John Baez's protoblog This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics is about quantum foundational issues this week. It contains a discussion of some of the ideas that people working on the boundary of quantum foundations and quantum information have been thinking about.

I'm mentioning it not lest because he cites some of my recent work, which I consider a great honor coming from the foremost physics protoblogger. My other posting ground "Quantum Quandaries" is actually named after one of John's papers, but fortunately he doesn't seem to have noticed yet so I am safe from being sued for the timebeing.

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Do physicists still accept Bohr's theory that the absorption of specific wavelengths of light by a gas molecule affects the energy state of its electrons rather than the old theory of Jean Baptiste Fourier that the process caused the molecule to become hotter. Climatologists seem to favor Fourier.

Fourier's theory may have made sense in the context of a model of the atom in which the atom was considered the smallest particle of matter. However, Bohr's theory is more consistent with atoms comprised of charged particles. It makes more sense for the absorption of radiation to affect the electrons instead of increasing the motion of atom/molecules. Changing motion requires an uneven impact. Absorbing radiation would seem to produce a uniform change in the electrons themselves which would seem incapable of changing motion.

If Bohr's theory is still accepted over Fourier's, why haven't physicists challenged the views of climatologists that Fourier's process is causing "global warming". That isn't the only problem with the theory. They ignore the far more likely ways humans could increase temperature especially the terracalories of heat humans generate daily.

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