Chapter 13 of the IPCC 5^th WGI Report claims that sea level will rise by an amount between 0.26 to 0.97 metres by 2100 according to which of their new scenarios actually happens.

Relative Sea Level, the distance between the level of the sea and the level of neighbouring land, is what matters to most of us. The Level of the open ocean is only of minor importance. This Report tries to mix the two up in a single chart.

Relative Sea Level is measured by tide gauges which measure the distance between the level of the sea registered on specialist equipment and a supposedly constant benchmark location on the neighbouring land. This is carried out in over 1,000 coastal locations all over the world. The records are averages, over a day, week, month or years.

Both the level of the sea and of the neighbouring land constantly vary from place to place.and from  time to time. The sea changes level constantly, diurnally and seasonally. It is influenced by winds, storms and hurricanes and also by earthquakes. The level of the sea may be influenced by breakwaters and harbour works. The equipment may be damaged or its location altered by storms. Severe storms may prevent correct measurement and give a false reading which interferes with claims for “change.”

Land surfaces may change. The land may subside by weight of buildings, and removal of minerals and groundwater. The Report illustrates the problem of measurement near land covered in ice. Geological change (Isostasy) may result from plate movements and earthquakes. Many of these effects cause an upwards bias to the readings.

Long term trends may as much show these changes as any other influence. As a result  they are not a reliable guide to the future, which should be based on a recent period of reliable measurements.

The recent installation of GPS levelling equipment on many sites has greatly improved the reliability of the land-based benchmark. It has resulted in a nearly constant sea level change for many records. It is therefore wrong to place reliance on older readings in order to assess future behaviour. It should be based on the most recent measurements which are the least likely to be affected by previous bias.

The records are publicly available at the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level  (PSMSL) website at   athttp://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/map.html which features a very convenient map of the world from which all the records can be obtained.

Many records are defective in one way or another. Many have gaps or sudden changes. Few have a long-term continuous record.  Frequently there is little sign of change during the recent decade – evidence. that currently there is little or no change in sea level. The following figure from Chapter 13, FAQ 13.1 Figure 1. illustrates this error.

It shows six tide gauge records compared with the supposed global average.

The actual current records, which are shown (rather small), disagree with this supposed trend:

San Francisco is unchanged since 1990.

Charlottetown is unchanged from 1995 to 2010.

Antofagasta  is unchanged from 1980 to 2012

Pago Pago is unchanged since 2000.

Stockholm is actually falling.

Manila is a rogue record.

Dear Professor Steffen,

We read your comments in the Canberra Times on Saturday 26th October. As you have not responded to our earlier letter we now add our further concerns.

Is it misleading the Australian public when you say that the science on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warmining/(CAGW) alias climate change/ extreme weather events etc. has been settled for decades?

You completely omit to mention the NIPCC Report which shows robust evidence for the null hypothesis.

You omit the historical events detailed in the climate gate emails which clearly indicate that the science was not settled as far back as 2009. Is it a coincidence that the bipartisan support for CAGW started to decline as from 2009?

You omit to mention the recorded signatures of more than 30,000 scientists (www.petitionproject.org) who have maintained over a considerable period of time that there is no convincing evidence for CAGW.

You omit to mention that many of these scientists are considering legal action against Al Gore for fraud (Preview on YouTube).

The Australian people trust you to provide them with reliable, evidence-based information. That means no exaggeration of effects, no misleading allegations and no omission of evidence that does not support your hypothesis.

University of Florida Threatens to Arrest anti-GMO Presenters and Bans Them from Campus

Gainesville, FL (US) – The University of Florida, a leading institution researching genetically engineered (GE) trees [1], threatened to arrest activists from the Campaign to STOP GE Trees when they arrived on campus Saturday to prepare for a presentation to highlight critical perspectives on tree biotechnology that was scheduled for tonight. The police informed the group that their presentation had been cancelled, and warned them that they were banned from University of Florida (UF) property for three years.

“Evicting us from campus was a blatant act of censorship by the University of Florida, likely linked to the millions they are receiving for GE trees research,” said Keith Brunner, from the international Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees [2].

