Greenhouse effect (in a bottle) explained

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is frequently in the news because its production from burning fossil fuels causes increased levels of the gas in the Earth's atmosphere.

CO2, along with a range of other greenhouse gases, is often implicated in global warming. But what is its role in the greenhouse effect?

Scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock from EADS Astrium visits the Royal Institution's new Young Scientist Centre to carry out a simple experiment that shows how CO2 traps heat.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• green
• carbon dioxide
• experiment
• test
• prove
• proof
• science

[barryschwarz]

This is a simple experiment. Others much like it are run in uni and high school classes, done thousands of times the world over. I'll be saving this vid to show the troglodyte and pseudo-scientific deniers who ask for empirical evidence that increasing CO2 in a volume of atmosphere can cause warming.

[barryschwarz]

I'd suggest that doubters posting here look up 'CO2 experiment' on you tube, which runs the experiment in a different way - i.e., one source of heat and one volume of atmos - but no doubt they'd make up more pretty stories to convince themselves that it's all fake.

The resistance to even simple facts about AGW is astounding. Just goes to show how ideology can kill reasonable skepticism and basic curiosity.

[protonsforbreakfast]

I don’t know what the effect observed is due to but this does not show the effect of carbon dioxide similar to the Earth's greenhouse effect.

Think about it.

1.What the experiment appears to show is that CO2 absorbs visible light – which it does not.

2. One container has more CO2 >and< more water vapour – a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2

3. CO2 does not absorb much energy in the wavelength ranges emitted by a domestic light bulb whereas water vapour absorbs strongly.

[RasPesher]

@zxcv Cont...

This does not mean that the intensity of radiation from the Sun is necessarily less than the Earth's (black body) radiation. The Earth emits its radiation over the entire surface area of the globe (an area of 4 Pi r²) whereas the light from the sun is spread over a disc the cross sectional area of the earth (an area of Pi r²); which is ¼ of the area.

[RasPesher]

@zxcv73 The total of the Sun's energy that penetrates through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the surface of the Earth is ACTUALLY LESS THAN the total (black body) radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth. That is because part of the energy emitted by the Earth is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and re-emitted back to the Earth making the Earth hotter than it otherwise would (ie from the effect of the Sun alone).

[zxcv73]

@RasPesher So we are now worried about the Earths warmth emission? I'm pretty sure that the sun does most of the work.

[RasPesher]

@DontBendOverForAllah "So global cooling is the new warming"

What I said was that you can have an increase in energy in the climate system and still get cooler temperature readings. Basically what your saying is that you don't recognise the melting of the Arctic ice cap and Greenland as part of what we refer to as "Global warming". So when you hear on the weather report that we had another year of RECORD ICE MELT you think to yourself, "that's evidence of Global Cooling"!

[RasPesher]

@DontBendOverForAllah This should not come as a surprise. Whilst the trend over the last decade was a 0.15 deg C rise in temp the increase does not hold up from year to year. In the following years the temperature fell 1996 1999 2004 2006 2008. However this does NOT MEAN that the Earth lost energy in those years because it didn't. The energy has simply moved away from being measureable within the global temperature dataset.

[DontBendOverForAllah]

@RasPesher So global cooling is the new warming? - Priceless!!!

[RasPesher]

@buddcinder "Her experiment shows only that one bulb may be closer than the other"

The mythbusters do a similar experiment to this but in their experiment they use a light meter to check that the light intensity is the same going to each greenhouse.