Hadley CRU isn’t the only government agency that deletes web content related to climate. NOAA/NWS Southern Region Headquarters has gotten into the act. An interesting thing happened today. NOAA deleted an educational web page about an experiment you can do with CO2.
Ordinarily such a thing would go unnoticed, especially since it doesn’t impact anything particularly important like policy, or climate data. It’s just an experiment for kids in the classroom.
Fortunately, I still had the web page open in my browser. I had been looking at it yesterday, and I had been thinking I might try the experiment myself with a datalogging thermometer, just for fun.
Here’s the web page as it was open in my browser:
And here is what the same URL looks like now:
You can try it out for yourself:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
What could cause NOAA to pull a web page like this on a moment’s notice?
Two things.
1 It was featured on Climate Depot yesterday.
2 It had this passage that must not have agreed with somebody higher up in the NOAA food chain:
It has been thought that an increase in carbon dioxide will lead to global warming. While carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing over the past 100 years, there is no evidence that it is causing an increase in global temperatures.
Or maybe it was this one:
The behavior of the atmosphere is extremely complex. Therefore, discovering the validity of global warming is complex as well. How much effect will the increase in carbon dioxide will have is unclear or even if we recognize the effects of any increase.
So rather than corrupt young minds with a simple science experiment with some inconvenient language attached to it, NOAA simply deleted it. Of course nothing is really deleted on the Internet anymore. NOAA looks pretty silly thinking it would go away with a simple delete.
The Wayback machine has the missing web page for posterity:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060129154229/http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
Now it looks like I’ll have to run their simple experiment. Stay tuned.
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Wouldn’t the simple fact that the bottle with seltzer in it has more mass imply more energy transferred from the lamps and thus, a higher temperature, irrespective of whether or not it there was more CO2? I would think the experiment would only be valid for the purpose they are attempting to illustrate if you had the same amount of mass in each bottle (gas and liquid).
Mark
Oh, Boy. A completely open field to romp through.
This looks really, really difficult to get reasonable data out of. The CO2 path is short, lamps are not very uniform, what do they mean by equal distance, and temperature is tough to measure in the first place to the sort of resolution required. Might have to do a lot of randomized replications.
Other than all that the experiment is fine.
Actually, thinking even deeper, PV = nRT, worked out for each gas present, using partial pressures and proper mass (n), correct?
Mark
REPLY: with seltzer, there is mostly only CO2 present, being heavier than air, it would likely fill the bottle and force out the other gases. -A
“The Wayback machine has the missing web page for posterity:”
So it’s in NOAA’s arc?
I am guessing the chemical reaction that causes the fizz fizz of the seltzer tablets builds up quite a head of heat. I use a similar experiment to shoot the lids off old plastic film canisters with a legoman sitting on top.
I did a double-take on the last 2 paragraphs.
Had to page up to check the logo.
It’s interesting that the commentary following the experiment doesn’t offer the result as proof of global warming. Also the comments about the 1997 NASA report that satellite data showed no warming but rather a cooling was a surprise.
Maybe someone at NASA and NOAA has good sense but not enough rank.
I thought something was amiss when the page went missing so fast. Gavin-boy must have racked up the phone charges. I can see the wife shutting the study door so the kids don’t hear daddy cussing like a sailor, “GET THAT $%^&*I S4@7 OFF THE EFFING SERVER NAO!!!”
We need to find out who loses their job over this and make him or her a cause celebre.
What about the Venus info panel on the side? Doesn’t Venus reflect 85% of the Sun’s rays back into space? Doesn’t it periodically re-surface itself with magma, erasing all of the craters that MUST have been there? Is the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus settled science?
Denier Power!
Maybe suspended particulates or a colloid solution? Or an exothermic reaction as previously mentioned?
I saw that webpage the other day too, & wondered about that experiment. Since they do not mention equalising the air pressure in both bottles, wouldn’t the higher pressure in the CO2 one result in higher temperatures with all else being equal?
