An orgy of self-flagellation

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Sept 23

RE: City rolls out training for all city managers on Indigenous history

Saturday’s Spectator reported on the orgy of self-flagellation that official Canada is supposed to endure in order for “reconciliation” to be achieved with the Indigenous.  That reconciliation is a two-way street occurs to no one running the show.  It’s demoralizing in the extreme for intelligent, highly-educated, and experienced people to have to sit through a lecture full of contentious nonsense on pain of losing their jobs, when at no point will reconciliation actually occur as the reword for the pain.  Why would an indigenous agree to reconciliation when he can have such fun tormenting the white guy?

Hamilton city officials are to receive training in “cultural competence.”  People who are competent enough to deal with any other culture in the world are assumed to be incompetent when dealing with those of indigenous culture, who are said to number 15,000 out of a city population of over half a million; and never mind the fact that the Crown has ruled in Hamilton for over 230 years.  Yes, this is textbook special pleading.

All this nonsense is due to the prevalence of a totalitarian ideology among non-indigenous, that being post-modernism.  This philosophy doesn’t believe in the existence of objective truth; but rather of power, of structures of dominance, of who has power over whom. The belief has taken hold that evil Western society deserves, because of its prior success, to be dominated in its turn, and being lectured by an indigenous about “real” history is precisely the kind of tables turning that non-indigenous Canada has coming, in spades.

The irony is that every single documentable fact uttered by the indigenous lecturer comes from Western historians, Western documentation, and Western anthropologists.  The Neolithic culture of the indigenous is held up as the equal of Western civilization, and inconvenient historical facts will be glossed over, or ignored.

Historical facts like that the Mississaugas alleged “traditional territory” didn’t come into their possession until 1650, the Mohawks having massacred the Hurons in 1648 and then withdrew to their traditional territory in present day New York State.  Hence, when the British Crown purchased the Land between the Lakes in 1792, 231 years ago, the Mississaugas had only possessed it for 142 years.  They miss the fact that the Six Nation reserve, being the last remnant of the Haldimand Tract was purchased from the Mississaugas for the benefit of the New York Mohawks, meaning that Mohawks aren’t,  strictly speaking, indigenous to Ontario, or Canada.  They ignore that all the treaties and land purchases made by the Crown over the years was an agreement binding on both sides.  You can’t claim land that your people corporately gave up two centuries ago.

Reconciliation is a big joke progressives are playing on good natured people who are being taken advantage of on account of their believe in law & order, in keeping good faith, their good manners, and politeness.

Meanwhile, European history has been made so controversial because of this belief that history is nothing but the speaking of power structures of dominance that it can no longer be taught in Canadian schools.  Instead of history, we get “social studies.”  Where history is of facts, social studies are of someone’s opinion concerning historical facts.

Hamilton city staff are going to be taught history from the aboriginal perspective, which relies on knowledge gained from Westerners, but Westerners are forbidden, on pain of non-reconciliation, from countering with history lessons of their own.  They dare not rasie the question of good faith on the part of aboriginals. All of this is playing upon weaknesses in Western thought, and especially upon a British sense of decency and law.

I cannot imagine a Russian or a Chinese government putting up with such nonsense.

-30-

There is no greenhouse effect: Part 2

Accounting for global temperature

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Sept 23

The following derivation is not original; it has been used by other workers for other purposes.  This derivation is intended to demonstrate the reasoning behind the claim that a global mean temperature can be accounted for entirely by insolation and albedo; no postulated greenhouse effect being necessary.

We begin with constructing a simple model familiar to those knowledgeable of the climate debate.  We will use the Stefan-Boltzmann law to derive a hemispherical mean temperature.  The hemisphere of radius R is assumed to be a blackbody at every point of its surface, and that it is illuminated by a constant light source with parallel rays.  The hemisphere forms a circular disk perpendicular to the incoming radiation, and hence the illumination that each point on the hemisphere receives depends upon the angle made by the vector normal to the surface of the hemisphere at that point with the income ray.

Thus the Stefan Boltzmann law, for any point on the hemisphere, can be written as follows:

                        T(Ɵ) = [(1-α)S_o cos Ɵ/σ]^1/4

where T(Ɵ) is the temperature along the circle on the surface of the hemisphere formed at angle Ɵ from the perpendicular incoming rays; α is the albedo of the hemisphere (assumed to be uniform across the hemisphere); σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, and S_o is the insolation in Wm^-2. No assumption is made about an atmosphere; the whole idea of an atmosphere is neglected.

To obtain a mean temperature of the hemisphere, we need to integrate T(Ɵ) over the entire hemisphere.  An area element of the hemisphere can be expressed in terms of Ɵ as follows:

                        dA = 2πrdS

where r is the radius of the circle at angle Ɵ, and dS is the width of the circular band between r and r + dr.

Expressing in terms of Ɵ:

                        dS = R dƟ  ;  and r = R sin Ɵ

where R is the radius of the hemisphere.

