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
Max, I believe that the reflected side of the bulb would generally be hotter, because it’s also receiving the extra energy. The total brightness of the room wouldn’t increase, just the wall that’s receiving the reflected light from the mirror. I feel that looking from a certain angle,the bulb might appear brighter, but not by a useful amount.
I’d like to see an IR map of the entire bulb. That would show exactly where the extra heat is concentrated. Light, however would be more difficult to map.
Your experiment did not do what you claim. The argument was ”shining a lighted bulb to a mirror does not increase the brightness of the bulb”. This did not happen. Therefore Joe Postma is correct. You had a small increase of temperature because the mirror acts as an insulator preventing the temperature equilibrium being maintained so you ended up with a small temperature increase. This does not prove that the GHE is fact only that insulation works, which we all know.
PLEASE use SI units of temperature.
Since several people have complained about the lack of access to the PSI forum.I sent an e-mail to John O’Sullivan about 1 1/2 days ago suggesting that they make a forum section visible to the public and volunteered to help them moderate it.I was a moderator of an older forum but left after having to clean up the spamming on a daily basis which is not possible to prevent due to the low quality of the Kunena forum software.I tried hard to convince them to use a good forum software such as myBB and gave them links to the Joomla merger software to bridge myBB and Joomla together and it was rejected in favor of the gutter quality Kunena software from Joomla.
There have been no response to the e-mail and that is why I am commenting about it here.I am a member of that private forum but unable to go there anymore because I never joined the PSI group thus making me an outcast.Have not seen the forum for months and no longer care to because of this absurdly level of privacy.
I am pissed about it.
REPLY: I don’t blame you. It’s like the SkS kidz club at the opposite end of the spectrum. -Anthony
Konrad says (May 29, 2013 at 2:33 am): “That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got?
I would say you just lost Gary. Badly.”
Whatever you say, Barack. Good luck storming the castle.
OK, what @ur momisugly#%$^& is next on the agenda?
I love real-world scientific experiments. This is what Nye and Beakman were SUPPOSED to do for kids, but they quickly switched to advocacy and lost their shine.
Keep this up!
This should handily disqualify your point of view, unless you’d like to revisit your use of the word “insulator” as used to describe a material that is an excellent conductor of heat.
Anthony,
I have been told that anyone can now post comments at the PSI blog.
Gary Hladik says:
May 29, 2013 at 7:24 am
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I am not sure I understand your reference to “Now is the Moment” Obamcaclese, teleprompter reader in chief, architect of the sub-prime loan crisis and former president of the Joyce Foundation. But no matter..
“Assault the castle”?
Let us not go to Camelot, it is a silly place. There is no need to assault the castle, it can be pushed over with a finger. The walls are made of cardboard and those 2500 knights guarding the ramparts are scarecrows stitched from whole cloth and stuffed with grey literature. The whole point of the PSI thing was to shame any sceptic from questioning the radiative GHE hypothesis and finding this out.
The castle will self destruct in due course. There is a man on the inside. One of your own. Ray Pierrehumbert, high priest of AGW and writer of the sacred texts. He worked out the critical errors I am highlighting with the radiative GHE hypothesis. He knew before 1995. He tried to write some industrial strength bafflegab to cover it up. Essentially trying to get away with this –
“initially adding radiative gasses to the atmosphere causes cooling, but after a “certain point” than strangely coincides with current political conditions, it causes warming.”
It wasn’t going to work, so it was buried under the castle. It is still ticking.
So Gary, good luck with the AGW thing.
What’s next on the Agenda? All the AGW fellow travellers tearing each other to pieces in a maelstrom of blame, rage and despair. Popcorn time for sceptics.
Konrad says (May 29, 2013 at 5:13 pm): ‘I am not sure I understand your reference to “Now is the Moment” Obamcaclese…’
Because, like yours, his sales pitch is that he has THE ANSWER. Well, so does the Pink Unicorn Brigade, so does the IPCC, and so does the deodorant commercial on TV. My built-in doubter says they (and you) probably don’t.
‘“Assault the castle”?’
Actually it was “Good luck storming the castle.” from “The Princess Bride”: Three guys (one crippled) against a castle. A metaphor for overturning the conventional science that so-called “greenhouse gases” provide a net warming of the atmosphere.
“There is no need to assault the castle, it can be pushed over with a finger.”
And yet it still stands. Funny, that. Finger out of order? 🙂
“The walls are made of cardboard and those 2500 knights guarding the ramparts are scarecrows…”
Those “knights” come from BOTH sides of the CAGW debate, i.e. both supporters and critics of the IPCC. You’re not part of the Pink Unicorn Brigade, but your “army” is apparently about as small as theirs. Small “armies” have “stormed the castle” before (e.g. plate tectonics), but the vast majority just melt away.
“So Gary, good luck with the AGW thing.”
Thanks. Good luck with the castle. In all sincerity, you’ll need a bigger battering ram than your kitchen experiments. (And only here do I realize that I should have gone with the “Jaws” metaphor instead, so I could tell you to get a bigger boat. *sigh* Story of my life…)
“What’s next on the Agenda? All the AGW fellow travellers tearing each other to pieces in a maelstrom of blame, rage and despair. Popcorn time for sceptics.”
While that vision is certainly appealing, my built-in doubter says the CAGW scam will slowly fade away, only to be replaced by even more destructive stupidities.
Sorry to implode your bubble here, but if IR was reflected by the mirror and the bulb reduced thermal loss because of this, as you admit, then it’s obvious other wavelengths of photons were reflected, such as visible light. In the glare of the bulb, our own eyes may not be able to perceive much change in brightness. This is difficult to measure without accurate Lumens measuring equipment.
But it still stands to reason that any reflected photons will affect the bulb’s brightness, whether in UV, IR or visible light wavelengths. The experiment is, for all intents and purposes, proven.
Addendum to my above:
Any photonic wavelength that can be reflected by the bulb surface, or even filament (which it can because it’s visible even when switched off), will make the bulb appear brighter, however the argument was not about the filament – just the bulb. in any case, Joe Postma is incorrect and his hypothesis duly falsified.
joeldshore says: “It was a tongue-in-cheek comment inspired by Darren Potter’s conspiracy theory. In all seriousness though, after reading the Slayers nonsense rejecting basic ”
> beng says: ” Unless you forgot a sarc tag, only you could turn a perfectly reasonable comment by J Condon”
>> Potter says: “Is PSI a covert attempt by ManBearPig types to discredit ”
Call it what you will, but PSI is doing a good job of trashing web sites which have rejected AGW (claim of man made CO2 inducing climate change). Try reading through some of threads where PSI / Slayers have posted numerous comments. It is hard to tell who is skeptic of AGW and who is Slayer rejecting GHG — unless you already know the players.
Now imagine reading through the same sites and threads as an average person who is starting to doubt ManBearPig’s AGW. An outsider that has come here looking for information and facts on GW. With said average person having education of one or two high school science classes, works in non-science field, and up until now has gotten their AGW (cough) science from newspapers and television. Realizing, an average person is not deeply interested in science of climate change, and most likely has limited amount of time to spend digging out fact from fiction.
I tried reading through a few such threads wearing hat of an average person, and quickly grew weary of all the conflicting comments / trashing. I never made it to point of who was right or wrong, let alone whether AGW was science or nonsense.
Regardless of whether PSI / Slayers are ManBearPig / AGW operatives; PSI / Slayers are having a negative impact on those of us who have rejected ManBearPig’s Global Warming SCAM, and are attempting to help others understand why AGW is not science fact. ( IMO it is a mistake to underestimate how far ManBearPig is willing to go to win AGW: http://climaterealityproject.org )
Gary Hladik says:
May 29, 2013 at 6:28 pm
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“Kitchen experiments”? Gary, the instructions for the experiments posted have been designed specifically so other readers can build and replicate them for themselves. I cannot ask others to use Q-Cell and Mylar insulation, dry nitrogen or peltier chips. The basic physics demonstrated in the experiments remains valid and AGW remains a physical impossibility.
You have attempted to defend the radiative GHE hypothesis. In your responses you have attempted to ridicule me by association or comparison to others. You have made call to authority arguments regarding “conventional science”. You have attempted to ridicule the simplicity of the experiments shown without addressing their results. (I note that you do not attack Anthony’s experiment in the same way). You have nowhere addressed the science. Why is that?
I don’t need a army Gary, one is enough. All that is needed is the Internet and time. After all, some AGW promoters already knew for years why the hypothesis fails, yet continued to push it anyway. The evidence of this cannot be erased. Pierrehumberts clumsy patch up. The “high altitude ice clouds cause warming” papers being ditched. The attack on the Makarevia 2010 discussion paper. It’s all there on the Internet forever. There will be no “slow fade away”, no “soft landing”. The hoax got too big for that. The public will demand the names and they will get them.
Darren Potter says:
May 29, 2013 at 7:24 pm
“it is a mistake to underestimate how far ManBearPig is willing to go to win AGW”
—————————————————————————————————–
Indeed,
look at the money from Soros through Fenton Communications to set up the pro AGW sites including RC. Then further money to Google to keep RC further up in the search listings than their traffic alone would justify.
The weight of circumstantial evidence would indicate that PSI, Greg House and Myrrh are AGW Assault Clowns. Always jumping on any thread discussing problems with the radiative GHE. Never seen to comment on proxy studies, surface station data or numerous other issues. Their apparent mission – make any sceptic thinking of challenging the radiative GHE hypothesis afraid to be associated with them.
Part 2 of this thread is quite entertaining. AGW Promoters and AGW Sleepers arguing with AGW Assault Clowns. Anthony has “taken out the trash” yet they are still trying to keep the game alive 😉
That’s one thing that could be said for climate blogs. They do attract a better class of troll 😉
Konrad says (May 29, 2013 at 7:57 pm): “Gary, the instructions for the experiments posted have been designed specifically so other readers can build and replicate them for themselves”
While I appreciate the attention, you have to realize that I and other laymen here at WUWT are not your target demographic. If you want to revolutionize atmospheric science, you ‘ll have to target atmospheric scientists. If you have more sophisticated experiments, submit them for publication. If you have a better GCM, show that it explains climate parameters better than existing GCMs and submit for publication.
“In your responses you have attempted to ridicule me by association or comparison to others.”
You reject the prevailing scientific paradigm, therefore your claims are extraordinary, but you present no extraordinary evidence. You claim unique truth, much like the Pink Unicorn Brigade, so I hold you to the same standards.
“You have made call to authority arguments regarding ‘conventional science’.”
Sorry, have I misrepresented “conventional science”?
“I note that you do not attack Anthony’s experiment in the same way”.
Come on, Konrad, you don’t seriously think the complexity of the issues is even comparable, do you? I mean, light bulb + mirror ~ planetary climate system? Seriously?
Besides, Anthony’s results are in line with “conventional science”. 🙂 I know, because I’ve even seen this stuff in textbooks (which, BTW, disagree with you on so-called GHGs causing net cooling). You can bet, though, that I’d have a bone to pick with him if his results weren’t “conventional”. Extraordinary claims, right?
“You have nowhere addressed the science. Why is that?”
Au contraire. I explicitly accepted all your experimental results. Convection! Evaporation! Refrigeration! They’re real!
My quarrel is with extending these results to an entire climate system.
“I don’t need a army Gary, one is enough. All that is needed is the Internet and time.”
“I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.” — “The Magnificent Seven”, 1960
“The public will demand the names and they will get them.”
My built-in doubter says otherwise, but I hope I’m wrong.
I can see how 50 or 60 incandescent lights throughout the house could add to the warmth of the home.
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/bulbs.html
The IR light is more pleasant as well even though you can’t see it.
Slartybartfast–
Have you seen or used a ”Space Blanket”? These are very thin polymer sheets covered with a mirrored finish, probably aluminium, that reflects EM radiation. It is used to cover very cold survivors to keep them warm, or even help to warm them up. It insulates very well but does not prove the GHE.
Gary Hladik says:
May 29, 2013 at 10:30 pm
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Gary,
Still no scientific rebuttal of my primary claims? No? Why am I not surprised…
I have no interest in “revolutionising” non established atmospheric science. I will leave it to Dr. Spencer to return atmospheric science to reality when he wakes up. Remember, the AGW hypothesis has no founding in empirical science. The radiative GHE hypothesis has no supporting empirical evidence. It will fail. All that is require is the Internet and time.
I suspect you misunderstand my motivation and entertainment. I know the radiative GHE is pseudo science. I know that some of those promoting the radiative GHE also know that it is pseudo science. Sceptics are not part of a “well funded denialist machine”. Herding sceptics would be like herding cats. Pointless. You are dealing with the worlds first genuine “grass roots movement”. None of the old techniques will work. Sceptics are self motivated. They observe each other and choose an area in which they can contribute. I do not waste energy on debating PSI Assault Clowns. Identifying and outing “Sleepers” is so much more fun 😉