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.
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Glenn says:
October 6, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Myrrh,
from your ref:
“Once the thermal energy leaves the sun (in the form of radiation) it is called heat. Heat is thermal energy in transfer.”
That is horsehockey. Practically no energy is transferred in space. The website is a joke. Light does not carry thermal energy, it carries radiant energy.
Shrug, what’s radiant heat then? Heat is transferred in one of three ways, conduction, convection and radiation. Of course energy is transferred in space! How the heck do you think light and heat get to Earth from the Sun?!
Don’t tell me, let me guess. The gods who own the Milky Way run a container business between the stars, of course we can’t see this because it’s on a supernatural level beyond our ken, but the owner gods of the Milky Way have a deal going with the lesser gods of Earth who require the Sun’s heat and sell them it by putting it in invisible containers carried on an invisible track which delivers it to Earth in eight minutes. When the gods of Earth upset the gods of the Milky Way they shut off all access to the Sun, periodic reminders are in place so the gods of Earth don’t ever get too uppity. But you’re right about light, Light does not carry heat energy.. Light is not thermal. It is not heat, thermal energy, on the move, which is thermal infrared.
As to your use of Wiki as a reference, you should think twice since several other Wiki articles contradict your claim that visible light doesn’t heat anything. And the one that you cited, in the same section you referred to, says “That is, one object might reflect green light while absorbing all other frequencies of visible light.”
Again shrug. Wiki was known to have been corrupted by Greenies, but a clearing up process put in place. However, there’s no contradiction. What I referenced is bog standard divisions in the differences between light and heat energies. Light energies work on an electron level, they are tiny dinky little waves moving very rapidly up and down and the faster they move the smaller they get because they all have a common restriction, they have to keep to the same basic speed limit (matter of course slows this down and different wavelengths in visible for example will be slowed down more than others, etc., water slows them down more than air) – as I said, the first thing you should do is try to get a grasp of the scale of this. Near infrared is microscopic and the waves get smaller through visible to gamma and larger through infrared to radio. Different size is a property of waves, they will react with matter they meet in different ways because of this, there’s rather a big difference between waves the size of a house or miles long and visible light. Look it up.
Visible light is tiny, when it meets matter, molecules, it will be affected in different ways depending on the matter. When it meets molecules of nitrogen and oxygen with is the volume of the fluid gaseous atmosphere around us, pressing down on us a ton weight per square foot (you’re carrying quite a weight on your shoulders..), visible light doesn’t have the oomph to act on the whole molecule, it can hit the electrons of the molecules and get them to speed up briefly which they do and then use that energy to eject the wave/photon of visible light, this is what reflection/scattering is, hence you see the blue sky all around, etc. Water molecules are not such an easy pushover and don’t even let visible light in to play with their electrons, the visible light tries for a while which slows it down and is then passed on, this is called transmission, this happens in a transparent medium which water is to visible light. The atmosphere of the gas air is not transparent to visible light, the electrons absorb it and scatter it around filling the sky with colour as this breaks up the wavelengths as putting them through a prism does.
So, what does it mean that one of possible ways visible light interacts with matter is that the matter will absorb some of colours and reflect back others. This happens in photosynthesis, the plants take in mainly red and blue and reflect back green, the colour green we see of plants is the reflection of the green lightwaves bouncing back into our eyes which have the ability to discern the differences from receptors to these. All the colours you see around you are those wavelengths not being absorbed, but reflected back out. The colours, the energies, perhaps they should be called pigments on the move.., that are absorbed by plants in photosynthesis are used in photochemical changes, not the creation of heat, but the creation of sugars. The plant is not heated up by visible light, because visible light doesn’t move the whole molecules of water in a plant to rotation/vibration, but is either surplus to requirements and reflected back out mainly green or absorbed for a chemical change, like UV’s energies used in the creation of vitamin D.
UV itself is divided into ionising and non-ionising radiation. What does that mean? It means that some UV, near UV is like visible light, non-ionising, which means its energy isn’t sufficient to knock an electron out of its orbit (recall that visible light is scattered in air by the electrons of the molecules absorbing its energy which makes them vibrate and then push the wave back out), ionising has sufficient oomph in its frequency, to push an electron out completely. This is where ionising UV and likewise the tinier and even more highly energetic gamma rays do their damage. Gamma rays in sufficient quantity will not just give you ‘sunburn’, they will instantly vapourise your whole body in conflagration leaving practically nothing behind, look up Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see why these were first called ground zero, ground nothing.