Hence, dA can be expressed in terms of Ɵ as follows:

                        dA = 2πr dS = 2πR² sin Ɵ dƟ

Our Stephan-Boltzmann law is for a circular band around the hemisphere is:

                        σT⁴ = ƐS₀ cos Ɵ,  where Ɛ = (1-α)

Solving for T::

                        T(Ɵ) = (ƐS₀/σ)^1/4 cos^1/4Ɵ

Integrating:

(I’ve had to use a giant S in place of the integration symbol as the blog doesn’t support it.)

Substituting:    T_m = (2πR²)^-1  S (ƐS₀/σ)^1/4 cos^1/4Ɵ (2πR² sin Ɵ) dƟ

Cancelling, and integrating over Ɵ from 0 to π/2, we arrive at the following:

                        T_m = 4/5 * (ƐS₀/σ)^1/4

Hence the mean temperature of the hemisphere depends solely on S₀ and Ɛ, with σ being the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

We assign the following values:

            Ɛ = 0.7

            S₀ = 1362 Wm^-2

            σ = 5.67 x 10^-8 Wm^-2K^-4

Hence:             T_m = 288K or 15℃.

The computed mean temperature for the simple hemisphere using the accepted figures for insolation and albedo lies within experimental error of the accepted IPCC figure of 16℃ for global average temperature, while the satellite measurement says it’s more like 14.6℃ in the lower troposphere.

Thus the accepted global average temperature can be arrived at using a very simple model of the problem, without reference to an atmosphere or greenhouse effect.  Hence, it is unnecessary to posit a greenhouse effect in order to achieve a global mean temperature of 15℃.  The IPCC model seems to require that the global mean temperature be 255K with a greenhouse effect contributing an addition 33 degrees.  There seems to be something wrong with the IPCC model, or with their computational data.

-30-

It is worth observing that the IPCC global mean energy budget has 340 Wm^-2 as average insolation (1362/4), with 100 Wm^-2 lost due to reflection from clouds, and of that remaining, only 161 Wm^-2 actually is absorbed by the ground.  Yet, somehow, the ground radiates 398 Wm^-2 , 342 Wm^-2 hovers mysteriously in the atmosphere and radiates toward the ground, this being the alleged greenhouse effect; and 239 Wm^-2 radiates to outer space.  Needless to say, the budget doesn’t balance.  The IPCC global model is of a static, flat earth under constant illumination and with all heat transfer mechanisms averaged into a steady state.

Since the 342 Wm^-2 is allegedly in the atmosphere radiating, a striking question arises: why does radiation, which is supposed to be emitted in a random direction, only radiate downward, as indicated in the budget?  Why isn’t half downward, and half up to outer space? A figure of 239 Wm^-2 is given as that which escapes to space.

 

There is no Greenhouse Effect, Part 1

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Sept 23

Let me begin by offering my thanks and gratitude to the Tom Nelson Podcast and his guest on podcast #98, Tom Shula.  It brought me back to my early days at the Ontario Research Foundation and to my work in the Glass & Ceramics Department.  We had big, high-vacuum furnaces.  These were large, heavy steel chambers that could be pumped down to 10^-6 Torr; inside the chamber were large, graphite heating elements that could easily run up to 2200℃.  The high vacuum was necessary to protect the heating element from oxidation, and to keep the power requirements modest.  At high vacuum, despite the high temperatures inside, the outer part of the chamber was cool.  The size of a furnace necessary to reach temperatures of 2200℃ in open air would have rivaled a rotary cement kiln in size.  But that lack of heat transfer efficiency of a high vacuum is actually relevant to this story.

You had to be able to measure the pressure inside the chamber in order to know when it was safe to begin heating.  I didn’t know it at the time, but the device used to measure vacuum pressures was called a Pirani gauge, and Tom Shula explained how one worked.  The device uses a high resistance filament in a Wheatstone Bridge arrangement, and the device measure the amount of power required the keep the filament at a fixed temperature.

According to Shula, the filament temperature runs between 50℃ and 100℃, depending upon the range of pressure you’re going to be measuring.  There are three modes of heat transport: radiation, conduction, and convection.  Radiation is the passage of electromagnetic photons through space. Conduction is the transport of heat through a body, and the passage of heat through a metal rod heated at one end through to the other is an example of heat conduction.  The heating of a pot of water on a hot plate requires heat conduction from the plate to the pot, and from the pot to the water.  Convection is the movement of matter within a fluid body carrying heat with it; and the boiling of water in the pot is an example of convection.  Forced air heating or air conditioning in a building is another example of convection, by artificial forcing.

Back to the Pirani gauge.  The heated filament can lose heat by radiation, conduction, convection, and by “end losses,” which is a heat loss by conduction into the body of the gauge.  What is actually measured is the amount of power, or electric current, required to keep the filament at temperature.  Under high vacuum, only radiant heat transfer is available as a mechanism of heat loss, and as we saw in the case of the big furnaces, it is the least efficient.  At the highest vacuum, the least amount of power is required to keep the filament warm.  As more and more air is let into the chamber, the power required to keep the filament warm increases.  This is because air molecules collide with the filament, absorb heat, and depart the collision at a higher speed than then entered into it.  Higher molecular speeds equate to higher temperatures.  Air molecules are highly efficient at taking heat from the filament; on a macro scale, this is heat loss by the filament through convection and conduction.

