The world is a very confusing unpredictable place. Humans have, from the very beginning tried to create some sort of order and means of reducing its uncertainty.

They began by trying to find ways of ensuring the continuation of the regularities of the daily appearance of the sun, and of the annual cycle of the seasons. The responsible Gods had to be propitiated by sacrifice and ritual. The beginnings of this process are described in “The Golden Bough”¹ .

The rituals that developed are still in existence in the form of daily prayers and annual holidays for Easter and Christmas, absorbed by more recent religions.

By the time of the Middle Ages it was believed that the world was basically static and unchanging, apart from any deviation which could be blamed on the Gods and solved by prayer or sacrifice.

The beginnings of modern science came with Kepler, Galileo and Newton who found that the behaviour of solid bodies could be predicted successfully by a fairly simple mathematical model. In order to do this Newton had to invent friction and gravity. It became possible to predict the movements of the planets as well as solid objects on the earth. The principle of mathematical models took hold to the extent that it was believed that the entire universe resembled a huge clock operated by mathematical formulae.

The complacency was disturbed by Einstein’s theory of relativity and by Planck’s quantum theory, but the idea has survived even the discovery of evolution, and the structure of atoms, ..

Science depends on measurement and all measurement inevitably involves inaccuracy. It was only in early 20^th century that inaccuracy itself became subject to mathematical models. It is unfortunate that so many people who make use of them do not take care that their measurements comply with the assumptions of the model used.

The scientific study of the climate began, as with other disciplines, by the measurement of its properties. The science of meteorology is today amongst the most successful of all scientific institutions in its ability to measure and forecast local climate anywhere on the globe.

By comparison with other scientific disciplines it is faced with serious handicaps. Science demands that an experimental determination cannot be accepted unless it can be repeated, to an agreed level of accuracy, by an independent observer. Climate observations cannot be verified in this way. In addition, instruments, procedures, supervision, location are not standardised and the qualifications or the identity of the observer is often unknown. Recently the observer may just be automatic.

Investors in wind farms around British and Danish coasts are facing financial ruin as a new study from the University of Olso affirms a catastrophic design oversight. Newly identifed flaws mean that all windmills currently in operation are in real danger of snapping like matchwood during severe storms. 

Dr. Pierre R. Latour, noted for his engineering prowess in helping design and develop the docking system for NASA’s Apollo space mission, turns film critic to lambast the latest film sold in the name of junk science. Latour’s eagle eye has landed on the new science-free climate movie: “Greedy Lying Bastards” (PG-13, 90 min) that trumpets alarmist fears over man-made global warming in the shrillest and most despairing tones.

Here is Dr. Latour’s round up:

If you find any physics linking CO₂ to temperature here, please advise.

If you discover ways to earn a living from global warming hysteria, you are smart.

If you discover glacial cycles have a period of about 100,000 years with an interglacial period of about 15,000, your discovery has been made already.

If you realize Chicago is covered by an ice sheet >1 mile thick 85{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the time, you get it.

If you realize humanity prospers during interglacials, not glacials, you get it.

If you discover Earth’s temperature has stabilized at a local high since 1998, you can expect it to begin cooling soon. Maybe -15C. Because a new glacial has begun.

If you accept Lucy walked around Kenya 3 million years ago, you can conclude your ancestors survived 3,000,000/100,000 = 30 glacials.

Her ancestors appeared about 7 million years ago so they survived 4,000,000/100,000 = 40 more glacials. 30 + 40 = 70.

If you have enough faith in current humanity to believe we will survive at least one more = 100,000 years, year 102,013, you are a Greedy Lying Bastard, like me, with a new movie named after you.

Remedy? Invest in property near the Equator. This is not good or bad news, it’s just news.

Don’t be provocative. Have a fabulous day. Breathe your CO₂ easy.

 

 

Critics of the greenhouse gas theory and it’s supposed role in climate change have presented a fresh analysis of a CIA report that suggests climatologists created a false scientific basis to link global warming to levels of carbon dioxide. An assumption that wrongly fixed cloud cover as a constant factor encouraged scientists to incorrectly assume changes in CO2 rather than changes in cloud cover determine temperatures.

