Be Deconfused.com

In the debate regarding climate the second law of thermodynamics is often quoted but rarely explained. For a starter lesson watch Flanders and Swan sing the basics. But these are rules. Not the understanding of them. The problem is understanding the nature of energy which is in reality a flux over a time.  Energy only exists as a static quantity when stored in some indirect primary form, in a battery, fuel tank, rubber band, hydroelectric dam, chemical molecule or nucleus, etc,  and is only able to do work when released to create an energy flux that must do work, which may be to store itself in another form, as heat, chemical energy, etc. To do this a flow of electromagnetic energy must occur, from a more energetic source to a less energetic sink. Crucially, energy cannot flow uphill.

So the fundamental truth is that energy will always flow from a place where the energy density is higher to one where it is lower, to balance the Universe. This is the universal entropy heat death theory. Not coming any time soon, as there is lot of localised energy hot spots around the Universe with very intense energy left to redistribute. This also means  energy must flow from a hotter to a colder place, because temperature is an indication of the energy intensity/density of a substance, energy per unit mass. In an ideal gas or vacuum the majority of the energy flow is a radiative flux, pure energy propagating to another place, which is always unattenuated in a vacuum, also in some atmospheres, to a location where it might be stored in another form to that which it was stored in before, perhaps doing work on the way, or simply lost in space as low grade heat, far, far, away.

This is both poorly explained and poorly understood. It is because pure energy is a flux, it does not exist in a static form, it must be used to do work as produced, or be stored as potential energy, in a battery, pumping water uphill, winding up a rubber motor, whatever. Otherwise, when radiated from a planet it is lost in space (Microwave background is such an energy field throughout the Universe). Generally this involves the energy becoming much less dense or intense, so more physical matter is required to store it in its new form, it becomes less structured than before.

Energy stored for use elsewhere must be in some other form than electromagnetic radiation. For example, in molecular or atomic structures, made in stars,  the most energy intense structural forms of molecular binding energy or nuclear binding energy, released by chemical reactions or nuclear fission & fusion. These two are the main power sources of developed economy, because the higher the energy intensity, the more efficient and lower cost per unit is the energy extraction from its source. The more extreme the intensity, the more difficult to achieve, with the bonus that the higher the temperature difference, the higher the efficiency of conversion/energy transfer.

From there we can go down to the relatively weak gravitational potential energy, for example water collected behind a dam, to form a lake that can energise a hydro energy scheme, where the water loses gravitational potential energy on its way from higher up to lower down. Other weak forms of energy flux are wind and water flow in tides.

Water is of interest to this account of the way solar energy flows through the Earth’s surface systems. In hydro power it gives up the energy it gained by being converted from a liquid to a gas, water vapour, lifted into the atmosphere by convection in air warmed by the ocean surface, all powered by the solar radiative flux, gaining in gravitational potential energy as it is lifted higher into the troposphere. The energy stored in the latent heat of vapourisation of water is also transported towards space by this convection in the warm, so less dense, atmosphere rising from the surface. When it gets high enough, so cold enough, the change from liquid to vapour structure of water vapour is reversed and the water vapour condenses. The energy of latent heat is released as radiation to space, where it is colder, as discussed later. The now liquid droplets of colder so denser condensate fall back to earth as rain to be aggregated in river system to fill the lake and increase the store of gravitational potential energy. This store of gravitational potential energy, originally provided by solar energy that uplifted it,  can now create hydro power when converted to the kinetic energy of water flow, in a flux of water in this case, the kinetic energy is usually harvested from the water in a turbine located below the lakes surface water level where it becomes an electrical flux of pure enrgy. The water then returns to the ocean to repeat the water cycle, energised by the Solar radiation from the nuclear fusion generator 93 Million miles away. A cycle that we have exploited to extract a small part of the solar energy that drives it.

But where does the energy stored in the water vapour go when it condenses?

As with a chemical or atomic reaction, the pure energy produced by the condensation process has to go somewhere. In a solid, liquid or gas this may be by conduction and convection – thermal excitation of colliding molecules, in a vacuum only electromagnetic radiation can transport energy. In an atmosphere both radiation and convection can be powerful contributors to energy transport. As the atmosphere thins, it is in ever reducing contact with itself, so energy transfer will increasingly be by radiation, which is measured as a flux of electromagnetic energy. This happens at the top pf the lower atmosphere, at 0.1Bar, in the tropopause. This energy flux can be described as radiative or photonic, per the duality of energy and matter at quantum levels. It’s the same thing, pure energy realised in different ways by the physics because physics needs two ways to best describe what happens, as we measure it.

 This flux can only flow to a place where energy levels are lower, so to colder matter it interacts with and excites, until an equilibrium between the source and sink is reached and flow stops as the two systems come into thermal equlilibrium, as in a cooling curve…

….OR to space itself from the warmer body to the near absolute zero of surrounding space.  Because space naturally needs to be of a uniform energy level, energy will always tend to flow from points of high energy to areas of lower energy, to try to flatten the overall energy level of the universe, in the same way that a water mountain in the ocean is not sustainable.  The more different they are the higher the flow. Wherever the energy levels equalise the flow of energy ceases. This does not happen in this case the case of space as there is a lot of emptiness to fill.

