Great post on Velikovsky and Venus via Louis Hissink's Crazy World: Al Gore and Venus Envy.
Steven Milloy of the Junkscience site has just posted an interesting development - Al Gore has publicly stated what drive's his, and therefore Jim Hansen's, belief that CO2 is a dangerous greenhouse gas - Venus.
Jim Hansen's PhD was on the atmosphere of Venus and it is from this work that his belief in CO2 being a significant greenhouse gas is based.
The theory is wrong as was Carl Sagan who postulated that Venus was hot because of a runaway greenhouse mechanism.
This raises the ghost of Velikovsky for it was Velikovsky who initially proposed that Venus would be hot because of it's youthfulness based on historical evidence from many sources.
Mainstream science believed Venus was an earth-like arcadia, our sister planet! As Sagan could not admit that Venus was a young planet, he therefore had to come up with an ad hoc explanation to make this new discovery fit the "standard model", hence the runaway greenhouse effect.
Well, the equilibrium temperature of a given planet depends on a number of different things. Clearly, Earth is not Venus, the Moon, or Mars....the Earth is Earth, it has it's own set of parameters and thereby it's own equilibrium temperature. It is doubtful that Earth's atmosphere, which is about 70% Nitrogen, will ever become similar to the atmosphere of Venus.
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING LEADS TO OUTERSPACE!
ReplyDeleteSo, it turns out Hansen's deep seated belief in "Man-made" global warming has more to due with Venus than anything happening on Earth.
It wouldn't be the first time there was actually a sound basis for calling somebody a "space cadet."
Sign Hansen up for a guest spot on The Outer Limits.
It seems, in reality, there is little scientific backing for thinking carbon dioxide is a heat trapping molecule.
And now we know where Hansen gets his belief: Out-dated ideas on the atmosphere of Venus.
Well, it seems all things lead to outerspace.
Fine, let's study Venus and understand it's dynamics, but let's not jump of the cliff into a Totalitarian Carbon State because somebody wrote a Ph.D. thesis that has subsequently turned out wrong.
Can we yank Hansen's Ph.D. because he was wrong?
No, because then a good portion of Ph.D.'s would also be liable to get the lamb skins yanked...
But hey, haven't they been yanking our chain long enough?
Actually, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gase, but it does not nearly trap as much radiation as methane and higher order hydrocarbons, and with carbon nanotubes or activated carbon powder being the most absorbant of light waves in the optical and infrared spectrums.
ReplyDeleteI actually propose that people use carbon compounds to capture heat from the sun though, and thereby to run a stirling engine off of. I know that I've touched the black steering wheel of my car that was in the hot sun enough times to know that the heat could be condensed and perhaps utilized to boil water for running a boiler of some sort too.
Kinda disengenuous to use Sagan's name to promote Velikovsky when you are well aware that Sagan was the number one Anti-velilovsky scientist of his day, having dedicated more than one book to the anti-young venus theory.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, you knew that when you predetermined the result of your thesis without examining, oh, i dunno, evidence.
QF said: "Actually, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gase, but it does not nearly trap as much radiation as methane and higher order hydrocarbons..."
