Believers in the greenhouse gas theory, the cornerstone of the science of man-made global warming, often refer to a select history of researchers and key papers to bolster claims for a “settled science.” But here we expose just how flimsy is its provenance. Below is exposed the flaws in such seminal works by James Hansen, Richard Lindzen, the National Academy of Science (NAS) and others. This article is a summary of six articles located at the author’s blog (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part 6).

The ‘Charney’ Report

We begin with the NAS, the pinnacle of American science, as we delve into how the major academies of sciences played their roles in the greatest travesty of modern science. ‘Charney’ is a  seminal 13,000-word report about earth’s climate from 1979 and NOWHERE in those 13,000 words does it mention the term ‘greenhouse gas effect’ or any such derivative of the term.

Also, nowhere does ‘Charney’ speak of our planet being ’33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be;’ (a common GHE meme) and no mention of “back radiation heating” and/or delayed cooling due to carbon dioxide (CO2). And who was among the key authors? None other than NASA’s James Hansen and Richard Lindzen!

It seems utterly plausible to infer that uncertainty about the science of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) was the reason why Hansen, Lindzen and their eminent co-authors omitted to include mention of the term, or of the mechanism whereby CO2 causes warming/delayed cooling in the atmosphere.

Hate-filled Response

When I published those six articles I enraged a slew of global warming afficionados, mostly from Skepticalscience.com attacking me on this crucial technical issue. My blog became filled with irate accusatory comments. In response I pointed out that nowhere in this major report were the best brains in the business able to put a name to what they described. As I told them: settled science requires settled nomenclature.

The UN’s latest Climate Conference (COP19) in Warsaw marks an astonishing new low for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Despite 50,000 angry Polish protesters demanding an end to the shameless fakery of the ‘science’ about man-made global warming, the IPCC now claims that:

“during the last hundred years … the sea level increased for the first time since the last ice age,” Tom Nelson reports.

The claim will come as a big surprise to some of the world’s leading oceanographers. As the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) recently reported, such a claim is readily discredited. Peer-reviewed studies by experts in sea level rises (not climate ‘scientists’) suggest that no only have sea levels gone on rising irresistably for the last several thousand years, but that there is compelling new evidence pointing to the existance of multidecadal cycles in the historical mean sea level observations from many ocean basins.

Don Chambers from the University of South Florida led the research team that found that tide gauge records from across the globe show oscillations with a period of about 60 years in all ocean basins except the Central/Eastern North Pacific. [1]

Oceanographers are still grappling with the implications of these findings, which seem to suggest a 60-yr quasi oscillation of sea levels. If so, these oscillations are remarkably similar to those identified in other earth/climate systems including ocean circulation, global mean surface temperatures, large-scale precipitation patterns, and atmospheric pressure, among other things.

[This article originally published as: GHG Theory 33C Effect Whatchamacallit (Pierre R Latour, PhD, Houston, January 15, 2012) at climatechangedispatch.com]

GHG Theory was invented to explain a so-called 33C atmospheric greenhouse gas global warming effect. In 1981 James Hansen [1, 2] stated the average thermal T at Earth’s surface is 15C (ok) and Earth radiates to space at -18C (ok). Then he declared the difference 15 – (-18) = 33C (arithmetic ok) is the famous greenhouse gas effect. This is not ok because there is no physics to connect these two dissimilar numbers. The 33C are whatchamacallits. This greenhouse gas effect does not exist.

Here is the science for what is happening. Thermal T is a point property of matter, a scalar measure of its kinetic energy of atomic and molecular motion. It is measured by thermometers. It decreases with altitude. The rate of thermal energy transfer by conduction or convection between hot Th and cold Tc is proportional to (Th – Tc).

Radiation t is a point property of massless radiation, EMR, a directional vector measure of its energy transmission rate per area or intensity, w/m2, according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. It is measured by pyrometers and spectrometers. Solar radiation t increases with altitude. Black bodies are defined to be those that absorb and radiate with the same intensity and corresponding t. Real, colorful bodies reflect, scatter, absorb, convert and emit radiant energy according to the nature of the incident radiation direction, spectrum and body matter reflectivity, absorptivity, emissivity and view factors. The rate of EMR energy transfer from a hot body, th, is Q, w = 5.67Ae(th + 273)4, where A is radiating area and e is emissivity fraction. But it may not be absorbed by all bodies that intercept it, as GHG theory assumes. In particular, hotter radiating bodies do not absorb colder incident radiation and reemit it more intensely, as GHG back-radiation theory assumes.

