National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part 4

The first three parts of this series* showed the academic fraud that for 33 years promoted the greenhouse gas effect. The articles caused outrage among believers in the cult as evidenced by the comments section of my blog. But with some of the cultists having come out to openly debate we can better gauge the intellectual bankruptcy of their arguments.

Carbon Dioxide Not the Devil He Claims

Not only are there so many assumptions made about what is the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) but what strikes me most about these discussions is how believers in the ‘theory’  avoid addressing why, if this is all ‘settled science,’ there is no standard definition. Moreover, the closer we look at it the less it is clear just how this ‘theory’ even operates. Pointedly, despite around $100 billion spent on climate research, this cornerstone of the man-made global warming science hasn’t even been validated by any objective test in earth’s atmosphere.

What has triggered the furor is my analysis of the seminal 13,000-word report from 1979 by the National Academy of Sciences. The study is often referred to as the Charney Report and was commissioned by the U.S. Government to supposedly explain how carbon dioxide (CO2) will impact future climate. From our modern perspective – 33 years on – it seems incredible that such an in-depth report should fail to mention the greenhouse gas effect (GHE). This is especially incongruous being that climatologists will glibly tell you the theory has unimpeachable provenance stretching back 150 years to the formative era of radiative physics and Arrhenius and Tyndall.

But it isn’t just the absence of any mention of the GHE that is odd. There is also the  failure to identify the mechanism by which CO2 is supposed to generate additional warming at the earth’s surface. Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  claims ‘back radiation’ heating as the mechanism by which CO2  adds additional heat to our planet. But that term, just like the GHE,  is absent from the Charney Report. Thus an objective reading of the report adds, not diminishes, my skepticism especially knowing that the ‘best evidence’ for the phenomenon is nothing more than a ‘toy’ model generated by a NASA computer, as adeptly shown by Professor Claes Johnson. Likewise, none of the GHE chicanery is getting past astrophysicist, Joseph E Postma who provides his own assessment on climateofsophistry.com. Postma observes:

“The one thing which has become very clear, is that the GHE doesn’t actually have a consistent explanation or description.  We have seen it as the backradiation ‘active heating’ mechanism, where radiation from a cold source adds serially with the radiation from the Sun in order to amplify the temperature generation; we have seen it as the “delayed cooling” mechanism, where GHE advocates wish to be in compliance with the Laws of Thermodynamics, and so backradiation does not cause “active heating”, but merely serves to reduce the rate at which energy is lost, particularly during the nighttime.  In my last paper, we proved that neither of these things actually occur because, by definition, these things should be quantifiable and observable in their effect on the temperature, and they were not.”

What the NAS report did stress was that uncertainties abounded wherever the scientists looked. The authors admitted they lacked sufficient real world data and so had to rely on guesstimates from computer models. From such speculation emerged the view that  an otherwise benign trace gas (CO2) may warm the climate. But the  caveat in ‘Charney’ was that CO2 might actually cause cooling, something the IPCC and GHE advocates would rather you didn’t know.

Aficionados mostly from Skepticalscience.com were having none of it. My blog filled with irate accusatory comments from them. 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. If it was the greenhouse gas theory then surely an in-depth 13,000-word report on atmospheric carbon dioxide would at least make some passing reference to it. Secondly, and perhaps more damaging to the credibility of the ‘theory’  is that the NAS overlooked to mention ‘back radiation’ heating as the mechanism that could trigger the heat adding phenomenon, either. But upon further investigation we may have found out why it was no oversight. The concept of  ‘back radiation’ heating seems to have been invented years later, according to Dr. Judith Curry, in the reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is this dubious concept that the ‘Slayers’ have insisted falls foul of the laws the thermodynamics.  Dismissing ‘back radiation’ heating in no uncertain terms is popular skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball who noted,

“… [radiation] merely resonating in place does not imply reflecting energy back at the source….it is so difficult to argue with the absurd Alice looking glass science.” While Georgia Tech. climatologist,  Dr. Judith Curry conceded, ““Back radiation is a phrase, one that I don’t use myself, and it is not a word that is used in technical radiative transfer studies. Lets lose the back radiation terminology, we all agree on that.”

Thus my thesis is a simple one:  when the best brains from thirty years ago commissioned to explain what CO2 does in the climate overlook to identify the  GHE or it’s mechanism, ‘back radiation heating,’ then there is something seriously awry with the provenance of this ‘settled science.’

What further stokes my cynicism is how much uncertainty the Charney Report expressed about how our climate actually works. It seems utterly plausible to infer that uncertainty about the GHE is the reason why the panel of scientists that included James Hansen and Richard Lindzen omitted to include it.  Even now when you learn that Hansen’s version of the GHE is very different to Lindzen’s then you can understand the reticence of us cynics.

You don’t have to be a scientist to feel uneasy when these ‘experts’ can’t even agree on the name!  Depending on which afficianado you talk to,  some will tell you the name ‘greenhouse effect’ is  misleading because ‘no one means the atmosphere acts just like a greenhouse.’ But, yes, many of the top authorities do. There are no less than  53 bogus authority statements online declaring that Earth’s atmosphere DOES act ‘like a greenhouse.’ You might imagine a similarly hostile religious debate between Shia and Sunni Muslims,  or Protestants and Catholics. But instead of fighting over interpretations of a biblical script these cultists argue over the computer models.

The ‘blasphemy’ in my series of articles was daring to prove that their ‘settled science’ emperor has no clothes. Only yesterday (December 27, 2012) James Hansen sent a protest letter to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal. A skeptical article the previous week by Matt Ridley in WSJ (December 19) titled “Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change” upset him. Hansen called it “another misleading attempt to present a distorted view of the consensus that exists among the vast majority of the community of science experts”. He countered with his own speculations for GHE ‘back radiation’ warming (with a 68% probability). Hansen claims “this agrees with IPCC estimates.”

