William A. Masters: The Case Against Man-made Global Warming
Independent scientist, William A. Masters, offers evidence to understand man-made global warming fraud and the information needed to destroy it:
How do you do Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am William A. Masters; I am a Peer-Review Journal author in Physics, Astrophysics, and Environment Affairs. I authored: “STRETCHED AND NEAR ZERO SPACE -TIME, A NEW MODEL OF GRAVITATION AND BLACK HOLE DYNAMICS; and, INERTIA AS A CHANGE IN ENERGETIC STATES AND ITS EFFECT UPON THE TWIN PARADOX.
I am also the instigator of MASTERS vs OBAMA, in which I allege that the Former President, NASA, EPA and NOAA were committing Constructive Fraud for stating that the Earth was being warmed by the human addition of Carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
As the Court has prevented me from destroying AGW by finding that my damages were general, not specific and so I lack standing to file the case, I wish to give you the evidence to understand AGW and the information needed to destroy it.
Of important note is the claim, often made, that the Nobel Prize-winning paper by Svante Arrhenius:
ON THE INFLUENCE OF CARBONIC ACID IN THE AIR UPON THE TEMPERATURE OF THE GROUND, [April 1896, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 5, Volume 41, pages 237-276], which many have lied about. His Nobel Prize-winning paper did NOT claim that burning of fossil fuels was warming the planet, rather it stated the opposite. On page 240 he wrote:
” The intensity of radiation for any group of rays should always diminish with increasing quantities of aqueous vapor or carbonic acid traversed.”
On page 244-245 he presents his exacting measurements [the first ever done], stating the decline of radiation passing through carbon dioxide and water vapor writing:
” If a ray of heat, corresponding to the angle of deviation 39.45 degrees, passes through the unit of carbonic acid, it decreases in intensity in the proportion 1: 0.934 (log= – 0.0296), the corresponding value for the unit of water vapor is 1: 0.775 (log= -0.1105).”
Thus, he proved that increasing the amount of CO2 in the air will decrease the amount of Sun heat that will be able to pass through the water vapor and carbonic acid and reach the Earth. This decreased Sun heat will cool the Earth not warm it.
So, why did Arrhenius in later papers state that added human CO2 was warming the Planet?
For the answer to that we have to go back to the very first paragraph of his award-winning paper, and to the work of Joseph Fourier, the guy who started all the nonsense about the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ by getting it very wrong.
In the First paragraph Arrhenius writes:
“Another side of the question, that has long attracted the attention of physicists, is this: Is the mean temperature of the ground in any way influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere? Fourier maintained that the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hot-house because it lets through the light rays of the sun but retains the dark rays from the ground.”
Early in the 19th Century, it was discovered that glass blocks infrared heat rays! This raised a question that Fourier thought he’d answered.
As Greenhouses [hot-houses], get warm during the day, and the Sun’s heat [dark rays] can’t penetrate the glass, how does a greenhouse get warm?
Since the visible light rays could penetrate the glass Fourier reasoned that it must be the visible light, not infrared heat, that warmed the earth. It passed through the glass, struck the ground and objects in the greenhouse, warmed them and in return, they gave off infrared heat. That infrared then was trapped inside the greenhouse because infrared can’t penetrate glass!
Simple reasoning, yes? And wrong as we know today.
In 1909 W. O. Wood conducted experiments to test this idea of trapped Infrared. Wood built two greenhouses, one with glass panes, and one with rock-salt panes. Rock-salt is transparent to infrared radiation so any infrared that was given off by the contents inside would be able to escape.
Both greenhouses in the experiment warmed up at the same rate and to the same temperature proving Fourier was wrong. What did he get wrong?
The Sun’s heat was absorbed by the greenhouse itself. Making it warm up. Then, like my wooden garage, it conducted that heat to the inside walls of the greenhouse warming the interior air that was trapped inside.
The air couldn’t rise up in the atmosphere as warm air does, so it just absorbs more and more heat from the walls of the greenhouse until it reached its maximum temperature for the conditions that day.
But this idea that visible light warmed the air continued on in people’s thinking. More so than that, it gave birth to a second horribly wrong idea. Arrhenius speaks of it in the first paragraph on page 239:
“The selective absorption of the atmosphere is, according to the reasearches of Tyndall, Lecher and Pernter, Rontgen, Heine, Langly, Angstrom, Paschen, and others, of a wholly different kind. It is not exerted by the chief mass of the air, but in a high degree by aqueous vapour and carbonic acid, which are present in the air in small quantities. Further, this absorption is not continuous over the whole spectrum, but nearly insensible in the light part of it, and chiefly limited to the long-waved par, where it manifests itself in very well-defined absorption-bands, which fall off rapidly on both sides. The influence of this absorption is comparatively small on the heat from the sun, but must be of great importance in the transmission of rays from the earth.”
It was believed that the infrared portion of the sun’s light must be inconsequential, and the visible must be the majority. Thus, they believed that very little heat is actually blocked out by the CO2 and water vapor, but all that visible light coming in and warming the earth and being sent out as Infrared must be gargantuan!
Remember, their ability to measure light was crude. And they had no satellite data telling them what was actually coming at the earth from the Sun.
Today we know that 52{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Sun’s radiation is in the Infrared and 52{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the radiation that reaches the Earth is also infrared. This even though most of the infrared that reaches the earth is actually absorbed and blocked out by the atmosphere.
At the top of our atmosphere, NASA satellites measure 265 degrees Fahrenheit of Sun heat arriving. The average daytime temperature of the Earth is only 71.9 degrees F.!
