Top French Mathematicians Praised for Getting Skeptical on Global Warming
Top French mathematicians go public to condemn climate alarmism and join growing worldwide army of sceptical scientists. France’s Societe de Calcul Mathematique declare: “The battle against global warming is an absurd, costly and pointless crusade” in a 195-page PDF.
In a letter published below, Dr. Bernard Beauzamy of the Societe de Calcul Mathematique, SA (SCM) is warmly praised by prominent American skeptic scientist, Dr Martin Hertzberg for his organization’s damning new White Paper, “The battle against global warming“ in which France’s top mathematicians condemn climate alarmism.
After conducting its own rigorous study SCM declares that the global warming cult has had an “impact on the entire field of scientific research” and “is particularly clear and especially pernicious.”
SCM was established in 1987 by University professor, Dr. Beauzamy. Dr Hertzberg is co-founder and key scientist at Principia Scientific International (PSI). Both bodies separately, studiously and impartially applied their skills to separate fact from fiction in the heated climate debate. Both find carbon dioxide (CO2) to be innocent and nothing more than a benign trace atmospheric gas.
Both SCM and PSI agree bad science and misrepresentation of data has led poorly-trained climate ‘experts’ to wrongly conclude there exists a dangerous human impact on earth’s climate requiring urgent global action.
PSI’s Hertzberg, a former US Navy meteorologist and respected climate analyst praises Beauzamy and his French colleagues for their paper which finds that there is “not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way disturbed.’”
Dr Hertzberg writes:
Dear Dr. Beauzamy:
I have just read your White Paper and wish to congratulate you and your colleagues for its comprehensive and accurate evaluation of the
“theory” of human caused global warming/climate change. I have been studying the issue for over 30 years and most of your conclusions are virtual identical to mine and those of my colleagues who are loosely identified as “the Slayers” The identification comes from a book we
coauthored entitled “Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory“, published in 2011 by Stairway Press. I will get to the greenhouse gas issue later.
But first I want especially to complement the White Paper on its thorough discussion of the vast array of temperature measurements published in the literature and your excellent critique of the flaws and ambiguities in those measurements and their interpretation by the prevalent “consensus”. I agree with your conclusion that “None of the information on global temperatures is of any scientific value, and should not be used as a basis for policy decisions.” and that “we do not know what such a temperature might mean because nobody has given it any physical significance.”
I looked at such issues myself a while ago and came to the cursory conclusion indicated below:
” 4. COMPLEXITIES IN DETERMINING THE ABSORPTIVITY TO EMISSIVITY RATIO OF THE EARTH.
Now the problem of obtaining a realistic value for the absorptivity to emissivity ratio for all the entities at the earth’s surface and in its atmosphere that participate in the radiative balance is a formidable task. The first and most difficult part of the problem is simply to locate the “surface” of the earth that is involved in the radiative equilibrium process. Upon closer examination, one finds that the “surface” on which the incident solar irradiance is absorbed and from which the earth radiates outward into free space, is not a simple surface at all. Most of the albedo of the earth is caused by reflection of the incident solar flux from several surfaces: from the tops of clouds, from the surface of the oceans, from the surfaces of continents, and from the surfaces of dust particles in the atmosphere. There is also a scattering component to the albedo: from homogeneous gases and heterogeneous particulates in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the absorbed fraction of the solar flux is not only absorbed heterogeneously at those same surfaces, but also homogeneously by the gaseous components: water vapor mainly, with smaller contributions from other gases. That same distribution of homogeneous and heterogeneous absorbers are the same entities that are the emitters of the flux that is radiated to free space from the earth.
Those entities are distributed vertically throughout the earth’s atmosphere: from the ocean surfaces at mean sea level, to the mountains at high altitudes, to continental depressions below mean sea level, and to the upper reaches of the atmosphere at the tops of clouds. Those same entities are distributed longitudinally and latitudenally from the equator to the poles. With what measured temperature are the calculated ones to be compared? Is it reasonable to expect that the calculated temperatures should be compared only with the air temperatures measured near the earth’s topographic surface? How representative is such an average surface air temperature to the entire mass of the earth’s atmosphere involved in the radiative equilibrium processes? If the near-surface air temperature is not representative, is it realistically possible to measure the average temperature of the entire mass of absorbing and emitting entities with sufficient accuracy to make a meaningful comparison between the data and the predictions? One is asking for a definition of the mass of matter that constitutes the earth’s surface, its atmosphere, and its oceans. How high in altitude should one go in the atmosphere to include it all? Similarly, how deep in the liquid fluid of the oceans should one go in order to include the mass below the ocean surface that influences the heat and mass transport processes near the ocean surface and the atmosphere above it? How representative are near-surface temperatures of the average temperature of those vertically distributed, yet poorly defined entities. As difficult as those questions may be, they are nevertheless the ones that need to be answered in order to evaluate the validity of any models that purport to be able to predict future conditions. It was indicated earlier that this was a formidable task; however, looking at the problem in depth, it may be more realistic to conclude that its resolution may be unattainable given our limited understanding of the complex processes involved, and the lack of data available for the current thermodynamic state of those entities. “
The quotation above is taken from my paper ” Earth’s Radiative Equilibrium……..:” which is attached to this e-mail.