However, 33 years ago when contributing to the NAS report Hansen, Lindzen and others did not attribute any warming, as per IPCC ‘science’ to such ‘back radiation’ heating. But worse yet, if you examine how back then Hansen, Lindzen and others describe the mechanism for this ‘theory’ you can understand why there is so much confusion.

From all this ‘confusion’ it is no wonder why any thinking scientist could believe that any gas could ‘store’  energy even though the absorption/emission cycle of carbon dioxide is one billionth of a second – less than the blink of an eye. At Principia Scientific International (PSI) hundreds of experts are aghast that such a small bit of radiation briefly bouncing around the atmosphere before it escapes to outer space should be accorded anything other than a very negligible impact within the overall system.

For PSI researchers  the real emphasis should be on the very powerful energy storage potential of water and the relentless dynamo of the hydrological cycle. Speak to anyone who glibly spouts to you that the greenhouse gas effect is real and the chances are they have no clue that there is no less than 130 years’ worth of solar energy stored in latent heat in the liquid of our oceans. They are likely also oblivious to the fact there is around 7 days’ worth of solar energy stored in water vapor latent heat of our atmosphere.

We have seen in this series of articles that the science academies and their well-funded researchers are at odds with independent scientists (i.e. those not on the global warming gravy train). Here are just a few comments from top scientists weary of this whole scam. Tens of thousands share their sentiments. All too often GHE believers have wrongly assumed that the properties of latent heat and other elements of the Ideal Gas laws are the GHE. They then casually toss in the bogus belief that ‘colder makes warm even warmer.’ To fudge that they then seek to add any and all admitted uncertainties and claim them as also part of the ‘signal’ for the GHE. This is in large part how they concoct the illusion of the ‘settled science’ they often refer to. GHE advocates just don’t want to let go of this unscientific and illogical conflation.

As Professor Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan says, CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other – every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so.”

*This article is one of a series on this subject. The full set are found as follows: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part 6

Another Alarmist Author Admits Spreading Greenhouse Gas Bunkum

Prominent global warming blog, skepticalscience.com is in crisis due to internal dispute over the “long settled science” of man-made global warming. Writer goes “off message” to discredit website’s own alarmist claims after prompted by  new articles  exposing greenhouse gas lies.*

Aussie doomsayer, Glenn Tamblyn is a regular author on the popular alarmist blog alongside frontman  John Cook. But Tamblyn has now exposed the lie that the greenhouse gas theory has the finest pedigree, thus discrediting such bold statements as this on their website:

“Disputing that the greenhouse effect is real is to attempt to discredit centuries of science, laws of physics and direct observation.”

But yesterday (December 23, 2012) under the weight of evidence from this series of new articles, Tamblyn has performed an astonishing U-turn causing huge embarrassment to Cook. The once avid cult member  submitted a comment to my blog  owning up to the truth that the greenhouse gas theory is less than 30 years old – only figuring on the mainstream science radar within the last generation.  These capitulations by hardcore greens may be getting contagious. Readers may recall the esteemed James Lovelock, a fellow climate cult writer, also jumping the sinking ship back in May.

Lovelock appeared on MSNBC to admit he, too,  has overstated the science. Lovelock told viewers, “…we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.  That led to some alarmist books…mine included…because it looked clear cut…but it hasn’t happened.”

Likewise, Tamblyn has long been invested in the scam. At last, he now accepts that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) correctly represented the mainstream position for the first half of the 20^th Century when it showed that the scientific consensus did not believe that the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) and carbon dioxide (CO2) drove climate.

The widespread delusion among the ranks of the  true GHE believer is finally cracking. We see it as it truly is – not a mass conspiracy, just the product of creeping scientism. This is where post-normal cherry-picking can infect believers’ minds with confirmation bias and misinformation wrought by noble cause corruption.  But back in 1951 the AMS  conspicuously held a non-political stance on all matters climate. While in the modern era, with so much money sloshing about for scientists to ‘prove’ a link between humans and climate,  it’s little wonder that otherwise honorable folk succumbed to the bait.

A more honest AMS from 50 years ago openly admitted there have always been huge natural swings in levels of atmospheric carbon stating, “The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere must have varied greatly during geological time, being depleted by the formation of limestones (carbonates) and coal measures, and replenished by volcanic action.” [1]

Geologists had long known volcanoes pump out far more CO2 than humans. The AMS admission about volcanoes is very welcome vindication for leading Aussie geologist, Professor Ian Plimer,  long pilloried by the alarmist UK Guardian and elsewhere for honestly pointing to a wealth of  such confirmatory science down the ages.

Likewise, Tamblyn is learning NASA’s James ‘dusty’ Hansen had for years attributed the GHE to dust particles, not CO2. Hansen’s big flip-flop into blaming CO2 for the GHE occurred in the 1980’s, not before. Other contemporaries of Hansen merely played ‘follow my (funding) leader.’

Tamblyn has signaled a breakthrough in his own understanding (albeit grudgingly) by admitting the evidence the AMS presented was true yet represented “an outdated position based on science that was just about to be overturned.”

