Replicating Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment (from the 24 hour Gore-a-thon) shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised
Readers may recall my previous essay where I pointed out how Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 Video, used in his “24 hours of climate reality”, had some serious credibility issues with editing things to make it appear as if they had actually performed the experiment, when they clearly did not. It has taken me awhile to replicate the experiment. Delays were a combination of acquisition and shipping problems, combined with my availability since I had to do this on nights and weekends. I worked initially using the original techniques and equipment, and I’ve replicated the Climate 101 experiment in other ways using improved equipment. I’ve compiled several videos. My report follows.
First. as a refresher, here’s the Climate 101 video again:
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/video/climate-101-bill-nye
I direct your attention to the 1 minute mark, lasting through 1:30, where the experiment is presented.
And here’s my critique of it: Video analysis and scene replication suggests that Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project fabricated their Climate 101 video “Simple Experiment”
The most egregious faked presentation in that video was the scene with the split screen thermometers, edited to appear as if the temperature in the jar of elevated CO2 level was rising faster than the jar without elevated CO2 level.
It turns out that the thermometers were never in the jar recording the temperature rise presented in the split screen and the entire presentation was nothing but stagecraft and editing.
This was proven beyond a doubt by the photoshop differencing technique used to compare each side of the split screen. With the exception of the moving thermometer fluid, both sides were identical. 
- difference process run at full resolution – click to enlarge
Exposing this lie to the viewers didn’t set well with some people, include the supposed “fairness” watchdogs over at Media Matters, who called the analysis a “waste of time”. Of course it’s only a “waste of time” when you prove their man Gore was faking the whole thing, otherwise they wouldn’t care. Personally I consider it a badge of honor for them to take notice because they usually reserve such vitriol for high profile news they don’t like, so apparently I have “arrived”.
The reason why I took so much time then to show this chicanery was Mr. Gore’s pronouncement in an interview the day the video aired.
His specific claim was:
“The deniers claim that it’s some kind of hoax and that the global scientific community is lying to people,” he said. “It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics.” – Al Gore in an interview with MNN 9/14/2011
So easy a high school kid can do it. Right?
Bill Nye, in his narration at 0:48 in the video says:
You can replicate this effect yourself in a simple lab experiment, here’s how.
…and at 1:10 in the video Nye says:
Within minutes you will see the temperature of the bottle with the carbon dioxide in it rising faster and higher.
So, I decided to find out if that was true and if anyone could really replicate that claim, or if this was just more stagecraft chicanery. I was betting that nobody on Gore’s production team actually did this experiment, or if they did do it, it wasn’t successful, because otherwise, why would they have to fake the results in post production?
The split screen video at 1:17, a screencap of which is a few paragraphs above shows a temperature difference of 2°F. Since Mr. Gore provided no other data, I’ll use that as the standard to meet for a successful experiment.
The first task is to get all the exact same equipment. Again, since Mr. Gore doesn’t provide anything other than the video, finding all of that took some significant effort and time. There’s no bill of materials to work with so I had to rely on finding each item from the visuals. While I found the cookie jars and oral thermometers early on, finding the lamp fixtures, the heat lamps for them, the CO2 tank and the CO2 tank valve proved to be more elusive. Surprisingly, the valve turned out to be the hardest of all items to locate, taking about two weeks from the time I started searching to the time I had located it, ordered it and it arrived. The reason? It isn’t called a valve, but rather a “In-Line On/Off Air Adapter”. Finding the terminology was half the battle. Another surprise was finding that the heat lamps and fixtures were for lizards and terrariums and not some general purpose use. Fortunately the fixtures and lamps were sold together by the same company. While the fixtures supported up to 150 watts, Mr. Gore made no specification on bulb type or wattage, so I chose the middle of the road 100 watt bulbs from the 50, 100, and 150 watt choices available.
I believe that I have done due diligence (as much as possible given no instructions from Gore) and located all the original equipment to accurately replicate the experiment as it was presented. Here’s the bill of materials and links to suppliers needed to replicate Al Gore’s experiment as it is shown in the Climate 101 video:
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BILL OF MATERIALS
QTY 2 Anchor Hocking Cookie Jar with Lid
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=187543
QTY2 Geratherm Oral Thermometer Non-Mercury http://www.pocketnurse.com/Geratherm-Oral-Thermometer-Non-Mercury/productinfo/06-74-5826/
QTY 2 Globe Coin Bank
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150661053386
QTY 2 Fluker`s Repta Clamp-Lamp with Ceramic Sockets for Terrariums (max 150 watts, 8 1/2 Inch Bulb) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fluker-s-Repta-Clamp-Lamp-150-watts-8-1-2-Inch-Bulb-/200663082632
QTY2 Zoo Med Red Infrared Heat Lamp 100W
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200594870618
QTY1 Empire – Pure Energy – Aluminum Co2 Tank – 20 oz
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190563856367
QTY 1 RAP4 In-Line On/Off Air Adapter
http://www.rap4.com/store/paintball/rap4-in-line-on-off-air-adapter
QTY 1 flexible clear plastic hose, 48″ in length, from local Lowes hardware to fit RAP4 In-Line On/Off Air Adapter above.
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Additionally, since Mr. Gore never actually proved that CO2 had been released from the CO2 paintball tank into one of the jars, I ordered a portable CO2 meter for just that purpose:
It has a CO2 metering accuracy of: ± 50ppm ±5% reading value. While not laboratory grade, it works well enough to prove the existence of elevated CO2 concentrations in one of the jars. It uses a non-dispersive infrared diffusion sensor (NDIR) which is self calibrating, which seems perfect for the job.
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Once I got all of the equipment in, the job was to do some testing to make sure it all worked. I also wanted to be sure the two oral thermometers were calibrated such they read identically. For that, I prepared a water bath to conduct that experiment.
CAVEAT: For those that value form over substance, yes these are not slick professionally edited videos like Mr. Gore presented. They aren’t intended to be. They ARE intended to be a complete, accurate, and most importantly unedited record of the experimental work I performed. Bear in mind that while Mr. Gore has million$ to hire professional studios and editors, all I have is a consumer grade video camera, my office and my wits. If I were still working in broadcast television, you can bet I would have done this in the TV studio.
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STEP 1 Calibrate the Oral Thermometers
Here’s my first video showing how I calibrated the oral thermometers, which is very important if you want to have an accurate experimental result.
Note that the two thermometers read 98.1°F at the conclusion of the test, as shown in this screencap from my video @ about 5:35:
STEP 2 Calibrate the Infrared Thermometer
Since I plan to make use of an electronic Infrared thermometer in these experiments, I decided to calibrate it against the water bath also. Some folks may see this as unnecessary, since it is pre-calibrated, but I decided to do it anyway. It makes for interesting viewing
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STEP 3 Demonstrate how glass blocks IR using the Infrared Thermometer
The way an actual greenhouse works is by trapping infrared radiation. Glass is transparent to visible light, but not to infrared light, as we see below.
- Image from: greenhousesonline.com.au
Mr. Gore was attempting to demonstrate this effect in his setup, but there’s an obvious problem: he used infrared heat lamps rather than visible light lamps. Thus, it seems highly likely that the glass jars would block the incoming infrared, and convert it to heat. That being the case, the infrared radiative backscattering effect that makes up the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere couldn’t possibly be demonstrated here in the Climate 101 video.
By itself, that would be enough to declare the experiment invalid, but not only will I show the problem of the experimental setup being flawed, I’ll go to full on replication.
Using the warm water bath and the infrared thermometer, it becomes easy to demonstrate this effect.
Since Mr. Gore’s experiment used infrared heat lamps illuminating two glass jars, I decided to test that as well:
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STEP 4 Replicating Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment exactly, using the same equipment – duration of 10 minutes
At 1:10 in the Climate 101 video narrator Bill Nye the science guy says:
Within minutes you will see the temperature of the bottle with the carbon dioxide in it rising faster and higher.
Since this is “simple high school physics” according to Mr. Gore, this should be a cinch to replicate. I took a “within minutes” from the narration to be just that, so I tried an experiment with 10 minutes of duration. I also explain the experimental setup and using the CO2 meter prove that CO2 is in fact injected into Jar “B”. My apologies for the rambling dialog, which wasn’t scripted, but explained as I went along. And, the camera work is one-handed while I’m speaking and setting up the experiment, so what it lacks in production quality it makes up in reality.
You’ll note that after 10 minutes, it appears there was no change in either thermometer. Also, remember these are ORAL thermometers, which hold the reading (so you can take it out of your mouth and hand it to mom and ask “can I stay home from school today”?). So for anyone concerned about the length of time after I turned off the lamps, don’t be. In order to reset the thermometers you have to shake them to force the liquid back down into the bulb.
Here’s the screencaps of the two thermometer readings from Jar A and B:
Clearly, 10 minutes isn’t enough time for the experiment to work. So let’s scratch off the idea from narration of “a few minutes” and go for a longer period:
RESULT: No change, no difference in temperature. Nothing near the 2°F rise shown in the video. Inconclusive.
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STEP 5 Replicating Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment exactly, using the same equipment – duration of 30 minutes
Ok, identical setup as before, the only difference is time, the experiment runs 30 minutes long. I’ve added a digital timer you can watch as the experiment progresses.
And here are the screencaps from the video above of the results:
RESULT: slight rise and difference in temperature 97.4°F for Jar “A” Air, and 97.2°F for Jar “B” CO2. Nothing near the 2°F rise shown in the video.
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STEP 6 Replicating Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment, using digital logging thermometer – duration of 30 minutes
In this experiment, I’m substituting the liquid in glass oral thermometers with some small self contained battery powered digital logging thermometers with LCD displays.
This model:
Details here
Specification Sheet / Manual
USB-2-LCD+ Temperature Datalogger
I used two identical units in the experiment replication:
And here are the results graphed by the application that comes with the datalogger. Red is Temperature, Blue is Humidity, Green is dewpoint
The graphs are automatically different vertical scales and thus can be a bit confusing, so I’ve take the raw data for each and graphed temperature only:
After watching my own video, I was concerned that maybe I was getting a bit of a direct line of the visible portion of the heat lamp into the sensor housing onto the thermistor, since they were turned on their side. So I ran the experiment again with the dataloggers mounted vertically in paper cups to ensure the thermistors were shielded from any direct radiation at any wavelength. See this video:
Both runs of the USB datalogger are graphed together below:
RESULTS:
Run 1 slight rise and difference in temperature 43.5°C for Jar “A” Air with Brief pulse to 44°C , and 43.0°C for Jar “B” CO2.
Run 2 had an ended with a 1°C difference, with plain air in Jar A being warmer than Jar “B with CO2.
