Breaking: Top German Scientists Discover Fossil Fuel in the Stars

Written by John O´Sullivan

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute, Germany have discovered that the Horse Head Nebula galaxy in the Orion constellation contains a vast field of hydrocarbons (‘fossil fuel’ to you and me).The astonishing discovery signals the death of a theory that for decades told us the petroleum we use to power our motor cars comes from rotten prehistoric vegetation and dead dinosaurs.

horse head nebula

A powerful 30-meter telescope positioned at the Institute for Radio Astronomy confirmed the incredible news. Astronomer Jerome Pety told The Daily Galaxy, “We observed the operation of a natural refinery of gigantic size”. Will this incredible story be appearing in the mainstream media? Probably not. So far only the Daily Galaxy and the oil industry publication Rigzone have put this amazing discovery ‘out there.’

This incredible revelation confirms what scientists and engineers at Principia Scientific International (PSI) had long claimed: abiogenic oil theory was far more credible, based on the actual evidence, than the fossil fuel theory. For some years now Texan engineer, Joseph A. Olson and this author have battled to get this issue more widely debated. Now, it seems, this new discovery offers fresh hope that we can finally dismantle another brick in the wall of mainstream junk science.

Olson and other researchers will claim this new discovery affirms their hypothesis that hydrocarbons are formed under considerable nuclear heat and pressure. Two years ago the Texan engineer wrote: “The newly ‘liberated’ atoms from the fission reactions are in an environment of extreme heat and pressure.  Some of these daughter atoms are stable, non-reactive inert gases, others quickly find a matching atom and form a stable diatomic molecule.  For the remaining atoms, the heat and pressure force new molecular bonding.

As Olson declared years ago, “Oil is a renewable resource and man’s harvesting of this resource, may be of actual benefit to the eco-system.” The Houston engineer believes that once we abandon the nonsense of the ‘fossil fuel’ theory we will better placed to utilize what he believes is one of Earth’s best naturally re-generated resources: petroleum. 

Whether or not the stars are also constantly creating a boundless supply of oil, astronomer Viviana Guzman is sure of one thing; that the nebula contains 200 times more hydrocarbons than the total amount of water on Earth. Now that a world-leading science body, the Max Planck Institute, joins us in letting the cat-out-the-bag it is time that  the discredited ‘one percent’ who govern us stop peddling their self-serving lies about ‘peak oil’ and all those other Malthusian junk science scare stories (global warmers, are you listening?).

For too long a scientifically illiterate mainstream media has misled us. The western world, has been living in an age of stupid where self-loathing, guilt-ridden middle classes were duped into believing government junk science.

Hydraulic fracturing, often vilified by sections of the media, is already confirming there may be vast untapped lakes of oil being continuously replenished under our feet. In the USA the oil and shale gas revolution promises much as indicated elsewhere.

But it isn’t just in the stars that our skyward gaze has revealed a wondrous bounty of hydrocarbons. As Olson reminds us it was four years ago Saturn’s orange moon Titan was found to have hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth. The finding was from data obtained by the Cassini space mission. It was made known by a study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA.Titan is known to have dozens of Titan’s lakes each having the equivalent of all earth’s natural gas supplies.

PSI co-founder Joe Olson asks, “Will humanity harvest and use this resource or will over-funded pressure groups and expanding government forces overwhelm reason and force unneeded control of this resource?”

But while media misinformation rules and we allow it, then we should blame ourselves for such perfidy and our corrupt and collapsing world economy. As long as we fail to fully exploit the Internet as the medium of shared learning we will continue to see the stupid get stupider, the rich get richer and poor, poorer. But if we embrace knowledge and share the truth we can more speedily put behind us the absurdities of man-made global warming, ‘Too big to fail’ banking, ‘peak oil’, ‘fossil fuels’, ‘Big Bang’ theory, etc.

Please help PSI become a force for good in this fast-evolving Age of the Internet where self-directed research and learning can reap real benefits for wider society. The Max Planck Institute has provided an invaluable addition to our growing knowledge of our bountiful Universe. PSI will be addressing further the implications of this new discovery. We will assessing, for example, how we may now better understand the true significance and potential of ‘Frakking’ – the fracturing of rock to release all that earth-bound hydrocarbon treasure which is the key to a bountiful and cheap energy-driven future.

It is up to us to free ourselves from the straitjacket of ignorance.

 

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The Newly Improved IPCC

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been predicting a rising temperature doom and gloom scenario for the last 20 years or so. Al Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for propagating that scenario.

Forward to December 2012

The new IPCC 5th assessment report (AR5), to be released later in 2013, but recently leaked, contains some graphs which all but negate their previous reports’ scenarios. Much of the new report’s language still revels in exaggerated pending-climate-disaster verbiage, but some of the graphs comparing actually measured values with those predicted by the former assessment reports (FAR: 1990, SAR: 1995, TAR: 1999, and AR4: 2007) are telling the true story.

For example, look at this graph showing the predicted temperature scenarios with their ranges in grey colour, the release dates of the four prior reports, and the actual temperatures measured. As you can see for yourself, the runaway temperature scenarios are not being experienced.

 In fact, the actual temperature development has been “slipping” into the extreme lower parts of the predictions range. Then, couple that with NASA’s claim of low sunspot numbers for several decades to come, and you’ll know what to expect in the future.

OFFICIAL TEMP charts 1990 to 2012

Stop griping about a pending climate disaster – and stay warm!

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U.S. National Academies Find Greenhouse Effect Doesn’t Exist

Written by John O'Sullivan

This story is huge. America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and related government bodies found no greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere. Evidence shows the U.S. government held the smoking gun all along – a fresh examination of an overlooked science report proves America’s brightest and best had shown the White House that the greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier.

NAS logo

Unwittingly, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council have all dealt climate alarm it’s biggest ever blow. Their killer evidence had been hidden in plain sight for 33 years until uncovered by a team of maverick climate researchers.

All those global warming skeptic Christmas wishes have come at once wrapped in the NAS document, ‘Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, a joint publication from 1979 commissioned on behalf of the U.S. government. This amazing story ties in perfectly with all the big climate news chatter this past week about the revelations from the leaked draft report (AR5) of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The leaked IPCC draft admits it has had to ratchet down yet again the climate sensitivity it expects to find from carbon dioxide (CO2). No wonder the IPCC is today having to retreat over CO2 sensitivity –  the trace gas can’t be any factor in our climate if there is no greenhouse gas effect to begin with!

Readers can browse for themselves online the 13,000-word 33-year-old U.S. government report that details the role of carbon dioxide and how it might impact climate. You will see that while CO2 is mentioned no less than 112 times, as you’d expect, nowhere in those 13,000 words will you find ANY mention of the greenhouse gas effect/theory. Scientists at PSI who have carefully studied the document assert this to be the most compelling physical evidence ever found proving the GHE as nothing more than a modern  (post-1979) political construct – a veritable sky dragon now well and truly slain. After studying the report PSI expert Hans Schreuder adroitly characterizes the tone of it’s authors: “the main theme that jumps out at me is “we don’t know enough.””

The NAS study was commissioned by the U.S. government to address the best science of the day on the role of carbon dioxide in atmospheric physics and is the perfect seasonal accompaniment to the leaked IPCC admission that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is once again lower than all the experts predicted  – now we know why!

Because of it’s total omission from this key report, any rational human being will be forced to infer that America’s brightest and best in climate science knew as far back as 1979 there was no greenhouse gas effect for CO2 to impact. The report was the distillation of the best climate science from that era. It examined all aspects of how CO2 might alter the temperature of the atmosphere. Popular Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball and climate researcher, Derek Alker, both of Principia Scientific International (PSI) recognized the significance of the NAS publication straight away. Acting on their suggestion this author obtained a download copy from the NAS website and ran it through a full word search to confirm the  numbers. Readers can check for themselves. There is ZERO mention of any greenhouse gas effect as a factor on our climate.

Now let’s be clear on this. No governmental scientific body entrusted to present the best available evidence on the impacts of CO2 on Earth’s atmosphere would omit to make any mention of the so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ effect unless they did not consider it a factor – however small. But omit it they did.