As such the shamefaced eco-warrior affirmed what many GHE skeptics at Principia Scientific International (PSI) had shown by reference to the older and more established science literature. They found  mainstream belief in the GHE switched on fast 30 years ago as per the signal sent out by British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher in her key GHE  Speech to the Royal Society (27 September 1988). Even rank alarmists like DeSmoglblog admit Thatcher bought into the GHE to smash the striking coal mining unions and to boost UK nuclear investment. Until then the ‘theory’ had long been consigned to the trash can of science after Professor R.W. Woods’ experiment debunked it in 1909 (re-affirmed by Prof. Nasif Nahle in 2011). [2]

As shown in a series of new articles, the trick of post 1980’s climate science was to re-write the science history so that it became accepted that the natural moderating effects on temperatures actually due to the latent heat properties of water became obfuscated into the nomenclature as a ‘greenhouse gas.’  PSI’s peer-reviewed publications are pioneering this march back to traditional science. Tamblyn has simply been exposed to the simple truth  that latent heat, the actual moderator of our atmosphere’s temperatures, stops Earth getting too hot or too cold. Just contrast and compare earth’s temperatures with those of our water-less moon which has a daytime surface high of 130 degrees C (266 degrees F) and night time low of minus 110 degrees C (-166F). But as we so often, the alarmists (and even so-called ‘skeptics’) will try to dupe us into accepting that earth’s “mild” climate is due to the mythical GHE while ignoring the critical role played by latent heat. Such is the GHE fraud repeated across many websites, not just Tamblyn’s,

Embarrasingly, Tamblyn’s welcome confession contradicts what his own website, skepticalscience.com states on this back story myth. So far John Cook, site owner has made no public comment on Tamblyn’s admission. But expect many more alarmists to follow suit.  Already hardcore German environmentalist and socialist, Fritz Vaherenholt, has fessed up in his new book, “The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen.” He lays the blame for modern junk climate science squarely at the door of the UN.

Spotting untold errors in reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the principled eco-champion charged them with gross incompetence and dishonesty for  fear-mongering exaggeration about human CO2 emissions. When reporting the scientific errors to  IPCC officials Vaherenholt was shocked that his complaints were  simply brushed aside.  Stunned by the dishonesty he asked himself:  “Is this the way they approached climate assessment reports?” He came to wonder: “…if the other IPCC reports on climate change were similarly sloppy.”

Well, folks PSI’s 200 science researchers  proves they were.

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*This article accompanies a series on this subject. The full set are found as follows: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

[1]  Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “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.

[2] Nahle, N.,’Repeatability of Professor Robert W. Wood’s 1909 Experiment on the Theory of the Greenhouse,’ (2011), principia-scientific.org

US National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part Three

This article is the third in a series that traces the back story of the (non) greenhouse gas theory.* Their purpose is to expose the truth that this so-called ‘settled science’ never appeared on any national science academy’s radar until the 1980’s.

Here we show how James Hansen flip-flopped from claiming the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) was due to aerosols to claiming it was due to carbon dioxide. We show how a ‘pre-GHE era’ calculation was re-packaged to provide the key numbers for this cynical and fraudulent revision of science.

Previously, we saw that not only did the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ not concern the best scientific minds of the 20^th Century, we showed why: the ‘theory’ was widely accepted as being refuted before 1951. This is confirmed by the prestigious American Meteorological Society (AMS). [1]

Today’s populist promoters of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) have sought to denounce these articles by citing papers they claim vindicate their beliefs. However, our previous essay made short work of that delusion. It demonstrated that leading climate researchers prior to the 1980’s either were dismissive of it, or made no mention at all, of any GHE; the vast consensus accepted that once solar energy entered earth’s atmosphere it was the water cycle and convection that ran the show on global temperatures. This pre-1980’s consensus agreed that carbon dioxide (CO2) could not alter the climate because it was discovered that all the long-wave radiation that could be absorbed by CO2 is already absorbed by water vapor (id.). Therefore the effects of latent heat (water) by the process of the hydrological cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, conduction and convection) were proven to dominate instead.

But a growing body of evidence collated by thousands of citizen scientist auditors is pointing to the likelihood that since the 1980’s government climatologists – incentivised by a billion dollar funding stream – employed sophistry and spin to resurrect the long discredited GHE. We know that even alarmists admit that the politics of the day (re: Margaret Thatcher’s  1988 keynote speech to the Royal Society) rather than science was a key motivator. [2] Leading this post-normal era of junk climate science was NASA’s James Hansen. Hansen’s team at NASA cleverly re-branded the hydrological cycle as “the greenhouse effect” despite the fact no national science academies in the pre-1980’s era regarded water vapor as a ‘greenhouse gas.’

This was a major U-turn for Hansen, who in 1967 published a key paper defining the GHE as being caused by dust particles (aerosols). Nowhere in that paper did Hansen attribute any GHE to water vapor. [3]

What’s in a Name?

In short, this is the ‘nomenclature argument’ presented in Part One and should have put an end to the climate change idiocy right at the start. Our thesis there was simple: settled science should have settled nomenclature. But as the National Academy of Science showed in a key 1979 report the term ‘greenhouse gas theory’ didn’t exist. (id.) Therefore, reason and logic dictates there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas if there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas theory!

But as Canadian climate researcher, Norm Kalmanovitch who has studied this aspect in detail shows, there is clear fraud here. Kalmanovitch reports, “The greenhouse effect as defined even by Hansen back in 1981 is simply the difference between two numbers; one a theoretical calculation that always comes to 255 K and the other the Earth’s actual temperature typically taken as 288 K with the difference of 33 K being the greenhouse effect. (This same calculation on Mars comes to 5.5 K)

Kalmanovitch advises. “ This yields Te ̴ 255 K. The mean surface temperature is  T ̴ 288 K. The excess (Ts – Te) and is a pre-Hansen era value but is morphed into being Hansen’s ‘greenhouse effect’ of gases and clouds.” Kalmanovitch and independent scientists at Principia Scientific International (PSI) proved that the term  “greenhouse gas” was applied many years after the above calculation was written (and when consensus science rejected any such notion of a GHE).

