American physicists warned not to debate global warming

How did the Council of the American Physical Society determine that the “conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”?
Did they do a survey?

It seems that it is now officially politically incorrect to debate – god forbid doubt – man-made global warming theory. All Hail Mr. Gore!

American physicists will have to decide for themselves whether bullying debate out of science is tolerable. I hope more and more will stand up and realise what a bunch of madmen charlatans like Gore and Hansen really are.
This may sound harsh, but what else can you label people who demand we live in a fantasy world?

The idea that one would tell people with degrees in physics not to read an article lest they be deceived . . . how funny is that. If the administration of the APS had stood back and tried to visualize how that looks to the bystander, or to people belonging to the APS who hold MAs or Phds in physics . . . it just maks me shake my head.

And for anyone who may have missed it in my comment above, in his reply, Saperstein refers to an anthropomorphic effect rather than the correct term of anthropogenic, two rather different concepts.

So now the APS is doubting the intelligence of their members? That they don’t have the brains to distinguish between fact and fantasy so they shouldn’t read Monckton’s paper? What a hoot and an insult to the APS’s members.

“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
The problems with this statement is that while everyone agrees that increasing CO2 will cause an increase in temperatue, nobody agrees on how the feedbacks will play. The AGW’ers assume that there are strong positive feedbacks that will dramatically increase the affect of CO2 increases. However, nobody has demonstrated the existence of these proposed feedbacks. A number of recent studies have concluded that H2O feedback is negative, not positive.
Finally, regarding the crack about correlation not equaling causation. I wish the AGW’ers would apply that logic to their own theory.

John Riddell:
“How did the Council of the American Physical Society determine that the “conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community”?”
And how would the world scientific community know that they disagreed with the conclusions, unless they had all read the paper?
Oops, I forgot – they’re not allowed to 😉

So this is what science has become … political, no truth. I wonder, do the scientists involved realize the damage they are doing to their own chosen field by this politicization of science?
Still there remains no verifiable proof of AGW, just computer models, which can prove anything you program them to say — So where is the beef? Why not just offer up the proof? AGW has been declared to be going on for 100+ years, there must be proof. Well, except for the recent years … It’s getting complicated.
Meanwhile, the sun does not seem to be responding to NASA’s proclamation.

James, I appreciate your support. Apparently, though, the current moderator here is not interested in debate, but rather in playing “gotcha.” My post was not meant to be published publicly – hence the address to “Moderator” prior to it. However, since we’re having this discussion in the open let us continue it:
Moderator, you conflate separate issues in your reply to my request. Specifically, as I’ve already stated, your comment on my first post is disingenuous in nature; it does not address the substance of my comment, and instead opts to hit an Achille’s heel within the post itself. You refuted my post by knocking down a strawman. In the case of Monckton’s paper, there was no “refutation” involved. Rather, the disclaimer was a clarification of the APS’ official policy which had been lost during the heavy dissemination and politicization of the issue at hand. The disclaimer was not meant to address Monckton’s paper – it was meant to dismiss the legions of skeptics on the internet who were being guided to the paper under the false pretenses that the APS had reversed its official policy.
You’re entitled to not honor my request as this is your own webspace. However, it speaks quite vividly of your intentions with this blog and the subsequent promotion of this story, which is at heart and motive dishonest.
REPLY: I think the object lesson is clear, Monckton disliked the disclaimer conditions that were added after the fact. Under the same situation, you’ve reacted identically, to the same type of disclaimer, but at the same time maintain that you’ve been wronged and that I’ve been disingenuous. That that I say: BUNK. If you don’t want a comment published, put up NOT FOR PUBLICATION on it. I can’t read your mind.
The disclaimer and subsequent comment stand.
BTW if I was “not interested in debate” as you assert, none of your comments would be published. Thus, your assertion fails. If you want one sided debate, go to RealClimate.