Above Earth’s stratosphere, thin air T is rather cold, about -80C. Yet solar radiation t is rather hot, about 120C. So spacesuits have thermal insulation and radiant reflection. The difference, 200C, is meaningless. On a cold, clear, winter day on snowcapped mountains, dry air T = -10C and radiation t = 50C. I can feel them both.

 

According to the Worldwatch Institute, the US Department of Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, is pushing for an increase of the current maximum of 10.2{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} ethanol in gasoline to 15-20{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}. Much of that is supposed to come from corn and, later, from cellulose (wood).

Under the current federal “Renewable Fuel Standard” the US is already slated to increase its use of biofuels from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. That standard does not even include the proposed increase of the ethanol content of common gasoline.

The proposed revision would be a really bad idea and let me tell you why. 

Fuel Supply

To begin with, the idea is a red herring. There is no shortage of automotive fuel or its precursor, crude oil. The production of crude oil in the US already has substantially increased as shown in the graph below and continues to expand. Current predictions are that the US will actually become a net oil EXPORTER in a few years’ time.

For that reason alone, there is absolutely no need to “adulterate” good gasoline with ethanol.  However, there are far more compelling reasons to steer away from the ethanol mandate altogether.

Engine Problems

There is no shortage of potential engine problems with such a mandate. You may as well kiss your car/pickup/motorcycle/ATV, lawnmower, outboard, generator and other engines good-bye. Gasoline with that kind of ethanol content will kill most of them in short order, especially in areas of colder climes. To begin with, many engine and connecting parts cannot withstand the corrosive or solubilizing properties of ethanol when present at higher than 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in gasoline. For example, gaskets and the like in older engines (pre-2000) cannot withstand its effects. Furthermore, gasoline, at any temperature and level of activation will not react with aluminum but alcohol (ethanol) will when the metal’s protective oxide layer is compromised. Without that protection, for example, aluminum would readily dissolve in water.

The Sun moves the atmosphere, rules the weather and is the energy source for all life on Earth!

The Sun as an energy source

The Sun is the source for life on Earth and has a direct influence on most of the physical processes within the Earth’s atmosphere. Sunlight provides the energy for photosynthesis within plants, which in turn creates the atmospheric oxygen required for us to breathe. The solar daily cycle regulates our lives, and the solar annual cycle determines the seasons and hence the agricultural cycle. Yet the role of the Sun in determining the sate and behavior of the Earth’s climate is much greater than just a simple observation of its warmth would lead us to suppose. The Earth’ atmosphere is literally solar-powered, the Sun being the primary cause of all the atmosphere processes, including the General Circulation, the formation of clouds and the generation of both local and global wind patterns.

The Sun, at the centre of the Solar System, is a typical star 1.392.000 km in diameter, with a mass roughly 1 000 times that of the rest of the Solar System combined. Like most stars it is composed mainly of hydrogen (≈70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}), with most of the remainder being helium. The Sun generates its heat and sustains itself from nuclear fusions in the core where the temperature reaches some 15 million °C, and in which an estimated 600 million tones of hydrogen are converted into helium every second. The total solar output into space is 2.33×10²⁵ kJmin^-1, but only a tiny fraction (1/2.000.000.000), i.e. one two thousand millionth, of this is actually intercepted by the Earth since the energy received by any planet is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Owing to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the receipt of solar energy on a surface normal to the Sun is 7{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} more on 3 January at the perihelion (when the Erath is closest to the Sun) than on 4 July at the aphelion when the Earth is furthest from the Sun. The “solar constant” is therefore not a constant. The “solar constant” changes from 1416 W/m² at the beginning of January to 1321 W/m² at the beginning of July.

Wind turbines are illegally inflicting severe losses on so many protected bird species that the problem can no longer be ignored or tolerated.

90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of government scientists feel they can’t speak freely: union survey

OTTAWA — A large survey of science professionals in the federal public service has found that almost 25 per cent of respondents say they have been directly asked to exclude or alter information for “non-scientific reasons.”

Some 71 per cent of those surveyed said political interference is compromising policy development based on scientific evidence, and almost half of those who took part said they were aware of cases in which their department or agency suppressed information.