 But the passage of time has been the undoing of this 1980’s scam. We have seen that CO2 emissions have stubbornly refused to correlate with atmospheric temperatures. Since 1997 global CO₂ emissions have increased by 39.8% but there has been no change in the Earth’s temperature proving Hansen was wrong to fudge the numbers to make a connection between CO2 and global temperatures. According to Hansen’s own mangled numbers T_s has remained constant since 1997 and T_e is calculated as a constant value. As Kalmanovitch describes:

“The excess, Ts – Te, which according to Hansen “is the greenhouse effect” is also constant since 1997; so in Hansen’s own vernacular there has been no change to the “greenhouse effect” from the 39.8% increase in CO₂ emissions since 1997!” As Dr. Pierre Latour (noted for his work on the Apollo Space program) has shown, there is also a fatal calculating error elsewhere in Hansen’s GHE numbers. [4]

National Geographic Says ‘Carbon Equals Cooling’

It isn’t just in English-speaking nations this fraud was sold. PSI is constantly receiving reports from around the world enabling us to better trace the back story of how this scam got going. A jigsaw puzzle is being put together showing the gradual usurpation of accepted climate science by the new Greenhouse Gas Brigade. It was a steady drip fed of dross over decades permeating into the major national academies. From Italy, independent climate researcher, Alberto Miatello, recalls,”the oldest article I could find is a 1976 piece by Samuel W. Matthews, from the National Geographic (November 1976). But it is curious to note that at that time the main fear in the scientific community was NOT of the possibility of global warming, but for a new Ice Age.”

As the evidence shows, this was because scientists before 1980 had understood that adding more CO2 into the atmosphere provided a cooling effect, not warming as shown by the peer-reviewed literature examined in our previous article. [5]

In the Nat Geo piece above (“The Ice from the Future”), Matthews presents the consensus view of climate experts of the day saying “some” scientists believe CO2 can cause warming, but that “other scientists believe these molecules [CO2] pushed outwards by man could generate an opposite effect, namely cool our Earth by mirroring outward the light from Sun.” The Nat Geo piece not only echoes a similar one in Newsweek article from around the same time but is much longer and more detailed. [photo link: courtesy of wmconnolley.org.uk]

 Miatello concludes that the Matthews article “was showing clearly that the main concern of the scientific community at that time (middle of ’70) was NOT the possibility of heating, but of cooling.”

 From his own studies of how the science has been presented in the literature in Italy Miatello affirms, “Between 1975 – late ’80 any such GHE was being  linked to air pollution rather than to global warming. As we recall, back then we still had gasoline with high sulfur content, lots of ‘fossil fuel’ burning and much higher levels a lot of lung diseases due to smog than in today’s cities.” This is the Great Truth being re-discovered to defeat the ‘Big Lie’ of man-made global warming.

As David Whitehouse put it so succinctly (The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 December 2012):

“It is the bloggers who are science’s new auditors. Many do not like it and have a cultural difficulty in accepting that the times are a changing. But as the new generations take over, science will become more participatory and more appreciated. All scientific conclusions are open to revision, especially those of climate science.”

As such, anyone who recalls the 1970’s will know the main concern of scientists was to reduce high levels of air pollution created by burning hydrocarbons. The science was thus aerosol-focused as per those peer-reviewed papers of Hansen in the pre-1980’s era. Airborne dust particulates (not the trace gas, CO2) was what was being cited as damaging to the health of people and the planet. The great fear then was not a heating world but for the ozone ‘hole,’ CFC’s, and the acid rain scare as Hansen had well acknowledged. (id.) But because western society had cleaned up its act so well by reducing particulate pollution  a new scare story was contrived to subjugate the masses, and Hansen’s team was well-funded, willing and able to launch their counter-consensus assault on long-accepted science.

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*This article is one of a series on this subject. The full set are found as follows: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five,Part 6

[1]Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “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. It shows the American Meteorological Society had refuted the concept of a GHE in 1951 in its Compendium of Meteorology. They stated that the idea that CO2 could alter 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.”

[2] Lars Myren, Anne Debeil, ‘Climate & Energy Presentation,’ (April 3, 2009), www.desmogblog, (accessed online: December 3, 2012)

[3] Hansen, J.E., and S. Matsushima “The atmosphere and surface temperature of Venus: A dust insulation model” Astrophys. J. 150: 1139–1157 (1967) Bibcode 1967ApJ…150.1139H. Doi:10.1086/149410.

Manabe. S & Wetherald, R.T., ‘Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity,’ Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, May 1967 .

[4] Latour, P.R.,’That Bogus Greenhouse Gas Whatchamacallit Effect,‘ (January, 2012) www.slayingtheskydragon.com.

[5] O’Sullivan, J., ‘US Academies and the Greenhouse Gas Effect: Part Two, (johnosullivan.wordpress.com)

 

U.S. National Academies and the (non) Greenhouse Gas Effect (Part Two)

Glenn Tamblyn  (climateandrisk.com) and John Cook (skepticalscience.com) were among a myriad commenters apoplectic with rage about my article yesterday. * Their outrage was because I showed that no American science academy, at least till 1979, gave the idea of the greenhouse gas theory the time of day. In fact it was never even mentioned in a key report to Congress that year. So much for ‘settled science’ I said.

But Tamblyn was having none of it. He thought he had gotten one over on me by citing a paper from 1967 by climate experts, Manabe and Wetherald. [1] Now that I’ve had time to read and digest that paper two things struck me: (a) How many times the authors mentioned the GHE. Answer: ZERO and (b) They found carbon dioxide cools the atmosphere and water vapor dominates the climate system.

