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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The "fictitious" greenhouse effect
I'm guessing nearly everyone who reads this space also reads Small Dead Animals, so I suspect everyone already know what I'm talking about.
But, for those who don't, it's a real eye-opener:
"It is shown that this effect neither has experimental nor theoretical foundations and must be considered as fictitious. The claim that CO2 emissions give rise to anthropogenic climate changes has no physical basis."
Now that's a real inconvenient truth.
Posted by D.J. McGuire on January 23, 2008 in Science | Permalink
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Comments
As a reflex, any time there's a report of a scientist or paper that is critical of the "climate change consensus", I do a quick search on Google, Wikipedia, SourceWatch, etc, to find any leftist criticism pointing out any links or grants from corporations. I was not able to find any criticism of Gerlich or Tscheuschner. Now, maybe there is material on-line in german instead of english, but it's a pretty good indication of their credibility when the pro-Gore forces haven't been able to post any drive-by character assasinations on-line.
Posted by: Anonymous | 2008-01-24 7:17:47 AM
The Alberta government has responded to this “fictitious” problem today with a plan to cut emissions by 50 per cent:
http://alberta.ca/home/NewsFrame.cfm?ReleaseID=/acn/200801/22943ACC446ED-ED74-6A1E-6CF263E59920969B.html
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach will share his plan with provincial and territorial leaders at a Council of the Federation meeting in Vancouver on January 28, 2008:
http://alberta.ca/home/NewsFrame.cfm?ReleaseID=/acn/200801/22940AC697E6E-EAAD-C53F-F781BB38DE1C1EB3.html
I wonder if this Gerlich-Tscheuschner study will find it’s way to the Premier’s office.
I don’t know why Stelmach needs a new plan to cut emissions. He already put the breaks on Alberta’s energy sector with his royalty tax increase. That should reduce industry activity and emissions to the satisfaction of the province’s anti-capitalist activists.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-01-24 11:43:04 AM
No matter what Alberta tries to do about climate change, it will never be enough to satisfy Gore, Suzuki, or the Ontarians (who exempted themselves from Kyoto). I wish Mr. Stelmach would realize this.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-01-24 11:49:34 AM
day after day it appears agw theories are being questioned . if not disproving at least raising many doubts. why is it all levels of government are still trying to enforce policies that will increase costs of everything to decrease co 2 levels as if all the theories were fact? just wondering.
Posted by: hbw | 2008-01-24 12:25:04 PM
Say that again, Zebulon.
Here's the NDP response:
For Immediate Release - January 24, 2008
Tories taking Alberta down risky, expensive road - Mason
Carbon capture technology could become a giant subsidy for big oil
And the Sierra Club:
For Immediate Release - Thursday January 23, 2008 [They got the date wrong]
Stelmach fails to take real action on climate change – produces a global warming plan that is nothing but hot air
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-01-24 1:17:20 PM
Sooooooo the plan to tackle hot air plan is nothing but hot air? The reality has become the metaphor? No wonder no one takes it seriously!
Keep in mind that the Alberta NDP is only slightly more clueless than the Alberta Liebral/Ontario lackey party; yet it is more credible than the federal Dipper party.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-01-24 1:24:37 PM
You are so right Matthew. I find it sickening to continue to see all governments (including the American) at all levels falling all over themselves trying to implement to one degree or another this science-fiction hoax.
Posted by: Alain | 2008-01-24 3:07:59 PM
When you see yourself as enlightened and therefore worthy of controlling others, you usually need an excuse to do so. What better way than a crisis, real or manufactured. When the masses are afraid, politicians of all stripes, the vicarious controllers (green NGO's), and watermelon MSM cheerleader/parrots, all acting with impunity. Crisis pimping also heavily involves academia, rent-seeking corporations, and Luddites. Science fights a rear guard battle and never catches up to the controllers as they have long since gone on to the next crisis by the time the previous crisis has been widely seen as debunked.
The crises industry is never held accountable. I would like to see, for example the green NGOs that shut down all nuclear power plant construction in the 70s held liable for the US dependency on ME oil, similarly sued for all damages to industries based on junk science related to endangered species listings and the ESA. Or how about a suit on behalf of all the BC public that might have been exposed to higher levels of radiation from natural sources that otherwise might not have been if BC hadn't had a moratorium on uranium exploration for the last 35 years on the basis that discovering it and mining it would potentially secure and remove it. Or how about suing Mo Strong for all damages from Kyoto.
I know, dream on!
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-01-24 5:45:23 PM
Just wait 20 years, when all that's left of the prairies is arid desert where you couldn't even hope to grow a cactus, then let's see what you think of the "ficticous" greenhouse effect.
Posted by: ccn | 2008-01-25 8:40:04 AM
So it's a date then ccn? I'll buy the coffee if you buy the cinnamon buns! :) Oh and maybe bring some bottled water, if you think it's going to be dry!
