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.

***********

[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.

The Scottish Science, Climate & Energy Forum, scef.org.uk, showcases a brilliant new study by Emil A.Røyrvik constrasting and comparing the intellectual approach to learning and understanding between academia and the applied sciences in industry. The study focuses on the global warming controversy pinpointing perennial flaws in the reasoning process of academics with little, if any, experience of the real world. 

 Consensus and Controversy

 The Debate on Man-made global warming

 Author Emil A.Røyrvik

What marks this paper out from others** on the debate is that it treats the subject seriously and does not start from the premise that Sceptics or “contrarians” are either wrong, or ill-informed or deluded**. The paper is well worth reading as in online.

Dear Chris,

Principia Scientific International salutes your tireless efforts in recent years in opposing the nonsense of man-made global warming. But to those of us who carefully study the history of climate alarmism you are the veritable “poacher turned gatekeeper.”

You have carefully styled yourself as “science adviser” to Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as British Prime Minister in the 1980’s. As the records show, back then the “Iron Lady” became the first world leader to promote what we now know as the man-made global warming scam. At that time you boasted you used “the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street,” to perform “radiative-transfer calculations that indicated climate scientists were right to say some ‘global warming’ would arise as CO2 [carbon dioxide] concentration continued to climb.”

But as an armchair scientist you have been proved wrong. As the decades passed and CO2 levels rose by 40 percent we have seen global temperatures flatline for 16 years. Greenhouse gas predictions (and thus the science) are shown to be wrong.

We have to be careful to distinguish between latent heat and trapped heat, particularly in the sense that Anthropogenic Global Warmers use the term.

Latent Heat is used most often, following Joseph Black, to describe the change of state from ice, a solid, to water, a liquid, to steam, a gas (water vapour), which are all chemically of the same composition.

In order to clarify the difference to ourselves we may buy at a Supermarket a bag of ice. Let us open the bag and pour the contents into a large saucepan, put it on the stove, light the gas. Having applied x calories of heat the ice rapidly turns to water – it has changed from a solid to a liquid, chemical composition H2O.

If I continue to heat this pan of water until 100C, the water will turn to steam, a gas.Steam and water vapour are one and the same, except that the concentration in the atmosphere differs. Steam is clearly visible to the naked eye, whereas water vapour istransparent, though it can be seen on summer mornings as dew rising from the grass.

It is notable that steam rapidly loses its heat and quickly condenses. This demonstrates the volatility of gases. Hot water on the other hand will retain its heat for a long period compared to the gas, demonstrating heat capacity.

Of course, steam can be used to drive turbines and steam engines – the beginning of railways and the industrial age. We can use a bag of ice in order to learn about the Arctic. If we keep the bag in a cold store where the temperature is rarely if ever above zero C. the ice will barely melt at all. However put the same bag of ice in a bowl of tepid water, the ice will melt rapidly. This shows that Arctic Ice will melt, not from the atmosphere, as the AGWs seem to think, but as the result of warm currents of water.

The AGWs use the analogy of sunlight on a stationary car, with windows closed. They aver correctly that the temperature within the car will rise, and they call this ‘trapped heat’. What they omit to add is that this rise of temperature will only occur and continue while heat is being generated. Once the Sun goes down the heat rapidly disperses.

This demonstrates that all sensible heat has to be generated, that such heat is never trapped, but is either being generated or being dissipated. There is no steady state. In particular, there is no way that Carbon Dioxide can trap heat – such an idea is bizarre!

Here I hope I have demonstrated the difference between latent heat and sensible heat in a way that is comprehensible to the layman.

Anthony Bright-Paul

After providing exemplary unpaid service in helping this fledgling science association get off the ground Dr. Tim Ball steps down as Chairman after a personally very challenging two-year period. With 2013 shaping up as an exciting year of growth Principia Scientific International (PSI) expands our leadership team with the appointment of highly respected and established talent.

PSI’s new Chairman is Imperial College’s John Sanderson (photo, center). John is the immediate past president of the Royal College of Science Association, a physicist by training and an experienced and skilled administrator. John wishes to be more than just a figurehead as he helps guide our maverick organization forward as a credible alternative to established yet politicized science associations. John will focus on extending PSI’s reach, not only further into academia, but elsewhere where a truly independent voice on scientific issues needs to be heard.

Two new vice Chairmen: John Elliston & Pierre Latour

With PSI’s growing worldwide membership two new important positions have been created to cope with the demands of such diversity. Serving as Vice Chair (North) will be Dr. Pierre R. Latour, an internationally respected Chemical Engineer of few peers. Dr. Latour’s alma mater, Purdue University’s School of Chemical Engineering, has honored him with their Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award making him one of only 116 of the school’s 9,000 alumni to be so recognized. Pierre has published 68 papers, holds one U.S. patent, and was also Control magazine’s Engineer of the Year in 1999. 

