Author, Ken Coffman, is generously donating to Principia Scientific International all gross sales of his novel ‘Endangered Species’ for the week ending Friday, May 31^st 2013.

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‘Endangered Species‘ is currently on limited offer for only $11.01 via Amazon and there is FREE shipping on orders over $25. Buy your copy today, have a great read and feel you’ve also helped sponsor the world’s only independent science association dedicated to campaigning against corruption within science.

Authors of a new climate science consensus study trumpeted by mainstream media hacks for “proving” that most scientists blame humans for global warming are today being accused of fakery. Uproar ensued just days after publication of a controversial paper, ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature.‘

(John Cook, University of Queensland)

Experts whose work was cited in the paper by lead author, John Cook (pictured) are aghast that their work has been used to justify far-fetched claims that there exists a  “97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} consensus” among scientists regarding human-caused global warming.  Among those upset scientists cited in the new paper is Dr. Craig Idso. Idso reacted: “That is not an accurate representation of my paper.”

Nonetheless,  key authors, John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli, are unashamedly taking the plaudits from pro-green news outlets that are citing their paper as justification for draconian carbon taxation policies. California’s KPBS proclaims the study a “survey of the work of almost 30,000 scientists” which has “found 97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of published papers agree human activity is the cause of climate change. “

Mr. Cook, who owns and runs the controversial and confusingly named alarmist blog, Skeptical Science, is Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, Australia. His paper, appearing in the journal “Environmental Research Letters”  has added real irony for its claim that there really is “a striking discrepancy between public perception and reality.”

But as more independent analysts look into Cook’s claims the less reliable they seem. Another scientist quick to report being misrepresented by the new study is Dr. Nicola Scafetta who spoke of the “ utter dishonesty” at work. While Dr. Nir J. Shaviv of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, when asked whether Cook’s study reliably reported his paper, replied “Nope… it is not an accurate representation.”

Now Cook’s “97{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} consensus” study is being met by a backlash from the very heart of European green policy. Once solidly pro-green Germany sees its flagship news magazine, Spiegel Online, quick to throw cold water over Cook’s claims.

Speigel reports:

“There’s an obvious discrepancy between the public perception and reality. The authors speak about ‘consensus on man-made climate change’ – and thus this threatens to further increase confusion within the public. The survey confirms only a banality: Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that man is responsible for at least a part of the climate warming. The important question of how big is man’s part in climate change remains hotly disputed.”

Nonetheless, in the United States it’s climate alarmist business as usual in the Whitehouse. President Barack Obama this week was again turning the heat up. The President’s new “Call Out the Climate Change Deniers” website is hard at work trying to sell the myth that opposition to climate alarmism among scientists is “vanishingly small.”  Such assertions fly in the face of the fact tens of thousands of  American scientists are actively on record as condemnatory of such junk climate. As many correctly point out,  you will see that  by comparison there is only a miniscule number of climate scientists who have actually put names on record to assert humans are dangerously warming the climate.

Indeed, a U.S. Senate minority report demonstrates that if you contrast and compare the actual number of names of alarmist scientists on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) versus those named scientists opposing the scam then the skeptics are “12 times the number of U.N. scientists who authored the official IPCC 2007 report.”

And the skeptic naysayers are scientists of real pedigree. Among them are some of the world’s best. Among them is a past winner of a Nobel Science Prize (unlike that Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC and Al Gore).

Dyes and pigments are everywhere. They make us see things in many colors. The blue of your jeans is just one dye of many.

Some History

In ancient times (say Neanderthals’ time), the available dyes were mostly minerals, such as “ocher,” rust, carbon (black) and similar pigments. Pictographs made with them some tens of thousands of years ago have survived quite well to this date.

Later on, just a few thousand years ago, some organisms-derived organic dyes became widely known. They include Indigo (the blue dye in “blue jeans”) from the plant Indigofera tinctoria, Tyrian Purple (a purple dye, the Roman imperial purple) from the snail Murex sp., Cochineal (a red dye) from the aphid-like insect Sternorrhyncha sp. among many others.

The evolution of chemistry changed it all. Beginning with the elucidation of the chemical structures of some of the natural dyes above, chemists found ways to duplicate those en masse in laboratories and create derivatives and novel dye structures on the basis of then-recognized simple principles. Fig. 1, showing the chemical structure of indigo helps to understand that principle. All the “aromatic bonds” (indicated by a pair of parallel lines spaced by a single line) create a large molecule with a “conjugated-bond” structure. Such conjugated-double bond arrangements have optical absorption bands in the visible spectrum of light and hence are dyes.

Fig. 1. The chemical structure of the indigo (blue) dye from the Indigo plant.

Just a (small) change of the chemical structure causes a shift in the material’s spectrum to make it a purple dye. This compound has two additional bromine atoms, as indicated by “Br” in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The chemical structure of the Tyrian Purple (purple-red) dye from the Murex snail.

Today, such synthetic dyes number now in many tens of thousands. Your (color) photocopier or printer, your newspaper and every glossy magazine you look at makes liberal use of such inventions. Without the glitzy color, the new car ads just wouldn’t have the same sex appeal!

The World of Color

Just twenty years ago, most newspapers were strictly black and white without any color pictures whatsoever. These days, in the same papers you’ll find full page color-ads and pictures throughout.

While we humans enjoy a world of color, others on Earth are only able to perceive dark and light. For example, deer and moose do not have color vision. Instead, their dark and light perception far exceeds ours. That allows them to move through dense forests in the middle of the night without much difficulty.

Yet other species perceive entirely different “colors,” namely parts of the electromagnetic wave spectrum we cannot see at all; the infrared spectrum belongs to that. Many insects, certain snakes and other critters have organs which can “see” infrared radiation as it is emanating from warm bodies. We only feel that radiation as warmth hitting our skin when sitting near a camp fire or similar heat source, but we cannot see it with our eyes.

Without our ability to perceive color, the world would appear more bleak, just in shades of light and dark.

Aren’t you glad that chemistry invented some fabulous additions to the world of color?

Twenty interesting facts about CO2 that have been kept ‘top secret’ by the man–made global warming community

By Dr Darko Butina

1. We know everything about physico-chemical properties of CO2 there is to know since its discovery 200 years ago, and categorical statement can be made that the physico-chemical properties of CO2 in its pure state, including IR properties, have nothing to do with its properties as part of the mixture called air.

Lord Monckton’s latest open letter in our debate about the validity of the greenhouse gas “theory” is peppered with vituperation, untruths, errors and self-contradictions. Monckton’s reply follows that of his first open letter. These are in rebuttal against John O’Sullivan’s first and second open letter challenges to Monckton about the so-called greenhouse gas ‘theory.’ Below we show how unreliable his lordship is as a supposed authority. Sorry it’s so long but it’s not easy to debunk the sophist arguments in a few words.

Let us examine his lordship’s latest diatribe where Monckton takes great umbrage to O’Sullivan’s assertion that his lordship has cultivated an image of himself as the former “science adviser” to Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. They say a picture speaks a thousand words. In that light, please take a look at this Youtube video where Monckton smiles contentedly as a news interviewer refers to him in those very same terms – no words of correction whatsoever from his lordship.

But while Monckton throws insults at me for daring to describe him that way he seems to have no qualms when such attributions are made by his supporters, including Marc Morano at Climate Depot. Morano explicitly states, “Former Thatcher Science Advisor & UN IPCC Reviewer Lord Christopher Monckton,” and again here, to which Monckton, replied, “The story circulated by the indefatigable Marc Morano is – as one would expect – accurate in every particular.” 

