Engineering Earth’s Thermostat with CO2?

Written by Dr Pierre Latour PE on April 16, 2014. Posted in Current News

In a powerful public presentation at the Electric Universe Conference, Albuquerque, a leading Chemical Engineer showed that science proves carbon dioxide cannot operate as a thermostat in earths’ atmosphere.

Dr Pierre Latour, Vice Chair of Principia Scientific International , demonstrated to an assembled audience why our climate is an unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable system. CO2 does not affect temperature; temperature affects CO2. There are no greenhouse gases in physics. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is green plant food. Global warming stabilized since 1998.

The Electric Universe Conference, All About Evidence. Albuquerque, March 24, 2014.

Summary. Earth’s temperature is a chemical process system. Review of control system engineering of Earth’s thermostat with anthropogenic CO2 in 1997 proved it will never work because it is an unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable system. CO2 does not affect temperature; temperature affects CO2. There are no greenhouse gases in physics. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is green plant food. Global warming stabilized since 1998.

Purpose. Physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, economics, history and ethics are deployed to identify the barriers to designing the thermostat to control Earth’s atmospheric temperature by adjusting its CO2 input.

Method: People have beliefs and knowledge. Knowledge of nature is discovered by the scientific method: theory in the language of nature (mathematics), prediction and verification. Such discoveries are held to be true until falsified. I offer claims supported by credible evidence, settled science and warrant how one can know that they are true. Sound engineering requires no less. No opinion, no speculation, no controversy, no politics, no alarmist adjectives. When an unlicensed engineer resorts to name calling and threats I declare victory and move on.

Thermostat. A thermostat is a temperature controller. Like most control systems, it consists of a measurement, thermometer or thermocouple, comparison with a desirable setpoint setting creating an error, feeding that error back to a control algorithm that determines an adjustment to a manipulated variable, like combustion fuel flow, that corrects the error, holding it near zero. Control systems engineering is part of most engineering disciplines: chemical, mechanical, electrical, aeronautical, biological, civil.

Credentials. I built a thermostat to verify my “Time Optimum Control of Chemical Processes” PhD Thesis theory at Purdue in 1966; the first computer control loop in Shell Oil Co, a FCC regenerator thermostat at Deer Park Texas in 1967 and digital autopilots and spacecraft trajectory controls for NASA’s Apollo Program in 1968. I invented and commercialized hundreds of true boiling cut point thermostats for petroleum product quality in the HPI since 1970. I am a registered PE Chemical Engineer in Texas and Control System Engineer in California. I was Control Magazine Engineer of the Year 1999 and Purdue’s Outstanding Chemical Engineer 2007. I am a contributor to the US Senate Minority Report: 700 Scientists Dissent and Debunk Man-Made Global Warming, March 16, 2009. I personally financed this presentation; I have no financial incentive in the outcome. I seek no government or business funding. I am an AGW skeptic denier. Not my job to get the science right, just falsify what I can. Turns out I can do both.

Science.

1. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is harmless green plant food. CO2 is the inert result of complete oxidation. There are only two CO2 gas phase reactions, both are endothermic: arc welding and photosynthesis [CO2 + H2O + sunlight = sugars + O2, catalyzed by chlorophyll]. US Navy submarines limit CO2 < 8000 ppmv because it displaces O2.
2. Halting all combustion of hydrocarbons (oil, gas, coal and wood) by man will not measurably affect atmospheric CO2 content, now 400 ppmv. Simple material balance shows man generates 30 billion tons/year (this is neither a big nor a small number, it is just a number) while plants consume 7 trillion tons/year (this is neither a big nor a small number, it is just a number). Forest fires, rotting flora and volcanoes input most of the CO2 to the atmosphere. Total input or output is >7. The ratio is 0.03/7 = 0.0043. (This is a small ratio.) Cutting the 30 in half to 15 will drop CO2 by 100 ppm after 70 years.
3. CO2 does not affect temperature; rather temperature affects CO2. Data for the last 400,000 years, reported by Al Gore, “Inconvenient Truth” in 2005, shows they cycle together but CO2 lags temperature by about 800 years. Solubility of CO2 in water, oceans, beer and champagne decreases with temperature so solar warming of the ocean releases dissolved CO2 and cooling reabsorbs it. Solar radiation drives Earth’s temperature; CO2 has nothing to do with it.
4. Atmospheric radiation absorption and emission is dominated by the presence of all three phases of H2O. Like all molecules, CO2 only absorbs and emits specific spectral wavelengths (14.77 microns) which constitute a tiny fraction of solar radiation energy in Earth’s atmosphere. The first 50 ppm CO2 absorbs about half of this tiny energy, each additional 50 ppm absorbs half of the remaining tiny fraction, so at the current 380 ppm there are almost no absorbable photons left. CO2 could triple to 1000 ppm with no additional discernable absorption – emission. This is the Beer-Lambert Law: the intensity of radiation decreases exponentially as it passes through an absorbing medium.
5. There is no such thing as a greenhouse gas because the atmosphere has no glass house. German physicists Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D Tscheuschner proved this in their classic paper “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”, International Journal of Modern Physics B, v23, n03, January 6, 2009, pp. 275-364. Free download at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
6. Earth’s temperature increased naturally 0.6C from 1976 to 1998 and has stabilized since, decreasing nearly 0.1C from 2005 to 2009. Forecasts of long term cooling are credible but irrelevant to the claim anthropogenic CO2 does not affect temperature. CO2 content did not accelerate at the onset of the increase in hydrocarbon combustion by man after 1900.
7. The language of GHGT is inaccurate. Warming does not cause ice to melt. A glacier melts when the average temperature of its surroundings > 0C, whether T is increasing, warming, or decreasing, cooling. Of course the rate of melting is proportional to T > 0. The higher T the faster it melts, even when T is decreasing. The proper way to say it is glaciers melt when surroundings are too warm, the hotter the faster it melts. Those who know the derivative of calculus will understand, Isaac Newton, Principia, 1687.
8. Earth’s atmospheric temperature is not measurable. Temperature is a point property of the energy content of vibrating and radiating molecules. Physics has no rigorous definition of average temperature of bulk matter, accounting for changes in temperature, state, composition, pressure, heat capacity, velocity and reactions. Air temperature, pressure and composition change with altitude, latitude, clouds, time of day, season, weather fronts and deforestation. Wien’s Law gives an average surface temperature from radiation emitted by black bodies like stars; it does not apply to bodies dominated by non-uniform, variable reflection, like Earth.
9. UN IPCC climate models incorrectly assume Earth’s radiation to space decreases as its temperature increases. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law states all bodies radiate proportional to T**4. In July 2009, Prof Richard Lindzen, MIT meteorologist, verified Earth obeys this law. Control engineers know all matter reaches an equilibrium temperature due to this change mitigating effect. Otherwise Earth would have exploded or frozen long ago. UN climate models are empirical and hence wrong.
10. Waxman-Markey HR2454 CO2 Cap & Trade bill requires USA to reduce its CO2 production by 83{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} from 2010 to 2050. Using discredited empirical UN IPCC models, they predict this will reduce CO2 by 20 ppm and temperature by 0.05C after 40 years. Physics predicts the temperature change approaches zero.
11. Sea level is changing slowly and naturally in direct proportion to land ice changes, not floating sea ice. Archimedes proved his buoyancy law about 250bc. The majority of Northern Hemisphere glaciers have been receding since the ice age ended 18,000 years ago. They did not accelerate since 1900. All AGW scares, like hurricanes, droughts and dying polar bears, have been competently debunked.
12. Arctic ice shrinks annually when Earth is too warm, but Siberian and Canadian snowfall increases, increasing Northern Hemisphere solar reflectivity, causing Earth to cool and ice to grow again. A plausible mechanism for these regular 40,000 year ice age cycles has been related to the shallowness of the Barents Sea south of Spitsbergen where the Gulf Stream can break through to the Arctic Ocean. Data indicate another regular ice age began since 2000. CO2 is not involved.

Engineering.

13. Earth’s temperature system cannot be adequately modeled for control. Modeling and control of multivariable, nonlinear, dynamic systems like fluid catalytic cracking, crude distillation, coking, hydrocracking and gasoline blending was commercialized in the 1980’s and deployed throughout the HPI and chemical industry ever since. Control systems have been built for mechanical and electrical systems like aircraft and spacecraft since 1960.
14. Earth’s temperature system cannot be adequately measured or controlled. Mathematical criteria devised in the 1960’s that ensure a system is measurable, observable and controllable are not satisfied.
15. Mankind has no decision process for properly setting global temperature or CO2 targets. Or home thermostats either. The rigorous procedure for optimizing risky tradeoffs for HPI control system setpoints like thermostats was published in HP, December 1996.
16. Nuclear power is not useful because it produces no CO2 but because it is profitable. Engineers at DuPont, Westinghouse and GE commercialized recovery of uranium for safe breeder reactor fuel with manageable recyclable waste since 1960. Delta Colorado holds commercially recoverable U-238 equivalent to 1000x the energy of Earth’s fossil fuels. Exporting enriched reactor grade U-235 fuel would have preserved oil for transportation fuels and petrochemicals, reversed US trade deficits and accelerated peaceful and inexpensive power generation worldwide. The energy from 1 kg of U-235 equals that from 3 million kg of coal.

Ethics.

