As readers may know, Dr. Roy Spencer and I have had a long running disagreement with the group known as “Principia Scientific International” aka the Sky Dragon Slayers after the title of their book. While I think these people mean well, they tend to ignore real world measurements in favor of self-deduced science. They claim on their web page that “the Greenhouse gas effect is bogus” and thus ignore many measurements of IR absorptivity in the atmosphere which show that it is indeed a real effect. Rational climate skeptics acknowledge that the greenhouse effect exists and functions in Earth’s atmosphere, but that an accelerated greenhouse effect due to increased CO2 emissions doesn’t rise to the level of alarm being portrayed. Yes, there’s an effect, but as recent climate sensitivity studies show, it isn’t as problematic as it is made out to be.
I don’t plan to get into that issue in this thread, as this is an hands-on experiment showing one of the thermal premises of the “slayers” in action to prove or disprove it. Most of what that group does is to spin sciencey sounding theories and pal reviewed papers by a mysterious members-only peer review system, and I have yet to any one of them try to do anything at an experimental/empirical measurement level to back up the sort of claims they make.
What started the recent row was an essay by Dr. Spencer titled Time for the Slayers to Put Up or Shut Up, which I followed on with: The Spencer Challenge to Slayers/Principia.
In their response to Dr. Spencer, they made this essay…
…and in that response was this curious graphic from Dr. Alan Siddons:
To be honest, I laughed when I saw this, because for all their claims to be “experts” on thermodynamics while telling the world that “back radiation” has no effect, this is a clear-cut case of them not knowing what they are talking about when it comes to heat -vs- visible light. Clearly, you can indeed reflect/re-emit a portion of the visible and infrared energy back to the light bulb, energy which would have been lost to the dark surroundings. There is no “extra” energy per se, just a spatial redistribution of energy (a greenhouse atmosphere has higher temperatures near the surface, but lower temperatures at high altitudes). They also seem to fail to understand how a mirror actually works, bold mine:
“Does shining a flashlight at a mirror so that all the radiation comes back to the flashlight make the flashlight shine brighter?”
While the emissivity of a glass mirror is high, no mirror reflects 100%, and mirrors of course are not lossless, so it will also absorb some Visible and IR in addition to reflecting/re-emitting some of it back. You can see this loss of energy in the FLIR camera in the video just before the mirror is removed at about 16:30.
I put their claim of “a light bulb facing a mirror does not heat up” to the experimental test.
I did several spot experiments at home over the last couple of weeks to investigate the issue empirically (since talk is cheap), and to make sure it was repeatable, while discussing the design and results with Dr. Spencer. The first two designs of the experiment had weaknesses that I was not happy with, and so it has take time to devise an experiment in a way that was fully comprehensive and uninterrupted from start to finish. For example, in my first iteration, the experiment was shot from the side (similar to the diagram), but required rotating the bulb mount assembly away from the mirror to get the temperature of the bulb surface. This wasn’t always repeatable to get the same spot on the bulb surface and it introduced variances. Another problem was that standard household bulbs had odd temperature gradients across their surface due to the way the filament is placed. The flood lamp was much more repeatable at its center. Repeatability is important, because I want others to be able to replicate this experiment without significant variances due to the equipment and how it is setup.
After ensuring the experiment works, and is repeatable/replicable, and that the control run without a mirror performed as expected, today in this WUWT-TV segment, I present the entire experiment uninterrupted as one long video. It is almost 21 minutes long, but I had no choice, because at least 16 minutes of it were required to be non interrupted to show the experiment in progress. I didn’t want anyone to be able make silly claims that the experiment was faked that there were video edits going on to change the results, such as Al Gore did in his Climate 101 video.
In my case, I did some graphic overlays to illustrate points and data, but there was no discontinuity edits of the video or audio from start to finish.
Here’s the experiment equipment list and procedure.
Equipment:
- FLIR BCAM portable infrared camera
- 65 watt incandescent flood lamp (used due to mostly flat center target surface)
- clamp on ceramic lamp base and metal electrical base/stand
- small glass wall mirror from K-Mart
- video camera to record the event
Procedure:
- Setup equipment in similar fashion to Alan Siddons figure 3 above, using stands and clamps to allow for correct height and continuous recording of FLIR camera image and a timer image.
- Focus FLIR on flat front surface of 65 watt bulb
- Start video camera to record experiment, simultaneously start digital timer
- Apply AC electrical power to 65 watt bulb
- Note FLIR temperature of bulb center surface at intervals, record that data.
- Run until equilibrium temperature is reached, which I defined would be when temperature no longer increases after a period of about 60 seconds, note that temperature, note how long that takes with timer. Record that data.
- Leaving all equipment in place and operating, place mirror perpendicular to 65 watt bulb surface, at about 3 inches away to fit scale of Alan Siddons Figure 3. This will obscure surface of bulb from FLIR camera but is required so that distance/position between bulb and FLIR is not changed, which could result in altered readings.
- Continue experiment.
- Show with video camera how equipment remains in place.
- Wait for the same amount of time as previous equilibrium temperature took to reach.
- Remove mirror, note on the FLIR camera what the surface temperature of the 65 watt light bulb is at that time.
Premise of the experiment:
If the temperature recorded by the FLIR camera is the same after the mirror has been left in place for the amount of time that it took to reach equilibrium temperature, then the Principia/Slayers claim is true.
If the temperature has risen, it falsifies their premise that “a light bulb facing a mirror does not heat up”.
Video of the experiment (with conclusion) :
Note that this is not a big budget production (it was done in the dining room of my home) so I apologize for less than perfect audio quality. BTW, the clothes iron I used as a prop was not turned on, which is plainly evident in the FLIR image. It just so happend that the tabletop ironing board and iron worked out well to position the mirror…. and I had no budget beyond a few dollars for light bulbs and lamp bases. Where’s that big oil check when we need it? /sarc
Plotted temperature data:
[Note: per a suggestion in comments, this graph was updated to show the data after the “mirror added” as dashed line, since only one datapoint (228F) was measured. – Anthony]
Supplemental information:
In a PDF file here: Slayers_lightbulb_experiment
- Temperature data recorded from the experiment to reach equilibrium temperature
- Graph of the data recorded from the experiment showing data including after removal of mirror.
- I also ran a separate control experiment for 2x of the tested equilibrium temperature time to see if bulb can reach same temperature without mirror. I’m satisfied that the experiment is properly functioning.
I have another experiment planned for part 2 that will test another claim that the Principia/Slayers routinely make. I’ll have that in a few days.
UPDATE: In the claim by Joe Postma at Principia where they stated a couple of days ago that we’d “cut and run” (obviously not, just taking our time to be careful) Alan Siddons makes this claim:
As PSI’s Alan Siddons laments:
“All of us on our side have researched and deeply pondered the actual principles of radiative heat transfer. On the other side, however, the “experts” we argue with, like Spencer, Lindzen, Monckton, Watts, just insist that a body’s radiant energy can be doubled by directing that energy back to it — even though the simplest of experiments will shows that this is false.
I’ve never made a doubling claim like that, nor am I aware that any of the others named have claimed a doubling, only that some energy will be returned, as I have just proven in the “simplest” mirror experiment postulated by Siddons.
I have to think these folks aren’t operating with a full understanding of what the physical basis is when I read things like this. This is an excerpt of this comment left in the thread below by Joe Olson where he confuses a microbolometer with doppler radar:
“Remote read IR thermometers are also used to ‘explain’ this back-radiation warming effect. These instruments work be sending out an IR signal and measuring the shift in the returned signal. ” (bold mine -A)
No, sorry, you are 100% wrong. it is a passive sensing device. No active signal is emitted.
FIGURE 1. One pixel in a microbolometer array. An infrared-absorbing surface is elevated above the substrate and thermally isolated from adjacent pixels. Low mass increases the temperature change from heat absorption. Read-out circuits typically are in the base layer, which may be coated with a reflective material to reflect transmitted IR and increase absorption of the pixel. http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-48/issue-04/features/microbolometer-arrays-enable-uncooled-infrared-camera.html
Gosh, I didn’t think your misunderstanding of an IR bolometer was that distorted. No wonder you guys make the sort of way out claims you do.
A microbolometer is a specific type of bolometer used as a detector in a thermal camera. It is a grid of vanadium oxide or amorphous silicon heat sensors atop a corresponding grid of silicon. Infrared radiation from a specific range of wavelengths strikes the vanadium oxide and changes its electrical resistance. This resistance change is measured and processed into temperatures which can be represented graphically. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbolometer
You should really quit while you can Joe, you are making a fool of yourself when you make such claims that are so easily disproved. – Anthony
UPDATE3: The Principia/Slayers group has posted a hilarious rebuttal here:
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/210-why-did-anthony-watts-pull-a-bait-and-switch.html
Per my suggestion, they have also enabled comments. You can go discuss it all there. – Anthony
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I need some help here:
what is it called when observational data does not match one’s theory?
I’m sure there is a scientific word or phrase for this.
It’s unfortunate this is necessary. Bottom line IMO is not to waste too much effort, as it typically doesn’t change the dedicated slayers. Arguing w/fools, etc, etc.
Thanks Anthony I’ll have a look at this. Of course, this is beside the point of Spencer’s challenge and our answer to that challenge, in that in fact no GHE is actually observed in a time-dependent heat flow equation.
REPLY: Knock yourselves out. Someday we hope you’ll be fair and open up the Principia website to allow comments. Surely your science is “bulletproof” enough that you have no fear of debate.
For some entertainment, one of the principals of your organization, Doug Cotton, (who has become so obnoxious and devious with fake names and fake email addresses that he has been banned at several blogs) can defend your science in this video:
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8YbyfqUvfY ]
– Anthony
Nice Anthony.
John Who said
“I need some help here: What is it called when observational data does not match one’s theory?
I’m sure there is a scientific word or phrase for this.”
—- ——
The word is ‘wrong’
tonyb
OK well you didn’t actually do what you think you did, and so I’ll write an article for response instead of posting it here. Sorry, but the GHE is still dead…we already proved it with real world data anyway. Cheers. We’ll have a reply article for you later today or maybe one or two days.
REPLY: LOL! You might want to wait until the second experiment I’m doing is published, so you won’t have to retract your first rebuttal. How about opening up comments at Principia? You guys whine that we don’t debate your issues enough here and elsewhere, goose, gander, and all that. – Anthony
Wasn’t it the Dragon Slayers who first proposed strapping buttered toast to the back of a cat to get perpetual motion? No I’m joking, but they do remind me of that.
Well done Anthony, looking forward to reading their response.
Cool! :>)
Joseph E Postma says:
“no GHE is actually observed in a time-dependent heat flow equation.”
What?
http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20Radiative%20Cooling.pdf
@Anthony
Good job! If attaboys were dollars you’d be rich.
Well it’s not a “rebuttal” I have for you Anthony, it is a few factual statements which render this experiment superfluous, because it didn’t do what you think it did or what it needed to do. It is completely independent of the results of your second experiment. Besides, as can be followed from the links in the response to Spencer’s challenge, we used actual data from the real world to look for the GHE, and found that it doesn’t exist. Anyway I’ll stay off here for now and will just come back to post a comment to link the response for you.
REPLY: the experiment was designed from the start to be repeatable/replicable, why not repeat it and show me exactly how it will “render this experiment superfluous”?
Empirically measured data talks, bullshit walks. Leave the realm of opinion and enter the realm of hands-on science, and then you’ll have something worth looking at.
And, why do you keep ducking that question about allowing comments on the Principia website? Surely you can’t be afraid of an open debate about your science claims? – Anthony
The ability to increase the heat source by 18F by simply adding a mirror to reflect the ‘Back Radiation’ must open up some good commercial opportunities given further development.
“They claim on their web page that “the Greenhouse gas effect is bogus” and thus ignore many measurements of IR absorptivity in the atmosphere which show that it is indeed a real effect.”
==============================================================
I think both statements are true. IR absorptivity in the atmosphere is real and the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is non-existent.
The IPCC “greenhouse effect” goes beyond absorptivity and says that the “greenhouse gases” warm the Earth surface additionally via back radiation. Exactly such an effect is physically impossible, because under certain conditions it would lead to an absurd and impossible outcome.
Please, do not confuse IR absorptivity in the atmosphere with the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC.
REPLY: “physically impossible” um, no. Cue the “cold object can’t heat warm object” meme.
Back radiation from any gas is not only quite possible, but real. It’s called radiative cooling and it goes on every day. It is exactly what you guys get confused about with CO2 in the thermosphere. – did you even watch the video?
Sometimes I wonder if you guys have some sort of mental block on these simple physics basics, some have suggested that your claims are so absurd that your organization is a “plant” to make rational skeptics look ridiculous like Lewandowsky and company.
-A
AW: “Someday we hope you’ll be fair and open up the Principia website to allow comments.”
More misinformation and hypocrisy as usual from Anthony Watts. Contrary to his bogus claims anyone can post comments on the Principia Scientific International Forum – its freely available to to those who can be bothered to sign up for a free account.
So Mr Watts, when are you going to admit we do have a time-dependent energy model, contrary to the deceitful misinformation put about by you and Dr Spencer?
I don’t expect this comment to pass your censors as you have scrupulously deleted every single one of my comments for the past year.
REPLY: that’s because you’ve violated site policies like Mr. Cotton has. But I’ll allow this one.
Your reply is a strawman, I’m talking about the articles on your main web page, where you name Dr. Spencer and I, not some separate members-only forum where you have to sign up. We don’t make people sign up at WUWT to comment on articles. There are no comments allowed on those at PSI main page. If you want to claim openness, you should allow comments on articles where people are named so that they can reply directly below the articles, not someplace else.
Your model still doesn’t work. It’s as flawed as your claims of “CO2 cools the atmosphere” or a “cooler object can’t radiate to add heat to warmer object”
Dr. Spencer doesn’t see anything worthwhile yet, when/if he does, look for a statement from me.
In the meantime, do be careful and don’t take this one comment approval as a sign that you have commenting privileges again. Sock puppetry shouldn’t be necessary if your science was solid.
– Anthony
paulus says:
May 27, 2013 at 8:30 am
The ability to increase the heat source by 18F by simply adding a mirror to reflect the ‘Back Radiation’ must open up some good commercial opportunities given further development.
I have an old 1Kw electric fire with a reflector – does that count? 😉
Not sure that reflection == absorb and re-emit ??
But that is why such experiments are useful and why science uses them.
Anthony, I don’t need to repeat the experiment because the experiment is incorrect, and so I’m just going to state why it is so.
The comments on PSI don’t really concern me. I do have my own blog which is open to comments…we don’t have anyone that could moderate comments at PSI and leaving such comments “open” is not really a good thing to do due to abuse, spam, etc. The PSI site is for articles and research papers…not really an interactive site like yours here.
Again, in terms of your challenge to empiricism and measured data, in our reply to Spencer’s challenge we provide just that, from the actual real-world. Not a table-top experiment but actual outside data.
REPLY: LOL! Replicating hands-on a diagram of an an experiment you postulate and publish on your own website is “incorrect”? Do you hear yourself when you say these things?
There may be no hope for you. – Anthony
@Joseph E Potma As with Anthony, I too beieve that you et al are sincere in your intentions, but this experiment does not set out to prove/disprove GHE. It sets out to prove/disprove that a mirror placed in front of a lightbulb creates a positive energy feedback. The premise is elegantly proven.
With regard to a mirror making a light source grow brighter, them’s photons, and we all know the basics about light interferance patterns, and light scatter, don’t we?
Very good demonstration!
A minor point on your time vs. temperature graph. The line segment between mirror added and mirror removed might be shown as dashed to emphasize it is inferred from the endpoints.
REPLY: That is a valid point, I’ll make that change, thank you – Anthony
REPLY: “physically impossible” um, no. Cue the “cold object can’t heat warm object” meme.
Back radiation from any gas is not only quite possible, but real. It’s called radiative cooling and it goes on every day. … did you even watch the video?
==========================================================
Back radiation is real and the the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is non-existent. There is no contradiction here. Because the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is not just about existence of back radiation. The IPCC goes beyond that and claims that this back radiation has a warming effect on the surface. Exactly this warming effect (this includes slowind down cooling) is physically impossible.
No I have not watched the video yet. I certainly will do it a little bit later, when I have more time.
“Cue the “cold object can’t heat warm object” meme.”
Yep. Somehow the concept of NET heat transfer escapes them.
paulus: The ability to increase the heat source by 18F by simply adding a mirror to reflect the ‘Back Radiation’ must open up some good commercial opportunities given further development.
There’s this device that has a concave mirror and an incandescent bulb at its focal point. It conveniently has a battery inside of it and a switch.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I think it’s called a “flashlight”. >.<
[snip – this is getting too far off topic, the discussion is about the current experiment. If you want to make a new one, do it and submit it as a guest post with data – mod]
Anthony said: “Replicating a diagram of an an experiment you postulate and publish on your own website is “incorrect”? Do you hear yourself when you say these things?”
The problem is that you don’t understand the data, and what you’re actually supposed to measure, and what you’re measuring. It is not quite so crass as you are saying.
Bugs Man said: “With regard to a mirror making a light source grow brighter, them’s photons, and we all know the basics about light interference patterns, and light scatter, don’t we?”
Yes, exactly, and that’s basically why the GHE doesn’t exist.
Anyway, geepers, I’m trying to stay off here. A reply is coming, which will be an article at PSI, which I will link to here, or if comments are closed here then hopefully people find it anyway. 🙂
REPLY:
Postma writes: “you don’t understand the data, and what you’re actually supposed to measure, and what you’re measuring.”
