Home/BlogNo, Our Ability to Monitor Sea Ice Has Not Ended
Yesterday, The Guardian ran a story with the headlines:
Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change
Republican-controlled Congress ordered destruction of vital sea-ice probe
But as NASA’s leader of the U.S. Science Team on one of the best satellite instruments developed for monitoring sea ice, I can tell you we will not lose our ability to monitor sea ice.
Admittedly, the premature failure of the Defense Department’s DMSP F17 and F19 satellites has definitely reduced the number of times a day we can measure the polar regions.
Artist rendering of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite, carrying the SSMIS instrument (upper-left) since July 1987. The unexpected failure of the F17 and F19 satellites has led to criticisms of the defunding of the final, F20 satellite in the series.
But even once a day is plenty for the purpose (sea ice doesn’t change that fast), and there are other — and better — satellites that can now do the job.
The Decision Was Made On Obama’s Watch
The first point The Guardian got wrong was that Congress’s fiscal decision to dismantle the last remaining DMSP F20 satellite was made by Congress in 2016, when Obama could have done something about it. These satellites do much more than monitor sea ice, and the decision was made knowing that we have more modern satellites that can do these jobs now. The specific sensor on that satellite that monitors sea ice, the SSMIS, is a modified microwave radiometer that was first launched in July, 1987, and was designed in the early 1980s. Because microwaves penetrate clouds, and since the polar regions are often cloudy, these window-frequency microwave radiometers have become the workhorses of sea ice monitoring.
The U.S. Long Ago Decided to Let Other Countries Take Over
I have worked with satellite microwave radiometers for 30 years now, doing NOAA and NASA sponsored research with them. The U.S. long ago made the decision to help Japan take the lead on this capability. As a result, the Japanese built the AMSR-E instrument with newer technology, more microwave channels, and higher spatial resolution to fly on NASA’s Aqua satellite in 2002. As the U.S. Science Team leader on that instrument, I and others helped Japan become a leader in producing and interpreting this kind of data.
Artist rendering of the AMSR2 instrument on the Japanese GCOM-W satellite, the new generation of climate monitoring with window frequency microwave remote sensing.
After the failure of AMSR-E in 2011, Japan launched an even better version — AMSR2 — on their own GCOM-W satellite. They are currently designing a third one for launch. Everyone in the business knows that these are expected to be the sea ice monitoring workhorses of the future, providing a daily global climate monitoring capability for a wide variety of weather and climate variables.
Other U.S. Satellites Could Help Out as Well
Even without the newer and fancier AMSR series of sea ice monitoring instruments, and even with the complete failure of the old SSMIS series of satellite instruments (many of these last much longer than their design lifetime), in a pinch we could use the window channels of the AMSU sensors flying on the NOAA polar-orbiting satellites, and the newer ATMS instruments flying on the NOAA polar orbiting satellites. The next copy of the ATMS is scheduled to be launched this Friday, November 10 on the first JPSS satellite. These instruments are not ideal for the purpose, though, and the Japanese AMSR series of sensors are expected to be the main sea ice monitoring satellites into the future.
Trump Derangement Syndrome?
One could more justifiably ask why President Obama in his 8-year term could not have asked for a dedicated climate monitoring network of global satellites. Most people don’t realize that our long-term climate monitoring with satellites has always been piggy-backed on either NOAA weather satellites, which are not designed with the stability and lifetimes needed to monitor subtle trends in climate, or on NASA one-off science experiment satellites which provide just enough data to help address specific science questions.
This is why it feels more than a little disingenuous to blame President Trump for the dismantling of a single satellite as if is going to cripple our ability to monitor climate change from space. Quoting from the Guardian article:
President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked….
This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient, said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.
This claim that the Trump Administration is to blame, or that our capability is being blocked or crippled is, quite frankly, silly.
Guns kill people.
Trump want guns.
Trump kill people.
People kill people, guns don’t. No Gun? A baseball bat, an axe, a hammer, a shovel, a knife, whatever works just as well at killing people Grow up.
I don’t remember last mass shooting with a baseball bat…
You are so stupid.
Talk about the pan calling the kettle black.aeroplanes. vans.guns or knives.its people who kill.I thought this was a science blog.and as such none political .if we left politics out of climate science we might get some where
A science blog ? No there is no science here.
You like science and numbers ? Cool. Try to look at some statistics before talking about guns.
Some of the highest death tolls in terrorist acts have been caused by ploughing moving vehicles into densely pack pedestrian precincts. Do we ban cars trucks and lorries. Fertiliser bombs were the go to bomb of the IRA, do we stop fertilising crops and ban fertilisers as a consequence. Crazy argument.
Why should the US shoulder the entire cost of monitoring the climate. Other countries can build satellites to do so. It never ceases to amaze me the no of Americans who quote a British paper funded
In July 2016, a man murdered 86 people in Nice, France, using a cargo truck.
In November 2015, three terrorists murdered 90 attendees at the Bataclan Concert Hall in Paris, France. This despite the fact that France has strict gun laws.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Disarming law abiding citizens is not the answer.
+1
You confuse mass murder and terrorism.
Also look at the statistics.
Which statistics? The ones that show homogeneous European nations with strict gun control laws have low rates of gun crime, or the ones that show heterogeneous nations of Latin and South America with strict gun control laws have high rates of gun crime?
Keep working Bart.
I do believe you didn’t study this seriously.
And try to think. I know that’s the hardest part. Good luck.
You can start by comparing states vs states, and then US vs other developped countries :
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts
Ah, developed countries. Are we a “developed” country?
Under gross measures, certainly yes. But, in individual locales, sometimes not so much.
Gun violence in the US is extremely localized. If you take out particular population centers, the rate of gun violence drops precipitously.
I do not wish to disarm the people living in such communities, leaving them at the mercy of gang bangers and assorted hoodlums who can arm themselves as they please, as they don’t care a whit about any laws you care to pass.
Please spare me the “try to think” type arguments. They are merely childish foot stamping. If you do not respect my opinion, then why are we even having a discussion?
Great article Mickey.
It’s like climate change. Fixable if you can get the facts straight and be a bit pragmatic.
It’s a strange thing that you can lower the suicide rate by preventing it once.
Death toll rises to 33 in knife attack on China train station.
Terror Attack on Nice: 84 Dead After Grenade-Filled Truck Plows Into Crowd
8 killed as truck plows into pedestrians in downtown NYC terror attack
Remember this? It’s not the gun, it’s the determination and intent of the person committing the crime.
It appears a car of truck is more effective than a gun, an armed citizen ready and able to has a better chance against a shooter than a vehicle. The intent of the perpetrator and gun free zones are the problem.
IMHO
‘mickey prunt’ you are devoid of any logic or intelligence.
https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-us-counties-2014-zero-murders-69-1-murder/
Oh look where most gun related murders occur. Liberal, nonNRA thugs based cities.
Oh look, less murders in USA. More murders in latin countries by people that you morons want to let cross into our borders illegally.
https://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/
So instead of responding to Roy’s satellite report, you divert by talking about guns.
*”You are so stupid” I believe is what you claimed about another poster. You sound like another liberal murderer Hodgkinson.
How many guns were used by Timothy McVeigh when he killed 168 people?
How many guns were used by the terrorists who killed 3000+ people at the World Trade Center?
Baseball bats are made to hit baseballs.
Axes are made to chop down trees.
Hammers are made to drive nails.
Shovels are made to dig holes.
Knives are made to cut food and other things.
Guns? Guns are made to kill things.
Like bad guys and polar bears.
And also to shoot skeets. We usually have skeet stew at Thanksgiving. Tasty stuff.
And also to shoot holes in paper, and shoot steel (targets)
Guns are made to kill tasty animals and and criminal humans.
Very high IQ logic. Brilliant.
LOL
Mickey…”Guns kill people.
Trump want guns.
Trump kill people”.
I was right, you are an idiot. With logic like yours, it amazes me that alarmists can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I am not an alarmist.
Try again.
What do your opinions regarding gun ownership have to do with the topic of the post, namely, satellites?
You are a sad joke.
Why, if Trump is a fascist and Nazi, does the left want to disarm America? It’s because the left doesn’t believe their own insane rhetoric.
Alarmists cause hysteria.
Hysteria causes anxiety.
Anxiety causes stress.
Stress kills people.
Alarmists kill people.
People want guns “to protect themselves” from other people who have guns, probably also to protect themselves…
That’s hysteria.
+100
People have been using cars to kill people, are well going to ban all cars. Even if guns were banned, criminals would still carry them and people have the right to defend themselves if attacked by another with a gun. The recent church massacre would have been far worse.
Instead of outlawing guns, why don’t we outlaw murder? Oh, we have already!
Criminals break the law!
Criminals break the law; therefore we shouldn’t have laws.
You’re an idiot.
Laws only prevent the law abiding from preventing crime.
Laws proscribe punishment for conviction hoping that will deter crime.
And the police cannot be everywhere
Just remember that when seconds count the police are only minutes away
Add frisking and you have an easy court case.
Guns are used to kill.
That’s not the main purpose of cars.
If nobody has a gun then you won’t have to “defend [yourself] if attacked by another with a gun”.
You are so stupid.
You may want to answer me it’s not that easy. The world doesn’t work like this ? Well just look how it goes in other countries.
You are so stupid.
“You are so stupid”
Are you in 1st or 2nd grade?
When you can guarantee that no one else has a gun – including the police and government agents- I will still exercise my constitutional right and keep mine – thank you.
BTW after over 50 years none of my guns have harmed any person but I am vigilant and prepared to defend my family and property.
Even Obama said his supporters should take a gun to a knife fight.
Mickey Mouse states:
If nobody has a gun then you wont have to defend [yourself] if attacked by another with a gun.
You are so stupid
Criminals get guns illegally, dumbass. No wonder you spout pseudoscience as well, Einstein.
troll, get lost.
This is so off-topic as it gets and as trawling as you can imagine, but why don’t you Mickey consider that Andorrans are required to have a gun, yet have the lowest murder rate you can think of?
Murder rates correlate with a number of things.
They correlate with heterogenous ethnical composition, they correlate with Democrats around, they correlate with cultural heterogeneity. They correlate with easeness to get guns from the black market. They correlate with ineffective police forces, bribing, illegal substances.
You take guns away from the law abiding citizens, and you make the problem worse, not better.
But you have one point. Only one, but have it. Democrat-kept cities with a lot of cultural richness in them get much of their guns by stealing them from the law abiding people.
To improve the situation, I suggest you forbid Democrats owning a gun. That should fix the places where Democrats live. /irony
Guardian story? Enough said. Their track record on truthful reporting is offered as evidence.
Right. No surprise.
Gary…”Guardian story? Enough said. Their track record on truthful reporting is offered as evidence”.
The Guardian, a ‘formerly’ highly respected newspaper, has become the the National Enquirer of climate propaganda.
Formerly respected? Must have been a time before newspapers eh? Al Guardian is nothing more than the print version of al beeb…which tells you all you need to know about its integrity and honesty.
What chance is there for someone to make the Guardian print a retraction??
Hmmm … so i should respect a UK source complaining because the US doesnt front the entire bill for climate research.
I’m very thankful for US climate research, UAH etc.
The US is also a major GHG emitter, so perhaps there’s some justice in it.
“This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient, said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.”
Pretty tempting to segue into a bit of a rant about NASA adjusting the temperature records.
garyh845….”Pretty tempting to segue into a bit of a rant about NASA adjusting the temperature records”.
NASA GISS gets their data from NOAA, after NOAA fudges the data. Then they amend it further.
Both of them inexcusably use downward adjusted confidence levels to declare various years as the warmest ever. NOAA declared 2014 the warmest year based on a CL of 48% and GISS has stooped to 35%.
We all need to pay close attention to satellite data with both ocean and air temps as well as sea ice. The climate has been doing some strange things. Don’t be alarmed remain calm nothing is under our control. My hope is we keep our climate satellites in good working order and be honest about about the data we collect.
snowready…”My hope is we keep our climate satellites in good working order and be honest about about the data we collect”.
That is my fear, that the only source of legitimate data may become compromised BEFORE UAH receives it. Is there any guarantee that UAH receives the data straight from the sats or is there a chance that NOAA can intercept it and fudge it the way they have blatantly fudged the surface data?
After all, the data UAH processes comes from NOAA sats. I know UAH applied for the data back in 1979 because NOAA was archiving it without using it. What guarantee do we have these days that NOAA is not ‘adjusting’ the data before UAH receives it?
Alarmists have been trying for decades to discredit satellite data. That’s the source of propaganda about orbital errors and so on. Those errors were fixed by UAH circa 2005 and found to apply only in the Tropics and well within the declared error margin. Still, we get this on-going nonsense about satellite errors and adjustments.
It would definitely be in the interest of NOAA to fudge the sat data to make it appear as if their fudged surface data is legitimate and lower than sat data.
The climate has been doing some strange things .
LoL, when was it that the climate was not doing strange things?
Maybe that comment was satire.
“Most people dont realize that our long-term climate monitoring with satellites has always been piggy-backed on either NOAA weather satellites, which are not designed with the stability and lifetimes needed to monitor subtle trends in climate, or on NASA one-off science experiment satellites which provide just enough data to help address specific science questions.”
