UPDATE2 10/18/2011 – The experiment has been replicated several ways, see:
UPDATE: New images added prove without a doubt the faked split screen. See below.
It has been over a week now since the Gore-a-thon aka “24 hours of climate reality”. The front page of the Climate Reality Project has changed from “live mode” to offering clips of video shown during the 24 hour presentation. Note the circled video on the front page below Mr. Gore. I’ve discovered that by watching carefully it reveals an “inconvenient truth” of the worst kind.
Analysis of this “Climate 101” video highlighted on Mr. Gore’s website is something I’ve been working on for the past week and a half. It has been carefully reviewed (with video graphics tools) and has been inspected by a number of science, engineering, and television professionals I’ve had review the video, my video captures, annotations, and writeup to be certain I have not missed anything or come to an erroneous conclusion. It also took me awhile to locate and get the items shipped to me to do the work I needed before I wrote this article. Now that I have them, and have done some simple replications to confirm my suspicions, I can write about them while presenting corroborating photographic evidence.
First, I wish to direct your attention to this video, produced by Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project titled “Climate 101”. I direct your attention to the 1 minute mark, lasting through 1:20. I suggest you click on the little X-arrow icon to expand full screen of the right of the slider tool bar, since this video is in high-definition and the details of my concerns require that higher resolution to view them properly.
It is worth watching a couple of times to get fully familiar with the sequence.
I’ve been in television broadcasting for over 20 years, and I’m quite familiar with editing tricks, I think I spotted more than a few in the video.
There are five scenes that appear, each an edit in that 20 second span of video during which an experiment is set up which supposedly demonstrates that CO2 in a heated jar causes that jar to be warmer than a second heated jar with ambient air in it.
In that 20 second span, I looked for things that changed, indicating that it wasn’t done in a continuous shot. I found evidence that the scene was changed at least three times, suggesting multiple takes.
The giveaways were that I saw objects change in the scene, most notably the CO2 tank, which has three different rotation positions. See the video captures from the Climate 101 video below, with my annotations. Note the position of the safety valve (1) and the label (2) change (click images for HD resolution):
Climate 101 scene @1:01 –
Climate 101 scene @1:05 –
Climate 101 scene @1:09 –
(UPDATE 10:27AM : spotted by commenter “mkelly” – note the thermometers are reversed in the 1:05 video capture versus the 1:09 video capture – note the green card mark on the thermometer scale as explained further in the story) So clearly, this wasn’t done in one take. By itself, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it did make me wonder why for such a simple sequence (putting the tube in the jar) they had to have three separate edits.
Such a simple thing could surely have been accomplished in a single take. All they would have had to do was zoom the camera in/out as the actor did the work, then take the appropriate scenes from the single shot to the final cut. They could have done several continuous takes and chosen the best one, it just seemed odd they had to keep moving/rotating the bottle to do it. It made me wonder if the experiment maybe didn’t go so well and they had to keep trying it.
These scene discontinuities made me curious, and it made me look further to see what else might have been edited in such a way to reveal that what looks like a continuous flow of scenes…actually isn’t.
I’m glad I did.
Now I know there will be lots of arguments about whether this experiment is a valid test of CO2 greenhouse theory or not. It is deceptively simple, and it fits with the claims of it is “high school physics” made by Al Gore and others before and during the 24 hour Climate Reality Project. His specific claim was:
“The deniers claim that it’s some kind of hoax and that the global scientific community is lying to people,” he said. “It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics.” – Al Gore in an interview with MNN 9/14/2011
Let’s put the arguments about applicability of the experiment aside for the moment, and just concentrate on what was presented in the experiment section of the video, because there is plenty to look at in the video with a skeptical eye.
One thing that caught my eye after I noticed the edits with the CO2 tank positions changing was the split screen scene with the thermometers side by side, one with temperature rising faster than the other. It is located starting at 1:10 in the video continuing to 1:17 it is the longest “continuous” scene in experiment section of the video, though we all know that thermometers don’t jump up in spurts like that.
I figured at first they just cut down a longer continuous scene, done with two cameras, so that it fit into the time allotted and then rotated from horizontal and edited them in split screen, which are tried and true techniques, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that.
But thanks to the fact that this was shot in HD video, and because I was able to expand the video to full resolution outside of the web page format bounding, I noticed something that gave me reason to doubt the veracity of this section of video. I suspected it had been faked, but it would take me some time and materials to prove it.
One thing that struck me was how clean the image of the two thermometers was. Remember this is an experiment where the two thermometers are placed inside two glass jars. A proper experimental procedure would be to film them while they are inside of the jars, experiencing the conditions of the experiment, in fact, they were presented just like that with a closeup at 1:02 in the video, you can actually read the thermometer scale:
Note this video capture at 1:02 looks quite different from the video at 1:17 showing the thermometers split screen. There are several differences:
1. Throughout the video from 1:00 to 1:20, the thermometers in the jar are shown horizontal, the split screen at 1:17 shows the thermometers vertical.
2. There’s a greenish-yellow background in the split screen at 1:10 to 1:17 which isn’t seen anywhere else in the experiment video at all.
3. The split screen thermometer scene has not a hint of the optical distortion seen at 1:02 in the video. Note that the thermometer scale is distorted by the glass, and if you look closely by expanding the video capture above to full resolution by clicking on it, you’ll see that the tick marks are distorted differently all along the scale. This is what you would expect from thick glass like the jar is made of.
I considered these possibilities for each point above:
1. That was editing to show the thermometers side by side, perfectly acceptable if the edit was done from combining two separate video streams filmed simultaneously on two cameras while the temperature was rising inside the jar. Cutting down the time is also acceptable, which would account for the “spurts”
2. They may have placed a paper or cardboard background behind the thermometers while filming in the jars to make the scales more visible and to remove visual clutter, but didn’t show it in the video. While using such backgrounds is understandable, not showing that you have done so is a bit of a no-no, but it isn’t a deal killer.
3. While I thought about it a lot, I couldn’t reconcile the glass caused optical distortion issue. Why was it missing from the split screen thermometer scene? I decided I couldn’t answer the question without getting my hands on the objects and re-creating the optical situation with a camera.
That took some doing, because Al’s “high school physics” experiment didn’t come with a bill of materials and list of suppliers. So, in my spare time I started looking for the jars, the thermometers, and the globes so that I could exactly recreate the experiment scene.
I found them all, thanks to Google visual image search and Ebay.
Replicating the scene – materials:
Anchor Hocking Cookie Jar with Lid http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=187543
Geratherm Oral Thermometer Non-Mercury
http://www.pocketnurse.com/Geratherm-Oral-Thermometer-Non-Mercury/productinfo/06-74-5826/
Globe Coin Bank
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150661053386
It took a few days for everything to arrive from the three different suppliers, here they are all together on my desk at work, I actually bought two sets:
What I wanted to do was to recreate the closeup shot like we see in the video at 1:02 to see if I saw similar optical distortions, then see if there was any way that I could get a clear closeup view of the thermometer scale like we see in the split screen at 1:10-1:17.
My theory was that the thermometers aren’t actually in the jar when they were photographed for the split screen.
Checking for optical aberrations:
I used a piece of double-sided foam tape to affix the thermometer:
Here’s a closeup of the thermometer affixed to the globe. Note how clear and distortion free the scale is.
Here’s my attempts at photography of the thermometer inside the jar. I had a lot of trouble getting focused on the thermometer scale due to the autofocus mechanism being distracted by the glass which is in the foreground. Note that you can see the optical aberrations caused by the glass on the thermometer scale. The scale is not straight and the tick marks are also distorted.
Here’s another photo – I could not get the macro view focus right due to the glass confusing the autofocus sensor:
I decided that my camera was inadequate for this particular task, so I called in a someone who has a professional camera with a high quality professional lens capable of manual focus and macro function. It is a far cry from my little Kodak Easy Share Z1012 used to make the photos above:
- Camera – Canon 1D Mark IV
- Lens – Canon MACRO 100mm 1:2.8 L IS USM
Just as I did with my clunky little Kodak camera, the photographer had a lot of trouble getting a clear shot through the glass. Below is a collection of shots done by that photographer at different distances and focus settings on the professional camera. Note that I also rotated the jar to see is different sections made anything clearer. Click any thumbnail to enlarge it (warning large download ~ 10MB each)
The professional photography setup also could not capture an image through the glass jar that looked as clear as what was shown by my photo with the thermometer outside the glass, or as clear as the split screen images presented in the Climate 101 video from 1:10 to 1:17. I invite readers to inspect the images above carefully, examine the EXIF data of the unedited original JPEG images presented at the native resolution of the Canon 1D camera at 4296×3264 pixels and examine for yourselves if it is possible to shoot the thermometer scale through the glass and get an image that is free from any distortions.
Neither I nor the professional photographer could get a clear image through the jar glass that matched the clarity of the thermometer scales seen in the split screen, so I am forced to conclude that in the split screen scene from 1:10 to 1:17 on the Climate 101 video, the thermometers are not in the jars.
But wait, there’s more.
The background behind the thermometers:
Remember point 2 above where I was concerned about the greenish-yellow background in the split screen at 1:10 to 1:17 which isn’t seen anywhere else in the experiment video from 1:00 to 1:20? Well, there’s something odd about that too. The background appears identical in both sides of the split screen. What first tipped me off was a speck on the thermometer.
Here’s a video capture from the start of the split screen sequence. I’ve highlighted something I found curious, a speck on the thermometer scale that appears on both thermometers:
At first I thought it was dust, but then I realized that wasn’t possible, as dust would NOT appear identically on both thermometers in the split screen. I surmised it might be a manufacturing defect, printed on the scale. Fortunately, I have two thermometers from the same manufacturer that I can compare to. Here’s my closeup of them:
Nope, no speck, so it isn’t a manufacturing defect common to all thermometers.
========================================================
Side note: Note above in the thermometer closeup how the scales are offset, this is due to the manufacturer hand calibrating these glass thermometers by trimming the card with the scale printed on it so 98.6 lines up with the top of the fluid line when the thermometers are placed in the temperature test well. Glassblowing is an inexact science, and each thermometer must be calibrated by a technician, then sealed. You can see how the cards don’t match here:
We can see this in the Climate 101 video also:
The green section of the card for the scale is clearly different lengths as part of the trimming process for calibration, so clearly we have two different thermometers.
========================================================
OK, back to the main issue.
