Climate Skeptic Conference is ‘100 Percent’ for Greenhouse Gas Warming
Lord Christopher Monckton’s article on WUWT claims “100 percent” of skeptics at latest Heartland’s Climate Conference believe in greenhouse gas warming. But many WUWT readers condemn lordship’s spin.
Upperclass Brit Monckton became a comical figure in Las Vegas on July 7, 2014 when his plum tones repeated the mantra of carbon dioxide climate forcing, a key element of the supposed human-enhanced greenhouse gas effect.
Like others in the “lukewarmist” club his lordship feels the need to circle the wagons insisting CO2 “must” cause some warming – how much? He didn’t say.
But Monckton’s mission was to rally the troops and he wasn’t leaving that Vegas stage till he got his “proof” his audience backed him. But then this was always going to be little more than a drum-banging exercise. In fact. no scientists at the conference even paid lip service to the glaring elephant in the room: why rising human emissions of carbon dioxide are not warming our planet – not even in the slightest. In fact, global cooling has been happening this century.
The harsh black and white backdrop to this is the extraordinary absence of any additional global warming for more than 17 years, despite Monckton’s supposed scientific consensus saying that levels of atmospheric CO2 are up about 40 percent. Thus, more CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t lead to more heat. As such, the “laboratory” of earth’s atmosphere is telling us the theory looks busted.
Instead of facing facts our faux aristocrat emulated the discredited and now infamous alarmist paper by John Cooke et al. (it “proved” the 97 percent scientific consensus on humans dangerously warming the planet) submitting his own dubious six-question survey for conference attendees to complete. Polling duly completed his article claims all 600 of the assembled skeptics were on message. But plenty of savvy readers on WUWT weren’t buying any of it and nor was Andre Lofthus who last week in American Thinker wrote:
“Real scientists would demand to know the physics of how increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming. Is there any real physics behind this unsupported bold assertion?” But then most people aren’t aware that Monckton was never a government science adviser nor a scientist either.
WUWT readers, just like American Thinker, are increasingly doubtful these days. Below we provide a smattering of a few of the choicest replies.
Sure, “under lab conditions colloidal silver is unstoppable it kills 650 plus diseases. In practice though, in an actual human body the results are hardly stellar,” notes one shrewd WUWT commenter.
And this is the crux of it. “In a lab [in vitro], we all know how much energy increased CO2 is said to retain. In practice [in vivo] though? I do not see that the data backs it up. There is often a tremendous difference between in vitro (glass) and in vivo (live) outcomes.”
[Editor’s note: this “proof” of the GHE in a lab flask has caught a lot of people out. What is proven in vitro is not the “greenhouse effect” but a well-known thermal property of CO2 called “specific heat capacity”.]
But as we now see, a sealed laboratory flask was never a good substitute for predicting how this otherwise useful trace gas was going to react in the open atmosphere. It now seems the strongest empirical evidence just washes over Monckton, Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer and the “lukewarmist” club – and as a consequence they no longer sway the enlightened skeptic chatter.
And WUWT followers have been quick to tell Monckton he does not have the CO2 numbers on his side. As reader Khwarizmi put it:
“Since no numbers for a temperature fingerprint can be seriously attributed to our CO2 fingerprint in vivo, we have “nothing at all.” Therefore it would be irrational to vote “yes” on [Monckton’s] question 6. The 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} figure representing those who did vote yes, is like any consensus figure, a meaningless one. All that should matters is how well the map meshes with reality. And it doesn’t do a very good job.”
While WUWT reader John Jarajas says:
“I am just a geologist but I truly believe that there was a major glacial period about 400 million years ago when the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were about 10 times greater than they are today.”
‘Ladylifegrows’ was swift to pick up the theme:
“The greenhouse effect can be demonstrated in vitro even by schoolchildren. But ancient graphs and the stability of life on Earth makes it seem that the feedbacks are so strongly negative that no net effect exists.”
And, of course, even us “deniers” of any greenhouse gas effect over here (at Principia Scientific International) readily acknowledge the empirical evidence – thermometers do show that human activities warm urban areas. That’s readily explainable under standard thermodynamics, and no GHE needed there! You just need to understand the back story to all this that there has been a trilogy of failure in climate science.
Also, given that at least some of those 600 attendees at the Heartland Conference believe in a negative feedback from CO2, precipitation, clouds, and maybe more complex mechanisms – one would expect a percentage of sceptics answering “NO” to at least one, if not more of Monckton’s six questions. But our man in the audience spotted that Monckton was somehow “blind” to those very obvious hands raised by naysayers.
And as an astute Chris Wright commented:
“For those sceptics who believe that human CO2 emissions have caused some amount of global warming, please tell me what the evidence for this is. All the evidence I’m aware of (e.g. ice cores show zero warming effect of CO2 and that temperatures rise before the CO2 rises) suggests that CO2 has no effect on the climate. Certainly, CO2 has a warming effect in the laboratory, but that doesn’t mean it has any effect in the climate system. In this century CO2 has increased by around 10 per cent. And the amount of warming? Zero, or even a slight cooling.
So, for anyone who believes that CO2 has warmed the climate, please show me the data and the proof. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
Yes, Chris, we at PSI endorse your reasonable request of Monckton and his fellow lukewarmists. Sadly, unlike you, we are banned from posting any questions or comments on WUWT. So much for the open debate claims made for his site by Anthony Watts.
As WUWT commenter John says: “the correct answer to questions 3 – 6 is “I don’t know” or “Maybe” but apparently those were not among the choices.”
That’s right, John. No room for quibbling where “lukewarmist” CO2 science is concerned. It’s all “settled” don’t you know!
But according to credible predictions from some of the world’s most eminent solar scientists we are about to see global COOLING for decades to come. In fact, the brightest and best from Russia to America (Global Cooling Awareness Project (GCAP)) are telling us a mini ice age cometh – so much for Monckton’s “lukewarmist” band of believers and their “some” warming religion!
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