Saturday 29 February 2020

New, statistics shows the past 40 years of climate change is mainly natural

A new study dispenses with mere correlation to show causality. Because correlation has been badly misused by scientists for decades to infer causality modern statisticians are increasingly down on mere correlation. This study uses new, sophisticated, statistical techniques to investigate whether recent global climate change is driven by shortwave or longwave radiation changes.

The man-made climate change conjecture says that human emissions of CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases cause a long-term decline in infrared radiation emitted from earth because greenhouse gases "trap" infrared radiation leading to global warming. The study, here, does not show that. It shows recent climate changes are mainly driven by shortwave radiation changes (due to solar output and cloud changes). This increased by about 3 W/m² since 1984.

... we study the causality of those changes using Transfer Entropy ... showing that the changes are mainly driven by the variations in shortwave radiation. The observed behaviour of climatic complexity could be explained by the changes in cloud amount ...

Delgado-Bonal, Marshak, Yang, Holdaway. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-57917-8

Tuesday 25 February 2020

DB

There is no greenhouse gas effect:

If such an extreme effect existed, it would show up even in a laboratory experiment involving concentrated CO2 as a thermal conductivity anomaly. It would manifest itself as a new kind of ‘superinsulation’ violating the conventional heat conduction equation. However, for CO2 such anomalous heat transport properties never have been observed.

— Gerlich & Tscheuschner, 2007, "Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame of Physics" https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161


There is no great climate change:

U.S. Climate Reference Network Temperature Anomaly
Univ. Alabama (Huntsville) Global Satellite Temperature Anomaly
Last 300 years, by @GillesnFio

Our current warming trend began in the year 1695 n the rate of warming the following 40 years was the highest since that time and 4x the rate of warming in the 20th Century. Post WW2 CO2 surge has no measurable influence. Is only a meaningless coincidence w post 1980 warming.


Global temperature records are corrupted and wrong:


Climate Change

2017: Ancient tree stumps found under Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in Southeast Iceland are confirmed to be roughly 3,000 years old. Stumps also being uncovered by the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. The "its never been as warm as this in so many thousand years" is nonsense.


Thursday 20 February 2020

How to Sell a Pseudoscience

This article from the 'Skeptical Inquirer' has been compared to how climate science was sold

Judith Curry comment: Someone recently emailed me this 1995 article from Skeptical Enquirer: How to sell a pseudoscience. Take a look; these tactics are all being used to sell climate science.


How to Sell a Pseudoscience
by Anthony R. Pratkanis
from Skeptical Inquirer
Volume 19, Number 4 (July/August 1995): Pages 19-25.
Notes and references removed; refer to original for these.

Every time I read the reports of new pseudosciences in the Skeptical Inquirer or watch the latest "In Search Of"-style television show I have one cognitive response, "Holy cow, how can anyone believe that?" Some recent examples include: "Holy cow, why do people spend $3.95 a minute to talk on the telephone with a 'psychic' who has never foretold the future?" "Holy cow, why do people believe that an all-uncooked vegan diet is natural and therefore nutritious?" "Holy cow, why would two state troopers chase the planet Venus across state lines thinking it was an alien spacecraft?" "Holy cow, why do people spend millions of dollars each year on subliminal tapes that just don't work?"

There are, of course, many different answers to these "holy cow" questions. Conjurers can duplicate pseudoscientific feats and thus show us how sleights of hand and misdirections can mislead. Sociologists can point to social conditions that increase the prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs. Natural scientists can describe the physical properties of objects to show that what may appear to be supernatural is natural. Cognitive psychologists have identified common mental biases that often lead us to misinterpret social reality and to conclude in favor of supernatural phenomena. These perspectives are useful in addressing the "holy cow" question; all give us a piece of the puzzle in unraveling this mystery.

I will describe how a social psychologist answers the holy cow question. Social psychology is the study of social influence__how human beings and their institutions influence and affect each other. For the past seven decades, social psychologists have been developing theories of social influence and have been testing the effectiveness of various persuasion tactics in their. It is my thesis that many persuasion tactics discovered by social psychologists are used every day, perhaps not totally consciously, by the promoters of pseudoscience.

To see how these tactics can be used to sell flimflam, let's pretend for a moment that we wish to have our very own pseudoscience. Here are nine common propaganda tactics that should result in success.

1. Create a Phantom

The first thing we need to do is to create a phantom __ an unavailable goal that looks real and possible; it looks as if it might be obtained with just the right effort, just the right belief, or just the right amount of money, but in reality it can't be obtained. Most pseudosciences are based on belief in a distant or phantom goal. Some examples of pseudoscience phantoms: meeting a space alien, contacting a dead relative at a seance, receiving the wisdom of the universe from a channeled dolphin, and improving one's bowling game or overcoming the trauma of rape with a subliminal tape.

Phantoms can serve as effective propaganda devices. If I don't have a desired phantom, I feel deprived and somehow less of a person. A pseudoscientist can take advantage of these feelings of inferiority by appearing to offer a means to obtain that goal. In a rush to enhance self-esteem, we suspend better judgment and readily accept the offering of the pseudoscience.

