Guest Post by Dan Fauth
If you’ve ever used a Hydro Flask, you are probably as enamored with this product as I am. Hydro Flask makes the claim that their containers will keep your chilled beverage cold for up to 24 hours and your heated beverage warm for 6-12 hours. By my experience, this is not an exaggeration. Imagine the pleasure of indulging in 40 ounces of ice cold beer at the end of a six hour hike into desert wilderness. In fact, don’t imagine it, do it! So good!
In this paper, I am going to reveal the secret of the Hydro Flask. In order to do so, I must subject you to a fair bit of science.
To understand what it takes to keep things hot for 6-12 hours compared to keeping things cold for 24 hours requires a basic understanding of thermodynamics. Sadly, much of this may be new to you. This knowledge will also serve you well in understanding the natural forces which really do affect our climate.
Heat can only flow in one direction, from warmer to cooler. It’s never the other way around. To do otherwise would violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. There are four methods by which heat can flow and each method has its own efficiency and hierarchy which is dependent on the environment in which it operates. These four methods are evaporation/condensation, conduction, convection and radiation.
Evaporation is far and away the most efficient means of removing heat from a warm body. Our bodies engage in this technique constantly as we sweat to maintain our desired body temperature. This is also the primary method by which the Earth cools its surface, be it land or water. Condensation is just the inverse of evaporation or evaporation in reverse.
Evaporation is so incredibly efficient at cooling because it involves phase change, namely a liquid material converting to the gaseous form of that same material. In the cases of our bodies and the Earth’s surface, we are talking about evaporating water.
For water, which gets my vote as being the most miraculous substance in the universe, we can witness one aspect of this miracle every time we boil water. You have a pretty good idea how much heat you need to add to freezing water to increase its temperature to the boiling point, from 32 F to 212 F, a temperature increase of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the water hits the boiling point, it then takes over five times that amount of heat to convert all of that water to steam (water vapor) with essentially no temperature rise at all.
Another miracle of water is that it doesn’t have to boil to evaporate. But it still takes that same amount of energy per unit volume to make the transition from liquid to vapor. Your sweat is a case in point and the same thing happens with soil moisture and the water in our lakes, streams and oceans. It is the evaporative process that carries most solar heating away from the earth’s surface. It’s very efficient. Nature loves it.
Conduction, the second choice of Nature, occurs when a warm body is in thermal contact with another body. This technique is used regardless of the phase state of the material. It may be solid to solid, solid to liquid, solid to gas or any combination of the three states of material common to planet Earth. The heat flow is always from warmer material to cooler material regardless of the phase states.
If the material receiving the heat from the other material is liquid or gas, thermal conduction usually results in convection. When added to conduction, convection greatly increases the efficiency of heat transfer. If you have a convection oven and have compared the preheating and cooking times to that of a conventional oven, you know just what this means. Before diving into the subject of convection and how it relates to Earth’s climate, we need to know a bit about air, the stuff that makes up our atmosphere.
Because water vapor has the unique ability to change phases within our atmosphere it is found in extremely variable amounts from nearly zero to over 4% by volume. For this reason it is standard procedure when discussing the composition of air to characterize it as being dry air with no water vapor. Dry air is composed of 78% Nitrogen, 20.9% Oxygen, and 1% Argon. CO2 and methane, both so called greenhouse gases, are also present in trace amounts at 0.04% and 0.0002% respectively. Again, water vapor content in the atmosphere varies dramatically ranging from very nearly zero in arid regions to more than 4% being present in powerful hurricanes and typhoons. Atmospheric water content also varies greatly with altitude as the air within the troposphere (the portion of our atmosphere from surface to around 40,000 feet) becomes cooler with height and water vapor condenses out to form clouds and precipitation.
It is important to note here that all matter has the capacity to store thermal energy, even our atmosphere. This concept of heat capacity is a fundamental property of all matter. Nitrogen for instance has a specific heat capacity of 0.25 btu/lb 0F at sea level pressure. As you may remember from science class, a btu is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of liquid water 1 degree Fahrenheit. At one quarter of this value, four pounds of nitrogen in our atmosphere can store the same amount of heat as one pound of liquid water. The total mass of our atmosphere is estimated at around 5.5 quadrillion tons. This is a lot of heat storage.
