A Heretic in the Religion of Climate Change

Man-made Global Warming is a religion. Why do I say that?

A religion is a belief system based on faith that's not easily provable. The adherents to a religious belief system typically base their belief on the testimony of others who they accept as having superior knowledge. Even though the average believer lacks the means to test and verify the belief themselves, they accept the orthodoxy presented by the high priests of the belief system, and can often quote the tenets of the faith scripture and verse.

Should someone challenge the belief system, the resultant response is angry condemnation. The naysayer is vilified, condemned as a heretic. The incredulity that anyone could suggest that the religion is wrong results in anger and public mockery. 

Science has never been a popular discipline for the average person. While some people are fascinated by how the universe works and eagerly consume every scrap of investigation on virtually any topic in science, most people neither know nor care, and are unwilling to exert the effort to educate themselves. Just 200 years ago, science and mathematics was the realm of the wealthy, of little practical use to the average person eking out a living from the land. Today, though scientific literacy is much higher in the average person in the industrialized world, most people don't really care why these technological marvels that populate every facet of our existence work the way they do, they just want their cars to go, the lights to be on, their phones and computers to work, and the TV to deliver entertainment directly to our living rooms.

Scientific discovery has yielded some fascinating results, and the entertainment industry has found a way to monetize this by delivering science to you packaged as entertainment, using flashy, state of the art video production and an entertaining host. Because of this, many people fancy themselves scientific experts with no practical understanding of how to develop a theory, design a test for the theory, and evaluate the results. While a lot of people can probably recite the scientific method, there's a lot to it that's unsaid which you really can't appreciate until you actually practice it day in and day out.

My background is in a field of hard physics, testing the electromagnetic characteristics of commercial products to ensure they meet industry requirements. To do that, I have to have a laboratory full of sophisticated equipment, and moreover, I have to prove on a regular basis that the results I get are reproducible to those arrived at by other labs with similar capabilities. 

There's an old saying: In theory, theory and reality are the same. In reality, they're not. One of the most difficult challenges in my field is when we have a standardized test article for performing interlaboratory comparisons. These are either objects with a specific emissions spectra, or articles that behave in a certain defined fashion in the presence of electromagnetic fields. Theoretically, each lab should produce the same results when testing these articles to a certain standard. Yet this is rarely the case, and many engineers pull their hair out trying to identify why this is so. The generally understood reason is that this can be a chaotic field - where small changes in input conditions can generate huge differences in behavior. Finding the culprits and correcting for them can be frustrating and educational. If two labs have different results, who's right? Why? Or maybe both labs are wrong? This can lead to heated discussions, and this in a field where all the input conditions can be controlled, and the only thing preventing a rigorous exploration of differing input conditions are time, space and money.

When it comes to climate science, everything is theoretical. We only have one data point of reality, and we have no way of altering the input conditions to test behavior. We can run computer simulations, but there's no way to know if our computer simulations account for every possible input condition -- and in my experience with practical science, they can't possibly -- or if the simulation isn't just a complicated exercise in curve-fitting. It's not like we can take a perfectly optimum Earth-like planet and pump its CO2 levels up and see what happens, with another identical planet sitting by as a control.

So what differentiates science from religion? I doubt many people reading this have a firm grasp on quantum mechanics, but we accept that as science, even though most of us - myself included - lack the mathematical background to understand it. If we get right down to it, the lay person's understanding of quantum mechanics is a religious belief, based on what the high priests of physics tell us. The reason it really doesn't fall into the religious category, though, is that if you scoff at quantum mechanics, or propose a different set of rules to govern it, you don't get branded as a heretic. So many people are scratching their heads over the theory in the first place that any hair-brained explanation is no more unbelievable than what mainstream science proposes. People readily admit they don't understand it, and so aren't willing to haul out the torches and pitchforks to defend it against the heretic.

One could even say that most people have a religious belief in electronics. They don't understand it, lack the educational background to understand it, and take what the experts say about it on faith. The difference is that electronics works. Even if you don't understand it, those who do can demonstrate that their understanding yields predictable results every single time - to the point where we actually get angry when our electronic talismans fail to live up to their billing.

But climate science is an obscure field of scientific study, not what one would consider "mainstream." It cannot be experimentally tested with rigorous controls in a laboratory environment. There's no way to know if the input variables are accounted for or fully understood. The interactions and feedback mechanisms between the various input variables are complex and chaotic* and poorly understood. Computer simulations rarely come close to modeling previous observed behavior, and so are "tweaked" until they reproduce that which has been observed. This sort of model has some value, but cannot be relied upon for predictive value, as there is no way to quantify how closely the model actually represents reality, or how much the model's behavior is a result of an exercise in curve-fitting.

As an aside, a classic example of curve fitting can be seen in trading the stock market. If one examines any historical stock chart, apparent patterns leap out. This is partly because the human mind is very good at seeing patterns in chaos - even when no such pattern really exists. These stock price patterns have been retroactively analyzed in a myriad of ways, each of which has many adherents who use them to time stock trades. Moving Average Convergence/Divergence, Multiple Moving Averages, Fibonacci levels, any number of patterns all can retroactively show that if you trade on this or that signal, you'll have a successful trade. Except it rarely works that way as a predictive tool, and when the "signal" supposedly occurs you might as well flip a coin over whether it will be a win or loss. In retrospect most of the signals are false. But you don't see the false signals in the historical charts, because our brains are only geared to see the successful ones. This same problem arises to some degree in any statistical analysis of data, and the more chaotic inputs that drive the data, the more patterns and false signals will likely be observable. There's probably no data set with more interacting chaotic variables than the climate record. Even the stock market with thousands of independent traders affecting stock prices is a model of predictability by comparison.

Since climate science is based on observation and analysis of a single data set with no mechanism available to perform experimentation and reproducible independent studies (there's only one data set), climate scientists are understandably inconsiderate of such things as uncertainty calculations and identifying sources of error. Since there's only one data set available, the climate scientist has no need to explain discrepancies in the collected data, analyze sources of error that may skew the data or calculate the measurement uncertainty based on multiple independent sources. These exercises are the bane of every lab manager's existence, and even in the most stringent environments often amount to nothing more than a scientific wild ass guess. Climate scientists can make a show of identifying measurement error, and have even used it as an excuse to modify their data. However, an interesting thing is that if all your identified measurement errors only adjust your data in a direction to reach a preconceived result, you're not being objective, you're curve-fitting.

What differentiates man-made global warming from scientific theory is an intolerance for dissension. Science relies on skepticism and criticism. Science only moves forward when someone says, "Hey, wait a minute!" It doesn't matter how elaborate your theory is, how many peer-reviewed papers its been written up in, how much data you have to support it, if anyone comes in and drops a single fact in your lap that disproves it, then your science is worthless, and you need to start over. A scientist -- well, a reputable scientist -- needs to be able to explain all the data. When someone presents a refutation, it's up to the scientist to demonstrate why the refuting evidence doesn't apply, why it actually fits into the theory, or how the refuting evidence is wrong. 

This can be very difficult for climate scientists who are experts at paleo-climate and historical weather patterns and weather/climate data collection. These people work in a field immersed in data and spend a significant amount of time studying and explaining the data patterns. They're not full-time physicists. They're concerned with patterns and explaining those patterns. They make assumptions that may or may not reflect the actual physics involved. I happen to work in an esoteric field of electromagnetics, not climate science. But when a climate scientist comes to me and makes a statement of how a certain gas acts in response to an electromagnetic input that's the underpinning of an entire hypothesis, I'm certain that I'm more equipped to understand that electromagnetic interaction between the terrestrial IR emissions and the gas than the climate scientist is, and if it doesn't work the way the climate scientist assumes, then I know that the foundation of their hypothesis is flawed.

You can see the religious zealotry when you honestly suggest that maybe the science is flawed. Try it. Here's a taste of what I have experienced by making such a statement on a science forum recently:

"Shut the fuck up, boomer."

"Just because you say so it doesn’t make it so." (Really? That cuts both ways, doesn't it?)

"u be dumb."

"Pay no attention to troll bots"

"only fools and Fox news think climate change is a hoax"

"are you willfully ignorant? Or just plain fucking stupid?"
"maybe your drugs are cleaner..."

