[JohnAdams1145]

I don't claim to understand it, but we are not in the position to judge what moonlight should or should not do based on rationalism when we have numerous empirical experiments which tell us that moonlight cools.

Have a look at CuriousSquirrel's post and the YouTube video. Empirical evidence that sunlight makes things cooler?
The explanation is given in the video. Honestly. Cold light. If you could prove that in a way which doesn't make scientists laugh out loud you would win a Nobel prize.

I looked at the video and its just bad. First he points a telescope at the moon and then he moves the telescope to compare the temperature to empty space. He may as well compare the temperature of the moon to the temperature of an ice cube...  That experiment does NOT tell us whether the light of the moon can make things cooler.

Next he makes some ridiculous claim that when you sit in the shade it is actually warmer. The example he gives involves putting a piece of foil in the sun and then putting it under a bush. Under the bush it is warmer. This is ridiculous. In the day time it is not warmer in the shade than it is directly in the sun.

He says the foil is like a mirror reflecting ambient IR of the objects around it. The foil is of course physically cooler in the shade, but the reflected IR is not. However, this does not explain experiments with non-laser thermometer devices taking a direct measurement of bodies which shows the same cooling moonlight effect.

None of the above really even tests the issue, and is an attempt to discount the tests based on flawed rationalism. Cooling moon light is not directly tested by that experimenter. Sweeping declarations and assumptions are made.

If moon light did not cool, then it should be easy to design an experiment that shows that. The experimenter in that video and the excuse masters on the internet do everything except that.

Rowbotham references an experiment performed by a notable mid 1800's scientist in which a telescope was indoors and closed to the elements, looking out a window at the moon. A room temperature thermometer was placed next to the eye piece and the temperature cooled. When removed it warmed again. This happened again and again.The excuses given do not describe what is happening there.

Wow. I can't believe Tom Bishop is trying to disprove the Second Law of Thermodynamics by citing some supposed experiment that clearly hasn't been replicated. This is insane. Rowbotham was not a scientist; he was an idiot crank who couldn't understand basic concepts of physics and yet suffered from Dunning-Kruger enough to publish a book on it. Someone who says

There are rivers that flow for hundreds of miles towards the level of the sea without falling more than a few feet — notably, the Nile, which, in a thousand miles, falls but a foot. A level expanse of this extent is quite incompatible with the idea of the Earth's convexity. It is, therefore, a reasonable proof that Earth is not a globe.

clearly understands nothing about how a sphere works, and you're going to trust this guy? He can't even do basic high-school physics. His "expertise" is not level with any one of the scientists that we cite today. He is just someone who didn't understand basic physics, but due to the Dunning-Kruger effect and confirmation bias (wants to desperately believe FE), came up with a bunch of garbage and shoved it into a book. If we're going to have a debate about FE, please stop citing this guy as gospel (same goes for RE citing this guy -- that's a straw man fallacy). You can take his arguments and rehash/modify them, but this guy knows nothing.

It is ridiculous to suggest that moonlight, which is all over the visible spectrum, would cool anything down. You're literally throwing out the Second Law of Thermodynamics (since I could construct an "artificial moon", unless the moon is somehow magical of course, and use the waste heat from an engine to replenish the hot and cold reservoirs). This is so absurd I haven't even thought of a way of solidly debunking it other than invoking conservation of energy (hint: the light has energy) and saying that the light absolutely cannot cool something without heating something else up (actually, the Second Law argument limits how much you can do this too). What has this globe come to? If you're asserting that scattered light from the Moon cools things down just to breathe life into your dying hypothesis that the Earth is flat, aren't you doing exactly what you hate about science? You're just making up fake news to support a clearly junk theory.

It makes absolutely no sense that light input could cool things down. If you invoke laser cooling, then you clearly don't understand how it works. You're defying physical laws which have been tested countless times. I suggest you do the experiment. You'll find that your assertions are absolutely false. Take a telescope/magnifying glass and put it in the moonlight. Put something at its focal point. Nothing really happens. I can't believe FE people are so lazy as to not test this obvious experiment. Your assertions are patently disproven by the exact experiment that you describe. Take very precise thermometers in a temperature-controlled environment and use moonlight to cool one. You won't get any.

[TomInAustin]

I never imagined that we would be here discussing whether the moon gives off its own light or is reflecting light from the sun.  And that we would discuss whether this moonlight has all the gnarly powers attributed to the widow at the end of the street's evil eye.  If moonlight can make meat rot faster, that pretty much throws all our medical science into disarray.  You can take a telescope and burn a hole into a piece of paper using sunlight.  I have looked at the moon with my eyeball through that same telescope (never would look at the sun that way) and my eye did not instantly freeze. 
Light that cools things is similar to anti-phlogiston proposed in the 1700s to explain rusting of iron before oxygen was thought up. 

