Common Misconceptions

So let me ask you a question? Why is the temperature at the surface of the Earth warmer than the atmosphere above it? Why does standard atmosphere state that the temperature falls by 2°C for every 1,000 feet of altitude? I used to ask, ‘Why is there snow on the tops of mountains’, but it comes to the same thing.

The atmosphere gets progressively colder with altitude.

Every airline pilot knows this, as it is called Standard Atmosphere. Every scientist knows it, as it is called the Adiabatic Lapse Rate.

So then why has Sir John Beddington, the chief scientific adviser to the government, who appeared on TV this morning, churned out all that business about emissions of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere? If the atmosphere at 1,000 feet is colder than the atmosphere at ground or sea level how can it possibly cause warming? The atmosphere does not warm the ground or the oceans. It is the oceans that warm the atmosphere.

Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is a complete irrelevance. The cold cannot heat up what is warmer. He is confusing sensitivity with causation. It is the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere that may get warmed by the oceans – not the other way round.

He is right in saying that there is sometimes a delay in Great Nature. Once again we see that he brings up the Arctic Circle as proof of warming. But it cannot be the atmosphere that warms the Arctic, can it? The radiation from the Sun has to encounter mass in order to produce heat. The atmosphere has very little mass so the radiation passes through the atmosphere until it strikes the earth and the oceans. It is the waters of the oceans that have the capacity to retain heat fifty times longer than the atmosphere. Therefore any warming of the atmosphere that does occur must come from the bottom up, not the other way round.

Nobody can deny that climates are changing, for the very simple reason that the whole Biosphere is evolving. If he, Sir John Beddington, truly imagines that man is causing Climate Change,let him prove it!

I hereby issue a challenge to Sir John, and to any scientist at the Meteorological Office, or at the Climatic Research Unit to show proof positive that Carbon Dioxide is causing Global Warming and that Carbon Dioxide is causing changes of climate.

For I declare here that it is completely impossible for Man to warm the atmosphere, and it is likewise completely and utterly impossible for Mankind to cause changes of climate anywhere upon this planet.

Anthony Bright-Paul

25 March 2013