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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (19310)	12/30/2007 9:24:13 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36923

Junkscience explains Hot Air Ballons By T.A. Watson: Hot on the heels of successfully debunking the notion that the earth’s climate is at all like a greenhouse, Junkscience has turned its perceptive analysis to the functioning of hot air balloons. As we showed previously, greenhouses are clearly warmed by sheltering the inside of the greenhouse from cold outside air, i.e. fundamentally greenhouses are warmed by convection modulation. It turns out that much similar confusion exits regarding the science behind hot air balloons. Our intrepid debunker of liberal communist science recently investigated the matter. Scientists have long claimed that hot air balloons function by enclosing a large volume of heated air inside a lightweight bag. The heated air is claimed to be less dense than the outside air, and it is claimed this causes the balloon to float up in the surrounding air, much as a boat floats on water. Unfortunately, the only thing correct about this explanation is that it is “dense”. Our Junkscience reporter visited a local balloon stampede. Dozens of large and colorful balloons filled the local high school playing fields, and lifted off in the still early morning air. By careful observation, documented with video, our reporter arrived at a correct understanding of how balloons rise. The ground crews were observed to unfold the large balloon bags, then employ large blower fans to partially inflate them. Once partially inflated, the propane burners were fired into the bags, which were still laying on their sides. Following a few minutes of this, the balloons rose vertically above the gondolas. However, the key insight was then discovered. Each balloon was anchored to the ground by four ropes pulled at quadrants from the inflated bag. The ropes were each held by one or more persons. As each balloon in turn was signaled for departure, it was observed that these ropes were released. Immediately on release of the ropes, the balloons started ascending. While some balloons applied fire to the balloon cavity at lift off, others were observed to have no flame at all at the time of lift off. Once airborne, the same behavior was observed. Balloons randomly fired their burners, but also had them off for significant fractions of the time. Balloons were observed to both rise and fall while having burners on or off. Indeed it was even observed that one balloon, when released too early, was successfully brought back to ground by the rapid application of more people to the just released ropes, thus proving beyond doubt that weight on these ropes is the key scientific understanding to the functioning of hot air balloons. Junkscience is proud to correct these widespread misunderstandings, so prevalently claimed to be the “consensus” view of elitist scientists.