Daniel Wolf Savin and Michael Hahn have been fascinated by the universe since they were boys. For Savin, a senior research scientist in the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, discovering Albert Einstein at age 12 spurred the desire to “learn everything about the universe.” Years later, Hahn, an associate research scientist who grew up 40 miles from Savin’s home town in Connecticut, started gazing at the stars as a teenager; he eventually became president of the astronomy club at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon.

Now the two have made a big leap toward cracking one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics—why the corona, or plasma surrounding the sun, is so much hotter than the sun’s surface.

The coronal heating problem, as it is known, is important because the corona is the source of solar wind, which is responsible for the northern and southern lights and can also disrupt telecommunications and power grids. “Satellites can be slowly pushed out of their orbits if they’re deflected by the solar wind so if we can better understand the cause, we can create better models for space weather,” says Savin, referring to conditions beyond the atmosphere.

Alternative fuels have failed to catch on because they require a major adjustment in the way society works. Here’s an alternative to that.

Considering the fact that over 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of crude oil is used for jet fuel, it appears that refined oil is going to be around for a long time.

 

If you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em, says Herskowitz. With a revolutionary system for making gasoline out of hydrogen extracted from water, and from carbon dioxide, two of the most common substances on earth, Herskowitz believes that he and his team at Ben-Gurion (including Prof. Miron Landau, Dr. Roxana Vidruk, and others at BGU’s Blechner Center for Industrial Catalysis and Process Development) have come up with the one alternative fuel that can succeed on a wide scale.

A teacher in South Korea wrote to ask me for more information about global warming theory, to help his class. Below is an excerpt of my reply.

In regard to CO2 and global warming, the two have become so linked in the public mind that the warming mechanism itself (the Greenhouse Effect) is seldom referred to or discussed. Rather, it’s taken for granted. For a detailed explanation of this mechanism, then, I’d refer your students to MIT professor Richard Lindzen’s essay Greenhouse Effect.

In Lindzen’s piece your students will discover that the popular notion of the Greenhouse Effect differs from the accepted scientific explanation. The popular view has it that gases like carbon dioxide absorb and trap thermal radiation (infrared light), thus keeping the Earth warm by reducing its ability to release heat-rays to outer space.

In this view “greenhouse gases” function much like a blanket or winter clothing. As this infrared image suggests, after all, a body that’s inhibited from releasing heat-rays will cool off more slowly, which is the same as saying “will stay warmer.”

Has a critical new element in the climate fraud been uncovered? Independent British researcher, Derek Alker, attending the UK lecture tour of Australian climatologist, Dr Murry Salby, stumbles on an apparent critical flaw in climate models. Alker finds the models are dependent only on carbon dioxide (CO2) to change temperature. Incredibly, the models seem to be pre-programmed so that no other atmospheric variable is allowed to alter climate. Read Alker’s full analysis below:

How the IPCC models human emissions of CO2

accumulating in earth’s atmosphere

By Derek Alker (November 18, 2013)

Wednesday, 26th May, 2010, 09:03 pm in post ten of this thread at the Global Warming Skeptics.info forum. Dr.Jonathan Drake published one of the most important posts I am aware of thus far in the ongoing climate debate. At the time I did not realise the full significance of it, nor it seems did anyone else. But it is worth noting that Dr. Drake and I had discussed this on a prior occasion without fully ascertaining its import.

Thursday, 7th Nov, 2013, 07.00pm I attended Professor Salby’s lecture at the Links Hotel, Edinburgh, as part of a series of talks sponsored by Ken Coffman (Stairway Press) and Principia Scientific International. The lecture was titled Climate: What we know and what we don’t. The relevant part of his lecture can be viewed in a video from his earlier lecture given in Hamburg on the April 18, 2013 (specifically between 53 minutes to 1 hour and 2 minutes).

Background
Consensus scientists and the IPCC state there is a dominant residence time in excess of 100 years for human emissions of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere. This arises due to a “need” within the “theory” of a greenhouse effect (the scientific underpinning of supposed human-caused global warming) to have the facts fit the emissions data of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). All such official data is measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO).