Tom Shula gave a little example of the relationship between radiative and convection/conduction mechanisms of heat transfer in a chart somewhat like the following:

 

                        Pressure (Torr)            Radiative         Convection/Conduction

                                                            Contribution    Contribution

                                                                  %                           %

 

                        760 (sea level)                    0.4                        99.6

 

                        10/(110,000 ft)                   0.7                        99.3

 

                        0.02/(250,000 ft)               50.0                       50.0

 

                        Climate models                 95.5                       4.5

 

 

Shula gave a little context by providing some actual power readings: The radiative and end losses at high vacuum amounted to 0.4 mW; at 760 Torr pressure, the device require 100 mW of power to maintain filament temperature.  In sum, the IR losses amounted to 0.4 mW, while that lost to gas was 99.6 mW.

The figures in the chart are representative; the last line is the allocations of heat transfer ratios made by the climate models.  The Greenhouse Effect is based upon the idea that radiation is the primary means of heat transport within the atmosphere, and that trapped IR radiation in the lower troposphere is the cause of global temperature rise.  Shula argues convincingly that his results clearly show that radiation is insignificant as a means of heat transfer in the lower troposphere.  (This, in fact, was the burden of my post on “Carbon dioxide saturation and global warming” 16 Sept 23: Blackbody IR is completely absorbed by CO2 with 10 m of the surface, and is immediately thermalized.)  The surface of the earth is cooled by thermal conduction to the atmosphere in contact with it, and the air in contact with the earth is constantly kept cool by convection currents.  It is only in the upper atmosphere, above 250,000 ft altitude, that radiation becomes the predominant mode of heat transfer; and this is how the earth radiates heat into outer space.

Shula gave molecular beam epitaxy as an example of where a heated substrate can be kept at very hot for a long time without external heating by simply keeping it in a high vacuum.  The admission of a little air cools the substrate rapidly.

From this work, Shula concludes that the climate models, being based on radiative heat transfer, are unphysical, and therefore invalid, being based upon a false assumption.  There is no scientific basis for anthropogenic global warming.  Greenhouse “forcing” doesn’t represent the real dynamics of heat transfer in the lower atmosphere.

Shula said that the potential for massive government funding and the creation of a continuing crisis permitted the AGW concept to enter the mainstream; and in this opinion I heartily agree.

-30-

Shula made use of the IPCC AR4 global energy budget in his presentation, and I have the one from AR5.  The numbers are pretty close.  Concerning how the surface of the earth cools, the budget claims that the earth’s surface emits 398 W/m2 on average in blackbody, i.e. infra-red radiation, and loses a further 20 W/m2 by conduction/convection, which the IPCC refers to as “sensible heat.”  Thus 398 + 20 = 419 total heat loss; 100 x 398/419 = 95 % lost by radiation, and 100 x 20/419 = 5 % lost by conduction/convection.  Shula says these proportions are wildly unphysical.

The energy budget also has 342 W/m2 being emitted by the atmosphere back to the earth’s surface, and this is the so-called greenhouse effect: the earth’s atmosphere is considered to be a black body that emits IR radiation.  Since nitrogen and oxygen are not IR active, IR active gases, particularly water vapour and carbon dioxide, are primarily responsible for trapping this IR radiation and re-emitting it in all directions.  The earth’s atmosphere is considered to be a big IR trap, or, to coin a phrase, a greenhouse.

Shula argues that the cooling mechanism proposed by IPCC is wildly unphysical.  The primary mechanism of the cooling of the earth’s surface is by conduction/convection, and not by the emission of IR blackbody radiation. He further argues that the earth’s atmosphere simply cannot be considered as a blackbody.  Hence, there can be no greenhouse effect of any consequence in the earth’s atmosphere: the primary means of heat transport in the atmosphere is convection/conduction, and not IR radiation.

In my post of 16 Sept 23, entitled “Carbon dioxide saturation and global warming” I show that all of the IR radiation emitted from the earth’s surface is captured by atmospheric CO2 within the first 10 m of the surface, and that this is all thermalized, i.e. converted into sensible heat.  Shula shows that the radiative heat transport mechanism on which the climate models rely is unphysical, and hence invalidating of the model.  There can be no greenhouse effect.  I show that even if you accept the IPCC model of IR blackbody radiation of from the earth’s surface as correct, there can be no greenhouse effect because all that IR radiation is thermalized, and hence subject to the physics of conduction/convection.  There can be no greenhouse effect in the earth’s atmosphere.

Reviving disheartened souls

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Sept 23

RE: Reports says there’s still hope to reach climate goals. AP story. The Hamilton Spectator 27 Sept 23.

The leaders of the climate change movement realize that their radical fringe has gone too far.  They have people believing that the climate movement maintains that Armageddon will occur by 2030 without a radical, unaffordable, destructive, and unattainable set of goals being met.  To some, such radicalism discredits the movement, and it is discouraging to many who find it impossible to keep up.

The leaders have to rein in their Jacobites without being eaten by them; hence, hints are dropped to the effect that it’s not quite as bad as it seems.  Maybe the world isn’t really boiling; it just seems that way.  This unnamed report, which may have originated from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, is a toss of sand into the radical’s gears.

The report says that there’s still hope for 2030; all is not lost; some progress is being made; continued heavy lifting can still save the planet.  The report claims to know things it can’t possibly know: of a sufficiently “huge” growth in solar energy and EVs “worldwide.” They can’t know the numbers, let alone that they indicate sufficiency.

Nevertheless, renewable power needs to triple by 2030, and EV sales need to rise even more sharply, to a ridiculous 70 percent from 13 percent of sales; methane emissions need to fall by 75 percent, even as global LNG sales rise. Annual investments have to rise from a third of the US federal budget to its current entirety by 2030. Etc. No mention of China, India, or Russia. It’s still all on the West.

It’s all hogwash: there’s no greenhouse effect, and no anthropogenic global warming. There’s no greenhouse effect because infra-red radiation isn’t trapped in the lower atmosphere; it’s all thermalized within ten meters of the surface.  All thermal transport within the lower atmosphere is by convention and conduction; it is only in the upper most atmosphere, where pressures are of the order of 1/100 torr that radiation becomes the predominant mechanism of heat transport, and that’s how and where the earth radiates heat into outer space.

Anthropogenic global warming has yet to be proved, and the mechanism cannot be by rise in CO2 in the atmosphere.  In the first place, the globe hasn’t warmed since 1999 despite rising CO2, and as we have claimed here, there is no greenhouse effect, which is the mechanism by which CO2 is said to cause global warming.

If there is global warming, it has to be due to a reduction in the earth’s albedo.  I will explain and demonstrate this soon.

-30-

Confirm that bias!

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Sept 23

RE: “What the 1 million march was really about” Opo-ed by Torstar columnist by Edward Keenan.  The Hamilton Spectator 22 Sept 23

If you thought the million man march 4 kids was about protecting Canadian kids from the teaching of gender identity theory and from pornographic books in school, you’d be wrong!  At least according to Torstar columnist Edward Keenan, whose opinion piece is a textbook example of confirming progressive biases.

He begins with discrediting the entire protest by opening with a description of all the hangers-on, who are portrayed as the usual anti-progressive freak show: people with F- Trudeau flags, a woman shouting about “totalitarian ideology” (which would never happen in Canada, last year’s seizure of bank accounts notwithstanding); a person handing out dystopian warnings about “15 minute cities” (as if it wasn’t a progressive ideal already being implemented in European cities); people warning about the dangers of COVID vaccines, as if there actually were some; and the tyranny of another mask mandate, as if such a mandate wasn’t raised by PHAC head Dr. Theresa Tam.

On top of all that, “the protest organizers included “significant misinformation about what is being taught!” Gosh, you’d think “parents grew up in world in which the existence of these gender questions were ‘essentially invisible.’”  No big deal, “my kids have friends who are trans and non-binary” and are nonchalant about it.

Actually, twenty years ago, nobody heard about Gender Identity Theory, it was snuck in without warning. Parents have a right to be suspicious, because keeping secrets from parents on sexual matters is what the teachers are openly advocating.  Parents want this wretched stuff stopped now.

In typical progressive diversion tactic, the concerned parents are condemned as transphobes and homophobes.  But they must love their kids, because they are out there protesting; they don’t want their children  to be groomed into an alphabet person; and it simply doesn’t follow that that love for their children makes them transphobes or homophobes.  The niceties of close reason doesn’t help the progressive cause in this case, and so progressives go coarse and stay coarse with the aim of cancelling their opponents, and avoid having to meet them on the field of reason.  Love for their kids makes them transphobes; that’s quite a leap!

Keenan’s column confirmed biases against anti-progressives, and ours about Torstar columnists.

-30-

The Dog's Nest Dispatch, ladies & gentlemen!

Get woke, go broke

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Sept 23

RE: Dozens of Metroland papers to close. The Hamilton Spectator 16 Sept 23 p.A22.

RE: Hamilton Spectator to losing its office space as parent company Torstar tries to save money.  CBC News story posted 19 Sept 23, by Bobby Hristova.

From the Hamilton Spectator, to the Hannon Times, to the Dog’s Nest Dispatch (PO Box 3, Townsend, ON, L0L 0L0; J.P. Antonacci, Editor): how far the might have fallen!

A never-ending whine about “trans rights,” “Pride” haters, climate cultishness that no one believes anymore; scolding about masks and vaccinations, the drum-beat of “I hate Ford,” and “Pierre Poilievre is unworthy” and “greenbelt!”  What respectable business owner that is trying to appeal to the mainstream, and has other advertising options, wants to associate himself with endless progressive hectoring, both on the editorial pages and in the news pages?

NordStar, owner of Metroland Media and Torstar, gave the lemming’s excuse: it’s across all print media, we’re no different.  Well, the print media belongs to the liberal hive mind, illustrated by the JournoList, and going well before that.  Nobody thought about making the paper more interesting to read.  Literary flair is racist; never a column by, say, Mark Steyn.  The proprietor doesn’t dine at The Hamilton Club.  A lack of enterprise, which happens when ownership is distant and doesn’t know the business; it’s easy and safe just to keep turning the handle over and over, until you can’t.

