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
Sorry to say that as a 40+ year practicing neurologist/psychiatrist and neurobiologist, I am just not buying this whole silly idea of a scientific consensus. The term itself is an oxymoron of the highest degree, with a built-in irony of political overtones that just don’t work.
Two major factors make me skeptical: a) the fact that I don’t see any mention of the effect of microfauna at all–and that is troubling for the simple reason that those primitive forms of life are the most adaptable and occupy every possible biological niche in, on, above and below the earth’s surface and yet no model I have seen validates their effects in harnessing available biological niches and exploiting them while simultaneously being the most basic part of the lifecycle; and b) I don’t trust any particular hypothesis with ambitions to explain the complexity of planetary function based solely on mathematical models with known high degrees of inaccuracy and marginal predictive value.
I have to say as a physician who treats patients with neurocognitive deficits that Americans are not the scientifically illiterate bunch that most pompous, arrogant scientists would have everyone believe. They are very skeptical of putting even more resources into an idea that is counter-intuitive to what they have been taught for generations. We have always been taught that carbon dioxide is necessary for plant life and for microfauna at different levels of the food chain, and now suddenly it is bad? Do any climate scientists know how long it has taken those of us in medicine to get patients to accept the simple idea that a dose of a medication does not always produce purely linear results? And now you want them to accept an idea based on precepts that remain entrenched yet still scientifically valid (e.g. are climate scientists going to re-invent the carbon fixation cycle in plants?)? Sorry, but that is antithetical to human nature in general, but American reliance on tradition more specifically. If the Australian government recently toppled could not adequately sell global warming to its own voters, how on earth do you think Americans, who are beset with economic considerations, are going to react?
Seems like climate scientists always adopt the gloom and doom approach. Nobody wants to buy into the depressive, depressing and detached world of global warming because it is sold as something where everyone must pay more taxes from money they don’t have and do with less when they already are doing with less. The psychiatrist in me wonders if global warming advocates understand just how they sound like a group of major depressive disorder support group patients? Why would anyone want to buy into that?
The question of whether boosting carbon dioxide’s concentration in the atmosphere will affect the Earth’s temperature and climate is wholly separate from the question of whether scientists and environmentalists have much of a feel for how to explain this to the public. Adding carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere at a vast global scale inherently interferes with the Earth’s natural cooling system, subtly but cumulatively and also irreversibly. Do environmentalists explain this well and respectfully? No. Do environmentalists engage the public well on the question of how best to develop a post-fossil fuel energy alternative? No.
Once you come to grips with how the Earth’s natural cooling system works, you’ll appreciate that Energy IN (from the sun) has to be offset by Energy OUT (via the infrared spectrum), because if it weren’t, the Earth would get warmer and warmer very fast. What this issue is about is how a pinched outflow in one part of the Earth’s IR spectrum requires expanded outflows in other parts of the IR spectrum so that the total outflow stays constant. But expanding the outflow in those parts of the spectrum that have a clear path into space happens only when the Earth’s surface gets warmer. Less outflow in some parts of the IR spectrum, plus more outflow in others, brings the total outflow back to an Energy OUT total that equals Energy IN from the sun.
Does warming, by itself, matter a great deal? Maybe, maybe not. What matters is the effect on climate. If climate behaviors change significantly, and those changes become even stronger as the CO2 accumulation rises and rises and rises, then much of humanity will pay a cost.
Incidentally, I doubt that this has anything al all to do with microfauna, as they aren’t regulators of the Earth’s outbound infrared, or of climate.
The good news – you seldom hear it from scientists, let alone environmentalists – is that the U.S. receives about 50,000 terawatt-hours worth of sunshine every day. And consumes about 56 terawatt-hours worth of end use energy every day. All it takes to run the American economy at full speed is about a thousandth of the sunshine we now receive.
But the effort to get from here to there? It’ll have to have enormous grass roots involvement. It can’t be dumped on people by regulators. It’ll have to be developed in the sort of handyman spirit that’s one of America’s best traits.
THANK YOU. REALLY. This is great science and proves 2 things:
-climate change deniers don’t care about scienceor you’d see this everywhere saying: TOLD YA GORE IZ A LIAR ND KLIMATE IZ A OAX.
– have we, science lovers, come to this?faking reak science to make it more digestible to the masses? Using our enemies tactics to fight them? Is it good be because the finality is the matter and most people wouldn’t understand or turn their tv of with tests with your level of precision an rigor (i disagree on some points and will come back to that later)? Or is it bad because it could backlash in HORRIBLE ways and it’s opposing to our core methodology?
I ceave for some good old Bill Nye. I hate the Goreification of it. Gore is almsot to Climate Change what “Facebook likes” are to starving childrens, Or the “Asl ice bucket creating awareness” is giving to science. Idk…
On the scientifical part of your busting experiment… I was left not satisfied…:
-CONTROL were is control? Should have been two more boxes not under IR light. Even another set in darkness to rule out the ambient lighting from any changes. Controls are SO OFTEN overlooked it kills me…
-BOXES. The lid of those cookie jar look like optical nightmares to me. Looks like the type where the center would concentrate light rzal close underneath it and etc. So even if glass didn’t stop IR, I’d bet my mathematician ass that some points there could be melting hot while 2 cm asides would be in a diffraction shade. Meaning whatever reading you got couldn’t be taken seriously.
-LATENT HEAT- putting the jars and all in a water bath to “reset” the temperature between two data recording Wouldn’t hurt if you asked me.
-IR SOURCE. You didn’t calibrate neither the light bulbs nor the setting which feels like #1 possible error inducing factor here.