In 2011, the University of Florida School of Forest Resources and Conservation along with GE tree company ArborGen won a three-year, $6.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop GE loblolly pines for liquid biofuel production [3]. There is rising opposition to GE trees due to concerns over genetic contamination, increased flammability, deforestation and other ecological impacts of industrial tree plantations.

The UF presentation was part of a multi-week speaking tour titled “The Growing Threat: Genetically Engineered Trees and the Future of Forests” [4]. The tour will travel through several southern states (NC, GA, FL, SC) to educate the public about the social and environmental threats posed by the proposed commercial release of billions of genetically engineered freeze tolerant eucalyptus trees in seven southern states from South Carolina to Florida to Texas.

University of Florida Professor Bron Taylor teaches a course on Environmental Ethics and had encouraged students to attend the presentation. He expressed disappointment about the cancellation and stated, “The University is supposed to be a place characterized by free and robust debate. This situation begs the question, why was the presentation cancelled and these activists banned from campus under a threat of arrest?”

Genes and environment play dynamic role together

The well-established view that intelligence is largely genetically fixed and hardly malleable has been discarded. A team of Dutch research methodologists at VU University Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Tilburg University propose that the high heritability of intelligence stems from a dynamic interplay between genes and environment that takes place throughout the course of development. The interplay results in individual differences in knowledge and skills, and in this way differences in intelligence arise. The role of education, culture, and society is crucial in this process; they enable genetic effects to arise. The larger the environmental influences, the larger the genetic effects. Their paper will be published in the upcoming edition of Psychological Science. Empirical results contradict mainstream intelligence theories Research methodologists Kees-Jan Kan, Jelte Wicherts, Conor Dolan en Han van der Maas investigated how well intelligence theories actually predict empirical results. To this end, they listed the predictions from mainstream intelligence theories and collected relevant results that have been published in the scientific literature over the last decades, and which pertained to intelligence test scores from thousands of subjects across the world.The team showed that on essential aspects empirical results were opposite of the predictions from mainstream theories of intelligence. Surprisingly, it also turned out that the larger the genetic influences on completing intelligence tests are, the larger is also the dependency on education and culture. Heritability estimates of clearly culture-depended knowledge and skills, such as vocabulary, spelling, and general knowledge, are the highest among all abilities that are measured by intelligence test batteries, hence higher than heritability estimates of less culture-depended abilities such as working memory, spatial ability, reasoning, and processing speed. This pattern did not follow from mainstream theories of intelligence, in which intelligence is interpreted as a biological trait.The old idea: nature versus nurture

Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste

The wind industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. For example, the industry claims that wind energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

But there are many ways to skin a cat. As IER pointed out last week, even if wind curbs CO2 emissions, wind installations injure, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year in clear violation of federal law. Any marginal reduction in emissions comes at the expense of protected bird species, including bald and golden eagles. The truth is, all energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is full of necessary trade-offs. The further truth is that affordable, abundant energy has made life for billions of people much better than it ever was.

Another environmental trade-off concerns the materials necessary to construct wind turbines. Modern wind turbines depend on rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Unfortunately, given federal regulations in the U.S. that restrict rare earth mineral development and China’s poor record of environmental stewardship, the process of extracting these minerals imposes wretched environmental and public health impacts on local communities. It’s a story Big Wind doesn’t want you to hear.

Steel Greenhouses and General Electric Lightbulbs

What is heating…

The “steel greenhouse” provides a basic schematic for the meme of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, among other sources.  Sometimes the terminology goes by the phraseology of “backradiation”, and sometimes it goes by that of “heat trapping” or “heat flow restriction”, and others, as the need arises.  There is little consistency, and these terms can all mean very different things physically, which is curious for a supposedly scientific concept.

Generally, the underlying concept is that a heat source which is enclosed in some relevant fashion will “become” warmer because, variously, A) radiation from the source of thermal radiation directed back to the source of radiation (i.e. backradiation) by the enclosure leads to the source becoming warmer, because i) radiation from the cooler passive enclosure, either reflected or absorbed and re-emitted from the passive enclosure and back to the warmer source, becomes thermally absorbed by the surface of the warmer source which leads to the warmer source becoming warmer still, or ii) heat trapped by the enclosure leads to the source of heat inside the enclosure to become warmer as the source struggles to radiatively emit the same amount of thermal energy to the outside of the passive enclosure, or B) as the source of heat warms the cooler enclosure, the source of heat is lead to become warmer still as the cooler enclosure warms up to equilibrium with the source of heat, in order to maintain the temperature difference between the source and the passive cooler enclosure.