Since joining us in 2011 Dr. Latour has taken a lead in shaping PSI’s policy on the applied sciences and engineering and he now assumes responsibility for guiding our development in North America and Europe.

John N.W. Elliston, a chemical geologist by training will be serving as Vice Chair (South) where he will have an open brief to expand PSI’s network of business and academic contacts throughout Australasia. In a long and successful career as manager, director and full time researcher John first distinguished himself at Peko-Wallsend Limited before engaging on a series of research contracts at CRA Exploration Pty. Limited. He has prepared 103 scientific papers and reports and is holder of the Order of Australia for his services to the Australian mining industry.

PSI wishes to thank all those other outstanding candidates who put their names forward for the above positions in what turned out to be a stunning pool of talent from which to choose. As an association that wishes to represent equally all members from academia and the applied sciences supportive of the traditional scientific method we trust our leadership balance struck between the applied and theoretical sciences will hearten all members.

Finally, we say a big thank you to outgoing Chairman, Dr. Tim Ball for the dignity, courage and humility he showed in the post and we wish him every success for the future.

 

There is a common misconception that the atmosphere warms the Earth and it is this misconception that is at the root of all the theories of Anthropogenic Global Warming, and that beloved offshoot of theirs, namely Climate Change.

With an excellent discussion underway, unfortunately – but not surprisingly – Anthony Watts abruptly closed comments on his latest article attacking Principia Scientific International (PSI).  From his readers’ feedback it is clear Mr. Watts went off half cocked with his mischaracterization that PSI had  “misinterpreted” a revealing NASA press release about CO2, solar flares, and the thermosphere.

Mr Watts is probably aware that he has no valid response to many of the points made by PSI members in various papers and articles. 

Working overtime to hide that elephant with its umbrella is climatologist, Dr.Roy Spencer. Not only did a world-leading expert in thermodynamics, Dr. Pierre R Latour, point out Spencer’s errors with his ‘No, Virginia’ rebuttal to Spencer’s ‘Yes, Virginia’ blog post we’ve seen many other highly-respected scientists disagreeing with Dr. Spencer.

UC Berkeley Discredits Spencer’s Infinite Heat Sink

A look at a thermodynamics physics text from UC Berkley proves, using standard physics, that cold does not heat up warm even in the presence of “backradiation.” Problem #1023 shows that a radiation shield does not cause a source to become hotter if its radiation is trapped, and Problem #1026 shows that a sphere surrounded by a shell simply warms up the shell until the shell emits the same energy as the sphere, without requiring the sphere to become hotter and with the presence of backradiation. What Spencer, Watts, Willis, et al mistakenly believe, is that in order for something warm to heat up something cool, the warmer thing has to heat up itself! As absurd a proposition as an ice cream licking itself.

The debate over whether petroleum is derived from dead fossils or from minerals has just been served fresh evidence from the deepest, darkest depths of the Pacific Ocean. The findings published in the journal ‘Science’ come as further food for thought supportive of those who say the established fossil fuel theory is wrong.

‘Science Daily,’ (March 14, 2013) showcases the findings in ‘Life Deep Within Oceanic Crust Sustained by Energy from Interior of Earth,’ whereby a team of scientists from Aarhus University are making a compelling new discovery 2.5 km deep in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of North America. Principia Scientific International members have been among those at the forefront of the debate questioning whether oil more likely comes from rocks (abiogenic theory) rather than decayed organisms (fossil fuel theory). 

So this latest evidence from microbiologist Mark Lever and his Scandanavian team is creating a real stir. Dr. Lever’s team have been examining rock samples from the depths on board the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s research vessel JOIDES Resolution and finding evidence of life where it was once thought impossible – in rocks.

Dr. Lever reports, “We’re providing the first direct evidence of life in the deeply buried oceanic crust. Our findings suggest that this spatially vast ecosystem is largely supported by chemosynthesis.”