If I were to calculate the worst and best case senarios of your testing i’m pretty sure i’d get degrees of variations of several degrees. I could then make a counter video following your every step made to look identical but with readings varying in matters of 10% at least. (thanks to errors adding to eaxh others)
CONCLUSION ok Im’ a huge mythbusters fan and even if they are light handed with rigor they always try all they can to see what it would take for a busted myth to be true. I didn’t see that part in your busting.
it felt you said:”Global warming is real. An experiment could show it. But not this one. This one sucks and here’s why”. But.. How can i make one that does? Let’s make one and give an opportunity to Gore Nye to get back to facts! (you could also make some $$ which is never bad)
Here are some that are methodologicaly easy while following the toughness of my criteria.
1- the earth simulation: two long wooden boxes closed on all ends but one. Insulate that shit. Get the nottom to be absobing et emeting wace lenght as earth woul (paont it black would work) . add in thermometers and and co2 capters (in a shaded box inqulated from the ground) and a little fan to have the air mixing. Add a first IR transparent window midway and a sexond at the top. In the upper segment your co2 input valve and a co2 capter.
Have heat lamp and a normal light lamp shining above it.
Wait for each thermometers to stabilize. Wait 15 minutes to be sure.
Add 100ppm of co2 in the sealed atmosphere chambers 15 minutes after the temperature has stabilized.
Redo experiment without IR lamp to sample out the Pv=nrt factor.
There you have a heat caring proof climate change experiment.
replicating the experiment as exact as one can WAS the experiment
Gore/Nye used NO control jars in boxes
the fact remains, Gore/Nye are not telling us the truth, they are offering falsified information, as did the IPCC.
NASA PROVED CO2 is insignificant in global warming. But all that info has recently been purged from the internet.
IPCC/Gore/Nye have offered NO PROVEN data that CO2 is a significant GHG. NONE… only hypothesis.
for Nye to say it is Proven is being disingenuous.
Global Warming is REAL
Man is NOT causing it!
In both the youtube and the mythbusters video the heat source is presented on one face of the jar/enclosure that means that at least 50% of that enclosure is acting to radiate heat. This would leave one to be able to explain this by conductivity (again), the lower co2 higher o2 experiments will show lower temperatures because they can dissipate the heat away from the side presented to the heat source and out through the side away from the heat source more efficiently. The lower conductivity of the CO2 enhanced atmosphere will mean that the heat cannot be dissipated as efficiently causing that environment to warm. Therefore neatly demonstrating the thermal conductivity differences not the greenhouse effect. To do that the heat source would have to be unilateral or the rear of the containers coated with a material that represents the earths albedo.
I’m glad you acknowledge global warming is happening. Perhaps you are not aware that the sources of the CO2 in the atmosphere can be identified by the carbon isotopes in the CO2 molecules. The C14 isotope is not present in CO2 molecules originating from burned fossil fuels. So by taking a sampling of CO2 from the atmosphere you can count by percentage how much of the CO2 present comes from fossil fuels, vs other natural sources (volcanic eruptions etc), which do have the C14 isotope. So real scientists (like the World Meteorological Organization) know the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the increase in the CO2 pool year to year… and looking specifically at that increase, they know how much comes from humans vs. natural sources and humans have produced huge amounts since the industrial revolution. Something like 500 billion metric tons of CO2.. and are adding more every year. The thing is that even if a small percentage of the total CO2 comes from humans (which it is not), what’s really important is the tipping point. What puts the concentration over the edge? What causes an irreversible cycle of increasing global warming. They used to say the tipping point was 350ppm of CO2. Now we are at 400ppm. We may not be able to stop it. But what harm is there in trying? At least we may be able to slow it down a bit. Besides, I fail to see whats wrong essentially all of the things recommended by environmentalists – Solar energy, improving energy efficiency, cutting coal out of the energy equation.. Can’t see anything bad unless you work for the coal company or an oil company. But company imperative or job security is about money, not the environment so we must be clear what our goals are. Then it is also worth asking the question should a job producing something that is environmentally damaging or destructive in other ways, exist? At some point there needs to be a transition to an economy that promotes a healthy environment. Denying the human role in global warming is simply propaganda that promotes the fossil fuel industry.
[You are obviously new to these parts. Your contribution is based on what you imagine skeptics know and don’t know. I would suggest that you spend some time reading through the many threads here that have covered the things you incorrectly assume we don’t know. It will save you time in identifying what to attack in the skeptic camp rather than things that have been well aired.
However, welcome to WUWT, the most read science blog on the internet and populated by some of the most informed people with incisive wit and intelligence in the scientific world. Enjoy . . mod]
I too am new here.
I appreciate everyone’s opinions and thoughts.
I think it very important, as noted elsewhere that when you state a fact, it is indeed a PROVEN fact.
I view with skepticism anyone’s claim that X causes Y because they believe that, or some “Computer Model” showed it (GIGO?)
I had not read about C14 isotopes, but I go back the original premiss, “So What?”
IF CO2 has no significant effect on global warming, and it is indeed caused by forces beyond our control, why would we be so quick to destroy our economies and countries trying to fix something that may not be broken?
Folks are stating so many things as fact, that are not so, or not proven to be so, that it is easy to get lost on the noise.
Inconvenient Truths are being ignored and buried in that noise and when asked about it, the “Consensus” tends to say, “Don’t worry about it, just believe what I tell you as I am all knowing.”
When called on it, they attack the one questioning. (Nye did exactly that, saying the experiment was flawed, due to incorrect thickness of glass lids! Yet any high school student could replicate it with far less adherence to the original parameters?)
NO ONE should have to FAKE anything if it is true and provable.
the moment the Fakery is called out, the Acolytes of the Goracle and the Suzukiites start to scream really loud and spout more rhetoric and unproven theory/beliefs.
one of the reasons I seek out sites like this one, is they offer facts, and not just opinions based on a theory based on a model based on faulty inputs. They are also a place where one can read information offered by some VERY intelligent people who have some background and understanding and can help the rest of us get a tenuous grasp on what is in play, one way or another.
