Apollo 7 astronaut, Walter Cunningham mounts a scathing attack on junk climate science dismissing it as politicized alarmism unsupported by facts. In an interview with Larry Bell (Forbes; August 6, 2013), Cunningham says man-made global warming fears have been built on “phony conclusions.”

Pulling no punches Cunningham, referring to the open letter sent last year to NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden Jr., signed by dozens of former NASA staff and retired astronauts, called NASA’s former chief climatologist, James Hansen, “an embarrassment and disgrace to the agency.“

Since 1988 and up to his retirement earlier this year, Hansen was the figure in promoting the ‘greenhouse gas’ hypothesis as ‘scientific fact and formulated the botched equation to ‘prove’ it added an essential 33 degrees of ‘missing heat’ to earth’s climate. The claim has since been refuted by independent scientists at Principia Scientific International (PSI).

Cunningham goes on to assert:

NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused [anthropogenic] global warming [AGW]. Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy and support for the White House agenda is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics.

The conflict over AGW has deteriorated into a religious war; a war between true believers in a human-caused global warming problem and nonbelievers; between those who accept AGW on faith, and those who consider themselves more sensible and better informed. “True believers” are beyond being interested in evidence; it is impossible to reason a person out of positions they have not been reasoned into.

Much of this may be due to today’s lowered educational standards in scientific literacy, skepticism and critical thinking. Many people today are unable to distinguish between science and non-science, leaving them vulnerable to the emotional appeal of human caused global warming. Unfortunately, most students today are fed a lot more hype about self-esteem and global warming than real information about history and science. Let’s finally recognize that “self-esteem” is no substitute for common sense, and “indoctrination” is no substitute for education.

With the right leadership, with the right science, and with the right commitment to excellence and integrity, we will go much farther. And, it’s high time to do so.

Read Larry Bell’s full interview with Walter Cunningham here.

As is now generally known, there has been no warming of the Earth’s surface since 1998 at least.  Prior to that time, we were informed that there had been a rapid warming of the Earth’s surface and that it was caused by increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere due to man using fossil fuels. 

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Report still insisted that for 25 years the Earth had been warming.  A newly published study using satellite temperature sensing specifically for detecting the Earth’s surface temperature and minimizing that of the atmosphere above the surface, shows that the Earth’s surface, contrary to reports, actually cooled from 1982 to 2006!

The paper is entitled Meteosat Derived Planetary Temperature Trend 1982-2006 by Andries Rosema, Steven Foppes, and Joost van der Woerd and was published in Energy & Environment, Vol. 24, No. 3 & 4 2013.  They were very surprised to find the cooling trend they reported. Earlier satellite data analyses, originated by investigators at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, used microwave sensors to infer the temperature from microwave emissions from oxygen molecules. 

Microwaves of different energies originated from various layers of the atmosphere.  One set of data originated from an altitude of about 17 km.  Another at an altitude of about 3 – 4 km. Then by looking at data taken at oblique angles of incidence, they inferred a temperature from an altitude of about 0.8 km.  However, none of this data actually measures the Earth’s surface temperature.  Initially, this data on the lower atmosphere had shown a small cooling effect, but after many corrections were applied, the data yielded an increase of temperature of about 0.1 C/decade in the troposphere.  The troposphere is the bottom about 10 to 11 km of the atmosphere and its temperature is not at all necessarily in direct proportion to the surface temperature.  Indeed, increased cloud cover, water vapor, and CO2 in the atmosphere may cause an increase in the troposphere temperature even as it cools the surface temperature.

Have you ever wondered how, despite evidence to the contrary, so many scientists could believe humans were catastrophically altering our climate? It becomes even more of a wonder when you learn that any supposed climate catastrophe is based on junk science.

The junk science component of climatology relies on an untested and spurious hypothesis: “downwelling” or “back” radiation heating. This unproven mechanism as the linchpin of the so-called “greenhouse gas theory.” Grandfather of the hypothesis of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE), Svante Arrhenius (pictured), was discredited for claiming the existence of another such  “magic gas” (the “luminiferous eather“). It may have taken longer, but today it is the GHE itself, the second “magic gas”  myth promoted by Arrhenius, that now bites the dirt.

“Back Radiation heating:” A Post-normal Paradigm

So-called “downwelling” or “back” radiation heating is a climatic chimera conjured up by government-funded researchers who made themselves a post-normal breed apart from those in the “hard” sciences. Climatologists want you to believe in their “magic gas.” But their notion of back radiation heating is an alien concept to those trained in tougher disciplines such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, etc. Frankly, for more than a generation third rate researchers have been peddling a computer-generated fiction, a slant on radiative physics that relies heavily on discredited 19th century notions of a “magic gas” and little, if anything, on actual measurements and verifiable scientific techniques.