The appellation seemingly thus implicitly approved by Monckton going back at least to 2009 as per UKIP Leader Malcolm Pearson when Pearson announced:

“I am delighted that Lord Monckton has accepted my invitation to join UKIP as our chief spokesman on Climate Change. He was Margaret Thatcher’s Special Adviser in Downing Street on a number of areas, including science.”

Thatcher Minister Mocks Monckton’s Mendacious Claims

Current UKIP leader, Nigel Farage will see that the self styled “Special Adviser” on science to Margaret Thatcher was nothing more than a glorified press officer and odd job. Yes, he has an arts degree but no science qualifications we can find. By contrast, Margaret Thatcher was an Oxford University Chemistry graduate. “It was I [Monckton] who—on the prime minister’s behalf—kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward.” Well, Thatcher’s autobiography makes not one mention of Monckton and attributes all such climate science advice to George Guise and Sir Crispin Tickell.

So, your lordship, since you’ve called me a liar, in my defense I challenge you

If all you claim is true then why do you appear to have done nothing to counter Thatcher’s climate alarmism? You claim you had at that time hard evidence to prove such alarmism wrong. But newspaper reports and your own piece in the Daily Telegraph (Nov 6, 2006) stand at odds with quotes attributed to you elsewhere (The Guardian:June 22, 2010) suggesting you disregarded all those “calculations” you say you performed using the “first computer in Downing St;” calculations you say proved that, at most, CO2 could only cause “some warming.” So why, by your omission to speak out, do you appear complicit in Thatcher’s original greenhouse gas-based global warming alarmism?

Monckton’s other Gaffes and Scientific Self Contradictions

Monckton has contradicted himself in his pronouncements about the science. In his first reply in our exchange he said:

Once again, Laker Erie is on the verge of choking on too much nutrient. In 2011, its western basin had massive blooms of Microcystis and Cladophora sp. algae. It happened before, in the 1960’s, leading to it being declared “dead.” A new paper by AM Michalak and 28 coauthors describes the event in detail; the figure below shows a satellite image of the observed bloom.

Fig. 1. Observed algal blooms, 2011, in western Lake Erie; source: Michalak et al. (2013).

Algal Blooms

Algae begin to thrive when the concentrations of phosphorous- and nitrogen-type nutrients become overabundant. The algae produce fibers which commonly wash up on the shores. There, the rotting mass produces slimy surfaces and pungent smells. What’s worse though, the stuff not washing up on the shores dies in the water column and sinks to the bottom of the lake. There, its decomposition consumes the water’s oxygen to become uninhabitable by bottom-dwelling organisms which require that oxygen. Furthermore, Microcystis-type algae also produce natural toxins that are highly toxic to a variety of species, man included.

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the fourth largest of the Laurentian Great Lakes (LGLs) with ~26,000 km^2 (~10,000 square miles) of surface area. Lake most other LGLs, it is shared between Canada and the US.

When Lake Erie experienced severe algal blooms several decades, then predominantly of Cladophora sp. ago (in the western basin of Lake Erie, the toxic Microcystis algae were first observed in the mid 1990s), governments on both sides of the border sprang into action. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQ) of 1972 was based on research findings, much of it undertaken by the then new Canada Centre for Inland Waters in Burlington, Ontario. The GLWQ recognized the need for limitation of excessive nutrient loadings to the lakes in order to prevent such algal blooms. Primarily, the agreement called for the construction of sewage treatment facilities which would remove excessive phosphate loadings from municipal sources.

Lake Erie responded extremely well to the new effluent controls, some people even called it “miraculous.” Within a few years, fishermen’s catches of perch and walleye increased to levels not seen for decades, the shores were no longer covered with smelly decaying algae, and all was fine, again.

Beginning with the early 2000s, blooms of algae, now predominantly of the Microcystis species, started to re-appear in Lake Erie, generally getting more severe over the decade. This trend went into overdrive in 2011.

Presents his “time dependent model” as a challenge

Dr. Roy Spencer has challenged the Slayers to either “put up or shut up” (1) and presents what he says is a “time-dependent” Earth model to describe “reasonable surface temperatures”, and asks us to produce the same. Anthony Watts added his reply: “Like me, you’ve reached a GHG [greenhouse gas] tipping point with these folks. Good for you for taking a stand. I await them addressing your model challenge.” Watts has subsequently responded on his own blog: “…if and when they are able to provide a simple working model of the atmospheric energy balance that matches their theory with observations, I’ll be happy to take another look at the idea here”.

Spencer provides an xls spreadsheet showing the “code”, and he references the model as being “time-dependent” several times in his text. He also says that it produces “realistic temperatures”, and this is apparently supposed to be taken as some sort of support for the model.

A few things here. First, “reasonable temperatures” can be created by any arbitrary model at all.  So, that his “time dependent model” produced such temperatures means nothing at all. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system, for example, produced “reasonable planetary positions” for over a thousand years, yet it was so fundamentally flawed that correcting it brought about a scientific revolution. The unquestioning belief in Ptolemy’s model is analogous to a current belief in the “greenhouse gas effect”, as Joe Postma has observed (2).

Second, and this is the really important part, we have to ask if Spencer’s own model is even “time-dependent”, as he claims it is. His model’s solar input is a constant 161 Watts for each square meter of the Earth, which is a value equal to 230 Kelvin (or -42⁰ Celsius). Hence, that model is not a “time-dependent” model.  For him to call what he has there a “time-dependent model” is scientifically and mathematically incorrect.  It is not a time-dependent model because the sun is static at a constant 161 W/m², and this indicates static, flat, non-rotating Earth, with no day and night, and hence no time dependence at all. That the “model” Spencer produced can be run from a starting temperature to a final temperature in time does not mean that the model is “time-dependent”. The real sun rises and sets over a rotating spherical Earth, meaning that Spencer’s model actually abandons any attempt to make surface temperatures “time-dependent”. Such a description can only be called misleading at best, for the term “time dependence” in differential equations and heat flow calculations denotes something else entirely than what Spencer offered. Spencer’s model is static and he seems to not understand this; he challenged us to produce a time-dependent model and presented us with his own, however, his isn’t even what he claims it is.

So then, with sunshine freezing cold and constant, meaning the model is static and not time-dependent, they insert the required greenhouse effect (GHG) pumping up factor wattage from an even colder atmosphere in order to force it to produce a “reasonable temperature”, with values “…based upon the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram” (quoting Spencer) which is designed to do precisely that – to force a flat-Earth model to work when the initial assumption of freezing cold and static sunshine is wrong. Thus, cold has to heat hot and the atmosphere needs to be an additional source of heat, even though it is not even a source of energy, because that’s what they need to make their static model with static freezing cold sunshine “work”. This is pretty much how you define circular and tautologous reasoning. It is just like Ptolemy arbitrarily adding epicycles to make his model work.

What is equally noteworthy at the moment is not just that Spencer’s model is actually static, but that Spencer’s challenge per se could only be predicated upon utter ignorance about PSI’s and the Slayer’s work. Not only has PSI member Postma created an actual real-time model(3) meaning that it genuinely uses a time-dependent Sun, his model also included the effects of the latent heat of liquid H₂O which showed that such heat helps to hold the surface temperature higher than otherwise all by itself. The modeling also used a temperature-dependent function for the thermal capacity of water. Astonishingly, none of this is even mentioned by Spencer or in his model, which means he didn’t even think it relevant to include in the model the vast majority of what the surface of the Earth actually is. PSI and the Slayers do think it important. 