193.1 degrees of sun heat is blocked out by the water vapor and ‘greenhouse gases.’ On the other hand, NASA reports here:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page6.php
That only 5{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the radiation reaching the earth is radiated out as infrared and returned to the earth by the ‘greenhouse gases’, raising the temperature of the earth only 59 degrees F. So the actual real effect of the ‘greenhouse gases’ is they cool the planet by 134.1 degrees F!!! CO2 doesn’t warm the planet it cools it by 134.1 degrees.
In conversation with other scientists, I have been dumb-struck by how reverent people still hold to Fourier’s and Arrhenius outdated ideas. In a conversing with Dr. Richard Mueller of Berkeley University, I brought up the Stefan-Boltzmann Law making the point that added CO2 would block out more incoming Sun heat cooling the Earth and so reducing the heat radiated off the Earth and so reducing the ‘greenhouse effect’. To which he responded stating that infrared heat was inconsequential to earth heating!!!
Mueller is a Pro-AGW guy so you might think okay that explains why he is a pro-AGW guy, he doesn’t know that the ‘greenhouse gases’ block out three times more heat than they keep in. But in conversations with a leading opponent of AGW, Doctor of Climatology Roy Spencer, he said the same thing, that infrared was inconsequential to earth heating when I brought up the Stefan-Boltzmann Law!!!
To let you know, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law proves that AGW is impossible. It tells us that the amount of radiation a mass will give off will be equal to its absolute temperature [that’s temperature in degrees Kelvin], taken to the FOURTH POWER of the temperature.
This means any change in the temperature will be taken to the Fourth Power of the change in temperature and that will be the change in emitted radiation. In other words, the change in emitted radiation will always LEAD THE CHANGE IN TEMPERATURE.
If we put enough CO2 into the air to make the atmosphere 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} more insulating for example, then 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} less sun heat will get in. As a result the Earth will give off
-4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} less heat.
1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} more outgoing heat will be reflected back at the Earth offsetting the -4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} drop so, the net drop in the greenhouse effect will e -3{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} rather than -4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.
This is also why Dr. Hawking was lying when he talked about Venus and a runaway greenhouse effect there. It is impossible, as the temperature of the planet increase, it will give off greater and greater amounts of radiant heat making a runaway greenhouse impossible, as NASA says here:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page6.php
In order to defeat AGW and destroy it you have to prove that the Atmosphere blocks out more incoming Sun heat than it keeps in. NASA’s Department of Infrared Astronomy will do that. This is their website:
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/ir_tutorial/irwindows.html
It has a chart (shown below) showing the “Opacity” of the Earths atmosphere and states:
“Most of the infrared light coming to us from the Universe is absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Also, NASA has a chart showing the incoming and outgoing heat, the chart shows that the outgoing and incoming heat is identical in amplitude and waveband! Proof that visible light is NOT turning into infrared like Fourier and Arrhenius thought, because if visible light was turning into heat then the outgoing heat would be much greater than the incoming as it would be made up of the incoming heat plus all the visible light that turned into heat
” Why doesn’t the natural greenhouse effect cause a runaway increase in surface temperature? Remember that the amount of energy a surface radiates always increases faster than its temperature rises—outgoing energy increases with the fourth power of temperature. As solar heating and “back radiation” from the atmosphere raise the surface temperature, the surface simultaneously releases an increasing amount of heat—equivalent to about 117 percent of incoming solar energy. The net upward heat flow, then, is equivalent to 17 percent of incoming sunlight (117 percent up minus 100 percent down).”
THE OPACITY OF THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE
NASA’s own chart (above) shows the Earth’s Atmospheric Opacity. It tells us what wavebands are being blocked out by the atmosphere and by what percentage they are being blocked out. On the Far left of NASA’s chart we see that 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Gamma Rays and X-Rays are blocked out while 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the UV wavebands are blocked out.
11{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} to 7{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the visible light is blocked out by the atmosphere, while to the right of the rainbow of visible light we see that over 60{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Near Infrared (0.8 microns to 8 microns), are blocked by the atmosphere.
To the right of the Near IR, is the Mid-Infrared (8 microns to 40 microns). Only 1/3rd of this heat is blocked out by the atmosphere, 2/3rds make it to the surface. This Mid-IR range is known as the “Water Vapor Window”.
Water vapor, is the most powerful of the insulating “greenhouse gases” but is very poor at absorbing IR radiation of this Mid-IR waveband range. Given the Water Vapor Window, the Earth primarily radiates in the Mid IR wavebands with its heat emissions peaking at 12 microns. This peak is very important due to the fact that Carbon-dioxide’s peak absorption is at 12 to 15 microns! Right where water vapor is the leased effective Carbon-dioxide is the Most effective at absorbing Infrared photons.
NASA charts show the outgoing Earth emitted heat in blue above the corresponding incoming Sun heat reaching the Earth’s surface as registered by NASA ground stations. As can be seen the outgoing heat is identical in waveband and amplitude to the incoming Sun heat. Proving once again, the Law of Conservation of Energy is at work.
What comes in, goes out, all energy is Conserved.
No visible light is coming in, and turning into invisible infrared heat as presumed by Fourier and Arrhenius and others. If that were true, then the exiting heat would be greater than the incoming, yet they are identical. By evidence of their own chart over 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of this is blocked out by the atmosphere, as well as most of the Microwave radiation to its right.
CLOUDS, THEY ARE INSULATORS TOO YOU KNOW
The most obvious example of this cooling effect brought on by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law are Clouds! Clouds are made of the most powerful insulating gas of them all, water vapor. When Nature naturally increases the amount of water vapor in the air it doesn’t get warmer does it?
