People send me stuff. My friend Rick was in Eugene, OR recently for a Ducks game and saw this in a store on the shelf. Of course, he had to snap photos and send me an email to tell me all about it.
I got a chuckle out of the “experiment with a model atmosphere” part. Here’s the reverse side:
I did some research to find out who makes this and how it is marketed. It turns out to be from a company called Thames and Kosmos:
| Earth’s Climate & Climate Change | ||
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Global warming — the steady increase in Earth’s air and ocean temperatures since the mid-20th century — is one of the most discussed and studied topics in the scientific community today. This kit introduces you to Earth’s climate and the issue of global warming with 23 hands-on experiments. Since Earth’s formation, its climate has been constantly changing. Periods of warmer climate have alternated with ice ages. These changes happen over long periods of time. During the last few decades, a warming in the climate has been observed everywhere on Earth. While some warming may be due to natural phenomena, scientists predominantly attribute global warming to human influence. This kit gives you the basic knowledge you need to understand the climate, why it changes, and how our actions affect it. First, learn about Earth’s climate system, weather, and atmosphere by conducting experiments with a model Earth and atmosphere. Explore the hydrological cycle to learn about humidity, clouds, and precipitation. Model Earth’s heat reservoirs, thermals, global and local winds, and ocean currents. Next, learn how human activity influences the climate with experiments involving carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Measure the effects that increased levels of carbon dioxide have on the temperature of air. Learn about how warming affects the Gulf stream. Finally, investigate the potential consequences of global warming on humans, ecosystems, and the world’s economies. Learn what we can do to protect the climate. The full-color, 48-page manual guides your experiments. Ages 10 and up. |
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Intrigued, I decided to have a look at the online manual available here (PDF) The table of contents is telling:
I really wanted to see how they do experiment 21, suspecting they do some variation on Al Gore’s fabricated CO2 experiment, given the included equipment I see. Unfortunately they don’t give a complete manual online lest some enterprising kid decides to just skip buying this and do it at home.
I suspect that experiment 20 fills the plastic globe with CO2, and then they do something like what they show in experiment 8-10:
As we know (but Al Gore still refuses to acknowledge) an experiment like that can’t possibly work they way the Earth’s atmosphere does, which is why they had to fake the results in post-production.
The last item in the manual table of contents (page 46) reveals that this science kit has advocacy as a conclusion:
Economic Consequences 46
How Can We Protect The Climate?
Let’s hope some parents follow this early advice and teach their children to be skeptical detectives rather than followers:
Encourage your child to be a good detective and look closely to see the results of the experiments.
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Remember wood burning kits and lawn darts? Those taught us about “natural selection”.
Martin Clark says:
November 2, 2012 at 1:24 pm
“Experiment to see how carbon dioxide levels affect temperature” is in the Climate & Weather” kit as well. Some of the other kits would have been of interest to me if they had been available when I was in the target age-group. Hopefully there are still kids with the required attention span?
I moved on from the home chemistry set to mixing sodium chlorate and sugar. Much more spectacular results. (Don’t try this at home. It is a wonder that I am still in one piece.)
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Back when I was in elementary school my parents bought me a chemistry set. (It had a little bottle of sulfer. There were charcoal briquets in the garage. For some reason they wouldn’t buy me any pottasiaum nitrate.) That was back in the day before they had to put a warn you not to make toast in the bathtub.
There was one little bottle with two warnings on it. “Do not heat” and “Do not mix with acid”. I remember being a little disappointed that when sodium ferrocyanide is put in vinager and heated that all I noticed was that it changed color from blue to green. (Or maybe it was green to blue?)
Good thing I didn’t add any CO2!
The manual sample pdf is here
http://www.thamesandkosmos.com/news/manualsamples/663513_globalwarming_manual_sample.pdf
Not sure how they demonstrate the effect on humans and raise the ocean levels in experiment 23. Maybe they melt ice cubes in a tray of water but that would be really dull.
It’s $34.95 on their online store and they put it in the environmental science section. It should probably be earth science.
Is there a version for mars?
It’s The Team climate model! The more it is sold, the better the predictions will be….
I just typed Thames Kosmos into e-bay. The “Sustainable Earth Experiment kit” looks fun, but I think I might be tempted to skip the CO2 bit and recreate the Great Bombardment with Pb.
If the green kits are duff science, you have to wonder if the “Genetics kit” follows Mendel or Mengele?
John West says:
November 2, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Experiment 25: Ocean Acidification: Making Ocean Water Acidic with CO2
Step 1: Obtain HCl or H2SO4 ……..
Ahh, the old Chemistry Sets….new ones don’t do anything, and cost twice as much
(at least) once you’ve bought all the household chemicals needed to do the
experiments (hmmm….you’d assume being a chemistry set it would have
everything in it already)….
On the other hand, UEA, UVA, Penn, etc. would have saved a lot of money by just
using this kit rather than buying huge supercomputers, etc. Same (lack of) results,
less money….
And speaking of H2S04, Think Geek has a nice shirt (not sure if it can handle
chemical spills 🙂 ) Johnny
[ha-ha. snip. — mod.]
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?id=632002
This is very funny – the Earth’s climate is one of the many things which don’t do “what it says on the box”.
On page 24, it says “Fall Wind”. Shouldn’t that be “Windfall”?
I wonder how they rigged the “CO2 produces warming” experiment, given that the mean path length for infrared absorption should be on the order of 23 meters right now at 1 bar level.
