GMO-free Salt and Fluoride

Recently, I came across a blog with a face-palm entry about "GMO-free" pink Himalayan salt.  Coincidentally, I was engaged in a conversation with friends who are apparently concerned about a government conspiracy to poison us with fluoride. Putting the two thoughts together sparked my curiosity.  How much fluoride is in natural salts such as Himalayan Pink Rock Salt, and is it too much?

Good and Bad

Just a quick note on something about which I have been thinking, rather than a full blog post.  It seems to me that some people like the simplicity of easily categorizing things into good and bad.  There are good chemicals and bad chemical.  Vitamin C is a good chemical; fluoride is apparently a bad chemical.  Selenium is apparently a good chemical in your multi-vitamin, but a bad chemical when the EPA tries to eliminate it from our water supply.

In reality the world is much more nuanced.  At high concentration naturally occurring fluoride in the water supply can have negative health effects.  At the concentrations in which it is added artificially to water supplies (700 ppb to 1.2 ppm); it's beneficial. Most chemotherapy drugs are really bad for you, but maybe they are better than cancer.  Pesticides are very dangerous compounds, but mosquitoes can be deadly.  Carbon (see Carbon: Poison in Our Food ) can be toxic as hydrogen cyanide, a nutrient such as a carbohydrate, a fuel like methane, or a greenhouse gas like methane and carbon dioxide.  Ozone in the troposphere is pollution, a result of photochemical smog. Ozone in the stratosphere protects us from UV radiation.

I suspect it is tempting to do the same with people.  There is a school of thought that people can be easily categorized as good or bad.  Good people are like us; they believe what we do; we can trust them; they would never hurt a fly.  People who do bad things must be unlike us.  We search for reasons to categorize them as unlike us, rather than recognizing that but for the good choices we happen to have made, we could be those people.  I suspect that this way of looking at the world is pernicious.  It isolates us from the understanding that our choices have consequences, and that we ourselves have to be ever alert that we do not become what we despise.

Carbon: Poison In Our Food

Learn about the new hazard THEY are putting in our food!!!

You will never guess what they are putting in our food.  Even organic locally grown food contains this poison!!!

Consider the Facts about Carbon:

1. Carbon is a principal component of the deadly nerve gas sarin.
2. In the history of chemical warfare, more people have died from phosgene gas than any other chemical agent used on the battlefield.  Phosgene contains carbon.
3. Deadly hydrogen cyanide gas contains carbon.
4. 100% of biological tissue from cancer patients contains carbon.
5. Carbon compounds are implicated in climate change.
6. Every human disease ever known can be associated with carbon!!!!
7. The Nazis ate food with carbon in it.

Tell Monsanto, Big Pharma, and Big Farm A that you do not want carbon in your food.  Join the movement to insist that our food producers start growing natural food without this toxic poison!

Stop Poisoning Your Body Today!

Amateur Summer Amber

I've brewed beer a few times, but I have not done so in quite some time. In the past, I have not kept very detailed notes about the beer I've made. This time I decided to do so, and as long as I was keeping notes, I thought it would be fun to blog about it.

I am far from an expert when it comes to brewing; so I decided to keep it simple by brewing a pure extract beer. I did create my own recipe, but it is very similar to recipes in a couple of my references below.

Petagrams of Carbon

Sometimes carbon dioxide is referenced in units of ppm, and sometimes it is referenced in petagrams of carbon.  What are the meanings of these units and how does one convert between them?

In a previous post I explained how to convert to and from units of ppm.  The current post explains the units petagrams of carbon, and how to convert from ppm to petagrams of carbon.

The Second Law, Radiative Transfer, and Global Warming

This post is part of a series, Nonsense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The previous post is entitled Spontaneous Change and Equilibrium.

Does global warming violate the second law of thermodynamics?  Such a claim may seem strange.  The idea that the vast majority of physical scientists would subscribe to an idea that somehow violates a fundamental law of thermodynamics on its face seems odd.  Yet, such a claim is often made by people calling the science behind global warming into question.

Temperature Anomalies and Graphing Data

Globally Averaged Temperature Anomaly

One statistic that is used to understand climate is the annual globally averaged temperature anomaly.  It is not the only measure of global warming; there are a great many others, but it is one that the media tend to focus on because it is a convenient way of explaining what is happening to surface temperatures as a function of time.

The data here are taken from Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index (C) (Anomaly with Base: 1951-1980), which includes data from 1882-2007.  There are updated numbers available for more recent years, but I am using these data to respond to an argument made by a friend.

Carbon Dioxide Poll

A recently closed poll on this blog posed the following question.  "The bending mode of carbon dioxide is:" Respondents were to respond with the best answer.  Here were the choices:

• A Hoax
• Not Dipole Allowed
• Degenerate
• A Blackbody
• The reason the sky is blue
• Even though I understand Global Warming, I don't know
• I don't know

I should point out that the answer to the question can be found in a post on this blog. The results of the poll are shown here:

The Hydrogen Economy

This post is part of a series, Nonsense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The previous post is entitled Perpetual Motion.

The media often perpetuate the idea that the so-called hydrogen economy is the solution to all of our energy needs.  Hydrogen is abundant everywhere; in fact there are oceans full of hydrogen in the form of water, just waiting to be extracted, oxidized and used as an endless source of energy, right?

What the Second Law Does Not Say

This post is part of a series, Nonsense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Second Law does not say it is impossible for heat to be transferred from a cold body to a hot body.  The second law does not say that "disorder" must increase on the earth or anywhere else.  Life is not a counter-example to the second law; life is an example of the second law in action.