Finally, regarding the crack about correlation not equaling causation. I wish the AGW’ers would apply that logic to their own theory.
Pretty hard to do, Mark, since the only close correlation between increases in atmospheric levels of C02 and temperature existed briefly during the 80’s and 90’s and has virtually vanished during the last decade.

Evan, close those italic tags every chance you get. Maybe it’s just my poor old eyes. But, reading italic on more than a string of a few words is difficult.
Please don’t take this suggestion badly. I enjoy reading all of your posts. I’ll skim others while trying to read every word of yours.
[Hesitantly clicks “Submit Comment”]

Moderator, you’re still not getting it. I invited you to include your comment – however, the comment should line up with its subject matter. Your comment referred to a single sentence in my post. Although I can not read minds either, it is apparent that you posted it to diffuse my argument in its entirety – an argument which was only tangentially related to the veracity of Monckton’s paper.
As of yet, no one has responded to my argument, so I’ll re-iterate it:
The bottom line is that Monckton’s paper was not peer-reviewed. Period. The APS’ disclaimer was not meant for Monckton’s paper as much as it was meant to serve as a course-correction for the legions of misinformed skeptics who were spreading a false meme around the blogosphere. At the very beginning, it was a false and bunk argument that the APS had reversed their stance on global warming. It is still false to suggest that they are shutting down debate by sticking a disclaimer on Monckton’s paper.
REPLY: I think you are the one missing it. This was a test that was counter to the published opinion of APS. That is the story. It truly is a reversal to open a debate on an opinion for which the organization has already issued a pro forma policy statement.
If you have ever been a part of a union, perhaps you can draw from that experience to help understand the disclaimer issue. The union leadership issues an “opinion” on a proposal, then distributes it with that opinion attached. The rank and file then typically will not vote to accept the offer unless leadership approves it ahead of time. APS is much like a union in that regard.
In the case of APS, the leadership qualifies the paper with an opinion of their own thus tainting its ability to succeed or fail on it’s own merits. If APS had not done that, there would be no issues. APS made a mistake, a huge one. Their “damage control” is compounding that mistake and drawing attention to the issue far more than if they’d just let the paper stand or fail on it’s own like any other science paper.

I think it’s incorrect to assume that the greenhouse effect of water vapor acts as a positive feedback for the greenhouse effect of CO2. It seems to me that the two act separately but in tandem, and the total greenhouse effect is a sum of the two – before any feedback is considered.
After all, water vapor has always existed in the atmosphere over the major part of the planet, since the beginning when the earth was still a molten sphere. As an aside, at that time the atmosphere consisted almost wholly of CO2, methane and water vapor – but despite this, it still cooled down from its molten state, and didn’t go ‘Venus’ on us.
The point is, water vapor has always co-existed with CO2 in the atmosphere and, for at least the most recent 100 million years, has been in somewhat greater concentrations. So, far from the water vapor in the atmosphere having been ‘manufactured’ by the warming effect of CO2, it’s level is governed principally by the action of sunlight on the oceans. There has never been a time when we had a ‘snowball earth’ which had little or no water vapor, and which relied on the presence of CO2 to raise its temperature above -18, or whatever it was.
As far more IR is absorbed by water vapor than by CO2, it creates its own warming, which far exceeds that of CO2, and temperatures would be close to what they are now in the complete absence of CO2 – except, perhaps, over deserts and other extremely dry areas at night.
The negative feedbacks of precipitation etc act on the overall warming effect and, therefore, much more on the warming effect of water vapor than that of CO2. If not for those negative feedbacks, this planet would probably be far too hot to support life as we know it, even if CO2 didn’t exist.
It seems to me that the effect of CO2 forcing is only a tiny part of the overall warming effect (that of water vapor and CO2 taken together) and so is much less than it would be in the absence of water vapor.