For a mere $70,000 per couple, you can break ice at the North Pole. Actually, you can just sit back, sip a drink, and watch the nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker Victory do the work for you.

Arctic Cruises

There are plenty of Arctic cruises at this time of the year, between mid-June and mid-September. For example, the ad for the Victory’s “North Pole Expedition Cruise” reads:

Day 3-7 – Northbound in the Arctic Ocean
Watching the Victory crush through the Arctic ice pack is a sight you’ll never forget, made even more memorable by taking a helicopter flight for a thrilling aerial view of the Victory and expansive Arctic Ocean.

Elsewhere, it says:

“Carrying the highest ice class rating possible, Victory can crush ice up to 3 meters (10 feet) thick, and is the world’s largest and most sophisticated nuclear-powered icebreaker.”

Of course, the Victory is not the only ship plying the Arctic waters though most others are limited to zones of much thinner ice or ice-free water. According to another ad, you can even go “Hot Air Ballooning at the North Pole.”

In addition to sight-seeing expeditions, there are merchant ships attempting to use the Northwest Passage as a short route between the northern Atlantic and Pacific coasts, various naval and scientific research vessels, and companies exploring for natural resources.

Ice-Breaking

The increased marine activity in the Arctic is often accompanied by ice-breaking of some sort. Most of the ships operating there have re-enforced bows which lets them cut through a layer of ice. In part, the thrill of these “expeditions” derives from the sound of ice being crushed by the ship’s hull. It provides both audible and visible proof of man’s ingenuity and physical force in one of the world’s last frontiers.

Klaus Ermecke with his ‘Rescue from the Climate Saviors‘ provides a telling exposition of the junk science underpinning the so-called greenhouse gas theory. It merits showcasing here for the edification of the increasing number of likeminded scientists now recognising that a paradigm shift, led by Principia Scientific International, is now in full swing.

If one believes politicians and the media, the world is in danger: the earth is heating up – catastrophe will result – and civilization is the cause! Even school children are frightened and taught that mankind can and must save the climate.

But this message is linked to a hidden agenda. Its purpose is to prepare the citizens for sacrifice: Rescue is possible – maybe – though unfortunately it is awfully expensive!

In spite of the rising burdens imposed on almost all businesses and citizens, few politicians have questioned the “fight against climate change”. Over years, hardly a newspaper challenged the scientific basis of the “greenhouse” dogma. If asked, its proponents referred to a “scientific consensus” regarding “human made climate change”.

Accordingly, dissenting opinions had to be unfounded and were not worth consideration.

The derivation of the “effective temperature of the earth” being -18°C is based on the assumption of a rocky planet without atmosphere and oceans. But, as Gerlich and Tscheuschner demonstrated, the assumptions and the reasoning leading to this result contain several physical and mathematical errors. Consequently, the supposed “natural greenhouse effect” of 33°C is just a lore, not rooted in the laws of physics that apply to the realworld around us.

A team of experts from the “hard” sciences working with climate researchers at Principia Scientific International (PSI) have devised what they believe is an important new energy model of our planet that turns conventional “flat earth” climate thinking on its head.

Published below, the diagram deftly accounts for all the energy Earth receives from our sun without the need to factor in the hotly disputed “greenhouse gas theory.” The diagram serves as a simplified version of an earlier PSI model produced in answer to a “put up or shut up” challenge (May 10, 2013) by climatologist, Dr Roy Spencer that appears to have the now subdued Spencer stumped.

Pointedly, PSI’s model depicts our planet in three-dimensions, unlike the preferred flat earth two-dimensional model favored by Spencer and other climatologists (the Kiehl-Trenberth model). PSI believes it is crass and contrary to the advancement of science that promoters of the “greenhouse gas theory” (GHE) should insist on relying on the outmoded flat-Earth model. The GHE is increasingly discredited because despite its core claim that more atmospheric carbon dioxide means higher temperatures the hard evidence proves this has not happened.

COMMENTS – EARTH’s SOLAR ENERGY BUDGET

This diagram (‘Miatello Model’), in our opinion as members of Principia Scientific International (PSI), is a precise, simple and visually immediate way of presenting and depicting the Earth’s solar energy budget.