One has to be very careful about applying statistical results to a single molecule or a few molecules and remembering that increasing entropy applies to irreversible changes, not reversible ones. The second law says nothing about disorder. The second law does not prevent evaporative coolers from operating.

The second law does not contradict radiative transfer theory or global warming. The second law does not contradict conservation of energy.  In applying the second law to  cosmology, one should tread cautiously.

Nonsense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Introduction

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is, perhaps, the most abused physical law of all time. It may be rivaled for that distinction by the Uncertainty Principle, Relativity, and Hawking Radiation, but I think the Second Law probably wins the contest.

There is a plethora of nonsense disseminated on the web and elsewhere that misrepresents what the law actually says. This series is an attempt to curb some of that nonsense.  Along the way, I hope to make some sense of what the second law of thermodynamics actually does say, as well as addressing some of the nonsense that people believe about it.

Reformatted Post on Beer's Law

I have had to reformat the post on Beer's Law.  The html editor at Blogspot seems to do strange things with <br> tags.

Very Unscientific Poll

I have posted  a poll on global warming on this blog.  Before I remove the poll from the blog, I thought I should document the results.  The poll is for entertainment purposes only.  There was no methodology used except to post the poll to this blog using a blogger add-on.

The poll states "Global Warming is," and gives six options, "anthropogenic," "natural," "a hoax," "something I don't understand," "a topic upon which I am reserving judgment," and "other."

How To Convert To and From Parts-Per-Million (ppm)

Parts-per million (ppm) is a common quantity used in many areas of math and science.  It can be somewhat difficult for some to understand because it is not a true unit.  In fact, ppm is a unitless quantity.  It is analogous to percent.  Percent can refer to just about anything.  Percent means part-per-hundred, per cent (cent meaning hundred).  ppm is an exactly analogous quantity, but it is one part per million instead of one part per hundred.  ppm is a ratio between two numbers that have the same units.  Consider the example of a 5% sales tax.  For every hundred dollars I spend, I must pay 5 dollars in sales tax. So:

      5 dollars/100 dollars = 5%


I would much rather pay a 5 ppm sales tax:

     5 dollars/10⁶ dollars = 5 ppm   

We do not usually refer to money in ppm, but we could.  Ppm is more often found as a concentration, for example, ppm by mass or ppm by volume (sometimes referred to as ppmv).  In nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ppm can be used to describe the amount of chemical shift in frequency (Hz/MHz).  This post focuses on the use of ppm as a measure of concentration.

How To Convert To and From Wavenumbers

The question of how to convert from one set of units to another comes up from time-to-time, and I think it might be helpful to have a few short posts that simply address unit conversion.  This post addresses conversion to and from wavenumbers (cm^-1) (also called reciprocal centimeters, inverse centimeters or  Kaisers). A previous post What is Infrared Radiation (IR)? addresses the concepts behind this unit.  The unit is proportional to frequency, and can be considered a unit of frequency or of energy.

Radiative Transfer

If you are following this primer on infrared spectroscopy and global warming you already have some of the basics of radiative transfer.  The previous post in this series develops a simple multi-layer model of the carbon dioxide in the troposphere.  It leaves out many important features but shows conceptually how absorption and emission behave in layers of the troposphere.

The current post is intended to wrap up the topic and touch upon a few issues that were not discussed. It is possible to teach a year-long course in radiative transfer (or even multiple courses); so of course this post does not do the topic justice, but perhaps it provides some basic principles that give the reader a cursory understanding of the topic.

A Multi-Layer Model of Carbon Dioxide

I have put together a simple multi-layer model of  carbon dioxide in the troposphere.  It is based upon the same principles as the two-layer model and the three-layer model.  It accounts for the temperature and pressure profiles from the  previous post and it is part of a primer on infrared spectroscopy and global warming.  Just like those other models there are still caveats; this model is intended to be illustrative of concepts and therefore it is conceptually simple.

Structure of the Atmosphere

This post is part of a primer on infrared spectroscopy and global warming. The previous post introduces a three-layer model  in the context of developing a radiative-transfer model of the atmosphere.  From that post it should be apparent that one needs to include an understanding of the structure of the atmosphere to understand radiative transfer through the atmosphere. This post provide a summary of the structure of the atmosphere.  It is intended to be a quick introduction, rather than a detailed treatise.  Some of the sources listed go into more detail for the interested reader.

A Three-Layer Model

This post is part of a primer on infrared spectroscopy and global warming. The previous post introduces a two-layer model  and is a necessary prerequisite to understanding this post.  In this post I start with the following assumptions.  There is a source of infrared radiance that has emissivity of 1, i.e., it radiates as a perfect blackbody at a temperature of  288 K.  The radiance from that layer is I₀

There is a layer of air 1000 m thick with 380 ppm carbon dioxide at a temperature of 278 K.  There is another layer of air 1000 m thick with 380 ppm carbon dioxide at 268 K.  All layers are at a constant pressure of one atmosphere.

A Two-Layer Model

This post is part of a primer on infrared spectroscopy and global warming. The previous post discusses the issue of saturation in the 14-micron band of carbon dioxide in a single-layer model.   The post before that discusses Beer's Law, and is a necessary prerequisite to understanding this post.  This post starts to look beyond the single-layer model, by discussing a two-layer model, and beginning a discussion of radiative transfer.