ReplyDeleteScientists Challenge Premise of CO2 as a Greenhouse Gas –Analytical chemist Hans Schreuder of the UK – Comments: hans@ilovemycarbondixode.com
Excerpt: I can’t stress too strongly how silly it is to use an illusory belief about garden greenhouses to explain what occurs in the atmosphere. Greenhouses are unable to trap and multiply radiant energy within the volume they enclose, and neither can the atmosphere. Electromagnetic energy emitted by the earth’s surface merely exits to space at the speed of light. The few molecules that hitchhike on several waves do exactly the same. This partial interception process can bring air up to a lower temperature than the surface, but raising the temperature of the surface is completely out of the question. Yet influential people believe that a temperature rise must occur because of the non-existent radiant trapping performed by greenhouses! It is circular reasoning. Correction: it’s not reasoning at all. 1. The vacuum of space is not "cold." It is instead a thermal insulator that has no means of absorbing heat and thus restricts a body’s energy loss to radiant emission alone, meaning that the earth cannot lose heat (molecular vibration) to space. Nothing on earth restricts its infrared emission, as satellites attest. 2. An infrared-absorber of any kind does not "trap" infrared light but radiates it instantly. The dark absorption lines in spectrographs are an artefact of linear photon flight being interrupted and assuming a radiative pattern. This is why, as point 1 states, satellites see the earth releasing the same amount of radiant energy as it absorbs. Nothing is "trapped." 3. Heat transfer works by difference. If two objects are equal in temperature, no transfer will occur. If one object's temperature is higher than the other, heat will transfer to the other. A source’s own energy cannot be used to heat it, then. Source A providing energy to Receiver B would have to be colder than Receiver B in order to be heated by it. In which case, however, Source A would be unable to transfer energy to Receiver B in the first place.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/FAQ.html
& http://
www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/carbondioxide.html
EM radiation is converted to phonons in molecules though. Temperature is just an average of the kinetic, vibrational, and rotational energy of the gasses, and EM absorption increases the kinetic energy of molecules. I don't know why I should even bother to argue this anymore when NASA has satellites that measure the intensity of the incoming and outgoing EM fluxes at a wide spectrum of wavelengths.
ReplyDeleteQF said: "EM radiation is converted to phonons in molecules though. Temperature is just an average of the kinetic, vibrational, and rotational energy of the gasses, and EM absorption increases the kinetic energy of molecules..."
ReplyDeleteCO2 only absorbs a certain amount of energy from one secondary source (Earth's surface is not a primary source of energy) and carries that load of absorbed energy to another system. CO2 molecules reach a higher temperature from the absorption of photons (absoptivity) which are released immediately (emissivity), so CO2 does NOT "trap" or generate heat. If we increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, without changing the load of heat transferred from the surface to the air, we will have a higher number of available microstates to where energy will be dispersed. In which case, the amount of energy absorbed by each molecule will not increase, but will rather decrease because the energy will be diffused or transferred among a greater number of microstates. The emitted photons are not more energetic than the absorbed photons. They are less energetic because their wavelengths are longer than the wavelengths of the absorbed photons. The longer the wavelength, the less energetic the photon.
I agree that the verdict is not in on global warming, but carbon dioxide does acidify the oceans, which has the potential to disrupt or destroy very important ecosystems that directly contribute to sustained human welfare. There is thus some justification for carbonphobia regardless of any lack of greenhouse effect.
ReplyDeleteSeth said: "I agree that the verdict is not in on global warming, but carbon dioxide does acidify the oceans, which has the potential to disrupt or destroy very important ecosystems that directly contribute to sustained human welfare. There is thus some justification for carbonphobia regardless of any lack of greenhouse effect."
ReplyDelete"Manmade global warming" and "manmade ocean acidification" are pseudoscientific twins, Seth. The threatening quality you appear to attribute to CO2, ought to be fairly easy to reproduce in a laboratory employing an aquarium, some seawater, one or more of the ecosystem specimens supposedly threatened by CO2, and appropriate equipment to regulate carbon dioxide levels in the seawater. As a matter of fact, we know that modern day coral breeding aquarium enthusiasts already boost the CO2 levels in their aquariums to improve the condition and productivity of their stock, much as market gardeners do in their greenhouses. Carbon dioxide is the gas of life and abundance, Seth, not scarcity and death.
An example from nature:
"The shallows near Dobu Island off Papua and New Guinea have active underwater fumaroles pumping out virtually pure CO2. The sea grass is extraordinarily lush and healthy and there is very healthy coral reef a few metres away."
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003220.html
Interesting, BF. I'll have to look into that more. Thanks!
ReplyDelete