Water vapor has a specific heat capacity of 0.36 btu/lb 0F at sea level pressure, so 2.8 pounds has the same heat storage capacity as 1 pound of liquid water. With water though we should never forget that in making the change in phase state from liquid to gas, each pound of water vapor is storing an additional hidden 970 btu of thermal energy that is not evidenced by temperature. This energy storage associated with phase change is called Latent Heat. This latent heat can be released should the water vapor condense to form clouds or precipitation as it does typically high up in the atmosphere.
Let’s now take a look at how much heat on a percent basis is contained within the constituents of our atmosphere.
Average water vapor content in the troposphere is somewhere between 1% and 2%. If we assume 1% water vapor and we take the specific heat capacities, the latent heat in water vapor and the proportional makeup of the atmosphere, we wind up with the following distribution of heat storage in the troposphere, ranked first to last: Nitrogen: 72%; Oxygen: 17%; Water Vapor: 10.5% ; Argon: 0.5%; CO2: 0.04%; Methane: 0.000%.
So in air containing 1% water vapor, Nitrogen contains 72% of the heat, oxygen is second with 17%, water vapor is third with 10.5% and so on. CO2 and Methane are insignificant. Forget them. They are of no consequence in influencing atmospheric temperatures within the troposphere where life resides. This basic physical fact may be contrary to what you have been told. You have likely been told that CO2, methane and other so called greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere. This is not possible. Given that each CO2 molecule is surrounded by 1,950 nitrogen molecules and 522 oxygen molecules (based on air containing 78% nitrogen and 20.9% oxygen) which are in thermal contact with the CO2 molecule, CO2 has no ability to trap heat beyond the proportions previously listed. Thermal contact requires that should they somehow be heated independent of their neighbors, they must instantly begin sharing that heat with the neighbors. This in turn would induce convection which moves heat away from the Earth’s surface toward space. It can be no other way.
On dry areas of the Earth’s surface, evaporation is absent due to the lack of moisture. Nature’s second favorite means of heat transfer is active here. The air at the surface is in thermal contact with the ground and once the ground is heated relative to the air, the heat must flow to the air as nature always strives to equalize the temperature of adjacent matter.
Warming the air causes it to expand and it becomes less dense relative to the cooler air above it. Like a hot air balloon, the warmer air becomes buoyant and rises above the surface thus being replaced with cooler air that in turn accepts heat from the warmer ground. This process of rising warm surface air with replenishment by cooler air is called convection. Conductive heat transfer from the solid or liquid surface to the air layer with which it makes thermal contact initiates this convection. So long as the sun is shining, the solar radiation impinging the ground will continue to keep the ground warmer than the air above it and the conduction/convection heat transfer process will keep the air circulating with the temperature gradient moving heat away from the surface. At night the convection process will eventually equalize surface and air temperatures and the air will become calm as convection grinds to a halt.
It is important that you understand that greenhouses work by allowing light rays to enter the inside of the greenhouse where the electromagnetic energy from the sun is converted to thermal energy within the molecular composition of the surfaces and air within the greenhouse. The walls and roof of a greenhouse present a barrier to convection, just like your car with the windows closed, and this restriction allows the greenhouse temperature to rapidly rise to the point where thermal conduction between the glass and outside air equalize the energy flows and stop the temperature rise. Even at greenhouse temperatures over 100 0F, radiant heat loss is not significant. Because our atmosphere is completely open to convection within the troposphere, the term “Greenhouse Effect” is a complete misnomer. The term is not just inaccurate, it is deceptive.
Radiation is the least efficient method of heat transfer and generally requires a very high temperature for the radiating source. Radiation is of utmost importance in terms of getting heat to transfer across a vacuum. The sun and light bulbs are good examples of high temperature radiating sources. Light bulbs are vacuum tubes and since the sun is surrounded by the vacuum of space, you may view it as a naturally occurring vacuum tube. It is the fact that the presence of the vacuum precludes more efficient methods of heat transfer that allows the light bulb filament to achieve the high temperatures necessary to emit bright visible light.