Peppered throughout the paper on virtually every page were such water-related terms as ‘hydrological cycle’, ‘convective equilibrium’, ‘humidity,’ ‘clouds’, ‘water vapor.’ So much so, it was obvious that the authors understood the overriding significance of latent heat in the atmospheric system. Playing second fiddle in all this is radiation and carbon dioxide (CO2), which Glenn, like all other GHE believers, wants to tell you is a far more important climatic factor. Well, judging by this offering –  his “best evidence” from 50 years ago –  Glenn’s rather proved my point.

The big bombshell drops on Tamblyn’s argument from page 250 onwards where the authors admitted:

“If one discusses the effect of carbon dioxide upon the climate of the earth’s surface based upon these results, one could conclude that the greater the amount of carbon dioxide, the colder would be the temperature of the earth’s surface.” [emphasis added]

Manabe and Wetherald also declare:

“In order to obtain the complete picture, it is also necessary to consider the effect of convection.” (p 251). They then go on to state, “The larger the mixing ratio of carbon dioxide, the colder is the equilibrium temperature of the stratosphere.”(p 251).[emphasis added]

Then:

“Generally speaking, the larger the cloud amount, the colder is the equilibrium temperature of the earth’s surface” (p 252). [emphasis added]

So, in short,  they say CO2 and clouds make the earth’s atmosphere colder, while convection is a cooling process, and almost wherever you care to look  not even one mention of any greenhouse gas effect – whether  natural or enhanced by humans. PSI’s independent researchers will be pleased! As Dr. Tim Ball has adroitly shown many times, the GHE ‘Big Lie’  over global warming due to human emissions of CO2 only began to appear in mainstream science journals from the time of Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Royal Academy, London in 1988. [2]

And as Tim’s colleagues at Principia Scientific have demonstrated, the only ‘heat trapping’ gas proven to exist in Earth’s atmosphere is water vapor – thanks to the miraculous properties of latent heat. No other gas traps heat. It is by the (non-greenhouse gas) phase changes of water vapor that Earth is able to enjoy such a moderate climate. It is the very reason why the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 1951 finally dismissed carbon dioxide and the GHE as a possible factor.

The AMS assessed the greenhouse gas hypothesis based on the best science of the day. They found  the consensus opinion was that there is no evidence of any greenhouse gas effect  in our climate and it “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.” [3]

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*This article is one of a series on this subject. The full set are found as follows: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four,Part Five,Part 6

[1] Manabe. S & Wetherald, R.T., ‘Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity,’ Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, May 1967 .

[2] Thatcher, M., Speech to the Royal Society (27 September 1988), Public Statement, Speech Archive, Margaret Thatcher Foundation (accessed online: December 3, 2012)

[3] Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “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.

Breaking: U.S. National Academies Find Greenhouse Effect Doesn’t Exist

This story is huge. America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and related government bodies found no greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere. Evidence shows the U.S. government held the smoking gun all along –  a fresh examination of an overlooked science report proves America’s brightest and best had shown the White House that the greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier.*

Unwittingly, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council have all dealt climate alarm it’s biggest ever blow. Their killer evidence had been hidden in plain sight for 33 years until uncovered by a team of maverick climate researchers.

All those global warming skeptic Christmas wishes have come at once wrapped in the NAS document, ‘Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment,‘ a joint publication from 1979 commissioned on behalf of the U.S. government. This amazing story ties in perfectly with all the big climate news chatter this past week about the revelations from the leaked draft report (AR5) of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The leaked IPCC draft admits it has had to ratchet down yet again the climate sensitivity it expects to find from carbon dioxide (CO2). No wonder the IPCC is today having to retreat over CO2 sensitivity –  the trace gas can’t be any factor in our climate if there is no greenhouse gas effect to begin with!

Readers can browse for themselves online the 13,000-word 33-year-old U.S. government report that details the role of carbon dioxide and how it might impact climate. You will see that while CO2 is mentioned no less than 112 times, as you’d expect, nowhere in those 13,000 words will you find ANY mention of the greenhouse gas effect/theory. Scientists at PSI who have carefully studied the document assert this to be the most compelling physical evidence ever found proving the GHE as nothing more than a modern  (post-1979) political construct – a veritable sky dragon now well and truly slain. After studying the report PSI expert Hans Schreuder adroitly characterizes the tone of it’s authors: “the main theme that jumps out at me is “we don’t know enough.””

The NAS study was commissioned by the U.S. government to address the best science of the day on the role of carbon dioxide in atmospheric physics and is the perfect seasonal accompaniment to the leaked IPCC admission that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is once again lower than all the experts predicted  – now we know why!

Because of it’s total omission from this key report, any rational human being will be forced to infer that America’s brightest and best in climate science knew as far back as 1979 there was no greenhouse gas effect for CO2 to impact. The report was the distillation of the best climate science from that era. It examined all aspects of how CO2 might alter the temperature of the atmosphere. Popular Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball and climate researcher, Derek Alker, both of Principia Scientific International (PSI) recognized the significance of the NAS publication straight away. Acting on their suggestion this author obtained a download copy from the NAS website and ran it through a full word search to confirm the  numbers. Readers can check for themselves. There is ZERO mention of any greenhouse gas effect as a factor on our climate.

Now let’s be clear on this. No governmental scientific body entrusted to present the best available evidence on the impacts of CO2 on Earth’s atmosphere would omit to make any mention of the so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ effect unless they did not consider it a factor – however small. But omit it they did.

So, if climatologists are to be accorded the prestige of being the best arbiters of what mechanisms are most likely driving our climate why is there such a huge discrepancy between what science knew 30 years ago and what we are being told today?

One crucial factor here is credibility. What we can be sure of is that the cream of U.S. climate science in the 1970’s had no political axe to grind. Back then the political hullabaloo about man-made global warming took another decade to gather momentum. As such this pristine and untainted evidence provides skeptics the world over with an unequivocal smoking gun to challenge the man-made global warming scam.