Posted by: Markalta | 2008-01-25 8:45:59 AM
obc: Then you won't be joining us for coffee in ten years? :)
Posted by: Markalta | 2008-01-25 11:32:19 AM
My bad:
obc: Then you won't be joining us for coffee in 20 years? :)
Posted by: Markalta | 2008-01-25 11:32:47 AM
Markalta
Why not invite your new little friend to a modest wager, say a couple ounces of gold based on the indicator twenty years out of soil moisture too dry for cactus growth?
Julian Simon took $1000 off Paul Ehrlich (still revered today by Greens) by taking him to task on one of his many historically-proven wrong Malthusian predictions by betting on commodity price declines over ten years as proof of continued abundance
Posted by: John Chittick | 2008-01-25 12:21:26 PM
ccn should have a look at the original survey notes from the Alberta township survey in the 1880's. There were active sand dunes in many areas of SE Alberta.
Check Google Earth sometime. Zoom in on the area north of Medicine Hat. There are arrow shapes pointing to the NE, indicating a drifting pattern away from the prevailing winds. Today there are happy cows on this land.
The show is almost over for these actors.
Posted by: dp | 2008-01-25 12:29:52 PM
Globull Warming is such a scam! If they wanted to steal my money, why don't they just use a gun or a knife?
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-01-25 12:48:27 PM
It really perplexes me how people can doubt the man made causes of climate change even in the face of the overwhelming scientific concensus that exists. Obviously with an issue of this nature there can never exist 100% proof as you would have in mathematics. To the same end there will never be 100% proof that smoking causes lung cancer, but there is a concensus among doctors that this is true. The IPCC consisted of over 1000 scientists from around the globe analyzing over 4500 peer-reviewed journal papers.......but sure, maybe they're all wrong.
Posted by: ccn | 2008-01-25 8:35:59 PM
CCN,
I don't need 100% proof. Just a consistent, repeatable, and verifiable string of scientific predictions that , well you know, actually come true.
Silly me for actually studying physics and all.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-01-25 8:41:52 PM
ccn: What about our coffee? In 20 years right? Should I bring a dustbuster? :)
Posted by: Markalta | 2008-01-25 9:10:53 PM
ccn: Maybe it's the solution and not the problem that arouses opposition. Kyoto is a sham, pure and simple, a tax regime designed to transfer wealth from the rich countries to "poor" ones. The way the Liebral/Dipper/Green/Corporate Alliance, with their Greenpeace/David Suzuki lackies, have tried to force Kyoto with shame and scare tactics, has forced people to actually think about Kyoto. Turns out it's a fraud and must be opposed at all costs.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2008-01-25 9:38:46 PM
Anonymous says: "I was not able to find any criticism of Gerlich or Tscheuschner...it's a pretty good indication of their credibility when the pro-Gore forces haven't been able to post any drive-by character assasinations on-line."
Hmmm...You must not have been looking very hard. Or maybe you were looking for the wrong thing, i.e., character assasinations instead of critiques of the science. There are plenty of explanations out there for why the science in G&T is completely wrong. For example, you can start here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324 and also look here: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/03/second-law-and-its-criminal-misuse-as.html (and related posts on that site), the latter of which have admittedly appeared after you wrote your comment.
Posted by: Joel Shore | 2009-03-29 3:22:42 PM
Stelmach has been a disaster for the Tory party and for Alberta. Basically the Albertan version of Dalton "fiddle and ban" McGuinty. I wouldn't be surprised if the party quietly dumps him at the next leadership convention. If they can do no better than this for their leader, both the Conservatives and Alberta are in big trouble.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-29 7:06:31 PM
CCN,
1. No one cares what perplexes you.
2. The correct spelling of concencus is consensus.
3. The consensus is far from overwhelming. Recently scientists were polled, and while 1,800 said they believed or somewhat believed in AGM, a further 50,000 said there was insufficient evidence to say either way.
4. In the case smoking, evidence is a lot easier to come by. People have shorter life cycles than planets. Furthermore, there isn't much evidence that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, whereas in the case of global warming, no one has been able to explain why temperatures were 3 degrees F higher around 1100, and 2 F higher in the time of Jesus. Apparently all the medieval warm period did was make Greenland temporarily inhabitable, to the point where Vikings set up a colony there. Oh, and crop yields went up, too.
5. "Peer-reviewed"? Hah. You want fries with that?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-29 7:11:22 PM
How come no one peer reviewed the Kyoto Accord?
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-03-29 7:24:21 PM
Joel,
1. For your first source: Scientists--at least scientific ones, as opposed to political ones chasing grant money or serving some behind-the-scenes puppeteer--don't use words like "refuted." That's more a debater's term. A classical scientist would be more apt to say something like "The evidence does not support this conclusion." To declare in the very first paragraph that another opinion is totally "refuted" is to speak with a moral certitude that is quite unscientific. It wasn't enough for the author to disagree with the other theory. He set out from the start to discredit both it and its authors.