In addition to the identical speck on the two thermometer scales, I noted several other identical specks and aberrations in the split screen video. I’ve listed them by number on two video captures below from two different times in the video (click images to enlarge for best viewing):
Climate 101 video @1:10 –
Climate 101 video @1:16 –
I have 8 labeled points that are identical between each frame @1:10 and @ 1:16 In fact they are identical on every video frame from 1:10 to 1:17. The only thing that changes is the blue liquid in the thermometer tube.
- Dots on left top glass edge match exactly
- Speck on right top glass edge matches exactly
- Smudge/discoloration near number “38” on scale matches exactly
- Speck in background matches exactly
- Speck near number 98 on scale matches exactly
- Tick mark pattern near number “36” matches exactly
- Smudge in background matches exactly
- Reflective highlight in glass tube matches exactly
- While not numbered, note how the background shading matches exactly
Conclusions
With 9 points of agreement between the two images through all video frames there is only one possible conclusion:
The split screen is showing the same piece of video, shot by a single camera and edited to make it appear as two separate pieces of video with two separate thermometers. All that is required is to apply edits along different portions of the timeline. It is the same video shot by the same camera on each side of the split screen.
Summary of what was discovered:
- The video of the experiment showing filling of the jar with CO2 was shot in multiple takes because the CO2 cylinder has three different positions between 1:00 and 1:10. It suggests the experiment didn’t go smoothly and had to be repeated.
- The thermometers in the split screen appear not to have been filmed through the glass of the jars, because the split screen video contains no optical aberrations of any kind. Neither myself nor the photographer with professional gear was able to get clear shots through the jar glass that equaled the clarity of the thermometer scales shown in the split screen video. This strongly suggests the thermometers were never in the jars for the split screen video showing temperature rise.
- The greenish-yellow background in the split screen at 1:10 to 1:17 isn’t seen anywhere else in the experiment video at all, and not in the jars, suggesting it was used only for that scene, which also suggests the thermometers were never in the jars for the split screen video sequence.
- The video of the split screen shows two identical backgrounds, and two identical thermometers with 9 points of exact agreement in the backgrounds and the thermometers. Clearly the split screen contains two copies of the same video from one camera, edited in the timeline to make the liquid in the thermometer rise at different rates.
The only conclusion one can make from these four points is that the video of the “simple experiment” is a complete fabrication done in post production.
I’ve double checked my work, and I’ve had other people look at this video and the points I make and they see the same issues. They concur the video of the experiment was fabricated using editing techniques too.
While everyone can make mistakes (I know, I’ve made some big ones myself), this isn’t a case of a simple mistake, its a production that had to have been screened and approved before releasing it. It is mind blowing that this video, which was intended to be shown to millions of people (recall that Mr. Gore’s claim was 8.6 million views), was not clearly identified as an illustration or artistic license and not a true record of an experiment if that was their intent. Yet, they invite viewers to try replicating it themselves.
This level of fabrication on something that is so simple makes me wonder. Mr. Gore claimed in the MNN interview on 9/14 that:
“It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics.”
Why then, does Mr. Gore’s organization go to such lengths to fabricate the presentation of the “simple high school physics experiment” they say proves the issue in that venue? Perhaps they couldn’t get the experiment to work properly using the materials chosen? Maybe it might not be so easy to perform at home after all? Maybe a few controls are necessary such as the Mythbusters team used in the video below. Why else would they need to fake it in post?
Even if Mr. Gore and his team wanted to claim “artistic license” for editing the video for the experiment, why would they do so if it is so easy to replicate and do yourself? The narrator, Bill Nye the Science Guy actually invites people to do so at about 0:46 in the video. Why not simply do the experiment and record the results for all to see? Of course a one word lower third caption on the video at that point saying “DRAMATIZATION” would be all that was needed to separate a real experiment from one fabricated in post production – but they didn’t do that. I’ve watched the film several times, checked the audio, and the credits at the end. There is no mention nor notice of any dramatization regarding the “simple experiment” segment that I can find.
If Mr. Gore’s team actually performed the experiment and has credible video documenting the success of his simple “high school physics” exercise, I suggest that in the interest of clarity, now is the time to make it available.
About the experiment:
So far all I’ve concentrated on is the stagecraft I observed. It’s clearly obvious that the split screen scene with thermometers was not filmed inside the cookie jars. I’ve established that it is a staged production from start to finish and the split screen of two thermometers but was edited from a continuous video of a single thermometer with temperature rising then frame sequences were inserted out of order to compose each side of the split screen.
Of course the whole Climate 101 CO2 experiment is questionable to begin with, because it doesn’t properly emulate the physical mechanisms involved in heating our planet. Note the heat lamps used, likely one of these based on the red color we see in the lamp fixture:
Heat lamps like this produce visible red light and short wave infrared (SWIR is 1.4-3 µm wavelength). As we know from the classic greenhouse effect, glass blocks infrared so none of the SWIR was making it into the cookie jar. All that would do is heat the glass. John Tyndall’s 1850’s experiments used rock salt windows, which transmit infrared, for exactly that reason. Adding insult to injury, CO2 has no SWIR absorption bands. What CO2 does have though is higher density than air. The gas in the cookie jars was primarily heated by conduction in contact with the SWIR-heated glass.
Moreover, the CO2 injection in one cookie jar would raise it from 0.04% CO2 to very near 100% CO2 which is hardly comparable to the atmosphere going from 0.03% to 0.04% CO2 during the industrial age. Gore’s team provides no indication of the concentration of CO2 in the jar, that’s hardly scientific. Here’s how current greenhouse theory works:
All that said, in principle it does demonstrate that CO2 absorbs long wave infrared (LWIR 8–15 µm). Energy would likely be transmitted into the gas through conduction with the heated glass (which would likely get very hot) and it would then re-radiate inside the cookie jar as LWIR, and cause the CO2 jar to heat up faster and higher. But this is hardly news. The LWIR absorptive characteristics of many different gases under different pressures and mixtures was experimentally verified in thousands of experiments performed by Tyndall 150 years ago.
This characteristic of CO2 is the theory of operation for millions of CO2 sensors routinely employed in commercial buildings with high occupancy rates to determine when ventilation fans should turn on and off to exhaust the CO2 buildup from a lot of people breathing the same air in a confined space.
So while some might say the stagecraft involved in the Climate 101 presentation wasn’t dishonest it was most assuredly staged with great literary license and dramatization of an effect that was experimentally verified elsewhere with far greater precision and attention to replicating the real world.
I should make it clear that I’m not doubting that CO2 has a positive radiative heating effect in our atmosphere, due to LWIR re-radiation, that is well established by science. What I am saying is that Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality Project did a poor job of demonstrating an experiment, so poor in fact that they had to fabricate portions of the presentation, and that the experiment itself (if they actually did it, we can’t tell) would show a completely different physical mechanism than what actually occurs in our atmosphere.
If Mr. Gore wants to convince the world, he’d do far better at emulating the Mythbusters TV show; show all the materials, steps, measurement, and results like they do.
As it stands, the video fabrications in the “simple experiment” by Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality Project is no better than the stagecraft done by Senator Tim Wirth turning off the air conditioning (to make it hot in the room) when Dr. James Hansen testified before lawmakers in June 1988 about CO2 being a problem.
The public, and especially young budding scientific minds, deserve better than stagecraft.
Of course LWIR radiative CO2 heat retention is only a small part of the global warming issue. There are still raging debates over climate sensitivity, uncertainty, feedbacks, and most recently whether clouds provide positive or negative feedbacks in our atmosphere.
But from my point of view, if everything is so certain, the science so settled, why does Mr. Gore resort to these cheap stagecraft tricks to convince people?
UPDATE: In comments, Mariss Freimanis runs a Photoshop difference analysis, proving the split screen image is the same. He emailed his analysis to me, shown below.
From Mariss
1) I have attached ‘analysis_before’ which is a cropped shot of your original with it’s circles and arrows.
2) The ‘analysis_right_thermo’ is the right thermometer overlaid already positioned to overlay the the left thermometer.
3) The ‘image_analysis_after’ shows the results of subtracting away the right overlay from the underlying left image.
Comments:
1) The attached jpegs are reasonably sized in the sense that they don’t throw away any information. The ‘after’ image black area still contains some residual ‘non-black’ background noise from the subtraction process. This is largely due to my choice of a times-4 repixelation of the original. The image offset was not precisely 0.25 pixels so it reflects some residual image alignment errors.
2) This method reveals minute differences between two images. For the background to be as featureless as it is, it requires both thermometer’s reflections to be identically lit from the exact same light source angle (parallel ray source), their seemingly identical mottled green backgrounds to actually be identical and of course, the thermometers would have to have exactly the same ‘fingerprint’ flaws. It would take one hell of a telephoto lens to see both thermometers from exactly the same perspective. This is inconceivable.
3) The 0.25 pixel offset drift is significant because it reveals the same thermometer was used to sequentially film the composite image. Little things change with time such as thermal expansion. It marks the passage of time. That drift indicates they weren’t filmed simultaneously.
For those that might be concerned about the images above not being full resolution HD and having annotations, here’s the before and after difference image at 1:17 in the video:
Note the only thing that changes is the fluid level and the reflection of it (thin line to the right) in the glass tube. This proves the “result” split screen is the same image, not two thermometers showing results.
Why didn’t mythbusters ad water vapor as a GHG?
Gore faked the video, Why am I not surprised? I have to admit that I didn’t watch any of his faked science in his broadcast.
Glad you did Anthony.
One other piece to show editing are the globes themselves.
In your first clip (@1:01), look at the size of the island in red – the one on the left is larger.
Same for the one @ 1:05.
But for the one @ 1:09, the globes have been swapped – the one with the larger island is on the right.
That’s also proof that it wasn’t one shot.
Whoever was doing continuity for editing messed up, eh?
Holy Cow! It took me more minutes than usual to read this WUWT article. One of the best I can remember, mostly because it was unexpected!
How longer can this hoax last?
Ecotretas
Bill Nye, front and center.
=============
AaH! Quite. A Fake indeed. May I also point out that of the three occasions that the ‘Jars’ appear in two of the scenes the ‘CO2’ pipe has been left in the top, dislodging the lid and allowing warm gas to escape to be replaced by cold/ambient air. Either that or the build up of heat was so rapid and serious that an injection of expanded, cooled gas was needed to slow the rise of the thermometer down to allow us to see it. I’m sure there are many other good scientific reasons for this.
Ha ha, well done. Can’t say that I’m surprized about this deception and lack of scientific understanding from the Gore team.
Excellent debunking of a bunch of bunk.
The other obvious indication the thermometer shots are fake is that the section(s) of the thermometer in the close-up are not resting on the globe coin bank; other vidcaps show the thermometers are resting on the globe in that specific section of the thermometer body.
REPLY: I considered that, then considered that they may have needed to place the background behind the thermometers to get the proper contrast for the shot. The experiment still would have been valid without the globes, so long as the thermometers were actually in the jars, but it appears they were not – Anthony
Wow, you’ve gone far beyond the call of duty. I just rolled my eyes, figured the closeups of the thermometers were out-of-jar and moved on.
I think it’s time to use the “f….” word, and I don’t mean fabrication.
No one denies that CO2 causes some warming.
The British Royal Society estimates it is .4 ° C per doubling of CO2. It is the feedbacks where the bodies are buried.
There are studies which indicate that these feedbacks are negative and actually diminish this puny warming.
As far as the “experiment” the one jar should have air without any CO2 and the other should have 380/1,000,000 parts. The difference would be unmeasurable.
Despite what some people say “size matters”. The correct fix would be different for 10 ° C per doubling of CO2 or 1 or .1 or .01 or .001.
The supposed fix isn’t painless and the purported disease had better be terrible to endure it.
Why do chemotherapy for a pimple and will chemotherapy even work on pimples ?
The difference between Good Science and Bad Science. Or reasonable experiment and circus side show.
Glass will transmit some NIR, but not the longer wavelengths. Would take a very simple test to measure the temperature of the glass itself. I have not done the test, but I think CO2 will conduct heat better than the standard 80/20 atmosphere. And 100% CO2 as you point out, is hardly reasonable. High school science? Al gets an “F”.
Dear Anthony, – What you have exposed is a serious criminal fraud. Gore was asking for money throughout the Bore-a-thon. Even though a real experiment would have shown some warming from additional CO2 in the jar, it would not have shown the over-dramatic increase faked in the purported experiment. You have kept meticulous records of your research: I hope you will be able to go to a police station, show your results and report the fraud. Then it will be up to them to decide whether Gore is as untouchable as he thinks he is. You could add, for good measure, the fabrication of the viewership figures for the Bore-a-thon. There’s no cost to you: if they decide to do nothing, they have to give you some sort of reason, but if they decide to involve the State’s Attorney-General and prosecute, then that will be a welcome step towards bringing to an end the repeated scientific frauds on which so much of the climate-extremist case is founded. Very well done indeed! Now, please, follow it through. – Christopher
Dear Christopher Monckton,
Thank you, but I suspect the court of public opinion will be far more problematic to Mr. Gore’s organization than a court of law.
So they set up an experiment that was doomed to fail, not because of an error in the greenhouse effect calculations, but because the experiment was not a reasonable representation of the greenhouse effect.
When the experiment failed, they faked it. Ouch! Shooting yourself in the foot must be painful.
Experiment replication is the hallmark of science, well done! Though I’m a little confused why this experiment is thought to replicate anything in the real world? What’s next using a snowglobe to show that earthquakes cause snowstorms? What’s up with that?
Great work Anthony … new spin on an old joke: How can you tell Al Gore (and his gang) is lying … his lips are moving
Great job Anthony. Strong evidence that they had to retake the shots several times until they got the results they wanted. Hardly scientific.
I would like to add that the planet Mars is also an ideal ‘experimental testbed’ to test the so-called “CO2 warming” hypothesis (because there is no pesky nitrogen, oxygen or water vapor to complicate the issue). Mars’ atmosphere is 95% CO2. Though much thinner, it contains almost 30 times as much CO2 per surface area unit, than Earth. Yet, it has virtually no greenhouse warming effect: the mean surface temperature is very close to the theoretical black body temperature of 210 Kelvins.
Mars Facts http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
Visual geometric albedo 0.170 (Earth 0.367)
Solar irradiance (W/m2) 589.2 (Earth 1367.6)
Black-body temperature 210.1 K (Earth 254.3 K)
Average temperature: ~210 K (Earth 287 K)
The warmists say that all we need is a “trace” of CO2 to create catastrophic warming. If so, then why doesn’t the 30-times more abundant CO2 on Mars have any significant warming effect on that planet? Based on Al’s “high-school” research it should have ‘terraformed’ Mars by now.
The old co2 in one container with a light source is a normal middle school science project. The truth is the earth has no lid, so the greenhouse effect is more like a greenhouse with no roof. So to be more accurate the two containers must have no lids. The one with CO2 will warm only marginally over the the other, not several degrees as the experiment shows.
We live in a greenhouse effect, not a greenhouse.
What about the lid being propped open on the jar with the CO2 injection tube while the other was essentially sealed? Surely this has to effect the experiment as well.
As Abraham Lincoln once said…
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Thinking about it, why would the thermometers show temperatures in the range of the human body (~37ºC,~98ºF) ?
The average temperature of the Earth is below 15ºC, but that doesn’t impress much, does it?
Ecotretas
Anthony at time 0:57 the right hand jar getting the CO2 has a thermometer that “points ” down to the left as we face the video. At time 1:09 the thermometers have reversed and now the “point” down one is on the left and the tube is in the “straight” one.
Yes, Henry3. The thermometers have been swapped over – see the green ends?
Couldn’t he just put a mouse in the jar with 100% CO2 and say CO2 kills!
Bravo Anthony. If Gore had a conscience he would be embarrassed. Since he does not appear to be embarrassed…
In the first three pictures the angle the two thermometers lie at also changes. They have also been moved.
yes
henrythethird says:
September 28, 2011 at 8:21 am
Great catch – Anthony missed it! Anthony’s globe is also different – we need a close of his too.
BTW, the island is Borneo.
Clearly whereever the globes were made, the manufacturing standards were not very high. Hmm, I wonder if there’s lead in them. That could be a whole separate line of criticism.
Geeze Anthony, I hope you never get a hold of my tax returns. Keep up the good work.
This is a very damaging evaluation. RETIRED ENGINEER brought up the issue of the absorption of energy by the glass container. Interesting. Does the glass container reasonably represent anything in the climate model? Should the container not be perfectly transparent to all bands of radiation? How does the glass alter the radiation emitted within the container?. What is the spectrum of the source light? Why is there no water vapor in the container? I’d love to see the result with H2O(g) compared with CO2(g).
Incredible fraud.
Kind of odd that the black CO2 cannister found its way very close to the “warmed” jar. I kind of wonder if they had trouble and decided to fudge the results by placing an object that would absorb some heat from the lamp and radiate it back to the jar. Perhaps even that failed and they had to fall back on a dramatization. I’m curious now… does this experiment really work as shown even if it doesn’t tell us anything about our atmosphere?
There is no way this could be called an “experiment” – it’s a demonstration. And even before Gore, demonstrations like this were being shown to students on courses like “Introduction to Science for Arts Students”. No mention of the Scientific Method – or of Feynmann’s “leaning over backwards … to find other causes that might explain your results.”
There are significant differences between the properties of air and carbon dioxide – e.g. specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity, absorption spectra etc. – and no attempt was made to isolate the effects of each. (And they would have needed to prove that water vapour wasn’t messing-up the experiment!) It would have been interesting to see the experiment repeated with a range of different lamps and suitable instruments to measure the spectra.
That said, I don’t have a big problem with this part of the GHG theory. It’s the positive feedbacks that I am sceptical about.
I expect Gore will think he has done nothing wrong. This is the same person who freely admits that he thinks that it is ok to lie.
Thank you for submitting the manuscript “Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video, Simple Experiment” to Geophysical Research Letters. Based on the review, I believe that the article requires a major revision, and therefore I cannot accept this version of the manuscript for publication.
Even without the editing, this experiment is debunked:
http://myweb.cableone.net/carlallen/Site/Greenhouse%20In%20A%20Bottle-Reconsidered.html
Gosh next you’ll be telling me that Al moved the data around in C02 and temperature graphs to show that Temp follows CO2 and not vica versa. Oh wait…………..
The light on the right side sure looks significantly brighter to me than the light on the left.
Bill Nye, the
sciencepolitics guy!Must be embarrasing for Mr Gore.
Or?
Nice work. Man, that must have been fun!
Congratulations Mr. Watts on such fantastic forensic work. One additional point. The colour of the liquid in the thermometer tube on the ‘proof’ picture seems to be different from that in any of the other thermometers. As it would be rather difficult to hold the temperature at the required level for a photographic shot outside of the jars, is it possible that the liquid in the tube was re-touched also? More forensic work I’m afraid!
I figured Al would have used rectal thermometers
Wow! Impressive detective work. Thank you.
Further proof of repeat takes: between Climate 101 scene @1:05 and Climate 101 scene @1:09, the thermometers switch jars. The thermometer with the longer green section that’s perched on a tilt on the globe is in the jar on the viewer’s right in 1:05 then the jar on the viewer’s left in 1:09.
In this internet age, a fake will be found out. Good job.
One question though, could the thermometers have been photographed clearly if they were vertical in the glass jars? That position would have relieved some of the distortion caused by the curve of the glass. I think they would not be as clear as shown, but in the interest of thoroughness perhaps it should be verified.
At least the globe showed Greenland with some ice.
For 2. in the Summary:
Heating the glass in the experiment would induce thermal currents that would be moving distortions on the thermometer shots. This is why viewing the stars at night from the comfort of your home through a window is wishful thinking and an even bigger disappointment. Don’t think every kid, me included, who got tired of shivering in the cold dark night didn’t try it.
Injecting CO2 from the compressed cylinder would be to keep refreshing the gas in the jar, and the temperature in the jar would become that of the temperature of the CO2 as it left the tube. The heated glass would interact even stronger with the constant temp of the piped gas, and thermals would be more evident as moving distortions. For tis reason, I suspect the non-CO2 injected jar (lid closed)would be the one that actually warmed, thus the switcheroo.
There is little attempt at control or calibration in Mr. Gores simple High School physics experiment.
The lid is ajar in the CO2 piped jar, and there is no sensor inside each jar to record the CO2 concentration, or RH. Bad. No science teacher is going to let students off that easy.
Gore flunks again.
Specific heat of CO2 is somewhat lower than that of dry air. Exposed to the same heating power, its temperature would rise more quickly.
CO2 in the one jar would tend to displace all the air, being more dense. We have no way of knowing the CO2 concentration at any time during the “demonstration”.
There are gross misrepresentations of the magnitude of “greenhouse” gases. e.g. @1:30
And that’s where I stopped listening and watching. That’s beyond nonsense.
