You’re overthinking this... And apparently saying that Clarke’s papers is worthless. I disagree.
Is the proportion of energy leaving the system due to convection from the rods that great, that it merits such fine analysis? I assume modelling them as a triangle would be fine?
I am not saying that. The evidence is leading towards a COP of approximately 1, the normal state of the universe in the human sensitivity range. TC, myself, LDM, and others can do some calculations with data supplied, choosing from which we feel is the most reliable.
But the upshot is that the data we are choosing from may not be reliable, as there are certainly errors, and we are not really in a position to choose which data is good, and which is not good, without corroborating data. Which we don't have.
The greatest body of data that can be used for corroboration is the normal result in the typical Earth conditions, where COP would be 1, within uncertainty bounds. The Lugano data, when corroborated with normal Earth expectations (COP =1) has an extremely high level of correspondence and corroboration with alternate calculations using the same data when the COP = 1 theory is applied. Therefore the preponderance of evidence leads me to believe that it did not work, the COP was effectively 1.
However the data is not good enough that if the COP was indeed 1.2 or maybe even 1.5, that we could discern this through the uncertainties and real errors.