To be very clear, energy cannot flow from a less intense energy source to a more intense one, the flowing uphill of the first paragraph. This requires a reduction in entropy, which cannot happen in a Universe where every conversion of energy into work increases entropy, creating more disorder that is measured by the resulting entropy, a form of energy that is unrecoverable to do useful work.  This requires some maths to fully grasp, and a read of Maxwells theories, but is just as well qualified in words. I hope this helps understand the second law of thermodynamics.

brian.catt@phsyics.org / brian.catt@deconfused.com

Why does this matter now? I am involved in a debate around the way that energy released in the atmosphere from condensing oceanic evaporation must be lost to space, and cannot return its latent heat as warming energy to the lower and hotter atmosphere as frequenty claimed by climate scientists.

Because, as already explained above, when that radiative energy is released in the colder Troposphere, it can only flow one way, down the energy intensity hill to space, where its colder. Much colder. Not towards the warmer surface. Not uphill.

This, hopefully, also explains why the atmosphere cannot heat the oceans, the atmosphere is mainly heated by the dominant heat sink of the oceans, directly warmed by the Sun which absorbs and stores roughly over 96% of all the energy absorbed by the earth’s surface, and is the only source of atmospheric warming for half the day. The oceans can do this because they have 1,000 time greater thermal capacity than the thin atmosphere above. They are greater in both mass and specific heat. I leave that simple maths to you to check. Any smart speaker will give you the numbers to determine the total mass and specific heat of air and water.

When the structural store of latent heat energy in condensing water vapour is released as radiative energy flux in the Troposphere it is no longer contained by the water vapour, and must immediately leave for somewhere colder. That is to the Universe, and beyond, travelling perhaps for human ever, at the end of its interrupted journey into space, from the heart of our Sun, through the Earth’s energy balance system, down the inevitable thermal gradient to deep space, still energy as a flux seeking interaction to do work in space.

In particular,  this transfer by latent heat is measured to provides one third of all Earth’s radiative heat loss to  space. So the strongest planetary cooling of Earth’s surface is by latent heat alone. That varies with the quantity of water vapour, which is measured to change at close to 7% per degree Kelvin across most of the oceans, over a wide range of temperature humidity. As tabulated and illustrated below.

Once free of its structural bonds, the latent heat energy of oceanic evaporation must leave Earth as electromagnetic radiation and won’t come back, because Earth, heated continuously by the Sun, will stay warmer than wherever that radiation went, for now.

This matters because it’s claimed by some Climate Scientists, as regards evaporation from the oceans, that when the water vapour condenses in the Troposphere “it returns the heat to the atmosphere and surface”,  in “warm rain” and other fictions that are denied by the measurement of the whole system energy balance, as well as the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, as explained above .

To summarise, this  is simple nonsense because the water already lost its latent heat energy as it condensed, as the radiative flux that immediately flowed to much colder space, as seen in Earth’s energy balance, measured by satellites to be departing this Earth.

We also observe that the condensate, as it accumulates to a drop size large enough to fall under gravity in the warmer rising atmosphere from the hotter surface below, often starts off as ice in the troposphere, and is in fact warmed by more warm and humid rising air from the mainly ocean surface on its way down through the warming lapse rate of the atmosphere. This is well described in school as the water cycle.

The idea that the latent heat energy in evaporation can return to the surface in rain is wrong, because it directly denies the well observed laws of physics at work. And the reality we measure. The latent heat component of the energy in water vapour must leave for colder space as the radiative flux it creates during condensation. It won’t be back. The atmosphere now returns to the surface, cold and dense in its convective circulation, to be uplifted again, energised by the solar energy warming the surface and transporting more of the latent heat of evaporated water vapour to the Troposphere, to repeat the transfer of solar energy by this natural escalator of latent heat energy to space. I hope I have explained why it works like that. And is not reversible, as some activist climate scientists claim. Without any scientific basis for their claims. Going down the up escalator in natural thermodynamics is not difficult, it’s impossible.

nb: Possible by adding energy in a heat pump that does work using another energy, but that’s another story.

Earth’s Radiative Energy Balance – Summary

Nb: Values are derived from diagrams. Imbalance is temporary & unimportant within overall scale and balance, which the system must converge upon.

Brian RL Catt 2024

NASA ENERGY BALANCE 2010

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/783mijobopn46s163kmhx/NASA-Earth-s-Energy-Budget-Annotated-BRLC.png

TRENBERTH ENERGY BALANCE 2009

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k8ny3s9ckbjz79fa1bz49/Trenberth-2009.png

ENDS

There are many things I would like to write regarding the relativities of scale with respect to both energy and climate science, including the scale of our energy use versus what renewables can actually deliver, and the stark realities of energy density of renewable enrgy sources and their intermittency, that must unavoidably prevent any attempt to create a cheap energy dependent developed economy using the weak, diffuse and unpredictably intermittent energy sources of a feudal economy. The laws of ignorant political ideology cannot change the fundamental laws of physics, nor the properties of matter.

Such a belief is simply delusional in obvious and absolute energy fact and physics any qualified engineer understands and can quickly calculate, no models required, because the science is known, absolute, and guesses are of no merit when reality is known. The simple concept of electrical storage at grid scale is practically impossible, literally, and definitely unaffordable. Even if theoretically possible it would be so costly in resources it is a self-evident lunacy compared to the simple cheap abundant and sovereign solutions of nuclear energy. By contrast, the telatively weak energy of renewable sources is fundamentally limited by nature, so is expesnive and environmentally damaginng to collect.Not only is it a weak energy source, but we cannot control when it is available, it obviosuly cannot be scaled to meet any need on demand as dispatchable sources can. So how do you electrify fossil powered energy use with renewables when you can’t generate enough to meet current demand over an average year?

