The Number’s Up for WUWT and Professor Robert Brown
I don’t follow Anthony Watts or “Watts Up With That”, and so, I didn’t see this post from WUWT that was posted back in the summer: ‘Friday Funny – reflections on the greenhouse effect,’ (July 19, 2013):
Let’s quote Mr. Watts:
“After the essays in May on mirrors and light bulbs, I’ve been regularly poked and prodded via email for not wanting to engage “the slayers” anymore, or to do that “third experiment” I mentioned in May. I long ago concluded by my experiences afterwards with “the slayers” that it is a waste of time and effort to try to explain anything to them. Curt Wilson, who did the second experiment and was planning to do the third, has come to the same conclusion, as have many others.”
In regards to the “essays on mirrors and light bulbs”, we demonstrated with Mr. Watts own work that he and Curt Wilson weren’t aware of high-school level math and physics, and that their experiments directly demonstrated that there was no greenhouse effect. See Slaying Watts with Watts and Closing with Watts. Also see Slayers “Putting Up” not “Shutting Up” for what started it all and how Mr. Watts et al. walked right into their own debunk of the greenhouse effect. By the way, I wonder what that “third experiment” was anyway – they were either too embarrassed to continue at their own scientific incompetence, or the experiment didn’t do what they wanted it to, and buried it.
Watts:
“WUWT regular, Duke physicist Dr. Robert G. Brown has been trying to talk some sense into them over at Principia Scientific.”
Let us deal with this “Dr.” Robert G. Brown for a moment. First of all, this supposed physicist doesn’t understand the basic equations for heat flow, as seen here The Difference between Math and Physics and Greenhouse Fraud 20: Physics disproves the GHE; Steel Greenhouses; & General Electric Lightbulbs. Those posts come directly from attempting to educate this supposed physicist that cold doesn’t heat hot…seriously this fellow has a difficult time with the concept that cold doesn’t heat hot, and he claims to be a physicist. Just wait to see what comes next.
To add to the character and competency self-defamation of this supposed physicist, scanning a few comments down into the WUWT article linked above, we see this quote from Robert Brown:
“It takes around 100,000 years for a photon produced in the Sun’s core to get to the surface and escape. Now that’s a greenhouse effect!”
The time it takes for “a photon” to get from the core of the sun to the surface of the sun is a function of the mean-free-path a theoretical photon would have to go through to travel that direct distance, given the number of times scattering/absorption/reemission etc. it would have to go through because the density of the solar gas is so thick. This has nothing at all to do with the greenhouse effect. Seriously, Robert Brown’s example intersects the supposed mechanics of the greenhouse effect nowhere. What is Robert Brown trying to say, that there’s a greenhouse effect in the solar atmosphere which creates the high temperature and nuclear fusion at the core?
There is no stellar physics textbook on the planet that talks about or models the greenhouse effect being in stellar (star) atmospheres. The funny thing is, is that it should be, given Robert Brown’s perspective and the general mechanics of the greenhouse effect…but it isn’t. Someone could start up a whole new field of research and get funded for life by proposing research into the greenhouse effect in stellar atmospheres. No one has, and the concept doesn’t exist. (And to be sure, for those who know, line-blanketing is not the greenhouse effect either! Line-blanketing does not increase the temperature of the core, of the fusion reactions in the core – it only slightly modulates [a few percent] the photospheric temperature profile.)
So Robert Brown is either a liar, or he made a very stupid mistake in his claim, and I will take either claim to court if he wants to make a point of my public accusation of him. This is just yet another example of “greenhouse effect by analogy” that the whole concept exists by. There is no direct physics or experiments that actually demonstrate a greenhouse effect – all that exists are analogies, that are actually never physically meaningful, instead of the real thing.
The funny thing is, is that we’ve had the other side ADMIT that their diagrams and analogies are only just that, and that they’re “just used for teaching the concept”. (lol oh really??) Joel Shore has admitted this, Robert Brown has admitted this, Tim Folkerts has admitted this, Roy Spencer has admitted this, and Judith Curry, Jo Nova, Chris Colose, etc etc. When asked for the real thing, it can’t be produced. The Slayers have been looking long and hard for the real thing, for the real physics and math of the GHE instead of just the analogies and simple diagrams, and we’ve even looked in the GCM code the IPCC uses for its predictions…and it just can’t be found. The greenhouse effect only exists in analogies which presuppose their own legitimacy, and otherwise it has no physics or math that actually describes itself proper.
Now that Robert Brown is finished, let’s look at how Anthony Watts continues to put his foot in his mouth and expose himself as a total and complete scientific incompetent and probably even an outright fraud (as he’s done previously); Watts:
“For those that might care, keeping the filament of a lightbulb within its optimum temperature range increases its life, by limiting hotspots and thus tungsten evaporation.”
How does this relate to the greenhouse effect? Hot-spots are caused by “small variations in resistivity along the filament”, as per Watt’s own link reference. This has nothing to do with backradiation or a greenhouse effect, but Watts tried to make it appear that it did.
Watts:
“Putting an incandescent bulb into a reflector housing not designed for it will in fact increase the filament temperature, increasing tungsten evaporation and deposition on the inside bulb glass surface.
Does this statement and reference support the greenhouse effect or backradiation? First, the cited source doesn’t address backradiation anywhere. Second, the reference is about T5-HO lamp behaviour…T5-HO lamps are fluorescents! They don’t have filaments and they don’t suffer from tungsten evaporation. And finally, the overheating in these T5-HO fluorescent lamp designs as discussed in the reference link is caused not by backradiation, but from having other lamps nearby; these are independent sources of energy, and so the heating issue discussed in the reference has nothing to do with backradiation heating in the first place.
Anthony Watts cited a source on fluorescent lamp housing design and pretended that it was supporting his claims on incandescent filaments and had something to do with tungsten evaporation, and that this supported backradiation heating and the greenhouse effect: All of this was a pure deception, and if it wasn’t that, then it was extremely stupid. It was like someone linking to the Wiki on horses to prove that unicorns exist, and hoping no one would catch you. It’s just pure sophistry. None of Watts’ followers even bothered to check the references…they just believed!
Watts:
“Tungsten evaporation from hotspots is why standard incandescent bulbs eventually fail.”
Again, what do hotspots and tungsten evaporation have to do with the greenhouse effect or backradiation? None of the links support the implication. And the final link here is titled at the actual website, “Why does surface of the incandescent light bulbs become grey over time?”, which is about tungsten deposition on the interior of the bulb. This has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, yet again. There’s no connection. Watts is just inserting random links and making unrelated statements to make it appear that his beliefs are justified…and this, after his own experiment proved the opposite of what he tried to find. So he’s just obfuscating to try to cover it all up, and move on.
I wonder if Anthony Watts’ and Robert Brown’s lies (or stupidity) here could be brought to court somehow for making fraudulent claims? If we could sue them for making false claims, we could win this case in a minute and make lots of money, and also shut these freaks down, and finally get public traction on destroying the GHE which would happen with the fall of these guys, because it would be so public for the blogosphere of followers. At the very least they would have to retract all of what they said above.
Read more by Astrophysicist Joe Postma at climateofsophistry.com
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