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People send me stuff. This makes Bill Nye’s recent CNN fail look almost forgivable.
My friend Lars Larson, who runs a nationally syndicated radio show out of Portland, OR sent me this audio clip today. I had to listen to it to believe his claim, because who would guess that a credentialed scientist who is lecturing a national audience on climate change issues could misunderstand the greenhouse effect so badly. Here is the audio clip, with Dr. Laurie Johnson of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Have a listen:
The relevant passage starts at about 8:20 into the interview.
She says:
When you get in your car in summer, your car is hot because it has greenhouse gases in it. That’s why its hot.
I’ll have to hand it to Lars Larson, because after the obligatory “hold on a second….” he proceeded to explain how the greenhouse effect works in an automobile, though he mispoke and said “shortwave” instead of “longwave”, but he had the physical premise right.
After explaining that, he asks:
Are you telling me my car heats up because there is more CO2 in the atmosphere?
Unfazed, she insists:
I’m telling you your car heats up because there are greenhouse gases in your car.
And, she goes on to say, after Lars uses the example of sunlight streaming through the open windows of his home, making it hotter, and asks:
Is my house filled with greenhouse gas as well?
She says:
Yes! It has carbon dioxide in it!
Lars retorts:
Are you telling me my house now gets hotter than it it would 20 years ago because there’s now more carbon dioxide in it?
Dr. Johnson responds with:
I don’t know the exact temperature of your house, what I’m going to say is that the scientists…
And then goes on to talk about how “the military is concerned about it”, “scientists everywhere are concerned about it”, “12,000 peer reviewed papers” (channeling Cook et al) and other consensus building statements.
She seemed totally oblivious to the fact that she had just been pwned.
What does real empirical science say about why your car is hot when exposed to sunlight? It says nothing about the role of CO2 (or other greenhouse gases) of course which have a negligible effect at this scale.
From the Georgia State University physics department:
==============================================================
Greenhouse Effect Example
Bright sunlight will effectively warm your car on a cold, clear day by the greenhouse effect. The longer infrared wavelengths radiated by sun-warmed objects do not pass readily through the glass. The entrapment of this energy warms the interior of the vehicle. The trapping of the hot air so that it cannot rise and lose the energy by convection also plays a major role.
 |
Short wavelengths of visible light are readily transmitted through the transparent windshield. (Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see through it!) |
Shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light are largely blocked by glass since they have greater quantum energies which have absorption mechanisms in the glass. Even though you may be uncomfortably warm with bright sunlight streaming through, you will not be sunburned.
===============================================================
Source: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/grnhse.html
Of course, the role of convection gets immediately stunted when you roll all the windows down.
It is mind blowing that this PhD, doesn’t understand the basic elements of the greenhouse effect (as it applies to actual physical greenhouses, of which your automobile is a small working model) enough to realize when she’s made a major embarrassing blunder, yet persists to lecture the radio audience about the certainty of her position.
Maybe she should have taken some science to go along with that economics training. You’d think a learned individual would train themselves on the basics, apparently not.
For more on how automobiles heat up dangerously, please see the study by my friend Jan Null, who has quantified the effect and danger to children and pets. And remember, don’t leave kids and pets in the car, not even for a minute.
Hint: the hyperthermia danger isn’t from CO2.
Study of Excessive Temperatures in Enclosed Vehicles
Jan Null, CCM 1,2
June 2003
BACKGROUND
Every year dozens of children tragically die due to hyperthermia (heat stroke) after being left unattended in cars, trucks and vans. Over the past five years in the United States 160 deaths of this type have been documented (Kids and Cars and 4 R Kids SakeTM, 2003). [For the current year see 2003 Hyperthermia Fatalities (Children in Vehicles)]. Hundreds of other children left in similar situations suffer great bodily harm and these numbers do not include similar consequences to infirm adults or animals.
More here: http://www.4rkidssake.org/Vehicleheatstudy.htm
UPDATE: Dr. Johnson responds with an admission of error.
The approach of hurricane season has raised public interest in a recent NRDC analysis showing that the U.S. government spent nearly $100 billion in 2012 responding to damage related to climate change. As an NRDC economist, I helped make sure the analysis was sound.
In discussing th
is recently with Lars Larson, I got outside of my area of expertise and made a mistake. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are accelerating climate change, but cars get hot in summer when the sun warms the interior and closed windows trap the heat.