The section in your paper which presents the atmospheric CO2 data is equally comprehensive and thorough. I have seen most of that data before and agree with your conclusion that “There is nothing that enables us to support the commonly-held conclusion that CO2 concentrations are constantly rising and are higher than anything that may have been seen in the industrial age”. While it is true that current values as high as 400 ppm are higher than any of the maximum values measured for Interglacial Warmings as shown in your Fig. 32, the fact remains that one cannot take the absolute values shown in that figure too seriously. Much happens to gases that are trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years. In addition the values measured are averages over many centuries and thus easily miss the peak values for shorter periods of time. Nevertheless, the approximate doubling between the minima at Glacial Coolings and the maxima at Interglacial Warmings are probably reasonably accurate. But the “smoking gun”, as it were, for the ice core data is the comparison of temperatures with CO2. Temperature changes inevitably precede CO2 changes by about a thousand years. The same is true for recent data but with a shorter time delay of several years. The precedence of temperature before CO2 clearly proves that CO2 changes are caused by temperature changes and not the reverse as is claimed in the IPCC paradigm.
Data that I have not seen before was the data shown in your Fig. 25 for the Wisconsin Tower measurements. The data for daytime Summer show that ground concentrations are some 25 to 50 ppm lower than concentrations at 400m elevation. Clearly, the gradient must be caused by the sink of photosynthesis.
There is also more recent satellite data obtained by NASA with their Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), that I have found somewhat puzzling. The data clearly show that natural sources of CO2 from land masses and oceans far exceed the magnitude of human sources.
The one thing that needs to be revised in the White Paper deals with the lifespan of CO2 in the atmosphere. Both lifespan and concentrations are important. The table shown on p. 147 of the paper lists 100 years for that lifespan. The data show that the lifetime is much shorter: 5 years or even shorter for tropospheric injection. This question is discussed in detail in the quotation below from my paper, “The Lynching if Carbon Dioxide”. That paper is also attached.
“The global warming advocates including the IPCC argue that the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere lasts for centuries. Some even claim that it accumulates for thousands of years. Like unabsolved sins, they claim that our transgressions will pile up until the earth gets so hot that it burns up creating the hell we deserve. The most authoritative study of the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere was done by a Norwegian, Professor Tom Segalstad of the University of Oslo. The measured lifetime, based on the studies of some 50 independent researchers is at most about 5 years. The best measurements came from the rate of decay of the radioactive isotope of Carbon, Carbon 14, which was injected into the atmosphere during past, above-ground nuclear weapons tests. It is an unambiguous and accurate measurement. You just measure its decay in the atmosphere as a function of time. Segalstad concludes that the short lifetime means that CO2 is quickly taken out of the atmosphere and recycled into the oceans. Despite such authoritative measurement, the global warming advocates still maintain that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. I will quote from Professor Segalstad’s recent e-mail to me:
‘ It is incredible that this wild idea of CO2 being an evil gas in the atmosphere has paralyzed most of the world today, especially since it is the “gas of life” responsible for photosynthesis that makes the food we eat. Daily we see the news media presenting apocalyptic views, not backed by solid measurements or comprehensive scientific theory. When we try to correct them, our contributions are usually rejected…..Editorial committees in scientific journals are now IPCC-supporting people, not allowing critics to appear in print. A manuscript submitted by me to Nature was rejected with only one sentence: ’30 years of greenhouse effect research cannot be wrong’. I was tempted to tell the editor that he should terminate his publication altogether. After all if everything they published in the last 30 years was correct, who needs any more research.’
Too bad the small committee of the Norwegian parliament that awarded Gore and the IPCC the Nobel Peace Prize didn’t have enough sense to consult with Prof Segalstad before they made their ghastly mistake. He was only a short distance away and he knew more about the subject than anyone of them. But as you can see, Prof. Segalstad’s experience in getting his work published is similar to mine.”
The next issue that needs clarification is the question of a “greenhouse gas” and the extent to which such an entity in the Earth’s atmosphere heats (or cools) it more than would otherwise happen in its absence. The issue also deals with the physical mechanism by which that entity exerts its effect: the “greenhouse effect”. The White paper provides this definition: “Part of the (solar) radiation absorbed by the Earth’s surface is returned to the atmosphere by convection (air movements) and in the form of far infrared radiation. The greenhouse effect only concerns this radiation, which is partly absorbed by greenhouse gases and helps to heat the atmosphere.” This definition is further clarified in Fig3 on p. 129 which is the standard IPCC summary of all the radiant fluxes involved between the Sun, the Earth and free space. It depicts a radiation transfer emitted by the atmosphere and absorbed by the Earth’s surface. It is that “back radiation” which is the problem as well as the magnitude of the radiation from the atmosphere to free space.
Attached are several additional publications which deal with those radiative transfers. The first is a note on the improper use of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and the other two are recent papers: “The Night Time Radiative Transport Between the Earth’s Surface, Its Atmosphere, and Free Space” which amplifies that note. My Review of the NIPPC report is also attached. They all contain my analysis of the validity of the so-called greenhouse effect. The first problem is simply the fact that the “back radiation” depicted by the IPCC diagram transfers energy from the colder atmosphere to the warmer Earth’s surface in direct violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Perhaps the distinguished diplomats gathering in Paris in December can solve that problem by repealing the 2nd Law!). Those publications and the book which I coauthored, (Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory) go into much more detail than I can in this e-mail.
And finally, I was much amused by your comment: ” We are fighting for a cause (reducing CO2 emissions) that serves absolutely no purpose, in which we alone believe, and which we can do nothing about. You would probably have to go quite a long way back in human history to find such a mad obsession.”
I would note that Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for the Nation Magazine in a series of articles which I referred to in my chapter of the Slayers book, has written as follows:
“In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet’s downward slide. Then as now a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in “carbon credits” is in formation. Those whose “carbon footprint” is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.
“The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any contribution to the world’s present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution —- and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.”
And now the Pope himself has joined the fray!
“Le plus ca change, le plus c’est la meme chose.”
Sincerely,
Dr. Martin Hertzberg
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