All sold to you by the same crowd that sells you AGW (at great expense).

Looking back on all that, we’f better ACT NOW. No time to think. (And for gaia’s sake, shut the deniers up before they multiply!)

R. W. Wood, “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”, Philosophical magazine 17, pgs 319-320 (1909)

Here is an excerpt:

“There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the Sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.

I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its effcacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house.

The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the “open”, the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents.

To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one
covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 °C, the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the Sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate. There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures.

The maximum temperature reached was about 55 °C. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 °C, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting
practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped.

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the
temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.

I do not pretend to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.”

If CO2 is that “forcing” to an atmosphere as computer climate models show, we would have had CO2 climate control systems in our homes 20 years ago to save energy. Think about it.

Could this be explained via another mechanism besides being caused by carbon dioxide build-up – such as an overheating Dodge parked on the acres of asphalt beside the foundry wall where the MTSS is attached?

I have a question that might be off topic but has anyone done a controlled experiment where CO2 levels were tested for their effect on temp. Imagine a round room, 30 feet in diameter, with a powerful full spectrum light source suspended in the center about 15 feet off the floor. Around the room, Plexiglas boxes, 1 meter square with appropriate concentrations of atmospheric gases sit on tables a few feet off the floor. The only difference would be the level of CO2, 200 ppm, 300 ppm, 400 ppm, etc. Thermometers in each box would record continuous levels of temp to determine this level of forcing we hear so much about.

I just can’t accept that a concentration that represents less that 1.5” on a football field means doom for the planet.

REPLY: Understood and I’ve known that. My intent was to show the environment, and potentially biasing elements as an adjunct to the reasoning behind the distance based site quality rating system. There are those that complain that nearby objects don’t have the potential to bias the temperature measurement. Seeing an image of where heat is and is not is helpful in understanding the issue.

Thanks, and thanks for what you do.

Do you know what the body of the mmts is made out of? Reason – plastic breaks down, becomes less shiny. Would go along with your paint experiment.

What time of day was this taken? Are max/min recorded at same time each day?

Reason – since it appears that the case is warmer than the surrounding air, did the case reach max daily temp before the air temp did? (if that makes sense…)

Also, did the case hold heat during min temp time?

I’m also wondering if the side of the sensor facing the “heat source” would show a diff temp than the side facing away.

It would be interesting to see if a particular housing/shield holds temp better under the same conditions (NIMBUS/MMTS/Stevenson Screen/HYG, etc).

REPLY: Henry they are made of a plastic, but I don’t know the composition. There seems to be a slight yellowing factor to some of them, but it does not appear to be large in magnitude. They are low mass, and seem to track air temperature fairly well.

I’m going to ask to come back to this site at night to get follow up IR pix to answer the questions about the home/pool radiating and causing a split bias on the MMTS housing.