The trick, of course, is to get the new seeker to believe that the phantom is possible. Often the mere mention of the delights of a phantom will be enough to dazzle the new pseudoscience recruit. After all, who wouldn't want a better sex life, better health, and peace of mind, all from a $14.95 subliminal tape? The fear of loss of a phantom also can motivate us to accept it as real. The thought that I will never speak again to a cherished but dead loved one or that next month I may die of cancer can be so painful as to cause me to suspend my better judgment and hold out hope against hope that the medium can contact the dead or that Laetrile works. But at times the sell is harder, and that calls for our next set of persuasion tactics.

2. Set a Rationalization Trap

The rationalization trap is based on the premise: Get the person committed to the cause as soon as possible. Once a commitment is made, the nature of thought changes. The committed heart is not so much interested in a careful evaluation of the merits of a course of action but in proving that he or she is right.

To see how commitment to a pseudoscience can be established, let's look at a bizarre case__mass suicides at the direction of cult leader Jim Jones. This is the ultimate "holy cow" question: "Why kill yourself and your children on another's command?" From outside the cult it appears strange, but from the inside it seems natural. Jones began by having his followers make easy commitments (a gift to the church, attending Wednesday night service) and then increased the level of commitment __ more tithes, more time in service, loyalty oaths, public admission of sins and punishment, selling of homes, forced sex, moving to Guyana, and then the suicide. Each step was really a small one. Outsiders saw the strange end product; insiders experienced an ever increasing spiral of escalating commitment.

This is a dramatic example, but not all belief in pseudoscience is so extreme. For example, there are those who occasionally consult a psychic or listen to a subliminal tape. In such cases, commitment can be secured by what social psychologists call the foot-in-the-door technique. It works this way: You start with a small request, such as accepting a free chiropractic spine exam, taking a sample of vitamins, or completing a free personality inventory. Then a larger request follows __ a $1,000 chiropractic realignment, a vitamin regime, or an expensive seminar series. The first small request sets the commitment: Why did you get that bone exam, take those vitamins, or complete that test if you weren't interested and didn't think there might be something to it? An all too common response, "Well gosh, I guess I am interested." The rationalization trap is sprung.

Now that we have secured the target's commitment to a phantom goal, we need some social support for the newfound pseudoscientific beliefs. The next tactics are designed to bolster those beliefs.

3. Manufacture Source Credibility and Sincerity

Our third tactic is to manufacture source credibility and sincerity. In other words, create a guru, leader, mystic, lord, or other generally likable and powerful authority, one who people would be just plain nuts if they didn't believe. For example, practitioners of alternative medicine often have "degrees" as chiropractors or in homeopathy. Subliminal tape sellers claim specialized knowledge and training in such arts as hypnosis. Advocates of UFO sightings often become directors of "research centers." "Psychic detectives" come with long resumes of police service. Prophets claim past successes. For example, most of us "know" that Jeane Dixon predicted the assassination of President Kennedy but probably don't know that she also predicted a Nixon win in 1960. As modern public relations has shown us, credibility is easier to manufacture than we might normally think.

Source credibility is an effective propaganda device for at least two reasons. First, we often process persuasive messages in a half-mindless state __ either because we are not motivated to think, don't have the time to consider, or lack the abilities to understand the issues. In such cases, the presence of a credible source can lead one to quickly infer that the message has merit and should be accepted.

Second, source credibility can stop questioning (Kramer and Alstad 1993). After all, what gives you the right to question a guru, a prophet, the image of the Mother Mary, or a sincere seeker of life's hidden potentials? I'll clarify this point with an example. Suppose I told you that the following statement is a prediction of the development of the atomic bomb and the fighter aircraft:

They will think they have seen the Sun at night
When they will see the pig half-man:
Noise, song, battle fighting in the sky perceived,
And one will hear brute beasts talking.

You probably would respond: "Huh? I don't see how you get the atomic bomb from that. This could just as well be a prediction of an in-flight showing of the Dr. Doolittle movie or the advent of night baseball at Wrigley field." However, attribute the statement to Nostradamus and the dynamics change. Nostradamus was a man who supposedly cured plague victims, predicted who would be pope, foretold the future of kings and queens, and even found a poor dog lost by the king's page. Such a great seer and prophet can't be wrong. The implied message: The problem is with you; instead of questioning, why don't you suspend your faulty, linear mind until you gain the needed insight?

4. Establish a Granfalloon

Where would a leader be without something to lead? Our next tactic supplies the answer: Establish what Kurt Vonnegut terms a "granfalloon," a proud and meaningless association of human beings. One of social psychology's most remarkable findings is the ease with which granfalloons can be created. For example, the social psychologist Henri Tajfel merely brought subjects into his lab, flipped a coin, and randomly assigned them to be labeled either Xs or Ws. At the end of the study, total strangers were acting as if those in their granfalloon were their close kin and those in the other group were their worst enemies.

Granfalloons are powerful propaganda devices because they are easy to create and, once established, the granfalloon defines social reality and maintains social identities. Information is dependent on the granfalloon. Since most granfalloons quickly develop out-groups, criticisms can be attributed to those "evil ones" outside the group, who are thus stifled. To maintain a desired social identity, such as that of a seeker or a New Age rebel, one must obey the dictates of the granfalloon and its leaders.

The classic séance can be viewed as an ad-hoc granfalloon. Note what happens as you sit in the dark and hear a thud. You are dependent on the group led by a medium for the interpretation of this sound. "What is it? A knee against the table or my long lost Uncle Ned? The group believes it is Uncle Ned. Rocking the boat would be impolite. Besides, I came here to be a seeker."