Of course, this is also accompanied with numerous links to sources to support the man-made global warming narrative, i.e. quoting from scripture. They don't understand it well enough to make the case on their own, so they appeal to the authority of the high priests. One of the leading sources of scripture is the pseudo-scientific blog Skeptical science, which is neither skeptical or scientific. It's completely on board with the man-made global warming narrative, and neither harbors nor entertains any skepticism at all. Its science is cherry-picked and lacks objectivity. Like any religious screed, it appears to attempt to bury criticism and ironically, skepticism, by sheer volume, ignoring the scientific axiom that it doesn't matter how much data supports your hypothesis, it only takes one fact to topple the whole thing.

So why do people have the religious adherence to the orthodoxy of man-made global warming? Well, the primary driver of this is fear. Like the ancient pagans, we're afraid of the doom that has been predicted by a select few climate scientists. We seek to stave off this doom by sacrificing as the high priests instruct us, in an attempt to placate the impending doom so that it passes over us and leaves us unharmed. The sad fact is that when you instill fear in someone, there's good money to be made in offering a solution to their fear. Whether the predictions of climate change are real or not, no one can deny that some people have become very rich in the effort to avert it. Whether it's green technology that isn't economically sustainable on its own, or a carbon exchange scheme similar to the stock market where the market makers get a cut of every trade, if you make enough people scared enough, you can make some big money.

To make this work, you need several things to line up for you: 

You need a population that's basically scientifically illiterate, but not so illiterate that they can't follow a well-considered line of reasoning. People who are capable of understanding the concepts, but incapable themselves of testing the concepts or analyzing the data on their own and formulating their own theories. 

You need a way to control the narrative, and deliver the accepted narrative to the population. Journalism 101: If it bleeds, it leads. Disaster is good news.

You need to be able to suppress and marginalize dissenting opinions. Many many highly qualified scientists, including doctorates in physicists and climatology from well respected universities around the world, some Nobel prize winners, refute the narrative of man-made global warming. They're easy to find. Why do they never get any air time to present their views to the average news consumer?

Once you have these three things, the stage is set for you to proselytize your religion without interference. When you have enough converts, you can influence political discussions and political decisions. And someone is going to get very rich as a result.

How do you know if you're a religious zealot or a serious scientist? If your initial response to a skeptic is to scoff, call names or try to shout down the skeptic and marginalize them by public shame, you're a religious zealot. If you don't understand the science well enough to be able to discuss it in your own words, but insist that your position is the only correct one, you're a religious zealot. If you quote from the sacred scripture of man-made global warming, and dismiss refutations without being able to demonstrate why they're in error in your own words, you're a religious zealot. If you publicly endorse your high priests as oracles of knowledge, and dismiss other dissenting experts - no matter how prestigious or well-qualified - you're a religious zealot.

What can you do? Educate yourself. Not in a circular reasoning exercise of confirmation bias, but actively seek out dissenting opinions and try to figure out for yourself why they're incorrect, if they are.

Lose the opinion that only climatologists are qualified to discuss climatology. Science doesn't work like that. All disciplines interact with all others, and a physicist probably has all the necessary qualifications to speak authoritatively on certain aspects of climate science as anyone else (I pick on physicists here because my field is physics-based, and many of the high-profile skeptics upon whose shoulders I stand are physicists).

Follow the money. Who stands to gain?


________
* When I say something is chaotic, I'm using the classic definition: tiny changes in input conditions can yield staggering differences in outcomes.

Testing CO2 Assumptions

Are you, or do you know a college student who’s looking for a thesis project? Here’s one for you.

CO2 is purported to be the lynchpin surrounding the theory of manmade global warming.  According to the theory, CO2 is a very effective gas at absorbing IR radiation, causing the atmosphere to warm up.  Based on this theory, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more warming will occur. Computer climate models assume a constant correlation between CO2 levels and atmospheric warming (typically that a doubling of CO2 results in a 1°C change of temperature).  The question is whether that relationship is experimentally valid. Let's stop arguing about it and test it.

To warm the planet, changing CO2 levels must change the net heat balance between what the Earth receives from the sun and what it radiates back to space. 

CO2 is a chemically stable, colorless, odorless gas that is generally evenly mixed with and distributed among other atmospheric gases.  It is an essential gas for life, without which plants will die, collapsing the ecosystem that relies on plants to provide the base of the food chain.  High concentrations of CO2 can degrade respiratory performance and lead to death.

Hypothesis:  CO2 absorption is so efficient that atmospheric CO2 absorbs all the available IR energy in its absorption spectrum many times over before leaving the atmosphere.  Since all of the available IR energy in the absorption spectrum has been absorbed already, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will have a negligible effect on global atmospheric levels. Without a source of additional heat, no amount of additional warming will occur by adding CO2 beyond the current levels, because all the available energy in the CO2 absorption levels has already been absorbed and contributed to warming the atmosphere

Please see my other article detailing the physics behind CO2 absorption.

The experiment:  On a controlled test range, measure the spectral loss due to CO2 absorption over a given distance.  Calculate from that how far an IR emission can propagate before there is no measurable energy in the CO2 absorption frequencies.

What you will need: 

1 FTIR spectrometer.  You can get these from E-bay for under $500, and they run up into the thousands

1 broadband IR source

1 CO2 level meter.

(optional) cannisters of compressed CO2 gas.

A suitable site for the experiment.  A large, empty climate-controlled warehouse, manufacturing facility or aircraft hangar would be ideal. A blimp hangar or gymnasium would be an excellent location. An open area test site outdoors would be acceptable, with a change to the test protocol.

For experimenting in doors, make the facility as cold as possible, with as low humidity as possible. Have as few people as possible in the facility during the experiment, as CO2 exhalations in a confined area can dramatically change the atmospheric CO2 concentrations in an enclosed space in a very short time. Experimenting indoors provides the opportunity to test varying levels of CO2 and observe the effects on the spectrum.

If experimenting out of doors, an arid climate area with extremely low humidity is preferable, and all measurements should be conducted after dark, preferably in winter or after a cool day, so that IR emissions from the Earth do not adulterate the measurements. Experimenting outdoors provides the opportunity for measurements at longer ranges than you would typically be able to achieve indoors.

Assumptions:

Only the direct propagation path will be considered.  Any given point of the Earth’s surface emits IR radiation in all directions, giving an infinite number of paths for IR energy to leave the atmosphere.  Since all points are emitting IR energy and contributing to the total energy leaving the atmosphere in any given direction, the vertical path from an emission point to the edge of the atmosphere will represent the integrated aggregate of all points contributing to the measurement.  In other words, what is lost because the emission is omnidirectional is recovered because all the other emission points are likewise omnidirectional and contribute their emissions to the radiation from any point in the atmosphere as if those emissions originated as a vertical column.

In any free space electromagnetic measurement, the antenna factors must be calibrated to accurately measure the signal loss over the transmission distance.  For the purpose of this experiment, we can dispense with antenna correction factors, because we can use the spectrum itself as a control. CO2 is transparent to IR radiation at 13µm and 17µm wavelengths. Range measurements at these frequencies can provide a range calibration factor for measurements taken across the CO2 absorption spectrum between these frequencies.

Based on data compiled by the National Institute of Standards concerning the absorption spectrum of CO2, I predict that we should see a loss of 10dB in the CO2 absorption spectrum at a distance of 166 meters with CO2 levels at 400 ppm.

Measurement 1: 

Place the FTIR spectrometer receiver close to the IR source, to minimize the amount of CO2 between the receiver and the source.  If possible, a transmittance path in vacuum would be ideal.  You should see no change in IR emission levels between 13µm and 17µm wavelengths.  Record the levels across this spectrum.  This is your reference baseline.

Measurement 2: 

Move the FTIR spectrometer to a set distance from the IR emitter.  Measure and record the CO2 levels of the test range and record the spectrum between 13µm and 17µm wavelengths.  You should see a drop between 14.5µm and 15.5µm.  This is due to CO2 absorption.

Make a variety of measurements at different distances, recording the distance, spectrum and CO2 levels at each measurement.

If operating indoors, establish a baseline measurement at ambient CO2 levels at the longest distance.  Release gas from the bottled CO2 to double the CO2 levels on the range and repeat the measurement.  Use fans to disperse the CO2 evenly throughout the room.  Pay attention to CO2 levels and the chart above for safety.

If operating outdoors, see how far the FTIR spectrometer needs to be placed from the IR source to achieve a 10dB loss in the CO2 absorption band.

After all the measurements have been taken you should be able to graph the signal loss due to atmospheric CO2 absorption by distance and be able to project the losses to greater distances than those measured. Typically, the loss in dB will double when you double the distance. Keep in mind that electromagnetic losses due to distance are logarithmic, not linear.  Determine the distance necessary to achieve a 60dB loss in the CO absorption spectrum vs your control frequencies, representing a measurement of 1/1,000,000 of the original power – effectively zero.  Since this will be well below the measurement threshold/noise floor of your FTIR spectrometer unless you have an exceptionally hot IR source, you could safely say that adding any more CO2 or distance will not measurably change your readings.

