THE PHYSICS OF WHY CARBON DIOXIDE DOES NOT CAUSE WARMING

The climate-change scheme and net-zero carbon policy are based upon a 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.  They must understand gas physics, or their instruments won’t work.

So how did academia get this wrong?

In 1988, James Hansen flip-flopped from “global cooling” to “global warming” being dangerous.

Al Gore fed the fear with $22 billion in annual funding for universities and professors to study the matter.  Hansen’s claim is a falsehood.  People move to warmer climes for their health.  Consider all the species, in the plant and animal kingdoms, that thrive near the equator, whereas none survives at the poles.

Yet, out of desperation for the money, professors cornered themselves into attempts to prove a falsehood to be true.  To do that, one must lie.  Each lie created new falsehoods until they have made gas physics look like a child’s messy bedroom strewn with theories.

Nearly everything we have heard about global warming for the past thirty-five years has been from the professorial world, which has been untested theory.  How often have their declarations and predictions come true?

Because their world is theoretical, they use peer review for approval.  But there is no such thing as peer review in the private sector; either something works or it does not, and everything is tested.  Engineers who design gas-physics instruments must be correct, or their instruments fail, buildings might burn, and they certainly would be fired.

There are two trees of gas physics: the professorial-theoretical tree in academia, beginning in 1662, and real-world gas physics, taught by private-sector engineers, beginning in 1836.

The professorial tree began in 1662 with Boyle’s law (pv=k, higher the pressure, lower the volume).  American Meter company engineers invented the gas meter in 1836, the same dual-bellows meter that sits in front of your home.  That began the non-theoretical tree, which is supported by real science — testing.

In the last half of that century, John D. Rockefeller began using American Meter instruments (turbines and diaphragm meters) to measure thousands of cubic feet of compressed natural gas into large tanks, and transporting them by train to New York.  Apparently, a customer disputed the amount of gas sent.

American Meter tested the diaphragms measuring the flow out at low pressure and the high-pressure turbines measuring gas into the tanks.  They found the meters to be accurate; however, the readings were significantly different.

To test the correction factor of Boyle’s law, American Meter built a high-pressure test facility in northern Pennsylvania, which is still there.  I toured it with them.  They determined that Boyle’s law is wrong.  The higher the pressure, the more wrong it is.  They meticulously tested and created calculi that match the tests.

These calculi are called supercompressibility formulas.  Over the years, they have created fifteen formulas, AGA 1 through 15.  Not one of them shows up in my advanced physics book.  The book has pages of calculus derived from formulas that are wrong.  Even the ideal (or universal) gas law formula is not precisely accurate.  It would have to change with each gas to remain accurate.

There is no curriculum for gas physics in academia.  Engineering and physics classes merely touch upon the subject with centuries-old (and misleading) postulates such as continuity of energy and thermodynamics.  Professors have used these to leap to the conclusion that energy cannot be destroyed, or at least it migrates on and on.  This is also false.

Theoretical gas physics is like theoretical math: it leads to false conclusions.

So what’s the real science?

Energy does not migrate on and on.  Kinetic energy (motion) is continuously destroyed in a gravitational field.  Put bluntly, a six-year-old can see that a baseball rolls to a stop.

All matter, including gases, is affected by gravity.  Temperature is the measure of kinetic energy.  The definition of temperature is “an indication of the speed that atoms and molecules are moving” (Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopedia, page 140).  A heat source causes them to accelerate and collide with one another, and when they cool, they slow down.  They do not go elsewhere.

Professors skip over this simple truth, the definition of temperature.  Temperature simply speeds up and slows down — like the atoms in a mercury thermometer.  Any migration of energy ends abruptly, like sand under a rolling baseball.

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.  All 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 fifty-five 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 conclusion: measure it.

In our first test, we conducted a test of vaporous (70 percent humidity) atmospheric air including carbon dioxide and other trace gases.  The air–carbon dioxide mixture matched actual conditions.

The air–carbon dioxide mixture was isolated in our climate-controlled proving (test) room and heated.  Once the heat source was discontinued, temperature dropped steadily at about 1 degree Fahrenheit every 32 minutes.  During a typical sunny day, our atmosphere absorbs about 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  The vaporous air-carbon dioxide mixture in this test cooled 22 degrees in about 11 hours, 45 minutes.  This, by no coincidence, closely matches the cooling rate of our atmosphere.

In our next experiments, we tested pure carbon dioxide.  We measured the time it took for carbon dioxide to cool 22 degrees once the heat source was removed.  The cooling time varied between about three and ten minutes depending upon the type of container.  The fastest cooling time was in a plastic container at 3 minutes and 47 seconds.  Any container will slow cooling, so the gas in open atmosphere cools faster than indicated by the test.

In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide will therefore cool as fast as the Sun and vaporous air allow it to cool.

Even the vaporous mixture of all gases cools faster than 24 hours.  Temperature does not, and cannot, accumulate in our atmosphere.

Yes, some gases absorb more heat than others; however, for how long does any of them retain that temperature after the heat source is removed?  The answer is, certainly not long enough for the greenhouse theory to be true or to cause warming.  Advocates claim that greenhouse gases retain temperature from day to day.  There is no such thing.

And the notion that an increased number of parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause warming is also false.  A metaphor might help here.  Your car engine that heats to near a thousand degrees cools to cold steel by morning.  It does not matter whether there are 200 or 400 cars in your neighborhood.  Nor does it matter whether the engine is large or small.  Without a heat source, they all cool quickly and at about the same rate.

In other words, carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas.  Only in academic theory are there greenhouse gases that retain temperature from day to day.  In the real world, they do not exist.  The reason carbon dioxide causes no warming in our atmosphere is that it cools too quickly.

These tests further prove that no gas — whether carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, or even humid atmospheric air — retains heat from day to day.  They all cool too quickly.  Prolonged warming, if it occurs, is caused by the Sun.

To naysayers, we say, prove it.  Prove it or stop creating destructive laws and rules based upon false theories.

We say to academics, measure it like real scientists.  Build a laboratory like ours or Thomas Edison’s.  Try to get carbon dioxide to retain temperature from day to day.

It is a simple test.  We used precision instruments.  However, this is a repeatable test that anyone can perform with hardware-store instruments.

James T. Moodey is the author of The Ladder Out of Poverty, chapter 12 of which is excerpted for this article.