But what directed my fingers to the keyboard regarding the realities of scale was a question that came to me this weekend, when I was asked about the impact of wars on the climate by a journalist, and it struck me very strongly that this exposed a common delusion about the power of humans, relative to the power of nature we exist within, due to a total lack of understanding of the relative realities of scale involved.

So I wrote the commentary below. I hope it helps position the significance of humans on Earth, as almost undetectable in the scale of natural cause and effect on Earth’s natural systems.

The most obvious place to start was the reality of the significance of humans within the main natural systems of Earth climate, and of Earth systems at scale relative to the solar system it is a part of, which our efforts can neither affect nor change in any way. Annything humans can do will simply disappear into the sheer scale of natural reality most people cannot begin to grasp. Some even consider themselves or our species somehow significant within the reality of nature at a planetary scale, on which we are, in reality, an intelligent but temporary and tiny amount of sentient froth, powerful compared to other frith, of no consequence within the power of the climate and other system that control the Earth’s environment, undetectable in physical quantities that control the solar system.

Humans are a rather interesting development of the short lived primates over a few million years of Earth’;’s 4.5 Billion years, evolved by a geological tectonic event 3 Million years before present, (3Ma BP), the closing of the gap between NOrt and South America that ended the connection between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This made us into a smarter, but still short lived, species. As Feyman says elsewhere on this site, these Apes stand around, trying to figure stuff out. Except, a few hundred years ago, we invented the scientific method and can actually figure out how nature works. and make tools based on what we figure. We can understand the natural world about us, use this knowledge to make machines that increase our power, and exploit the resources nature offers, especially those resources in the rocks beneath the Earth, that are an indispensable part of our development as a technologically enabled animal, and the surplus output the enrgy allows us tcreate, for thfirst time ever in thousands of years ofhuman existence, make it possible to protect humanity against the planet’s threats and extremes, both natural environmental extremes and biological threats. Even bio engineer ourselves in surgery and with drugs that maximise useful life expectancy, and create the environmental systems systems for a few to venture into the hostile freezing void of space that our planet moves within, but we can never adapt to. Send a robot? …… perhaps.

But such feats that protect us from the realities of a natural environment are, like humans flying or diving, a tiny effort within the natural planetary scale of things. To believe humans can control the natural world at a planetary scale is a massive level of delusion. Because the forces the more delusional humans might think they have are in clear and absolute fact wholly insignificant, compared to the scale of the natural forces we understand, that truly dwarf any impact we can imagine ourselves ever having, or being able to control if we could create such power.

So to relative scales and their inconvenient truths. I had a chat with a journalist who called to discuss an idea they were considering regarding how the wars going on now would affect climate, more than changes in CO2 from industrialisation, etc. I had to keep repeating what was apparently hard to accept, the realities of scale say the answer is “none”. For example the idea that one average Hurricane requires the energy of about 200 Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs kinda spoilt the perceived belief of some comparable relativity of power between humans and nature. This includes the tiny effect of both weapons and the effect of the tiny amount of AGW from CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, both measured to be infinitesimal at the absolute power of global energy systems. Weapons appear powerful because they concentrate the release of a significant of enrgy in human terms into a very small space to do a lot of localised damage to vulnerable animal like humans and their built structures, called explosions, but are insignificant on a World Wide scale.

The total radiative effect due to human activity since 1850 is guessed to be 1.6W/m^2. The level of negative stabilising control feedback from the oceans, net of water vapour GHE positive feedback, is circa 10W/m^2 for each degree of warming. So the claimed effect of all the AGW ever is less than 0.2 deg K. The rest is natural. Go figure.

And also, on a quick calculation I will check again later, the amount of solar energy falling on the planetary climate system every day is over 8 Million times that we generate for our own use in a similar period, that is 179TWh from all fuels and energy sources. So how much will this extra level of enrgy entering our weather systems affect the planet that is receiving 8 Million times more from the Sun? Answers on a postcard.

Don’t believe the Doom sayers for profit, do your own checks first, etc. It’s not hard. Ask Google and do the maths. It just multiplication and division at basic high school level.

So to human versus natural relativities, which I will return to later in an enrgy specific blog , having floated the overall global reality, as regards the realities of human energy production and the actual effect of its production on the global climate above.

While on the subject of scale, it is informative and sobering to consider the illustration below, as regards the overall water and freshwater proportion on Earth, the smaller of the two drops compared to the rocky Earth in the image.The freshwater on Earth’s surface is the smaller blue dot. The tiny skim of water that is Earth’s 70% ocean coverage has the largest effect on the Earth’s ability to control its global temperature within a narrow range, compared to a rocky planet.

https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/worlds-water-1613×2048.jpg

Interesting, but take another look at that rock. What is it in reality ? Under a wafer thin Creme Brulée skin, the Earth itself is in fact almost entirely molten and trying to get out through whatever small holes in its thin aging skin it can make, and the whole issue, together with the water and air on top of the wafer thin skin, is held together by gravity. ( But not powered by steam, for the Rugby fans here)

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/80a24352-67a4-42eb-971a-a9a867ac1e98/d2wy2y4-f2a2c10f-57ab-4dca-ab87-361e98938a59.jpg/v1/fill/w_1095,h_730,q_75,strp/inside_the_earth_by_streincorp.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwic3ViIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl0sIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiIvZi84MGEyNDM1Mi02N2E0LTQyZWItOTcxYS1hOWE4NjdhYzFlOTgvZDJ3eTJ5NC1mMmEyYzEwZi01N2FiLTRkY2EtYWI4Ny0zNjFlOTg5MzhhNTkuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwOTUiLCJoZWlnaHQiOiI8PTczMCJ9XV19.2_c8oYWTD6JnOeYyntYfSasYzxnM-ShGJ6t_M209Yj0