“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
I have a plausible mechanism (I think):
The oceans are gradually warmed by the direct action of sunlight but, because of their huge thermal inertia, this process takes a long time (decadal timescales, at least). As they warm, more evaporation takes place and so water vapor builds up in the atmosphere. All other things being equal, the more water vapor, the more cloud formation. The more cloud formation the higher the albedo and the less sunlight available to warm the oceans further, so they start the long process of cooling again – to the point where the cycle starts over. This process would, of course, be modified/amplified/diminished by solar cycles, cosmic rays, Milankovich cycles, etc etc. And, of course, lets not deny that CO2 may have a tiny part to play.
Does this sound plausible? Maths isn’t one of my strong points, so don’t ask me to prove it 😉

counters,
the criticism of the “disclaimer” isn’t that the disclaimer is factually wrong–as you say, it wasn’t peer reviewed, and APS is free to state their own view. That’s not the problem.
What is being criticised is the manner in which the disclaimer was “slapped” onto the article afterwards. Say you are a local artist and I run an art gallery, and I invite you to have your own paintings hung in my gallery. At first you welcome the opportunity to show off your work, and have the public see it. But then you turn up at the gallery and discover that I have placed a big sign across the top that reads “DEGENERATIVE ART”.
This is simply lacking in common respect and honesty. The APC can very well be criticised for not deciding for itself before hand how and what to publish. Why did they publish it at all?
The bottom line is that they made a mistake in a rather delicate political arena. They publish an article, and then afterwards try to label it as essentially wrong. This implies that people who hold the views expressed by the article are wrong; “this article is degenerate”, or words to that effect.
What is evident is that the scientific community is at odds with much of the general public who normally approach things with “common sense”. If anything the disclaimer seems aimed not at the general public but at scientists who would only care about peer review.

“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
Wouldn’t another “basic” model that did not exhibit the same prediction be sufficient? What basic physical mechanism has the model proved? Some assumptions had to be made about the sensitivity. With models, they say, garbage in = garbage out. Since the climate models have not statistically matched the actual behavior of the planet (rankexploits.com/musings), it seems that they really aren’t such a strong metric anyway.

“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
As has been posted earlier, this statement is mind blowingly insane.
“CO2, Guilty until proven innocent.”
We have 150 years of data – at least 30 years of which are beyond reproach – on a planet that’s been around for millions of years so our modelers know exactly how it all works. I have a pseudoname for the APS – We shall call them “Gavin”. – AW, snip the last if you must.

How come Mr. Saperstein is only interested in a critical analysis of Monckton’s paper, and fails to request the same treatment for Hafemeister’s.
I think we all know the answer to that question.
Hafemeister glossed over everything anyway, and basically said “Ignore the man behind the curtain”.

I am not a scientist! I do believe in good courtesy. It is one thing to ask comment and print the comment and then put the disclaimer on it. That should have been issued with the invitation. It was not. I believe also that with the disclaimer being issued after the fact that they are now required to answer Lord Monckton’s reply. They are the ones that have now set the rules and must by their own description of the rules must abide by said rules. The point being that while the review being done may not have been true peer review it met the requirements of the editors for acceptance and was printed. Now it must be challenged and by more than a statement of disagreement with the conclusions. They have put themselves in the position to now have to logically and empirically disprove the said conclusion.
Counters you are correct in that the debate is now opened. The point now is that the APS in its method of disclaimer have put themselves in the position of having to prove their position or to disprove the position of Lord Monckton.
I look forward to the debate with relish.
Bill Derryberry
PS I have also been derided to that “common sense” has no place in climate science. IMHO that is pure bunk.

I am amazed that so many people here feel compelled to lecture the APS about courtesy when in fact it is Monckton who deserves the lecture. This is the first sentence of the press release that the organization that Monckton serves as chief policy advisor on released when the paper appeared: “Mathematical proof that there is no ‘climate crisis’ appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.” That whole sentence is a downright lie and it lays bare the fact that Monckton’s motives had very little to do with convincing physicists (which, frankly, his ridiculous article is not going to do) and everything to do with using the prestige of the APS, along with considerable misrepresentations regarding the paper and its appearance in the newsletter, to further his own propaganda campaign.