Researchers at Principia Scientific International have put under the microscope an important but widely overlooked 1970’s U.S. government climate report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ‘A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems’ offers a wealth of evidence to prove the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) was disregarded by the best brains in climatology and the document shows no indication as to why the GHE was trumpeted as the accepted ‘theory’ on climate a mere half dozen years later. The CIA in-depth study dates from August 1974 and was uncovered by Maurizio Morabito in 2009 and despite tens of thousands of words not one mention is made anywhere of a supposed greenhouse gas effect. [1]

The CIA study was regarded by the U.S. Government as a highly accurate appraisal of the best peer-reviewed climate science of the day on concerns of global cooling. This document starkly contradicts a report by Peterson, Connolley and Fleck who misused the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in September 2008 to paint a different picture about global warming. [2]

Independent climate analysts crunch the numbers to prove that hurricanes are a more powerful driver of climate than so-called greenhouse gases. Dr. Pierre R Latour, a leading industry expert in thermodynamics, has peer-reviewed the latest newsletter from long-time climate skeptic, Dr. Vincent Gray and affirmed Gray’s calculations to be correct.

Dr. Latour, who first made his name assisting in the engineering of NASA’s Apollo space mission agrees that Dr. Gray’s analysis points to the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) being trivial (if, indeed, it does exist) when compared to the actual energy manifested in hurricanes. Gray is noted as the only expert reviewer of all five reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Latour, Principia Scientific International’s (PSI) lead expert on thermodynamics affirms what other industry experts had long suspected. “We know that hurricanes can never create or consume energy. All they do is transform the energy received into the Earth’s system and move it around,” says Dr. Latour. Unlike climatologists Latour is an engineer trained to the highest standards in thermodynamics. He can’t understand why modern academics are incapable of discerning what an earlier generation of climate researchers knew to be true: carbon dioxide is just not a factor at all in the climate equation.

Dr. Pierre Latour has peer-reviewed Dr. Gray’s numbers and confirms that “This analysis supports my long held contention measuring the average temperature of the whole atmosphere is impossible. Measuring any change in that average over years or decades is even harder.” It is the overwhelming power of evaporation, condensation, rain, storms and wind energy – seen at their most dramatic in hurricanes – that tell us the hydrological cycle is the key, not any trace gas like CO2. “Water is the great leveler in the system,” Latour insists, “It all averages out if you wait long enough. Turbulent fluid flow is well known.”

The death knell tolls for the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas Theory (CO2-GHT). If the CO2-GHT ever was a plausible theory, it is rapidly turning into a giant hoax. The perceived scientific underpinnings of the theory are unravelling fast. It took a while to get the “Anti-CO2-Warmist-Theory” scientific camp on the right footing. Now, Principia Scientific Intl. (PSI) has taken the lead in dispelling the last of the CO2-GHT “consensus”-based vestiges.

The latest nail for the CO2-GHT coffin has been contributed by Dr. Charles R. Anderson with his article “The Most Essential Physics of the Earth’s Temperature and Why Carbon Dioxide is No Threat to the Earth.” This comes hard on the heels of a recent paper on “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature” by Dr. Ole Humlum and coworkers. Their work showed conclusively that the regular seasonal variations in the atmospheric CO2 levels are lagging the sea surface temperatures by 9.5 to 12 months — not the other way.

An examination of the energy budgets for the Earth of recent years gives one reason to be unsettled about the settled science claimed for the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  The energy budget currently posted by NASA is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 shows the principal NASA energy budget for the Earth as of February 2013.  Note the huge surface radiation and the huge radiation from the atmosphere all of which is absorbed by the surface.  The surface-absorbed atmospheric down radiation is 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the solar insolation at the top of the atmosphere and it is all claimed to be absorbed by the surface!  The greenhouse gases absorb a very unrealistic 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all of the radiation emitted from the surface!

For many the field of chemistry is a terra incognita, an unknown world. This is odd if one considers that humans are virtually chemistry factories, ingesting, processing and producing chemicals throughout our lives. We routinely use a wide variety of chemicals without ever thinking of them in those terms, from detergents to medications. Besides, with all kinds of wonderful electronic gadgets, who needs to know anything about chemistry or chemicals anyway? On top of that, we are constantly told that chemicals are dangerous to our health. Everything else, including meteorites are too.

 

Neanderthals

You might not believe it, but the Neanderthals (80,000 years ago) and their later cousins, the Cro-Magnon people (30,000 years ago) had an inkling of chemistry. Their cave paintings in France and Spain survived for tens of thousands of years simply because they used extremely stable, mineral-based pigments including mercury, iron and manganese type minerals. For example, just look at any of the many pictographs from ancient caves around the Pyrenees (Fig. 1). They appear to be done yesterday, clear and crisp. The lesson is to use stable pigments for your art; some knowledge of chemistry helps for that.