Jar “A” Air temperature led Jar “B” CO2 during the entire experiment on both runs
The datalogger output files are available here:
JarA Air only run1.txt JarB CO2 run1.txt
JarA Air only run2.txt JarB CO2 run2.txt
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STEP 7 Replicating Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment exactly, using a high resolution NIST calibrated digital logging thermometer – duration of 30 minutes
In this experiment I use a high resolution (0.1F resolution) and NIST calibrated data logger with calibrated probes. Data was collected over my LAN to special software. This is the datalogger model:
Data sheet: Model E Series And the software used to log data is described here
Here’s the experiment:
I had to spend a lot of time waiting for the Jar “B” probe to come to parity with Jar “A” due to the cooling effect of the CO2 I introduced. As we all know, when a gas expands it cools, and that’s exactly what happens to CO2 released under pressure. You can see the effect early in the flat area of the graph below.
Here’s the end result screencap real-time graphing software used in the experiment, click the image to expand the graph full size.
RESULTS:
Peak value Jar A with air was at 18:04 117.3°F
Peak value Jar B with CO2 was at 18:04 116.7°F
Once again, air led CO2 through the entire experiment.
Note that I allowed this experiment to go through a cool down after I turned off the Infrared heat lamps, which is the slope after the peak. Interestingly, while Jar “A” (probe1 in green) with Air, led Jar “B” (Probe 2 in red) with CO2, the positions reversed shortly after the lamps turned off.
The CO2 filled jar was now losing heat slower than the plain air jar, even though plain air Jar “A” had warmed slightly faster than the CO2 Jar “B”.
Here’s the datalogger output files for each probe:
Climate101-replication-Probe01-(JarA – Air).csv
Climate101-replication-Probe02-(JarB – CO2).csv
Climate101-replication-Probe03-(Ambient Air).csv
What could explain this reversal after the lamps were turned off? The answer is here at the Engineer’s Edge in the form of this table:
Heat Transfer Table of Content
This chart gives the thermal conductivity of gases as a function of temperature.
Unless otherwise noted, the values refer to a pressure of 100 kPa (1 bar) or to the saturation vapor pressure if that is less than 100 kPa.
The notation P = 0 indicates the low pressure limiting value is given. In general, the P = 0 and P = 100 kPa values differ by less than 1%.
Units are milliwatts per meter kelvin.
Note the values for Air and for CO2 that I highlighted in the 300K column. 300K is 80.3°F.
Air is a better conductor of heat than CO2.
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So, here is what I think is going on with Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 experiment.
- As we know, the Climate101 video used infrared heat lamps
- The glass cookie jars chosen don’t allow the full measure of infrared from the lamps to enter the center of the jar and affect the gas. I showed this two different ways with the infrared camera in videos above.
- During the experiments, I showed the glass jars heating up using the infrared camera. Clearly they were absorbing the infrared energy from the lamps.
- The gases inside the jars, air and pure CO2 thus had to be heated by secondary heat emission from the glass as it was being heated. They were not absorbing infrared from the lamps, but rather heat from contact with the glass.
- Per the engineering table, air is a better conductor of heat than pure CO2, so it warms faster, and when the lamps are turned off, it cools faster.
- The difference value of 2°F shown in the Climate 101 video split screen was never met in any of the experiments I performed.
- The condition stated in the Climate 101 video of “Within minutes you will see the temperature of the bottle with the carbon dioxide in it rising faster and higher.” was not met in any of the experiments I performed. In fact it was exactly the opposite. Air consistently warmed faster than CO2.
- Thus, the experiment as designed by Mr. Gore does not show the greenhouse effect as we know it in our atmosphere, it does show how heat transfer works and differences in heat transfer rates with different substances, but nothing else.
Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 experiment is falsified, and could not work given the equipment he specified. If they actually tried to perform the experiment themselves, perhaps this is why they had to resort to stagecraft in the studio to fake the temperature rise on the split screen thermometers.
The experiment as presented by Al Gore and Bill Nye “the science guy” is a failure, and not representative of the greenhouse effect related to CO2 in our atmosphere. The video as presented, is not only faked in post production, the premise is also false and could never work with the equipment they demonstrated. Even with superior measurement equipment it doesn’t work, but more importantly, it couldn’t work as advertised.
The design failure was the glass cookie jar combined with infrared heat lamps.
Gore FAIL.
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UPDATE: 4PM PST Some commenters are taking away far more than intended from this essay. Therefore I am repeating this caveat I posted in my first essay where I concentrated on the video editing and stagecraft issues:
I should make it clear that I’m not doubting that CO2 has a positive radiative heating effect in our atmosphere, due to LWIR re-radiation, that is well established by science. What I am saying is that Mr. Gore’s Climate Reality Project did a poor job of demonstrating an experiment, so poor in fact that they had to fabricate portions of the presentation, and that the experiment itself (if they actually did it, we can’t tell) would show a completely different physical mechanism than what actually occurs in our atmosphere.
No broader take away (other than the experiment was faked and fails) was intended, expressed or implied – Anthony
The experiment was perfomred live on BBC Newsnight over a year ago.
Hello…Lets do a study about common sense and High School Science…And give a Dunce Cap to all
on the “CO2 and Global Warming” Train…
CO2 (Carbon DIOXIDE) is a LIFE ESSENTIAL GAS that all plant life converts to the OXYGEN we need.
It is NOT as “Ozone depleting” or a “Green House Gas” contributing to the Fictitious “Global Warming”.
We are in danger of FAR TOO LITTLE CARBON DIOXIDE (that we exhale) that plants need to convert
(as our only conversion source) for the OXYGEN we need!
CO (Carbon MONOXIDE) is a TOXIC GAS that, with it associated Carbon Particles, is 85% of the INCOMPLETE COMBUSTION PROCESS of burning fossil fuels, part of the clouds from erupting volcanoes and ,sadly, the rampant wildfires for many decades in the US and around the World…along with volumes of sulfur and methane compounds from a multitude of sources.
For Eons , since the Earth “Began”, the Earth goes thru cycles of “Climate changes” from overheated
Tropical (with associated Volcanoes) to the Ice Ages that meteorites to Volcanic Clouds have been blamed
for….all without and with us Carbon Dioxide producing humans and animals that plants have had a symbiotic relationship with thru millions of years.
So Please…QUIT CALLING CO2 (CARBON DIOXIDE) A POLLUTANT!!! IT IS A LIFE ESSENTIAL GAS!
CARBON MONOXIDE IS THE TOXIC GAS….CARBON PARTICLES ARE DANGEROUS “POLAR WARMING PARTICLES…AND MAN-MADE GASSES LIKE AEROSOL PROPELLANTS ARE THE BIGGEST DANGERS
TO THE OZONE!
Any FYI …. “Going Green” with “Renewable, Carbon-less Energy Sources” should not be a new source
of Toxins and Health Hazards (like Wind Turbines) that can only be “fiscally viable” with billions of peoples tax dollars, or destroy entire aquatic eco-systems like so many Hydroelectric projects in the past have done …or be so over priced that only the very rich can afford a partial solution like solar panels… or access “clean sources” like natural gas (up to 98% total combustion to produce CO2 carbon DIOXDE) but access
it with Fracking that mixes water with highly corrosive chemicals, that creates a new toxic “heavy water”
that is pumped into the ground to force out to gas, then “stored” in the ground as another source of
“TOXIC waste”.
I ready for a new “Renaissance of Common Sense” age to arrive…waiting ….waiting….waiting…
Deborah Stout- Meininger Community Advocate, Citizen Scientist
Most of the incomplete combustion process (including carbon monoxide) is turned into nitrogen (N2), CO2 and water by catalytic converters on US vehicles. The converters take about 20 minutes to reach operating temperatures all the while reducing fuel economy.
Why does the earth exist in the temperature range that supports life? It is because Earth has an atmosphere that maintains a balance between the frigid cold of space and the scorching heat of the sun. The earth is heated mostly by solar photons and infrared that heat objects- solids and liquids which in turn radiate heat to other solids, liquids and gases. We are very lucky here on Earth because planets that can support life in this vast universe are very rare. In fact despite an exhaustive search astronomers have yet to find another planet like Earth although there are some candidates…. very – far- away… .
One important part of the mechanism by which the atmosphere maintains is with CO2. CO2 has an interesting property that it will absorb an infrared photon and re-emit it. But here’s the key – It re-emits it in an arbitrary direction. So if the photon was emitted from the Earth (as they are all the time) and it’s initial direction was space, and say, that photon hits a CO2 molecule. The CO2 will absorb it and emit it in a new direction. However that direction will 95+% of the time NOT be in the direction of space, but rather either back to Earth or to another CO2 molecule, etc. The net effect is that this example photon which would have “cooled” Earth by being emitted into space, now is remaining within the atmosphere thus having a heating effect. So that balance – the amount of continuous cooling which happens due to emission of infrared photons into space, vs the warming of the atmospheric molecules that maintain our temperatures on Earth – is completely dependent on the just the right amount of photon absorbing molecules in the atmosphere – enough to cool the planet enought to stop it from overheating. Too few CO2 molecules and we freeze. Too many and we burn (a bit exagerated but you see where I am going). So obviously adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has the net effect of warming it, and taking away or not having enough has a cooling effect. So there an ideal balance between the number of photon absorbing molecules and the non-photon absorbing molecules in order to maintain the precious temperature balance on Earth. Adding CO2 molecules to the atmosphere in sufficient quantities to alter that balance is what has happened over the past century, since the advent of the industrial age or we might call it the age of oil. That is what global warming is. Hopefully you find this helpful in understanding the situation. We are not at all in danger of not having enough CO2. And having too much is just as toxic to humans as CO. Please take a moment to consider carefully what you are saying. There is indeed a risk to the survival of life on Earth, and global temperature change due to excessive CO2 is a real thing.
rlkorb
Every sentence above is written in English; and every sentence is simplistic, exaggerated, and also dead wrong.
Well, not really. Actually, based on CO2 levels in the past, your “ideal natural level” of CO2 is anywhere between 280 ppm and 1200 ppm. And global average temperatures never responded to these changes in CO2 levels in the past, and do not appear to be responding now – since the global average temperatures began rising about 250 years (in 250 BC, and in 950 AD and in 1650 AD) BEFORE fossil fuels were ever burned in quantity.
No. Maximum (impossible) temperatures threaten no lives, no species now living on earth, all evolved while the earth was much hotter in the past, and all evolved while CO2 levels were much higher in the past. With no known exceptions, ALL LIFE lives better and is more productive in higher CO2 levels and in warmer temperatures. (Too low of CO2 levels – close actually to the previous 280 ppm lows of only a few years ago – DO threaten all plant life.) It is also physically impossible “mankind” to EVER burn enough carbon fuels to raise CO2 high enough to threaten life.
Perfect!!! Interesting how how almost all plant life seems to have evolved to thrive best at a level of 1200PPM of CO2. Below 270 and they die!!! This should tell people something.
Wouldn’t filling the jar with CO2 replicate the atmosphere of Venus or Mars, not Earth?