With no newsroom, editorial meetings will have to take place via Zoom, or at a Timmies somewhere.  With no space to call its own, the sense of Spectator corporateness will fast disappear.  Hopefully, a white knight will buy the name out of bankruptcy.

Got woke, went broke.  Pity.

-30-

Dogs not barking

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Sept 23

RE: Tropical storm Lee leaves behind a trail of damage.  CP story by Michael MacDonald.  The Hamilton Spectator 18 Sept 23.

Tropical storm Lee is noted to be far less destructive than Fiona was last year.  The dog that isn’t barking in this fact is that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  The climate cultists are telling us that storms are supposed to become more intense and more destructive, not less.  But the theory isn’t fitting the facts, so the theory doesn’t get mentioned.  The theory is too precious to be exposed to criticism. 

There’s a reckoning coming.  The climate cultists have made the year 2030 the year of decision.  The world will experience climate collapse, climate chaos, or some such apocalypse by 2030 if radical and painful measures aren’t taken immediately to reduce world CO2 output to net zero.  Well, net zero isn’t going to happen, but the middle class will have been impoverished by all the measures said necessary to reach net zero: absurdly expensive EVs, crazy electricity prices, carbon taxes on fuel, which makes home heating costly, and anything grown and transported to market more expensive.  The middle class will have suffered much in the name of attaining net zero to ward off the coming climate apocalypse.

But in 2030, nothing will happen. We won’t have attained anything like net zero, but the promised apocalypse won’t have arrived.  The sky won’t be falling any more than usual.  The next seven years will be like the last seven, with its share of droughts, fires, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, cold snaps, and natural disasters.

Who to believe then?

-30-

Carbon Dioxide Saturation and Global Warming

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Sept 23

In two previous postings, Beer’s Law and Climate Change (16 Nov 21) and The Molecular Mechanics of Global Warming (16 Nov 21), I explained in a qualitative way how carbon dioxide contributes to warming of the atmosphere, and also that there is limit to how much infra-red radiation CO₂ can absorb in its contribute to atmospheric warming.  The important conclusion was that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere above which is already present will contribute nothing more to atmospheric warming.  Those qualitative explanations will now be demonstrated quantitatively.

In 1998, Heinz Hug determined the extinction coefficient of the bending mode of CO₂ at the frequency of 667 cm^-1, the famous 15 micron absorption peak.  The other principle CO₂ absorption peak, asymmetric stretch, occurs at 2390 cm^-1; but this is not significant to the global warming effect.

The Beer-Lambert law is:

            log₁₀ (I/I₀) = -Ɛ_ƛCd      where Ɛ_ƛ is the extinction coefficient at wavelength ƛ

                                                C is concentration

                                                d is distance

Hug determined Ɛ for CO₂ at the frequency of 667 cm^-1.  At a concentration of 357 ppmv CO₂ in atmospheric air containing 2.6 % water vapor, the extinction coefficient was found to be 20.2 m²/mole.  This enables us to calculate the amount of radiation absorbed over a distance of 10 m in the atmosphere.

We convert 357 ppmv into moles/m³ as follows:

357 ppmv = 0.357 L/1000 L of air.  At STP, 1 mole of gas occupies 22.414 L volume; hence, .357 L = 357/22.414 = 0.0159 moles.  And since 1000 L = 1 m³ we get:

357 ppmv = 0.0159 moles/m³.

Substituting:  log (I/I₀) = - (20.2 * 0.0159 * 10)  m²/mol * mol/m³ * m

                       log (I/I₀) = --3.21

                      Exponentiating:   I/I₀ = 0.0006

 This means that 99.94 % of the radiation is absorbed in the passage through 10 m of air.  Increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide merely shortens the distance in which 99.94 % of the radiation is absorbed.  If, for instance, concentration were doubled, the distance would be halved.  The earth’s lower atmosphere is effectively opaque to IR radiation at the 667 cm^-1 wave number already.  A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere won’t make it any more opaque.

All of this radiation is converted to heat.  This is demonstrated as follows:

Let N_i(t) be the number of molecules of CO₂ in its excited vibrational state at time t.

Let N₀ be the number of molecules of CO₂ in its excited vibrational state at time t=0.

The decay constant, K_d ,of CO₂ returning to its ground state is 1.54/s, which is known from the HITRAN database.

The half-life of the excited state is calculated as follows:

            N_i(t)/N₀ = ½ = exp - (K_d * t_1/2)   where exp = e, the base of the natural logarithms.

            ln (1/2) = - K_d * t_1/2   or    t_1/2 = ln (2)/1.54 = 0.45 s.

The half-life of a vibrationally excited CO₂ molecule is roughly half a second.

Thermal quenching is the process in which a vibrationally excited CO₂ molecule is reduced to the ground vibrational state by a collision with another molecule: the vibrational energy of the CO₂ being converted into kinetic energy in the colliding molecule, i.e. a higher speed of the other molecule exiting the collision.  We have data for that also.