That is why Earth is spherical and in fact so smooth and spherical, bulging at the equator. A ball of molten rock held together by its own gravity, which also keeps the water and atmosphere in place and under pressure, all wobbling like a giant rock jelly beach ball in the varying gravity of its solar system partners, to orbital change beats, mainly the Sun and Moon, and it gravity and that of the moon controls its shape, as well as its equilibrium temperature when in a stable orbit around the Sun, distorted by the Moon, varying on periods from geological to daily. Earth’s shallow oceanic puddles, over 70% of its surface, only 4km deep on a few km of rocky skin, change the dominant ocean surface temperature continually, to adjust to changes in incoming energy and the effects on outgoing radiation passing through the changing atmosphere to space, as regards water vapour content and other, less effective, greenhouse gasses, on which humans have a tiny effect, about 3% added to the natural and relatively small total greenhouse effect since 1850. The natural system is strongly controlled by the oceans that work continuously and wholly naturally to maintain a stable thermal equilibrium, which it does with massive oceanic feedbacks to and changes in the surface temperature. At all times the system must ensure a net enrgy balance, enrgy in = enrgy ut, nota t constant temperature, or the system would veer off heat balance one way or the other. The natural negative feedback that is created is proportional to the imbalance between heat in and out, so is always just enough to balance them. And, most important, there is always a strong negative feedback from three dominant controls to any imbalance that changes the current natural thermal equilibrium, and hence changes ocean surface temperature, which in fact must vary constantly, because it cannot be constant when its role is to balance the system in a varying environment. These controls are far more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

Note, carefully, that the concept of a stable system is fine, but that this requires constant change in temperature to balance the constantly changing system components, of which CO2 is a very small one, on multiple periods, as well as stabilis unpredictable extreme events, such as Asteroids and super volcnoes.Nature does not stay still, but it adapts. Even creates new species for changed environments. We can also adapt to change, but we certainly can’t control it, but the second, re engineering ourselves, is beyond us. Probably.

Even the expectation, of sustained stability without change, is self evidently delusional – when the known changes of the various variable factors involved is considered alongside the known variability of the past. As the geological record shows, constant change is the natural reality. An assertion of change as unnatural is a simple lie, if spoken by anyone claiming expert understanding of the natural systems. Otherwise the speaker self evidently has no serious knowledge of the subject, andcannot defend such assertion against the facts.

The continuous natural feedbacks to natural cyclical and extreme events, of massive scale relative to anything humans can create, balance Earth’s massive heat input from the Sun, a fusion reactor a million times bigger than Earth , against the Earth’s rate of heat loss to the absolute zero vacuum of freezing space. This happens mostly through ocean surfaces changing to whatever temperature that equilibrium requires, a form of planetary sweating that cools the surface by evaporation and also forms clouds that reflect the sun to reduce incoming energy reaching the surface.

Cool ;-). Especially if you consider the scale and volatility of the Sun’s activity and our changing orbit around it, which can vary the solar energy by over 26% at 100,000 year maximums extremes of the Milankovitch eccentricity, plus the lesser effects of obliquity and precession, of which there have been many cycles. The Sun, for scale, is a Million times the volume of Earth and is a very large fusion reactor held together by …. gravity. Just like Earth. But hotter, and MUCH bigger.

/https://tomroelandts.com/sites/tomroelandts.com/files/field/image/sun-earth-moon.png

The reality of “climate change”, as observed in the record, is whatever temperature that has been required to maintain Earth’s thermal equilibrium in space. Average global temperature is never constant, because it must vary to regulate the amount of energy energy going in and out, from multiple causes. The balance between such forces is at a scale impossibly large for humans to contemplate. Or to change significantly.

CONCLUSION: The temperature the Earth needs to be to maintain thermal equilibrium in space is delivered by natural forces more powerful than most people can possibly imagine, that dominate any effect that humans can create. Humans are passengers on this system. The best we can do with our technologies is protect ourselves from nature that kept us leading short mean lives as hunter gatherers through the mainly freezing periods of the last 2.8 Million years of ice ages we evolved within (but living much closer to the Equator, where most people still live, between the Equator and 40 deg North, probably for this historic reason, and the fact we are also a tropical species, until the warm Holocene interglacial again allowed farming and surpluses and thus led to technological societies, where the massive energy we can now at last command can keep larger numbers of us safe, able to communicate and also resist and avoid disease, famine and even war – protect ourselves from nature.

This can continue for as long as we can best apply human intelligence to best use resources that the Earth provides us with, from the air, land and sea. And maximise the energy we can extract from nature to do that as best we can. Certainly not allow givernmentsto impose the opposite by reversing energy use per capita to profit elites, while the mass of people raised up by indusrialisation have their prosperity and freedoms taken from them by elites, who reward their academic priests to promote their backward fraud on the measured facts above, usually inadequates with a poor grasp of maths, physics and the broad systems grasp required to join the science dots, as becomes obvious in any serious debate on the facts and physics.

Their great belief in their own abilities and wisdom is unsupported by their professional formation in almost all cases. Don’t know what they don’t know. Don’t wanna know any inconvenient truths they don’t wanna hear. And…..

