Re-Initializing Koonin’s Unsettled: Fury of a Geoengineer Scorned?
The 2004 Koonin:
- PhD (Theo-Phys) M.I.T.
- Taught Theo-Phys at Caltech for 30 years, including 9 as VP/Provost; managing 300 faculty.
- Wrote Computational Physics (1985); published 100+ physics, computation, and energy papers.
- National Academy of Sciences; American Academy of Arts and Science; JASON Group; Council of Foreign Relations; Democratic Party. (1)
His sales-pitch:
- “The haze in the stratosphere that occurs naturally after volcanic eruptions demonstrably cools the planet for a few years as the haze particles settle out.”
- “It is well within the capabilities of current technology to create a stratospheric haze via any number of methods, including additives to jet fuel or artillery shells that disperse the gas hydrogen sulphides.”
- “creating aerosols in the atmosphere might be the most plausible way to make a significant global impact.”
- “the haze would have to be refreshed constantly”
- “projected costs are low enough that a small nation or even a single individual could carry out the entire project” (4)
Disappointingly, Koonin:
“soon discovered any mention of geoengineering to government or NGOs was met with tight-lipped silence, if not actual hostility. The focus was on reducing emissions, and any distraction from that goal, especially one that would allow the world to continue to use fossil fuels, was not to be contemplated.” (5)
During his first sit-down with BP execs Koonin opined that, as per global warming, the benefits of CO2 emission reductions achieved by switching from coal to gas are negated by the corresponding reductions in sun-blocking aerosols emitted by coal-burning.
BP markets gas as the climate-friendly alternative to coal, hence:
Late-2004: Koonin flies home from a Science and Technology in Society conference wondering:
On his way out BP’s door (2008/9), Koonin secured financing from Novim to convene a 10-scientist conference dedicated to drafting geoengineering research proposals. (8) Geoengineering remained verboten.
John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, sparked controversy in 2009 by merely saying “geoengineering.” He apologised. (9)
In 2009, Koonin became the US Energy Department’s Under-Secretary of Science. With Novim’s geoengineering flyers in hand Koonin solicited research money. Obama Administration “higher-ups ”gave’m the bum’s rush. (10) Koonin left DC empty-handed, clear-headed. (11)
In 2013-4 Koonin led a team of 6 physicists missioned to update the American Physics Society’s climate statement. They cross-examined 6 climate experts during a one-day “ climate science stress test.” The physicists plied the climate scientists on where the “data poor assumptions” were hidden; and about the limitations of computer models.
They exposed gaping uncertainties. (12)
Koonin uncovered science mandarins misstating the content of the papers they cited. The scientific literature actually finds scant evidence of recent increases in tropical cyclone activity. Koonin leapt the barricade; landing on his feet.
He no longer shakes the tambourine for geoengineers. Turns-out the problem geoengineers aimed to fix ain’t a problem. By rejecting economical geoengineering solutions, climate crusaders betrayed ulterior motivation.
Energy Transition is their immutable end. Climate Change is their pretextual means.
Footnotes
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Kevin Doyle
| #
Two questions:
If ozone, clouds (H2O), and other gases block incoming solar radiation, and thus, cool the planet; then why wouldn’t CO2 do the same? Half of incoming solar radiation is in the IR portion of the spectrum.
Or, is CO2 some magical ‘One-Way Mirror’ gas which has never been found in nature?
It would be refreshing if some ‘climate scientist’ would attempt to answer this question, citing specific wavelengths and intensities, as all gases have line spectra ‘fingerprints’…
Reply
William Kay
| #
Thanks for commenting Kevin.
The sun-blocking that geo-engineers speak of is done by “aerosol particles” which are millions of times larger gas molecules.
According to standard “global warming” theory the waves coming from the Sun cover the full spectrum while the heat waves bouncing off the Earth are primarily of much longer and allegedly more susceptible to capture by CO2. Your suspicions are legit – the GHG should capture heat coming from both directions; however the type of waves coming from each direction are quite different in composition.
Reply
Kevin Doyle
| #
William Kay,
I was asking a ‘rhetorical question’.
Obviously, O3 (Ozone) is not an aerosol. It is a molecule. It absorbs incoming UV radiation in the upper atmosphere, thus saving our skin and decreasing the surface temperature on Earth.
H2O (also a molecule) also captures incoming solar radiation at virtually every note on the keyboard!
This is basic stuff.
Why are you incapable seeing this basic stuff?
Also, the Sunlight coming towards Earth has higher energy content than any spectra of ‘cold energy’ emitted from the surface of Earth.
How exactly does CO2 not absorb incoming sunlight in the 4.3 Micron and 5 Micron spectra, but only absorbs outgoing radiation in the 15 Micron spectrum?
By the way, 15 Micron wavelength has its ‘peak thermal energy’ at a temperature of -80 Celsius. Do you think CO2 is helping keep Antartica from getting down to -90 Celsius?