Essential to the success of the granfalloon tactic is the creation of a shared social identity. In creating this identity, here are some things you might want to include:

(a) rituals and symbols (e.g., a dowser's rod, secret symbols, and special ways of preparing food): these not only create an identity, but provide items for sale at a profit.

(b) jargon and beliefs that only the in-group understands and accepts (e.g., thetans are impeded by engrams, you are on a cusp with Jupiter rising): jargon is an effective means of social control since it can be used to frame the interpretation of events.

(c) shared goals (e.g., to end all war, to sell the faith and related products, or to realize one's human potential): such goals not only define the group, but motivate action as believers attempt to reach them.

(d) shared feelings (e.g., the excitement of a prophecy that might appear to be true or the collective rationalization of strange beliefs to others): shared feelings aid in the we feeling.

(e) specialized information (e.g., the U.S. government is in a conspiracy to cover up UFOs): this helps the target feel special because he or she is "in the know."

(f) enemies (e.g., alternative medicine opposing the AMA and the FDA, subliminal-tape companies spurning academic psychologists, and spiritualists condemning Randi and other investigators): enemies are very important because you as a pseudoscientist will need scapegoats to blame for your problems and failures.

5. Use Self-Generated Persuasion

Another tactic for promoting pseudoscience and one of the most powerful tactics identified by social psychologists is self-generated persuasion -- the subtle design of the situation so that the targets persuade themselves. During World War II, Kurt Lewin was able to get Americans to eat more sweetbreads (veal and beef organ meats) by having them form groups to discuss how they could persuade others to eat sweetbreads.

Retailers selling so-called nutritional products have discovered this technique by turning customers into salespersons. To create a multilevel sales organization, the "nutrition" retailer recruits customers (who recruit still more customers) to serve as sales agents for the product. Customers are recruited as a test of their belief in the product or with the hope of making lots of money (often to buy more products). By trying to sell the product, the customer-turned-salesperson becomes more convinced of its worth. One multilevel leader tells his new sales agents to "answer all objections with testimonials. That's the secret to motivating people," and it is also the secret to convincing yourself

6. Construct Vivid Appeals

Joseph Stalin once remarked: "The death of a single Russian soldier is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." In other words, a vividly presented case study or example can make a lasting impression. For example, the pseudosciences are replete with graphic stories of ships and planes caught in the Bermuda Triangle, space aliens examining the sexual parts of humans, weird goings-on in Borley Rectory or Amityville, New York, and psychic surgeons removing cancerous tumors.

A vivid presentation is likely to be very memorable and hard to refute. No matter how many logical arguments can be mustered to counter the pseudoscience claim, there remains that one graphic incident that comes quickly to mind to prompt the response: "Yeah, but what about that haunted house in New York? Hard to explain that." By the way, one of the best ways to counter a vivid appeal is with an equally vivid counter appeal. For example, to counter stories about psychic surgeons in the Philippines, Randi tells an equally vivid story of a psychic surgeon palming chicken guts and then pretending to remove them from a sick and now less wealthy patient.

7. Use Pre-Persuasion

Pre-persuasion is defining the situation or setting the stage so you win, and sometimes without raising so much as a valid argument. How does one do this? At least three steps are important.

First, establish the nature of the issue. For example, to avoid the wrath of the FDA, advocates of alternative medicine define the issue as health freedom (you should have the right to the health alternative of your choice) as opposed to consumer protection or quality care. If the issue is defined as freedom, the alternative medicine advocate will win because "Who is opposed to freedom?" Another example of this technique is to create a problem or disease, such as reactive hypoglycemia or yeast allergy, that then just happens to be "curable" with whatever quackery you have to sell.

Another way to define an issue is through differentiation. Subliminal-tape companies use product differentiation to respond to negative subliminal-tape studies. The claim: "Our tapes have a special technique that makes them superior to other tapes that have been used in studies that failed to show the therapeutic value of subliminal tapes." Thus, null results are used to make a given subliminal tape look superior. The psychic network has taken a similar approach -- "Tired of those phony psychics? Ours are certified," says the advertisement.

Second, set expectations. Expectations can lead us to interpret ambiguous information in a way that supports an original hypothesis. For example, a belief in the Bermuda Triangle may lead us to interpret a plane crash off the coast of New York City as evidence for the Triangle's sinister effects. We recently conducted a study that showed how an expectation can lead people to think that subliminal tapes work when in fact they do not. In our study, expectations were established by mislabeling half the tapes. The results showed that about half the subjects thought they improved (though they did not) based on how the tape was labeled (and not the actual content). The label led them to interpret their behavior in support of expectations, or what we termed an "illusory placebo" effect.

A third way to pre-persuade is to specify the decision criteria. For example, psychic supporters have developed guidelines on what should be viewed as acceptable evidence for paranormal abilities -- such as using personal experiences as data, placing the burden of proof on the critic and not the claimant, and above all else keeping James Randi and other psi-inhibitors out of the testing room. Accept these criteria and one must conclude that psi is a reality. The collaboration of Hyman and Honorton is one positive attempt to establish a fair playing field.

8. Frequently Use Heuristics and Commonplaces

My next recommendation to the would-be pseudoscientist is to use heuristics and commonplaces. Heuristics are simple if-then rules or norms that are widely accepted; for example, if it costs more it must be more valuable. Commonplaces are widely accepted beliefs that can serve as the basis of an appeal; for example, government health-reform should be rejected because politicians are corrupt (assuming political corruption is a widely accepted belief). Heuristics and commonplaces gain their power because they are widely accepted and thus induce little thought about whether the rule or argument is appropriate.

