After the essays in May on mirrors and light bulbs, I’ve been regularly poked and prodded via email for not wanting to engage “the slayers” anymore, or to do that “third experiment” I mentioned in May. I long ago concluded by my experiences afterwards with “the slayers” that it is a waste of time and effort to try to explain anything to them. Curt Wilson, who did the second experiment and was planning to do the third, has come to the same conclusion, as have many others.
I have to give them credit though, they are entertaining. When I saw this profoundly ridiculous rebuttal (reflectional denial) at their headquarters while arguing over Willis’ Steel Greenhouse post, I just had to share it.
LOL! That’s the “slayers” in nutshell right there. No better example of the absurdity of their position exists in my opinion. Epic.
WUWT regular, Duke physicist Dr. Robert G. Brown has been trying to talk some sense into them over at Principia Scientific. I keep telling him he’s being sucked into a time and energy sink like gravity around a neutron star. Just as it is a good policy to steer clear of neutron stars, so it is with these folks who are incapable of assimilating the real world of physics, but live in an alternate reality of absurd second law constructs.
So, that’s why I’m not bothering anymore, when you have reflection denial statements like the one above, why engage in a pointless dialog with the hopelessly lost who don’t want to learn anything? Thank goodness for my spam filter.
For those that might care, keeping the filament of a lightbulb within its optimum temperature range increases its life, by limiting hotspots and thus tungsten evaporation. Putting an incandescent bulb into a reflector housing not designed for it will in fact increase the filament temperature, increasing tungsten evaporation and deposition on the inside bulb glass surface.
See: http://www.lightingassociates.org/i/u/2127806/f/tech_sheets/FAQs_Reflector_Design__Why_is_it_important_.pdf
Tungsten evaporation from hotspots is why standard incandescent bulbs eventually fail.
Gary Hladik
This expert in industrial heat transfer considered that while radiative effects of CO2 were very significant at furnace temperatures, the effects were almost negligible at atmospheric temperatures.
A. Schack, Der industrielle Warmeubergang [The industrial heat transfer] (Verlag
Stahleisen m.b.H., Dusseldorf,
Remember that advocates of the Greenhouse Effect claim a magnitude of 33K
Gary Hladik.
the element in a vacuum furnace gets heat from the electrical energy supplied to its element.
No I could not design such an engine because the theory is wrong so it would not work. I was wondering if Anthony would make the same assumption. Obviously not.
As explained above decreasing entropy of a system is impossible without an external source of energy to drive that drop. The earth/sun system is it, no external energy to lower entropy, even cosmic rays powerful though they are act as a cooling mechanism by increasing clouds which increases entropy.
The fact of the matter is you haven’t ever moved a meter with your pretend effect,
and there’s no name for that effect in the literature of history except as been claimed by cranks to move weather, and eventually climate.
You’re not going to move a meter with the magic gas effect because there is no heating component to a miles deep frigid, refrigerated, gas bath. The fact the earth’s covered with ten thousand feet of refrigerant isn’t going to help your case.
You who believed there would one day be found an effect measurable have been proven wrong in your guess which way an instrument would move time, after time.
The ocean basins cover the earth about 55 or something percent. They kick back blue light the most energetic end of the spectrum.
The earth’s “the blue planet” because of it.
You’re not going to find an instrument class which reveals a warming effect due to the presence of the gas, water, half the globe covered in oceanic basins of:
frigid,
liquid,
refrigerant.
Even saying you think maybe reveals something’s seriously up with what leads you to claim you believe it. The atmosphere’s a frigid gas bath, refrigerated, with phase change action, of water.
The refrigerant and the tiny trace of CO2 aren’t going to be found, ‘warming’ anything. No matter how many years people spend milking the grant/publicity that comes from insisting it will.
[snip -try again, sans the accusation, my patience with you is wearing thin – Anthony]
tjfolkerts says:
July 21, 2013 at 10:35 pm
“Greg … think about what you just said! “Efficiency of protecting the environment from the inside heat by the shields”
The ‘protection of the environment’ means less heat getting out to adversely warm the surroundings. By conservation of energy, this mean the heating elements are providing less power than they would without without the radiation shields in order to reach the same temperature. Your own statement backs this up!”