The methods that we use to develop the mathematics that are used to describe energy transfer by radiation are established by concepts that are not part of our experiences that underlay all of the skills that we have acquired since we were born to guarantee our survival in the world in which we live. How many of those skills or parts of them are transferred to our progeny through our genes is now a serious scientific study (think spider webs).

The formulas that govern where a photon goes and how much energy it carries have arisen as a result of observed physical phenomena and an attempt to construct an expression (usually mathematical) that allows us to predict how energy is transmitted from one place to another. The idea that it was carried in bundles resulted in a Nobel Prize being awarded to Einstein. The properties of these bundles (quanta of energy called photons) require several different mathematical frameworks to explain how they travel from place to place. They are treated as particles, waves, entities having the property of mass as they are even affected by gravitational fields, and the apparent paths that they seem to take are governed by their surroundings. To develop the equations governing their behavior may requires such a bizarre mental pictures that no two theoretical physicists would tell you the same story if you asked him/her the simple question, “In twenty words or less, tell me what is a quantum of energy”. (Or maybe 50 or 100.)

The actions of the advocates of Climate Science have certainly caused significant public controversy.

Perhaps the most interesting result has been the public discussion itself.  If one takes the time to view the posts and comments on many websites that present climate science one is left with the inescapable viewpoint that everyone is an expert and that ridicule and sarcasm are actually cogent arguments that have become more important than the discussion at hand.

Perhaps, before we continue, we could humbly remember that Einstein said:

“All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, ‘What are light quanta?‘

Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.” (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The claim that petroleum originates with biological materials seems strange, because biomass does not accumulate in such large quantities without decaying. The real proof that petroleum is not biological in its origins is in the chemistry. Petroleum is called hydrocarbon because of hydrogen attached to carbon. Hydrogen-carbon bonds are very high in energy.

Biological material has oxygen with it, called carbohydrate, which has less chemical energy. There is no way to increase chemical energy other than radiation. (ATP and similar reactions do not increase energy; they transfers energy with some loss). Heat and pressure will not increase chemical energy, because they act upon nuclei, while chemical energy is in electrons which spin around nuclei.

There is nothing that can be done to nuclei which will increase the motion of electrons which spin around them short of a nuclear reaction. (All chemical reactions go down-hill energetically with some energy loss as heat. There is not a one which does not lose energy apart from photochemical reactions). It means so-called fossil fuels did not originate with biological materials, because they were not exposed to light in a way which would increase the chemical energy from carbohydrates to hydrocarbons.

Science is not what it used to be. This concern is the starting point of Principia Scientific, where the focus is on correcting global warming science. Due to the vastness of climatology, it’s impossible to criticize the science without getting buried in a quagmire of endless details which displace relevance and perspective.

Books on global warming cannot sustain relevance and perspective, because they get immersed in too much one-sided detail. Flaws get carried too far, and corrections and responses are not possible. Another problem in this area is that there tends to be an absence of basics throughout global warming “science” and its criticism. When the basics are wrong, the problem is going to persist, even when the rest of the subject is corrected. The basics are the starting points which create the foundation for the rest of a subject.

One of the most basic errors in global warming “science” is a fudge factor for determining how much heat carbon dioxide produces in the atmosphere. If that fudge factor is correct, then carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and what it does is unquestionable. It’s all wrapped up in the fudge factor. The fudge factor has to be wrong before there can be anything wrong about the concept of global warming or how much heat will be produced by CO2 (before other “forcings”).

Yet the fudge factor is nowhere to be seen in criticism of global warming (or its promotion). It first showed up in a publication by James Hansen et al in 1988. Its origins cannot be determined. Norm Kalmanovitch took a look at it and said it appears to be an extension of past assumptions into the future. Supposedly, a temperature increase of 0.6°C occurred in the past with an increase of 100 parts per million CO2. So the fudge factor says increases in CO2 will always hold those proportions.

It won’t happen, and it is not happening with a recent cool-down, because temperatures constantly change for any number of reasons which have nothing to do with carbon dioxide. The fudge factor is fed into models, with the only question being how much secondary effect will be created by other factors (called forcing) such as increased water vapor causing more warming, since water vapor is a so-called greenhouse gas even stronger than CO2.

In an extract below from his latest article, Dr. E. Calvin Beisner shows that people right at the top of the pecking order of alarmist climate-change “scientists” know exactly what they’re doing—post-normal science, not real science.