Tell me what you KNOW, not what you THINK!
I THINK Hollywood’s facination with violence and firearms IS the reason for the increase in youth violence and crime. But just because I think it is so, does not make it so. If I could prove it, I’d offer you that proven fact.
I look forward to reading more information about actual tests that prove CO2 can cause an increase in global warming. I have read far to much about the “Consensus’ opinions” that they BELIEVE it does.
I am a skeptic at heart, and I don’t want you to tell me, I want you to SHOW me.
I also note, the “Consensus” also were CONVINCED the earth was Flat, and put to death those who would offer a differing position. Also too, the Consensus said the earth was the center of the solar system, with the sun revolving around the earth. In both those famous positions, the Consensus was WRONG.
I fear the Consensus is now full of “FlatEarthers” and although they don’t put anyone to death anymore, they do destroy them societally.
I hope my long winded post doesn’t get me banned from here. 😀
I guess it is fair to say that some climate models have been correct, and some have been incorrect. The problem is people become emotionally married to a position, and believe that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow ignorant. When political parties start giving their opinions, then all rational thought goes out the window.
the problem with “Models” is just that! They are models and NOT fact, or measured data.
over 90% of what one reads on the interweb, and indeed, in forums and comments on articles, it based on nothing more than a model, which in reality is just someones theory… not evidence based.
When asked about actual measurements done on the atmosphere, the reply usually is something esoteric and meaningless, based on lab experiments using only a limited set of parameters. Such as the experiment above. THEN you get Nye saying, “Yeah… but it really happens, TRUST ME!!!”
What has me REALLY concerned is the NASA report that actually measured temperatures over the course of day/night cycles that disproved the GHE based on CO2, and proved that CO2 is Insignificant, has been washed from the public’s view. We all know why!
1) it goes against every Government Pocket Picker’s ideology
2) it proves water vapour is the real culprit and there isn’t anything we can do about WV.
oh, and there are over 30,000 scientists in the US alone who disagree with AGW and that number is growing…. so much for the near 100% consensus the FlatEarthers would have us believe.
I remain very skeptical
To John Doe’s other brother – “IF CO2 has no significant effect on global warming, and it is indeed caused by forces beyond our control, why would we be so quick to destroy our economies and countries trying to fix something that may not be broken?” … You are of course free to choose who to believe as you like, but the vast majority of serious scientific organizations in the world are in near unanimous agreement to the contrary – that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that it does have a significant effect on global warming and that anthropogenic sources have contributed tremendously to that effect. And further, the effects could have devastating consequences. Which organizations are saying this? The World Meteorological (WMO), the EPA, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), US Geological Survey, National Climatic Data Center. These are not backyard scientists. These are some of the foremost scientists and engineers of our time. So I cannot accept your initial statement, and would urge you to look to the world centers of research outreach programs to see what they have to say. And please look into if C14 isotopes because it is the key to understanding the human impact on CO2. As to the negative economic impact I guess it depends how tied in you are to the fossil fuel economy. If you happened to be an employee of First Solar this week you’re probably celebrating cuz the stock went up 20% in 2 weeks. But shifting an economy so largely driven by fossil fuels is surely going to mean massive change. That being said what about the economic impacts of climate change? One of the predictions is stronger more turbulent weather. If you consider Superstorm Sandy as a possible consequence of climate change you can attach $65 billion price tag to it… How many of those type of storms or worse can the economy take? How many people will be displaced? How will agriculture be affected? What will happen if the oceans rise and cause massive numbers of refugees? The effects of global warming feel very abstract changes have historically happened very slowly – on a time scale far exceeding human lifetimes. But that seems to be changing now. There is a real reason to be concerned.
The VAST majority of serious scientific orgs (VMOSSO) are funded by Gov’ts who have a vested interest in taxing people, and the Carbon Tax is neigh on every taxpayer in the world.
Follow the MONEY! this has been documented years ago, as to WHO started the CO2 scam… it was the same group who supported communism in NE Europe, and tried to spread it to N.A…. when communism failed, they altered their targets…. this IS documented.
also the VMNOSSO are all basing their theories on FLAWED COMPUTER MODELS! NONE of them have MEASURED the effect of CO2.
NASA, also known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was the ORG that actually measured (for the FIRST time AFAIK) the effect of CO2 on warming. It was they who said it had no significant effect.
Let me say that again…. ONLY NASA has actually measured the effect and based their numbers on actual data, NOT some computer model….
Quote who you want, but if they are an accredited organization and make sweeping statements NOT based on facts and measurements, but on what amounts to conjecture and someone one “I think” statements, I give them little weight.
I often laugh when folks criticize a Climate Scientist who was funded by big oil as being biased, yet accept without question a CS who is funded by Gov’t through a university or such, whose funding would be cut if they did NOT find AGW was real! Both need to be viewed with an eye of skepticism.
I’ll not disagree that man is adding CO2 to the atmosphere… I believe that is true, and CO2 increases are helping fuel the food growth so badly needed in the world. the earth can handle double the CO2 is has now, as has been show in ice records. Ever wonder why Greenhouses pump CO2 into their enclosures?
what I AM saying is “So What?” Ice records appear to show warming PRECEEDS CO2 increases, so CO2 is an EFFECT not a cause.
the last report from the severe weather scientists I read stated that the severe storms are not more frequent, or more severe than has been in the past, just the extensive coverage of it has made it seem so.