Peter says: “Really? So ‘outsiders’ are people who are incapable of making up their own minds, and therefore must be told what they should or shouldn’t believe?” No, it is outsiders who are likely to be unfamiliar enough about the APS that they would believe the lies spread by Monckton and associates regarding the article being a major peer-reviewed piece or would believe it represented a shift in the APS’s position on AGW.
Peter says: “I find that patronizing in the extreme. It’s not only those who inhabit the hallowed halls of the APS who are capable of understanding scientific arguments.” I don’t doubt that this may be true, although I am rather disappointed to see that so few of the people in the “skeptic” sphere have been willing to own up to the fact that the paper’s scientific arguments are completely flawed. However, since the APS was having its position on AGW and its publication of that paper willfully misrepresented by Monckton and his associates, it was necessary to set the record straight.
Peters says: “If they felt it necessary to add that disclaimer then they should have added a similar disclaimer to all the other ‘non peer-reviewed’ papers published in their newsletters.” Well, there is a general disclaimer in that newsletter. However, this specific disclaimer was made necessary by the fact that the author and his associates used the paper as part of a propaganda campaign with willful misrepresentation of it. That has not happened, as far as I am aware, of other articles that have appeared in that newsletter. Frankly, I think the editors of the newsletter were naive to not have expected something like that to happen…but scientists can sometimes be a bit too trusting in that way, since we don’t deal with this sort of politicization and willful misrepresentation very often.
REPLY:”but scientists can sometimes be a bit too trusting in that way, since we don’t deal with this sort of politicization and willful misrepresentation very often.”
Hogwash! (and that’s the nicest word I could use)
No, THAT’S never happened in the global warming debate before. My goodness, do you live in a cave? Just read any news article recently saying “global warming does this or climate change will do that”. Just today I came across two more absurd articles like the penguins spin and the whitewash for the sea that are just so unbelievably absurd, I can’t fathom how a rational person could report them.
I haven’t seen you denounce articles like these, thus I am forced to conclude that AGW proponents such as yourself simply don’t care if the science is right or not, as long as the cause is furthered.
Please don’t lecture about propaganda until you are prepared to renounce some the pro AGW propaganda that has been showing up in news articles.

smokey
Your points are well taken with regard to Albert Einstein.
However, he did not publish a document entitled Annus Mirabilis. The term is used to describe the year 1905 when he published four foundation papers. Annus Mirabilis is latin for ‘miracle year’, and it was appropriate for the physics community to use this term to describe his output in 1905.
The five paper he published dealt with:
1) Brownian motion, proving the existence of atoms.
2) Determination of Avogadro’s Constant, determining the size of atoms and molecules.
3) Photo-electric effect, the basis for quantum mechanics and our solid state revolution, as well as other fields.
4) Special theory of relativity.
5) Mass Energy relationship (E=MC2).
Here is a wonder book I stumbled on back in 2005 while walking through the Denver Public Library.
http://www.amazon.com/Annus-Mirabilis-Albert-Einstein-Relativity/dp/B000EPFVIW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216763201&sr=8-1
Here is an excellent web page describing the details of his work and why Einstein was, well, Einstein.
http://mclibrary.nhmccd.edu/einstein.htm
The era Einstein lived in at the turn of the century was very unsettling. In 1890, the physics community felt they really understood all there was to know about the physical universe and the only task remaining was to add some more digits to some of the universal constants.
Then came the discovery of radiation. Also the total radiant energy emitted by a black body did not match the predictions of classical physics. That is, the formula for predicting the total energy radiated by a black body failed when the experiment was attempted. As the formula broke down in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, this was referred to as the ultraviolet catastrophe.
Physics was looking for a rescue, some sort of explanation for these breakdowns in their expectations. By 1905, they were desperate.
Einstein provided the explanations.
Any one of these papers would have earned Einstein a prominent place in the history of physics. And he did five in a period of about 8 months.
Miraculous indeed.
Today, we have a situation where a lot of people are extremely confident of their models of the climate, just as the physics community was confident of their’s in 1890. However, in 1890 there was a large collection of real observations accumulated since the time of Newton (another giant in science) confirming their models. Today, we have just the opposite. A collection of models that are not predicting accurately. Yet, there is this hubris the models are correct, even without observational confirmation.
Einstein most definitely would not have done well in this environment. He really was a radical in his approach to science.
Thanks for your observations that caused me to recollect the joy of reading the book mentioned above.