Fig. 1. Pregnant mare running through wild wheat; pictograph from the wall of a cave in Lascaux, France, dating to 15,000 to 10,000 BC; photo courtesy of http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.ca.

There are four key points that together invalidate any argument that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide can alter the climate:

1. All heat has to be generated. (This is surely self-evident.)

2. All heat by itself always flows from hot to cold and never vice-versa (The irrefutable 2^nd law of thermodynamics.)

3. It is impossible to trap heat. (High temperatures can be generated in an oven or in a greenhouse, but only remain so long as heat is being generated.)

4. It therefore follows that all talk of ‘Man-made Global Warming’ has no basis in reality. For no gases generate heat, nor can they trap heat, least of all Carbon Dioxide.

The cornerstone of climate alarmism is that ‘Greenhouse Gases,’ in particular Carbon Dioxide, are susceptible to the infrared radiation that is emitted from the Earth and Oceans. I quote here from an email from my colleague Max Potter, an ardent warmist.

This light (from the sun) is mainly absorbed by land, sea etc and converted to heat. When the energy is reradiated it is emitted as much lower frequency infrared (below or lower frequency than red). It is this infrared radiation that is absorbed by the “greenhouse gases” (including water vapour), which warm the atmosphere.

That is correct. In layman’s language that means that the molecules of CO2 are warmed by this infrared. The Warmists then argue that there has been an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere caused by the burning of hydrocarbons. That is also correct. In percentage terms that can be construed as a big increase, but in fact it only seems big because the amount is still only a trace – less than 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the gases in the atmosphere.

However they argue further as follows – I quote again from this email from a colleague – that Carbon Dioxide traps heat. Here is how my colleague argues: 

You ask: “If a Carbon Dioxide molecule traps heat, how long is that  heat trapped? Permanently? If not permanently, then how long?”Heat (vibrational energy) is continually being exchanged between molecules of gas as they collide. If there are more CO2 molecules they will absorb more infrared radiation and share it with all the other molecules, whether they are CO2, O2 or N2 thus warming the atmosphere,
i.e. “trapping heat”.

All the best, Max Potter

Can you see the fallacy in his argument? Or rather can you see how he has in fact conceded that there is no such thing as trapped heat? The warm molecules instantly pass their warmth to cooler molecules, thus vindicating the 2^nd law of thermodynamics, as heat by itself always flows from hot to cold. The fact that there may be a few more molecules makes no difference whatsoever. The heat is not trapped but is instantly passed on and on to cooler molecules.

Because of the stringent censorship policy of Anthony Watts his award-winning WUWT science blog is not a place  you will find articles skeptical of the so-called greenhouse gas theory (GHE). In keeping with that ethos Willis Eschenbach’s recent guest article for Watts provides another defense of what critics say is pseudo-science.  Nonetheless, adverse comments there soon began to fly, which was unusual coming from loyal WUWT readers. Below is an edited version of Joe Postma’s impassioned refutation of that Eschenbach  piece. If only Mr. Eschenbach and Mr. Watts would engage Postma and other GHE critics in debate. There is no doubt WUWT readers have a growing appetite for it.

 

 

In what is an exotic yet contentious subject, Stephen Crothers used a recent science conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico to deliver a robust attack on the cornerstone of modern cosmology. Crothers, who was forced to quit his PhD studies because he questioned ‘Big Bang’ physics offers an entertaining and compelling argument for his position.

This addresses the Big Question that has long perplexed scientists: what is the true driving force behind our Universe? But from the early 20^th Century a consensus was established around the ideas of Albert Einstein whose Theories of Relativity seemed so compelling. But in the new millenium the debate is once again hotting up. Opponents of such problematic ideas as Dark matter and Dark energy are espousing the notion of plasma cosmology (also known as the Electric Universe theory), and it is here where Crothers has taken center stage.

Crothers and others say there is increasing evidence to believe there are no isolated islands in the universe. They say all objects in space, from subatomic particles to galactic clusters, are connected by manifestations of the electric force acting in real time.

In this two part video presentation (part one, part two) we see that not only is the concept of an electric universe, its driving forces, and electro-magnetic mechanical properties far more readily understood than those of ‘Big Bang’ physics, picking holes in Black Holes is a lot of fun, too. As Crothers quips during his presentation, “When quantum physicists don’t understand things, they postulate a new particle.”

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is the term used for the unusually large die-offs in honey bee colonies over winter. First observed about a decade ago, the “disorder” is back with a vengeance. While most prevalent in the US, European and other countries are starting to find similar problems though not yet at the same scale.