The UN’s latest Climate Conference (COP19) in Warsaw marks an astonishing new low for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Despite 50,000 angry Polish protesters demanding an end to the shameless fakery of the ‘science’ about man-made global warming, the IPCC now claims that:

“during the last hundred years … the sea level increased for the first time since the last ice age,” Tom Nelson reports.

The claim will come as a big surprise to some of the world’s leading oceanographers. As the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) recently reported, such a claim is readily discredited. Peer-reviewed studies by experts in sea level rises (not climate ‘scientists’) suggest that no only have sea levels gone on rising irresistably for the last several thousand years, but that there is compelling new evidence pointing to the existance of multidecadal cycles in the historical mean sea level observations from many ocean basins.

Don Chambers from the University of South Florida led the research team that found that tide gauge records from across the globe show oscillations with a period of about 60 years in all ocean basins except the Central/Eastern North Pacific. [1]

Oceanographers are still grappling with the implications of these findings, which seem to suggest a 60-yr quasi oscillation of sea levels. If so, these oscillations are remarkably similar to those identified in other earth/climate systems including ocean circulation, global mean surface temperatures, large-scale precipitation patterns, and atmospheric pressure, among other things.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, the US Department of Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, is pushing for an increase of the current maximum of 10.2{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} ethanol in gasoline to 15-20{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}. Much of that is supposed to come from corn and, later, from cellulose (wood).

Under the current federal “Renewable Fuel Standard” the US is already slated to increase its use of biofuels from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. That standard does not even include the proposed increase of the ethanol content of common gasoline.

The proposed revision would be a really bad idea and let me tell you why. 

Fuel Supply

To begin with, the idea is a red herring. There is no shortage of automotive fuel or its precursor, crude oil. The production of crude oil in the US already has substantially increased as shown in the graph below and continues to expand. Current predictions are that the US will actually become a net oil EXPORTER in a few years’ time.

For that reason alone, there is absolutely no need to “adulterate” good gasoline with ethanol.  However, there are far more compelling reasons to steer away from the ethanol mandate altogether.

Engine Problems

There is no shortage of potential engine problems with such a mandate. You may as well kiss your car/pickup/motorcycle/ATV, lawnmower, outboard, generator and other engines good-bye. Gasoline with that kind of ethanol content will kill most of them in short order, especially in areas of colder climes. To begin with, many engine and connecting parts cannot withstand the corrosive or solubilizing properties of ethanol when present at higher than 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} in gasoline. For example, gaskets and the like in older engines (pre-2000) cannot withstand its effects. Furthermore, gasoline, at any temperature and level of activation will not react with aluminum but alcohol (ethanol) will when the metal’s protective oxide layer is compromised. Without that protection, for example, aluminum would readily dissolve in water.

Wind turbines are illegally inflicting severe losses on so many protected bird species that the problem can no longer be ignored or tolerated.

Astrophysicist, Joseph E Postma pulls no punches in his latest blog post exposing so-called global warming skeptics who appear to be propping up the increasingly discredited ‘greenhouse gas theory’ of climate change.

Naming and shaming those he suspects may be intentionally misrepresenting the facts, Postma points his accusatory finger fairly and squarely first and foremost at WUWT’s Anthony Watts, Dr Robert Brown and Dr Roy Spencer.

Postma has on many occasions – not only in private emails, but in detailed published articles – set out his scientific case as to why standard physics, chemistry and thermodynamics disprove the belief that carbon dioxide can play any measurable role in climate change.

The Canadian astrophysicist insists that such errors are:

“helping  to destroy the credibility, use, and function of true science.  You can not have a PhD in physics and insist that cold heats hot, that insulation in your walls determines the burn temperature of the natural gas in your furnace, that as something warm heats up something cold the cold thing heats up the warm thing in proportion, etc.  You can not believe that turning on a lightbulb and putting it in front of a mirror will make it shine brighter.”

To quote Mr. Watts:

“Let me make this simple, the greenhouse effect is a well established property of radiative physics in our atmosphere, one that I have observed firsthand through experimentation.”