It is true, Clouds are 100,000 times more insulating than carbon-dioxide gas, but that means clouds block out 100,000 times more Sun heat than carbon-dioxide gas. If the Sun’s heat never reaches the Earth’s surface, the Earth cannot warm up. If the Earth doesn’t get warm it won’t give off IR radiation for the Greenhouse Effect to trap in, ergo no Greenhouse Effect!
Trackback from your site.
jerry krause
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Hi William,
I agree (as if that is important) with much of which you wrote; except …. . And I consider this except very important. In the past the writing of scientists has been criticized as being quite boring. I regularly find that I have written something that I did not intend because I do not proof-read well. And I sometimes I find I have clearly written something that is wrong. Does this mean I should stop writing and asking John O’Sullivan to post what I have written?
A good scientist writes with care so that what is written cannot be misconstrued. Details are important but only to a scientist who ‘understands’ what is being written. For a good scientist writes to share what he (she) has seen that which it seems other scientists have not.
I agree with you that cloud is the principal variable influence upon the earth’s surface temperature from place to place and time to time. Variable is a key word because I believe most would agree that the principal influence upon the earth’s surface temperature is the incident solar radiation incident upon the top of the atmosphere.
So here is my except that you wrote: “Clouds are made of the most powerful insulating gas of them all, water vapor.” The influence of cloud has nothing to do with water as a gas. Clouds are composed of the condensed matter (liquid or solid) of water and clearly not water vapor (gas). The use of the word—insulating—is misleading because it clearly endorses the beliefs (reasoning) of Fourier and Arrhenius and the ‘trapping’ of heat (energy).
But my bottom line is: William, your article was very good and needed to be written and to be shared because given the history of this false idea (the greenhouse effect of certain atmospheric gases) a reasonably informed and intelligent reader should be able to correct less than perfect writing. For none of us are perfect.
Have a good day, Jerry
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nfw
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I was looking at the Web Truth Page, ie Wikipedia, the other day about car exhaust gases. The “author” noted CO2 was a by-product and is a major greenhouse gas. The “author” also noted water vapour was a by-product but said nothing else about it. Most odd. A lie of omission (or is that emission?) is still a lie.
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Ike Kiefer
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You can’t look at day case only (265 F from sun) and ignore night (-454 F of deep space). Saying the atmosphere cools the planet is such a false statement that it trashes all the other good points you make. Need to fix this.
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geran
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Ike, Earth’s atmosphere definitely cools the planet. Heat energy is constantly being radiated/reflected to space. I’m not sure where your confusion begins.
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Peter
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Vapour is neither gas nor liquid, it is in fact very important in thermodynamic steam cycles. The supercritical point of steam, is that point on the top of the saturation curve, where liquid water meets super heated steam. This property is taken advantage of in supercritical boilers, to prevent vapour bubbles forming in steam tubes, causing them to overheat and blow out. If the clouds were gas (superheated steam), you would if the were liquid it would be raining. Clouds are vapour, where the air has cooled and become saturated, because cooler air has a lower absorbtion capacity for H2O gas.
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jerry krause
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Hi Peter,
The publishers of Galileo’s ‘Two New Sciences’ in a preface to the reader wrote: “Intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.”
When I looked for the definition of vapor in my Websters I was surprised to find: “1. Any diffused matter suspended floating in the air and impairing its transparency, as smoke, fog, etc. 2. Physics. Any substance in the gaseous state, thought of with some reference to the liquid or solid form; a gasified liquid or solid.”
When I look in the glossaries of a couple of meteorology textbooks I find neither defines vapor but each does define ‘vapor pressure’: “The pressure exerted by the water vapor molecules in a given volume of air.” And one adds: “It is a measure of the contribution of water vapor to the total pressure.”
Obviously VAPOR is a word which can only create confusion because it has conflicting accepted definitions and therefore can never have an accurate definition.
You concluded: “Clouds are vapour, where the air has cooled and become saturated, because cooler air has a lower absorbtion capacity for H2O gas.” I ask: With what has the atmosphere become saturated? And, are clouds and this unstated something the same?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Peter
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Vapor is a term used in thermodynamics, it’s a gaseous phase, however it is usually used to indicate that a substance can be easily condensed to the liquid phase. I think this is in agreement with your understanding of clouds. It’s on the brink of becoming a liquid. When the gas is no longer easily condensed to the liquid phase in Thermodynamic it is called super heated.
Thermodynamics is used to describe processes that occur in engines, boilers and power stations, but it can also be used to describe natural processes, much better than mathematical statistical models can. Unlike a mathematical model, which can be manipulated by assumptions, Thermodynamics cannot lie, people can stuff up their calculations, but then it’s provably wrong, as it is based on hundreds of years of empirical evidence and study of the properties of matter and energy exchange.
In our world we see matter in states, but properties vary with pressure, temperature, density and energy. In thermodynamics we use various graphs to describe these states, one of those graphs represented in 3D, with pressure plotted against temperature and specific volume, represents the three states of matter (ignoring plasma, the fourth), the triple point for water for example, where gas, ice and water are present, lies underneath the vapor curve (shaped like an upside down parabola with the critical point at the top), it’s called the triple line, along this line, all three states of matter occur. This line has constant pressure, constant temperature, but varies in specific volume. How can specific volume change you ask? In a word, energy, the more energy it has the greater the volume it occupies, albeit at the same temperature and pressure.
Vapor in a condenser, exists without the presence of air at much lower pressures than atmospheric.
At pressures typical of Earth’s atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide exists as a gas or solid, but under greater pressure it can also form a liquid.
