Do you believe warm, moist air is lighter than cool, dry air?
Yes.
Do you believe dry layers act as a cap to upwelling of lighter, moist air?
I don't have an opinion on that. Is that what meteorologists claim? It wouldn't be the dry air itself that would act as a cap, because dry air is denser so the warm moist air should continue to rise through it.
However, if there were a lot of dry air and a limited amount of warm moist air rising through it, the rising plumes could entrain and mix with some of the dryer air, making it overall less moist, which could act as a cap of sorts.
Also, if such a dry layer were also cold, that would condense the moisture (water vapor) in the warm moist air, making it cooler and hence arresting its further rise. That could certainly act as a cap under those conditions.
If that were often the case, then we'd expect to see clouds often forming with flat bottoms corresponding to the height at which the temperature becomes cool enough to cause condensation, and fluffy tops where the capped-off convection plumes reach their highest extent. And, lo and behold, we do observe exactly that.
Do you believe release of latent heat from water describes the origins of the cold gusty winds of storms?
Not directly. Release of latent heat during condensation of water vapor warms the surroundings. It's evaporation that cools them.
Are meteorologists being honest with us that they have actually measured, tested this theory or do you think they are pretending to understand and relying on the general confusion of the populace to skirt the issues?
Meteorologists rely on the well-tested findings of basic physics and physical chemistry for such matters as the behavior of H2O in phase transitions. Most of their testing has historically consisted of observations in the real atmosphere (temperatures, pressures, water vapor content) and correlating those with observed weather, both locally and in large-scale patterns over large areas.
More recently, of course, mathematical modeling has been extensively used.
Physical modeling and experimentation is of limited use in meteorology because the processes of weather have inherent scales. "Tornado chamber" experiments, for example, are highly contrived, using directed air flows from fans and the like, to create a small-scale simulacrum that kind of looks like a tornado. For hurricanes and thunder storms, even that much is not possible, because the actual processes only occur on characteristic scales. One never observes a three foot high thunderstorm in nature, nor can one create one in ones living room no matter how extreme you set your HVAC controls.
Do you think they have a good understanding of severe weather. For example, did you know that tornadoes are considered by many to be a mystery. Are they doing all they could do to solve this mystery or are they just pretending to do all they can?
"Understanding" is a more complex concept than you would like it to be. It's quite possible to understand all of the underlying rules by which a system operates, and also understand all of the starting conditions when the system initiates operation, and still not understand why it behaves as it does.
Another forum member in a different thread recently brought up the example of "Langton's Ant." It's an idealized artificial system with extremely simple rules, but its behavior is complex. We can observe, for example, that for all finite starting configurations, the Ant's behavior eventually falls into a certain repeating pattern. But we can't explain why, other than to say "because that's the result of following the rules." Which is very unsatisfying; we look at the rules and they say nothing about a 104-step repeating pattern.
Some people are so bothered by that that they insist there must be a hidden rule snuck in somewhere. But there's no need and no room for a hidden rule. You can take the known rules and use them, and them alone, to design your own Langton's Ant program or machine, or even execute the rules yourself with pencil and paper, and still get the same result.
Why Langton's Ant makes that pattern is a mystery, in the sense that we can't explain in words, in narrative, why it does so. But there's no mystery and no doubt about the fact that we know the exact and complete rules that cause its behavior.
(I sometimes call this the "Mad Scientist Fallacy." That's the belief, often unspoken but assumed, that if you can create something that works, or enumerate the rules by which it works, it implies you understand it well enough to be able to control it. Or equivalently, that if something goes out of control or behaves unexpectedly, it must be because there's an unrecognized exception somewhere in its operating rules, an "x factor." Mad scientists in fiction had to be insane, to explain why they could create things they couldn't control. But in the real world, such "mad" science is more the rule than the exception; and nature is madder than all the world's scientists put together.)
Similarly, you can look all you want at the rules for heat transfer and electromagnetism and the fluid mechanics of air and water, and you won't find any rule that mentions tornadoes. Tornadoes, like Langton's Ant's repeating pattern, are a result of the actual evolution of systems following the rules under certain starting conditions. Just because we can't phrase a satisfying explanation beyond "that's the result of following the rules" doesn't mean there has to be an undiscovered tornado rule.
Now, my turn to ask some questions:
1. You've claimed in your writings that water vapor cannot exist in air in earth's atmosphere. How do you explain (a), the observed operation of a solar still; (b) where the moisture that fogs up my glasses, when coming indoors after being out in cold weather, comes from?
2. Your question about warm moist air being lighter than cooler dryer air implies that you doubt that claim. How do you explain the operation of (a) a chimney; (b) the flight of a typical gas-burner-heated hot air balloon (noting that gas burners output both heat and moisture)?
3. You've also expressed doubt about evaporation and condensation of water vapor being a cause of heat transfer in storms. How do you explain the observed operation of a refrigerator?