Oh really?  He’s observed it first hand?  Like when he turned on a lightbulb in front of a mirror and demonstrated no greenhouse effect?  Like when the greenhouse effect “radiative physics” ignores the natural lapse rate gradient that already establishes that the bottom of the atmosphere must be warmer than the average?  As when Watts and his associates didn’t know what a time-dependent differential thermal equation is. 

COMMENT TO FASULLO, J.T., C. BOENING, F. LANDERER, AND R.S. NEREM, AUSTRALIA’S UNIQUE INFLUENCE ON GLOBAL SEA LEVEL IN 2010-2011, GEO. RES. LETT., 2013, IN PRESS

Albert Parker

[email protected]

The lack of global warming over this century in the measurements of ground and deep oceans temperatures and the lack of positive acceleration in the measurements of sea levels suggest that the climate models have greatly exaggerated the influence of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission. However, rather than feeling uncomfortable with possibly wrong theories, many authors have recently re-focused their attention from “warming” to “weather extremes”, blaming climate “variability” and “uncertainty” for the lack of warming, or sorting out the most unrealistic explanations for the lack of warming of temperatures and accelerations of seas as it is the case of the claimed storage of 4.572·10¹² m³ of water in Australia discussed in the commented paper.

The latest news about global warming report of temporary falls of the rate of rise of sea levels because of formation of Lake Eyre in Australia.  “Global sea level has been rising as a result of global warming, but in 2010 and 2011, sea level actually fell by about a quarter of an inch. Scientists now say they know why: It has to do with extreme weather in Australia. The sea level drop coincided with some of the worst flooding in that continent’s history. Dozens of people died and torrents washed away houses and cars, forcing thousands from their homes. Some of those floodwaters simply ran back into the ocean, so they didn’t affect sea level. But a lot of that water was trapped on the Australian land mass. That’s because the continent has an odd geography.” writes Richard Harris [1] reporting on a work recently published by John Fasullo and others in the paper here commented [2].

The claim by Fasullo surprisingly accepted in the peer review is that “Australia’s hydrologic surface mass anomaly is responsible for the fall in the reconstruction of global mean sea level.” Apart from the fact that the global mean sea level (GMSL) reconstructions are not measurements but very questionable computations, it appear unbelievable that the natural formation of Lake Eyre in the centre of Australia can be considered responsible for a drop of a quarter of an inch in the GMSL.

Mexican study affirms a 1951 finding by top American scientists that carbon dioxide (CO2) cannot cause global warming. Applying known scientific values, more eminent scientists are coming forward to confirm that atmospheric CO2 mixes with clouds and water vapor to cause only cooling. As such, the credibility of “consensus science” claims about man-made global warming being caused by rises in CO2 levels are left in serious doubt.

Professor Nasif Nahle (Monterrey, Mexico) provides a peer-reviewed paper, ‘Determining the Total Emissivity of a Mixture of Gases Containing Overlapping Absorption Bands,’ that uses known and well-established values from the results of experiments performed previously by H. C. Hottel, B. Leckner, M. Lapp, C. B. Ludwig, A. F. Sarofim, et al, showing that the combined effect of overlapping absorption bands of water vapor with CO2 causes a reduction on the total absorptivity of the mixture of those gases in earth’s atmosphere. As such, water vapor and CO2 are proven to combine to cause global cooling, not warming.

Nahle’s paper affirms the long-forgotten findings of the eminent former head of Britain’s Met Office, CEP Brooks, and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) that also revealed that CO2 in the atmosphere could not cause warming. Brooks, Britain’s top climatologist at the time, along with America’s best meteorologists agreed that the idea that CO2 could warm the climate:

“was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor.”

[see:“Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” In Compendium of Meteorology, edited by Thomas F. Malone, pp. 1004-18 (at 1016). Boston: American Meteorological Association]

Scientists at Principia Scientific International (PSI), who peer-reviewed Nahle’s paper, are currently advising colleagues that the most reliable data available now confirms that CO2 is shown to act as a coolant in earth’s climate. As such, the notion of a so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ warming effect may be regarded as refuted, while environmental measures by governments and individuals to reduce “carbon emissions”  to combat climate change are, in turn, rendered pointless.