The guy in the lab coat at the start, standing behind a jar CO-squared made me think that this video must be a parody of some sort. But no … it got stupid beyond parody.
I believe Gore has put his FCC license at risk with this apparently fraudulent display to rake in the cash over the public airwaves.
Ha ha, this is great fun:
at 1.04 the Left thermometer level and the Right thermometer is sloped,
while at 1.09 the Left thermometer is sloped and the Right is level.
Any more for any more?
The heat lamps spill red light. Why don’t we see the white on the temperature scale with a red tint?
Anthony:
I guess you missed all the demonstrations about the effectiveness of Dual pane windows, window films, and solar screens where they used identical heat lamp set ups to demonstrate the differences between untreated and their product. It was a big thing at home improvement stores and conventions.
But I guess as you say it must have been an optical illusion that the temperatures behind the glass were changing if glass stops the IR from a heat lamp!
Al Gore is a confirmed fraud but you did not have to add an obvious error of your own to show his problems!
I am so glad that I never had Mr. Watts or Mr. McIntyre checking my expenses claim forms.
glacierman says:
September 28, 2011 at 8:55 am
Even without the editing, this experiment is debunked:
http://myweb.cableone.net/carlallen/Site/Greenhouse%20In%20A%20Bottle-Reconsidered.html
**************************
This video is well worth watching. If you have time watch it.
It’s main point is:
1) The CO2 warming is caused by the fact that it heats more when it is compressed. When the bottle is vented the warming goes away.
I would like to perform this experiment myself.
Even granting some artistic license, the rates of temperature rise the “thermonmeters” are showing during the experiment are much too fast given the rate of energy input from those lamps.
If Q=m*Cp*dT then I have a problem with this.
Q is stated as equal. accepted
Cp or CO2 is .844 J/g C
Cp of air is 1.01 J/g C
The jar according Anthony’s link is one gallon cookie jar.
one gallon is 3.785 liters
one mole is 22.4 liters
3.785/22.4 is .1689
CO2 mole mass is 44.01g/mol
Air mole mass is 28.97 g/mol
CO2
Q= (.1689*44.01) * .844* dT
Q/6.2736=dT
Air
Q= (.1689*28.97)*1.01 * dT
Q/4.9419 = dT
For the same amount of time and Q being equal I cannot see how the temperature of the CO2 could be higher. Please show me the error of my ways.
My first question was in regards to the CO2 concentrations in each jar. Obviously, this experiment didn’t test a change from 280/ppm to 380/ppm, so the entire
experimentpublicity stunt is invalid just on that standpoint.A second question: Why not use digital thermometers with those remote sensor wires instead? Someone already mentioned the glass jars were heated by the lamps. Is there a noticable difference in the way each jar transferred heat? And didn’t the thermometers themselves become directly heated?
Shouldn’t the lamps been something other than IR heatlamps as well? That’s not very representative of the earth. The jars should have been slowly rotating, instead of having the same face to the lamp continuously.
This was a poor
experimentpublicity stunt even by grade school standards. And since the earth doesn’t reside in a greenhouse, it’s not even relevant.Bill Nye’s video (who btw, only earned a BS degree) begins with a labelled “CO2” jar in which the 2 is a superscript rather than the chemical correct subscript. One need look no further than this to realize they are incompetent to even be discussing these issues.
LOL. And who knew the ambient temperature of a cookie jar was 98F?
(a) Must be on account of the expanded scales (resolution) on a rectal/oral thermometer; greater movement of the expanding/indicating liquid during the demonstration … a regular thermo not so much … plus (b) the variation (accuracy) from thermo to thermo of rectal/oral thermometers can be expected can be expected to be much less due to individual calibrations that are performed … a ‘regular’ thermo from Home Depot or Wal-Mart again not so much …
.
“Thank you, but I suspect the court of public opinion will be far more problematic to Mr. Gore’s organization than a court of law.”
Ah, but the public will never hear of it, ergo no court. If there were investigations ongoing, THEN the public would hear of it. News loves a scandal.
Your comments with respect to the CO2 bottles are irrelevant because the tank has a twist nozzle. One of the scenes shows the actor twisting the valve. Since the entire tank may be moved when the gas is turned on or off, it makes sense that the label orientation will vary.
As for the basic concept of the experiment, try this. Place one thermometer in direct sun light and another, right next to it, in shade. (You can use your hand or a leaf.) You will get a 20F to 40F difference. Their “experiment” would measure direct absorbed energy and not the temperature of the “air”.
And yes, I agree that they simply showed a single thermometer.
While I wouldn’t expect seeing the actual experiment in an informational/propaganda film like this, not only doesn’t the experiment work as advertised, the CO2 level is seriously out of proportion. To accurately model the atmosphere, you’d have to increase the CO2 by a scant 100 to 200 ppm. Instead of a big hose, the CO2 should have been added with a very, VERY small syringe.
All one needs to is watch the video that Glacierman linked to. It has nothing to do with aberrations of the thermometer readings or anything else. It is so obvious once one understands what the real world basic physics are, the Gore “experiment” is worse than a carnival shell game.
WATCH THE VIDEO!!
http://myweb.cableone.net/carlallen/Site/Greenhouse%20In%20A%20Bottle-Reconsidered.html
Al Gore has now proven himself to be an official climate scientist with that demonstration.
On a side note, I’d never actually watched any of the climate reality crap – I’m amazed at the density of the disinformation in that video.
As always great work.
Once a snake oil salesman always a snake oil salesman:
“Al Gore has warned that there is now clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/28/al-gore-proof-climate-change
Of course the shyster cannot provide the proof because even as slippery as he is there is none.
It was a very convincing video for the uninformed. The fact that much of its content was complete BS is obvious to anyone with any real knowledge on climate change – we can be sure there will be lots of stuff like this in the next IPCC report.
Deliberate fraud is another matter – we all know politicians are deceitful, but this is something special even for someone like Gore. Doesn’t he have enough money yet?
Anthony,
Some more ideas:
Stopping at 1:06 in the video, it seems like the right lamp is more intense than the left one. If we see the top black side of the lamp, in each case there seems to be two holes, one bigger than the other. On the left side they are both intense red, while on the right they are not. Same theory is confirmed around 1:04, when the lamps are out and there is no red; slow forwarding shows it going red as the lamps are connected. They are again visible at 1:17, and there it seems that a tiny red spot is visible on the bottom of the right lamp. Reflection from the CO2 bottle is also visible, but it’s a long shot, given the angle. Might the lamp be lower on the right side?
While at 1:06, we can also see the background reflected on the black part of the lamp. The person filming is clearly visible, as is the space itself. Some “CSI” enhancement might reveal other things…
Ecotretas
(a) Can you cite those specific CFRs (Code of Federal Regulations) he might have violated?
(b) I don’t think Algore has in his name any TV or radio station licenses; internet broadcasting (at the moment) requires no ‘licensing’ from any ‘authorities’ (at least in the USA).
.
What is really disturbing…..is that there are adults, college students…….too many people
…that will actually fall for it….and never read this post
Well done, Anthony.
If you are going to continue your investigative activities (you will!), please do a post asking for contributions to buy a new digital camera. Maybe you would get enough to fill those glass jars with your favorite cookies.
I didn’t watch any of the Gore-a-thon — were he to visit my town, I would leave.
————————–
klem says @ 8:40 …
I agree entirely, but one small note: The effect ought to be called the “atmospheric effect” because a greenhouse works by stopping circulation and Earth’s atmosphere near the surface (the tropopause) is defined by the natural circulation caused by differences in heating, densities, and the like.
I also normally question the “doublings” implied by these “experiments” in the sense of human’s use of carbon based fuels. For example, the concentration is now about 400 ppm. Can we make it to 800? The next doubling would be to 1,600. Think of demand, costs, substitutions, efficiency, and all the other issues involved. Mother Earth may act to get us to those numbers but I doubt that human activities will.
What an outstanding piece of work Anthony. I will show it to my wife, a middle school math and science teacher. This could be a object great lesson for all young scientists on honesty and integrity. Where do I send the check to help you pay for those supplies? And no my middle name is not “big oil”.
Excellent! Very Smart.
Anthony wrote: Thank you, but I suspect the court of public opinion will be far more problematic to Mr. Gore’s organization than a court of law.
It probably isn’t worth your while, but in a court of law you can establish actual guilt, and in a civil suit you can hurt him in the wallet directly; furthermore, in discovery you can find out and publicize how many actual donors there were on whose behalf you are bringing suit. There’s probably a law firm willing to take this on spec.
Oops – did I get one stuck in the spam filt?
CFR to me stands for Code of Federal Regulations, as found here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/ vs the Public Laws: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plaws/
Thanks in advance mods. _Jim
.
I’m sorry you spent so much time debunking such an obviously edited video. The scene was probably shot a dozen times with different camera angles and lighting then edited as a commercial. It was meant to illustrate how to do this misguided “experiment” not show the actual results. This analysis reminds me of the 9/11 deniers that point to pixels in grainy handheld video stills as proof for whatever theory they have.
I would think an unedited video of this simple (minded) experiment as demonstrated would do more to proving the point.
REPLY: They could have avoided any criticism by simply placing the word “DRAMATIZATION” anywhere in that video segment showing the experiment, but they didn’t and they invited viewers to try it themselves. – Anthony
Excellent!
Just a couple of things not mentioned yet:
In normal writing, we often write carbon dioxide as CO2. However the 2 should actually be subscripted. In the video, it is superscripted on the bottle. That does not inspire confidence in the rest of the video.
“Moreover, the CO2 injection in one cookie jar would raise it from 0.004% CO2 to very near 100% CO2 which is hardly comparable to the atmosphere going from 0.003% to 0.004% CO2 during the industrial age.”
The above numbers are off by a factor of 10 and should read 0.03% and 0.04%.
I have tried to access ANYTHING in reference to this video from Al Gore’s fake science site.
It seems that the science fakers at “climaterealityproject” got caught with their proverbial hands in the cookie Jar and shut the video down.
Bill Nye and Science Lies.
Is the video cached anywhere besides Anthony’s HD.
May need it later at Lord Monckton’s dream lawsuit at The Hague.
REPLY: It is still up at Vimeo, and works via the embedded video in the story above. It also works here:
http://climaterealityproject.org/video/climate-101/
I suspect it is network or computer problems on your end – Anthony
Anthony
The BBC did a similar experimet around the time of Copenhagen. Have you seen that? I am sure that it must be on Youtube. It is difficult to see how such uncontrolled experiments would influence anyone with a scientific mind, but then again they are not aimed at that market, but rather just pure propaganda aimed at the masses.