Then do it yourself, do the ACTUAL EXPERIMENT you diagrammed on your website, and prove me wrong with the data you collect. Until then, all you have is noise. Now that you’ve made the claim, I’ll accept nothing less than replicating what I did and showing it to be wrong.
Theoretical essays won’t cut it, man up and do the experimental work. We’ll discuss it then. Don’t comment further here until you have that.- Anthony
Thank you Anthony for allowing discussion of this simple experiment. Turning on an electric light bulb causes internal heating of the filament, globe and base, followed with the rise in surrounding air temperature until a convective equilibrium is reached, at approximately 400 seconds in this experiment. Then adding the mirror, REDUCES convective currents until a new equilibrium is established. To properly conduct this experiment, one must do a blind convective restrictor, a non reflective surface of same size and placement as the mirror, OR induce a convective flow that is NOT disrupted by the mirror placement. This could be done with a small fan creating a draft normal to the mirror plane.
An outbound OLR photon moving at the speed of light impacts a three atom, free moving gas with a narrow absorption band and is in a billionth of a second ’emitted’ as a lower energy, longer wave length photon, that is incapable of reheating the warmer source of the OLR emission. This lower energy emission is required due to the KE transfer, but a three atom molecule cannot ‘redirect’ with the magnitude of a solid surface, or even a multi-molecule surface like water vapor. There is scattering by CO2, but nothing approaching 50% reflection from OLR-CO2 impacts.
Remote read IR thermometers are also used to ‘explain’ this back-radiation warming effect. These instruments work be sending out an IR signal and measuring the shift in the returned signal. All electromagnetic energy transmission is a function of the square of the distance, yet a remote read IR thermometer will give the same reading of a shot at your backyard barbie, regardless of the distance. Your body can ‘feel’ infrared energy, and you can easily feel this energy below, beside and above your barbie. You can also easily feel the difference in temperature at these three locations due to convective currents, and always flowing away from Earth.
If you take a tuning fork to a concert, it will vibrate to the natural frequency of the concert….but it does not amplify the sound of the concert. A thousand tuning forks would be equally ineffective. Hopefully showing half the experiment will inspire others to do the complete experiment. Hopefully discussion of the full spectrum of Earth forces will end the Carbon forced hysteria. Objective readers are encouraged to visit the PSI “Publication” tab for a wider discussion. PSI is a volunteer group with limited control over independent actions of some of our members. We only support that which is publicly posted. Alan Siddons is a radio chemist, but to my knowledge has not claimed to be a PhD.
REPLY: “Remote read IR thermometers are also used to ‘explain’ this back-radiation warming effect. These instruments work be sending out an IR signal and measuring the shift in the returned signal. ” (bold mine -A)
No, sorry, you are 100% wrong. it is a passive sensing device.
FIGURE 1. One pixel in a microbolometer array. An infrared-absorbing surface is elevated above the substrate and thermally isolated from adjacent pixels. Low mass increases the temperature change from heat absorption. Read-out circuits typically are in the base layer, which may be coated with a reflective material to reflect transmitted IR and increase absorption of the pixel.
Gosh, I didn’t think you misunderstanding of an IR bolometer was that distorted. No wonder you guys make the sort of way out claims you do.
A microbolometer is a specific type of bolometer used as a detector in a thermal camera. It is a grid of vanadium oxide or amorphous silicon heat sensors atop a corresponding grid of silicon. Infrared radiation from a specific range of wavelengths strikes the vanadium oxide and changes its electrical resistance. This resistance change is measured and processed into temperatures which can be represented graphically. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbolometer and also http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print/volume-48/issue-04/features/microbolometer-arrays-enable-uncooled-infrared-camera.html
You should really quit while you can Joe, you are making a fool of yourself when you make such claims that are so easily disproven. – Anthony
[snip we are talking about the experiment on this thread, this is way off topic – mod]
Bugs Man says (May 27, 2013 at 8:49 am): “…this experiment does not set out to prove/disprove GHE. It sets out to prove/disprove that a mirror placed in front of a lightbulb creates a positive energy feedback. The premise is elegantly proven.”
=============================================================
Right, a mirror or a reflector would create “a positive energy feedback”, as you put it, but it can not have a warming effect on the source. So, it can have a warming effect on something else, this is obvious, but not on the source. Therefore the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC is impossible.
REPLY: “a mirror or a reflector would create “a positive energy feedback”, as you put it, but it can not have a warming effect on the source. ” Like Postma, do you listen to yourself when you say these things? Watch the video, I’ll give you a 30 minute time out to do just that – Anthony]