Here, another wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation
Glenn;
Myrrh’s made up his mind and doesn’t want to be confused with the facts. Read through his last rant. How does one even start to correct the list of complete fallacies, misunderstandings, half right (but still wrong) web of constructs? Recall the words of Einstein:
“That’s not right. That’s not even wrong.”
Myrrh,
Until you can actually answer questions like “what is a watt?” and “what is Ohm’s Law?” and “what is the Stefan-Boltzmann equation?” and “what is the Planck constant?” and cite the Laws of Thermodymics, you are just not right, you’re not even wrong.
If you dispute that these laws are “traditional physics” then show where the formulas and principles that they describe are wrong. If you accept the formulas and principles, then use them to demonstrate your theories.
You haven’t answered my question: If a 100 watt light bulb produced 90 watts of infrared, what happened to the other 10 watts? Do you know? Do you know why the question is significant? Do you know how to answer the question using the various formulas from SB Law, Planck, and Ohm? Can you cite the specific math that is “wrong” with these formulas?
davidmhoffer says:
October 7, 2011 at 7:59 am
Myrrh,
Until you can actually answer questions like “what is a watt?” and “what is Ohm’s Law?” and “what is the Stefan-Boltzmann equation?” and “what is the Planck constant?” and cite the Laws of Thermodymics, you are just not right, you’re not even wrong.
? Don’t be ridiculous. The difference between heat and light even a child can understand. You’re again avoiding answering the question – give me proof that visible light from the Sun is able to heat land and oceans as you claim or I’ll take it you can’t. I know you can’t, because as I’ve given you real world traditional physics, visible energy from the Sun isn’t capable of such a great work. When you admit that, if you ever do, welcome to rational thinking.
If you dispute that these laws are “traditional physics” then show where the formulas and principles that they describe are wrong. If you accept the formulas and principles, then use them to demonstrate your theories.
Straw man avoidance. Where have I disputed such a thing? I’ve given you the workings of energy meeting matter, proving your claims are nothing but empty vessel making much noise.
You haven’t answered my question: If a 100 watt light bulb produced 90 watts of infrared, what happened to the other 10 watts? Do you know? Do you know why the question is significant? Do you know how to answer the question using the various formulas from SB Law, Planck, and Ohm? Can you cite the specific math that is “wrong” with these formulas?
I have tried very hard to be polite against all you and your gang have thrown at me, but you really are full of shite.
Anything to avoid facing up to the idiocy Ira came up with, wich is the logical outcome of your fictional science. Go on, warm yourself on the 10% visible radiating out from the lightbulb trapping the 90% infrared heat inside which is backradiating like mad unable to escape from its greenhouse..
Bye bye
davidmhoffer says:
October 7, 2011 at 7:59 am
“Glenn;
Myrrh’s made up his mind and doesn’t want to be confused with the facts. Read through his last rant. How does one even start to correct the list of complete fallacies, misunderstandings, half right (but still wrong) web of constructs?”
I don’t hold out much hope. He’s shot himself in the foot again with his Wiki article about non-ionizing radiation. Apparently the fact that all infrared is non-ionizing as well as visible light doesn’t phase him, and some of his latest comments, such as “Near infrared is not thermal. It is not hot, we can’t feel it.” only reinforce the suspicion that he thinks that thermal infrared is “hot photons” flying through space and from one object to the next, distributing heat like bees flying around distributing pollen
Glenn;
I have no idea what he thinks. He’s got some stuff in his head that he just won’t let go of. Try and take him back to the basics and build from there…and he refuses to engage. He demands proof that visible light carries “heat” and every piece of evidence gets answered with arm waving and complaints that we’re avoiding answering his question. Its like “prove to me that two plus two equals four” and when you show him two popsicle sticks and two other popsicle sticks, put them together in one pile and count them…one, two, three, four… he fires right back with “I’m not talking popsicle sticks here, I’m talking “traditional” math, why are you avoiding answering my question? Prove to me that 2+2=4!”
He keeps describing processes like a photon raising an electron to a higher orbit, and then concluding that there’s no transfer of energy because it is an electron not a molecule. He doesn’t want to understand that moving an electron to a higher orbit requires energy, and that the energy came from the photon, and so he can’t.
He similarly refuses to explain what is wrong with the mathematical forumlas that engineers use every day to design everything from freezers to jet engines (succesfully I might add) but maintains that they are wrong. when asked if he understands Ohm’s Law, what a “watt” is, or SB Law, or Planck’s Constant, he screams that those things have nothing to do with it. Sorry, but they have EVERYTHING to do with it!