BTW, isn’t First Solar the company Obama pumped BILLIONS into to get it started? the only reason it is increasing in stock is due to Gov’t intervention and funding…. also, looks like it is down about 35% since 2010.
with Global Warming, agriculture will produce more food. Oceans will only rise a bit, not enough to cause mass refugees. the Earth has a lot of land available for folks, and with an even migration, man WILL adapt. Always has.
the Ice mass in Antarctica is increasing, and with the weather changes, will probably continue to do so for awhile, so the likelihood of ocean levels increasing to any significant degree is minimal.
my main point is as a skeptic, I will NOT take someones word for it, I don’t care how many letters you have behind your name.
In my job, I go outside and look at the sky at least once an hour….. you could say I’m an expert on the color of the sky. If I were to say to you the sky is blue because there is an increase in blue dye number 12 in the atmosphere, and I have computer modeled it to show that indeed the sky WILL fall due to the increase in weight: would you take me at MY word???
one last point, when ALL climate scientists are polled, it is about 50/50 who believe AGW vs those who believe it is other sources, such as solar/volcanic polution/etc.
remember, the consensus told us the earth was flat!
Don’t be a Flatearther! always ask more questions.
“As to the negative economic impact I guess it depends how tied in you are to the fossil fuel economy.”
That would be everyone in Europe and North America except the Amish and even they burn wood for fuel.
“What will happen if the oceans rise and cause massive numbers of refugees?”
In the 500 years that is scheduled to take, this planet will have 10 more world wars, countless lesser wars, and 5 more great depressions. 37 despots will rule various small and some large nations causing millions to perish through faulty economic programs (50 million Russians for instance in the last century).
It is doubtful that anyone will notice the ocean creeping up on them. I have seen no change in Seattle tides in 50 years.
As to your lettered government organizations, yeah, I know how that works.
I like the acronym… (VMOSSO’s) is this original or just my first time;-) I certainly agree with you that we should follow the money.. and the vast majority of it goes to Exxon, and also to Rosneft as they plan to drill for oil in the Arctic – which they are planning on -why? because the polar ice is melting. Now I know you’re going to say the ice grew last year.. But this is about a longer progression of time, not one or two years where we see anomalies in weather patterns. But overall the planet is heating up (sources easy to site if you’re willing to suspend disbelief). Of course when you question motivation affecting research results it would be disingenuous to not consider the obvious interest to oil companies- In particular they don’t want pesky climate change problems to interfere with plans to extract as much oil/carbon as possible. So what do you think they ask of their “climate scientists”? As to your carte blanche condemnation of the VMOSSO’s I guess they don’t figure into your “50/50” number because after all, they only want money to continue their research which, by the way is peer reviewed, and rejected if wrong… Anyway I’m glad you agree that humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. But your conclusion that the increase is helping agriculture – well the California pistachio and almond growers would take issue with you.. Another: the Burpee seed company had to change their national growing charts because growing seasons and locations have changed due to global warming.. How hard do you think it is to move crops once they are established..
BTW the solar company was Solyndra not First solar. And the amount the government financed was a bit over $500 million.. not “BILLIONS”, and the government got 19% back when the company declared bankruptcy. But we’re still sending BILLIONS to the oil companies despite the fact that they are the most profitable companies in the world..
Interestingly the World Bank issued a statement in 2012 – that if the global temperature exceeds 2-degrees Celsius, there is a risk of ” triggering nonlinear tipping elements” They go on to say how rapid sea-level rises or a massive die-off in the Amazon could drastically affect agriculture, energy production, ecosystems, people’s livelihoods, etc. Other big corporations seriously concerned: the insurance companies protecting the East Coast..
If it is true that we are on the verge of a tipping point where the temperature rise could happen faster and faster, then we should do everything we can to slow it down – not that we can stop it. It may already be too late. But many bad things will happen, are happening.. and we owe it to the next generations to try to stop it. Another example is the Great Barrier Reef- the largest in the world and it will probably be dead within a few years from ocean acidification. The coral is “bleached”.. This isn’t about politics. It’s about trying to maintain an environment capable of supporting life and biodiversity.
you basically summed up the whole experiment in one sentence. The entire premise is that the CO2 greenhouse gas HOLDS the heat.
in your experiment, you completely overlook this when you say: “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”.”
this literally is the entire greenhouse gas premise and the basis for the theory of climate change. CO2 does not “magically create heat” which is what you are trying to prove wrong. Both jars receive the same amount of energy which you are showing. When you remove the heat source, one holds the energy more than the other, acting as a “greenhouse”.
Rising CO2 in the atmosphere affects the Earth’s natural cooling system by decreasing, modestly but continuously, the amount of infrared energy escaping into space. The heat that’s trapped accumulates mostly in the ocean, less on the land, and even less in the atmosphere. It doesn’t accumulate in CO2 molecules. Result: Heat IN (from the sun) isn’t fully offset by Heat OUT (from the infrared energy the earth sends into space). Rising CO2 levels subtly alter the behavior of the Earth’s natural cooling system. At what speed? On average, judging by the long-term temperature record, by about one twenty-thousandth of a degree every day.
What most folks ignore, on both sides of this issue, is the distinction between Signal and Noise. With a daily signal that’s so weak, daily Noise overpowers daily Signal. Even on an annual basis, Noise often overpowers signal. Sometimes Noise seems to amplify Signal, and environmentalists claim that global warming is proceeding more rapidly than it really is. Sometimes Noise cancels out Signal, and deniers claim that global warming has gone away or doesn’t exist. Both kinds of exaggeration misunderstand the ongoing reality of slow heat accumulation in a context of enormous climate noise.