Applied to the atmosphere, the terminologies are such that the atmosphere heats the surface of the Earth with backradiation, or that the atmosphere traps heat from the surface thus leading to the surface becoming warmer in the attempt to cool, etc.  It is the presence of a cooler object, i.e. cold atmospheric gas, that by some method, leads to the source of heat of the cooler gas, which is the ground surface, to become warmer.

None of these statements are physically valid or are supported by traditional or modern physics.

Let it be clear, the only physically valid statement that could be made is that:

The atmosphere becomes warmer, if it absorbs more heat.  

Likewise:

The surface becomes warmer, if it absorbs more heat.

I will let Pierre Latour speak here, from a private email discussion:

“The Stefan-Boltzmann equation gives intensity of radiation, W/m2, emitted by a body at temperature T. It is analogous to fluid pressure, kg/m2. Stefan and Boltzmann called it intensity, not heat transfer, because it is intensity, not heat transfer. (It becomes heat transfer in maximum case emitting to 0K surroundings, so it is a max heat transfer. Real transfer is always less.) All bodies radiate with an intensity and they all experience a pressure. But for a fluid to flow there must be a driving force, a pressure difference. Physics teaches the fluid flows from high pressure to lower at a rate proportional to the pressure difference. The pressure at the bottom of the sea is high but uniform so no fluid flow.

For radiant energy to flow, transfer from one body to be absorbed by another body, heating it, there must be a driving force and that force for radiant energy transfer is an intensity difference. Physics teaches that the radiant heat flows from high intensity, to lower intensity, at a rate proportional to the difference (TH4 – TL4). Two identical glowing radiators facing each other radiate intensely but without any heat transfer between them.

The GHGT error is assigning to that second intensity term in the radiant heat transfer law an energy flow from cold to hot. Just because there is an algebraic term in the equation for cooler body radiating intensity does not mean it corresponds to a rate of heat transfer from cold to hot.

Atmospheric CO2 radiates with same intensity in all directions but the direction and rate of heat transfer to surroundings depends on surrounding’s radiating intensity. Energy transfer is asymmetric. So if the K-T 333 back-radiation arrow signifies direction of downward radiation intensity in all directions, ok, if they point it in all directions. But K-T labeled their diagram energy flows, and their back-radiation arrow 333 cannot be a flow, absorbed by surface, warming it further. Hence we have the dispute about semantics of physics which GHE believers dismiss with derision. “

If the atmosphere gets warmer by absorbing more heat, then something already warmer than the atmosphere (particularly its own source of heat, the surface) doesn’t need to become warmer-still in this process.  The atmosphere is simply heated to higher temperature by something warmer than it, up to the point where they’d be equal in temperature.  And that’s it.

Two Australian scientists, Dr Robin Warren and Dr Barry Marshall won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005 for their pioneering cure of peptic ulcers.  What is most revealing about ‘established science’ is that these gifted and dedicated doctors had made this discovery in 1982.  Establish orthodoxy moves at a snail’s pace when confronted with unorthodoxy.

The ‘settled science’ of peptic ulcers for decades was based on gastric samplings that showed an acidic or lower pH than normal.  This indicated that the patient obviously had a dietary imbalance, best cured by alkaline tinctures, or curiously enough, dairy products which were themselves acidic.  It is inexplicable that the science community clung to this false premise for so long.

What Warren/Marshall research was able to show was that the bacterium, H. Pylori, was the cause of the ulcer and the increased acid was from the bacteria’s waste.  Millions suffered needlessly for decades while ‘experts’ dithered and obstructed this important medical breakthrough.

The established experts were unable to accept the overwhelming evidence of successful treatment based on this theory.  To prove his findings, the courageous Dr Marshall infected himself with H. Pylori and then cured himself with his own antibiotic treatment.  It is the determined skeptic that delivers the hope and promise of science to humanity.

