Bill Nye is not a scientist, yet passes himself of as the science guy.
His defining experiment for proving the greenhouse effect is junk science. He took two glass jars, and filled one with CO2.
Then he put heat lamps over the two jars, which shone thermal radiation towards both jars.
At the end of the experiment, he claimed that the CO2 filled jar was hotter than the one without CO2, due to the CO2 absorbing the thermal radiation.
But Bill made a fatal mistake in his fake experiment. The theory behind the “greenhouse” effect is that shortwave (sunlight) radiation passes through glass, but longwave thermal radiation coming up from the ground does not pass through glass.
Nye’s experiment depended on thermal IR from the heat lamp passing into the glass chambers. But glass is opaque to thermal IR.
How Does a Greenhouse Work?
In a greenhouse, radiant energy passes through transparent material into an area where plants, soil and other objects absorb it. They then re-radiate that energy in the form of infrared heat. Because infrared has longer wavelengths, it cannot go out back through the material through which it came.
How Does a Greenhouse Work? | Sciencing
Most glass is effectively opaque to thermal IR. (This is another reason that thermal imaging cameras are expensive; they need lenses made of materials transparent to thermal IR: typically germanium or quartz are used.
Nye’s experiment to prove the greenhouse effect, fundamentally violated what he was trying to prove. The greenhouse effect made his experiment useless. Whatever Bill Nye did, it most likely wasn’t what he claimed he did.
h/t to Dr. William Happer at Princeton, for pointing out Bill Nye’s junk science.