Rikorb
Most of what you said was bullshit as others have detailed,but I will point out the most important gas that you failed to mention
Water vapour which is anywhere from 50 to 75 times on average more abundant than CO2 in the atmosphere outweighs all greenhouse gases combined by a factor of at least 4 to 1 when you take into account the radiative spectroscopy of photons in gases. All temperature is a local phenomena on earth.
You get hot temperatures in a desert because there is no water to evaporate. However at nighttime in the desert without clouds it is actually cool but with clouds it is warm. It is the water vapour in the clouds that is absorbing the IR and reradiating it back to the surface. CO2 is a minor player or else it would be warm at night in a desert without clouds. Deserts can sometimes go near freezing temperatures at nighttime without clouds. In fact certain sections of the Sahara desert, the largest in the world and located not too far from the equator in its southern portion ; has even gone as low as 5F or -15C. Nothing to do with CO2. Deserts have also recorded the highest temperatures again nothing to do with CO2.
In recorded history temperature comes first and CO2 follows. Not the other way around.
There is no basis for establishing a temperature from CO2 levels.
Do you realize that there is no correct radiative transfer equation that can be solved for anything except for the simplest very restrictive 1 dimensional situations? I will simply quote Michael Modest in his textbook “Radiative heat transfer”. ” Exact analytical solutions to the radiative transfer equation are exceedingly difficult and explicit solutions are impossible for all but the very simplest situations. ”
In addition those calculations require assumptions that the absorption coefficient of photons, the scattering coefficient, and phase function are constant across the electomagnetic spectrum. This is clearly not the case with our earth’s atmosphere. I further quote Modest. ” Radiative heat flux………….must be evaluated…….will always involve the guessing of a temperature field”
You must note that the above quote is even only valid for a gaseous mixture that is bounded by walls. Modest doesn’t even attempt to discuss the actual atmosphere which doesn’t have walls except for the earths surface. SO IN THE END ANY ATTEMPT TO USE RADIATIVE TRANSFER EQUATIONS TO ANALYZE THE EARTH ATMOSPHERE IS JUNK SCIENCE.
I can give you a 100 reasons why the CO2 scare is a complete scam but am too tired and my post is long enough.
Well said Alan. As an aero-thermo engineer with extensive industrial experience, I will add that radiative heat transfer science is a bit like using a Betty Crocker cookbook. You consider your engineering situation, then go to the page which describes your particular situation best (like heated gas flowing through the rear section of a cylindrical turbojet) and get the statistically-based equations which best describe the EXPERIMENTAL results from past, similar experiments. You then apply these equations to your problem and then test later to make sure you didn’t use the wrong recipe.
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If the Betty Crocker approach is too risky OR you simply don’t have a recipe which applies to your situation then you turn to modeling. The more complicated the system, the more questionable the results will be from that model until it is carefully calibrated to real data. It is important to keep in mind that ALL MODELS ARE WRONG, THOUGH SOME CAN BE USEFUL. They will tend to be less useful the more complicated they become. And the Earth’s climate models are very, very complicated if they are to be useful at all.
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The test of any model is how well it can reproduce past observations and outcomes over extended periods. Assimilation climate models today are quite good over short periods (days) but quickly depart. This is the best we have to offer today. Not good enough however for longer term decisions.
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The climate change argument today is much more a religion than true science. And those of us unwilling to drink the Kool Aid are labeled heretics. It is important that the ideas supporting these uncritical assertions are confronted at every turn. Only then will true knowledge prevail.
“There is indeed a risk to the survival of life on Earth, and global temperature change due to excessive CO2 is a real thing.”
A rather moronic conclusion and not supported by your analysis.
CO2 is not, genius, the only green house gas in the atmosphere for one. And the “ideal” CO2 level is going to be a range, not a specific number. And, well, your blithering analysis is amazingly naive.
The absorption of IR energy by CO2 in the atmosphere is in no way whatsoever linear. In fact, it appears to be quite asymptotic. That is why every idiot climate model has to include a made up “multiplier effect” for CO2 that is scientifically and physically without any merit whatsoever. And this is also why ever major climate model has predicted temperature rises out of all proportion to what has actually occurred in reality.
oooops…125 times as abundant as co2 is the more correct statement – where did 5,000 come from?
Hyperbolic. The scenario you have painted has such close tolerance that it could not be maintained if it were that simple. Thanks anyway.
rlkorb – it may be just semantic, but thought I’d point out something in what you wrote.
You state, concerning CO2, that it will absorb an infrared photon and re-emit it – but then state “But here’s the key – It re-emits it in an arbitrary direction.”
Two sentences later, you state “… that direction will 95+% of the time NOT be in the direction of space, but rather either back to Earth or to another CO2 molecule, etc.”
It seems to me that you are claiming a near-total exclusion of roughly 50% of the possibilities – a selectivity that can hardly be called “arbitrary” …
And what does his hypothis leave out? If that happens from radiation emitted FROM the Earth, then it stands to reason it happens to radiation RECEIVED by the Earth. And it’s obvious that the SUN produces more radiated energy than the Earth. So by his own “logic”, his premise results in COOLING.
You really do not understand how this works. Most of the energy that comes from the sun is in the form of VISIBLE light which passes through the atmosphere unhindered. The atmosphere is only blocking the lower energy thermal radiation that is trying to leave the earth. It is basically a one-way valve, or one of those mirrors you can look through on one side.
BS. Infra red.
That was perhaps not well expressed, but correct.
The intended meaning, as I read it, was that the re-emitted photon would most likely hit another CO2 molecule rather than escape to space, regardless of its “direction” (unless it is emitted already in the high atmosphere where the density is much lower than at ground level). In fact 95% is very probably underestimated, the actual figure is probably much closer to 100%.
Actually plants make their oxygen by breaking it off from water (H2O).
This has been proven by using radioactivly labeled H2O feed to the plant and observing that the plant then gives off labeled oxygen. When the plant is given radioactively labeled CO2 the produced oxygen is not labeled.
The plants incorporate the CO2 into their bodies.
What plants need it? Do we even have enough trees or forests left to convert all the CO2 into oxygen? Doubtless since we are cutting them all down to graze cattle (approximately 30,000 square miles of tropical forests are destroyed each year), and about 30% of the CO2 in our atmosphere is absorbed by our oceans, so all that extra CO2 is causing ocean acidification which kills coral and has other ramifications. Not to mention all the excess methane put into our atmosphere from raising too much livestock (a much worse “greenhouse gas” than CO2, incidentally.) Total wild terrestrial biomass (land animals by weight) left on earth = 2%, humans and the animals we raise (mainly for food) = 98%. We can only have a “symbiotic” relationship with the other creatures on this planet if we maintain a balance of these things. Does this sound balanced to you? Global warming is not fictitious, but no one has “proven” per say that it is caused by excess CO2. What we do know is that rising global temperatures are strongly correlated with the rise in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. You can be assured that whatever the source, humans activities are likely responsible for it, one way or another.
Jade Kayos
Odd, there are as many forest acres today across North America as ever before, though many (by no means “most”) are managed as rotating crops. The prairies are as productive now as ever, today’s grasses and wheats and ryes and barleys and corn and alfafa and cotton and soybeans and sunflowers and beets are as effective as growing (transforming airborne CO2 into stems, seeds, food, fodder, and flowers and flora as ever before.
EVERY plant on earth, in the seas, and above the ground grows 12% to 27% faster, taller, more drought-resistant and more productive than before man’s release of CO2.
Your hype and your mere repetition of mindless doomsday propaganda does you no good: NONE of it is true.
Mr. Cook seems to have missed the mention of “tropical forests” in the comment he responded to — not an aspect of the North American continent. He may also have missed the fact that “global warming” applies to the entire globe, of which the United States is only 1.9% in terms of land area. Additionally, he seems to think that the total plant biomass of the Earth can grow quickly enough to completely sequester the extra 30 gigatons of CO2 that humans produce every year, and will be able to do so for the indefinite future.
RACookPE1978 says: “EVERY plant on earth, in the seas, and above the ground grows 12% to 27% faster, taller, more drought-resistant and more productive than before man’s release of CO2.”
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Can you provide me a citation for that assertion?
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For example, if you examine Death Valley, you will not see any increase in plant growth since 1850/
It seems we have been invaded by a bunch of CO2 scaredycat trolls who are afraid of their own shadow. Correlation does not cause causation. BTW the PH scale is logarithmic and the oceans have dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 7.0 is where you get to acid. Based on the rate of drop it will take 8400 years to get to the 7.0 level . If you want to ban the 1.5 billion cows, I suggest you take that idea up with the IPCC. They seem to want to ban everything. However methane i residence time is 12 years but since it is parts per billion it is not quite the player that water vapour is.
The inconvenient questions that the IPCC can’t answer.
1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not accelerating?
2) Why do many rural only land temperature data sets show no warming?
3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends? They are supposed to be unbiased either way.
4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.
5) Why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? The 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.
6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming 1.3C per century and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?
7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?
8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?
9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?
10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.
11) Why do most climate scientists not understand the difference between accuracy and precision?
12) Why have many scientists resigned from the IPCC in protest?
13) Why do many politicians, media and climate scientists continue to lie about CO2 causing extreme weather events? Every data set in the world shows there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were
14) Why do clmate scientists call skeptics deniers as if we were denying the holocaust?
!5) Why did Michael Mann refuse to hand over his data when he sued Tim Ball for defamation and why did Mann subsequently drop the suit?
16) Why have every climate scientist that has ever debated the science of global warming clearly not won any debate that has ever occurred?
17) Why does every climate scientist now absolutely refuse to debate anymore?
18) Why do careers get ruined when scientists dare to doubt global warming in public?
19) Why do most of the scientists that retire come out against global warming?
20) Why is it next to impossible to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric science if one has doubts about global warming?
21) Why is it very very difficult to get funding for any study that casts doubt on global warming?
22) Why has the earth greened by 18% in the last 30 years?
23) Why do climate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1000 ppm not 410ppm.
24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?
25) Why should the rest of the world ruin their economies when China and India have refused to stop increasing their emmissions of CO2?
26) Why have the alarmist scientists like Michael Mann called Dr. Judith Curry an anti scientist?
27) Why does the IPCC not admit that under their own calculations a business as usual policy would have the CO2 levels hit 614ppm in 2100 which is nearly twice the CO2 level since 1850.?
28) Why do the climate modellers not admit that the error factor for clouds makes their models worthless?
29) Why did NASA show no increase in atmospheric water vapour for 20 years before James Hansen shut the project down in 2009?
30) Why did Ben Santer change the text to result in an opposite conclusion in the IPCC report of 1996 and did this without consulting the scientists that had made the original report?
31) Why does the IPCC say with 90% confidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming when they have no evidence to back this up except computer model predictions which are coded to produce results that CO2 causes warming?
32) How can we believe climate forecasts when 4 day weather forecasts are very iffy?.
33) Why do all climate models show the tropical troposhere hotspot when no hotspot has actually been found in nature?