Dr Lever, formerly of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, is now a scientist at the Center for Geomicrobiology at Aarhus University, Denmark. If confirmed, the findings are set to add further support to the theory first proposed by Russian scientists and then popularised in the West by Dr. Thomas Gold in his 1992 paper “The Deep Hot Biosphere” published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [1]

Lever, a specialist in sulphur-reducing and methane-producing organisms, says, “We collected rock samples 55 kilometres from the nearest outcrop where seawater is entering the basalt. Here the water in the basaltic veins has a chemical composition that differs fundamentally from seawater, for instance, it is devoid of oxygen produced by photosynthesis. The microorganisms we found are native to basalt,”

For decades Thomas Gold and many Russian scientists argued microbial life is widespread in the porosity of the crust of the Earth and down to depths of several kilometers, where ever rising temperatures set a limit. According to rock oil believers bacteria at such great depths is able to feed on the oil and this accounts for the presence of biological debris in hydrocarbon fuels. This, they argue, is why fossil fuel theorists need to resort to abiogenic theory for their position. By contrast Gold is backed by several thousand Russian peer-reviewed papers adamant that oil does come from rocks and is constantly being regenerated.

But, if you buy into the fossil fuel argument then, of course, you would also need to argue oil reserves are finite and ‘peak oil’ is a real concern (‘peak oil’ believers say oil reserves are fast depleting because of human extraction). But if you hold the view that abiogenic oil is more likely then there is little reason to fear humans are going to run out of oil reserves any time soon. Indeed, if oil is formed continuously from hydrocarbons in rocks then the name ‘petroleum,’ literally meaning ‘rock oil,’ is well chosen.

Back to Dr. Lever’s findings; this new ocean drilling program is showing that subsurface life obtains its energy not from photosynthesis but from chemical sources in fluids migrating upwards through the crust. As such, we can infer the mass of the deep biosphere may be comparable to that of the surface biosphere. If true, subsurface life may be widespread on other bodies in the solar system and throughout the universe, even on worlds unaccompanied by other stars. As in a previous PSI article we saw evidence that showed hydrocarbons have been identified on other planets which undermines the argument oil must come from decayed plants and other organisms.

In short, Dr. Lever’s findings may be confirmed as further validation of the about origin of natural hydrocarbons (petroleum and natural gas). As such, hydrocarbons would be shown to be not biology reworked by geology (as the traditional western fossil fuel view would hold), but rather geology reworked by biology, as argued by Thomas Gold, PSI mavericks and thousands of Russian scientists.

[1] Thomas Gold, 1999,The Deep Hot Biosphere, Springer,ISBN 0-387-95253-5

It is rare that any newly popularized book on climate gets resounding acclaim by those mavericks at Principia Scientific International (PSI). But Rupert Darwall’s ‘The Age of Global Warming’ is one such case. Darwall earns his three PSI cheers for taking a leaf out of their book and extolling Karl Popper’s more traditional scientific method above the politicized ‘post normal’ science that outgoing U.S. President Eisenhower warned us about in 1961.

And perhaps prominent figures in the climate skeptic community will wonder why such a tome from the ‘lukewarmist’ stable of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) should find PSI’s approval. Certainly it is true that in the heated climate debate there are three sides at war: the ‘alarmists’; the ‘lukewarmists’ and those ‘deniers’ of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) assembled at PSI.

For those uninitiated on the finer points of this scientific schism we can simply say that the alarmists have long preached that humans are dangerously warming the planet thanks to industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions;  the ‘lukewarmists’ disagree but concede CO2 must cause some warming, while the ‘deniers’ (Principia Scientific International) say there is no such GHE whatsoever because CO2 can only cool not warm.

It is true PSI may be congratulating Darwall in haste as we have only had those pre-publication excerpts to go on. He may well have passages inside his book proclaiming the glib but never proven Lawson mantra of “some” warming.  But there is no doubt that PSI will congratulate anyone who also champions the openness and rigor of the traditional scientific method as extolled by Karl Popper.

Perhaps without even knowing it Darwall and his colleagues at the GWPF are taking their tentative first steps towards seeing there is not a shred of real world evidence for their “some warming” claims. Dare we say it, perhaps they might even countenance applying Popperian principles to their beloved GHE and see no gas (apart from water vapor) can “trap” heat or act “like a blanket.”

So, dear reader, judge for yourself. Below we showcase an excerpt from Darwall’s book. To those who follow PSI publications they will instantly recognize Darwall’s words echo the writing of PSI Chairman, Dr. Tim Ball and essays by John O’Sullivan that pinpoint how, in the 1950’s, the American Meteorological Society proclaimed the GHE was bogus because all the infrared radiation assumed to be absorbed by CO2 is already absorbed by water vapor. Nonetheless, this anti-Popperian junk science was dusted down and re-packaged as “the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds” by an unscrupulous James Hansen in the 1980’s.