In your conclusions, be sure to acknowledge that your measurements were conducted horizontally, and so had a constant partial pressure of CO2 across the range.  Calculate and correct for this in the vertical atmospheric column, where pressure changes with altitude.  If the theoretical model is accurate, you should be able to draw conclusions well before you have to deal with the atmospheric pressure step that happens at the tropopause.

One criticism of this experiment will be that the effect of the nonlinear "skirts" of the CO2 absorption spectrum will get wider as CO2 levels increase.  This can be measured and put to rest by calculating the total power density received by the spectrum analyzer at various levels of CO2. Additional experimentation may be interesting using a tube between the IR emitter and receiver, and calculating the spectral density at a variety of levels of CO2.  I believe you will find that the assumption that doubling the CO2 levels causes the absorption bandwidth to be wider breaks down pretty quickly as CO2 levels rise.

A Better Solution than Term Limits

One thing that everyone can agree on is that Congress is no longer responsible to the people. Our founding fathers never envisioned that a position in Congress would be a lifetime career. It’s been observed that you should change Congress like you would change a diaper – and often for the same reason. It’s clear to everyone that being an incumbent in Congress gives a politician an almost overwhelming advantage against any challenger. Big ticket donors won’t contribute as much to an unknown candidate. The incumbent’s party connections ensure endorsements, access to finances, and networking connections that are simply unavailable to any challenger.

The standard solution that everyone seems to be putting forward for this malaise is term limits. By term limiting our Congressman to two terms in the Senate and three to four terms in the house the assumption is that it will have a higher turnover of politicians, fresh ideas, and break the power monopoly of the senior members of Congress.

This is been tried at lower levels. Currently 36 state governors and 15 state legislatures have term limits. In nearly every instance, we hear stories of problems that term limits have caused, and in some cases they’ve been proclaimed to have been a disaster. By term limiting a member of Congress you're guaranteed that at any given time a certain percentage of your Congressmen will be lame ducks, with no responsibility and no answerability to the electorate that placed them in office. With the sure knowledge that their political career is at an end at the end of their term, they'll be less concerned with addressing the needs of their constituencies or legislating responsibly, and more concerned with padding their resume, networking contacts and cashing in their political capital for lucrative positions as lobbyists or board members of companies that benefit from government engagement. The opportunity and temptation for corruption will be nearly irresistible, and no mechanism could conceivably prevent it.

There’s a much better way than term limits to get control of our Congress.

If you have an employee who doesn't perform the job he or she was hired for, what happens? The answer is simple, that employee is removed. If you have an employee who's given financial responsibility within the company, and that employee wastes money, drives the company into debt and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of balancing the company’s budget, what happens? The answer is simple, that employee is removed.

To make a rule that all employees will lose their job after a fixed period of time, because some employees are incompetent, corrupt or gain too much power in the Corporation is a stupid way to run a business. It's an equally stupid way to run a government. There are politicians and legislators who do an outstanding job for the people. They work within the budget and stay within the constitutional limits of their job. These are people that we want to keep in government and encourage them to do so.

This is all we have to do with our politicians: establish a minimum level of performance, and if they haven't met that performance when their contract comes up for renewal, they're ineligible to renew. The minimum level of performance is simple and obvious: the politician must adhere to the Constitution and may not increase the public debt. If a politician votes for or signs into law a piece of legislation which he or she has no constitutional authority to pass, that politician shall not appear on the ballots of the next election. If the body politic increases the public debt, all those politicians that supported that debt increase will be ineligible to run in the next election.

This, of course, will generate a number of consequences, but they won't be unintended. Who should decide whether a politician has met his constitutional and fiduciary requirements to appear on the ballot? The obvious answer would be the state auditors who are responsible for controlling the elections of each state, with the backing of the state’s attorney generals. Making the auditors the gatekeepers to the ballot exposes them to the potential of a tremendous amount of corruption. This is where citizen watchdog groups and the courts play a role. Should an auditor decline to place an incumbent on the ballot on the basis of their performance, the incumbent would obviously sue. This would put the auditor in the position of justifying his decision before the appropriate judiciary body. Should an auditor place in incumbent on the ballot who has obviously failed to meet the constitutional and fiduciary requirements, citizen watchdog groups can sue to have that incumbent removed, and once again the case will be heard before the appropriate judiciary body.

This will have several beneficial side effects. Challenging a ballot appearance will be an expense for the incumbent, as well as an embarrassment in a campaign that their opponent could use against them. The easiest way to avoid such a problem would be to ensure that they are constitutionally covered whenever they vote for a piece of legislation. I can’t imagine any scenario where a politician who is constantly looking over his shoulder is a bad thing. Challenging a politician on increasing the debt would be much easier, because accounting and the numbers don’t lie and aren't prone to subjective interpretations as constitutional law may sometimes be. This allows for politicians to increase the public debt in times of national emergency, with the full realization that it will cost them their careers.

Today, Congress is immune from the consequences of passing unconstitutional laws. Unconstitutional laws are rarely brought before the judicial branch because of the expense of litigation and the necessity to show harm to a plaintiff because of these laws. It also opens the door for Judicial activism when such a suit is brought, allowing judges to strike down portions of a law and leave others in place to suit the narrow confines of the lawsuit before them. Making incumbent candidates responsible for their legislation in the upcoming election, with the potential that challenged legislative acts may appear before the judiciary gives a path of judicial review over Congress that's currently missing. This would be a mechanism to improve the checks and balances between our three branches of government.

All of the arguments in favor of this mechanism apply equally to executives as to legislators. The 22^nd amendment should be repealed, and the incumbent president be subjected to the same requirements for ballot eligibility as the legislators.

One of the advantages of this idea is that it wouldn’t necessarily require a constitutional amendment to implement. Article I of the Constitution gives the states the authority for qualifying candidates. If a state’s laws allow for the auditor, with the concurrence of the state attorney general, to disqualify an incumbent candidate on the basis of their performance, there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution which specifically prohibits them from doing so. This theory has been challenged recently with state attempts to require candidates to release their tax returns and has been struck down by the Supreme Court. That’s not to say that the Supreme Court would not uphold a performance qualification requirement, as performance in a public office as a matter of public record, and challenges to income tax revelation have been based on the fourth amendment and privacy.  It can easily be tested at a state level and, if successful, other states would follow suit.

In the event that state laws requiring a minimum level of performance to qualify for a ballot don't pass Supreme Court muster, the solution, as with term limits, will required article V convention. Should it go to an article V convention, we should assiduously avoid term limits for the inherent unintended consequences that they will bring and build in a performance mechanism such as that proposed here that will force Congress to face consequences for their legislation.

America Doesn't Deserve Our Constitution

It’s all over social media. People from left and right are ecstatic that President Trump just signed a bill making animal cruelty a federal felony. Who doesn’t love animals and who can object to criminalizing cruelty to animals?

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about animals. I love animals, and I would happily string up any low-life that tortures animals for fun. But we have to step back and ask ourselves, do we care about the Constitution or not?

The US Constitution, Article 1 section 8 lays out the enumerated powers of Congress:

1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence[sic] and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

6: To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

9: To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

10: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

13: To provide and maintain a Navy;

14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

17: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Nowhere in there is there a single word that suggests that Congress has the power or authority to criminalize animal cruelty. Therefore, under the tenth amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It’s an issue for the states to legislate on.

Recently I saw a comment about DUI checkpoints, and many people opined that they would be happy for the inconvenience of a checkpoint if it helps keep drunk drivers off the road. They don’t seem to have a problem with warrantless searches and seizure without probable cause, in clear violation of their fourth amendment rights.

Our federal budget is wildly out of control. Congress authorizes spending, and most of the federal spending today has no constitutional authority supporting it. But nobody asks our elected officials to account for the constitutionality of their pork projects, their welfare or their bloated departments. We’ve gone way past the point where the population has realized they can vote themselves bread and circuses. The elected officials in Congress have no incentive to uphold the Constitution. They stay in power buy wielding their governmental influence to get enough money to buy a propaganda machine to dupe the tax serfs into keeping them in power.

If the President doesn’t like what Congress does or doesn’t do, he does what he wants anyway with executive orders. Nobody cares if he usurps the powers of Congress. Congress doesn’t care, because it would be bad publicity to get into a constitutional face-off with the President, and bad publicity is how you lose elections.