To sell a pseudoscience, liberally sprinkle your appeal with heuristics and commonplaces. Here are some common examples.

(a) The scarcity heuristic, or if it is rare it is valuable. The Psychic Friends Network costs a pricey $3.95 a minute and therefore must be valuable. On the other hand, an average University of California professor goes for about 27 cents per minute and is thus of little value!

(b) The consensus or bandwagon heuristic, or if everyone agrees it must be true. Subliminal tapes, psychic phone ads, and quack medicine feature testimonials of people who have found what they are looking for.

(c) The message length heuristic, or if the message is long it is strong. Subliminal-tape brochures often list hundreds of subliminal studies in support of their claims. Yet most of these studies do not deal with subliminal influence and thus are irrelevant. An uninformed observer would be impressed by the weight of the evidence.

(d) The representative heuristic or if an object resembles another (on some salient dimension) then they act similarly. For example, in folk medicines the cure often resembles the apparent cause of the disease. Homeopathy is based on the notion that small amounts of substances that can cause a disease's symptoms will cure the disease. The Chinese Doctrine of Signatures claims that similarity of shape and form determine therapeutic value; thus rhinoceros horns, deer antlers, and ginseng root look phallic and supposedly improve vitality.

(e) The natural commonplace, or what is natural is good and what is made by humans is bad. Alternative medicines are promoted with the word "natural." Psychic abilities are portrayed as natural, but lost, abilities. Organic food is natural. Of course mistletoe berries are natural too, and I don't recommend a steady diet of these morsels.

(f) The goddess-within commonplace, or humans have a spiritual side that is neglected by modern materialistic science. This commonplace stems from the medieval notion of the soul, which was modernized by Mesmer as animal magnetism and then converted by psychoanalysis into the powerful, hidden unconscious. Pseudoscience plays to this commonplace by offering ways to tap the unconscious, such as subliminal tapes, to prove this hidden power exists through extrasensory perception (ESP) and psi, or to talk with the remnants of this hidden spirituality through channeling and the seance.

(g) The science commonplaces. Pseudosciences use the word "science" in a contradictory manner. On the one hand, the word "science" is sprinkled liberally throughout most pseudosciences: subliminal tapes make use of the "latest scientific technology"; psychics are "scientifically tested"; health fads are "on the cutting edge of science." On the other hand, science is often portrayed as limited. For example, one article in Self magazine reported our subliminal-tapes studies showing no evidence that the tapes worked and then stated: "Tape makers dispute the objectivity of the studies. They also point out that science can't always explain the results of mainstream medicine either". In each case a commonplace about science is used: (1) "Science is powerful" and (2) "Science is limited and can't replace the personal." The selective use of these commonplaces allows a pseudoscience to claim the power of science but have a convenient out should science fail to promote the pseudoscience.

9. Attack Opponents Through Innuendo and Character Assassination

Finally, you would like your pseudoscience to be safe from harm and external attack. Given that the best defense is a good offense, I offer the advice of Cicero: "If you don't have a good argument, attack the plaintiff."

Let me give a personal example of this tactic in action. After our research showing that subliminal tapes have no therapeutic value was reported, my coauthors, Tony Greenwald, Eric Spangenberg, Jay Eskenazi, and I were the target of many innuendoes. One subliminal newsletter edited by Eldon Taylor, Michael Urban, and others claimed that our research was a marketing study designed not to test the tapes but to "demonstrate the influence of marketing practices on consumer perceptions." The article points out that the entire body of data presented by Greenwald represents a marketing dissertation by Spangenberg and questions why Greenwald is even an author. The newsletter makes other attacks as well, claiming that our research design lacked a control group, that we really found significant effects of the tapes, that we violated American Psychological Association ethics with a hint that an investigation would follow, that we prematurely reported our findings in a manner similar to those who prematurely announced cold fusion, and that we were conducting a "Willie Horton"-style smear campaign against those who seek to help Americans achieve their personal goals.

Many skeptics can point to similar types of attacks. In the fourteenth century, Bishop Pierre d'Arcis, one of the first to contest the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, was accused by shroud promoters as being motivated by jealousy and a desire to possess the shroud. Today, James Randi is described by supporters of Uri Geller as "a powerful psychic trying to convince the world that such powers don't exist so he can take the lead role in the psychic world."

Why is innuendo such a powerful propaganda device? Social psychologists point to three classes of answers. First, innuendoes change the agenda of discussion. Note the "new" discussion on subliminal tapes isn't about whether these tapes are worth your money or not. Instead, we are discussing whether I am ethical or not, whether I am a competent researcher, and whether I even did the research.

Second, innuendoes raise a glimmer of doubt about the character of the person under attack. That doubt can be especially powerful when there is little other information on which to base a judgment. For example, the average reader of the subliminal newsletter I quoted probably knows little about me knows little about the research and little about the peer review process that evaluated it, and doesn't know that I make my living from teaching college and not from the sale of subliminal tapes. This average reader is left with the impression of an unethical and incompetent scientist who is out of control. Who in their right mind would accept what that person has to say?

Finally, innuendoes can have a chilling effect. The recipient begins to wonder about his or her reputation and whether the fight is worth it. The frivolous lawsuit is an effective way to magnify this chilling effect.

