Blog Archives
CLIMATE EVIDENCE WANTED
Climate science must be verified not by consensus but by empirical evidence. Lacking evidence there can be dissension. The following null hypotheses are ‘Great Lies’ contradicting conventional wisdom. I haven’t seen evidence that would refute them, but would like to, if it exists.
Do you have evidence to refute these?
- Climate warming did not start with growth of fossil fuel use.
- Climate warming is not caused by carbon gases trapping solar energy.
- Earth’s temperatures are not increasing by heat from the Sun.
- Climate warming by heat from combusting fossil fuels is significant.
- Renewable energy cannot be recycled.
- Renewable energy use causes absorption of more radiation from the Sun.
- Renewable energy use can warm Earth more than equivalent fossil fuel use.
These hypotheses seem to oppose the conventional wisdom and are refuted in detail in a novel Animal Farm 2 by Martin Knox. It is a sincere and unaffiliated attempt to reframe climate change wisdom by science methods which are ethical.
My book also has an entertaining sequel to George Orwell’s book Animal Farm. Animal Farm 2 is available on Amazon.
Reviews: martinknox.com
MORE HUMAN HEAT WARMS EARTH
Earth could be heating by a small amount of global warming. The bigger picture is that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium with the Sun. Heat enters the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans steadily from daily solar radiation and from human consumption of energy. Some of the heat leaves quickly, radiated back into space. Other heat lingers and is gradually dissipated.
Time for heat present to be replaced is its average residence time, which I have calculated as roughly 60 days for heat on Earth. On average, heat would circulate for 60 days before it is radiated into space. Some heat would be present more briefly, while other heat could be present longer. The heat would flow from hot to cold places. The heat could be absorbed by the oceans or land masses until released again and passed into the atmosphere and space.
Hot surfaces, air and water cool by flow of heat to lower temperatures. The heat on Earth flows in winds and ocean currents reducing to ambient temperatures. The energy at this temperature is too cool to be used and is called ‘entropy’. The Earth’s thermal sources of energy such as fossil fuels, fires and geothermal resources are running down as they are converted to entropy.
An increase in residence time of heat on Earth would be measured as higher temperatures, such as global warming. The most likely explanation is entropy gain by increased wastage of heat by humans. Increased radiation entrapment seems unlikely by physical processes.
A new paradigm of climate science is in my fiction novel Animal Farm 2.
Reviews: martinknox.com
PHLOGISTON AND GREENHOUSE GAS THEORIES
Johann Becher in 1669 described the phenomenon of burning, now called oxidation, as caused by liberation of ‘phlogiston’ from combustible substances. The theory was accepted by scientists and at the beginning of the 18th century, Stahl extended it to include corrosion of metals. By today’s standards of objectivity, ‘phlogiston’ was an imaginary substance with magical properties.
A movie An Inconvenient Truth (2006) declared that the Earth is being heated by the action of ‘greenhouse gases’, mostly carbon dioxide. The theory has dominated climate science’s observation of and explanation for global warming ever since.
Measurements by Lavoisier recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783). Priestley (1733-1804) also claimed discovering oxygen (1774). Joseph Black first identified carbon dioxide in the 1750s. There was no evidence corroborating phlogiston and Lavoisier’s account of combustion has gradually replaced the phlogiston theory.
Warming of 99.96% of Earth’s atmosphere by the 0.05% of greenhouse gases, enough to increase its temperature, has not been corroborated, as far as I know. There are alternative theories of global warming. I have published, in my satirical novel Animal Farm 2, an explanation of warming by thermal pollution, which is simpler. There are other theories and more than one may apply.
It remains to be seen whether the greenhouse gases theory will survive any better than the phlogiston theory has.
NEW CLIMATE SCIENCE PARADIGM
Why Blame Carbon Dioxide?
Can there be evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming? We can see that there is less arctic ice and shrinking of glaciers but the explanation could conceivably be that snowfall in their catchments has reduced. Even if there is warming, attributing these effects to it cannot be tested because causality is invisible and cannot be identified with certainty. Attributing the effect to carbon dioxide cannot be observed or tested directly. It’s too important to guess.
Scientists often establish causality by testing with a physical model. If there warming was observed in many tests and few results were without warming, nor many with cooling, then by the principle of induction the warming could be associated with carbon dioxide, under those conditions. No physical model can be large enough to approximate the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Models could possibly corroborate that carbon dioxide does cause warming (I haven’t heard of any such tests). Even so, models could add their logic to the theory but can never verify it absolutely.
People who use the reduced ice effects as evidence can be deceived by an a priori result, because melting was assumed to cause the reduction in ice observed, a circular argument and false.
Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not a smoking gun. Warming of the oceans is causing them to release some of their dissolved store of carbon dioxide. Warming has caused the carbon dioxide increase, not vice versa.
Attributing the cause of ice reduction to carbon dioxide with reasonable confidence requires that possible alternative causes are eliminated. The effect on ice of co-products of fossil fuel combustion, heat and water vapour, could also be to reduce it. Alternatively, Earth warming by the Sun has variable solar processes and Earth orbits that could cause warming and melting.
Other science theories, such as gravity, evolution and relativity, also have invisible causality and were adopted before their science was fully understood. Philosophies of science were modified to accommodate these theories. Carbon dioxide’s culpability could be accepted without evidence, provided it is logical, if it is not contradicted and if other explanations are not credible.
I have mentioned several alternative theories of ice reduction. William of Occam wanted preference to be given to the simplest theory. Thermal emissions explain warming more simply than does carbon dioxide. The significance of carbon dioxide needs to be reconsidered.
My coming novel Animal Farm 2 is a sequel to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and satirizes totalitarianism, animal liberation and climate change. martinknox.com