Since as described earlier, the Earth’s surface is in thermal contact with the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth is not at a high temperature as compared to the sun or a light bulb, radiation can be ignored in terms of cooling the Earth’s surface. Radiation is nature’s last resort when it comes to equilibrating temperatures. It is far, far less efficient than the other forms of heat transfer.
Now back to the Hydro Flask.
The Hydro Flask container is constructed of two stainless steel containers, one inside the other with the only point of contact being at the upper rim where they are connected. The space between the two containers is filled with nothing meaning that a vacuum has been pulled on this space such that almost no air molecules are present. As with the vacuum of space, there is no temperature present in this cavity between the inner and outer containers. Temperature requires matter. No matter, no temperature. This space is neither cold nor hot. This is a mysterious concept because you can’t measure the absence of temperature. To do so would require the insertion of some instrument, but since a vacuum is defined as the absence of matter, inserting something into a vacuum renders it no longer a vacuum. It’s a mind bender. You must use your imagination. Nonetheless the heat transfer properties of a vacuum are very special.
As described, the Hydro Flask’s only thermal contact point is at the upper rim and of course the hollow stopper which is made of plastic with poor thermal conductivity. This design, with the stopper in place and firmly sealed, eliminates evaporation and greatly reduces conduction / convection. At the temperatures desired for hot and cold beverages, radiant heat transfer is nearly non-existent.
With hot coffee inside the Hydro Flask at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and with room temperature at 70 degrees, the heat wants to get out and bring the coffee to room temperature. The sides of the inner container are also at 140 degrees, but because of the vacuum next to the outside surface of the inner container, conduction is impossible and 140 degrees is too low for significant radiation of heat. The only way for conduction to work is to pass through the contact points at the rim and stopper of the Hydro Flask. The smallness of this area of thermal contact at the rim combined with the insulative properties of the stopper greatly limit conductive heat transfer. The temperature of the coffee is sufficient to allow some heat to traverse the rim and stopper, but it is a slow and inefficient process taking 6-12 hours. As the coffee cools, the rate of heat transfer slows as the temperature differential between the coffee and outside air diminishes. The power of a vacuum to stop conductive heat transfer is truly amazing.
With a chilled IPA at 40 degrees inside the Hydro Flask and outdoor temperatures at 100 degrees, the desert heat would love to warm up your beer. As with the coffee example, conductive heat transfer is pretty much limited to the top of the flask. Now the interesting question here is why the beer stay cold does for 24 hours but the coffee only stays hot for 6-12 hours?
Liquids are less dense at higher temperatures, so with coffee, the hottest coffee is at the top. As the coffee cools from heat conduction at the top of the flask, this cooling effect causes the top layer of coffee to become denser, so it moves toward the bottom of the flask. Convection has been induced in the coffee. As described previously, this convection enhances the heat transfer efficiency dramatically by always keeping the hottest coffee at the top.
With the cold beer, the warmest part of the beer is at the top as with the coffee, but the “warm” beer is becoming warmer, so it doesn’t sink and initiate convection. The warmest part of the beer stays put and doesn’t enhance cooling of the beer. Thus the beer stays cold much longer than the coffee stays hot.
The implication here is that if you turn your coffee flask upside down, so that the hottest least dense coffee is at the top, which is now the bottom of the flask next to the vacuum, the coffee should stay hot for much longer because you have stopped convection in its tracks. Using this technique, you may get many more hours of hot coffee available to you. The physics says this will work. Try it and see!
Now that you have a better understanding of the thermodynamics of heat transfer than 99% of the people on the planet, let’s conduct a brief examination of the radiative greenhouse effect (RGHE).
The Powers That Be (TPTB) want you to live in fear that catastrophic human induced climate change is at your doorstep. Excessive burning of fossil fuels has been vociferously identified as the culprit. We are all guilty, especially Americans, and we must change our evil ways. Since this is a global problem, we will have to give up our national sovereignty and work together with all other humans on planet Earth. No holdouts allowed!
The case for carbon based climate change, previously known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW), has at its foundation the Radiative Greenhouse Effect. Every school child knows that the greenhouse effect is what allows the Earth to maintain the moderate temperatures which allows for life as we know it. All of the fear mongering government agencies and university science departments whose funding is dependent on this climate of fear will give you their particular version of the greenhouse effect. Let’s start with the agency with the forked tongue on their logo.
NASA says:
“When they absorb the energy radiating from Earth’s surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters— like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
This absorption and radiation of heat by the atmosphere—the natural greenhouse effect—is beneficial for life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today.”
There you have it. The sun heats the Earth’s surface, the surface radiates to the atmosphere and the “bricks” which compose 0.04% of our atmosphere radiate back to the surface adding more heat than the sun did initially. This is the radiative greenhouse effect and every purveyor of climate alarm uses some variant of this deception. The deception as you now can see works by substituting radiant heating for evaporation and conduction / convection. Back heating of the Earth’s surface is clearly impossible with evaporation and conduction / convection, but somehow “climate scientists” are able to make the case that back-radiative heating doesn’t violate the Laws of Thermodynamics. It does, but it’s not as obvious as with the other heat transfer methods. It fools most of the people all of the time. And yes, this makes those people FOOLS.
Now you may ask the question: “Why isn’t Hydro Flask smart enough to make a new and improved version of the Hydro Flask coffee mug that fills the vacuum space with carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor or even better, sulfur hexafluoride which has, as reported by EPA, a global warming potential on the order of 12,000 times that of CO2. Surely it would keep the coffee hot for at least a year. In fact, if we can back-radiate more heat than we started with, as the radiative GHE implies, we should be able to heat the coffee to boiling. In fact, if you think this out logically, you should be able to warm yourself in front of a mirror just using your radiative body heat. How’s that for NASA science?
Now that you know real thermodynamics and you are smarter than all of the astrophysicists at NASA, you understand that the Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere which has both mass and large thermal storage capacity. This fact alone completely explains the moderate temperatures found on planet Earth. Not only is a greenhouse effect not necessary, but it is impossible given the extent of thermal contact within the troposphere and nature’s preferred methods of heat transfer.
So where does radiant heating or cooling become important in moderating temperatures on planet Earth? Only in the upper reaches of the atmosphere where the vacuum of space abuts the thinness of our outer atmosphere. This is the area where thermal molecular contact is lost and the only option for planetary cooling is radiant emissions. Theoretically, greenhouse gases which are more radiatively active than nitrogen and oxygen, could enhance this cooling, but that would first require additional heat to get to this part of the atmosphere and that amount of heat is set by the mass and composition of the troposphere. Additional greenhouse gases cannot upset the balance of heat flow from the Earth’s surface to space. More CO2 means more plant food and that is a wonderful thing.
Within the troposphere, evaporation/condensation, conduction and convection rule our climate, and no greenhouse effect is remotely possible or needed. That’s Real Science!
The secret of the Hydro Flask reveals the deception hidden within the Anthropogenic Global Climate Change scam. The truth is out!
-By Dan Fauth,
Independent Scientist and Engineer
Has this been tested for Beefeater and Tonic?
Here we go again. Let’s start the show by stating that old Dan is neither a scientist nor an engineer. He is certainly not independent although if that means out of work then sure maybe he is independent.
Rob, You got the “old” right, but nothing else except perhaps the “here we go”.
An interesting, but flawed argument.
Albedo, or “whiteness,” is a scientific term meaning reflectivity. It is the fraction of solar energy that Earth reflects back into space. Lighter colored areas of Earth—those covered in new snow and ice—reflect most solar energy back into space. Darker areas of Earth—oceans, forests, and cities—absorb more solar heat.
This whiteness is why snow-covered areas can stay cold, while dark spots like pavement and black roofs heat up. So when the white color of snow and ice is darkened by dirt and soot, more of the sun’s heat is absorbed, and snow and ice melt faster.