A psychometric chart is used to describe the ability of air to absorb water as a gas below it’s boiling point (remember that boiling point changes with pressure). Super heated steam you cannot see, if a super heater in a power station boiler were to leak, you may not hear it, you may not see it, but if you walk through the super heated steam, it will cut you in half and strip the flesh from your bones.
Now Entropy is a very useful property, on one hand it is representative of the energy a substance contains, but can only be increased or decreased by adding or removing heat energy, doing work on the substance (compressing it) or the substance doing the work on the surroundings around it (by expanding) is a constant entropy process. If a substance has no heat added or removed, but does work or has work done on it, it is said to have constant entropy. This is a reversible process. The transfer of heat is an irreversible process.
When Entropy changes we know an irreversible process has occurred.
So it’s somewhat amusing when physicists confuse reversible and irreversible processes and hold a straight face while doing so, because you know they don’t really understand energy and matter, yet, and some are so dogmatic and stuck with their options they’ve shut themselves out from reality.
The greenhouse effect is an example of this, they think it’s an irreversible process, but it is in fact reversible. When air is heated by the earths surface, its entropy increases, causing it to rise up, but as it’s starts rising, it is no longer is being heated, instead it is performing work on the surrounding atmosphere against the earths gravity, it has constant entropy as it rises up to the top of the troposphere and the tropopause. The stratosphere above, heated by ultraviolet light has a higher entropy, so it stops rising.
You’ll note that the stratosphere is higher at the equator than the poles? This is dictated by the energy available at the surface, so if if the world heats up, the elevation of the tropopause and size of the troposphere increases. The elevation also changes with the seasons.
The funny thing is, so called popular physicists on the telly keep telling us that Venus has a runaway green house effect, that all Venus’ water evaporated into space. Well that’s bull shit “they are wrong”, Venus has an atmospheric pressure 90 times that of earth, all this gas is doing work on the gasses beneath thanks to Venus’ gravity. Pure and simple. Constant entropy Son, Venus at Earth’s atmospheric pressure is a balmy 38 degrees. A diesel engine only has a compression ratio of about 16:1, and that heats air up enough to ignite diesel, now Venus has a higher compression ratio, you’d have to be an idiot to expect a cool surface on Venus, with 90 of Earths atmospheres compressing it, duh!
The greenhouse effect is caused by gravity and mass of gas. So for Carbon Dioxide emissions to heat the Earth as much as the alarmists are predicting we need to release so much gas that we increase atmospheric pressure, now that is a lot of gas, we’d need to get carbon dioxide out of parts per million into the parts per hundred range and we just don’t have enough gas to do that.
Perhaps the alarmists are responsible for global warming, with all their emissions of hot air.
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Peter
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Just to be clear, my personal understanding of a vapor is, it isn’t a gas or liquid. But thermodynamic texts describe it as a “gaseous” phase, that is easily condensed. You can see the small liquid droplets forming as mist, but they’re still small enough to float around with the H2O gas phase you can’t see.
Saturation is a measure of how much of those small droplets are present floating around in the gas. This is a property that can be measured.
However we choose to describe it, it’s a very important property and it exists.
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James McGinn
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Psychometric charts are for vapor, not gas.
You have the typical poorly considered understanding of H2O.
The millions upon millions of idiots that believe H2O magically turns to gas at temperatures below it’s known boiling temperature/pressure are not evidence that it does. It is evidence of human fallibility.
Also, the fact that this plainly dumb notion has been incorporated into many models of many scientific disciplines is not evidence that this notion is valid. It is evidence of how collectively stupid humans are.
Peter
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Note Psychometric charts are for humidity, air’s ability to absorb moisture. You can measure wet bulb and dry bulb temperature and plot it on the chart.
In thermodynamics we also have steam tables, under the vapour curve, we can calculate the % saturation of steam, there is no air here, it is steam in gaseous vapour phase.
This is sufficient for designing steam turbines (where we need to avoid saturated steam to avoid damaging turbine blades) and condensors, where steam is cooled into liquid. Steam tables are reliable and repeatable. We can calculate the potential power output and efficiency of turbines using thermodynamics.
For many people worldwide, it’s what turns your lights on. If we couldn’t calculate using thermodynamics so accurately, you wouldn’t have electricity. Every engine, every power station, someone’s designed it using thermodynamics.
Peter
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James,
I’ve watched part of your video, I haven’t had time to watch it right through yet.
If you have discovered something new and currently unknown to science, on a micro structural level, it may not invalidate, but rather help explain existing observations.
Thermodynamics is a physical science, that is, the principals that form the framework of thermodynamics are all based on observations of physical phenomena.
The principals of thermodynamics were applied incorrectly when climate scientists came up with back radiation. Cold carbon dioxide gas cannot warm a hotter surface, net heat transfer will be from the hotter surface to the colder CO2, not the other way around.
Given your interest / focus on atomic structure, I recon you’d understand that atoms absorb photons that match their energy levels, and re-emit it at the same energy level, explaining why the visible light spectrum isn’t converted to infrared light when it’s re-emitted.
The trouble is, when people turn to corruption and creating misinformation, the average Joe isn’t able to see through the lies, especially when they are presented with visual effects and charismatic presenters. Of the people who propagate these myths, some are liars and others are well meaning fools.
I think this applies to the claim that Venus’ water evaporated off into space, a lie made up to support runaway greenhouse claims. I suspect in reality, based on my knowledge of Thermodynamics, it would rain down, boil, rise back up and rain back down again, we know it wouldn’t pool on the surface, but this doesn’t prove it would disappear into space either, what evidence do they have the water was ever there? I think Earth got it’s water from the collision that created the moon, and Venus simply missed out.
