Are these words of wisdom? Or are they words of folly which we can ignore? I bemoan the fact that as a young scientist I did not read the classical books of Galileo and Newton whom are said to have founded what we now call physical science. In their days, it was called natural philosophy as they studied the natural world in which they lived. I taught chemistry for more than two decades, yet I never suggested to my students that they should read these classic science books. Why? It had never been suggested that I should. I was too immature to understand that I should.
For a while, after retiring as an instructor of chemistry, I drove a school bus. We had a short course on driving safely. Its theme was there was no such a thing as an accident. That an accident was always something that could have been avoided if one had taken proper precautions.
There has been an accident and I consider there are likely to be more if we continue to ignore the wisdom of Galileo and Newton and therefore cannot take the precautions to avoid the mistakes about which they might warn us if we have no idea of all that was written in their classics because we no longer read them.
These words are just part of a personal conversation and not an argument. I write them purely because I am interested in what a reader’s response might be.
I have read Nahle’s entire report of the experiment. The stated purpose of the experiment was to support Professor R. W. Wood‘s 1909 experiment which it seems was challenged by an experiment by Professor Pratt. I had never heard (read) that Wood’s experimental results had been questioned. But it was obvious that it had been ignored just as the data of the SURFRAD and SCAN projects has apparently been ignored by nearly everyone interested in refuting the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) of ‘greenhouse gases’ who omit to address the data of these projects begun before 2000.
The data of the SURFRAD project can easily prove that reason of the higher temperatures observed in Wood’s and the Nahle’s experiment is not because of the lack of free convection. For if the UWIR measured there, when converted to a minimum surface temperature using the S-B radiation law and an assumed emmistivity of 1, produce a surface temperature comparable to the maximum temperatures (in his boxes) observed by Professor Nahle. These calculated extreme surface temperatures, which are 20C greater than the measured air temperatures at the same time, are observed when average winds during the afternoon can average 20mph with even greater gusts.
Of course, the fact these extreme surface temperatures can be observed to occur day after day after cooling to much lower temperature by sunrise the next morning is proof of a localized radiation balance day after day which is not being significantly inhibited by the presence of GHGs. While some might naively argue that there is not much water vapor involved because this atmosphere’s relative humidity is low. However, because of the atmosphere’s high temperatures the atmosphere’s dewpoint temperature is greater than during the winter there when there are also significant range of diurnal temperature’s oscillations being observed. And please do not make any comment about the value of emissivity used because another ‘Slayer’ researcher, Carl Brehmer, knows that an emissivity less than 1 produces a greater calculated temperature from the measured UWIR.
And when I claim to maybe know more about this topic, it is because I did not begin to study the GHE in 2010 or so. I have read much that has been written about it for the past 40+ years. And as Einstein stated: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” And, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” And I do have several years of experience as an experimental physical scientist whose results I claim can be reproduced by anyone who does the careful experiments required to produce the quality of data that I produced.
That is why I point to the data which has been basically ignored by the government projects whose results I consider, based upon my experience, to be quality, reproducible, data. Because it can be observed to, on certain occasions, to be reproduced day after day.
Professor Nahle did not have to conduct the same observation day after day to convince me that his results were generally reproducible. But he did not make any special note that a 5cm x 5cm hole cut in the acrylic plate Plaskolite®-Duraplex® had no influence upon the result compared with the box covered with a complete sheet of acrylic plate Plaskolite®-Duraplex® (image below)
The later obviously did trap the atmosphere and longwave infrared radiation (IR) just as the glass did. This was the result which best refuted the idea that radiation was being ‘trapped’ inside the box and thereby producing the extreme temperature. In fact this hole allowed a significant portion of the solar radiation directly into the box without having to pass through anything which might absorb or reflect any solar from entering the box.
Hence, I consider he did not see what I just described. Which is a common problem of any scientist. To see what is most obvious. Please, do consider what Galileo wrote more than 300 years ago.
I must set the record straight. The title and the introduction to, but not including, Galileo and the Greenhouse Gas Theory, are my words. I have read Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, from cover to cover and I cannot imagine anything that Galileo wrote has a relationship to the Greenhouse Gas Theory. The words ‘Galileo and The Greenhouse Gas Theory’ are the words of John O’Sullivan, the editor. Who added “Nahle then performed an experiment to debunk the greenhouse gas theory during May 2011.” I do not consider an artificial laboratory experimental can explain how the earth’s natural energy balance system works, or does not work, any more than computer modeling experiments can. But I do consider that direct observations (measurements of temperatures and radiations) of the earth’s energy balance system can.