I have had question about having satellites designed to measure earth temperature. What would be best, etc.
But I have indulge myself with a question about GoreSat.
Which was suppose to be a satellite directly related to “global warming” [rather than weather or other important matters].
Goresat was fueled by, say “dreams of my children” or politician’s gas.
But there were actual engineers involved in it. So anyways, I was wondering how useful that satellite has been to you and others [or those “Most people dont realize that our long-term climate monitoring…” ?
Anyways one broadly have few ways, “gold plate” satellites, small cheap disposable [and main idea of frequently launched], and lots of nanosatellites/cubesate. And/or mix and match. Anyways what are ideas of best system. And since best system is dependable/related to cost, how much does it cost.
A Deceptive New Report on Climate
November 5, 2017
By Paul Homewood
“The Federal Climate Science Special Report from the US Global Change Research Program, mandated under the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990, has now been published.
As with the draft, which I reported on in August, it is the usual mix of half truths, exaggerations, omissions and outright lies.
Lets look at the main sections:”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/a-deceptive-new-report-on-climate/
Linked from:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/
I must agree. It is sad when a government publication uses tricks and deceit to present misleading information. It is even more sad the media will not explain the misleading information. And perhaps saddest of all is that our education is so bad that the public does not have the analytical ability to see the deception.
Just answer the question yes or no, Have you stopped beating your wife?
I love modern journalism!
No, and I don’t intend to. She enjoys it.
I beat my wife at chess regularly. And I intend on continuing.
Thanks for that information Dr Spencer. It is refreshing to hear some factual information rather than constantly being given “fake news”. There is no doubt that the media is hell bent on frightening the pants off anyone who is prepared to accept what they are seeing. Unfortunately a huge percentage of the population, read, watch and hear and believe without question what is being put in front of them.
@Roy Spencer, Ph.D,
This thread has attracted some folks who are even worse than your resident troll (David Appell).
My “gag reflex” has been triggered. See ya in a month or two!
Our world is ailing .
The view of a detached and dispassionate scientist, I dont think.
Christopher…”Our world is ailing .
The view of a detached and dispassionate scientist, I dont think”.
Are you referring to Roy? If so, he is defending the planet from pseudo-scientists who are doing what they can via their ego and arrogance to lead the general public astray.
The planet is just fine thank you. We don’t need alarmists spreading propaganda geared to an ulterior motive. More than anything, we don’t need them sticking their noses into the mechanism of the planet to fix ‘what ain’t broke’.
Certainly not, I was referring to a quote from David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado: “Our world is ailing …” etc.
My Apple-Mac doesn’t transpose easily here.
Why its almost as if two sets of data have to be produced. output with unadjusted data and a second with adjusted data. Surely that would be of great use for keeping track of whats happening with our climate?
The Guardian is the left-wing version of Fox News.
And, all the rest are on the side of the Guardian. Lefties loath Fox News not because it is inaccurate, or at least not any more so than their house organs, but because it dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
I don’t like Fox News because it is so obviously partisan. The Guardian is a rival to that on the left side. The rest are on the spectrum, left, right, and (best of all) near the middle.
No, the rest are pretty much on the Left. MSNBC is rabidly partisan. CNN is not much further behind. All the alphabets are strongly partisan. Just about every major newspaper aside from the WSJ is strongly partisan. We live in a sea of left wing media.
The problem with arguing about this is that one’s own politics inform one’s views of what is left and right. I’ll agree that there is a preponderance of left-wing news media, but not that they are all pretty much on the left. In the US, WSJ, The Hill, The Economist, CNS News, Free republic, Drudge Report, NRO, Newsmax, The Daily Caller, Town Hall, UPI, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and numerous radio talk shows (possibly the preponderance) are right-leaning to my mind (notice I ignored Breitbart and The Blaze there). The major news outlets apart from Fox spread from centrist to centre-left. A clue to someone’s fitness to read the situation is if they see no spectrum at all on the other side of the line from them, just a clump.
The Guardian is a UK paper (there’s an Australian edition – I don’t read it). There are right-wing news services in the UK, and in Australia, too (The Australian, The Telegraph, The Advertiser). Most if not all Murdoch owned press is right-wing. Here there is a spectrum, too. The Australian (the only Oz national newspaper, a broadsheet) is centre-right, while the Telegraph (tabloid) is more rabidly right-wing. I tend to read The Sydney Morning Herald most regularly, which is slightly left of centre (which I know, and read between the lines if I have to). But I read news from all sources that aren’t too annoyingly partisan. Don’t read much from Huff-Po, for example. But I’ve read all the news services I’ve mentioned.
Of your list, I would agree on WSJ and Drudge, and the former only markedly so on its editorial page, the latter more libertarian than right. The others I would judge either lefty-lite (e.g., The Economist is not right wing) or of limited influence with minor market penetration.
barry…”The Guardian is the left-wing version of Fox News”.
More like the UK version of the National Enquirer.
Hardly.
Nah,
The Guardian is the left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh. In fact, that is not a fair comparison: there is more truth in Rush than there is in the Guardian.
Better to say that the Guardian is like the National Enquirer with a left-wing tilt
Newspapers want to sell, so they tend to write want people want to read, and people apparently want to get their knickers in a twist.
You really have to go to their (scientific) sources.
Will people not feel cheated?
https://accuweather.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2bd0bc0/2147483647/resize/590x/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faccuweather-bsp.s3.amazonaws.com%2F92%2F8b%2F67c87169424ab4bb696b6a4e6cb0%2Fstatic-cold-blast.jpg
NASA Has More Evidence Volcanic Activity Is Heating Up Antarcticas Ice Sheet
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/07/nasa-has-more-evidence-volcanic-activity-is-heating-up-antarcticas-ice-sheet/
jime…”NASA Has More Evidence Volcanic Activity Is Heating Up Antarcticas Ice Sheet”
It’s an interesting premise but we have enough established science to explain why the ice sheets are breaking up. In the field of glaciology, a subset of geology, it is understood that glaciers flowing to the ocean go through a process called calving.
When the ice flows downhill it reaches the ocean and is pushed out over the ocean. Part of the ice will be submerged but there is a great mass of it part floating and part hanging over the water. All that supports the mass is the connection to land ice.
In the Antarctic there are seas at times up to 100 feet high and the only thing protecting the ice sheets are ice floes that buffer the wave action. From time to time, the floes are taken away by ocean currents, exposing the ice sheets to the full fury of the ocean.
Eventually, due to the flexing, the ice sheets crack and separate. This is nothing new and any climate alarmist blaming this on global warming is seriously myopic.
President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.
Why is investigating sea-ice cover critically important?
Shipping?
barry…”Shipping?”
There will never be shipping through the NW Passage unless something catastrophic happens to get solar energy into the Arctic year round.
There is no way to predict which channels will be ice free even in the brief Arctic summer. The ice gets moved around unpredictably and after a few cargo ships get crushed, they’ll quickly lose interest.
I don’t see why anyone would have an interest in shipping to Antarctica.
To take a shortcut?
“During the last ten years, marine traffic has increased by 33% in the Baltic Sea and the trend is expected to continue. Sea ice is a major hazard that can damage passenger ships and commercial vessels carrying oil, natural gas and other goods. Icebreakers clear paths through sea ice to assure safe passage for 6000 to 7000 vessels each winter in the Baltic Sea.
Ice-thickness maps, derived from satellite radar imagery and ground measurements, make shipping safer by providing accurate information on the actual ice conditions. The maps are delivered to ships and local authorities and are continually updated on the Internet. The sea ice information is generated in an operational manner and delivered 30 minutes after data have been received from the satellite. Based on these maps, ice motion, concentration, thickness and ridges can be forecasted. Every Finnish and Swedish icebreaker uses satellite-based sea-ice forecasting services for the Baltic Sea.”
http://www.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Copernicus_Briefs/Copernicus_Brief_Issue5_SeaIce_Sep2013.pdf
barry…During the last ten years, marine traffic has increased by 33% in the Baltic Sea…”
The Baltic Sea sits between Sweden and Finland, it’s hardly in the Arctic. It’s at the same latitude as the North Sea and I have never heard of ice breakers being required there.
The ice in the Baltic Sea cannot be very thick if ice breakers roam through there in winter. The North Pole, on the other hand, has ice 10 feet thick January through March and no ice breaker will penetrate such ice that contains pressure ridge after pressure ridge.
Sea ice can exceed one meter in the Botnian Bay.
Ice classes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish-Swedish_ice_class
Oden handles 1.9 m at three knots:
https://tinyurl.com/ya889wbp
Sea ice is trending down:
https://tinyurl.com/y8g3v9fl
The Atlantic is reasonably ice free up to Murmansk because of the Gulf Stream.
Oh the Northern parts of Baltic Sea freeze up badly every year. Ice breakers are necessary. The Baltic Sea is shallow and has brackish water, so it freezes much easier than its Atlantic broad and salty latitudinal neighbors.
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play. | Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. Joseph Goebbels
As we all know and sadly recognise, the Leftist psychopathology that infects the MSM, no longer makes any attempt to conceal its role as the organ of globalist propaganda and spin-meister of eco-Marxist aspirations.
That Dr Roy Spence writes,
This claim that the Trump Administration is to blame, or that our capability is being blocked or crippled is, quite frankly, silly.”
is laudably polite. At the same time it appears both tame and unfortunately in some ways, equally silly.
The MSM, like Herr Joseph is way way beyond silly. Make no mistake, for it is intentional, deadly serious and devious. It sets out to destroy liberty, decimate prosperity, diminish fact and denigrate reason. Simply, It is become the greatest liar of our age.
The Grauniad, ever consistent and true to itself, betrays its relentless fakery and Leftist propaganda. Consequently, as it so often does, it becomes caught out by its own machinations.
Ipse facto: Fishy business: Trump and Abe dump fish food into precious koi pond
“This article was amended on 6 November 2017 to make clear that Shinzo Abe also emptied the contents of his container into the pond.”
Exactly the same may be said for the Marxist Media Party in New Zealand
No diet for these carp as Trump goes all-in on fish food
Correction: A video previously attached to this story described Donald Trumps fish-feeding action as clumsy and a diplomatic blunder. This conflicted with the text of the story, which describes Trump as following Shinzo Abes lead.
Again, as we all know so very well, the euphemistically termed corrections or erratum are nothing of the sort, just trivial and meaningless virtue signalling used to provide faux deniability. As my wife from South Korea says, whats the difference between this and the extant propaganda machinery of North Korea?
10+
“..whats the difference between this and the extant propaganda machinery of North Korea?”
Left is left.
A common mistake is that Left is new. Left is far older than the “new and improve” soap.
Left is politics which is as old as politics. It’s kings with different job titles.
Castro was obviously the king of Cuba and his family wants to continuing ruling. And obviously N Korea recognized and supported by Lefties everywhere, claims to be socialist, and supported by China, that typifies communism/socialism.
China is basically ruled by a tribe or family- ie, a monarchy.
The goal and direction of all socialism is being a monarchy- or this is not vaguely “new”.
A symptom of how left the US is, is the various political dynasties, we have. Or hatred of Trump could be the assumption
that Trumps might become another dynasties. Because why not, we already have them. Which is not the plan of what the US was founded on- it was expected, everyone knew it would not be a good thing. And people still know this.
It’s a bad sign, rather than bad, it foretell future problems as it has always had problems.
That George Washington choose not to continue as president, was surprising to the rulers of world, at that time.
gbaikie…”Left is left”.
Not really. Left is just another word to satisfy our penchant for labeling people.
If you asked the average US citizen what the word left means to them politically, they’d like reply with the word communist. If pressed further, they’d likely point to the Soviet style communism under Stalin or the Chinese style under Mao.
The Chinese style is based roughly on the Soviet style and neither are true communisms as intended by Marx. In fact, the Bolsheviks who initiated the Stalinist style imprisoned true communists and socialists. Today, true socialists who are totally into democracy are labeled under the same left wing moniker as Russian-style communists.
The word socialist, which has been unfairly associated with Russian communism, was developed in democratic countries by workers who rebelled against the right wing company owners and prevailed. We are indebted to them for modern fair wages and conditions, pensions, universal medical coverage, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and womens’ rights.
Unless, of course, you have a beef with these institutions, left is actually a part of the government of Canada, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, to name a few. Even the US has left wing politics enshrined in its government.
What I don’t understand is the so-called connection between climate alarm and the Left. It has nothing to do with the Left, it is a movement of wacko environmentalists who have another agenda up their sleeves. There are as many right wingers who are alarmists as there are left wingers.
The left is political. Lefties think everything is political.
gbaikie…”The left is political. Lefties think everything is political”.
I’m as left as you can get without being a communist. I prefer to call it humanitarianism. I think AGW is nonsense and the same for GHE. I have no problem with capitalists making money as long as they behave and do it responsibly.
I’m afraid the average person on the street would not recognize a leftie if he/she encountered one.
You don’t think right-wingers are political? Then why do they spend so much time getting legislation passed to feather their nests and oppress everyone else?
” Gordon Robertson says:
November 9, 2017 at 12:37 AM
gbaikieThe left is political. Lefties think everything is political.
