Friday, March 28, 2008

"But where does the HEAT go?"

I was reminded of a scene from Seinfeld when I read this article on the missing heat of global warming. The scene is one where Kramer and Elaine are sitting in the hallway of Elaine's building. Elaine asks to borrow Kramer's deli slicer and Kramer doesn't want to part with it. After Elaine demonstrates that she has sufficient knowledge to use the darn thing, Kramer frustratedly asks, "But where does the MEAT go?"

Why does the article remind me of this? Well, other than the fact that I can typically relate any life situation back to Seinfeld, I can just hear the Josh Willis (JPL), Kevin Trenberth (NCAR), or pick your favorite global warming believer at NASA saying in fit of frustration, "But where does the HEAT go?" So, I thought I would give them at least three plausible explanations: (1) The heat doesn't exist; (2) The heat is being radiated to space and is of no consequence; or (3) The heat trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is so small it can't be detected by our crude instruments and is of no consequence.

I have asked myself why this article hacked me off so much, and I finally decided that it is the fact that the theory of anthrogenic global warming (AGW) was being treated in this article like it belongs in the big leagues with the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. You can put your trust in these two laws, but I wouldn't bet my Diet Coke much less my farm on AGW.

Let me give you an example. Back in 1911, Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn found that when a radioactive sample undergoes beta decay, the electron that is emitted can have any energy up to some maximum value and that the angular momentum of the reaction didn't add up. Big deal, right? RIGHT! The first item violates the Law of Conservation of Energy, and the second item violates the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Well, this caused a stir until 1930 when Wolfgang Pauli postulated that another particle that we didn't have the technology to detect was emitted along with the electron and this invisible particle carried away the right amount of energy and angular momentum. In 1934, Enrico Fermi (my favorite physicist) wrote the paper that forms the basis for our current understanding of the beta decay process and called that particle a neutrino. A neutrino wasn't physically detected until 1956, but we KNEW neutrinos were there because we could trust these two laws.

Here is the part that really gets me about the article, not only does the ocean not have the extra heat to warm it up that it must have for AGW to be true, the ocean temperatures have cooled since 2003 (but according to the article, that isn't really significant). This means that the oceans are not even getting the heat that they are supposed to get to keep a constant temperature. They cannot even get the DIRECTION of the temperature change right!!!

So, let me get this straight. You can't do the energy balance calculations close enough to get the temperature change to go in the right direction, but you want me to trust you that there is some mysterious missing AGW heat out there that we haven't found.

Here is my final explanation for the location of the missing heat. It is in the same place where you guys keep the $20+ billion dollars of hard earned taxes spent on the AGW modeling boondoggle. Vanished, like the proverbial fart in the wind.

2 comments:

Kritter Krit said...

Nice rant, Sweetie.

Just kidding. I really did like it. Of course, I like any discussion that combines science and farts.

...Uh, oh. Did I just prove I wasn't mature enough for this blog? Whoops.

Anonymous said...

loved this post russ.
there are huge amounts of money that are being spent to push this propaganda.

http://windfarms.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/big-money-behind-global-warming-propaganda/

$700,000 a month worth of propaganda on one sign.
crazy

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