Response to Watt’s Up
| 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.
If your claim is that the wrong set of equipment was used, then that is fair enough. Could you recommend an equipment shopping list where those who want to replicate the warming effect might do it. Surely if a major production cannot do it properly, then you will never convince those who deny that CO2 has any significant impact.
Thank, Bill. Can you point us to some links of your experiment details. It looks like from the pictures above that you did a TV show with an experiment. Is that available online?
Thanks,
Hi Bill and thanks for the info. Agree with above comments, we need a shopping list and directions to replicate.
Thanks again!
Dear Science Guy,
So let’s sum it up: You say :
1. I, The Science Guy, knowingly participated in the faking of a science experiment for Al Gore’s Climate Project. which was shown to the world over the internet. I did a voice over for for an experiment that was not actually taking place, which did not achieve the results it claimed, and which I did not actually observe with my own eyes, yet I spoke as if it were actually taking place. .
2. Anthony Watts is absolutely correct, the experiment did not and would not have ‘worked’ — and for ‘worked’ we mean shown what I, The Science Guy, said it showed — because the equipment and set-up were not correct. Mr. Watts did not have the wrong equipment and set-up, Al Gore and his Climate Project people did. It is the Climate Project people that performed the faked experiment — it didn’t actually work for them either, of course, they just pretended that it did.
3. Anthony Watts is correct — the fact that the experiment was faked and didn’t work doesn’t mean that CO2 in the atmnosphere doesn’t cause warming — Mr. Watts readily and freely admits that it does, and, in fact, has never ever said or believed that it doesn’t.
4. I, the Science Guy, could perform a similar experiment with proper equipment and could have shown that a CO2-enhanced atmosphere does absorb more heat than ‘normal’ air. Despite knowing that the Climate Project’s experiement would fail, due to wrong equipment and set up, I did the voice over anyway.
We are now waiting for an apology to all the kids who count on you, The Science Guy, to be a real scientist and always strictly follow the Scientific Method and never ever lie or fake results.
Bill,
Prove it with a real, repeatable science experiment. Publish the results and how you did the experiment. Either that or change your moniker. It’s not real science if you can’t prove to me, that I can repeat the experiment.
A better, more convincing demonstration would be to take the original demo setup that Bill Nye used, and use regular atmospheric air mixture in each. Then, inject CO2 into just one of the cylindrical chambers, and observe the temperatures in both. The process of injecting CO2 into atmospheric air and monitoring the static temperature of that mass of gases would be more realistic than just monitoring temperatures of two different masses of gases. Just my opinion here Monsieur Science Guy. Please post a YouTube video of this suggested test rig setup and show time histories of the temperatures in both cylinders.
Renewably,
solarman350
The demonstration was deliberately faked. How does that, or your spiteful swipe at Anthony Watts, tally with your version of what happened.
It is very very sad to see how low supposed science has sunk.
Propaganda and faked experiments to try and convince the public who more and more recognize just what a crock they are being served.
Come on Science Guy – Try and live up to your name and act in an honest and honorable way.
I used to avidly watch Mr. Wizard on TV as a kid. I eventually went into the sciences in college.
If he was faking his experiments, I never knew about it. I’m glad for that.
Bill, I was struck by your final sentence “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.” What is the optimum temperature for our planet? If you truly believe that AGW/ACC is taking place, and we must “Do Something!” then please tell me “What temperature should the earth be at?”
What is the ideal temperature for Life on Earth? Are we today at that optimum, or should the earth be cooler, or even warmer, than today? Should the temperature be what it was in 1970, when we were at the end of a 30 year mini-cooling period? Or should the Earth’s temperature be what it was in the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl years? How about 1900, before automobiles and burning of fossil fuels became commonplace? Or 1800, before the majority of Industrial Revolution took place? Or 1500, during the Little Ice Age? Or 1000 A.D.? Some other era?
So, it was all fake, and therefore we should listen to the results because they show what is happening to the world? Idiocy. This experiment would be bogus even if it was done properly. Unless you have one jar with the same makeup of air in our atmosphere and another exactly the same, but without CO2 as baseline, then it is a crock. Not to mention there needs to be wind, different temperatures at different points in the jar (lower atmosphere upper atmosphere). You sir are a fraud, yet even now you show no remorse at your fraudulent bahaviour, you just try to justify it. Shame on you.
Ah, Bill, we hardly knew ye!