To be sure, Postma’s model uses the exact same heat flow equation as Spencer used in his model, but the difference is that Spencer’s model is actually a static non-time-dependent model that assumes a flat Earth and cold sunshine, while Postma’s model actually rotates the spherical Earth and accounts for real-time solar heating and latent heat as an actual time-dependent differential equation. Spencer’s model requires the GHE to produce a reasonable temperature, while Postma’s does not. The difference arises in using fictional vs. actual boundary conditions and inputs: one model is based on fiction which therefore creates fiction, while the other model is based on reality in real time and therefore reproduces reality. So, PSI has already presented much more than what Spencer challenged us with, and it turns out that Spencer doesn’t even have what he seems to think and claims that he has in the first place.

Postma’s model produces “reasonable temperatures” without including any “greenhouse gas effect” at all.  Indeed, his model was tested against real-time observational temperature data collected by PSI member Carl Brehmer, and Postma’s dynamic model predicted the results with great accuracy, finding no need to introduce a single epicycle of back-radiation warming from “greenhouse gases”.  The results proved that backradiation heating from the atmosphere did not, was not, and does not occur on top of the solar forcing, even though backradiation is maximized during the day time as we see here:

Postma’s model equations also showed that, overnight, the majority of atmospheric cooling occurs directly at the surface and that the amount of cooling overnight was at least ten-times the value expected without a theoretical backradiation delay in cooling. Cooling at the surface is actually enhanced overnight rather than impeded, and there is no sign of delayed overnight cooling occurring at all. This is a matter of observational fact and can be explained by the enhanced cooling caused by convection and conduction at the surface with a cooler atmosphere. The paper proved beyond any doubt that Sunshine is hot and cannot be averaged down to an artificial freezing-cold value as it in the creation of the GHE, as Spencer does in his model.

In that paper Postma also showed precisely how to calculate the wet atmospheric temperature lapse rate from first principles, given by adding water vapour condensation to the dry lapse rate. The real-time model also explains precisely why and how the temperature lag to insolation forcing occurs on both the diurnal and seasonal time-scales, and Postma also explained how to extend the model to be more general and discussed some of the other boundary conditions the more general model would have to satisfy.

Spencer and WUWT have seemed to continually short-change their readers in this debate. Spencer’s challenge itself creates a sham in claiming that we have never presented any alternative model. But we have had it already in Postma’s previous peer-reviewed paper (4) from 2011. Postma’s follow-up paper in 2012 details precisely what has now been demanded of us. It is there, in the links, on our website under ‘Publications’ and has been there now for almost two years.

Postma’s model is not only referenced in many of our articles but also in blog comments elsewhere (including at WUWT and Spencer’s blog). Time and again, we have invited our opponents to familiarize themselves with that model and engage with us in friendly discussion about it, comprehending the implications that the usual static models (like Spencer’s) are wrong. Thus, Spencer’s latest challenge to “put up or shut up” over this issue points to his intellectual laziness or something less forgivable.

Postma says: “Some people wonder if this was some genius conspiracy or plot behind man-made climate alarmism to block people like the Slayers from asking a simple question like ‘Hey, you know, instead of modelling Sunshine as freezing cold and constant, neither of which it is, then, what difference will it make if we acknowledge that Sunshine is actually really hot and that the Earth can’t actually really be modeled as flat and with no day and night?’. It turns out it isn’t a genius conspiracy or plot to gate-keep such simple questions from being asked; the gatekeepers really are just scientifically illiterate. Can you believe that in the climate change orthodoxy, you’re not allowed to talk about how hot sunshine is, and what it can do, because it conflicts with the incorrect tenets of the GHE?”

Postma’s paper has pages and pages of discussing an actual real-time, time & temperature dependent, differential heat flow equation and it included pages of Matlab code and all the required algorithms, showed how to calculate the solar forcing in real-time (actual real-time, not static non-real-time constant cold input with no day and night and a flat Earth), successfully compared the results to actual real-world data, discussed how to improve it, etc. etc.

Spencer accuses the Slayers of “cult science”. That’s a nice accusation, but please point it out. PSI can point out yours: a) you literally think it is reasonable that sunshine is freezing cold, b) you literally think it is reasonable that there is no day and night, c) you literally think it is reasonable that the Earth is flat, d) you literally do not know what “time dependent” means in regards to a differential equation, e) you literally think it is reasonable to say that because “greenhouse gases cool the atmosphere/the atmosphere would have no way to cool without greenhouse gases” (direct quotes from Spencer) that this means that GHG’s heat the atmosphere…because they cool it, f) you literally deny or are at least incapable of acknowledging that the near-zero emissivity of O₂ and N₂ means that 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere can hold a higher temperature for a given radiative output than it would otherwise, when this is the very basis of radiative thermal physics and doesn’t require a GHE or GHG’s at all.

Need we go on? Those beliefs don’t relate to “cult science”, but a full-blown fanatical and insane religion. We Slayers, in reality-land, have simple questions pointing out basic facts which makes GHE believers go blind with rage. Just look at an example of what GHE orthodoxy wants us to believe:

In the GHE orthodoxy of backradiation heating, when you put two light bulbs near each other then it means that the photons from one “have to be slowing the cooling of the other light source, meaning that it has to heat up the other light source and make it brighter”. Of course, the same thing would happen both ways and so the idea should strike one immediately as being unphysical and unlikely, because it sets up a run-away mutual heating process. Of course, any person who has artificial lighting in this world knows that what is claimed doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen for candles beside each other, light bulbs beside each other, etc.

In fact, the GHE orthodoxy even requires that a heating scheme such as this will occur from a single light bulb’s own light shone back upon itself. This scheme is in fact directly analogous to GHE orthodoxy because that idea is based on backradiation from the atmosphere, the atmosphere which was heated by the earth’s surface in the first place, causing the surface to heat up some more even though the atmosphere is far colder than the surface and cannot rightly be considered a heat source for the surface in the first place, because it is the surface which is the heat source for the atmosphere. Does shining a flashlight at a mirror so that all the radiation comes back to the flashlight make the flashlight shine brighter? We all know it doesn’t.

Let’s also go back to the claim that, because GHG’s cool the atmosphere, this means that they heat the atmosphere. This is literally what Spencer says. Belief in the “greenhouse gas effect” says that without GHG’s, the atmosphere wouldn’t be able to cool, and because of this fact, GHG’s heat the atmosphere. Yes you are correct, that makes no sense at all. In reality, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law shows that the only way for a thermal radiative object to have a higher kinetic temperature than what its radiative output flux is, is if it has an emissivity lower than unity. Well, 99{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of our atmosphere, which is oxygen and nitrogen (O₂ and N₂), have emissivities near zero! It is O₂ and N₂ which literally “trap heat”, because they are unable to radiate any heat away at all, and radiative flux energy loss is the only way the planet has to cool down. Alan Siddons discussed this years ago (5) when he pointed out the fundamental flaws of GHE orthodoxy.

There are three things the GHE orthodoxy will not touch with a ten foot pole.  1) that sunshine is hot and has to be treated in real-time, not averaged out to some non-physical and therefore meaningless value, and that it is impossible to meaningfully average solar power input; 2) that O₂ and N₂ have near-zero emissivity and that in the land of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and radiation, the only way to get something to a higher temperature with the same flux output is to reduce its emissivity, 3) that the lapse rates (both dry and wet) can be calculated without reference to any GHG radiation whatsoever and that according to GHE theory, the lapse rate should be steepened by GHG radiation, yet the rate is still exactly as it is calculated without reference to GHG radiation, and when the “GHG” water vapour is present it lessens the slope of the lapse rate and decreases the surface temperature, not increases those as is required by the GHE.

