to commonly observe, is that solid water (ice) floats on liquid water.
JMcG: Even a child can see that if ice involved H2O molecules magically forming into a lattice, as Bernal and Fowler SUGGESTED, then ice would be a lot more bouyant than it is. (I capitalize the word ‘suggested’ because many have mistakenly assumed that B and F’s models were evidence, and that is just stupid.)
Jerry: It was only concluded by the general scientific community, on the basis of reproducible observations (measurements), that matter (solid, liquid, gas) was composed of atoms in 1803.
JMcG: That’s over 200 years ago. Is the news slow in your neck of the woods?
Jerry: Our knowledge of the atom is not old.
JMcG: Yes, Jerry, I saw the same documentary. You aren’t the only one that gets YouTube on your computer.
Jerry: The opportunity and incentive to prepare this work for publication have been provided my tenure of the George Fisher Baker Non-resident Professorship of Chemistry at Cornell University during the Fall Semester of 1937-38.”
JMcG: Interesting. So, you were directly involved in helping this book and its included errors be published. I suppose you think that gives you some special status that excludes you from considering the fact that Pauling screwed up on one particular point. And, therefore, you don’t have to consider the huge implications of this particular screw up. One can only wonder, do you think the current paradigm which does recognize these anomalies are all in some kind of big conspiracy? Is Anders Nilsson lying? How about Alan Soper? Martin Chaplin? And then there is Phillip Ball—the leading journalist involved with the water structure problem—who stated, “No one really understands water. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but the stuff that covers two-thirds of our planet is still a mystery. Worse, the more we look, the more the problems accumulate: new techniques probing deeper into the molecular architecture of liquid water are throwing up more puzzles.” Then Ball twists the knife: “This guilty secret has myriad ramifications. Water defines the terrestrial environment. It is central to Earth and atmospheric sciences, to biology and to many technologies. The common assumption that water is well characterized has led to explanatory edifices built on shaky ground. The situation is unsatisfactory intellectually and hazardous in practice.”
Jerry: Given this book and Pauling’s later ‘introduction to chemistry’ textbooks, I doubt that James McGinn could explain any anomalies of water not already explained by Pauling in his books.
JMcG: So, in your mind Pauling was a God and it’s not possible that a mere mortal, myself, could correct him. Well, Jerry, not only will I be correcting Paulings error but I will introduce a new model that will set the stage for untangling the mess of bad theory that followed in the wake of Pauling’s (and your’s) error.
Does the concept of tetrahedral symmetry mean anything to you? (See the comments section at the link below to see a huge hint as to the nature of Pauling’s error.)
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes (and water)
https://www.meetup.com/Resolving-the-Anomalies-of-H2O/events/246928935/