I’m simply pointing out a few numbers as a ‘reality check’. Climate Scientists are allowed to have completely erroneous theories, with no repercussions.
Engineers live in the real world where they are responsible for peoples lives via their bridges, ships, buildings, etc.
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Kevin,
First O3 is not absorbing uv, it is a result O2 absorbing more than 450,000 joules/mole of from uv and then splitting into oxygen atoms. When an oxygen atom encounters an oxygen molecule it forms O3. Both O2 and N2 have short bond lengths because of the double and triple bond in the molecules and absorb short uv wavelengths. O3 is formed from longer single bonds. How could a molecule (O3) with a concentration of 10ppm possibly absorb over 90% of the incoming uv radiation. If you paint one square cm black (O3) on a pane of glass with an area of 100,000 cm^2 it will not block over 90% of the light from going through the glass. If you paint 99,000 cm^2 black (O2 and N2) you will block over 90% of the light from going through the glass.
Second: Water is transparent to visible light and absorbs longer wavelengths. If you scuba dive and use a flashlight you will see that some of the grey coral is actually red but the water has absorbed the red wavelength. Water is very good at absorbing IR radiation (heat).
Third: Because the gases in the atmosphere are absorbing radiated energy from the sun the energy being transmitted to the surface of the Earth is weaker and because that energy is distributed to more molecules, each molecule on the surface has less energy than those in the atmosphere. Energy is flowing from the atmosphere to the surface. (Remember: in the troposphere the transmission of energy is done by convection, not radiation and according to the law of conservation of momentum energy will flow from the object with greater velocity to the object with less velocity regardless of mass. Cold fast small objects can add energy to slow large objects even though they have less kinetic energy.
Herb
Reply
William Kay
| #
Kevin, I’ve been active in the climate skeptical community for 35 years. If you are looking for someone to defend CAGW, I’m not that guy. I could provide you with a summary of what the alarmists say about your concerns but why bother? The above article was about geo-engineering and Koonin’s transformation.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Kevin
While I am not a “climate scientist “ and neither is Richard Feynman or Einstein, consider the which Feynman taught his physics student at Caltech., “Einstein assumed that Planck’s final formula was right, and he used that formula to obtain some new information, previously unknown, about the interaction of radiation with matter. His discussion went as follows: Consider any two of the many energy levels of an atom, say the mth level and the nth level (Fig. 42–2). Now Einstein proposed that when such an atom has light of the right frequency shining on it, it can absorb that photon of light and make a transition from state n to state m, and that the probability that this occurs per second depends upon the two levels, of course, but is proportional to how intense the light is that is shining on it. Let us call the proportionality constant Bnm, merely to remind us that this is not a universal constant of nature, but depends on the particular pair of levels: some levels are easy to excite; some levels are hard to excite. Now what is the formula going to be for the rate of emission from m to n? Einstein proposed that this must have two parts to it. First, even if there were no light present, there would be some chance that an atom in an excited state would fall to a lower state, emitting a photon; this we call spontaneous emission. It is analogous to the idea that an oscillator with a certain amount of energy, even in classical physics, does not keep that energy, but loses it by radiation. Thus the analog of spontaneous radiation of a classical system is that if the atom is in an excited state there is a certain probability Amn, which depends on the levels again, for it to go down from m to n, and this probability is independent of whether light is shining on the atom or not. But then Einstein went further, and by comparison with the classical theory and by other arguments, concluded that emission was also influenced by the presence of light—that when light of the right frequency is shining on an atom, it has an increased rate of emitting a photon that is proportional to the intensity of the light, with a proportionality constant Bmn. Later, if we deduce that this coefficient is zero, then we will have found that Einstein was wrong. Of course we will find he was right. Thus Einstein assumed that there are three kinds of processes: an absorption proportional to the intensity of light, an emission proportional to the intensity of light, called induced emission or sometimes stimulated emission, and a spontaneous emission independent of light.” (https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_42.html)
Have a good day
Reply
Michael Clarke
| #
It is interesting to note that the energy emitted by CO2 is calculated as being DOWN!
I thought that the photons emitted were in a random direction therefore less than half should come down, spherical earth spherical emissions.
Also that energy may not reach the earth at all but bump into other particles which do not reach photon emission state.
Yet the science is settled!!!!
Reply
William Kay
| #
Thanks for commenting Michael!
IMHO – Photons do not exist. They are figments of the all-pervasive Einsteinian bunk. Light and heat are waves through the aether.