Im as left as you can get without being a communist.”
I don’t think you are lefty.
Is politics everything, for you?
If you do, then you are lefty.
Now, if deluded enough to believe Marxism is scientific and not pseudoscience, then I am sorry for you.
But as I said the left didn’t start due to Karl Marx, he was merely deluded preacher of it.
What I hear when you are as left as you get, is you proclaiming your faith in government- your government.
And you have bought the propaganda, how how much these idiots have done for you- they given you very food you eat, all praise the wonderful government.
Winston Churchill had different view of government, oh here’s one I haven’t heard before:
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
But wasn’t the one I was looking for, hmm:
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
-Thomas Paine
and:
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.
Margaret Thatcher
Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.
Ronald Reagan
More Reagan:
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Ronald Reagan
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomaspain100996.html
Hmm
“We so often hear the famous Churchill dictum on democracy:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. “
gbaikie…”Now, if deluded enough to believe Marxism is scientific and not pseudoscience, then I am sorry for you”.
I have no interest in Marx or in any of the sorry-assed regimes that have been passed off as communism. Believe it or not, I actually support the basis of capitalism with the provision there are controls on it to ensure the greedy don’t accumulate all the wealth and deprive the general public of a decent living.
Capitalism cannot function without workers yet the capitalists have proved over and over a disdain for the working class. They were forced into concessions with regard to wages, hours, and working conditions through workers willing to place life and limb on the line to get those concessions.
“I dont think you are lefty.
Is politics everything, for you?
If you do, then you are lefty”.
Economic systems like capitalism, socialism and communism are not about politics. The political system is imposed on top of the economics. Thus fur, all we have seen in this world are communist states run by politically corrupt entities. Here in Canada we have a blend of socialism and capitalism but the political party running it could be Conservative, Liberal, or pseudo-socialist.
I don’t know where you get the notion that left-wing means a political system. It is a reference to the side of the economic spectrum that favours benefits to the public rather than benefits to capitalists.
Our current Liberal Party maintains a bridge between left and right. On the one hand, they kiss butt to corporations, giving them enormous tax breaks and handouts, and on the other, they maintain socialist systems such as Medicare, pensions, and so on.
“What I hear when you are as left as you get, is you proclaiming your faith in government- your government”.
Ironically, I don’t support any of the parties in Canada. I think they are all corrupt in one form or another. The party who used to identify with socialism, the NDP, and who now call themselves Social Democrats, sold out long ago to small-c capitalism in a pathetic attempt to garner votes from the right.
They have also sold out to special interest groups like environmentalists. The NDP is currently in power in BC and Alberta and they are butting heads. The NDP in Alberta, a province dependent on oil, are supporting pipelines while the BC NDP, in bed with the Greens, are opposed.
I cannot support idiots like that who push this nonsense about AGW.
Recently, a Canadian newspaper referred to the environment minister as a Climate Barbie. That’s what she is, an airhead who believes everything about catastrophic climate change and preaches it.
I have no parties I can support in Canada, and if I was in the US, I definitely could not in good conscience support either the Republicans or the Democrats. All the same, I’m glad Trump won and that other Climate Barbie, Hillary Clinton lost.
My interest is in the human condition. I find it somewhat unbelievable that in this day and age people are still struggling to get by while others have accumulated most of the wealth.
— Gordon Robertson says:
November 9, 2017 at 4:39 PM
gbaikieNow, if deluded enough to believe Marxism is scientific and not pseudoscience, then I am sorry for you.
I have no interest in Marx or in any of the sorry-assed regimes that have been passed off as communism. Believe it or not, I actually support the basis of capitalism with the provision there are controls on it to ensure the greedy dont accumulate all the wealth and deprive the general public of a decent living.–
Ok let’s name them:
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#47bea0fa251c
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Amancio Ortega,
Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim Helu & family, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, David Koch, and Michael Bloomberg.
So these guys are rich billionaires and is wrong and something should be done about it, because they depriving the general public of a decent living?
Is that correct?
And do you also mean movie stars and sport stars?
How does a very good basketball player who gets paid a lot more money, depriving the general public of a decent living?
I should provided a list of Canadian billionaire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadians_by_net_worth
If those guys on the list gave say 95% of their wealth to Canadian government, would that be a good thing?
gbaikie…”So these guys are rich billionaires and is wrong and something should be done about it, because they depriving the general public of a decent living?
Is that correct?”
I have no problem under the current system of anyone being a billionaire. I think the system is wrong. I am not advocating over-throwing any system, I can only hope people will mature to the point where they will democratically vote for a better system.
The question is, will you be able to accept it if the citizens of the US unilaterally vote for a socialist state which decides to bring the billionaires and corporations under control and more evenly distribute wealth?
I am talking democracy and the wishes of the majority, unless if course, you are opposed to democracy.
Meantime, I won’t hold my breath that my vision will ever be implemented. If not, I’ll hold my nose and get along the best I can. I have no interest in a minority controlling the world as is the case at present.
gbaikie…”If those guys on the list gave say 95% of their wealth to Canadian government, would that be a good thing?”
I am not interested in bleeding someone to death via taxation. It was tried by myopic socialists in democratic governments and it forced people to live abroad and/or invest abroad.
People who are wealthy and those in corporations should pay their fair share of taxes and not receive handouts as incentives. One Canadian politician referred to those freeloaders as corporate welfare bums.
All that interests me is people acquiring the awareness to do things fairly in life so that all people prosper. Is that asking too much or are you one of those ideologues who thinks people who are poor are poor due to their own fault?
I am looking for an end to stupid, self-centred thought that stems back to feudal times. However, I realize such awareness must come naturally, there is no way to force it.
“If you asked the average US citizen what the word left means to them politically, theyd like reply with the word communist. If pressed further, theyd likely point to the Soviet style communism under Stalin or the Chinese style under Mao.”
Are saying Canadians know it refers the left side of French parliament- the guys who causes the Great Terror?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
gbaikie…”Are saying Canadians know it refers the left side of French parliament- the guys who causes the Great Terror?”
Socialism as we know it today in democratic countries was invented in democratic countries like Canada. Modern Canada has nothing to do with France. The French lost the battle to the British army on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec and most of them have never forgotten that. They are still fighting that battle to this day.
manfred…”As we all know and sadly recognise, the Leftist psychopathology that infects the MSM, no longer makes any attempt to conceal its role as the organ of globalist propaganda and spin-meister of eco-Marxist aspirations”.
You are coming across like an admirer of Goebbels. Are you aware that he killed his children before he and his wife committed suicide? He killed the children despite an offer from Albert Spier to look after them. That’s Nazis for you.
If you think the MSM supports socialist ideals, you should take a visit to Canada, a socialist nation, to see how they take every opportunity to skewer anything socialist.
Here in Vancouver, both of the daily newspapers openly support the right-wing candidate at election time and that is true for most newspapers in Canada. In the US, there are no left wing parties to support. If you think the Democrats are left wing you need a serious upgrade on your political labels.
The Democrats are about as right-wing as the Republicans, they just talk like they’re not. I call that political-correctness and I am glad Trump won to kick the politically-correct up their collective butts.
Gordon,
The DemoPublicans are two branches of the same party.
Both support more government and more taxes. The question is who gets paid to spend the money – hence the fights.
Trump is an actual outside who believes in freedom, capitalism and small government. No wonder there are so many who oppose him. His taking their candy, free ride, away.
What are you talking about?
You think the Trump administration, backed by law enforcement, tells the MSM what to say?
I was replying to Manfred’s comment upthread. I don’t know why it landed down here.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/11/trump-wrongly-blamed-for-destroying-sea-ice-satellite/?replytocom=271776#respond
Moving the stratospheric polar vortex towards Europe promises a very cold winter in North America.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-68.72,80.86,519
La Nia develops.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstweek_c.gif
…and develops…
Cold air from the north cools the eastern Pacific.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=namer×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
The satellites work as they should.
ren…”Cold air from the north cools the eastern Pacific”.
I am happy to report the cold air seems to have moved on for the time being. It was not that bad outside tonight in Vancouver area.
Of course, it could be back anytime.
“Polar vortex may unleash bitterly cold air, snow for northeastern US prior to Thanksgiving.”
https://accuweather.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/495a60f/2147483647/resize/590x/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faccuweather-bsp.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2Ff5%2F0fa36adb44228e785602c3c91d2a%2Fstatic-pv-storm-potential-nov-18-to-22.jpg
I invite you.
https://www.facebook.com/Sunclimate-719393721599910/
The jet stream over Kamchatka pushes the Arctic air over Canada.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php…
Sorry.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=alaska×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
Strong freezing rain are coming to Lake Michigan.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00946/0x5g5qu0gvqq.png
Polar vortex center is shifted to the east of the North Pole.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_o3mr_05_nh_f00.png
I didn’t know there is east from the pole. South to 90E maybe, but not east.
Compare the strength of the polar vortex in 2015 (high magnetic activity of the Sun) and in 2017 in October and November. You can see that this year the polar vortex is weak.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_UGRD_MEAN_ALL_NH_2015.png
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_UGRD_MEAN_ALL_NH_2017.png
” Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change
Republican-controlled Congress ordered destruction of vital sea-ice probe”
How do you monitor sea ice with a satellite and how does the data relate to climate change?
There has been no climate change related to anthropogenic gases since 1998 at least. The IPCC has confirmed 15 years of that claim from 1998 – 2012, calling that period a ‘warming hiatus’. UAH has confirmed another 3 years through 2015.
That’s 18 years with no significant global warmer, never mind catastrophic GW. If there has been no significant GW, how can there be any climate change, never mind catastophic climate change?
And why does Trump factor into the equation? Such a charge is nothing more than the Guardian and their uber-alarmist stance pathetically hitting out at Trump.
Very recently, Trump made an astounding claim, that we need to get involved with Russia. He actually has Putin talking sanely about the Ukraine.
Du-u-u-u-h!!! What’s wrong with the rest of the politically-correct idiots like Merkel of Germany, the idiotic May of the UK, and even our dandy, Trudeau of Canada? Why are they not reaching out to Russia to establish a dialog through which we might remove the threats of nuclear attacks from the planet?
Anyone who thinks climate change comes anywhere near to the reality of a nuclear attack needs a reality check. Yet, here we have Democrats in the US, along with McCarthyist Republicans like McCain, lining up to establish fake news about Russia and their involvement in the last US election.
I guess the pundits at the Guardian are far too stupid to get that.
Hi Gordon,
completely off-topic, but about your:
“Yet, here we have Democrats in the US, along with McCarthyist Republicans like McCain, lining up to establish fake news about Russia and their involvement in the last US election”
Being Italian, I’m completely missing what should have done the russians about the last US elections to impeach the president?
Have you an answer to that question?
Have a great day.
Massimo
Massimo,
If you couldn’t understand a word of American, you would not understand less of what you asked.
It is the hysteria of the left and, more exactly, the ‘elite’ ruling class and their relatives, who are threatened by the people finding someone to represent them, instead of the leftist, big government of the Bush/Clinton/Obama coalition. There is no impeachable offense – so far.
But, to encourage those, Even now, government is being reduced in reach and the cries of pain of those losing their position of power become louder and louder until finally, hopefully, they go out of our range of hearing.
lewis…”instead of the leftist, big government of the Bush/Clinton/Obama coalition”.
For one, Bush is a Republican while Clinton and Obama are Democrats. No coalition there.
For another, during the 8 years Clinton served as president, before Bush was president, he did absolutely nothing about climate change or global warming. His vice-president, Al Gore, was far more interested in finding Satanic messages in rock lyrics, with his wife Tipper, than doing anything about climate change.
No one could claim Bush is a left-winger and anyone claiming Clinton/Obama are left-wingers does not understand the meaning of left-winger. There is not much separating the Republicans and Democrats on the right side of the political spectrum.
The Dems are currently demonstrating their hysterical fear of Russia, a country that has been on the extreme left for much of the 20th century. Now that they have moved to the right, the Democrats want nothing to do with them.
I have no idea why socialists are being blamed for the current hysteria over climate change. This hysteria has no apparent political connection, being driven equally by leftists and right-wingers.
Here in BC, Canada, a carbon tax was introduced by an uber-right-wing government. It’s based on a reverse Robin Hood concept, where the wealthy steal from the poor. The collected taxes are handed over to a private, right-wing corporation with the idea of appeasing them for not emitting CO2.
Gordon,
The difference between R’s and D’s in not really very much. R’s certainly are, generally, more concerned with controlling certain social issues, while D’s are more concerned with paying certain groups of people to vote for them. But if you think there was some great difference between the Bushs, Clinton and Obama, you’re not really paying any attention.
Bush/karl Rove gave us Medicare Part D. a huge social giveaway, which saw the beginnings of the TEA Parties. But when R’s gain office, as they have now, the change is minimal. Notice, they haven’t been able to rid the nation of AbominationCare.
Further, if you look at the history of the national budget, it continues to grow, the debt continues to increase. You cannot discern which party was in control by any change in how much they spend.
On a local and, in some states, mine (North Carolina) the R’s actually have reduced the budgets some, enough to keep them balanced. But even there, the administrative state is still large, and few, if any bureaucrats lose their jobs under R administrations.