We can now say with great confidence that no serious mainstream climate scientist (up to the current generation of rent seekers) gave the GHE the time of day. This new revelation vindicates what experts like Tim Ball have been saying all along: the GHE was already debunked by Professor  H. W.Woods in 1909.

I asked senior members of the 200-strong Principia Scientific International who had worked in meteorology or climate science to recall when they first saw the ‘science’ of the GHE emerge onto the radar in universities, schools and national science academies.

PSI co-founder, Dr. Martin Hertzberg recalls:

“I was trained and served as a forecasting and research meteorologist for the U.S. Navy from 1953-1956. The term “greenhouse gas” never appeared in any of the texts or articles I studied during that period, nor did I or any of my fellow meteorologists ever use the concept in either short term or long term weather prediction.”

While Dr. Tim Ball confirms:

“As I recall the original greenhouse effect concept was created as a teaching analogy that was adopted and adapted into the hypothesis. Carl Sagan and Hansen were messing around with the aerosol issue because of the alarmist threat of nuclear winter. This proposed that with a global nuclear war so much dust would be put into the atmosphere sunlight would be blocked driving the world into a snowball earth. The idea was later shown to be theoretically incorrect and disappeared but not without leaving residue such as Hansen’s focus on aerosols and soot. This created his pathological hatred of coal that is the broad theme running through his career. He came to world attention because Gore and Senator Wirth heard about him and brought him to testify before Gore’s Committee in 1988.”

PSI is appealing for more anecdotal evidence from other professionals and scientists the world over who studied in, or were connected to, climate and meteorology studies before the 1980’s.  PSI’s aim is to forensically compile a trace line back to where national science bodies and universities went over to the ‘dark side’ to sound the alarm over bogus greenhouse gas ‘science.’

Sane minds will now put all the telling pieces of evidence together and understand why the most modern of science instruments shows little if any climate sensitivity to CO2; while climatologists knew in 1979 the greenhouse gas effect wasn’t even a consideration. If there was to be found killer evidence to expose this scam this surely must be it.

*This article is one of a series on this subject. The full set are found as follows: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five,Part 6

—— UPDATE ——-

John Cook (Skepticalscience.com) and other GHE fanatics have rushed here to post a swath of comments to berate me that I’ve been misleading in my article (above). It is they who are being misleading. Settled science requires settled nomenclature.

The very fact no mainstream science body dared tout the greenhouse gas theory by name in 1979 is because: (a) they lacked the confidence in the science to call it as such (b) they well understood that the greenhouse gas ‘theory’ had already been refuted by RW Woods (1909) and affirmed as such by the American Meteorological Society (1951) in its Compendium of Meteorology (Brooks, C.E.P.  “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” pp. 1004-18 (at 1016)).

The AMS was adamant that the very idea that CO2 could alter 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.”

The cold, hard facts are in black and white and the revisionists of science history have failed to bury the truth despite billions of dollars in resources and virtual ownership of the media.

New Paper Forces Greenhouse Gas Believers to Abandon ‘Theory’

A Canadian astrophysicist who last month published a hard-hitting paper exposing critical errors in the greenhouse gas theory is claiming victory.

Joseph E. Postma, a global warming skeptic, laid out his paper’s challenge on October 22, 2012 to all takers inviting them to prove him wrong. Postma’s detailed scientific case exposes a host of errors in the science of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE). Despite the public fanfare and brazenly throwing down the gauntlet to his critics, in the two months that have elapsed no one has yet stepped up to publish a rebuttal of his paper, ‘A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.’ [1]

So is this failure of hardline greenhouse gas believers to come out and defend their ‘theory’ an indication of a mass capitulation? Joe thinks it is. He and his 200+ colleagues at maverick science body, Principia Scientific International (PSI) are boldly declaring that unless or until believers in the greenhouse gas effect (GHE) have the gumption to come out and openly debate the evidence his papers present then it is only reasonable to infer he’s right. By openly publishing his paper and inviting criticism rather than submit to any of the mainstream journals, Postma and his PSI publishers have chosen to go the old-fashioned, tried-and-tested route: gauging new science by open public examination. This is a refreshing common sense approach when compared with the discredited practice of the big science journals whereby scientists were required to submit their papers to a secret ‘peer review’ by anonymous panels.

This ‘behind closed doors’ system was shown to facilitate corruptive and coercive practice during the Climategate scandal. In 2009 hundreds of leaked emails proved that a clique of government climatologists and their handlers were colluding to bully and threaten editors if they dared publish papers refuting the man-made global warming narrative.

Postma’s freely-available paper has stunned believers of the accepted GHE ‘theory’ into mass silence because it has not one, but two key strengths. It not only cleverly applies textbook mathematics to detail differential equations of atmospheric heat flow but it does so using a wealth of cold, hard observations from nature collated by fellow climate researcher, Carl Brehmer.

Over at his blog, Joe says, “With that data and with the heat-flow equation, I was able to do two things: 1) predict the day-time surface high if NO greenhouse effect were present; 2) predict the night-time cooling if NO delay in cooling was present.  Both of these points were relevant to assess because they represent the two main versions of the greenhouse effect.”

Of great importance here is that Postma’s paper demonstrated that there was no GHE heating up the surface from back-radiation to a higher temperature. In effect, this  proved the standard version of the GHE is wrong. His calculations, based on observations from nature, proved there was no delay in cooling at the Earth’s surface. But it did show  cooling was enhanced there, again proving the mainstream science version wrong.

Postma claims this is “a very interesting point, because it is consistently the fall-back position that GHE adherents use when they are proven wrong.” In effect, there are two mainstream versions of the GHE theory.  “Version 1″  is based on the “back radiation heating” fallacy. This was demonstrated to be a bogus because the laws of thermodynamics expressly state “colder cannot add heat to warmer.” Experts in thermodynamics have since affirmed that climate scientists had, indeed, gotten that wrong.