Myrrh, one more crack at it.
A unit of energy is a joule. Traditional physics, look up the physicist who came up with it. His name is Joule.
Power is measured in watts. One watt = 1 joule per second. Traditional physics, Look up that physicist, his name is Watt.
Voltage (E) = Current (I in amps) times Resistance (R in ohms). Traditional physics. Look up physicists Ohm, Ampere.
Power (P) = Volts (E) times Current (I) More traditional physics, if you looked up names above you should have all you need to know.
P=E*I Still more traditional physics.
The above is either right or it is wrong. If it is wrong, then explain what is wrong with it. You’ll most certainly win a Nobel Prize if you do as you’d be debunking a few centuries of physics not to mention a whole bunch of previous Nobel Prize winners.
Now, if you have a 100 watt incadescent light bulb, you can show that it is 100 watts by measuring the Voltage and the current running through it. If you also measure that it is producing 90 watts of infrared, the question becomes, what happened to the other 10 watts?
Now, if your have a 100 watt infrared light bulb, you can show that it is 100 watts by measuring the voltage and the current running through it. If you also measure that it is producing 99.9 watts of infrared, the question becomes what is the difference between the output of the infrared bulb and the output of the infrared bulb. What accounts for the difference in infrared energy output? Same power source, and we’ve verified that they are both consuming 100 watts. Did the other 10 watts from the incadescent bulb disappear into thin air? (Answer: YES IT DID! AS LIGHT! 10 WATTS OF IT!)
Now, if you have a 100 watt flourescent light bulb, you can show that it is 100 watts by measuring the voltage and the current running through it. If you also measure that it is only producing about 10 watts of infrared…well now, you’ve got a real canundrum, don’t you? Where’d the other 90 watts go? Why isn’t the flourescent bulb hot to the touch? Not even warm in fact? You’ve got 100 watts going in…100 joules per second…and they have to BE someplace them thar joules! Where’d they go? Your choices are they’ve collected somewhere (in which case the bulb would be hot) or that they’ve escaped somehow (but there’s only 10 watts of infrared so 90% of them escaped another way). What way was that? If not visible light, then WHAT?
Myrrh says:
October 7, 2011 at 9:53 am
“Go on, warm yourself on the 10% visible radiating out from the lightbulb trapping the 90% infrared heat inside which is backradiating like mad unable to escape from its greenhouse..”
I really doubt anyone understands what it is you are trying to say here, but I doubt anyone ever actually made a point of saying that no heat is radiated through the glass of a greenhouse. We all surely have felt window glass warmed by the sun. Saying that greenhouse glass absorbs infrared and traps heat isn’t an explicit claim that no heat is radiated by warm glass. A lightbulb is not analogous to a greenhouse, and I’m unsure whether backradiation inside lightbulbs hit much of anything to heat, but the glass certainly gets very hot, and reradiates to the surrounding air till all energy has been transferred and temperature equals the surrounding air. Infrared is absorbed by the glass of the lightbulb, and the glass reemits infrared in all directions. Such is with a greenhouse, the infrared from the sun does heat the greenhouse glass, and the surrounding air on both sides. Solar irradiance is around 350 watts per square meter, cut that in almost half to remove your “cold white light”, and you have the equivalent of roughly one 100 watt heat lamp directed over each square meter (about ten square feet) of greenhouse glass that is exposed to that amount of solar irradiance. And the glass is radiating heat in all directions, in and out of the greenhouse. Now you have perhaps less than half that energy massaging the molecules in the greenhouse, since outside air will tend to absorb more since it is not an enclosed area and you know how heat transfers.
You end up with not so warm glass heating up a greenhouse to the extent that it raises in temperature at times to the extent that it must stay vented even during times the outside temp is mild.
Exit question: Don’t you think the lightbulbs would be more efficient were they placed inside the greenhouse?
Glenn says:
October 7, 2011 at 11:06 am
I don’t hold out much hope. He’s shot himself in the foot again with his Wiki article about non-ionizing radiation. Apparently the fact that all infrared is non-ionizing as well as visible light doesn’t phase him,
?? Why should it?? You’ve really not taken anything in have you?