For nitrogen:    K_N2 = 5.5 * 10^-15  cm³/molecule-sec

For oxygen:      K_O2 = 3.1 * 10^-15  cm³/molecule-sec

Averaging for atmospheric composition:  K_air = 5 * 10^-15 cm³/molecule-sec.

Since there are approximately 2.5 * 10¹⁹ molecules per cm³ of air, multiplying K_air with N, the number of molecules, we get:

            5 * 10^-13 * 2.5 * 10¹⁹  =  12.75 * 10⁴  quenching collisions per second.

Hence, vibrationally excited CO2 undergoes roughly 100,000 no-radiative deexcitation collisions per second, or about 50,000 over the half-life of a radiative deexcitation.  A non-radiative thermal deexcitation is 50,000 times faster, and hence far more probable, than re-radiation.  Thus, thermalization effectively kills back-radiation, and hence ends any further potential greenhouse effect of more CO₂.  Because the CO₂ already present in the atmosphere is so quickly returned to the vibrational ground state, it is ready to receive another quanta of IR radiation much faster than if had to wait half a second to de-excite by re-radiation.  This makes the CO₂ already present in the atmosphere so efficient at absorbing IR radiation and converting it to heat.

So, what happens with all this heat transferred to nitrogen and oxygen?  By convection and thermal diffusion, this heat is carried to the upper atmosphere, where, by a process of thermal excitation, ground state infra-red active molecules are excited into a higher vibrational state, and radiatively return to the ground state.  This process becomes more favored because, at the low pressures of the upper atmosphere, thermal quenching is far less probable.

-30-

Heinz Hug, 10 Aug 12 eike-kilma-energie.eu

HITRAN data base: spectra-calc.com/ spectra browser/db data.php

Siddles, Wilson, Simpson, Chemical Physics 184 (1994) 779-91

Ignorance is scarier than climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Sept 23

RE: Nukes are less scary than climate change.  Op-ed by Rama Singh, Professor Emeritus in Biology at McMaster University.  The Hamilton Spectator 14 Sept 23.

The article by Rama Singh shows that even university professors, when speaking outside of their field of expertise, can sometimes be no better than the rank amateur.  His comments about the scariness of climate change make a case in point.

He says, quiet contrary to the facts, that global temperatures are “rising fast and are the result of the burning of fossil fuels…”  Insofar as global average temperature is concerned, the best measurements available are those from satellites, and they show no fast rise, globally.  Temperatures seemed to have roughly plateaued since 1999, and even the “hottest summer on record” was exceeded in temperature in February, 2016.

So, temperatures aren’t rising dramatically and consistently.  As for the burning of fossil fuels being the cause of global warming, this canard is readily discredited, but is nevertheless held up out of a need to believe it in the climate science community.  Much of their funding depends upon this belief.  The fact is, there is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperature.  And it’s not simply that CO2 is one effect offset by others; the greenhouse effect of CO2 is maxed out at about 100 ppm concentration.  Adding more doesn’t contribute to the capture of more IR radiation.

Lastly, Professor Singh says that global warming is bad.  Well, what’s his evidence for that?  Is the climate we currently have the best possible?  What about that of 1979? Or of 1936? Or the Holocene Climatic Optimum? Serious thought hasn’t been given to this question of what makes climate change necessarily all for the worse?

-30-

What rights?

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Sept 23

RE: Forcibly outing children violates their human rights. Op-ed by Julie Malbogat. The Hamilton Spectator 13 Sept 23.

However daring this titillating headline is, the author makes no effort, beyond a bald assertion, to prove that “forcibly outing” children violates their “human rights.”  It takes little parsing, in fact, to demolish this silly assertion.

To begin, what does “forcibly outing” even mean?  It seems to mean that the policies of New Brunswick and other provinces, which require schools to inform parents if their children appear to express gender diaspora at school, causes them to be ‘outed’ by force.  If a child showed any other kind of sickness or mental illness at school, the parents would be, and ought to be, informed of the observation; and gender diaspora is a mental illness; but, strangely, this particular mental illness is the one illness that needs to be kept secret from parents.  Why?

The assertion answering why it must be kept secret is that it violates the “human rights” of the child.  I don’t see how informing parents of their child’s condition violates the child’s “human rights.”  Parents, however, bear heavy responsibilities in raising their children; and, with that, they also have rights concerning them, which the state ought not wantonly to violate.  If their child has done bad at school, parents will most certainly be informed of it.  If their child exhibits a communicable disease at school, the parents will be informed of it.  So what makes gender diaspora the secret that can’t be shared?

What makes incipient gender diaspora special is that a new recruit for the cause needs to be shielded from a potential cure.  Transgenderism is the latest, most avant garde, cause of the progressive movement.  It is post-modern deconstructionist to its core.  It is so far out of the mainstream that gays, lesbians, and feminists are distancing themselves from it; and yet men with male genitalia are now competing against women in women’s sports.  This is how reality-bending the justification for transgenderism must be.

