An 'enlightening' paper on global warming

If you're trying to figure out why the atmosphere is warming up, you'll probably be more successful if you look at what warms the atmosphere, not the atmosphere itself.

Several weeks ago, I was e-mailed an extremely interesting paper on the relationship between 'light' and 'global warming' written by Jeffrey and Kate Harrison (majkmushrm@rezmail.com).

Jeff has a BA in Physics from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the University of Missouri. He worked for many years in the aircraft industry. Kate is his editor.

The paper was too long to print in 'Gems,' so I asked the Harrisons to cut it down a bit.

Here is Jeff's response and his 1215 word article:

Well, Cliff, this is the best I could do. My word processor says that this is 1215 words. My editor (my wife) managed to add 200 words to my original revision, so I kept my original and incorporated some of her suggestions for clarity. This is tough. It is a gloss of a summary of a bunch of atomic and quantum physics that I fear will be way too dense for the non-scientific reader and too loose for the scientific ones. But, since every time I hear the phrase "heat trapping greenhouse gases," it sounds like fingernails on a blackboard, here it is:

The main meme of the "global warming" movement is this: we stupid humans have been producing excessive amounts of carbon dioxide which traps heat and, as a result, is warming up our atmosphere. Thus, we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air in order to reduce the little heat trapping bodies in the atmosphere and thusly thwart the terrifying rise in the average temperature of our atmosphere. We never hear anything about the fundamental science behind the link between "global warming" and carbon dioxide. I want to change that.

What is heat? Heat is the energy of motion of atoms and molecules. Indeed, absolute zero is defined as that temperature at which all atomic motion ceases.

What is light? Visible light is ElectroMagnetic Radiation with a wavelength of between 400 and 800 nm. EMR possesses energy that is proportional to its frequency. Do not confuse this energy with light intensity which is a measure of the number of waves, not the energy in each wave. Light does not move the same way in a vacuum and a medium (i.e., anything that's not a vacuum). To move in a medium, a photon of light (i.e., an individual wave) must be absorbed and re-emitted by whatever the medium is. For a photon of light from the sun to travel from the outer reaches of our atmosphere to the surface of the earth, it must be absorbed and re-emitted by an entire Sagan (billions and billions) of atoms and molecules. So how does that happen?

As we all know, sunlight warms the planet Earth, but sunlight itself is not heat. So to create heat what we need is a process that converts a massless, spinless particle (a photon of light) into the physical motion of atoms and molecules. Here's how that happens.

If a photon of light hits an atom, it's a real collision of physical bits. When the collision occurs, one of two things will happen - either the photon will be absorbed or it will bounce off the atom. Which of these two choices happens will be determined by the amount of energy in the photon and which specific atom or molecule has been struck. That's because, in order to absorb the photon, the atom must be able to absorb all of the energy of the photon. That's not as easy as it sounds. In the fascinating world of quantum physics, everything is quantized and can only take on specific values. And by everything, I mean everything - energy, space, time, etc., are all quantized in the land of the very small. If the quantized values of the atomic structures that will hold the energy don't add up to the energy of the photon, it won't be absorbed and will bounce off.

But we're not interested in the photons that bounce off. We're interested in the ones that are absorbed. Once the photon is absorbed, the atom becomes what's called 'excited.' One of the principles of physics is that everything wants to be at it's lowest energy state. So, once the atom becomes excited, it will go back to its ground state as quickly as possible. In order to get back to the ground state, the atom will emit a photon of light whose energy is equal to the amount of energy being shed. Here's where things get interesting, because there are two possible outcomes. Either all of the energy that the photon absorbed will be released, or it won't. Some materials will release all of the energy they've absorbed and the photon is unchanged. This is called a 'lossless collision,' because there is no energy exchanged between the photon of light and the atom and no heat is created. Other materials - and let me be clear - represent 99-plus percent of everything on planet Earth. They do not release all of the energy they have absorbed. After one of these non-lossless collisions, the emitted photon is lower in frequency and energy and the atom is more energetic than it was before the collision. Go back to the top. Heat is the energy of motion of atoms and molecules. A more energetic atom is one that is hotter. And that is how sunlight is converted into heat.