So, if climatologists are to be accorded the prestige of being the best arbiters of what mechanisms are most likely driving our climate why is there such a huge discrepancy between what science knew 30 years ago and what we are being told today?

One crucial factor here is credibility. What we can be sure of is that the cream of U.S. climate science in the 1970’s had no political axe to grind. Back then the political hullabaloo about man-made global warming took another decade to gather momentum. As such this pristine and untainted evidence provides skeptics the world over with an unequivocal smoking gun to challenge the man-made global warming scam.

We can now say with great confidence that no serious mainstream climate scientist (up to the current generation of rent seekers) gave the GHE the time of day. This new revelation vindicates what experts like Tim Ball have been saying all along: the GHE was already debunked by Professor  H. W.Woods in 1909.

I asked senior members of the 200-strong Principia Scientific International who had worked in meteorology or climate science to recall when they first saw the ‘science’ of the GHE emerge onto the radar in universities, schools and national science academies.

PSI co-founder, Dr. Martin Hertzberg recalls:

“I was trained and served as a forecasting and research meteorologist for the U.S. Navy from 1953-1956. The term “greenhouse gas” never appeared in any of the texts or articles I studied during that period, nor did I or any of my fellow meteorologists ever use the concept in either short term or long term weather prediction.”

While Dr. Tim Ball confirms:

“As I recall the original greenhouse effect concept was created as a teaching analogy that was adopted and adapted into the hypothesis. Carl Sagan and Hansen were messing around with the aerosol issue because of the alarmist threat of nuclear winter. This proposed that with a global nuclear war so much dust would be put into the atmosphere sunlight would be blocked driving the world into a snowball earth. The idea was later shown to be theoretically incorrect and disappeared but not without leaving residue such as Hansen’s focus on aerosols and soot. This created his pathological hatred of coal that is the broad theme running through his career. He came to world attention because Gore and Senator Wirth heard about him and brought him to testify before Gore’s Committee in 1988.”

PSI is appealing for more anecdotal evidence from other professionals and scientists the world over who studied in, or were connected to, climate and meteorology studies before the 1980’s.  PSI’s aim is to forensically compile a trace line back to where national science bodies and universities went over to the ‘dark side’ to sound the alarm over bogus greenhouse gas ‘science.’

Sane minds will now put all the telling pieces of evidence together and understand why the most modern of science instruments shows little if any climate sensitivity to CO2; while climatologists knew in 1979 the greenhouse gas effect wasn’t even a consideration. If there was to be found killer evidence to expose this scam this surely must be it.

Update (by John O’Sullivan)

John Cook (Skepticalscience.com) and other GHE fanatics have posted a swath of comments on my blog to berate me that I’ve been misleading in my article (above). It is they who are being misleading. Settled science requires settled nomenclature. The very fact no mainstream science body was touting the greenhouse gas theory by name in 1979 is because: (a) they lacked the confidence in the science to call it as such (b) they well understood that the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ had already been refuted by RW Woods (1909) and affirmed as such by the American Meteorological Society (1951) in its Compendium of Meteorology (Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” pp. 1004-18 (at 1016)).

The AMS was adamant that the very idea that CO2 could alter the climate “was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor.”

The cold, hard facts are in black and white and the revisionists of science history have failed to bury the truth despite billions of dollars in resources and virtual ownership of the media.

 

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New Paper Forces Greenhouse Gas Believers to Abandon ‘Theory’

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A Canadian astrophysicist who last month published a hard-hitting paper exposing critical errors in the greenhouse gas theory is claiming victory.

POSTMA paper front cover

Joseph E. Postma, a global warming skeptic, laid out his paper’s challenge on October 22, 2012 to all takers inviting them to prove him wrong. Postma’s detailed scientific case exposes critical errors in the widely-accepted greenhouse gas effect (GHE). Despite the public fanfare and brazenly throwing down the gauntlet to his critics, in the two months that have elapsed no one has yet stepped up to publish a rebuttal of his paper, ‘A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.’ [1]

So is this failure of hardline greenhouse gas believers to come out and defend their ‘theory’ an indication of a mass capitulation? Joe thinks it is. He and his 200+ colleagues at maverick science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI) are boldly declaring that unless or until believers in the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) have the gumption to come out and openly debate the evidence his papers present then it is only reasonable to infer he’s right. By openly publishing his latest paper and inviting critiques from all quarters, rather than submitting to any of the mainstream journals, Postma and his PSI publishers have chosen to go the old-fashioned, tried-and-tested route: gauging new science by open public examination. This is a refreshing common sense approach when compared with the discredited practice of the big science journals whereby scientists were required to submit their papers to a secret ‘peer review’ by anonymous panels.

This ‘behind closed doors’ system was shown to facilitate corruptive and coercive practice during the Climategate scandal. In 2009 hundreds of leaked emails proved that a clique of government climatologists and their handlers were colluding to bully and threaten editors if they dared publish papers refuting the man-made global warming narrative.

Postma’s freely-available paper has stunned believers of the accepted GHE ‘theory’ into mass silence because it has not one, but two key strengths. It not only cleverly applies textbook mathematics to detail differential equations of atmospheric heat flow but it does so using a wealth of cold, hard observations from nature collated by fellow climate researcher, Carl Brehmer.

Over at his blog, Joe says, “With that data and with the heat-flow equation, I was able to do two things: 1) predict the day-time surface high if NO greenhouse effect were present; 2) predict the night-time cooling if NO delay in cooling was present.  Both of these points were relevant to assess because they represent the two main versions of the greenhouse effect.”

Of great importance here is that Postma’s paper demonstrated that there was no GHE heating up the surface from back-radiation to a higher temperature. In effect, this  proved the standard version of the GHE is wrong. His calculations, based on observations from nature, proved there was no delay in cooling at the Earth’s surface. But it did show  cooling was enhanced there, again proving the mainstream science version wrong.

Postma claims this is a very interesting point, because it is consistently the fall-back position that GHE adherents use when they are proven wrong. In effect, there are two mainstream versions of the GHE theory.  Version 1  is based on the back radiation heating fallacy. This was demonstrated to be a bogus because the laws of thermodynamics expressly state colder cannot add heat to warmer. Experts in thermodynamics have since affirmed that climate scientists had, indeed, gotten that wrong.

When “Version 1” of the GHE was shown to be busted climatologists then fell back to “Version 2” insisting that so-called greenhouse gases must cause “some” delay in cooling of our atmosphere.However, at Postma and his PSI colleagues repeatedly point out, “they [government climatologists] never, and have never, actually stated any numerical values for how much cooling they expect with and without the delayed-cooling GHE overnight.”

And this, dear readers, is where we stand today. Climate science has been backed into a corner and shown to be unable (or unwilling) to adduce any verifiable numbers to back their claims that a greenhouse gas effect even exists. That the whole developed world is being compelled to reduce ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions when the scientists haven’t a shred of evidence to back their ‘theory’ that such gases alter our climate, demonstrates the lunacy of the modern world.

[1] Postma, J.E., ‘‘ A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.’ (October 22, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 20. 2012).

 

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It’s the Sun, after all

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

A leaked draft of the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) forthcoming 5th assessment report has some explosive new revelations:

There is substantial influence on our climate by the radiation received from the Sun.

There is a breaking of the ranks. The previously touted consensus about the forces driving our climate appears to be falling apart.

 Sun heats Earth on One Hemisphere only

The News

Specifically, the draft report says “The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”

 In layman’s terms: The radiation received by the earth has a larger effect on the climate than previously thought.

 Agenda21

Past claims by the IPCC as to the cause of any climate change were almost exclusively laid on the shoulders of mankind’s use of fossil fuels, with its resulting increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. This claim has been taken as sufficient justification to promulgate a new world order, as prescribed in detail by the UN’s overarching program named Agenda21. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in an interview with Yale Environment 360, explains:

“…what we are doing here is we are inspiring government, private sector, and civil society to [make] the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken. The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to [consensus] science. So it’s a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”, [emphasis added].