34) Why is there non existent long term variability in the climate models because otherwise the simulation would become chaotic so the model has to be tuned to flatten the variability?
35) Why is the normal greenhouse effect not observed for SST?
36) Why is SST net warming increase close to 0?
37) Why is the ocean ph level steady over the lifetime of the measurements?
38) what results has anyone ever seen from global warming if it exists? I have been waiting for it for 40 years and havent seen it yet?
39) If there were times in the past when CO2 was 20 times higher than today why wasnt there runaway global warming then?
40) Why was there a pause in the satellite data warming in the early 2000’s?
41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?
42) For the last 10000 years over half of those years showed more warming than today. Why?
43) Why does the IPCC refuse to put an exact % on the AGW and the natural GW?
44) Why do the alarmists still say that there is a 97% consensus when everyone knows that figure was madeup?
45) The latest polls show that 33% do not believe in global warming and that figure is increasing poll by poll ? why?
46) If CO2 is supposed to cause more evaporation how can there ever be more droughts with CO2 forcing?
47) Why are there 4 times the number of polar bears as in 1960?
48) Why did the oceans never become acidic even with CO2 levels 15-20 times higher than today?
49) Why does Antarctica sea ice extent show no decrease in 25 years?
50) Why do alarmists still insist that skeptics are getting funding from fossil fuel companies ( when alarmists get billions from the government and leftest think tanks) and skeptics get next to nothing from either fossil fuel companies nor governments for climate research?
51) If the Bloomberg carbon clock based on the Mauna Loa data, in the fall and winter increases at a rate of only 2ppm per year; then why do we have to worry about carbon increases?
52) Why arent the alarmists concerned with actual human lives. In England every winter there are old people who succumb to the cold because they cant afford the increased heating bills caused by green subsidies.
53) Why did Phil Jones a climategate conspirator, admit in 2010 that there was no statistically meaningful difference in 4 different period temperature data that used both atmospheric temperature and sea surface temperature?
54) Why does the IPCC still say that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is a 100 years when over 80 studies have concluded it is more like 5 years?
55) Why do all global climate alarmists say that corals are dying due to bleaching when Dr. Peter Ridd (who has published over 100 papers) has proven that coral bleaching is a defensive mechanism by corals in relation to temperature change in the water.
56) Why does the IPCC still release temperature and sea level data from NOAA and NASA when Tony Heller has proved that those agencies have faked data and made improper adjustments to the actual raw numbers ?
57) How does the IPCC explain that Professor Miskolczi showed that despite a 30% increase in CO2 in the atmosphere in the period 1948 to 2008, the total infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere was found to be unchanged from its theoretical value of 1.87
58) Why has the Global Historical Climate Network temperature data set for ~ 1000 temperature stations in the United States shown no warming over the entire 124 year period when you just take the daily maximum and average it out for the 365 days of the year?
59) Why has the global average downward infrared radiation to the surface shown no increase ever since the CERES satellite started collecting data in the year 2000?
60) How would Antarctica ever melt if almost all of the land mass never even comes close to 0 C even in summer? Same for Greenland.
61) Why did one alarmist put 7 bullet holes in Dr. John Christy’s office window?
62) Why does a NOAA graph that charts CO2 levels in the atmosphere and thus by year increase (since CO2 increases every year) show absolutely no relation to outgoing longwave radiation?
63) Why does the central England temperature dataset from the mid 1600s to today show only a .25 C increase in 350 years?
64) Since no one has been able to show exactly what the emissivity of CO2 is ; then wouldnt that mean that the downward IR measurements by NASA are wrong since they assume emissivity of a blackbody of a value of 1?
65) No one has debunked the finding of the IRIS effect by Dr. Lindzen.
66) Why does the NASA energy budget diagram show a heat flux flow within the diagram that is far greater than the original solar input even though the system is in energy balance or close to it? This is contrary to all mathematical laws.
67) Since the net CO2 in the atmosphere has been a steady 0.5 – 0.7 % increase ever since it was 1st measured in Mauna Loa, why does the IPCC deny that climate sensitivity to doubling CO2 isnt at least 200 years into the future. See Dr. Will Happers charts.
68) How can CO2 be involved in heating the surface air when an infrared heater cannot heat air?
69) How can the oceans be warming when three of the major ocean systems show no warming by the ARGO float measurement systems?
70) Dr.Michael Modest a world authority on IR radiation ,in his classic text book on Radiative Heat Transfer states that there is no closed form solution to the VOIGT profile equation. A further problem is; that equation applies to blackbodies and grey bodies and doesnt even apply to non grey bodies like CO2 anyway.
The most important sentence with respect to CO2 in Modest’s textbook on page 315( the chapter on gases) is the following. I quote
” we note that ,at moderate temperatures , the rotational partition function causes the line strength to decrease with temperature as 1/T or 1/(T^1.5), while the influences of the vibrational partition function and of stimulated emission are very minor . ”
What this means to me is that at the temperatures we see in our troposphere, the vibrational effect is small for gases and the rotational effect decreases with temperature increase.
On page 309 Modest says and I quote “while symmetric molecules such as CO2 show a rotational spectrum only if accompanied by a vibrational transition.”
So Modest seems to be saying that even though CO2 absorbs IR, the line strength of absorption/emission at moderate temperatures is too weak to worry about, especially since the rotational partition strength of the spectrum decreases with temperature increase. So not only CAGW is impossible, it seems that AGW is impossible to any significant degree (pun not intended).
71) The hidden ocean heat that was calculated from plancton studies which have now been replaced by the ARGO floats, determined that the total heat flux calculated from those studies was almost 4 times(10W/m^2) the generally accepted ( by alarmists) heat flux imbalance of today of 2.85W/m^2. Why doesnt the IPCC admit this and admit that they dont have any credible source to calculate any heat imbalance of the last 70 years if indeed there is even one?
72) From Wiki I took the top 44 glaciers in Switzerland out of the total of 1500. They all have retreated since 1973 to 2016. However the total retreat has been 34.38 km over that 43 year period. That is an average of 0.8 km per year or 0.78 km per glacier . That works out to 0.278 % decrease in length per year as an average overall for the 44 glaciers. Based on that average it will take 360 years for those 44 glaciers to completely disappear. Why does the IPCC deny this?
73) How can CO2 be of any consequence when the only important difference in temperature at nighttime in a desert is whether there are low lying clouds or not ?
[Long list. Thank you. .mod]
I read it all
I have one other question:
How can the ACTUAL “average temperature” of the globe be affected by El Nino, when El Nino is nothing more than a SHIFT in localized, albeit large area, climate? It makes NO SENSE whatsover. OBVIOUSLY the formula on AVERAGE temperature are WRONG.
Thank you for this list!
One answer, Global warming is a religion not science. If it was science, it could be debated and tested for it’s validity, since it’s dogma, you are a heretic if you speak ill of it. These are the days we will in the future call the beginning of the great dark ages of science, and I suspect a global collapse as the world turns to tyrannical dictators “to do what needs to be done”. As we saw in the last two months alone, the way “Science” wants us to solve global warming is as follows: 1) elimination of all power sources except for the ones which are the least adequate (solar and wind) modern way of life. 2) Reduction of food sources – Cattle, swine, and other livestock since “Cow Farts” contain C02. 3) Reduction of transportation – all petroleum sourced fuel will be outlawed. 4) Reduction of population – there are too many mouth breathers. The only way to execute these pillars is to 1) redefine the idea of freedom and self government, 2) remove independence and replace it with total dependence to a state 3) removal of all private property and replace it with a state owned property model in which everyone other than the elite are surfs, property would be used and consumed to provide for the biddings of the state. This is the manifesto of the secular fascists, and it will be here in less than 2 years.
Great list, Alan. By the way, you failed to mention that we’ll only get to “acid” oceans in 8,400 years IF the “trend” continues, which of course it will not. The Earth’s oceans weren’t acidic with 7,000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, no pittance that human fossil fuel use will add to it is going to get it there.
Jade,
Google, “the greening of earth.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V21/oct/a12.php
These do not seem to comport with you unsupported assertions.
What of the CO2 produced by the millions of native ruminants that have been replaced by non native food animals?
non native ruminants produce CO2 as well.
If CO2 cant be the cause of temperature rise then the levels of CO2 experienced are of little consequence..
Not so sure about the cows and methane, the cow eats the grass and a few hours later it is methane, the grass dies six months later in winter, and produces methane, what’s the difference.
The correlation you claim as to rising temperatures and co2 is not fact, there is a far greater correlation between the suns solar output and rising temperature. If you really want to claim cause and effect, you can easily say US postal charges cause rising co2 as they re both very similar.
Since 1998 the earths temperatures have been going downhill and the co2 still uphill.
You are right. There is nothing wrong with CO2. There was a time on this planet when there was almost no O2 in the atmosphere. This was an earth that would be absolutely inhospitable to most life that lives on earth today. A proliferation of carbon based life began to harvest CO2, leaving O2 as waste. At first, this O2 was absorbed into various compounds within the earth, forming a bloom of new mineral compounds. When reactions with the material of the earth were more or less completed, additional O2 began to collect in the atmosphere. For eons, life harvested carbon from the atmosphere, used it for body building, and upon death (this was before the advent of microbes adapted to live off the dead bodies of these lifeforms) their carbon-rich bodies were buried in sediment, trapping the carbon underground, and leaving oxygen above. This is what oxygenated the atmosphere of earth initially. It is true that plants and photosynthetic lifeforms absorb carbon and release oxygen, just as they did a billion years ago. So why is releasing CO2 (their food) into the atmosphere a potential problem? Two reasons– First, the environment today is rich with microorganisms that feed on dead plant tissue. These organisms release the carbon that a dead plant spent a lifetime harvesting rather quickly. Hardly any carbon at all is removed from the atmosphere by a typical plant when you consider that all that carbon is quickly released via decomposition shortly after its death. This contrasts long ago when photosynthetic organisms died before there were microbes to break down their dead tissue, so it just sank to the sea floor and was buried by sediment. So today’s plant life taken as a whole is extremely inefficient at removing carbon from the atmosphere. The second reason is that the rate is just too fast. It’s estimated that it will take seven years of global plant growth to remove just one day’s worth of the carbon we humans release by digging up those ancient stores of carbon and burning it. “Climate change” or “global warming” are political buzz words. If and to what extent extra carbon in the atmosphere contributes to changes in climate, depletion of the ozone, etc. has important consequences, but it’s all really beside the point. What humans are doing when we burn fossil fuels is undoing the eons of carbon harvesting work that took millions of years of photosynthetic life to oxygenate the atmosphere. We are doing it at an alarming rate, and the processes that removed that carbon from the atmosphere in the first place are largely no longer in existence. So, this re-release of carbon is at best extremely difficult to reverse and at worst impossible. You don’t need to (and probably shouldnt) believe everything you hear from politically charged “science”. But if you understand the underlying issue, the path is pretty clear.