I think there is a lot we don’t understand, we’ve gone through a golden age of learning enlightenment, this period in time, where we’ve had to endure climate faith, will be remembered for what it is, no one can afford to ignore reality forever.
Regards,
Peter.
jerry krause
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Hi Peter,
I often question with whom am I having a discussion? On one occasion it was what I considered to be a very fundamentally based person who eventually admitted he liked to enter into discussions such as you have because he enjoyed the challenge of debate. It was fun just like playing chess is fun for some. I am not doing what I write for fun.
I am a scientist who is trying to right the ship called SCIENCE which has brought us so far in only about four centuries.
When you wrote: “atoms absorb photons that match their energy levels, and re-emit it at the same energy level, explaining why the visible light spectrum isn’t converted to infrared light when it’s re-emitted.”, you have just referred to Einstein’s idea of induced or simulated emission. I suspect, but don’t know, that you know that it is the electrons of the atom which absorb visible radiation.
Electrons are what ‘give’ atoms, molecules, or ions, the volume of space the we observe by diffraction experiments. It was the electron of the hydrogen atom which Schrodinger assumed to behave as a wave as physics moved from thermodynamics, which could not explain the behaviors ‘tiny’ matter like atoms and molecules to quantum mechanics which did a better job.
When Einstein assumed that photons which were absorbed could be simply re-emitted by same atom as the same photon, he certainly was not considering any understanding of thermodynamics. He knew he was proposing a new radical idea. Which explained how the atoms or molecules or ions of the earth surface could absorb photons (energy) and not convert it into sensible heat (increased temperature which was long known to be proportional to the matter’s kinetic energy, whether the matter be in the gas, liquid, or solid phase.
But the observation which led to this understanding of the observed behavior of a gas in a gas thermometer.
So Einstein’s idea to which you referred is how the earth’s surface can absorb the longwave infrared photons being emitted by the matter of the atmosphere according to their temperatures (spontaneous emission according to Einstein’s new terminology) and for these photons, when absorbed, to not increase the surface’s sensible heat (temperature).
But as a side issue, I ask you, a thermodynamicist, what happens when there is a temperature inversion and the surface is cooler than some of the atmospheric matter which emitting according to its temperature?
I suspect you know (understand) this and are testing James as to his understanding of this. But, I can also consider that you are not aware of the significance of your statement.
For I admit as Richard Feynman admitted. Quantum mechanical behavior is so strange that he and Einstein and the other ‘great’ physicists of the 20th Century really could not claim a understanding of the quantum mechanical behavior of particles too small to see with our unaided human eyes.
But to my fundamental understanding gas atoms and molecules still exist just liquids and solids do.
Awhile ago you wrote: Vapor is a term used in thermodynamics, it’s a gaseous phase, however it is usually used to indicate that a substance can be easily condensed to the liquid phase.”
For three years I worked with liquid helium as I did low temperature studies. I even used a vacuum pump to further cool the liquid helium by ‘boiling’ the liquid (evaporating the liquid at the fastest possible rate). So, when helium gas was somehow (I have not idea how how this was actually done) as the liquid helium came in a stainless steel dewar which was cooled by liquid nitrogen in a surrounding stainless steel dewar. So in my experiences nitrogen vapor was a gas and helium vapor was a gas and to the best of my knowledge those who liquefied air and then helium never referred air or helium as being a vapor. As I wrote, vapor is a word which only creates confusion. Just as it seems the word STEAM does. STEAM is water as a pressurized gas, whose pressure is greater than 1atm and whose temperature is greater than 100 degrees Celsius.
Your response, lack of a response, to what I have just written will tell me much about whom you might be.
Have a good day, Jerry
Peter
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So, how to describe it? It’s properties are not that of a liquid, nor that of superheated gas. A new definition to avoid confusion?
The ship of science sailing through the doldrums, hopefully the wind picks up and we don’t drift too close to the rocks.
Yes, thermodynamic is large or classical physics, it’s still very useful for determining whether a process will work or not. Greenhouse gas theory is the modern equivalent of the perpetual motion engine, it no more science than perpetual motion was classical thermodynamics.
Energy loss, or efficiency is a thing of classical physics, not quantum physics. Have some physicists become too comfortable with statistical models, leading them to accept non scientific climate statistical models, or is it due to bullying and toxic culture?
Schrodinger’s cat, we don’t really know exactly where electrons are, just a probabilistic indication of their location; their orbital. The photons cause electrons to change orbitals and the colours we see re-emitted are indicative of this when they return to their lower orbitals. There are of course a wide variety of orbitals or energy levels. Interestingly NOx in the atmosphere is directional, we can see it as an Orange or brown stain in sunlight from certain angles, but cannot see it from other angles. Steels change color due to atomic structure changes with temperature.
Everything above absolute zero is vibrating with energy, solids, liquids, gasses, water requires a lot of energy to change from liquid to gas.
If the ground surface is cooler than the atmosphere above, it will cool those gasses immediately above it, but if the air above the cold layer close to the surface is hotter, the air will stagnate when in a valley, otherwise horizontal convection is more likely to sweep it away, as it doesn’t naturally rise.
If water is placed under high enough pressure, with enough energy, it becomes difficult to determine whether it is liquid or gas, it is simply a supercritical fluid, above the supercritical point, there is no observable distinguishable difference between the gas and liquid phases; no bubbles, which is why supercritical boiler tubes don’t blow out and there is no drum at the top of the boiler with a regulated water level.
I’ve never worked with anything so close to sub zero. Helium is a noble gas, but it sounds like you were working with it in a superfluid state.