Consider self-professed socialist Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre and Professor of Climate Change (note that title—not of climate, but of climate change) at the University of East Anglia, home of the Climatic Research Unit, of Climategate infamy. (Climategate was the release of thousands of emails, computer codes, and other documents among leading climate alarmist scientists that revealed that they were fabricating, exaggerating, cherry picking, and suppressing data, intimidating dissenting scientists, blackballing journal editors willing to publish the dissenters, corrupting the peer review process, refusing to share data and code with fellow scientists on request even when required to by the journals in which they published, and violating American and British Freedom of Information Acts.

The only games in town that have a chance at fundamentally explaining all aspects of existence are Scientific Materialism vs. Mathematical Idealism.

Scientific Materialism fails as a possible answer before it even gets out of the starting gate, because it can’t explain how subjective mental experience arises, or what the mind actually is.  At best, Scientific Materialism says that mind is an epiphenomenon of matter, an emergent state of complexity that gives rise to the impression of mind.  This is actually a blind statement of faith, because how such a process actually leads to the impression of mind is not and specifically can not be explained – it is simply assumed.  It is simply called “emergent”, as if such a label explains something.  Moreover, Scientific Materialism fails because it can not explain the numbers zero, infinity, or i, even though it uses them in all of its equations; Scientific Materialism is therefore incomplete, since it can not fundamentally explain all aspects of itself.  Scientific Materialism can discover the laws of physics, but it can’t actually explain where the laws come from, why matter obeys them, where the laws are stored, and why they are always mathematical in the first place.  Finally, it can not explain why the Big Bang occurred, or what it was. Besides, quantum mechanics has already proven that there’s no such thing as material anyway.

Mathematical Idealism, on the other hand, already subsumes Scientific Materialism because it is based on the very things where materialism breaks down: zero, infinity, and the number i.  Moreover, this basis does explain the nature of reality, where physical laws are stored, why matter obeys them, why the laws are always mathematical, what mind is and how it arises, and how subjectivity can be experienced in an objective universe.  It also explains what the Big Bang was and why it occurred.  Hmm, perhaps this would be a good basis for a rational religion?

But this does not mean that human usage of mathematics on paper is infallible.  In fact, mathematics is so powerful that it can describe almost anything, even concepts which have no basis in reality.  The mathematics which corresponds fundamentally to reality is called “Ontological Mathematics”, because ontological means “the basis or essence of existence”.  We are about to see that there is an important difference between mathematics, and physics, and that this difference depends on the comprehension inherent in Mind.  Discovering Ontological Mathematics is the true activity of science and physics, although science does not currently understand this.  We are trying to fix that.

Dr Nicola Scafetta’s newly-published paper showing strong evidence supporting the planetary theory of solar variation due to gravitational and electro-magnetic forces. Tellingly, the theory and the associated evidence has never been factored into any official climate change models for earth. As such, this new line of research may go some way towards explaining why climate models have notoriously low reliability.

After complex analysis Dr. Scafetta‘s new paper shows there exists a clear signature for the 1.09-year Earth-Jupiter conjunction cycle, in particular during solar cycle 23 maximum with the Jupiter side of the Sun being slightly brighter during solar maxima.

This has led Scafetta and his colleagues to conjecture that on annual and sub-annual scales both gravitational and electro-magnetic planet-sun interactions and internal non-linear feedbacks may be modulating solar activity.

Scafetta has long argued, “At least 60% of the warming of the Earth observed since 1970 appears to be induced by natural cycles which are present in the solar system.”

Scafetta proposed that the gravitational energy released by the planetary tides to the sun may trigger slight nuclear fusion rate variations by enhancing solar plasma mixing. In fact, solar plasma is made of protons and electrons that can freely move and interact through electromagnetic forces. Under gravitational perturbations electrons and protons may drift in opposite directions perpendicular to the gravitational forces generating micro currents in the plasma.

Dr. Scafetta advises, “In general solar records present peaks at about 85-90 year and 200-215 year, and they are well known. These frequencies can be easily reconstructed by planetary harmonics. In general these statistical tests need to use the physical statistical error in the data instead of generic white or red errors definition. One never knows if the problem is the data or the statistical test.”

Abstract

The time series of total solar irradiance (TSI) satellite observations since

1978 provided by ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are studied. We find

empirical evidence for planetary-induced forcing and modulation of solar

activity. Power spectra and direct data pattern analysis reveal a clear

signature of the 1.09-year Earth-Jupiter conjunction cycle, in particular

during solar cycle 23 maximum. This appears to suggest that the Jupiter side

of the Sun is slightly brighter during solar maxima. The effect is observed

when the Earth crosses the Sun-Jupiter conjunction line every 1.09 years.