So, please, explain to me the difference. Trump is the difference.
He has brought on board people whom the administrative state and their sycophants in the press are afraid of. That, is unusual.
Obama, and his disdain for the Constitution and the unwillingness of the right and the press to call him on it, was unusual.
What will be different, long term after Trump, is the courts. His is putting people in place who actually WILL upload the limitations set on government by our constitution.
Who else has done so.
Clarence Thomas is an anomaly. We’re lucky to have him. Would that we had Bork beside him.
massimo…”Being Italian, Im completely missing what should have done the russians about the last US elections to impeach the president? Have you an answer to that question?”
Nothing should have been done, it’s fake news.
There is absolutely no way to trace a good hacker. It’s impossible, yet the US security forces are claiming they identified the hacker as being Russian.
That’s an outright lie. Trump actually nailed it the other day when he called US security forces ‘political hacks’.
Comey was recently head of the FBI and during the election campaign he waffled on charging Hillary Clinton with a blatant breach of US security. Under pressure, he was forced to acknowledge the breach and that acknowledgement did a lot to turn public opinion against Clinton. He should never have waffled in the first place, he should have charged her.
That lends credence to Trump’s claim that the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security are all political hacks who are affected by political parties.
The claims against the Russians are bogus. There is no way to trace a hacker since they route their communication through several proxy servers, equipment designed for the business world that strips the IP address off an incoming communication and replaces it with a random IP address.
Just going through one proxy server is nearly 99.9% efficient at disguising the sending IP but sending the comm through several proxy servers makes it 100% certain the sender cannot be found.
So, how did the FBI, CIA, or Homeland Security identify the sender? They did it using the nym of the sender, something like Georgio.
That makes the US security forces laughing stocks if they want us to believe such a pathetic attempt at identifying a hacker is real. Yet 99% of US politicians believe them.
A good hacker will ‘spoof’ his/her identity. That means they will attach someone else’s name (nym) to their communication. Either US security forces are blatantly naive or they are blatant liars. Take your pick.
Not only that, a hacker can spoof where he/she originated the comm. For all we know the hacker is in the US, maybe even at Democrat headquarters.
The Dems were hacked because their security was pathetic. The hacker gained entry with the oldest trick in the book, an email exploit. Anyone who knows the most basic of computer security knows not to activate a URL in an email but that’s exactly what one stupid Dem did. Can’t really say I blame him/her after their candidate broke security rules by have a secure email server in her home.
The Democrats have wasted an incredible amount of the US public’s time with this hysterical witch hunt featuring Russia. And it’s all about sour grapes, because Hillary and the Dems thought they were shoo-ins and got beaten by Trump.
Hi Gordon,
I agree with you that it’s not a question of “left” or “right”, I think all the “true politicians” fear Trump because he doesn’t follow their current “government standards”.
So, if I get it right it’s all about the supposed e-mail hacking at the Democratic Party. I didn’t get it was all about it.
I still don’t understand what the heck Trump should be blamed if eventually russians had revealed to the world those Dems e-mails.
Were those e-mail spoofed?
If they were not spoofed, that is if in those e-mail there was just what Dems did, why should that a scandal?
The contrary, if into those e-mails there were some bad Dems behaviour exposed, that should be the true scandal.
Where am I wrong?
Anyways, thank you for answer to my O/T question, I don’t want politicize this blog (I’m not an anarchic, but I really hate the current “political standards” so, I’m not sure I’ll vote at next Italian election day).
Have a great day.
Massimo
massimo…”I think all the true politicians fear Trump because he doesnt follow their current government standards…”
Exactly. I don’t support much of what Trump stands for politically but I do support his irreverence. He does not do what is expected and it has the media in a tizzy. They are behaving hysterically. I do support his stance on terrorism, Russian, and immigration. In fact, I don’t mind the way he is able to interact with world leaders like Putin and the leader of China.
He does lie and exaggerate but no more than past presidents. The difference is that he does it up front, like on Twitter. Past presidents like Nixon had to be exposed and when exposed, Nixon claimed “a lie is not always a lie”.
President Clinton, after being caught having sex with an employee in the White House Oval Office, an act that far exceeds anything Trump has ever thought of doing, denied it at first. He’s had affairs with several women and had to pay $800,000 in an out of court settlement with Paula Jones, for which he was impeached.
No one mentions that these days as he runs around earning millions giving talks. His wife, Hillary, stuck by him through his infidelity and blamed the women. I would not want someone like her running my country.
“If they were not spoofed, that is if in those e-mail there was just what Dems did, why should that a scandal?”
The focus is on interference by Russians in the US election. Nothing has been proved with regard to Russians interfering in the electronic polling, a means of voting by the Internet. The hacking of Democratic headquarters seems to be a minor issue.
I really don’t know what the fuss is about other than a sour grapes movement by the Democrats to cover up for their very unexpected loss. Blaming it on the Russians, however, is getting into serious sci-fi.
Hi Gordon,
even if you always stated that you are a socialist while and I’m very critic with socialism as a form of government because it focuses more on how to distribute the wellness (supposing that it was something due), instead of how to encourage the citizens to produce that wellness, I fully agree with you.
Thank you very much.
Have great day.
Massimo
massimo….”even if you always stated that you are a socialist while and Im very critic with socialism as a form of government because it focuses more on how to distribute the wellness (supposing that it was something due), instead of how to encourage the citizens to produce that wellness, I fully agree with you”.
First of all, I want to be clear that my reference to socialism is a socialism formed in democratic countries through civil disobedience. That’s what it had to come down to in order for ordinary workers to be heard and taken seriously.
I will admit that early socialist governments tended to be excessive in their zeal to tax the wealthy. And some workers took advantage with what you claim about feeling an entitlement. However, most socialists I have encountered were hard working people who simply wanted a better living than what their capitalists masters were willing to give them voluntarily.
Surely you don’t believe that it’s possible for all people in a society to produce ‘the wellness’. Where has that ever been done where the greedy have not found ways to marginalize the poor, or use them to make excessive profits? That still goes on today.
The general public does not set the rates for rents, housing, food, fuel, clothes, etc. Yet they are forced to pay at a rate for those amenities from a wage that is pathetically low.
Since the 60s and 70s, a family cannot get by with a single income. People are forced to put infants in daycare so a mother can go to work. I think that’s horribly wrong and it shows how badly working conditions have deteriorated under capitalist governments.
Until capitalists become more responsible and factor into wages and conditions the problems faced by people to survive, there’s no point in talking about a responsible society in which people look after themselves based on their own skills and ingenuity.
The deck is seriously stacked against them. As it stands in Canada, small grocery stores cannot compete with the corporate superstores. It’s virtually impossible for the average citizen to start his/her own business.
If they do, where will they get workers? In your society, everyone would be his own boss and there would be no workers.
We have to recognize the reality. We need workers but we have to be responsible and pay them fairly with fair working conditions. Who sets the grade for what is fair and what is not fair? Prior to the form of socialism in democratic countries, the capitalists owners set the conditions and they were generally pathetic conditions. At one point, children were sent to work.
On the other hand, when unions were formed, some workers allowed the power to go to their heads. We need something that fairly addresses the needs of both sides and that’s not happening. When you speak of entitlement, have you met a capitalist who does not feel an entitlement to maximize wages at the expense of workers?
Governments need to be involved, governments that represent both sides. Governments need to help create employment. Today, in Canada, the unemployment rate is listed around 7%. That’s a lie, it’s closer to double that figure because the governments omits many people from the unemployed rolls.statistics.
Once there is guaranteed full employment with fair wages and fair conditions, no one has a reason not to work. That’s not the way it is, however. The deck is seriously stacked in favour of employers and they can pick and choose who they like, paying them whatever they like.
Hi Gordon,
I agree with most you wrote, but I think we should define what capitalism it is and what it is not (and the same for socialism of course), but as said before I don’t want change the scopes of this blog.
Let me just tell you that I have many leftist friends, and most of them are exactly as you stated “hard working people who simply wanted a better living than what their capitalists masters were willing to give them voluntarily”, which I fully support.
I think you are a good man which I would be glad to have as a friend.
Have a great day.
Massimo
massimo…”I would be glad to have as a friend”.
Thanks, Massimo, good to have an Italian friend.
And good for me to have a Canadian friend too.
Have a great day.
Massimo
“We need a total, I might say, brainwashing”
Jerry (Brown in Bonn for climate discussions)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/jerry-brown-climate-rant-we-need-a-total-i-might-say-brainwashing/
jimc…”Its not just a light rinse, Brown said. We need a total, I might say, brainwashing. We need to wash our brains out and see a very different kind of world.”
From the article, a quote from Brown:
“Its not just a light rinse, Brown said. We need a total, I might say, brainwashing. We need to wash our brains out and see a very different kind of world.”
The mantra of climate alarmists, I might add. They see the world through distorted senses and they want to force the rest of us to do the same.
I am eternally thankful that I don’t live in Brown’s California with all the weirdness going on there. California takes weirdness to a new extreme.
sorry…jimc, you already quoted that.
sorry again, you didn’t post the entire quote. It was me pasting the quote from the article as if you had posted it already.
My weirdness.
Another wave of arctic air is approaching North Dakota.
http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00947/fyei1nc4hzrw.png
Today, or yesterday, a Trump representative at the climate talks was shouted down for defending coal-fired power plants.
Major hypocrisy.
Germany, which leads the way with such opposition to coal is heavily dependent on coal to supply power. Same with France. In other words, those shouting the Trump rep down are very likely dependent on coal.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/france-germany-turn-coal/
John Christy of UAH has laid out eloquent, logical reasoning for affordable fossil fuels. I think Roy subscribes to that reasoning as well, although I’d like to see him do an article on that. Essentially, John Christy claims that we as a species are living much longer, while being healthier, due to affordable fossil fuels.
The idiots shouting down Trump’s rep would likely be very happy with us freezing in the dark, to borrow and old expression from Alberta in Canada. They are completely removed from reality.
The best thing about this is that we can more easily dismiss the evidence as a plot by other countries to weaken the US as part of a UN power grab since our own satellites aren’t providing the data.
Index Nino 4 is the lowest in many months.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino4.png
ren…”Index Nino 4 is the lowest in many months”.
What does that mean, ren? Here is Canada, the weather people seem to be predicting a fairly strong La Nina.
Last December, we set records for cold here in Vancouver which extended well into January. Not looking forward to another December like that but last December was a weak LN. A stronger one might be more extreme.
Mind you, cold Decembers have never been the norm in Vancouver during my life here. I played soccer through nearly every December as a kid and a younger man. Very seldom were games canceled for cold weather or frozen fields.
In fact, they began closing the fields recently in December and January due to rain causing the grass to become water-logged. Playing sports on such fields tears them up badly.
I mainly come to this blog to get the monthly temperature update and I want to thank Dr. Spencer for providing this information.
If I may make a request. The comment threads are a mess. Alarmists and other resentful provocateurs hijack articles with inane troll trash.
Would it be possible to implement a comment voting system?
Please consider the idea seriously. Interesting comments could then become visible via simple sorting while imbecilic ones would automatically disappear without the need for any form of explicit admin intervention.
Thanks again.
I agree completely. Way too much trash in the comments here.
Doesn’t take long to sort out who’s sincere, and who’s just trying to be a disruptive troll. I don’t think voting would help. The same people voting would be the same ones commenting.
The number of trolls is ridiculously low. They are violent and have nothing better to do with their lives (e.g., Mickey Prumt) so they impose themselves artificially. That’s about it. Look at the top comment. It has zero content. It’s just a provocation from a person with manifest mental problems.
If comments had scores, they would not be able to up-vote themselves. This is not conjecture. Take a look at any website with a voting system. The only problem is that it can create echo-chambers. But even that would be huge improvement over the current situation.
Laura…it has been apparent for some time that this site has been invaded by alarmists trolls. They not only disrupt as you have claimed, some have actually tried to set themselves up as knowledgeable authority figures. Recently, one suggested they should not reply to certain skeptics.
That’s a hoot. Alarmists invade a site devoted to extreme global warming/climate change skepticism, as guests, and try to run the show.
I have no doubt that some are from organized groups trying to disrupt skeptical comment. As you say, some reply to almost every comment from skeptics with inane, banal commentary.
Great idea Laura, a simple ‘Like’ button would do.
A voting system like stackoverflow would be heaven, e.g.:
https://tinyurl.com/yd45bck6
Your troll classification is the wrong way around, but I agree Mickey Prumt does not suffer fools gladly.
Read Prumt’s comment at the very top. It is the 1st one. He is trolling. There is absolutely no defense for it. None.
No argument from me on that one.
Laura…”Would it be possible to implement a comment voting system?”
I have seen such systems in the past and they are open to abuse. For one, trolls can invite friends to bias the voting. For another, commenters can sign in using bogus nyms and influence the voting with multiple votes. I saw one guy run votes up over 2000 on a thread when the average vote was around 200.
Here’s a site with voting, take a look:
https://tinyurl.com/y7rfwhzj
Gordon, the top rated answer is from a guy called ‘DavePhd’.
Some issues finish with:
“Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site”.