Researchers have also attributed some Arctic ice cap melting to darkening from soot. Further, as Arctic Ocean ice thaws in spring and summer, more adjacent dark, heat-absorbing water is exposed. This dark water is warmed by the sun’s rays, and in turn melts even more ice nearby. In what scientists call a “feedback loop,” melting causes even more melting, more heat-absorbing dark water is exposed as more ice melts, and even more ice melts because more dark water is exposed, and so on.
Makes perfect sense.
Stucky, Thanks. Not full retard. And tomorrow the clincher!
But, all the facebook memes are so much shorter, and what about the 97% consensus?
The Consensus Project says so……
[img]https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2YepJpo-7-O9b33Bk89147js9FEEdAOuH1KXTSzPLFSQutqt0[/img]
[img]https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2YepJpo-7-O9b33Bk89147js9FEEdAOuH1KXTSzPLFSQutqt0[/img]
Well, pictures are not posting, so I’ll go back to work……
Card802, And tomorrow … the consensus. http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/09/climate-consensus-deniers-97-percent-is-wrong
I neither concur or disagree, but it seems your argument relies too heavily upon “vacuum”. We all know that the rules change when vacuum comes in to play, but do we truly even understand “vacuum” and can we even measure it any more accurately than Captain Cook did with his crude barometer on his voyages? And why is there a ‘limit’ to vacuum?
Kick me to the curb if you must. I can take it. Enlightenment has tuition.
Rob & TJF are spot on. Why the fuck don’t you climate change deniers just STFU? Jesus H Christ, it’s even now been revealed oil company scientists warned global warming was going to occur all the way back to the 60’s, but of course that news was suppressed.
Do you really want to continue to shit all over the air that we & our kids breathe in order to line the pockets of the oil oligarchs sucking the last lump of coal and drop of oil from the ground, and maybe, perhaps, just a little, avoid paying taxes?
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-change-oil-industry-environment-warning-1968
@DurangoDan: Fascinating you would link that article since it is based on peer reviewed articles. The recent post (and a host of other supporting work) on the accuracy of peer reviewed articles makes it a specious testimony. If there really are 99.99% of climate scientists that are “decided” on this topic then the credibility of the entire field of study is bankrupt.
This article is flawed, but it is also correct in the explanation of the flask, convection, and conduction. Radiant energy, like other waves can be bent, blocked or reflected based on the relationship of the matter it interacts with. A primary driver of that interaction is the wavelength of the radiation and its relationship to the size of the material involved. Case in point: the microwave oven. You’ll note that there is a perforated metal screen that allows you to see through to the food inside. Why don’t the microwaves escape through the holes? Well because the wavelength of the microwave energy is much bigger than the holes, so it can’t squeeze through. It is a bit more complicated than that, but that is the essence of how it works.
Similarly the reflective “bricks” could potentially be spaced adequately to block infrared radiation, and it wouldn’t necessarily have to block much. It would just need to be able to block more than was being blocked previously so that on aggregate more energy was reflected back than was reflected prior. My major issue with this idea is that the atmosphere isn’t a one-way mirror. If it is blocking or reflecting energy then it will be blocking the Sun’s input as well as the Earth’s output radiation which would have a cooling effect. Conceivably the energy input could come in a less blockable wavelength whereupon it was absorbed and re-radiated at a different wavelength that was then in turn reflected back. Maybe that is the trick.
Seems like an awful lot of ifs and maybes to generate a near 100% consensus. At this point in my life I’m going to remain very skeptical of any “expert” consensus since I’ve seen so many other consensus opinions fail. I’m especially going to remain skeptical since the explanations I’ve heard don’t line up with my understanding of physics. I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll be wrong again before the day is out. I’m usually pretty good when it comes to physics though.
My *opinion* is that global temperatures have more to do with the big heat lamp in the sky than any other factor or combination of factors. If it puts out more heat, the Earth will get hotter. If it puts out less heat the Earth will cool. So far I haven’t seen any evidence to contradict that point, but it is fun to listen and learn new things. Don’t hit me with “everybody says so” though.