Carbon is “stored” in many places on the Earth before it is chemically converted to CO2 and injected into our atmosphere. Some carbon storage is long term such as fossil fuel deposits in the ocean and under the land, and short term carbon storage in plants, forests, etc. By doing something as conceptually simple as leaving the deep, long-term storage deposits alone, you prevent them from being added to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. By extracting, distributing and burning the fuels we all use, (directly and indirectly), fossil fuel & related industries have changed the balance of naturally occurring release and reabsorption of CO2; i.e. the human influenced part of global warming.
There are different interests on each side of the “debate” about this- On the one hand a very large portion of the world’s economy runs on derivatives from fossil fuels. There is little doubt that stopping fossil fuel production would have a massive economic impact. On the other hand there’s an interest in trying to prevent a potential tipping point being reached where global warming spins out of control, causing massive agricultural shifts and drought affecting the worlds food and water supplies, among a long list of other disastrous things – which could over time lead to the planet being largely uninhabitable. If that sounds far-fetched consider a recent Smithsonian article that states that there’s been a 52% decline in the world’s wildlife since 1970. Then consider the thought: no wildlife, no humans.. (e.g. no bees to pollinate the crops, no crops…)
It is a stretch to extend the notion of “conflict of interest” to those whose interest is the pursuit of scientific knowledge. But the corrupting influence of a money is beyond dispute and should be in our minds as we apply the phrase “consider the source” when deciding who to believe.
The problem from a cognitive perspective is that a disastrous consequence from global warming is an abstract idea difficult to validate as a cause and effect relationship. There is always the possibility that an extreme weather event is a “natural” occurrence similar to others that happened in the past – well before the C02 concentration reached the level it is at now. On the other hand global economic events have ripple effects that can be perceived quickly on the local level because it hits you in the pocket book. So the concrete influence of money cognitively trumps the abstract idea a global warming influenced worldwide disaster. Just doesn’t “feel” real does it. But what if it is?
As we think about things like the Canadian Tar Sands being pumped into the U.S., it is worthwhile to consider if it makes sense to risk all that carbon being injected into our apparently CO2 saturated environment, or should we refocus our efforts to renewable sources. If you believe that there’s even a 50% chance that the majority of climatologists are right the answer to that should be evident.
again, more conjecture?
the “Tipping Point” is a theory
in fact, the original IPCC document was ALL theory based on someones ideas with not measured evidence to back them up.
Those IPCC bureaucrats would have failed grade 8 science class.
I consider it terribly irresponsible to destroy a country’s economy with a scam wealth transfer policy based on THEORY!
and using inflamatory phrases like ” risk all that carbon being injected into our apparently CO2 saturated environment” raise serious red flags about your agenda.
where in the world do you get the idea that the environment is SATURATED with CO2???
OK JDOB – You are right. My use of the word “saturated” was incorrect if taken literally, because if that were the case w/ resp. to CO2 we would all be dead. To be clear -what I meant by “saturated” was in reference to the “tipping point” being either already reached or very close to being reached. But then you demean the notion of a GW tipping point as only a “theory”. Well what if that “theory” is correct? What if the C02 level actually is bringing us to an irreversible climatological disaster? What are the chances? One in 10? One in 5? 50%? especially concerning is the “irreversible” part. Wouldn’t you want to take steps to prevent finding out that the “alarmist environmentalists” were right?
JDOB: ”in fact, the original IPCC document was ALL theory based on someones ideas with not measured evidence to back them up. Those IPCC bureaucrats would have failed grade 8 science class.”
So in 2 sentences you reduce the combined results of scientists from 85 countries and the hundreds of thousands of work hours from thousands of real scientists collecting and analyzing real data in the field and laboratory to “someone’s ideas with no evidence”?? Then your degrading language (“IPCC bureaucrats” and “failed grade 8 science class”) is indicative of your negative attitude toward them. Your comment cannot be taken seriously. The IPCC report is all about evidence. You might try to suspend your disbelief for a minute and try reading some of it.
JDOB: “I consider it terribly irresponsible to destroy a country’s economy with a scam wealth transfer policy based on THEORY!”
What benefit would the scientists have from destroying the economy? This is silly. But your “scam wealth transfer policy” … gives a glimpse into your own economic fear. Look – the idea that scientists are somehow going to get wealthy by forcing big business to change to sustainable ways of doing business is pretty silly. One thing scientists are not (in general) is businessmen. Has there been a shift in the balance of wealth in the country toward the wealthy? Yes. But this is not about that. This is about trying to stop a potential irreversible shift in the climate that will have a much more far-reaching effect on the world’s population than any cyclical economic event ever has. Besides –I for one believe there will be a myriad of business opportunities in an economic paradigm shift supporting an environmentally sustainable economy.
JDOB: ” and using inflamatory phrases like ” risk all that carbon being injected into our apparently CO2 saturated environment” raise serious red flags about your agenda”
As to my agenda I am not sure what you think it is but let me say it here. I would like to see planet Earth continue as a habitable place for humans for a very long time. Wouldn’t you? I get no remuneration for saying that. Nor do the scientists from all over the world that volunteer their research results to the IPCC.
If one believes there is a chance that the majority of climatologists and scientists doing real research, providing data and citing evidence suggesting that the planet ecosystem is in deep trouble; If they are right, then the results are too dire to not be concerned and to want to make major changes.
SF writes:
” Well what if that “theory” is correct? What if the C02 level actually is bringing us to an irreversible climatological disaster?”
Your question answers itself. The only remaining question is what you are going to do about it. As it will take 300 to 500 years for this irreversible disaster to actually happen, you might as well continue going to the movies in the meantime.
“What are the chances? One in 10? One in 5? 50%?”
Science does not deal in chances. Physical processes either will or will not proceed on firmly fixed rules.
“Wouldn’t you want to take steps to prevent finding out that the alarmist environmentalists were right?”