The Gore experiment appears an obvious fake. The temp of the CO2 from the cylinder would depress the temperature, at least for a long time and as you say the heat lamp produces EMR of the wrong wave length!
Gore should be challenged to repeat the very same experiment live on TV (but with the thermometers kept in the jar). If the experiment did not work, and was not REAL, it would be interesting to hear his explanation as to why he posted this material on his 24 hours of REALITY..
.
Did Cuba disappear from the little globe with the fever just like on Al’s book cover?
Hmmm … seems like they could have metered the mains (current drawn by the lamps and voltage suppled by the mains .. using a P3 Kill-A-Watt meter even) – or measured the ‘light’ (heat) output at the least …
.
Nice work Anthony.
Another example of models just not working when it comes to climate science!!
Monckton of Brenchley says:
September 28, 2011 at 8:36 am
“Dear Anthony, – What you have exposed is a serious criminal fraud. Gore was asking for money throughout the Bore-a-thon.”
WTF? Gore is a multi-millionaire! Why is HE asking for money? He even got half of the 2007 Nobel Prize loot [LOL]!
What puzzled me with this “experiment”, is that they did not need to fake the experiment.
CO2 is heavy, so, more CO2 equals more mass.
If heated, when rigidly contained, the temperature and pressure will rise more.
Not that proves anything, other than what is already known, and simple physics.
The “real problem” is the interpretation of the “results” and those are not being questioned…
So, why did they fake the experiment, and fake it so badly???
“Any publicity” springs to my mind.
Given the “real problem” described above, that is not being questioned,
then it is a case of, let the “skeptics” spread the GHG and GH gospel.
Well done.
Al Gore loves you all.
Hey, it’s (internet) TV. Stuff like this happens all the time. That’s why TV is a profession. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the sequence was hosted by a CG polar bear instead of Bill Nye.
That supposed “experiment” only measures the heat of compression of two different gasses in a closed system. If the same measurements were taken of an open system, where the gasses are allowed to expand, as they can in the atmosphere, the temperatures would be the same in each jar. Photo editing aside, the experiment does not show a greenhouse effect.
Help somebody!
The article above claims that the temperature at the surface of the earth is warmer than it would be for a black body because a compressed gas gets warm (Boyle’s Law). Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention well enough but I haven’t heard that explanation before.
Could you check a wedding video for me as I’m not sure who was disappering into a closet with the best man but to me it looks like the bride but I can not be 100% sure.
And is anyone really that surprised that good ol’ Al would lie to people to get there money? Does anyone have figures on the $10 he was trying to get people to cough up?
glacierman says:
September 28, 2011 at 8:55 am
“Even without the editing, this experiment is debunked: http://myweb.cableone.net/carlallen/Site/Greenhouse%20In%20A%20Bottle-Reconsidered.html”
Sorry, but that is a whole bunch of crap at the link. Gases only heat up as they undergoing compression or expansion. The earth’s atmosphere has essentially static pressure at any one point. For it to heat up from gravitational compression the force of gravity must be constantly increasing otherwise when the pressure goes static there is no further temperature increase.
If it didn’t work that way it would be a perpetual motion machine. Suppose I take my shop compressor and fill up its air tank from ambient pressure to 150psi. The tank will indeed heat up. And if I bleed the pressure off very quickly the tank will cool down rapidly. But what happens if I turn off the compressor but don’t bleed off any pressure? The tank will still cool down even though the pressure isn’t changing. That’s because in order to get compressional heating the pressure must be increasing.
So let’s debunk the gravitational compression silliness and find out why the air gets warmer closer to the surface of the earth (in the troposphere, anyhow). It’s because the sun heats the ocean and the ocean heats the air. The (sunlight-heated) surface is the source of the heat. As you move further away from the source of the heat it will (obviously) get cooler.
Also, there comes a point where this relationship of falling temperature with increasing altitude doesn’t hold true. The thermosphere, for example, has a temperature in the thousands of degrees, far hotter than any layer below it. If gravitational heating had anything to do with it then the upper reaches of the atmosphere, with sub-millibar pressure, couldn’t possibly be the hottest part of the atmosphere… yet it is.
Outstanding work Detective Watts. The really sad part is that Gore admits that he is a liar and sheeple keep believing him.
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [anthropogenic global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are.”- Al Gore
Well done for exposing this contemptible fakery.
However, I have to point out that 400ppm comes out at 0.04%, not 0.004%.
REPLY: Decimal point typo fixed, thanks – Anthony
A miracle has happened, courtesy of Al Gore’s science buffoons. Oops, i meant to type “boffins.”
“…Al’s “high school physics” experiment didn’t come with a bill of materials and list of suppliers….” –Anthony Watt
Why should he share his Bill of Materials data when you just want to find something wrong with it?
“Kind of odd that the black CO2 cannister found its way very close to the “warmed” jar. I kind of wonder if they had trouble and decided to fudge the results by placing an object that would absorb some heat from the lamp and radiate it back to the jar….” –Peter McCoy
Good eye, Peter. The canister looks like it’s either touching the jar or close enough to allow heat transfer from the hotter canister to the jar by convection, conduction, and radiation. But it’s worse than you thought: the CO2 in the canister is also hotter than ambient, and is flowing into the jar and over the thermometer. This is known as “cooking” the experiment.
…Perhaps even that failed and they had to fall back on a dramatization. I’m curious now… does this experiment really work as shown even if it doesn’t tell us anything about our atmosphere?” –Peter McCoy
No, it’s completely bogus, as I’m sure you know. Calling it an ‘experiment’ is a gross lie; there was little or no effort to maintain conditions equal between jars or to accurately emulate the atmosphere. It’s nothing but a Gorrible proctoganda trick intended to fool the innocent.
For those noticing the thermometers were switched, it’s probably because they were attached to the globes – switch globes, switch thermometers.
One reason they may have been switched (and I hope this makes sense) is because of the calibration used for these thermometers.
As is shown in the photo of the two thermometers Anthony purchased to replicate the presentation, the length of the “green bar” shows different calibration for the same style. In a real experiment, you’d want the length of the bars as close to each other as possible.
In the film, the thermometer with the shorter “green” (and the longer min-max “swing”) was the “control”, and the longer “green” (and shorter min-max “swing”) was the CO2 thermometer.
Later, they swap. To me, the one with the longer scale would APPEAR to rise faster (if both at min and get same temp input, one would climb higher IF THE SCALE WERE IGNORED).
So, naturally, the CO2 thermometer, even with same temp input goes higher, if all you’re looking at is the rise.
For the closeup, they could have not used the different thermometers – the scales would not have matched. Hard to explain that in a short film.
Which of the two thermometers DID they use for the closeup? Probably the one that would show the FASTER rise.
It’s just a cartoon. The 150 year old experiments wouldn’t show what they required the “experiment” to. I recall this being done on the BBC around the time of Copenhagen and the questions are the same . . .
1. Is the difference in CO2 concentration equivalent?
2. Is it an equivalent open system?
3. Is the heat signature ( frequencies ) the same as in nature?
If NO is the answer to one or more of these questions then what on Earth was the experiment supposed to illustrate? Do the warmista think that we are all so stupid as to be hoodwinked by this nonsense? How much did the “poodle man” raise on his Goreathon because that will be the idiot indicator.
What about the Mythbusters? How real is that because frankly it doesn’t seem in the least bit possible.
What was the effect of the Ice? Also a box of air isn’t a climate system. At best that was a metaphor for our atmosphere with exaggeration as its motif.
Anthony, I criticized the Mythbusters test last year and I stand by my position. If this version is not clear enough, get one with higher resolutions or the full version. Notice the CO2 concentrations used. It is an eggasuration, worse than Al Gore’s.
Obviously it is an illustration and not the real experiment. Did you notice that they used an audio cassette tape not a video tape? And that little TV was not really showing those images either. Jeez.
REPLY: They could have avoided any criticism by placing the word “DRAMATIZATION” onscreen anywhere in the experiment segment, but they didn’t, and invited people to replicate the experiment themselves (@0:46 mark). They can’t have it both ways. – Anthony
RE: comment that no SWIR (short wave infrared) will penetrate the glass.
The correct comment is that ONLY SWIR will penetrate the glass, which blocks the other IR (infrared) wavelengths. This is well known to military uses of night imaging equipment as only the SWIR is capable of seeing thru windows/auto glass…and…only a few companies make this technology & export it. In the night imaging sensor field, SWIR wavelenghts are 0.9 to 1.7 microns — significantly different from the wavelengths defined in the narrative. Reference (many, one is): http://www.sensorsinc.com/whyswir.html
All that aside, the fact that the presentation displayed was staged as indicated is not necessarily bad–if the net effect was to communicate the basic outcome. Sure, the experiment is crude, but if some IR and/or other energy gets thru the glass & warms both equally and the one containing greater CO2 stays warmer longer, the point is made. The fact the apparatus is presented inaccurately becomes a very minor point if the facts of the physics presented correctly align with what actually occurred.
In the time I had to skim the blog entry I could find no indication that the representations made about the physics were wrong.
Which suggests that they’re correct.
Which suggests the emphasis on the idealized presentation is meant to undermine & distract, rather than report the science.
And that is indicative of what’s so wrong with the whole global warming debate — the issue is so polarized that we have “sides” (bad enough itself) … but those “sides” are willing to grasp at any detail to bolter their view or undermine the other view that fundamental truth (aka “science”) is getting shortchanged.
DID the experiment as portrayed actually yield the results asserted by Gore, et. al? So far, all this very lengthy blog item does is shows that the presentation of the experiment is idealized — which, if the only effect is to enhance communication of what was done is not really a bad thing in such a forum.
IF “yes” (the experiment as portrayed did yield the results asserted) then the entire photo analysis becomes just another example of nit-picky partisan propagandizing being presented as evidence for refuting the assertion made. A sort of sleight of hand that doesn’t really do what it suggests its doing…..and done in a manner that induces the readership to reach a faulty conclusion where it counts most.
Frankly, I’d have thought this blog was better than that.
Oh for goodness sake! It was a bit of television to demonstrate that the greenhouse effect can be seen in an experiment that anyone could do. That’s all! Didn’t the guy in the white coat and the use of globe money banks give you a clue as to that? It was supposed to be midly amusing. It is so obviously not a video of the actual experiment being done that I can’t believe you wasted your time looking for specks on thermometers. Now if the experiment, when run properly, did not show warming, you would have something to whine about.
