Claim: 1.5C Global Warming is Not a Magic Number

Iron (Fe), is an Earth- & Solar-System abundant element, Atomic-Number-26. Its dominant isotopic mass (56), and its precisely measured ‘mass-defect’, reflects the stability arising from its count of thirty (30*) neutrons and twenty-six (26*) protons.

Both these Counts (26* & 30*) were derided as ‘Magic Numbers’, as late as 1950, because there was no accounting for them.

One Ms. Maria Mayer, neé Goeppert, attended a meeting in Chicago, wherein such matters were discussed, specifically how the nucleon(p+,n0)-counts associated with high abundance, reflective of special stability, should differ so much from the special electron-counts (electronic shell-fillings) of atomic-physics & chemistry.

At one point, Enrico Fermi, pausing at the exit-door, turned back to enquire:
“What is known about the magnitude of the spin-orbit interaction (effect) in the atomic nuclei?”

Ms. MGM, reflecting on her wartime (Manhattan Project) experience with the spectroscopy (electronic energy levels) of heavy elements (actinides), set herself to work out that question … and within a short time had it largely calculated out, in a framework she published a few months afterward.

And so the Swedish Academy recognized her contribution, to the understanding of the ‘Structure’ [i.e. mechanics] of the nucleus of the elements, with a share of its Nobel Prize in Physics.

Nepotism Law, in effect in mid-century America, meant that this German immigrant had never worked in a paid position, her husband, American Chemist J. Mayer having ‘earned the bread’ to support their home & family.

[ Incidentally, she was a classmate of one young American, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in the Göttingen group of Prof Max Born, where she wrote her PhD dissertation on the obscure subject of the rates of (simultaneous) multiple-photon absorption, her formulae remaining useless until the advent of high-powered lasers and the now-ubiquitous ‘nonlinear optical materials’ that exhibit such properties to great effect in applied optics / spectroscopy. ]

With her little ‘model’, all the magic had been squeezed out of the Magic Numbers of nucleon abundances. [But the derisory label remains with us today, as per the putative ‘Magic Number +1.5 (or +2.0) Celsius‘ for a climatic ‘tipping point’ into an Infrared Catastrophe, a Runaway Greenhouse-Warming.]

And so it must be(come), also in this case of that very big & complex fluid-dynamical machine that we call ‘The Climate System’. The observed invariants, these inexplicable-hence ‘Magic[al] Numbers’, such as the GH-Efficiency Ratio (1.652), must become disenchanted (literally), i.e. reduced from their present-day ‘Magic’ status to a basis in clear physical principles that could be — that must be — understood, even by small children (our own).

Thanking you for your kind attention to this most vexing matter, I remain
Respectfully yours, — RLW
Written on behalf of Prof A. Friend, he is absolutely & always AI-free.