Our federal courts issue injunctions against laws and executive orders they don’t like. The Left has for decades sought to get from the judicial branch what they couldn’t possibly pass as laws in the legislative branch. Nobody cares that the Judiciary usurps the powers of Congress and legislates from the bench.

Once upon a time in America, everyone knew the Constitution. They understood the limits of the powers between the three branches of government and understood that the government couldn’t do anything not spelled out in the Constitution. There was a nationwide effort to make alcohol illegal, which was a dumb idea, but at least they had enough respect for the Constitution to know they needed to pass an amendment that gave Congress the power to do it. But they stopped teaching our children the Constitution in civics class. They started teaching some nebulous feel-good history cum culture called social studies instead. The result is a whole generation who pays lip service to their “constitutional rights” without having any idea what those rights actually are or understanding that they do not come from the government. They think the first amendment gives them the right to say anything they want on Facebook or YouTube, not understanding that the first amendment only keeps the government from passing laws about what can and cannot be said. Facebook and YouTube aren’t the government, and to use these services, you have to agree to their terms.

People get the government they deserve. Congress has an all-time low approval rating; but come the next election cycle most of the bad actors will remain seated. Few people call them to account for their behavior under the Constitution, and those who do are shouted down and ridiculed by the masses who apparently care nothing for the Constitution and the very clear limits it places on government.

If you don’t learn the Constitution and demand that our elected officials operate within its bounds and remove them from office if they don’t, then you don’t deserve the Constitution. You honestly deserve to be the powerless tax serfs you have become, subservient to leaders you think you elect, instead of having public servants working for you. You rightfully deserve the feudal chains that have been placed on you by our elected nobility, dressed up with modern terms to make you think you’re a free man. 

You need to demand that the schools and universities stop indoctrinating our children with failed political, economic and social ideologies. Today we spend record amounts of money on education to teach our children to not only be happy little tax serfs, but to openly advocate for it and condemn and attack those who prefer to be freemen who repudiate a government that doesn't even follow its own rules.

We once had a pretty good thing going here in America, where every man was free to be who he could be. Now we’ve accepted a crony capitalist oligarchy which exists to fleece the tax serfs and ensure that the competitive advantage always stays in the hands of those who can buy the best politicians. You did this. You allowed it, by not demanding that the branches of government stay in their constitutional lanes. The American people can take back their government in less than a year, but first you have to be willing to forego laws that you like and make you feel good, if they lack a constitutional foundation. We either follow the rules, or we bow in obedience to our noveau feudal lords. The choice is yours. Learn your Constitution. Demand your elected officials follow it. Remove them if they don’t, even if you like them, they’re from your party, or bring the pork home to your district. 

The Civil War: Yeah, it was About Slavery

Gordon was an escaped slave who joined
and fought for the North in the Civil War

It’s been 155 years since the Civil War. It’s been going around for years that the South didn’t secede because of slavery. Revisionist historians have delved deep into the culture, the politics, the sentiments of the day and have served up well-researched treatises on the causes of the civil war, the political strife leading up to it and the sentiments that caused it. We’ve had people writing revisionist books that cherry-pick and take out of context passages from Lincolns writings and actions, to try to show that he fought the war to keep the country together, not to free the slaves. We’ve seen people point out that the emancipation proclamation didn’t free all the slaves in America, only those in unoccupied confederate states. Ergo, Lincoln didn’t care about freeing the slaves. We’ve seen revisionists rename the conflict the “War Between the States”, “War for Southern Independence” or the “War of Northern Aggression.” 

All of this revisionist history is designed to overload the senses of the casual scholar, confuse the issue, cast doubt on the conventional wisdom and regenerate the narrative to paint the Southern cause in a more acceptable light. And it’s all poppycock, and easily swept aside with one question and one fact.

The question: Would the Civil War have happened if there had been no slavery in the United States of America?

This is the root cause. There is a common technique in Quality Systems theory for discovering the root cause of any problem called the 5 whys. Ask why something happened, and then ask why the first reason happened, etc. Eventually – usually within five iterations – you get to the root cause. If you apply the five whys to any of the revisionist reasons for the Civil War, you will eventually always come back to slavery.

What few realize today was that the road to secession was a long one. The various states didn't jump up one day and all declare their break from the US Constitution. It was a process that took nearly a year from the time that South Carolina seceded until Kentucky seceded. These states that later followed the other's lead cited their outrage that the Union was using military force to enact their will on those states left because of their slaves. The notable point of this oft-cited cause is that it seems that only slave states shared this outrage. If the cause really concerned the rights of states to secede, then whether a state was slave or free should have had no bearing on its outrage over union over-reach.

The fact: Every single state that seceded from the union published a declaration or ordinance of secession. Of those declarations that gave reasons for their secession all either cited slavery as the prima facie cause of secession, the election of Lincoln and the fear that he was an abolitionist, calling him a "sectional party." Lincoln's personal interest in freeing the slaves was subordinated to his understood duties and limitations under the constitution. Lincoln understood that he could not constitutionally abolish slavery, and said as much many times both before and after he took office.

Lincoln was elected easily by 28 electoral college votes, breaking directly in terms of slave vs. free. The fact that he was elected showed the South that the winds of public opinion were turning against them and slavery. The recent admission of Oregon and Minnesota into the union was shifting the political power towards the North, and southern slave states knew they would be soon outnumbered in electoral votes, as the populations of the increasingly urban free states boomed and shifted the electoral power north. Lincoln's election was proof of this, and it became plain that the South would never regain their influence in the House or the Oval office, the Senate would always hang by a thread, and the subtle pressure to punish slave holding states in petty fashions would only increase.

South Carolina, December 24, 1860:
“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

“For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

“This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”

Mississippi, January 9, 1861:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. "

Alabama, January 11, 1861:
"Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [i.e. slavery] and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and manacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security, therefore:"

"And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,"

Texas, February 1, 1861:
"WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression; THEREFORE,"

Virginia, April 17, 1861:
The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:

Arkansas, May 6, 1861:
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

Arkansas was adopting the "Hang together or hang separately" paradigm. Having the North win the war that was already being fought would certainly be ruinous to the slave holders of Arkansas.

Kentucky, November 20, 1961:
". . .the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, . . ."

Yes, folks, the idea that blacks aren't inferior and shouldn't be enslaved was considered an ignorant prejudice.

Any attempt to whitewash the civil war as being about anything but slavery ignores the context. If there were other causes, they weren't addressed by the requirements that the rebel states needed to comply with to be readmitted to the union. As soon as the Federal occupation ended, many state governments in the South proceeded to pass Jim Crowe laws.

Yes, the politics leading up the Civil War are fascinating to study, but whether you use the 5 whys method of root cause analysis, or just look at the cited reasons for the secession of the Southern states and their subsequent behavior, no matter how you slice it, it comes up slavery.

Democrats Behaving Badly

It's no secret that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real malady. Those who suffer from it have been observed to be completely irrational, and cannot tolerate normal social interactions which may cause them to be emotionally triggered.  This has affected our national dialogue.  Both sides will freely admit that communication between those with opposing views has completely broken down, but each side blames the other.

I for one, am not a huge Trump supporter.  I think we could have done better, and we had a chance to do better, but were drowned out by louder, less thoughtful voices.  That being said, I am immensely grateful that Trump won the election instead of Clinton Crime, Inc.

If there's a communication breakdown, it's not my fault, nor the fault of anyone I know on the right. I'm quite happy to discuss my points of view with anyone willing to listen, and every conservative I know is the same way.  What I see is those on the left demonizing, vilifying, ostracizing and abusing anyone on the right who makes the mistake of publicly disagreeing with those on the left.  Does "tolerance" mean only if you agree with the left? What is it that makes liberals think that such behavior - including overt acts of violence - is acceptable?

Anyway, the problem is that when you mention this to liberals, they immediately deny it, and challenge you to prove it.  Okay.  Challenge accepted.  On this page, I'll keep a running journal of Democrats Behaving Badly that I encounter, to demonstrate that these are not one-off incidents, but a disturbing trend and subculture that has infected our political discourse and needs to be stopped before it leads to open violence.