DR says:
September 28, 2011 at 9:38 am
The gravitational compression explanation given at the above link is very, very wrong. Anyone who doesn’t see the error is, frankly, a physics illiterate. A gas, once compressed to a static pressure, will not retain the heat of compression. It it worked like the author states it does then one could compress a volume of air into a tank until it was quite hot then use the heated bottle as a perpetual source of heat. The fact is that once the gas reaches a static pressure any compressional heating also goes static.
I’m not impressed with either experiment. Heated gases in the Earth’s atmosphere will expand, rise, and convect–not stay trapped in a jar or a plastic box. Maybe an insulated pipe or silo that’s 50 ft. tall by several feet wide with a hot plate at the bottom as a heat source, a cold plate at the top as a heat sink, and several thermometers, anemometers, and barometers at the various height intervals could reveal something crucial: at least one negative feedback mechanism.
Mike: “Obviously it is an illustration and not the real experiment.”
Really????? Obvious to whom? The general public viewing the video and being asked to contribute? Pure deception for monetary gain. I hope the FCC and FTC look into this.
I am glad you went to all that effort to confidently prove your theory. However, much as I am a skeptic, and I don’t want to rain on your parade at all, I’d still have to say ‘so what?’ because we all know that most of the CAGW propaganda is overhyped, falsified or just plain hockey stick fake!
The only way this would hurt the team and Gore, would be if it is pushed like the Climategate emails in the mainstream media – and we all know how likely that is!
So, a brilliant piece – worthy of all that effort – but ultimately I don’t feel it will help much!
Also, the proponents of AGW will probably turn it against you, as some sort of personal hate campaign against Big Al using ‘creative license’ to get his point across! (Over here it’s called false advertising, and generally not allowed – but not sure if that applies to internet broadcasts?)
Didn’t any of you goons notice the orang-utan walking across the lab? Or rather, did any of you actually listen to the commentary?
The experiment was not intended to demonstrate global warming but the relative effect of heat on bodies of gas of different chemical composition. To waste a week and a half on investigating the integrity of a very short film which is obviously demonstrating the various separate steps required to conduct the experiment (thereby requiring a number of takes) is beyond stupid.
As Watts already has most of the necessary equipment why doesn’t he complete the set and then carry out the experiment for himself? He could also demonstrate to himself why it is necessary when making a film in HD to do it in a number of takes. Unless, of course, he thinks it possible to make HD images of thermometers through thickish, non-planar glass. The experiment certainly won’t take him a week and half to set up and film.
I suggest also that he takes Monkton of Brenchley’s advice and visits a the police station where, doubtless, he will receive trenchant information on the quality of the good Lord’s legal knowledge. My guess is it will not be dissimilar to that of his scientific knowledge.
REPLY: You may have noticed that the thermometers were oral fever thermometers, designed to hold the high temperature reading when removed from the mouth. All they had to do was remove them after a few minutes (filming the removal) and put them side by side and photograph them in the closeup of the scales to prove the point. They couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Mr. Gore has million$ and asks for more, yet they can’t even budget to do a “high school experiment” correctly. He can’t afford a data logger or at least something better than cookie jars an oral thermometers? Your argument fails spectacularly, just like the “experiment”. I’m just getting warmed up. – Anthony
Brilliant analysis!
Athlete says:
September 28, 2011 at 10:02 am
Outstanding work Detective Watts. The really sad part is that Gore admits that he is a liar and sheeple keep believing him.
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it [anthropogenic global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are.”- Al Gore
————-
Quote taken out of context. Gore was saying that An Inconvenient Truth spent way more time explaining the problem than discussing solutions. That is the “over-representation” he was talking about.
@commieBob
You haven’t heard that explanation because it’s bogus. Boyle’s law states only that pressure is inversely proportional to volume at a fixed temperature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyle%27s_law
Now, it’s true that the temperature of an adiabatic process (i.e. thermally insulated) goes up when pressurized, because work is performed in pressurizing. Energy must be conserved (1st Law of Thermodynamics) so the work is converted to internal energy, which causes the temperature to rise.
But in a open system (like Earth) the heat escapes (by radiation and convection) and the system tries to reach thermal equilibrium, i.e. everything at the same temperature (Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics).
But global thermal equilibrium is never reached because the pesky old Sun keeps pumping more energy into it (along with heat energy from other sources e.g. geothermal etc).
Personally, I would conduct the experiment with one system, whereby the use of on jar, one thermometer, and one heat source, thusly eliminate any differences in glass, thermometer and heat source. Also, compare a vacuum environment as a base, then to various gases. I suspect, there would be no change of temperature over time regardless of the gas used. I suspect the thermometer simply heats up from direct radiation from the heat sources, a combination of room temperature, outside temperature, and the lamp used.
Nice work on exposing their continuation of fraud. I have to agree that someone who lives in the state where this fraud took place could file a complaint with the AG. The more complaints filed, the more likely the AG will act on it, forcing the producer to return the funds, or possible fines. Either way, it is another example of swindling the ignorant.
Cue Mr. Dan (“Fake, but accurate”) Rather. Except the demonstration wasn’t accurate.
Anthony: It is a far cry from my little Kodak Easy Share Z1012
John Hultquist: …please do a post asking for contributions to buy a new digital camera.
I’ve got one of those Easy Shares too. I can get manual focus by setting the mode dial to P and poking the landscape button 3 times. Won’t work in the Auto (red icon) mode. Took me a long time to figure out and it’s been a real pain in the duff where I tried to get distance shots through a chain link fence. (Typical airport situation) The focusing program sees that fence as a brick wall.
BTW, that CO2 tank appears to be for a paintgun system.
Anyone out there know just how much CO2 is in one of that size? If he opened it full-bore, how long would the pressure last? If the film was edited, then there was probably more than one tank used.
How much of a “carbon footprint” did this “presentation” have?
John B……That is what undisciplined science fakers always say. “it was just a demonstration, a metaphor…. it is obvious that it will work if it is done properly”…
Well, if it is child’s play and easy to do properly and important enough to make into a precious video, then why WASN’T it done properly?… if it soooo easy to do?
John B why don’t you do it properly? Apparently it is simple high school physics… ie Climate 101.
I am sure Anthony will post your validation of the work.
Science… if you choose to use the term, requires that you stick to science in fact.
Keith Battye says:
September 28, 2011 at 10:09 am
“What about the Mythbusters? How real is that because frankly it doesn’t seem in the least bit possible.”
It might not seem possible to you but if you understood the physics just the least little bit it isn’t just possible it’s inevitable.
This is old stuff, people. Absorptive properties of gases was experimentally characterized 150 years ago by John Tyndall and commercial CO2 sensors operate by that same principle. This isn’t theory it’s physical, measured properties of materials that engineers reference when they design stuff like electronic CO2 sensors. If you don’t understand at least enough to look up the physical properties of CO2 in an engineering reference you are not equipped to argue the merits, or lack thereof, of the so-called greenhouse effect.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/
The section of the OP “About the Experiment” is almost entirely my words.
I have a small machine shop and will occasionally create videos and slide shows of the evolution of a piece of metal to a final product. In many cases it is impossible to film live certain operations because of light, angle, obstructions caused by safety shields, and flying swarf. These are then “faked” by clever angles and tricks in the studio to create the final video product. So the result is not precisely what goes into the production of the part, but is representative to the degree possible of the exact process. There is no intention to deceive, and the faked sections are in fact necessary to clearly show what is happening to the work.
So my take on the Al Gore fake is it is needed in the studio, but I realize a studio is not a lab. The equipment is hardly lab quality, and while the underlying science is supportable and at least visually supported in the video, the results of this particular setup do not show what is suggested. But it does not mean it cannot be shown as suggested – you just need proper equipment.This video is shabby but does not rise to the level of fraud any more than my machine shop videos are fraudulent. The claim and the test are known and repeatable with proper equipment.
What is probably clearly in the realm of fraud is the temperature difference presented at the end of the tests. I doubt even a proper test with proper equipment is going to show such a high degree of difference in temperature between a lab quality device with and without the presence of 0.0362% CO2 *and* 4.0% water vapor. But we expect exaggeration from the Goracle.
Mr. Gore,
once more
you are
caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
🙂
As pointed out by many viewers, you missed the fact that the globes/thermometers have been swapped during the sequence. This is like the old shell game … keep your eye on the jar with the CO2 added. Left, right..no left … look away, now look back … which one was it again? 🙂
The jars have been moved and replaced in their positions at least a couple of times during the sequence. One other demonstration of this (as if any more were needed): consider the objects in the scene between the frames at 1:05 and 1:09. In the latter the Co2 bottle is still there but all hoses are gone from the scene, whereas in the earlier frame there is a massive clutter of hoses around and behind Jar 2.
Further, the red object on the shelf behind the actor. It is displaced to the left of the jars at 1:05 but is almost behind the first jar at 1:09. So the camera angles are different: the later angle, which is a close-up, is taken from an angle of about 20 degrees to the right of the other one. But now look at the position of the Indian subcontinent in the CO2 jar in the two frames. Almost identical relative to the camera, but the latter one rotated slightly toward the center — that is, in the opposite direction it ought to be, given the different camera angle.
So apparently, care was taken to make it appear that we are looking at the same scene, to the point that they reached into the jars and adjusted the positions of the globes, attempting to replicate the original scene. Complete stagecraft, but unfortunately imperfect.
Interesting that the thermometers were both reading so far above room temperature during the comparison sequence — and so close to the temperature of the human body. Seeing as the instruments (actually instrument — singular as Anthony argues) were not in the jars at the time of shooting, any guesses how they were made to shoot up like that?
This stagecraft stuff is just silliness. I am more concerned about some of the seriously wrong hyperbolic claims in the latter half of the video.
55% of CO2 in the oceans? Really? I believe it is over 90% given a rough calculation from Henry’s law. The graphs used are laughable. Notice they don’t show any scales. What exactly are they supposed to represent?
The temperature graph supposedly showing temperature for “the last million years” bound within a small range and SUDDENLY rising dramatically during the industrial age??? No competent scholar of climate would accept such a thing. Even the Holocene era looks nothing like this. It is pure fantasy.
Increased storm and extreme weather activity in the last century? Uh, that’s “inconveniently” wrong.
So I would say … let us laugh at this silly botching of the “high school science” but I would suggest concentrating on the larger errors. Let us not strain out a gnat and forget that they are asking their audience to swallow a camel.
The experiment is pointless. Everyone knows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and produces some warming.
The question is whether CO2 alone can force climate, can it overwhelm all the other forces that combine to create our climate?
