Summary of Debate on the Greenhouse Effect

Here is a summary of the recent debate about the existence or non-existence of a physical phenomenon named "greenhouse effect", including the following groups:

1. Alarmists: There are "ghosts" and they are dangerous.
2. Inside Skeptics: There are "ghosts" but they are not so dangerous.
3. Outside Skeptics/Deniers: No real "ghosts" have been identified.

Lindzen, Spencer, Singer, Monckton and Watts belong to group 2, and myself to 3.

There are many possible incarnations as "ghosts" besides "greenhouse effect", like "terrorists", "viruses", "marsians", "islamists", "jews", "drugs", "comets", "aliens"...

Note that from scientific point of view, 3 is the position which is best or easiest to defend, since it puts the burden of proof on 1 and 2 who claim that ghosts exist. Position 2 is most difficult to defend since it both requires identification of ghosts and quantitative assessment of their degree of dangerousness. Position 1 has the advantage of connecting danger and ghost and compensating lack of proof of existence by inflating danger.

One may argue that good science has good defense, and that bad defense gives bad science.

Lord Monckton Believes in the Greenhouse Effect

Lord Monckton is reported on WUWT to have baffled his audience at Union College in Schenectady, New York, by opening his “Climate of Freedom” lecture, with a confession to the "greenhouse effect":

• Lord Monckton then startled his audience by saying it was settled science that there is a greenhouse effect, that CO2 adds to it, that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere, that we are largely to blame, and that some warming can be expected to result.
• But these facts had been established by easily-replicable and frequently-replicated measurements first performed by John Tyndall in 1859 at the Royal Institution in London, “just down the road from m’ club, don’t y’ know” (laughter). Therefore, these conclusions did not need to be sanctified by consensus.

Lord Monckton apparently used tactics which are now common in politics, namely to take on the views of your adversaries. For example, the conservative party in Sweden of today has adopted the views of the social-democrats and vice versa.

But then Lord M pulled the carpet by claiming that the "greenhouse effect" is so small (less than 1 C) that it cannot be detected. This puts Lord M into category 2. of a previous post:

• Skeptics: There is a greenhouse effect, but it is so small that it cannot be detected.

This is like claiming that boys are smarter than girls (or the other way around), but that this "boy effect" (or "girl effect") is so small that it cannot be detected.

So according to Lord M it is "settled science", which is so settled that it does not even have to be

"sanctified by consensus", that "there is greenhouse effect", which however is so small that it cannot be detected. Is this science, or politics or scholastics or what?

Compare with the earlier post Tyndall and His Greenhouse Effect showing that Tyndall assures the existence of an effect

• ...the extent alone of the operation remaining doubtful.