Sonic, Sorry you didn’t catch my setup for tomorrow. The author and I be one and the same. Good stuff on the microwave, etc. You get it.
Thanks, enjoyed it.
Westcoaster, I grew up outside of Pittsburgh in the 50s – early 70s. I worked at Hockensmith’s iron foundry in Penn, Pa 1973-74 rolling fire clay. I played war games as a boy on the smoking slag heaps outside of Shafton, PA; swam naked in the acid mine dead Brush Creek. I know first hand what air and water pollution do. The foundry was shut down by Nixon, EPA and the Clean Air Act of 1970 and essentially off shored to China. In my opinion, our air is now clean as is our water. China’s, not so much. The root of our current problem of grotesque over consumption is not fossil fuels, nor the coal and oil companies. The banksters and their miserable debt based fractionated currency have caused the debt slaves to pull 40 years of future demand into the present. Clearly a course for disaster. Keep your eye on the real culprits, the House of Rothschild and their evil spawn. Got it!
Westcoaster, I did not say that what you think I did.
Admin, Now I know why I have restrained myself from commenting on this site for the past five years. Once you start, it not just a gateway drug, it’s an absolute addition.
Westcoaster,
What period(s) of Earths known and/or scientifically investigated history would you point out to demonstrate a long term stable climate, and why did it change?
Gateway drug indeed! You’re right about both. I didn’t realize you were the author.
Sonic, Tune in tomorrow. I think you will be pleased. Also, as you alluded, the difference in energy levels (wavelength/frequency) between incoming and outgoing thermal energy is very much the key to understanding this issue and fooling the misinformed.
As I’ve said a number of times (and this probably won’t be the last), I don’t give a rats ass what is causing earths’ atmosphere and oceans to warm.
One can debate gravity while in free fall with no parachute until you hit the ground at which argument and discussion are immaterial.
The fact is glaciers are vanishing, Ice sheets at the poles are shrinking and the seas are rising.
We had best start thinking about how we are going to deal with what’s going on and how to minimize the coastal flooding, loss of NYC, Miami and the homes of some 13 million plus citizens by 2100 rather than fizzle and fart around arguing what, why and how.
MA
Coast….you are a certified moron. I’m kinda smiling as I write – you actually think it is about the environment. Of course you missed quotes from Holdren, Figueres, and Edenhofer.
Silly gullible smurf.
When they can correctly forecast the weather, 10 days out, I will consider listening.
since they can’t do that now,
why would anyone believe they can predict what happens 20-50 years out, as this is the time line for Al gore’s invention/mind trickery.
no need for long arguments, or abstract thinking, just common sense,
they are lying to you.
count on it.
Muck,
You would be right if you weren’t wrong.
Muck, I can guess where you get your facts. I’ll refer you to Ed’s improvement on my #1 rule for Questioning Authority:
Durango Dan: “Here’s the #1 rule for QA. If the information comes from government, it’s a lie and not just a lie, but 180 degrees from truth.”
Yeah, there it is, Dan. My version of it is:
If it’s
A. on TV or
B. from a government spokestwit
C. generally agreed upon by all the news sources and media outlets
Then it’s a lie. If it’s A and B, then it’s a reeking pile of shit-type lie, and if it’s A,B and C then its also such a poorly told lie that ridicule is the only sane response to it.
Link:
Muck About:
“seas are rising”…they’ve been rising for 20,000 years since the unwinding of the Pleistocene. Show me the cave men drilling oil and driving SUV’s. How fucking dumb can you be.
“glaciers are vanishing”….no they are not. Glacier gain and recession are normal and vary within continents. Expect the earth to be warmer for 400-500 years after the end of the LIA.
“Ice sheets at the poles are shrinking”….When the arctic has its melt season the Antarctic has its gain season. Note how the MSM always screams melting ice at the Arctic starting in April, but they don’t mention the Antarctic gain.
You gullible schmuck have probably fallen for every failed scare, including the Ozone Hole (which is not a hole).