The comparison I’ve been making is between non-ionising UV/Visible/Nr Infrared and non-ionising Thermal Infrared, the shortwave are tiny compared with thermal infrared, near infrared is microscopic. These Light energies are reflective, they have enough energy to excite an electron, (but don’t have enough energy to eject an electron which shorter more energic UV and down has), but this does not create heat. It takes moving the whole molecule to do so and heat energy from the Sun, thermal infrared, can do that and does it. It’s the invisible thermal infrared, heat energy from the Sun, which we feel as heat, which warms us up, which heats the land and oceans of Earth.
and some of his latest comments, such as “Near infrared is not thermal. It is not hot, we can’t feel it.” only reinforce the suspicion that he thinks that thermal infrared is “hot photons” flying through space and from one object to the next, distributing heat like bees flying around distributing pollen
That is well-known in traditional real world physics. It is a fact. Near Infrared is like the shorter wavelengths of Light it is next to, reflective not absorptive. That’s why near infrared cameras can work just as visible cameras do, by capturing what is reflecting off the subjects. Near infrared is not hot, we cannot feel it, visible is not hot, we cannot feel it, UV is not hot, we cannot feel it. What we feel as hot is thermal infrared and that is absorptive in penetrating our bodies and heating us up inside, because we are mainly water, and thermal infrared heats water.
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
NASA TRADITIONAL PHYSICS
Your ‘physics’ is AGWScience Fiction memes, complete gobbledegook, contradicted in every aspect by real physics, including the real 2nd law.
And your continuing to promote it while unable to prove anything in its claims is really rather sad.
I shall forever associate your arguments with the incandescent lightbulb’s 5% radiated visible warming you up, while the 95% thermal infrared is trapped inside its greenhouse glass getting the inside hotter and hotter by backradiating..
[NASA traditional physics v AGWScienceFictiion takeover]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
[AGWScienceFiction energy budge as per Kiehl/Trenberth]
I shall forever associate your arguments with the incandescent lightbulb’s 5% radiated visible warming you up, while the 95% thermal infrared is trapped inside its greenhouse glass getting the inside hotter and hotter by backradiating..
🙂
IR lasers are used industrially to cut steel. http://unitednuclear.com sells them – and the tubes are made out of glass. [Find the lasers under “death ray parts.”
Myrrh,
“Forever associate these references, they are from the same orgs as you have used:
“Incoming ultraviolet, visible, and a limited portion of infrared energy (together sometimes called “shortwave radiation”) from the Sun drive the Earth’s climate system.”
“The solar radiation that passes through Earth’s atmosphere is either reflected off snow, ice, or other surfaces or is absorbed by the Earth’s surface.”
http://missionscience.nasa.gov/ems/13_radiationbudget.html
“Shortwave radiation (SW) is a term used to describe radiant energy with wavelengths in the visible (VIS), near-ultraviolet (UV), and near-infrared (NIR) spectra”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_radiation
“When EM waves are absorbed by an object, the energy of the waves is converted to heat (or converted to electricity in case of a photoelectric material). This is a very familiar effect, since sunlight warms surfaces that it irradiates. Often this phenomenon is associated particularly with infrared radiation, but any kind of electromagnetic radiation will warm an object that absorbs it.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_energy
You really shouldn’t be reading articles designed for kids, it will only confuse you.
Longwave or thermal infrared is what is radiated by objects that are primarily hit be shortwave radiation. That is why greenhouses get warm.
“I shall forever associate your arguments with the incandescent lightbulb’s 5% radiated visible warming you up, while the 95% thermal infrared is trapped inside its greenhouse glass getting the inside hotter and hotter by backradiating..”
I had just told you that greenhouses, as do lightbulbs, also radiate heat through glass, but unlike lightbulbs, greenhouses have vents. Greenhouses do get hotter by “backradiating” in the manner that incoming shortwave radiation that passes through the glass warms objects in the greenhouse, which those objects then radiate that heat into the air. Lightbulbs get very hot for one reason because they can not vent, and also that a continuous source of infrared radiation exists within the bulb. But both lightbulb and greenhouse do radiate heat through the glass. I just explained this to you in a previous post, but you can forever associate whatever you wish, it does not matter to me. I can easily understand the basics, and as easily experience them. After the sun rises, a window in my home warms, and I can feel that warmth on the glass both inside and outside the house, as well as in the air some distance from the window. As I move away from the inside of the window, the air (if the house is cool) I can feel that the air is cooler. As I move further away, I can feel the warmth on a wall that is in the path of the sunlight that is entering the house through the window.