There is no end to the number of disasters you could avoid by giving me your money. Then, when the disaster doesn’t happen, you are amazed that it worked.
However, if there is a non-trillion-dollar way to confirm someones theory, that is a thing worth doing.
“So in 2 sentences you reduce the combined results of scientists from 85 countries and the hundreds of thousands of work hours from thousands of real scientists collecting and analyzing real data in the field and laboratory”
Yes, just as warmists do even better; condense all that into a single sentence: “Global warming is real and human caused”.
SF writes
“What benefit would the scientists have from destroying the economy?”
None. Scientists probably do not believe they are engaged in helping or hindering the economy. They are nerds doing science, usually at public expense. They have no idea where money comes from other than government grants.
However, you prevaricate — this argument is not about science or scientists. Let’s get it back on track. Maurice Strong is not a scientist. Al Gore is not a scientist. John Cook is not a scientist. Most of the world’s leading advocates on the Fear Train are not scientists. The 97 percent factoid was not created by a scientist.
What any intelligent person can plainly see (IMO) is that Thomas Malthus will eventually be proven correct; fossil fuel is a subsidy that permits more human beings to exist than would naturally exist without this subsidy. The deer population crash on the Kaibab Plateau is an example or warning of what is to come. So, the United Nations, Maurice Strong and Club of Rome, all have the same goal — reduce human population. It can reduce gracefully, gradually, or just crash ungracefully.
The problem then becomes how and who. Nobody wants to be the first to die.
Since the third world is already living on its renewables, and culling its population through endless warfare and disease, the only thing to control is civilized nations. But nobody wants to be first. So you have a Kyoto Protocol so all nations will gradually die rather than some of them all at once.
But not all nations signed on to Kyoto, namely the big ones with the most to gain if the little nations decided to slowly die. Australia and New Zealand seem to be having second thoughts about being willing to die this early in the game.
“Look – the idea that scientists are somehow going to get wealthy by forcing big business to change to sustainable ways of doing business is pretty silly.”
Indeed, which is why perhaps no one is arguing the point you are arguing against. Al Gore has already made quite a lot of money on this whole thing, but he’s not a scientist.
Perhaps you have seen that report by some Google researchers, deciding that “sustainable way of doing business” is impossible. The daily energy requirements of 7 billion people cannot be met with photovoltiac. I still have hope for it but Google’s research takes into account the enormous amount of energy it takes to MAKE a photovoltiac panel in the first place. If a breakthrough reduces that energy investment well then things will be much brighter in the future.
“One thing scientists are not (in general) is businessmen.”
True enough. Maurice Strong, Al Gore, and Rajendra Pachauri are businessmen, not scientists.
“Has there been a shift in the balance of wealth in the country toward the wealthy?”
No. Wealth never left the wealthy. They invented wealth. They created the tax systems. As a wise man said 2,000 or so years ago, look at the inscription on money. It won’t be you or me. The only thing truly yours is your mind and what you put in it, your intelligence and your learning.
I think scientists are very much business men and also rational human beings. You dont get rich or have job security if you back the sceptical side. If however you take up AGW as a scientific career choice – for the time being there are many rich sources of income. Name me a sceptic who makes good money on the scale of Gore or even Mann. Some scrape a living from it, but not many. The sensible thing is to go with the current status quo and earn money rather than go against it and risk poverty.
Its common sense and the most banal of all arguments that sceptics are backed by money. Most sceptics are businessmen too – they have to hold down jobs they know will pay and follow the real science part time.
A note for Skeptic Factchecker:
“As CEO of New Delhi-based TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute), Dr. Pachauri oversees a staff of more than 1,200 employees engaged in the research and development of solutions to global problems in the fields of energy, environment and current patterns of development. ”
http://www.teriin.org/profile/profile/emp/1
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Let me know what you conclude from this. Maybe something about wealthy becoming wealthier?
Your videos are not linked to properly on this page. The last video is about the Illuminati? O.o Please correct the placement of the videos. I think one is missing.
Wow I can’t wait to remove the insulation and walls from my house, and replace them with metal. Who knew I could heat my house so fast with a conductors as walls!
If the sun is hitting your walls, that will definitely work.
There is a matter that has been bothering me for some time with regard to this whole downwelling/backscatter claim. (For a bit of orientation, GHE is claimed to come from GHGs in the atmosphere both forming a greenhouse “wall” which “traps heat” and also absorbing IR emitted from the VIS-heated earth and re-emitting it at the ground, which is supposed to further heat the ground. The first claim was defeated roundly by Fourier in 1824 (who pointed out that the atmosphere’s molecules would have to become motionless _without changing their optical properties_, which, of course, is not possible.) The second seems to be the main claim of IPCC with regard to CO2: that the GHGs in the atmosphere let 184 Watts/m^2 through to the Earth, which absorbs it and reradiates it as long-wave radiation. This radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, which then, somehow, emits 169W/m^2 into space (along with a mere 30W/m^2 from clouds and 40W/m^2 of Earth’s reradiated energy, while Back Radiating 333W/m^2 back to the earth, which absorbs it. (vide Kiehl-Trenberth Energy Balance diagram).
Without dwelling on the amazing ability of Earth to take 341W/m^2 from the sun, reflect 102W/m^2 from clouds, atmosphere and surface, but still have 356W/m^2 to re-radiate, and then absorb 333W/m^2 re-radiated from the GHGs…
It should be blindingly simple for someone with the equipment you have to devise a test of BackRadiation. All you need is an IR source with the characteristic of re-radiated IR which comes from the heated earth, enough material which is transparent to that radiation, and your temperature-measuring logger. Build an enclosure. Fill it with varying mixtures of air and CO2 and moisture. Irradiate the volume of gas in the upper part of the enclosure, and measure the heating of the bottom of the enclosure.