The cool moonlight hoax is the silliest yet.  Anyone with 2 dollars and a cardboard box can test this one.   Go to the dollar store and buy 2 thermometers.  Go out on a moonlit night and put both under the box blocking the moonlight and let them settle to the ambient temperature.   Now move one under the moonlight. 

Case closed.

[Ratboy]

now that I think of it, the cooling powers of moonlight should help preserve meat not make it rot faster.

[AATW]

I've read a lot of crazy stuff on here but cold light. Honestly, that really takes the biscuit.
How anyone can think that light which is made up of photons which have energy can cool things down...I'd like to see someone try to explain that without just going "Rowbottom said so".

[6or1/2Dozen]

The cool moonlight hoax is the silliest yet.  Anyone with 2 dollars and a cardboard box can test this one.   Go to the dollar store and buy 2 thermometers.  Go out on a moonlit night and put both under the box blocking the moonlight and let them settle to the ambient temperature.   Now move one under the moonlight. 

Case closed.

Actually, that's how you set up an 'experiment' to show the moons cooling effect. The cardboard box will trap heat radiating off the objects under it. [That's why hoboes use cardboard as blankets.] The thermometer will say it is warmer under the box than in the moonlight, because it is. This shouldn't be confused with the moonlight having a cooling effect though.

[douglips]

I never imagined that we would be here discussing whether the moon gives off its own light or is reflecting light from the sun.  And that we would discuss whether this moonlight has all the gnarly powers attributed to the widow at the end of the street's evil eye.  If moonlight can make meat rot faster, that pretty much throws all our medical science into disarray.  You can take a telescope and burn a hole into a piece of paper using sunlight.  I have looked at the moon with my eyeball through that same telescope (never would look at the sun that way) and my eye did not instantly freeze. 
Light that cools things is similar to anti-phlogiston proposed in the 1700s to explain rusting of iron before oxygen was thought up. 

The cool moonlight hoax is the silliest yet.  Anyone with 2 dollars and a cardboard box can test this one.   Go to the dollar store and buy 2 thermometers.  Go out on a moonlit night and put both under the box blocking the moonlight and let them settle to the ambient temperature.   Now move one under the moonlight. 

Case closed.

You need to be careful about this experiment. Things might cool faster when not under a box, regardless of the moon's presence or not. For example, you can get frost on the ground on a clear night when the temperature is still above freezing, but not when it is cloudy.

Building a north/south wall and measuring temperatures on both sides of it as the moon passes might work, but again you have to be careful of other effects.

[Ratboy]

You can buy drives for telescopes that keep it lined up with the night sky as the earth rotates.  Build your little stand with just a little blind to shade one of thermometers from the moonlight while your stand rotates.  Leave them out all night and see what happens to them at regular intervals.  Then do it with two pieces of meat.  For a good experimental analysis, do these experiments 50 times each to see if the thermometer (change the thermometers used each position each time) shaded from the moonlight is colder.  And if the meat exposed to moonlight rots faster.

[JohnAdams1145]

Actually, this experiment is best done without an enclosure. We can use a lens to "enlarge" the Moon and shine the moonlight at its focal point -- from the point of view of the object, more of the sky is Moon. Then we measure the object's temperature after a few minutes. Then we let the same object sit without the lens on it and measure its temperature after a few more minutes. The lens shouldn't cover too much of the night sky, so we don't have to deal with effects like reflecting radiation or preventing convection from happening.

While it's true that both trials will involve exposing the object to moonlight, one will have far more moonlight on the object.

Actually, thinking about it, this sounds like the 32-mile Sun hypothesis. It's delusional. Doing this experiment is a waste of time and even the $2 you spent on the thermometers is a day's pay in many parts of the world. It would be far better spent if we just gave it to starving people instead of "testing" this delusion that moonlight causes cooling; it defies basic laws of physics that have been verified time and time again. We already know the result of the experiment before even starting it.

[xenotolerance]

I have read Earth Not a Globe cover to cover, and I agree with his assertion that looking through any kind of lens would produce an error in the actual position of a body.
...
You need to show us some kind of theodolite that does not use any sort of lens.

Man have I got bad news. You wear glasses! Or the man in the picture by all your posts is wearing glasses. Every last observation you've ever made has errors in the actual positions of bodies! The Bishop Experiment involves a telescope - you better throw that one out too.

Oh snikeys, don't eyes have lenses in them? The cornea, isn't it? Yo this is huge we have to ignore all visual observations ever recorded, by anyone, ever.

Or, as you may argue in your defense, one can calculate for any changes in apparent position a lens might cause, as lenses are well understood, so we don't have to ignore experiments that use a lens. But, that would have to include theodolites, which by routine use show that the Earth is not flat.

Whoops!