Consequences

The consequences of the new findings must not be underestimated. They pull the rug out from under the entire CO2-climate hypothesis and, therefore, the claimed scientific consensus which, until now, has underpinned Agenda21. Consider it as an early Christmas gift!

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Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution – perceptions, politics, and facts convenientmyths.com

Dr. Kaiser can be reached at: [email protected]

 

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Switchable Water

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

By Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

Some media are abuzz with the latest invention, Switchable Water, and other “switchable” things. If you believe the stories, these switchables will solve all kinds of problems, reduce energy requirements for a variety of technologies and so forth. It sounds like a real panacea; some even claim that it will force a rewrite of chemistry textbooks.

Laws of Nature

Chemistry and physics are specific fields of the natural sciences which are governed by inextricable laws of nature. One of those laws says that you cannot create energy out of nothing. Therefore, if you want to elevate the energy content of a mixture of substances, for example by separating it into pure components of the mixture, you require energy. The exact form of energy you add is not important; it could be mechanical energy, or electrical energy, or thermal energy (heat). In some cases any one of these will do the trick. The important part of it is, though, that you need the same amount of energy to make it happen, regardless of the form you use.

Perpetuum mobile

So, when someone comes along with an idea which claims that it reduces the energy requirement for any process be very careful. More likely than not, it is a modern version of the Perpetuum mobile, i.e. the perpetual motion machine which is outlawed by Mother Nature.

Ideas involving one or another method to create a sort of Perpetuum mobile have been around for millennia. Just look at the drawing by Villard de Honnecourt (13th century).

perpetuum mobile

As far as I am concerned, these new “switchables” may well exist, but the claims as to their reduction of energy requirements for chemical or physical processes which involve very distinct changes in energy are bunk. Perhaps the term “Witchable” would be more appropriate to describe the claimed energy savings.

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UN Leak: Climate Science in Disarray on Human Emissions Impact

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A group of authors for the UN’s climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admit the sun plays a far greater role in climate than previously thought. An embarrassing new leak from the prominent organization points to a schism in the ranks with many UN researchers now on record stating that changes in the sun, rather than human carbon dioxide emissions have altered Earth’s temperatures.

Alec Rawls

Up till now the role of the sun, referred to as enhanced solar forcing, received only scant mention in prior IPCC reports (AR3 and AR4) being glibly dismissed. But this is the first time IPCC authors have acknowledged the evidence that a solar mechanism seems to be at work. The source of the leak, Alec Rawls, said, “I participated in “expert review” of the Second Order Draft of AR5 (the next IPCC report), Working Group 1 (“The Scientific Basis”), and am now making the full draft available to the public.”

Rawls, who also serves on the Stanford Review’s board of directors, said it was important for this document to be immediately released because of the “public’s right to know.” Rawls declared he felt compelled to break his confidentiality agreement as an IPCC reviewer because of the “systematic dishonesty of the report” which, he says, has been corrupted by “bad faith” and “fraud.” Rawls insists “Once the evidence for enhanced solar forcing is taken into account we can have no confidence that natural forcing is small compared to anthropogenic [human] forcing.”

But, as expected, alarmist blog, ‘Skeptical [sic]Science’ has been quick to try to limit the damage. As per usual defenders of the IPCC “consensus” position are sticking to their forlorn claim that humans emissions of carbon dioxide rather than the sun drives our climate. But Rawls is adamant. Cited on popular skeptic blog WUWT he concluded,

The [IPCC] admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes everything. The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself.”

Consensus” Science Illusion Busted

But most uncomfortable for the “consensus” of IPCC politicized climatology is the stark contrast in claims by IPCC authors between chapters 7 and 8 of the leaked AR5 draft. Pointedly, Chapter 7 authors admit strong evidence (“many empirical relationships”) for enhanced solar forcing. But authors in Chapter 8 (page 8-4, lines 54-57) contradict their colleagues by persisting in debunked claims that natural forcing is relatively small and unchanging. The now busted “consensus” exposes the long-assumed and bizarre IPCC position that solar effects were constant and thus could be discounted. But such an unscientific assumption is well characterized by Rawl who laments, “In effect they are claiming that you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the burner to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to keep turning the flame up to get continued warming, an un-scientific absurdity that I have been writing about for several years.”

But it gets worse, in chapter 10 (Figure 10.5) alarmist IPCC  authors are shown to have been using regression analysis technique in what appears to be a cynical statistical trick to remove the impacts of ocean current systems such as El Niño and La Niña and volcanic aerosols from the instrument temperature record. Critics say this ruse is just another way that junk scientists can make it appear that human emissions are the more dominant climate driver.

Nonetheless, the leaked documents prove that a substantial number of IPCC scientists now recognize that there is an underlying long term solar trend which recent scientific studies show was most evident in the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.  [1.2] Principia Scientific International (PSI), a research group asserting solar impacts are ill-considered and human impacts trivial, expressed delight at these latest revelations.

The news is a timely boost for those climate researchers who have recently published papers pointing to solar, not human, impacts on climate. Among them are PSI experts Canadian astrophysicist, Joseph E. Postma and Australian Douglas Cotton. [3,4]

With such stark contradictions in interpretation of the raw evidence woven into IPCC “science” we should remind ourselves that the mainstream media has consistently misrepresented the IPCC as “the world’s top scientists.” As we have seen with the likes of Lisa Alexander who didn’t even earn her PhD until 2009 yet authored the 2001 and the 2007 IPCC reports, any claims about IPCC authors as being “expert” must be treated with great caution. Certainly, critics will no doubt point to the obvious contradictions evidenced by the conflicting statements of authors in chapters 7 and 8 as proof that one of the most important qualification to be an IPCC author is a commitment to green activism.

A full download of the leaked AR5 Report can be accessed here.

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[1] Roman Warm Period (Europe — Mediterranean) – Summary,co2science.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[2] Hoffman, D.L., ‘Medieval Warm Period Rediscovered,’ theresilientearth.com (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[3] Postma, J.E.,’ A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect,’ (October, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[4] Cotton, D.J., ‘Planetary Surface Temperatures A Discussion of Alternative Mechanisms, (November, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

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Former U.S. Navy Meteorologist Blasts Super Storms Hype

Written by Dr. Martin Hertzberg

A staunch liberal and former navy weather expert writes to the New York Times and his local newspaper, the Summit Daily News to correct absurd media claims connecting ‘Superstorm Sandy’ to man-made global warming.

hurricane sandy

Citing one of the world’s top meteorologists as his source Dr.  Martin Hertzberg tears a hole in the cherry-picked alarmist claims made in an article by Tim Lydon,  an Alaskan parks ranger and occasional jobbing journalist who gets plenty of column inches pontificating about meteorology without any apparent science training. Dr. Hertzberg is co-founder and senior fellow of Principia Scientific International, a fast-growing science body campaigning for higher standards and greater transparency in discredited government science. While the Summit Daily News has published Hertzberg’s riposte there was no such joy at the NYT. Below is an unabridged version of Hertzberg’s letter:

 Tim Lydon in his 12/7/12 article entitled “Super Storms, here they come” claims that Hurricane Sandy as well as last year’s giant storm near the Alaskan coast were “strikingly similar, and both point to a climate destabilized by fossil fuel emission.” He has cherry picked two cases, but what does the totality of the data show? The data for Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) from 1972-2012 shown in Energy Tribune  (which includes Sandy in the 2012 data point) shows that the 2012 (ACE) was markedly lower than the average for that 40-year period. Here is Prof. William Grey, of CSU, one of the world’s most distinguished meteorologist on the subject: “The longest recorded period of no major (category 3,4,5) hurricane landfalls in the U. S. has occurred during the last several years (2006-2012). We have also had 20 fewer major U. S. hurricane landfall events in the last 47 year period (1960-2012) than we had during the earlier 47 year (1919-1965) period. And this decrease occurred during the time of rising CO2 levels”. Where is the destabilization Lydon is talking about?