Heat loss from a CO2 molecule would be unaffected by gravity and thus spread in all directions including back down to Earth.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi William and PSI Readers,,
When you wrote “Photons do not exist.” you were being honest as you admitted it was only your opinion. However, I do not understand why you need to be critical of Einstein’s opinion whom isn’t around to point out it is more than his opinion. For I believe I have read this opinion was the reason mentioned for awarding him the Nobel Prize in physics.
have a good day
Reply
William Kay
| #
The politics surrounding Einstein’s Nobel could fill a book. He was awarded the prize for the “discovery” of the photoelectric effect, not the photon. He certainly didn’t receive it for his malarky about photons which at the time were not accepted as real. Furthermore his contribution to the discovery of the photoelectric effect (which does not require photons) consisted of plagiarism and sophistry and nothing more.
Reply
Jerrry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
You have a choice: Believe what William Walter Kay BA JD has written, what Richard Feynman, an other Nobel Prize winning physicist, and Einstein have written, or have your own opinion.
I am only trying to inform you so you know you have a choice.
Have a good day
Reply
William Kay
| #
That’s just the argument from authority. I’m aware my comment about photons conflicts with what Big Physics preaches. There exists a lively community (1,500 websites by one count) of people who question the Einsteinian and/or Quantum obfuscation.
According to your line of reasoning the “science” coming out of the Climate Science Establishment regarding “global warming” must be accepted. According to your logic Big Pharma’s Covid caper should go unchallenged; after all they’re the authorities.
MattH
| #
Hi William
Suggesting Feynman and Einstein were scumbags the way big p[harme and climate hoaxers are is unfortunate.
A poor analogy.
Jerrry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
You have a choice: Believe what William Walter Kay BA JD has written, what Richard Feynman, an other Nobel Prize winning physicist, and Einstein have written, or have your own opinion.
I am only trying to inform you so you know you have a choice.
Have a good day
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi William,
I agree light is a wave and the photon is nonsense, but I disagree with “heat”is a wave. Heat is kinetic energy which includes energy and mass and objects do not radiate mass. Objects radiate infrared energy which only other objects of the right size can absorb and convert to heat.
The transfer of heat in the troposphere, which is the heat we experience, is transferred by convection or collisions. While the type of radiated energy an object can absorb is restricted by its structure this is not the case with convection. All objects will absorb and equalize energy during collisions regardless of what radiated wavelengths they absorb.
Herb
Reply
William Kay
| #
Hey Herb, we’re digging ourselves out from underneath a mountain of pseudo-science. The “electromagnetic spectrum” must be rechristened the “aetherial spectrum.” Heat (aka thermal radiation) is the jiggling or vibrating of molecular matter by a wide spectrum of wavelengths from the longer fringes of UV, through visible light, to infrareds and microwaves where heat is most pronounced. The Sun blasts Earth with all of the above. Visualize a jelly dessert with bits of fruit in it. The jelly is the aether. If you shake the aether you rattle the little pieces of fruit. That’s heat. Its a wave/vibration. Bon appetit, Herb!
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi William,
What you call the”ethereal spectrum” I call the electric (produced by matter) and magnetic/gravity (produced by energy) fields which are radiated by all objects above absolute zero.
They are the jelly that contains bits of different fruits with different sizes. These inclusions don’t transfer flavor (energy) to the other fruits but to the jelly. An object can never equalize energy with another object because of the distance between them and their different structure prevents the absorption of all the different wavelengths and amount of energy being emitted from the other object.
It’s like a two way radio which absorbs and transmits at set wavelengths into the the electric and magnetic fields around it, depending on the length of its antenna (bond lengths). The jelly isn’t shaking, it is shaking and absorbing vibrations from the fruit. The fruits get hot, the jelly does not. The amount of jelly decreases with distance until it meets jelly coming from another object where the vibrations contained in the jelly are transmitted to the adjacent jelly and propagate through it.
Some people find it hard to swallow that “electromagnetic” is not one force but two. Consider what happens to the radiated fields from charges and magnets as similar and opposite poles/charges approach each other. The two behave in opposite fashion (Increasing and decreasing).
Herb
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Michael,
Glad to see you are still with us! Yesterday, while reading ‘No Latitude For Error by Sir Edmund Hillary a 2nd time I finally saw an obvious observation (fact) that I had not seen before before I had learned to observe from reading how Louis Agassiz taught some students to observe. Actually he first taught (forced) them to ask questions to themselves.
Since the southern hemisphere is your part of the world you have “boated” in in the oceans down there, what do you suppose I finally saw that has been generally overlooked, if it has ever been seen and reported by anyone?
I know you like challenges so I give you a chance to observe what I have just observed. And after a bit we can discuss this oversight and its significance.
Have a good day
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Michael and other PSI Readers,
To give a clue of what I finally saw, I quote Hillary (pp 68). “On December 31st we passed through an area of heavy packice, and despite some quite difficult going we made excellent progress. Early in the afternoon we broke our way out of this heavy pack into a much easier area. The weather was overcast and cold and a strong southerly gale had sprung up with snow showers . We fought our way into that gale through a series of great pools several miles in length. The wind was so strong that it was difficult to stand-on deck and face into it, but the ship kept moving at a good pace and the miles dropped behind. We were very encouraged now by distinct signs of an ocean swell—a clear indication that we had broken through the worst of the pack and were fast approaching open water again.”