Given the low level of the lay public’s understanding of science, it is a real challenge to provide meaningful debate to the established leadership and not over-reach the populace.  Along with the restraints of article brevity, all concepts must be simplified and each article self supporting.  This articles is best viewed in context with the previous companion article.

Heat is energy in transit from warmer systems to colder systems.

Once I had begun to take in the full import of the fact that the earth and the oceans meet the atmosphere just everywhere and all-at-once I began to search for a word to describe this phenomenon that everybody observes yet which virtually nobody acknowledges. Could one say simultaneous-ness? Ugly. Then I thought of ‘synchronicity’ – but it is not enough. Synchronous applies only to time. I needed a word for time and place.

The great heat exchange that is taking place over the entire globe is taking place everywhere and all at once by contact, by conduction. There is not a word in the English language that I am aware of that can describe the fact that is easily observable – that the action and reaction that is taking place between every surface everywhere on this planet is instantaneous, contiguous and continuous.

Far from it being the Sceptics who do not believe in Global Warming and Climate Change, precisely the opposite is the case. It is the Warmists who do not acknowledge, who are utterly blind to the incredible Global Warming/Cooling that is taking place all together and all at once – in a sort of majestic symphony. Every instrument in this celestial orchestra is playing its part harmoniously, everything is on cue, and the supreme conductor, Great Nature, is conducting everything.

BRITAIN faces a new mini-Ice Age with decades of severe Siberian winters and washout summers, an expert has warned.

Professor Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, said erratic and extreme weather patterns could be the norm in 20 years. He said the risk of harsh winters and wet miserable summers has gone up to 25 to 30 per cent compared with 10 per cent a few years ago.

Weakening sunspot activity is to blame for a “major change” in the UK’s weather he told BBC TV.

He said: “The sun is ‘quietening’ really rapidly. We think it is actually quietening more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

“So this is a major change. We think lower solar activity does seem to tie up with more cold winters in central Europe and the UK.”

Climatologist Dr Dennis Wheeler from Sunderland University, said: “When we have had periods where the sun has been quieter than usual we tend to get these much harsher winters.”

The comments follow unusual weather patterns over the past few years including the extreme winter of 2010 and this summer’s heatwave.

I was reading this excellent book ‘Taxing Air’ for the second time and for the second time I was stopped dead in my tracks by some words on page 69. It says that the common ground among scientists includes that ‘Carbon Dioxide is a Greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere.’ Whoa! Whoa! Bob Carter, Spooner et al, and the composite authors of this book.

Surely this is a printing error, or something written in haste. What is generally agreed is that Carbon Dioxide is 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere and reacts to the infrared radiation from the earth; and it is this radiation that warms the molecules of carbon dioxide. So it is the gas that is warmed by the radiation. Even the Warmists do not really claim any more, because obviously a gas cannot heat itself; the atmosphere, the temperature of which is always varying – cannot heat itself.

So yes, the Carbon Dioxide molecules are warmed by the infrared radiation, all 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere. But being a gas these molecules are also subject to convection; that is to say that as they warm these molecules rise up and cool, as does the whole of the lower atmosphere.

So that begs the question: What warms the lower atmosphere? Now we come to what warmists and sceptics do agree on. They agree that the sun warms the earth and the oceans, as radiation from the Sun encounters mass. It is also generally agreed that water has a great heat capacity and that the warm oceans in particular warm the lower atmosphere. Is that OK? Not quite. And the cold oceans cool the lower atmosphere. Is that better?

The land is more complex. Hot sands warm, while cold rocks cool the atmosphere. Hot tar warms, while frosty runways cool the air. A leafy wood is often cooler than an open field or lawn. Snow-bound Siberian wastes are cooling, while the Gobi desert by day is warming the atmosphere – all by conduction.

The atmosphere is being warmed or being cooled every instant of every day. The gases of the atmosphere are being warmed primarily by contact, by conduction. So where does that leave the 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere that is Carbon Dioxide? In order to answer this question let us ask ourselves another question that I first saw posed in the book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.’ Why does the Sun warm the Earth? Answer: Because it is hotter.’ Is that agreed? Because the Sun is hotter than the Earth.

Evaluation of “Climate Change Reconsidered II – Physical Science”

What’s good about it.

