B5014-4 Moron Science: How Low Can You Go?

THE LANDSCAPE: One of my favorite places to visit on my walks with the dog is the lowest spot on High Street next to the moraine wash-out channel.  In the summer, it’s always ten degrees (F.) cooler there than anywhere else.  So, it’s actually a very refreshing place to visit on a warm and muggy day. 
      It looks very much like an old river bed: flat bottomed, with steep banks on either side that are covered in old-growth trees.  All the brush and small trees have been removed from the wash-out channel as if someone had seriously considered building a house there.  They would have been quite unwise to do so, however.  It is, after all, a wash-out channel that could suddenly come alive with flood waters during the next major rainfall.  As some have discovered when they built homes on alluvial fans in the American Southwest, there is a sound reason why such landforms look the way they do: they were formed by the action of flood water.  The little low spot on High Street is no different.  It’s attractive and beautiful and cool on a hot summer’s day.  But it’s a sleeping giant just waiting for the next deluge.

THE DRAINAGE WINDS:  Nonetheless, it is a place of magical refreshment.  I often pause and face “upstream” whenever I pass by that low spot on High Street.  The very slight breeze flowing down that channel is cool and filled with a rich, earthy, loamy heaviness.  When it reaches the street, the air ponds in a layer five or six feet deep.  One can feel the cool air enveloping himself as he walks through it.  And it is always difficult to resume my walk with the dog after being caressed by that refreshing air.
      It is, of course, what the physical geographers call a “drainage wind.”  Usually they refer to a much more profound wind in, say, the Dinaric Alps, where a flow of cold, dense air from a higher elevation to a lower elevation occurs under the influence of gravity in the winter months.  Such winds are also called katabatic winds, and other examples include the bora and mitral winds.  It may be a stretch to call those lazy breezes at the low point on High Street “drainage winds.”  But the underlying principle is precisely the same: dense air always seeks the lowest spot in the landscape.
 
DEATH BY FORKTRUCK:  Some years ago I read about an industrial accident that killed several men.  They were workers in a facility that bottled and stored industrial gases.  Often such gases are used by welders as metal-cutting gases (propane, acetylene, etc.) or as MIG-welding shielding gases (argon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc.).  The facility where the accident occurred had a large building for administrative offices.  On a dock outside the offices were several very large storage tanks of refrigerated nitrogen and carbon dioxide.  Normally those gases are stored in a liquid form at very low temperatures.  And it is the customary practice, as I understand it, to pass that liquid through an evaporation radiator and then to compress the gas to the appropriate pressure when filling smaller tanks.  The filled tanks or bottles are then stored in an open yard for later sales.  This particular facility had a storage yard that was five or six feet lower than the dock, and the yard was completely surrounded by a sheet-metal wall.  Think of a shoe box lid turned upside down and you'll have a fair approximation of what the storage yard looked like.
      One fine day, a careless fork truck driver inadvertently backed into the carbon dioxide storage tank and damaged the discharge valve on the tank.  Liquid carbon dioxide spewed from the tank without the fork truck driver noticing it, and the liquid cascaded over the dock wall into the “shoe box” storage yard below.  Once the cold liquid hit the warmer surfaces of the storage yard, it evaporated quickly and filled the yard with carbon dioxide gas.  The sheet-metal walls of the yard contained the gases.  Unfortunately, two men were working in the storage yard and they were quickly overcome by the carbon dioxide gas and were asphyxiated.  This was not an entirely unheard of sort of accident.  Such things happen five or six time a year.  It is common enough that industrial safety people often teach and advise of its insidious dangers.

CYCLING IN THE DESERT:  Each year during Le Tour de France cyclists ride several "mountain stages," where they encounter very high elevations. The alert observer will often notice a rather barren terrain at the very summit of such mountains: hardly anything seems to grow there. And for good reason: there isn't enough carbon dioxide up there to sustain an abundant plant life.
      Now, of course, there are those who will say that the Alpine climate itself does not favor plant life and that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with.  That's a fair point as far as it goes - were it only true. But what many seem to forget is the fact that the Alpine setting is also a carbon dioxide desert.  Carbon dioxide would struggle mightily to hold its position on the side of such steep hills.  Instead, it rolls down hill, seeking the lowest spot in the terrain.

HEAVY STUFF:  But why should that be so? Carbon dioxide is heavier or denser (1.997 weight of one liter at N. T. P.) than the other common components in the atmosphere - nitrogen (1.25 weight of one liter at N. T. P.) and oxygen (1.429 weight of one liter at N. T. P.). For the sake of argument, I will not discuss the minor components of Earth's atmosphere (argon, neon, radon, and other rare gases) since they do not affect the calculations being discussed here. Therefore, in still air conditions, carbon dioxide will sink down to the lowest level it can find and will remain there simply because it is more dense than the other components in the air column.
      Although some might be loathe to admit it, the gases in the atmosphere are exquisitely proportioned for plant life on earth, not only in composition as physical substances, but also in the physical characteristics of the gases themselves that facilitate efficient usage. At some very intuitive level, almost everyone understands that: if carbon dioxide is a necessary component for plant life, then it's quite important that that component be right next to the plants and not brushing up against some supposed "greenhouse" ceiling at the top of the atmospheric column. It would be quite foolish for God to design plants that require carbon dioxide for life, and then to put the carbon dioxide where it is inaccessible to the plants. That's pretty basic stuff, guys.

GREENHOUSE GASES:  But haven't we all been told that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? That's what many seem to say. But actually, it's not going to be up there against a greenhouse ceiling as you have been told. Those folks lied to you because they make their living pretending that a problem exists where none exists.  The "greenhouse" they speak about is merely a metaphor and not a physical structure existing "out there." So, there's no place for the carbon dioxide to collect "against." More importantly carbon dioxide is denser than other air components, so we're unlikely to find it up there "against the ceiling" in the first place. Or if it does make it up there through the updraft of volcanic eruptions or smokestacks, it will not stay up there. It cannot because physically it's too dense to ride at the top of the atmospheric column.  How many lead fishing sinkers do you see at 33,000 feet when you are flying to Chicago?  Yeah, I thought so.
       On a related note, some years ago there was a great deal of alarm about acid rain. The thinking then was that smoke from public utility generation plants contained excessive amounts of sulfur dioxide, and that substance combined with water and fell as "acid rain" on the lakes in New England.  It sounded so logical.  The response was to install sulfur dioxide scrubbing units on the smokestacks - at a great expense - in order to lessen the amount of sulfur dioxide getting into the air. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and subsequent experience seemed, oddly, to confirm that hunch. What no one wishes to speak about, however, were the concurrent volcanic eruptions that actually caused the acid rain.  Acid rain did not come from public utilities as such.  Remember, acid rain suddenly became a problem after years and years of electrical power generation by coal-burning plants.  That should have told people something.  Rather, it came from the massive amounts of sulfur dioxide emitted by the volcanoes.  And once the volcanic eruptions ceased, the acid rain problem also ceased.
      Today, the catalytic converters on our automobiles spew an acetic mist that combines with moisture in the air to accomplish the very same thing. But all of us feel considerably better knowing that catalytic converters are removing that awful sulfur dioxide from our internal combustion engine exhausts. Again, as with carbon dioxide, the density of sulfur dioxide (2.264 times heavier than air) should drive it right into the ground. So we drive around in an ever-increasing soup of hydrochloric acid and wonder why the marbles in our cemeteries are being eaten away by "acid rain" in places where there is no rain, e.g., Los Angeles.

JUST ONE QUESTION...:  But I digress.  And I leave you with a very simple question: how dumb would it be for carbon dioxide to mix with other gases in the air and to drift upward away from plant life and to collect against the "greenhouse" ceiling? If that were so, the human race would have died of starvation long ago and you and I would not be sitting here right now having this discussion. When they speak to you about greenhouse gases, smile at them as if they didn't have any sense at all.  Then ask them how much the university pays them to write such nonsense.

EXTRA CREDIT: If the "greenhouse" is merely a metaphor, then global warming takes on a brand, new dimension. How is it possible for a metaphor to "cause" global warming?  Hmm?  You may use your book to find the answer, boys and girls.