Lydon then goes on to regurgitate the rogues gallery of climate change “talking points”: “warming oceans and rising sea levels” as “observable phenomena driven by the atmospheric build up of greenhouse gases”. Again, what do the data actually show? In www.climate4you.com October 2012 update, you will find that global sea surface temperatures like near-surface air temperatures have been essentially constant (or even decreased slightly) over the last 10 years. Lydon’s suggestion that the observed current sea level rise of about one-tenth of an inch in one year’s time can have any significant effect on a storm surge of 15-20 feet in a day’s time is clearly absurd.

The climate change echo chamber of environmental activists that Lydon and his fellow “Writers on the Range” are tuned in to is no less fact deficient than the right-wing, reactionary echo chamber of the Fox News network that we liberals detest. For some authenticity, integrity, and a breath of fresh air, the reader is referred to the recent open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations. It was signed by some 130 of the world’s most knowledgeable and distinguished scientists (including Prof Grey) and is available online at the Financial Post.[1]

That letter tells it like it is:

The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased…..the hypothesis that our emissions of CO2 have caused or will cause dangerous global warming is not supported by the evidence.”

 

Dr. Martin Hertzberg

Former U.S. Navy Meteorologist, author and climate science analyst

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 [1] ‘Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists,’ (Nov 29, 2012) opinion.financialpost.com (accessed online: December 12, 2012).

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How Corruption Is Strangling U.S. Innovation

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If there’s been one topic that has entirely dominated the post-election landscape, it’s the fiscal cliff. Will taxes be raised? Which programs will be cut? Who will blink first in negotiations? For all the talk of the fiscal cliff, however, I believe the US is facing a much more serious problem, one that has simply not been talked about at all: corruption.
 
 
corruption
 
But this isn’t the overt, “bartering of government favors in return for private kickbacks” corruption. Instead, this type of corruption has actually been legalized. And it is strangling both US competitiveness, and the ability for US firms to innovate. The corruption to which I am referring is the phenomenon of money in politics.

 

Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost, details many of the distortions that occur as a result of all the money sloshing around in the political system: how elected representatives are being forced to spend an ever-increasing amount of their time chasing donors for funds, for example, as opposed to chasing citizens for votes. Former congressman and CIA director Leon Panetta described it as “legalized bribery”; something which has just “become part of the culture of how this place operates.”

 

But of all the negative impacts this phenomenon has had, it’s the devastating impact it has on US competitiveness that should be most concerning.

 

One of the prime drivers of economic growth inside America over the past century has been disruptive innovation; yet the phenomenon that Lessig describes is increasingly being used by large incumbent firms as a mechanism to stave off the process. Given how hard it can be to survive a disruptive challenge, and how effective lobbying has proven in stopping it, it’s no wonder that incumbent firms take this route so often.

 

The process by which firms do this is rarely overt, and usually couched in the language of regulation. When it involves nascent disruptors running headlong in to regulation that protects the incumbents, then the innovators are painted as “cutting corners.” Conversely, when new regulation makes sense in order to foster innovation and disruption, but it doesn’t suit the interests of the incumbents, then that regulation will often be characterized by incumbents as “stifling red tape.” It seems to be happening more and more frequently, across sectors.

 

Read more of James Allworth’s article in the Harvard Business Review.

 

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Science Misconduct Skyrockets as Governments and Media Look Away

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We’ve all heard of the global banking fraud. But corruption in science is also costing us billions. Increasing evidence points to an epidemic in scientific misconduct as governments, science institutes and the media fail to address the common core of this societal malaise.

Crazy-Scientist-Hansen

In Britain, as institutions such as the Institute of Physics and the BBC are currently being exposed in corruption and incompetence, we examine the latest data to see how far scientists have been  falling down that slippery slope to ignominy.

Daniele Fanelli first brought attention to this issue in 2009 with the publication of her shocking findings in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One. In this article we explore why, despite growing evidence of widespread scientific misconduct, few media outlets, governments or science institutions appear willing to address the issue.

Surveys among scientists themselves suggest we may draw strong parallels between the deregulation of the banking sector and the self-regulation of the press and the rise of corruption in the science. We see that, just as with any organized crime, scientists are more prone to commit data fraud when three factors combine:  significant financial reward or prestige acquired from being dishonest, lax standards and/or regulation, and a prevailing institutional mindset that tacitly condones or ignores improper behavior.

Fanelli’s study was based on a review of 21 scientific misconduct surveys conducted between 1986 and 2005. It found there existed far more corruption than the public stereotype of science showed. Fanelli, of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, found that one in seven scientists admit to knowing of colleagues who have committed serious breaches of professional conduct. Her research showed  46 percent of scientists surveyed admit they have seen “questionable practices,” including data “cherry-picking” and altering scientific findings by work colleagues to fit the agenda of a funding source. Yet, only two percent of all scientists surveyed admitted to having faked results themselves, suggesting the problem may be an inherent endemic refusal to confront the issue.

When Mainstream Media & Institutions Enable Science Corruption

The evidence certainly suggests that the problem emanates from the top down. Last week two former senior figures on the Energy Committee of the Institute of Physics (IoP) triggered a new scandal by blowing the whistle on years of“institutional bias” over global warming hype at the top of one of Britain’s most venerated science bodies.

Outraged by years of endless pro-green shenanigans  by administrators within the prestigious and once unimpeachable Institute of Physics, prominent IoP members Peter Gill and Terri Jackson, leaked hundreds of official emails revealing coercion, bullying and censorship to favor  lobbyists in the global warming agenda. Despite the gravity of these new revelations not one mainstream news outlet chose to pick up on the story. Of course, with so much of the “old” media still sold on environmentalism organisations like the IoP have little to fear if exposed for having long sold out to Big Green.

And this is hardly surprising when you consider the true extent of media bias  shown recently in the astonishing “28Gate” scandal. Last month compelling new evidence exposed the  monolothic BBC, Britain’s prime public broadcaster, rigging a key policy-making committee with pro-global warming advocates, in contempt of the BBC’s legal requirement concerning strict impartiality.

As Fanelli’s study proved, when scientists are able to see others are covering up for them or condoning their wrong doing then they are more likely to massage, alter or interpret their data in ways to suit their paymasters – such changes can be very subtle and sometimes even escape the researchers’ conscious control. This is the realm of “noble cause corruption” and is a tag increasingly being applied to climate researchers eager to “save the planet.”

And What of Our Political Leaders?

But there is also another sinister element in the mix. There is a growing public awareness  in Britain of the unwillingness of government to correct corruptive practices among the bigger players in society. A perception is growing that it is the petty wrongdoer who will be punished hardest while criminality among the elite classes may more readily escape justice. Whether this perception is right or wrong, politicians must take the ultimate blame for it. History tells us we often judge our political leaders most critically by how they react to a crisis. But how many big bankers faced criminal prosecutions in the wake of the banking collapse? How many climate scientists proven to have rigged their data were brought to trial? What will Prime Minister Cameron’s government do next in the wake of the damning Leveson Report on press standards?

It is this pattern of inertia at the highest level that may in part explain why Fanelli’s study, despite much soul-searching upon publication in 2009, has since generated so little action. Let’s not also forget that the UK government investigated Climategate. Lord Oxburgh in 2010 officially identified climate researchers as poor data handlers creating “errors” that would be inexcusable among trained statisticians. But what was done about it?

Oxburgh had recommended that the home of the climate scandal, the University of East Anglia (UEA), should engage outside statisticians to ensure no further repeat of their “error-prone” mangling of Earth’s historic temperatures. The BBC’s Richard Black didn’t even mention that key  specific recommendation. Thereafter, the story dropped off the mainstream media radar and there have been no follow up reports as to what, if any government action followed to ensure that the UEA cleaned up its act, despite the second-rate university continuing to enjoy lucrative taxpayer grants.

Cynics will say the mainstream media has successfully swept the Climategate scandal under the carpet for a reason. Broadcasters are again plying their usual glib climate scare stories premised with “scientists say;” as if what climate scientists peddle is somehow beyond journalistic skepticism.