Nov 3, 2020

Biden Supporters Burn Down Apartment Building in Portland

Oct 13, 2020

Democrat mayor forces police chief to resign after pro-Trump comments by chief’s wife

Sept 18, 2020
162 Democrats Vote Against Amendment to Protect Jewish Students from Antisemitism at School

 Feb 22, 2020
Couple Used Car To Run Kids On Bikes Off The Road Because They Had Trump Flags, Cops Say

13 Feb, 2020
New Hampshire man arrested after allegedly assaulting pro-Trump teen at polling site

12 Feb, 2020
Woman Attacks Retired NYPD Cop Wearing Birthday Hat, Mistaken For MAGA Hat

21 Jan, 2020
Florida man may have killed Trump-supporting boss over politics

7 Jan, 2020
Couple Says They Were Targeted By Vandals For Supporting President Trump

17 Oct, 2019
Video Exclusive: Minneapolis Hard Times Cafe Doesn’t Welcome Trump Supporters

15 Oct, 2019
Leftists Threaten To “Bring Out The Guillotine” If Theaters Show Jordan Peterson Documentary

11 Oct, 2019
Anti-Trump Mobs Attack President’s Supporters After Rally — Burn Piles of MAGA Hats in Streets

8 Oct, 2019
Extortion: Minneapolis Mayor Tries to Shut Down Trump Rally With 'Outrageous' Security Fee

1 Oct, 2019
Police charity event on hold after chief withdraws because Republicans were invited: report

12 Sep, 2018
Congressional Candidate attacked by knife-wielding man shouting anti-Republican comments.

1 August, 2019
Liberals Say Man Brutally Beaten for Wearing MAGA Hat Deserved It: ‘He Shouldn’t Dress That Way’

23 Jun, 2018
Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders kicked out of Virginia restaurant by owner

20 Jun, 2018
Video shows DHS boss Kirstjen Nielsen being heckled, harassed at DC restaurant

5 Nov, 2017
Rand Paul Assaulted by His Neighbor

14 Jun, 2017
HuffPo Pulls Article Calling For ‘Ultimate Punishment’ Of Trump

14 Jun, 2017
Gunman Targets Congressmen: House Majority Leader Shot

24 May, 2017
Bay Area college professor used a U-shaped bike lock in beating Trump Supporters 

14 Feb, 2017
71-year-old staffer for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was hurt during protest

1 Feb, 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos speech at the University of California-Berkeley was cancelled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows

31 Jan, 2017
Trump supporter knocked unconscious during airport immigration protest  

20 Jan, 2017
Ralph Lauren Is Already Receiving Backlash for Dressing Melania Trump

20 Dec, 2016
Trump Supporter Beaten, Dragged By Car

11 Nov, 2016
Assassination threats against Trump flood Twitter

10 Nov, 2016
High schooler assaulted for supporting Trump

CO2 is Not Driving Global Warming

In the latest legislative session in Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee proposed a carbon tax which will penalize anyone the government deems is producing an excessive amount of CO2. The stated purpose of this tax to mitigate the damage caused by global warming that results from CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

This punitive tax is based on poor science, circular reasoning and media-fueled hysteria. Any effort to curb CO2 emissions will do exactly nothing to affect worldwide temperatures, if they are even a problem. I will prove this here.

I'm a NARTE certified electromagnetic compliance engineer with more than 30 years practical experience in high power radio frequency and microwave applications. The principles of radio frequency propagation and free space loss in the RF frequency domain are identical to the infrared region. My critique of the CO2 driven climate change theory is based on a practical understanding of the intersection between chemistry and electromagnetic theory. I'm also a systems engineer with plenty of experience in software design and development. I’ve had a lifetime fascination with astronomy and cosmology, which has given me an intimate familiarity with the principles of spectral absorption which are necessary to understand CO2’s role as a greenhouse gas. I acknowledge the work done by climatologists based on their study of global trends and their comparative studies of CO2 levels. I challenge their conclusions, based on the understanding of how CO2 acts in the atmosphere; and suggest that they explore alternate explanations for their observations.

This explanation is going to be technical, but I will explain the principles as I go, and anyone with a science background can duplicate my analysis.

Global Warming (or is it Climate Change?)

No one was even aware that a problem existed until 2006, when former VP Al Gore grossed $24 million in box office sales with his propaganda-laden exposé, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore filled an hour and forty minutes with anecdotal evidence cherry-picked to support his claims, claiming that 97% of scientists supported his conclusions, even though nothing of the sort was true. The linchpin of his proposal was a study by Mann, Bradley and Hughes, which resulted in the famous hockey stick graph. Gore projected this graph into the future and predicted dire consequences as a result.

Without even studying the basis for this claim, this set my alarm bells ringing. Climate is a chaotic system. It’s a system with dozens, if not hundreds, of attractors which influence the end result. Small changes in any one of the systems or attractors that influence climate can have dramatic effects on the overall system. This is the very definition of chaos.

Anyone who is studying chaos theory knows that chaotic systems tend to behave similarly, even if they have nothing to do with each other. Another example of a chaotic system which frequently generates short-term trends like Al Gore’s hockey stick graph is the stock market. What Al Gore is essentially doing is looking at a short-term trend, projecting it forward and concluding that huge profits are in store. Anyone who's a done any trading in the stock market knows that this is a fallacy. Yes, sometimes short-term trends turn into long-term trends, and if you invested at the beginning of the short-term trend you can turn a handsome profit. The problem is that chaotic systems have feedback loops, and the feedback loops have feedback loops, and nine times out of ten your short-term trend is going to reverse the moment you invest. If Al Gore is such a fan of projecting trends, he should become a stock market analyst and get rich. Good luck to him.

I figured in 2006 that the short-term hysteria that he generated would soon be forgotten. But Al Gore wasn’t about altruistically warning us about an ecologic disaster. His movie was the opening salvo of a marketing campaign designed to make billions of dollars through the creation of a carbon credit exchange, where large producers of CO2 could “buy” carbon credits from others who didn’t produce CO2. This exchange would function just like the stock market, with the market makers taking a cut off of every transaction. Of course, Al Gore was setting himself up to be one of the market makers. Gore spent huge amounts of money promoting his climate change religion, literally going on tour to convince people to invest in his carbon exchange. He used his political capital to influence sitting lawmakers to pass legislation to support his scheme. Tremendous amounts of money were spent in the form of grants to generate studies that validated his hypotheses, using studies designed around a predetermined outcome, frequently based on circular reasoning.

Is It Science, Politics or Religion?

Global warming became a religion. Religion is based on a belief that cannot be verified by the average person, based on testimony by a select group of priests and prophets. Heterodox opinions and evidence are condemned as heresy, and those who voice them are shunned, ostracized and subject to derision. Voice any skepticism to global warming in a public forum, and observe the hysterical condemnation of your skepticism, based on the Orthodox Scripture of global warming, quoted by people who are essentially scientifically illiterate and incapable of understanding the underlying science of climatology, let alone capable of seeing the holes in the theory.

The foundation of the climate change theory is based on data that suggests a general worldwide warming trend. There's considerable controversy as to whether this warming trend is unusual in the long-term, whether it’s an artifact of the data collection methods, whether the data has been manipulated to demonstrate a foregone conclusion, or even whether the data collected is reliable, given the advances in data collection technology that have occurred over the period in question. I don’t propose to answer any of these questions here. Global temperatures may indeed be rising. The fact is that global temperatures have never been constant throughout the geologic history of the planet.

The foundation of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory is based on data that shows a correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures. The assumption is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that CO2 levels drive planet surface temperatures. Any scientist worthy of the name knows that correlation is not necessarily causation. I aim to show here that changing CO2 levels at the current concentrations have absolutely no effect on the atmospheric energy budget of planet Earth. I will demonstrate that while CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, it has already made its full contribution to the temperature of the Earth, and that additional CO2 will have no effect.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum and a Primer on Heat

The study of electromagnetic theory has some fascinating applications. Climate change argument aside, you’re about to learn some really interesting stuff.

Electromagnetic waves consist of an electric field and a magnetic field 90° to each other. These waves vary in frequency, from very low frequency waves that take tens of seconds to pass by all the way up to x-ray and gamma ray radiation. Electromagnetic frequencies are measured in hertz. One hertz means one wave per second. We’re familiar with radio waves in the megahertz region that we listen to in our cars. Radars operate in the low gigahertz region, what we call microwaves. Infrared energy we feel as heat. Our eyes are sensitive to a certain band of electromagnetic radiation we call light. Above that you have ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma rays.

The chart above shows the electromagnetic spectrum in terms of wavelength. It’s backwards to what I’m used to, because I work with frequencies, which are the inverse of wavelength. Most infrared studies deal with wavelengths instead of frequencies, so we’ll use that.