The weirdness and reality-confusion of the article begins in its opening line: “My son, Zack, is transgender.” Being eight years old when he told his mother, and eleven now, his transgenderism is “strictly social: new pronouns, new clothes, new haircut, new name.”  After three years, there’s nothing new anymore; what she means to say is: feminine pronouns, girl’s clothes, girl’s haircut, and a girl’s name.  He’s still her son, not her “daughter,” however.  He casually told his mother, “that he was transgender.” Now, I can understand a boy telling his mother that he was a girl, or wants to be a girl, but where would this ‘transgender’ term have arisen?  Can a boy of eight even pronounce that polysyllabic modernism, never spoken in a family home in casual conversation?  Anyhow, mom never asked where; she just accepted it; perhaps because that’s what she really wanted: a daughter.  If the boy had said, “I’m a girl,” or “I want to be a girl,” mom should have said, “look in your pants, boy.  You’re not a girl, and never will be.  Every cell in your body contains an XY pair.  You’re marked forever as male.”  What did dad say about this? What dad thinks isn’t mentioned.

But the purpose of the story is to condemn Ontario Minister of Education Stephen Lecce, and everybody else who disagrees with her, of being transphobic haters.  Most people aren’t “gender-affirming,” which, here again is reality-bending: if she had told her son that he was a boy and will never be a girl -that would be gender-affirming.  But not in the topsy-turvy world of gender identity theory.  Does she hate her son qua son?  She must, for she wants him to be a girl.

She condemns parents who are “homophobic and transphobic, in the worst cases abusively so.” Not exactly clear what “abusively so” means, but it’s the term ‘abusive’ that she wanted to employ, like she did with ‘forcibly.’  Not exactly clean what transphobic and homophobic means in this context of raising prepubescent pre-teens either, but I’m sure parents want grandkids too; and they won’t get them if their children are homosexual or sterilized by “transgender affirming care.”  These are not, in general, happy lifestyles; and parents want their children to lead happy lives, which is why this story is so weird: the falling for an unhappy and irreversible lifestyle choice by a mixed-up mother who allegedly only wants her son to be happy.

The transgender lifestyle is unhappy; that’s why suicide is so prevalent among the gender confused.  Being sterilized, a transgender can’t have their own children; their genitals being removed, they can’t enjoy sex; they’re in for a lifetime of medical treatments; they’re creepy in person; and they expect you to live the lie they’re unsuccessful at telling.  People don’t like being lied to, and quickly find tiresome living someone else’s lie in their presence.  This pressure being put on other people to live the transgender’s lie is where the behavior of “transphobe” begins.

People who are creeped-out by transgenders, and who don’t want to live their lie, aren’t transphobes; but the child butchers who mutilate children by removing girls’ breasts, and castrate young boys in the name of “affirming care” deserve all the hated they get, and more.  They’re on par with Joseph Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, and I say this without a trace of emotion in my heart.

Not enough is being done to put down the madness of transgenderism.  People like Julie Malbogat have no right to fling around accusations of transphobe and hater at other people; it’s people like her who are guilty of child abuse, for not putting her child right the moment he got off the rails.

I’ll bet Zack is getting a lot more special attention after he told his mom that he was “transgender;” more than he was getting before.  So far, so good, Zack; but be careful when she takes you to the doctor’s office.

-30-

 

It takes a special kind of stupid

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Sept 23.

RE: The free market won’t solve this mess,  Op-ed by Marie-Josée Houle, Canada’s Federal Housing advocate.  The Hamilton Spectator 11 Sept 23

It takes a special kind of stupid to write an piece like that by Marie-Josee Houle; and a show of the paucity of knowledge of basic economics is that such socialist trash as purveyed by Houle could pass muster with the Spectator’s editors.

Houle complains that the housing crisis today was caused by the ending of the federal affordable housing program - in the 1990s.  From this she concludes that for-profit housing contractors cannot bring the crisis to an end.  Her solution is Stalinist goverance.  She argues that public money should be used to support non-market housing, which seems to be housing permanently owned by the government (“permanently affordable and accessible”).

Houle’s solution is faced with the same problem as that of the private contractors: When is the land this new housing is to be built on to be made available?  Where’s the money coming from to buy the materials and to service the land?  Most importantly, where are the workers and contractors to come from to do the government’s work, if not from the construction companies themselves – the ones that can’t get the job done without making a profit?  None of these questions occur to the author.  Neither does the irony.  With Stalin in charge, the land will be made available, or those in the way will be sent to the Gulag.  The compulsory nature of the work, and the likely low rates of pay, will certainly cause a labor and skill shortage, and demonstrate the advantages of the carrot over the stick.

The housing crisis in Canada was caused by the creation of the greenbelt, and like artificial shortages of land.  Force reluctant municipalities to cooperate; trample the opposition; unhobble the horse, and watch it run.

-30-

Expire quietly

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Sept 23

RE: Trans students need care, not legislation. Op-ed by Kathleen Hilchey.  An Ontario certified teacher and qualified mediator who works as a conflict specialist training teachers “on meeting the conflict and mental health needs of youth today.” The Hamilton Spectator 8 Sept 23.