Only in the blogosphere does it appear actual cutting-edge journalism is being done. It is also the place where new science associations are being formed. The “old” media appears is as inept or biased in its reporting on the rise in science fraud as it has been about the banking fraud or journalistic “phone hacking” and other misconduct. But “cooking the data,” is a long-standing process that mathematician Charles Babbage in 1830 defined as “an art of various forms, the object of which is to give to ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy.”  And it’s an age-old problem because – as we saw in banking, so it is in science – numbers are all too easily “mined” to forge a statistically significant relationship to support predetermined expectation. Too often conflicts of interest are concealed and as one observer noted,“misbehaviours lie somewhere on a continuum between scientific fraud, bias, and simple carelessness, so their direct inclusion in the “falsification” category is debatable, although their negative impact on research can be dramatic. Henceforth, these misbehaviours will be indicated as “questionable research practices.””

Fanelli’s study warrants serious consideration because she found that no less than a third of scientists admit to using such “questionable research practices.” With so much science now being taxpayer-funded it is alarming to know that a third of the science we pay for is “questionable.” Moreover, Fanelli identifies that the surveys suggest a great reluctance among scientists to admit to dishonesty, such that it is believed the actual frequencies of misconduct could be far higher than this.

Fanelli is sure that number is very much “a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.” And as with science, as with banking so that the objective-minded soul-searchers among us can be left in little doubt this is a societal problem.

So when Fanelli concludes, “data fabrication and falsification –let alone other questionable practices- are more prevalent than most previous estimates have suggested,” we can rest assured that self-serving institutes like the BBC and Institute of Physics (and many politicians) have been enablers in perpetuating the ongoing rot within science. In the same way our political reacted to the banking collapse, so are they responding to the decline in scientific standards – if it serves their interests to turn a blind eye then they will.

Until we see the day when a public outcry forces a change, expect little action triggered by the Leveson Report into press standards just as there were no criminal prosecutions in the wake of the banking collapse or against government scientists who cooked the climate books.

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To Anthony Watts and WUWT: Please Stop Your Greenhouse Gas Censorship

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Skeptics are rightly proud of the success of popular science blog, WUWT as an antidote to government misinformation and bias about man-made global warming. However, an irrational censorship over greenhouse gas science by site owner Anthony Watts may be about to damage the credibility of this supposed champion of higher standards in climate science.

WUWT magic gas tirade Dec 2012

For almost two years Mr. Watts has stubbornly opposed all requests to host a debate on his blog about new science discrediting the greenhouse gas effect (GHE), the very cornerstone of alarmist claims that humans are dangerously warming the atmosphere. I personally, have been banned by an irate Watts from even contacting him.

Now astrophysicist, Joseph E. Postma, author of the latest groundbreaking paper ‘Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Gas Effect‘ has become the latest victim of irrational censorship at the hands of the closed-minded Watts. As Postma lamented yesterday, “Right in the middle of a perfectly good conversation, with good science being discussed Watts shut down the discussion.”  WUWT is blocking any attempt we make to link to the comment in question but the URL is:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/01/weekend-open-thread-4/#comment-1164308

The Watts comment reads as follows:

“Mr. Postma and everybody else involved in this idiotic discussion over “magic gas”

The greenhouse effect exists, get over it. The only questions are magnitude, sensitives [sic], and feedbacks.

This thread is closed, along with a warning to any other “Slayers” out there posing under other names (Doug Cotton this means you).

Your GHG science is pointless, wrong, and unwelcome here. Take it somehwere [sic] else, and please, be as upset as you wish. – Anthony Watts”

Mr. Watts may have his own private reasons for wanting to preserve the status quo about that so-called “magic gas” (carbon dioxide). But as coordinator of the increasingly prominent Principia Scientific International (PSI), which has eight signatories among the 125+ of the recent open letter to UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, I make this public plea to Mr. Watts: please show statesmanship and demonstrate your support of open science debate and lift your ban against us. If our science is “idiotic, pointless and wrong” surely your forum is a great place to prove it.

Many thanks,

John O’Sullivan

 

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Absence of any Greenhouse Gas Warming Dulls Doha Climate Conference

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Government-funded climate science is entering its death throes yet governments still want to tax carbon dioxide at the latest international climate conference in Doha. With no global warming trend for 15 years what does the latest science say about the “greenhouse gas effect” and ‘heat trapping gases’?

DOHA climate conference

Science is fast entering a new climate of realism about carbon dioxide. Eight leading scientists from Principia Scientific International (PSI) were among the 125-plus signatories of a key open letter last week to UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon protesting at pointless policies to raise carbon taxes when there is no global warming.

What sets the eight PSI experts apart from the other 120 or so is that they are in the vanguard of debunking the cornerstone of carbon dioxide fears: the greenhouse gas effect. Today Piers Corbyn launches his own blistering attack against mainstream media coverage of those Doha climate talks.

The focus of Corbyn’s venom is a particularly biased new Bloomberg article hyping the new U.S. government’s strategy to squander a further $100 billion of taxpayer monies by 2020 on pointless greenhouse gas-cutting initiatives. Corbyn pulls no punches, “CO2 [carbon dioxide] warmist delusionism is pointing the world in the wrong direction.”

Blame the Sun, Gravity and Hydrological Cycle, Not CO2

And Corbyn should know what he’s talking about. He’s widely regarded as the world’s leading independent long-range weather forecaster – no one has a better handle on what actually drives Earth’s climate. As advocated by PSI, Corbyn insists climate is driven by three key factors: the sun, latent heat (via water cycle) and gravity. All the evidence, says Corbyn, now shows carbon dioxide (CO2) has nothing to do with it. He has a point. Since 1998 global temperatures have flat-lined but atmospheric levels have risen exponentially. This proves there is no correlation between the two.

As the British weather expert insists,”there is no observed or proxy real data in the real world which demonstrates that CO2 increases contribute to warming and there is not one scientist in the world who can produce real data from recent centuries or millenia (or more) to show this.”

Backing Corbyn is Joe Postma, a young Canadian astrophysicist and rising star at Principia Scientific International (PSI) who demonstrates on his new blog what a slew of independent climate experts, including Jelbring, Nikolov and Zeller have shown: Earth’s gravity is the elephant in the room – an overlooked thermostat regulating atmospheric temperature. [1]

Also added to the mix should be latent heat (via the water cycle). Postma and his colleagues have the numbers to prove that it’s latent heat along with gravity that moderate incoming solar energy as the real climate mechanism without any need to factor in the bogus ‘greenhouse gas effect’ (GHE). With climatologists now admitting they can’t understand why there is no longer any link between levels of CO2 and temperature, they are also shown unable or unwilling to explain what has gone wrong with their GHE theory.

Sensible discussion about climate is increasingly being left to independent researchers in the blogosphere. Online is where more science papers are being published independently of the broken ‘pal review’ system of mainstream science journals. The beauty of online review is that it is far more open and lively with no holds barred across many competing web sites. One of several forums where there is dynamic and informed discussion is Tallbloke’s blog. Here you will see genuine debate over the new science provided by PSI and the ‘Slayers’ (or cynically called “the deniers”). As Postma sums it up, Earth’s gentle climate “is actually already described simply by its heat capacity, and latent heat.” A bold yet common sense declaration that will bring no shock to the sensibilities of meteorologists trained to understand barometric pressure and the role of hydrological cycle.

Here’s what one meteorologist, Ulric Lyons has to say, “water vapour, which is considered to be the dominant ‘greenhouse gas,’ reduces peak daytime surface temperature (tropics, summer at higher latitude).”

So it seems water, via latent heat, is a moderating effect in climate. Indeed, and plenty of actual empirical evidence tells us so, as demonstrated by recent experiments of Carl Brehmer. Tests in our open atmosphere prove that heat retention via latent heat and the strongest “greenhouse gas” (water vapor) actually causes lower temperatures, not higher, which tells us that what happens in our atmosphere is limited by a function of the specific heat capacity of all those gases around us.

On Downward Infrared Radiation (DWIR)

For more than 30 years crank science led by NASA’s James Hansen sought to dodge that powerful climate machine: Earth’s hydrological cycle, in favor of placing false emphasis on runaway radiation effects connected with CO2. Why? Because governments would rather scare us and more easily tax the air we breathe rather than admit natural variation by way of the sun, our oceans and clouds better accounts for climate change.