=======================================================
Is it possible that you have lost focus a little bit?
There are many ways to keep cold from getting warm and warm from getting cold, like blankets, insulation etc. . But we are talking specifically about alleged “back radiation warming effect” also known as “greenhouse effect”. This particular effect is not possible, as I demonstrated earlier on this thread.
Gary Hladik says:
July 22, 2013 at 12:08 am
“I’ve found another real life variant of the “Yes, Virginia” experiment that should be accessible to everyone. This paper describes a compact vacuum furnace for use in orbit, where weight, space, and power are critical. The paper describes a number of design measures to reduce power consumption, but as the author writes in the introduction, “…radiant heating dominates heat transfer in the furnace at all temperatures…” so the project concentrated on efficient radiation shielding.”
========================================================
This is the same kind of misunderstanding as in case of reflective layer on the inner side of a thermos flask. This is the definition of thermos flask from the WordWeb dictionary: Vacuum flask that preserves temperature of hot or cold drinks. So, they apparently know 2 things: a)it is vacuum insulation that works there, not “radiation shield”, they do not even mention the reflective layer and b)it does not necessarily warm (“cold drinks”). It is clear, that a thermos flask with a reflective layer will indeed keep a hot drink warm under usual conditions due to vacuum insulation, but this should not be confused with the alleged “back radiation warming effect”
The same goes for any application. Reflected radiation like any radiation can warm, but not the source and not from cold to hot, see the demonstration above.
The only way a radiation shield can work would be by redirecting radiation to some spot, but not to the source, the latter is impossible.
In the abstract the authors wrote: “Vacuum and radiation insulation, coupled with low conductivity support paths provided a means to almost eliminate heat losses from the furnace,”, so, vacuum insulation would work, lowering conductivity would work, too, redirecting radiation would work in some cases, but redirecting radiation back to the source won’t work for physical reasons.
Richard Vada says:
July 22, 2013 at 4:21 am
I suspect you are essentially correct, and that the phase changes of massive amounts of water dominate the dynamics. Mind you, what you are suggesting is negative feedback. It does not invalidate the basic Greenhouse mechanism, but it makes a mockery of the necessary “all things being equal” qualification. All things are decidedly not equal, and increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, according to the observational evidence, has negligible impact on surface temperatures.
” Greg House says:
July 21, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Gary Hladik says:
July 21, 2013 at 11:01 am
“How do you explain a radiation shield increasing the temperature of a vacuum furnace heating element?”
==========================================================
The abstract you linked your words to does not say anything about “increasing the temperature of a vacuum furnace heating element”. The shields are apparently supposed to protect the environment from the heat.”
On Earth, if you have a bunch of mirror and point them at tower it can make very high temperatures and this high temperature be used to generate electrical power.
A loss in such a system is whatever is being heated will radiate heat and it will also heat the air
and lose heat from convection.
On the Moon you could have same solar power system and not have any loss from convection of heat, but still have losses from radiant energy. So due to lack of heat loss from heating air [as you in a vacuum]. Such solar tower would be more efficient as compared to such systems on Earth.
Plus on the Moon you start with more sunlight.
Sunlight not intensify can heat an object to somewhere around 80 C, and on Moon the sunlight heats surface to about 120 C. This is due to solar flux being 1360 watts per square meter on the Moon as compared to around 1000 watts per square meter on Earth.
With Moon you have no losses from convection and you have higher intensity of sunlight [the Earth’s atmosphere stops over 360 watts from reaching the surface].
So on the Moon with mirrors one can more easily produce very high heat. On could point mirrors at the ground and melt and vaporize the ground. And your biggest loss is having very hot material which could be vaguely approaching the surface temperature of the Sun. But as get to point of reaching say 1000 K, the surface emitting a lot of energy, and 3000 K it’s glowing like a light bulb-
5-10% of energy emitted is visible and most of rest in Near Infrared.