So whether the CO2 jar gets warmer or not is specious, it is outside the realm of the argument..
Marvellous bit of sleuthery. One hopes it goes viral. Like Christopher said, it is fraud of the worst kind. Swaggart Squared. Would criminal charges stick? Meh. Would embarrassment stick? Like doggy-poo to a shoe. The entire edifice is toppling.
Whoa! Anthony! Amazing detective work. Nice job.
(And here I was just trying to figure out if Al was real or faked on the show. I can’t prove it but I think they used a fake. Had to be or else 8.6 miiill-yun viewers would have instantly fallen asleep.)
Silly skeptics! He swapped the jars around because there is a pea under one of them.
Dave Springer says
The gravitational compression explanation given at the above link is very, very wrong. Anyone who doesn’t see the error is, frankly, a physics illiterate. A gas, once compressed to a static pressure, will not retain the heat of compression. It it worked like the author states it does then one could compress a volume of air into a tank until it was quite hot then use the heated bottle as a perpetual source of heat. The fact is that once the gas reaches a static pressure any compressional heating also goes static.
***************
To a point this is true but does it work that way for a planet?
At sea level it is 6 ° C warmer than at 1 Km up. Why is that ? This is a fact. Don’t believe me look it up.
The “compression heat goes away” [which is true] explanation doesn’t explain the measurable difference in temperature does it?
Venus has huge amounts of CO2 and very dense atmosphere.
“The pressure of Venus’ atmosphere at the surface is 90 atmospheres (about the same as the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth’s oceans). It is composed mostly of carbon dioxide.”
nineplanets.org
At the elevation where there is 1 atmosphere of pressure the temperature is earth-like.
****
In the closed bottle the warming WOULD CAUSE COMPRESSION don’t you agree ?
In the bottle the warming comes from the glass not the CO2 don’t you agree ?
For the “experiment to be valid the bottle must be vented and the jar must be made out of something which won’t block IR.
As it is the so called “experiment” isn’t valid.
Thank you Bill Nye, for setting science back 50 to maybe 100 years …
,
mkelly, I believe your calculations are correct but CO2 also has higher conductivity, so Q is higher for CO2.
In any case, I would suggest a similar experiment whereby you bet Gore that you can drink more shots of 0.08 proof ethanol than he can drink of 200 proof. For the average 300 pounder, 4 or 5 shots could have one over the DUI limit vs 12500 shots of the 0.08 proof alcohol.
I don’t know anyone is complaining, this is nothing new. As Anthony has proven. (Good eye, and good follow through to prove what you suspected!) Climate 101 is just another episode of the same fraud that we have seen again and again.
1. I’m sure everyone remembers Mann’s hockey stick fail.
2. How about Phil Jones and his I’ll destroy the data before I let anyone see it? Was anyone really surprised when the data turned out to be gone?
3. How about Eric Steig’s statistical manipulation and splicing of temperature records to find some warming and smear it over half a continent.
4. Or perhaps Briffa’s tree pruning activities to try and create a new hockey stick.
5. No list would be complete without mentioning James Hansen’s adjustments on top of adjustments, all designed to show warming where there is none.
There are dozens more.
When the BBC did the experiment they generated the CO2 with an exothermic reaction, they blew warm CO2 in to the jar and it worked. Here they have a big pressure drop from the cylinder so the CO2 is cold and it doesn’t work. Obviously the data must change to fit the facts.
Dave Springer:
So what is being measured in the closed container experiment when the light source is turned on if it is not compressional heating?
I did not mention gravitational heating, etc., but continue to argue on about it if you want.
This is very trivial, but what initially stood out for me was the incorrect CO2 notation on the jar. Shouldn’t the 2 be lower and not higher than O? It’s been a while since I was in a chemistry class but that much I remember.
Bernd Felsche says:
September 28, 2011 at 9:18 am
“…And that’s where I stopped listening and watching. That’s beyond nonsense.
The guy in the lab coat at the start, standing behind a jar CO-squared made me think that this video must be a parody of some sort. But no … it got stupid beyond parody….”
Yeah the CO-squared instead of usingCO 2 subscript is a dead give away that they are complete donkeys and I am insulting my donkey who is a lot smarter.
In case anyone wants to see an even neater video, see below:
We know how various molecules, reflect, scatter and absorb various wavelengths.
We know that C02 is opaque to IR, just as H2O is opaque
That’s why, for example, when a plane goes behind a cloud, you lose an IR track on it.
As you add more C02 to the atmosphere, you make the atmosphere more opaque to IR.
This raises the height at which radiation to space occurs. That escape happens where
the atmosphere is finally transparent to the wavelength being emmitted.
The higher and colder that altitude, the warmer the surface has to be.
This has nothing to do with computer models.
The added C02 doesnt warm the surface, it slows the rate of cooling by raising the effective
radiating altitude.
To watch C02 “block” IR watch this fun video
The problem some skeptics have is the Pro AGW people associate them with a fringe group that deny any effect for C02 whatsoever.
Anthony, great piece of detective work. I have a hard time getting too exercised about it, though. If the temperature differences they showed actually occurred in the experiment, then they are certainly free to illustrate that difference however they want: with words, a graph, an animated drawing, or thermometers going up. I suspected they weren’t actually filming the thermometers (due to the lack of glass distortion and the background) before reading your detailed writeup. They could have added “dramatization” or something, but I’d have to put this in the category of “sloppy” and not a big deal.
The real issue is that the experiment doesn’t accurately reflect the earth system. (Plus all the follow-up questions that arise even if it did.) I’d prefer to battle on that front, rather than the presentation.
@henrythethird: it is a 20 oz paintball bottle. Mine says max fill 0.54 kg CO2. If you open that full throttle it doesn’t stay put: at the temperature they are operating it (>36 deg Celsius) the pressure is about 1800 psi/125 bar. It would fly off the table. CO2 goes supercritical above 31,1 deg Celsius with pressure to match.
Besides, the bottle would freeze over with water vapor on the outside if youi opened it that way… Anyway: it would last all of fifteen seconds before it was empty.
Piotr
It wasn’t Gore. Where’s the snow cloud constantly over his head?
================
Does it really matter if Al’s experiment shows one thermometer rising over 100?… everyone knows the temperature in the centre of those two globes is several million degrees.
Fantastic work and research Anthony. I am very impressed. The fallout SHOULD be enormous – let’s see what the national papers do with this.
We’ve talked about this scam numerous times; the video trickery is NOT the issue; the science scam is.
Note how cavalierly they open the “jar”. So it is safe to assume that both jars contain plenty of water vapor (H2O) a well known greenhouse gas.
Issue #1
The “heat lamp” is an incandescent filament lamp with a source Temperature in the range of about 3000 Kelvins. A back of envelope calculation will yield about 4 megaWatts per square metre approximately black body radiation from that heat lamp. We know it should be about 1/16 of the emittance of the sun’s surface at 6,000 K.
It is also 10,000 times the emittance of the average earth surface at around 300 K.
At 3,000 K, the peak spectral output from that lamp is at around one micron wavelength; a value twice that of the sun, and 1/10 th of the emission wavelength of the LWIR from the 300 K earth.
Water (H2O) is a very good absorber of 1 micron radiation, which is why the human skin, which is mostly water records that as “heat”. In contrast, no human senses respond in any way to 10.1 micron LWIR emissions, which humans are entirely unaware of. We have to go out of our way to detect that with special instrumentation.
So to make this experiment closer to scientifically accurate, the “heat” lamp at 10,000 times too strong needs to be replaced by a 300 K source matching the actual earth emissions; like an ordinary rock or brick out of your garden. One could also use a bottle of ordinary drinking water as a perfectly good LWIR emitter that more closely matches the emission from the oceans.
All in all, this experiment, that is often repeated, demonstrates what a bunch of inept country bumpkins these fools really are. Video tricks ior not, these idiots can’t even cheat without being caught.
If I were a fraud, huckster, swindler, lier, etc. treacherous charlatan and Inspecter Watts got on my tail/trail, I would give it up!
He’s got eyes on you. You can’t run, you can’t hide!
As usual, good work Anthony!
The worse part of this is the SAFETY ISSUE!
Gore is probably using an EMPTY or almost empty paint ball cylinder. (The name shows the cylinder is normally used for paintball) Why do I think it is empty? because it is not properly chained down!!!!! Also Because All you see is the mouth of the hose and hear the valve turn , no hiss. Note there is no pressure regulator and if the tank is full it would be full of liquid CO2 and would probably make the glass jar frost to boot.
From the instructions on refilling paint ball cylinders
“…A small amount of dry ice or snow can be formed by the gas as it exits the system to a lower pressure and a large amount of dry ice if its liquid exiting to a lower pressure…..” http://www.teamonslaught.fsnet.co.uk/co2_info.htm
No matter how you slice it kids should not be messing with a cylinder of gas without a pressure regulator. The blasted things are dangerous and have already caused the death of one child.
People were killed when a CO2 cylinder unintentionally disengaged from the paintball gun: http://www.paintballdangers.com/pbd_death.htm
So Anthony, I have to agree with Lord Monckton. You need to go after this video in court.
REPLY: I thought about all these issues ahead of time. I agree they are dangerous. A better way for kids would be to uses vinegar/baking soda to make the CO2. I also have located the exact paintball tank, and the exact twist valve. It is possible to fill the jar without blowing off the lid due to pressure, but yes one must be very careful. They have no proof that there is any CO2 in the jar at all, a simple CO2 meter available here would prove the issue. More to come – Anthony
About the mythbusters show – it looks like a MASSIVE increase in CO2 – far more than anyone is predicting – created a VERY STEADY 1 degree increase. To me this proves that CO2 is NOT affecting the earth’s temperature. result = Myth
Anthony, in case it hasn’t been mentioned by commenters, carbon dioxide has a noticeably higher heat capacity than air. So, for a given amount of input energy, it takes longer for CO2 to heat. Air would heat faster. I wonder if they ran the experiment and, because of the difference in heat capacity, got the “wrong” result and so they monkeyed with it.
Without seeing what is actually warming the thermometers, er, single thermometer in the video segments of the “two side by side shots of the same thermometer” it’s not possible to know what the source of the heat was for the business end of the thermometer wasn’t visible!!! For all that one knows it could have been some other heat source.
Great work Anthony. You certainly knocked Al Gore’s and Bill Nye The Science Guy’s satellite out of orbit with this one. Although I concur with Christopher Monckton that it would be really nice to see legal fraud charges brought against Al Gore and Bill Nye.
