The innocense of carbon dioxide

The innocence of carbon dioxide Gary Young December 10, 2020 To: Climate Sceptics Group at Yahoo.com Dear Sceptics, The reason I posted the Happer paper is my enthusiasm that it should end the arguments that more CO2 will cause more warming. I posted it again for those who missed it the first time. Now the work really begins for us Sceptics. Not only should we do all in our power to “get the word out,” particularly to the world’s decision makers but to all those who have been victimized by those who are profitably riding this manufactured crisis.

For Mike MacCracken: You mentioned the work of Arrhenius going back to 1895. Yes he noticed that CO2 absorbed IR light. However, he had no idea what was really going on. It took Max Planck to come up with the idea of energy quanta (Nobel prize in 1918) which in large measure explained what Arrhenius observed. Mike, I have a big file under your name because you have frequently caused me to double check my understanding of science. You seem to have great confidence in your scientific skills, so I have a project for you if you choose to accept the challenge. Please analyze the attached June 8 2020 vanWijngaarden and Happer paper and tell us if and where they are wrong. If you have the time, could you also please critically review the attached Physics Rate Flow paper?

Here is the problem as outlined by Happer: “We don't think there is a chance that any major journal will publish our paper. It is sure way to get the editorial staff fired. And we would rather not publish this in a second-tier journal. Samizdat on arXiv will have to suffice for now.” His explanation is really a damning incitement of the current situation. “It is very time consuming to submit a paper for review. Every journal has different requirement for formatting, citations, etc. We tried three times in good faith to submit this paper to three different journals. Some years ago, I wrote one of the most widely cited papers ever in Reviews of Modern Physics, the first journal we approached. You might think that a submission by an author who brought lots of credit to RMP, and who is also a member of the National Academy of Science might get a fair review. No such luck.”

For William Kininmonth: I did a cursory scan of your paper and it seems focused on transient phenomena like clouds and their effect on the climate picture. I will read it much deeper because I also have been exploring similar aspects as those initiated by the great ocean heat conveyers. So is Happer: “We are now focusing on how clouds affect radiation transfer. This is a lot harder than the clear-sky calculations the of arXiv paper.

1

You probably know that scattering by greenhouse gases is negligible. They simply absorb and emit. But cloud particulates scatter a lot more than they absorb or emit. And on average, half of the Earth's surface has cloud cover. Clouds are highly variable in altitude and other properties, and they are probably a potent feedback mechanism, probably negative, but we are not far enough along in our work yet to say with confidence.”

What I dream about is that the Sceptic network can make a lasting contribution. Perhaps as specifically as Happer says: “Our aim is to write this all up in a book for a new generation of uncorrupted young scientists. I hope I live long enough to complete the task. So far so good.”

Helpful definition: sam·iz·dat /ˈsämēzdat/ noun 1. The clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe. "a samizdat newsletter" arXiv – On Line published 1.8 million papers concerning physics, math and related fields:. Looks to be hosted by Cornell.

When I first brought up the Happer paper in this forum I did not make really make strong case why the vW. & Happer paper is such a break-through. My background included Theoretical Physical Metallurgy which morphed into device physics working on integrated circuits. For instance, it was in the 1980’s when I was tasked with reinventing a solid state laser diodes that radiated IR light through the “atmospheric window” and was the heart technology of the Surveying Division. We started having problems with the light frequency/wave length drifting close to the atmospheric window boundaries which reduced the range of the surveying instruments. HP guaranteed 5 KM and +/- 5mm accuracy! I had to do a lot of studying about how IR light behaved. It was helpful that I still had secret clearances through the Navy Reserve so was able to visit with the Air Force Labs at Cambridge Mass. They were the folks who then maintained the HITRAN data base. HITRAN started with WWII research trying to detect high flying aircraft using their heat signature. Heat seeking missiles were developed from the knowledge. As a consequence, I learned more about the physics of light and specifically how infrared light is absorbed by carbon dioxide and water vapor molecules.