Indeed, Postma and his PSI colleagues have shown that when measured against conduction and convection, radiation is the most trivial mode of energy transport in our gaseous, wet atmosphere, despite what Hansen says. But even hard core climate alarmists will admit all the hype about CO2 and downward infrared radiation (DWIR) goes back to a clever political ruse from the 1980’s when UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher wanted an excuse to shut down Britain’s strike-prone coal mining industry. [2]

Thatcher, in her key speech to the Royal Society was the first world leader to stir up fear about the  “vast increase in carbon dioxide” which she described as “a greenhouse gas” that was “creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability.” But she is now proven wrong, as there has been no additional warming this century despite the rise in CO2.

But to serve her political agenda Thatcher co-opted Big Oil in the form of Shell and BP to construct the new “science” of climatology at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) as a means to eliminate coal (and those pesky striking miners) as a viable energy source. The CRU and other universities all dived into the money pit for “research funding” and serve the agenda that put the focus on atmospheric CO2 rather than the real sky “villain” water (H2O).

Water was then and still is the only true “heat trapping” driver of climate via latent heat. The latest science shows those 1980’s claims about DWIR and carbon dioxide are busted. As Postma declares, “With Carl’s [Brehmer] data and my last paper, we proved that DWIR doesn’t actually cause additional heating on the surface, on top of what the Sun can already do. With ~300 W/m^2 extra of heating power from DWIR, that should have shown up easily. It didn’t, and this has something very important to say about how adding “cold” radiation power to “hot” radiation doesn’t actually increase the temperature of the target. Cold can’t warm up hot in other words.” Read more of Postma’s Q&A here.

Not only in the science labs but also in the courtrooms are PSI experts taking apart junk greenhouse gas science. Dr. Tim Ball’s outspoken denouncement of junk UN climate modeling so outraged the sensibilities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) lead climate modeler, Professor Andrew Weaver that he then sued Ball for libel in January 2011. Now that case is about to come to an abrupt end after Weaver failed to show the court exactly how those IPCC models of the GHE actually work. As such, the world is on the brink of getting a legal validation that the greenhouse gas theory isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Meanwhile, as PSI’s openly peer-reviewed papers have shown, there is no evidence of any additional heat generation occurring in Earth’s atmosphere due to CO2. So climatologists, seemingly unable to debunk PSI’s papers have fallen back on a new strategy: claiming the GHE doesn’t add any heat to the system! Instead, they now say DWIR simply delays nighttime cooling. But as with all other claims about the GHE no one has published any numbers showing by how much. Or have they?

Well, Joe Postma has the answer for us, “Again, I am the only one who has attempted to calculate that. You take the known output at TOA [top of the atmosphere], which the ZEB [the Zero-Energy-Balance] plots shows is ~240 W/m^2, and calculate how much total energy actually gets lost over night. Then, you compare that total night time energy loss to the actual amount of stored energy in the system.”

Common sense tells us that by knowing how much energy you started with, and how much you lost, you can calculate the associated drop in temperature. In this case, the drop in temperature for the whole system over night is shown to be ~1K. However, the actual measured drop at EARTH’S SURFACE as shown by Carl Brehmer’s experimental data was in fact ~10K. An increase in cooling not a delay! So much for that “nighttime cooling” gambit.

Postma continues, “Most of the drop in temperature therefore occurs at and near the surface. So why not just say that night-time DWIR actually helps cause cooling, rather than delay cooling? There is no delay measurable…but the opposite. Don’t forget that DWIR has another half – UWIR [upward infrared], and this UWIR is being lost, whereas if IR from the atmosphere didn’t exist at all, then said energy wouldn’t be lost at all.”

In short the system perpetually operates, either faster or slower, to maintain the balance such that we always see: ENERGY IN = ENERGY OUT. As fellow PSI researcher Hans Schreuder characterizes it, “Just like electricity or water in a river, if there is no gradient (of any kind of energy) then there is no movement of energy; let there be a gradient and wham energy will move to equalize the setting.”

So we see that the fact DWIR exists means that UWIR exists, and if UWIR exists then it is net cooling, not net warming, since half the internal thermal energy is being LOST, and no more energy is coming in over night. If DWIR/UWIR/IR didn’t exist at all, the atmosphere wouldn’t be able lose energy at  all, and so there could be no temperature drop in the atmosphere at all. But DWIR/UWIR/IR does exist, and so energy is being lost that otherwise wouldn’t be.

As Postma sums up, “I think internal IR emission is simply passive energy exchange. It doesn’t really do anything…it is just energy being shared back and forth, but, half of the internal IR emission is UWIR – it is not all DWIR – and so the IR energy is net loss, not net gain and not delay, because if the IR didn’t exist at all, THAT would be the best way to delay cooling.” In short, once radiation enters our climate system it takes a back seat because it leaves all the real work to the hydrological cycle.

So, as Principia Scientific International has shown, if governments can’t prove global warming is due to carbon dioxide more than those other factors, then there’s no justification for hammering already hard-pressed taxpayers with more climate levies. As such we can just leave control of our climate to nature where atmospheric forces always reacts to change by seeking equilibrium, whatever we throw at it.

 

[1] ‘The Gravity of Some Matter,’ (January 15, 2012), tallbloke.wordpress.com (accessed online: November 30, 2012)

[2] Speech to the Royal Society (27 September 1988), Public Statement, Speech Archive, Margaret Thatcher Foundation (accessed online December 3, 2012)

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Alice in Wonderland science

Written by Kelvin Kemm

Our energy and environment deserve better – in South Africa and Qatar

By Kelvin Kemm

A few weeks ago, perhaps as a prologue to the “global warming disaster” convention in Doha, Qatar, South Africa’s Department of Environment Affairs took out a full-page advertisement in our country’s newspapers, promoting National Marine Week.

Alice in Wonderland

The ad showed a map of the Antarctic continent, from above the pole, surrounded by the vast blue Southern Ocean. It also promoted South Africa’s new Antarctic research vessel, SA Agulhas II.

The advertisement’s text mentioned the massive Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which is responsible for distributing vital nutrients to the world’s oceans. It noted that the truly massive quantities of phytoplankton found in the ocean are vital marine building blocks in ocean processes. All that is true, and I certainly applaud efforts to protect the environment and promote National Marine Week and our country’s research efforts.

But then, sadly, the ad’s discussion of physics content went off the rails. Referring to phytoplankton, it said “these microscopic creatures also use carbon to create energy.” Wrong!

The most basic law of thermodynamics says energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely converted from one form to another. The only way to “create” energy is via a nuclear process, whereby matter is converted to energy in a nuclear reaction, as Einstein famously postulated over a century ago. Nuclear processes operate outside the laws of thermodynamics, but there is certainly no nuclear process going on in phytoplankton.

I could have lived with that slip up in the physics. But it got worse – much worse. The ad went on to blame global warming for upsetting the phytoplankton. In a declaration straight out of Alice in Wonderland, it asserted: “The increase in surface temperature over Antarctica from climate change is having a catastrophic knock-on effect, depleting phytoplankton stocks, melting the Antarctic ice sheet and causing an alarming reduction in all marine life.”

First, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no “alarming reduction in all marine life.” None of my colleagues are aware of it. Second, the surface temperature over Antarctica is not increasing.

In fact, a new record has just been attained. Antarctic sea ice has just reached an all-time record for total acreage. Day 265 of the year 2012 set an all time record, and then on day 266 that record was broken. The days 265 to 270 were the six highest Antarctic sea ice extent days of all time.

The environment department then compounded these errors by committing the unforgivable scientific sin of claiming a supposed increase in surface air temperature over Antarctica “is having a catastrophic knock-on effect” – then providing no evidence to back up its assertion and not telling readers what the alleged knock-on effect is.

I cannot even begin to imagine how this knock-on is supposed to alter the Circumpolar Current, which in turn is somehow supposed to affect the “energy creation” capabilities of phytoplankton. Come off it, folks.