The above report was recently issued by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). It was coauthored by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer together with an equally distinguished group of scientists who served as lead authors, contributing authors, and reviewers. The report is a well documented and thoroughly researched analysis of the hypothesis put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that recent increases in atmospheric CO2 caused by human emissions from fossil fuel combustion is causing, or will cause, dangerous global warming and climate change. Such warming has been observed in the late twentieth century as atmospheric CO2 was measured to increase. According to the IPCC paradigm increases in atmospheric CO2 precede, and then cause, parallel increases in temperature.

A large number of governments, professional societies, scientific journals, journalists, the print media, the TV media, and even some corporations, generally accept the validity of that IPCC paradigm. Accordingly, there has been a concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions, or to tax such emissions, or to replace fossil combustion sources by alternative energy sources. A smaller number of governments or organizations have rejected that IPCC paradigm and NIPCC is among them. The NIPPC report being reviewed here documents the observations and measurements that contradict the paradigm.

While NIPPC concedes that CO2 is a “mild greenhouse gas” that might cause some mild heating, such heating far from representing a “climate crisis” would actually be beneficial to mankind. The Global Climate Models produced by the IPCC have predicted drastic warming up to 6 C for decades to come. Those predictions have been falsified by the data. In fact, during the past 16 years, even as atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by 8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, the Earth’s average temperature has not increased. While prior to 1995 there was a parallelism between the CO2 increase and temperature rise, such a parallelism does not prove causation, and in fact that parallelism has ceased since the mid- 1990’s. In geologic time, the Earth’s temperature has oscillated naturally between +4C and -6 C relative to current values. Those fluctuations are driven by glacial coolings and interglacial warmings caused mainly by changes in the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit. The Earth’s overall warming since 1860 corresponds to its recovery from the Little Ice Age as modulated by ocean-atmosphere oscillations and variations in solar activity.

Even more telling is the CO2 data from those ice core measurements as obtained from air bubbles trapped in the ice. They show a parallelism between CO2 and temperature with minima in CO2 occurring near the lowest temperatures of a glacial cooling. The maxima in CO2 occur near the highest temperatures of a glacial warming. But if one analyses the data carefully, one finds that the changes in temperature always precede the changes in CO2 by several hundred to a thousand years. The same precedence is observed during the most recent glacial warming cycle that we are currently experiencing. Those observations conclusively falsify the IPCC theory that CO2 is the primary forcing agent for temperature changes. Quite the contrary, it is the temperature changes that are the cause of the CO2 changes. Even shorter term variations in CO2 over the last several decades also display somewhat similar behavior with sea surface temperature changes inevitably leading to atmospheric CO2 changes. There is still more to be learned from such data and we will return to it again.

As Britain is battered by 99 miles per hour wind and “boiling” seas maverick long range weather forecaster, Piers Corbyn provides thousands of his loyal customers with yet another astonishing performance. Londoner Corbyn, who runs the WeatherAction forecasting service, is today touting his “End Game” special forecast that more accurately (from two days ahead) foresaw the blistering storm track that left a wake of destruction further South than the UK MetOffice and Standard Models had predicted.

But what is so incredible is not that Corbyn’s forecast was more accurate than others, but that he first predicted this severe storm a full six weeks before it struck. The 67-year-old gave this bullish news release earlier today:

“Everything Piers Corbyn warned about this storm (named his storm by thousands) from 6 weeks to 6 hours ahead confirmed while UK MetOffice knew nothing or dithered.”

The ‘Piers Corbyn Storm’ of October 2013, the most serious in Britain and Ireland, North West France and  the Low Countries for decades, was predicted – in detail to within one day from six weeks ahead – by WeatherAction.

PubMed today launches a pilot version of PubMed Commons,

“a system that enables researchers to share their opinions about scientific publications. Researchers can comment on any publication indexed by PubMed, and read the comments of others.”

In general, we’re big fans of post-publication peer review, as Retraction Watch readers know. Once it’s out of its pilot phase — and we hope that’s quite soon — PubMed Commons comments will be publicly available. So this is a step forward — but only a tentative one. That’s because of the first bullet point in the terms of service commenters agree to:

Only those individuals listed as an author on a PubMed citation may make comments in PubMed;

If possible, provide detailed references to papers (eg. page numbers, figure pointers) and unpublished data; refer to external websites if a longer comment or reference to other work is necessary;

Do not describe or share unpublished work by others;

Comments should not contain discriminatory, racist, offensive, inflammatory, or unlawful language;

Comments should not contain partisan political views;

Comments should not have explicit commercial endorsements.