Based on the earlier book by John D. Hamaker and Donald A. Weaver “The Survival of Civilization” (1982), Weaver also published a companion book “To Love and Regenerate the Earth” (2002). Both books are available freely as electronic (pdf) files from www.soilandhealth.org.

The main idea in both works is the “re-mineralization” of soil as a means to produce better yields of agricultural products. This re-mineralization essentially means adding finely ground rock powder to mineral-depleted or mineral-lacking soil. Without doubt, finely ground rock from almost any source will provide potassium and phosphate-type minerals that are vital for plant growth. However, grinding rock to a fine powder requires not just the equipment but a large amount of energy as well.

Believers in the greenhouse gas theory, the cornerstone of the science of man-made global warming, often refer to a select history of researchers and key papers to bolster claims for a “settled science.” But here we expose just how flimsy is its provenance. Below is exposed the flaws in such seminal works by James Hansen, Richard Lindzen, the National Academy of Science (NAS) and others. This article is a summary of six articles located at the author’s blog (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part 6).

The ‘Charney’ Report

We begin with the NAS, the pinnacle of American science, as we delve into how the major academies of sciences played their roles in the greatest travesty of modern science. ‘Charney’ is a  seminal 13,000-word report about earth’s climate from 1979 and NOWHERE in those 13,000 words does it mention the term ‘greenhouse gas effect’ or any such derivative of the term.

Also, nowhere does ‘Charney’ speak of our planet being ’33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be;’ (a common GHE meme) and no mention of “back radiation heating” and/or delayed cooling due to carbon dioxide (CO2). And who was among the key authors? None other than NASA’s James Hansen and Richard Lindzen!

It seems utterly plausible to infer that uncertainty about the science of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) was the reason why Hansen, Lindzen and their eminent co-authors omitted to include mention of the term, or of the mechanism whereby CO2 causes warming/delayed cooling in the atmosphere.

Hate-filled Response

When I published those six articles I enraged a slew of global warming afficionados, mostly from Skepticalscience.com attacking me on this crucial technical issue. My blog became filled with irate accusatory comments. In response I pointed out that nowhere in this major report were the best brains in the business able to put a name to what they described. As I told them: settled science requires settled nomenclature.

[This article originally published as: GHG Theory 33C Effect Whatchamacallit (Pierre R Latour, PhD, Houston, January 15, 2012) at climatechangedispatch.com]

GHG Theory was invented to explain a so-called 33C atmospheric greenhouse gas global warming effect. In 1981 James Hansen [1, 2] stated the average thermal T at Earth’s surface is 15C (ok) and Earth radiates to space at -18C (ok). Then he declared the difference 15 – (-18) = 33C (arithmetic ok) is the famous greenhouse gas effect. This is not ok because there is no physics to connect these two dissimilar numbers. The 33C are whatchamacallits. This greenhouse gas effect does not exist.

Here is the science for what is happening. Thermal T is a point property of matter, a scalar measure of its kinetic energy of atomic and molecular motion. It is measured by thermometers. It decreases with altitude. The rate of thermal energy transfer by conduction or convection between hot Th and cold Tc is proportional to (Th – Tc).

Radiation t is a point property of massless radiation, EMR, a directional vector measure of its energy transmission rate per area or intensity, w/m2, according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. It is measured by pyrometers and spectrometers. Solar radiation t increases with altitude. Black bodies are defined to be those that absorb and radiate with the same intensity and corresponding t. Real, colorful bodies reflect, scatter, absorb, convert and emit radiant energy according to the nature of the incident radiation direction, spectrum and body matter reflectivity, absorptivity, emissivity and view factors. The rate of EMR energy transfer from a hot body, th, is Q, w = 5.67Ae(th + 273)4, where A is radiating area and e is emissivity fraction. But it may not be absorbed by all bodies that intercept it, as GHG theory assumes. In particular, hotter radiating bodies do not absorb colder incident radiation and reemit it more intensely, as GHG back-radiation theory assumes.

Above Earth’s stratosphere, thin air T is rather cold, about -80C. Yet solar radiation t is rather hot, about 120C. So spacesuits have thermal insulation and radiant reflection. The difference, 200C, is meaningless. On a cold, clear, winter day on snowcapped mountains, dry air T = -10C and radiation t = 50C. I can feel them both.