Can Science Be Sold with Propaganda?

I would be remiss if I didn't address one more issue: Can we sell science with the persuasion tactics of pseudoscience? Let's be honest; science sometimes uses these tactics. For example, I carry in my wallet a membership card to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with a picture of the cutest little otter you'll ever see. I am in the otter granfalloon. On some occasions skeptics have played a little loose with their arguments and their name-calling. As just one example, see George Price's 1955 Science article attacking Rhine's and Soal's work on ESP -- an attack that went well beyond the then available data.

I can somewhat understand the use of such tactics. If a cute otter can inspire a young child to seek to understand nature, then so be it But we should remember that such tactics can be ineffective in promoting science if they are not followed up by involvement in the process of science -- the process of questioning and discovering. And we should be mindful that the use of propaganda techniques has its costs. If we base our claims on cheap propaganda tactics, then it is an easy task for the pseudoscientist to develop even more effective propaganda tactics and carry the day.

More fundamentally, propaganda works best when we are half mindless, simplistic thinkers trying to rationalize our behavior and beliefs to ourselves and others. Science works best when we are thoughtful and critical and scrutinize claims carefully. Our job should be to promote such thought and scrutiny. We should be careful to select our persuasion strategies to be consistent with that goal.

Greenhouse gases simply do not absorb enough heat to warm Earth

Reblog, by Peter L. Ward, from The Hill


Mark Twain, in his inimitable way, is reputed to have quipped “what gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”

Today, many climate scientists “know for sure” that observed global warming is caused by greenhouse-gas emissions. Many have worked tirelessly for decades, publishing thick summary reports, forging the appearance of a scientific consensus sufficient to convince political leaders to take action to prevent runaway global warming.

Such an agreement was reached in Paris on December 12, 2015. If greenhouse-gases are indeed the problem, their work will go down in history as heroic.

 

But science is not done by consensus, by popular vote, or by group think. As Michael Crichton put it: “In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”

The drive to demonstrate scientific consensus over greenhouse-warming theory has had the unintended consequence of inhibiting genuine scientific debate about the ultimate cause of global warming.

Believers of “the consensus” argue that anyone not agreeing with them is uninformed, an idiot or being paid by nefarious companies. The last thing most climate scientists want to consider at this point, when they think they are finally winning the climate wars, is the possibility of some problem with the science of greenhouse-warming theory. Believe me, I have tried for several years to communicate the problem to numerous leading climate scientists.

New data and improved understanding now show that there is a fatal flaw in greenhouse-warming theory. Simply put: greenhouse gases do not absorb enough of the heat radiated by Earth to cause global warming.

Understanding this very surprising and rather blunt statement is much easier than you might think. It gets down to understanding why a traditional light bulb gives off a great deal of heat whereas a new LED light bulb producing the same amount of light remains quite cool.

Heat is what makes us feel warm. More formally, heat is thermal energy flowing spontaneously from a warmer body to a cooler body. Thermal energy is well observed at the molecular level to be the oscillation of all the bonds that hold matter together. The hotter the body of matter, the higher the frequencies of oscillation and the higher the amplitudes of oscillation at each frequency of oscillation. In this way, heat and the temperature that results from absorbing heat both consist of a very broad spectrum of all of these frequencies of oscillation.

A traditional light bulb uses a large amount of electricity to heat the tungsten filament to temperatures around 5500 degrees, causing the filament to glow white hot. This high temperature is required to produce visible white light. The glowing filament gives off a very broad spectrum of frequencies of radiation, however, that we perceive as heat. Only a very small number of the highest of these frequencies are useful as visible light.

A new LED light bulb, on the other hand, uses a very small amount of electricity to cause a diode to emit a very narrow range of frequencies within the spectrum of visible light. The LED radiates only visible light — it does not radiate heat.

The primary purpose of a light bulb is to provide visible light. To repeat, a traditional light bulb radiates heat, a small portion of which is visible light. An LED on the other hand, only radiates visible light, requiring much less electricity. This is why you can substantially reduce your electric bills by replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with LED light bulbs.

How does this apply to greenhouse gases? Detailed laboratory studies of absorption of radiation show that carbon dioxide absorbs less than 16 percent of all the frequencies making up the heat radiated by Earth. Just like LEDs, this limited number of frequencies absorbed by carbon dioxide does not constitute heat. This limited number of frequencies cannot cause an absorbing body of matter to get much hotter because it contains only a very small part of the heat required to do so.

Current radiation theory and current climate models assume that all radiation is created equal—that all radiation is the same no matter the temperature of the radiating body. Current theory simply assumes that what changes is the amount of such generic radiation measured in watts per square meter.

Extensive observations of radiation emitted by matter at different temperatures, however, show us clearly that the physical properties of radiation, the frequencies and amplitudes of oscillation making up radiation, increase in value rapidly with increasing temperature of the radiating body.

Climate scientists argue that the thermal energy absorbed by greenhouse gases is re-radiated, causing warming of air, slowing cooling of Earth and even directly warming Earth. There simply is not enough heat involved in any of these proposed processes to have any significant effect on global warming. Greenhouse-warming theory “just ain’t so.”