Smokey says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:45 pm
“IR lasers are used industrially to cut steel. http://unitednuclear.com sells them – and the tubes are made out of glass. [Find the lasers under “death ray parts.”
The site claims “The Death Ray (actually a high power IR laser) produces an invisible beam of heat”.
Heat is energy transferred from one object to another. This only serves to confuse some people. Heat only occurs when a laser beam comes into contact with an object, such as molecules of air or other objects.
Myrrh,
Haven’replied to me huh? Because you can’t?
Little fact for you. When a photon strikes an electron and moves it to a higher orbit (as per your description) the molecule itself has more energy by the exact amount that the photon carried. That’s why some frequencies of light can be absorbed my some molecules and not by others. The molecule can only absorb a photon that carries the exact amount of energy to raise that one electron. Like it or not, the molecule now contains more energy than before it absorbed the photon, despite only a single electron being advanced to a higher energy state. Or are you going to debunk Bohr now as well?
Regarding your light bulb, no, the energy doesn’t stay trapped in the light bulb. BUT, it DOES raise the temperature of the inside of the light bulb by absorbing infrared and re-emitting it. On re-emission, some goes inside and some goes outside. Do you know why most incadescent light bulbs have white frosting on the inside of the glass? Do you think that the white frosting lets more light through? Of course not, it BLOCKS some of the light that a clear bulb would otherwise let through. However, the white frosting increases the range of frequencies that the glass+frosting absorbs versus clear glass. The process of absorption and re-emission having more spectrum to work with, increases the temperature inside the bulb to a higher temperature than would occurr in a clear glass bulb. That in turn increases the temperature of the filament, causing it to emitt photons at higher frequencies. The result is a greater percentage of the energy emitted from the filament being in the visible light spectrum versus infrared. Technically, the increase is very small, but if infrared goes from 95% to 94% as a result, that means visible light went from 5% to 6% which in lumens would be a 20% increase.
Or are you going to debunk Edison now too?
Myrr is the kind person that believes tat if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to there it that it could not possibly be making any sound.
Myrr classic quotations: “Near infrared is not a thermal energy. It is not hot. ”
Can we really say that any frequency electromagnetic radiation is “hot”. I think this kind of loose language is in itself nonsense.
For the sake of the argument let us define that we mean a radiation is “hot” is it causes direct heating sensation. So the statement “Near infrared is not a thermal energy. It is not hot. ”
Translates to “Near Infrared does not cause a heating sensation”
To test this we need to understand how a EM radiation that does cause a heat sensation produces this effect. So let’s go back to Myrrh for some guidance
“Near infrared is not a thermal energy. It is not hot. WE CANNOT FEEL IT AS HOT ON OUR SKIN. THIS IS A FACT. It does not warm us up, not absorbed by our skin, nor does it get absorbed as does thermal infrared, heat from the Sun, to warm us up inside. Near infrared is reflective not absorptive – hence its use in infrared photography.”
Myrr talks about an absorption as being the key mechanism. So far so good.
But he states that Near IR is not a “thermal Infrared”. Myrr defines thermal infrared as radiation absorbed by our skin and therefore sensed as heat.
So the claim is Near infrared is not absorbed by our skin. By Myrrs own claims, we only now have to test this claim.
Near IR is from about 800 nm to 2500 nm. So the claim is that our skin predominantly reflects this radiation to such a degree that we can not sense it as heat via absorption. Having done IR myself I do know that skin appears somewhat milky and translucence in such pictures. So that seems to support Myrr. Type in “Infrared b&W photography” into google images and you’ll see some examples.
However the images do not support claiming 100% reflection or even anywhere near it, as humans would then look more like ‘mirrors’ in such photographs.
According to the paper: “Near-infrared Absorption Property of Biological
Soft Tissue Constituents” (google it)
“Near infrared (NIR) can penetrate relatively deep into biological soft tissues. The NIR absorption property of tissue varies with tissue constituents especially water, fat, collagen, and their combination ratio.” and
“The strong absorption of NIR by water generally limits the penetration depth of light in tissue.”
So Myrr’s argument depends on the refelctivity of skin and energy content of the sun’s radiation in the NIR region relative to his “thermal radiation”. For arguments sake let’s say that 99% of the radiation is reflected, does that mean we can not feel the 1% and herefore NIR does not qualify as “thermal radiation”? Maybe someone else can run the numbers from here.
BTW to be a lottle on topic, the video is a stunt and not proof.