I regret that I misspoke. I apologize for any confusion I might have created. And I hope we can move forward, as a nation, with the action we need to reduce the industrial carbon pollution that is driving climate change and threatening our future.
Laurie T. Johnson, Ph.D.
Chief Economist, Climate and Clean Air Program
Natural Resources Defense Council
1152 15th St NW Ste 300
Washington D.C., 20009
It goes to show time and time again that level of education is not equal to intelligence. If I have a 100 IQ with a Bachelor’s degree. I will still have the same 100 IQ with a PhD.
Minor correction: NRDC stands for NATURAL Resources Defense Council (you have it as “national”).
Of course, that doesn’t change the utter ridiculousness of her statements.
REPLY: Fixed right away, thanks. Hard to remember which it was while I was laughing- Anthony
OMG!!Thanks for the laugh.. WTF how did Dr. Laurie Johnson of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Get a job and become a doctor. Her and Michael Mann should hook up..LOL
Foot in mouth disease!
Too funny. Thanks to your friend Lars for highlighting this gem.
This needs to be repeated and repeated. Ridicule is both powerful and satisfying, especially when the target is begging to be shot.
Kurt in Switzerland
Just because she is listed as “Dr.” Laurie Johnson does not make her a scientist in any way (economics is “social science”, and the term “social science” is an oxymoron). So, she is just another wacko with an opinion, which she freely shares.
Now the interesting part .. since the levels of “greenhouse gases” are roughly the same in summer and winter, why doesn’t get the inside of the car as hot in winter when the sun shined on it as in the summer? 😉
I have always wondered whether the industrial greenhouses that have co2 levels pumped up to 1000+ppm are any hotter than ones without.
Now for some lovely pictures and info about co2 generators for greenhouses, boy are they huge.
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
Of course so-called greenhouse gases don’t really act like a greenhouse, trapping heat. By reradiating energy in all directions, not just down, they merely slow the escape of heat from earth’s surface through the atmosphere back out to space.
Wow.
I was only worried, now I’m scared.
Somehow I can’t believe 98% of scientists believe her explanation of the greehouse effect!
What an embarrassment!
Dr. Laurie Johnson.
Is it just me or does everyone think people who have not a clue as to what they are talking about (lib’rul Democrats, most assuredly, in this context) look like this?
Male or female.
I know it sounds like an ad hominem but, I’m serious! 😉
PhD simply means “Piled Higher and Deeper”. Seems appropriate. Just because someone is “book smart” doesn’t equate with intelligent.
From Cipolla’s “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”:
#5 — A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Come on, she’s an economist, just like Stern. That means they know about some things, only not about the things they are talking about.
so tell me again how many people believe in global warming……
…I’m just curious to know how many total idiots we have
The scary part is that the interviewer tried to give her an “out”, that never registered.
Has anybody sent her an email pointing out her foot-in-mouth errors?
The common error that really annoys me is that Venus is hot because of greenhouse gases, and that if we don’t change our waves (i.e. go green) the Earth will be the same.
Sunlight never even reaches the surface of Venus.
Maybe I should have been there to ask – then why doesn’t my car get hot in the winter when the sun is shining on all that CO2 in my same vehicle?
Somewhere, a village is missing its idiot.
.
…speechless.
It should be mentioned of course that not all warmists are stupid just by being associated with this woman. The fact is, their stupidity is individual to each and every one.
She’s an economists, not a climate scientist. Well actually to be more accurate she is a propagandist not and economist.
My explanation of her statements is she was lying and she knew she was lying. Anything to further the agenda.
I’d actually be interested to see what Laurie Johnson has to say about the economics of climate change mitigation policies. (So she got her talking points wrong: a particularly unfortunate thing if you’ve been collecting an NDRC paycheck for five years running, but hey – she’s an economist, not an atmospheric physicist).
Kurt in Switzerland
Thanks Dr Johnson! We now know we should all prepare for more floods, droughts and hurricanes inside our cars.
At about 11:30 she brings up Cook’s “12,000 peer-reviewed articles” of which “98%” (!) agree with the consensus. Obviously she doesn’t read WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/21/cooks-97-consensus-study-falsely-classifies-scientists-papers-according-to-the-scientists-that-published-them/
It’s entirely possible for a PhD in economics to have studied no more physics than a typical high school student.
Quite a nice-looking woman.