In the year 1900 physicist Max Planck pioneered a study of electromagnetic radiation which demonstrated that any body with the temperature above absolute zero radiated electromagnetic fields. Planck’s formulas showed that the higher the temperature of the body, the higher peak frequency of field it emitted. He postulated an ideal black body radiator, which is a model to approximate the radiation of anything with a temperature above absolute zero.

The chart above shows the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by two different bodies according to Planck’s law, one shown in blue with a temperature of 288° Kelvin (15°C), and another shown in red with a temperature of 5855° K (5082°C). Why I chose these temperatures will become apparent in a moment. You can see that the peak emission frequency shifts to the left as the temperature goes up. Note that both axes are plotted on a logarithmic scale, i.e. every unit is 10 times bigger than the unit before. This is common in studying electromagnetics, because the behavior of electromagnetic waves is rarely linear.

This chart means nothing at first glance, so let’s impose something we all understand over the chart.

The green lines show the frequency of the visible light spectrum. What our eyes see as blue would be on the left-hand green line, and red on the right. You can see this effect in real life on your electric stove. As the temperature of the stove increases, the frequency of the electromagnetic infrared (IR) radiation shifts to shorter and shorter wavelengths (higher and higher frequencies). As some of the energy starts to appear in the 0.38µm region, the stove begins to glow red. This is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can detect with our eyes. As the stove gets hotter and hotter, emissions shift further and further into the visible spectrum. Around 5000°C we see the body glowing white-hot. This is the area where the electromagnetic emissions caused by the temperature of the body are right in the middle of our visual detection band. If we continue to raise the temperature (a very difficult thing to do), the white will begin to turn to blue, and theoretically the intensity we see will begin to level out as the temperature goes up and the emissions are pushed into the ultraviolet spectrum that we can no longer see.

I chose to show the temperature of these two bodies because they represent the temperatures of the surface of the Earth and the surface of the sun. We see the sun as a white light in the sky because the frequency of its heat emissions is centered on the detection range of our eyes. This, of course, is because our eyes evolved under this sun to gather the optimum amount of light available. Note that while the temperature of the Earth causes it to emit electromagnetic radiation, it’s at such a low level and a low-frequency that it’s below our visual acuity.

The color of the sun is based on its surface temperature. But if we’re talking about how much of that temperature is associated with warming the Earth , we have to correct for how much energy is actually hitting the upper atmosphere of the Earth due to distance. Correcting for distance gives us the curve in blue below. Remember, this is a logarithmic vertical scale, so the difference is about 1/100,000 of the sun’s surface energy hitting the Earth.

This is an important concept to understand. The solar radiation which warms the Earth is at a different frequency than the infrared (heat) energy emitted by the Earth. When the solar energy, which is at a high frequency and high energy state, strikes an opaque object, it’s absorbed by that object. The object is excited to a higher energy state, and re-radiates the energy as infrared energy based on its own thermal curve. Typically we can expect an object on the surface of the Earth to absorb solar energy at about the 0.5µm wavelength, and re-radiate it at about 10µm wavelength. What you’re feeling as heat from direct sunlight is not the sunlight at all, but the reaction of your skin absorbing that sunlight and re-radiating it at a lower IR frequency. The hot air you feel on a sunny day has been heated by conductive transfer. The air is in contact with the surface of the Earth and is heated through conductive contact. Sunlight has very little effect on heating the air directly, because the atmosphere is mostly transparent at the frequencies in which the sun radiates. The solar radiation passes right through the atmosphere with little interaction.

An interesting side note to this is that photosynthesizing plants are cooler in sunlight than inert materials, because the solar energy absorbed is used to perform the photosynthesis chemical reaction, and is therefore not re-radiated. Photosynthesis uses CO2 and water to create complex sugars, effectively storing the solar radiation in a molecular bond, and giving off oxygen as a byproduct. When plant material is burned in a fire, or if it’s compressed over ages into coal and oil which is then burned, the solar energy stored in the sugars is released. To this effect, essentially all fossil fuels are ultimately solar energy. When you drive your car down the road, you’re releasing solar energy that hit the planet millions of years ago. Even nuclear fuels are solar energy, stored atomic power created in the supernova of a long-dead star before our sun was born.

Greenhouse Gas

CO2 is one of several different types of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. What this means is that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, which then heats up the CO2. As a byproduct of the CO2 heating, it also emits infrared radiation.

As the Earth’s surface absorbs sunlight, it heats up, causing it to emit infrared radiation. If there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, most of the heat would be radiated back into outer space, and the surface of the Earth would be much cooler than it is now. A key point to remember is that in a thermally stable condition, the amount of energy radiated from the Earth must be equal to that absorbed by the Earth. If the Earth radiates more energy than it absorbs, it cools, if it radiates less, it heats up. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including water vapor, methane, CO2 and even oxygen, absorb some of the infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface and inhibit it from radiating back into space.

When we’re discussing thermal transfer, we have to differentiate between conductive and radiative heating and cooling. Conductive temperature change occurs between objects that are in contact with one another. If there’s a temperature difference, heat energy will naturally flow from the hotter object to the cooler object. This conductive transfer also applies to gases and liquids. The warm air on a hot summer day didn’t get that way because of sunshine, which mostly passes through the air without interacting with it, but was warmed through contact with the surface of the Earth , which was heated up by absorbing the sunlight energy. Warm air then rises because it’s less dense than cool air, creating convective currents and transporting heat energy higher into the atmosphere than would be the case if the air was motionless. We preserve temperatures in a thermos bottle by surrounding them with a volume of vacuum, thereby eliminating the contact needed for conductive transfer.

Radiative transfer is the emission of electromagnetic energy, which, when absorbed by another object, heats that object. Objects that are at a higher temperature than their surroundings emit electromagnetic energy in the infrared spectrum. This is why the inside of our vacuum bottles are mirrored, to reflect infrared energy and prevent it from transferring even through the vacuum of the bottle. When discussing atmospheric warming, one has to be very careful to understand the conductive component of that warming versus the radiative component.

CO2 is a particularly effective greenhouse gas, as it makes up an almost insignificant part of our atmosphere. At 400 parts per million (ppm), it comprises 0.04% of the atmosphere, yet it’s responsible for more than 2.8% of greenhouse gas warming. The Earth emits infrared energy from a wavelength of about 4µm to 40µm. CO2 is transparent at most wavelengths, and doesn’t interact with infrared radiation at all. CO2 does absorb infrared energy from the wavelength of about 14.5µm to 15.5µm, and does so very efficiently. This warms the CO2 gas, which then warms the atmosphere through conductive heating.

Computer Modeling

Climate is a chaotic system. Small changes of input parameters can result in large changes in the final state. Computer models are designed to mimic climatic conditions, to predict climatic trends and to make “what if?” extrapolations. Of course, the earliest computer models were woefully inadequate in predictive ability, because of the vast number of contributing factors and feedback loops in a climatic system that had to be modeled by the computer. As computer models became more sophisticated, the outputs more closely resembled actual observation. Nevertheless, it needs to be understood that a computer model is a simulation of climate, using assumptions and algorithms designed to produce an output that matches observations. The assumptions and algorithms are adequate to approximate current climate observations, but one has to be cautious in assuming that a change of input conditions on the model will yield the same results as the same conditions changing in the real climate system.

To model the effect of CO2 on global temperatures, the computer models needed to simplify the effects of the chaos by using the value of a forcing factor for CO2 to apply to their equations. Using temperature measurements from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present day, they derived a multiplier to apply to their equations that resulted in a close match to the observed data. The problem is that they assumed that all of the temperature change in that time was due to CO2 changes, completely ignoring other factors, such as changes in solar output or levels of other greenhouse gases. This is the logical fallacy of begging the question. The conclusion that CO2 changes drive global temperature changes is “proven” by equations that assume that measured temperature changes are caused by CO2 changes.

One of the assumptions made in the climate models is the contribution of CO2. The 0.04% of CO2 in our atmosphere contributes 2.8% or more of greenhouse gas warming. Without fully understanding the spectral characteristics of the CO2 contribution, it’s reasonable to assume that doubling the amount of CO2 to 0.08% would cause CO2 to contribute 5.6% or more of greenhouse gas warming. The disproportionate amount of CO2 contributions to greenhouse gas warming to the trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere is staggering.

This assumption seems to be corroborated by atmospheric analysis of ice core samples taken from Greenland and Antarctica. Based on the assumption that global temperature is directly affected by changes of CO2 in the atmosphere, one can analyze the ice core data and see a correlation between global temperatures and CO2 levels. This seems to confirm the hypothesis that a greater amount of CO2 will contribute more to greenhouse gas warming. One would not expect a climatologist to necessarily have a conversant knowledge in chemical spectral absorption properties, or be able to do gain and loss calculations in the electromagnetic spectrum. Without a thorough understanding of these, incorrect assumptions about how CO2 works as a greenhouse gas can be reasonably expected.