The abuse you mention requires a kind of commitment that only deranged people such as Mickey Prumt can muster. In other words, 600 trolls might disrupt a post now and then but not every one of them. Only deeply disturbed people need to impose on others that narcissistic level of attention every single day.
As an experiment, please post the list of resident alarmists, the ones that systematically “comment”. Post the names and let’s count them.
New research on Arctic. Antarctic. and Greenland ice mass.just found this from the European Geosciences Union. http://www.the-cryosphere.net.its typically long winded.but worth a read if you have the time
Ian…your link is bad. It appears there should be something other than .its after net. Normally a URL terminates with com/, org/, net/, etc, not with another dot.
Ian….removing the .i from .its and replacing with / gives this: http://www.the-cryosphere.net/ts . That link leads to a page at The Cryosphere but it’s listed only as volume numbers. You will need to supply more info on the paper title.
Ian…or give a volume and issue number.
Hello Gordon Same page.click on discussion forum.top right.
Gordon.from I can make out they seam to be suggesting no change in Arctic sea ice since 1900.and no great change in Greenland glaciers since 1600.just started looking at the antarctic report.so farit flies in the face of what we are led to believe
Ian…”so farit flies in the face of what we are led to believe”
People have been lead to believe that Arctic sea ice is disappearing all year round due to a trace gas in the atmosphere. That is physically impossible.
The Arctic is devoid of sunlight for several months of the year and seriously limited sunlight for several more months. No amount of CO2 can warm such an environment.
The melting, if any, comes during a brief window in the Arctic summer of about 1 month. It has already been proved that ocean circulation in the Arctic is conveying sea ice into the warmer Atlantic and that is more likely to happen in the very brief Arctic summer. The rest of the year, the Arctic is covered by ice up to 10 feet thick.
Any warming in the Arctic has been very localized and those locales move around month to month. No one has any idea why the Arctic has warmed in certain sporadic locales. The phenomenon could be explained far better as anomalies in ocean temperature.
Increased CO2 can cause cooling in the Antarctic.
IR loss to space is determined by how deep into the atmosphere you can see.
If you look down a CO2 a.b.s.o.r.p.t.i.o.n line you see a high and cold layer of the atmosphere.
If you look down a transparent band you see the warm surface.
In Antarctica, the surface can be colder than the atmosphere, in which case more GHGs can increase radiation to space and thus cause cooling.
We don’t need citations do we Gordon?
svante…”Increased CO2 can cause cooling in the Antarctic”
At the same time it is causing warming in the Arctic and no warming in the Tropics??? Pretty magical stuff that, I’d bottle it and sell it.
Yes, better bottle and sequester.
Gordon, here’s a reference anyway:
https://tinyurl.com/yag9hqwp
Was it helpful to think of the visibility depth as seen from space in order to understand the GHE?
It is the temperature of the layer you see from space that determines the IR radiation intensity to space.
svante…”Was it helpful to think of the visibility depth as seen from space in order to understand the GHE?”
No. The CO2 spectrum is over-lapped by the water vapour spectrum. There is no way to separate CO2 out of the mix.
Furthermore, you need to assess exactly what you are seeing when you measure IR from the surface. What you see is not always what you get when measuring IR. I simply don’t trust the conclusions reached by those measuring IR emissions from the surface. Some of the graphics come from the 1960s and they are not direct satellite photos, they are personal renditions of various scientists.
I think a far more helpful visualization is to compare the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere to the combined mass of nitrogen and oxygen. Only then does it become apparent that anthropogenic CO2 could not possibly contribute more than a few hundredths of a degree C to atmospheric warming.
Climate model theory has mislead us into thinking surface radiation is an important factor in atmospheric warming. I feel that atmospheric warming is due primarily to direct heat conduction from the surface and evapouration from the oceans and groundwater. I think surface radiation is a minor player.
Use the satellite measured spectrums if you think surface measurements are difficult.
CO2 is well mixed to the top of the atmosphere. H20 condenses and falls out at lower altitudes, so H20 is increasingly obscured if you add CO2.
Think of the view from space, what you see depends on opaqueness for each frequency, it has little to do with mass.
Water has great mass but is quite transparent. Add ink and your view becomes shallow.
You are probably right about convection and evaporation in the lower parts of the troposphere, but they stop at higher altitudes. The deciding factor is the temperature that is visible from space, i.e. which layer you see.
svante…”Think of the view from space, what you see depends on opaqueness for each frequency, it has little to do with mass”.
Do you know anything about basic chemistry and gases? The atmosphere is no different than an ordinary container of gas in a laboratory in many ways. It has added turbulence and convection we call weather and the underlying gas is stratified vertically by gravity.
Overall, neither the turbulence nor the convection affect the pressure-temperature relationship. Pressure is directly proportional to mass in a constant volume system like the atmosphere but the mass too is constant. So is temperature, and in our atmosphere, except for local perturbations caused by rising air due to surface heating, and the pressure gradient effect due to gravity, the volume of atmospheric gas is no different than nitrogen, oxygen, argon, CO2 and other minor gases mixed together in a lab container.
According to Dalton, when gases are mixed in a container the overall pressure is the sum of the pressures of individual gases. The pressures of individual gases is proportional to individual masses. The overall temperature is proportional to individual pressures and masses (Ideal Gas Law).
Mass is everything and when N2/O2 accounts for nearly 99% of the mass and ALL CO2 only 0.04% of the atmospheric mass, one would expect the heat contributed by each to be in proportion. ACO2 is only about 0.001% of atmospheric mass based on 390 ppmv (IPCC).
400 ppmv means there are 400 CO2 molecules per million molecules of air. That breaks down to 1 CO2 molecule per 10,000 molecules of air. If 1 molecule of CO2 warms, and I know it’s absurd to consider 1 molecule, what contribution will that molecule have to warming the surrounding 10,000 molecules?
It has to warm by collision, after one collision it is dead, no longer contributing heat.
We are asked to believe that CO2 molecules at altitude are all absorbing surface radiation and that after absorp-tion, they are able to back-radiate IR that is absorbed by the surface, raising the surface temperature to a higher temperature than what it is heated by solar energy. If you believe that, I have a dandy bridge in my home city that might interest you. I can let you have it cheap.
I have posted the effect of the inverse square law on radiation several times. If you have a heated 1500 watt ring glowing red hot on an electric stove, you cannot even feel the effect of radiation 5 feet away. How high in altitude would you expect 240 W/m^2 to be effective after radiation from the surface?
It’s highly unlikely that surface radiation is effective at heating CO2 any more than a few feet above the surface.
Ignore all that for a moment, and concentrate on the view from space.
Fill the atmosphere with black smoke so you can’t see the surface. Now the radiation depends on the temperature of layer you see from space. It has nothing to do with mass.
Your glowing heater is a point source.
Fill your floor with them to simulate a surface.
I think you get 240 W/m at around 5000 m on average, but it varies by frequency due to GHGs.
Svante
If I understand correctly, the upper atmosphere over parts of Antarctica is losing heat to the surface. More CO2 means more downward moving energy would be trapped and radiated back upward, never reaching the ground. This would slow the upper atmosphere’s rate of heat loss to the surface and consequently slow the surface’s rate of heat gain from the atmosphere.
It’s weird isn’t it?
CO2 makes the upper atmosphere shed more energy to space, “which cools the Earth-atmosphere system”.
Seen from space you get a CO2 peak instead of a spectrum dip, so the system has to lose.
Here’s the full paper:
https://tinyurl.com/yauzn5f2
Svante
Yeah, really weird. I had to think upside down to try and make sense of it. Where does the heat come from that replaces the energy going to space?
Not from below, obviously not from above. Must be winds from elsewhere?
svante…”Fill the atmosphere with black smoke so you cant see the surface. Now the radiation depends on the temperature of layer you see from space. It has nothing to do with mass”.
Ignore the chemistry we know and follow a thought experiment??? No thanks.
If you fill the atmosphere with smoke, you block solar energy. With no solar energy then I agree that mass becomes irrelevant with temperatures near absolute zero.
However, temperatures are not near 0K and solar energy is heating the surface, which converts solar energy to long wave IR. If CO2 is not absorbing incoming solar, which I think is unlikely, then it’s main source is surface IR. After absorbing surface IR it warms and you are claiming CO2, with a mass percent close to 0.04% of the atmosphere should be able to heat it significantly.
I say bullfeathers. Mass is far more significant than the musing of those observing from IR space. For all we know, the anomalies in the long wave spectrum could be due to anomalies in surface radiation.
Have you considered that? The surface may not be radiating evenly.
Gordon, the inside of a sphere can not stay colder than its surface, so it will not equilibrate at 0 K.
svante…”Gordon, the inside of a sphere can not stay colder than its surface, so it will not equilibrate at 0 K”.
It’s apparent you have no intention of replying intelligently to the points I am making. That’s twice you have replied with an answer that has nothing to do with the point in question.
Gordon, I must admit I cant’t keep up with you.
It gets out of hand when I say one thing and you respond with ten.
If I respond to all there is a hundred points in the next round.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
The solution is divide and conquer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer_algorithm
That’s way I want to do one thing at a time.
I do want to address all of your points ultimately.
svante…”Gordon, I must admit I cantt keep up with you.
It gets out of hand when I say one thing and you respond with ten.”
The point we were discussing, I thought, was whether the mass of CO2 in the atmopshere was significant. You thought not and kept pointing me to the fictitious atmospheric window.
I supplied yo with in-depth reasoning as to why mass is significant and you ignored it. Rather you veered off in a different direction.
I explained using Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures and the Ideal Gas equation, but norman, being scientifically illiterate, suggested I know nothing about chemistry. He pointed me to a link that used Dalton and the Ideal Gas Law. There’s no pleasing some people.
Gordon,
1) Mix a hot and cold gas and you get something in between.
2) So if CO2 absorbs energy it will share it.
3) So the mass of CO2 is not relevant, only its energy gain.
svante…”Gordon,
1) Mix a hot and cold gas and you get something in between.
2) So if CO2 absorbs energy it will share it.
3) So the mass of CO2 is not relevant, only its energy gain”.
1 CO2 atom per 10,000 atoms of N2/O2. How much can it share?
If the N2/O2 surrounding the 1 in 10,000 CO2 molecules are already at an equivalent temperature to the surface nothing will be shared.
This is a complex problem made stupid-simple by charlatans trying to peddle the AGW theory, which cannot pass the scientific method.
You can not have two well mixed gases at different temperature, so it will share all the energy that it captures.
So the question becomes how much does it capture? That has been theorised, calculated, measured in the lab, from space, and from the ground.
Charlatans say the effect must be low because the percentage is low, which is no argument at all.
svante…from your link…
First thing to note is this citation: “several ideas have been discussed describing the lack of warming of central Antarctica [Chapman and Walsh, 2007; Steig et al., 2009; Thompson et al., 2011; Langematz et al., 2003; Shindell and Schmidt, 2004; Shine and Forster, 1999]”
Reads like a who’s who of uber-climate alarmists, those responsible for the pseudo-science behind AGW.
There’s Steig and Schmidt. Steig did a study of Antarctica with Schmid’s buddy Michael Mann. Both Mann and Schmidt run the uber-alarmist site realclimate and of course, Schmidt is head of NASA GISS.
Steig and Mann claimed there had been warming in Antarctica since 1950. Turned out they generously extrapolated warming in the Antarctic Peninsula to all of Antarctica. One station they sited was under 4 feet of snow.
Next…”The global warming observed is to a large extent caused by anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2013]. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) act on the climate by absorbing terrestrial surface radiation and provoking long-wave (LW) emission from the atmosphere. This is radiated in two directions, back toward the surface and out into space. Generally, the surface is warmer than the atmosphere. Thus, radiation emitted from the surface through the atmospheric window is higher compared to radiation from the stratosphere”.
Scientific idiocy. First of all, how do GHGs ‘act on the climate’? What is ‘the climate’? There is no such thing AFAIK other than a gross generalization to all long term weather.
Not a word about heat transfer, I guess that is presumed.
Secondly, what has CO2 absorp-t-ion got to do with surface emissions as far as heat is concerned? So…CO2 absorbs a tiny amount of surface radiation and re-emits it. What’s the point? What happens to the surface emissions CO2 cannot absorb?
Then they get into some horrible math trying to establish the fictitious GHE, because they cannot prove it using the scientific method.
All in all, another sci-fi paper.
They prove it with measurements too.
It works exactly like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-layer_insulation
Svante
Great link!
The MLI link came from Nate, it has stopped three “cold can not warm hot” threads so far.
svante…you cannot rely on wiki articles. You or I could submit an article today and it would stand as submitted till challenged.
At your link, it claims: “…imagine a square meter of a surface in outer space, held at a fixed temperature of 300 K, with an emissivity of 1, facing away from the sun or other heat sources. From the StefanBoltzmann law, this surface will radiate 460 W….”
That is simply not true in general in our atmosphere. They have obviously used 300K as one temperature and absolute zero as the other temperature. Under those conditions it is true that the body will emit 460 w/m^2 but what does that have to do with what we are discussing?
I am talking about a trace gas in the atmosphere and why it cannot possibly contribute the 9 to 25% of warming claimed by climate alarmist scientists who are mainly modelers.