She’s as bad as the skydragon slayers who insist that because CO2 has no effect in the 1-centimeter gap in a double-glazed window, it can have no effect in the atmosphere.
re: the two Summer/Winter comments above:
Sorry but that won’t help your argument. CO2 is the same but the glass is also the same. The truth is that your car DOES heat up during the winter.
You notice the effect in summer because as you get into the car, you’re going from “a bit hot” outside in your shorts to “my thighs are crisping on the seat and my lungs are scorching”. You just don’t notice the temperature difference as much when getting into your car in winter because you’re going from “darned cold” to “less cold” and probably insulated from feeling even that by your overcoat.
You also have a lot less sunlight to work with in winter so the greenhouse effect, while still present, is not as severe.
I’ve been trying to say something witty for about 10 minutes now but whenever I try the only thing that comes out of me is random noises. I have no words fitting for this. None whatsoever.
“When you get in your car in summer, your car is hot because it has greenhouse gases in it. That’s why its hot.” – Laurie Johnson, Idiot.
*facepalm*
‘We don’t have enough data to really know what’s going on…” – Dr. Laurie Johnson
With that statement Dr. Johnson, we invite you to spend some time at http://wattsupwiththat.com as you enhance your knowledge and understanding of climate science.
Be warned, though- this will require a great deal of courage on your part because you will confront the truth, which is far different than what you think is truth.
I’m surprised she didn’t say something like this:
“Greenhouse gasses in cars and houses, led to the development of air conditioning. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, when CO2 levels were much lower, A/C was not required. If Venus had air conditioning it would not be in the predicament that is.”
I’m Sorry this is a kind as I can be to a numbskull who makes a great living from the overtaxed citizens, producing flawed logic and crappy science.
Dr. Laurie Johnson PhD is so out to lunch on a green spoon fed diet of global warming mythology that there is simply no redemption for her EVER!
The car is hot from radiation from the sun. On a cloudy day the car stays cool. Even if you injected 10,000 parts / million of CO2 into the car, it would still be the same temperature!
Shes is willfully dumb, as thick as 2 short plank and half as useful!
Would I be right in thinking that, as she has a PhD and works somewhere in the field of climate change, she’s probably counted amongst the consensus of “experts”?
Maybe she’s confused about the car’s cabin and the exhaust system?
Anyway, do a Google scholar search and you’ll find much of her scholarly work has been about the economics of regulation, not the physics of CO2.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-012-0087-7#page-1
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mBw8IZa81J8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA293&dq=laurie+johnson+economics&ots=fsc5DW2uEX&sig=AoXThe-LO4P6aDwiSHYfhtslqBY#v=onepage&q=laurie%20johnson%20economics&f=false
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268106001028
I can’t wait to pass by these people standing outside in the dole queue.
NOW I know why my car doesn’t heat up nearly as much if I leave the windows slightly open – it’s because the CO2 leaks out 😉
The NRDC people suffer from a common ailment that impacts educated specialists, arrogant ignorance. As soon as they exceed the boundaries of their speciality, arrogant ignorance morfs into stupidity.
Yep, as long as the phrase “climate change” was in her paper & it was peer reviewed.
This is one of the main (but unnoticed) flaws in the “consensus” surveys: They aren’t restricted to papers dealing with the physics and chemistry of “attribution,” but include those on impacts and mitigation, which simply assume (perhaps just for the sake of argument) that AGW or CAGW is true.
Jacques Peloquin says:
May 23, 2013 at 12:34 pm
“Quite a nice-looking woman.”
Perhaps the CO2 concentration in front of your screen is well over 10,000 ppm.
Tom in Florida says:
May 23, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Jacques Peloquin says:
May 23, 2013 at 12:34 pm
“Quite a nice-looking woman.”
Perhaps the CO2 concentration in front of your screen is well over 10,000 ppm.
_____________________
People gone to hell fer less
This only goes to show that having a PhD does in no way impair one’s ability to manifest oneself as a total idiot. Doing so on the radio within earshot of an audience only serves to make the idiocy even worse. This woman demonstrates clearly that it is highly dubious to claim there is any correlation at all between a PhD and common sense (why is she talking about a subject in which she has no proper education or background?).
In cases like this, it is sad to see a PhD educated mind being squandered so pitifully. Sigh.
Dr. Laurie Johnson should walk slowly to the nearest mental hospital
and give herself up. She has clearly wigged out.
