1600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about our climate
Image: Kate Evans
In February 2019, Mark Magee was scraping the bucket of his 45-ton excavator through a hillside when it hit something 30 feet down that wouldn’t budge.
It was high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and Magee, a construction foreman, was clearing a platform for a new geothermal power plant near Ngāwhā, a tiny community in New Zealand’s Northland region, the long peninsula that stretches from the city of Auckland to the country’s northern tip.
He called in additional digger drivers to help. Gradually, as the machines peeled away the mudstone encasing the obstinate object, they realized it was a tree — and not an ordinary tree. More and more of it appeared, a seemingly endless log. When it lay uncovered, complete with a medusa-like rootball, it measured 65 feet long and 8 feet across, and weighed 65 tons.
It was a kauri tree, a copper-skinned conifer endemic to New Zealand. The indigenous Māori hold the species sacred and use its honey-colored softwood for traditional carvings and ocean-going canoes. Although this kauri tree had clearly been buried for thousands of years, Magee was astonished to see leaves and cones stuck to its underside that were still green.
The power company, Top Energy, called in a local sawmiller named Nelson Parker to examine Magee’s find. Parker, a champion woodchopper with powerful shoulders and a missing finger, had been digging up, processing, and selling kauri logs like this one since the early 1990s. As soon as his chainsaw bit into the bark, he knew from the color of the sawdust (dark yellow) and from the smell (subtle, resiny) that this tree was very old, and worth a lot of money.
Parker also knew that swamp kauri, as the buried trees are known, are worth a lot to science. One this large would be of special interest to a group of scientists who study the information that the ancient trees have coded into their rings. After removing the roots, he cut a four-inch-thick slice from the base of the trunk and sent it to them for analysis.
What he couldn’t know then was that this particular tree held the key to understanding an ancient global catastrophe — and how it may have shaped our collective past.
A brief history of the swamp kauri boom
The kauri tree, or Agathis australis, is one of the largest and longest-lived tree species in the world. An individual kauri can live for more than two millennia, reaching 200 feet tall and more than 16 feet in diameter. Today, the living trees grow only in remnant pockets in northern New Zealand, where the national Department of Conservation lists them as threatened, due to a century of heavy logging, forest clearing for agriculture, and, more recently, the onslaught of a deadly fungus-like pathogen.
Yet for tens of thousands of years, kauri forests dominated a vast swath of the upper North Island. As the trees grew, they recorded information in their annual rings about the climate and makeup of the atmosphere. When they fell, some of the heaviest plunged deep into nearby peat bogs, where they stayed mostly unchanged for millennia.
Itinerant 19th-century gumdiggers, who sought the swamp kauri’s preserved golden resin for use in varnish and jewelry, were the first to exploit the trees for profit, digging up fields and wetlands in search of buried gum. In 1985, after environmentalist protests, the New Zealand government banned loggers from cutting live kauri on public land, and Parker and other Northland timber merchants turned their attention to swamp kauri.
They clawed the trees from the earth with excavators and sold the exotic wood to furniture makers in New Zealand, the United States, and several European and Asian countries.
The industry grew slowly until around 2010. Then, it exploded, thanks to demand from a booming China, where customers are often willing to pay more for materials with antiquity. Fetching up to $200 per cubic foot, swamp kauri became one of the most valuable timbers in the world. Chinese agents roamed rural Northland, New Zealand’s poorest region, offering farmers cash in exchange for the right to prospect on their land.
The lure of a fast buck also attracted a host of dubious kauri extractors. Among them were the aptly-named “Swamp Cowboys,” who drained endangered wetlands — only 8 percent of Northland’s wetlands are still intact — to reach their quarry. In the years that followed, conservation groups successfully fought to restrain the swamp kauri industry and hold the national Ministry for Primary Industries and regional council accountable.
Finally, in 2018, New Zealand’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision limiting swamp kauri exports. By then, the shadiest companies had gone bankrupt, and swamp kauri exports dropped from more than 200,000 cubic feet in 2013 to around 10,000 cubic feet in 2019.
The end of the swamp kauri boom was a big victory for wetland advocates — and a big relief for the scientists who study the ancient trees. The slowdown has made it easier for them to take samples from every piece of unearthed swamp kauri before it disappears into the mill and heads out of the country. Every single tree, they know, has a story to tell.
Long-lived, well-preserved kauri are something of a “high-resolution time-capsule”
In a windswept paddock on Northland’s remote Karikari Peninsula, on a cool October day in 2019, I watch Andrew Lorrey use a chainsaw to cut a four-inch slab called a “biscuit” off the end of a huge kauri trunk. Around him, beached on the surface like stranded whales, were dozens more unearthed logs, their forms twisted and gum-encrusted, the tortured roots of their massive stumps reaching for a squally sky.
Lorrey, a stocky, bearded American originally from New England, is a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). He came to the country in 2002 to study swamp kauri for his PhD. During the “gold rush” years, he felt a lot of pressure to “scurry around” collecting samples, knowing most of the wood was slipping through his fingers. But over time, he and a handful of other scientists forged relationships with the main timber extractors.
“I want to look back and say I did what I could to get this precious natural archive preserved for science,” he tells me.
Image: Kate Evans
Swamp kauri fall into two age clusters: “young” trees that died anywhere between a few thousand and around 13,000 years ago, and “ancient” ones that were alive more than 25,000 years ago. No one has yet found a kauri from the roughly 12,000-year span in between. That was the height of the last glacial period, when temperatures were cooler and sea levels more than 300 feet lower.
Scientists speculate that the kauri’s range may have shrunk during that time because of the cold, or that the forests moved to lower elevations on the continental shelf when sea levels fell, and were later submerged as the climate warmed and seas rose again. Or perhaps the trees from that time are simply still out there, waiting to be discovered.
The landowner here on the Karikari Peninsula, a taciturn, pipe-smoking farmer named Chris Hensley, found this batch of buried logs when he was converting an old pine forestry plantation to pasture. For Hensley, the kauri are a nuisance. “They bugger up the farm equipment,” Lorrey says. But for Lorrey, they’re treasure.
After learning about them, he quickly organized an expedition, driving more than four hours from Auckland to examine them. Hensley had used his digger to lay the huge haul — 104 individual trees — on the ground like matchsticks. “When I got there, I said, ‘I’ve got gold,’” Lorrey remembers.
Now, Lorrey moves from log to log, slicing biscuits from each one, making detailed notes about their measurements and where they were found, then brushing the cut faces with a white glue-based paint to protect the wood from the elements.
While Lorrey works, Hensley arrives to watch. A tiny white fluffy dog jumps from his truck and runs frenetically among the dark logs. Knowing the age of the timber will help him sell it later, Hensley says. “This way I get them dated for free.”
What the scientists get in return is something they can’t find anywhere else.
There are other ancient trees in the world, but none as old, as long-lived, or as numerous as the kauri. Because migrating ice sheets demolished everything in their path, few trees survived the glacial periods in the Northern Hemisphere, and scientists have found only a handful — including one 23,000-year-old cypress buried in a volcanic mudflow near Mount Fuji in Japan. Northland, however, remained ice-free. “The kauri are globally unique,” Lorrey says. “There’s no other wood resource like it for this part of Earth’s history, full stop.”
Other natural climate archives, such as ice cores, lake sediments, and stalactites and stalagmites, also allow scientists to peer into the past. But trees are the “gold standard,” Lorrey says, because they directly sample the atmosphere and make a new record of it and other aspects of the environment in each annual growth ring of wood they lay down. Unlike ice cores and lake sediment, tree rings don’t compress over time.
Multiple trees growing at the same time can be cross-referenced, too, smoothing out any local or individual variation that might interfere with broad conclusions about the climate. (Imagine a single tree growing poorly for a few seasons because its roots were waterlogged or it was shaded by others.) Long-lived, well-preserved kauri are therefore a kind of “high-resolution time-capsule,” Lorrey says.
Tree rings illuminate the past in several ways. Most simply, counting them under a microscope reveals how long a tree lived. The biscuit that Nelson Parker cut from the log found near the village of Ngāwhā, for instance, indicates that the kauri was about 1,600 years old when it died: 1,600 rings, 1,600 years. Measuring the varying width of the rings from year to year allows scientists to observe changing growing conditions. Chemical analysis of each ring can indicate relative humidity, rainfall patterns, and soil moisture.
And by using computer programs and eyeballing tree-ring patterns to string together multiple samples from different times and locations, scientists can create long tree-ring sequences, called “chronologies,” that span millennia and help reveal larger regional climate patterns.
University of Auckland dendrochronologist Gretel Boswijk and collaborators, for example, used 700 samples of both ancient and living kauri to piece together a continuous 4,491-year chain of trees that lived between 2488 BCE and today. The chronology allowed Boswijk’s colleague, Anthony Fowler, to figure out that kauri are especially sensitive to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that affects annual temperatures and rainfall around the world.
“When we have an El Niño year, here in the north of the country we’ll get more southwesterly flow — clearer skies but also cooler average temperatures,” Boswijk says. “Kauri tend to respond well in those conditions, so they tend to put on a wide ring.” Conversely, in a warmer, cloudier La Niña year, kauri add narrower rings. “They get stressed, they don’t grow as well.”
Using this information, the team was able create a 700-year reconstruction of ENSO variability in northern New Zealand, providing a lengthy picture of the country’s natural climate variation. For comparison, historical climate records date back only 150 years.
Scientists have also assembled a handful of other kauri chronologies that go even further back in time, each covering a few millennia of the past 60,000 years. But because they’re not connected to the present, they’re called “floating chronologies,” meaning their calendar ages remain relatively uncertain. Lorrey dreams of one day finding the right logs to link all of them into one unbroken chain.
In the meantime, the floating chronologies and ancient kauri samples are already proving incredibly valuable for global science in other ways. As a start, they can help scientists determine the ages of other plant, human, and animal artifacts, from as far back as tens of thousands of years ago.
See more here: vox.com
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I cannot believe I am the first commenter to draw attention to this GREAT article. To possibly remain first I am going to submit this comment and come back later with my detailed comments about it.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Kate Evans (author) and John O’Sullivan (PSI editor),
Thank you both for bringing this very critical research to our actual understanding of the Earth’s unquestionable historical climate of New Zealand and possibly surrounding region.
As stated in the article, it is well established that brief (about an year) El Nino events produce ‘abnormal’ weather’ worldwide. And I know there is a decade period of what now must be considered abnormal weather during the 1930s. About which I have not read any speculations as to a possible explanation. Hint, compare the tree rings of trees growing during that period with those which were growing during the 1920’s. I have no idea what might be seen, which is why someone should look.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I have been told that PSI Readers do not have time to read long articles. The following is at the end of the article.
“Multiple trees growing at the same time can be cross-referenced, too, smoothing out any local or individual variation that might interfere with broad conclusions about the climate. (Imagine a single tree growing poorly for a few seasons because its roots were waterlogged or it was shaded by others.) Long-lived, well-preserved kauri are therefore a kind of “high-resolution time-capsule,” Lorrey says.
Tree rings illuminate the past in several ways. Most simply, counting them under a microscope reveals how long a tree lived. The biscuit that Nelson Parker cut from the log found near the village of Ngāwhā, for instance, indicates that the kauri was about 1,600 years old when it died: 1,600 rings, 1,600 years. Measuring the varying width of the rings from year to year allows scientists to observe changing growing conditions. Chemical analysis of each ring can indicate relative humidity, rainfall patterns, and soil moisture.
And by using computer programs and eyeballing tree-ring patterns to string together multiple samples from different times and locations, scientists can create long tree-ring sequences, called “chronologies,” that span millennia and help reveal larger regional climate patterns.
University of Auckland dendrochronologist Gretel Boswijk and collaborators, for example, used 700 samples of both ancient and living kauri to piece together a continuous 4,491-year chain of trees that lived between 2488 BCE and today. The chronology allowed Boswijk’s colleague, Anthony Fowler, to figure out that kauri are especially sensitive to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean that affects annual temperatures and rainfall around the world.
“When we have an El Niño year, here in the north of the country we’ll get more southwesterly flow — clearer skies but also cooler average temperatures,” Boswijk says. “Kauri tend to respond well in those conditions, so they tend to put on a wide ring.” Conversely, in a warmer, cloudier La Niña year, kauri add narrower rings. “They get stressed, they don’t grow as well.”
Using this information, the team was able create a 700-year reconstruction of ENSO variability in northern New Zealand, providing a lengthy picture of the country’s natural climate variation. For comparison, historical climate records date back only 150 years.”
Maybe, if this interests you, you might take the time to read more about the potential of these tree rings relative to the actual history and climate of this part of the world.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Joseph Olson
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“Amazing! New! Wrongco Proxy Crock” > CanadaFreePress.com
Tree ring proxy is a hoax. The first factor in tree ring is PRECIPITATION. The second is PREDATION, by insect, grazing animals or disease. The third factor is temperature, but this is a Bell Curve, with maximum at one point, but TWO POINTS for either higher or lowere temperatures. This allows a crook to disappear the Medieval Warming Period with just three bristle cone pines.
“The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Andrew Montford
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Joseph and hopefully other PSI Readers,
The topic are specific trees which actually grow more than a thousand years and grow very tall and large. Hence, I doubt if PREDATION is a significant factor. But clearly PRECIPITATION and TEMPERATURE are. Just as they are the major factors used to classify climate. However, there is now a third major factor which should be considered relative to tree rings and climate: INCIDENT SOLAR RADIATION. Until 3 decades ago there were few automated weather stations which hourly measured mean incident solar radiations. So a 50 year old Douglass Fir or Ponder Rosa Pine or a Spruce should enable those who study tree rings to see if INCIDENT SOLAR RADIATION could be seen as being a significant factor in the width of an annual tree ring’s growth.