Activists can’t handle the truth. So will not debate it on the facts, and attack those who debate reality because they have studied and understand it so can, as deniers, which they are, deniers of lies created to defraud the mass of people for political purposes. It is helpful to remember that informed sceptical debate and proof by observation are the basic principles of real science, which are no longer allowed in the mass media, in publicvenues or political debate entertained by any enterprise the government and elites have influence over. Becai ause thos realities are that nature has our back and there is no detectable problem on Earth that humans have, or probably can, create at a planetary scale that can change natural events significantly. Just a tiny amount of localised noise, on the measurements we have made. Earth and nature are not bothered by humans, at and global scale.

Given its scale, ONLY nature can decide what is real, by the way it changes, on the facts we can measure. Real science. Nature decides what change really happens, not models that falsify any effect’s humans may have on nature by exaggerating the effects of their chosen problem du jour in their predictions, by 100’s of percent, by simple assertion, no supporting phsyics attempted. Environmentalist models are contrived frauds, built on erroneous and cherry picked assertions and given wholly unrealistic powers by their modellers, AKA “sensitivities”, which border on “Superpowers” in hmasn as regards scake and reality. So models using these exagerrated guesses cannot expect to predict reality, and in afct get it very wrong when used to predict thefuture as result. Because the real climate doesn’t work like that. Climate models are are fairy tales, science fiction, made up n by their authors to prove an exxuse to reverse western econlies by UN derive laws, while Asia powers on unhindered, making te stuff we could still be maing, until we lose te transferred skils and become third world clieny ts of emrgig ecomies, as the UN planned it back in the 80’s,a nd their politicians made lain as their real objectives. Their enforcrs at national level simply repeat the UN climate liturgy to deceive for reward and academic recognition, in a branch of science corrupted by politicians, for the stated objectives of transfer of power and profit globally.

Only the observation of nature can tell us what is real, by the realities it commands and we observe, and about which there is only one truth, the one we measure. And those measurements expose the predictions of models that do not happen as claimed for them in the natural world as false. Now, and for ever, ever since satellite records began in 1979. The net zero scam is wholly regressive for humanity in evry way and neds to be shut dow, A rational energy transition is fine, and will e necessary over a few hundred years, no ruch, there is alot of oil, gas and coal in the griund still to find and extract, the rational lead is from fossil to nuclear for generation and, eventually, electricity for heating and synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuel for long distance travel and flight, nuclear freighter ships, perhaps EVs in inner cities, but it will take 100s of years to electrify the roadside infrastructure to power the vehicles we need to continue to develop as democratic and free society. Exactly the prosperity and freedoms the overtly false claims of the climate “emergency”, and its false attribution of cause and effect, was created to end in the West. All based on a level of change above normal which is clearly has clearly not happened in measured fact, CO2 rises a lot temperatures hardly change, and Asia is plans wever more coal and other fossil burning. How long can supposedly rational educated people suspend belief in the rational truth? This is scientufic cognitive dissonance, on a massive scale.

I hope this was a good way to start talking scale, as regards our insignificant place in nature. And the false assertions thatpretend otherwise. There may one day be relics left to show an unlikely visitor or future intelligent species, from a planet far away, that an intelligent species that could build machines to serve them , powered by energy they had developed the skills to create to assist in that end, had once occupied this planet. But only if they drop in before the whole Earth is redistributed as its constituent elements as our Red Giant Sun consumes the Earth we were told to leave the resources we need to progress in. For whom or what we. are they being conserved, exactly? When its gone, its gone, as they say in Lidl..

It is overpoweringly obvious when contrasting our power that nature allows us to have, with the overall power nature has, that human activity can have no effects at the natural scale of the global environment. All is transient, everything changes, naturally, cyclically and exceptionally, The natural Earth feedbacks have control. Not humans. So far. Earth’s climate will spend most of the next 80.000 years 8 degrees colder on average than the short, current, Holocene interglacial, now inot 3,000 years of cooling down its neo glacial phase to the glacial floor (yup, really) , which the coldest end of in a few thousand years will render most of Northern Europe and Canada uninhabitable, until eventually much of the Northern regions nearest the sea are under kilometers of ice sheets, and the ocean levels are 130 metres lower than now ……… just like the last ten times. Makes 3mm pa sea level rise look a bit slow, and that’s natural change, mostly. Nothing we can do will affect any of this future significantly. There are more important questions to ask than about a few millimetres of sea level change pa, such as….

“Will civilisation survive when the people who built it are losing their lands under the ice, the Riviera is more akin to the UK South coast and the populations of whole sub continents must relocate or die.” Now THAT’s a climate migration, of the natural kind, on a planetary scale. All totally natural and inevitable. Forget that nation state border s***..

QUESTION: What level of stupidity can suggest humans reverse their use of cheap plentiful enrgy, after 1 Million years of hunter gathering subsistence survival in the cyclic ice age cycles was followed by a short 10,000 years period of warm plenty from agricultural surplus in the short warm Holocene we live in, when we learnt how to better protect ourselves from nature, how to ensure surpluses of food for a population of 10 Billion, that wil fall when infant mortality is no longer a problem anywhere, and most recently learnt how to generate the energy to do many more things at lower costs so all people in a society could live free, full safe lives protected from nature. The health, wealth and happiness they elites no wish to claw back from the masses by ending theri access to cheap plentiful energy, hence fredom to travel and associate, be warm, and challenge elite rule, etc.

The only possible consequence of climate action is a return to being clever animals in some post industrial feudalism run by self declared elites in the glacial phase of an ice age, in which elites alone are allowed the technological benefits they control, and ration a small proportion of to the masses by climate law, “for their own good”. In the name of things that self evidently cannot and do not happen as they claim.

It’s just obvious. Doesn’t anyone learn anything about real science and economics at school?