And this is not anywhere close to climate science’s back radiation- it’s not in same time zone.
A light bulb filament is small. if instead it was 1 meter square, it’s radiant energy is a lot- It’s around 4 million watts.
So if want 2000 to 3000 K temperatures for furnace or power generation, you have stop the loss of this radiant energy- or use a lot of mirrors and/or only heat relatively small area.
On with the Moon one can nearly capture the heat of the sun- though with lasers on Earth you can exceed the sun’s heat, to do this, generally involves using a vacuum- though dropping a nuclear bomb can provide such very high temperatures, briefly. [Btw, nuclear bombs above ground have different effects on Moon as compared to Earth- see high altitude/space environment nuclear explosions.]
So solar power tower on Earth:
“Thermal storage to store the heat in molten salt containers to continue producing electricity while the sun is not shining
Steam is heated to 500 °C to drive turbines that are coupled to generators which produce electricity”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower
” Since molten salt is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold more heat than the synthetic oil used in other CSP plants
http://inhabitat.com/worlds-first-molten-salt-solar-plant-produces-power-at-night/
1000 F is 537.7 C
The advantage of using salt is you have a liquid [not a high pressure gas] at high temperature,
the higher temperature has more heat stored in smaller area. So it’s used rather than oil or water for this reason.
On moon you could also use salt, but you also perhaps have option of using some other medium which melts at even a higher temperature. Higher temperature can allow more efficiency, but one has more heat loss. So one were using solar tower which operated at same temperatures as on Earth, you would probably not use reflectors to deal with heat loss, but on the Moon one has potential to operate solar power towers or solar furnaces at much higher temperatures at lower costs, and have various benefit associated with operating at these higher temperature, and one would use reflectors to significantly reduce heat losses.
Bryan say: “This expert in industrial heat transfer considered that while radiative effects of CO2 were very significant at furnace temperatures, the effects were almost negligible at atmospheric temperatures.”
Bryan, industrial heating and the earth-sun-space system are rather different. Two huge differences pop to mind.
1) Furnaces are typically no more than a few meters large. Those are rather short distances for CO2 to make much difference.
2) Furnaces are surrounded by a “cold reservoir” at about 300 K (the air and ground and water around us). The earth is surrounded by a cold reservoir at about 3 K. So the equivalent statement would be something like “while radiative effects of CO2 were very significant at typical atmospheric temperatures, the effects would be almost negligible if the atmosphere were close to 3 K”.
Bryan says (July 22, 2013 at 2:27 am): “This expert in industrial heat transfer considered that while radiative effects of CO2 were very significant at furnace temperatures, the effects were almost negligible at atmospheric temperatures.”
The real-world effect of CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases can be measured from the ground. The downwelling IR (DWIR) at Billings, OK, for example, varied around 300+ watts per square meter October 3-5, 1993. Not what I would call “negligible”.
“Remember that advocates of the Greenhouse Effect claim a magnitude of 33K”
From all so-called “greenhouse gases”, including water vapor, CO2, methane, ozone, etc.
johnmarshall says (July 22, 2013 at 2:41 am): “No I could not design such an engine because the theory is wrong so it would not work.”
Dodging the question. I asked you, as you asked Anthony, to design an engine utilizing the so-called “greenhouse effect”, assuming such an effect. You can’t, so your challenge is meaningless.
What do think about the compact vacuum furnace?
Greg House says (July 22, 2013 at 8:13 am): “…so, vacuum insulation would work, lowering conductivity would work, too, redirecting radiation would work in some case…”f
Indeed, the furnace minimizes conduction losses through careful design and convection losses by using a vacuum, but to repeat from the introduction, “…radiant heating dominates heat transfer in the furnace at all temperatures…”
“…but redirecting radiation back to the source won’t work for physical reasons.”
Demonstrably false. Remember the control experiment for the effect of the radiation shielding? SInce English is apparently your second language, I’ll add emphasis:
“The first test of the furnace design gave 115 W of power used at a coil temperature of 600°C. This is to be compared with the exact same furnace using vacuum insulation except with a quartz outer shell [i.e. without radiation shield] that operated at the same core temperature, but used a power of almost 2 kW.” See? Vacuum in both cases, radiation shielding made all the difference.
Since even that may not penetrate, I’ll translate: The radiation shielding alone reduced power requirements by over 90%. Pretty good for a “non-existent” effect, no? 🙂
Of course I still expect you to see nothing. I’m writing primarily for any fence-sitters still reading and secondarily for amusement; I always did enjoy watching the antics of “Sgt. Schultz” (though even he never thought he could melt his face with a mirror). 🙂
Greg House 8:13am demonstrates his confusion arising from use of the word “warm” when writing:
1) “It is clear, that a thermos flask with a reflective layer will indeed keep a hot drink warm under usual conditions…”
2) “Reflected radiation like any radiation can warm, but not the source…”
The source of the warmth in the thermos flask is the hot drink hence these Greg House’ writings cannot both be true. The one that is not true in modern science is 2).
In modern science, the word “energy” can be used as a noun, heat or “warmth” cannot be used as nouns. When one writes “heat transfer” it is always way less confusing to write “energy transfer”.
Energy is conserved, heat is not. Heat as a noun doesn’t even exist once the caloric theory died out.
Here’s one way I would make Greg House’ statements less confusing, both of these are true in modern science:
1) “It is clear, that a thermos flask with a reflective layer will indeed keep a hot drink losing energy slower under usual conditions…”
2) “Reflected radiation like any radiation can slow energy transfer but cannot raise the temperature above that of the original source…”
******
Greg House 8:13am continues:
“The only way a radiation shield can work would be by redirecting radiation to some spot, but not to the source, the latter is impossible.”
When Greg House writes that incorrect statement, what he means to convey properly is something like this:
“The only way a radiation shield can work would be by redirecting radiation to some spot, but if redirected to the source, it is impossible to raise the source’ temperature above starting conditions.”
To Greg House – A recommendation for less confusion (of author & reader) in your postings: drop the terms “warm”, “warmth”, “heat” as a noun and substitute “energy” & “temperature”. Greg House’s postings will become a lot less confused and Greg House’s refutation(s) above will be obvious as to why it (they) cannot prevail.
“”””……..Bryan says:
July 22, 2013 at 1:41 am
george e. smith, you appear to be saying that if semiconductor material is heated its resistance goes up.
A simple yes or no reply on this central point would have cleared the matter up
My last post gave you the chance to set the record straight but instead you dodged the central point
I hoped that you would agree with me that all commonly freely available sources (such as wikipedia) say exactly the opposite that is that the resistivity goes down as the temperature goes up.
Here is the wiki reference that you found hard to find from the link I provided.
Semiconductors[edit]
Main article: Semiconductor
In general, resistivity of intrinsic semiconductors decreases with increasing temperature…….”””””””
So Bryan,
Let’s divide all common solid materials into two classes. One class is metallic conductors. Now Let me add, that we are talking PURE materials. Not a single atom of any impurity. The second class of such materials are not metallic conductors.
Now we eliminate the first class; we have no more interest in them.
What is left are “insulators.” They don’t generally have free electrons, particularly when cold.
So-called “semi-conductors” are just insulators, usually in crystalline form since we said they are pure materials, and some of the shared electron bonds are weak enough that a few of them break at room Temperatures,. Yes these would be “intrinsic” semiconductors. A crystal like quartz has such strong bonds that very few break at room Temperature due to thermal agitation, but heat them enough, and eventually some will break, so is quartz an insulator, or a semiconductor ?
But now we focus in on those solids that for various reasons we tend to think of as semiconductors.
Carbon, Silicon, Germanium, and alpha tin, would be some group IV ones. Well carbon (diamond) is not your typical semiconductor; nor is alpha tin.
The next group, would be the III-V s , the three fives, GaAs, GaP, GaN etc. Then there are the
II-VI s, the two sixes, and so on and there’s a lot of them.
But Silicon is best known and plentiful, so let’s stay with that.
“””””…..In general, resistivity of INTRINSIC semiconductors decreases with increasing Temperature…..”””””
Just try buying one; an intrinsic silicon device.
Well you can’t; except as a paper weight, because you cannot make Ohmic contact with intrinsic silicon, to attach wires to it, and make a resistor out of it. But the statement is true. Raise the Temperature and more bonds will break, Same goes for quartz and diamond.
But we were talking about LEDs , not intrinsic paper weights. (or gemstones).
USEFUL semi-conductors are ALWAYS doped with impurities. In the case of Silicon, Boron and Phosphorous, would be two very common ones. Phosphorous, being group V donates a free electron, and makes the material n-type. Boron creates a hole, and makes p-type.
Typical densities would range from 1E14 to 1e19 impurity atoms per cc. Silicon has 5E28 atoms per cc.
I cited measured conductivities for 1E15 and 1E17 doping densities, which are more typical values. You need to get into the 1E19 to 1E20 range to make Ohmic contacts. Silicon has 5E22 atoms per cc.
So at the highest doping densities, you have one impurity atom in 5,000 silicon atoms; and one in half a million is more typical.
So keep that in mind when somebody tries to tell you that 400 ppm (1/2500) CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, couldn’t possibly do anything.
But back to the semiconductor resistivity.
At very high Temperatures, much higher than climate Temperatures, or device survival Temperatures, thermal breaking of crystal bonds, will lead to conductivity, that increases rapidly with higher Temperatures.
As the Temperature drops, the thermally induced conductivity drops, until it is below the dopant induced conductivity, and below that Temperature, the conductivity now drops with lower Temperatures, or if you like the resistance goes up with Temperature just as I said.
At low enough Temperatures (maybe 100 K) the conductivity will have a range of near zero Temperature coefficient, and at cryogenic Temperatures, it will once again have a conductivity that increases with Temperature, but at a much lower rate than the high Temperature end. At those Temperatures, the device is no longer an operational functioning semiconductor device, like a transistor, or LED. That doesn’t mean it is destroyed, it just doesn’t work at such low Temperatures.
Over the whole functional operating Temperature and useful doping range of a Semiconductor device, the resistivity has a positive Temperature coefficient.
So if you would like a gold star for finding texts that say the intrinsic Temperature coefficient is negative; I’ll give you a silver star, since YOUR references, failed to tell you the coefficient is also negative at very low Temperatures, for some extrinsic semi-conductors as well.
And that silicon 5 E28 is a typo, 5E22 is correct
Gary Hladik says:
July 22, 2013 at 12:25 pm
““The first test of the furnace design gave 115 W of power used at a coil temperature of 600°C. This is to be compared with the exact same furnace using vacuum insulation except with a quartz outer shell [i.e. without radiation shield] that operated at the same core temperature, but used a power of almost 2 kW.” See? Vacuum in both cases, radiation shielding made all the difference.
Since even that may not penetrate, I’ll translate: The radiation shielding alone reduced power requirements by over 90%. Pretty good for a “non-existent” effect, no? :-)”
============================================================
The only rational explanation for this alleged difference performance by two types of shields (apart from non-existing back radiation effect) can be that they have other differences, like different conductivity, which leads to some differences in temperature and efficiency. But not back radiation.
Another option would be that someone made it up.
Again, as I demonstrated earlier on this thread, the assumption of “back radiation warming” leads to a runaway warming and production of energy out of nothing, which is apparently absurd and proves the assumption false. This is basic physics and simple math. There is no way around it.
To illustrate it by a simple example, if someone claims to have increased efficiency of something by using the innovative equation 2+2=5 and there is indeed an increase in efficiency, then it is not because 2+2=5 and it does not prove 2+2=5 being correct, it must be for some other reasons.
Gary Hladik and tjfolkerts
In this case the argument is not with me but with Professor Schack.
Professor Alfred Schack, the author of a standard textbook on industrial heat transfer .
was the first scientist who pointed out in the twenties of the past century that the infrared
light absorbing gas components carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O) may be
responsible for a higher heat transfer in the combustion chamber at high burning temperatures
through an increased emission in the infrared. He estimated the emissions by measuring the
spectral absorption capacity of carbon dioxide and water vapor.
In the year 1972 Schack published a paper in Physikalische Blatter entitled ;
The inuence of the carbon dioxide content of the air on the world’s climate”.
With his article he got nvolved in the climate discussion and emphasized the important role of water vapor .
Firstly, Schack estimated the mass of the consumed fossil fuels per year
Schack then shows that CO2 would absorb only one seventh of the ground’s heat radiation
at most, if the water vapor had not already absorbed the infrared light in most situations.
Furthermore, a doubling of the CO2-content in the air would only halve the radiation’s characteristic absorption length, that is, the radiation would be absorbed at a length of 5km
instead of at a length of 10 km, for example.
Schack discussed the CO2 contribution only under the aspect that CO2 acts as an absorbent
medium. He did not get the absurd idea to heat the radiating warmer ground with
the radiation absorbed and re-radiated by the gas.
In a comment on an article by the science journalist Rudzinski the climatologist
Oeschger objected against Schack’s analysis of the inuence of the CO2 concentration on the
climate that Schack had not calculated thoroughly enough . In particular, he referred to
radiation transport calculations. However, such calculations have formerly been performed
only for the atmospheres of stars, because the processes in planetary atmospheres are far too
complicated for such simple models. The goal of astrophysical radiation transport calculations
is to calculate as many absorption lines as possible with one boundary density distribution
and one temperature dependency with respect to the height with Saha’s equation and many
other additional hypotheses . However, the boundary density of the radiation intensity
cannot be derived from these calculations.
One should emphasize that Schack was the first scientist to take into account the selective
emission by the infrared light absorbing re-gases for combustion chambers. Therefore one
is driven to the verge of irritation when global climatologists blame him for not calculating
complicatedly enough, simply because he saw the primitive physical concepts behind the
equations for the radiation transfer.
Taken from link below (page 71) with additional calculations to justify the analyisis.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4.pdf
Trick says:
July 22, 2013 at 1:05 pm
“Greg House 8:13am demonstrates his confusion arising from use of the word “warm” when writing:
1) “It is clear, that a thermos flask with a reflective layer will indeed keep a hot drink warm under usual conditions…”
2) “Reflected radiation like any radiation can warm, but not the source…”
The source of the warmth in the thermos flask is the hot drink hence these Greg House’ writings cannot both be true.”
=============================================================
It is only your cutting out an essential part out of my statement that let it look contradictory. Dirty trick, Mr.Trick.
You have cut out the parts “due to vacuum insulation” and “but this should not be confused with the alleged “back radiation warming effect””. This is what I rally said: “It is clear, that a thermos flask with a reflective layer will indeed keep a hot drink warm under usual conditions due to vacuum insulation, but this should not be confused with the alleged “back radiation warming effect”. Meaning that the reflective layer inside a thermos flask is useless, it is the vacuum insulation that works.
Bryan says (July 22, 2013 at 2:51 pm): “Gary Hladik and tjfolkerts
In this case the argument is not with me but with Professor Schack.”
I’m not sure there’s any argument at all. Theoretical calculations, based on the absorption/emission properties of CO2, say a doubling of CO2 should warm the Earth by about 1 K, all else being equal. All else is never equal of course, but both sides of the CAGW debate seem to agree on this point. Does Professor Schack disagree? Does he calculate the effect of doubling CO2, all else being equal?
“””””……Bryan says:
July 22, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Gary Hladik and tjfolkerts
In this case the argument is not with me but with Professor Schack.