Neither Mr. Gore’s nor Mr. Watts’ experiment demonstrates the “greenhouse effect.” Both failed for the same reason. This underscores the fundamental problem in attempts to demonstrate the operation of the effect. Both of these “experiments” made the faulty assumption that the absorption of incoming radiation by CO2 would somehow raise the temperature of the ambient air in the containers. If true, this could not have been recorded by the equipment used in the experiments.
CO2 only absorbs infrared radiation within the limits of 13 and 17 microns wavelength (MODTRAN6), which corresponds to a temperature range between -51 and -103 degrees C. The thermometers used in these experiments do not measure temperatures within this range.
The “greenhouse effect” results when CO2 re-emits IR radiation within this same temperature band. Half of this back-radiation is directed upward, to space, and the other half is directed downward, ostensibly being then absorbed by Earth’s surface. Any “greenhouse heating” must therefore occur between the upper and lower limits of the CO2 absorption band, i.e., from -51 to -103 degrees C. Such absorptions can only occur in the matter of Earth’s surface, and they can only occur between the limits of -103 and -51 degrees C. A further limitation is that they can only be absorbed by molecular bonds in the surface that are vibrating below the upper limit of the temperature band, i.e., below -51 degrees C. Re-emissions of this absorbed radiation can then theoretically raise the ambient temperature. In other words, no temperature changes or variations above -51 degrees C will be evident or registered. This is the only available mechanism by which greenhouse warming of Earth’s surface or the superjacent atmosphere can be effected.
Since practically no molecular bonds in Earth’s surface are vibrating this slowly (i.e., between -103 and -51 degrees C), most of the back-radiation from CO2 is therefore either scattered, reflected, or transmitted at Earth’s surface and is not absorbed. This fundamental misunderstanding of the greenhouse warming concept is certainly why the supposed CO2/warming effect has never actually been demonstrated by any hard-data-based study in the peer-reviewed literature, and why so many ardent “warmists” are so adept at making complete fools of themselves.
Laing says: “CO2 only absorbs infrared radiation within the limits of 13 and 17 microns wavelength (MODTRAN6), which corresponds to a temperature range between -51 and -103 degrees C.”
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False. A CO2 molecule at 200 degrees C will absorb a photon between 13 and 17 microns. Photons have no clue what the temperature of the emitter or the absorber is. Photons do not have a “temperature.”
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Laing says: “and they can only occur between the limits of -103 and -51 degrees C”
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False again. CO2 at 0 degrees C will absorb a photon between 13 and 17 microns.
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Laing doesn’t understand radiative physics.
You’re forgetting that a warm object has a distribution of wavelengths, so there will be photons of those wavelengths coming off any body that is warm enough. Do some research on atmospheric absorption. You’ll find a graph of the wavelength distribution of light coming from the Sun as measured in space (generaly smooth blackbody curve peaking at the yellow colour), and as measured at the surface of Earth, where the curve now has big dips at the wavelengths preferred by N2, O2, water vapor, etc, and also CO2, but that is small and at most wavelengths H2O is stealing CO2s photons.
In fact, Watts’ experiment successfully demonstrated the greenhouse effect, since the temperature did raise — in both jars.
That’s because the jars themselves were the “greenhouses”, not the gas inside them. The GLASS absorbed the infrared radiation and caused the temperature increase. The contribution of the CO2 added inside jar B was absolutely marginal.
Nobody is arguing that CO2 depletes ozone. Those are CFCs etc. I don’t think there is an argument that plants don’t need CO2 either. I would look at your arguments. I don’t think anyone’s disagreeing except for the argument that we need more CO2. Thats ludicrous. Global warming is an observation more than a theory and the greenhouse effect is a theory that has evidence dating back to the 1800s and is 6th grade science. Yes..
The glass jar itself is the problem. It traps the heat in exactly the same manner in both instances.
Our atmosphere is not quite the same as a glass jar. Heat escaping from the atmosphere at different rates is not being represented because of the insulating glass jar.
Precisely right. There is no ‘greenhouse’, no roof, ceiling, lid, or glass enclosure.
The entire premise of this experiment by Gore/Nye is stupid. It has no relationship to the real atmosphere or the constraints, loops and feedback, whatsoever.
Climate is a convection system of many-to-many variable relationships which (in IT as we know), are not well understood and therefore cannot be modelled.
Co2 is .0004 % of gas by weight, it is obviously a derivative of climate processes not the creator.
1. They use Infrared (thermal) because that is the electromagnetic wavelength that CO2 absorbs (heating). The infrared (thermal) is produced through the absorption, reflection, refraction, of other electromagnetic spectrums by other gases (air) and Earth surfaces (Albedo). This has been quantified, and it is CO2. https://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-is-not-the-only-driver-of-climate.htm
2. Why are you using an oral thermometer? Oral thermometers rely on conduction to measure thermal energy. This type of thermometer would be less sensitive to air temperature as it requires being inside you to get an accurate measurement. That is like holding the same thermometer an inch away from your forehead to find your body temperature.
3. Try to refrain from the use of logical fallacies. You lose credibility when most of your article is ad hominem attacks, appeals to emotion, and strawman arguments.
4. Your experiment was flawed and your conclusions are invalid. Try again, but make it sciency.
Mr. Yee, first of all, it’s necessary to clarify who are “you” and “they”. One can only guess (by your link), that “they” are Al Gore and Bill Nye (who are “right”) and “you” is Anthony Watts (who is “wrong”).
In this case we are talking about the correctness of experiments, and your link to Skeptical Science has nothing to do with this: it contains only general statements about the role of CO2 without reference to any experimental evidence.
We see a description of two experiments performed at the same conditions. These experiments led to opposite results. In such cases, in order to find the truth, it’s necessary either to perform an independent experiment or to analyze possible experimental errors. I consider the Watts experiment to be correct for the following reasons: a) the availability of a detailed description of the instruments, materials, and the course of the experiment (unlike Bill Nye’s description); b) analysis of the video from Bill Nye with the indication of places where an error is possible; c) Watts results are completely consistent with data of thermal conductivity and heat capacity of gases, and Nye’s results contradict them.
Note that over the years, neither Bill Nye nor anyone else has attempted to prove the fallacy of Watt’s experiments. So, what are your reasons for claiming: “your experiment was flawed”? Where are the facts?
And one remark, I believe, corresponding to the topic of the discussion. Can the “jar experiments” performed in schools confirm the greenhouse effect? Physics say: “temperature rise observed in a popular classroom demonstration arises not from radiative greenhouse effect, but primarily from the suppression of convective heat transport between CO2 and air”. (P.Wagoner a.o. Amer.J.Phys., Vol.78, No.5, pp.536-540, 2010):
https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.3322738
More information about how the greenhouse effect is “based” on physics can be found in the article by Timothy Casey: “The shattered greenhouse: how simple physics demolishes the greenhouse effect”. http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
Bryan ,
You also obviously missed the follow up experiments he did with different thermometers.
You also missed that what he was doing was refuting the claim by Bill the, ahem, “Science Guy” that the temp quickly rises 2 degrees in his silly experiment.
If you have a problem with the premise of the experiment, you should probably take it up with the guy who came up with it … NOT the guy who attempted to replicate it and proved it was fraudulent.
Again. The experimenter faked the original experiment. The original experiment used Infrared Light, the wavelength CO2 actually absorbs. WUWT used visable light, which ensured that the experiment wouldn’t work as CO2 does not absorb visible light. Physics, try it some time.
MrYee,
Why lie. WUWT used infrared lights, listed in the materials list. Did you really read the WUWT experiment or just throw out your obfuscations to confuse those of read the comments without reading the full post to reinforce the belief system of warmists. How very Mannian of you.
Reality and truth, try it sometimes.
shilling
from their web site a reply – did you notice this already? Who is right?
“Response to Watt’s Up
By Bill Nye | Published: November 14, 2011 – 9:31 pm
O my friends, I have received numerous messages asking about the voice-over I did for the Climate Reality Project. My voice describes an experiment or demonstration that I’ve performed several times over the last 15 years. You can put pure carbon dioxide in a vessel, illuminate it with a bright hot lamp, and its temperature will be a few degrees warmer than an identical vessel filled with air. (I once did it with pure methane; the temperature rose in that vessel as well.)
The Climate Project people created their own version, but apparently they didn’t test it very well. One of our strident climate change deniers seized on their corner cutting and showed their demonstration didn’t demonstrate anything. I considered this part of healthy discourse: people cut corners; they got called on it and taken to task. Since it was my voice, I was considered to be a co-conspirator in the plot to fool the world into believing that our climate is changing. That’s reasonable in its way.
The Climate Project people used jars with lids that were too thick, the thermometers were not well placed, and the volume of gas in each vessel was greatly diminished by the presence of handsome, but voluminous globes and pedestals. When I’ve done this in the past, my apparatus did not have any of these shortcomings, so I got different results.
As the famous Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston remarked, “One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.” Try it; try your own version, and see if you measure a temperature difference.
One thing to note though, the guy who called us out on this drew an incorrect conclusion, or he made an erroneous claim. He says any change would have been caused by “… a completely different physical mechanism than actually occurs in our atmosphere…” That’s wrong. It is this mechanism. The model has to be set up properly. Keep in mind that our troposphere is several dozen kilometers thick, and it doesn’t comprise pure carbon dioxide. This is a model, a demonstration. Real atmospheric models are astonishingly complex.
Regardless of any shortcomings or shortcuts in the model shown by the Climate Reality Project advocacy group, the world is getting warmer, and we had all better do something about it.
Bill, You fail the stink test. Massaging data is not science as much as an art.
Hey Mr Nye, show the complete list of materials and process so it is repeatable as a ‘high school’ experiment
— that is how science actually works, not smug we know better evasions
Well said!
Hey Bill – I think you know the sign of a valid experiment is the ability of others to replicate given similar circumstances,
Thanks you for admitting that this was a demonstration and that “real atmospheric models are astonishingly complex”. I hope you meant that “real atmospheric performance is astonishingly complex”. Or, have you confused the difference?
Bill, this is an enormously weak and unscientific response. Disappointing, I expected better.
Makes me think you a not so clever bunkum artist.
Applause!
Keep up the good work. How can 3% (=man-made) of 0,039% (=total amount of CO2 in air) warm the earth? Its impossible. Co2 is about banking and total control. In fact about selling air to stupid ppl and phoney governments.
I am more worried about the loss of Oxygen by burning all those fuels.
Less oxygen makes ppl more sick, tired/lazy/drugged and dumb. Oxygen generates 97% of all the energy of animal creatures like us. You can live days without water and weeks without food.
You can’t live 5 minutes without oxygen. Some say that in the ancient times there was 35% oxygen in the air. Now its ~20%. If its true or not, why do we never hear or see this kind of data?
Animals are MUCH smaller these days than 65 million years ago. Is that because the lack of oxygen? Or because there was much more CO2 in the air? Or both?
But.. you mention the AG video 101. There is something with that number: ‘101’.
I forgot what. Kind of (secret) code? No time at the moment to look it up but it’s somewhere in the next video. Sorry, its a bit long… and bit over the top …but also interesting in a way.
You don’t get it. It’s aboit equilibirum.
Let’s say 300ppm reflects back to earth 100unit of IR. (I say unit because mathematically it doesn’t matter, it’s the change that is important.)
Then going to 400ppm which is still not a lot will reflect 125 units. So there is more infrared flashed back at us. Not a lot just a little.
But that moves us out of the previous and fragile equilibrium. The heating is then self generating. CO2 levels are the beginning of a chain reaction. It’s because earth is not a homogenous surface that little changes in temperature caused by a little more IR flashed back at us makesbig temperature change in the future.
Take two cars in the summer. One black and one white. The black one will get crazy hot while the white one less.
And for earth kt goes like this:
1 little more co2 ->
2 more heat flashed back
3 climate changes as you could expect in a “hot year” regardless off climate change or not. So less snow, more melting and less rain on average on earth.
4 ok you tell me, it changes s from one year to another naturally and comes back to normal…. Not with more co2 because that little something that affected climate last year didnt disappear this year.it’s not el nino. People still drive cars etc.
5 si you get a second year Ith less snow fall and more melting. BUT it didnt have a couple “normal years” to average out. So the “normal” snow/ice/grass surface diminish
6those places were likr your white car. Not generating heat from normal sunlight. They are now darker and create more IR than before.
7 finally you get back to point 1.. You might still have only 400ppm of co2 and you’d think they reflect the same 125units… But the earth generates more now so it went up to maybe 130-135 units of IR comparaed to the 100 with no continuous added co2.
And, you are dead wrong. Nice simplistic theory. But dead wrong.
CO2 has increased 10% the past 18 years … and NOTHING has changed in global average temperature in those same past 18 years.
before that, CO2 was steady, and the earth’s global average temperature proxies decreased, were steady, and increased.
Before that CO2 steadily increased, and the earth’s global average temperatures decreased, were steady, and increased. By the same amounts – and faster and by greater amounts ! – than have changed in the only 21 years in earth’s 4 billion year history that both CO2 and temperatures increased at the same time.
Sorry, but your thought experiment is of value only in a case where CO2 is the only (or vastly dominant) GHG. Of course, in the real world on Earth, that isn’t the case. The evil H20 is the dominant GHG in our atmosphere (over 70% between gaseous H2O and clouds, per the IPCC), so changes in CO2 levels have a much, much smaller impact than you describe. Indeed, if you really want to cut down on GHGs, perhaps a better solution is to do something about the evaporation of water.
Indeed, this is another example of a seriously flawed climate change model, though simpler than most. Thank you for illustrating that.
Ah, reduce evaporation so that clouds don’t form, thus, depriving farmers from the rain that allows their crops to grow – starving humanity because of the ‘evil’ H20 (which is necessary for human survival). All this in an effort to ‘preserve’ the Earth for future generations who will, by the way, have no food to eat. May as well kill all humans.
Slight grammatical error – correction – “farmers of the rain” instead of “farmers from the rain”.
true true. i personally believe that global warming, climate change and the so and such are all complete and utter hoaxes, constructed by certain socialist scientsits to convert the world into a communisctic social enviroment and economy. the lengths at which people will go to kill off captilisim and amreica as a whole is absolutely terrifying. i personally am scared for my life as it seems almsot the entire rest of the world is out for red whtie and blue blood.
You’re right, it’s about equilibrium, and the equilibrium is very fragile.
That’s why it’s HARD to model it correctly.
Global climate models can easily be made to fit with PAST climate because they have so many parameters that you can tweak. The real challenge is to predict FUTURE climate correctly in advance — not retrofit the model by adjusting the parameters when the new data come out.
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk” (John von Neumann)
What about the 3,000,000 ppm CO2 sequestered in living tissue generated calcium carbonate deposits. If that three million parts per million were released into the atmosphere, there would be about 3,000,400 parts CO2 per 4,000,000 or about 750,000 ppm which is a couple of thousand times higher than the “tipping point” of 400 ppm. How did said tissue survive long enough to sequester all of that CO2?
“three million parts per million”
That’s a nonsense phrase; it’s like saying “that forest contains three trees for every tree in that forest.” Your logic is fundamentally flawed.
You should be embarrassed. In an expression “x ppm” , where ppm means “parts per million” and x being an integer, there is no meaning to the expression if x is greater than one million. For example, 1,000,000 ppm means the measured quantity is pure. 500,000 ppm means it is 50% pure. There is no such thing as 101% pure as there is no such thing as 1,000,001 ppm.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_spectroscopy
light and properites of the molecule known as c2 have been known for hundreds of years
Daeran…and misused for hundreds of years, as implied by your use of the reference.
I wonder if Mr. Nye has considered what he may be seeing in his results is attributable to the gas’ Specific Heat?
The relevant formula is
Q=Cp*m*dT
Where Q = the amount of heat required to change the temperature of a gas delta T or dT. “m” is the mass. The specific heat of the atmosphere (Cp) is approximately 1.01 KJ/KgK and that of CO2 is 0.84 KJ/KgK. Therefore if the energies, Q, going into the systems are the same (remember identical heat lamps?), and the mass of the system is the same (identical jars, etc.) then the lower the specific heat of the gas involved the greater the temperature change or dT.
The mass isn’t the same. CO2 is denser than air. Need to work out that part before concluding.
same volume not the same mass. Use a ratio of 28.97 to 44 to get your specific heat on a volumetric or molar basis.
Cp is 36.94 for CO2 (molar basis) and 29.07 for Dry Air (molar basis). Volumes will follow these proportions. So of course (and as Anthony has clearly shown) the CO2 will heat a bit less quickly than Air if we are just considering simple absorption of energy. (I’m assuming small changes in temperature for a constant Cp). I have always wondered what the CAGW crowd was trying to show with this “experiment.”
Bravo Anthony for actually doing the experiment (and without having to photoshop the results). Shortcuts indeed Mr Nye!
APE
Keep in mind that Mr. Nye is not a trained scientist. His degree is in mechanical engineering.
Blank Reg, you are absolutely right. Only in this formula it is preferable to use the molar heat capacity instead of the specific heat, since the gas composition is usually given in mole (volume) percentages: see comment
aleks January 27, 2018 at 1:54 pm
Surely, Mr.Watts performed an excellent work. Remarks about the influence of IR-radiation absorption by glass do not cancel the main conclusion: under the same conditions air is heated more than carbon dioxide. Only to explain this fact I would suggest using the simple heat capacity formula instead of thermal conductivity.
Both vessels contain equal volumes (equal number of moles) of gases, so molar heat capacity C is used in the formula q = n*C*dT (q – amount of heat, n – number if moles, dT – the difference between final and initial temperature in the vessel). As values of q, n, and initial temperature in both cases are the same, so C and dT are inversely proportional.
Indeed, the values of C for air and CO2 are 29.3 and 37.1 J/(mol *K), respectively. Quantitative calculation from the experimental data is impossible, because in this experiment one can not determine amount of heat absorbed by the gas only. Nevertheless, qualitative prediction is correct: dT value for CO2 is less than for the air, according to the heat capacity formula.
It seems that in a similar experiment with methane (C = 35.6) temperature would be slightly higher than in CO2 vessel, but less than in the air containing vessel.
I can not imagine how these results can be reconciled with the theory of absorption of IR radiation by greenhouse gases and radiative forcing values.
“The way an actual greenhouse works is by trapping infrared radiation. Glass is transparent to visible light, but not to infrared light, as we see below.”
Ummm… Doesn’t a greenhouse works mainly by preventing convection rather than by the “greenhouse effect”?
As far as greenhouses are concerned, the main effect is shelter from winds.
A greenhouse gets warmer, because it prevents the warmed air from rising or getting blown away. If greenhouse gases reflect IR, then it would also reflect IR from the sun back into space.
Sorry, I expressed myself poorly. I shouldn’t have called it the “greenhouse effect”. I first thought of saying “the greenhouse analogue of the greenhouse effect”, but realised that would be a bit confusing.
What I meant to ask was “doesn’t a greenhouse work mainly by preventing convection rather than by trapping infrared radiation?”
Yes.
Different kinds of glass have substantially different transparencies at different wavelengths. That is why for this reproduction it is very important to use exactly the same glass. The remote reading thermograph thermometer shows indisputably that the longwave infrared radiation is not penetrating the glass. That leaves reflection or absorption since it is not coming through the glass. Since the glass warms up we know it is absorbing. Once warmed up the glass will have its own infrared emission.
Needless to say this is great stuff for household windows to keep longwave (heat) OUT on a hot summer day, but in winter, keep your house heat IN. But unlike an insulator, this simply absorbs and warms up and eventually radiates its own longwave infrared. If double-paned, the cold glass can stay outside (in winter) and the warm glass stays inside and you put argon in the middle which is apparently poor at convection.
If CO2 reduces convection then water vapour concentrations would reduce, has this happened?
Oops! “work” rather than “works”, obviously. Sorry, I’m really not with it, at the moment, but I thought I ought to mention the convection vs trapping infra-red issue.
So Bill Nye says “Regardless of any shortcomings or shortcuts in the model shown by the Climate Reality Project advocacy group, the world is getting warmer, and we had all better do something about it.”
How does this reconcile with the US met data which says there has been no global warming since 1997 and the models look like being fundamentally flawed?: Refer: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Al Gore never learned that correlation doesn’t equal causation. I love his famous hockey stick graph which supposedly shows that CO2 rises and then temps. and then when you research the study they got their data from you learn that it was in fact the opposite, that temps rose first and then CO2 levels rose. I don’t debate climate change, we know for a fact that the earths climate naturally shifts from time to time…what I do debate is anthropogenic climate change that states it’s only happening because of us parasitic humans. Same people that believe in Darwin and natural selection but won’t let endangered species die off…uhhh, isn’t that part of natural selection?
Its comical…
Dustin, you are exactly right. A simple highschool experiment (better than Al Gore’s) is to take two bottle of soda water. Put one in the refrigerator and one on the counter. Allow them both to reach equilibrium temperature with their surroundings. Shake both bottles equally. Then open them both. Which fizzes more? The warmer one, because CO2 disolves less in warm water. We know CO2 is disolved in the oceans. One can readily assume the oceans and atmosphere would both warm comparably. When the oceans warm, CO2 is liberated to the atmosphere, just as in our experiment. Thus, higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere FOLLOW warming of the oceans.
That’s right, and data from ice cores through which temperature and CO2 concentration have been reconstructed for the last 400000 years shows exactly the same thing: temperature goes up and AFTERWARDS CO2 concentration goes up. There is also a lag of several hundred years
Regardless of any shortcomings or shortcuts in the model shown by the Climate Reality Project advocacy group, the world is getting warmer, and we had all better do something about it.