If CO2 is such a mighty and powerful back-radiator, it will emit in all directions, not just down, against gravity. Even if there is some favoritism that could be argued in Atmospheric GHG’s to radiate towards the strongest gravity vector, you should still measure a significant heat rise at the bottom surface of the enclosure. By adding a fan and a few vanes to mix the air-flow, you should be able to create convective motion of the gasses in the enclosure, simulating the atmosphere. If IPCC and “the best scientific minds” of the world are right, you should see more heating (because the gas will both back-emit and be heated in the portion of the enclosure where the IR passes, and donate that heat to the bottom surface as they pass by) than when the air is still, and only back radiating.
This kind of experiment should clinch the truth one way or the other: Either the air absorbs IR and back-radiates longer wave IR, and that back radiation increases with the increase of CO2 far more significantly than by the addition of moisture, or the entire back-radiation claim is high-price bunko.
The key number in the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram is at the very bottom, “Net absorbed 0.9 Watts per square meter.” Boosting carbon dioxide by 43% – as has happened mostly in the last half century – tilts the entire system by just a shade. Relative to other greenhouse gases, such as water or methane or nitrous oxide, CO2 is relatively mild. It prevents three narrow streams of infrared photons from shooting through the atmosphere and reaching outer space unimpeded. CO2 molecules are transparent to the rest of the infrared spectrum.
If there were a Before and Now pair of Kiehl-Trenberth diagrams, before CO2 was up 43%, and now with CO2 up 43%, most of the numbers would be the same, or almost the same. The key difference between the two would be in the “Net absorbed” number, which would be 0 W per square meter in “Before” and 0.9 in the “Now” diagram. What’s important is that this tiny difference generates a cumulative increase in the Earth’s retained heat. That difference produces a daily rise in the Earth’s heat, equivalent to one eighteen-thousandth of a degree per day, give or take, or 2 degrees Celsius, over the course of a century, according to folks like Trenberth.
It’s a mistake to try to attribute the really large numbers in the diagram to CO2. If Kiehl and Trenberth were to publish a Before and Now comparison, it’d be a lot easier to appreciate that.
Steve Johnson: “Rising CO2 in the atmosphere affects the Earth’s natural cooling system by decreasing, modestly but continuously, the amount of infrared energy escaping into space. The heat that’s trapped accumulates mostly in the ocean, less on the land, and even less in the atmosphere. It doesn’t accumulate in CO2 molecules. Result: Heat IN (from the sun) isn’t fully offset by Heat OUT (from the infrared energy the earth sends into space). Rising CO2 levels subtly alter the behavior of the Earth’s natural cooling system.”
So do a thousand or more other factors, which is why climate change can’t be accurately modeled. The earth doesn’t have a temperature, let alone a stable or optimum temperature. Temperature varies over time and space, land and water, and always has. There is no “need” for heat received by earth from the sun to be exactly offset by heat radiated out into space. And it never has. Climate changes.
It’s amazing that people theorize that a small increase in atmospheric CO2 is going to result in catastrophic climate change. There is no optimum CO2 level, no optimum temperature level, no optimum sea level, arctic ice extend, etc.
When the earth warms, the oceans warm, ocean currents may change, ocean chemistry changes, more water vapor is released, more clouds form, less solar radiation is absorbed, and so on. And while this is going on, so are an unquantifiable number of other processes, which also affect climate. The cycles and processes involved in climate change are too complex to express in mathematical models and no one will be calculating real world results from changes in inputs to mathematical models.
It is hard to believe that this simplistic and arrogant and pretentious “heat imbalance -> global warming” argument, where the “imbalance” results from rising (man-caused) CO2 in the atmosphere, is advanced by people who call themselves scientists.
Well, actually it’s not a small increase in CO2. It’s up more than 40% from its pre-industrial norm. It’s rising by another 7 percentage points a decade. If current rates of consuming fossil fuels remain constant, CO2 will have doubled from its pre-industrial norm by the end of the century. So the burden of proof is on those who say such a trend is entirely safe. Paulg23 falls a long way short of meeting that burden. I don’t think he even understands how the heat balance process works. When greenhouse gases accumulate, and infrared radiation into space is cut back in some wavelengths, then the amount escaping into space in the more transparent part of the infrared spectrum has to go up in order to restore heat balance. For the amount escaping in the rest of the spectrum to rise, the Earth has to get warmer. The denser the filtering in those parts of the spectrum subject to greenhouse gases, the more intense the infrared energy has to become in the rest of the spectrum. Heat balance is restored when the Earth gets hotter. If you don’t think this is a real law of physics, then you’re not in a position to explain why Venus is hotter than Mercury even though it’s roughly twice as far away from the sun.
Steve there are twp reasons the APGWCC — harp on CO2:
1) from the technical modeling perspective — it never condenses or freezes although it can dissolve in liquid water
2) from a policy perspective — if you make the egregious leap that all CO2 come from human activity you can try to regulate it — try regulating water vapor
What’s at stake is the cumulative increase in atmospheric CO2 and its effect on the average temperature of the planet, first, and second, the climate consequences of the temperature increase. The UN has been gathering data on CO2 emissions from human activity for some time. The broad finding is pretty clear. We humans generate about 35 billion tonnes of CO2 every year, mostly from the consumption of fossil fuels. Of that, about half ends up as a permanent addition to atmospheric CO2. By weight, total atmospheric CO2 is about 3100 billion tonnes just now. On an annual basis humans add 16 or 17 billion tonnes.
Why does this matter? Because the baseline CO2 total was roughly 2,175 billion tonnes before the Industrial Revolution got going. The scientists who pull ice cores out of Greenland and Antarctica have by now done around 30 cores and I haven’t heard any static suggesting that there are significant deviations among the cores in what they say about total CO2 some hundreds or thousands of years back.