I considered that this article to be a GREAT article because one cannot question the width of a measured annual tree ring. One can question what influences the width of the tree ring. But to do this we only need to compare the known meteorological factors history with the history of the annual tree rings. These scientists who study tree rings are clearly doing very critical research.
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
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If belief in climate change is an ideological thing. And if humans are inherently and intrinsically ideological then not only does this explain the how and why people of certain ideologies are incapable of not believing in climate change it also tells us that all people of other ideologies will have other notions that they are incapable of not believing. Along these lines I have found that people of conservative ideological beliefs are equally brain dead as global warming advocates when you attempt to get them to think critically about traditional meteorological notions:
Currently meteorological theories on atmospheric flow and storms maintain three superstitious and half-baked notions: 1) Convection. This is the superstition that evaporation makes air buoyant enough to power strong updrafts in the atmosphere (included in this is the strange belief that H2O in the atmosphere becomes gaseous at temperatures/pressures that have never been detected in a laboratory); 2) Dry layer capping. This is a superstition that imagines dry layers having structural properties that explain the how/why convection does not constantly produce storms and uplift; 3) Latent heat. This is the superstition that phase changes from a gaseous phase of H2O (which are purported to exist despite never having been detected and being inconsistent with what is indicated in the H2O phase table) to a liquid phase releases “latent heat” which itself has never been confirmed/verified.
In accordance with which, the current meteorological paradigm assumes hurricanes are caused by warm water. Actually the energy of hurricanes and all storms comes from jet streams and is delivered through vortices in the form of low pressure. Wind shear at low altitudes is the most important predictor of severe weather. This is because wind shear is the mechanism underlying growth of the vortices that are the transport mechanism of the low pressure energy. Warm moist air/water is not the source of the energy of storms, it’s the target of vortice growth.
The ‘Missing Link’ of Meteorology’s Theory of Storms
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Reply
Herb Rose
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Hi James,
Low pressure (cold fronts) air masses have less energy than high pressure (warm fronts) air masses.
The barometer is measuring the momentum of the air molecules (like a thermometer) not the weight of the air molecules. Being warmer (more energy) a high pressure is less dense (universal gas law) meaning there are fewer molecules per unit area than in a cooler air mass (low pressure). The high pressure reading of the barometer is a result of those fewer molecules having greater energy or momentum than the more dense molecules in the low pressure air mass and transferring more energy to the mercury in the barometer. The flow of energy is from a high pressure to a low pressure.
Herb
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I have given up writing essays for John O’Sullivan to possibly post. Instead I submit more brief comments. However, this comment, which is not really related to any posted article, presents a problem. Should it be a brief comment or a bit longer essay for John to consider?
R.C. Sutcliffe (Weather and Climate, 1966) wrote in the Chapter (The Winds of the World): “All this may seem a far cry from the general circulation of the world’s atmosphere but the detail serves to point the moral one cannot explain the broad features of world climate if one does not know the actual mechanisms involved.”
This comment is to point to an actual mechanisms of atmospheric circulation which occurs over the Antarctic Continent and the surrounding Oceans without any apparent periodicity. This seemingly lack of periodicity is probably (I do not know) because of certain possible random DETAILS that have been and are being observed. For the possible consequences of these possible random details are commonly being ignored.
A fact is that if you go to (http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html) you will find what I consider to be a topographic image of the Antarctic Continent and the surroundings Oceans. Which I now find does not work as planned. So after clicking on the link you will need to go to Regions and click on Antarctica. Now you will see a topographjc image of the continent as shown in shades of black and gray. I call attention to the two intense black areas and the one extensive uniformly grey area (the well known high plateau).
As I studied this image I questioned: what are the two moderate sized intensive black areas? Then I noticed the narrow intense black band which ‘circled the high plateau.’ So, I speculate that the intense black represents a surface which is best defined (described) as being sloped. And the surface of narrow band is steeply sloped and that of the larger areas are lesser sloped (gently sloped?).
A generally known (observed) fact of the continent’s winter winds are that they can often be katabatic: “Any wind blowing downslope. It is usually cold.” (glossary, Meteorology Today 9th Ed., C. Donald Ahrens) or “A type of strong mountain breeze in which wind gusts can exceed 160 km/hr (100 mph)”. (glossary, Meteorology 3rd Ed., Steven A. Ackerman and John A. Knox). I ask a reader, not a meteorologist, do you commonly associate the common words strong and gusts with a breeze? Which meteorology textbook would you choose to learn a little bit about meteorology?
Ahrens, in his text, began: “Although any downslope wind is technically a katabatic wind, the name is usually reserved for downslope winds that are much stronger than mountain breezes.” But as I read further I have to begin to separate the wheat kernels from what I consider chaff. “the flow of air can increase, often destructively, as cold air rushes downslope like water flowing over a fall.” Which is a wonderful analogy. For most people have seen water rushing down a steep streambed to fall nearly vertically over a waterfall. And most of these people, who have seen this, understand the cause of the rushing water is the same as that which cause the water to fall nearly vertically. Of course, the NATURAL CAUSE is GRAVITY.
However, if you read most books about Katabatic Winds, you might not,read the word GRAVITY. Which could be why James McGinn seems to consider many meteorologists to be braindead.
This seems a good opportunity to close this comment for I have found a good place to insert the comment to an unrelated article, instead only to an a very good comment conversation which I consider is the necessary foundation of the observational philosophy common called SCIENCE.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
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Well, Jerry, I just got done watching the movie Fargo. it’s one of my favorite movies–maybe because the short time I lived in ND I kind of fell in love with the honesty and calm intelligence of the people I encountered there, and even with the intense winter, which is all intertwined in my mind. BTW, I did take your advice and read of your discovery of the thermal properties of H2O and the continuing frustration (you are not stupid) you’ve had getting people to recognize it as such, which I really identify with. I use that word, discovery, because that is the right word. I made the same discovery in the context of other discoveries about H2O which has also lead to similar frustrations getting others to recognize it. (There is a big difference between my discovery of the thermal eccentricities of H2O and your parallel discovery. I made my discovery around 2007 and only after having seen a TV show that pointed me to the discovery. You made the discovery way back in 1975, which is amazing.)
I especially appreciate, Jerry, that you are (now) asking the right questions:
Similarity of a Dam Breach to a Storm
https://anchor.fm/james-mcginn/episodes/Similarity-of-a-Dam-Breach-to-a-Storm-eh0nc4
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
What a surprise!!! Thank you! Thank you! Maybe now that I know you have NDak experiences, we have something in common.
I probably had mentioned this before but as you probably know I and we all have memory problems. I urge you to get John P. Bluemble’s book–“North Dakota’s Geologic Legacy. He is a ‘true’ naturalist and we are studying a natural environment as we studying the role that water plays in weather (storms) and climate (the average weather).
Pages 23-27 is a section titled: “Geography and Climate” and it contains some good discussion topics. Some statements I question but he is not frighten by your or my comments as he simply wrote (a sample): “Climate is strongly influenced by volcanic eruptions. In fact, the Little Ice Age, fwjocj began around 1350 and ended in the mid-19th century, was caused by several large volcanic eruptions in the second half of the 13th century. The series of eruptions cooled the Earth, and it was not until the recent transition to a warming climate, beginning in the 19th century, that temperatures began returning to “normal” conditions. The Earth’s–and North Dakota’s–climate are always considerably cooler when volcanic activity is vigorous. The climate tends to be warmer when volcanic activity is at a minimum.”
So, we can ‘peer review’ what he wrote together if you get the book.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
Have listened to your ‘link’ and your have well described from where you are coming. Some nitpicking: you stated: “haven’t tested”; I would state: ‘haven’t observed’ for we cannot manipulate the Natural Atmosphere. We have to try to explain what’s been observed, which is my obvious point. For if one has not observed anything, one has nothing to explain.
After putting the emphasis upon the ‘physics of the atmospheric system you finally got around to considering the possible chemistry of water which I believe I, some fellow chemists, and Pauling do understand as you claim to.
When Schrodinger, a physicist, did his wave-mechanics calculation of the hydrogen atom (one proton-one electron) he converted the particle, an electron, into a specific volume of space which had a negative charge (but no particle) about the proton (still a positively charged particle).
Hence, I a chemist, now that you ‘have described’ that which you consider that Pauling did not understand, is exactly what he, a few other chemists who ponder instead of memorizing, and I totally agree That a hydrogen bond is a proton between two negative volumes of space where one does not know which volume of space is a covalent bond between the proton and oxygen atom and the other negative volume of space is a unshared pair of the oxygen atom’s electrons for we imagine a mechanism which we term resonance which makes the two negative volumes of space identical. Therefore, there is not electrical dipole as you rightly propose.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
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Jerry: Maybe now that I know you have NDak experiences, we have something in common. I probably had mentioned this before but as you probably know I and we all have memory problems.
James: It was quite a while ago that we discussed that I worked in the oilfields of western ND, Williston. I was there for about two years, taking time off college.
Jerry: The Earth’s–and North Dakota’s–climate are always considerably cooler when volcanic activity is vigorous. The climate tends to be warmer when volcanic activity is at a minimum.”
James: Interesting. There certainly is a larger puzzle to be explained here. I have some coursework in regard to Milankovitch cycles that would weigh in on this.
Jerry: Hence, I a chemist, now that you ‘have described’ that which you consider that Pauling did not understand, is exactly what he, a few other chemists who ponder instead of memorizing, and I totally agree That a hydrogen bond is a proton between two negative volumes of space where one does not know which volume of space is a covalent bond between the proton and oxygen atom and the other negative volume of space is a unshared pair of the oxygen atom’s electrons for we imagine a mechanism which we term resonance which makes the two negative volumes of space identical. Therefore, there is not electrical dipole as you rightly propose.
James: I refer to the error that Linus Pauling made back in the 1950s (an error that is encapsulated in the models of all of the disciplines in all of the natural sciences) as the most devastatingly subtle misconception in all of science. I am about to start shooting a video that fully explicates all of this. What follows was cut and pasted from the first section (of about 6 or 7) of the script thereof:
Section One: The Most Devastatingly Subtle Misconception in All of Science
When he first laid out the rules of hydrogen bonding between water molecules way back in the 1950s Linus Pauling, a Nobel prize winning scientist, assumed that the attractive forces that exist between H2O molecules are caused by the asymmetry or lopsidedness of the arrangement of the H2O molecule’s hydrogen atoms relative to its oxygen atom. In contrast, with my model it is assumed that these attractive forces–forces that are often referred to as “polar” forces–are the result of the lopsided or asymmetric way the H2O molecule’s various electrical gradients are arranged relative to its three sets of nuclei, which itself is the result of the lopsided asymmetric way the H2O molecule’s covalently attached hydrogen atoms are arranged relative to its oxygen atom.
Do you find this confusing? Well, if not then you probably aren’t paying attention. Because if you were paying attention then you would have noticed that these competing explanations are very similar. You might even have suspected that any difference between them is only a matter of perspective. And, well, if you did suspect this you would be right–up to a point. Let me explain.
As I indicated, with the current paradigm of hydrogen bonding in water the focus is on the lopsidedness in arrangement of the H2O molecule’s covalently attached hydrogen atoms relative to its oxygen atom. {Demonstrate this visually.} In contrast, with my model the focus is on the lopsidedness in the arrangement of the H2O molecule’s electrical gradients relative to its three nuclei. {Show this on the board.} So, my model is different from the traditional model. But this difference seems to evaporate when you consider that, as I indicated, with my model the cause of this lopsidedness of electrical gradients relative to nuclei is the same thing they are focussing on in the traditional model–the lopsided way the H2O molecule’s covalently attached hydrogen atoms are arranged relative to its oxygen atom.
Considering this last point, you might suspect that with my model I am putting forth a distinction without a difference. And, well, you would be correct. Or, I should say, you would be correct up to the point that I explained to you one additional distinction with my model. You see, with my model the arrangement of electrical gradients that determines an H2O molecule’s polar attractive force is not limited to the electrical gradients produced by the H2O molecule’s own atoms. In stark contrast to the standard model introduced by Linus Pauling in the 1950s, with my model this attractive force is also determined by the electrical gradients coming from any adjacent H2O molecules with which it shares hydrogen bonds. In other words, in my model, this attractive force is determined by the arrangement of the net sum of electrical gradients, which includes both the electrical gradients coming from the H2O molecule itself and those coming from any adjacent H2O molecules with which it shares hydrogen bonds.
It is at this point that something profound jumps out at us. And if you are not looking for it you might not notice it. The additional electrical gradients achieve a higher degree of symmetry or balance in the net arrangement of electrical gradients to nuclei and in so doing they reverse some of the asymmetry or lopsidedness that is the cause of the polar force. In other words, they will reverse some of the polarity that is being caused by the asymmetry. And this provides us a mechanism to describe the diversity of behavior that we see in the anomalies of H2O and thereby a means of making these anomalies no longer anomalous.
To understand what I mean by this let’s take a step back in time to the 1950s and consider what Linus Pauling was considering when he formulated the notion that it is the asymmetry or lopsidedness in the arrangement of its atoms that causes the H2O molecule’s polarity. Linus Pauling was primarily a chemist. And, as a chemist he was concerned with categorizing different chemical elements based on their properties. One of the categories they considered involved the boiling temperature of a substance based on its size. H2O was an outlier with respect to the fact that its boiling temperature and freezing/melting temperature was dramatically higher than that of molecules of similar size and similar composition. In other words, it seemed H2O should be a gas at ambient temperature. But, of course, it is not a gas at these normal temperatures, it is a liquid. This called out for explanation. And it was its lopsidedness and asymmetry of the arrangement of its atoms, in the context of some simple rules of quantum mechanics, that provided the solution by way of allowing him to envision the H2O molecule being polar, thereby explaining its high boiling temperature.