Turns out that the gallium arsenide wafers used when the laser diodes were invented had a certain level of contaminating elements in them. As the wafer industry matured, 2

the gallium arsenide became ever more pure. To solve the problem, we had to go back to the atomic level and tweak the doping elements and levels used to restore the correct frequency diode. We nailed the 6.5-micron wavelength which is the middle of the window. Of course, we had to reinvent the silicone photo diode array receiving circuit to be optimized at 6.5 micron. In the Australian outback where it is very dry, we were getting 15-kilometer ranges and still within laser brightness safety limits!

A couple of years later I was made responsible for putting a new bipolar integrated circuit process into the Fort Collins Fab. I needed to better understand the photolithography process to do so. This was because to make the newer generations of integrated circuits the features and devices were much smaller which required deep ultraviolet wavelength light. (By the way, integrated circuit features are now about 2000 times smaller!) I learned more about how light interacts at the atomic level with chemicals that were “developed” into the masks necessary to make the smaller geometries of the devices. As I became more knowledgeable, I could train others to maintain the production processes.

This was about this same time I was consulting through Coopers and Lybrand (HP was big on loaned executives) with the Air Force Laboratory at Rome New York. The Cambridge lab was having the Rome lab write the computer programs and build the computerized HITRAN data base. To give you an idea of the extent of HITRAN at that time, my “boot leg” copy fit on a 3 ½ inch floppy, a far cry from the data processed by Happer and vanWijngaarden!

The Niels Bohr model implied that absorption reactions would result in a spectra of energy outcomes, it was not until higher resolution instrumentation could the spectra actually be observed. Since then every generation of more sensitive instrumentation shows more and ever finer spectral lines. That was when I noticed that where a previous spectral line looked solid, under greater resolution it was made up with a combination of finer lines but more important, “white space” between the lines! Huh, how can you have optical saturation when there is so much white space between the lines? I was sure that CO2 was saturated at the frequency/wave lengths where the earth radiated most so something was really wrong. Having straddled the line between science and engineering running Technology Centers for 20 years, I understood design of experiments. The “what:” To have a definitive answer if CO2 was saturated where the earth radiates, each spectral line has to be analyzed from the earth’s surface to space, over the range of temperatures encountered, and over land and sea from pole to pole. The “how:” Short of magic happening this is where I realized that it would take people smarter than I and resources I couldn’t muster! And then Wijngaarden and Happer published their paper by providing the how and answering the what!

Engineers like to solve problems with more than one alternative approach to validate that the principal “money” solution is right and will work. My “count the molecules and count the photons” approach is one of these alternatives. This is where in very gross terms, the combined energy leaving where the earth radiates most if concentrated in photons corresponding to 15 microns, there are approximately 40,000 molecules of CO2 3

otherwise not engaged and able to absorb the photon. That is four magnitudes of overkill. When water vapor is included, it approaches five orders of magnitude. The Happer and Wijngaarden paper shows four orders of magnitude. Results of the approximation at least verifys the same orders of magnitude generated by the far more elegant solution is comforting; that the Wijingaarden and Happer solution is indeed definitive.

NEXT BIG PROBLEM: The warmers are vested in warming so if CO2 is proved innocent there better be some answers to what is causing the warming. For years, many possibilities have been discussed in this forum. Expect that there will be a lot more discussions worldwide. William’s paper is one. I am working on something called the “Construction Law of Thermodynamics.” Climate is a giant matrix of thermodynamic flows so the “law” says that these flows “oscillate;” the amplitude and duration likely are not known and possibly unknowable.

I am pretty sure that some of the most outspoken warmer scientists have the vW&H paper. It could take a while before they can reset their world view. The hope is that intellectual honesty will prevail in the end with notable warmers standing up and saying, “I was wrong.” That could take a lot of time as it did for Einstein when he first published in 1905 and definitively verified by the solar eclipse of 1919.

Sincerely, Gary

References W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases, June 8, 2020 W. Happer and W.A. van Wijngaarden, Physics Rate Equations, June 16, 2020

4