Dang Tom, I forgot my sarc tag.
/
greenhouse gases must disappear at night because my car is cold.
Seems to me that to make the Greenhouse gasses work you need the Sun.
Many of the warmists believe sort of the same thing as Dr. Laurie. The media has for instance only very seldomly mentioned the postulated water vapor positive feedback; warmist scientists like Dessler have over and over again used the misleading term heat-trapping gases. The CO2AGW cult lives through disinformation of its own followers and tries to shield them from other information; the BBC and the German UBA try to do all they can to ostracize and silence skeptics – because we give real information. Cults can only thrive as long as they control what information their followers get.
And this is why it is so enormously entertaining to talk to warmists. They are so surprised, baffled and speechless when they hear for the first time in their lives, say, about the Medieval Warm Period. The poor little things.
One of the hottest vehicles we owned was an WHITE 84 T-Bird with tinted windows and light blue interior. The slope of all the windows allowed more sunlight to enter and heat the interior. One of the coolest vehicles we owned was a DARK blue Jeep Cherokee with un-tinted windows and medium gray interior. The upright glass on it kept more of the sunlight from entering and heating the interior.
Oooh, the ignorance… it burrrrrnnnnnnnsssssss!!!!!!!
NRDC have been very prominent in pushing the “Acid Oceans” idea. They have had a revolving door with EPA for many years and have received milions of dollars in grants from the EPA.
Frances Beinecke, President of NRDC, is on the board of the World Resources Institute, with Al Gore: http://www.wri.org/about/board/frances-beineke. Currently on the Board of Trustees are Van Jones, Laurie David, Leonardo di Caprio, Robert Redford and long time activist George Woodwell of Woods Hole, where John Holdren worked for many years.
David Doniger, NRDC Policy Director and Senior Attorney, served as director of climate change policy in the EPA air office, under Carol Browner. He was prominent in Massachussetts vs EPA.
Nancy Stoner, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for Water was previously the Co-Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Water Program.
Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy, Michael Goo was the Climate Legislative Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council and spent time at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Money from the EPA, one amongst many:
Award Date: 10/11/2010 Cum Award: £1,150,123, Recipient Name: NRDC NY – Natural Resources Defense Council, Grant ID Number: XA – 83379901-2
“This project facilitates coordination among current and emerging state greenhouse gas registries in order to ensure consistency and credibility. Companies are encouraged to participate and invest in these efforts in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
David Hawkins, Natural Resources Defence Council, was a Review Editor for the AR4 Synthesis Report.
She is one of the many bureaucrats who are making a career managing ad hoc institutes dedicated to foster sustainability (mostly of the global warming agitprop). Another one like this is Laurence Tubiana is the director of the Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), professor at Sciences Po Paris, political science…
At the very start of the Audio clip Lars Lawson says:-
“And a warm welcome to Dr. Laurie Johnson from the National Resources Defense Council”
There is nothing more pitiful than an “expert” pontificating in an area they are totally ignorant of. In her case, her PhD actually does stand for Piled Higher and Deeper.
================================================================
Sooo …. I should plant my tomatoes in my back seat?
Or maybe this bit of knowledge is unknown to the rest of the world because “Big Ice-scraper” companies are pouring money into the effort to suppress this knowledge to protect their profits? I mean, if people knew this all they’d need to do next winter is swing by Taco Bell for a couple of bean burritos before they park their cars. Who’d ever need to scrape their windshield?
Only 8% of CO2 spectrum is involved so whatever the concentration of CO2 is, multiply that by 0.8 then only take into account that portion that is in the troposphere…..how can such a small amount of CO2 have any effect at all?
around 4min20 into the audio: “In our time , about 8.000 years on Earth….”
Seems she’s a creationist as well !
She plays the Games Of Thrones well. She taken a position which is supported by the power crazed lunatics in control of our society and has stuck to her stupid claims even in the face evidence to the contrary. She makes the right noises and the right times. She is a scumbag politician. They are all the same, these political types. Whether they work in your company or in your parliament, the political type is the most destructive and evil of all the beasts.
Relative to Dennis A’s reference to the acid ocean idea, I was unaware of it until I read an article about it in the March 25, 2013 issue of Chemistry and Engineering News (C&EN). You might be interested in my letter to the editor which was published in the May 13, 2013 issue. JLK
Did she do an actual scientific test? It would be rather easy.Identical cars fitted with thermometers under identical conditions with differing levels of CO2 in them, left out on the same hot day.