This all seemed to work real well at first. But then they started noticing other properties that were not predicted by this model: very low viscosity, unexplained consistency in its viscosity despite differences in temperature, high heat capacity, sensitivity of its boiling temperature to changes in pressure, surface tension, becoming less dense upon freezing which allowed ice to float on water, superchilled water, and other characteristics that did the opposite of what found in most substances. They referred to these properties as anomalies because they were completely unpredicted by and unexplained by their model. And the more they looked the more they turned up new anomalies. At last count there are something like 72 different observations that were completely unexplained and unpredicted by their model.
In other words, there was a diversity of observed properties that didn’t have a corresponding diversity of causes. And now we know what the problem has been all along. The problem is the oversimplified model that was introduced to us by Linus Pauling back in the 1950s. The supposition that asymmetry was the cause of the polar force seen in H2O is fundamentally correct. But Pauling focussed on the wrong causal factor. It isn’t the symmetry/assymetry of the atoms of the molecule that matters. It’s the symmetry/assymetry of all of the electrical gradients–the net sum of electrical gradients–relative to its nuclei that matters, and this includes the electrical gradients from adjacent H2O molecules. When all of this is taken into consideration we arrive at a model that actually produces predictions that correspond with what is actually observed.
So, now there is a solution to the most devastatingly subtle misconception in all of science. In the next section we will demonstrate the viability of this breakthrough by applying it to one of the most seemingly irresolvable anomalies of H2O, its very low viscosity (and/or the unexplained small space that exists between H2O molecules in the liquid phase). After that, in the section that follows this next section, we can begin what will undoubtedly be the most difficult part of this endeavor, the long slough of cutting through the web of confused thinking and intellectual dishonesty that has emerged as a direct result of this devastatingly subtle misconception–the longer termed end resulting being to reject and eventually replace the archaic thinking about H2O and its various roles in nature that currently dominates within academic circles.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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Herb Rose
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Hi James,
All atoms, although neutral, radiate a negative electric field because of the distance the electrons are from the nucleus. The belief that the positive nucleus attracts the electrons of other atoms is ridiculous. It is the negative charge that preserve the structure of the atoms.
The attractive forcer between atoms is concentrated at the nucleus and radiates out from it in the form of gravity. An orbiting electron turns that force into a direction force, magnetism.
A hydrogen atom is a solenoid producing a magnetic force that will be attracted to the magnetic fields of other atoms. That is why in diatomic molecules the electrons of atom spin in opposite directions. It is the gaps in the outer electron shell that allow the magnetic field of atoms to mesh like gears shortening the distance between the atom allowing them to form covalent bonds despite the electric repelling force between them.
In a water molecule the hydrogen atoms are at 180 degrees and it is distortion in the combined electric and magnetic fields that give water its properties.
When energy is absorbed by a molecule a portion becomes internal energy (bonds) and some is radiated. The electric force and attractive force have opposite behavior. When the attractive forces of atoms combine they create a larger radiated force and the internal force decreases. (The radiated magnetic fields combine forming a larger magnet while the force between them decreases.) When opposite electric fields combine the internal force increases and the radiated electric force (field) decreases as in a neutron. When same poles or charges come together the opposite occurs, with the radiated electric field increasing and the radiated magnetic field decreasing.
When energy is added to water it increases the flexing between the hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms. This can cause the molecule to split into a hydroxyl and hydronium ion creating internal energy in the form of an ionic bond. When this happens more of the added energy becomes non-radiated energy and the attraction between molecules decreases. At the same time the radiated repelling force between the molecules decreases as the electric force changes from a radiated force to an internal force.
This creation of electric bonds is why the viscosity of water does not change.
Herb
Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
We were doing so well in trying to factly understand (explain) a little bit about weather (atmospheric science) which is not commonly considered and then you write: “Linus Pauling, a Nobel prize winning scientist, assumed that the attractive forces that exist between H2O molecules are caused by the asymmetry or lopsidedness of the arrangement of the H2O molecule’s hydrogen atoms relative to its oxygen atom.” My wife pretends to be a mindreader and it makes me angry because I know I am not and she is not because she is not the Creator God.
When you write what I read, what you write is purely your opinion but you seem to consider it to be the TRUTH. The only thing in my world which I consider is the TRUTH is an reproducible observation (measurement) and even that may not be the entire TRUTH because I (we) haven’t (or cannot) see everything. And what we don’t see might have consequences.
Richard Feynman was a very transparent SCIENTIST because he liked to tell stories about himself and his experiences. Read his story: The 7 Precent Solution. (“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”)
Have a good day, Jerry
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Herb: Correct me if wrong. when a hurricane approaches the barometer goes way down. This is a mass of moist warm air. Years ago thats the only way they knew one was coming. When a cold front moves in this is a mass of dense dry air and gives a high pressure reading..
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Herb Rose
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Hi Mark,
I’m not an expert in storms but I believe the low pressure is in the eye of a hurricane where it is sunny and calm.
Storms occur along the boundaries between high and low pressure systems.while in their interiors the weather is relatively tame. I thought a low pressure system was called a cold front and when it moved in it was a harbinger of cooler temperatures after the stormy weather ended, while a high pressure warm front meant future warmer weather after the front had passed. I’m sure James will be able to give us the correct answer.
Herb
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Mark Tapley
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I believe a low pressure system is generally warm moist air such as comes up from the Gulf of Mexico. It cannot advance against a high pressure system of cold dense air coming down from the north. Notice with hurricanes that no matter how powerful the actual storm is, it is a low pressure wether system that is not able to push out a high pressure system. This also explains why cold fronts come in fast but are slow to leave as there is nothing to push them out. They just have to fizzle out. Any way we are not too concerned about the weather because so far nature still is in control.
I forgot to mention something in our last discussion about the fake moon landings After awhile there became moon landing deniers (like those incorrigible holohoax deniers) and information began to appear from quite a few skeptics like the ones I mentioned. NASA began a big campaign to counter and try to debunk the critics with the usual conspiracy theory slander. However the huge collection of “moon photos” NASA possessed contained many anomalies. The photos had to be “lost” and so they were. Among the many discrepancies was a film technique used at the time (before the hi- tech of today) to simulate a distant panoramic view called “front screen projection” where objects that were filmed on a movie set in a big studio could be made to look as if they were filmed out in an expansive desert or mountain setting. The only problem was that there was a descret line at the bottom edge.that had to be camouflaged. This technique was visible for example in the ape scene in the movie “2001 A Space Odyssey. It was also evident in the panoramic “moon scape images.”
Everything the government (elite) do is a lie and a fraud to fleece the flock. When you get big government you get big corruption. The worst always come to the top. Ultimately you get a kakistocracy of global criminals. They might even try to push a fake virus on us.
Best regards,
Mark
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Herb Rose
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Hi Mark,
I am not familiar with the camera used to take the moon pictures but I would suspect that it was in a container (like those used for underwater photography) to protect it and maintain a constant pressure. I don’t know if part of that case appeared in pictures as I imagine focusing on an object would be difficult if the range of motion (I assume it was mounted on the space craft not hand held) would be limited and some photographs would be cropped to show objects of interest.
I don’t think the Van Allen belts pose the threat you believe they do. The two belts are composed of ionized particles from the solar wind. The electric fields (positive and negative) radiated by the Earth block these charged ions from reaching the Earth, not the magnetic field. If the magnetic field were to block them it would direct the positive and negative ions in opposite directions (right hand rule) forming one belt with both charges instead of two belts with different charges. Because the particles have charges they interact with other mater (the names Rutherford gave to them: alpha, beta, and gamma was due to their penetrating ability.) making them easier to block than the high energy uncharged radiation (gamma rays) or low charged particles (neutrons) that do the most damage, just as it is the high energy short electromagnetic waves (x-ray, UV) that do the most damage.Usually the ions will be blocked in the atmosphere. but when there is a large solar flare they can penetrate making it to Earth. The stronger magnetic fields at the poles redirect them producing the auroras while else where they change the electric field producing EMF knocking out electric systems. They do minimal radiation damage to living organisms.
I don’t think it would take much shielding to protect satellites or astronauts from the ions in the Van Allen belts.
Herb
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Herb: The mission to Mars scam is getting cranked up now with Zionist shill Elon Musk so they are claiming to be working on improved shielding against the radiation. What did they use 50 years ago.?
The issue with the From screen projection is not a matter of cameras but the front screen screen technology used as I mentioned. This fakery was clearly evident thats why they had to get rid of the originals.
Herb Rose
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Hi Math,
Since the Van Allen belts are local to Earth I would expect the improved shielding is for high energy cosmic rays from the sun which astronauts would be exposed to for a prolonged time.
As to the pictures, how would you design a camera for use on the moon that is not held by an astronaut but mounted on the lander? I would have it in a case that that would be remotely controlled with the widest angle lens to gather as large a viewing area as possible and then use enlarging and cropping to show objects of interest. It would be quite possible to get parts of the lander in the pictures since the lander position is not changed to get a better view. As I say, it is not an area that I have examined so I don’t know the equipment or method used in taking them and if those could offer an explanation for the lines you refer to.
Herb
Jerry Krause
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Hi James and hopefully other PSI readers,
James: “1) Convection. This is the superstition that evaporation makes air buoyant enough to power strong updrafts in the atmosphere (included in this is the strange belief that H2O in the atmosphere becomes gaseous at temperatures/pressures that have never been detected in a laboratory)”
Jerry: Colder atmosphere, with the same dew point temperature as that of the warmer parcel of atmosphere which has a boundary with the warmer so that the colder, more dense atmosphere, flow under the warmer atmosphere and lifts the warmer, less dense, parcel is the mechanism of updrafts that I have been taught and learned. And the greater the temperature difference between the colder and warmer atmosphere, the stronger the lifting action. There is no influence of water vapor because the atmosphere’s dew point temperatures are the same.
James: “2) Dry layer capping. This is a superstition that imagines dry layers having structural properties that explain the how/why convection does not constantly produce storms and uplift.”
Jerry: Dry layer capping. Never heard of it. Have read about the vertical temperature graduate of the atmosphere which seem many have assumed is always the theoretical one which has been established by ‘reasoning’. Except if one studies atmospheric sounding data of the atmosphere’s actual temperature gradient one finds it can be (often is) not the theoretically reasoned vertical temperature gradient. Here, I must admit to some ignorance for atmospheric soundings in mid-ocean are not regularly conducted like those over land surfaces. But a historical fact about atmospheric soundings is that they have only been regularly made since WWII. So while it was known for about 130 years that the atmosphere’s temperature did not continuously decrease with increasing elevation (altitude), I am not sure when it was observed that after a cloudless (clear) nighttime, it was discovered that atmosphere’s temperature usually increased with increasing altitude up to some altitude where it abruptly began to decrease as theoretically expected. This atmospheric condition is commonly termed an atmospheric inversion and not a dry layer cap. Which may be to what you are referring because no clouds are involved (hence dry),.
James: “3) Latent heat. This is the superstition that phase changes from a gaseous phase of H2O (which are purported to exist despite never having been detected and being inconsistent with what is indicated in the H2O phase table) to a liquid phase releases “latent heat” which itself has never been confirmed/verified.”
Jerry: Phase Changes are reversible: Liquid water freezes and ice (solid water) melts. Liquid water ‘evaporates’ (disappears because we cannot see the tiny water molecules) and gaseous water water molecules (which we cannot see) condense to form liquid droplets of liquid water (which we can see if there is a sufficient number of them or if the droplet becomes big enough.. Solid water (ice molcules sublimes) disappears and water molecules condense on solid water (ice) surfaces.
Professor Smith The Elements of Physics, 1938) wrote; “If a vessel of ice, or snow, is heated the temperature first rises until it is 0C, and then remains stationary until all the ice is melted. After all the ice has been melted, the temperature of the water begins to rise.”
Is it so difficult to see that the energy (heat) added to the water while the water temperature is stationary at 0C is the latent heat of converting water solid to water liquid? So we know that an equal amount of energy (heat) must be moved from liquid water at OC to convert it to solid water (ice) at 0C.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jerry,
Latent heat and heat of evaporation are terms used to describe the energy added to water that becomes internal energy rather than radiated energy. This occurs throughout the liquid phase of water.
Snow or ice are when the liquid phase is converting to a solid which, as James pointed out, is completed at -30 C. The 80 calories/gram needed to melt ice is breaking internal bonds and not showing up as radiated or kinetic energy. Above 0 C when energy is added that energy it becomes both internal energy (forming structures in the water) and kinetic energy raising the temperature. This is why the size of a calorie (the energy needed to raise 1 gram of water 1 C) changes as the temperature of the water changes. Energy is still being stored as “latent heat” even when there is no phase change in the liquid water. At 100 C as more energy is added the temperature remains constant as that energy breaks down the structures created in the liquid. After absorbing 540 calories/gram (the heat of evaporation) the internal structures are broken and the water converts to 100 C steam/vapor.
The terms “latent heat” and “heat of evaporation” ignore that water is continually absorbing energy as internal energy while it is in a liquid phase, not just when there is a phase change.
Have a good day,
Herb
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
As I concluded my previous comment, I asked a question which only you can answer. Why have you avoided answering it? It only requires a YES or NO response.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
james McGinn
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At one time it was widely believed that moist air contained gaseous H2O. Also, as is still the case, there was a lot of mystery in regards to the origins of the strong gusty winds of storms. It was proposed that has the gaseous H2O in moist air converted back to liquid (condensation) that this also released heat. And this imaginary heat was called latent heat of condensation or latent energy of condensation. Since they didn’t have any explanation of the origin of the strong gusty winds of storms and since everybody was confused about storms and nobody had a better explanation the phrase as adopted into the jargon of storm theory. So, ultimately, it is meaningless. It is just part of the meaningless rhetoric of a failed paradigm.