When “Version 1” of the GHE was shown to be busted climatologists then fell back to “Version 2” insisting that so-called greenhouse gases must cause “some” delay in cooling of our atmosphere.However, at Postma and his PSI colleagues repeatedly point out, “they [government climatologists] never, and have never, actually stated any numerical values for how much cooling they expect with and without the delayed-cooling GHE overnight.”

And this, dear readers, is where we stand today. Climate science has been backed into a corner and shown to be unable (or unwilling) to adduce any verifiable numbers to back their claims that a greenhouse gas effect even exists. That the whole developed world is being compelled to reduce ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions when the scientists haven’t a shred of evidence to back their ‘theory’ that such gases alter our climate, demonstrates the lunacy of the modern world.

[1] Postma, J.E., ‘‘ A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect.’ (October 22, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 20. 2012).

It’s the Sun, after all

Guest post by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

A leaked draft of the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) forthcoming 5^th assessment report has some explosive new revelations:

There is substantial influence on our climate by the radiation received from the Sun.

There is a breaking of the ranks. The previously touted consensus about the forces driving our climate appears to be falling apart.

 

Climatology in denial?

The News

Specifically, the draft report says “The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.”

In layman’s terms: The radiation received by the earth has a larger effect on the climate than previously thought.

 Agenda21

Past claims by the IPCC as to the cause of any climate change were almost exclusively laid on the shoulders of mankind’s use of fossil fuels, with its resulting increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. This claim has been taken as sufficient justification to promulgate a new world order, as prescribed in detail by the UN’s overarching program namedAgenda21. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in an interview with Yale Environment 360, explains:

“…what we are doing here is we are inspiring government, private sector, and civil society to [make] the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken. The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to [consensus] science. So it’s a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”, [emphasis added].

Consequences

The consequences of the new findings must not be underestimated. They pull the rug out from under the entire CO2-climate hypothesis and, therefore, the claimed scientific consensus which, until now, has underpinned Agenda21. Consider it as an early Christmas gift!

—————–

Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser is author of CONVENIENT MYTHS, the green revolution – perceptions, politics, and facts convenientmyths.com

Dr. Kaiser can be reached at: mail@convenientmyths.com

Switchable Water

Guest post by Dr. Klaus K.E. Kaiser

Some media are abuzz with the latest invention, Switchable Water, and other “switchable” things. If you believe the stories, these switchables will solve all kinds of problems, reduce energy requirements for a variety of technologies and so forth. It sounds like a real panacea; some even claim that it will force a rewrite of chemistry textbooks.

Laws of Nature

Chemistry and physics are specific fields of the natural sciences which are governed by inextricable laws of nature. One of those laws says that you cannot create energy out of nothing. Therefore, if you want to elevate the energy content of a mixture of substances, for example by separating it into pure components of the mixture, you require energy. The exact form of energy you add is not important; it could be mechanical energy, or electrical energy, or thermal energy (heat). In some cases any one of these will do the trick. The important part of it is, though, that you need the same amount of energy to make it happen, regardless of the form you use.

Perpetuum mobile

So, when someone comes along with an idea which claims that it reduces the energy requirement for any process be very careful. More likely than not, it is a modern version of the Perpetuum mobile, i.e. the perpetual motion machine which is outlawed by Mother Nature.

Ideas involving one or another method to create a sort of Perpetuum mobile have been around for millennia. Just look at the drawing by Villard de Honnecourt (13^th century).

As far as I am concerned, these new “switchables” may well exist, but the claims as to their reduction of energy requirements for chemical or physical processes which involve very distinct changes in energy are bunk. Perhaps the term “Witchable” would be more appropriate to describe the claimed energy savings.

UN Leak: Climate Science in Disarray on Human Emissions Impact

A group of authors for the UN’s climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admit the sun plays a far greater role in climate than previously thought. An embarrassing new leak from the prominent organization points to a schism in the ranks with many UN  researchers now on record stating that changes in the sun, rather than human carbon dioxide emissions have altered Earth’s temperatures.

Up till now the role of the sun, referred to as enhanced solar forcing, received only scant mention in prior IPCC reports (AR3 and AR4) being glibly dismissed. But this is the first time IPCC authors have acknowledged the evidence that a solar mechanism seems to be at work. The source of the leak, Alec Rawls, said, “I participated in “expert review” of the Second Order Draft of AR5 (the next IPCC report), Working Group 1 (“The Scientific Basis”), and am now making the full draft available to the public.”

Rawls, who also serves on the Stanford Review’s board of directors, said it was important for this document to be immediately released because of the “public’s right to know.” Rawls declared he felt compelled to break his confidentiality agreement as an IPCC reviewer because of the “systematic dishonesty of the report” which, he says, has been corrupted by “bad faith” and “fraud.” Rawls insists “Once the evidence for enhanced solar forcing is taken into account we can have no confidence that natural forcing is small compared to anthropogenic [human] forcing.”

But, as expected, alarmist blog, ‘Skeptical [sic]Science’ has been quick to try to limit the damage. As per usual defenders of the IPCC “consensus” position are sticking to their forlorn claim that humans emissions of carbon dioxide rather than the sun drives our climate. But Rawls is adamant. Cited on popular skeptic blog WUWT he concluded,

”The [IPCC] admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes everything. The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself.”