No. Because that’s not what they are told to believe by the woke teachers and academics who create and promote the climate science scriptures you must believe, because their salaries depend on promoting the narratives of the elites that employ them. Many of them don’t even understand the physical reality and facts of the hard science they repeat, just what they have been told to believe and proseletise, just ask them a hard question… the majority of the public they deceive must believe, never question, and surrender their share of energy use and natural resources to the elites, along with the wealth and freedom that used to give them, so only the elites orvtheir appted bureaucrats can now decide who is lucky enough to get them.

Something’s amiss, as Will would say. And it starts with a complete denial of the sheer SCALE of the fundamental reality of the controlling natural forces, that we already understand, and have developed ways of living with much more safely, using our ability to create a small amount of intense energy to make our small sophisticated cities and other more dispersed habitataions safer in so many ways, adapting to living within a natural World that, often and unknowingly, is extremely hostile to life on land, but with much reduced harm when humans can use the technologies that cheap plentiful energy has provided us with to warn, defend and protect us.

But always by adapting our defenses and behaviour to nature, never by attempting to control the whole planetary environment at scale, a self evidently impossible conceit in fact, and a stupidity on a massive scale to believe possible, in ignorance of the most basic scientific reality. On the facts we have measured.

PS This blog,. like human understanding and real deterministic science, will always be a Work In Progress. No science is settled, so all is questionable. Unless it’s a deliberately contrived lie as with climate action, and people profit from its belief, so it cannot be allowed to change. And is thus not science.

This work will be corrected by any input that correctly applies proven physics and verifiable datasources. As I rewrite this is the FOURTH edit, to make the same points better, from a finer tuned approach, after further thought. All I ask is you make the same informed and rational science effort in any response.

© Brian RL Catt October 2023
12:52 PM

The truth science knows and the lies they tell

NB: A Work in Progress

This blog is to share simple facts based reality, defined as what the data and science gathered to test that reality says, regarding population and the resources available to support it. Such a simple approach to testing the reality exposes the absolute and knowing deceit of the limits to growth and exponentially rising  claims about dangerous population explosions that clearly are not happening as described, but promoted for the gain of their own ruling class by those holding false in fact Malthusian beliefs regarding human development . I have written this to make it clear that their  false claims are easily disproven on the facts we know very well, because governments monitor them globally. So the rhetoric regarding population growth and being unable to support it with available resources is demonstrable and delusional rubbish, on so many levels and facts.

As regards population, this was well/best described to millions of people by Hans Rosling, then quickly forgotten by the weak minded and hard public and chattering classes, to follow the easy sounding woke beliefs of the likes of Thunberg’s and Attenborough’s contrived and knowing deceit. People are clearly naturally gullible and unable to test assertions, even prefer to be part of a tribal belief in untested authority when the facts are there to check. Not very promising for a society that depends on understanding and deploying technology effectively to continue to survive and advance through the prosperity and surpluses we generate through the increasing use of plentiful cheap energy per capita..

First let’s be clear about the reality of the changes in global poverty and health, which are that poverty is decreasing as fast as health is increasing, at an accelerating rate, while population rises as a single bubble effect, that ends when birth rates fall as infant mortality and modern disease control and health care becomes pervasive in developing countries. Which needs the wealth only increased energy use can deliver.

Counter intuitively, experience has proven that  raw materials and food societal development needs are not limited by currently known resources and methods – the inbuilt and obvious nonsense of Malthusian beliefs. The record also shows that the supply of food, goods and other resources have expanded to become more plentiful at lower cost as the population demanding them increases. This is self-evident when the data is examined. You can check the data from the study of facts for yourself (avoiding the opinions of “experts” claiming to represent that data tp you) , better than believing what a blogges  writes . I address some details below, mainly as regards population. The primary subject of this blog. The text below is itemised to keep the core point separated and summary as I felt appropriate to making the point.

1. With growing wealth and Western medicine available to many billions more, the reality of how the population has and will change as a result of this massive improvement in human survival, in particular infant mortality, deserves analysis, not belief in the overt nonsense in the overt and known facts talked by activists like the Erlichs, Thunberg, Attenborough, XR, etc.. Who seek to deceive by misrepresenting the facts science knows, in the name of their beliefs, which are clearly false on the facts of nature and human activity that science and statistics have recorded and anyone literate and numerate can easily check, but prefer to believe than do the work and repeat the facts to others.

As my go-to man on this, Hans Rosling says, “we have never lived in harmony with nature, we die in harmony with nature”: Words of wisdom, from a statistician who worked first in 3rd World medicine so knows reality. Our primary responsibility is to protect ourselves from Nature so we live fuller lives and don’t get sick or are harmed by natural events that will occur and we cannot control, or even influence, but can defend against by relocation or adaption. Mark them well.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

Hans Rosling explained this very well, many times, to massive lay audiences, who then forget reality to listen to the easier to follow simplostic, delusional, fearful scare stories of the Malthusian nonsense of the idiot Attenborough, an hard of physics naturalist presenter who seemed nice, but know nothing of relevance about the global climate system. But the masses preferred to believe this celebrity naturalist who clearly has NO idea what he is talking about, based in claims that deny the observations of nature, which he claims to present but actually doesn’t know. While they fail to notice his fellow naturalist Prof David Bellamy, a real Academic before being a presenter, is removed from mass media platforms because he suggests the climate rhetoric is deceitful and not what science knows at all.

As you can check for yourself from the original data, that Attenborough has probably never read, just presents his script earnestly for his money.