You can ignore it. When it comes to the physics of storms meteorologists are just as dishonest as climatologist discussing global warming. in other words, they won’t discuss it.
Here is an example of dishonesty by meteorologists:
The Roof Leaks at the Top: Conversation with Edwin Berry Phd.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=446
James McGinn / Genius
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Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James and hopefully other PSI readers,
I came here this morning with an idea. The idea was based upon my foggy memory that Joseph Olsen had previously described his adventure of doing a solo flight along the coast of Texas as part of his training to get a pilot’s license . And he got caught in a band of developing cumulus clouds. The idea was to ask him to repeat these experiences for you and other PSI readers who maybe had not read it before. Except, I am not sure it was Joseph Olson who wrote what I KNOW I read.
Whomever experience is very important as it was a very unique experience which maybe very few pilots may have experienced and survived. For you have just alluded to the chaos of the forming cumulus clouds but I doubt you have been there and really know what the chaos is actually like.
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” (Einstein)
Hopefully, this pilot with experience, hence knowledge, was Joseph and hopefully Joseph will rely if he was or was not this learning pilot.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
It’s here, Jerry, on a post that I made:
The ‘Missing Link’ of Meteorology’s Theory of Storms
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329
According to Science Inside and Out:
From one that did live to tell about it, the following, entitled Science Inside and Out, involves the first hand testimony of a then new pilot, Joe Olsen, encountering thunderstorms on a solo flight in a small plane over Texas:
Entering the cloud felt like hitting a wall. Suddenly everything was white, it was raining from every direction and the wind was howling. There were massive vertical wind shears that rendered the instruments useless. The altitude, air speed, rate of climb and artificial horizon gauges were all bouncing peg to peg. “Flying by the seat of your pants” quickly becomes the over-riding instinct. You are now in vertigo and your butt thinks it knows where the Earth is. You are fooled by the changing gravity of the rapid up and down wind shear. You are surrounded by glowing white light and cannot see further than ten feet in any direction. The wings are shaking at beyond maximum design loading and the LAST thing you want is your BUTT flying the plane. The propeller is used to 110 mph wind from the nose, but is disturbed by the 200 mph up and down winds.
I use it as evidence that supports my model. So, Jerry, you are confused;.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
Thank you!!! What am I confused about?? I described as what I remembered as being chaos. I read nothing about the organized winds which must define a vortex.
Other PSI Readers what do you read? Who do you think is confused. What Joe described is no theory.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
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Jerry:
What am I confused about?? I described as what I remembered as being chaos.
James:
Did you not notice this therein? “The earliest of these three discoveries was the discovery of extreme turbulence at the top of thunderstorms. This was surprising because up until then it had been assumed that as water molecules within a parcel of air combined with other water molecules in the colder air at the top of the troposphere the air parcel would become more dense. And, consequently, it’s buoyancy–the assumed source of its power–would be neutralized. Additionally, when observed from the ground the tops of thunderstorms appeared to be benign, fluffy, and harmless?” (quoting myself.)
Jerry:
I read nothing about the organized winds which must define a vortex.
James:
Jerry, is it not obvious that winds cannot just self organize? So, it we witness organized winds of a vortex we must also envision that which can achieve the organizing. Current models don’t allow for anything that might achieve this. So we know that current models are, at best, incomplete. There is something missing. What is this thing that is missing? I provide you a hint at the end of “missing link.”
So, Jerry, I would like to make three suggestions for you:
1) I suggest you read this whole thing (Missing link of storm theory) again and try to discern its deeper meaning.
2) Consider the fact that when traveling from east to west in the vicinity of tornado alley pilots who encounter thunderstorms are advised to avoid them by flying to the (left) south and not to the (right) north of the thunderstorm. Or, to be more specific, pilots are advised to never get between a thunderstorm and the jet stream. Why is this?
3) With respect to answering the questions above take a look at this:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329#p114302
James McGinn / Genius
James McGinn
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Hi Herb and Mark,
Herb: Low pressure (cold fronts) air masses have less energy than high pressure (warm fronts) air masses.
James: I agree that colder, lower pressure means less energy (ie. gas laws) but it is when we look at the details that explanatory challenges emerge. Cold front are caused by (and/or harbor) storms. There are gusty winds and uplift in storms. What causes this? Convection supposedly explains uplift but the physics thereof are obviously a cartoon and there is nothing about convection that explains the origin of the low pressure. And why do storms track along with the jet stream? And what maintains the momentum of the jet streams. There are many conundrums and inconsistencies with the prevailing model and there is an overriding taboo about discussing the details thereof. Why is this?
Also, there are big differences between a warm front and a cold front. Cold fronts start out small, grow larger and eventually disappate. Cold fronts are concave. warm fronts are convex they don’t start out small. They just exist.
Mark: when a hurricane approaches the barometer goes way down. This is a mass of moist warm air.
James: Hurricanes start in warm moist air. But the hurricane itself is cool like any other storm.
Mark: When a cold front moves in this is a mass of dense dry air and gives a high pressure reading..
James: Not really. Cold fronts are low pressure and harbor storms. The longer they persist, haboring storms the more low pressure they generate.
Herb: I’m not an expert in storms but I believe the low pressure is in the eye of a hurricane where it is sunny and calm.
James: yes, the eye is low pressure.
Herb: Storms occur along the boundaries between high and low pressure systems.while in their interiors the weather is relatively tame. I thought a low pressure system was called a cold front and when it moved in it was a harbinger of cooler temperatures after the stormy weather ended, while a high pressure warm front meant future warmer weather after the front had passed. I’m sure James will be able to give us the correct answer.
James: Yes, warm fronts are associated with calm weather. Doldrum (non-gusty) winds.
James: My point is that there is a lot of confusion and if you look back on the history of the discipline this confusion has generated a lot of superstitious thinking has resulted in this topic becoming invisible and even ideological. And so, whereas it is really easy to get people to talk about, explain and make perfectly explicit notions about climate with storm theory it is still ensconced in taboo along the lines that people will only go so far before they become overwhelmed and begin harking back to simplistic conclusions, even though it can be shown that these simplistic conclusions are, at best, only partially correct. So it is really hard to arrive at any kind of scientific consensus as to what is exactly happening with the physics of a storms. And I think it is made worse by the fact that meteorologists are very careful not to discuss the subject because the don’t want to reveal that they are perfectly confused.
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Herb Rose
| #
Hi James,
Thanks for the clarification.
If a less dense (warmer) air mass registers a higher barometric pressure it must mean that the barometer is not measuring the weight of the air molecules but the momentum (mass times velocity) of the molecules striking it. Since a thermometer is an almost identical design as a barometer it stands to reason that it also is measuring the momentum of molecules striking it not, the kinetic energy of each molecule. The reason the temperature drops with increasing altitude is the same reason the barometric pressure drops, fewer molecules means less momentum being measured. The kinetic energy of the molecules actually increases (universal gas law) with increased altitude (even in the troposphere) showing that it is the sun heating the atmosphere, not the Earth.
Herb
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Herb:
Less dense warm “:moist” air does not register a higher reading on a barometer. The instrument reading goes down. When a hurricane approaches you get maximum low barometric pressure. Masses of cold dense “:dry” air always raise the barometric pressure. When a cold front is moving over an area the barometric pressure always goes up. As this high pressure system diminishes the barometric pressure always goes down. That is how people before weather “forecasting” knew the the weather was changing. If the barometric pressure was moving up they knew a cold front was coming. And as an old timer told me about Hurricane Camille of I believe the 60’s that blew everything in. Plaquemine Parish away, they knew something big was coming because the barometer went lower than ever before.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I write my comments so you a reader will be cautioned not to believer everything that is written (stated). To present alternatives to what some have written. Of course, the same applies to what I write and you the reader can make your own INFORMED decision. For I believe, without my alternatives, you cannot make an INFORMED decision. Which was Galileo’s purpose in doing his experiements and writing his book. And I have observed humans all make mistakes because we forget what we ‘know’.
What you are reading here in these comments is an actual LIVE example of DIALOGUES CONCERNING TWO NEW SCIENCES of which Galileo fictitiously wrote so long ago. Not fiction is that Louis Elzevir, the Dutch publisher of Galileo’s book written in the common Italian language, wrote a preface to the READER of Galileo’s book. In this preface I read, as translated to the English language by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio: “For, according to the common saying, sight can teach more and with greater certainty in a single day than can precept even though repeated a thousand times; or, as another says, intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.”
In the course of composing this comment I finally observe that I had not read the TAPLE OF CONTENTS, which Elzevir must have also written, with any comprehension. For I now read that Elzevir had divided what Galileo had written into four chapters.
Day I: First new science, treating of the resistance which solid bodies offer to fracture.
Day 2: Concerning the cause of cohesion.
Day 3. Second new science, treating of motion [moviemnti local]. Inform motion. Naturally accelerated motion.
Day 4. Violent motions. Projectiles
For from my first reading of this book, I had questioned what this TWO NEW SCIENCES were. And clearly this TABLE OF CONTENTS clearly stated what they were.
I now conclude that it was Elzevir who divided the book into four chapters and who titled these four chapters. For I read, that Antonio Favaro had written in his introduction to Crew and de Salvio’s 1914 English translation, that Elzevir had changed the title of Galileo’s book over Galileo’s objection.
And it is a fact that Galileo described (Day I) his well known experiments of dropping two bodies of significantly different weights from high places and observing that when dropped at the same time that they struck the ground at nearly the same time. What is not as commonly known are his experiments with pendulums which he also described in some detail the Day I chapter. For the pendulum slows the fall of a body so its motion can be observed in detail (uniform motion and naturally accelerate motion) Day III. Day II is clearly about ‘the resistance (cohesion) which solid bodies offer to fracture’.
Have a good day, JerrY
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James and hopefully other PSI Readers,
Preface: I am placing my comment to Jame’s comment of April 18 at 6:06pm to make its many lines longer and easier to read (less scrolling).
I have not extensively read the ‘literature’ of the meteorologists, but I agree with you that they have not yet clearly explained what creates the chaotic winds and rain that Joseph Olson experienced. But I,a physical chemist, can. But first I will review what meteorologists have observed and therefore do know. Of course I will quote from R. C. Sutcliffe’s 1966 book (Weather and Climate).
He wrote: “I … shall be content with a brief outline of some current techniques for exploring the free atmosphere, which have been introduced wholly in recent decades, some only in the last few years. The items selected for this purpose are the ballon-borne radio-sonde and radar for wind measurements, the weather or storm radar, the meteorological rocket, and lastly, on the common ground of meteorological exploration and space technology, the earth-orbiting weather satellite.” pp 24-25
Sutcliffe’s is still available (Amazon or maybe Abe’s Books) at a reasonable cost. I would urge you, or any readers, with an interest in weather and climate to get a copy of this book, if you do not have it already. For I have have alerted you about what might interest you in the rest of this chapter.
Chapter 5 is titled “The Microphysics of Clouds”. Which I warn you is the fundamental problem. For “When invisible water vapor in the air reaches saturation point, or sufficiently close to saturation point, enormous numbers of liquid droplets (so solid ice particles are produced, becoming visible as a ‘cloud’.” Immediately after this statement Sutcliffe lists a sequence of 10 questions. Which these and more questions are summarized by this statement: “Looking more closely at the ice phase … a new set of inquires into why, how, when, and where, and still the range problems is far from exhausted.” pp 46
Again, one must read Chapter 5 to learn what meteorologists know and didn’t know in 1966 and I expect that few have gone to the chemists who study matter and the changes it undergoes. Chemists are very familiar with the non-equilibrium systems like supersaturated solution and supercooled precipitates that will not naturally crystalize as they do if the non-equilibrium system is ‘seeded’ with a tiny crystal (like a snowflake) in the case of a cloud of super-cooled liquid droplets.
Now a fact is that chemists could not example the cause of super-cooled water droplets until Erwin Schrodinger, a physicist, assumed that an electron could behave as a wave and used the wave equation to solve the system of a hydrogen atom (one proton and one electron) to create the model of the quantum mechanical atom (1925). Then Linus Pauling proposed a special type of intermolecular bonding between water molecules which forced the water molecules to form multiple molecule single crystal of water which had empty space in the middle of the crystal.
James, as I researched the history of the hydrogen bond with which Linus Pauling is commonly credited with theorizing, I find that “a graduate student at the University of California named Maurice L. Huggins conjectured that the hydrogen nucleus might be held in suspension between the octets of two other atoms.” (https://inference-review.com/article/the-hydrogen-bond)
I quote this because this was before Schrodinger did his theoretical calculation to establish there had to have been some physical evidence for the idea of the hydrogen bond beside the fact that everyone knew that ice floats on liquid water. Which observation forces the conclusion that ice must have a rigid crystalline physical structure with ‘holes’ naturally in it. And, of course, the snowflake, is evidence of ice’s crystalline structure.
And chemists understand the explanation for super-cooled liquid water is that each molecule of water must one by one joined to other water molecules to form that first single crystal of water. For once until this final molecule is added, whatever exists to that point, is easily knocked apart of perpetual movements of the other water molecules in the supercooled liquid water.
Accordingly to kinetic-molecular theory based upon the Gas Laws of Boyle (1662) and Charles (1780s) the average kinetic energy (mass X velocity^2) of the gas molecules is proportional to the kelvin temperature of the gas. Hence, as the temperature decreases the average speed of the molecules decrease; thereby increasing the probability that a stable single crystal will be formed.
Relative to this reasoning, Sutcliffe wrote: “Not all the details of supercooling are yet understood until the temperature falls to about -40C when all droplets freeze.” pp 50
What I cannot find being written by Sutcliffe, other meteorologists, and James is that the unstable supercooled or supersaturated systems revert (are transformed) to a stable equilibrium system very rapidly. And it is observed in the chemistry laboratory that depending, upon the latent heat (energy) of the phase transition from liquid to solid. In the case of water the transition from liquid to solid is an exothermic one (produces energy). Any reaction which rapidly produces energy is commonly called an explosion.