BTW to be a little on topic, the video is a stunt and not proof.>>>
Its so much worse than that. Gore used infrared heating lamps to demonstrate the effect of CO2 commonly called the “greenhouse” effect. But that isn’t how the greenhouse effect works at all.
CO2 would tend to BLOCK incoming infrared from ever reaching the earth. If the experiment was done properly, with highly sensitive and highly accurate equipment, it would have demonstrated that the CO2 filled jar actually warmed more slowly than the regular atmosphere jar.
To demonstrate the greenhouse effect, Gore would have had to use a heat source in the visible and UV range. That heat source would pass through the glass and the CO2 unimpeded, strike the globe (and thermometer for that matter) and be absorbed. This would then heat up the globe, causing it to radiate energy away from itself. Since the globe is MUCH cooler than light sources that produce visible or UV, it would radiate in the infrared band, which would then be absorbed and re-radiated by the CO2 in the jar…
In other words, the greenhouse effect depends on SW going right through the CO2, water vapour and other GHG’s, being absorbed, and then re-radiated as LW. Without that conversion, there is no greenhouse effect in the first place. By using an infrared source, Gore not only had to fake the experiment in order to get the results he wanted to show, but the experiment itself that he proposed shows very clearly that he hasn’t a clue how the greenhouse effect actually works in the first place.
I was in the middle of negotiating a bet as to what the results would be with another commenter, who proposed doing the experiment for real, and simplifying it by taking the globes out of the jars as he considered them superflous to the experiment. That shows you how quickly people who are certain of their “Science” jump to conclusions that show they don’t understand at all. With no globe in the jar to absorb SW and re-radiate it as LW, there would be no greenhouse effect to demonstrate. With the only heat source being infrared, all CO2 would have done is act as an insulator and result in the CO2 filled jar rising in temperature more slowly.
The notion proposed by Gore that this experiment is done every day in high schools is equally preposterous. If THIS is the experiment they do, then there’s a lot of science teachers trying to explain to students why the results come out opposite to what they expected. We’ve heard nothing of the sort for the simple reason that if high schools do ANY experiment to show the results of the greengouse effect…this isn’t it.
davidmhoffer says:
October 7, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Myrrh,
Haven’replied to me huh? Because you can’t?
I’ve replied to you. You either haven’t the ability to understand what I’m saying or are deliberately using straw man arguments to avoid answering, as I’ve already noted in asking you several times to prove that visible light is actually capable of heating water, method and observation. I’ve shown that it can’t by giving you standard traditional physics. It isn’t capable of it. You keep avoiding this.
I have nothing more to say to you who are doing everything you can to avoid giving me what I asked for, proof, while continuing to support the intelligence of your gang against me already proved to be nothing of the kind, example I gave in quoting Ira. My summary stands as reply to anything and everything you have to say further in avoiding the point I’m making.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/#comment-761876
davidmhoffer says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/#comment-762162
I agree.
Closed box would not work in anyway.
As I said before, CO2 is not transparent to all 0-5 um, so there is a cooling effect
that nobody seems to want to acknowledge, but is clearly proved
see footnote, here,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Myrrh;
I’ve replied to you. You either haven’t the ability to understand what I’m saying or are deliberately using straw man arguments to avoid answering, as I’ve already noted in asking you several times to prove that visible light is actually capable of heating water, method and observation. I’ve shown that it can’t by giving you standard traditional physics. It isn’t capable of it. You keep avoiding this>>>
I’ve answered your challenge directly. I’ve proposed experiments that you could do yourself, which you haven’t. I’ve presented the known physics as demonstrated by Bohr, Watt, Ampere, Joule, Ohm, Stefan-Boltzmann, Planck and Edison.. I’ve demonstrated the math that proves you wrong according to their discoveries and mathematical formulas, and challenged you to dispute the math, or their physics. All you’ve done in response is scream that I’ve offered no proof.
Do the experiments and/or the math and show where either is wrong.
There’s only one person guilty of avoidance here, and it isn’t me.
[snip]
REPLY: Myrrh, no more of this, you are DONE. Tired of you thread jacking here and learning nothing – from now on it is highly moderated troll bin for you, be as upset as you wish. Go have a drink at the pub or something, maybe it will help you see clearly. – Anthony
Myrrh;
I feel sad for you.
You`ve cobbled together a bunch of explanations of various things that prove the opposite of what you claim. You claim for example that a photon may be absorbed by a molecule, but that no chanmge in energy contained in the molecule takes place. Sorry, but you can`t have it both ways. If the photon carried no energy in the first place, it couldn`t make the electron do anything at all. The fact that the electron is now in a different orbit and the photon no longer exists means that the energy of the photon is now in the molecule.