That page was a joy! Mark T already pointed the PV=nRT balance. No one knows what is the relative pressure of the gaseous fraction of each bottle. Presumably, the one with the seltzer tablet will have a much higher pressure in the gaseous fraction. Considering that the volume will, approximately, stays equal to the other bottle, temperature will surely rise, no matter if it’s CO2 or any other gas. But this is not the most jokey part of the erased page. Pay attention to the Planet Venus “fact” green box. Clearly there’s a complete ignorance about the physical conditions about the Venusian atmosphere. Venus has a pressure, near the planet’s surface, of about 90 atm (earth = 1 atm). This is the main factor that makes venus atmosphere so hot, even ignoring that is closer to the sun than earth, thus it receives more radiation. As a matter of fact, during the Magellan missions, the variation of the temperature of the venus atmosphere with the altitude was measured. At an altitude where the pressure of the Venusian atmosphere is about the same pressure as the earth atmosphere, which occurs at about 49.5km from the planet’s surface, the temperature was about 57ºC. For these reasons, venus atmosphere cannot be used as a simplistic example to explain the paper of the “so called” greenhouse gases.
Wouldn’t the temperature also rise due to the increase in pressure from the CO2, particularly as the seltzer would probably release gas even without the heat lamp?
Oops; too popular Anth! – getting “all our circuits are busy now” message from wayback machine:
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“with seltzer, there is mostly only CO2 present, being heavier than air, it would likely fill the bottle and force out the other gases. -A”
Check that the experiment talks about sealing the top of the bottle with molding clay. This way no gas is forced out and potentially rising the pressure of the gaseous fraction. I’m saying this because the experiment does not refer if the sealing is made after all seltzer tablet is consumed.
Anthony, it will be interesting to hear your test results. I see a lot of problems with this experiment. My prediction is that any temperature difference seen will have absolutely nothing to do with the >10,000 ppm CO2 concentration in the gaseous volume above the liquid.
On the other hand, its a perfect science fair experiment, with plenty of opportunities to learn about how difficult it is to design a clean experiment.
Anthony,
Deepclimate may be the culprit…
http://deepclimate.org/2009/11/02/contrarian-education-noa/
OT,
Stop breathing or we’ll kill the fish.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091102171559.htm
I am beginning to wonder what the difference between a government scientist and a prostitute is.
The waybackmachine link gave me a “Failed Connection” error page.
Speaking of experiments, has there been ANY lab-scale experiment done to verify the GH effect of CO2 and the likelihood of positive feedback mechanism through increased water vaporization?
I know the dog ate my homework excuse is lame.
But the dog ate the homework I set the class from a teacher, is a cacker.
Using Venus to demonstrate C02 as a GHG is ridiculous. Venus’ orbit is .72 AU, so due to the inverse square law receives roughly double the intensity of sunlight. Add a 243 day period of rotation, and a nearly pure C02 atmosphere, and the day side literally cooks for months on end.
Hardly representative of earth’s situation.
haha, great work Anthony! this is funny — and very embarassing for NOAA. With 2 million hits per month, and rising, more embarrassment for NOAA?
That’s a great ‘model’,showing how CO2 in the’atmosphere’ comes from outgassing of the comparitively large body of water beneath it….and not a fossil fuel in sight!
Layne Blanchard (21:30:32) :
Using Venus to demonstrate C02 as a GHG is ridiculous. Venus’ orbit is .72 AU, so due to the inverse square law receives roughly double the intensity of sunlight. Add a 243 day period of rotation, and a nearly pure C02 atmosphere, and the day side literally cooks for months on end.
Hardly representative of earth’s situation.
The Venusian atmosphere itself rotates in about four days, the temperatures are pretty uniform on both day and night side of the planet. Still comparing today’s earth with Venus is like comparing apples to pears, two completely different planets and a sun that is not strong enough to deliver the required amounts of watts per square meter to cause a positive watervapour feedback that eventually leeds to CO2 outgassing of rocks.
But it is a future that awaits our own planet in a pretty distant future, perhaps in a billion years time when the sun gets hot enough to start a runaway greenhouse here on earth. Nothing to worry about for a long time, a very long time. In the highly unlikely event that we are still around during that time the only option is to move place.
In other words, a scare story in the current “Global Warming Hysteria”.