That in itself is questionable when the probable inaccuracy in the measurements is an order of magnitude greater than the differences measured. What is more important is that no one seems to be interested in looking at the detail. When you look at the temperature anomaly maps on the NASA site, particularly the sea ones it shows clearly that the temperature of the earth is on average reducing if it was not for highly localised hot spots that appear in the near polar regions.
If the warming is caused by CO2 how is this localised transfer of 5 degrees above the ambient achieved? This is especially strange when once it arrives at the surface it manages to disperse to lower temperature wider areas as one would expect and no longer constrain itself in the same way.
My experiment falls short but believe me any way. Science…catch it!
In response to Bonta Phillip – did you read the paper the article was referring to? Apparently not as if you had you would be aware that the MET office (UK not US) did and took the unusual step of issuing a statement highlighting their concern at the Mail’s misrepresentation of the paper. For your consideration here is a link to the paper;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD017013.shtml
and also the MET office Statement:
https://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/met-office-in-the-media-29-january-2012/
regards
I suspect that Bill Nye’s experiments did show the reading in the CO2 vessel as higher. Bill tells us that he did not clutter his containers with little extras so we can assume he simply popped a thermometer in each vessel. I suspect the long wave IR was filtered by the glass in the bulb and the vessel. Thus the atmosphere in each vessel did very little absorbing of the light energy. BUT the thermometers likely did absorb the energy and likely would have shown a similar increase in temperature had the vessels contained a vacuum. But since the air has nearly twice the thermal conductivity as the CO2 it simply removed the heat from the thermometer faster in the Air vessel. This explanation allows both Bill Nye and Anthony to be correct in their observations. But it would appear the CO2 acted as an insulator of the thermometer rather than absorbing the infrared energy and it is primarily the thermometer doing the energy absorbing rather than the CO2 gas.
To test this explanation you can add a vessel of H2 or He gas. The He is safer and available at many Scuba shops. The thermometer in the He or H2 should not heat as fast as the CO2 or Air thermometers and the ratios should follow the thermal conductivity shown in the chart. Now there is a science project. If using H2 I suggest being aware of ignition sources, keep the vessels small and use safety goggles. A quick look in a ChemPhysHandbook should underscore the wide range of H2 to O2 mixtures that are ignitable.
Wow, very nicely done. Could Al Gore truly make a mistake? (insert sarcastic laugh)
I don’t know, I think that a vessel with higher CO2 actually should warm up faster under IR. I don’t know why it didn’t warm up faster in Anthony’s experiments. Perhaps the IR source was not high enough intensity or warming of objects other than the air dominated the effect of air content.
The interesting thing about this experiment is that over the long term the two jars should reach the same equilibrium temperature even though they have different CO2 concentration. The additional IR should warm the gas in each chamber, because each chamber has ability to absorb IR, but the chamber containing more CO2 should reach equilibrium temperature faster, which is why the transient effect would be jar B leading jar A as the temperature rises.
Like I said, the two jars should eventually reach the same equilibrium temperature. Then when you turn off the lamp jar B should also cool down faster. The take away is that the co2 should cause greater responsiveness of the gas temperature to changes in IR flux.
I agree with Anthony that this experiment does not demonstrate the mechanism whereby greenhouse gases warm the earth. You can just as easily demonstrate that CO2 will increase the rate of cooling with this experiment.
The demonstration is that I.R. from the heat lamps never reaches the air or the CO2 inside the jars.
The power of CO2 to absorb infrared is thus neither confirmed nor denied by this experiment.
However, it also answers the question of whether a GLASS greenhouse does actually stop outgoing longwave radiation (in addition to stopping convection), and apparently that is exactly the case, depending of course on what kind of glass is used.
If we look closely at the two experiments again, I would like everyone to notice one thing.
Though the IR lamp was only shown on and above the lamp for a very short period of time, in the original video, please pay attention to the hose from the CO2 source… That’s right, it’s still in the jar.
So, from what we are shown on this page, it appears that we have two different tests. In the original test, the CO2 bottle has the top partially open, allowing for more IR to potentially pass through the “glass” while actually passing through open air. On the other hand, we have the air bottle with the top fully on that forces all heat sources to pass through the glass. If this is indeed how the test was conducted when not speedily cut through, then it should be blatantly obvious to anyone that the test is erroneous and invalid.
Test two had the IR lamps on while both jars had the covers completely on, forcing any heat that enters the jars to enter identically in both the CO2 and Air cases. Though this may not be a perfect representation of IR passing through earth’s atmosphere, it is 100% a much fairer comparison between the gasses.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that the original test left the hose in the jar to continually fill it with CO2. (Or purposefully allow a free air path for heat to enter the jar)
Both jars were at the same temperature when the CO2 was introduced. He even mentioned that the releasing of the CO2 into the chamber slightly lowers the temperature.
If you took the time to see the whole video, you would have noticed the readings were CONSISTENTLY different between the jars … as indicated in the graphs he produced from the data.
This is essentially an indoor version of Wood’s Experiment of 1909, which was said to prove that greenhouses trap solar heat principally through lack of convection, not through IR blocking.
Wood’s Experiment has been repeated by at least two modern experimenters, and interestingly, they disagree about the outcome. Vaughan Pratt of Stanford reckons that Wood was wrong and that the box with a far-infrared blocking window material gets significantly hotter. Meanwhile, Nasif Nahle finds the opposite, that IR-blocking material actually prevents some of the Sun’s rays from entering the box, causing marginally slower warming than in the box with the IR-transparent window.
Nahle’s experimental method seems to be by far the more meticulous, and on that basis I’m inclined to accept his findings in preference to Pratt’s. Though, I do find it perplexing that that no agreement can be reached within the scientific community over the results of so simple, so easily repeated a test. If no agreement can be reached even on this, what trust can be placed in more complex forms of climate science?
http://boole.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Experiment_on_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
I suspect variations exist in what the glass does WITH the infrared. If it absorbs the infrared, the glass itself will heat up and indirectly heat the interior, making it seem that the infrared passed through. Glass that reflects infrared, such as is used in projectors, won’t heat up nor will it pass the infrared. Instead, the infrared is reflected somewhere else which will then heat up. Heat reflecting windows are used in buildings to keep the interior cool but of course the streets and sidewalks then get a double dose of infrared.
Look at the spectrum of sunlight from a black body, and then look at the infrared spectrum emitted from the surface of the earth as a black body. There is very little energy overlap between the two, and even less energy in the infrared frequencies, that CO2 can absorb to excite its vibrational or rotational modes. Do you think that maybe they needed some dirt, grass, or water to get a better idea of what was really happening? CO2 is an effective absorber only in very narrow frequency bands, say 9.4 and 10.6, microns, not the entire infrared spectrum. There is only a finite amount of energy coming from the earth at these frequencies. Therefore, it may be possible to absorb all of it with a finite number of atoms of CO2 in the atmosphere, and maybe this is why some people say the absorbtion is a natural log function (ln) and will be quickly saturated. CO2 molecules don’t know up from down, or earth from space. If they emit absorbed energy it can be absorbed by other CO2 molecules or maybe even N2 molecules, but it will probably still reach space after being delayed for a little bit, or it could be reabsorbed by the earth and re-emitted. I don’t know what happens, if it hits the oceans, since we have been told that it can only minutely penetrate the surface layer of water.
By the way, I think the infrared light bulbs may not be made with a normal glass cover. That would seem to defeat the whole purpose of their existance. I think at least some infrared light heaters have quartz covers.
http://www.ice-age-ahead-iaa.ca/small/radiation_transmitted.jpg
Focusing on your closing question, I also believe that the “consensus” often claimed is misleading on a related basis.
Nobody is writing articles about proving or even testing the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere. Even the articles cited as part of a consensus are derivative, consequentially presumed and thus valueless to the analysis of physics. They are barely to be valued as opinion polls.
On the matter of physical models (not computer models), the proper experiments can be imagined. They are definitely not high school level, nor easy.
One such that can be envisaged would requite an enormous building. I thought to pick one with a picture, but decided to show many…. https://www.google.com/search?q=clouds+found+inside+buildings&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=IcGfUnAVTkeBwM%253A%252CVvtdwpmGDgidtM%252C_&usg=AFrqEzfQmRsdm3mDvvjJcKmbNG13EO84Og&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_-5q83Y3dAhVGGt8KHWh6DHQQ9QEwA3oECAUQBA#imgrc=IcGfUnAVTkeBwM: Have any rained inside I wonder?
Perhaps another way would be to make a geo-art project of a transparent polymer supported to be perhaps 200 meters tall, and open at the top, located in a sunny location and enclosing 1000 m^2 area. A desert might be a good locale. CO2 and water controlled by injection at the bottom. Thermometers top to bottom. Crowd-funding anyone?
There are some very substantial problems with this experiment. First, they are using an infrared lamp; second the amount of CO2 in the ‘atmosphere’ in the bottle is substantially greater than the amount in the earth’s atmosphere; and finally, the gases are not acting as the atmosphere, the glass of the bottle is.
The gases in the atmosphere absorb the radiant energy from the sun based on the wavelength of the radiant energy and convert that to heat energy. Carbon Dioxide is most effective at absorbing infrared wavelength light and converting it to heat energy. By using an infrared lamp and a CO2 atmosphere they have magnified the amount of heat produced compared to Earth’s atmosphere by a huge margin. Finally, the heat energy produced from the absorption by the gases in the atmosphere is radiated out from the atmosphere in all directions, with more than half of that heat energy being directed out to space. The glass of the bottle prevents that heat from being radiated out and traps it in the bottle thus causing an extra temperature rise.
These so-called scientists should be ashamed of how they conduct experiments – this particular experiment only shows that a CO2 saturated atmosphere is more effective at absorbing infrared radiation and converting it to heat energy than the regular atmosphere, it does not demonstrate that AGW is a threat or even if it is occurring.
Good work. Thanks from a non-scientist for making the effort.
Suggest that your challenge Bill Nye to get in the same room with you and conduct his experiment to prove his result with complete transparency and advance agreement about how the experiment is set up.
In fact, why not agree with each other as to the setup and then conduct it with both of you together and an agreement that the results will speak for themselves.
I doubt, however, that Bill Nye will rise to such a challenge.
Dwight Oglesby
So after all this do you think that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that increases the temperature of the atmosphere?
No.
Sorry – didn’t read your update. So you agree CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Then the next question is do you think that CO2 introduced by humans is contributing to the warming of the planet and therefore global climate change?
No, not substantially. By 0.1 to 0.2 degrees ? Perhaps. But CO2 has increased by 10%, and we have measured 0.0 increase in global average temperatures. therefore, by measurements over time, the actual ratio appears to be 0.0 degrees/co2doubling.
