Many may recall Bill Nye, the ‘#Scienceguy, illustrating how greenhouse gases work through a tabletop experiment. In it, Nye fills one container with regular air and another with carbon dioxide (CO2) and exposes each to radiation from a sun-like heat lamp. According to greenhouse gas theory, the CO2-filled container should show a rise in temperatures, which it did. Nye ended up proving that convection, not infrared, raised the temperatures of the container. Convection has no role in climate change.

‘Right result, wrong physics’

That’s according to a paper that reproduced Nye’s experiment. The paper, published in the American Journal of Physics, used the non-greenhouse gas Argon as an experimental control gas because it has no greenhouse-gas properties, e.g., no infrared absorption. By reproducing what Nye did, even the Argon gas heated up. What Nye had proven, the authors wrote, was CO2’s convective heat transport abilities and not its infraredproperties.