@Vodka
Think of vacuum as “zero absolute pressure”. Ambient, or atmospheric pressure is about 14.7 psi at sea level. In engineering, we talk about pressure in terms of absolute (relative to zero), or gauge (relative to ambient).
Gas pressure is really just molecular and/or atomic matter bouncing around. Therefore perfect vacuum is the absence of said molecules and/or atoms. In practice, it is not possible to create a perfect vacuum, and even in space it does not occur. But rather it is a theoretical limit, similar to absolute zero temperature.
Greetings,
Seems to me that the Earth’s surface and its climate are constantly changing. After all, our very recent ancestors witnessed the retreat of ice sheets that were a mile or more thick to the very creation of our Great Lakes. They saw it happen. To believe that we or government can do anything to influence these cycles is pure foolishness.
The money spent on all this nonsense would be better spent on adaption to whatever world awaits us.
Rdawg, Thanks, Well put. I had overlooked a response to Vodka. It would be interesting to know just how close Hydro Flask comes to pure vacuum and how this compares to earlier versions such as the Thermos. Couldn’t find it on their site. Perhaps trade secret.
I was a science teacher in 1973 when the DOE sent us an analog computer to teach climate change. It had dials where the kids could set all of the variables from personal energy consumption to pop growth to energy contribution from coal, oil, nuclear. No matter how you set it up, when you hit ‘run’ we all would freeze to death in the dark before the year 2000. The DOE sent us to class where we learned that the model and its assumptions on availability of each energy contributor had been thoroughly researched and while variable were well within the margin of error. Since we did not freeze to death in the dark by 2000 I assume the model was flawed. Do you think there is a possibility that today’s models are wrong too?
Why debate AGW here when the voters of the industrialized world have clearly indicated that they are not willing to make any significant reduction in their use of fossil fuels?
Despite the warnings of credible science and some marginalized politicians there will not be any meaningful emission reduction policies until it is too late (which was about 10 years ago).
The fact that this author is full of shit is quite irrelevant.
I am still curious why these GW stories get posted when the denier side has won the contest and the clock has run out.
You got it? You’ve won already. Give it a rest. Move on to your next bit of foolishness – how about Nibiru or hollow Earth, that should keep you going.
Oh, and the loss of American sovereignty? In case you missed it the political class sold that to the banks and the corporations a long time ago.
To clarify, the author is quite correct about the hydroflask,which most of us learned all about in grade 6 science class where it was called a Thermos bottle. They’ve been around for quite a while.
Cdubbya, I may be swimming against the riptide, but I still enjoy the challenge. Thanks for sharing.
John Galt, the climate models are absolutely useless. We actually have to understand how something works in order to produce a reliable model. But then again, the models aren’t really about predicting future climate, but rather securing funding.
@DurangoDan
This page says that a typical Thermos bottle has a vacuum of 10^-2 to 10^-3 torr: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Vacuum
Probably start bumping up against diminishing returns to go below that. In my prior job I used to pump equipment down to 10^-6 torr and lower, but you need multi-stage pumps and turbo-molecular pumps for that. Plus it can take a long time, depending on the volume of course.
Nice primer on heat transfer, by the way.
Son: Dad It’s A Miracle !
Dad: What’s a miracle son ?
Son: A thermos Dad.
Dad: How is a thermos a miracle son ?
Son: Well, it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold .
Dad: How that a miracle son ?
Son: How does it know ?
DurangoDan, what riptide is that?
Rdawg – nice to have another here with “vacuum experience”.
A decent 2-stage rotary will get down to 10E-6 Torr, and the most cost-effective way to get lower is still the trusty diffusion pump (with a decent oil fill 10E-9 – 10E-10 Torr is easily achievable.
As you must know, it’s not just a case of pulling a vacuum, but also a case of material surface preparation. At reasonably low vac., outgassing starts to be an issue (can be minimised by baking-out), however there’s the problem of porosity. Even “impermeable” materials (metals / glasses) can be surprisingly leaky (if thin-wall) especially where the low atomic number gases are concerned, and this is the main failure mode for Dewar flasks (apart from accidental damage), where miniscule leakage eventually leads (over time) to significant enough vacuum degradation).
