“By attacking the distinguished Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Dr Lindzen], rather than refuting his facts, Seward reveals himself as a pseudo-scientist.”

Actually, according to his web site, Michael Seward is a custom furniture maker in Pennsylvania. In the “About Me” portion of his website he notes that he has been a woodworker for many years, but has no word about any scientific training. He IS published — in ‘Fine Wood Working”, “This Old House”, “The Custom Furniture Sourcebook”, and etc.

In short, Michael is not even a “pseudo-scientist”; he is just a non-scientist. Probably the reason he doesn’t try to refute the arguments here is that he can’t read the literature, so gets his arguments from alarmist websites.

I have degrees in physics, mathematics, electrical and optical engineering. I’m a working engineer who has build a number of flight instruments to measure cloud properties for scientists at NCAR (in Boulder, Colorado) and elsewhere. I can read the scientific literature (and have contributed a few of my own) and have been following the “debate” for a number of years.

The state of the “Climate Consensus” as can be determined from the literature is:

1) There is a consensus that the Earth has been warming since about 1850. (This is a kind of “well duh!” consensus, since we aren’t still in the Little Ice Age, are we?)

2) Everything else, nearly, is up for grabs as far as the science is concerned, although my personal thoughts are that the evidence of Solar effects is by far the most convincing.

Solar effects have long been demeaned, as there wasn’t a good theory to explain them (The Sun’s output in the visible and IR didn’t vary enough and other coupling mechanisms were very speculative.) Solar variation is being taken more seriously now that experiments have identified a possible
coupling mechanism between the Sun’s activity level and total cloudness on Earth (via the cosmic ray flux).

It’s funny that the many of the same people who are willing to make giant leaps of faith based on the relatively weak correllation between CO2 and temperature (even ignoring or hand-waving away the apparent fact that temperature changes often lead CO2 changes) are also blind to the strong correllation between Solar activity and global temperature. Almost makes you think they have some kind of agenda…

Undersea vulcanism remains the “elephant in the room” that everybody hopes they can just ignore. Maybe someday we’ll develop the instrumentation to survey this — until then everyone will studiously ignore it. (If you meet an atmospheric scientist at a party, and want to see their hair catch on fire, ask him or her about the possibility of “El Nino” being partially driven by vulcanism.)

One other thing should be added to the “consensus”:

3) According to the Global Circulation Models (You can download NCAR’s GCM from their website and be the first on your block to model the climate!) even implementing enough ‘Kyotos’ to send the global economy into a decades-long depression would STILL not have an effect on global
temperatures that could be discerned from the measurement uncertainty.

As these facts become better known, alarmists become more, well, “alarming”. This may be why Global Warming Alarmists have now started talking about “tipping points” — a descent into pure fundamentalist religion, since there are no data (historical or geological), theories, or even models that
support this notion.

By attacking the distinguished Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Dr Lindzen], rather than refuting his facts, Seward reveals himself as a pseudo-scientist. There is no climate scientist more credible than Dr Lindzen. In addition, over seventeen thousand [17,000+] scientists have already signed Dr Fredrick Seitz’ letter stating, in effect, that human-induced global warming is entirely unproven.

Dr Lindzen states that there is ample evidence that the Earth’s temperature as recorded at the equator has remained constant to within +/- one degree centigrade for billions of years. That established fact alone destroys the catastrophic global warming argument, when one thinks it through:

The Earth’s equatorial temperature is the steady state temperature of the planet. As one approaches the poles, however, local temperature differentials increase from summer to winter, between the continental land masses and the ocean, and from day to night.

That temperature differential is a direct result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; heat moves around the planet in large packets. [Note that last summer was warmer than average in large parts of the U.S. — but southern Africa saw its first series of blizzards and freezing temperatures in almost three decades. But the Earth’s overall temperature has remained constant to within one degree C.

Also unexplained by Seward is the fact that atmospheric CO2 has historically risen following past warming — not preceding it. Any credible explanation must conclude that CO2 is a consequence of warming, not a cause.

The purveyors of globaloney deliberately select particular locations, and specific base years, only where those current temperatures and base years support their desired conclusions. That tactic is unscientific and completely dishonest, and they know it. That is why they run from any serious debate on the subject, and instead personally attack reputable scientists who disagree.

As Michael (from previous experience) subscribes to the view that those who take a different view about the THEORY of man-made climate change are all part of a great right-wing conspiracy (note his slur on the scientists at Friends of Science and Al Jacobs above) he won’t appreciate Leroux’s 500 page+ book or the fact that it is here highlighted at a conservative website. But those who can discern a genuine science argument might.

For the review (by one of the IPCC’s own reviewers) go to http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=091106F

For the record also, note Leroux’s assertion about how climatologists can’t even tell you what the weather will do in a few days time yet are so certain a few years hence. Uncannily smiliar to my own conclusion (written when I was unaware of Professor Leroux’s book)in the above article.

When we come to policy formulation we usually turn to the consensus to provide the basis for action. By all means question that, and subject it to scrutiny, but using terms like ‘climate alarmist’ - when nothing I wrote was in the slightest bit alarming, doesn’t encourage me. I wouldn’t describe Richard Lindzen as a skepto-fascist! But as Michael Seward pointed out in the climate change consensus he is a maverick. Let’s hope he’s right, but let’s base policy on consensus until he can convince more of his scientific peers that his position - and on theirs - is the one we should trust.

Check out Jacob’s website. The first goal of FOS is a strictly political agenda: to “re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol”. FOS runs radio ads attacking the Kyoto Protocol. They made sure that all members of the Federal Parliament received copies of their misleading DVD. “The society has also briefed scores of politicians and civil servants in person” according to the Daily Oil Bulletin. This is a predetermined political agenda pretending to be science. It’s pseudoscientific PR designed to influence the policy debate, plain and simple.

What about the science? FOS also claims to champion the “dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on this subject.”Then why is the FOS website a virtual catalogue of standard skeptic arguments, arguments that have been rejected by every scientific institution on the planet?

Mr. Jacobs claims “no reliable correlation has been established between carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and planetary temperatures.”Mr. Jacobs is dismissing 180 years of scientific discovery. Fourier discovered that gases in the atmosphere increase the surface temperature of the Earth in 1824. Arrhenius discovered that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect in 1896. Keeling’s careful measurements from the 1950’s have quantified the unprecedented increase in human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now generally expected to take about a century. Jacobs’s quirky ideas deny the history of science, a history you won’t find mentioned in his “educational” materials.

If they want a balanced debate with all views fairly represented, why do they only have the most extreme, fringe, global warming skeptics, with a long history of denying and distorting the science, on their petitions and their website?

The FOS website says: “We have no obligation to any commercial outfit (let alone oil companies)”. You can read about the complex web of connections between oil companies, think tanks, PR firms, and the “scientists” who represent FOS here: www.charlesmontgomery.ca/mrcool.html. Decide for yourself who should be ashamed.