The usual responses are: 1) to accuse us of not knowing what an average is, and insult our intelligence with snide remarks in a few ways, which just begs the question if they have any clue as to what power input means and that more power does more power than less power; real sunshine can drive extremely energetic processes (take the water cycle for instance, etc.) and generate very high real-time temperatures that 240 W/m² (let alone 161 W/m² !!) could never emulate – not without inventing their GHE (hello!!) to make up for the difference; 2) they never address the emissivity question as far as we know because it automatically and immediately renders the GHE superfluous; 3) they’ve backed away from the lapse rate = GHG effect but still use it from time to time, but the point simply needs to made repeatedly as it was above, because the lapse rates, both wet and dry, can be calculated without any reference to GHG’s at all and GHG’s do not have the observed effect which is claimed.

Postma did ‘put up’, last year already, exactly what Spencer requested. And more, Spencer walks into his own trap by presenting his own model which is not even a time-dependent model as he claimed and seems to think it is. All the Slayers have always ‘put up’ the simple questions about the actual nature of reality that has always made GHE believers get very upset. We didn’t actually ever need to have an alternative model anyway, we just needed to point out what was really unscientific and wrong about the GHE one. They never learned from the criticisms, and in general they couldn’t handle them at all. They ignored what we did try to put up and usually won’t even allow it to be discussed on their blogs. Why aren’t people allowed to ask that, if sunshine is actually really hot, then how can treating it as cold correspond to anything in reality? It is such a simple thing: real-time sunshine can drive processes that are much higher temperature and much more energetic that the averaged-out, cold-sunshine, no day & night assumption could never do. In short, clouds exist, and therefore any model that averages out sunshine down to a freezing cold value is wrong, and has to be wrong. Hence, the greenhouse gas effect is wrong. And that is why the greenhouse gas effect is invented with these flat-Earth cold-sunshine models: because they have nothing to do with reality.

(1) http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/05/time-for-the-slayers-to-put-up-or-shut-up/

NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 310

MAY 10th 2013

For over 30 years the world has been saturated with the environmental fallacy.It has taken over the media; newspapers, radio, TV; the education system;, the schools, the universities. It has led to a retreat from experimental and theoretical science.

My professional career began during the war when science made a substantial contribution to its outcome. We had vigorous scientific discussions both in public and in the media. We published them in the journals. We enjoyed prestige, attractive salaries and public confidence.

It declined immediately the war ended. R V Jones, in his “Most Secret War” recounts that as soon as the war ended the military were no longer interested in measures to improve conditions of survival of pilots.

I endured a steady decline of science. In industrial research the role of the scientist was to justify the decisions of the sales department, and now it is increasingly to justify the policies of the Government even in the universities.

We have benefited from technical progress, based on scientific discoveries of the past. Chemistry, X-Ray diffraction have enabled molecules to be visualized. Combined with the genetic code it has led to modern medicine and our longer lives. Computers and solid state physics have changed our communications completely. The environmentalists accept these grudgingly, but they reject nuclear power, chemical pesticides, genetically engineered crops, and even (current National Geographic article) nitrogen based fertilizers. They have rubbished Darwin’s theories of evolution and replaced them by The Environment and Sustainability

There have not been any revolutionary scientific discoveries for 50 years. Scientists now live on short term contracts, interspersed with press announcements which either scare the public or claims to have made world shattering discoveries, all in the aid of receiving the next grant.

The climate models that have been foisted on the public would have been rejected by all the journals I knew in 1940. They can only gain credance in an atmosphere where science education has been replaced by dogmatic endorsements of the pioneers, and, increasingly, of the charlatans who have taken science over.

I have recently been revising my old NZClimate Truth Newsletters where I said it all years ago. There are no new publications worth answering. The latest IPCC Report. merely repeats previous shibboleths.

They have confessed that they are frauds in the Climategate letters, and even, as I point out, in such items as Jim Hansen’s item on “The Elusive Surface Temperature”

But, who cares? They still routinely promote the views of environmental activists on every excuse, Prince Charles and Al Gore keep up their worrying. So, at last, to get to the point of this Newsletter, are we returning slowly to reality? There are currently a number of indications that the worm is beginning to turn.

Fracking

This is a method developed in 1947 for improving oil production which has been the deliverer of the United States economy where they now export oil, instead of importing. It has had the effect of making coal so cheap that it has boosted cosl-fired powers stations and made up the energy shortfall in Japan that followed their unwise abandonment of nuclear energy. European environmentalists and anti-nuclear Japanese must now face the fact that gas prices in the USA are now $3.32 per million BTU in USA, $11.77 in Europe and $I6.66 in Japan

The New Zealand Government seems at last to be encouraging oil exploration. Discouraging damaging protest and even approving the ming of gold in its traditional region, Waihi.

Temperature

I have spent much effort pointing out that you cannot measure the average temperature of the earth’s surface and that the “Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record” is a very poor substitute. It is not a temperature record at all, but consists of a series of multiple averages each of which is based on a different mixture of measurements from unrepresentative weather stations. It is also, like all of the ”data” favoured by the IPCC, subtly biased to enable it to support the greenhouse theory. What is amazing is that they did not do a better job, and that the world could be made to cringe at the thought of an increased temperature of less than one degree in 100 years.

Yet it has now got stuck. It has stayed much the same for 17 years and Dr Pachauri is so worried that he thinks it might last another 15 years before his desired warming actually happens.

Apart from the infected Met Services, like the UK where they still keep predicting forthcoming warm winters and our own service which failed to predict the drought. Most ordinary meteorologists carry on with genuine science which does not depend on greenhouse gas concentrations

Windmills

The companies are going bust and the US is trying protectionism for its own dying manufacturers. Brian Leyland shows that windmills actually increase emissions of carbon dioxide because they have to be backed up with inefficient powere stations that can be frequently turned on and off.

Emissions

Only 15{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of greenhouse gas emissions currently come from countries that signed the Kyoto Treaty. The New Zealand Minister, Tim Groser, recommends it should be ditched (Carbon Price is “Inching close to zero”)

Sir Peter Gluckman

The Government’s Chief scientific advisor has announced new funding for the National Science Challenges.

It is more interesting in what it does not say that in what it says.

• Aging well – harnessing science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life

• A better start – improving the potential of young New Zealanders to have a healthy and successful life

• Healthier lives – research to reduce the burden of major New Zealand health problems

• High value nutrition – developing high value foods with validated health benefits

• New Zealand’s biological heritage – protecting and managing our biodiversity, improving our biosecurity, and enhancing our resilience to harmful organisms .

It is all very laudable, but there is no mention of any new ideas that might push any of these objects further.

For the first time there is no mention of the environment, global warming, climate change endangered species, or sustainability. It is actually getting real, at last

Conclusion

These are, as yet, only straws in the wind. There is still much to do before science and common sense can once again prevail.

Norman Rogers (American Thinker) this week poses the question: ‘Is Roy Spencer the world’s most important scientist?‘ Obviously, Norman is no doubt and suitably eulogises his hero.

Rogers tells his readership:

“Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama Huntsville who may be the world’s most important scientist.   He has discovered scientific insights and theories that cast great doubt on global warming doctrine.  That doctrine has always been dubious and is often defended by attacking the integrity of anyone who dares to raise questions.  Spencer is a rare combination of a brilliant scientist and a brave soul willing to risk his livelihood and reputation by speaking plainly.”

Now while we may agree that Dr. Spencer has, for many years, been on the front line of the skeptical cause  fighting the man-made global warming scam he is certainly not serving the advancement of science. Worse, yet, some of us argue Roy is cut from the same junk science consensus-affirming cloth that underpins all man-made global warming alarmism. “How so?” you may ask.

For no other reason than Spencer is an active promoter of the so-called greenhouse gas theory. This “theory” is the essential cornerstone of all alarmist science. It basically asserts that the more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere the more warming will occur. Roy says “some warming” must happen, while the alarmists assert a more extreme message.