I’m an engineer, the finger of blame keeps an engineer honest, we are not allowed to make big mistakes, when we do, people die.
Science has become corrupted, I’m not sure how you fix that, but good on you for trying, I feel for ethical scientists, the western world must look so foolish, in the few places where Climate change doctrine hasn’t caught on. My daughter, very bright, did start studying science, she wanted to do good for society, but they teach AGW doctrine at University in science now, free thought or questioning are out. I remember when I studied, questions were encouraged, our lecturers were retired from industry and were very experienced. Climate change wasn’t relevant to her major, but it was mandatory course material, she’s now studying a non science degree at a different University that has a much better employment prospects and higher income.
I wonder how many other bright science students are driven away and what this says of our future.
Regards,
Peter.
jerry krause
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Hi Peter,
Very good response. You are struggling to understand just as I am. I use observed data. I do not need to be super-‘intelligent’ to do this as I generated data by the experiments I was expected to carefully conduct so the anyone else doing what was carefully described as what I was doing, would find the same data as I had.
But you are an engineer and what you do is directly related to people’s lives. And no one’s life depended upon my data. So I respect your courage.
However, because of the bridge collapse at Florida International University killed people, I had written an essay which John O’Sullivan would not post. It was titled something like (I never had a good memory and am not organized) ‘All Engineers Should Read What Galileo Wrote’. For he immediately began his classic book with a discussion about that it was impossible scale the strength of what is built bigger. His example was a big ship’s hull needed to supported at many points while a rowboat could be supported at only two points.
“Science has become corrupted, I’m not sure how you fix that, but good on you for trying,”
In 1914, an English translation of Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences was published. Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, the translator began their preface: “For more than a century English speaking students have been placed in the anomalous position of hearing Galileo constantly referred to as the founder of modern physical science, without having any chance to read, in their own language, what Galileo himself has to say.”
After ten years of formal higher education as a chemistry major, after a 3 years as post-doc at Cornell University, after teaching chemistry for 20 or so years and soon retiring, I finally read their translation.
You state that our SCIENCE has become corrupted for the same reason it was corrupted before Galileo’s time. Too many people believe rational reason is superior to simple observation (data). Too many people do not understand they must work (read and ponder) long hours (like a lifetime) to learn some things and then it is only a little.
Galileo was the professor in his book. Louis Agassiz was the professor in Land Cooper’s book: Louis Agassiz As A Teacher. Which was published in 1917. The evidence is clear; few scientists (and engineers) have ever read either book.
It is my opinion that every science teacher, every science professor and engineering professor needs to read these two books. What they get from reading them is up to them. But if they do not read them, I can conclude that they are ignorant as I was ignorant before I read them.
Have a good day, Jerry
James McGinn
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Peter:
Note Psychometric charts are for humidity, air’s ability to absorb moisture.
James:
Right. My point was that humid air does not contain genuinely gaseous H2O. You erroneously indicated that it did/does. This is a common mistake. I was drawing your attention to this error. I am an expert on this subject. This is an extremely common error. For some strange reason people think that the fact that clear moist air is clear is proof/evidence that it contains gaseous H2O. Even people that understand thermodynamics make this cloddish error. The reality is that H2O strictly conforms to its known boiling/condensing temperature/pressure as indicated in the steam tables–REGARDLESS OF CONTEXT. clear, moist air actually contains nanodroplets of LIQUID H2O.
Unfortunately you will find that the world is chock full of retards who think that their BELIEF that clear moist air contains steam is more significant than the overwhelming body of exmpirical evidence that indisputably indicates that H2O strictly conforms to its boiling temperature/pressure. If anybody suggests otherwise you have my permission to call them a fool until they have produced the reproducible experimental evidence that indicates otherwise. And rest assured they will never produce this evidence because it does not and cannot exist.
Peter:
You can measure wet bulb and dry bulb temperature and plot it on the chart.
James:
Okay, but so what? If you think this proves H2O is monomolecular in the atmosphere then you are letting your imagination get away with you.
Peter:
In thermodynamics we also have steam tables, under the vapour curve, we can calculate the % saturation of steam, there is no air here, it is steam in gaseous vapour phase.
James:
You seem to think you understand better than you actually do. If there is no air in there then the phrase saturation is meaningless. In a sealed container with no air the boiling temperature/pressure is very low. Water boils at room temperature in a vacuum. You seem to not grasp this.
Did I mention I’m an expert on this subject? I say this not to be arrogant but to get the point across that many think water is simple, obvious, and well understood. The stark reality is that most people–yourself included, it seems–harbor deep misconcpetions about water. H2O is complex, atypical, and poorly understood. And, in contrast to what you assume, H2O strictly complies with the phases in its phase diagram, REGARDLESS OF CONTEXT. You seem to believe that the boiling temperature/pressure of H2O adjusts depending on whether or not it is mixed with air. It doesn’t. (The clarity of clear, moist air is not evidence that it contains steam.)
Peter:
This is sufficient for designing steam turbines (where we need to avoid saturated steam to avoid damaging turbine blades) and condensors, where steam is cooled into liquid. Steam tables are reliable and repeatable. We can calculate the potential power output and efficiency of turbines using thermodynamics.
For many people worldwide, it’s what turns your lights on. If we couldn’t calculate using thermodynamics so accurately, you wouldn’t have electricity. Every engine, every power station, someone’s designed it using thermodynamics.
James:
Yes. This is all common knowledge. I was helping you with H2O since it appears you carry a misconception. My experience with slayers is that they want to beat everybody over the head with well understood concepts like thermodynamics but when it comes to learning about something that is poorly understood they become temporarily brain-dead, defensive, and arrogant.
Peter:
I’ve watched part of your video, I haven’t had time to watch it right through yet.
If you have discovered something new and currently unknown to science,
James:
Right. It’s a major breakthrough. I’m expecting to win the Nobel prize when the world figures out what a huge breakthrough this is. Feel free to attempt to dispute this claim.
Peter:
. . . on a micro structural level, it may not invalidate, but rather help explain existing observations.
James:
Right. These observations are referred to as the anomalies of H2O. My video corrects a huge error made by Linus Pauling 70 or 80 years ago. With my corrections the anomalies disappear.
Peter:
Thermodynamics is a physical science, that is, the principals that form the framework of thermodynamics are all based on observations of physical phenomena.
James:
The same is the case with the chemistry of H2O.
Peter:
The principals of thermodynamics were applied incorrectly when climate scientists came up with back radiation.
James:
Right. And now that is fixed. In contrast, the incorrect application of H2O continues. Let’s apply some intellectual muscle to the problem that is not yet solved and stop wastiing time on well understood thermodynamics. Alright?
Peter:
Cold carbon dioxide gas cannot warm a hotter surface, net heat transfer will be from the hotter surface to the colder CO2, not the other way around.
Given your interest / focus on atomic structure, I recon you’d understand that atoms absorb photons that match their energy levels, and re-emit it at the same energy level, explaining why the visible light spectrum isn’t converted to infrared light when it’s re-emitted.
James:
Right. Again, you are preaching to the choir here. There is no drama in radiative properties of a linear, nonpolar molecule like CO2. In contrast, there is a lot of this type of drama in the radiative properties of a bent, highly polar molecule–H2O–that has a high heat capacity AS A LIQUID in the atmosphere.
Peter:
The trouble is, when people turn to corruption and creating misinformation, the average Joe isn’t able to see through the lies, especially when they are presented with visual effects and charismatic presenters. Of the people who propagate these myths, some are liars and others are well meaning fools.
James:
Right. That is one set of myths. And I agree that science based propaganda is a huge problem. Neither one of us is subject to this set of myths. (I am an expert in thermodynamics.) I was drawing your attention to a different set of myths. I am putting you on the spot to help you realize that you are a victim of a different set of myths surrounding the H2O molecule.
Please answer this question. Do you believe H2O can turn gaseous at temperatures/pressures below the boiling temperature/pressure of H2O when it is mixed in with air? Be honest. (Let’s face it. Until I brought this issue to your attention you never thought twice about any of this. Right?)
Peter:
I think this applies to the claim that Venus’ water evaporated off into space, a lie made up to support runaway greenhouse claims. I suspect in reality, based on my knowledge of Thermodynamics, it would rain down, boil, rise back up and rain back down again, we know it wouldn’t pool on the surface, but this doesn’t prove it would disappear into space either, what evidence do they have the water was ever there? I think Earth got it’s water from the collision that created the moon, and Venus simply missed out.
I think there is a lot we don’t understand, we’ve gone through a golden age of learning enlightenment, this period in time, where we’ve had to endure climate faith, will be for what it is, no one can afford to ignore reality forever.
Regards,
Peter.
James:
I would add that we shouldn’t ignore the reality of H2O either. If it was better understood that LIQUID H2O has a huge heat capacity and ALL of the H2O that is in the atmosphere is in the liquid phase then maybe people would stop getting so excited about the miniscule amount of thermally ineffective CO2 that there is in the atmosphere.
Watch the rest of my video. This addresses the mother of all misconceptions about the atmosphere. Stop wasting time being so myopically focussed on a small set of problems–thermodynamics–that is already well understood and get a better understanding of the real problems associated with traditional misconceptions about H2O
Regards,
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
jerry krause
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Hi Peter,
Two topics beside my failure to proofread well. Land Cooper should be Lane Cooper.
I had composed a comment, copied it, and came here to paste it. But as I read James comment I discovered I had maybe not even read your comment of 5/10 11:41am, and if I had I ignored it.
So first I will paste and then respond to what you have already written.
Hi Peter,
You used the word DOLDRUMS. Which I have sometimes pondered. I wonder if you have pondered the doldrums. I wonder if you have pondered: what are the principal heat engines which cause atmospheric circulation? I wonder if you have pondered: what is the fuel of these principal heat engines? And I wonder if you are asking: What is the relationship to these questions and the doldrums?
“You can see the small liquid droplets forming as mist, but they’re still small enough to float around with the H2O gas phase you can’t see.
Saturation is a measure of how much of those small droplets are present floating around in the gas. This is a property that can be measured.”
Have you read about atmospheric condensation nuclei? Do you really believe that individual, independent water molecules do not exist in the atmosphere? Do you really believe that most every scientist (myself included), who believes that water molecules can be an ideal gas in the atmosphere just as oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide are at ordinary atmospheric pressures and temperatures, are dilusional?
Have a good day, Jerry
Peter
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Thanks Jerry,
Sounds like an interesting read, I’ll have a look.
James,
I will get around to watching your video, I’ve only watched the first half so far. You’re misunderstanding my comments. A power station condenser (or your fridge or air conditioner condenser) contains no air, saturation in a condenser is a measure of the wet and dry fractions of vapor, this is often used to calculate the enthalpy of the vapor and vice versa. This is different to the saturation of water in oil or air, which is a measure of absorption ability, these are different things with similar terminology. Well wishes for the prize.
Regards,
Peter.
James McGinn
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Peter:
A power station condenser (or your fridge or air conditioner condenser) contains no air, saturation in a condenser is a measure of the wet and dry fractions of vapor, this is often used to calculate the enthalpy of the vapor and vice versa.