“Really” hard vacuum? Even turbopumps are pushing it much below 10E-13 to 10E-14 Torr, and then you’re in the league of the “exotica” – “Getter” pumps (diode / triode) and other implantation / capture technologies. I remember Perkiin-Elmer claiming their Triode Pumps were able to get down to 10E-18 (under ideal conditions), and the Semiconductor industry was the big driver for this technology. The hardest vac. we routinely used (as an EM driver) was 10E-15 (Edwards 2 stage backing, Edwards Turbo, Varian triode) when using WDX surface analysis on a Cambridge Stereoscan 180 (at that time the World’s best SEM by a long margin).
@Phil
My experience was in preparing experiments using a sodium pool boiler for two-phase heat transfer. Playing around with vacuum was a real eye-opening experience for me; as was messing around with elemental sodium!
Cdubbya,, with a riptide best approach is go with the flow. Not my style.
Does all of this mean that Westcoaster will get a free flask if Bernie gets elected? Can I have half of his? I don’t have one either>
Muck said, “…I don’t give a rats ass what is causing earths’ atmosphere and oceans to warm…The fact is glaciers are vanishing, Ice sheets at the poles are shrinking and the seas are rising.
We had best start thinking about how we are going to deal with what’s going on and how to minimize the coastal flooding, loss of NYC, Miami and the homes of some 13 million plus citizens by 2100 rather than fizzle and fart around arguing what, why and how”
Yannow, you could always just turn the sun down a few thousand degrees or so.
mike in ga said:
“We had best start thinking about how we are going to deal with what’s going on and how to minimize the coastal flooding, loss of NYC, Miami and the homes of some 13 million plus citizens by 2100 rather than fizzle and fart around arguing what, why and how””
Fuck that! Just let nature take it’s course. Quit trying to live beyond your means. Let the “haves” who get flooded out become the “have nots” for awhile. Learn from the hard knocks that life is so fond of handing out. It balances out because those that were a few blocks from the shore previously now have an ocean front view for awhile. It’s the circle of life.
Man’s pitiful and arrogant attempts to halt nature by living beyond our means in every possible way is what causes many of the problems we currently have. We are our own worst enemy. Why not save a few resources for humanities children and grand children? Why not consume to the level of our need rather than luxury? Would that not be the best thing for all life and the only home we know? A win-win is just not good enough for us I guess.
I should add that the alternative is to continue to breed, consume and excrete exponentially until we’ve turned the place into a smoldering shit pile unfit for habitation. I often wonder about the meaning of life and what the goal may be or if there even is a goal. I’m inevitably jolted back into a reality that for sure and certain cannot be the goal. Please tell me that the last 4000 years or so of human endeavor is not indicative of the goal, if there is one of course.
Sometime back T4C posted some theory or story that indicated that Earth is a prison planet and that the physical lifeforms that life “inhabits” is part of our punishment. Our true form is infinite and can travel the universe at will. Supposedly, when we die we are drawn towards a bright light but that light is supposedly a trap intended to keep us imprisoned in a physical body here on Earth via re-birth. I’ve pretty much decided that when my time comes I’m going to be sportin’ one of the rear view mirrors worn by cyclists and I’m going to turn around and run like hell straight into the darkness and just see where I end up. I’ve always been able to see better with the light at my back anyway!
Well, so much for a simple comment to a bunch of ignoramuses.
MA
Anon asks the most important question on this thread of WC’r. None of the weatherphobes answer. I’ve posted this chart before – I’m posting it again. Perhaps someone can help me wrap my mind around why we are panicking when the climate has NEVER been stable on this piece of rock.
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@francis marion: I wish I could have answer your post. I spent 15 minutes it and Word Press ate the whole thing!.
It was sure a great answer too!
MA
@ Muck
LOL.
That happens to me way too frequently. I am convinced there is a gremlin in the system that waits until I’m on a final edit and then presto – it eats it up… knowing full well that I will simply throw in the towel and say screw it. There’s only so much time in the day.
To bad the gremlin got you. I bet it was a doosey!