There is so much good Antarctic science to be proud of – and, for that matter, really fine South African scientific achievements in the Antarctic to brag about. That the DEA would feel compelled to celebrate National Maritime Week by resorting to phytoplankton scares supposedly related to nonexistent Antarctic heating is beyond mystifying.

Meanwhile, over the last few months, newspaper stories have told of reduced sea ice extent at our planet’s other pole, the Arctic. Terms like “alarming rate” of ice depletion were bandied about casually. Yes, there were reductions in Arctic sea ice cover.

However, on September 18, a video posted by NASA on its website showed that a large and long lasting Arctic cyclone “wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover,” by “breaking up sea ice.” The unusual reduction in Arctic sea ice cover was due to high winds – not to any warming of the Arctic or global warming in general. NASA’s belated analysis demonstrated that a large section of ice north of the Chukchi Sea was cut off by the churning storm, broken up and pushed south into warmer waters, where it melted.

The storm also broke up other ice, accelerating drifting and melting elsewhere. Reuters finally reported that “NASA says a powerful cyclone formed off the coast of Alaska in early August and moved toward the centre of the Arctic Ocean, weakening the already thin sea ice as it went.”

NASA noted that this was an “uncommon event” and that there have been only about eight storms of similar strength during August in 34 years of satellite records. However, a major storm every four years is not all that “uncommon.” Paul A. Newman, Chief Scientist for Atmospheric Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, added that such wind disturbances produce many effects and can also lift warmer water from the depths of the Arctic Ocean up to the surface to accelerate melting.

For some reason – probably having to do with its regular promotion of “dangerous manmade global warming” claims – the storm story was barely mentioned in the mainstream popular media. By contrast, the “alarming ice cover reduction” narrative was covered extensively.

Now jump back in time five years, to December 12, 2007. On that date Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein distributed an article that stated: “An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer – a sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One scientist even speculated that summer sea ice could be gone in five years.” 

Well, five years have come and gone. Borenstein was dead wrong. Does anyone suppose the AP will now publish an apology, admitting that its “science writer” was on thin ice when he made this outlandish statement, and saying he should not have tried to scare the public like that?

Perhaps the answer can be found in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

“There’s no use trying,” Alice said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Especially with the Doha climate change confab in full swing, taxpayers, newspaper readers – and anyone dreaming of a better life through reliable, affordable energy – deserves more honest reporting and more science-based energy and environmental policies than they have been getting.

_______________

Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and business strategy consultant in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a member of the International Board of Advisors of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), based in Washington, DC (www.CFACT.org). Dr. Kemm received the prestigious Lifetime Achievers Award of the National Science and Technology Forum of South Africa.

 

 

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Lemmings Galore

Written by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

by Dr. Klaus L. E. Kaiser

You’ll probably have come across the term “like lemmings” before. Lemmings are small hamster-like rodents found across the Arctic land area and the term refers to their change in abundance and behavior when their number reaches a critical point. At such a point lemmings are said to follow one another to die by drowning in the sea, although there are some open questions about the veracity of such claims [1].

lemming

 

Background

Lemmings are hand-sized rodents, similar to the hamsters your son or daughter (age-dependent) may find cute and would like you to raise as their pet in your place (at least until your offspring loses interest).

Anyway, lemmings and hamsters come and go. Given the right circumstances, every so often they multiply enormously. However, nature has its own way of cutting them down to size again; usually by starvation. In times with plenty of food, any species will procreate as much as possible; lemmings are no different. When the inevitable poor harvest occurs, their fortunes change dramatically. This is known from many cyclic species with cyclic population exuberance and crashes. When a crash occurs, it can reduce the previous abundance by many orders of magnitude.

Lemmingnistics”

OK, that’s a new word. What I mean by it is the pretense of knowing all, still doing the same thing, and expecting a different result than before. Albert Einstein is said to have defined insanity as “doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different result.” Of course, Einstein had his own problems. Someone with the first name Adolf did not particularly like his theories. Adolf managed to enlist a good number of learned people who all concurred that Einstein was wrong. It helped to shape the opinions in the media and the populace. There remained just one little problem: scientific proof was not available at that time, neither for nor against Einstein’s science. As it turned out later, Einstein was right. In response to the hundred-plus scientists who had claimed that he had been wrong, Einstein simply said “one [scientist] would have been enough – if I had been wrong.”

To me that is an important lesson in science. Science does not work by consensus, rather by fact. Any theory, as outlandish as it may sound to another scientist or a layman alike, will eventually be proven to be false or true. But that proof does not depend on how many people believe that the theory is correct or false, at any time. There is no substitute for scientific proof – certainly not of the kind much of the media like to hype. To give you a modern example, let’s look at the Mann Affair.

The Mann Affair

To refresh your memory, Dr. Michael Mann was a major factor, i.e. contributor and lead author to several reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His work on tree (growth) rings helped to propel his “hockey stick” graph to worldwide attention. That graph supposedly showed a causative link between carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air and the climate on earth. That graph was used by Al Gore and others to “sell” the ideas of “global warming”, the “Kyoto Protocol” and other international agreements such as the UN’s Agenda 21 with its prescriptions for all kinds of government control of your life.

Dr. Mann and some of his associates were so convinced of his work that his employer, the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) had no qualms about publishing his biography with its claim that “He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC authors in 2007.” In fact, Mann was so enthused about his scientific prowess that he started court proceedings against others who questioned his claims and wanted to see the raw data behind them [2].

Fast forward to November 2012: The court case brought by Dr. Mann against his most outspoken critic, Dr. Timothy Ball, appears to have collapsed. Mann simply failed to provide the data on which his whole hockey stick graph is supposed to rest. As a result, Mann, and potentially others like him, may be facing counter-suits and potentially substantial damage awards, possibly even punitive actions as well. PSU may not be pleased. They could be on the hook for millions. Stay tuned.

Take Home Message

The take-home message here is simple.

Don’t fall for media hype, awards, or scientific concepts or models with claims like “the majority of scientists believe” as their justification. “Consensus” does not exist in science – but facts do. Computer models can provide great inside knowledge – or can be utterly wrong, the latter for sure if the data behind it are “cooked.”

————————

[1] Wikipedia entry ‘Lemmings’  wikipedia.org (accessed online: November 28, 2012)

[2] L. Bell, ‘ ClimateGate Star Michael Mann Courts Legal Disaster,’  www.forbes.com (accessed online: November 28, 2012)

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Top British Science Body in Revolt over Global Warming Censorship

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Shock new email revelations show that since 2007 senior members of the UK’s prestigious Institute of Physics (IoP) cynically locked down any debate about man-made global warming. Now seasoned writer, Andrew Montford, draws on hundreds of leaked emails exposing how a clique of Big Green activists hijacked one of Britain’s most venerated institutions to shamelessly promote a one-sided version of the hottest environmental issue.

 BISHOP HIll institutional bias

In his startling new pamphlet, ‘Institutional Bias’ Montford lays out the evidence selected from a vast body of leaked internal emails. Two whistleblower insiders were the source, Peter F. Gill, formerly the chairman of the IoP’s Energy Group and Terri Jackson (MSc Mphil), former science adviser to Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Rev. Ian Paisley and Founder of the IOP’s Energy Group.

 The incredible correspondence details a conspiracy to silence any and all dissent challenging the alarmist mantra of human-induced climate change. Self-serving senior figures within the IoP are shown to have harassed and harangued every attempt for a grassroots debate among members over the global warming controversy.

 Montford, a well-respected figure on the skeptic side of the debate and author of the best seller ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion,’ the book that exposed climatologist, Michael Mann’s iconic ‘hockey stick’ graph, is damning in his assessment of this fiasco.  Montford argues the leaked emails prove, “The voice of the membership is increasingly being silenced, with headquarters staff having arranged to abolish the annual representatives meeting, at which grievances had formerly been aired.”

 The IoP is a vast organisation of 45,000 members with a multi-million income derived from member subscriptions, journal publishing and meetings. This new evidence puts flesh on the bones of what has for too long been glibly dismissed by elements of the mainstream press as “conspiracy theorization.”

We see in black and white the email evidence of how, when the Climategate controversy hit the news, pro-green elements in the IoP and British press were quick to paper over the cracks. Despite an upswelling among members for a full debate the IOP’s hierarchy silenced criticism in preference of a  “clear” message on global warming. In this the IoP chose to state “there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now,” much to the ire of disenfranchised grassroots members. IoP’s Jackson was snipped by the green censor’s scissors when a version of her dissenting article, ‘Pouring cold water on global warming’ published in The Belfast Telegraph and due to also appear inThe Times,  was “blocked” by green activists in London. Meanwhile Gill’s integrity was thrown into question by The Guardian.

Gill is delighted with the impact Montford’s pamphlet is making, “I must say that the reaction so far has been largely positive albeit that it has made some people sad and depressed.”

Initially, when Climategate hit the headlines Gill played a role in helping to draft the submission, from the Institute of Physics (IOP) to Parliament. The statement reflected widespread concerns that scientists at the University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to support conclusions and that key reconstructions of past temperature could not be relied upon. But Gill’s statement was not what pro-green propagandists within the IoP wanted and a backlash ensued when the controversy was catapulted to prominence in the UKnational press

Shaken and outraged by their experience Gill and Jackson now both choose to ply their talents within the maverick rival science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI). Both are assisting their new-found colleagues in compiling further hard-hitting revelations, including the shabby way the IoP subverted and blocked a scheduled talk by prominent skeptic, Lord Lawson. Ominously for the beleagured IoP Gill warns, “Andrew has chosen not to ventilate the whole question of how those that had the Lawson meeting cancelled got away with it… but that’s another rather long story….”

With the full set of embarrassing emails now in the hands of PSI we can expect to see a more objective light shone on this once unimpeachable British science institute. Read more  here.

 

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The Courts, Hans Jelbring and the Kiwis Bring Joy for Greenhouse Gas Deniers

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Fast-growing maverick science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI) takes three more steps closer to defeating junk climate science and forcing an overhaul of the world’s “broken” science peer-review system. In the courts PSI’s chairman, Dr. Tim Ball hammers two prominent climate scientists, while in the science labs PSI’s debunk of the alleged greenhouse gas effect (GHE) has won over another slew of key recruits including a prominent climate researcher.

 

scales of justice

 

Today renowned climate expert Hans Jelbring and Bryan Leyland, spokesman on energy and economic matters for the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) each announce themselves among dozens of new faces in the PSI team. Dr. Vincent Gray, Leyland’s colleague at NZCSC also issued a press release seen as further validation of PSI’s indomitable stance in refuting greenhouse gas science.

  

Tim Ball Launches Legal Counter Attack against Michael Mann (& Andrew Weaver)

 

But it is at the courtrooms of British Columbia, Canada that we must first begin our rousing roundup of news. It is here that popular Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball delivers the evidence signalling not one, but two impending dramatic legal victories against carbon hating junk climate scientists. Specialist Canadian libel firm, Pearlman Lindholm are to announce the filing of separate counterclaims on behalf of  Dr. Ball and against discredited climate professors Michael Mann and Andrew Weaver. Recently the Nobel Committee affirmed that both professors lied when each claimed to be co-winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Ball’s legal team are to file stiff counterclaims in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to coincide with the announcement of his separate victories over Mann and fellow IPCC doomsayer, Weaver. Cynics will say Weaver’s qualification as a proven and adept liar who “bribed university students with research funding” helped clinch his position as new Green Party leader

 

Sadly, for Weaver his new political position will do nothing to save his junk science. Dismissal of his vexatious libel suit against Ball is the death knell of those discredited “complex computer models” touted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Weaver, the IPCC’s chief climate modeler, has fallen foul of court rules because he, just like Mann, has been timed out for failing to advance his case since it was filed in February 2011. This dismissal us due to Weaver’s (and Mann’s) bizarre refusal to comply with court rules to reveal the hidden evidence that supposedly underpins their science. Honest researchers would have no qualms over a little ‘show and tell’ to convince a jury their science is “settled.” But these charlatans must now think its worth blowing a cool million to keep it hidden. As such, for refusing to come clean both their lawsuits are now scheduled for summary dismissal, plus costs. The desperate duo are represented by libel expert, Roger McConchie, a big-hitting lawyer unused to having his butt kicked so emphatically round a courtroom. The news is a devastating blow to alarmist attack dogs, DeSmogblog and climate kook, David “jail the deniers” Suzuki who allegedly bankrolled Weaver’s failed lawsuit against Ball.

 

Yesterday (November 26, 2012) popular science blog WUWT ran a new article by Dr.Ball exposing the flaws in computer modeling. Ball and PSI are delighted and bullish after Weaver backed down over his pompous claims about the IPCC’s “complex models” that were long claimed to validate the GHE. But now the Canadian state has given ultimate legal validation of PSI’s debunk of greenhouse gas physics. In his now defeated writ Weaver tried and failed to get the court to punish Ball for declaring Weaver was part of the “corruption of climate science.” Ball further stated that Weaver was “unqualified” about climate and was dishonestly passing himself off as a climate expert when he wasn’t. Hilariously, it seems the court agrees with Ball and Weaver has removed the claim from his website. Also now given legal validity is Ball’s other claim that Weaver had his students heckle and interrupt Ball during a presentation at the University of Victoria in April, 2010.

 

Sharing in the joy is Dr. Hans Jelbring, a long-standing independent critic of the greenhouse gas “theory.” Dr Jelbring provided PSI with a further boost by declaring, “The initiative of PSI is much needed and I will be glad to be informed by PSI and contribute to the goals of PSI as much as my skill allows me to do.” Jelbring’s 2003 paper, published in Energy & Environment is seen as being much in accord with PSI science as well as that of Nikolov and Zeller.

 

New Zealand Skeptics Align with Maverick Science Body

 

As independent climate researchers move closer towards the universal abandonment of the greenhouse gas “theory” last week the indomitable Bryan Leyland showed his leadership by becoming the first prominent Kiwi skeptic to join PSI. Leyland, from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) is their spokesman on energy and economics while fellow NZCSC stalwart Dr. Vincent Gray is editor of the popular Kiwi newsletter. Each, along with Professor Cliff Ollier of the University of Western Australia announced their acceptance of all key elements of PSI science (see below).

 

 Canadian Astrophysicist, Joe Postma, who also assists the Indian space agency and is now at the vanguard of advancing PSI science, had this to say, “NZCSC has made an important declaration in their newsletter and we are very gratified. The NZCSC position is almost a perfect echo of the work the Slayers and myself have been presenting over the past 2 years and more. I am very happy to see this synchronicity!”

 

 Dr. Vincent Gray wrote, “In several recent newsletters I have attacked the plausibility of the basic climate model promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” In particular Dr. Gray condemned the practice of IPCC junk science in stubbornly modelling Earth as is if were flat. As Postma’s calculations have shown, it is by crassly choosing to stick with this “flat earth physics” that climatologists have gotten away for decades in duping policymakers that any such greenhouse effect exists.

 

 Postma’s work, most notably his latest paper, shows that IPCC models critically failed to factor into the mix legitimate heat flow differential equations nor did it take into account the impacts of latent heat, circulation, the Zero-Energy-Balance plot, etc. [1]

 

As Dr. Gray points out the IPCC went badly wrong because omitting these key factors was “completely at odds with meteorological science.” Dr. Gray, like Postma asserts that Earth’s surface is immediately cooled by “convection by the atmosphere and evaporation of water.”

 

 Postma backed Gray’s assessment by declaring, “My initial papers were based on exposing the inherent tautologies and abuse of mathematics and physics such [IPCC] models exploit, introducing a new graphical schematic model baseline for treating the system dynamically as it actually occurs in reality.”

 

 Thanks to such unswerving dedication to defend itself against the “dirty little secrets” of junk science, not only in the labs but in the courtrooms, Principia Scientific International is moving to the forefront as the only international science association prepared to expose the flaws woven (deliberately?) into greenhouse gas climate science.

 

[1] Postma, J.E., ‘A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect,’ (October, 2012), principia-scientific.org

 

 

 

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