Ending Climate Debate by Distinguishing Thermoelectric and Raman Detected Greenhouse Gases

 

The Crux of the Climate Debate: Distinguishing Between Thermoelectric and Raman Detected Greenhouse Gases

Settling The Climate Woo With Quantum-BasedRaman Spectroscopy

Published on April 2, 2019

Written by Blair Macdonald

Premise, premise, conclusion: this is the foundation of deductive reasoning and that of the scientific method. If one of your premises collapses, so too should your theory – and with it sometimes your paradigm.

With greenhouse theory, it seems to me we focus on and argue over its conclusions and its effects, and not enough or at all on its premises.

By ‘we’ I mean all of science, both sides of the great debate. The proponents of greenhouse theory strongly claim that at its foundations, the science is settled and need not, based on principles of fundamental physics,  be questioned.

Greenhouse theory, at its foundations, is premised on a special group of trace gases, of which carbon dioxide (CO2) is only 0.042%, that are the only gases to absorb and emit (longwave) infrared (IR) radiation. These special Greenhouse Gases do all the work; they pass on their gained energy to the non-greenhouse gases, the ‘99% '–nitrogen and oxygen (N₂ and O₂) by collisions, like some kind of conduit, as one expert explains. 

The problem for me is that this group of trace gases leaves the rest of the dry atmosphere not emitting and absorbing infrared radiation at any temperature, and this is a catastrophe, what I call The Infrared Catastrophe.  This greenhouse theory claim contradicts the axioms of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics – the principles upon which atomic theory is built. By foundational physics, all matter above absolute zero Kelvin is assumed to radiate infrared photons. 

And on 'collisions'. Well, collisions is the physics of the conduction of heat. The problem is that all gases are extremely poor thermal conductors, and oxygen and nitrogen have thermal conductivities close to zero (0.024 W.m^-1.K^-1). They both diffuse slowly as well, at approximately the speed of an average snail. How do greenhouse gases do all this work if the numbers show they don't?  That leaves only convection, but it relies to some extent on the other modes of transfer. There must be more to it? The two gases of the ‘99% – nitrogen and oxygen – both have heat capacities – a measure of the ability of a substance to gain heat-energy – so they do gain and transfer heat-energy, but how do they if they don’t radiate?

Do oxygen and nitrogen play? Do they, too, absorb and emit radiation, and is it simply that we lack a complete understanding? I think they do, and I can prove it. What I have turns it all on its head. It may be that Nitrogen heats the CO2. Get that. I'll come to that later. 

If we think we have a problem with making sense of quantum mechanics and, similarly, the behaviour of the Universe (we do), well, it appears we should also have a problem with the atmosphere too – and we should be asking questions. Talk about ‘spooky action’!

This premise puts these two molecules in the same realms of cosmology’s 95% ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’, where they too are equally assumed not to – paradoxically – interact with light. Must something be wrong? Something must give. But, if something is to give, is it going to be quantum mechanics? No. So, that leaves only our understanding of the radiating atmosphere.

As a consequence of this misconceived premise, I think climate science has been led down a road of exploitation and extrapolation to such an extent that it now resembles, to use an example, ‘woo’ or pseudo-science quantum mechanics, which is parasitic and bears no comparison to its classical textbook interpretation.

As a response to the current ensuing debate over its effects, I have done the unthinkable: over the last five years or more, I have looked into these foundations – the first principles of elementary physics and chemistry – and into what makes these greenhouse gases so special.

From what I have found, I have concluded that the physics used is contradictory and incomplete: what we think we know, in light of quantum physics, is outdated and incorrect.

In this article, I present my findings. It was a massive exercise for me: piecing together what is known and practical in physics – what is all out there in the public domain – towards a coherent understanding, a new theory of the atmosphere.

