Ivy League Alarmist Proves My Point

Reader Phil has been complaining that the Ideal Gas Law doesn’t work. He provided these numbers.

Arctic: T=-23ºC (250 K), P=101 kPa, R=8.314 J/K.mole, d= 1.2 kg/m^3
Tropics: T=27ºC (300 K), P=101 kPa, R=8.314 J/K.mole, d= 1.46 kg/m^3

I pointed out that those numbers don’t make sense. Obviously warm air is less dense than cold air. Then he corrected his numbers :

Arctic: T=-23ºC (250 K), P=101 kPa, R=8.314 J/K.mole, d= 1.46 kg/m^3
Tropics: T=27ºC (300 K), P=101 kPa, R=8.314 J/K.mole, d= 1.2 kg/m^3

Which shows that the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT) is a good model for the atmosphere. ‘P’ is fixed by the altitude (within the minor variations that weather generates for PMSL.) ‘n’ is the number of molecules in a vertical column of air, and is also fixed by the altitude. R is a constant. The two variables are V and T, so V tropics / V arctic should be equal to T tropics / T arctic

Density ‘d’ is inversely proportional to volume so

(V tropics / V arctic) == (d arctic / d tropics) == (T tropics / T arctic)

Using Phil’s numbers

(1.46 kg/m^3 / 1.2 kg/m^3) == 1.2 == (300 K / 250 K)

Now isn’t that convenient.

BTW : I attended the Haavaad of the South

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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13 Responses to Ivy League Alarmist Proves My Point

  1. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    Is that rotted icePhil?

  2. Baa Humbug says:

    Looking at the pic of that hot air balloon, if CO2 was such an efficient trapper of heat, wouldn’t they pump CO2 up into the balloon instead of just air? Wouldn’t more CO2 in the balloon make it a much more efficient/effective lighter than air flying craft?

    • Scott says:

      MW of CO2 = 44

      MW of air (if there is such a thing) = 29

      So, nope.

      -Scott

      • Baa Humbug says:

        haha should I have put a smiley face or a /sarc off at the end of my comment? But I’ll play.
        CO2 is a magnificent mysterious trapper of heat. So ballonists should take a couple of fire extinguishers with them and every so often squirt some up into the balloon. Those extra ppm of CO2 molecules would trap oooodels of heat and warm the rest of the air in there. The ballonist wouldn’t need to fire up the burners as much, saving on fuel and fuel weight.

        The molecular weight is irrelevant when they are heated coz they’ll always be rising above the colder air outside of the balloon.
        I think I’ll take out a patent. Waddaya reckon Scott?

  3. suyts says:

    They talked themselves into a circle of fail.

    Apparently, to these really clever sciency alarmists, the gas, CO2, causes the world to hot up, but gas laws don’t apply to the gas because gases cause temp changes not gas laws………… 😐

    No, wait, I explained that wrong!!! You see Venus is hot because the atmosphere there is mostly CO2 and Mars is mostly CO2, but it doesn’t get hot there because the gas laws don’t work in the atmosphere…….. see? O_0 0_O O_0

    No, wait, I explained it wrong again!!!! You see, the formula pV=nRT, the T stands for absolute temperature. Obviously, Émile Clapeyron wasn’t big into maths, because you can’t derive T from the equation even if you do the tricky division thingy. Emile was a trickster and gave the whole world a big “psych!

    It was an interesting tag-team, though. Nice guys, I hope they hang out some more.

    Oh, and altitude doesn’t have much to do with anything……….. well, sure temps, volume and mass, but other than that………

    So, is that Duke or Vandy?

  4. Tory says:

    Everybody thinks their school is the Harvard of that area.

  5. Sparks says:

    here are my expert numbers
    (6.46 kg/m^7/ 1.2 kg/m^7) == 9.2 == (3000 K / 2500 K)

  6. Phil. says:

    Reader Phil has been complaining that the Ideal Gas Law doesn’t work. He provided these numbers.

    Not true, I said that the ideal gas laws don’t determine the temperature of the Earth, the gas laws are the relationship between pressure (determined by the mass of the atmosphere), Temperature determined by the energy balance from its surroundings and the density of the atmosphere (which is a consequence of the other two.
    The numbers I provided were calculated using the Ideal gas law so the agreement is hardly surprising!

    As pointed out before your application of the gas laws to the whole height of the atmosphere is an error.

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