The other problem around climate and population is that so many people in developed countries, who cannot even see the reality, believe the deceit of left wing activist MSM arts graduate “communicators”, and their supposed facts about climate change they overtly understand little of. But audiences prefer to believe invalidated assertions, so have become ignorant and lazy-minded “woke” victims of false tribal belief about most subjects concerning the natural and human World, useful idiots, created by dishonest and deceitful National politicians, educators and media. As Rosling exposed as regards population – that the BBC broadcast, but Attenborough simply ignores.

 3. When children stop dying, women can, and do, stop producing them, because they are not needed. The women  become more productive as a result, so are freed from producing and rearing too many children to maintain the population levels so can now contribute to the economy, if allowed. A real bootstrap effect. Not what you are told. Because it doesn’t support their narrative, that human development is bad.

QUESTION: What is the planet being saved for? What is the purpose or logic of preserving rather than using a Planet that can support the continuing development of intelligent life, and will ultimately live and die with its Sun, when its resources , so precious and supportive of the development of a species that can uniquely use to engineer nature to their needs, using technology that has understood how nature works (physics) , will be consumed and recycled randomly in Space by the growing Red Giant and its subsequent remains, to no useful purpose at all???

Should we simply deny the measures we can take to make human lives better and die “in harmony with nature”? Earth and its, albeit short lived organic  human species represent a level of order in the Universe that is clearly rare in intelligence density, and should be able to maximise its potential while it lasts, not wait to be toasted in ignorance, the future the Greens apparently prefer.

4. Back to current population. The reduction in infant mortality creates a bubble of the resulting adult population, a generation of 6 child families all survive in now more populous  and formerly high infant mortality countries. But they so reduce birth rates to a lower replacement level of children. Hence the rapid growth soon stops. As does further pressure on resources, which the developed world has provided the technology and support to meet, and avoid the consequences of, except where greedy power obsessed humans fight for control of developing countries.

5. Such growth is not exponential rise, in fact its exponentially decreasing once the infant mortality falls, already at Western replacement levels in Bangladesh for example. 

So claims that human population growth is unsustainable are simple numerical and easy to check deceit on the fact of demographics by knowing liars. As already explained above by Rosling.

This reality already happened in many currently developing countries, before they even became developed, perhaps partly HOW they will become developed, more productive with more energy use per capita plus more time to be productive.  Bangladesh Birth rate is 2.1 children per woman, if you doubt this ask Google/Echo/Alexa/Siri 

“what is the fertility rate per woman in XXX”. ANS for Egypt: 

“The value for Fertility rate, total (births per woman) in Egypt was 3.37 as of 2017. As the graph below shows, over the past 57 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 6.72 in 1960 and a minimum value of 3.01 in 2006” 

6. I suggest those who think population is not a self-evident and self-correcting hence sustainable problem of prosperity and better health care watch Hans explain above, if you didn’t already. Or be self identify as the unknowing humans he describes.

Because it’s as deterministically obvious as your beliefs are wrong on any logical factual basis, on the historical evidence of development in the West, for a start. As he explains, a Monkey has a better chance of getting this basic knowledge right by luck than a University professor by what they believe.

People are expected to prefer to believe the prejudices of ignorant specialised academics with reputations to protect whose ignorant opinionated arrogance denies the simple global facts of the numbers recorded by governments, that. but no one bothers to check the actual data. Or think. Far too hard.

7. Also note again, that the Malthusian idea that more people make resources scarcer and more expensive, which worries the elites who want to control the supply and demand of most of it for themselves. But that is also a delusion on the facts. 

The majority of what people need has increased in abundance to match demand, at lower prices as the volumes demanded increases.  These are the facts, versus the deceitful rhetoric of Malthusian delusionals like Attenborough and the Erlichs, who make alarmist end of days claims regarding famine and scarcity that are overtly false on the available facts of what is happening in the real world we can measure – to scare people into supporting their nasty psychopathic, regressive, controlling and absolutely unjustified by nature agendas.

QUESTION: Which to believe, the beliefs of zealots and liars, or the facts we can measure and check for ourselves?

8. The Mathusian rhetoric was wrong when it was invented, before technological society harnessed fossil fuels to develop its output per person, then massively more powerful nuclear energy to carry this development of our ability to control hence defend ourselves from nature and move our developemnt forward to higher level still, when fossil energy has really gone. (And remeber synthertics can replace natural compounds if you have the energy to create them.

POINT: The supposed limits to growth were never the real limits, given our ability to explore, extract more difficult reserves, adapt and improve our use of technology.

If you have any doubt of how this works, and prefer qualitative words that describe it, JFK did not, and prdoduced an eloquent description of how the human race have advanced in 200 years using plentiful cheap energy to multiply human powers as the science painfully won in feudal societies was finally realised. This well edited set of points from his Rice speech makes it clear WHY we can only move forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5A6ZQ28pE&t=122s

nb: Note (at 1:20s) how steam delivered the future we now enjoy, and how clearly he warns of the dangers of ending progress using the precautionary principle, resistance to all change to preserve the ruling classes control of people and money, that religion had imposed for so long by fear of death, and we have only just overcome to ake the greatest change for human progress in one Million years over 200 years.

Our problems of development have always been overcome by human ingenuity, as Kennedy makes clear. If you recall, genetic engineering of crops by selective breeding and some forms of disease control have been  improving since before the stuck in time and place thought processes of the unimaginative Malthus, and the fear of progress in the studied ignorance of their limited imaginations we see in green thought. All as daft and unknowing then as Attenborough et al now, , but without the data at that time to make it clear the ideas were wrong, as we actually have now, and Attenborough has when he spouts his evil deceit, that will kill millions, if followed, from cold and disease that regression to energy starved feudal lives will bring to many, reversal of economic development in the West, denial of that progress to the developing World, etc.etc.