I recently posted my findings in two working papers; the first I titled – deliberately, to provoke the necessary attention I think this issue demands: ‘Quantum Mechanics and Raman Spectroscopy Refutes Greenhouse Theory’; and the second The Greenhouse Gases and Infrared Radiation Misconceived by Thermoelectric Transducers.

In them, I have argued that greenhouse theory, along with radiation theory, appears incomplete and incorrect. And I offered a solution.

Let me start with quantum mechanics. When I used this term in my title, I want to make it clear, I implied no – to use the term again – ‘woo’ quantum mechanics; where we all hold hands and observe each other and the world’s a better place for it.

No, to the contrary; this is the real, not weird, the ‘shut up and calculate’ quantum mechanics – the solid one. The one that is said to have changed our world by telling us what we are made of.

You see, not only does all matter radiate, but it does so only at specific immutable positions throughout the electromagnetic spectrum – termed emission spectra. It is quantum mechanics that explains these atomic and molecular emission spectra, and it is quantum mechanics – at least in part by the Schrödinger equation, no less – that predicts and measures the respective positions of these spectra, and in so doing, answers that question: what we and the universe are made of.

As greenhouse theory is taught today, N₂ and O₂ are dismissed as IR absorbers, so my first question was: do ‘the 99%’ not have IR spectra? The answer I found set me on my path of investigation. Yes, they do.

I discovered that N2 and O2 have spectra at wavenumbers (positions within the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum that correspond to frequency) of 2338 cm-1 and 1556 cm-1, respectively,  as shown in the table below, along with the other atmospheric gases. Get to know these numbers; tattoo them; they are real, and they will recur throughout this article.

Table 1. Vibrational Modes in the Infrared Range of the Electro Magnetic Spectrum by Detection Method 

This table may appear confusing at first, but it is a basic taxonomy of the infrared spectra of the atmosphere, with a few exceptions, and it reveals patterns of causality. Argon is absent from the table as it does not – interesting for me – have predicted spectra that I could find, and it appears to be neither IR nor Raman-active. Equally, it is not considered a greenhouse gas.

Spoiler alert!  When you see the term Raman here, it pertains to a method of detection of these spectra, and the significance of them is the topic of this article, and all will be revealed in good time. The Raman effect has no direct effect on weather and climate. Again, it is detection. 

When expert chemists – away from the topic of greenhouse theory – talk and write on this topic of IR and Raman spectroscopy – the study of (infrared) light and how it interacts with matter – they (correctly) claim all of the predicted infrared emission spectra, whatever the type, ‘are effectively the same’.

In terms of vibrational quantum mechanics, they all – whether by ‘Raman’ or ‘IR’ instruments – emit and absorb, and that these instruments are complementary; they work together to build our picture of the infrared.

If this is right, then there can be no ‘special’ absorbing greenhouse gases; but, by greenhouse theory, the greenhouse gases are directly claimed to be determined by their special, unique spectral type alone – and that is what makes them different.

The Raman spectra are totally discriminated and dismissed; ‘they do not absorb’ – that is that. So, what has gone wrong here? Why the discrimination and extrapolation thereof?

To address this, in my second paper, I hypothesised that our definition of greenhouse gases is incorrect. The detail of the – just mentioned – ‘special unique spectra type’ of greenhouse gases is that these spectra have electric dipole moments. I argued the converse: that we detect these gases because they possess electric dipole moments.

It is not the gases that are special; it is the instruments we detect them with – by their dipole moment – that are special. With the ‘helio’ and ‘geo-centric ‘universe in mind, this is a totally opposite perspective. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has done that – it is the stuff of science.

To move forward, we need to examine spectral types in detail, including how they are determined and measured. One only needs to look at the spectra in the table and their respective vibration types to see why there is a pattern pointing to my explanation of the demarcation between the so-called ‘IR spectra’ and the so-called ‘Raman’ spectra.

There are two basic vibrational ‘mode’ types (as shown): a group of asymmetric types and a single symmetric type. The asymmetric types include the ‘wag’, ‘bend’, and so on and all share – here we go – electric dipole moments from their vibrations.