2. For your second source: "Droppings along the bunny trail"? "The data adds up 'when done properly'"? On a blog, yet?
Short and sweet: Academics disagree. Oh, the humanity. And even if they're both wrong, that doesn't prove the existence of AGW. The fact remains that the doomsday predictions associated with AGW, from increased hurricane frequence a la An Inconvenient Truth to rising ocean levels (so far our local beach is not underwater) have not come true, show no signs of coming true, and if past history is any indication, will not come true without a radical upward tick in temperature. Earth has been hotter than today within the last 1000 years and yet the ancestors of the Salish and Haida were not drowned like rats, nor are their reports from any quarter of a massive rise in ocean levels.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-29 7:25:39 PM
It really perplexes me how people can doubt the man made causes of climate change even in the face of the overwhelming scientific concensus that exists.
Posted by: ccn | 2008-01-25 8:35:59 PM
What "overwhelming scientific concensus" would that be? Do you mean the IPCC report that was "edited" to give the appropriate lies?
Or the Scientific Panel of "thousands of leading scientists" that turned out to be about 60 people some of whom asked to have their names taken off the report after it was "doctored"?
I can go on for a while here ccn...
bottom line is, its all bullshit designed to herd us around and rob us blind using fear and misinformation as its tools. Man this kind of government sponsored domestic terror campaign pisses me off, and it should piss you off too.
You really need to do some homework. The kind that can only be done by "questionning" the status quo.
PS, without the greenhouse effect, we'd all be dead of solar exposure.
Posted by: JC | 2009-03-29 8:00:16 PM
Shane: I was hoping for more substantive comments. Furthermore, you didn't seem to notice that G&T used the term "fictitious" and "falsified" in their abstract...and even more extreme language in their paper itself, so to get on Arthur Smith's case for using "refuted" seems rather selective! (And, the important difference is that Arthur used it to refer to his demolishing of a claim in what is frankly a crackpot paper whereas G&T claimed to falsify what is a well-established piece of science that has been understood for more than 100 years.)
The simple point of fact is that the major claims of the G&T paper (that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and that the calculation that the greenhouse effect keeps the planet at least 33 C warmer than it would be otherwise is incorrect) have been shown to be wrong. The 2nd Law claim, in particular, is so easy to show to be wrong that a problem demonstrating it could be given to students in an undergraduate physics course when they first encounter heat transfer.
I agree that G&T being wrong doesn't itself "prove AGW". (In fact, nothing "proves" AGW since science is inductive and relies on the weight of the evidence...not proof as mathematics does.) However, the way that this paper has been embraced by those who do not believe AGW shows how poor they are at distinguishing real science from garbage.
As far as the temperatures over the last 1000 years are concerned, your claim that the earth has been hotter than it is today is not believed to be correct by most of the scientists in the field. And, the the scientific evidence shows that we are very likely headed in the next century to temperatures not experienced since at least the previous interglacial ~100,000 years ago (when sea levels were a few meters higher).
JC: If you want to see what a scientific consensus looks like, here is a good list of the stands of various scientific organizations in regards to the IPCC conclusions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
Posted by: Joel Shore | 2009-03-29 8:52:38 PM
Just for the record, it is possible for a planetary atmosphere to trap heat to the point where the surface is hotter than it would be with no atmosphere at all, even if that atmosphere is so thick that the ground cannot be seen from orbit. This is why the atmosphere-less Mercury, at 58 million km from the Sun, has a surface equatorial temperature of only 425°C (falling to -180°C at night), whereas Venus, which at 108 million km is over twice as far from the Sun, has a very thick atmosphere, but a surface temperature of 460°C, from poles to equator, day and night. So the theory behind atmospheric greenhouse effects is grounded in fact.
That said, Venus’s atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, while our own atmosphere’s CO² content is currently one three-hundredth of one percent (387 parts per million by volume), and geologically speaking, it’s never been lower. Carbon dioxide was the original major component of the Earth’s atmosphere just as it was (and is) on Venus; it did not fall below 500 p.p.m. until about 25 million years ago, thanks largely to the proliferation of oxygen-exhaling plant life. That time represents only one-tenth of the tenure of mammals on Earth and less than the two-hundredth part of the total age of this planet. Most animals today would find the atmosphere of 25 million years ago perfectly breathable.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-29 9:00:07 PM
Shane is right. You would be surprised at how little consensus there actually is on this issue. Mind you, dissenting scientists don't get the media spotlight and are typically punished by their peers.