Regardless of this nice simplistic theory – like the nice, simple theory like aether to transmit light through space and those many decades before the idea of phlogiston theory of combustion was rejected by “scientists” of the day – is nice, simplistic, obvious, and …. incomplete, if not dead wrong.
A common miconception is that more CO2 traps more IR energy. In reality, the atmosphere is opaque to IR in the CO2 absorption bands even at a concentration of 280 ppm. The mean free path of an IR photon in the CO2 absorption band is about 25 meters near the surface of the earth. Thus, in order to “escape” from the atmosphere, that photon is absorbed and re-emitted hundreds if not thousands of times before it gets to outer space. Adding more CO2 does have the effect of raising the height in the atmosphere whereby that IR photon can “escape.” Due to the lapse rate of the atmosphere, increased height means lower temperature which means less energy leaving. Global temperature data strongly suggests this effect is small and possibly negligible. Furthurmore, it is an oversimplication to consider only CO2 without including the interaction of the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor.
“do you think that CO2 introduced by humans is contributing to the warming of the planet and therefore global climate change?”
Bad logic and ignores dozens of confounders. What causes climate change is CHANGE.
There’s nothing special about human CO2 warming the planet. Of course it does, but so does natural CO2 and the CO2 brought by aliens from Alpha Centauri. Whoever brought the CO2, thank you! All life depends on it. Of course there can be too much of a good thing but that’s a different conversation.
But glass (or other material ) greenhouses or your car parked in the sun for that matter “heat up” by trapping the heated air that would otherwise convect away into the free atmosphere and be replaced by cooler air. Professor Wood’s 1909 experiment, replicated by Professor Nahle, clearly demonstrated a few things
– the solar radiation contains significant IR which glass blocks; and,
– the increase in temperature by “trapping” of IR in a heated glasshouse cannot be measured whilst there is a clear effect by preventing convection to the free atmosphere.
Note that these say nothing about absorbing or emission of IR by gases which I do not dispute BUT it is a fact that all things radiatedependent on their temperature and therefore the vast bulk of the atmosphere must radiate IR yet this 99% of the atmosphere is ignored where the “backradiation” of greenhouse gases is considered – it just doesn’t make sense to me that less than, at the most, a few percent of the atmosphere can be responsible for all the IR – the vast bulk of the atmosphere is not at absolute zero after all.
“BUT it is a fact that all things radiate dependent on their temperature”
I hate to be a party pooper but this isn’t entirely factual. The relevant factor is called “emissivity” and describes the ability of a warm object to radiate as compared to a perfectly theoretical “blackbody” radiator. For instance, a highly polished ball doesn’t absorb light energy, it reflects it. Interestingly, it also has a difficult time radiating its own heat.
The best radiators of infrared have a loosely bound outer electron orbit, the very thing that makes it possible to “capture” a photon and absorb its energy, but it can only capture photons whose wavelength couples with the wave function of the electron, and it can (usually) only emit that same type of photon. Other mechanisms exist but this is what makes CO2 special in lasers and the atmosphere.
An incoming photon will impart energy to an electron and it jumps to a higher “shell” or orbit, but they can occupy only specific orbits, nothing in between. It isn’t really an orbit, its an energy state, but orbit is convenient for description.
Anyway, after a while the electron reverts back to its “base state” and the jump produces a tiny burst of electromagnetic energy – a photon – in a random direction.
But it might lose energy in a collision before it radiates. That is why CO2 near the ground imparts heat to other molecules primarily through collisions but near the edge of space radiation is the dominant energy transmitter. In fact, it works both ways; other molecules can give their energy to CO2 which can then radiate it! CO2 thus warms (near the surface), and cools (TOA – Top of Atmosphere), the Earth.
Interesting if incomplete… The TOA increased between 1962 and 1976, occasioning release of a new edition of The US Standard Atmosphere as a result. See http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a035728.pdf the TOA was remeasured at about 1000K. Perhaps not all resulted from actual increase, but the only measurement I know of does not show cooling at TOA. It is not the same as stratospheric cooling.
Also, while radiation is dominant afaik, it is an error to believe only CO2 carries IR away even if there is no mechanical loss from solar wind (such sensible heat loss has not been reported, but it must be small and slow). Water vapor not only is made from liquid water at similar wavelengths, it radiates at those same wavelengths, for the same reasons you stated, and it does so when it is much higher than the average CO2.
The atmosphere around the real Earth is not glass … The direct heat from the Sun is what reaches us and heats us up, land and oceans and us. This has been taken out of the AGWScienceFiction energy budget. You’ve left out the direct heat from the Sun which can actually physically really heat matter and substituted shortwave visible light from the Sun, which can’t.
This is so totally ludicrous it’s beyond a joke.
As noted before Bitskeptic, human emissions are just 3% of 0.039% of total atmospheric CO2. That’s just 0.00117%. No wonder they can’t find the anthropogenic signal amongst the natural noise.
Any actual warming would be arising from the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI), where roads and building retain heat for longer, but that escapes into space on a clear night. Notice how cities always have a higher overnight temp forecast? But that’s only localised. Out in the city fringes and the prairies, temps aren’t really affected at all.
Note that the Earth having a total area of 510,072,000 km2 and (from what I could gather – somebody correct me because I couldn’t find the exact figure), around 300,000 km2 of global city area that’s capable of measurable UHI, I doubt there’s a problem.
Meant to say earlier that I am pleased Anthony approached this as a clear, concise and repeatable experiment.
He has clearly summed up the situation correctly – the IR lamps primarily heat the glass jars which conduct heat to the gases therein – the gases did not heat substantially by absorption of IR which the glass blocks effectively.
Why didn’t Gore and his “expert” forsee this basic criticism and use a different heating method ?
Wood’s 1909 experiment showed almost no temperature effect by the glass box “trapping” IR compared to the rock salt box which passes IR at ~100% at the temperatures reached – the consequence of this is that the surface heats the atmosphere primarily by conduction and convection – radiation effects were not measurable.
It seems inconceivable to me that the Earth’s surface, heated by the Solar radiation, predominantly heats the atmosphere by radiating to greenhouse gases which then spread the heat around (which must be kinetic energy as the bulk of the atmosphere doesn’t appreciably absorb IR) – I simply do not believe this and Professor Wood demonstrated this.
Obviously radiation to space is the only method of removing energy from the atmosphere.
I’m surprised the temperature profiles in the two jars were so close, given the potential manufacturing differences in the bulbs and the jars (the glass is not going to be uniform in thickness, among other things). There are so many ways the experiment could have been faked, but it’s pretty clear the thermometers were not in the jars when the video was running. Using a 50W bulb for one jar and a 150W bulb for the other would be an easy way to fake it in a “live” test. Realistically, the conditions for both jars were not the same: both should have had tubing running into them, so that both were open to “the atmosphere” and both should have had identical temperature gas running into them. A better solution is to have proper laboratory jars that allow hoses to be attached so that there could be no uncontrolled leakage.
Nye’s response is interesting, if you can put up with/get past the rhetoric. He provides some interesting bits of information:
1) He acknowledges that Team Gore made up their own experiment, and lists numerous failings of it.
2) He notes that in his own experiments he used a “bright hot lamp” though he doesn’t indicate if it’s an IR or visible light lamp. A hot bulb radiating heat is likely to cause the jars to heat to some degree, which will complicate the issue.
3) Nye also acknowledges that such experiments are grand simplifications of the real atmosphere, models of which “are astonishingly complex.”
4) Nye encourages people to make up their own model and see what happens. That’s all fine and dandy, but that’s where Team Gore went wrong in the first place: they made up their own experiment and botched it, but then said their results were valid…
In many ways, Nye provides good evidence that he is above the fray, but it’s hard to get to that point after he shows his apparent true colors as he refers at the very top to “one of our strident climate change deniers.” And to think I actually let my children watch his show when they were young…
Actually, this whole concept of a green house like effect surrounding the earth like a pane of glass is a ludicrous attempt to present a vision in children’s heads and I well imagine many adults also believe this. The question is, when was the last time anyone was able to “capture” anything with a gas? That this ubiquitous, odorless, colorless, and benign trace gas essential for life on earth, CO2, that is one and one-half times heavier than the rest of the atmosphere (maybe there is intelligent design after all because everything that utilizes CO2 is on the surface of the earth) and be reminded that it constitutes only .037% of the total atmosphere of our planet can have basically anything to do with the earth’s climate can not and never will be shown by ANY experiment to do so.
That H2O is what causes the green house effect should be realized by anyone that has ever noticed that the coldest nights of the winter occur when there is no cloud cover and this is why the deserts can get to 130*F during the day and freezing at night, no cloud cover.
Carbon dioxide is one and one half times heavier than “air”. This point was sadly proven on Aug, 21, 1986 when Lake Nyor in Cameroon released about 1.6 million tons of CO2 that spilled over the lip of the lake and down into a valley and killed 1,700 people within 16 miles of the lake. “Carbon dioxide, being about 1.5 times as dense as air, caused the cloud to “hug” the ground and descend down the valleys where various villages were located. The mass was about 50 metres (164 ft) thick and it travelled downward at a rate of 20–50 kilometres (12–31 mi) per hour. For roughly 23 kilometres (14 mi) the cloud remained condensed and dangerous, suffocating many of the people sleeping in Nyos,Kam,Cha,andSubum.
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…
This coincides with the above fact about CO2:
ppm of CO2 with altitude and mass of CO2 in atmosphere to 8520 metres beyond which there is practically no CO2
http://greenparty.ca/blogs/169/2009-01-03/ppm-co2-altitude-and-mass-co2-atmosphere-8520-metres-beyond-which-there-practic
(It is strange that I happened on this above at the Green Party of Canada’s site)
There are some obsessed with the supposed increase of 280 ppm to 392ppm of CO2 and I hope that this information will help them to sleep better at nights.
This, I hope, will put this into some kind of a perspective that makes one understand just how insignificant this increase is.
A part per million is like 1 drop of ink in a large
kitchen sink.
A large kitchen sink is about 13-14 gallons. There
are 100 drops in one teaspoon, and 768 teaspoons
per gallon.
Some other things that are one part per million are…
One drop in the fuel tank of a mid-sized car
One inch in 16 miles
About one minute in two years
One car in a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic from
Cleveland to San Francisco.
One penny in $10,000.
I know that you understand that these 112 additional ppm are spread out over this 16 miles in different one inch segments and wouldn’t it be a task to be told to sort out the 392 pennies from the number that it would take to make up $10,000.
At 392 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmosphere– less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth’s current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
Let’s picture this in another way to really get an idea of the scale of CO2 compared to the total atmosphere. The Eiffel Tower in Paris is 324 metres high (1063ft). If the hight of the Eiffel Tower represented the total size of the atmosphere then the natural level of CO2 would be 8.75 centimetres of that hight (3.4 inches) and the amount added by humans up until today would be an extra 3.76 centimetres (1.5 inches)
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/co2-the-basic-facts