The symmetric type does not exhibit this electric dipole moment, and, at least according to greenhouse theory, this is explained by their not absorbing or emitting infrared photons. Thus, it is precisely where the Raman-active modes are excluded.

By an interesting coincidence – this is my point, I don’t think it is a coincidence – the asymmetric ‘electric dipole’ types are the only types that are detected or inferred by thermo-electric transducers –  so-called IR detectors. Hence, I think the detectors are special.

These transducers convert IR radiation into electricity, or electromotive force (emf), directly via the Seebeck effect or its derivatives. The transducers come in many types, but they all provide the same discriminatory readout; they do not measure the symmetric (Raman) modes.

Importantly, according to greenhouse theory, all transducers belong to a lineage or kin that can be traced back to the earliest 19th-century type, the thermopile, which John Tyndall used in 1859 to first derive the special greenhouse gases. And yes, they are the technology behind thermal imaging cameras – the instrument that produces thermograms and our general visual understanding of the infrared.

I see these IR transducers (I call them that) like radio wave receivers – which are also transducers – only they receive infrared waves or signals and not radio waves from an object or its molecule. It should now be obvious that not all spectra transmit a signal that can be received, and when they do, the signal is sometimes weak. I could talk about emissivity here, but I won’t –  maybe later.

Building on this discovery, in my second paper, I have claimed that IR spectrometers correctly infer spectra with thermoelectric (electric-dipole) properties. From this, I further claimed – deduced from the table – that Tyndall really only discovered the thermoelectric gases, not the special greenhouse gases he thought, and we still think, they are.

An examination of the history of spectroscopy also supports my case. The IR spectra get their dominant name – that covers all infrared spectra –  I think because for a long time there was only one technology to measure IR spectra – it was thermopiles and the like – so since they were the first to measure ‘IR’ radiation, and there was no other instrument or knowledge at the time, they get the name.

The other (Raman) spectra were there – predicted, but there was no technology to measure them. This evolution in technology and the thermoelectric paradigm (my words) has direct implications for our current understanding of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect.

In light of the advent of Raman laser technology, they should be termed thermoelectric (or TE) spectra, and the field of spectroscopy should be termed thermoelectric spectroscopy. In the mid-19th century, Tyndall lacked the laser instrument I will discuss next, or even the quantum knowledge to recognise that he needed one.

Atoms, the work of Planck, and the ‘birth’ of quantum mechanics – it itself owing its origin to the thermoelectric thermopile derived blackbody spectrum –  was all yet to come.

Had he had this new (Raman) spectrometer and used it in conjunction with his instrument, he would have concluded differently, and we would not have the discrepancy and debate we currently have. This sounds like a conclusion, but it is not – I am only getting started. It is now time  – finally –  for me to introduce and talk about the Raman Spectrometer – the title of this article.

To detect the symmetric spectra types, we need to turn to the modern Raman Spectrometer and Raman Spectroscopy – the other term I used in my first paper, and hence the term Raman.   Get to know it; it will change things.

This instrument can ‘see’ or measure by inference the spectra ‘IR spectrometers’ cannot – hence the name ‘Raman-active’ spectra. The ‘Raman’ pertains to the Raman Spectrometer – a modern laser-based instrument that exploits the Raman (scattering) effect to detect these special spectra. Raman spectroscopy is often regarded as part of the quantum revolution; it was recognised early that it could identify spectra in support of this new field.

From the Raman scattering signal the instrument retrieves from the gas samples, it can also determine the concentrations of all the gases together (see the Venusian atmosphere figure below), and it can also tell us, inextricably, again by quantum mechanics,  the temperature of the gases to a high degree of accuracy. They say don’t mess with quantum mechanics; they are right.