An assertion without even so much as an attempt to prove the point suggests it is either propaganda or part of a belief system, an integral part of RELIGION( the climate cult), not science.
If you could borrow the new cars from a car dealer and borrow the thermocouples and data loggers, this would be an easy and inexpensive study to perform that would prove almost instantly that the hypothesis was null and void.
Putting an unfounded and untested assertion out to the public under the guise of science to try to prove a (scientific) point is(scientific) fraud. Come to think of it, how many of the increasing number of “out there” studies we see to convince us that climate change/global warming/extreme weather/ BS of the day is real are based on solid, statistically significant controlled studies?
Ah, but isn’t the main greenhouse gas in your car methane?
The car heating situation would make for a good experiment.
Have one car with ordinary air in it and another with greenhouse-gas-free air in it. Leave both in the sunshine and compare the temperatures. Will the car without the greenhouse gasses remain cool?
(An easier option might be one car filled with CO2 and the other filled with N2.)
I have recently been trying to catch up with the greenhouse gas heating theory and have not found much useful via Google. Can anyone recommend some links?
Most explanations resort to claiming things like: CO2 “traps heat”. To me that sounds like a cop out because the claimed heating seems to be due to the re-radiation from greenhouse gasses and this ignores the fact that all the other gasses are warmed by the earth by conduction and they also emit infra red radiation in all directions. Which is the bigger effect?
Methane can be a major greenhouse gas in your car if you eat burritos before driving. Perhaps just hold it in and feel very uncomfortable while driving. Hopefully(according to the UN via “sustainable development”) you kill yourself whilst driving in this uncomfortable state to reduce the human carbon footprint from the evil humans. How dare we recycle the carbon buried beneath the ground to feed the plants.
I suppose we can get two cars of the same make and model, well sealed and equally exposed to the sun. Fill one with a non greenhouse gas,say N2, and the other with that dreaded CO2, to equal pressures, and monitor the temperature increase over time. But this seems highly reminiscent of one of Anthony’s previous endeavors, done more on a lab scale.
Twenty years ago, scientists debated the cause of real greenhouse warming. Half thought the glass prevented infrared from escaping, half thought the glass prevented convection. The consensus is now convection. Rolling down the windows allows convection to proceed.
I don’t know how much a PhD in Economics from the University of Washington, Seattle costs, but I know how much it’s worth.
It is becoming patently obvious, if you want to be noticed and have a hint of fame, just lie!
“Kaboom says:
May 23, 2013 at 11:41 am
Now the interesting part .. since the levels of “greenhouse gases” are roughly the same in summer and winter, why doesn’t get the inside of the car as hot in winter when the sun shined on it as in the summer? ;)”
Probably drives around with a car painted black and with a black interior. So cooks in summer and feels a bit warmer during Winter. It must be CO2. 🙂
Great. Another gooberment “expert” that isn’t. In fact, no better than a 5th-grader.
This cretin is not the first global warming activist to have a weird theory about why cars are warm on sunny days: David Suzuki beat her to it by a quarter century. http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/pastedgraphic-1.pdf
As a sometime refugee from academia myself (Ph.D., History, taught at two major state universities before being driven around the bend by my colleagues and getting some sense and going back to school to get an M.B.A. and embarking on a new career in business) I can testify to how these people’s education makes them less able. not more able, to deal in realities, and often less able to do so than people of average or even below-average intelligence: there was the one colleague – a history prof himself! – who said that the Soviet system was so much more efficient and humane than ours in the US (and when I confronted him with the millions murdered by Lenin and Stalin, and the horrors of daily life in a totalitarian state, said that it was “a necessary step in reforming society”); and another who claimed that the only way big retailers made money was to sell at a loss and make it up on interest.
No one should be surprised at this mollusk’s self-deceit.
Jim Steele wrote;
“Twenty years ago, scientists debated the cause of real greenhouse warming. Half thought the glass prevented infrared from escaping, half thought the glass prevented convection. The consensus is now convection. Rolling down the windows allows convection to proceed.”