17. Gradual warming is good. Earth’s flora, fauna and mankind have flourished since Earth warmed again 18,000 years ago. Humans have experienced 5,000,000 years/125,000 years per ice age cycle = about 40 such cycles. New Yorkers retire to Florida, Canadians to Phoenix, Chicagoans to Hawaii and Germans to Provence.
18. Taxing energy production is bad. Energy management is basic to human prosperity and well being. Profitable conversion of heat to work since 1780 has created great comfort and wealth for all who know how. Waxman-Markey HR2454 will never work.
19. India, China, Africa and Russia will continue to produce CO2 from coal, oil and gas, to their credit. Their people will prosper.
20. Al Gore, at Oxford on July 8, 2009, promoted research to violate the second law of thermodynamics. He condemned power plant and vehicle combustion for wasting 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the fuels energy. In 1824 Sadi Carnot proved the maximum theoretical frictionless reversible efficiency is Wo/Qi = 1 – T2/T1, where Qi is total heat in, Wo is net work out, T1 is temperature of the heat source (flame, steam) and T2 is temperature of the surroundings (air, cooling water). Great engineers have labored to approach maximum economic efficiency ever since.
21. Corrupting science is bad. Al Gore promotes spending by governments around the globe to finance his multibillion dollar venture capital fund, KPCB, which owns 16 GreenTech firms and Google. Providing government grants for fraudulent science research promoting caps on CO2 production is a conflict of interest. I personally found flawed science in peer reviewed papers in Science and Proceedings of The Royal Society and published my findings in a letter to HP in January 2009.
22. On April 17, 2009 the US EPA issued instructions for comments on “Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act” as they prepare to declare CO2 a pollutant. They claim current law and court precedent authorize them to do so.

Conclusions.

23. Knowledgeable environmental engineers support reforestation and efforts to curtail anthropogenic pollutants like SO2, NOx, Bz, CFC’s, particulates and surface ozone. They oppose depriving Earth’s flora of their green plant food, choking and starving them for personal gain. I like harmless CO2. I exhale some at 40,000 ppm every 4 seconds.
24. CO2 and O2 are the basic molecules of the life cycle between Earth’s flora and fauna. The miracle of life photosynthesis reaction should not be tampered with lightly. Starving and choking plants of their food supply would be a monumental crime against humanity, all fauna and flora, the environment and Earth itself.
25. Since there are no graduate or licensed chemical process control engineers in the UN IPCC, US Congress, Cabinet or Supreme Court, these incompetent groups continue to waste time and money since 1997 attempting the impossible, designing Earth’s thermostat using anthropogenic CO2. No one has controlled the climate of an entire planet.
26. Climate experts like MIT meteorology Prof Richard Lindzen, Princeton physicist and former DoE Research Director Prof William Happer, UVa atmospheric physicist Prof S Fred Singer and ClimateDepot.com are reliable.
27. Forecast: This paper will remain valid beyond 3000AD. If engineers consider this report good news, ok. I welcome any proof of errors and apologize if I have offended anyone. If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research. A Einstein   In every enterprise, consider the outcome. Chinese Fortune Cookie

Parting Shot: Earth’s temperature is unmeasurable, but…….

28. Satellite spectrometers measure Earth’s average radiating intensity day-night, pole-to-pole, summer-winter to be about I = solar constant*albedo/4 = 1366*0.7/4 = 239 w/m² of its surface. I varies with solar input and flora photosynthesis rate. The latter increases with solar, T and [CO₂], reducing T and [CO₂]. Cool.
29. Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law gives temperature of any radiating body with emissivity e < 1 as T = 100(I/5.67e)^0.25.
30. Earth’s global emissivity is difficult to measure or determine, but Standard Global Climate Model uses e = 0.612. It increases with content of radiating gases like H₂O and CO₂. (It goes down with T.)
31. Since e is in the denominator, if e increases, T decreases. Doubling CO₂ from 400 to 800 ppmv increases e by about 0.001 to 0.613.

32.   T₀ = 100(239/5.67*0.612)^0.25 = 288.08 (14.93C, a generally accepted value)

    T₁ = 100(239/5.67*0.613)^0.25 = 287.96 (14.81C)

    T₁ – T₀ = -0.1156C. Cooling. Decreasing I drops T₁ more, increasing e further. UN IPCC says 1.5 < T₁ – T₀ < 4.5. Wrong.

33. There you have it all, in five sentences. What is all the fuss about? When I was in kindergarten, Henny Penny & Chicken Little said “The sky is falling!” They neglected to say how fast or when. No astrophysics, just chemical engineering.

34.  In 1981 James Hansen, NASA, assumed Earth was a black body, e = 1.0, and deduced Earth’s radiating temperature to be Tbb₀ = 100(239/5.67*1.0)^0.25 = 254.80 (-18.35C). Since it is about +15C, he declared the Greenhouse Gas Effect to be T₀ – Tbb₀ = 288.08 – 254.80 = 33C. Everybody was horrified, Hansen got famous, Al Gore got rich and the rest is history.

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