By Raman spectroscopy, we have temperature measurements of a molecule, and thus, by Planck’s radiation Law, we have radiation, and we have their spectral positions – both emission and absorption; this all from molecules (or spectra) that are claimed by greenhouse theory not to be able to do just that.

The Raman-active spectra are the sole constituents of the non-greenhouse gases, including helium. If they weren’t, and had an asymmetric spectrum instead, or too, they too would – following my ‘emf’ argument – be greenhouse gases. CO₂, for instance, has a Raman spectrum at 1338 cm-1, and its temperature, from that spectrum, can be measured by Raman, correlating with its other two ‘IR’ spectra measurements.

Further to this, some spectra can show themselves by both ‘IR’ and Raman instruments – denoted in purple colour in the table and figure below. For instance, both can measure all of H₂O’s spectra – a greenhouse gas in its vapour phase – particularly its 3652 cm^-1 spectra. The measurement in this spectrum is so perfectly both ‘IR’ and Raman that we can exquisitely measure the temperature from either instrument independently – a fact I will return to as supporting evidence for one of my claims later. They are, as I and others have claimed, ‘equivalent’.

Aside from what I am revealing this instrument can do, ‘Raman’ is known as one of the most exciting instruments of our time, and this is clear from the rise of YouTube scientific demonstrations of it. They are the stuff of CSI – crime scene investigation – as they reveal what something is, and they are used in numerous places, including gas leakage monitoring and aviation ‘Clear Air Turbulence’ (CAT) detection, and I have reference to one directly able to measure CO₂ concentrations from a motorway one kilometre away.

Raman Spectroscopy is a well-known complementary technique to IR spectroscopy for physicists and chemists; I argue that it is not only a complement to IR spectroscopy but also its near substitute.  Just look at the (NASA) Raman spectra measurements of the Venusian atmosphere in the figure below: it shows all the gases are there with their respective concentrations.

Application of Raman Instrument for Venisan Atmosphere

If Raman (IR) spectroscopy is good enough for planet Venus, is it good enough for planet Earth? And it is. I have papers confirming Raman is capable of measuring the Earth’s greenhouse gas concentration – the Keeling curve; and it may well be doing so in the near future, if not so already.

If this is so, it should be noted that it is doing so using laws of physics that contradict the theory and the very reason we are measuring the concentrations.

One of the rebuttals I received during the research of my paper – these rebuttals helped me no end to develop my work –  pointed to my use of the term Raman. When they – PhDs and Professors –  saw I used the word Raman, they – relentlessly in an act of ‘red herring’ – dismissed my discoveries and attempted to educate me on how the atmosphere is not heated by the Raman (scattering) effect – something I did not claim.

It was argued: ‘I was confusing Raman Spectroscopy with the Raman effect and it has no part to play in greenhouse theory’. I have never said or claimed any such thing: this is gaslighting.

I addressed this as a fallacy and responded:

‘This spectrometer shines a laser of arbitrary colour through the atmosphere and exploits the Raman effect to infer the quantum predicted spectra lines of the sample gas – or any other matter’.

Another important rebuttal I received and addressed was couched: while N₂ and O₂ do radiate at the said spectra – I was granted this, but only after I first revealed it (‘moving the goal-posts’) – they do so only by a very small factor as their spectra positions lie outside and between the maximum positions on curves (curves ‘b and b’ in the following figure).

They are said to therefore not absorb fully, as their output is effectively modulated (my words) by the Sun’s and Earth’s Blackbody Spectrum.

This rebuttal set me back for a time until I researched and discovered that these Blackbody curves are, once again, a direct derivation of thermoelectric thermopiles and their kin (the bolometer), the same transducers that derived and still derive the greenhouse gases.

To refute this rebuttal, I used what I had discovered (covered earlier) about H₂O’s 3652 cm^-1 spectra. This spectrum is also ‘outside and between’ these Blackbody curves, yet its temperature is measured equally by both Raman and IR spectrometers.