The study, entitled “The Big Chill,” was commissioned by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, and paints a disturbing picture of government scientists who feel they are being muzzled.

More than 4,000 federal scientists — out of more than 15,000 who were invited –responded to the union-commissioned, online survey handled by the polling firm Environics.

“A chill has settled on federal government science that is even greater than that suggested by the cases so far reported by the media,” Gary Corbett, the president of PIPSC, said Monday.

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is already conducting a study of how communications policy changes under the Harper government have clamped down on the sharing of government science with the public.

Astrophysicist, Joseph E Postma pulls no punches in his latest blog post exposing so-called global warming skeptics who appear to be propping up the increasingly discredited ‘greenhouse gas theory’ of climate change.

Naming and shaming those he suspects may be intentionally misrepresenting the facts, Postma points his accusatory finger fairly and squarely first and foremost at WUWT’s Anthony Watts, Dr Robert Brown and Dr Roy Spencer.

Postma has on many occasions – not only in private emails, but in detailed published articles – set out his scientific case as to why standard physics, chemistry and thermodynamics disprove the belief that carbon dioxide can play any measurable role in climate change.

The Canadian astrophysicist insists that such errors are:

“helping  to destroy the credibility, use, and function of true science.  You can not have a PhD in physics and insist that cold heats hot, that insulation in your walls determines the burn temperature of the natural gas in your furnace, that as something warm heats up something cold the cold thing heats up the warm thing in proportion, etc.  You can not believe that turning on a lightbulb and putting it in front of a mirror will make it shine brighter.”

To quote Mr. Watts:

“Let me make this simple, the greenhouse effect is a well established property of radiative physics in our atmosphere, one that I have observed firsthand through experimentation.”

Oh really?  He’s observed it first hand?  Like when he turned on a lightbulb in front of a mirror and demonstrated no greenhouse effect?  Like when the greenhouse effect “radiative physics” ignores the natural lapse rate gradient that already establishes that the bottom of the atmosphere must be warmer than the average?  As when Watts and his associates didn’t know what a time-dependent differential thermal equation is. 

On a windswept evening in the heart of Scotland’s capital an eager audience was left in no doubt about Salby’s message. The American climate professor, fired by his Australian university employer for daring to speak the unspeakable truth, admitted that the peer-reviewed historical data proves that global temperatures conclusively drive carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, not the reverse.

In short, the message from this principled researcher stands loud and clear for policymakers: the CO2-forcing ‘greenhouse gas’ hypothesis has ’cause and effect’ back to front. But before we go deeper into Salby’s presentation we can’t overlook a most bizarre appearance (enter stage door left!) from the indefatigable (Lord) Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.

Obviously it was quite a surprise to all present when the self-styled former “science adviser” to Margaret Thatcher popped up out of the blue. Judging by the facial expression of Mike Haseler (the scottish sceptic who organised this event) it surprised Mike as much as the rest of us. That said, his lordship was quickly allowed a small speaking slot before Salby. Salby did look a little none plussed, but leaned in the doorway and warmed to the speech as Monckton did his usual excellent job (more on that later below).

Salby was able to demonstrate, by reference to such official data, that recent and short term CO2 levels do not directly follow temperature swings, but are induced by and dependent upon the time integration of the temperature changes. If Salby’s analysis is correct, then all those expensive government computer models programmed to show CO2 and temperature correlation are completely wrong and the ‘decarbonisation’ crusade is all based on junk science.

A paper has been recently posted to arXiv by Fromholz, Poisson, and Will (http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.0394). In their paper titled “The Schwarzschild metric: It’s the coordinates, stupid!” the Authors consider the so-called ‘Schwarzschild solution’ for “a vacuum, static spherical spacetime” and attempt to determine a general means by which equivalent solutions can be generated.

They have however, failed to obtain this means, deriving instead by their methods only one already
known equivalent form, which has no physical significance. Their paper is without any scientific merit.

The full downloadable PDF, ‘On The ‘Stupid’ Paper by Fromholz, Poisson and Will,’ may be located at viXra.org where, over 19 pages, Stephen J Crothers addresses the false arguments for the black hole adduced by Fromholz, Poisson, and Will. Mathematics is employed. Version [2] corrects some typographical anomalies.