Absorption Spectrum

In the year 1802 English chemist and physicist William Wollaston passed sunlight through a very narrow slit onto a prism. This broke the sunlight up in the spectrum which he was able to view in detail on a wall 12 feet away. He was able to see a spectrum running from red, yellow, green, blue to violet. He also reported seven dark lines in the spectrum. At certain frequencies the sunlight seemed to be getting absorbed. Wollaston had no explanation for this. Twelve years later Joseph von Fraunhofer, using a much more sensitive method, mapped out 574 thin black lines in the visible band of the solar spectrum.

In 1826 John Herschel showed that when a substance is heated and the light passed through a spectroscope, each element gave off a characteristic set of bright lines of colors.

In 1849 Jean Foucault showed that the emissions lines given off by an element when heated lined up aligned perfectly with some of the absorption lines identified by Wollaston.

In 1862 Anders Jonas Ångström isolated four lines in the visible portion of the hydrogen emission spectrum, and they were later shown to match the dark lines that appeared when light was passed through a hydrogen gas sample and then refracted into a spectrum, confirming Foucault’s work.

Today we understand that these thin lines of absorptivity are as characteristic as fingerprints for identifying different molecules. These discoveries led to important advances in chemistry, understanding the atom, quantum physics and astronomy.

The CO2 Absorption Spectrum

The flaw in climatologist computer model assumptions about CO2 is that they assume that the absorptive capability of CO2 will increase proportionally to the amount of CO2 in the system. This is because they don’t consider the spectral characteristics of CO2 electromagnetic absorption.

We can see the CO2 absorption characteristics from the NIST website. To view this in context of my discussion here, change the graph settings to normal X,µm and transmittance.

So what we see here is an area of high absorption at about 4.2µm, which is near the very high-frequency end of the Earth’s infrared emissions. And then a much wider area of absorption from about 14.5 to 15.5µm. The two artifacts just below 14µm in just above 16µm appear by their symmetry to be heterodyne products caused by a preamplifier without a preselector in the measurement equipment, and are not real measurements.

Let’s plot this on the graph we’ve been looking at before:

You can see the two CO2 absorption bands here in violet, the primary band being well outside of the infrared contribution from the sun.

It’s of particular importance for us to understand what exactly is being measured in the NIST graph. This graph was achieved by analyzing the spectrum of light passed through a 10 cm path of one part CO2 mixed with two parts N2 (nitrogen), at a pressure of 600 mmHg (1 atmosphere equals 760 mmHg).

We see from the NIST data that at about 15µm, only about 30% of the IR energy is getting through. In the electromagnetic realm we measure changes of power in decibels (dB). A 70% loss of energy equates to about a 5 dB drop in power. From this, we can say that we have a 5 dB loss in a 10 cm path where the CO2 concentration is 333,333 ppm.

We can use the Beer Lambert law, A=Єbc, to calculate the needed path to get 5 dB’s of loss at the current atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 400 ppm; where A is the optical density, Є is the absorptivity, b is the path length and c is the concentration. Optical density and absorptivity are constant, so the path length and the concentration are inversely proportional. Using a concentration of 400 ppm, we calculate the necessary path length to be 83.333m (273.4 feet) for a 5dB drop in power at 15µm.

If we double the path length to 166.66 m, we get a convenient 10 dB drop in power. Electromagnetic engineers love working in increments of 3 dB and 10 dB, because it makes the calculations simple. The 10 dB drop in power means you have 1/10^th of the power after the drop that you had before. The 20 dB drop in power equates to 1/100 of the power. A 30 dB drop means 1/1000 of the power. To get a 30 dB drop in the available electromagnetic energy at 15µm due to CO2 at roughly 1 atmosphere, your path would only have to be 500m (1640 feet) long. That’s way less distance than the IR radiation from the Earth has to travel to be radiated into space.

The two primary absorptivity bands of CO2 lie in the infrared spectrum, well below that of visible light. We therefore cannot “see” these bands in a refracted spectrum without specialized equipment for detecting infrared. If we could see these with our eyes, we would see the refracted spectrum would have a black line at the point that represented the 14.5 to 15.5µm band. If we were in outer space looking at the infrared emissions from the Earth and running them through a prism, we would detect nothing between 14.5µm and 15.5µm. The infrared energy between those two wavelengths has been attenuated away to nothing. The energy has gone to heating up the CO2 which absorbed it, which then conductively heated up the surrounding atmosphere.

Proponents of the CO2-based global warming model point out that when you heat up the atmosphere, it produces infrared radiation itself, in the same bands as it was absorbed, according to Foucault. They use this to propose some sort of amplification mechanism wherein the infrared gets absorbed and re-emitted over and over, cumulatively contributing to atmospheric warming, reflecting back to the Earth and causing it to heat even more. This simplistic understanding ignores the laws of thermodynamics and the fact that the Earth/atmosphere temperature has already reached equilibrium with respect to the greenhouse gas contribution. CO2 will not radiate more infrared energy than it absorbs if it’s at the same temperature as its surroundings. It also ignores the fact that the “passing along” of photons in the direction of propagation has already been accounted for in the loss measurements such as NIST performed, and the result is still an opaque gas at those frequencies.

Given that the Earth’s radiation temperature in the infrared region is more or less fixed, adding more CO2 will not increase the atmospheric temperature in the slightest. All the available energy in the 14.5µm to 15.5µm region has already been absorbed and contributed to heating the atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere is effectively 100% opaque at these wavelengths. You cannot get additional energy out of the system without adding energy to it somehow. The only way that adding CO2 to the system would increase the amounts of greenhouse warming contributed by CO2 is if the initial CO2 concentration was low enough that a measurable amount of infrared radiation between 14.5µm and 15.5µm was already escaping into space, i.e. where the atmospheric opacity was less than 100%, and adding additional CO2 would increase the opacity. CO2 levels low enough for this to be the case would be too low to sustain life on planet Earth. You simply cannot become more opaque than 100%.

What would be the effect of increasing the CO2 levels? We’ve already seen the linear correlation between CO2 concentrations and the path distance necessary to completely absorb the available energy at the absorption wavelengths. Increasing CO2 concentrations will shorten that path. Effectively, this would mean that the greenhouse effect of CO2 will be concentrated at lower altitudes. The overall average temperature of a column of air will be unchanged, and any concentration of heat closer to the ground will likely be offset by convection because warmer air rises. This could have implications near the ocean of increasing evaporation, which in turn will increase convection because moist air is lighter and tends to rise. Since the CO2 contribution to global warming is less at higher altitudes when CO2 is in higher concentrations, moist convective air currents will encounter colder temperatures at lower altitudes and condense into clouds, further cooling the atmosphere through condensation and increasing the reflective surface albedo of the planet. This is a prime example of thermal feedback cycles inherent in climate science.

The Climate Record

But what of the ice core samples that show a direct correlation between CO2 levels in global temperatures? AGW advocates point at this as the smoking gun that CO2 drives global temperatures. The evidence seems to fit their understanding, where additional CO2 results in higher temperatures.

The ice core sample data seem to confirm the CO2 warming hypothesis, and no further investigation was needed. What these graphs show that isn’t explained by the CO2 warming hypothesis is why atmospheric temperatures began to fall while CO2 levels were still relatively high. CO2 levels and atmospheric temperatures seem to rise in lockstep, but CO2 levels lag declining atmospheric temperatures.

To answer this we have to consider Henry’s Law formulated by William Henry in 1803 which states: "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid." The key to this is constant temperature. The solubility of the gas and liquid solvent decreases as temperature increases. The oceans of the Earth are considered to have 10 times more dissolved CO2 than is contained in the atmosphere. If the temperature of the oceans increase, the amount of CO2 that they can hold in solution decreases, and the oceans must outgas the excess CO2, much the same as a bottle of soda does when you release pressure. There is no delay, and no appeal. Excess CO2 is released immediately. Conversely, when temperatures fall there is no mechanism that requires atmospheric CO2 to immediately be dissolved in the ocean. This is a slower process as the partial pressures between the CO2 in the atmosphere and the CO2 stored in the ocean slowly equalize. If our hypothesis is that ocean temperatures are directly responsible for atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels, we would expect atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels to rise simultaneously, and for CO2 levels to lag declining atmospheric temperatures. This is exactly what the data shows us.