Do the experiment I suggested. Get a large wattage flourescent light and a magnifying glass. Burn yourself and call me arrogant if you want. Never look directly at the arc from an arc welder because even though you might be far enough away from it that you cannot feel any heat from it, the visible light will burn the backs of your eye balls and make you go blind. Get an infrared meter and use it to measure the infrared coming off of a stove element. Put a piece of glass between the stove element and the meter and watch what happens, the reading will instantly drop to ambient conditions. That will prove to you that infrared doesn`t pass through glass. Look through a clear glass window directly at the Sun and you`ll go blind after a while from the visible light burning the backs of your eyeballs, even though there is no infrared (as you will have proven to yourself) passing through the glass. Build a wooden box and try heating it with a flourescent bulb and then try heating it with an incadescent bulb of the same wattage. Try and find a difference in how they respond to being heated with the same wattage even though on emitts over 90% infrared and the other only 20%.
I told you to read up on the physicists who did their work in some cases centuries ago, and tell me what is wrong with the formulas they developed, and which are used to this various day unchanged. Either their physics was wrong or the formulas are wrong. Show where they are wrong, where they have been changed from `traditional`physics to something different today.
You see Myrrh, I`ve done every one of these experiements and dozens and dozens more. I learned how the formulas work, and how to apply them in real world applications, and that they are in fact accurate.
I said it before and I will say it again. If you want help understanding the formulas and how they work and how they have been proven thousands upon thousands of times by engineers designing equipment that functions according to these formulas, glad to help. You want to wave your arms, refuse to learn how the formulas work and how to test to see that they are accurate, refuse to read the information you`ve been directed to, and refuse to do the very many experiments I and others have suggested, then that`s up to you.
But I`ll be repeating my request to Anthony regarding providing you a forum to spout utter nonsense, calling people who`ve done the actual experiments names, and suggest you deserve the same fate as the commenter who hijacked every thread about the sun with his theory that it has an iron core.
REPLY: OK we are done with Myrrh discussions – Anthony
Just for fun, I took the split screen image of the Thermometers and attempted a Charles Johnson style animated .gif. Actually, I didn’t even get that far because it was simply too perfect of a match. Cutting the right half of the image off and pasting it in a new layer on top of the left half, then sliding the layers around revealed a perfect match. Everything lined up perfectly. Turning the top layer on and off provided the animating effect, and the ONLY thing that changed was the level of the mercury. I invite you to repeat the process yourself. The “Split Screen” is simply the same video of ONE thermometer played out at different speeds.
Henry@davidmhoffer
Whereas some small part of energy may be exchanged when radiation hits a substance and if the substance is not transparent to that specific wavelength radiation, i.e. when it hits the absorptive region, it is not so that all that radiation specific to that absorptive region is continuously converted to heat inside the molecules of that substance. That is not what I see is happening. Most of it is re-radiated,or, using the other term: back radiated.
This is a basic misunserstanding related to the term “absorbed” and what many people think what the GH effect is.
See
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Do you agree with me on that?
It’s quite obvious what to make of the fact Watts can’t tell the difference (or pretends he can’t) between a dramatized, enhanced video describing a scientific principle for a short video, and the accurate repeat of an entire experiment. He actually complains of not being told, poor man:
“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.”
It’s like not being able to tell the difference between a stylized account of something and the thing itself. Would Watts complain that there’s no warning telling him TV sets show representations of things, not the things themselves? Or perhaps that maps aren’t the actual landscape they represent? Or that documentaries about the Big Bang don’t show actual footage of intrepid explorers travelling back in time to find out what happened 13.7 billion years ago? Watts indubitably gains credit amongst his congregation here but that doesn’t mean his pursuit of the experiment wasn’t a absolutely obvious waste of time from the start.
Those who are interested in a video of the actual experiment – which I’ve not seen linked to amongst the hundreds of comments here – can see the bottom of by blog post. It is certainly possible to measure a temperature difference between two bottles, one of which contains air and the other an additional amount of CO2. The basis of the experiment Watts complains about is well known, repeatable and not undermined in the slightest by the labyrinthine rant in the blog post above.
http://www.lukesci.com/2011/10/05/1375/
Luke Scientiae:
What you have employed is called ‘Higher Criticism’, in other words arguing from a point of view that you are right and anyone of the opposing viewpoint is therefore wrong. Arguments coming from such a base are typically devoid of facts and properly reasoned discussion, and tend to focus instead on ridicule, scorn, innuendo and generally troll-like behaviour.