Peter L. Ward worked 27 years with the United States Geological Survey. He was the chairman of the White House Working Group on Natural Disaster Information Systems during the Clinton administration. He’s published more than 50 scientific papers. He retired in 1998 but continues working to resolve several enigmatic observations related to climate change. His work is described in detail at WhyClimateChanges.com and in his book What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse gases or ozone depletion? Follow him on Twitter at @yclimatechanges.

Tuesday 18 February 2020

UN claims of a climate crisis divert resources from more needed issues

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming Australian bushfires were proof of a climate crisis prompted Haapala to post in the journal the following comment:

“Carbon dioxide (CO2) and the greenhouse effect are critical for life on this planet. Green plants require CO2. Without green plants, it is doubtful complex life would exist. Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, CO2 is secondary. Without the greenhouse effect much of the earth would freeze at night, making it barren of complex life.

“The claim that life-giving CO2 is a threat causing a climate crisis is extraordinary, requiring extraordinary physical evidence. There is a dearth of physical evidence that CO2 is causing dangerous global warming. The greenhouse effect occurs in the atmosphere. The entire 40-year record of comprehensive atmospheric measurements shows temperatures have warmed slightly. This is the most comprehensive global temperature record existing. What physical evidence shows that greenhouse gases are causing dangerous warming? The problems of bushfires in Australia have been known since Black Thursday in 1851. Bushfires are not physical evidence of a CO2-caused climate crisis.”

Haapala's response to this: The Climate Crisis and Clinical Practice

Saturday 15 February 2020

Confusion behind the 'greenhouse gas effect' and radiative processes in physics


Under Construction

To Do: citations, especially mean-free path model | 3 examples (1) M&W 1967, (2) H&S 2000, (3) MFP model


There is no greenhouse gas effect, GHGE, in physics. There are radiative processes of absorption and emission of infrared radiation by radiatively active gases such as carbon dioxide, CO2, and water vapour, H2O, for example.

The idea of a greenhouse gas effect is a fabrication by climate scientists. It preceded any understanding of the physics involved in gaseous radiative processes. It began as something called a 'greenhouse effect', which was a notion that atmospheric gases warmed the surface of earth (by 33°C in the classic case) compared to an imaginary earth with no atmosphere. As such, both the Atmospheric Thermal Effect (ATE), an adiabatic heating effect, and the greenhouse gas effect, GHGE, are both explanations for a 'greenhouse effect'; although the ATE is 80°C, not just 33°C.

Today the greenhouse effect has mutated from its original meaning. It now means only the greenhouse gas effect, GHGE. Anyone wanting to talk about an Atmospheric Thermal Effect is treated like a heretic, banned, and metaphorically sacrificed. I won't talk further about the ATE because I want to look at the conflict between different visions and understandings of the role of gaseous radiative processes in climatology.

Physics - radiative gases

CO2, but mostly H2O, strongly absorb and emit infrared photons, due to their molecular electrical dipole. It's a zero sum game, CO2 molecules, for example, absorb exactly as much as they emit. When CO2 absorbs a photon of suitable frequency its energy state becomes excited moving from E(normal) to E(excited). CO2 absorbs and emits in 2 bands centred around 4µm and 15µm. Any radiation outside these bands it 'ignored'. More precisely CO2 behaves as a non-radiative gas like nitrogen, N2, when interacting with such. For example, it can still scatter the radiation.

In thermalisation a radiatively excited molecule such as CO2, with energy E(excited), collides with another molecule such as nitrogen, CO2's energy decays from E(excited) to E(normal). The lost energy [ E(excited) - E(normal) ] is transferred to the kinetic energy of the nitrogen molecule. Kinetic energy is generally regarded as the energy giving rise to temperature. So it looks like the nitrogen got 'warmer'. Except it's an equilibrium process. It goes the other way too. A N2 molecule can collide with CO2 to transfer some of its kinetic energy to CO2 to excite the CO2 energy state from E(normal) to E(excited). The CO2 may then immediately emit a photon to de-excite from E(excited) to E(normal) again. Not heat is 'trapped'.

The only warming that can happen here is an effect of radiation density. In the case of GHG / non-GHG mixture, such as earth's atmosphere, the absorption/emission processes decrease the photons' mean free path to space and so increase the radiation energy density of the gas as compared to the non-GHG case (for example: an imaginary atmosphere without CO2 or H2O vapour.

So it just looks like I've admitted the greenhouse gas effect!

Not so fast. In physics, we'd model the effect of this with a statistical model to calculate this warming due to the average decrease in the mean free path to space of photons. Such models have been written. They are not welcome in climatology. Much like the ATE any scientist touting such a model will be treated as a heretic, banned, and metaphorically sacrificed; but only if they raise the issue in climatology circles. In physic circles it's perfectly OK to model legitimate physics.

These mean free path to space models of radiative atmospheric gases give no dramatic warming by more CO2 in the atmosphere; even when the models are biased with all assumptions in favour of more warming!

Climatology - Greenhouse gas effect

In the 1950s Gilbert Plass began to model a greenhouse gas effect in terms of the behaviour of radiative gases in the atmosphere. Modellers picked up on his conjectures and they worked in a cul-de-sac journals. They read each others' work. Other scientists ignored them. By 1967, they'd made a model they were happy with (Manabe and Wetherald, 1967). With the popularity of the greenhouse gas effect after 1988 the work continued and reached a new milestone in 2000 with Held and Soden's paper. These are the two papers behind all greenhouse gas model calculations. Anything not in this tradition, but sometimes papers in the tradition, are 'heresy' and 'denialism'.

Friday 14 February 2020

Let's re-employ climate modellers to do less harm

This is a comment to David Wojick's article questioning computer climate models, or General Circulation Models. I took it one step further.

David criticises models well. Climate models don’t work. But there’s another model David forgot to criticise – the greenhouse gas effect, GHGE, model. This mini-model is embedded in the big computer climate models. It’s responsible for creating the basic warming which the big model then amplifies to project global catastrophe in model-world. The GHGE conjecture goes back to 1967 when it was first published in its modern form by Manabe and Wetherald. It has never been tested nor validated. GHGE model is just a conjecture or thought experiment. It is unscientific. After I point this out, climate alarmists tell me that “we only have one planet, do you want to burn the planet for your test?”. Most people would end their criticism right there. Yet, we don’t actually need a second planet to test GHGE model. It’s already been tested and failed. For example, GHGE model predicts the wrong lapse rate value, wrong temperature for earth’s surface, wrong upper troposphere heat spot. GHGE failed every test given it. It has been tested and failed. Yet the climate establishment don’t accept these failed tests for their favourite pseudoscience. They say only they are allowed to define a suitable test for their mini-model. Yet they can’t. As such, GHGE turned into the climate model which dare not speak its name. Brushed under the table; pretend “settled science”.

For modellers, junking the GHGE would be the same as sacking themselves. If politicians are no longer scared out of their wits what’s the point of climate modelling, and modellers, with their multi-decade long failures? Let them do something useful, rather than subsidising them to frighten pre-teens out of their minds into suicidal hell.

Modellers will never give it up. Instead, we have to give up funding them.

We need to stop supporting the basic greenhouse gas premise, and all other speculative pseudoscience's based on untested conjecture. There’s no evidence for carbon dioxide warming the climate. There’s good evidence the greenhouse gas effect conjecture is wrong.

Saturday 8 February 2020

Today’s Environmentalists Must Make a Literal Life or Death Decision

Opinion

Today’s Environmentalists Must Make a Literal Life or Death Decision

|
Posted: Feb 03, 2020 12:34 PM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Today’s Environmentalists Must Make a Literal Life or Death Decision

Source: Laurent Gillieron/dpa via AP

You’d think someone who longs for the day when every human on Earth is dead would be treated as a moral monster like Mao, Stalin, or Hitler and ostracized by anyone with an ounce of reason or conscious, but Les Knight is treated with respect in many circles because he echoes the horrific anti-humanism lurking in the environmentalist movement. If you consider yourself an environmentalist, you have a life or death decision to make here.

In 1991, Knight founded the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. The premise is that “When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth’s biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory …”

The Guardian recently ran an article authored by Knight titled, “I Campaign for the Extinction of the Human Race.” In it, Knight declares, “Procreation today is the moral equivalent of selling berths on a sinking ship.” Though he acknowledges that “society would be greatly diminished without children,” he goes on to assert, “it isn’t right to create them just because we like having them around.” He then doubles down on his excuse, stating that “if we go extinct, other species will have a chance to recover.”

“I can imagine what a magnificent world it would be—provided we go soon enough,” he concludes.

The ugly anti-humanism promoted by people like Knight has been part of the environmental movement for decades. Alan Gregg, former official of the Rockefeller Foundation, asserted in 1955, “The world has cancer, and the cancer is man.”

John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journalwrote some three decades later, “I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”

In 1995, Dr. Reed R. Noss of the Wildlands Project declared, “The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans.”

In 1998,The Economist opined, “It is hard … to imagine any reason to be against voluntary human extinction.”

In 2009, Jonathon Porritt, an environmental adviser to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made a more “moderate” suggestion: cutting his country’s population in half, by about 30 million people.

Let’s get our moral principles straight. There are no values without a valuer—a creature with a rational capacity and volition, that can make choices—and a standard of value. Humans are that creature—at least on this planet—and the standard is our lives. “Nature” and the “environment” have no inherent value, only value in relation to us. A forest is of value because we can walk through it and enjoy its beauty or harvest some of its trees to build houses for our survival and comfort. When a cheetah kills a zebra, it is neither “good” nor “evil.” It just is. When an asteroid hit the earth 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, it was likewise neither “good” nor “evil.” It just was.

A world without humans would not be “magnificent” or infused with “glory” because such notions are human evaluations.

Today, we live in the most prosperous, human-friendly world in history. Sadly, many individuals who rightly worked to reduce the worst human-harming threats—choking air pollution, poisoned water—are seduced by the panic of global warming alarmists. But this panic fogs their thinking and warps their values from, “We must protect humans!” to a dogma of “We must protect Gaia, even at the expense of humans!”

If you value the environment because you want humans to survive, prosper, and flourish in the best world possible, you need be get past the climate hysteria and seriously question the science on which it’s based. You need to acknowledge that the benefits of a moderately warming world—e.g., record crop yields and fewer deaths from cold, the latter of which kills far more people than heat—are good for humans, and that damage from proposed solutions to the alleged warming crisis—such as hyper-high energy costs and radically reduced living standards—are not.

Most importantly, you need to clearly and loudly reject and shun those who hate humans so much that they would have us all dead for the benefit of mosquitoes, frozen mud, and a “natural” world of predators and prey bereft of all value because it’s bereft of humans.