The only real way to do this is to calculate the absorp-tion per molecule of CO2, multiply by the total number of molecules in the atmosphere, based on the mass of CO2, then compare that to the total radiation emitted by the surface.
I have not bothered to do that since it is blatantly obvious that the trace amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, based on it’s mass, could not possibly absorb more than a fraction of 1% of the total surface radiation.
Why are you talking about atmospheric windows when the solution to the problem is right in front of you? Problem is, if you do the calculation above, can your calculator handle the enormous numbers? Avogadro’s number alone indicates 6.022 x 10^23 molecules of CO2 per mole.
Can you not grasp what I’m getting at? There are simply not enough atoms of CO2 to make a significant absorp-tion of surface radiation. I have yet to see one calculation done, modelers simply grab a number out of a hat without verifying the truth in their claims.
Gordon Robertson
I have already done the math for you on another thread and there is plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all the IR in the 15 micron band. You ignored it completely.
The IR emitted at the TOA in the 15 micron band that satellites record is from colder CO2 at higher levels of the atmosphere. All the warm surface IR emitted at 15 microns is absorbed long before it reaches the TOA.
In my calculation I showed that 1000 meters of path length is plenty of distance for CO2 to absorb all the 15 micron IR emitted from the surface.
You are wrong with your posts and mindless assertions. You have zero Chemistry background and show it with many of your posts, primarily the ones where you say Mid-IR is generated by electron transitions. So wrong it almost makes me ill. You have been informed so many times of your errors it is not funny and you have been provided links to correct your blatant Stupidity on this issue. You are one brain dead zombie trying to eat the brains of others for you nourishment.
Gordon Robertson
I guess I will attempt again to show you how much CO2 there actually is in air. You have listened too long to the buffoons and their trace gas BS that now you believe them without question. So obsessed are you with a belief that CO2 cannot affect Earth’s temperature that you fall for any garbage these goofballs throw your way. Don’t eat that crap food but look for better food to energize you brain with. Joseph Postma and Claes Johnson are crackpot lunatics off the deep end in delusional thought process. Don’t be like them.
Use this calculator.
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/other/converters/e_of_photon
If you make all the photons 15 microns (not reality but demonstrations only) you will get that a surface flux of 390 W/m^2 will give you 2.946×10^22 15 micron photons/sec if all the energy were 15 microns.
In the air you have 1.08×10^22 CO2 molecules/m^3 of air (at 400 PPM CO2)
Source material for this value, please take the time to look at it.
https://books.google.com/books?id=tuEhAUr92SgC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=carbon+dioxide+molecules+in+cubic+meter+of+air&source=bl&ots=o3fxmldLEa&sig=MujE45R6427FeYXhm9HgDJwpzB0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-sreb2NbXAhXm5IMKHc2sDZsQ6AEIYDAJ#v=onepage&q=carbon%20dioxide%20molecules%20in%20cubic%20meter%20of%20air&f=false
A couple meters of air has enough CO2 to absorb all the photons of the surface even if all were 15 microns. The actual amount of photons absorbed is much more complex math but this should finally convince you that there is plenty of CO2 to absorb IR. The nitwits that steer you to this phony and false impression that there just isn’t enough CO2 are blithering morons. Don’t listen to these types of low thinking caveman (Joseph Postma is one low thinking caveman)
norman…”I guess I will attempt again to show you how much CO2 there actually is in air. You have listened too long to the buffoons and their trace gas BS that now you believe them without question. So obsessed are you with a belief that CO2 cannot affect Earths temperature that you fall for any garbage these goofballs throw your way”.
Those ‘buffoons’ were the IPCC. That’s my source.
It’s known that all CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere and the IPCC admits ACO2 is only a small fraction of that amount based on 390 ppmv. The actual percentage is about 4%, making ACO2 about 0.001% of the atmosphere.
As far as your calculations showing CO2 capable of absorbing all surface radiation, you’re full of crap.
norman…”If you make all the photons 15 microns (not reality but demonstrations only) you will get that a surface flux of 390 W/m^2 will give you 2.94610^22 15 micron photons/sec if all the energy were 15 microns”.
I said you were full of crap for this statement. How did you derive a one-to-one relationship between the number of photons emitted by a square metre of the surface and the number of CO2 molecules in a cubic metre of air.
The calculator at your link says nothing about the number of photons.
Thinks of it this way. The surface is far more dense than the atmosphere. I don’t like the notion of photons, but I’ll humour you. If each electron in a surface atom is emitting a photon targeted at an atmospheric CO2 molecule, which in reality is absurd, how many atoms on the surface are emitting photons?
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/RBSP9.pdf
Note that they only use nitrogen and oxygen when computing air density.
norman…”I have already done the math for you on another thread and there is plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all the IR in the 15 micron band. You ignored it completely”.
I did not ignore it, I did not see it.
“You are wrong with your posts and mindless assertions. You have zero Chemistry background and show it with many of your posts, primarily the ones where you say Mid-IR is generated by electron transitions. So wrong it almost makes me ill. You have been informed so many times of your errors it is not funny and you have been provided links to correct your blatant Stupidity on this issue. You are one brain dead zombie trying to eat the brains of others for you nourishment”.
Now do you understand why I did not see it? Anyone who wastes a paragraph ad homming another poster is not only a dickhead, he has an emotional problem. You have failed to prove your competency in science, why would I listen to you?
Tell me norman, what else could emit Mid-IR EM? In atoms and molecules there are only protons, neutrons, and electrons. Neutrons have a neutral charge and they are bound to protons in the nucleus. The nucleus does not radiate, which leaves electrons.
Go figure it out norman, I’m sure one day the light will go on. If you are right, we will have to stop doing electronics, communications, and every other science involving electrons. The photoelectric theories of Einstein will be wrong.
Gordon Robertson
Electron transitions generate UV, visible and Near-IR light. NOT Mid-IR. The whole atom, with a slight charge from imbalance (the protons also contribute with a positive charge) vibrates. The electrons do not transition in Mid-IR productiion. The energy is far too low for this.
You have been linked to several science sites explaining this by many people. This is the reason you people get annoyed with you and respond with the attacks. They are trying to break through that wall of delusion but nothing seems able to penetrate it.
When you intentionally will not research the topic and post your nonsense over and over (which is wrong and unscientific) why would you not expect someone to call you stupid? If you show you are unwilling to even try to learn and correct your stupid and wrong assumptions why would you expect praise and adoration from anyone.
I highly dislike your intentional unscientific posts and you make skeptics look like morons. I am not the alarmist you think I am but I do like science and when I see you made up version I want to correct it. When you ignore all corrections and continue to post your stupidity it is upsetting to the rational minds out there. So far all the skeptics seem to be not just rejecting an alarmist position on Climate Change (as does Dr. Spencer) but just outright denial of established science. Things that are known, math that works well, ideas that are applied to real world technology. You reject it all and post your foolish and ignorant physics that is largely made up.
Norman
The fact that Gordon believes this is about Chemistry instead of Physics shows how little HE understands this material.
He sounds like someone who has never undergone a university Physics course, instead getting his patchy Physics “knowledge” from Google.
norman…”Electron transitions generate UV, visible and Near-IR light. NOT Mid-IR”.
According to you, mid-IR is not EM. All EM is generated by electron energy level transitions. The generated photon has an intensity and frequency based on the energy level difference through which the electron fell while generating the EM.
It’s very simply in reality, norman. As far as we know, there are only 2 charge carrying particles in an atom, protons and electrons. The charge difference attracts the electrons to the protons and explains atomic bonding. It also partly explains why electrons orbit the nucleus.
Theoretically, the electron should spiral into the nucleus, promoting Bohr to hypothesize that electrons must exist in specific energy bands around the nucleus, for whatever reason. That’s all we have to go on, a model.
Since electrons are the only charge carry particle with a magnetic field that is free to move, it is the only particle that can radiate EM…of any frequency or wavelength.
What else is their in an atom that can generate EM? Remember, a molecule is nothing more than two or more atoms bonded together…by electrons.
When EM is absorbed in the photoelectric effect, what is affected…electrons. Although protons are equally important, it is the electron that emits all EM in the universe.
If you have a better explanation, let’s hear it. We can leave Des to his ad homs since that’s all he has.
As for all those rocket-scientists on the Net who claim it is the CO2 molecule absorbing and emitting IR, let them explain where the EM is absorbed and emitted. They seem to think there is a mysterious mechanism in a molecule can can absorb/emit EM.
norman…has it not occurred to you that EM is electromagnetic energy? IR is EM, it consists of an electric field perpendicular to a magnetic field.
What could produce such fields? An electron carries an electric charge with a magnetic field. It’s the only source of an electric and magnetic field.
The proton is bound to the nucleus and cannot change energy levels. What else can produce EM?
Gordon Robertson
First I have not said CO2 will absorb all IR emitted by the surface. It will absorb the IR around the 15 micron band.
Here is a way for you to think of this in a more real world way that should help you understand what is going on.
CO2 makes up about 400 molecules/million of other molecules in air.
Take a 1 m^2 sheet and divide it into 1 million square millimeters. On this transparent sheet (about 1 millimeter thick) 400 random squares are totally darkened so light will not get through.
You shine a bright light behind this sheet and look through. The 400 darkened squares will not make much difference in the amount of light you will see shining through this sheet vs a sheet without any filled spots. I think this is where you are thinking and limiting your understanding. You seem to neglect the 3 dimensional aspect of the atmosphere, the number of radiating molecules at the Earth’s surface is limited to a few microns below the surface, but the CO2 molecules in the atmosphere can extend miles above the surface.
Now just keep adding thin sheets of transparent material with 400 random dark spots on each on. The sheets are 1 millimeter wide so in a meter you will have 1000 sheets. This means the potential for 400,000 of one million open spots will now be covered. You will have some overlap because the dark squares are randomly distributed but after a few meters of sheets you will not see the light anymore, each sheet only covers 400 of a million squares but the 3D nature of it will soon cover all the possible transparent squares. Does that make sense to you?
Gordon Robertson
Atoms within some molecules have charge imbalance. If you understood the mechanism it explains why N2 and O2 emit insignificant amounts of IR. The atoms in the molecules have zero charge imbalance. The vibrations of the individual atoms in these molecules does not produce an acceleration of charge to produce emission of EMR.
The whole atom of some molecules has a slight negative charge and the other atom or atoms have positive charge. Oxygen pulls on electrons stronger than Hydrogen or Carbon. So the Oxygen atom ends up with a slight negative charge (the electrons are all remaining in their stable energy levels, they do not need to transition to produce Mid-Range IR) and the other atoms have a slight positive charge…THE WHOLE ATOM.
When energy is absorbed by H2O or CO2 the atoms of the molecules go through different vibrational modes. The atoms might oscillate closer and farther away (one vibrational mode). The positive hydrogen atoms in the water molecule are moving back and forth and if they absorb energy they will move to a higher vibrational state, moving back and forth at a faster rate. They emit an IR photon and go back to a ground state of oscillation which does not produce any IR.
This is one of many videos available to help you understand what molecular vibrations are all about. Note, electrons are not transitioning in energy levels for these effects.
The scientists involved are so good at what they do they can match the different vibrations with the spectrum. Good stuff for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy-8rguvGnM
Gordon Robertson
This 6 second video shows the different vibrational modes of Carbon Dioxide molecule (whole atom movement within the molecule…no electron transitions) and the associated wave number that goes with the vibrational mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5gimZlFY6I
Gordon Robertson
Here is a good video on electron transitions and how the radiant energy created from the transitions. They do mention IR but this is near-IR not Mid-IR. Near-IR is just below visible red light and at much higher energy. The Mid-IR of Carbon Dioxide is much lower energy level. The electrical field is much weaker than that produced within and atom with electron transitions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DBYFtyX0dA
norman…”(whole atom movement within the moleculeno electron transitions)…”
Norman….what will it take to get it into your head that molecules are two or more atoms BONDED together by electrons, or the charges created by electrons?
Molecules don’t exist other than by definition. Molecules are aggregations of atoms. Atoms are aggregations of electrons and protons in which only the electrons can take part in bonding.
EM from molecules is all about electron transitions. Nothing else can produce EM but an electron. Electrons have both the electric charge and the magnetic field required to producer EM. EM is electrical + magnetic energy.
norman…A CO2 molecule is nothing more than a carbon atom bonded to two oxygen atoms. The bonds ARE created by electrons. The vibrations referred to are in the bonds, meaning the electrons are creating them in the bonds. When a CO2 molecule absorbs EM, it’s the electrons in the bonds doing the absor.bing.
norman…”Atoms within some molecules have charge imbalance. If you understood the mechanism it explains why N2 and O2 emit insignificant amounts of IR. The atoms in the molecules have zero charge imbalance”.
There are different types of charge imbalances, as you put it. The basic one is in an ion, where there is an extra electron or an electron is missing.
Take salt, NaCl. The sodium atom has an extra electron and the chlorine atoms lacks an electron to make it’s outer shell complete. When they come together, the sodium atoms is said to donate an electron to the chlorine atom and the chlorine to accept an electron from the sodium. That leaves the sodium with a positive charge (+ve ion) and gives the chlorine a negative charge (-ve ion). The charge difference, or imbalance, bonds them together.
The charge imbalance is due to electrons.
Molecular shapes are due difference in positive and negative charges. The arrangement of electrons in the bonds in certain molecules causes the negative charges to be less or more positive. The term positive does not necessarily mean pure positive as in a proton’s charge. It can refer to negative charges where one charge is more negative than the other hence more positive.
Like charges repel each other while opposing charges attract each other. The charge difference enables different shapes in different molecules.
The CO2 atom has a linear structure with a carbon atom between two oxygen atoms. However, the linearity can be tilted away from linear slightly due to an increased energy in the electrons forming the bonds. That can result in a vibration.
The electrons in the CO2 bonds are still free to absorb and emit EM. In fact, that’s the only way the molecule can absorb or emit EM. There is nothing else in the molecule capable of doing that.
Gordon, do you mean this:
https://tinyurl.com/yctohmn8
svante….not really, although the article is interesting. They are talking about molecules as macroscopic entities without referencing the bonds between atoms as electrons. If you read a book on organic chemistry where molecules are prevalent, they go into electron theory quite deeply.
Molecular bonding theory was developed largely on electron probability clouds. Those are geometrical shapes representing the probability of finding a bonding electron in that vicinity. The shapes change markedly between certain molecules.
That’s where I learned much of my theory on this subject, taking a course in organic chemistry and learning how the shapes of various molecules were formed. Even though I think quantum theory can be obscure, this aspect of it is well-documented and makes good sense.
That’s what Norman is doing, he’s talking about molecules as if they are not made up of electrons and protons. You cannot separate molecules into entities that vibrate on their own, the vibrational modes are related to the interactions of electron-electron and electron-proton. Like charges repel while unlike charges attract, resulting in vibrations as the forces interact.
In two atom molecule, the positively charged nucleii repel each other. However, the much relatively smaller electron has an equal charge to the proton albeit negative. The electrons bonds the atoms together and the on-going tension of a +ve – +ve repulsion combined with a -ve – +ve attraction sets up vibration.
Incidently, Clausius claimed that vibrations is work and that heat and work are interchangeable, even though they don’t have the same parameters.
In the article, they refer to the CO2 dipole changing. What makes it change? It’s the electrons in the bonds. If electrons absorb/emit energy it changes the parameters in the bonds.
Yes Gordon,
more info on the three ways to absorb (electronic, vibrational and rotational) here:
https://tinyurl.com/yblxmoj6
svante…thanks for link….interesting stuff.
I am starting a new thread, look for it below. I have a lengthy reply that may be of interest but I can’t get WordPress to accept it. I need to break it into smaller chunks and this thread is way too long to accommodate that.
OK, good idea.
Maybe it’s better to use the satellite data?
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zu_nh.gif
Some interesting newspaper articles.The Sydney Morning Herald.Jan 13 1939.ice retreating in the Arctic. Harrisburg Sunday Courier Dec 13 1939 Greenland Ice melt. The Canberra Times.May 31st 1947.temp rise in the Arctic.Region. The Cairns Post Feb 18 1952. Polar Ice Thaw Increases.if you access these Australian newspaper archives. They seam to suggest concerns over rising temperature’s in the Greenland and Polar regions.yet there is no sign of it in NASA or NOA graphs
Ice in Greenland will not disappear.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_nh.gif
Extremely high pressure above Greenland.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-59.24,65.89,786/loc=-40.243,72.505
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-59.24,65.89,786/loc=-39.082,70.820
Here’s a tidbit for you guys.
“”Climate change caused by humans is creating rapid ice melt in volcanically active regions,” Graeme Swindles, lead author and earth system dynamics professor at University of Leeds, said in a statement. “In Iceland, this has put us on a path to more frequent volcanic eruptions.”
From:https://www.yahoo.com/news/iceland-apos-frozen-volcanoes-waking-155405858.html
Not much ice in Bali.I think that nocks that one one the head.
lewis…”Climate change caused by humans is creating rapid ice melt in volcanically active regions,”
I am getting tired of hearing about fictitious climate change when there has been little or no global warming since 1979, as reported by UAH. Even the IPCC admitted a global warming hiatus between 1998 and 2012 (15 years).
Nothing against you Lewis, just the claim in your post.
Oh, I agree. I just thought it humorless that they’re claiming volcanic eruptions are due to melting ice. Really?! Why don’t we have any volcanoes in the Midwest then? Is that the reason for Crater Lake?
etc.
Hope you all had a nice filling Thanksgiving – without interference from the PC police.
This timelapse was shot on 25.11.2017 in Amed, East Bali. Around the time of 17:30 just before sunset. It was cloudy around Gunung Agung all day and this was the only window of opportunity to shoot a video to see what’s the activity as of right now.
https://youtu.be/hTIMWIPwsPg
The geomagnetic storm 21.11.2017
https://scontent-frx5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/23843339_740473876158561_6690807390323052989_n.png?oh=cfab76b383f30ef37175c2e102a493e0&oe=5A93E651
Agung volcano eruption on 21.11.2017.
On December 4, a sudden jump in geomagnetic activity is anticipated.
Based on the visual and instrumental analysis, it can be concluded that the volcanic activity of Mt. Agung is now at a very high level, so that the probability of greater eruption is increasing.
Polar vortex in the lower stratosphere is divided into three centers. The polar vortex is weak and the arctic air will flow south.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z100_nh_f00.png
You’re the problem with the left. Liberals used to have common sense, and the ability to rationalize. Now, liberals no longer exist. This group of people was taking over by a new group, a group of NAZI sympathizers called the “alt-left”.
Facts don’t interest you. Free speech doesn’t interest you. Individual expression doesn’t interest you.
What does interest you is lies, disinformation, and propaganda. You meet differing opinions with slander, lies, and violence.
Democrats are the new NAZI’s.
Ignore this racist bigot.
sad…”This group of people was taking over by a new group, a group of NAZI sympathizers called the alt-left.”
Nazis were about as far right as you can get. So are the modern sympathizers.
svante…”more info on the three ways to absorb (electronic, vibrational and rotational) here:”
Thanks for link…interesting stuff.
Please note this comment from the article:”There are three main processes by which a molecule can absorb radiation. and each of these routes involves an increase of energy that is proportional to the light absorbed. The first route occurs when absor.p.tion of radiation leads to a higher rotational energy level in a rotational transition. The second route is a vibrational transition which occurs on absor.p.tion of quantized energy. This leads to an increased vibrational energy level. The third route involves electrons of molecules being raised to a higher electron energy, which is the electronic transition”.
There is a generalization of the first two methods to the molecule then finally they get around to acknowledging the electron. Just below the comments is a diagram, Figure 1, in which they list the vibrational and rotational energy levels. To the right, there is an all-encompassing bracket with the notation: “Electronic energy levels”.
I would harbour a guess that electronic transition is by far the most prevalent. I say that because in astronomy when they study stellar gas spectra that seems to be what is mainly of concern. That might be because they are gathering energy through radio-telescopes over vast distances. In a lab, with more sensitive equipment, maybe rotational and vibrational become prevalent.
All of these process, transitional, vibrational, and rotational involve electrons absorb.ing and emit.ting EM. I have no problem acknowledging that electrons absorb and emit EM in different ways than sheer transition but the transitional method is one with which I am familiar.
It makes sense that energy is exchanged when atoms/molecules collide but it needs to be understood that the only particle in the atoms, hence the molecules, that can absorb and emit EM is the electron.
Forget molecules, they lend themselves only to discussion about particular atomic structure where the whole entity is being discussed. At the atomic level, a molecule is nothing more than a combination of protons and electrons with electrons bonding atoms together.
Of course, there are neutrons in the nucleus but they have no charge. It is the +ve charge of the proton and the -ve charge of the electron that creates atoms and the molecules those atoms can form.
In each case, whether transitional, rotational, or vibrational, it is the charge on the electron in motion that produces EM. That includes IR, unlike what Norman seems to think. The electron has a negative charge with a magnetic field surrounding it when in motion. That applies whether it’s moving through a conductor or in free air. Obviously, the electron supplies the E-field and the M-field in an EM wave, and that wave is transmitted into space free of the electron.
svante…on further reading of the article I find it to have an excellent explanation of the interaction of EM with molecules. Thanks again for post. It goes so far as to explain the relationship between EM and harmonic oscillators then relates that to quantum theory. Anyone trying to understand the interaction of EM and molecules/atoms should digest this stuff.
Please note the relationship between EM and electrons. Whether it’s a transitional change or the vibrational/rotational effect of electron density, as in atoms that are more electronegative and attract a higher proportion of electrons, it’s the electron that causes all these effects.
Of course, that would not be possible without the +ve charge of the proton on the nucleus, so it cannot be claimed it is the electron alone. However, the electron is the particle free to move about and it alone absorbs and generates EM.
The point to be made is that it is the interaction of the +ve proton and the -ve electron that define the properties of atoms and molecules.
I think we are in agreement, or near as dammit.
I’m sure Norman agrees that IR is EM too.
Svante
The link you sent I had sent it to Gordon Robertson months ago.
But thanks.
I didn’t know that, but I’m glad Gordon liked it, now we have some common ground.
Most of the remaining difference may be in the wording, perhaps we don’t need to get into that, for fear of another semantic meltdown.
svante…”Most of the remaining difference may be in the wording, perhaps we dont need to get into that, for fear of another semantic meltdown”.
My effort in this direction is to find a reason why the 2nd law stipulates a transfer of heat only from a hotter object to a cooler object, without compensation.
That makes sense intuitively in a solid, like an iron bar, where heat must be transferred atom to atom from the hotter end to the cooler end. I have read that the transferring agent is the valence electrons.
With two objects of different temperatures in space, where the heat transfer is by radiation, heat(thermal energy) is converted to EM in the hotter body and if received at the cooler object, it is converted from EM to thermal energy.
Again, it is the electrons in either body doing the conversion. However, there is a difference in the energy levels of the respective electrons and it makes sense that the EM created by the hotter object has a higher intensity and frequency than that produced by electrons in the cooler body. It makes sense that the higher energy EM from the hotter body is absorbed by the electrons at the cooler body.
However, I am arguing that the opposite is not true, that the EM from the cooler body lacks the energy to be absorbed by the electrons in the hotter body. That explains the 2nd law.
The semantics came from ball4 who regards heat merely as a concept and not a physical reality. He prefers the generic term energy but for me that confuses EM with heat. I feel you must distinguish the two forms of energy otherwise you get hung up making claims that heat can be transferred both ways between bodies of different temperatures because EM can flow either way. To explain the 2nd law, EM in one direction cannot be absorbed.
Heat has been regarded as a reality since before the 19th century. I see no reason to consider it otherwise because certain modern scientists confused heat with heat transfer. Heat transfer is energy in motion, heat is what is being transferred.
At least, apparently. Since EM cannot transfer heat directly, there is no heat physically exchanged with radiative transfer. It appears to be exchanged but it is a reference to heat being lost in the hotter body and raised in the cooler body. It’s all done locally and the transfer is a net loss-gain.
Let’s just say energy. Thermal energy and energy carried by EMR.
1) The 2nd law can also be explained as the difference in radiation.
2) Using Occams razor, what can be simpler than all bodies radiating according to their temperature?
3) We know that the rate of temperature change depends on the difference in temperature.
4) That can be plotted on a smooth curve.
5) In your case the warm object accepts nothing until they get to the same temperature. That would constitute a discrete jump, but we know that the energy loss rate depends on temperature difference, we can even feel it ourselves.
6) We know that the temperature emission spectra of the objects overlap, so some of the cold object radiation is more energetic than some of the warm object radiation. How can the receiving object know if it came from a hot or cold object?
Gordon Robertson
https://tinyurl.com/yblxmoj6
In Svante’s link it clearly states.
“At room temperature, the majority of molecules are in the ground state v = 0, from the equation above ”
Scroll down to equation 1.18 and 1.19 to find this.
This blows your idea out the water and you need to reject it. There is nothing preventing a hot object’s surface from absorbing IR from a colder body. The majority of molecules are in the ground state and can easily absorb any energy that they are able to (which are multiple in solid surfaces, many potential vibrational states).
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s not lose it!
norman…”In Svantes link it clearly states.
At room temperature, the majority of molecules are in the ground state v = 0, from the equation above ”
You’re cherry picking, you have not read the entire article. It makes it abundantly clear that electrons are the key participant in the absorp-tion and emission of EM. It also makes it clear that they must change energy levels to do that. Figure 1 shows clearly that the vibrational and rotational states fall under the umbrella of electronic transitions.
Electronic means with reference to electrons. The electronics and electrical fields, and to an extent, the computer fields, is all about electrons.
Of course the majority of molecules at room temperature are in the ground state. I presume room temperature means 20C with no hot air being added. When the room temp drops to 19C, and the furnace comes on, the forced air mingles with the molecules at room temp and raises their energy to an excited state via collision until equilibrium is reached.
sorry…typo.
“Figure 1 shows clearly that the vibrational and rotational states fall under the umbrella of electronic transitions”.
Should read:
“Figure 1 shows clearly that the vibrational and rotational states fall under the umbrella of electronic energy levels.