“Consensus” Science Illusion Busted

But most uncomfortable for the “consensus” of IPCC politicized climatology is the stark contrast in claims by IPCC authors between chapters 7 and 8 of the leaked AR5 draft. Pointedly, Chapter 7 authors admit strong evidence (“many empirical relationships”) for enhanced solar forcing. But authors in Chapter 8 (page 8-4, lines 54-57) contradict their colleagues by persisting in debunked claims that natural forcing is relatively small and unchanging. The now busted “consensus” exposes the long-assumed and bizarre IPCC position that solar effects were constant and thus could be discounted. But such an unscientific assumption is well characterized by Rawl who laments, “In effect they are claiming that you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the burner to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to keep turning the flame up to get continued warming, an un-scientific absurdity that I have been writing about for several years.”

But it gets worse, in chapter 10 (Figure 10.5) alarmist IPCC  authors are shown to have been using regression analysis technique in what appears to be a cynical statistical trick to remove the impacts of ocean current systems such as El Niño and La Niña and volcanic aerosols from the instrument temperature record. Critics say this ruse is just another way that junk scientists can make it appear that human emissions are the more dominant climate driver.

Nonetheless, the leaked documents prove that a substantial number of IPCC scientists now recognize that there is an underlying long term solar trend which recent scientific studies show was most evident in the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.  [1.2] Principia Scientific International (PSI) a research group that always asserted solar impacts were ill-considered and made human impacts trivial expressed delight at these latest revelations that will likely signal the demise of official UN claims that humans are dangerously impacting Earth’s climate.

The news comes as a timely boost for those climate researchers who have recently published papers pointing to solar, not human, impacts on climate. Among them are PSI experts Canadian astrophysicist, Joseph E. Postma and Australian Douglas Cotton. [3,4]
With such stark contradictions in interpretation of the raw evidence woven into IPCC “science” we should remind ourselves that the mainstream media has consistently misrepresented the IPCC as “the world’s top scientists.” As we have seen with the likes of Lisa Alexander who didn’t even earn her PhD until 2009 yet authored the 2001 and the 2007 IPCC reports, any claims about IPCC authors as being “expert” must be treated with great caution. Certainly, critics will no doubt point to the obvious contradictions evidenced by the conflicting statements of authors in chapters 7 and 8 as proof that one of the most important qualification to be an IPCC author is a commitment to green activism.

A full download of the leaked AR5 Report can be accessed here.

———————

[1] Roman Warm Period (Europe — Mediterranean) – Summary, co2science.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[2] Hoffman, D.L., ‘Medieval Warm Period Rediscovered,’ theresilientearth.com (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[3] Postma, J.E.,’ A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect,’ (October, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

[4] Cotton, D.J., ‘Planetary Surface Temperatures A Discussion of Alternative Mechanisms, (November, 2012), principia-scientific.org (accessed online: December 14, 2012)

Former U.S. Navy Meteorologist Blasts Super Storm Sandy Hype

A staunch liberal and former navy weather expert writes to the New York Times and his local newspaper, the Summit Daily News to correct absurd media claims connecting ‘Superstorm Sandy’ to man-made global warming.

Citing one of the world’s top meteorologists as his source Dr.  Martin Hertzberg tears a hole in the cherry-picked alarmist claims made in an article by Tim Lydon,  an Alaskan parks ranger and occasional jobbing journalist who gets plenty of column inches pontificating about meteorology without any apparent science training. Dr. Hertzberg is co-founder and senior fellow of Principia Scientific International, a fast-growing science body campaigning for higher standards and greater transparency in discredited government science. While the Summit Daily News has published Hertzberg’s riposte there was no such joy at the NYT. Below is an unabridged version of Hertzberg’s letter:

 Tim Lydon in his 12/7/12 article entitled “Super Storms, here they come” claims that Hurricane Sandy as well as last year’s giant storm near the Alaskan coast were “strikingly similar, and both point to a climate destabilized by fossil fuel emission.” He has cherry picked two cases, but what does the totality of the data show? The data for Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) from 1972-2012 shown in Energy Tribune  (which includes Sandy in the 2012 data point) shows that the 2012 (ACE) was markedly lower than the average for that 40-year period. Here is Prof. William Grey, of CSU, one of the world’s most distinguished meteorologist on the subject: “The longest recorded period of no major (category 3,4,5) hurricane landfalls in the U. S. has occurred during the last several years (2006-2012). We have also had 20 fewer major U. S. hurricane landfall events in the last 47 year period (1960-2012) than we had during the earlier 47 year (1919-1965) period. And this decrease occurred during the time of rising CO2 levels”. Where is the destabilization Lydon is talking about?

Lydon then goes on to regurgitate the rogues gallery of climate change “talking points”: “warming oceans and rising sea levels” as “observable phenomena driven by the atmospheric build up of greenhouse gases”. Again, what do the data actually show? In www.climate4you.com October 2012 update, you will find that global sea surface temperatures like near-surface air temperatures have been essentially constant (or even decreased slightly) over the last 10 years. Lydon’s suggestion that the observed current sea level rise of about one-tenth of an inch in one year’s time can have any significant effect on a storm surge of 15-20 feet in a day’s time is clearly absurd.

The climate change echo chamber of environmental activists that Lydon and his fellow “Writers on the Range” are tuned in to is no less fact deficient than the right-wing, reactionary echo chamber of the Fox News network that we liberals detest. For some authenticity, integrity, and a breath of fresh air, the reader is referred to the recent open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations. It was signed by some 130 of the world’s most knowledgeable and distinguished scientists (including Prof Grey) and is available online at the Financial Post.[1]

That letter tells it like it is:

“The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased…..the hypothesis that our emissions of CO2 have caused or will cause dangerous global warming is not supported by the evidence.”

Dr. Martin Hertzberg

Former U.S. Navy Meteorologist and climate science writer

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 [1] ‘Open letter to UN Secretary-General: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists,’ (Nov 29, 2012) opinion.financialpost.com (accessed online: December 12, 2012).