10/10 for tenacity and reasonable conclusions. Thermometer distortion could possibly be avoided by mounting them vertically in the jars – I know they wern’t – but just saying.
Did you go on to conduct the actual experiment (you could have breathed heaviliy for some time into one of the jars)? If so, what actually happened?
R. Shearer says:
September 28, 2011 at 10:59 am
mkelly, I believe your calculations are correct but CO2 also has higher conductivity, so Q is higher for CO2.
Thanks Mr. Shearer. I based my comment on the film saying the lamps were equal (i.e. Q is equal) if the time for measuring the effect was the same then CO2 could not be higher?
Again thanks.
By the way to prove that CO2 was heating the earth should not the exxperiment show that the jar with the CO2 it was heating the lamp?
Very nice piece of work, Anthony, Sherlock Holmes has nothing on you.
I see that a number of people are saying something on the order of “so what”? They clearly seem to think that fakery is acceptable in order to make your point. And in some regards, they would be right … but for two problems.
The first problem is they didn’t acknowledge the fakery. If they had said “Dramatization” somewhere in the game, like the most bozo TV producer knows to do to avoid this very kind of blowback, it would have been fine … but only if the dramatization stuck to the facts.
But did they stick to the facts or not? Unfortunately, since we are shown bogus film of the results, we don’t know.
For those who say “so what”, please note that the real fakery is not that they “dramatized” the procedures. That’s a “white lie”, it’s done all the time, and (as folks have pointed out) that would be fine … if they had acknowledged it.
The second problem is much more serious than faking the film of the experimental setup and procedures. THEY FAKED THE RESULTS. Because of that, we have no idea of what the results actually were. We simply don’t know what happened.
And that is more than dramatization. That is more that taking repeated shots to make your experiment more clear and understandable to the viewers. Those kinds of actions (when acknowledged) are white lies, and are done all the time.
But that’s not what they did. The have faked, not just the experimental setup, but the outcome, and that is not a white lie. That is what was known in my youth as a “damned lie.”
And while I realize that showing Al Gore to be a damned liar is hardly earth-shattering news, it’s always valuable to have it demonstrated once again, and so clearly.
Extremely well done, my friend,
w.
Depends on what wavelength you’re ‘viewing’ (like the atmosphereic window at 10 um or some other wavelength) and how thick the cloud is; I flew on TI’s FLIR demonstration platform, a Convair 580 with a belly IR pod housing a fully gimballed LWIR sensor, and we could still ‘see’ vehicular traffic below us on US-75 while in co-called “cloud cover” over the highway …
.
Al Gore is going off at the deep end in the Guardian:
Al Gore: clear proof that climate change causes extreme weather
Former US vice president tells Scottish green conference that evidence from floods in Pakistan and China is compelling
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/28/al-gore-proof-climate-change?intcmp=122
The BBC / Sir David King fake “experiment” was discussed by WUWT in 2009:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/24/bbc-botches-grade-school-co2-science-experiment-on-live-tv-with-indepedent-lab-results-to-prove-it/
So from your evaluation of the method deduced from the video clip; Mr Gore’s assertion should actually read “It’s not high school physics, it’s a hoax.”
I believe a very similar experiment was done some time ago by an independent source using clear plastic drinks bottles and posted on YouTube. They came to an entirely different conclusion than Mr Gore’s ‘team’. As have a number of physicists as far back as the 1900’s.
I want to say again that a GH effect of CO2 has never been proven, neither, if any, how
much exactly….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
So we should take these guys to court, to say that they are seriously misleading the public.
@ Steve Mosher:
The laser experiment does not say anything about how the real world atmosphere operates, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it too were flawed. If AGW worked as advertised, it doesn’t fit that the desert is warmer during the clear sky day than it is in the tropics at the same latitude and altitude. Convection (which swamps radiation during the day) and gravity appear to be ignored.
Where is the TLT/MLT hot spot that should be there according to Pro AGW “theory”? This is a main tenet of AGW; not even arguable, but has been pushed aside. The question is and always has been about that and surface temperature rising due to “back radiation”. What direct evidence is there, by observation, this is occurring? Santer 08 tried to make the data agree with the “basic physics”, but after 18 months of obfuscation and stall tactics, we now know that Santer rigged the game by omitting undesirable data.
Do the rules change as the hypothesis fails?
There are numerous, as in dozens, of examples of the atmosphere being compared directly to that of a real glass greenhouse (not unlike the glass jar), many from government institutions and universities. I find it incredulous the “greenhouse in a bottle” experiment is used as an approved educational tool for children when it is a complete fraud, but you failed to comment on the OP.
Che: Was Joe Bastardi used as a body double for that video?
@ Bill Sticker
Yes, all physical experiments should be ignored.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/professor-nasif-nahle-publishes-new.html
“What you have exposed is a serious criminal fraud. Gore was asking for money throughout the Bore-a-thon. ”
I’ll eat my hat, in fact all my hats, if this would be considered a serious criminal fraud. It’s a typically sleazy act by a sleazy man though. And that’s more than bad enough.
glacierman says:
“Che: Was Joe Bastardi used as a body double for that video?”
Not hardly.
Heh, I wonder how many of the 8.6 million took Al Gore’s and Bill Nye’s advice and tried the ‘simple high school experiment’ at home.
Did they think this would convince people? Did they think no one would try it? Maybe Bill Nye is a stealth skeptic.
Where is Bill Nye anyway? He needs to answer for this one.
===============
It doesn’t matter that the video is fake. When you record a video teaching someone how to do something that doesn’t require you to actually do it. It only requires you to present the steps on how to do it.
This is how cookery programs work. Noone seriously gripes that cookery shows cheat by having the steps pre-done.
The video introduces the experiment as “If you want you can replicate this effect yourself in a simple lab experiment, here’s how: take two identical bottles and set them side by side….”
Ironically you got all the stuff, but didn’t do the experiment.
Smokey,
Your’e right, I short changed the man.
Thanks for your effort & expense to enlighten the public.
I’ve always attributed that to PT Barnum, and apparently Ainsworth Spofford, 6th Librarian of Congress (1864-97), appointed by Lincoln himself – agrees http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Deceit/1/
What a stupid experiment.
First of all, having a constant source of gas (which is not temperature controlled) flowing into and out of one of the jars makes any results worthless.
As gas exits the tank, it loses pressure and cools. If the tank was also at ambient temperature, their test should have gone the other way, with the colder gas entering and leaving the jar, taking some thermal energy with it.
On the other hand, the test only proves anything if
(1) one jar had its atmosphere puged to pure CO2, then
(2) both were sealed loosely (to safely allow for thermal expansion without pressure buildup), then
(3) allow the temperature in both jars to equalize with ambient air, and then
(4) turn on the lights.
The fakery shown by the “science” guy is disgracefull.
Propaganda Smackdown!
Several people have alluded to it but I suspect the problem they had was the adiabatic cooling of the CO2 coming from the pressurized tank. If they left the valve open to keep the CO2 flowing then it would always have been colder than ambient – assuming the tank was at ambient.
Good catch!!!
steven mosher provided a video proving that CO2 blocks IR radiation. Before drawing any conclusions, please consider the following.
* The CO2 used was very cold (it came from a compressed source). Even though it is not visible, there might be a thin fog that affects the results.
* The tube was about two feet (2 ft) long and the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere would fill a tube about 12 feet long. Thus, the experiment shows that the atmosphere is already saturated (by which, I mean that adding more has no additional effect at the surface).
* The “experiment” would have been better if it had used the guys face (still a bit too hot) instead of a candle.
* The “glass tube” would not allow far IR to reach the detector. Perhaps the end caps are not glass, but he did not say it.
I have seen a number of videos using a similar setup and none of them address the points I have made above.
Off topic.
A claim is making the rounds that IR thermometers are being routinely mis-used when measuring atmospheric temperature and IR flux: http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/278396/its-thermometer-stupid-greg-pollowitz
It looks a bit thin to me. If true, it’s pretty damning, but I don’t see a well-documented claim there. The issues I see are: (1) What are climate scientists actually measuring with IR thermometers? (2) Does the claim that they are mis-using the thermometers stand up or not?
Can you guys take a look?
Thanks.
“LOOK! The color starts to come up!”
Ugh, too many words and too much science to read through this. Anthony, do I read (mostly skim really) this right that you’ve recreated their experiment (without all the video editing shenanigans) and found that their results are fabricated, and that the thermometer in the sealed CO2 jar doesn’t show a higher temperature than the other jar?
REPLY: I’ve recreated the scene, showing that the thermometers rising in the split screen video could not possibly have been in the jars, and that the split screen is actually one thermometer shot with one camera, duplicated on both sides, and edited to make one appear rise faster than the other. I’ll recreate the experiment next. – Anthony
henrythethird says:
September 28, 2011 at 8:21 am
One other piece to show editing are the globes themselves.
In your first clip (@1:01), look at the size of the island in red – the one on the left is larger.
Same for the one @ 1:05.
But for the one @ 1:09, the globes have been swapped – the one with the larger island is on the right.
That’s also proof that it wasn’t one shot.
I think what were seeing is the jars themselves have been switched around and that would mean the gas is going into the jar that was on the left at the beginning of the experiment. They reset the whole shot but got the jars mixed up.
My hat is off to Mr. Watt’s for this excellent analysis. Talk about keeping up with – and disecting – the news. The climate propaganda news. The controlled BS.
Video forensic analysis is a powerful ‘truth tool’ – for want of a better term. Liars are easily caught out when the liars overplay their hands and the skeptical are vigilant.
I don’t normally watch AGW propaganda but I did watch the whole CR video posted above and I must admit I was laughing out loud at it. Good laugh. If it wasn’t so bloody serious.
LIES INFECT MINDS – EXPOSE THE LIES!
Not often I shout.
Above, John Day tried to make a comparison to Mars. He claims that Mars has more CO2 than Earth and then wonders why that doesn’t make the planet warmer. He then suggests that this paradox invalidates the CO2/greenhouse connection. He is not alone in this line of reasoning. However, what everyone misses is that it is the total mass of the atmosphere that is important. The atmosphere captures and stores energy during the day. Water vapor and CO2 release that energy back to the surface (mostly at night). Without the atmosphere to store energy, there is no significant greenhouse effect. Also, note that energy is captured in the Earth’s atmosphere by both water vapor and CO2. Since Mars lacks water vapor, less energy can be captured during the days. As a result, CO2 has almost no effect on Mars, but a much smaller amount is very important on Earth.