June 17, 2026
They Don't Know What They Don't Know
This from Richard Cronin
Immodestly, no other discipline touches on Thermodynamics as does Chemical Engineering. The treatise on Thermodynamics by Richard Feynman is a tour de force. He poked a pin in a lot of "Settled Science”.
"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, it doesn't bother you any more.”
-- Arnold Sommerfeld (1868-1951)
Would that the typical Climatologist understood the fugacity of dissolved CO2 in ocean waters. At the great pressures and cold temperature in deep abyssal ocean waters, a vast amount of CO2 is dissolved.
The South Atlantic magnetic anomaly assures ample Ultraviolet radiation to heat the South Atlantic gyre. The counterclockwise current of the South Atlantic forms the only gyre that delivers heat towards the Equator.
Over the last several years, the mouth of the Amazon has swung from floods to drought and dolphins are dying due to the elevated water temperatures.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
10:41 AM
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Sommerfeld pretty well has it, and gets you to smile about it. Years ago as a layman, I read, and figured I had a decent grasp of, the First Law of Thermodynamics. I should have left well enough alone, but I decided to have a go at the dreaded Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is the one Sommerfeld was describing, and I saw why it's so feared. I decided to go back to Tinkertoys.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at June 17, 2026 11:12 PM (FpsZq)
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I hated thermodynamics (and the accompanying fluid flow) in Nuclear Power School, until at some point I had a breakthrough and realized it was all about mathematics, and from that point on I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Posted by: Bill H at June 17, 2026 11:24 PM (FRG6e)
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You are right Dana; the whole thing is baffling from a logical standpoint. That is why the climate people are so wrong so often; they don't understand thermodynamics at all but pretend they do.
Yeah Bill; it's like quantum physics in that regard - all about the math and not at all about what you can grasp on a visceral level. Fascinating subject.
Yeah Bill; it's like quantum physics in that regard - all about the math and not at all about what you can grasp on a visceral level. Fascinating subject.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at June 18, 2026 08:26 AM (oflqW)
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