Professor Alfred Schack, the author of a standard textbook on industrial heat transfer .
was the first scientist who pointed out in the twenties of the past century that the infrared
light absorbing gas components carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor (H2O) may be
responsible for a higher heat transfer in the combustion chamber at high burning temperatures……”””””
If I’m not mistaken (I have been before) one of the causes of pre-ignition in ICE engines, is EM radiation.
Back in the days when I was interested in “hot” sports cars and engines, I recall reading, that, in a gasoline ICE at high compression, both the Temperatures and pressures go sky high at higher compression ratios, and eventually the heated gases are hot enough to radiate high enough energy photons, to ignite a fuel-air mixture. At the point where that happens, there is immediate ignition of all of the as yet unburned fuel air mixture, that the burning flame front, has not reached yet; so the result is a ping.
That is part of the argument for many smaller cylinders, rather than fewer large cylinders, and is also a principal reason for dual spark plug ignition systems; to reduce the path length that the burning flame front has to travel, so it gets to the fuel faster, before the Temperature rise and radiation blows everything at once.
Don’t know if that theory is still in good standing today, but modern ICEs seem to operate with much higher compression ratios than was possible in earlier times.
I seem to recall, that my hot Jag XK-140 engine (3.4 litre) had an 8.5:1 compression ratio. The standard engine was lower (1956).
Supercharged engines didn’t run as hot or as high pressures, so bearing loads were more reasonable, but thermal efficiency was lower because of the lower Temp, so radiator problems were the result.
As I say, dunno if any of that applies today, or whether it was just folklore.
Trick says (July 22, 2013 at 1:05 pm): ‘2) “Reflected radiation like any radiation can slow energy transfer but cannot raise the temperature above that of the original source…’
The second part of that statement is not true, as demonstrated by this paper (unfortunately behind a paywall) and such tangible examples as this compact vacuum furnace and this dichroic light bulb.
That shouldn’t be surprising. Just as the temp of a constantly heated house goes up when insulation is added (thus “slowing” conductive energy transfer to the environment) a radiation shield “slows” radiative transfer to the environment. Greg’s bullus excrementum example is exactly the same as applying a perfect insulator to one side of the plate, but with a radiative shield he thinks the plate would melt. In the insulated case he would (I hope) agree that the plate would simply radiate 800 W from the uninsulated side. Yet the two cases are functionally identical.
It’s that kind of fuzzy thinking that leads the Pink Unicorn Brigade to conclude that the so-called “greenhouse effect” would melt your face (to the everlasting amusement of WUWT readers). 🙂
george e. smith
Might be some truth in your pre ignition theory, it sounds plausible.
One other curious engine effect is the smooth running of a petrol engine on a damp day.
Some even tried to force steam into the pistons.
The effect here however might be a petrol film forming over water droplet ensuring a better burning efficiency.
Greg House says (July 22, 2013 at 2:55 pm): “Meaning that the reflective layer inside a thermos flask is useless, it is the vacuum insulation that works.”
Which of course explains why thermos manufacturers go to the expense of adding the reflective layers, despite the danger that someone’s face could melt. 🙂
Greg House says (July 22, 2013 at 2:41 pm): [snip face-melting silliness]
I won’t even bother.
However, this perfectly illustrates a point I’ve made before on WUWT. When I bring up the “Yes, Virginia” thought experiment and ask why the Pink Unicorn Brigade (PUB) doesn’t do it for real and win a Nobel Prized for overthrowing conventional physics, someone usually asks why Dr. Spencer doesn’t do it and show the PUB they’re wrong.
I reply
1) Dr. Spencer has no reason, as he already knows the result;
2) The PUB will not accept someone else’s experiment, even if it’s peer-reviewed and published or even a commercially available product. The PUB would have to do the experiment themselves, and even then they might not accept the result. No danger they’ll actually do it, of course.
As we’ve seen with Anthony’s and Curt’s experiments, and with the papers and products discussed in this thread, I was (sadly) right. The PUB is impervious to both logic and facts. They’re exactly like the more rabid CAGW alarmists, who are likewise immune to truth. They all remind me, in fact, of this guy. 🙂