Posted by: Realist | 2009-03-29 10:35:52 PM
The Kyoto Accord is being replaced by the more drastic "Copenhagen Accord" Be afraid, be very afraid. This is nothing short of the New World Order being brought in under a false flag.
"A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.
Those and other results are blandly discussed in a discretely worded United Nations "information note" on potential consequences of the measures that industrialized countries will likely have to take to implement the Copenhagen Accord, the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, after it is negotiated and signed by December 2009. The Obama administration has said it supports the treaty process if, in the words of a U.S. State Department spokesman, it can come up with an "effective framework" for dealing with global warming.
The 16-page note, obtained by FOX News, will be distributed to participants at a mammoth negotiating session that starts on March 29 in Bonn, Germany, the first of three sessions intended to hammer out the actual commitments involved in the new deal.
In the stultifying language that is normal for important U.N. conclaves, the negotiators are known as the "Ad Hoc Working Group On Further Commitments For Annex I Parties Under the Kyoto Protocol." Yet the consequences of their negotiations, if enacted, would be nothing short of world-changing.
Getting that deal done has become the United Nations' highest priority, and the Bonn meeting is seen as a critical step along the path to what the U.N. calls an "ambitious and effective international response to climate change," which is intended to culminate at the later gathering in Copenhagen."
By George Russell
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf
Posted by: JC | 2009-03-30 4:51:51 AM
Joel, all that means is that neither paper was written by overly disciplined scientists. I neither praised nor panned G&T’s paper. The point is that dispassionate professionals whose only goal is knowledge are not supposed to speak this way, write this way, think this way. And NO scientist will ever say that a matter is permanently settled.
Ninety percent of climatology is pure conjecture. I am not aware of a single case in history where scientists successfully predicted weather patterns centuries in advance, and I am not convinced that the latest crop has suddenly mastered this skill. They can’t tell me how much rain will fall next Tuesday, or even if it will. And don’t give me that oft-repeated gem that “climate is not weather.” That is PRECISELY what it is. This isn't the first fable they've spun, either. In the 1970s, scientists were convinced we were headed for another Ice Age. Scientists in the 1960s gloomed and doomed that by the 1980s, crop yields would have fallen behind population growth and much of America would be starving. Scientists in 1900 predicted that by the year 2000, there would be no trees left in North America.
Accurate temperature and barometric readings date back less than two centuries. Hell, before the 17th century, there was no way to measure either of them at all. (Foundries had to use the hue of the incandescent steel to judge correct alloy temperatures.) We do, however, have regular historical records that mention the weather, and from these, we know that the Medieval Warm Period, far from being a fiction as you so incorrectly state, did exist. The Vikings were even able to establish a colony on what they called green land, after its lush alpine meadows—a description that certainly does not apply to Greenland today, with its barren, almost lifeless ice sheet. The colony was wiped out when the ice returned during the Little Ice Age a couple centuries later. Oh, and there are records of increased crop yields in that period, too, although no records of rising ocean levels. Many important towns were located on the coast and would certainly have noticed several meters’ worth of sea level change, particularly in the Low Countries.
This is all accepted history. It describes what people experienced, not what someone centuries later theorized should have happened based on a few tree rings. If your scientists have convinced themselves that the records are false just so they won’t have to modify their freaking theory, then they are not scientists but prophets, or worse, paid stooges. Science in the last few decades has become intensely politicized as various interest groups turn to science in a bid to capture some quick credibility. And there are always scientists who are willing to tweak the data and speak the words that will get them more money. Many research projects on which social policy was ultimately founded turned out to be blatant forgeries, either with or without the patron’s knowledge.
Want to know the real reason I doubt the existence of AGW? For the same reason I distrust the legalization of marijuana: its proponents. Over the years it has mushroomed into what is, for all intents and purposes, a shamanistic religion, infested with high priests, acolytes, and zealots. This cult assumed a whole nother dimension when it pushed forward with a loud and obnoxious policy, tinged with desperation and hysteria, to muzzle “deniers” who, in another century, would doubtless have been called “heretics.”
It's not just conservative types that are voicing their disbelief; there are signs that laymen are also beginning to scratch their heads over this global warming business. The irony of delegates to global-warming conferences battling their way home through record snowfalls is not lost on them, nor is the fact that the oceans have not risen perceptibly, nor is the fact that most the phenomena scientists ostensibly use to justify AGW seem to occur in remote places they will never visit. Unless, of course, your “scientists” can produce real, tangible proof that they can actually see, and learn to rein in loose cannons like Al Gore and David Suzuki that discredit the movement with their excesses.
Until then, the emperor has no clothes.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-30 7:18:05 AM
.....to rising ocean levels (so far our local beach is not underwater) have not come true, show no signs of coming true, and if past history is any indication, will not come true without a radical upward tick in temperature.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-03-29 7:25:39 PM
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
Posted by: The Stig | 2009-03-30 8:44:19 AM
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