Multiple spectral peaks are observed in the TSI records that are coherent

with known planetary harmonics such as the spring, orbital and synodic

periods among Mercury, Venus, Earth and Jupiter: the Mercury-Venus

spring-tidal cycle (0.20 year); the Mercury orbital cycle (0.24 year); the

Venus-Jupiter spring-tidal cycle (0.32 year); the Venus-Mercury synodic

cycle (0.40 year); the Venus-Jupiter synodic cycle (0.65 year); and the

Venus-Earth spring tidal cycle (0.80 year). Strong evidence is also found

for a 0.5-year TSI cycle that could be driven by the Earth’s crossing the

solar equatorial plane twice a year and may indicate a latitudinal

solar-luminosity asymmetry. Because both spring and synodic planetary cycles

appear to be present and the amplitudes of their TSI signatures appear

enhanced during sunspot cycle maxima, we conjecture that on annual and

sub-annual scales both gravitational and electro-magnetic planet-sun

interactions and internal non-linear feedbacks may be modulating solar

activity. Gravitational tidal forces should mostly stress spring cycles

while electro-magnetic forces could be linked to the solar wobbling

dynamics, and would mostly stress the synodic cycles. The observed

statistical coherence between the TSI records and the planetary harmonics is

Scafetta’s new paper is behind a paywall and may be purchased on Springer.com for $39.95 / €34.95 / £29.95  The title is:

Scafetta N, Willson R.C. (2013). Empirical evidences for a planetary modulation of total solar irradiance and the TSI signature of the 1.09-year Earth-Jupiter conjunction cycle. Astrophysics and Space Science. DOI: 10.1007/s10509-013-1558-3

Free download is available from here:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/Scafetta_EE_2013.pdf

In order to explain a physical process the mathematics that has been developed to describe it must be a good representation of all of the steps. What Dr. Spencer has done with his article, ‘Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still‘ is to take the basic Stefan Boltzmann equation (SBe) that I described in my previous article and neglected to consider the changes required in the adjustable parameters, with the exception of T₁, by his addition of the second plate. 

Dr. Pierre R Latour has already pointed out errors by Dr. Spencer in Latour’s ‘No, Virginia‘ rebuttal. The full email exchange between Spencer and Latour may be studied here.

Without a doubt the energy flux to the container from the heated plate will change. The A and ε are no longer the same as before the addition, and have to be included inside the bracketed part of the equation, with a corresponding time dependent variable as the emissivity and temperature now become a function of time. Note that T₂ in the SBe is neglected in the picture presented to attempt to describe the effect.

Following on in his discussion Dr. Spencer boldly asserts that “back radiation” is occurring although nowhere in the illustration is any evidence as to how it is possible.

Save the Eagles International and the World Council for Nature, the two NGOs that claim “green” policies are causing more harm than good, unite again today to issue a warning: wind turbines attract and kill bats, plus many species of birds, from many kilometers away. “Even “carefully-sited” wind farms or wind turbines will attract and kill them.”

“We recorded 11 species (of bats) … flying over the ocean up to 14 km from the shore,” wrote years ago a European authority on bats, Professor Ingemar Ahlén, in the Journal of Mammology (1). Studying bat migrations over the Baltic, professor Ahlén had found the following: “The bats did not avoid the turbines. On the contrary they stayed for shorter or longer periods hunting close to the windmills because of the accumulation of flying insects. Hunting close to the blades was observed, why the risk of colliding might be comparable to land-based turbines. Bats also used wind turbines for resting. Insects were collected at places and times when bats were observed feeding.” (2) He then discovered that some of these bats were not migrants, but commuters from the shore (see the first quote above).

Principia Scientific International’s Professor Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo publishes the latest monthly climate data on his excellent site, Climate4you, and it makes scary reading for alarmist global warming climate scientists.

The official government data, as presented in the graphs below, is as telling as it is iconic: while the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) measured at Mauna Loa (the official reference source) continues its ceaseless rise the satellite records – month on month – continue to show our climate is cooling.

In other words, the real world ‘laboratory experiment’ of adding more CO2 into the atmosphere is showing that this trace gas (<0.4 {154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}) is associated with cooling, not warming.

Of course, if you ask a biased government-funded climate scientist he/she will tell you this isn’t proof that the “greenhouse gas theory” is busted. They will, as always, point to their computer models that “prove” that CO2 “must” cause warming. So which is wrong: is it nature or the models?

For those readers looking for an independent expert’s explanation of the above we recommend a read of eminent Professor Karl Erdman’s latest article, ‘The Heating and Cooling of the Atmosphere of the Earth.’