Global Warming and the Great Pumpkin

After  watching last Halloween's broadcast of  "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", I realized that Linus van Pelt is like those who preach global warming.    Linus doesn't let the failure of the Great Pumpkin to appear destroy his belief that the Great Pumpkin exists.   Similarly,  the climate shaman who preach  global warming won't let colder than normal winter weather in recent years destroy their belief that someday their "Great Pumpkin" will rise from the pumpkin patch and distribute warming throughout the world.

When I started examining the claims about global warming I was surprised by the total lack of any scientific basis for the claim that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide could raise the temperature of the air.    The idea that a gas that is only 0.04% of the atmosphere could determine atmospheric temperature  sounds more like magic than science.   The false belief that heat in greenhouses and the atmosphere involved the trapping of low energy infrared radiation developed at a time when scientists falsely believed atoms were the smallest particles of matter.   Many believed Benjamin Franklin's theory that heat involved some mysterious "fluid". they called "caloric"

For those not familiar with the "Great Pumpkin..."  program, Linus van Pelt is a little boy in the "Peanuts" comic strip which is available at  Gocomics.com.  A recurring story line is his long standing belief that on Halloween the Great Pumpkin will rise from a sincere pumpkin patch and distribute toys.   On this particular Halloween he convinces Sally Brown, who considers him her "sweet babboo", to sit in the pumpkin patch with him.   She is mad when the Great Pumpkin doesn't appear.  However, Linus is undeterred in his belief that the Great Pumpkin will eventually appear.   In the comic strip Linus is occasionally shown waiting in the pumpkin patch on Halloween.   Sometimes he will persuade someone else to wait with him

I decided to wait until winter to write about the subject so everyone but global warming shaman would recognize that global warming. is as much a myth as the Great Pumpkin.   Near and subfreezing  weather  
occurred frequently in the continental U.S. except for  Florida, California, and small parts of Texas, Arizona and the coasts of Oregon and Washington. For example, on the morning of January 8 subfreezing temperatures extended south into the atmosphere over the  northern Gulf  of Mexico and west from the Atlantic to California and parts of Oregon and Washington.   The 20 F line  reached through Georgia just north of the border with Florida.  

Those who preach the global warning religion act more like religious fanatics  than scientists.   Real scientists respond to critics by trying to fi  nd more facts to support their theories.    The global warming preachers respond to criticism with name calling and threats.    They use terms such as "denier" and "contrarian" like religious fanatics use the term "heretic",    Religious fanatics rely on consensus about beliefs rather than facts.

The claims of empirical science are considered more valid than other claims when the science claims are based upon verification through observation and experimentation.    Physicist R.W. Wood tested the claim  that trapping infrared radiation helped greenhouses retain heat in 1909 in an experiment that used greenhouses that were identical except that one greenhouse used glass that reflected IR and the other used glass that was transparent to IR .   His experiment disproved the theory that "trapping" IR caused the heat in greenhouses  or the atmosphere.

Neils  Bohr subsequently demonstrated that the process of absorbing and re-emitting specific wavelengths of light by molecules  had nothing to do with heating.  Instead, the process involved changes in the energy state of the electrons.   His calculations indicated that the very small amount of energy involved was what he called a "quantum".    The quantum of energy released by CO2 molecules wouldn't be enough to heat anything.  The process of absorbing and re-emitting radiation breaks  up the radiation instead of trapping it.

Real scientists know that conduction by heated surfaces heats the atmosphere and the air in greenhouses.  At any one instant heated objects convert only a  fraction of their heat energy to radiation so heat transfer by radiation to other objects is limited.  However a heated object in what physicists call "thermal contact" with another object or gases will attempt to heat the other substance to its temperature.   The walls and ceiling of a greenhouse hold the heated air inside. Outside the greenhouse  gravity holds heated air  close to the ground. 

Global warming shaman have yet to provide any  proof that carbon dioxide or any other gas can cause heating by interacting with electromagnetic radiation.   They just demonstrate their ignorance of science and  math by claiming a nonsense number they call "average global temperature"  proves global warming.     More on the average temperature nonsense in my next post.   

Introduction

I have numerous blog posts dealing with the so called global warming, but they are scattered in other blogs.    I  plan to gradually consolidate them in this blog which will emphasize how the claims  about global warming / climate change have more in common with religion than science.    I won't have time to update all of them so I will try to list the date of original publication in the older posts.   I won't be checking the links for now so some of them may no longer be on the web.

I'm a polymath and generalist with a background in physics as well as the social sciences.   This background helps me understand how some people can believe something as absurd as the claim that a gas that comprises less than 0.04% of the atmosphere can have a significant impact on atmospheric temperatures.

Their are two basic types of professionals in science fields.  Scientists conduct research to learn new facts about the physical world. Technicians apply this knowledge to actual situations.  The vast majority of doctors are technicians as are most meteorologists and climatologists.

I have a lot of respect for meteorologists and climatologists.    Meteorology in some ways is one of the most difficult science fields because it is so chaotic.   Doctors must possess much more knowledge as well as physical skills they use to detect medical problems.   However, medicine is relatively predictable.   Doctors know what will happen most of the time when they prescribe treatments.

Often the best meteorologists can do, for example, is say that certain conditions will produce rain  20% of the time or maybe 50% of the time.    They can tell a major snow storm will occur but the predicted  track of a major snow storm can be off by 50 miles one way or the other.

Meteorology and climatology are highly specialized fields.    Meteorologists and climatologists are only qualified to deal with the distribution and interaction of heat and water (the primary components of weather).   Climatologists are not qualified to deal with the overall heating and cooling of the planet earth unless they have had training in astrophysics or thermodynamics.   The process of molecules absorbing and re-emitting radiation involves quantum physics rather than meteorology or thermodynamics.   

As an undergraduate in the sixties I switched from a math and physic program to a study of human behavior because politicians didn't seem to understand how to find solutions to social problems.  I have 100 hours of study beyond an M.A. in  U.S History in a half dozen fields.  My course work in physics includes a class in light.    Like many residents of tornado alley I have an interest in weather.   I am interested in the subject of other dimensions of physical reality and quantum physics.  I'm an amateur gardener who has had some success keeping cold sensitive plants alive during winter by using creating my own "greenhouses".