OPINION:
The green movement’s climate-change scheme is based upon the false notion that carbon dioxide and other gases cause global warming. They do not.
We don’t have to guess about this. We have empirical and scientific proof.
I owned a Weights and Measures gas-physics test-and-repair facility and conducted tests. We learned gas physics from engineers at factories that manufacture gas-physics instruments.
Nearly everything the public has heard about climate change for the past 30 years has been from the professorial world, which is theoretical. And how often have their predictions come true?
Because their world is theoretical, they use peer review for approval. There is no such thing as peer review in the private sector. Something either works or it doesn’t. Everything is tested. Engineers who design gas-physics instruments must be correct.
If they aren’t, their instruments would fail and buildings might burn.
There is no curriculum for gas physics in academia. Engineering and physics classes merely touch upon the subject with 100-year-old (and misleading) postulates such as continuity of energy and thermodynamics.
Professors use these to leap to the conclusion that energy cannot be destroyed, or at least migrates somewhere.
Temperature is an indication of the speed at which atoms and molecules are moving. Academia has forgotten or skipped over this first tenet of gas physics, presumably to chase the $22 billion per year in funding to study global warming.
When mercury in a thermometer is exposed to heat, the mercury atoms accelerate. They collide, increasing friction and temperature. This causes the mercury to expand, and the added force pushes it up the thermometer. When the sun goes down, the atoms slow, the friction and force lessen, and the mercury falls. The mercury atoms do not migrate elsewhere; they simply slow down.
This happens because we live in a gravitational field. Kinetic energy (motion) is destroyed by gravity, another tenet of gas physics that has been ignored. Any migration of energy ends abruptly like the spark from a flame or sand under a rolling baseball. Atoms and molecules are densely packed in our atmosphere.
Think of them as vehicles stopped at a light. A car rear-ends the last car. The last car cannot travel very far because it hits the next car.
Do gases retain some trace amount of temperature from day to day?
To answer this, we charted actual atmosphere temperature drops. High and low temperatures were recorded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website. It provides a high for the day, and a low the next morning.
The temperature drops were for locations throughout the country. A typical drop in summer was from 80 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The size of the drops varied.
However, the average drop for 15 samples or more was notably consistent at 22 degrees. Temperature drops were recorded throughout winter down to highs in the 20s. Similarly, temperature drops in winter also averaged 22 degrees.
This proves that temperatures drop at a steady rate when the sun is down. The resulting temperature-drop chart indicates that, if the sun never came up, the Earth would be a frozen ball of ice in less than 48 hours (dropping 22 degrees every 12 hours). That proves that temperature is not trapped or retained from day to day (global warming). Any prolonged warming is caused by the sun.
It further proves that no gas — not carbon dioxide, methane, or even humid atmospheric air — retains temperature from day to day.
Make no mistake. This is a true scientific test because it observes actual measurements of the atmosphere. Any high school class can repeat these observations over a school year.
Let’s consider carbon dioxide, which the green lobby has miscast as a cause of warming without proof. Real science demands empirical and scientific proof.
For instance, the empirical proof that an elephant weighs more than a mouse is observation. The scientific proof is to put both on a scale and weigh them. Atmospheric scientists agree that from 1950 to 1985, our atmosphere cooled very slightly. It did the same from 1997 to 2015. During both periods, carbon dioxide levels rose dramatically.
That is empirical proof that carbon dioxide does not cause warming. It is 55 years of proof. It is the elephant in the room.
We need to stop thinking, “It has to cause at least some warming.” No, it doesn’t. Obviously, it doesn’t.
The question we should be asking is, “Why doesn’t carbon dioxide cause warming?” That leads to the proper scientific approach: Measure it.
The scientific proof is easily grasped. We tested carbon dioxide’s ability to trap or retain heat. It cools 22 F in 3 minutes and 45 seconds. It cannot possibly retain heat and certainly not do so from day to day.
To naysayers, how about proving your theory? Try to get carbon dioxide to retain temperature from day to day. Or better yet, perform our test for yourself.
We used precision instruments. However, this is a simple, repeatable test that anyone can perform with hardware-store instruments.
• A condensed version of James T. Moodey’s paper “Three Proofs Carbon Dioxide Causes No Warming in the Atmosphere — No Gas Causes Warming” is in his book “The Ladder Out of Poverty.” The book also has a chapter about the extensive economic damage caused by our country’s first cap-and-trade rule to reduce natural gas in the Los Angeles basin. He explains how we lost most of our manufacturing to China because of that rule.
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