Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/15/2011 7:14:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
David Evans is a scientist. He has also worked in the heart of the AGW machine. He consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He has six university degrees, including a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. The other day he said:
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic.
And with that he begins a demolition of the theories, premises and methods by which the AGW scare has been foisted on the public.
The politics:
The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
He makes clear he understands that CO2 is indeed a “greenhouse gas”, and makes the point that if all else was equal then yes, more CO2 in the air should and would mean a warmer planet. But that’s where the current “science” goes off the tracks.It is built on an assumption that is false.
The science:
But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.
Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.
The disagreement comes about what happens next.
The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas. [emphasis mine]
But it didn’t increase the height of the moist air around the planet as subsequent studies have shown since that time. However, that theory or premise became the heart of the modeling that was done by the alarmist crowd.
The modeling:
This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.
That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.
What did they find when they tried to prove this theory?
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.
This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
Evans is not the first to come to these conclusions. Earlier this year, in a post I highlighted, Richard Lindzen said the very same thing.
For warming since 1979, there is a further problem. The dominant role of cumulus convection in the tropics requires that temperature approximately follow what is called a moist adiabatic profile. This requires that warming in the tropical upper troposphere be 2-3 times greater than at the surface. Indeed, all models do show this, but the data doesn’t and this means that something is wrong with the data. It is well known that above about 2 km altitude, the tropical temperatures are pretty homogeneous in the horizontal so that sampling is not a problem. Below two km (roughly the height of what is referred to as the trade wind inversion), there is much more horizontal variability, and, therefore, there is a profound sampling problem. Under the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that the problem resides in the surface data, and that the actual trend at the surface is about 60% too large. Even the claimed trend is larger than what models would have projected but for the inclusion of an arbitrary fudge factor due to aerosol cooling. The discrepancy was reported by Lindzen (2007) and by Douglass et al (2007). Inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data.
Evans reaches the natural conclusion – the same conclusion Lindzen reached:
At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.
And why will it continue? Again, follow the money:
We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!
Indeed. How extraordinarily unexciting for the proletariat who will be the ones stuck with the bill if these governments ever succeed in finding a way to pass the taxes they hope to impose and extend even more government’s control over energy.
While you’re listening to the CEOs of American oil companies being grilled by Congress today, remember all of this. They’re going to try to punish an industry that is vital to our economy and national security, and much of the desire to do that is based on this false “science” that has been ginned up by government itself as an excuse to control more of our energy sector, raise untold revenues for its use and to pick winners and losers. All based on something which is, according to Evans and other scientists, now demonstrably false.
the truth shall prevail.
Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark!
In the old days, this would NOT have been a revolutionary statement...
Well so much for ‘peer review’ and that ‘scientific methodology’.
There is existing legislation in U.S. against such kind of criminal racket.
G.E. bosses, Al Gore et al. should be trialed under RICO.
Everyone spreading AGW fraund over internet should be charged for wire fraud, a federal felony.
Church of Climatology would disappear before one could say "Milankovich cycles".
The knowing of the truth shall set us free.
Thus, the only thing keeping us from suffering through the effects of radical environmentalism (including the political power brokers who enable them) is whether enough people gain the knowledge of the truth in a timely fashion.
Tough assignment, but I sense the tide may be turning.
Excellent thread post. Thanks.
It is encouraging to see more and more of these people doing the right thing and standing up to speak out.
As someone with training in scientific methods, I was shocked by the release of the East Anglia emails and what they indicate.
I find it disgusting, yet fascinating that they tried so hard to defend the indefensible. They doubled down on their deceptions, to no avail. Even to those who AREN’T trained in science, the deceit clearly shone through.
The real clincher for me were the commented notes in Mathematica. Nobody would EVER look there...
"Is it getting warm in here or is it just me?"
I thought exactly the same thing.
Sad.
Tesla a famous engineer scientist of the late 19th Century and father of modern power (AC) whose inventions run our cities today died in the 1930’s. The federal gov closed his apartment immediately after his death and seized all his papers and notes as national secrets. Eventually the docs were released. Included in his preliminary notes and outlines for future inventions were radar, microwave, particle beam weapons and lasers. Another intriguing concept was beaming radio signals to the ionosphere and ionizing it just enough to have it influence the upper atmosphere wind patterns which can influence the weather patterns. According to Tesla’s calculation, it does not require much energy and within the means of a modern industrial society to produce such powerful radio waves to achieve such affects vs the millions of tons of CO2 needed (after the ocean absorbs millions of tons) to affect weather as proposed by the Global Warming advocates. Today the US, Russia and Australia has very powerful over the horizon radar system composed of hundred miles of radio transmission towers beaming energy up and bouncing signals off the atmosphere. One of these radar networks is sufficient to cover the entire North American continent. It possesses enough power to affect the ionosphere. Question is - are these powerful radio/radar installations inadvertently affecting the weather patterns or even more tinfoil are being used by gov to conduct weather warfare????
Boy, was that ever a money quote from the article, eh?
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Comments BUMP! I agree.
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I must have mssed those notes. Would you mind doing a very brief description/explanation, please. (I am collecting anti AGW items...)
Thanks!
FWIW, this award-winning fifth grader really liked this article!
Of course, her conclusion was that AGW is not "good" science...
Which no longer matters. Everything is covered under Climate Change now.
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