So why are we making such a big deal about it? Well, let’s be clear;  there is no standardized definition of this “theory” which may be shown to be false and, because of that, was known to have been widely abandoned before the 1950’s. [1]

Without this “theory” there would be no credible scientific basis whatsoever to blame human emissions of CO2 for warming the climate. As such, there would be no multi-billion dollar climate science research industry. Now, perhaps, you may see why even “skeptical” climatologists don’t want to question the source of their bread and butter. The GHE began to re-emerge very slowly on the radar from the sixties when the infant science of climatology was a backwater unpoliced by peer-reviewers from the “hard” sciences.

But since then, thanks to the politicization of science, it has grown in acceptance out of all proportion to its scientific validity. In recent years heretics, such as those from Principia Scientific International (PSI), have been waging a battle on behalf of those from the more skeptical “hard” sciences. We show that Spencer’s claims (and those of other GHE believers) flout the laws of physics.

Spencer is now even claiming that H2O makes the lapse rate steeper, contrary to well known fact and making spurious claims regarding infrared thermal imaging devices that PSI member, Doug Cotton rebuts here. 

With very great pleasure did I consume the paper by Faezeh et al. (2013) just printed in

Nature (May 9). After a careful study of four major marine-terminating outlet glaciers,

collectively draining 22{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Greenland Ice Sheet, they were able to estimate the annual

dynamic losses at volumes corresponding to a mean global sea level rise of 0.01–0.06 mm per

year. In 100 years this would only give a sea level rise on 1-6 mm, which is insignificant. By

applying a hypothetical future warming or 2.8 oC they increase this value to 19–30 mm rise

by year 2200 (or about 9-15 mm by year 2100). Even this value is so low that it poses no

threat what so ever to humanity.

Correction to the article on Dr Abdussamatov and apology to both Dr Abdussamatov and Professor A V Stepanov. We would like to make it clear that Dr Abdussamatov is not a member of PSI.

The recent article on Dr Abdussamatov by Terri Jackson the PSI membership officer contained some errors which we now want to correct. Dr Abdussamatov is actually head of space research of the Sun Sector at the Polkovo Observatory and head of the Selenometria project on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. We apologize to both Dr Abdussamatov and Professor A V Stepanov for the mistakes and misunderstandings.

Once again it seems secrecy is the modus operandi for so much research in climatology. Dr John Ray has a fascinating story on ‘Greenie Watch’ blog updating us on David Holland’s long running legal battle to expose government agencies playing fast and loose with freedom of information laws. Can anyone still be in any doubt that junk science is the basis for environmental policies?

In ‘Warmist secrecy again‘ (Thursday, May 09, 2013) Dr. Ray’s ‘Greenie Watch blog writes:

With the connivance of the British government

Can the Internet help climate scientists? Not everyone thinks so.“The Internet is a double-edged sword,” Met Office scientist Peter Stott told a London courtroom last week. “There’s a whole cacophony of voices on blogs, people with different opinions and people very motivated to dig around. But not in the ‘big picture’ details, frankly. That is not helpful to getting an overall balanced assessment.”Stott had just been asked whether widespread online participation in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment-of-the-science process might improve it.

The open source software development principle, that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, came to mind.The occasion was an Information Tribunal appeal brought by one-man information Inquisition David Holland. The retired Mancunian engineer’s previous enquiries were seen by many as the catalyst for the famous “Climategate” email leaks.“My interest in this was never to do with climate. I’m trained as an engineer, and I know the scientific method,” Holland told El Reg in 2011, when he had sought access to large amounts of information from the British climate-science establishment – and was denied.

Holland’s FOI requests set off a catastrophic sequence of prevarication and obstruction by the responding scientists, which ultimately appears to have triggered the Climategate leaks and massive discomfort for all the researchers involved.Now it’s the turn of Peter Stott of the Met Office to come under Holland’s microscope.I actually felt a bit of human sympathy for Stott; you can bet he would have rather been somewhere else, and it transpires that Holland didn’t actually want him there at all. Holland had wanted to cross-examine the head of the UK delegation to the IPCC, a Department of Environment and Climate Change official called David Warrilow, head of climate science and international evidence.The procedural questions under the spotlight are Warrilow’s bailiwick, not Stott’s, but Holland was refused his man. Stott, we learned, had been pressganged into appearing by the Met Office’s lawyers.

Stott also had to defend his and allied organisations’ refusal to disclose material on a basis – as we shall see – that’s highly questionable. No intelligent person should have to waste his own time, or anyone else’s time, defending the indefensible.And the mere presence of a Met scientist is a bit of a red herring, as it’s really the IPCC that is on trial; the case for the defence is being organised by the Treasury solicitor, paid for by you.Judge Anisa Dhanji was not impressed by the defence’s refusal to find someone so very germane to the case to stand up to cross-examination, and demanded that a written statement by Warrilow be included in the record.So. Here we all were. Why was this happening, exactly?

Below is the second open letter from Lord Monckton (first is published here) in reply to John O’Sullivan’s first and second open letter challenges to him in dispute of the so-called greenhouse gas ‘theory.’

A statement on behalf of Lord Monckton

3 May 2013

One John O’Sullivan has spent several weeks attempting to overcome his shock at the number of elementary errors of fact that he had made in replying to Lord Monckton’s response to an open letter from him asserting, with characteristic scientific illiteracy, that there is no greenhouse effect. The reply that O’Sullivan has now cobbled together intellectually dishonest, and characteristically so.

O’Sullivan says Lord Monckton had been “appealing to the authority” of various scientists he had listed. On the contrary, His Lordship had done no more than to demonstrate the characteristic factual inaccuracy of the statement in O’Sullivan’s original open letter to His Lordship that “not until 1981, when NASA’s James Hansen angled for the political stage, were scientists seriously considering CO2’s impact on climate.”

As O’Sullivan now accepts, that assertion was indeed factually inaccurate. Many scientists before Hansen had seriously considered the impact of CO2, of whom Lord Monckton had simply listed just a few. Here is what His Lordship actually wrote (O’Sullivan’s reply, with characteristic dishonesty, omits the first sentence of what Lord Monckton wrote so as to imply that His Lordship was appealing to the authority of the listed scientists rather than merely correcting O’Sullivan’s factual error):

“He [O’Sullivan] says that if I checked my history I should discover that it was not until 1981 that scientists were seriously considering CO2’s impact on climate. However, Joseph Fourier had posited the greenhouse effect some 200 years previously; Tyndale [or, rather, Tyndall] had measured the greenhouse effect of various gases at the Royal Institution in London in 1859; Arrhenius had predicted in 1896 that a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause 4-8 K warming, and had revised this estimate to 1.6 K in 1906; Callender had sounded a strong note of alarm in 1938; and numerous scientists, including Manabe & Wetherald (1976) [actually 1975] had attempted to determine climate sensitivity before Hansen’s 1981 paper.”

In no legitimate sense could His Lordship possibly be described as having perpetrated the fallacy of appeal to authority in that passage. His Lordship was merely correcting a serious factual error remarkable in one who presents himself as some sort of scientific authority and operates a mumbo-jumbo website under the mumbo-jumbo name of “Principia” “Scientifica”.

With characteristic loutish ill manners, O’Sullivan writes:

“What he [Lord Monckton] is counting on, of course, is that you and I have not read what these scientists and their contemporaries actually said.  Perhaps he himself is not aware of what these scientists and their contemporaries actually said or he wouldn’t have appealed to their authority.”

Here, O’Sullivan characteristically but unwisely assumes that, since he is himself bottomlessly ignorant, others are as ignorant as he. As will be seen, that is not so.

O’Sullivan goes on to perpetrate a series of elementary errors, which Lord Monckton will now address seriatim.

