24 July 2009

Open Letter to Doug Mackie
(Reply to his open letter: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0907/S00082.htm)

Dear Doug,

If I believed that the obviously-naked-Emperor was wearing a new suit of clothes merely because his sycophantic admirers said so, I would be laughed at. But entrenched ignorance of physical reality lets you, Doug Mackie and other anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmists get away with the equivalent.

Similarly, if I said I read and listened only to the IPCC’s political pronouncements that the earth is getting too hot while satellite measurements and other physical evidence indicate it is actually cooling, I would be mocked. But that is precisely what you and other AGW alarmists are doing. The IPCC’s computer models calculate that the earth is too hot and that it is getting hotter because of our so-called “carbon emissions”, ipso facto it must be true. End of story. The IPCC has spoken. Well we might as well all go home then.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple because temperatures have been trending downward for a decade while atmospheric CO2 is increasing. This fact alone makes a mockery of the models, none of which predicted the change, and yet you still hold to them. We have clear empirical evidence for cooling on one hand, and pure speculation for carbon-forced warming on the other. Yet you believe the speculation of computer models, and IPCC political dogma, over real world observations.

This reminds me of Galileo and the Church in the sixteenth century. Galileo could see the moons of Jupiter clearly through his telescope. They were there plain as day, yet the Church insisted they didn’t exist. He was forced to reject the obvious truth his eyes could see and accept a lie in its place. There was no point his arguing of course because the Church had spoken: the moons of Jupiter didn’t exist and the sun revolved around the earth. End of story. The Church said the science was settled so Galileo might as well pack up his telescope and go home. He was up against another “consensus” of opinion which, by dint of authority alone, overruled reality. Sound familiar Doug? So it seems to me this naïve belief in anthropogenic global warming has taken science back four hundred years.

But the IPCC get around this disconnect between increasing CO2 and decreasing temperatures by arguing it is an “anomaly” superimposed on an overall upward temperature trend. The IPCC and alarmists like Doug Mackie, Al Gore and others assume without any evidence whatsoever that the underlying upward trend has been caused entirely by mankind only since around 1900. This is completely naïve because the very gradual overall upward trend has been occurring since the end of the last Little Ice Age (LIA) in the early nineteenth century - well before mankind started emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. The earth has been ‘recovering’ since then so it is to be expected that global temperatures would begin gradually to rise - but with other periodic natural forces like El Nino and La Nina events superimposed on top. The earth has simply been emerging from the LIA for the last two hundred years or thereabouts, so CO2 has absolutely nothing to do with it.

However from your recent angsty open letter, it appears to me your entire argument hinges on the IPCC’s politically charged “Reports”, as though one merely need consult them for the sacred truth about the earth’s current and future climate. One can thus safely ignore all empirical evidence to the contrary plus earth’s entire historical record of past climate because it can’t hold a candle to what the IPCC says is true. The IPCC flashes the badge of political authority and insists that the earth’s temperature is too high, that it is continuing to rise, that it is abnormal and that it is all because of a minuscule increase in CO2, amounting to a few thousandths of a percent of the atmosphere. The idea is hilarious.

Despite all evidence against this obviously ludicrous hypothesis, the IPCC further insists with religious fervor that unless we reduce this vanishingly small fraction by yet a few percent, the earth’s climate will DEFINITELY reach a tipping point very shortly, like in six years, from which there will be no return. That is to say, unless we reduce our 0.0024% CO2 contribution to the atmosphere by a few percent, we will all burn. The oceans will boil and the earth will end up like Venus. Yeah right. At this point I’m rolling on the floor laughing!