Greenhouse Gases in General

CO2 gets a lot of attention from climatologists because of its disproportionate contribution as a greenhouse gas compared to its almost insignificant presence in the atmosphere. But it’s by no means the greatest contributor to the greenhouse gas effect. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. While it’s not nearly as efficient as CO2 and absorbing IR energy at any specific wavelength, it’s far more abundant than CO2 on average. Unlike CO2, it’s not 100% opaque at its absorption wavelengths, so increasing water vapor will result in a corresponding increase in atmospheric temperatures. Water vapor has some other important differences. Where CO2 is relatively evenly mixed throughout the atmosphere, water vapor levels vary dramatically as result of temperature and pressure differentials. Water vapor is virtually nonexistent at temperatures below freezing, and at common temperature/pressure combinations, it condenses and blocks visible sunlight from reaching the ground (clouds). The combination of opacity and reflectance of condensed water vapor is a major factor in cooling parts of the planet.

Here’s an experiment for you to do. On a typical summer day spend an evening in Charleston, South Carolina. You’ll typically notice high humidity, and when the sun goes down the temperature doesn’t change very much, it stays warm and muggy. Now take a trip out west to Tucson, Arizona. Same latitude, same amount of sunshine as Charleston gets. Same amount of CO2, generally speaking, but normally vastly less water vapor. Notice that the summer day in Tucson is much hotter than in Charleston. There is little water vapor interfering with sunlight striking the ground, heating it almost to oven-like temperatures. But the interesting thing is what happens when the sun goes down. Bring a coat, because even on a summer night it’s likely to get cold in Tucson. All that CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t do a darn thing for keeping the air warm. The heat radiating from the Earth radiates right through the bulk of the atmosphere without inhibition, and is lost to space.

In the graph below you can see the contributions of water and CO2. But this graph doesn’t show you that the third water vapor profile varies dramatically from place to place due to differences in humidity. The CO2 graph is relatively constant worldwide, and is plainly saturated. Adding more CO2 to the system will not result in any less energy being radiated into space at those frequencies.

Response to Criticisms

My approach to explaining this through the eyes of an electromagnetic engineer is unique, but the basic concept that the CO2 absorption band is saturated isn’t. Many other AGW critics have come to the same conclusion, and of course the members of the church of AGW have developed a doctrine to answer these criticisms. One of these answers states, “Any saturation at lower levels would not change this, since it is the layers from which radiation does escape that determine the planet’s heat balance. The basic logic was neatly explained by John Tyndall back in 1862: "As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere, thrown as a barrier across the terrestrial [infrared] rays, produces a local heightening of the temperature at the Earth’s surface."”

Well, that’s an interesting and actually an apt analogy. The problem is with the assumption that CO2 is like a dam built across the stream. It’s not, because for most of the spectrum, CO2 doesn’t inhibit the stream at all. CO2 is more like a post in the middle of the stream. The water rises slightly to either side of it, because it does change the cross-section of the channel, but essentially flows around it. Make that post as tall as you want, once it breaks the surface of the water, it can’t block any more than it already does.

The other misstatement in this argument is that, “... it is the layers from which radiation does escape that determine the planet’s heat balance.” This is incorrect. The temperature of the upper layers of the atmosphere has no effect on the IR radiation if that atmosphere is transparent to the IR radiation. If the transmissivity of the atmosphere is at or near one, the IR radiation will simply pass through it with no interaction. If it were otherwise, then IR radiation simply wouldn’t propagate through the atmosphere at all. Since there is little to no water vapor at high altitudes where the atmospheric temperature is claimed to be a factor, the atmosphere is completely transparent to IR radiation across most of the spectrum.

Remember, it’s about heat balance. The energy in the CO2 absorption band is dissipated in the first few hundred meters of atmosphere above the earth, and finds its way back to the surface. Once the system is reached equilibrium, the surface of the Earth is radiating at a higher average temperature than it would be if there was no CO2. That energy is across the IR spectrum, most of which either radiates to space without any interference from CO2, or is absorbed by other greenhouse gases. Think of our post in the middle of the stream. Same amount of energy gets into space, but at a slightly higher overall temperature, since it can’t radiate in the 14.5µm to 15.5µm band.

The other argument is that the CO2 bandpass is not constant, that adding more CO2 gets deeper into what we in the electromagnetic industry call the filter skirts, effectively increasing the bandwidth of absorption. This graphic is trotted out to demonstrate:

 Of course, to most people, this graphic looks pretty impressive. Whoa! As we get more CO2, the bandpass gets wider, and we get more absorption! It never ends! Hold on a second, Hoss. Pay attention to the vertical scale. That’s a logarithmic scale, which means that every major unit is 10 times smaller than the one above it. There’s really no way to explain this if you’re not already familiar and comfortable with working logarithmically, so it’s easier just to show you.

I don’t have access to the data set they used to generate the lovely graphic above, but I do have the NIST data for the same region, so let’s use that. Using NIST’s data, here’s a similar graph to the one you see above. The area inside the red lines is currently saturated at present CO2 levels.

Now, the argument goes that the more CO2 you add to the system, the further down those skirts we’re going to be saturating, which means we’re going to be absorbing more and more energy, the more CO2 we add. The claim is that no matter how much CO2 you add, there will always be more bandwidth being saturated, so you can never encounter a condition where adding more CO2 won’t absorb any more IR energy. The graph certainly does suggest that.

But wait. The amount of energy able to be absorbed by CO2 is basically equal to the area under the curve (remember basic calculus?). If you’re going to do that, you don’t use a log scale, you use a linear scale, like this:

Exact same data. The only difference is the Y axis is plotted linearly, instead of logarithmically. Note the present CO2 levels saturate the bulk of the bandpass. Adding more CO2 will push the curve upward. Saturation (the point at which no IR radiation escapes to space at the current Earth temperature) happens at about 290 on this chart. The amount of extra absorptivity you get from the wider skirts is insignificant. Adding more CO2 is not going to significantly change how much heat is trapped.

AGW advocates claim that adding CO2 will drive the heat absorption to lower altitudes, resulting in more heat closer to the surface, increased evaporation from the oceans, and thus compounds the problem by increasing water vapor in the atmosphere, which is another and arguably more significant greenhouse gas. Yes, more CO2 will cause the heat to be trapped at lower altitudes, but this argument breaks apart very quickly, because warm air rises. Even if we assume a higher water vapor load to this rising air, it encounters cold air at lower altitudes, and the water vapor condenses to clouds, which cool the planet by reflecting a large chunk of sunlight back into space.

Conclusion

The Earth may or may not be experiencing global warming or climate change. One can reasonably argue that the Earth is constantly experiencing climate change. It’s nothing new. A variety of things may influence global temperatures, the strength of sunlight hitting the Earth , volcanic action, methane levels or pollutants and aerosols in the atmosphere. One thing that is certainly not affecting global temperatures is variations in CO2 levels. The CO2 absorption wavelengths stop absorbing linearly at concentrations of less than 1/10 of what’s currently in the atmosphere. Anyone who tries to say different needs to explain where the extra energy comes from in the 14.5µm to 15.5µm band.

Computer climate models need to be adjusted to reflect that CO2 does not act like water vapor. Above about 40 ppm, varying CO2 concentrations has little to no effect on CO2’s greenhouse contribution, because it is already absorbed all of the available IR energy in its absorption spectrum. Computer climate models also need to address gases in solution in the ocean at varying temperatures.

The climate models make the case that the effect of CO2 is based not only on the proximate warming of CO2, but also the feedback mechanisms, primary of which is an increased rate of evaporation of the ocean due to higher temperatures. Since water vapor is in itself a greenhouse gas, this evaporation is supposed to amplify the effects of additional CO2. The amplification factor is generally agreed to be three times that of warming attributable to CO2 by itself. This number is derived by the assumption that all of the observed warming in the 20^th century was a result of CO2 increases. This is an absurd assumption in the system as chaotic and complex as climate. The problem with this model is that it suggests a climate “tipping point,” which would result in runaway heating, and ignores dampening feedbacks which would tend to keep climate stable. Since in geologic history there have been times when CO2 is been many times greater than it is today, and yet no runaway condition has ever been reached, we can assume that degenerative feedback loops exist that keep global temperatures from deviating too far from the mean. The Earth is currently in a period of glaciation, and we have been privileged that our civilization has risen during one of the interglacial warm periods. The general long-term trend of the Earth’s climate is one of cooling, and this is in line with the solar output which is the ultimate source of all heat energy on earth. (Climate change in 12 minutes, the skeptics case).