The Sun moves the atmosphere, rules the weather and is the energy source for all life on Earth!

The Sun as an energy source

The Sun is the source for life on Earth and has a direct influence on most of the physical processes within the Earth’s atmosphere. Sunlight provides the energy for photosynthesis within plants, which in turn creates the atmospheric oxygen required for us to breathe. The solar daily cycle regulates our lives, and the solar annual cycle determines the seasons and hence the agricultural cycle. Yet the role of the Sun in determining the sate and behavior of the Earth’s climate is much greater than just a simple observation of its warmth would lead us to suppose. The Earth’ atmosphere is literally solar-powered, the Sun being the primary cause of all the atmosphere processes, including the General Circulation, the formation of clouds and the generation of both local and global wind patterns.

The Sun, at the centre of the Solar System, is a typical star 1.392.000 km in diameter, with a mass roughly 1 000 times that of the rest of the Solar System combined. Like most stars it is composed mainly of hydrogen (≈70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}), with most of the remainder being helium. The Sun generates its heat and sustains itself from nuclear fusions in the core where the temperature reaches some 15 million °C, and in which an estimated 600 million tones of hydrogen are converted into helium every second. The total solar output into space is 2.33×10²⁵ kJmin^-1, but only a tiny fraction (1/2.000.000.000), i.e. one two thousand millionth, of this is actually intercepted by the Earth since the energy received by any planet is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Owing to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the receipt of solar energy on a surface normal to the Sun is 7{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} more on 3 January at the perihelion (when the Erath is closest to the Sun) than on 4 July at the aphelion when the Earth is furthest from the Sun. The “solar constant” is therefore not a constant. The “solar constant” changes from 1416 W/m² at the beginning of January to 1321 W/m² at the beginning of July.

90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of government scientists feel they can’t speak freely: union survey

OTTAWA — A large survey of science professionals in the federal public service has found that almost 25 per cent of respondents say they have been directly asked to exclude or alter information for “non-scientific reasons.”

Some 71 per cent of those surveyed said political interference is compromising policy development based on scientific evidence, and almost half of those who took part said they were aware of cases in which their department or agency suppressed information.

The study, entitled “The Big Chill,” was commissioned by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, and paints a disturbing picture of government scientists who feel they are being muzzled.

More than 4,000 federal scientists — out of more than 15,000 who were invited –responded to the union-commissioned, online survey handled by the polling firm Environics.

“A chill has settled on federal government science that is even greater than that suggested by the cases so far reported by the media,” Gary Corbett, the president of PIPSC, said Monday.

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is already conducting a study of how communications policy changes under the Harper government have clamped down on the sharing of government science with the public.

On a windswept evening in the heart of Scotland’s capital an eager audience was left in no doubt about Salby’s message. The American climate professor, fired by his Australian university employer for daring to speak the unspeakable truth, admitted that the peer-reviewed historical data proves that global temperatures conclusively drive carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, not the reverse.

In short, the message from this principled researcher stands loud and clear for policymakers: the CO2-forcing ‘greenhouse gas’ hypothesis has ’cause and effect’ back to front. But before we go deeper into Salby’s presentation we can’t overlook a most bizarre appearance (enter stage door left!) from the indefatigable (Lord) Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.

Obviously it was quite a surprise to all present when the self-styled former “science adviser” to Margaret Thatcher popped up out of the blue. Judging by the facial expression of Mike Haseler (the scottish sceptic who organised this event) it surprised Mike as much as the rest of us. That said, his lordship was quickly allowed a small speaking slot before Salby. Salby did look a little none plussed, but leaned in the doorway and warmed to the speech as Monckton did his usual excellent job (more on that later below).

Salby was able to demonstrate, by reference to such official data, that recent and short term CO2 levels do not directly follow temperature swings, but are induced by and dependent upon the time integration of the temperature changes. If Salby’s analysis is correct, then all those expensive government computer models programmed to show CO2 and temperature correlation are completely wrong and the ‘decarbonisation’ crusade is all based on junk science.