Kathleen Hilchey makes the self-disqualifying statement: “gender assigned at birth.”  This identifies her as one of those transgender pushing fanatics.  The nurse assigns a crib to a new-born; the doctor judges the baby’s sex at birth on the basis of readily observable characteristics.  That’s the difference between assigning and judging: the former is arbitrary, the latter is not.

Ten years ago, nobody heard of transgenderism, particularly among children.  Now, it’s all the rage.  Why?  Because people like Kathleen Hilchey have been quietly inculcating the idea to school children without the knowledge and consent of their parents.  Hilchey says she has no problem with “looping families in” but only “when the time is right.”  Sure, after the poison has set in.  Observe she used “families,” not “parents.”

We know how people like Hilchey deal with opposition.  They manipulate. They demand your good manners and your deference; and if you don’t defer to her better judgement, then you’re going to kill people by driving them to suicide.  “You’re going to be responsible for their deaths!!”  I’ve seen this played out before in public, even in US Senate hearings.

Do I really want deaths over this transgender issue?  Actually, yeah.  The lizards that connive at the sexual mutilation of children I think should crawl back under their rocks and expire quietly.  But they won’t.

-30-

Notice that Hilchey is certified as a teacher, but doesn’t teach students: she teaches teachers, and she mediates, and works as a ‘conflict specialist.’  Manipulation is her stock-in-trade.  “meeting the conflict and mental health needs of youth today.” Yeah, but what are the conflict needs of youth today? Is there a need for conflict?  This is all the product of the degraded humanities programs of today’s universities.  See my “Who is anti-science” the June 6th, 2023 entry of this blog.

Eat your vegetables.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Sept 23

RE: How do we avoid the next ‘tripledemic?’ By Matthew van Dongen.  The Hamilton Spectator 7 Sept 23.

When I saw the picture of Immunologist Dr. Dawn Bowdish grinning superciliously for the camera, and the conventional wisdom “get your shots,” go back to masks,” and “eat your vegetables,” I wondered if she kept up the literature on the subject she was asked to comment on, which wasn’t immunology.  The actual interview was much more nuanced than the headline writer implied.  And I can understand why Dr. Bowdish said what she did say: she was playing it safe.

I know people who have been vaxxed six times, and still caught a dose of COVID.  The drug said to be a vaccine isn’t a vaccine in the conventional sense; it is a prophylactic in the sense that if you get COVID the symptoms shouldn’t be as severe as they could be.  The latest literature on masks is that they don’t work on a virus as contagious as COVID; not even the N95 is availing because most people don’t know how to use it properly.  Surgical masks are a complete waste of time because they don’t form a close seal to the face.

Playing it safe, Dr. Bowdish delivered the conventional wisdom the Spectator wanted to hear: be compliant to orders.  The problem is that by now, people are tired of doing stupid things that don’t work on the orders of the belligerently ignorant.

-30-

It’s all our fault.

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Sept 23

RE: Drought, conflict and climate change.  Op-ed by Anthony Alexiou.  Alexious is the found and principal of a geopolitical risk advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. The Hamilton Spectator 5 Sept 23.

Iran and Afghanistan nearly go the war, and it’s our fault.  Somalia, a failed state since 1991, has refugee camps because of ‘the drought and the conflict,” and it’s our fault.  Migrations in the Sahel in western Africa is our fault.  Droughts and floods in the Horn of Africa is our fault.  It’s our fault because of climate change, and we’re responsible for that.

In consequence and penance, we have to take the flood of climate refugees.  That’s the message Anthony Alexiou has for us.  The West has the capacity to absorb and adapt to climate change, but people from these other regions do not; and so we have to take them in.

Canada is not the cause of climate change; it’s not our fault; if Canada disappeared tomorrow it would have no effect whatever on global temperature in 2100.  Doesn’t matter; Canada is still taking in 500,000 refugees a year, and despite the housing crisis, Alexiou seems to be forecasting our having to take in more.  Because of our sins against climate.

If some natural disaster hit North America, who would feel obliged to take us in?

-30-

It always costs you, not them.

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Sept 23

RE: Charge Big Oil for damage.  By Don McLean. The Hamilton Spectator 2 Sept 23.

It’s a waste of time to reason with a fanatic.  Hence, we should confine our comments to observations about Don McLean’s demand that “Big Oil” be made to pay for the damages caused by the wildfires of this past summer.  Let’s say they are forced to pay; where are they going to recover the money?

Big Oil is going to find the money by raising fuel prices; so those who actually pay are those who drive cars and trucks. Now, McLean is not actually crazy in this.  Though he blames “Big Oil” for the CO2 emissions which alleged caused the fires, it’s actually those who burn the fuels that put CO2 into the atmosphere, and that would be drivers and those who heat their homes with natural gas and use electricity generated by natural gas.  Forcing Big Oil to pay for damages is McLean’s way of jacking up the carbon tax.

One way or another, by hook or by crook, the climate fanatics are going to force people into the strait-jacket of their design: an allegedly carbon-free world.  As little Canada penalizes itself, in China, India, and Russia the beat goes on.

30-