Dr Jerry L Krause: How Stupid Am I?

Written by Dr Jerry L Krause (Chemistry)

Given the title, this obviously is a personal essay. Although, if the shoe fits, put it on. I have had a lot of stupidities, but this one started when I began to teach general chemistry at Hibbing Community College, Hibbing, MN in 1973.

For a topic that quickly became apparent was that I needed to teach the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Which obviously could have something to do with the physical properties of carbon dioxide, but this was a topic which I had never studied during my formal education to become a physical chemist.

At that early time one of the examples of the greenhouse effect of atmospheric gases capable of absorbing the longwave infrared radiation being emitted from the earth’s surface was the warm nights in Iowa during July and August which really made the corn grow and yield many bushels per acre.

However, having grown up in northeastern South Dakota where the precipitation was commonly much less than that of Iowa, the result was that our relative humidity was usually significantly less than that of humid Iowa. So I knew the reason for the warmer nights in Iowa was that dew generally formed on stuff there much earlier in the evening then it did where I grew up. And sure enough this example of the greenhouse effect quietly disappeared. And I forgot about dew.

For several decades I have frequently turned to R. C. Sutcliffe’s 1966 book—Weather and Climate—for my primary reference about weather and climate. However, in 2014 I saw for the first time a couple of things I had been reading over and over without comprehending their significance. One was:

“Meteorology is not a fundamental physical science, that is to say it is not concerned to develop the basic laws of nature.”

The other, nearly 50 pages later, was:

“These results, obtained first by Wilson and broadly confirmed by many later experimenters, have a very important bearing on natural meteorology, not because supersaturation occurs in the atmosphere but because it does not occur: why is it that in the atmosphere condensation to clouds invariably happens as soon as normal saturation is reached? The answer is that the natural atmosphere, however clean it may appear to be, is always supplied with a sufficient number of minute particles of salts, acid or other substances which serve just as well as liquid water in capturing water molecules from the vapour.”

Finally my training as a chemist about the critical importance of the scientific laws of the conversation of mass and of constant composition finally kicked in and I saw that Sutcliffe had, in the second quote, stated a basic law of the earth’s natural atmosphere.

So, I quickly composed an essay which I considered absolutely refuted a claimed result of the greenhouse effect which was that the earth’s temperatures would be about 33 degrees Celsius lower if not for atmospheric greenhouse gases. So in 2014 I began sharing this essay with various scientists who, I considered, might comprehend it.

But how stupid I was. If they read my essay, they still did not see what I saw. Then, after I had discovered Principia Scientific International (PSI) in 2016, John O’Sullivan posted this essay for me. (http://principia-scientific.org/new-scientific-law-greenhouse-effect/) Again, if it was read, even the deniers did not seem to see what I saw.

So, I move on to more of my stupidity. In 2016 I accidently discovered the person Horace de Saussure and his hot box. (http://principia-scientific.org/the-horace-de-saussure-hot-box/)

From Wikipedia I read:

“He [Horace] had constructed the first known Western solar oven in 1767, trying several designs before determining that a well-insulated box with three layers of glass to trap outgoing thermal radiation created the … highest temperature—230 °F.”

I only recently began considering the possibility that Horace not only constructed the first known Western solar oven but that he had also constructed the first known radiometer. Now, if one is not convinced already that I am stupid, this consideration should establish the fact.

But is it happenstance that 230°F is nearly the maximum temperature measured for the moon’s surface which is consistent with its surface radiation balance with the incident solar radiation?

If you read about Horace’s motivation for constructing his hot box, it is pretty obvious he had ‘tunnel’ vision and it seems the thought to observe the temperatures in his box during the nighttime never occurred to him or anyone since. No, I haven’t tried to construct his hot box to actually see what might be seen. For I am not only stupid but I am sometimes lazy. It is just so much easier to write about something instead of doing it.

So I wrote another essay about Horace’s hot box. (http://principia-scientific.org/solving-global-warming-de-saussure-device-paradox/) About this one I have no evidence that anyone even read it. For the only comment was mine in which I complimented John O’Sullivan for embellishing the essay with numerous images and to clarify that John had altered the essay’s title.

While I could go outlining my various stupidities, I am tired of being stupid and butting my head against a wall because it feels so good.

I doubt, but do not know, that most, who might read this, have no idea that Horace’s hot box was the inspiration for the greenhouse effect hypothesis. What if I, or someone else, would construct his box according to his design and construction, lay it on the ground during the nighttime and possibly discover that, while it was a hot box during the day, it became a cold box during the nighttime with an interior temperature significantly less than that of the air about 1.5m above it?

Do you consider that, if this was actually observed, it would convince anyone that this observation refuted the hypothesis of the greenhouse effect? If so, why don’t you conduct this experiment like, a long time ago, Horace conducted his experiment. I am tired of being stupid and butting my head against a wall because it feels so good.

Oops! I almost committed the most common of my stupidities. The one which really makes me angry because it is so common. It is forgetting what I claim to know. A necessary condition for the proposed experiment’s best result is that dew point of the atmosphere be so far below its temperature that dew would never form on the top glass of Horace’s hot box when it cooled during the nighttime.

For I have often observed dew, or frost, form on car windshields. And the latter case (frost) often occurred when the outside air temperature was several (maybe 5 degrees F) above the melting point of water. And relative to dew I know that the weather service at a nearby airport usually, if not always, report air temperature several degrees above the dew point when dew can be observed on the windshields of the cars parked near my home.

Yesterday, in a conversation I commented about the confusion which has always existed about the probable difference of a surface’s temperature and the temperature of the air about 1.5m above it. And I have read several people writing that the soil temperature remains above that of the air temperature a little above it except for a brief period after sunrise. And one of these people made the effort to actually do his own experiments to justify his understanding.

However, I remainded a doubter because I had read that it is not possible to accurately measure a surface temperature by laying a thermometer (temperature sensor) on a surface. It was explained, that if one did this, what was being measured was the temperature of the sensor because one could not be certain about the thermal contact the device had with the surface.

Less than a week ago I learned that a third US government project was measuring the surface temperature of soil as well as the temperatures of the soils at various depths. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html The result of this project’s surface temperature measurements were that when the air temperature began to decrease, the surface temperatures were previous decreasing and continued decreasing to below that of the decreasing air temperature. Hence, one can (must) conclude, on the basis of many of these observations, that the surface is cooling the air and not the air cooling the surface between sunset and sunrise.

I do not go into the details of this new (to me) information because the focus of this essay is: How stupid am I?

I like quotes and I have long known that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence, it biases the judgment.” I know I never experimented to see if I could measure the surface temperature as this other person did.

But I do know, because I have been an experimentalist that I must take great care to be sure that I am actually measuring what I claim to measure. Of course, I cannot automatically assume that the government’s measurements are valid and that those of this other person are invalid.

I can offer indirect evidence that supports the government’s measurements and if this person does not accept that his measurements are invalid, he must offer some evidence which might support the validity of his measurements. This is how science is meant to work if we (he or I or any others) are not to be stupid.

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