Here are selected extracts:

What these Authors don’t realise is that even if it is assumed, as they do, that linearization of Einstein’s field equations is admissible (which they have not proven or even addressed), the “simple wave equation” they refer to is in fact coordinate dependent. Consequently the speed of propagation of the ‘gravitational waves’ they allude to is coordinate dependent. In other words, the speed of propagation of Einstein’s gravitational waves can be given any speed one likes, by a simple change of coordinates. Einstein merely wished his gravitational waves to propagate at speed c (light in vacuum) and so he deliberately chose a set of coordinates to make it so. The wave equation obtained from the linearised field equations is not unique at all.

The speed of propagation of Einstein’s gravitational waves is not deduced from Einstein’s linearised form of his field equations; it is set by hypothesis and a set of coordinates deliberately chosen to satisfy the hypothesis.

From Wiki:

The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines of constant course, known as rhumb lines or loxodromes, as straight segments which conserve the angles with the meridians. While the linear scale is equal in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite.

The Mercator projection is all about the problem of how to transform a physically 3-dimensional object into a two-dimensional representation.  The problem is that this can’t be done without distorting the intrinsic physical properties of the 3-dimensional object, when viewed in the 2-dimensional representation.

What does this have to say about the greenhouse effect?  Simple.  A flat Earth is not a physically correct approximation to the true 3-dimensional nature of the planet.  Just like a 2-D map of the planet Earth is not a true representation of the 3-D planet.

Not only do things like day and night disappear, and rotation stops, but the physics numbers themselves get modified by this physically incorrect mathematical transformation to make the Sun twice as far away as it really is and its energy four times less intense (far below “freezing cold” in fact).

And since the greenhouse effect only exists in these 2-D maps of the planet, such as the IPCC K&T and related energy budgets, and it comes about only in order to reconcile the difference in the physics between the false 2-D and real 3-D planet, then the greenhouse effect is demonstrated as a fiction invented to fix a fiction.

Only this morning very early the enormity of what I had written yesterday struck me. Whereas the Rev Philip Foster had supplied some elegant constructs, I will now tempt you with some extremely simple arithmetic. Twice one is two, twice two is four. Are we agreed? But what is twice nought? Of course, it is nought. Let us go further. What is one thousand times nought? Of course, that is also nought, nothing, zero. Let us try one more time – What is 6,000C, which is reckoned to be the temperature of the corona of the Sun, what is 6,000 Centigrade times nothing? – you have it in one. It is zero, it is nix, it is nil, it is absolutely NOTHING!

This accounts for the temperature of Outer Space. Since space contains nothing, then the temperature of Outer Space is zero. Okay, it is given a Kelvin number, since dust particles may stray there. But the space itself is zero.

So now I am going to attempt to answer some of the questions that I posed yesterday in my essay ‘What’s in the space?’ Was Galileo right? I mean, does the atmosphere have mass? The answer is complex, but in the simplest terms the atmosphere has increasing mass from the top down. At the edge of space there are very few molecules and according to an email I had from the astrophysicist James Peden there are very few molecules at the Karman line, but they are very hot – how hot cannot be possibly measured by conventional thermometers. But the vastness of the Thermosphere is cold. Why? Because it is near vacuum, it is nearly empty. And you cannot heat empty, as per the foregoing conclusions.

Senior UK government minister tells the Daily Telegraph (James Kirkup, November 8, 2013) that a water industry study confirms that ‘frakking’ to exploit Britain’s shale gas reserves is “safe.” Kirkup reports as follows:

Households “right across the South” should prepare for gas fracking to begin in their areas, a senior minister has warned. Michael Fallon says that in the next few weeks, a study by the water industry will conclude that fracking will not contaminate the water supply.

I don’t follow Anthony Watts or “Watts Up With That”, and so, I didn’t see this post from WUWT that was posted back in the summer: ‘Friday Funny – reflections on the greenhouse effect,’ (July 19, 2013):

Let’s quote Mr. Watts:

“After the essays in May on mirrors and light bulbs, I’ve been regularly poked and prodded via email for not wanting to engage “the slayers” anymore, or to do that “third experiment” I mentioned in May. I long ago concluded by my experiences afterwards with “the slayers” that it is a waste of time and effort to try to explain anything to them. Curt Wilson, who did the second experiment and was planning to do the third, has come to the same conclusion, as have many others.”