Quite correct, it is now clear that the ”GHE” merely acts as a hybrid optical/thermal delay line. Once a packet of IR energy is emitted by the heated surfaces inside the car it is absorbed by the windshield, remember it’s opaque, opaque things absorb EM energy in those wavelengths where they are opaque. The windshield warms and then emits (after a delay) half of the energy back into the car, and half from the exterior surface. The absorption/remission delay and the travel times (about 1 nanosecond per foot) simply delay the energy flow by causing multiple trips through the system, alternating between thermal and EM energy.
This is why farmers sometimes make real greenhouses out of plastics that are transparent to IR radiation. The plastic is inexpensive and tougher than glass.
A thermal insulator on the other hand slows the velocity of thermal energy, which can cause something to cool more slowly.
The funny thing about a delay line like this is that you can only observe the delay when a pulse of energy flows through the system. When a steady state input is present the delay is still there but it cannot be observed. Until we have tools that can track individual photons at the speed of light we will not be able to observe it.
The ”GHE” in the atmosphere also only delays the flow of energy through the system. The missing heat is long gone. By delaying the flow of energy through the system the “GHE” only causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm up slightly faster when a change in the input occurs (sunrise, or clouds dissipating).
To learn more just look up the “temporal response of an integrating sphere”, a similar situation occurs there.
Cheers, Kevin.
Where is the science behind “…And remember, don’t leave kids and pets in the car, not even for a minute…”? For a site that argues against alarmist positions this is an incredible disappointment.
The families that have their children die in vehicles due to hyperthermia are do so inadvertently, not through conscious choice.
This has to be an even clearer case of the cost of government intervention (http://www.freerangekids.com/on-trial-for-letting-kids-wait-in-the-car-its-child-endangerment-2/)
far outweighs the benefits.
Ross McKitrick says:
May 23, 2013 at 4:18 pm
This cretin is not the first global warming activist to have a weird theory about why cars are warm on sunny days: David Suzuki beat her to it by a quarter century. http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/pastedgraphic-1.pdf
——————————————————————-
That is shocking. Suzuki even has a degree in a scientific subject. His misconception is crazy enough just on its physical basis, but his chemical ignorance is yet more astonishing. There is no carbon in car windshield or window glass.
Silica glass is used for manufacturing automotive windshield and windows. Typical approximate composition of automotive windshield:
72% SiO2 as vitrifier
14% Na2O as flux
10% CaO as stabilizer
4% MgO as stabilizer.
Five elements; no carbon.
milodonharlani
“Five elements; no carbon”
Doesn’t take away from the idiocy of Suzuki’s comment, but actually, automotive windshield is laminated to make it shatterproof. The interlayer is polyvinyl butyral.
Of course, glass in a typical greenhouse…
Bless her heart.
Another CAGW expert who serves the case for sceptical policy rethought, everytime she speaks.
graphicconception says (May 23, 2013 at 3:01 pm): “The car heating situation would make for a good experiment.
Have one car with ordinary air in it and another with greenhouse-gas-free air in it. Leave both in the sunshine and compare the temperatures. Will the car without the greenhouse gasses remain cool?”
Not necessary. Just note that the air outside the car is the same as the air inside, yet one reaches a much higher temperature than the other. Obviously the difference is the car. Duhhh.
“I have recently been trying to catch up with the greenhouse gas heating theory and have not found much useful via Google. Can anyone recommend some links?”
If you haven’t already, check out Willis Eschenbach’s “Steel Greenhouse” articles:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/27/people-living-in-glass-planets/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/27/people-living-in-glass-planets/#comment-538665
So if I leave dry ice in the car it will be warmer than if I don’t?
I haven’t been inside a greenhouse recently, but I didn’t notice any strangeness in the gasses. If we ban greenhouses, or perhaps if we hermetically seal them wouldn’t that eliminate greenhouse gasses?
So this greenhouse effect means the Earth is surrounded by glass like a greenhouse, right?
Who knew!
Gee, and I thought that Edith Bunker from TV’s All In The Family was a dingbat.
It has taken me several minutes to prepare my response morsel because I had to control my laughter to regain my composure. Apparently the University of Denver did not adequately delve into her academic credentials. Her students really got short changed. Her PhD = “piled high and deep”. “Dr.” Johnson: please find another line of work; maybe a crossing guard might work.
The average home has about twice the CO2 as outdoor concentration.
So according to this Laurie Johnson, if I turn off my heating system, shouldn’t the temperature of my home eventually become twice that of my outdoor thermometer?
If so, why; if not, why not; explain.
(I enjoy casting dispersions at complete and unadulterated idiots.)
TomRude wrote, in part:
“Sustainability.” Whenever I hear that word (spoken by a non-engineer) and/or, “raising awareness” (spoken by anyone), my bullshitometer bends its pointer on the peg.
Wow and i thought it was the tea spurting through my nose that was burning my nasal passages – now i know its the CO2 in the gaseous spluttering that was cooking me on the inside – thanks Laurie.
Free energy. She is brilliant. Solved our energy concerns, she did.
I can’t help thinking that if clowns like this are truly the Earth’s best defence, then we’re really in deep shit.
Pity the poor woman! I hope that she is well endowed ’cause nobody is going to love her for her mind. (I should apologize but these people threaten the future of my children and one weapon is ridicule)
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewstt’s evil twin)
Dr. Johnson – here’s a way to reduce CO2 levels in your home … stop breathing! Please, just stop!
This is why I have my manservant remove all greenhouse gases from my Prius before I drive it each day.
Here is an example of ‘the consensus’ at work … she has not stopped to think about it, just accepts what she hears without comprehension, and Cook would count her paper if she published.
Suzuki did exactly the same thing, except he attributed the warm air to carbon in the glass. Yeah, carbon. In the glass.
Suzuki made these 6 elemental scientific errors, in two short paragraphs. (link further down)
1. Carbon in glass? Maybe in the front windshield, sandwiched between 2 sheets of glass. As glass is mostly opaque to infrared (IR), its moot.
2. Carbon compounds may or may not trap heat. Polyethylene, for example, is transparent to IR.
3. Heat in the car is from modifying convection, not radiation. Decreased convection = increased radiation. Polyethylene vs glass in greenhouses shows no difference in heat retention, in spite of the different IR properties of the two barriers. The heat retention is from preventing convection.
4. Glass is mostly opaque to IR, not the supposed carbon in it. Suzuki assumes it’s not opaque, by needing the “carbon” in it to stop IR.
5. While some carbon compounds are transparent to visible light, some are not. Your black garbage bag, for instance.
6. Suzuki says carbon bearing compounds REFLECT IR. Some compounds allow IR through. The ones that don’t, ABSORB IR photons, then re-emit photons. They don’t reflect.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/suzuki/story.html?id=4bee3fa9-9a10-46f1-9d6a-648a19710b30
Dilbert reads WUWT..
http://dilbert.com/2013-05-24/
So this woman is an Economist!!! that says it all.
Her spoutings were so full of rubbish I thought her PhD was in knitting.
No comment on her claims needed.
That’s why a follow-up film to “The Great Global Warming Swindle” would have a big impact. It’s puzzling that the well-organized, well-funded denial machine hasn’t twigged to its possibilities.
Incidentally, most of the segments of Anthony’s 24 (?)-hour series of interviews with contrarians about 6 (??) months back have not been released for reviewing, as promised. WUWT?
She is contradicting herself several times.
I think there’s a TV clip of the lady in action….:
Many people that fancy themselves as superior for embracing AGW “science” have a lot of incorrect ideas about it. For excample, many would be warmists believe that if in fact the global mean temperature is increasing then the temperatures everywhere in the world must be increasing.
With her apparent level of intellect, I’d wager she believes that death from carbon monoxide in a vehicle is due to the greenhouse effect.
She is poor representative of the quality of education at U of Seattle. She should know enough to stick to Economics and keep her nose out of Physical Chemistry. I am a Physical Chemist, and I know more than a little about light/matter interactions. I would not presume to lecture her about the cognitive dissonance between real-world costs / benefits versus macroeconomic modelling. I will lecture her about the chemistry and physics of the Greenhouse Effect.
Thanks Kevin and Gary, I will take a look.
I already have my “Pin Ball Model”. The radiation from the sun comes straight in and then is deflected by the greenhouse gasses on the way out. This will cause the return of energy to be delayed and therefore should increase the energy in the system. It works for me but whether it is in touch with reality I can only guess.
As I sent to Lars the following day after hearing the “live” broadcast … My dog is smarter than I am when it come to CO2 in the car. The age old mystery is solved as to why the family pooch has to have his head out the window while on a car ride!
So by the genius PHd’s logic, an occupied vehicle will heat faster than an unoccupied vehicle. This due to the respiratory CO2 of the occupants. An easy experiment, that.
