Why Tyndall's experiment does not prove the greenhouse effect

Jump to: The experiment to prove the greenhouse effect

The number one experiment quoted as proof of the greenhouse effect is Tyndall's experiment.  Specifically the absorption experiment described in his 1861 Bakerian lecture to the British Royal Society.^[1]

In Tyndall's experiment various gases are introduced into the gas observation chamber and it is noted that some gases ("greenhouse gases") absorb more "calorific rays" (infrared) than others. This absorption is referred to as "proof of a greenhouse effect".

It was the result of several months work on his part. But in fact Tyndall's experiment shows nothing more than that EMR from a warmer object is absorbed by a colder one. Such absorption is not proof of a greenhouse effect.

In order for Tyndall's experiment to prove the greenhouse effect it would have been necessary to measure a gain in overall heat in the objects of the experiment, particularly in the emitting and absorbing objects.  But this did not happen in the experiment, could not have happened, and was not even attempted to be measured.

 

Tyndall's experiment

All my comments removed from Guardian article without trace

Update 2

Well this is a new one. I've had my comments removed from the Guardian plenty of times before, but you can still see the stub. Here's an example:

More NOAA trickery in US Feb 2014 temps?

Following my post from a few weeks ago about January temperature anomalies, Harold Ambler notices a similar strange thing on his website: http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com, about February 2014 temperatures in the United States. He states:

 

"As the map above shows, NOAA seems to have struggled in creating a temperature map that accurately conveys what New Englanders recently experienced"

 

See more here:

 

Another trick from the hockey stick team

Well this is a new one...for me anyway.  A graph that uses a tricky quasi-log scale on the X-axis to minimise 1000's of years of warmer Holocene temperatures, to make today's temperature seem scary and warm:

 

 The poster of this graph on Twitter says it's a "usual graph":

 

Arctic "death spiral" melts away when put in perspective

The AGW team uses September Arctic sea ice extent (the lowest point in the annual cycle) to show how the Arctic sea ice is disappearing as a result of dangerous, "scary-scary" global warming. They even omit the 50% recovery of 2013 to promote the notion of calamity:

 

The propagandists of "climate science" prefer to omit the inconvenient 2013 Arctic sea ice recovery.

Blocked on Independent Aus after one comment

I made one comment on the Independent Australia and was banned on this thread by DeSmog Blog:

http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/roy-spencer-calls-people-who-accept-climate-science-nazis,6219

I thought twice about commenting here because the level of the discourse was so low. I thought: these people are too stupid even to talk to. But I was angry enough at this guy's comment to do so:

Blatant deception in NOAA percentiles graph

If you go to this NCDC NOAA page there are a couple of graphs on it:

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/1

 

One has actual numbers for temperatures on it:

 

 

 

The other uses undefined percentile bins:

Why backradiation has no warming effect

We are told by greenhouse theorists that backradiation from the sky warms the ground -- 33C warmer than it would otherwise be without the greenhouse effect. In greenhouse theory, backradiation from the sky is recycled and counted again. For example:

 

NASA "radiation budget", or as I call it: "how to count energy twice"

 

Some insist that it's not the backradiation that does the warming, it's that light (EMR) is "slowed down" or "trapped" by the greenhouse layer. But even if EMR is trapped optically by the greenhouse gas layer it continues on its merry way in an energy sense.

Even if EMR is trapped by absorption, every photon that is absorbed by the greenhouse gas layer is matched by one that is emitted. This must be so per Kirchhoff's Law, unless the gas layer is changing in temperature. It will change in temperature from time to time, but not overall, not in a way that energy can be gained.

Only one 20 yr period of warming correlation to CO2 output

@350SantaBarbara @tan123 @billmckibben @JeffreyGoldberg Only one 20yr warming period '78-'98 matches human CO2 output pic.twitter.com/DEPaEvuQWp
— Paul Clark (@CarbonFooledYa) January 16, 2014

Not much correlation between Arctic temp and sea ice loss

We are told that runaway global warming is causing the sea ice loss at the North Pole. Although, like the rest of the world, Arctic warming stopped in 1998, the point in time when Arctic sea ice loss really took off. And such warming is pretty small anyway.

If you take the data from UAH and RSS for 60 degrees north to 82.5 degrees north and put it next to the sea ice loss, there's not much (inverse or reverse) correlation:

Quick critique of comments from Age article

Here's a quick critique of a few comments from The Age article:

 

Lack of accountability clouding the climate change debate

 

 

The Age is a heavily warmist Fairfax paper, with a following among the trendy latte sipping libaratchicks of inner city Melbourne.  The vast majority of comments, maybe 90%+ are warmist.

The article is by John Mclean and is critical of the IPCC.

Denier land: Climate justice for all

My next SkS inspired video parody of AGW. This was out in time for Australia Christmas eve; this post still in time for North America Christmas eve. Please enjoy your Christmas eve entertainment:

 

 

So far I have 27 views on it.  Not long before it reaches the 17,000 views of my first video...

 

It's also interesting to note that until recently my comments were automatically approved on WUWT, now they're back to pre-moderation only. (Perhaps it's the thread. Moderated only on "Tips and Tricks"?)

(Update 15 Feb 2014. No, my WUWT comments are still auto-approved. Seems you need approval always for comments on the static pages, such as "Tips and Tricks")

More fun with bizarre warmist rant

Is it a product of education? I'm 39 years old and I'm guessing almost every warmist is younger than me...sounds like it anyway. I voted Green when I was young too.

 

I guess today's generation had the hyper-left wing indoctrination in school, particularly about climate change.
 

I imagine these comments are copyright NBC, but by linking to the article it should get me out of trouble. Here's the article:

 

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/16/21911592-climate-change-experts-fraud-was-crime-of-massive-proportion-say-feds?threadId=3893793&commentId=81053462#c81053462

 

Here's the comment from StrengthInNumbers (a suitably Hitler Youth style of name); I couldn't think of a comment that was more wrong, and out of touch with reality. (Click image to enlarge and scroll through images.)

Wishful thinking distorts trendline on Greg Laden article?

 

Update: see below.

Update 2: Damn, Tamino critiques my post and wins, forces humiliating retraction from me (you can clearly see I've put a question mark at the end of the title now).  I now admit I don't know if the trendline by "ThingsBreak" was a case of wishful thinking or not. I suspected it was, but after reading Tamino's post I'm not so sure.  More below.

Update 3: Turns out this Tamino guy has authored a book on statistics. He proved I was out of my depth on the trendline issue, and suitably damaged my claim of a bogus one. Well done Tamino.

I tried to make an honest recontruction of that trend line; unfortunatley my only tool was Excel 2007 and the functions in it are limited.

I've read several of Tamino's posts over the years and been generally disappointed with them; also had my comments not approved by moderation. This particular post was quite good, though, and educational for me.

==========

This is curious. A new Greg Laden article on ScienceBlogs.com:

 

How to not look like an idiot

 

..where Laden argues cold doesn't mean lack of global warming, has an odd graph in it.  Look at the red trendline: