GW Skeptics vs Scientific Concensus

[Phil’s Dad]

Not knowingly of course. The vast majority in that position probably quite genuinely believe their version of the truth. Faith?

Again I agree with the spirit of your first statement. It is too easy though to accuse scientists of distortion etc., not based on evidence of such behaviour but purely on the basis of who is sponsoring them. Otherwise sensible pieces of work may be dismissed simply because they were paid for by a particular type of company or organisation, without really understanding the merits of the work itself.

Worse still, people only go looking for such “suspect” associations, or “character flaws” if they disagree with the conclusions of the work and are less rigorous if it supports their predetermined views. Human nature.

[Breakable]

Phil’s Dad wrote: …
Worse still, people only go looking for such “suspect” associations, or “character flaws” if they disagree with the conclusions of the work and are less rigorous if it supports their predetermined views. Human nature.

I agree this is not the best approach, still I wonder what is the false positive/false negative turnout in this situation.
Hopefully the singularity that will start after FF will free enough resources, so that we can achieve an intellectual golden age.

[Phil’s Dad]

Breakable wrote:
Hopefully the singularity that will start after FF will free enough resources, so that we can achieve an intellectual golden age.

Indeed so; in which there would be nothing to be gained by pursuing anything but the truth. This is of course the best possible policy, to create an environment where there is no benefit to wrong doing and great benefit to creative progress. True progressivism.

[Henning]

I don’t follow this discussion because it disgusts me, but there’s a quite fitting article on Ars Technica:

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

Okay, I’m telling you “read this”, whilst not reading what you’ve written above. Yes I know, it’s quite ignorant, but that’s how I am. And it’s how everyone here is…

[Brian H]

Henning wrote: I don’t follow this discussion because it disgusts me, but there’s a quite fitting article on Ars Technica:

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

Okay, I’m telling you “read this”, whilst not reading what you’ve written above. Yes I know, it’s quite ignorant, but that’s how I am. And it’s how everyone here is…

LOL. That’s universal ad hominem hostility, then?

I took a degree in psych, and any resemblance between that field and science is coincidental. It’s not entirely BS, but there are more mutually exclusive “schools” of thought than any 5 other fields combined, even including Sociology.

Climatology isn’t even a field, much less a science. It’s a conglomeration of inept excerpts from a dozen other fields, pastiched into demands for outrageous efforts with minuscule chance of having any effect to solve a problem which they speculate may exist but have no hope of proving is real.

Rather, the atmospheric greenhouse mechanism is a conjecture [defined as an evidence-free preliminary to a hypothesis which proposes pass-fail tests which might eventually qualify it as a theory], which may be proved or disproved already [i.e., in advance] in concrete engineering thermodynamics [95{97]. Exactly this was done well many years ago by an expert in this field, namely Alfred Schack, who wrote a classical text-book on this subject [95]. [In] 1972 he showed that the radiative component of heat transfer of CO2, though relevant at the temperatures in combustion chambers, can be neglected at atmospheric temperatures. The influence of carbonic acid on the Earth’s climates is definitively unmeasurable [98].

“Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame of Physics,” International Journal of Modern Physics B, v23, n03, January 6, 2009, pp. 275-364. Free download at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf.

[Breakable]

“Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame of Physics,” International Journal of Modern Physics B, v23, n03, January 6, 2009, pp. 275-364. Free download at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf.

http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S021797921005555X.html
In this journal, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner claim to have falsified the existence of an atmospheric greenhouse effect.1 Here, we show that their methods, logic, and conclusions are in error. Their most significant errors include trying to apply the Clausius statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to only one side of a heat transfer process rather than the entire process, and systematically ignoring most non-radiative heat flows applicable to the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. They claim that radiative heat transfer from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface is forbidden, ignoring the larger transfer in the other direction which makes the complete process allowed. Further, by ignoring heat capacity and non-radiative heat flows, they claim that radiative balance requires that the surface cool by 100 K or more at night, an obvious absurdity induced by an unphysical assumption. This comment concentrates on these two major points, while also taking note of some of Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s other errors and misunderstandings.

What to do next:
1)Post the next paper which claims to have fully refuted the GW (silver bullet mentality);
2)Try some FUD instead by attacking the uncertainties of GW process (muddling the waters);
3)Plaster the current refuted paper all over the forums yet again and again. and again (persistence wins in the end);
4)Have some doubts (The ILLUMINATES will win!!!)

PS:If you are claiming some credentials (a degree in Physics), you might want to prove them, otherwise its empty claim, because we cant verify.

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote:

“Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame of Physics,” International Journal of Modern Physics B, v23, n03, January 6, 2009, pp. 275-364. Free download at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf.

http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S021797921005555X.html
In this journal, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner claim to have falsified the existence of an atmospheric greenhouse effect.1 Here, we show that their methods, logic, and conclusions are in error. Their most significant errors include trying to apply the Clausius statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to only one side of a heat transfer process rather than the entire process, and systematically ignoring most non-radiative heat flows applicable to the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. They claim that radiative heat transfer from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface is forbidden, ignoring the larger transfer in the other direction which makes the complete process allowed. Further, by ignoring heat capacity and non-radiative heat flows, they claim that radiative balance requires that the surface cool by 100 K or more at night, an obvious absurdity induced by an unphysical assumption. This comment concentrates on these two major points, while also taking note of some of Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s other errors and misunderstandings.

What to do next:
1)Post the next paper which claims to have fully refuted the GW (silver bullet mentality);
2)Try some FUD instead by attacking the uncertainties of GW process (muddling the waters);
3)Plaster the current refuted paper all over the forums yet again and again. and again (persistence wins in the end);
4)Have some doubts (The ILLUMINATES will win!!!)

PS:If you are claiming some credentials (a degree in Physics), you might want to prove them, otherwise its empty claim, because we can’t verify.

That paper was immediately challenged and no response was obtained; the slur that two specialist physics professors didn’t understand the 2nd Law, issued by an unqualified non-physicist, was laughable to begin with.
Here is their response. (See continued for balance of material)

974.
February 11th,
2008
4:25 am
Dear all,
Dear Dr. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert,
We (Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner) are very sorry that we cannot reply to all statements published in Internet blogs since our “times on-line” are rather limited. Especially, we do not reply to semi-anonymous virtual climate pets like Eli Rabett and other Internet geniusses such as Gavin Schmidt, Stefan Rahmstorf and others at “Real Climate” or “Atmoz Blog” anti-scientific smear sites. Most of them do know so little about physics such that they quote the second law of thermodynamics incorrectly in order to falsify our work. Even the difference between energy, work and heat seems to be unknown to these experts. This cannot be the basis of a scientific discussion.
First, let us start with discussing the identity of Eli Rabett. We have been informed that Eli Rabett is the pseudonym of Josh Halpern, a chemistry professor at Howard University. He is a laser spectroscopist with no formal training in climatology and theoretical physics.
On 2007-11-14 we sent Josh Halpern the following E-Mail:
“Josh Halpern alias Eli Rabbett – [If you are not Josh Halpern, then forgive me and delete this message immediately.]
Apparently, believing to be protected by anonymity you (and others) want to establish a quality of a scientific discussion that is based on offenses and arrogance rather than on critical rationalism and exchange of arguments. Scientist cannot tolerate and endorse what is becoming a quality in weblogs and what is pioneered by IPCC-conformal virtual climate bloggers. I must urge you to reconsider.
My questions to you:
1. What is the most general formulation of the second law of thermodynamics?
2. What is your favorite exact definition of the atmospheric greenhouse effect within the frame of physics?
3. Could you provide me a literature reference of a rigorous derivation of this effect?
4. How do you compute the supposed atmospheric greenhouse effect (the supposed warming effect, not simply the
absorption) from given reflection, absorption, emission spectra of a gas mixture, well-formulated
magnetohydrodynamics, and unknown dynamical interface and other boundary conditions?
5. Do you really believe, that you can transform an unphysical myth into a physical truth on such a low level of
argumentation?”
We did not get any response.
We would like to encourage the readers of this blog to read our paper, at least the conclusions.
It can be found here:
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161
The following is a delayed reply to the very offending posting #111 of Raymond T. Pierrehumbert who wrote to Marc
Morano:
>“You can obfuscate all you want, but you can’t hide from the fact that we have been going at this for nearly two weeks now and none of the skeptics we have discussed so far have established a credible publication record for the ideas that qualify them as skeptics in your eyes. Whatever these ideas are, they evidently can’t stand up to the same kind of scrutiny that the ideas in the IPCC report have been subjected to.”
Neither the validity of a scientific result depends on the publication record of its authors, nor the number of publications is an indicator of the quality of research . To put it bluntly, virtual climate research (Pierrhumbert and his buddies may call it “real climate” research) is nonsense (non-science). The thousands of publications reviewing the results of these computer games are not worth the papers they are printed on, not to mention the hardware, CPU times and memory.
{cont}

[Brian H]

{cont}
>”Today I’m in a good mood, so I’ll give you a twofer: Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner. Neither of these physicists has produced a single peer-reviewed paper bearing on any aspect of climate science, or even on the radiative physics underpinning climate science.”
Indeed, this is a great advantage for the whole discussion, both scientifically and politically. It is a presupposition for to have a fresh look at the topic. We (Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner) are unbiased totally independent theoretical physicists, familiar with stochastic description of nature and quantum field theory, respectively, and last but not least familiar with the physics lab and software engineering. Of course, we have published our papers in peer-reviewed journals, and on topics that belong to science, not to science fiction as the computer games of global climatology do. We are physicists, not climatologists.

The main results of our paper are:
– the CO2 greenhouse effect is not an effect in the sense of a physical effect and, hence, simply does not exist;
– computer aided global climatology will not be science, if science is defined as a method to verify or falsify
conjectures, according to the usual definition of science.
(We do not get into the ideas of e.g. Feyerabend “anything goes” here in that they do not apply to physics, in particular to applied physics, e.g. aeroplanes).
Due to research grants, huge amount of financial support, virtual global climatologists suffer from a kind of
omnipotence delusion comparable to the state of highness of the early super string community. However, physics is different. “Physics is where the action is”, i.e., finally, reproducible results in the lab. We cannot
overemphasize that science is a method to prove conjectures, and not to go on-stage like the pop star Al Gore
performing what-if-when-scenarios beyond any reality and scaring kids.

>”The two links you provide in fact point to the same paper. What you seem to be unaware of is that this paper has not been published in any journal. It appears only in the unreviewed ArXIV repository of manuscripts. This repository has no screening whatsoever as to the the content of the papers posted. Indeed, a look at the paper by anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with radiation physics shows why they wouldn’t dare subject it to peer review. About 40 pages of this 90 page opus is in fact devoted to discussing the well-known flaws in the glass-greenhouse analogy sometimes used in simplified explanations of the phenomenon. These flaws have no bearing whatever on the manner in which the greenhouse effect is actually computed in climate models.”

We are not sure, whether you, Dr. Pierrehumbert, really know what you are talking about. The full theory of the atmospheric system must be a fusion of magnetohydrodynamics and radiation theory including Earth’s gravity and rotation. The full theory should be a multi component theory and should include phase separation , plasma physics, and highly involved boundary conditions which, in general, even cannot be written
down. You, Dr. Pierrehumbert, first solve the turbulence problem, and then we can discuss the existence of a local thermodynamic equilibrium for the photon bath in which the atmosphere is embedded. Point us to only one source in the literature, where the CO2 term enters the fundamental equations (not the useless phenomenological toy model equations).
Mathematically, even within the most simplified models you cannot predict anything, because all these ones
crudely approximate non-linear partial differential equations with unknown boundary conditions. There is
simply no physical foundation of the computer models with and without CO2.

>”The rest of the paper is simply bad physics; in fact, if they were right, not only would there be no anthropogenic
greenhouse effect, there would be no greenhouse effect at all!”
Boy, you got it.

>”They’ve proved too much!”
We did not prove anything.
We did not show anything.
We only demonstrated that you and your virtual global climatology buddies and Al Gore and the peace Nobel
prize committee do not know anything about fundamental university physics. We conclusively showed that
you, guy, and your buddies never will prove or disprove anything in the context of your unproven computer
models.
Moreover, we are sure that you are fully aware of this fact.

>”The Earth would be a solid ball of ice, and Venus would be 400 degrees colder than it is.”
In our paper, we clearly show that the standard calculation giving the 33 Celsius degrees for the greenhouse effect is wrong. Moreover, the Venus problem has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, since in this case even the core presupposition is not fulfilled, namely that the sunlight reaches the ground.

>”And, as an aside, infrared weather satellites wouldn’t work either.”
Apparently, you do not know the subtle difference between absorption and warming. Read Chandrasekhar, read
Unsoeld, read Schack.

{cont}

[Brian H]

{cont}

>”Since the work was never published*, it of course has never been discussed in the peer reviewed literature. The obvious flaws in the paper cannot be discussed easily in a comment box, but for a good general guide to the junk physics in this paper I refer the reader to Eli Rabett’s discussion at …”
Our paper is a brand new preprint submitted for publication. You are allowed to cite it in your future work according to
the arXiv conventions. Apparently, you rank a peer reviewed published paper higher than a preprint, no matter of its content. Even so, really surprising in this context is that you attribute to the statements of a semi-anonymous virtual climate pet, namely Eli Rabett, the highest value.
What is this about? (my emphasis)
Gerhard Gerlich
Ralf D. Tscheuschner
___________________________
*Subsequently, the paper was duly published after completion of peer review in the International Journal of Modern Physics (Jan 2009) as noted above.

CAGW and the GH hypothesis is junk science, not even testable in Physics terms. The equations on which it is based are invalid on the face. No possible linear approximations can account for the sub-grid scale processes which dominate after very short periods (days or weeks). In fact, as noted clearly in the paper, neither the mathematics nor the computer power to process the equations and the extremely detailed data necessary for their functions exist, or can even theoretically exist. The processes are irremediably chaotic at even moderate time scales, much less decades and centuries.

[Breakable]

Brian H wrote: {cont}
>”Today I’m in a good mood, so I’ll give you a twofer: Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner. Neither of these physicists has produced a single peer-reviewed paper bearing on any aspect of climate science, or even on the radiative physics underpinning climate science.”
Indeed, this is a great advantage for the whole discussion, both scientifically and politically. It is a presupposition for to have a fresh look at the topic. We (Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner) are unbiased totally independent theoretical physicists, familiar with stochastic description of nature and quantum field theory, respectively, and last but not least familiar with the physics lab and software engineering. Of course, we have published our papers in peer-reviewed journals, and on topics that belong to science, not to science fiction as the computer games of global climatology do. We are physicists, not climatologists.
…

{cont}

Gerlich was a member of the European Science and Environment Forum. The agenda of this group was to discredit government safety regulations and reports on such things as genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone, pesticides, public smoking, and global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Science_and_Environment_Forum
The European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), now defunct, called itself “an independent, non-profit-making alliance of scientists whose aim is to ensure that scientific debates are properly aired, and that decisions which are taken, and action that is proposed, are founded on sound scientific principles.” Typically this manifested itself in questioning the science upon which environmental safety regulations are based.

The Forum was linked, via shared staff (Julian Morris and Roger Bate) and a shared web server, to the International Policy Network and the Sustainable Development Network. The most prominent academic members were US scientists known for skepticism on global warming and the relationship between Chloro Fluoro Carbon or CFCs and the ozone depletion.

In 1996, Roger Bate approached R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for a grant of £50,000 to fund a book on risk, containing a chapter on passive smoking [1], but the grant request was denied and the money was never received. In 1997, the ESEF published What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health, edited by Roger Bate which included a chapter on passive smoking.

[Breakable]

Brian H wrote:
…
That paper was immediately challenged and no response was obtained; the slur that two specialist physics professors didn’t understand the 2nd Law, issued by an unqualified non-physicist, was laughable to begin with.
…

I think this was the response (no pdf unless you want to pay for it):
http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:12y9TN4AzwsJ:scholar.google.com/+COMMENT+ON+“FALSIFICATION+OF+THE+ATMOSPHERIC+CO2+GREENHOUSE+EFFECTS+WITHIN+THE+FRAME+OF+PHYSICS”&hl=en&as_sdt=2000

So I guess there is no response to this paper? So it probably must be true then…

Edit

	In particular, without the greenhouse effect, essential features of the atmospheric temperature profile as a function of height cannot be described, 

	i.e., the existence of the tropopause above which we see an almost isothermal temperature curve, whereas beneath it the temperature curve is 

	nearly adiabatic. The relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed temperature curve is explained and the paper by Gerlich and 

	Tscheuschner [arXiv:0707.1161] critically analyzed. Gerlich and Tscheuschner called for this discussion in their paper. 

	

	actually a pdf in german:

	http://www.ing-buero-ebel.de/Treib/Hauptseite.pdf

	

	You could ask the author to send you the English one, but probably who cares?

	Also other refutations in the link I posted previously:

	http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gerhard_Gerlich#Refutations

Brian H wrote:
CAGW and the GH hypothesis is junk science, not even testable in Physics terms. The equations on which it is based are invalid on the face. No possible linear approximations can account for the sub-grid scale processes which dominate after very short periods (days or weeks). In fact, as noted clearly in the paper, neither the mathematics nor the computer power to process the equations and the extremely detailed data necessary for their functions exist, or can even theoretically exist. The processes are irremediably chaotic at even moderate time scales, much less decades and centuries.

If you have a degree in physics, then you could publish a paper in GW field and expose all the flaws you are talking about. Or not?
It would also save me from having to go over long debunked arguments, even if they seem to get newer and more original every time.

[Breakable]

Henning wrote: I don’t follow this discussion because it disgusts me, but there’s a quite fitting article on Ars Technica:

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

Okay, I’m telling you “read this”, whilst not reading what you’ve written above. Yes I know, it’s quite ignorant, but that’s how I am. And it’s how everyone here is…

Very relevant article. Probably fits a little better under title of
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/528/P15/
but it seems each thread becomes the same in the end – facts vs fiction.

Regardless of whether the information presented confirmed or contradicted the students’ existing beliefs, all of them came away from the reading with their beliefs strengthened.

Nobody has the time to go over all the information about a specific issue.
Hopefully some automated methods will come out to analyze information in the future,
but I wonder if in the end a denialist or scientific impotent would believe the analysis?
Edit:On the other hand scientific impotent is probably not the same as denialist,
where one does not understand science the other is cherry-picking facts.

[Phil’s Dad]

Henning wrote: I don’t follow this discussion because it disgusts me, but there’s a quite fitting article on Ars Technica:

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

Okay, I’m telling you “read this”, whilst not reading what you’ve written above. Yes I know, it’s quite ignorant, but that’s how I am. And it’s how everyone here is…

I am indeed ignorant of many things. For example how you can be disgusted by something you have made a point of not reading. I had thought that Breakable and I were having a dignified exchange of views. Putting that aside I have done as you asked and read the article.

I have no doubt that its central message is true but would caution that it applies to both parties in the title of this thread. Therein lies my only problem with the article itself; that it identifies the scientific community as an homogeneous entity; whereas there are differing opinions within it (as Mr Learner would testify regarding the origins of the universe for example). I would have liked within the passage at least the level of honesty that recognises that you can reject a scientific argument without rejecting the whole of science. Without it the author of the piece falls into the very trap so eloquently described.

Sorry, truly, if my response disgusts you.

[Breakable]

Phil’s Dad wrote:
…
Therein lies my only problem with the article itself; that it identifies the scientific community as an homogeneous entity; whereas there are differing opinions within it (as Mr Learner would testify regarding the origins of the universe for example). I would have liked within the passage at least the level of honesty that recognises that you can reject a scientific argument without rejecting the whole of science. Without it the author of the piece falls into the very trap so eloquently described
….

Yes of course it is possible to turn (almost) any weapon or argument to defend or attack (almost) any position. A denialist, might consider the whole scientific community as “scientific impotents”. He might be even right in some cases by chance or otherwise. Still I think some characters in GW denial community would be very surprised to find out that they were right – even the oil businessmen are not trying to disprove GW anymore, at least publicly.

I believe in this because I see a lot easy to spot dirty tricks from the deniers side, but nothing of the sort from advocates (or alarmists if you want to call them so). While the scientists do make some mistakes, they do threat the aggressive attackers harshly, maybe some people loose jobs over their position on GW unfairly (nothing concrete), they are not trying to misrepresent the data, methods, credentials or results when doing science. On the other side I see a lot of press misinformation, credential misrepresentation, association with political-scientific organizations, funds from vested-interest organizations, association with other type of denialisms (tobacco,ozone,aids,evolution), FUD over uncertainties, reiterating attack from every possible angle, ignorance of reliable results, mistake exaggeration, probably more, but I don’t remember now.

So this is why I believe Mr. Lerner is doing sound science – I think he is not employing any shady methods. Although the mainstream fusion community might not like it they will have to validate his results.

[Phil’s Dad]

So what “shady methods” is Svensmark employing?

(and can we agree that not all scientists are advocates and not all advocates are scientists?)

[Author]

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