There's a philosophical debate to be had over the meaning of the word scientist, or even the origins of the term, and indeed "what is science?". But that swiftly becomes tedious, so instead take the Viz test: Do your bitches turn tricks on the street or do they smoke cigarettes chained up in laboratory?
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Does this have to be so binary?
[Only if you're a computer scientist (arf arf!) -W]
Now you discover why Eli is a bunny.
[You want http://viz.co.uk/man-mouse/ :-) -W]
No scientist has ever 'shagged' Marilyn Monroe. Stephen Hawking's stated desire to do so does not count. Nor do his bets.
I say Joe DiMaggio was a scientist.
Joe may have played Steve Gould's straight guy , but he's just not in Yogi's league as a philospopher
Dear William,
I came across this post from 2000, which I think you put up on the internet, concerning the experiment of Robert W Wood.
I may post this on JoNova on a Weekend unthreaded.(hopefully the next one). Just giving you a heads up in case you would like to reply (when the time comes),
R. W. Wood: Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
The following text is from the Philosophical magazine (more properly the London, Edinborough and Dublin Philosophical Magazine ???check this more exactly???), 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL shelfmark p340.1.c.95, if you're interested.
I found this reference by reading "History of the greenhouse effect", M. D. H. Jones and A. Henderson-Sellers, Progress in physical geography, 14, 1 (1990), 1-18. This, in its turn, I found from Jan Schloerer's FAQ: Climate change: some basics.
I present the full text, although the second-to-last paragraph is (in my opinion) regrettable and wrong. See after the text for why I think its wrong.
XXIV. Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse
By Professor R. W. Wood (Communicated by the Author)
THERE appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, and exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.
I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold and windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinion that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the "open," the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents.
To test the matter 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 themometer 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 oC., 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.
There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 oC. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 o, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it, while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped.
Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.
I do not pretent to have gone very deeply into the matter, and publish this note merely to draw attention to the fact that trapped radiation appears to play but a very small part in the actual cases with which we are familiar.
Why is his second to last paragraph wrong?
Comments and correction to this section are welcome!
Firstly, note that unlike the experiments described earlier, this paragraph merely expresses his opinion.
Second, although the troposphere is subject to convection, the stratosphere is not.
Third, in contradiction to his assertion about "the very low radiating power of a gas", the troposphere is largely opaque to infra-red radiation, which is why convection is so important in moving heat up from the surface. Only in the higher (colder) atmosphere where there is less water vapour is the atmosphere simultaneously somewhat, but not totally, transparent to infra-red and thus permits radiation to play a part.
W. M. Connolley, June 2000.
[You're welcome to post this at JN's. Note that the "currently maintained" version is on this blog, from 2011: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/01/07/r-w-wood-note-on-the-theory-of/. In theory, the Nova-ites aren't "Slayers" so won't find anything in particular to object to in Wood's work -W]
Could anyone miss the many thousandfold disparity in thickness and mass, and hence greenhouse gas optical depth , beween the air in the cardboard box, and the atmosphere?
Tyndall aimed his rock salt windowed gas sample radiometer not at the actinic sun, but a 393K black body radiating at ~ 10 microns--- a pot of boiling water !
Be seeing you on the streets, handsome.
Here's another test page:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/01/the_inventor_of_the_glo…