So PubMed Commons isn’t exactly a town commons, unless you happen to live in a town whose residents are all scientists.

Stanford’s Rob Tibshirani, who was involved in organizing PubMed Commons, wrote in a blog post prepared in advance of the launch:

“One would like the system to be inclusive as possible but many scientists would not be interested in posting comments in a system with a high proportion of irrelevant or uninformed comments. NIH also needed a rule for who could post that would be pretty clear cut and not based on e.g. some judgment of the experience or knowledge of the participants. The decision was made that comments could only be posted by authors of papers in PubMed. This would make the situation symmetric in that all people who comment can have their own work commented on. It would also include a large number of potential participants and would meet NIH’s need for something unambiguous. Unfortunately it would leave out many people who could add valuable input, including many graduate students, patient advocates, and science journalists. I’m a little worried about this restriction, as I want to make the system open to as many users as possible. But hopefully that is a pretty wide net, and it may be widened further in the future.”

We’re a bit worried about this restriction, too.

Tool making and communication skills are easily distinguishing features between human beings and other species on this planet.  When coupled with a natural curiosity and the ability learn from our mistakes, we have lifted most humans from the vulgar realities of our ancestor’s existence.  For those bent on controlling others, tools and communication must be controlled and manipulated.

The ‘great humanitarian’, Vladimir Lenin said “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation”.  The great philosopher, Bertrand Russell said “western populations would gladly accept serfdom if it was packaged as saving the Earth”. 

Hubble and the Big Bang

In 1929, when spectral analysis revealed a ‘red shift’ in distant galaxies, astronomer Edwin Hubble speculated that this might be due to acceleration away from Earth and a possible expanding universe.  Before he could reflect on other possible explanations, a radio interview stumbled onto the phrase “Big Bang” and a run-away train left the station.  Dr Hubble was uncomfortable with both the concept and the catchy nick-name, but he had a ‘conflict of interest’ on this issue.

In a Times magazine interview, on December 14, 1936, titled “Science: Shift on Shift”, Dr Hubble makes his opposition clear.  One reason that he was not more forceful was because he was begging the government for funding of the Mount Palomar telescope.  Public interest was necessary during the tight depression era federal budgets to complete this project.

The Hooker 100 inch telescope was then showing farthest light sources to be moving at 25,000 miles per second.  Dr Hubble, during his 1936 interview, stated that he was “willing to abandon the expanding universe to mathematical cosmologists”…pending erection of the 200 inch Palomar telescope…”which may finally settle the question”.

Shall I tell you a secret? The Sun warms the Earth and the Earth warms the atmosphere. Have you got that? It took me a while to ponder over this. I got it from my Climate guru, my personal trainer in all matters scientific. Actually Hans is my third personal trainer, and he will not mind if I say I don’t believe a word he says. That’s right – I don’t believe a word he says, until I have my own evidence for what he explains.

If the Sun warmed the atmosphere, the top of the atmosphere, or at least the top of the Troposphere, would be hot – but it isn’t – at 33,000 feet it is about minus 55C. I don’t have to tell you guys that do I? Just ask anyone who flies and watches the monitor on board. So radiation from the Sun encounters mass and the earth and the oceans warm the atmosphere from the bottom up.

Some smart-arse disagreed with this. He said to me: ‘Sit on a cold brick wall on a frosty morning and see just how warm the earth is!’ Well that smart arse had a point. So now let me share with you a second secret. The Sun warms the Earth and Oceans and the Earth and Oceans warm or cool the atmosphere.

Ah, that makes a difference, that makes sense, doesn’t it? When the Sun shines down on the sand even on the Riviera, the sands are often too hot for the feet. Even more so in the Sahara. So the atmosphere likewise gets hot and the temperature rises. When the sun goes down the sands cool rapidly, even the Bedouin will make a fire and drink hot tea. When the earth cools down so does the atmosphere.