In regards to the “essays on mirrors and light bulbs”, we demonstrated with Mr. Watts own work that he and Curt Wilson weren’t aware of high-school level math and physics, and that their experiments directly demonstrated that there was no greenhouse effect.  See Slaying Watts with Watts and Closing with Watts.  Also see Slayers “Putting Up” not “Shutting Up” for what started it all and how Mr. Watts et al. walked right into their own debunk of the greenhouse effect.  By the way, I wonder what that “third experiment” was anyway – they were either too embarrassed to continue at their own scientific incompetence, or the experiment didn’t do what they wanted it to, and buried it.

Watts:

“WUWT regular, Duke physicist Dr. Robert G. Brown has been trying to talk some sense into them over at Principia Scientific.”

Let us deal with this “Dr.” Robert G. Brown for a moment.  First of all, this supposed physicist doesn’t understand the basic equations for heat flow, as seen here The Difference between Math and Physics and Greenhouse Fraud 20: Physics disproves the GHE; Steel Greenhouses; & General Electric Lightbulbs.  Those posts come directly from attempting to educate this supposed physicist that cold doesn’t heat hot…seriously this fellow has a difficult time with the concept that cold doesn’t heat hot, and he claims to be a physicist.  Just wait to see what comes next.

To add to the character and competency self-defamation of this supposed physicist, scanning a few comments down into the WUWT article linked above, we see this quote from Robert Brown:

“It takes around 100,000 years for a photon produced in the Sun’s core to get to the surface and escape. Now that’s a greenhouse effect!”

The time it takes for “a photon” to get from the core of the sun to the surface of the sun is a function of the mean-free-path a theoretical photon would have to go through to travel that direct distance, given the number of times scattering/absorption/reemission etc. it would have to go through because the density of the solar gas is so thick.  This has nothing at all to do with the greenhouse effect.  Seriously, Robert Brown’s example intersects the supposed mechanics of the greenhouse effect nowhere.  What is Robert Brown trying to say, that there’s a greenhouse effect in the solar atmosphere which creates the high temperature and nuclear fusion at the core?

“Half the work done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.” E.R. Beadle.

In a 2003 speech Michael Crichton, graduate of Harvard Medical School and author of State of fear, said,

“I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”

We are in virtual reality primarily as Public Relations (PR) and its methods are applied to every aspect of our lives. The term “spin doctors” is more appropriate because it is what they are really doing. A spin doctor is defined as: “a spokesperson employed to give a favorable interpretation of events to the media, esp. on behalf of a political party.” It doesn’t say truthful interpretation. There are lies of commission and omission and this definition bypasses the category of omission. It’s reasonable to argue that if you deliberately commit a sin of omission it encompasses both. A ”favorable interpretation” means there is deliberate premeditated deception. The person knows the truth, but selects information to create a false interpretation.

Despite all the discussion and reports about weather and climate the public are unaware of even the most fundamental facts. Recently, I gave a three hour presentation with question and answers. The audience was educated people who distrust government and were sympathetic to my information. I decided to illustrate my point and concern by asking a few basic questions. Nobody could tell me the difference between weather and climate. Nobody could name the three major so-called greenhouse gases, let alone explain the mechanics of the greenhouse theory. My goal was not to embarrass, but to illustrate how little they knew and how easily PR can deceive and misdirect.

The Spectator has an article (November 5, 2013) by David Holmes who poses the question, ‘Is climate change a socialist plot?‘ in which Holmes infers that those who question the global warming narrative are tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists.

Apart from the tens of thousands of scientists who would disagree with Holmes on this issue, there is also an excellent article by Dr Tim Ball, co-founder and first Chairman of Principia Scientific International (PSI) to put the question into a more factual context. Although the article primarily addresses the fraudulent acts of alarmist professor Peter Gleick, it also provides a unique insight into how the UN’s Agenda 21 goes hand in glove with man-made global warming scare stories.

Below we cite freely from Dr Ball’s article.

Dr. Ball is not only a respected scholar of the back story of the climate fraud, he is a climatologist who witnessed the rise of the global warming fraternity among his academic colleagues in the 1980’s. He has always bravely defended real science, even in the courts when required. To better guide us into deciding the answer to the Holmes question Tim advises us to look no further than the grandfather of the UN’s IPCC, Stephen Schneider, who made the following admission in Discover magazine in 1989:

“On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, wed like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the publics imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

Dr Ball advises that Schneider’s ‘science’ was incorporated by the Club of Rome (COR), that is well known for advocating for a ‘new world order’ based on socialist ideals.