So it was these violent explosions, due to the rapid transition of supercooled cloud to ice cloud, which produced the extreme turbulence which Joseph Olson experienced.
Demonstrated by using previous observations and previous chemical knowledge.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
meteorologists have not yet clearly explained what creates the chaotic winds and rain that Joseph Olson experienced.
James:
Excellent. This realization alone puts you head and shoulders above the pretenders that would never admit/reveal these shortcomings of conventional theory.
Jerry:
“When invisible water vapor in the air reaches saturation point, or sufficiently close to saturation point, enormous numbers of liquid droplets (so solid ice particles are produced, becoming visible as a ‘cloud’.”
non-equilibrium systems like supersaturated solution and supercooled precipitates that will not naturally crystalize as they do if the non-equilibrium system is ‘seeded’ with a tiny crystal (like a snowflake) in the case of a cloud of super-cooled liquid droplets.
a special type of intermolecular bonding between water molecules which forced the water molecules to form multiple molecule single crystal of water which had empty space in the middle of the crystal. the hydrogen nucleus might be held in suspension between the octets of two other atoms. once until this final molecule is added, whatever exists to that point, is easily knocked apart of perpetual movements of the other water molecules in the supercooled liquid water.
as the temperature decreases the average speed of the molecules decrease; thereby increasing the probability that a stable single crystal will be formed.
Relative to this reasoning, Sutcliffe wrote: “Not all the details of supercooling are yet understood until the temperature falls to about -40C when all droplets freeze.”
the transition from liquid to solid is an exothermic one (produces energy). Any reaction which rapidly produces energy is commonly called an explosion.
So it was these violent explosions, due to the rapid transition of supercooled cloud to ice cloud, which produced the extreme turbulence which Joseph Olson experienced.
James:
Given the impossibility of the task, this is about as good as answer as possible. Good job Jerry.
My own answer involves there being a non-Newtonian type of moist air that spins up on moist/dry wind shear boundaries to produce the structural capabilities that are evident in the sheath of a tornadic vortice. And Tornadic vortices originate from jet streams and channel low-pressure energy by effectively sucking air which then shoots into the flow of the jet stream. In so doing they create the uplift and swirling, gusty winds that are evident in storms.
One criticism I can have of your model, Jerry, is that there is no precedent for the explosiveness that you suggest. But, I suppose, you could level the same criticism at my model in that there is no obvious precedent for the structural properties for the tubular voritices that channel the low pressure energy to the location of the thunderstorm in my model. But I would counter this criticism by pointing you toward non-Newtonian fluids as an example of structural properties appearing on the scene in the context of a different type of shear conditions.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi James and Jerry.
A tornado appears to be a monster feeding on the surface of the earth because it is a monster feeding on the surface of the earth. It is a consequence of the Lenard Effect.
A dust devil sucks up matter but the spin starts once the Lenard Effect kicks in.
Think of an electric motor without a fixed spindle.
Cheers. Matt
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH,
I have observed several to many dust devils. And I believe the atmospheric condition could be defined as being nearly calm, the ground condition dry and nearly level and extensive in area. If one was standing still one could sense a slight breeze in one direction and then a little while later in a different direction. What I imagine is there are random parcels of this surface layer of atmosphere moving about the field. Somewhere I have read that when these parcels of breezes contact each other there is a turbulence created at the boundary and because one breeze is in one direction and the other in the opposite direction this turbulence begins to create a spinning vortex and this vortex sucks and follows the boundary between the boundary of these breezes of opposing directions. And when these parcels of atmosphere part the dust devil dies.
Just what I have read and it seems simple to understand. But just because it seems simple does make it correct.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry. Thank you for the explanation.
When you previously mentioned dust devils I thought that destroyed my energy transfer thinking on tornados but when I researched dust devils I read the dry matter lifted by the dust devil does in fact collide and cause electric charges.
I think dust devils, tornadoes and hurricanes have some differing mechanisms but they all have some influence from the Lenard effect.
Have a nice day. Matt
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James,
Thank you for your comment!!! Have to check out the Lenard Effect because I have never heard of it. You claim: “there is no precedent for the explosiveness that you suggest.” I suspect your problem is you have not lived where I grew up. The thunder of thunder storms frequently raddled the windows of our home during the spring and summer. Lightening traveled down the eave spout into the cistern which was in our basement and blow out an eight inch thick concrete wall. Which pieces of concrete flew about twelve feet across the basement to break glass canning jars on shelves. And my folks woke up, looked out the window at the barn and saw it wasn’t burning and went back to sleep and only discovered in the morning what had happened in the basement.
No “precedent”??? And there is Joseph’s experience!
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
You claim: “there is no precedent for the explosiveness that you suggest.” I suspect your problem is you have not lived where I grew up. The thunder of thunder storms . . .
James: I wasn’t referring to storms, Jerry, I was referring to where you wrote the following:
Jerry: Relative to this reasoning, Sutcliffe wrote: “Not all the details of supercooling are yet understood until the temperature falls to about -40C when all droplets freeze.”
the transition from liquid to solid is an exothermic one (produces energy). Any reaction which rapidly produces energy is commonly called an explosion.
So it was these violent explosions, due to the rapid transition of supercooled cloud to ice cloud, which produced the extreme turbulence which Joseph Olson experienced.
Reply
Jerry [email protected]
| #
Hi MattH and James and hopefully other PSI readers,,
I may never have heard of the Lenard Effect but I have observed it and it obviously explains the ‘lighting’ .
This I observed in northern Minnesota where winters can be consistently very cold. I cannot remember the detail of what I did to observe that the flow of water from a chemistry laboratory faucet could be ‘bent’. I am reasonably certain that the necessary condition is the air needed to be very dry to allow the electrical charge buildup on the surface of the following water.
And I find that Sutcliffe wrote: “It is widely believed that the ice phase is a necessity, and the most recent [1966] theory put forward by Professor B.J. Mason, depending on the freezing process and supported by both laboratory experiments and detailed theoretical calculations, has gained many adherents. The fundamentals of this theory take one into microphysical processes beyond the scope of this book, but the essential feature of the argument is that supercooled water drops, when they begin to freeze, become positively charged on the outside surface, negatively charged within, and the surface charge is carried away by the air by splintering. … A remarkable consequence of the charge separation going on in thunderstorms all over the world, a thousand or more at any one time, is that the stratosphere is continuously fed with positive electricity which is distributed over the globe by conduction through the ionosphere, while the earth itself, a free conductor, carries the negative charge. The thunderstorms may in this way be looked upon as continuously charging a leaky condenser, for the balance is maintained by a slow continuous current in the order of a millionth of an ampere for each square kilometer. This minute steady current of fine weather occurs because the atmosphere everywhere is slightly ionized, mainly as a result of bombardment by cosmic radiation, which takes us into aspects of atmospheric physics rather far removed from weather or climate. One should, however, mention that although the fine-weather leakage current is so small, the electric potential necessary to drive it through the very slightly ionized air is very large, hundreds of volts per meter, a million volts through the troposphere, all of which in the ordinary way goes completely unnoticed.”
No, if I actually had read this before, I didn’t pay it any attention because it was about physics and not chemistry. But James, this validates your unique ideas which seem to be not so unique after all.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry and James.
It is satisfying that cosmic rays were mentioned by Sutcliffe. Cosmic rays are predominantly positively charged.( around 90% positively charged ) I was pondering last week if these positively charged cosmic rays could play a role in El Nino, La Nina reversals.
But back to Tornados. You mentioned lightning Jerry. Tornados are doing a similar thing to lightning. Whilst a lot of lightning is intra super cell, top of cloud to bottom of cloud, it is necessary for lightning from cloud to earth surface to create the required electric charge differentials for a tornado to form and start feasting on the Earth’s surface.
I leave you to ponder, Jerry, because I am curious as to Jame’s comments. I mentioned a while back I went to bed one night having read Jerry and James discussing tornados and woke up with a start in the morning clearly understanding what a tornado is. See if you can figure it out Jerry. What does lighting do to the earth’s surface when it hits the earths surface?
Cheers Matt
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH, James, and hopefully other PSI readers,
I now remember the details of my observation of the Lenard Effect.
First, I adjust the flow water from the faucet so the stream as it got ‘thinner’ as the water accelerated as it it fell did not break apart into droplets before hitting the laboratory sink. Next I blew up a balloon and rubbed it on my wool sweater to ‘charge’ it. Then when I brought the charged balloon near the ‘stream’ of falling water, the stream bent. I do not remember if it bent toward the balloon or away from it. So I knew that rubbing the balloon on my wool sweater charged it. Remember the simple instrument called an electroscope and rubbing a glass rod on silk fabric and an onyx (???) rod on wool as scientists first learned about the electrical nature of matter? They did not have rubber balloons in those early days of science.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH, James, and hopefully other PSI Readers,
MattH, when you write “it is necessary for lightning from cloud to earth surface to create the required electric charge differentials for a tornado to form and start feasting on the Earth’s surface.” it makes me ponder what actually is your background. Yes, I would like to see what James’ comment about this might be. For I have never read anything like this.
I am, as usual, running around in circles forgetting what I was planning to do. For I had just researched the issue of lighting with which it seemed you were more familiar than myself and I forgot to paste the website of NOAA 101 about lighting before I copied your comment about tornados and lighting which I had not read about in NOAA 101. These errors do not bother me because it they seem important enough I can correct. Many of my many errors do not seem important enough to correct.
And James, I have absolutely no memory of your background. Only know about your unique ideas, one of which I cannot still accept (that the atmosphere containes no water molecules). What is this thing we term relative humidity or just simply humidity??? During certain days I clearly ‘feel’ it and sweat profusely without much physical exertion. What is the air’s measured dew point temperature if it isn’t relative to the air’s water molecule content?
The article to which we are commenting is a great article and tree rings are best actual observations of what were the weather factors of a thousand or more years ago. And I present conversation (discussion is certainly about weather factors even if some reader might not recognize this ‘great’ conversation as being related to tree rings. Hence, this comment to you both to encourage you to keep it going. As we have already discovered we are learning things we maybe did not know before it started.
We have to accept that we are ignorant about many things. Even those we thought we knew.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
MattH, when you write “it is necessary for lightning from cloud to earth surface to create the required electric charge differentials for a tornado to form and start feasting on the Earth’s surface.” it makes me ponder what actually is your background. Yes, I would like to see what James’ comment about this might be.
James:
My theory on tornadogenesis doesn’t involve anything like what Matt is suggesting here. My focus is on describing the structural basis of the pipes that channel the low pressure energy from the jet streams to the location of the storm. Look into non-Newtonian fluids.
Jerry
Only know about your (James’) unique ideas, one of which I cannot still accept (that the atmosphere contains no water molecules).
James:
I’ve never stated anything to this effect.
James McGinn / Genius
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James,
Jerry
Only know about your (James’) unique ideas, one of which I cannot still accept (that the atmosphere contains no water molecules).
James:
I’ve never stated anything to this effect.
I am not going try to find your exact statement which led to my conclusion. Instead I will ask: Have you stated that independent water molecules cannot evaporate from a liquid water surface which water has a temperature of 25C?
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Yes. There are no independent (gaseous) H2O molecules in earth’s atmosphere.. You say this is my unique belief. I don’t think that is the case. There is Herb Rose. And I suspect there are millions of other people that can read a phase diagram, have common sense, and have not been indoctrinated in in meteorological superstition.
James McGinn / Genius
James McGinn
| #
One more question on this topic, Jerry. You will have found and/or will soon find that not only is there no empirical verification of this widespread belief that clear moist air contains gaseous H2O but that meteorologists have a strong taboo about discussing this. What do you think this tells us about meteorology about with respect to their attitude toward truth?
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
R.C. Sutcliffe. in the preface of his 1966 book ‘Weather and Climate began: “This is not a textbook on meteorology, neither a general introduction nor a formal course, but it has a serious purpose and that is to explain to the general reader what it is that meteorologists are doing and trying to do. Much is heard of the two cultures and of science and technology becoming intolerably specialized and sophisticated with concepts often unintelligible to the non-scientist. And yet of necessity they exist, as indeed do literature, art and music, in an economic and political environment where the most far-reaching decisions affecting them rightly rest in the hands of non-specialists who unfortunately may not adequately understand the issues before them. For my own part experience in presenting scientific considerations to non-scientists, civil and military, has rarely left an impression of great difficulty in communication and it could be that the gravity of the present situation has, in this respect, been much exaggerated, but it is still the duty of all specialist groups, which in a democracy draw their resources ultimately from the public purse, to avoid the arrogance of specialized knowledge and to try to present a fair account of their achievements, objectives and requirements in terms intelligible to a large proportion of educated citizens.”
I urge you purchase Sutcliffe’s book for if you were around as a meteorologist in 1966 you would judge he book to be very honest about what was generally known about meteorology (atmospheric science) at that time and despite the most greater availability of measurements and observations really has not advanced greatly because of “the arrogance of specialized knowledge”.
I judge that Sutcliffe achieved his stated objective except his writing is of no use if it is not read. And if you have not read what he wrote, that is not his fault.
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
When James wrote: “My focus is on describing the structural basis of the pipes that channel the low pressure energy from the jet streams to the location of the storm. Look into non-Newtonian fluids.”
James has given you an example of Sutcliffe’s comment: “to avoid the arrogance of specialized knowledge”. Which he isn’t doing. Nor has he given us any example of his background which might suggest that he understands more than I, a physical chemist with a first minor in physics, about non-Newtonian fluids. Of which my understanding of non-Newtonian fluids is zero. But I do understand what he was trying to do. About which practice Sutcliffe tried to warn his generally well educated, but not science majors, readers. I have listened to several lecture series by Nobel Prize winning scientists about topics I had not studied. And I have understood them without any great problem. I conclude this ability to communicate their knowledge (understanding) is how they became Nobel Prize winners. They understood what they studied was SIMPLE.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry and James and hopeful PSI readers.
Here is simple.
The Lenard Effect is that collisions of raindrops creates electric charge. The up draft of a dust devil has dust and dry matter colliding in the updraft and that also produces electric charge.
A super cell weather system that may produce tornados is positively charged in the upper reaches of the storm. The lower reaches of the storm is negatively charged. Hence intra super cell lightning.
The Earth surface has a relatively weak negative charge. Lightning from the supercell to the earth changes the charge of the earth from a negative charge to a positive charge for a radius of approximately 5 miles around the supercell.
The intensely negatively charged low cloud of the supercell is attracted to the now positively charged earth surface in the form of a funnel shaped cloud The dust, dirt, grass, trees and buildings are temporarily positively charged and are drawn up within the funnel to feed the attraction for charge equilibrium between the positive and negative charge. The forceful attraction of the lower supercell negative charge drawing up the positively charged particles from the earth’s surface creates the very low pressure inside the funnel.
What makes the tornado twist with such velocity? There are only two things I know of that twist like that. The electric motor and the internal combustion motor. After a tornado there is no smell of diezel or petrol fumes so it can only be the physics of an electric motor causing the otherworldly rotation of a tornado.
The most fundamental aspect of science is observation. I have just simply described what one observes of a tornado. Simple.
I now invite readers to refute this.
My vague understanding is that because the cloud inside the supercell is either positively or negatively charged it could be described as a plasma but I don’t know nuffin about that.
Kind regards Matt
Reply
MattH
| #
I failed to mention that any humidity in the earth surface air will now be positively charged and this will be a part of what the tornado is devouring. Hypothesis on the hoof.
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Matt,
Does your model explain the high wind speeds, 100 to 300 mph of a tornadic vortice? I believe my model does. Suppose we had a tube about 30 to 50 miles long and about 3 ft diameter. One end of it is at ground level in an area of relatively high pressure. There other end is suspended so that it shoots into a jet stream. We would find that the air in the tube would begin to accelerate, getting faster and faster, as a result of the difference in pressure from the entrance to the exit into the jet stream. In my opinion this explains the high winds speeds of tornadoes. How does your model explain the high wind speeds? Electricity?
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi James, Jerry, and other hopeful readers.
Thank you for your comments James. I am an advocate for multiple hypothesis. There can be more than one contributing cause to natural phenomena.
James.
How does your model explain the high wind speeds? Electricity?
Matt.
I think we can agree that lightning exists. Lightning is electricity on a scale difficult to comprehend.
An electrical substation can explode and catch fire. But lightning? BOOM!!! Rumble Rumble. Grumble Grumble. House and earth shake. Electricity.
Next point. Why does the funnel cloud come down to touch the earth? Is there anything in nature other than the attraction of electrical polar opposites that could manifest such a science fiction phenomena. And then, only if on the rediculously powerful scale of lightning.
And so, the three hundred miles per hour wind. The fury of electron transfer on a scale relative to the power of lightning. Anything less would be a personal insult to the lightning. The fairly stable cloud that is cast outward from the tornado funnel will be cloud that has attained electrical charge equilibrium.
I have read a few papers about weather, thunderstorms, dust devils, El Nino etc, but the Lenard Effect is usually never mentioned. Lightning and it’s relative forces are so often easily ignored .
Oh, and here is another one on standard meteorological thinking. I suggest the jet streams are at least partially a product of the bellows pump effect of the day and night expansion and contraction of the atmosphere.
Anyway. These are the things I observe. I may be blind.
Kind Regards. Matt
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH and hopefully other PSI Readers,
For a little while, as I informed myself about the Lenard Effect (LE), I was a little disappointed with your interest in it and its possible relationship to tornados which James, and now you, seem to believe is the only storm which needs to be explained. For I know that tornados are rare and thunder storms are not. But I finally saw, as I read, that the LE provides a common mechanism that creates ‘nano-droplets’ of water which are the ‘condensation nuclei’ of the troposphere which prevent this atmosphere from ever being SUPERSATURATED water molecule s (vapor). Both along ocean shores and near the tops of common thunderstorms where jet streams ‘suck them up’ and distribute them throughout the world’s atmosphere.
Before you introduced me to the LE, I did not really know the mechanist cause of the atmospheric haze that is common along the west coast of the Pacific Northwest.
In the chapter titled ‘Winds of the World’ Sutcliffe wrote: “All this may seem a far cry from the general circulation of the world’s atmosphere but the detail serves to point the moral, that one cannot explain the broad features of world climate if one does not know the actual mechanism involved.”
So thank you very, very much for adding another mechanism to my knowledge!!!.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry.
If one can easily explain a tornado the understanding of other weather phenomena is more easily understood.
Have an electric current through water based plasma day. Matt
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Matt & James,
In a discussing of tornadoes or hurricanes you must consider the flow of energy. The energy goes from high to low and in these storms the energy flows from the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth (that’s why tornadoes pick things up and throw them around). The reason the atmosphere has more energy is because it is being heated by the UV and x-rays from the sun and that energy decreases as it descends through the atmosphere, being absorbed by gas molecules and water. Liquid water crystals absorbs the kinetic energy of the gas molecules and converts it into stored electric energy (hydroxyl and hydronium ions) and when these crystals melt forming clouds the electric energy reverts to kinetic energy producing the winds.
Lightning is the result of the clouds having a different charge than the Earth and the equalization of that charge, just like the spark that occurs when your body accumulates static electricity.
Herb
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Hi Herb:
Herb:
In a discussing of tornadoes or hurricanes you must consider the flow of energy.
James:
I agree. In my model the energy is delivered to the location of the storm in the form of low pressure suction, starting from the jet streams where there is no shortage of low pressure energy. And the principle employed is kinematics (or hydraulics) that employ a tube as the energy transport mechanism. The energy moves literally at the speed of sound. But it does require a sealed tube.
A father and son team with the last name Connelley have put a name to this phenomena. They call it pervections. Strangeely, however, they failed to make the realization that vortice tubes are the mechanism thereof:
Here is a video where they demonstrate the concept (pervection).
https://youtu.be/XfRBr7PEawY?t=2625
Herb:
The energy goes from high to low and in these storms the energy flows from the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth (that’s why tornadoes pick things up and throw them around).
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi James,
A barometer measures the momentum (velocity times mass) of the air molecules in the atmosphere, not the weight of the molecules (A warm area (high pressure) is less dense so there fewer molecules/mass per unit area.) so the energy is in the high pressure not the low pressure.
Herb
Reply
James McGinn
| #
I don’t disagree. However, high pressure areas tend to be stagnant, no flow. Jet streams involve a lot of flow and low pressure. A vortice initiates in the jet stream and begins tunneling along wind shear boundaries. The flow produces the plasma which literally spins up on wind shear boundaries and the plasma provides the structure of the up-wind growth of the vortice. Vortice growth will naturally target areas in which the conditions of its growth are greatest which involves more distinct and smoother boundaries between moist air and dry air and areas of higher pressure, since both of these factors are instrumental with respect to maintaining the spinning of nanodroplets on wind shear boundaries that is itself the basis of the structural plasma that is the sheath of the vortice. The jet stream provides the energetic flow that initiates the structural capabilities of the vortice and the high pressure area that is the target of vortice growth provides the energy that maintains the structure that allows for the continuation and acceleration of the flow which eventually shoots into the jet stream, allowing for the maintenance of the momentum of the jet stream and at one and the same time causing uplift, swirling cold winds of a storm at the high pressure area. So it is both.
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Myself to Jerry:
pilots are advised to never get between a thunderstorm and the jet stream. Why is this?
James.
The reason is because there will be a vortice tube spanning laterally from the jet stream to the location of the thunderstorm. This tube is what is feeding the thunderstorm the low pressure energy (Suction) that allows the thunderstorm to create uplift and cause the storm. (The jet streams are the atmosphere’s repository of energetic, low pressure flow that it uses to create storms through vortice tubes as the mechanism that channels the low pressure energy to the location of the storm.) And the main reason pilots are advised as such is because these tubes have structural properties. And if you hit something structural going 600 miles an hour you can easily rip a wing off.
James McGinn / Genius
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James and hopefully other PSI Readers,
Again, why other PSI Readers? Because these conversations demonstrate what SCIENCE is about.
4caster, I need you to explain to James, MattH, Herb what Hodographs are about. You can ‘read’ them and I cannot not very well. I claim to be learning but have to admit I am basically ignorant about all the important information that you quickly read at a glance. For, given our conservations I suspect, but do not know, if these guys have even seen one. And I can understand why you do consider me, and them, to be quite ignorant.
Now, James, relative to your comment. My wife and I flew from Cairns AU to Hong Kong in early April during the daytime so I could watch the ‘weather’ all the way. A typhoon had hit the coast of AU, between Sidney and Cairns a few days earlier so the atmosphere was hazy but often we could see the ocean surface as I remember. So, from the beginning in the Southern Hemisphere I could see the towering Cumulonimbus Clouds (CC) of thunderstorms in the distance. But soon after we crossed the Equator the towering CC clouds were no longer in the distance. We were flying at 32000 to 34000ft and the pilot was obviously trying to fly around the tops of the CC clouds which were even above us and yes, we had our seat belts on because there was turbulence. Clearly we were flying very near the top of the troposphere. I almost forgot. In the tropics there are no jet streams. They begin at maybe 25 to 30 degrees Lat. and move northward in the Northern Hemisphere so that most commonly occur over North America a little below or above 45 Lat.
To make this story brief I will summarize. These towering thunderstorms were injecting atmosphere into the top of the troposphere which had only an hour or so before been in contact with the ocean surface. And this injected atmosphere was the origin of the jet stream atmosphere which was over the west coast of North America at a latitude of about 45 degrees.
And there were no tornados involved in these towering thunderstorm clouds of the tropics which I consider are the DRIVERS (cause) of the world’s atmospheric wind system. For it is all downhill from the tropics.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
The focal point of solar radiation (the area with the greatest energy) is only on the equator 2 times a year (First day of spring and fall) the rest of the time it is in either the tropic of cancer or the tropic of capricorn. In April it is in the northern hemisphere heading north. Since it is that intense energy that creates high pressure areas, you were traveling towards lower pressure area Hurricanes and typhoons are a result of the clockwise rotation of wind around the high pressure interacting with the lower pressure near the equator.
have a good day,
Herb .
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb,
I almost missed that you wrote: “Since it is that intense energy that creates high pressure areas.” I had not read this before, so I check some atmospheric sounding data most recently reported.
Of the 7 locations I checked, the two highest pressures (1014hpa and 1012) at 24.3N 7 meter elevation and 1012 at 22.2S at 5m. At 7.0. 9.8. 16.0 all north lat. the pressures were 1007 41m,1008 16m, 1008 7m.
Which data does not seem to support your statement.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
The northern edge of the tropic of cancer, which is the northern most point where the sun is directly overhead, is at 23.27 N.
Have a good day,
Herb
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb,
24.3N is north of 23.27N. And I know that it will be about 2 months before the Sun is directly over 23.27N.
Have a good day, Jerry
Jerry Krause
| #
Adelaide AU
1020 35.0S 4m
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
I would ask you the question: “What do you think causes high and low areas?” but since you have stated that you don’t want to think (explains a lot) but observe it would be pointless.
Here’s one for your observation. Hot air rises because it is less dense than the surrounding air. A hot air balloon will only rise to where its density matches the surrounding air. The observations are that at the surface the temperature is greatest, declining with increased altitude, but the density of the air is also greatest at the surface, yet it too declines with increasing altitude just like the temperature and the air doesn’t rise.
have a good day,
Herb
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb and hopefully other PSI Readers,
Thank you for questioning what I have written about the need to think near as much as it seems you think (reason). I am placing this comment here in an attempt to have longer lines.
We live within three miles of an airport from which atmospheric sounding weather balloons are launched at 4am LST. At the airport is also an automated weather station which measures and reports hourly meteorologic data.
This morning weather station reported clouds between 9000 and 12000 feet for 3 of the 5 hours midnight to 4am. The sounding data reported a layer of clouds between 10500 to 18800 feet where the temperatures of decreased from 21F to 11F. Because clouds were observed there was no need to reason whether the clouds were supercooled water droplets or ice particles. For the measured relative humidity for supercooled droplets was well less than 100%.
We have one of those inexpensive weather stations which has an outside sensor hung in a holly tree to avoid any direct sunshine on the sensor. Because I am old, it seems I wakeup up by 5am LST, This morning I knew, without looking outside or checking the internet that there was, or had been, cloud because the max-min temperature difference since midnight was only 3F instead of 10F as had been the case on several previous mornings when the nighttime atmospheres had been cloudless.
Now, about those previous nights of cloudless skies of which that of 4/16/2021 is representative. The air temperature was 44F at 61meters (surface) and as ballon rose the air temperature steadaly increased until it reached 68F at 468m. I really did not have to reason that the surface being cooled by emitting IR radiation was cooling this bottom layer of atmosphere to form what is commonly termed an atmospheric temperature inversion. Something which Herb and anyone else seldom mention.
For it would seem it should be obvious to somebody that these two nights of observations should prove there is nothing in a NATURAL ATMOSPHERE that hinders the transmission of the IR radiation being emitted by the Earth’s surfaces when the atmosphere is apparently cloudless. At the same time it should be apparent that clouds hinder the transmission of the same IR radiation being emitted by the Earth’s surface toward space.
So again, thank you for giving me a reason to review what I have observed so that I do not have to reason (think).
Have a good day. Jerry
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
So your observations tell you that the water in clouds provides good insulation preventing heat from escaping from the Earth but the scarcity of molecules in a cloudless sky is poor insulation.
Have a good day,
Herb
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb,
Have you ever considered the fact that radiation is the fastest mechanism of energy transfer? And cloud particles scatter both visible and IR radiation as well as the IR radiation being emitted by Earth surfaces according to their temperatures.
Rule II of Newton’s rules of reasoning in observation philosophy: “Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible assign the same causes.”
Because cloud particles high in the cold atmosphere are not evaporated or sublimed away by both sources, Sun and Earth, I must conclude that they are not warming due to any absorption of radiation. Plus the molecules of the atmosphere must not absorb any this radiation or the atmosphere’s temperature would not decrease with increasing altitude during most daytimes.
As I wrote the previous I saw something which I had not seen before. So I have to ponder abit before I share it with anyone. Conversations catalyze the formation of ideas.
Have a good day. Jerry
of radiation
Have a good day,
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi jerry,
Radiation is the slowest way to transfer energy not the fastest. The rate of transfer decreases as the difference in energy decreases. The strength of the radiation decreases with distance from the source. With collision (convection) the equalization occurs immediately.
Do you not know that water is very good at absorbing IR not good at reflecting it? The insulation in your house and in the windows incorporate space filled with gas (not water) because there are fewer collisions and the transfer of heat occurs slowly by radiation.
The laws of thermodynamics says that all objects absorb radiated energy and all objects above absolute zero radiate energy so your observation that the particles in clouds do not absorb radiated energy from the sun or Earth or emit radiated energy to the atmosphere contradicts a founding premise of physics.
Your lack of thinking make your observation ridiculous and is the reason nobody has come with the answer to your question “How Stupid Am I?”
Herb
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb and hopefully other PSI Readers,
Herb: “Your lack of thinking make your observation ridiculous and is the reason nobody has come with the answer to your question “How Stupid Am I?”
Herb, thank you very much for referring to my essay. Its link is (https://principia-scientific.com/dr-jerry-l-krause-how-stupid-am-i/)
If there is any PSI Reader reading this, I hope you would take a look at this essay as I judge it is one of my best. And then you can tell Herb and me how you judge it. It’s called ‘peer review.’
Herb, since you referred to it, have you written a peer review of it so I could work with you to correct any errors. For any reader of my more recent comments knows I make many errors of multiple kinds. Maybe you have and I have forgotten.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
what Hodographs are about.
after we crossed the Equator the towering CC clouds were no longer in the distance. In the tropics there are no jet streams. They begin at maybe 25 to 30 degrees Lat. and move northward in the Northern Hemisphere so that most commonly occur over North America a little below or above 45 Lat.
These towering thunderstorms were injecting atmosphere into the top of the troposphere which had only an hour or so before been in contact with the ocean surface. And this injected atmosphere was the origin of the jet stream atmosphere which was over the west coast of North America at a latitude of about 45 degrees.
And there were no tornados involved in these towering thunderstorm clouds of the tropics which I consider are the DRIVERS (cause) of the world’s atmospheric wind system.
James:
Jerry, even though you did not ask a specific question you are focused on the right issue and I can discern your question. You are wondering about the mechanism of Hadley cell circulation and whether or not my model can explain it at least as well as the previous/current model that relies upon convection and gravity (this “gravity” being the down-slope of the tropopause between the equator and the middle latitudes).
I believe my model can better explain it as being the result of very long lateral vortices stretching all the way from the equatorial regions, travelling along the tropopause where the wind-shear conditins are perfect because of the contrast between the dry stratosphere and the moist troposphere and emptying into the jet streams at the middle latitudes. Moist/dry wind shear is the most important factor for supporting the existence of the plasma that forms the sheath of these very long lateral, tornadic vortices. And it is these tornadic vortices that are the mechanism of Hadley cell circulation. Not convection or gravity.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
See this for more:
Brawndo Has Electrolytes
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16461&p=115353&hilit=hadley#p115353
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James and hopefully other PSI Readers,
James: “You are wondering about the mechanism of Hadley cell circulation and whether or not my model can explain it.”
Not at all!! My efforts are totally directed toward observing what is actually happening. I guess what is actually happening could be termed: NATURAL PHENOMENA. And based upon the common saying that Louis Elzevir drew to the attention of the readers of Galileo’s 1638 book, as translated by Crew and de Salvio in 1914, was: “Intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.” So I conclude, if I accurately define what is actually occurring, I might understand the hows and whys of the observed natural phenomena without actually thinking.
James, you concluded: “Not convection or gravity.” So, without thinking, I know that your model must be absolutely wrong.
Have a good day. Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
. . . I might understand the hows and whys of the observed natural phenomena without actually thinking.
James:
In this regard I think meteorology has beat you to the punch.
James McGinn / Genius
Hydrogen Bonding in Water Solved
https://youtu.be/AAuYt6T0A6o
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry, James, and hopeful PSI readers.
I googled ” tornados-electromagnetic force ” and there are a number of references explaining scientifically what I was attempting to explain, including polarity reversal at earths surface and ionized cloud becoming plasma.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2017/06/13/tornado-the-electric-model/
Jerry. Copy and paste the above reference. I feel vindicated.
http://charles-chandler.org/Geophysics/Tornadoes.php?text=full
The above reference goes into the subject quite comprehensively. In his introduction Chandler explains his model is always evolving in a response to comments and criticism. Chapter 38 explains polarity reversal just as I attempted to explain.
See Jerry. You taught me “good”. (well)
The moral of the story is electromagnetism is a force in all weather, often ignored.
Have an electromagnetic day. Matt
Reply
Moffin
| #
Thunderstorms, lightning, and tornadoes — all products of the same weather event — can be perfectly modeled electrically. Electromagnetic fields, ionization, current, capacitance, and induction rule nature. It is evident in Nature’s every aspect because the fractal, self-same patterns always appear.
Consensus science adheres to a gravity model that ignores this fundamental causation and instead feverishly dissects the emergent thermodynamic and fluid dynamic interactions looking for answers, like trying to tell time by taking apart the clock. They continually come up short, as a result. Andrew Hall
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Moffin:
For air to become plasma and carry current, the air has to be partially ionized.
James:
I agree about the necessity of plasma for tornadic vortices but you have the wrong type of plasma. Ionic plasmas are too hot, to fast, and limited in there temporal breadth to possibly explain the structural properties that are evident in tornadic vortices that can persist for extended lengths of time which would be impossible for ionic vortices. Tornadic vortices involve a plasma that is an implication of the surface tension properties of H2O. And the mechanism of their expression is spinning of H2O nanodroplets on wind shear boundaries, the mechanism of their conservation being rotational–angular momentum. The wind shear itself is maintained along the length of the vortice as the dry layer is channeled and the moist layer encircles the dry layer that begins to accelerate along as a result of differential pressure between the entrance of the vortice tube and its exit miles away into the flow of a jet stream. The element that is hard to envision in all of this is the structural properties in the moist layer, sheath of the vortice. But these can be envisioned by taking a gander at non-Newtonian fluids, which involves H2O and corn starch and is also an example of H2O surface tension being amplified.
Moffin:
A plasma state can be defined by “plasma density” — the number of free electrons per unit volume, and the “degree of ionization” — the proportion of atoms ionized by loss, or gain of an electron.
James:
I agree that plasma is the right concept to describe the structural properties that are evident in a tornadic vortices but we need to be more reasonable, more creative and less stubborn to assume that only ionic forces create plasmas. The plasmas associated with tornadoes are the result of hydrogen bonding forces that are much less powerful, slower, and associated with an element that is plentiful in storms, water.
When your only tool is a hammer I suppose every problem looks like a nail. You need to stop drawing from what you know about electricity and be open to what you don’t know about the properties of water which are much more extensive than current science has realized. (Look into the anomalies of H2O for more on this subject.)
Moffin:
A gas with as little as 1% of the particles ionized is a plasma, responding to magnetic fields and displaying high electrical conductivity.
James:
Electromagnetic forces are also involved with hydrogen bonding between H2O molecules also. So there is no reason to be stuck on ionic forces if you want to implicate electricity in tornadoes–but, of course, that is true for all of chemistry/matter.
Moffin:
A partially ionized plasma is often referred to as a cold plasma and highly ionized plasma is referred to as hot. Discharge from a corona is predominately a cold, dark current, invisible to the eye.
James:
Even the coldest ionic plasma is far too hot, too fast, and to brief to possibly be involved in describing the origins of the plasma of tornadic vortices. You need to shift your focus onto something that better describes what is actually observed which brings us to hydrogen bonding between water molecules. The real breakthrough in this regard is the spinning that provides a means for the persistence of the tornadic vortice. Ionic plasma have no such means.
Do some research on non-Newtonian fluids and you can start to get a grasp of the structural properties that are hidden in H2O.
James McGinn / Genius
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi James.
Thank you for your comments. I will do some reading on non Newtonian fluids.
I do have to clarify, it is not me or Moffin, my now deceased chocolate Labrador, who are implicating electricity. It is lightning clearly and unambiguously implicating electricity.
The other implication is many reports state that once a tornado touches down the nearby cloud to earth lightning severely reduces but once the tornado retracts the lightning fires up again.
I gotta go to work.
It is a shame we do not have jet stream maps in one colour clearly overlaying mean surface level pressure (MSLP) maps to see clear continuity between low pressure systems and jet streams.
Thank you for taking the time James.
Cheers. Dead Moffin.
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Hi Matt,
LOL. That was one smart dog!
Here is the simple story of human confusion with water. Humans–our physical bodies–are largely comprised of H2O. Maybe because of this, I don’t know, human have a bias to dismiss water as simple, well understood and otherwise insignificant. Then in the 1950s water was assessed through the lens of quantum mechanics and a mistake was made by Linus Pauling. I refer to this mistake as, “the most devastatingly subtle misconceptions in all of science.” Once you understand this mistake you can start to piece together the structural and energetic complexities that are hidden by this error. But until this is done this mistake engenders an even deeper pathological denial about these complexities. And this deep pathological denial about the complexities of H2O has been fully incorporated into many models in many disciplines of science. Most problematically of all this pathological denial has been incorporated into the ab initio (first principles) rendering it almost completely invisible. And the more educated people are the more invisible is this deep pathological denial.
I have the script finished and will soon be starting to shoot a video that will explain all of the above. I’m sorry Moffin won’t be available to peer review it.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Moffin,
Does it ever occur to you and some others that some ‘Consensus’ ideas (knowledge) could be correct??? Or, is only the wild, non-consensus ideas that are more likely correct?
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH,
We, people in this world, are all ignorant because we have not read everything that has been pondered and written about by others before we even begin to ponder. Some of the pondering maybe correct and others incorrect but most all is incomplete.
You are doing a great job and you see how easy it is once you consider what others have written and have ‘conversations’ (give and take) when the opportunity presents itself.
Again and again, I urge you (and anybody interested in the topic of weather and climate0 to get a copy of Sutcliffe’s book for he was trying inform educated, but non-science majors, about what might seem the complexities of weather and climate. But really are not if you have all the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle to put together. It is too easy to misplace a piece or two or too many. For a fact is that until after WWII we really had not observed much about actual weather and climate.
I came to my computer this morning considering the ‘anvil’ that sometimes forms at the tops of thunderstorm clouds and of hail (which hailstones fall through the atmosphere much faster than nano-droplets of whatever).
And I had reviewed Sutcliffe’s chapter six (Vertical Convection: cumuliform clouds, showers, and thunderstorms) and James is correct that (as I remember from my quick scan) he did not consider ‘horizontal’ convection (jet streams). But because of I have studied the atmospheric sounding data I know that there can be ‘strong winds’ well below the top of the troposphere which cause the cumuliform clouds to form an anvil shape at their tops.
Hailstones, anvil cloud tops, and horizon winds (convection) are pieces of the puzzle with which we have not commonly been playing.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
I had a brief conversation with Charles Chandler. I couldn’t make much sense of anything he was saying. His first sentence to me was to announce that plasmas are not necessary. And I couldn’t see the relevance of anything he stated after that. He just just spoke about the wonders of electricity but didn’t seem to want to draw a firm causal connection to what is actually observed.
Here he states:
Charles Chandler:
I agree that a tornado is a suction vortex. But in no sense does a suction vortex require plasma, . .
James:
There is nothing I can do with this. If somebody chooses to believe that suction can exists without an entity to do the sucking then we aren’t dealing with physical reality it becomes spiritualistic. Fantasy, not science.
Here is a link:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329&start=15#p114646
James McGinn / Genius
Here is a link to our very short conversation:
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
And I had reviewed Sutcliffe’s chapter six (Vertical Convection: cumuliform clouds, showers, and thunderstorms) and James is correct that (as I remember from my quick scan) he did not consider ‘horizontal’ convection (jet streams). But because of I have studied the atmospheric sounding data I know that there can be ‘strong winds’ well below the top of the troposphere which cause the cumuliform clouds to form an anvil shape at their tops.
James:
The real reason water is involved with storms isn’t simple. Convection is one of those notions that people want to believe because it seems simple. Understanding water’s correct role in the atmosphere is the most important concept for understanding storms and atmospheric flow, including jet streams and severe weathetr. Water’s role in the atmosphere has to do with its surface tension, not convection.
When you eliminate what is impossible your mind opens to consider what is implausible. People fight to maintain belief in an impossible explanation as long as it seems plausible. The real reason H2O is involved in storms and atmospheric flow seems implausible. Surface tension is not a simple concept.
The spinning of microdroplets along wind shear boundaries is what maximizes the surface area of H2O in the atmosphere. This only occurs when one body of air is moist and the other is dry and when they are moving in different directions. And it only occurs just along this boundary.
When you maximize the surface area of H2O you maximize the surface tension. The ensuing plasma-like qualities that emerge is the structural composition of vortices, the conduits of atmospheric flow, and this includes an inner slick surface that is the lubrication of atmospheric flow. (H2O surface tension is actually hydrophobic.) Most significantly, it isolates its contents from friction allowing it to accelerate down the length of a jet stream as a result of differential air pressure. accelerating the moist air that flows through them, sometimes reaching velocities hundreds of miles per hour.
All storms involve vortices that are themselves connected to the jet stream, itself a vortice and itself located along a moist/dry wind shear boundary, the tropopause. Normally these vortices are unseen. Sometimes, however, when conditions dictate (tornado alley), boundary layers extend all the way to the ground. When they do vortices can extend all the way to the ground, observable as a tornado.
People want to believe what is simple. When simple beliefs are shown to be false people experience cognitive dissonance. Water’s role in the atmosphere has to do with its surface tension, not convection.
This explains why storms are wet. It also explains how heavier moist air is pulled up higher, to the top of the troposphere. Moist air convection and H2O ‘latent heat” are bogus notions that have nothing to do with what actually happens in the atmosphere.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329&start=30#p114666
James McGinn / Genius
President of Solving Tornadoes
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi James,
I am wondering about images of Jupiter where you see high winds, vortices, and even the giant red spot but the atmosphere is comprised oh hydrogen and helium (no hydrogen bonds) with only a small trace of water, which would have to be in the form of ice. Doesn’t this indicate that there are other factors at work and water may not be an essential factor?
Herb
Reply
James McGinn
| #
I don’t know. There may be other factors at work. Or there may be more water than we realize. Have you looked at non-Newtonian fluids to get a sense of the structural properties hidden in water?
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi James,
Yes James it is those peculiarities of water, the liquid, that causes me to believe that it is a liquid crystal. On Jupiter with a temperature of -145C and high pressure what compound would be liquid? It leads me to wonder if crystals (solids with charges) could be involved in storms and the formation of vortices.
Herb
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James,
How is it that in your comment, I cannot find any mention. of dissolved carbon dioxide molecules in the micro-droplets of liquid water or even in the smaller nano-dropets of liquid water? Are not carbon dioxide molecules not naturally soluble in liquid water (Henry’s Law)?
Yes, I know that most others ignore the simple fact that carbon dioxide molecules as soluble in liquid water and even react with water molecules to form what are commonly (termed carbonic acid molecules (weak acid molecules). But that is not excuse for you to ignore them.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James,
Would you agree that gas molecules naturally try to fill all space? Until you answer affirmably to this question, I have nothing more to write. For it would seem you have never experienced a balloon bursting if you cannot answer the question with a YES!!!
I’m waiting.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
Would you agree that gas molecules naturally try to fill all space?
James:
YES!!!
James McGinn / Genius
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi James,
Thank you! Now I can write: Vortexes do not suck!!!. Herb has been reminding us that the atmosphere ‘flows’ from high atmospheric pressure volume toward low atmospheric pressure volumes in the FREE atmosphere. FREE is an adjective which Sutcliffe commonly writes without clearly defining what his FREE atmosphere actually is. I conclude the definition of the FREE atmosphere might be a gas without a container which constrains its gas molecules to a certain defined volume of space. Herb asks: how do high atmospheric pressure areas form and/or how do low atmospheric pressure regions form? How these different areas form is not a critical issue. The critical issue is these different atmospheric pressure areas are commonly observed. And we agree that the FREE atmosphere of the high pressure area is naturally trying to fill the low pressure region. But what is the relationship between the observed high and low pressure areas?
Now a fact is that in Sutcliffe’s book, between text pages 64 and 65, are six sheets (12 unnumbered pages) of glossy paper with actual images {10 pages} and figures of actual data {2 pages} with brief captions. All of which should be pondered (studied and comprehended) before we conclude what Sutcliffe, the meteorologists, actually understood or did not understand about vertical convection and horizontal convection which is moving atmospheric storm systems along the Earth’s heterogeneous surfaces which are revolving 360 degrees once every 24 hours.
Of course James, Sutcliffe, Herb, some educated non-scientists are aware of the centripetal effect. But after following the MOSAIC Project of freezing an icebreaker in the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean to drift across the Ocean from Northwest to Southeast it became obvious to me that these scientists were ignoring the influence of the centrifugal effect, which most of us have experienced on common childhood play apparatus.
I conclude with my common comment (which Louis Agassiz’s students learned as he taught them to see): The obvious can be most difficult to see.
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Jerry,
Hot air does not rise, hotter air rises. The atmosphere is being heated by the sun and the greater the altitude the greater the energy of the molecules (This is why the atmosphere is densest at the Earth’s surface.) The high pressure cannot expand up because the air above has more energy so it expands at the surface with the air only rising when the kinetic energy (The temperature measured by a thermometer is not the kinetic energy of the molecules but the amount of momentum from those molecules striking the thermometer.above is less. This rising warm air on the periphery pushes colder air towards the sun’s focal point creating a donut shaped high pressure area. It is the rising warm air of the high pressure interacting with the cooler air of a low pressure air mass that creates storms. The only way anybody will be able to understand how weather works is by first realizing that the sun heats the atmosphere, second the thermometer is useless in indicating the kinetic energy of molecules and the UGL must be used, and third it is the flow of energy, not temperature, that drives the weather.
Have a good day,
Herb
Reply
James McGinn
| #
Hi Herb,
Also, hotter air is more of a sponge for moisture. So hotter air can often be heavier/denser because it soaks up more moisture nanodroplets than cooler air. This is why hotter air is not necessarily always rushing up being replaces by the cooler air above.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi James,
If water were a liquid crystal the absorption of heat would grow the crystal portion, increasing the negative charge of the shell. This increasing negative charge would cause the water crystal to rise in the atmosphere being repelled by the negative charge of the Earth’s surface. It would continue to absorb energy and rise until it reached an altitude where heat of the air molecules caused the crystal to melt, releasing its stored energy.
Herb
James McGinn
| #
Jerry:
All of which should be pondered (studied and comprehended) before we conclude what Sutcliffe, the meteorologists, actually understood
James:
You could gaze at your navel all day too and gain an equal amount of insight. Without the structural capabilities of H2O to draw upon to describe the source of the directed low pressure of storms you have no chance of figuring out the source thereof.
James McGinn / Genius
Reply
Moffin
| #
Marklund convection, named after Göran Marklund, is a convection process that takes place in filamentary currents of plasma. It occurs within a plasma with an associated electric field, that causes convection of ions and electrons inward towards a central twisting filamentary axis. A temperature gradient within the plasma will also cause chemical separation based on different ionization potentials.[1]
Mechanism
In Marklund’s paper, the plasma convects radially inwards towards the center of a cylindrical flux tube. During this convection, the different chemical constituents of the plasma, each having its specific ionization potential, enters into a progressively cooler region. The plasma constituents will recombine and become neutral, and thus no longer under the influence of the electromagnetic forcing. The ionization potentials will thus determine where the different chemicals will be deposited.[1]
This provides an efficient means to accumulate matter within a plasma.[2] In a partially ionized plasma, electromagnetic forces act on the non-ionized material indirectly through the viscosity between the ionized and non-ionized material.
Hannes Alfvén showed that elements with the lowest ionization potential are brought closest to the axis, and form concentric hollow cylinders whose radii increase with ionization potential. The drift of ionized matter from the surroundings into the rope means that the rope acts as an ion pump, which evacuates surrounding regions, producing areas of extremely low density
Wakipedia
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH,
You wrote: “Hannes Alfvén showed that elements with the lowest ionization potential are brought closest to the axis, and form concentric hollow cylinders whose radii increase with ionization potential.” Did Hannes Alfvén actually observe this, or observe certain evidence of this, or did he only REASON it?
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry.
I only copied and pasted from wikipedia.
There are quite a number of pieces to put into the puzzle.
If you have a pump, air or water, and you put your hand over the intake end the water stops flowing from the outflow end. A tornado snout is hard up against the earth’s surface so a tornado is not merely an inlet for an airflow pump mechanism. Nature takes the path of least resistance.
The best saying I have ever heard is “don’t become so rapt in something you can’t see past it”. I do apply that to myself.
Cheers Jerry. Matt
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
There was a recent article about the whitest white paint. Which isn’t too difficult to understand (explain).
But have you ever read about the blackest black paint which absorbs all visible radiation??? If you have, please direct me to what you read. For I would like to know what MATTER is involved.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers (I assume there might be more than one),
I just Googled black paints and learned that if one mixes paints of the three primary colors together that the result is black paint. The problem of this is that we (I) understand that a paint has a primary color because there is a pigment which strongly reflects incident visible radiation of that color. Hence, it would seem to follow that a black paint strongly reflects visible radiation of all visible colors.
Do you see the problem???
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
I have just pondered what I just wrote and I question: Am I wrong when I assume (reason) that a pigment of the paint’s primary color most strongly reflects that color??? Or is it the opposite: Does the pigment most strongly absorb that color??? For then the mixed black paint would absorb all colors of the visible radiation; which seems more reasonable.
Please peer-review what I am writing. I ponder to learn better.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
I have just pondered what I just wrote and I question: Am I wrong when I assume (reason) that a pigment of the paint’s primary color most strongly reflects that color??? Or is it the opposite: Does the pigment most strongly absorb that color??? For then the mixed black paint would absorb all colors of the visible radiation; which seems more reasonable.
Please peer-review what I am writing. I ponder to learn better.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
If you have read before what I have written you know I habitually make numerous errors. But you maybe haven’t read my explanation of how, or why, these errors do no bother me and I do not waste my time and effort to eliminate some of these errors.
I do not make greater effort to reduce the number of errors because you, a reader, only notice https://principia-scientific.com/the-whitest-paint-is-here-and-its-the-coolest-literally/). And discovered the author had written: “The researchers believe that this white may be the closest equivalent of the blackest black, “Vantablack,” which absorbs up to 99.9% of visible light.” Which I obviously had forgotten. (Another of my problems)
So I finally clicked on this link and read: ““The structure of evenly spaced nanotubes — not too far apart and not too dense, either — allows particles of light to get into the spaces between the tubes and be absorbed by them like light falling between the trunks of a vast forest of trees. The fraction of light the coating does reflect comes from light particles that hit the very tops of the nanotubes.”
Now, because I have discovered this error I need to go back to see if there is any ‘fit’ between what I had written with this new information best explained by the analogy of a forest. I urge readers to read and read and read and to compare and compare and compare to see if there is any common ground between differing ideas.
Learning is fun!!! And as Einstein is said to have stated: “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.” Intellectual errors maybe do not matter as much then.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry, James, Herb and curious bystanders.
There are some comments in relation to low pressure weather systems on this item which are not quite correct. A low pressure system is not a cold front although cold fronts are usually associated with a low pressure systems
In the Southern Hemisphere where there are no land masses to mess with the six permanent lows circulating around Antarctica there is often a warm front preceding the cold front .
The warm front is an air mass dragged down from warmer Northern climes whilst the following front is cold air dragged up from the Antarctic or Sub Antarctic. When the following cold front combines with the warm front that becomes an Occluded Front which then becomes the driver of cyclogenesis and a major engine of weather.
In a cold occlusion, the cold air mass overtaking the warm front is colder than the cool air ahead of the warm front, and plows under both air masses.
In a warm occlusion, the cold air mass overtaking the warm front is warmer than the cool air ahead of the warm front, and rides over the colder air mass while lifting the warm air.
The two MSLP maps below show occluded fronts in pink. Occluded fronts come and go on the maps on a near daily basis. The other interesting phenomenon is the low pressure troughs which when occurring in the tropics and subtropics often cover a distance of thousands of miles and often create an attachment of low pressure systems thousands of miles apart. Please note that the Southern Hemisphere low pressure systems rotate clockwise.
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/indian_ocean.shtml
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/pacific_ocean.shtml
Cheers. Matt
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Jerry Krause
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Hi MattH,
What an excellent, excellent bit of scientific information!!!
I plan to write a comment, with a link to this article, because it is getting cumbersome to find this one unless there is a recent comment such as yours. For this article about tree rings is great and the many differing comments are great and should not be forgotten.
Here is a comment by Einstein you and others might ponder. “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Hi Matt,
This is excellent!
I’m going to follow Jerry’s suggestion (see above comment) and respond to this comment at the place he is suggesting. Here is a link:
https://principia-scientific.com/meet-zhurong-china-names-mars-rover-after-fire-god/#comment-49270
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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Herb Rose
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Hi Matt,
Thanks for the maps. They also show that over Antarctica, where the air is coldest and densest, the barometric pressure is lowest indicating the barometer measures the momentum (velocity and mass) not just the mass of the atmosphere (weight per area).
The atmosphere and its weather systems move east at a greater velocity than the surface of the Earth. This shows the atmosphere’s motion is not a result of the Earth (cannot give something a velocity/energy greater than its own) but due to the sun.The focal point of solar radiation heats the air causing it to expand. Because the air is moving east from the rotation of the Earth this expansion occurs in an easterly direction giving the atmosphere its energy.
The clockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere is due to the clockwise rotation around the focal point. When the focal point is in the Northern Hemisphere it causes counterclockwise rotation to air masses to its south (hurricanes) and pushes warmer air into the Arctic. In the Southern Hemisphere it pushes warmer air into Antarctica and spins low pressures along the equator clockwise.
The Coriolis effect is more meteorologist nonsense. Why do they think of the equator as down? Down is towards the center of the Earth and since the radius of the Earth is greatest at the equator, it is actually up. Since the sun is heating the atmosphere its expansion occurs on the surface and moves towards the poles where it rises over cooler air. They have it backwards.
Herb
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