#696
December 3 2022 10:53PM
…Refraction (which is exactly what this is all about) as a nomenclature, gets coopted by flat earthers, potential doctorate recipients, and optometrists because it's a nomenclature that has variable degrees of association depending on what the subject matter in question is.
As for my journey into this subject, refraction has very easy to associate beginnings. In my machinist career I had a very difficult rotating shift to deal with, so my hours were never really steady. During those years I grew food and marijuana indoors (as we've discussed before). This created a scenario where my reservoir maintenance, pest management, pH regulation, cleaning, etc had to be done when the indoor lights were off. It's never a good idea to turn lights on while the dark hours are happening. It stresses plants, which leads to deformation, stunting, and ultimately more pests. Regardless, I had to figure out a way to work in the dark because I had no choice. That's just when that workload was available to me given my schedule. That's the "how I got the motivation to learn about refraction" 20+ years ago reasoning. That led me to learn about green light. It's not a very discussed issue with most indoor growers, so even professionals are not exactly fluent in refraction. It just doesn't come up that often, but in my case, it was necessary to understand. The basic premise was that plants do not absorb green light, which after you understand refraction makes perfect sense, but before, it's just not that easy to correlate. So... I got a bunch of green lamps and could work whenever I wanted to no matter what the timing. I understood the most basic fundamental level of refraction due to that exact experience, but it obviously grew to be much more complex.
It's a simple concept: the light that is visible, reflects as the color, and depending on what color that is, the remainder becomes absorbed. To the human eye, the reason why plants appear to be green, is because they absorb all spectrums of light, other than green. This is essentially ubiquitous for all color spectrums. The extremes being white, and black; white reflects everything, while black absorbs everything. Simple. Right? Okay, so as the light comes to the Earth containing all spectrums of the rainbow (visible light), as well as several spectrums that are not visible, the conglomeration of spectrum is called shortwave. The variable spectrums are absorbed by many different sources, and thusly, refract, which reflects individual (or sometimes multiple) spectrums back into the atmosphere from the Earth's surface. That... is the essence of refraction, and defines the difference between shortwave and long wave light. Ozone, which is "trioxide," or O3, accumulates in the stratosphere. Ozone does not absorb shortwave frequency light, but does absorb long wave frequencies. Carbon sources of all varieties in the atmosphere absorb both; certain portions are absorbed in shortwave and long wave frequencies. Understanding refraction takes the mystery out of this equation. Why? Carbon is black. Simple again, right? So essentially, the more opportunities carbon has to interact with all light, ultimately, the more warmth will accumulate overall. Ozone on the other hand, only having the capacity to absorb long wave refraction sources, is depleted of absorbing warmth and light as the carbon sources accumulate in the troposphere.
The essence of inference for the global warming deniers, at least those who feel an increase in solar output is solely responsible for the accumulating warmth (which is not up for debate), is that both the troposphere and stratosphere should markedly increase in unison. During the beginning of the crude oil economy, before the transition began to convert non carbon based gases in internal combustion applications, otherwise referred to as "the clean air act," the saturation of those non carbon based gases "ate" ozone. Therefore what was occurring was a simultaneous warming effect of both the stratosphere and troposphere. After the clean air act, which enforced "scrubbers," like catalytic converters, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) systems, etc, the depletion of the ozone was drastically reduced. However, this does nothing for mitigating carbon sources. So, the inference made by global warming deniers (after the clean air act) is entirely dependent upon the inference that the troposphere and stratosphere SHOULD BE warming in unison. This, as the video concluded, which can be referenced by external sources, is not happening. The stratosphere is cooling, the troposphere is warming, and the solar output, although the strength fluctuates between solar minimums and maximums respectively, has remained essentially constant for millions of years. The only possible logical conclusion is that carbon sources within the troposphere accumulating, is the fundamental reason for why warming overall continues to accumulate in unison with that metric. While this debate rages on, usually pronounced by people whose only concern is their unapologetic consumption of crude oil derivatives, it's blatantly clear that they have no understanding of refraction, what carbon does, nor its relationship to refraction, and most importantly, the inferences that can be deduced by utilizing data from relationship between the troposphere, stratosphere, and the accumulation of atmospheric gases in their respective regions. I have understood this concept for quite some time, and I didn't learn it to make Al Gore justified (which I've been accused of), get a degree to become eligible for grossly overvalued grants and government contracts (which I've been accused of), sell books (which I've been accused of even though I gave mine away for free), or any other diatribe influenced ad hominem that so many others are justifiably accused of. The simple fact is that I learned about this subject because I wanted to be able to clean, and better maintain my artificial greenhouse/indoor grow room while the lights were off. It's amazing how wrong people have been about me in this regard over the last 25ish years, and what's worse is how much effort has been wasted trying to argue aspects in that context, instead of particulars focused on fixing the dilemma. Fortunately, at least for you and those who will listen to you, I didn't consume my thoughts on justifying my own egocentric bias. I actually worked nonstop on finding solutions for a phenomenon that I was absolutely certain, based on empirical evidence and data, was occurring. Thusly... here we are, heh, while others have wasted literal decades just trying to understand a fairly simple concept that ties everything together: refraction. Maybe they should try growing weed in the dark? LMAOOOOO
Anyways, hopefully that clears up some stuff about this subject. It's admittedly boring and nerdy, but it does have very practical applications, of which, should you ever want to grow food indoors and work during the darkness, you can benefit from tremendously.