Manabe & Wetherald

O’Sullivan writes: “At any rate, let us look at his [Lordship’s] more modern day reference, Manabe & Wetherald (1976). In fact this paper was published in 1967, not 1976, and the authors actually conceded:

Here O’Sullivan, with characteristic mendacity, takes a quotation deliberately out of context. Manabe & Wetherald (1967) had in fact developed their own climate model, based on a previous model by Rodgers & Walshaw (1966). The Rodgers-Walshaw model had found a warming of 1.95 K per CO2 doubling. Manabe & Wetherald (1967) found 2.36 K (of warming, not of cooling) per CO2 doubling.

Manabe & Wetherald (1975, not, as His Lordship had erroneously stated, 1976: even Homer nods) wrote:

“It is shown that the CO2 increase raises the temperature of the model troposphere, whereas it lowers that of the model stratosphere. The tropospheric warming is somewhat larger than that expected from a radiative-convective equilibrium model.” They revised their model to take into account changes in snow albedo, and concluded that a CO2 doubling would warm the Earth by 2.93 K.

Joseph Fourier

Next, O’Sullivan cites a translation by one Casey, a geologist, of a paper by Joseph Fourier in 1827. He says Casey has demonstrated that Fourier’s paper did not refer to what we now call the greenhouse effect. However, using Casey’s own translation, it is evident that Fourier was aware of the distinction – crucial to the determination of climate sensitivity, and yet much undervalued in today’s computer models – between radiative and non-radiative transports.

Fourier talks of “the strata of the air” losing only “the mobility peculiar to them”. These are the non-radiative transports, such as convection and evaporation. He says:

“This mass of air, [if it were] thus [to] become static [or, as Casey has it, “solid”], on being exposed to the rays of the sun, would produce an effect the same in kind with that [which] we have just described. The heat, coming in the state of light [i.e. visible radiation] to the Earth’s surface [Casey has “the solid Earth”], would lose all at once, and almost entirely, its power of passing through transparent solids: it would accumulate in the lower strata of the atmosphere, which would thus acquire very high temperatures [in other words, the cooling effects of evaporation and convection would be absent].”

Here, Fourier is talking of the displacement of incoming radiation to the near-infrared when the radiation strikes an emitting surface such as the Earth, by what eventually became known – and quantified – as Wien’s displacement law. By that law, incoming radiation, whatever its wavelength, is displaced upon encountering an emitting surface, such as that of the Earth, and is emitted at a peak wavelength determined solely by the temperature of the emitting surface.

The simplest expression of Wien’s displacement law is that the peak wavelength of the radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface, in microns, is simply 2897 divided by the temperature of the surface in Kelvin (i.e., 288 K). Thus, 2897/288 is a little over 10 microns, sufficiently close to the principal absorption wavelength of CO2 at 14.99 microns to ensure some interaction, and hence quantum resonance in the CO2 molecule, and hence the switching-on of the molecule like a radiator so that it emits heat directly.

Fourier continues – and this is the crucial passage in which what we now know as the greenhouse effect is posited:

“The mobility of the air, which is rapidly displaced in every direction [upward by evaporation and convection, sideways by advection, downward by precipitation and subsidence] and which rises when heated [convection], and the radiation of non-luminous heat [châleur obscure: i.e. infrared radiation] into the air, diminish the intensity of the [warming] effects which would take place in a transparent and static atmosphere [evaporation and convection cool the surface, for instance], but do not entirely change their character.

“The decrease of the heat in the higher regions of the air [the upper atmosphere] does not cease, and the temperature can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat in the state of light [i.e. visible radiation] finds less resistance in penetrating the air than in repassing into the air when converted [on striking the Earth’s surface, by Wien’s displacement law] into non-luminous heat [châleur obscure: i.e. infrared radiation].”

Any honest reader of this passage will recognize that Fourier is indeed here positing the greenhouse effect.

Nor is O’Sullivan correct in attempting to assert that Fourier is saying that “the ‘greenhouse effect’ couldonly exist if the air stopped moving”. For Fourier explicitly states the opposite: that, even in the presence of the non-radiative transports that give the air its “mobility”, the “character” of the warming “effects” that would arise in the absence of those transports would “not entirely change”.

John Tyndall

O’Sullivan then quotes John Tyndall, and, in doing so, establishes not that Tyndale had not observed that Tyndall had measured the greenhouse effect exerted by CO2, but that he had:

 “Carbonic acid gas is one of the feeblest of absorbers of the radiant heat emitted by solid sources.”

O’Sullivan went on to quote Tyndall as saying that carbonic acid gas is “extremely transparent to the rays emitted by the heated copper plate”. However, that does not demonstrate that there is no greenhouse effect. On its face, it demonstrates that there is a greenhouse effect. Tyndall may have found it small because the greenhouse effect is wavelength-dependent, and the particular copper plate may have been emitting little infra-red radiation at wavelengths chiefly in or adjacent to the principal absorption bands of CO2.

O’Sullivan on to say that, though Tyndall was not able to test water vapour in his apparatus, he had speculated that water vapour acted like a “warm garment”. In this Tyndall was again supporting the notion – which he had observed with carbonic acid gas but could not observe owing to the propensity of water vapour to condense in his apparatus – that there is a greenhouse effect, this time from water vapour, which, by its sheer quantity, is the most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for between two-thirds and nine-tenths of the greenhouse effect in the lower troposphere, though for considerably less in the upper.

O’Sullivan attempts to say that Tyndall’s remarks about the “warm blanket” that we now know of as the greenhouse effect were confined to water vapour alone. Yet the above passages demonstrate that Tyndall had also detected some effect from carbonic acid gas, albeit a weak effect, possibly because his heat sources did not produce enough infra-red radiation in the principal absorption bands of CO2. Amateurs such as O’Sullivan are prone to overlook the wavelength dependence of the interactions between infrared radiation and greenhouse-gas molecules.

Svante Arrhenius  

Next, O’Sullivan makes a garbled and characteristically intellectually dishonest attempt to suggest that Svante Arrhenius’ finding that a doubling of CO2 concentration would raise atmospheric temperatures was contingent upon “the proposition that there were no active feedback mechanisms operating in the atmosphere that would counter this warming.”

In fact, Arrhenius had simply stipulated that he was considering the zero-feedback or instantaneous case. As we should now put it, the forcing from additional CO2 in the atmosphere (3.71 Watts per square meter) is multiplied by the instantaneous or Planck sensitivity parameter (0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter), which contains no provision for feedbacks, to obtain the zero-feedback response to a CO2 doubling, which is 1.16 K.

The forcing is 5.35 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate change in concentration (in the present instance, 2 for a doubling), though the coefficient, which has already been reduced from 6.4 in earlier papers, may still be on the high side. The Planck parameter may be calculated by taking 30 years’ latitudinal temperature data and repeatedly applying spherical trigonometry and the Stefan-Boltzmann relation latitude by latitude, integrating the results over the whole Earth. If anything, the official value may be on the low side.

Here is what Arrhenius actually concluded in his paper of 1906:

“In ähnlicher Weise berechne ich, dass eine Verminderung des Kohlensäuregehalts zur Hälfte oder eine Zunahme desselben auf den doppelten Betrag Temperaturänderungen von –1.5 ºC beziehungsweise +1.6 ºC entsprechen würde.”

In short, a doubling of CO2 causes warming. Arrhenius went on to discuss the impact of water vapor, which, however, he saw as a positive feedback, amplifying the direct warming from CO2, and not as a negative feedback, attenuating it.

O’Sullivan should realize how long is the tradition that stands against him, and how great the labors of those who have attempted to quantify the greenhouse effect. It is the determination of climate sensitivity, not the fact of the greenhouse effect, that is the true subject of the scientific debate.