Have a good day,
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi William and PSI Readers,
Have anyone of you placed oneself in a position where there is “No Latitude For Error” as the Adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary did more than once as his life, and other lives, were involved in his story? Our lives are not likely threaten by what you and I write here at PSI.
Have a good day
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Michael, Matt, and PSI Readers,
What I finally saw was the unquestionable evidence of the influence of the near horizontal centrifugal effect which had drifted the icepack from the glaciers far from the Antarctica coast so that the strong katabatik winds falling down the same course of the glaciers were able to create a rim of generally ice free water of significant extent that these strong winds were creating ocean swells before they reached the pack ice; which pack because of the ice’s mass claimed the swells inspire of the strong wind.
Of course, there much evidence that the existence of this horizontal centrifugal effect, due to the rotating earth, has been almost universally ignored (forgotten) in the polar regions since Nansen had tried to drift his specially built ship to the North Pole in 1893-1894.
Have a good day
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Forgo: (https://follow.mosaic-expedition.org)
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH and PSI Editors,
I don’t like short lines so I quote your short comment: “Hi William
Suggesting Feynman and Einstein were scumbags the way big p[harme and climate hoaxers are is unfortunate. A poor analogy”
.
I nave never quoted how Galileo began “Two New Science”, and that has been a GREAT MISTAKE.
“ SALV. The constant activity which you Venetians display in your famous arsenal suggests to the studious mind a large field for investigation, especially that part of the work which involves mechanics; for in this department all types of instruments and machines are constantly being constructed by many artisans, among whom there must be some who, partly by inherited experience and partly by their own observations, have become highly expert and clever in explanation.” (As translated by Henry Crew & Alfonso de Salvio, 1914)
Artisans (common folk) are the inventors and not the “brilliant” philosophers (scientists) with whom Galileo saw (observed) a possible productive working relationship between invention and observation.
Have a good day
Reply
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry.
Necessity, observation, invention.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH,
I finally saw your point. “Necessity” is the critical first factor which imitates the invention process.
Have a good day
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
I must point to the fact that AI cannot correct my misspellings because it cannot comprehend, from the other words of my statement, what word I intended to spell correctly.
Reply
MattH
| #
‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Herb and others,
Relative to past three “La Niña years, the past Maunder Minimum with its Little Ice Age, and the current weather we are experiencing in Salem OR I will speculate an explanation what happens when “Solar Activity” becomes minimal. And I will be interested your responses.
The explanation begins with the recognition of the ultra-violet (UV) catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, is the prediction of classical electromagnetism that the intensity of the radiation emitted by an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium goes to infinity as wavelength decreases. I read (without any reference) “Planck solved the ultraviolet catastrophe by assuming that energy was not continuously divisible as we expect, but rather that it comes in discrete ‘packets’. By treating energy as a discrete quantity, Planck was able to arrive at a model which perfectly describes the radiance of a blackbody.” For I cannot show the figure of the observed radiance of a blackbody which drops to zero well before the UV wave-length decreases to zero. So the Planck theory Is not an issue, for it is an observation (measurement) made by an instrument.
And at the short=wave end of intensity of the UV radiation, from a black-boy, very rapidly rapidly increase with increasing radiation wave lengths unit it blends into the curve predicted by the classical Rayleigh-Jeans theory. So while the total energy of solar radiation (UV, visible, IR) as measure from a satellite instrument cannot be observed to significantly change, it is possible there can be a slight change in the intensity of the shorter wave UV capable of breaking an oxygen molecule into two oxygen atom; the first step in creating ozone molecules.
Next, one to look at a generalized temperature layers of the earth’s atmosphere (https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere/layers-of-atmosphere) and explain why the stratosphere is warmed by the oxygen-ozone system and not the mesosphere above the stratosphere. Which isn’t commonly done much more frequently than the centrifugal effect due to the rotating earth is discussed.
My favorite meteorologist. R.C. Sutcliffe, Weather & Climate (1962), in titled his 2nd chapter “Troposphere, Stratosphere and Beyond” but he never questioned why the higher mesosphere’s temperature does continue to increase as that of the stratosphere had. I make an issue of this even if one is not an atmospheric scientist, nor an academic meteorologist, nor a TV weather-person talking about the current weather and the predicted weather nor one who has never thought about these atmospheric temperature layers because one didn’t know they existed; for I believe most everyone can see they are something which needs an explanation.
But I stop here to see if there is anyone knows (sees) what the fundamental explanations must be or desire to know more what the explanations might be.
Have a good day
Reply