Mr. Nye has posted how the expreiment was performed above.I Believe that at this point there is no arguing that light can warm co2. Bill has at no point tried to claim that he is recreating the earths atmosphere. He is simply stating that as co2 levels rise in the atmosphere there will continue to be a Temperature increase. Lets all just focus on what we will be able to learn for the discoveries in the artic ranges to tell us about historical climate changes.
That said bill. Avoid politics they are a death trap.
[...] Nye was annoyed enough to respond, if you can call this a response. It seems rather science-free compared to what I offered. [...]
Bill Nye says, “Real atmospheric models are astonishingly complex.”
An important and accurate statement.
It would be even more truthful to say the “Real atmosphere is astonishingly more complex than our most astonishingly complex models”
Given your admission of this truth, why do you choose to scare and mislead kids with bogus overly simplistic experiments that claim the science about man-made CO2 causing global warming is all settled?
Why not be a bit more liberal with the truth? Why not admit that despite research and silly experiments, we still have absolutely NO IDEA what influence man-made CO2 plays on global temperatures? Why not include the caveat that for all we know man-made CO2 may be negligible compared to other natural factors?
Please stop scaring children unnecessarily.
Bill Nye says, \"Real atmospheric models are astonishingly complex.\"
An important and accurate statement.
It would be even more truthful to say the \"Real atmosphere is astonishingly more complex than our most astonishingly complex models\"
Given your admission of this truth, why do you choose to scare and mislead kids with bogus overly simplistic experiments that claim the science about man-made CO2 causing global warming is all settled?
Why not be a bit more liberal with the truth? Why not admit that despite research and silly experiments, we still have absolutely NO IDEA what influence man-made CO2 plays on global temperatures? Why not include the caveat that for all we know man-made CO2 may be negligible compared to other natural factors?
Please stop scaring children unnecessarily.
[...] Nye was annoyed enough to respond, if you can call this a response. It seems rather science-free compared to what I offered. [...]
Heating CO2 in a closed container shows that CO2 has a lower specific heat than air. It has no connection to the greenhouse effect which as a real scientists you should have known.
Water on the other hand, which is responsible for regulating our planets temperature shows the opposite effect. A container of moist air warms slower than a container of dry air, yet H2O is the dominant greenhouse gas on the planet.
We know that water is warming the earth through the greenhouse effect. Why then does water vapor in a sealed container act opposite to CO2? Could it be that water in a sealed container takes longer to warm because water actually holds in the heat, while CO2 does the opposite?
“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.”
So I should be worried about something that is never going to happen in the real world – a few degrees from 100% CO2 ??
And how does CO2 cause warmer air temperatures if the majority of the atmosphere, being almost transparent to infrared, isn’t heated ?
Are you implying the majority of the atmosphere is actually stone cold whilst less than 2% – water vapour and CO2 provide all the warmth ?
Isn’t it more realistic that the atmosphere warms through contact with the surface and the warmed air rises and convects away from the surface ?
And talking physics – evaporating water absorbs thousands of times the energy required to heat CO2 by a degree – it has always seemed unscientific that a trace gas with a low specific heat capacity is considered to be driving a substance which undergoes phase changes at ambient temperatures found on earth requiring much larger energy inputs and releases than CO2 – and the specific heat of water is some 4 times that of CO2 AND the mass of the oceans is some hundreds of times that of the atmosphere AND the partial pressure of water vapour is some 60 times that of CO2.
The analogy I see is an ant carrying an elephant around.
Bill,
I love your work but your use of the word “denier” to describe Mr. Watts was unfortunate.
Mr. Watts may have given you too much blame for Gore’s flawed experiment, and this may have stung, but your response fit a counter-productive stereotype.
The rhetoric on both sides of the climate change debate is off-putting, but your side has been worse. I suspect that using terms like “denier” is a key reason you are losing in the court of public opinion. Mr. Watts doesn’t deny anything. He’s a skeptic, or possibly even a cynic. Calling him a denier is, at best, a distraction from the science.
This has consequences. Climate scientists have done a breathtakingly bad job of convincing the public that climate change is an impending crisis. The result is that nothing is being done to deal with the threat.
You can’t win a scientific debate by name calling. In fact, it seems to be a pretty good way to lose.
Bill,
I was disappointed that you knowingly associated with a false experiment, with manufactured results, and held it up as good science for the younger generation.
I was appalled when after being challenged, you laughed it off, spread blame, denigrated your accuser, and claimed that the end justified the means. That was not science. You are not a science teacher when you behave this way.
Please remember that honesty and integrity really do matter, as does the scientific method and be more careful and thoughtful in the future.