Anymore, a PhD means about the same to me as a Nobel Peace Prize. By themselves they don’t signify squat. They’ll give them to anybody as long as they spew the correct propaganda.
( IMO. the PhDs here on WUWT have earned respect. They answer their critics.)
Just another example of the advancing stupification of academia, an issue that far transcends the climate change controversy. Even as the tools available to humanity become more and more capable of destroying our civilization, and possibly our species and much of earth’s biosphere, the judgment of those “certified” and appointed to manage these tools appears to be degenerating to the point of simple lunacy.
Whether the next immediate threat is an asteroid impact, a deadly runaway virus, a crippling solar EMP event, sudden onset glaciation, or a string of nuclear accidents, we can be certain that the response of governments and their appointed talking heads will be be either tragically inadequate or totally inappropriate.
This is the fundamental issue humanity urgently needs to face, not only because of any imminent danger, but also because, if allowed to corrupt our institutions of learning sufficiently, it may become irreversible. We must find a way to firmly say “no” to academic “yes-men”.
[Principia/slayers nuttery – take it elsewhere – mod]
I like the experimentation suggested by Karl W Braun. Only we need to test the courage of her convictions by allowing her to sit in the non greenhouse gas filled car for several hours while it bakes in the sun. Will the convection deminish her conviction? I wonder…..
graphicconception says:
May 24, 2013 at 7:00 am
“Thanks Kevin and Gary, I will take a look.
I already have my “Pin Ball Model”. The radiation from the sun comes straight in and then is deflected by the greenhouse gasses on the way out. This will cause the return of energy to be delayed and therefore should increase the energy in the system. It works for me but whether it is in touch with reality I can only guess.”
See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/co2-heats-the-atmosphere-a-counter-view/
The stoopid hit me at the 4:30 mark when she claimes we had a ‘nice, steady climate’ at 280ppm Co2.
Prior to this there were no cyclones, hurricanes, storms, floods (proving the story of Noah to be fallacy), droughts, heat waves.
Everyone lived in some mythical paradise.
Even though she is an economist, I’m glad she doesn’t do my tax return.
This just shows how far are wide parts of the society getting away from critical thinking and objectively analyzing facts. How little the scientific method is taught in areas which title themselves “science”.
Laurie, your beliefs of being on the “right side” have nothing to do with science. Science is about facts and objective truth. There is such, objective truth, ignoring it will just make it splash in your face again and again.
One can imagine how far away from reality are her environmental economics calculations, her cost benefits analysis, economics of climate change legislation! if all these are based on such poor judgment of facts but based on beliefs.
There is much too much money pumped into fake areas of science. There is much to much bureaucracy building up around such fake urgencies, draining the society of resources and hitting the most vulnerable members brought into energy poverty.
Economics, it’s not a science, even though it pretends to be one.
Ross McKitrick says:
May 23, 2013 at 4:18 pm
This cretin is not the first global warming activist to have a weird theory about why cars are warm on sunny days: David Suzuki beat her to it by a quarter century.
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David Suziki says “The interior gets warmer because of the carbon in the glass”, not because of the C02 inside the car.
But mebbe they are both right AND mebbe the feedback loop between the “carbon in the in glass” and the carbon in the C02 in the car creates the increase in temp that allows the confined space to reach 140 degrees. Now we need to get Hanson on board to model, and prove it… (he may be interested because the big money in the alternative energy “market” isn’t going to dry up as fast as the AGW money).
Who needs windmills … between Dr’s Suzuki & Johnson we just solved our energy production problems.
Don M.
Someone tell her that if you removed all of the CO2 from Venus’ atmosphere, it would be significantly cooler. Hilarity might ensue.
It’s true, but for reasons she probably would not anticipate.
Owners of Tesla EVs often have to leave notes in the windows of their cars asking passers-by not to smash in the glass to save the dog inside. The cars are remotely controlled by the owner’s mobile app, and run A/C indefinitely from the huge battery, keeping the interior cool.
Slart;
Yeah, there would only be wisps of trace gasses like HSO4 and H2 remaining. A near-vacuum.
Actually, there would be a substantial amount of atmosphere left. Venus’ atmosphere outweighs our own by a factor of nearly 100, so if you removed the CO2, there’s still be about 3x more atmosphere than Earth has.
But it would be cooler. Just not totally because the CO2 was missing.