The Problem

The problem is that there are not enough bees around to guarantee pollination of a variety of agricultural crops. From almond groves in California to corn and soybeans farms in the Midwest, CCD is widespread and appears to be on the verge of becoming a global problem.

Theories

Numerous theories have been advanced in the hope of finding a cause for the problem. So far none has panned out.

For example, some types of chemical pesticides, known as neonicotinoids have been implicated. However, other studies have shown that there does not appear to be any cause-effect relationship of that kind.

Other theories implicated genetically modified (GM) plants such as GM-corn containing the gene of Bacillus thuringiensis. Again, that was disproven as a probable cause of CCD by tests showing that pollen from such plants had no detrimental effects on bees.

Naturally (pun intended), even climate change has been proposed as the cause for CCD, an effect yet to be listed on the warmlist’s collation of claimed effects. Pun aside, I have my own theory, backed by some relevant observations.

Lord Nigel Lawson, Chancellor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980’s, issues a public statement that Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, is a global warming liar.

In his boldest attack yet on the frontman of Britain’s crumbling climate alarmist establishment Lord Lawson has thrown down a gauntlet that Nurse is not likely to pick up.  Lawson, former holder of the second highest office of government, has responded to Paul Nurse’s wild accusations that Lawson was cherrypicking data when he stated that global temperatures have been flatlining for 17 years. Lawson’s open letter published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (February, 27, 2013) where Lawson is Chairman, states:

“You [Nurse] claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie.”

Sir Paul Nurse, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, is described in the letter as more a  “shop steward for some kind of scientists’ closed shop” rather than the figurehead of Britain’s most prestigious science body.

Britain’s deeply unpopular Climate Change Act (2008) may be set for repeal as another politician joins the growing number of MP’s aghast at the damage it is having on the nation’s ailing economy.

Conservative Member of Parliament, Douglas Carswell’s mea culpa today (February 25, 2013) shows dignity and acceptance of the weight of evidence conflicting with the already scientifically dubious notion of human-caused global warming.  “My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. It was a mistake. I am sorry,” said Carswell on his blog.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of last week’s surprise admission by Rajendra Pachuari, the UN’s head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Pachauri conceded that we are now into a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, as confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office. Even NASA’s most strident climate doomsayer, Dr. James Hansen concedes there has been “a pause” in any temperature rise.

The scholarly peer review system may be functional for normal science or puzzle solving routine science in the sense of Kuhn, but is not well suited to handle non-normal new science challenging an existing paradigm. This is because any new idea poses a threat to existing normal science and as such often meets overly negative reviews by referees without sufficient knowledge of the novelty. Correct new science may thus get rejected without good reasons,  but is also possible that incorrect new science can get accepted by uncritical referees.

Furrther, incorrect normal science may be perpetuated by the peer review system, because incorrect normal science can only be questioned by new science.

In short, the peer review system is not suitable to handle new science, because either (i) good articles are rejected on bad grounds, or (ii) bad articles are accepted without good grounds. 

An example of new science is given by the article New Theory of Flight presented on The Secret of Flight. The article was rejected by AIAA Journal and is now under review by Journal of Mathematical Fluid Mechanics JMFM. 

JMFM has a difficult case to handle: Referees from normal science of fluid mechanics are not eager to touch the article and if so the review will be negative because the existing paradigm is challenged. On the other hand referee’s from outside the fluid mechanics community under AIAA may not be able to give a credible review.

An incredible new paper in the reputed Global and Planetary Journal using freely available government data may be about to cause an unwelcome storm for believers in the greenhouse gas theory and the ‘green’ carbon reductions industry. It’s publication is accompanied by a surge in highly-credentialed scientists joining dissenting fledgling science body, Principia Scientific International.*

Norwegian scientists led by Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo analyzed measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and compared them to temperatures with an astonishing result that throws serious doubt on claims that climate change is carbon related. If verified by other scientists Humlum’s study will confirm the findings of researchers at Principia Scientific International (PSI) who claim they have already refuted the greenhouse gas theory.

NOAA and HADCrut CO2 levels graph (click to enlarge)

The scientists investigated the phase relation (leads/lags) between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures using standard data series for the period January 1980 to December 2011. They found that changes in global atmospheric CO2 follow 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature and 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature. The findings conflict with the consensus view concerning the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ that says the opposite should happen with temperatures supposedly being driven by any rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 levels are up 40 percent in recent decades).