As this Raman measured temperature of H₂O does not appear to be modulated or trivial, I argued that as this and all of the other Raman-active spectra of H₂O, N₂, O₂, CO₂ and others including methane, (shown in figure above) that lay within the claimed unattainable gap between the two blackbody curves have real and valid ‘Raman’ measured temperatures the greenhouse theory interpretation of their impotance is misconceived.

These said spectra do radiate – and I argue – with temperatures measured by Raman spectrometers consistent with and corresponding to – or approximating – the Stephan-Boltzmann Law – line ‘a-a’ in the figure.  From this, I claimed the so-called Blackbody curves really and only depict the emf produced by a thermoelectric detector at each frequency at the corresponding temperature of the sample object – in this case, the Sun and the Earth.

 

If this were not enough, I sought to further support my hypothesis that N2 and O2 radiate infrared photons. To do this, I needed to identify an independent practical application in which either of them is known to absorb heat energy via radiation, consistent with their predicted and now-observed spectra. I identified one: the N₂-CO₂ laser.

Here, in a totally different context, the molecules of the atmosphere are doing what they are said not to do – radiate – and all in compliance with quantum mechanics, nothing less.

The N₂-CO₂ laser – by quantum design – depends on N₂’s one (2338 cm^-1)  quantum-predicted spectra to absorb ‘radiated’ electrons in a cathode tube during electrical discharge; the theory describing it is quantum mechanics. I later learned that the laser also operates by emitting photons. If N₂ did not absorb here, we would not have CO₂ lasers, and no CO₂ lasers mean no face surgery – that’s the facts.

What is more supportive from this CO₂ laser application is that the ‘radiated’/heated N₂ at spectra 2338 cm^-1 is said to be metastable – long-lasting – and it is this absorbed energy that is passed on to CO₂’s – close –  2349 cm^-1 (‘IR’) absorption spectra – and hence its technical name, the ‘N₂-CO₂ laser’.

This exchange of energy between the two molecules is so beautiful, I argue that the same mechanism is at work in the atmosphere; where the Sun directly heats by IR photons ‘the 99%’ and this energy is passed on down – in a non trivial process – to the remaining trivial trace gases, including –  by the looks – the 0.04% constituent CO₂.

This is by far a more logical and intuitive process than the current dogma, and it settles the paradoxes I opened this article with.

From what I have found, the premise that a special set of gases drives climate does not withstand fundamental scrutiny, and any claim based on it thereafter collapses. In light of my discoveries, I call for a review of greenhouse theory, and I also think all radiation physics in which IR spectroscopy using thermoelectric detectors was used to determine knowledge should be open to review.

This includes issues I have focused on in my second paper: blackbody radiation, blackbody radiation curves, emissivity, and the radiation equations. Yes, I can address – without waving my arms – emissivity: it is a correction factor, from measured to real, to do with thermo-electric transducers.

So where have we gone wrong?

To me, we are either not being honest to ourselves with what the physics theory and these modern instruments are telling us – because, as I have said, they are both well-known and understood to science – or, it is that we are aware of them, but haven’t yet given them any thought or dared to put them together with greenhouse theory, and say something.

Well, I’ve now dared. Also, as I said earlier, I think the order of invention of the spectrometers has not helped us distinguish what are essentially the same vibrational quantum spectra. If Raman spectrometers had been invented in the early 19th century, we would not have the ‘greenhouse effect’, as there would be no special gases to speak of.

Put another way (with respect to greenhouse theory, not spectroscopy in the IR), if Raman spectroscopy were the only means available today to measure the atmosphere, and IR spectrometers were a new technology, I think level-headedness would prevail, and such claims would be dismissed as inferior and trivial.

I imply no conspiracy upon scientists’ inaction in this area from my findings; I just think it is simply a matter of no thought, or no daring. A blind spot, a bias. I think it is now time we all take a good look at the premises and be honest with ourselves about what the science is telling us, and, in the end, what appears now to be, to use the term, the climate woo.