What’s in dispute, therefore, is the wisdom of the extra CO2 humans have already added from fossil fuel consumption, more than 825 billion tonnes, and the 500 or 1000 or 1500 billion tonnes that we’re capable of adding in the future if we continue to imagine that burning fossil fuels is a relatively risk-free activity.
I doubt that anyone who’s paying attention makes the mistake you warn me against. So let’s talk about the real issue: Why does extra CO2 matter? Because it affects the temperature at which the Earth achieves heat balance, a stable average temperature over time. The Earth cools itself by radiating infrared energy into space across a broad spectrum of wavelengths. Cooler parts of the Earth radiate IR at low frequencies and long wavelengths. Warmer parts radiate IR at higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths. What counts is the total energy that escapes. Is it equal to the total solar energy the Earth receives every day? When it’s equal, then the Earth’s average temperature remains stable. Heat balance is achieved.
But if the total IR that escapes into space shrinks just a skosh, heat balance is disturbed. The Earth retains just a bit more heat than it had before. The extra heat warms the Earth, and a warmer Earth generates more IR than it used to. In the non-filtered parts of the IR spectrum, more IR escapes into space than before, and once the Earth is warm enough, heat balance is restored precisely because the Earth has gotten warmer. The warming process is essential to the restoration of heat balance.
There’s an important added factor. As the Earth warms, the water vapor content of the air rises. And that amplifies the IR filtering effect that was triggered initially by rising CO2. Even greater warming is therefore necessary, so that heat balance can be restored.
Heat balance dynamics arise from the laws of physics at work. We humans poke at those laws of physics by adding new CO2 to the atmosphere. Our cumulative impact so far is roughly 43% above the pre-industrial norm, and at present rates of consuming fossil fuels, the atmosphere’s cumulative CO2 total is rising by about seven percentage points a decade.
The real question, then, is whether humanity will give the Earth a rest by stopping its consumption of fossil fuels in the next 30 to 40 years, or whether we’ll insist on pushing the CO2 levels to as high a level as we can before we stop, perhaps 100 years from now.
I have yet to see anyone from the skeptics’ camp make a physics-based case that refutes the heat balance process we’re tampering with. It’s a hard hill to climb. Venus is twice as far from the sun as Mercury, yet its surface is much hotter. Why? The heat balance impact of having an atmosphere filled with greenhouse gases. Heat balance dynamics are real, and the more intense the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the higher the Earth’s temperature has to be in order for equilibrium to be restored.
There is one final risk issue that I would ask you to consider. The Earth’s average temperature is likely to climb at a relatively steady rate over time. But what about climate? Climate is a different kind of variable. Small shifts in temperature can generate significant shifts in climate behavior. The risks we face in a future of unlimited fossil fuel consumption are not just temperature risks; we face climate behavior risks that could be considerably more intense than temperature risks.
So, how many people do you want to die to prevent this “theoretical” (lack of) warming you so greatly fear?
Let us apply the precautionary principle first.
1. What if your fears are wrong? What is the real harm YOU are requiring to the world’s people over the next 85 years by preventing an beneficial CO2 release?
What is the actual probability of temperatures in 2100 being lower than today’s global average?
What is the probability of temperatures rising by 1 degree by 2100? There’s zero harm, only benefits!
What is the probability of temperatures rising by 2 degrees by 2100? There’s zero harm, only benefits!
What is the probability of temperatures rising by 3 degrees by 2100? There’s zero harm, only benefits!
What is the probability of temperatures rising by 4 degrees by 2100? There’s a small chance of small harm to a few, but many benefits to billions more.
2. How many climate ” scientists” can you buy for 1.3 trillion in taxes for Big Government and 30 trillion in annual carbon trading schemes for Big Finance? If $25,000.00 ten years ago contaminates a think tank’s results for 25 years, what does 92 billion dollars in three years contaminate?
There’s plenty of observational evidence from Greenland and West Antarctica about their melt rates. My church in Annapolis sits at 29 feet above sea level. Once those ice sheets are mostly melted – yes it might take 300 years – my church will be destroyed. Apparently you view its destruction as a benefit.
Yes it may take 300 years or 3,000, or maybe never. But lets not quibble about specifics.
Destruction is a benefit or why else would have God created death as part of the cycle of life and death. In this world everything has a beginning and everything has an end, including people, species, cities, empires, governments, saints, and I imagine even churches. Your casting moral aspersion on people who are not as fanatically devoted as you to global warming is pathetic.
At any rate you might consider that in 300 years there is a lot of things that may destroy your church, including Gods will, but rest assured global warming is the least likely.
” You can put pure carbon dioxide in a vessel, illuminate it with a bright hot lamp…”
Illuminating carbon dioxide with a hot lamp? Really? It is heat traveling across the vacuum of space illuminating our atmosphere of pure CO2 causing the green house effect? This is purposeful ignorance, I don’t think Bill is that stupid, so why would the “science” guy do it? I guess politics pays well.
I was wondering about the ethics and motivation of Bill Nye the science guy but after this intensely stupid video and his weaselly anti-science explanation, I no longer trust him as a source of anything having to do with science.
In all of the back and forth between each entrenched side, I have never seen the true believers of warming/climate change due to man present a scientific, repeatable test to support their case. Predictive models are not data and they fail time after time. Picking the one that comes close this year and another next year is not a repeatable test.
It seems to me that the climate is changing as it has always done since long before man set foot on the earth. It isn’t caused by man. It can’t be stopped be stopped by man.
Yes, that is simplistic, but is it wrong?
This from a high school graduate.