Author Archives: gymnosperm

Entropy and Watermelons

Posted on September 2, 2018 by gymnosperm

What is the entropy of a watermelon? This question is not entirely fair, because living things are singularities swimming upstream against the tide of entropy. We can’t merely count the ways the invisible molecules in a watermelon can be rearranged … Continue reading →

Posted in God and Dice | Leave a comment

God and Dice

Posted on July 15, 2018 by gymnosperm

We don’t spend much time thinking about what God does for recreation these days, but the great scientists from Newton to Einstein who have framed our Western cosmology were often deeply religious men. It is understandable that when they found … Continue reading →

Posted in God and Dice | Leave a comment

Entropy and the Grand Canyon II

Posted on June 25, 2018 by gymnosperm

We left off in the last post having boated 78 miles, about five days on a typical trip, and having encountered the last of the suite of three books that comprise the geological story revealed in the Grand Canyon. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Grand Canyon, Paleogeography | Leave a comment

Entropy and the Grand Canyon

Posted on June 20, 2018 by gymnosperm

It has been our good fortune to row 280 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon twice in the last seven months. This is rare for private boaters limited to one trip per calendar year and subject to … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, Grand Canyon, Paleoclimate, Paleogeography | 1 Comment

CERES and MODTRAN VII, Clouds

Posted on June 9, 2018 by gymnosperm

MODTRAN deals only with infrared light, and at least the version we are using includes only low level cloud types.   Above is a screen shot of the menu. It can be seen that the highest altitude is three kilometers. … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Leave a comment

CERES and MODTRAN VI, Cloud Radiative Effect

Posted on April 10, 2018 by gymnosperm

CERES is the acronym for the rather chewy title Cloud Earth Radiative Effect Satellites. Displayed above is the TOA net flux in blue. The net TOA cloud radiative effect is in red. The axes are inverted to maintain the energy … Continue reading →

Posted in CERES, Climate | Leave a comment

CERES and MODTRAN V

Posted on April 3, 2018 by gymnosperm

We must begin by confessing that we have resorted to digitizing. The first CERES data were garnered by mousing over the visualization tool, writing in a notebook, and typing into Excel. We discovered that if we right clicked the tool … Continue reading →

Posted in CERES, Climate | Leave a comment

CERES and MODTRAN IV

Posted on March 25, 2018 by gymnosperm

The tile of this series promises a comparison of CERES and MODTRAN. The groundwork of exploring the CERES data in the first three posts is done. At the conclusion of the first post, we concluded that CERES and MODTRAN could … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Leave a comment

Responses to the Questions Posed by Judge Alsup

Posted on March 24, 2018 by gymnosperm

Question 1. What caused the various ice ages (including the “little ice age” and prolonged cool periods) and what caused the ice to melt? When they melted, by how much did sea level rise? Ice ages occur on our planet … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Judge Alsup Questions | Leave a comment

CERES and MODTRAN III

Posted on March 18, 2018 by gymnosperm

In the first post in this series we began with an assertion that according to greenhouse theory, it is impossible to warm the planet when longwave radiation to space is increasing. In the second post we discovered that it is … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | 2 Comments