O’Sullivan also mentions in passing a century-old experiment by Wood, which, however, was not conducted under the rigorous conditions of today. In particular, the straightforward containment within the box capped (if Lord Monckton remembers correctly) with sodium chloride glass would cause heat to accumulate at a rate far greater than would arise from near-infrared interactions with very small quantum of CO2 that would be present in so small a space.

Callender

O’Sullivan merely confirms what Lord Monckton had said in his original letter: Callender had sounded a warning about CO2. Lord Monckton did not assert that Callender had demonstrated its effect.

Unanswered points from Lord Monckton’s original letter of reply

O’Sullivan is silent upon Lord Monckton’s direct refutation of his inaccurate assertions that His Lordship had “styled” himself “‘science adviser’ to Margaret Thatcher; that Lord Monckton had written a speech for her in 1988 when he had left her service in 1986 and the speech is known to have been written by another; that CO2 does not warm the atmosphere at all; that the ‘hot spot’ in the mid-troposphere is a symptom of greenhouse-gas-driven warming only; that remarks in fact made by Al Gore were made by His Lordship; that blackbodies such as the Earth cannot simultaneously possess albedo; that the effect of CO2 is masked by that of water vapor at all altitudes; etc., etc.

His Lordship is entitled to assume that, on all these points, O’Sullivan is now better informed, if not necessarily wiser.

In sum, O’Sullivan’s reply to Lord Monckton was characteristically, belligerently wrong on every material point; he was unable to reply to the great majority of Lord Monckton’s previous points; and his entire letter was predicated on the characteristically intellectually dishonest misstatement of the context in which Lord Monckton had listed some of the scientists who had studied or discussed the impact of CO2 before Hansen (1981), and on the deliberate and dishonest suppression of the vital sentence in Lord Monckton’s reply that established the innocent context of Lord Monckton’s remarks.

*************

‘Unanswered Points’ Answered below:

By John O’Sullivan

(a swift reply to Monckton’s strawman point immediately above – a more detailed rebuttal on the science is being drafted by PSI senior scientists)

Above, Lord Monckton labours the strawman inference that I claimed he was directly involved in Thatcher’s 1988 speech to the RS. I stated no such thing. But I did infer he helped guide Thatcher towards that end by my statement that “you helped your boss, Prime Minister Thatcher spin the CO2 alarm. “

This is proven by Monckton’s own admission he was in Downing St. promoting the “CO2 causes warming” claim until 1986 as he admits “For four years I advised the Prime Minister on various policy matters, including science. “

If anyone is in any doubt that his lordship sought to trumpet his influence about climate issues in Downing St. check his cited interview with the Guardian that he told, ““it was I who – on the prime minister’s behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward.”

The Guardian story I cited in my first open letter reveals, “Viscount Monckton also modestly notes that he was responsible for bringing in “the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street”, on which he “did the first elementary radiative-transfer calculations that indicated climate scientists were right to say some ‘global warming’ would arise as CO2 concentration continued to climb”. “

Splitting hairs, m’lord?

As with Al Gore’s claim to have “invented the Internet” we see his lordship similarly modest about his achievements shaming others who have sought to cast doubt on his great scientific insight and genius. Indeed the Guardian continues:

“On page 640 of her 1993 autobiography Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years, the former prime minister describes how she grappled with the issue of climate change, referring only to “George Guise, who advised me on science in the policy unit”. Indeed, given Monckton’s purportedly crucial role, it seems to be heartless ingratitude from the Iron Lady that she does not find room to mention him anywhere in the 914-page volume on her years as prime minister. “

But, your lordship, if you wish to assert you were the voice of reason at Thatcher’s side for those years while others around her were sounding climate alarm please provide evidence (e.g. any publication by you) prior to, or around 1988, where you make it plain you are skeptical and Thatcher was wrong to sound the alarm in her 1988 speech.

If you fail to provide such proof we are thus fairly entitled to infer, as per your other Downing St. claims, that they should be taken with a grain of salt.

So, which is, Chris – luminary or liar?

Having spent a few days pondering Lord Monckton’s reply to John O’Sullivan’s open letter the senior scientists of Principia Scientific International concluded that the sum of his argument is nothing other than an appeal to authority – a debating stratagem his lordship denounces when used by our mutual opponents, the climate alarmists. In addition, closer scrutiny of Monckton’s references show them to be decidedly shaky. Indeed, with Monckton doing little more than glibly deferring to Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callender, in lieu of any actual scientific rebuttal, there is very little substance offered up for debate.

Despite his otherwise excellent reputation as a debater, Chris Monckton seems decidedly unaware that the aforementioned archaic figures are readily shown below to have been misrepresented, misunderstood and, in some cases, proven to be plain wrong. For it is axiomatic to any student of history to know that those who control the present also control the past because they can rewrite the past and make it say whatever they want it to say. Indeed, it is no different with those who believe in the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis; they, too, have sought to re-write history so that it supports their beliefs.

Fortunately much of what Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, Ångström, Wood and Callender wrote is still in print and can be read by anyone who is interested in what they actually said. After several years of diligent research by determined skeptics we can now all see what separates the wheat from the chaff.  

So, let us begin by examining a key passage in Monckton’s reply:

The curious thing about the above statement is that Lord Monckton himself has a talk that he gives which calls on the carpet those who promote the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming because they use an array of logical fallacies in their arguments.Yet when challenged about his own belief in the “greenhouse effect” he falls back on the same logical fallacies of appeal to authority and tradition. He says, in effect, the “greenhouse effect” is a scientific truth because it has been known about for two centuries and some of the world’s most famous scientists have endorsed it.  

What he is counting on, of course, is that you and I have not read what these scientists and their contemporaries actually said. Perhaps he himself is not aware of what these scientists and their contemporaries actually said or he wouldn’t have appealed to their authority. At any rate, let us look at his more modern day reference, Manabe&Wetherald (1976). In fact this paper was published in 1967, not 1976, and the authors conceded:

Therefore, even some of those scientists Lord Monckton relies upon agree with PSI that any increase in CO2 actually cools the atmosphere contrary to the “some warming” assertion his lordship monotonously repeats.

So let’s review what else is said by these scientists and their contemporaries about the ability of carbon dioxide to cause atmospheric warming.

Joseph Fourier

Australian Geologist, Timothy Casey has done a superb job of explaining how Fourier (1824) and Fourier (1827) are The Most Misquoted and Most Misunderstood Science Papers in the Public Domain and it doesn’t need any further elaboration here. It would seem that Lord Monckton is carrying on the long tradition of mischaracterizing what Joseph Fourier actually said, which, if we understand him correctly, is that the “greenhouse effect” could only exist if the air stopped moving.  

This is from Fourier, as quoted on Casey’s web site: “In short, if all the strata of air of which the atmosphere is formed, preserved their density with their transparency, and lost only the mobility which is peculiar to them, this mass of air, thus become solid, on being exposed to the rays of the sun, would produce an effect the same in kind with that we have just described.” Fourier (1824; p.155) Fourier (1827; p.586).

But does the air ever stop moving? Of course not. Thus, Monckton and other greenhouse gas “theory” believers overstate Fourier’s implausible hypothetical because Fourier clearly referred to conditions devoid of any inherent cooling due to convection and conduction.

John Tyndall

This is what John Tyndall said about the ability of carbon dioxide to absorb radiant heat:

 “Through air . . . the waves of ether pass without absorption, and these gases are not sensibly changed in temperature by the most powerful calorific rays.” 