9. The number of atoms and molecules on Earth will stay the same while gravity works, so, if there are no natural substitutes for exhausted natural resources, there are always synthetics, which we can make using available molecules with our technology, plus the inexhaustible cheap energy that nuclear power can deliver to maintain a far more developed and richer society, better able to afford to care for its environment as it prospers in the developing World as we already have in the Western World, while all areoncreasingly better protected from the extremes and diseases of nature.

We have reversible reactions to make synthetic fuels, collect the exhaust CO2 and water vapour and add energy to recycle the fuel molecules, ,  wholly sustainable. Synthetics can replace  exhausted or inferior natural resources with  new materials. Plastic is a good one, Carbon fibre, etc.  synthetic meats that are actually edible and tasty, etc.

Some doable at scale now. Others will become doable as any real shortage, that new exploration cannot supply, makes their development necessary. 

10. What people believe anout population and resoirces it needs amd its effect on the planetary environment are clearly wrong on the evidence of what has happened. Also what can happen, if progress is preferred to a return to feudal economies the greens plan in the name of irrational fear that is unsupported by their false in fact religious belief led rhetoric, that they promote to control humanity and deny the progress that will best serve us to the mass of people, ro keep the best for themselves in their Malthusian blinkered beliefs, that the simple data does not support in fact.

11.  Fortunately developing nations understand reality and back to the future delusion is certainly  not the plan of educated technocrats in India, China – nor Africa down the line. South Africa, much of Northern Africa and Egypt are already well on the way to a lower birth rate and  development led by increased energy use.

But these are only the facts, and it self evidently remains far easier for most people to believe what they are told by people  whose agendas are regressive , controlling and selfish and exploit false fears of untestable threats in fearful people who seem unable to check the facts of how things really work. Sad commentary on most of the human race in the supposedly developed Western world that supposedly leant better than to trust religion during the Protestant enlightenment. You can see why religions get such easy unquestioning following when humans can still so easily prefer to slip into easy belief in, or conformity with, buggaboos – rather than understand reality and question authority as critical thinking of a secular education taught them to. Or failed to in most cases..

Given what we know, as things are,  global population is not likely to exceed a sustainable 11 Billion, decreasing because they are all now developed,  well supplied on the evidence of Simon.

And I suggest we have not yet scratched the surface (sorry) of what the planet can support (except in Australia, the best eroded hence largest open cast mine in the World, as I half understand the geology?)

Sustainability of the Human race is not a real problem, if we keep moving ahead and making everything better, safer, more survivable by increasing the output per capita people can achieve with our enrgy dependnent technologies and better discovery and extraction..

All this is sill dwarfed by the natural forces of a planet we are simply insignificant porganic froth upon and have little effect on the natural cycles of in space.…………. recycled Dinosaurs and Cycads from the last epoch. Same molecules, different species.

nb: The same approach, of checking the easily accessible facts, is possible as regards climate change. But the platforms and channels of public communication have now been closed to those prepared and able to do this. So the facts about climate, as with population, and the faux solutions to the actually non-problem of a very small effect on the Lapse Rate from CO2 emissions, exponentially diminishing with concentration, can be hidden from the proletariat.

This deceit by the powerful allows the beliefs created to be monetised for the profit of elites. Also to advance the economic progress of Asia over the developed West, the primary goal of the UN IPCC. But that’s another story.

This is the end of this Population and Resources 101 blog.

©BRLC 11/2021

ENDS

This is a test piece, WordPress is the worst page design package I have used since Ventura Publisher kicked this off in the 80’s. Barely usable, utterly opaque. There is a massive opportunity to create a website design package usable by people who can navigate DWP software and following the metaphors of Mac and PC Desktop UI’s, instead of the barely comprehensible WordPress.

The acronym above is also the key to scientific reality. If the observations don’t support the scientific assertions AKA theories, then the theory is wrong. And all the people who support the consensus are wrong.

The tendency in 21st Century sciences, populated with ever less able middle class “scientists” keen to avoid the world of real work where you measurable success determines your job security, is to publish socially friendly theories you want to people to believe, creating supporting pseudo science using totally or partially fabricated models whose data, or even a lack of it, is forced by arbitrary adjustments to prove the theory the creators are receiving a grant to support. This is easily done using statistical methods to distort the data to prove the lie, as Mann’s Hokey Stick methods famously did. Climate science is such a science. Statistical models the tool.

It’s science Captain, but not as we know it. And the observational data disproves it, yet it continues, zombie science like, as if real and proven. This is not”the science”. It’s a deliberate deceit to attack the fundamental underpinning of modern civilisation by extremists, the use of cheap plentiful energy that empowers modern civilisation.

The idea of proving an activist’s theory wrong, the very essence of deterministic scientific proof, never enters their heads, because that is not what they are paid for. It’s much easier to just say what you believe is proven, because the model says so, so it must be, rather than check all the ways it could be wrong. Especially not with actual observations.

The scientific act of validation itself is seen as a denial of the belief systems of these so called “scientists”, an attack on the beliefs of their institutions and peer groups. So their science has little to do with provable deterministic science, and is mostly to do with creating pseudo science beliefs for profit. 21st Century consensual science, created using statistics to manipulate data to prove whar the grant is for, imposed by threats on the working commuity, and unable to prove itself, which is why it can only ever be a consensus, because, as Feynman observed, “you cannot prove a vague theory wrong”.

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