Doug, we are talking about a naturally occurring minor gas that plants thrive on, not some horrendously noxious phlogiston capable of igniting the universe at the merest touch. We are also talking utterly trivial percentages of this natural benign gas - so tiny indeed it is almost undetectable against everything else in the atmosphere, like against oxygen for instance. And yet the IPCC, you, Al Gore, and other blindly loyal alarmists think this gas is so utterly volatile and hostile to life, that tweaking our vanishingly small contribution by a few percent is powerful enough to hurl earth’s climate completely in the other direction and bring all life back from the brink of fiery extinction. It will save us from that “tipping point” you alarmists always bang on about. The runaway greenhouse effect. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I guess the “tipping point” will happen suddenly one night… “Dammit we’ve just set fire to the world because someone somewhere emitted another 0.000000000000000001% CO2 to the atmosphere and sent us over the edge”. Do you really believe that Doug? It defies common sense, logic and good science.

Now far be it from me to rain on your parade Doug, but I must point out a few more flaws in your contention that increased levels of CO2 inevitably lead to almost immediate increases in atmospheric temperature. Firstly, as you must know by now, CO2 is governed by the principle of diminishing returns where only the first 20ppm or so has the largest warming effect and every subsequent 20ppm addition has less and less effect. It is not a positive linear relationship so it goes without saying that you could quadruple our carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and the resultant warming effect, if any at all!, will be utterly negligible. Yes I know about the so-called ‘forcings’ and ‘positive feedback’ mechanisms you desperately need to rescue this absurd theory. That’s why you require something like water vapour to act as an amplifier. CO2 on its own is simply not enough is it? Sadly that theory is also broken because it has been shown by Lindzen and others that your hoped-for positive feedback is simply not there. If anything, the feedback is slightly negative because it has also been shown that the atmosphere is somewhat ‘self-regulating’.

Secondly, ice-cores show atmospheric CO2 lags temperature rises, not the other way around, thus disproving the link to global warming. So it is a pointless waste of time stubbornly insisting that our tiny CO2 output will force the atmosphere into some uncontrollable runaway greenhouse.

I mean really you alarmists need to get over carbon dioxide. It’s super stuff. Plants love it. We need more, not less. Why do you think commercial greenhouses run their atmospheres at 1000ppm - nearly three times the terrestrial level? It enhances plant growth Doug. That’s a very good thing because more plant life means more food. So tell me why you think that’s a bad idea.

Anyway then you ask how I know "the cost and damage to the country of imposing any form of carbon taxes will be high and completely futile." Contrary to your contention, I didn’t hear it from an economist. I obtained this view by reading in places more diverse than just the IPCC. It is obvious then that such carbon taxes are based on a fallacy in the first place. Unlike your good self Doug, I do not rely on one source of information for my edification on the AGW hypothesis. There is a mountain of information out there, including the very useful www.climatedebatedaily.com which lists numerous articles on both sides of the issue.

So my humble suggestion to you Doug is to broaden your horizons by reading further than just the IPCC’s “scientific” Reports. You can do no wrong by perusing the above web site, plus the Climate Science Coalition web site (http://nzclimatescience.net/), and Marc Morano’s excellent site: http://www.climatedepot.com

Furthermore, you are blowing smoke by suggesting I believe the “whole theory of human induced climate change is scaremongering because the climate changes naturally.” I do indeed believe it is scaremongering, but the reason is that the theory is fundamentally flawed. However you are correct to point out that the climate changes naturally. That is a step in the right direction. But then it begs the question: why is it necessarily the case that changes in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution are caused by mankind? That just doesn’t compute. What suddenly happened to the sun and other natural influences that they no longer figure as climate drivers?

Finally, you asked if I could point you towards any peer reviewed evidence against human-induced climate change. Yes. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

1). Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics: Gerhard Gerlich Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig.

2). Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature (Journal of Geophysical Research): McLean, J. D., C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (2009), J. Geophys. Res., 114, D14104, doi:10.1029/2008JD011637 (see: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml)

3). Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years; Willie Soon & Sallie Baliunas; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS 16, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA Mount Wilson Observatory, Mount Wilson, California 91023, USA.

It goes without saying of course that you won’t bother reading them because, judging by the comments in your letter, you have already dismissed all scientists who write peer-reviewed papers against anthropogenic global warming as “shabby frauds”. Nice one.

Regards,
Joe Fone

ENDS

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