Rupert Darwall: The First Warmist * 
Financial Post, 13 March 2013

Unlike the blanket TV coverage NASA climate scientist James Hansen generated at his 1988 appearance before Congress, there were no cameras when British prime minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the Royal Society on 27th September 1988. Told that the prime minister’s speech was going to be on climate change, the BBC decided it wouldn’t make the TV news.

The speech had been a long time in the making. Flying back from visiting French president François Mitterrand in Paris in May 1984, Thatcher asked her officials if any of them had any new policy ideas for the forthcoming Group of Seven (G7) summit in London. Sir Crispin Tickell, then a deputy-undersecretary at the Foreign Office, suggested climate change and how it might figure in the G7 agenda. The next day, Tickell was summoned to Number 10 to brief the prime minister. The eventual result was to make environmental problems a specific item, and a statement in the London G7 communiqué duly referred to the international dimension of environmental problems and the role of environmental factors, including climate change. Environment ministers were instructed to report back to the G7 meeting at Bonn the following year, and duly did so.

Tickell’s interest in climate change dated from the mid 1970s. Influenced by reading Hubert Lamb’s book Climate History and the Modern World, Tickell took the opportunity of a one-year fellowship at Harvard to study the relationship between climate change and world affairs and wrote a book on the subject in 1977. By 1987, Tickell had been appointed Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations and informally was acting as Thatcher’s envoy on global warming, his position at the UN making him privy to gossip from other nations.

On two occasions, Thatcher recalled him from New York to brief her.

Tickell was always struck by her determined approach; in the world of politics, Thatcher was a woman in a man’s world and someone with scientific training in a non-scientific world. To meet the test, you had to know what you were talking about; if she challenged you, you needed to be sure of your ground; she could be remarkably vigorous, Tickell found. The prime minister wanted the government to grasp the importance of global warming.

Ministers were called to Number 10 for briefings by climate scientists. “You are to listen, not to speak,” the prime minister told them. Returning to England for his summer holiday in 1988, Tickell called on Thatcher and suggested she make a major speech on global warming. She thought the Royal Society would be the perfect forum for it. She spent two weekends working on the draft with George Guise, one of her policy advisors.

In the speech, Thatcher addressed the society as a scientist and a fellow who happened to be prime minister. Environment policy was her main subject. Action to cut power station emissions and reduce acid rain was being undertaken “at great and necessary expense,” she said, building up to her main theme. “The health of the economy and the health of the environment are totally dependent on each other,” implicitly rejecting the view of conventional economics of there being a trade-off between resources used for environmental protection which couldn’t be used to raise output or increase consumption. It was also clear that the G7’s endorsement of sustainable development had not been an oversight or meant to be taken lightly, as far as she was concerned. “The government espouses the concept of sustainable economic development,” she stated, although the new policy had not been discussed collectively by ministers beforehand or with Nigel Lawson, the chancellor of the exchequer.

Thatcher concluded her speech by referring to one of the most famous events in the Royal Society’s history, when in 1919 Arthur Eddington displayed the photographic plates taken during the total eclipse of the Sun earlier that year. The eclipse enabled Eddington to record whether light from distant stars was bent by the sun’s gravity and verify a prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Cambridge philosopher Alfred Whitehead witnessed Eddington’s demonstration. The scene, tense as a Greek drama, he wrote, was played out beneath the portrait of Isaac Newton, the society’s 12th president, “to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalizations was now, after more than two centuries, to receive its first modification.” In Vienna, reports of it thrilled the 17-year-old Karl Popper. What particularly impressed Popper was the risk implied by Einstein’s theory, that light from distant stars would be deflected by the Sun’s mass, because it could be subjected to a definitive test: “If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observation — in fact with results which everybody before Einstein would have expected.” These considerations led Popper to argue that the criterion for assessing the scientific status of a theory should be its capacity to generate predictions that could, in principle, be refuted by empirical evidence, what Popper called its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. Scientists should therefore devise tests designed to yield evidence that the theory prohibits, rather than search for what the theory confirms. If we look for them, Popper argued, it is easy to find confirmations for nearly every theory. “Only a theory which asserts or implies that certain conceivable events will not, in fact, happen is testable,” Popper explained in a lecture in 1963. “The test consists in trying to bring about, with all the means we can muster, precisely these events which the theory tells us cannot occur.”

In 1988, proponents of global warming did not provide a similar black and white predictive test of the key proposition of global warming: the degree of warming with increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is therefore incapable of being falsified. The issue is not the capacity of carbon dioxide to absorb radiation in a test tube, which had first been demonstrated by John Tyndall in 1859, but the effect of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on the temperature of the atmosphere. An answer can only be derived from empirical observation.

Scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess’s characterization of mankind carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment, further illustrates global warming’s weakness as a scientific statement and its strength as a political idea. While prejudging the results of an experiment constitutes bad science, the proposition simultaneously generates powerful calls to halt the experiment before it is concluded. Yet questioning the science would inevitably be seen as weakening the political will to act. It created a symbiotic dependence between science and politics that marks 1988 as a turning point in the history of science and the start of a new chapter in the affairs of mankind.

Two years later, Mrs. Thatcher would address the UN: “We must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment,” she told the General Assembly, “But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.”
In the past growth happened. Now it had to be the right sort.

*Excerpt from “The Age of Global Warming: A History,” published this month by Quartet Books, London.

As climatologists increasingly, albeit grudgingly, concede climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide approaches zero John Elliston publishes a telling paper on the UN’s disastrously wrong definition of a “Greenhouse Effect.” Aussie geoscientist Elliston, pulls no punches with a new study published this week (March 19,2013) by Principia Scientific International (PSI). [1]

In no uncertain terms, Elliston, author of several peer-reviewed papers, concludes that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on a definition of the “Greenhouse Effect” (AR4,page 946) which is “plain wrong.”

The definition and the accompanying diagrams below are the centerpiece of global warming science: the UN IPCC Assessment Report of 2007.

Elliston’s18-page analysis,‘Why not tell people about the disastrously wrong definition of “Greenhouse Effect” in IPCC Assessment Report 4,2007?’ pulls apart the IPCC’s iconic diagram (AR4, page 115) to reveal fundamental errors (shown below). The cartoon-like diagram is simplified to illustrate the flaws in their “Greenhouse Effect” concept.

Elliston found: “The statement in the definition that downward atmospheric radiation from the cold upper atmosphere “trap(s) heat” in the surface-troposphere system to result in higher temperatures and global warming is untrue.”

He goes on to clarify, “The idea that back-radiation or radiant heat from the very cold upper atmosphere results in increasing the temperature of the warmer air below contravenes at least two elementary laws of physics (Second Law of Thermodynamics and Stefan-Boltzmann Law).”

As Elliston indisputably points out, “cold things like the exceedingly cold upper atmosphere cannot radiate heat to result in warming much hotter air near the ground that is the climate we live in.”

Scientists, like other professionals, are increasingly aware that the UN, man-made global warming and forced mass human sterilization have long been lumped together in the name of “sustainable development.” That there is growing concern about this cannot be dismissed as mere conspiracy theorizing – it is based in fact. Indeed, no less than 178 nations gathered in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro at the first ever UN Conference on Sustainability and the Environment and rubberstamped the UN’s proposals on this.

 

More than 20 years on and the scientific arguments appear irredeemably tainted by politics. In this article we address some of the key issues and present the basic facts hoping it may serve as a guide for more informed rational discussion.

In essence,Agenda 21 is a UN program that references fears about our global environment as the rationale to advance three key UN policy documents: the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Statement of principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests; and Agenda 21. Here the United Nations defines Agenda 21:

“Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.”

Not only is Agenda 21 of increasing concern to libertarians and many civil rights supporters it is having an impact in the scientific community as well. In 2009, as Lord Christopher Monckton revealed, global warming science had become the chosen vehicle to compel nations to cede their democratic sovereignty to the UN. Monckton warned that nowhere does the UN refer to the words “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” and independent scientists saw little, if any, merit in those scientific arguments that were touted as the catalyst for wholesale reforms of our modern industrial lifestyle.

New leaked emails from ‘Climategate 3’ (March 13, 2013) prove Dr. Don Keiller, an undisputed expert in Environmental Plant Physiology, was rebuffed and scorned by climatologists when contacting them to advise that tree ring data was unreliable for global temperature reconstruction.

The revelations are affirmed by Principia Scientific International, one of several bodies in possession of the password to all the remaining emails on the server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), University of East Anglia, released yesterday.

The leaker of the thousands of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has done it again. This time ‘Mr FOIA’ (Freedom of Information Act) has issued a password to a select group with express instructions to make use of this latest hoard of taxpayer-funded government science correspondence that corrupt officials at the university worked so hard to suppress from FOIA requests. PSI is in possession of the password and will be publishing further analysis in due course. It also appears Tom Nelson was one of the first to also receive the notice.

One of the first very signficant finds are emails proving that climatologists deliberately allowed the publication of bogus science papers that claimed to prove tree ring data showed modern temperatures to be dangerously warm. A top expert in tree rings who pointed out the errors was snubbed and ignored in correspondence with Professor Phil Jones, the head of Britain’s Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia.