GWPF Traps RS: The Greenhouse Effect is Real?

In response to a suggestion by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited five climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society to discuss the current state of climate science and its wider implications. This is a good initiative by GWPF in principle, but GWPF misses the opportunity to really challenge the CO2 alarmism of RS by uncritically accepting its basic postulate:

The starting point for the discussion as expressed by GWPF under "Matters where we agree with the dominant scientific establishment and can quantify the outcome" as the following proposition

1. The greenhouse effect is real and CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

This is an unfortunate unscientific statement which will make a scientific discussion meaningless, because "the greenhouse effect" is not well specified or described in scientific terms, see PS below. 

If "the greenhouse effect" was well specified, it would be absurd to add that in addition it "is real". If it is well specified, then it is real. If it is not specified, claiming it to be real is meaningless. 

Further, since "the greenhouse effect" is not well specified, the term "greenhouse gas" lacks meaning.

The question is why GWPF is so eager to express agreement with RS by stating 1? Is it to trap RS into a discussion?

PS If you wonder what "the greenhouse effect" is, you can ponder one of the most common definitions:

• The greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be (without the effect).

How much warmer and why is however not specified.

Royal Non-Science

Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, President of the Royal Society, sends in an Open Letter on Climate Change to political and business leaders and to the wider public, the following warning:

• This year has seen outbreaks of extreme weather in many regions of the world.
• No-one can say with certainty that events such as the flooding in Pakistan, the unprecedented weather episodes in some parts of the US , the heat-wave and drought in Russia, or the floods and landslides in Northern China, were influenced by climate change.
• Yet they constitute a stark warning.
• Extreme weather events will grow in frequency and intensity as the world warms.
  

The Baron backs his warning by:

• It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the core scientific findings about humanly-induced climate change and the dangers it poses for our collective future remain intact.
• The most important relevant fact is based on uncontroversial measurements: the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for at least the last half-million years.
• It has risen by 30% since the start of the industrial era, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels. If the world continues to depend on fossil fuels to the extent it does today, CO2 will reach double pre-industrial level within the next half-century.
• This build-up is triggering long-term warming, the physical reasons for which are well-known and demonstrable in the laboratory.
  

The Baron sends the following signal to business leaders:

• The actions needed to counter this threat – the transition to a lifestyle dependent on clean and efficient energy – will create manifold new economic opportunities.
  

The Baron apparently has a strong talent for business, in the tax financed green sector, but what about the science of his and the RS? Well, look at his main Royal argument:

• long-term warming, the physical reasons for which are well- known and demonstrable in the laboratory.
  

The Baron does not understand that to say that something is well-known, is not a scientific argument, only an argument of "scientific consensus" as an appeal to authority, which is not part of a scientific discussion. Further, to claim that long-term global warming has been demonstrated in a laboratory (referring to Tyndall's experiment), is so beyond rationale that it can only be interpreted as a joke.

Rees is a specialist in cosmology and probably dreams of demonstrating also his theories about the Universe in a laboratory. If you can fit the Globe into it, why not also the rest?

But when he assures the World and its businessmen that core scientific findings remain intact, he probably refers to a a stable zero value.

Fourier and his Greenhouse Effect

Joseph Fourier (1768-1830 ) in his grave, still very much present in IPCC.

CO2 climate alarmism is based on an atmospheric "greenhouse effect" attributed to the mathematician Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) as described in General Remarks of the Temperature of the Terrestial Globe and the Planetary Spaces from 1824:

• The heat of the earth is derived from three sources:
• The earth is heated by solar rays.
• It partakes of the common temperature of the planetary spaces; being exposed to innumerable stars which surround the solar system.
• The earth preserves in its interior a part of that primitive heat which it had at the time of the first formation of the planets.
• The interposition of the air very modifies the effects of the upon the surface of the globe. The solar rays traversing the atmospheric strata which are condensed by their own weight, heat them very unequally: those which are rarest are likewise coldest because they extinguish and absorb a smaller part of the rays. The heat of the sun coming in in the form of light, possesses the property of penetrating transparent solids or liquids, and loses this property entirely, when by communicating with terrestial bodies, it is turned into heat radiating without light.
• This distinction between luminous and non-luminous heat, explains the elevation of temperature by transparent bodies. The mass of waters which cover a great part of the globe, and the oceans of the polar regions, oppose a less obstacle to the admission of luminous heat, than to the heat without light which returns in a contrary direction to open space.
• The pressure of the atmosphere produces an effect of the same kind: but an effect, which, in the present state of the theory, and from want of observations compared with each other, cannot be exactly defined.
• We see that the surface of the terrestial globe is placed between a solid mass, the central part of which may surpass that of matter heated to whiteness, and an immense girdle, whose temperature is below that requisite for the congelation of mercury.
• It is difficult to know how far the atmosphere influences the mean temperature of the globe, and in this examination we are no longer guided by regular mathematical theory. It is to the celebrated traveller M. de Saussure that we are indebted for capital experiment, which appears to throw light on this question.
• The experiment consists of exposing to the rays of the sun a vessel covered with one or more plates of glass, very transparent and placed with some distance one upon the other. The interior of the vessel is furnished with a thick covering of black cork, proper for receiving and preserving heat. The heated air is contained in all parts both in the interior of the vessel and in between the plates. Thermometers placed in the vessel itself and in the intervals above, mark the degrees of heat in each space. This instrument was placed in the sun about noon and the thermometer in the vessel was seen to rise 70, 80, 100, 110 (Reaumur) and upwards. The thermometers placed in between the glass plates indicated much lower degrees of heat, and the heat decreased form the bottom of the vessel to the highest interval.
• The theory of the instrument is easily understood. It is sufficient to remark, 1st, that the acquired heat is concentrated because it is not dissipated by renewing the air; 2d, that the best of the sun, has properties different from those of heat without light. The rays of that body are transmitted in considerable quantity through the glass plates into all the intervals, even to the bottom of the vessel. They heat the air and the partitions which contain it. Their heat thus communicated ceases to be luminous, and preserves only the properties of non-luminous heat. In this state it cannot pass through the plates covering the vessel.

This is the supposed original scientific basis of IPCC CO2 climate alarmism. We see that

Fourier presents a simplistic theory of a glasshouse with, 1st, blocking of convection and, 2d, radiative heating. Fourier combines this with confused ideas of heating from the interior of the earth and all the stars. No mathematical formulas are presented, only vague ideas in words. The step from Saussure's little experiment to the Earth with atmosphere is immense.

Fourier documents some understanding of blackbody radiation, but altogether he describes a rudimentary and largely incorrect science. Nevertheless, Fourier could have had a leading position in IPCC if he had been present today, since IPCC climate science is built on Fourier's "greenhouse theory", essentially in its original rudimentary confused form presented above.

Compare with Geologist about the missing science of any "greenhouse effect" and the myth of backradiation.

FRS Multiplication Table and CO2

The revised statement by the Royal Society Climate Change Summary of Science is full of scientific misconceptions as noted in the earlier post Royal Society in Free Fall, such as the following presented under the contradictory heading

• Aspects of climate change where there is a wide consensus but continuing debate and discussion
  

namely:

• Once atmospheric CO2 concentrations are increased, carbon cycle models (which simulate the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere, oceans, soils and plants) indicate that it would take a very long time for that increased CO2 to disappear; this is mainly due to well-known chemical reactions in the ocean. Current understanding indicates that even if there was a complete cessation of emissions of CO2 today from human activity, it would take several millennia for CO2 concentrations to return to preindustrial concentrations.
  

In the recent article The Carbon Cycle and Royal Society Math by Dr Klaus Kaiser at CFP, this is shown to lack any mathematical rationale. How can it be that even elementary mathematics is beyond the capacity of FRS?

Maybe history gives the answer: Recall that FRS Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) in his famous diary records his struggle to learn the multiplication table (July 4th 1662):

• Up by five o'clock, and after my journall put in order, to my office about my business, which I am resolved to follow, for every day I see what ground I get by it.
• By and by comes Mr. Cooper, mate of the Royall Charles, of whom I intend to learn mathematiques, and do begin with him to-day, he being a very able man, and no great matter, I suppose, will content him. After an hour's being with him at arithmetique (my first attempt being to learn the multiplication-table).
  

It seems that Royals have limited talent for mathematics, with one exception proving the validity of this observation: King Karl XII of Sweden was interested in mathematics and in particular wanted to replace the base 10 with 64, and to this end during one single night gave new names to all the numbers from 1 to 63. However, maybe because the corresponding multiplication table was too hard to memorize, his reform attempts came to 0.

Royal Society in Free Fall

The Royal Society has by a group of Fellows been forced to issue a new guide to the science of climate change:

• The guide summarises the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers, highlighting the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain.
  

So what do we then find in the new guide? Is it different from the old guide? We read:

• There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, including agriculture and deforestation.
• The size of future temperature increases and other aspects of climate change, especially at the regional scale, are still subject to uncertainty.
• Nevertheless, the risks associated with some of these changes are substantial.

What is then the strong evidence? Yes, of course the greenhouse effect:

• The surface is thus kept warmer than it otherwise would be because, in addition to the energy it receives from the Sun, it also receives infrared energy emitted by the atmosphere. The warming that results from this infrared energy is known as the greenhouse effect.

So there we have it! Take a close look at this amazing statement produced by the combined brains of RS:

• The surface receives IR energy emitted by the atmosphere!

The cold atmosphere thus heats the warm surface, by IR energy! Once this is understood the strong evidence is completed by making CO2 equal to clouds and water vapor:

• in addition to clouds, the two gases making the largest contribution to the greenhouse effect are water vapour followed by carbon dioxide (CO2).
  

This is a stunning collapse of science:

• incorrect description of the effect of clouds and water vapor
• incorrect attribution to CO2 of the same effect as clouds and water vapor.

Neverthless, armed with this amazing power of thinking RS concludes:

• There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century.
• However, the potential impacts of climate change are sufficiently serious that important decisions will need to be made.
• Climate science – including the substantial body of knowledge that is already well established, and the results of future research – is the essential basis for future climate projections and planning, and must be a vital component of public reasoning in this complex and challenging area.
  

What decisions? Why not a big heap of money to (well established) climate science?

The message of the new guide is the same as in the old guide, just a little more of convincing comforting uncertainty. What was wrong with the old?

PS Note the clever use of the term well established science. This is not science which has been shown to be correct, but populistic science selling "truths" which serve a certain political agenda. There are many contradictory well established truths in different political circles,

which are not truths at all, and in science the truth cannot be contradictory. DS