The “air” that he was testing had atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in it and at those levels there was no effect on the temperature even by “the most powerful calorific rays.” [1]

After testing carbon dioxide at a concentration of about 8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, i.e. 80,000 ppm Tyndall specifically proclaimed:

“Carbonic acid (loosely hydrated CO2 molecules) gas is one of the feeblest of absorbers of the radiant heat emitted by solid sources. It is, for example, extremely transparent to the rays emitted by the heated copper plate already referred to.”  

Whether people will acknowledge it or not John Tyndall thus falsified in his laboratory the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (especially at atmospheric concentrations) can cause atmospheric warming. Even though he wasn’t actually able to test water vapor in his apparatus – because it kept condensing inside of the tube – he nonetheless speculated that, because of water vapor, the atmosphere acts like a “warm garment.”   

“But the aqueous vapour takes up the motion of the ethereal waves and becomes thereby heated, thus wrapping the earth like a warm garment, and protecting its surface from the deadly chill, which it would otherwise sustain,” asserted Tyndall.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that John Tyndall’s speculations about the atmospheric “hot house” effect were exclusive to water vapor and water vapor alone and they were based solely on his observation that the diurnal temperature swing is much narrower in places where it is more humid. This is clearly shown in this passage of his:

 “Whenever the air is dry we are liable to daily extremes of temperature. By day in such places, the sun’s heat reaches the earth unimpeded and renders the maximum high; by night on the other hand the earth’s heat escapes unhindered into space and renders the minimum low. Hence the difference between the maximum and minimum is greatest where the air is driest. He wrote:

“In the plains of India, on the heights of the Himalaya, in Central Asia, in Australia—wherever drought reigns, we have the heat of day forcibly contrasted with the chill of night.  In the Sahara itself, when the sun’s rays cease to impinge on the burning soil the temperature runs rapidly down to freezing, because there is no vapour overhead to check the calorific drain.” 

What Tyndall didn’t measure was the difference in the mean daily temperatures between arid and humid climates along the same latitude. If he had he would have seen what we see today. The mean daily temperature of the humid climates is less than the mean daily temperature of arid climates along the same latitude, because latent heat transfer “refrigerates” the lower atmosphere, as demonstrated by the studies of standard meteorological data and experiments carried out by Douglas Cotton and Carl Brehmer. [2,3]

Svante August Arrhenius  

Arrhenius did, indeed, predict that a doubling of CO2 would cause an increase in atmospheric temperatures, but it was predicated on the proposition that there were no active feedback mechanisms operating in the atmosphere that would counter this warming. Arrhenius wrote:

 “. . . we will suppose that the heat that is conducted to a given place on the earth’s surface or in the atmosphere in consequence of atmospheric or oceanic currents, horizontal or vertical, remains the same in the course of the time considered, and we will also suppose that the clouded part of the sky remains unchanged. It is only the variation of the temperature with the transparency of the air that we shall examine.”  [4]

A contemporary of Arrhenius, Knut Ångström, tested this hypothesis by filling a tube with the amount of carbon dioxide that would be present in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere and then running infrared radiation through it. Ångström first doubled and then halved that amount and repeated the test, which demonstrated virtually no temperature change between these differing amounts of carbon dioxide.  [5]

Taking Lord Monckton’s appeal to authority as our cue, the above rebuttal shows that his belief in the greenhouse gas “theory” is premised on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and half truths. We learn that contrary to what his lordship asserts Manabe&Wetherald conceded CO2 causes cooling; Fourier admitted a greenhouse effect only exists where there’s no convection (impossible in Earth’s turbulent atmosphere); Tyndall admitted CO2 was the feeblest absorber of radiant heat and that “greenhouse gas” humidity reduces temperature extremes; Arrhenius has been widely misrepresented as well as refuted by the experiments of Knut Ångström, while Callender made the schoolboy error of thinking that correlation proves causation – it doesn’t.

As all true skeptics know full well, it was that “correlations proves causation” fallacy that first triggered the man-global warming alarm when temperatures rose between 1975-1998 in line with a rise in CO2 levels. But as we since learned (and validated by 400,000 years of Vostok ice core data) rises in CO2 levels mostly follow rises in temperature, as now confirmed again by a new paper in  Nature Climate Change. [7]

As such they cannot be inferred as the cause of climate change because they are really an inconsequential symptom. Once his lordship and others understand these facts we will all be closer to wider climate sanity and truer to empirical science.

Finally, a supplemental detailed scientific rebuttal of Lord Monckton’s modern day greenhouse gas authority, Professor Roy Spencer, will be published in due course to accompany this reply. Some of such errors have already been pointed out to Roy.

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[1] All of these Tyndall quotes are from: Tyndall, John, On radiation: The “Rede” lecture, delivered in the Senate-house before the University of Cambridge, England, on Tuesday, May 16, 1865

[2] Cotton, Douglas,’Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures,‘ (February, 2013), Principia-scientific.org, (17-Appendix)

[3] Brehmer, Carl, ‘Watt’s Up with the Greenhouse Effect?‘ (April, 2013), Principia-scientific.org.

[4] Arrhenius, Svante, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pages 237-276

[5] He published his results in:  Ångström, Knut, 1900, “Ueber die Bedeutung des Wasserdampfes und der Kohlensäure bei der Absorption der Erdatmosphäre”, Annalen der Physik, Volume 308 Issue 12, Pages 720 – 732

[6] Wood, R. W. (1909). “Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse”. The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 17, pp. 319-320.

[7] Francey, Trudinger et al., ‘Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2 emission trends, ‘

Nature Climate Change 3, 520–524 (2013) doi:10.1038/nclimate1817:

‘A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change finds a disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2, demonstrating that despite a sharp 25{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} increase in man-made CO2 emissions since 2003, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 has slowed sharply since 2002/2003. The data shows that while man-made emissions were relatively stable from 1990-2003, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 surged up to the record El Nino of 1997-1998. Conversely, man-made emissions surged ~25{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} from 2003-2011, but growth in atmospheric CO2 has flatlined since 1999 along with global temperatures. The data demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels due to ocean outgassing, man-made CO2 does not drive temperature, and that man is not the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels’

The UK Met Office long term Central England Temperature record has kept a continuous and consistent data set since the 1660s.  It appears to be reliable and to have maintained its quality. It has not been adjusted as have so many other official temperature records.

Although the CET record covers only a small part of the northern hemisphere, it has shown a consistent rise since the end of the little ice age in 1850 at a rate of about +0.45°C / century or about +0.67°C in the last 150 years. This rise accords well with other temperature records.

However since the year 2000, diminishing solar activity in solar cycle 24, moving back towards little ice age patterns, appears to be having an real effect.

So since 2000 the CET shows an annual temperature diminution at the rate of -0.49°C / decade or -0.59°C in 12 years: this negates ~80{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the entire CET temperature rise since 1850. Although this is a very short period, the extent of the climate change that has been observed since the turn of the millennium is remarkable.

Using the March 2013 CET value it is possible to show the winter temperature values up until March 2013 with a combination of the four months December – March for the first 13 years of this century. The diminution of the four winter months temperatures is more remarkable at a rate of -1.11°C / decade or -1.49°C in the last 13 years. This compares with a winter temperature increase rate from 1850 to the year 2000 of +0.32°C / century or +0.48°C for the whole 150 year period.

There are substantial shorter term fluctuations in temperature and since about 1850 world temperatures have been recovering from a Little Ice Age up by about +0.7°C up until the year 2000. These fluctuations have correlated well with solar activity observable by the number of sunspots. There was a particularly active solar period from about 1970 onward coinciding well with sunspot cycles 21 – 22 – 23: it lead to comparatively rapid warming.

However the current cycle 24 is very much weaker and sunspots are diminishing to the levels of the earlier Little Ice Age.