Gordon Robertson
Your bias against GHE is so incredibly strong it blinds your reading ability.
YOU: “Youre cherry picking, you have not read the entire article.”
Read the material just under Figure 1 of Svante link.
It states: “The energy of IR radiation is weaker than that of visible and ultraviolet radiation, and so the type of radiation produced is different. A*b*s*o*r*p*t*i*o*n of IR radiation is typical of molecular species that have a small energy difference between the rotational and vibrational states. A criterion for IR a*s*o*r*p*t*i*o*n is a net change in dipole moment in a molecule as it vibrates or rotates.”
Also: “The energy levels can be rated in the following order: electronic > vibrational > rotational. Each of these transitions differs by an order of magnitude. Rotational transitions occur at lower energies (longer wavelengths) and this energy is insufficient and cannot cause vibrational and electronic transitions but vibrational (near infra-red) and electronic transitions (ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum) require higher energies.”
Gordon Robertson
There are numerous examples which show the process that is leading to IR emissions. The entire atoms within molecules are moving as one unit. All the electrons are moving along bound tightly by the nucleus. It takes a lot of energy to move electrons to higher energy levels. I clearly showed you this in a post. The Svante link clearly states it. Your brain shuts off when it sees this and goes on peddling the false and incorrect physics that Mid-IR is produced by electron transitions from higher energy levels to lower ones.
The energy is not there for that.
I asked you earlier that when an ion moves (like in a liquid or gas, physically crosses a distance) does its charge move as one complete unit. You went on a long explanation of the what an ion was but I did not catch if you could grasp the electrons in an atom can move together with the atom.
The movement around the nucleus is not what I am taking about. The motion of an electron within an orbital or energy shell is not changing, there is no transition to higher energy levels.
I think you have a complete failure to understand the energies involved in each process. You need to cling to your make believe physics because you need to deny real science in order to peddle the phony and false discredited physics of the PSI group.
You accept their hare-brained physics (like Claes Johnson) not based upon any empirical evidence or experiment and reject the actual phyisics that came about by many tests and lots of deep math and logical theory. Your fake PSI group is not overturning science and is shrinking as rational people see how bad their physics is and how poor their logical thoughts are.
Gordon Robertson
I want to walk you through basic chemistry to see what level of knowledge you have.
Certainly you know what an ion is. It would be an atom or molecule that possess a charge (either positive or negative) based upon the ration of protons and electrons.
When you have an ion moving do you think individual electrons are moving or the entire ion?
Also what do you think is meant by electronic transitions of an electron? I am not sure you really understand the concept.
If you can accept an ion (chaged atom or molecule) moving as a whole with all the electrons and protons moving as a single body then why is it impossible for you to understand that atoms in a molecule with a slight charge imbalance move as a whole and all the electrons are moving along with the atom (in the various vibraional states shown in Svante’s link, stretching, bending, etc).
The electrons in the atoms in molecules are all moving as a unit in vibrational modes. They do not move as individual electrons in these types of motions. In electronic transitions the electrons move as individuals.
Gordon Robertson
What might help you to understand is that electrons in atoms are tightly bound by the positive charge. It takes a lot of energy for them to transition in energy levels. The electrons are in constant motion around the nucleus but they are not transitioning energy levels. When an atom in a molecule moves back and forth in a vibrtional mode all the electrons move with the atom back and forth.
The overall charge on the atom (plus or minus) is what is producing the lower energy IR which has nothing to do with electronic transition.
You may have a good grasp of the wavelength or frequency of EMR but it seems you have very little understanding of energy differences between different types of EMR.
I hope you take the time to consider this reality and adopt it into your thought process.
UV EMR Wavelength: 0.01 micron to 0.4 micron
Energy: 11962.7 to 299 KJ/mole (if you have one mole of this EMR it would equivalent to this many kilojoules of energy, there are different energy units like joules but it is a very small number and hard to compare.
Visible EMR Wavelength: 0.4-0.7 micron
Energy: 299 to 170/9 KJ/mole
Near IR (last of the electronic transitional states): 0.7 – 1.5
Energy: 170.9 to 79.75
Rest of IR EMR: 1.5 micron to 1 millimeter
Energy: 79.75 to 0.12
Please note that 15 micron IR that is emitted by CO2 is 7.98 KJ/mole on the scale. 10 times less energy than the lowest energy electronic transitional modes.
The whole atom of oxygen moves with its slight charge (like an ion just not as much of a charge) and produces a EM packet of energy when it drops from a higher vibrational mode to a lower. The energy is not stored in the electrons individually to be emitted (as you suppose) it is stored in the vibrational state and when IR is emitted the atom drops to a ground state of vibration and will not emit IR until it moves to a higher vibrational state. All the electrons are moving as one with the individual atoms and they are not moving up to higher electronic energy levels.
norman…”Certainly you know what an ion is. It would be an atom or molecule that possess a charge (either positive or negative)…”
Thanks for the walkthrough, norman, I really needed it. [sarc /off].
“Certainly you know what an ion is. It would be an atom or molecule that possess a charge (either positive or negative)…”
This is all coming out of my memory based on what I have learned over the years. I am not consulting wiki or any other source. I know all this stuff from years in electronics and from studies at university.
Why do you think the ion is +ve or -ve? It either has an excess of electrons or a lack of them. The ion is determined from its valence band of electrons. The atom is defined based on the number of protons in it’s nucleus and in the standard form (non-ionic) of an atom it should have an equal number of electrons and protons. What you see in a periodic table is the standard, non-ionic form of the element/atom.
The valence band is the outermost orbital band and the other bands are filled according to a quota. The valence band electrons form the bonds for molecules. Of course, this is all theory and based on the Bohr model. I have simplified it considerably with regard to orbitals and how they are filled. I urge you to read about it, however, it’s quite interesting.
With common table salt, you have NaCl as your molecule. Sodium, Na, has 11 protons and 11 electrons. Since it has 2 electrons in its innermost orbit and 8 in it’s next orbit, that leaves one electron to start the next orbital, since 2 and 8 are all the electrons allowed in the first two. That makes Na a bit unstable since inert (stable) elements have completely full shells, like Argon.
Chlorine, Cl, has 17 electrons and 17 protons. It has 7 electrons in its outermost valence band and it needs 8 to complete the band to make it stable. Since sodium has an extra electron it donates it to the chlorine atom. That leaves both atoms with complete outer shells, making them more stable. However, it leaves sodium with one less electron than in its normal state and adds an electron to the normal chlorine state.
The loss of the donated electrons makes sodium +ve wrt its normal state and chlorine -ve. That state in an atom where it gains or loses and electron from its normal state is called an ion. You have a +ve sodium ion and a -ve chlorine ion.
If you put salt in a solvent of water, it will break up naturally into sodium and chlorine ions. In it’s solid state, salt, or sodium chloride, is bonded together by ionic bonds, meaning it’s held together by the +ve and -ve charges on the sodium and chloride atoms. The charges are due to electrons.
All in all, ions are about electrons.
I might add that an isotope refers to the nucleus. The nucleus always has the same number of protons but it can have a different number of neutrons. Hydrogen has no neutrons, just a proton. If it gains a neutron it’s called deuterium and with 2 neutrons it’s called tritium. Deuterium joins with oxygen to form heavy water, a kind of water required in nuclear facilities.
norman…”When you have an ion moving do you think individual electrons are moving or the entire ion?
Also what do you think is meant by electronic transitions of an electron? I am not sure you really understand the concept”.
As to the first question, both are moving and it depends on the medium they are in. In a solid, the ions are not free to move, as in sodium chloride, but they can vibrate. They cannot rotate, however. As a solution in water, the ions of Na and Cl are free to move and rotate.
Ions in a gas are totally free to move, vibrate, and rotate. While the ions are moving about physically, the electrons are moving locally. If an atom or ion receives enough energy it can dislodge an electron and make it a free electron. Then it is free to move about or join another atom.
I don’t pretend to understand the ramifications of the Bohr model with its quantum energy levels. I’m sure it’s not meant to be taken literally but if it’s to be believed, any atom has a proton/neutron in its nucleus (except hydrogen…proton only) with a number of electrons orbiting the nucleus.
According to Bohr, those electrons are constrained to exist in certain quantum energy levels that have definite energy amounts, measured in electron volts. If an electron drops to a lower energy level, for whatever reason, it emits a photon of EM with an intensity and frequency determined by the number of electron volts it fell through. If it receives the same amount of energy it jumps a level. It gets complicated since an electron can jump/or fall through several energy levels at once.
Furthermore, there is no in-between energy level. The electron is either at one level or another but never in between. No on knows how such an instant transition is possible, or how the electron emits or absorbs EM.
In question 2, a transition is not clear in reality. It’s not clear whether the electron actually moves physically. I would think that has to be the case since movement is needed to generate a magnetic field from it’s electric charge.
The transition is a change in energy level by an electron as it moves around the nucleus. Again, no one has ever witnessed this. However, the concept is used freely to explain the difference between atoms as well as Em emission and absorp-tion.
I don’t pretend in any way to fully understand this theory. There are many inconsistencies and interpretations. Some relate the orbital energies to energy levels and even Bohr suggested the angular momentum of an electron determined its energy level. That suggests an electron can exist at an energy level dependent on it’s angular momentum.
If you take the simple hydrogen atom, it’s electron state can be described by the Schrodinger equation. However, Bohr suggested a ground state for the hydrogen electron plus several excited states. How does that fit the model where different energy levels correspond to different orbitals if H only has one orbital?
AFAIAC, it’s the valence orbital electrons that absorb and emit EM and I have no idea how they change energy levels. All I know is that Bohr claimed it’s the case.
The energy level has been defined based on a potential energy of 0 outside the atom. As you approach the nucleus, the energy levels increase negatively in electron volts.
Take a look at this for Hydrogen:
http://astro.unl.edu/naap/hydrogen/transitions.html
It only has one electron orbital but it shows several orbitals with different energy levels. That suggests hydrogen with one electron can have its electron jump to different orbitals that would have electrons in other elements. How that would work for multi electron orbitals is beyond me.
It would seem that even though CO2 has it’s oxygen and carbon atoms bonded by valence electrons that the valence electrons are able to jump to energy levels outside their orbitals. That would suggest energy levels beyond the valence orbital.
Although quantum theory has helped reveal atomic behavior, it is a purely mathematical description that cannot be visualized. Talking about electron transitions as if the Bohr model is accurate is highly tenuous.
Quantum theory talks about electron spin. No one knows if electrons spin and the spin is a reference to quantum theory not to an actual spin.
norman…”What might help you to understand is that electrons in atoms are tightly bound by the positive charge. It takes a lot of energy for them to transition in energy levels. The electrons are in constant motion around the nucleus but they are not transitioning energy levels. When an atom in a molecule moves back and forth in a vibrtional mode all the electrons move with the atom back and forth”.
Electrons are not tightly bound at all. They have momentum and can move freely in their orbitals. If they receive enough EM they can fly right out of the atom. It was Bohr who suggested they are constrained to remain in certain orbitals but he did not specify that in relation to the nucleus. Were it not for Bohr’s theory, the +ve nucleus would cause the electron to eventually spiral into the nucleus.
Of course, that theory is contrary to the orbital theory of planets. All planets are attracted to the Sun by gravitational force and it is only their momentum that keeps them in orbit. There is no friction in space such as you’d find in our atmosphere and the planets and our Moon are able to maintain their momentum.
If we are going to think of electrons in that sense why should they spiral into the nucleus if they have the correct momentum? Then again, how do they get their momentum in the first place? And how did our planets/Moon get their momentum to put them in orbit?
According to all theory I have read on the matter, the valence electrons, in particular, transition between energy levels. The non-valence electrons in other orbitals are called core electrons and they appear to act as a buffer between the nucleus and the valence electrons. It would appear, according to the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom that valence electrons have the ability to transition into even higher orbitals and back.
The vibrational movement between atoms in a molecule are in the bonds, which are electrons. It is electrons that bond the atoms together.
I don’t have in-depth knowledge of this phenomenon but the repulsion between the +vely charged nucleii of two atoms does not come into effect till the atoms are within a few radii of each other. If electrons are shared between the atoms, as in a covalent bond, the electrons serves to hold the atoms together.
Such a system can be modeled as a mass-spring system where the nucleii are repelling and the electrons are causing an attraction. In such a system, it’s natural for a form of harmonic motion to exist which is essentially a vibration.
As the atom absorbs heat, the electron energy increases and the vibration increases. The vibration represents work and according to Clausius it is equivalent to heat.
If the vibration exists in a certain state, the body has a certain temperature and a certain heat content. If you add more heat, it gets converted to an increased vibration in the atomsand the temperature rises. If you add too much, the atoms will literally vibrate themselves apart.
It’s not quite correct to claim the electrons move with the atom, they are part of the atom. Without the electrons their is no atom, just a charged nucleus that cannot form a molecule.
In China they have frequent mass stabbings often in kindergartens.
With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues
of plagorism or copyright infringement? My blog has a lot of unique content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it appears a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my
agreement. Do you know any techniques to help prevent content from being stolen? I’d certainly appreciate it.