[ BA comments ]
-------- Original Message --------
Marc Morano,
A star is a nearly perfect black
body
radiation emitter - absorber because it has an atomically uniform
surface composition and temperature. Earth is far from a black body
because it has a two phase atmosphere and highly nonuniform surface
composition and temperature. Every planet's night - day side is hugely
different from a black body.
Siddons also describes dynamic
thermal
effects. Heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation across
Earth's solid and liquid surface and through its two phase atmosphere,
with a tremendous altitude pressure - temperature gradient, has very
complex low high (daily) and low (millennia) frequency dynamics. While
these are described by known physics equations (Navier-Stokes, Maxwell
etc) they are intractable, unsolvable and of little help.
I have read Gerlich and
Tscheuschner(1)
with great admiration and respect. They say so.
Consider how one would use
Siddons graph to
calculate the "average" temperature of the Moon's entire surface with
no atmosphere. Accounting for topography, craters, faults and transient
shadows. Within 0.1C.
Control system engineering
practice is to
ensure mathematically the proposed system is well modeled, measurable,
observable and controllable before attempting to design it. Prior to
Kyoto 1997 I proved using anthropomorphic CO2 for Earth's thermostat is
inadequately modeled, unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable. So
it won't work no matter what Kyoto, UN, Congress or G8 do. Setting
setpoints of control systems like thermostats always involves
optimizing a risky tradeoff, which I developed a procedure to solve.
The procedure in Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade won't work. Since no one
has ever built a thermostat for climate of an entire planet, it would
seem prudent for the designer to prove he know what he is doing, his
system will work and it will do no harm, before proposing it.
Particularly if he can't tell what good it will do and how much it will
cost. Particularly with benign, nonpolluting green plant food. And
particularly since some climate change is healthy and living creatures
have capability to adapt and evolve. Particularly when there is no
temperature or CO2 problem anyway.
And particularly when its leading
designer
proponent, at
Oxford University on July 7, 2009 in Gore's 6min video.
decried the 70% energy
in coal "wasted" for generating electric power and called for "global
governance" and massive government funded research to break the second
law of thermodynamics embodied by the Sadi Carnot cycle since 1824. I
took thermo in
sophomore physics (2) at VaTech fall 1958; thermo in junior mechanical
engineering (3) at VaTech in spring 1961 and thermo in graduate
chemical engineering (4) at Purdue in 1964. Al Gore dropped out of
Vanderbilt University Divinity School in 1972.
"No
one has ever constructed a heat engine which does not
throw away in its exhaust a relatively large fraction of the heat
supplied to it, and it is safe to say that no one ever will. The
impossibility of constructing an engine which, with no other
outstanding changes, will convert a given amount of heat completely
into mechanical work is a fundamental law of Nature, known as the
second law of thermodynamics." (2,
p 342).
In
1824 Sadi Carnot proved
the maximum theoretical frictionless reversible efficiency is E = Wo/Qi
= 1 - T2/T1, where Qi is total heat in, Wo is net work out, T2 is
temperature of surroundings (air, cooling water), K and T1 is
temperature of source (flame, steam), K. For example boiler efficiency
for max work extracted from 538C superheated steam to 20C cooling water
is 1 - 293/811 = 64%. Furnace efficiency for max work extracted from
coal combustion to flue gas is about 60%. Turbine generator for max power from shaft input work is
<80%. So max
theoretical combined cycle efficiency is about 0.64*0.60*0.80 = 31%.
Since 1824 engineers around the world have managed to get the actual
efficiency close to 30%. Engineers gave you energy efficiency already;
government won't create any more profitably.
And
Gore claims "if we just put our minds to it, we can
change all that" and overcome that evil second law. By the way the
first law of thermo is energy can be neither created not destroyed,
only transformed and conserved.
If
you find a congressman reacting to those two
little paragraphs with "I didn't take advanced math" tell him a) this
is third grade arithmetic, b) if he cannot follow my 9 sentences, he cannot follow
the 1428 pages of
HR 2454 between 0300 and 1915 edt on Friday 26Jun09 and c) he has no
business voting on $4 trillion budgets.
I can understand an incompetent
or corrupt
congressman would find this Pelosi argument persuasive: Trust me on
this one. I remember loyalty. If you vote against Waxman-Markey, DNC
will finance your opponent in 2010. Everyone knows majority rules in
Congressional law making.
But
I know the second law of thermodynamics rules
renewable energy, Gore, Congress, Earth and the universe, since the big
bang 13.7 billion years ago. Even if the polls say Gore is right. Gore
is proud he won the popular vote in 2000; I say that reflects poorly on
the majority of voters in 2000.
Gore
wants billions for research to eliminate "energy
waste". Ask physicist Chu, Secretary of DoE, if he is
willing
to accept $1 billion/year to do research to repeal the second law of
thermo and
develop a perpetual
motion machine of the
second kind.
Ask him the return USA got for the millions spent by DoE since 1960 on
Illinois, Pennsylvania and W Virginia coal combustion chemistry
research.
Now
Chicken Little is alarmed that Africa's soil doesn't
contain as much carbon as N America soil. Its "degraded". And dirt has
more carbon than air! Imagine that! Did he hear about high school
chemistry calcium carbonate, sodium carbonate,
potassium carbonate?
Con-artists
trained in governance take a non problem and
create one by scaring ignorant people! Now all we need is a perpetual
motion machine. Lets offer $5 billion in grants to US universities and
see if there are any takers.
I never imagined I would be
writing such
things obvious to most high school graduates in 1960: sunshine warms
Earth, flora convert it and CO2 to carbohydrates and O2, which fauna
combust with carbohydrates to make CO2 and heat. Climate changes. Very
good.
I worked on NASA Apollo Command
and Lunar
Module digital autopilots and trajectory controls in 1967-69, before
James Hansen did. They worked 40 years ago. I have built hundreds of
successful thermostats.
1. Gerlich,
Gerhard and Ralf D Tscheuschner, "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2
Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics", International
Journal of Modern Physics B, v23, n03, January 6, 2009, pp.
275-364. Free download at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
2. Sears, Francis W, and Mark W Zemansky,
"University
Physics - Mechanics, Heat and Sound", Addison-Wesley, 1955.
3. Van Wylen, Gordon J,
"Thermodynamics", John
Wiley, 1960.
4. Tribus, Myron,
"Thermostatics and Thermodynamics", Van Nostrand, 1961.
Pierre R Latour, PhD Chemical
Process
Control Systems Engineer, PE in CA & TX. Houston