James:
I think you are letting you imagination get away with you. Wet and dry are sensations. It’s meaningless to talk of wet and dry in a condenser.
The chemical that is used in a condenser is a chemical that (like water) has a high heat capacity when it is a liquid and a low heat capacity as a gas. Shifting between liquid and gas produces a change in enthalpy. And this is calculable knowing the percentage of liquid and gas. Calling it vapor or calling it wet vapor or dry vapor is perfectly meaningless–it adds nothing to use this terminology.
Moreover, vapor generally refers to liquid suspended in air (gases). And there is no air in a condenser. In casual conversation the word “vapor” can have different meanings that are not as technically stringent as I am suggesting here. And that can be the source of a lot of confusion. And this confusion is another one of the many reasons that people mistakenly assume that water has the magical ability to become gaseous at temperatures below its known boiling temperature/pressure.
The only substance in earth’s atmosphere that produces a greenhouse effect isn’t ever a gas, it is always a liquid, H2O. However, H2O is a very different kind of liquid. It has a huge heat capacity. And when it does become a vapor in smaller and smaller droplets its enthalpy does change in a manner similar to a gas, even if it never actually becomes a gas in the atmosphere.
It’s also important to note that if not for H2O’s polarity it would be a gas. And if not for both its polarity and the fact that hydrogen bonds neutralize H2O polarity (as explained in my videos) it would not have a high heat capacity.
Surface tension plays a role here too, in that the smaller are H2O droplets the greater is the ratio of surface. More surface equates to more surface tension–hard bonds that do not allow for movement. This reduces its heat capacity. And so, even though H2O never turns to gas in the atmosphere the reduction in size of its droplets does produce a corresponding change in enthalpy not unlike that of a substance going from liquid to gas.
jerry krause
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Hi Peter,
I was composing another of my essays, which I hope John O’Sullivan (editor of PSI) will post if it is completed when I discovered the following. So am trying to save you time.
http://stevensfirstprinciples.com/new/stevensfirstprinciples/louis%20agassiz%20as%20a%20teacher.pdf
This link contains the two best examples of how he taught but it does not include Lane’s introduction to such stories of how Agassiz taught.
Lane, Professor of the English Language and Literature In Cornell University, began: “When the question was put to Agassiz, ‘What do you regard as your greatest work?’ he replied: ‘I have taught men to observe.’ And in the preamble to his will he described himself in three words as ‘Louis Agassiz, Teacher.'” My comment is that it seems his definition of a scientist was someone who saw what others had not seen.
Have a good day, Jerry
James McGinn
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Jerry:
“You can see the small liquid droplets forming as mist, but they’re still small enough to float around with the H2O gas phase you can’t see.
James:
The notion that H2O regularly turns gaseous at temperatures below its known boiling temperature/pressure is just a group delusion. It’s just something that silly nitwits that pretend to understand science choose to believe. And the fact that direct evidence of “cold steam” has never been detected is something that these silly nitwits choose to ignore.
The world is full of millions upon millions of silly nitwits that choose to believe all kinds of silly things about the natural world.
And much of science has learned to accommodate and support this silliness because if they don’t they literally can’t make a living.
Unfortunately, and to the complete detriment of the natural sciences, silly nitwits are the rule and not the exception.
Also, CO2 is not the most misunderstood chemical in the natural sciences, H2O is–by far!!!
Jerry:
Saturation is a measure of how much of those small droplets are present floating around in the gas.
James:
There is no H2O gas in earth’s atmosphere.
Jerry:
This is a property that can be measured.”
James:
?
Jerry:
Have you read about atmospheric condensation nuclei?
James:
You mean dust?
Jerry:
Do you really believe that individual, independent water molecules do not exist in the atmosphere?
James:
You believe they do? Why?
Jerry:
Do you really believe that most every scientist (myself included), who believes that water molecules can be an ideal gas in the atmosphere just as oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide are at ordinary atmospheric pressures and temperatures, are dilusional?
James:
You think they/you are not delusional? Why? You just admitted you believe something for which you have no evidence. Is this not delusion?
Anybody who thinks delusion is something that other people experience is not a scientist, they are just pretending.
Real scientists realize that the person most easily fooled is oneself. You don’t understand this Jerry.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Peter
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… If clouds were gas you would not see them…
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James McGinn
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And they would be much, much hotter.
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Peter
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My excuse for bad grammar; fat fingers on mobile phone with autocorrect and too little proof reading. 😉
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James McGinn
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Vapour is neither gas nor liquid,
Science has long harbored deep delusions about H2O. These delusions have been incorporated into the models of many scientific disciplines but are especially erroneous with meteorology.
When it comes to water much of science has been dumbed down to accommodate deeply flawed models:
Pauling’s Omission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1bKHUE7SNw
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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James McGinn
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Linus Paulings Legacy of Confusion
Why H2O is so poorly understood by science
Paulings Omission: Incidental Symmetry
https://youtu.be/xvdnIaaetmM
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James McGinn
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Peter:
I will get around to watching your video, I’ve only watched the first half so far.
James McGinn:
What is taking so long?
The misrepresentation of CO2’s properties is only to scratch the surface of wrong thinking in the natural sciences–the origins of which are (largely) a consequence of Linus Pauling’s Omission and the sheer human frailty associated with spiritualistic idealization of H2O.
H2O polarity is variable (not constant) and H bonds are the mechanism of this variation. Only if you understand this do you have any chance of defeating the stupid paradigm that is currently popular.
Pauling’s Omission: The Original Sin of the Natural Sciences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Engineers are incapable of thinking outside the box.
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