John’s link (performed an experiment) leads to a summary of Professor Nasif Nable’s experiments. But when one goes there one immediately finds another link: “PLEASE READ THE PDF OF A WHOLE DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT.” Which is to what I referred when I wrote: “I have read Nahle’s entire report of the experiment.” The figure is from Nahle’s entire report but the image which John has also included is not. Nahle never described what the Control Box was. So I have to assume that John’s picture is of the apparatus used to conduct the experiment whose result is that of the figure.
I try not to be judgmental about another’s efforts to actually do experiments. But I must say I cannot image what the purpose of the right box of the image is. However, I assure you that there is much to be learned from the Professor’s experiments. Some of which I wrote to John and which constitutes most of the remainder of my essay. Except, the image has nothing to do with the ‘5cm x 5cm hole cut in the acrylic plate Plaskolite®-Duraplex®’. The rectangle in the center of each box is a piece of aluminum foil to shade the thermometer, seen in the ‘control box,’ from the direct solar radiation. I too, when I saw other images of the other boxes used in other experiments, was confused until I read the Professor’s clear explanation of them and their purpose. Except, in this image the black box is covered with the polyethylene film, as that of the ‘assumed’ control box is also. For there must be something supporting the aluminum foil.
As my habit, I checked out the links proposed by John and found nothing useful. So I Googled Wood’s greenhouse experiment and ended up at http://clim8.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/ where I read a quote by Professor Pratt. Which explains Professor’s Nahle’s cardboard boxes. “Wood specified his apparatus as follows.
“I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 °C., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.”
According to Wood this glass plate had a dramatic effect:
“There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 °C.”
The reason I have a habit of checking things out, is that I learn something which I likely would have never learned.
I urge the reader, who really wants to learn something, to go to this link and to Professor’s Nahle’s complete pdf already mentioned. And it maybe wouldn’t hurt to read my previous essays referred to by John at the end of this essay.
jerry krause
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Hi Readers,
I must set the record straight. The title and the introduction to, but not including, Galileo and the Greenhouse Gas Theory, are my words. I have read Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, from cover to cover and I cannot imagine anything that Galileo wrote has a relationship to the Greenhouse Gas Theory. The words ‘Galileo and The Greenhouse Gas Theory’ are the words of John O’Sullivan, the editor. Who added “Nahle then performed an experiment to debunk the greenhouse gas theory during May 2011.” I do not consider an artificial laboratory experimental can explain how the earth’s natural energy balance system works, or does not work, any more than computer modeling experiments can. But I do consider that direct observations (measurements of temperatures and radiations) of the earth’s energy balance system can.
John’s link (performed an experiment) leads to a summary of Professor Nasif Nable’s experiments. But when one goes there one immediately finds another link: “PLEASE READ THE PDF OF A WHOLE DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT.” Which is to what I referred when I wrote: “I have read Nahle’s entire report of the experiment.” The figure is from Nahle’s entire report but the image which John has also included is not. Nahle never described what the Control Box was. So I have to assume that John’s picture is of the apparatus used to conduct the experiment whose result is that of the figure.
I try not to be judgmental about another’s efforts to actually do experiments. But I must say I cannot image what the purpose of the right box of the image is. However, I assure you that there is much to be learned from the Professor’s experiments. Some of which I wrote to John and which constitutes most of the remainder of my essay. Except, the image has nothing to do with the ‘5cm x 5cm hole cut in the acrylic plate Plaskolite®-Duraplex®’. The rectangle in the center of each box is a piece of aluminum foil to shade the thermometer, seen in the ‘control box,’ from the direct solar radiation. I too, when I saw other images of the other boxes used in other experiments, was confused until I read the Professor’s clear explanation of them and their purpose. Except, in this image the black box is covered with the polyethylene film, as that of the ‘assumed’ control box is also. For there must be something supporting the aluminum foil.
As my habit, I checked out the links proposed by John and found nothing useful. So I Googled Wood’s greenhouse experiment and ended up at http://clim8.stanford.edu/WoodExpt/ where I read a quote by Professor Pratt. Which explains Professor’s Nahle’s cardboard boxes. “Wood specified his apparatus as follows.
“I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 °C., the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that it transmitted the longer waves from the sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.”
According to Wood this glass plate had a dramatic effect:
“There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 °C.”
The reason I have a habit of checking things out, is that I learn something which I likely would have never learned.
I urge the reader, who really wants to learn something, to go to this link and to Professor’s Nahle’s complete pdf already mentioned. And it maybe wouldn’t hurt to read my previous essays referred to by John at the end of this essay.
Have a good day, Jerry
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