So now we arrive at the first problem with the meme at the top. CO2 doesn't "trap" heat, it is merely one of those materials that converts light to heat. One of the issues here is that looking at only CO2 means that you're looking at the atmosphere as a bag of gas. It's not. It is a suspension of large quantities of dust, water vapor, aerosols (NOxs and SOxs, etc.), and particulates in a matrix that is 99 percent nitrogen and oxygen and 1 percent everything else. If you want to claim that CO2 converting light into heat in the atmosphere is raising average global temperatures, you can't ignore the many other things in the atmosphere that convert light into heat. That brings me to the next problem with the meme.

The problem is: we need to reduce the number of heat-trapping molecules in the air, because that's what is raising our average temperatures. Why is this a problem? I mean, if CO2 is converting light into heat and it is increasing in the atmosphere, won't that make the temperature go up? The short answer is no.

That would be a valid analysis IF AND ONLY IF the atmosphere was primarily warmed by atoms and molecules in the atmosphere converting the energy in sunlight into heat energy as does carbon dioxide.

However, here is an extremely inconvenient truth. While sunlight warms everything on the earth, it does not warm the atmosphere - at least not directly. Everybody's runnin' around like their hair was on fire about, in essence, five one-hundredths of one percent (0.05 percent) of the atmosphere all the while missing the fact that sunlight transits 99-plus percent of the atmosphere totally losslessly (the nitrogen/oxygen part). No losses, no conversion of light energy into heat energy, no heat creation in the atmosphere. In point of fact, the atmosphere is warmed by the earth, after the earth has converted enough light energy to heat energy. You can verify this by looking at a daily temperature chart. If sunlight warmed the atmosphere directly, you would see the temperature start to rise as soon as dawn arrived and carbon dioxide, dust, water vapor and other bits in the atmosphere started converting sunlight into heat. It doesn't. Out here in the country, it takes upwards of an hour and a half after dawn before the temperature starts to go up and the temperature won't peak until several hours after solar noon. Carbon dioxide can't even produce enough heat to start warming things up in the morning before the really big heat producer - the earth - comes on line when the sun is high enough over the horizon that sunlight starts to really strike the earth's surface. That temperature profile is telling you that atoms and molecules in the atmosphere aren't doing diddly squat to warm up the atmosphere.

Global warming may or may not be real, but lowering the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from approximately 0.39 percent of the atmosphere down to approximately 0.33 percent won't have any effect on atmospheric temperatures.

Thanks, folks, Cliff.

NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS

Except for a few clouds at times and some blowing dust, we've been bone-dry and warm to hot generally across North Idaho in the past three weeks, ending as of this Thursday morning writing, July 22. There's been no measurable moisture since July 2.

Even hotter weather lies ahead during late July and early to mid August. There will be many 'Sholeh' temperatures of 90 degrees or higher, possibly even a couple of afternoons near the century mark at my weather station on Player Drive in Coeur d'Alene.

There may be an isolated thundershower drifting over the region in the next few weeks, but most of the significant precipitation will stay to the north and east of the city in the mountains bordering Montana.

The weather prospects for this year's edition of the North Idaho Fair and Rodeo in late August still look good. I see afternoon highs mostly in the 80s with only the slight chance of a scattered shower or thunderstorm, mostly in the late afternoon or early evening hours.

September looks dry and warm until late in the period when the showers should return along with cooler temperatures into early to mid October. The chances of early frosts and freezes in the sheltered areas north and east of town will likewise increase.

As Randy Mann and I have said recently, a new colder 'La Nina' sea-surface temperature event could mean a 'bearcat' of a winter on 2010-11 with lots of snow. Stay tuned.

Cliff Harris is a climatologist who writes a weekly column for The Press. His opinions are his own. E-mail sfharris@roadrunner.com