Anthony Watts has rightly highlighted the fraudulent behaviour of Al Gore.
If it is so easy to recycle the same thermometer footage, it would be equally easy to use the genuine original footage for each thermometer – it’s as simple as that. The kind of shoddy snow-jobbing carried out by Gore and his team is evidence enough of the deceptive nature of that man.
Henry@Luke the science man!
It lukes like you are a bit late to the party. I thought the party was over.
The closed box experiment is not valid because it does not take into account the atmospheric cooling effect of the CO2:
see here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
Henry@davidmhoffer
You did not answer to my last post here?
Henry P:
I have looked at your post about global cooling. Firstly, it’s terribly written, and secondly, full of false claims. For example:
“Because the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send [sic] back in a radius of 180 degrees in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation.”
For a start, we both know (or perhaps you don’t) that molecules of CO2 are NOT spherical but linear. In group theory terms, CO2 belongs to the D(infinity)h point group, whereas a sphere does not. The point group of a molecule determines its spectroscopic properties, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise given your claim that you “happen to be familiar with spectrophotometry.” It is precisely their non-spherical shape that permits molecules to absorb IR in the first place, since it depends on the change in their dipole moment (through vibrations, bond stretches, etc.) which a spherical object could not undergo.
None of the rest of what you have written countermands the perfectly well established fact that CO2 has a heating effect on the Earth overall, irrespective of how many papers you cite showing that some incident radiation is re-emitted into space by CO2. The Earth heats up as a result of incoming sunlight, heat is re-radiated from the Earth in the IR region whereupon it interacts with atmospheric CO2, which acts as an insulator. The way you describe it, it’s as though the “cooling effect” is down to re-radiation of incident IR from the Sun. That’s not even slightly the point. And, by your own admission, you don’t know the quantities involved:
“So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results?”
If you don’t know the quantities involved, then you cannot validly conclude “The closed box experiment is not valid because it does not take into account the atmospheric cooling effect of the CO2” since for all you know, this might be negligible.
As for the Al Gore video about which Watts complained, which is the point of the whole blog post: Watts did not say the experiment’s premise is invalid. He complained of not being told that it wasn’t a repeat of a genuine experiment and my reply was TO THAT. Firstly, the genuine experiment works. Secondly, Watts should be able to tell the difference between a dramatization and the repeat of a genuine experiment (which would be considerably longer than the few seconds in the vid to begin with) if he presumes to comment on matters scientific. None of what you’ve said goes against this. As I wrote originally: “It’s quite obvious what to make of the fact Watts can’t tell the difference (or pretends he can’t) between a dramatized, enhanced video describing a scientific principle for a short video, and the accurate repeat of an entire experiment.” Does he object to Tom and Jerry cartoons on the basis of animal cruelty, too?
Speros:
You’ve spent the majority of his reply guffing on about Higher Criticism and accusing me of trolling, rather than considering the salient point: Watts gains points amongst his fanboys for attempting to repeat an experiment most sane people with some semblance of vision and common sense would know was dramatized for effect. That does not mean the actual experiment doesn’t work. It does, and I’ve already linked to a video of it.
It’s manifestly obvious that this place, WUWT, is a denialists’ Mecca. Just look at all the energy people here have put in on this post alone, analyzing stills from what is obviously a dramatization, congratulating themselves as they go on revealing what they portray as some grand, malevolent deception. There is precious little I’ll be able to say here to persuade Watts’ fanboys that there’s something wrong with the judgement of people unable to tell a video of something from the real thing itself, so I’m not going to make the mistake of continuing the effort.
Henry@Luke
I don’t see your reply here yet but I can read from my blackberry that you said,
that I said:
So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results?”
and then you said
If you don’t know the quantities involved, then you cannot validly conclude “The closed box experiment is not valid because it does not take into account the atmospheric cooling effect of the CO2″ since for all you know, this might be negligible
The quantities we know: CO2% has risen from 0.03% to 0.04% in the last 50 or 60 years.
So I say again:
where are your test results that prove that its warming effect is greater than the cooling effect?
I am concerned that you did not publish my comment that I left at your blog, especially the one that shows all my tables that prove that there is no warming caused by an increase in GHG’s.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
It rather proves your dishonesty and your actual unwillingnes to “argue from the authority of evidence”