Home experiment No.1
A plastic bowl in a 750 watt microwave oven is not heated by the high intensity radiation (photons if you like) whereas the same bowl in front of a 750 watt electric radiator is heated by a similar intensity of radiation. So the bowl “detects” the frequency difference. Many seem to think that would not be possible and that all photons are the same and all cause warming. The frequency of the microwaves is less than that of the spontaneous radiation emitted by the bowl itself at room temperature. But the frequency of the radiation from the electric radiator is greater. That’s all that matters. That is a simple demonstration of how a surface “pseudo scatters” radiation which has lower frequency than its own emissions, and is not warmed by such radiation. This is the whole point of Prof Claes Johnson’s “Computational Blackbody Radiation” paper. So I have provided at least one example of empirical evidence which is not in conflict with what he has said. There has never been any empirical evidence to disprove what he said, and never will be. I have explained more in the first five sections of my paper.
Home experiment No.2
Check the outside temperature just before, and then soon after low clouds roll in. Why is it warmer when there are low clouds? Water vapour radiates with many more spectral lines than carbon dioxide, so its radiation is more effective per molecule in slowing the rate of radiative cooling of the Earth’s surface. It is also much more prolific in the atmosphere, so its overall effect on this slowing is probably of the order of at least 100 times the effect of carbon dioxide. Hence it is not at all surprising that low cloud cover slows radiative cooling quite noticeably and, while it is present in that particular location, the rate of cooling by non-radiative processes cannot accelerate fast enough to compensate. But that is a local weather event, not climate. Over the whole Earth and over a lengthy period there will be compensation. In any event, what is being compensated for is almost entirely due to water vapour, with carbon dioxide having less than 1% of the effect on that mere 14% of all heat transferred from the surface which enters the atmosphere by way of radiation.
LazyTeenager says:
November 2, 2012 at 3:43 pm
[ha-ha. snip. — mod.]
Beautiful! Quite beautiful.
The simplicity of beauty is awesome.
Home experiment No.1
A plastic bowl in a 750 watt microwave oven is not heated by the high intensity radiation (photons if you like) whereas the same bowl in front of a 750 watt electric radiator is heated by a similar intensity of radiation. So the bowl “detects” the frequency difference. Many seem to think that would not be possible and that all photons are the same and all cause warming. The frequency of the microwaves is less than that of the spontaneous radiation emitted by the bowl itself at room temperature. But the frequency of the radiation from the electric radiator is greater. That’s all that matters. That is a simple demonstration of how a surface “pseudo scatters” radiation which has lower frequency than its own emissions, and is not warmed by such radiation. This is the whole point of Prof Claes Johnson’s “Computational Blackbody Radiation” paper. So I have provided at least one example of empirical evidence which is not in conflict with what he has said. There has never been any empirical evidence to disprove what he said, and never will be. I have explained more in the first five sections of my “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” paper.
Home experiment No.2
Check the outside temperature just before, and then soon after low clouds roll in. Why is it warmer when there are low clouds? Water vapour radiates with many more spectral lines than carbon dioxide, so its radiation is more effective per molecule in slowing the rate of radiative cooling of the Earth’s surface. It is also much more prolific in the atmosphere, so its overall effect on this slowing is probably of the order of at least 100 times the effect of carbon dioxide. Hence it is not at all surprising that low cloud cover slows radiative cooling quite noticeably and, while it is present in that particular location, the rate of cooling by non-radiative processes cannot accelerate fast enough to compensate. But that is a local weather event, not climate. Over the whole Earth and over a lengthy period there will be compensation. In any event, what is being compensated for is almost entirely due to water vapour, with carbon dioxide having less than 1% of the effect on that mere 14% of all heat transferred from the surface which enters the atmosphere by way of radiation.
But it is dangerous! Experiment 20 will finish off the child and the whole family. What is the point of having experiments 21 – 23?
This is the revised edition: the original had a methane experiment which was considered a medical hazard.
Seems like good wholesome fun for the whole family.
Ahahahahaaaa. I joke. It looks like a pile of warmist brain washing monkey bollocks.
True story.
Can we get any more predictable than is what is found on Thames & Kosmos’ 2006 web page about another of its products?
” … Originally developed in Germany, in cooperation with Greenpeace™, the Physics Solar Workshop kit adds relevance to the basic laws of physics by addressing the topic of solar power….” http://www.thamesandkosmos.com/news/news112906.html
Climate Author says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/02/friday-funny-global-warming-home-experiment-kit/#comment-1134000
Henry says
You seem to ignore the facts that both water and CO2 also radiate @places in the 0-5 um causing re-radiation of the sun shine, thereby a cooling effect. So, if you want to prove that a little more CO2 causes a net warming effect you first have to come with a balance sheet of how much radiative cooling and how much radiative warming is caused by an increase in 100 ppm of CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/02/friday-funny-global-warming-home-experiment-kit/#comment-1133580
the Physics Solar Workshop kit adds relevance to the basic laws of physics by addressing the topic of solar power
———————————————–
My goodness, if I was promoting solar power, every time someone mentioned the laws of physics, I would be going “Ooh look, a squirrel …”
The problem I can see for doing this experiment is that incandescent light bulbs are now band for all the harm they have done (sarc). You can still get them in the UK if they are for use in out buildings or garages as the law only band them for sale for domestic use, you can also still make and sell what are called rough duty bulbs for industrial use, they also last longer than the old standard use bulbs.
In Germany they are being sold as Heat Balls http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/skirting-eu-law-the-rebranding-of-incandescent-bulbs-as-heat-balls They come with a warning that as part of their normal operation they give off light. How cool is that?
James Bull
I think the “WARNING: Choking Hazard” on the box says it all.
Is this product false advertising … ?
John F. Hultquist says: I hope several museums obtain such hoax-kits to include with displays such as The Piltdown Man,
The Kyoto commitment ends on the 31st December 2012. Worldwide governments are trying to pretend it is not them that is causing it to end … but we all know they are as pleased as punch not to this tyre necklace around their economies. There’s no doubt at all that this year will be seen by historians as “the end of global warming alarmism”.