Edward Hudgins, Ph.D.(ehudgins@heartland.orgis research director at The Heartland Institute.

Friday 7 February 2020

Moderate Climate Catastrophe?

I wrote this in response to Alex Trembath's review of 3 climate ultra-catastrophe books. Alex wrote a classic fence-sitting post. Pretending to take the middle ground. In fact, the only reason why ultra catastrophe is now mainstream is due to fence sitting by people just like Alex - liberals and progressives. Alex is part of the problem. He's one of the reasons climate catastrophe is mainstream today. The refusal, by people like Alex to promote a moderate debate on climate is a huge part of the success of climate catastrophe. No doubt all unwittingly engineered by him and his allies!

"ultra catastrophe in now mainstream"? Yes. A recent search of Google Scholar showed that the most extreme pathway for modelling the effects of man-made climate change: RCP 8.5, is the most cited of the 4 main pathways. Yet, RCP 8.5 is supposed to be a near impossible pathway! On Google Scolar, the citations are by climate scientists. The climate catastrophe narrative is not driven by Greta, nor by the ENGOs like Greenpeace, nor by our craven media. Mainstream climate scientists drive the catastrophe narrative. Most people will not stand up to scientists, will not dare refute them. But media and progressives have systematically imposed a blackout against any views questioning the catastrophism promoted by climate scientists. That's how we're where we are today.

No-platforming began as a far left tactic against racists on the far right. It settled in Western Universities. Took them over to legitimise censorship and non-debate. It was copied by all other left campaigns. In particular the Green NGO campaign to promote anti-humanism, and anti-capitalism, which hides under the banner of climate change. The no-platforming lefties learnt at university became censorship after they graduated and took jobs in media, NGOs, and government. Marching through the institutions = a Gramscian term for taking over institutions by stealth: appointing one's allies to positions of power, in turn, getting appointed oneself. The lefty version of Buggins' turn. Liberals and progressives acquiesced in leftwing censorship by refusing to debate climate change in particular

Alex wrote a review of extreme climate catastrophe books, from the vantage point of mild climate catastrophe! What is a mild catastrophe? Good question. There isn't really one. There are just degrees of catastrophism. Civilization comes apart, how or how long is the 'degree'. The catastrophe is given. Merely rejecting ultra extremism, doesn't make one a moderate. Alex's remark: "To say that anthropogenic climate change touches everything is fair", is an extreme statement. Because there is no evidence that anthropogenic climate change is even a thing, as there is no "greenhouse gas" effect, GHGE, to cause it. We know there's no greenhouse gas effect because Dr Michael Connolly and Dr Ronan Connolly researched tropospheric weather patterns using data from 20 million weather balloons. The data they found directly refutes the greenhouse gas model upon which the whole man-made global warming, and climate change scam is based. This basic GHGE model is embedded in every IPCC climate model. It is the "settled science" that mainstream dogma insist is the basis for climate science. Every model projection, or forecast, hence all climate policy is based on this extreme, anti-scientific idea. All climate policy is based on these climate models; all of them incorporating the anti-scientific greenhouse gas effect. Policy formulations are instrincally model based, because there is no clearcut, objective, science to otherwise guide climate policy. There is no unambigous climate science. The big catastrophist trick is to call climate models 'science'. Settled science indeed! No wonder arts graduates in policy circles dare not question the models. To compound the unquestioning attitute of media / NGOs / bureaucrats - any scientist who doesn't pay lip service to the dogma is hounded and vilified.

This is extremism

It's the extremism of self-styled 'moderates' who are happy to censor dissenting voices from the media. The extremism of people who think they are right because they take the "middle ground". The extremism of anti-scholarship and bending the knee to the Powers That Be. Yet there are honest scientists out there apart for the Connolly's. For example, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner found there could be no greenhouse gas effect. According to them: "If such an extreme effect existed, it would show up even in a laboratory experiment involving concentrated CO2 as a thermal conductivity anomaly. It would manifest itself as a new kind of 'superinsulation' violating the conventional heat conduction equation. However, for CO2 such anomalous heat transport properties never have been observed." A greenhouse gas effect is not in nature nor evidenced in basic properties of gases (such as CO2 thermal conductivity). Thirdly, this GHGE is senseless according known scientific laws. The greenhouse gas effect is supposed to manifest at a cold, thin layer in the upper troposphere (for which Connolly's found no evidence). From there it, supposedly, warms a much warmer, denser layer of air at the planetary surface, many kilometres below. Somehow this effect is propagated through eleven, or so, kilometres of warmer denser air. All in fragrant violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which says heat always flows from warm objects to colder. Never from cold to far warmer air.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is called a law because it's a formulation of what is always seen in nature. It has never been contradicted by experiment nor observation.

By refusing to acknowledge the 2nd Law and take the science on climate change seriously, but instead, promoting the pseudoscience of man-made climate change, Alex betrays both reason and his self-professed "eco-modernist" manifesto. He's the norm for the so-called progressive today. Progressives who are just another degree of reactionary catastrophist. Mostly because they are too lazy to take the science seriously; but also because they crave acceptance by other progressives. They want to belong. To be inside the big tent. To contribute towards the progressive narrative and project. Rejecting the man-made climate scam would put them outside the pale. Alone, scorned by liberals and progressives.

There's no Greenhouse Effect

Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner, calculate the change in heat physics properties of air with 0.03% CO2, and 0.06% CO2 resprectively...