“clear, simple, and wrong”

Much of science is simple, but not necessarily obvious.

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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7 Responses to “clear, simple, and wrong”

  1. Disillusioned says:

    Bingo. I became disillusioned and stopped being an ignorant believer in AGW when I finally understood that heat is escaping into space as it always has.

  2. Applying Fourier’s Law to the 6.5 degrees per kilometre troposphere temperature gradient yields a heat flow of 0.00015 Watts per square metre, compared with the roughly kilowatt of the solar constant, indicating that thermal conductivity has little direct effect. Knowing nothing about convection, the alarmists try to treat convection as if it were conduction, which is hogwash. So we have Michael Mann claiming the ‘theory’ is soundly based on the work of Arrhenius and Fourier. The work of both these great men has been applied by idiots who clearly do not understand it.

  3. John Creighton says:

    Homework: Based on the direction of heat flow in the diagram, and the given (Ta>Tb), was (Tb-Ta), should be (Ta-Tb).

    However, the contention that the thickness and conductivity of the insulation will increase the temperature difference between the inside and outside to keep you and the heat happy is curious.
    Other forms of heat transfer being equal (or negligible in comparison to the conduction) I would say that for a given heat input Q, and thickness and conductivity of insulation, then for a given Tb, Ta follows from the heat flow – conduction relationship given. In normal situation the heating system could keep the inside temp constant at the desired thermostat setting with a widely varying insulation value and the only thing that would change is how much money is siphoned out of your wallet by the gas company, or how much you argue with your wife about the setting of the thermostat! Specifically, Ta is constant, Q varies. However, where furnace is insufficient to keep up with unfavorable combination small d, low Tb, and high K, then Ta will be lower than you want, lower than your thermostat setting, and furnace will run constantly at max output.
    Also, a different take on electric resistance heating analogy. Adding resistance (of heating element) in the circuit is not causing the electrons to speed up in order to compensate. In the schematic, if you have no heating element in the circuit, you will get maximum heat output. Only problem is, before you can get any usefulness from it, you will blow the fuse, or trip the breaker, or melt the wires and start a fire. On the other hand, if you do have a very high resistance heating element, you wont get any current, and consequently no heat. Voltage drop across the heating element is constant at line voltage. Heater power output is what governs the heat output (P=I^2R), V=IR, ==> P=V^2/R, thus R must be low enough to give good heat output, but high enough to keep current draw at safe level according to the design of the circuit (circuit breaker limit).

    • Tony Heller says:

      If you have a thin glass window in the house, it will feel quite cold to the touch. A double paned window will feel less cold to the touch. A triple paned window will feel less cold to the touch.

      • John Creighton says:

        Agreed.

        Then the scenario I was describing would become a little more involved, with a convection heat transfer component in series in the heat balance for determination of Q. This would be governed by the temperature of the air coming from the heating duct and the temp of walls/windows, with the thermostat reading some intermediate value. More complexity is added for accurate determination when considering the convection heat transfer coefficients for floor, walls, ceilings are not all the same, by virtue of their orientation, and natural temperature variation of the convection currents impinging on them.

  4. One of the many fundamental errors in the global warming nonsense is the belief that Fourier’s Law determines the convective heat transfer. Thus. if the heat flow is fixed and the tropopause temperature is fixed, changes in the ‘conductivity’ must result in changes in the surface temperature. However, convection outside the boundary layer is NOT governed by Fourier’s Law, nor can the ‘conductivity’ be sensibly related to the radiative properties of the atmospheric gases.

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