Smokey says: “As we’ve seen, Lord Monckton reads these threads. Although I don’t expect it, an apology is certainly in order in this instance.”
Well, if you are referring to my sentence that said, “That whole sentence is a downright lie …”, I will be happy to apologize and amend it to read, “That whole sentence is downright untrue …” and leave it to others to decide if the untruthfulness was purposeful or due to delusion or what have you. Likewise, you can replace “willful misrepresentation” with simply “misrepresentation”.
As for your characterization of Lord Monckton’s writing as “well reasoned, … well-researched, and credible” and the claim that he “is very well respected, and an acknowledged international expert,” we’ll just have to agree to disagree completely on that.

“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
I cannot recall where this quote came from, I know it has been wobbling around this site for quite a few days, but I would like to say something about it.
What troubles me is the second sentence and the reasoning behind it. Starting from the premise that models predict additional GHG will raise temperature, I cannot see how that gives rise to a presumption which must stand unless disproved in a particular way.
In principle one can challenge a model’s predictions without proving a contrary case simply by undermining the modelling process. If the material going into the model is questionable there can be no presumption that what comes out of the other end is accurate. Equally, if the way the model is constructed is open to question then even feeding in correct data cannot give rise to a presumption that what comes out of the other end is accurate. In other words, if the model does not prove anything then there is nothing to disprove.
There is, I believe, a burden of proof issue in this debate, but it is the opposite of what the passage I have quoted suggests. This is my take on it:
http://thefatbigot.blogspot.com/2008/07/wise-old-saying.html

counters, I mostly agreed with your post, except on one specific point (see below). However, I would point out that fighting with moderators is a waste of time. Make your point and then move on. Whatever you say, plenty will misinterpret you.
APS had reversed their stance on global warming.
As I pointed out earlier, the APS statement doesn’t say AGHG is the cause of GW. I find the ommission striking. Now if you have a statement from the APS saying AGHGs does cause GW, then post it, but I was unable to find such a statement.

Joel Shore: “Basically, Monckton is using the APS in a propaganda war to lend credibility to his views.”
Monckton is a slick and audacious operator. Press releases don’t write themselves, and they are created for a purpose: to persuade the media and others to a particular point of view.
The point of view expressed in the Science and Public Policy blog is that the APS supported Monckton’s contention that he had disproved AGW. This is false. Clearly, the APS panicked when it became aware of the way the sceptical blogosphere was running with the story.
One could fault the APS for its inept initial handling of the matter, but one cannot fault it for taking action to head off the false impression put about by Monckton and his supporters. The APS had the right and the duty to do so. Its members would have been justified in hauling the executive over the coals for failing to deal with the problem.
The subsequent reaction is an interesting case of cognitive bias. Sceptics expect an AGW-supporting scientific body to be heavy-handed and authoritarian, even fascist, and then interpret its actions in this light.
Perhaps some good may come of it, if sceptics can learn to contain their eagerness to topple AGW, and claim no more than the facts allow. This farce should also dispel the notion that AGW is a vast conspiracy. After all, the APS executive were such incompetent conspirators that they failed to bring one of their own editors in on the secret.

According to this link: http://www.iceagenow.com/Is_the_American_Physical_Society_being_honest.htm
This was Monckton’s response to why he said his paper was peer-reviewed:
“Oh, yes, it was peer-reviewed, all right, and by no less a personage than one of the editors, an eminent professor of physics, who went through it with a fine-tooth comb and then sent me a long list of reviewer’s comments, asking – rightly – that I should explain the derivation of every equation so that a non-climatological physicist could understand exactly what was going on. My amendments in the light of his questions lengthened the paper from 5000 to 8000 words, making it easily the largest paper they’ve published. The only sense in which it was not peer-reviewed is that the editors did not send it out to a third party for his comments. However, one is surely splitting hairs here – one editor commissioned the paper and liked the first draft very much: the other editor then reviewed it and also liked it very much, and was therefore prepared to devote some considerable time and effort to reviewing it and recommending revisions and clarifications, which I was o f course happy to provide.
“However, we must stand by the editors here: the APS is plainly furious with them for having allowed free speech on a subject that had been declared closed. It will no doubt dawn on the APS in due course that the correct response, rather than red-flagging the paper as they have, and rather mendaciously stating that the paper was not peer-reviewed, is to invite an alarmist to tear it to shreds in the next issue. I’m sure that is what will happen, and will be interested to see the extent (if any) to which the demolition of my equations is done ad rem rather than ad hominem. – C”

Frank Ravizza
I am expecting the AGW CO2 hypothesis to collapse, eventually. Hopefully this will occur within the next year or so.
For the true believers in AGW, this set of circumstances will definitely be a Carbon Dioxide Catastrophe. Won’t bother me a bit.
However, if AGW catches the fancy of the politicians, we could see some horrible things done to the economy in the name ‘saving the planet’. In this case, Carbon Dioxide Catastrophe will be catastrophic to almost everyone on the planet. In particular, the poor of the world will suffer disproportionately, just as they have suffered from other environmental fads such as the ethanol debacle and the restrictions on the use of DDT in controlling mosquitoes.
So the real question is: what will the catastrophe be? Egg on the face of the AGW believers? Or a true economic catastrophe inflicted on the human family?
Of course some societies will not be as affected as others. The Chinese and Indians have already decided that if there is a choice between suffering from poverty or suffering some of the consequences of global warming, they will take the latter. Neither country is even slightly interested in curtailing CO2 emissions.
While we’re in the process of naming big events, what are we going to call the big Dalton or Maunder type solar slow down? Something else I am expecting. Perhaps (as has been suggested by others) we could refer to it as the Al Gore Minimum. And the resulting little ice age? The James Hansen Little Ice Age?
Thus these gentlemen will be memorialized as they so desperately desire.

” FatBigot (16:42:17) :
“Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth.”
They do, but that does not mean they are accurate.
Miskolczi (2007) offers a theory in which the optical depth remains constant based on energy conservation, local thermal equilibrium and energy minimization etc.. He predicts that increases in CO2 will result in decreases in H2O to maintain energy balances.
* Ferene M. Miskolczi, Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres, IDŐJÁRÁS, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111, No. 1, January-March 2007, pp. 1-40
* Ferene M. Miskolczi, Physics of the Planetary Greenhouse Effect, 2008 International Conference on Global Warming, New York March 2-4, 2008., Audio or Powerpoint
* Miklós Zágoni, Some paleoclimatic consequences of Dr. Miskolczi’s new greenhouse theory, (2008)2008 International Conference on Global Warming, New York March 2-4, 2008 Audio & PowerPoint presentation (PDF format)
* Miklós Zágoni Developments in greenhouse theory 2008
Chihlingar & Khilyuk offer a theory that increasing CO2 will DECREASE warming.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a788582859~db=all
Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission
Authors: G. V. Chilingar; L. F. Khilyuk; O. G. Sorokhtin
Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, Volume 30, Issue 1 January 2008 , pages 1 – 9
Brief discussion at: http://www.henrythornton.com
On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved? L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar
Environmental Geology Volume 50, Number 6 / August, 2006
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t341350850360302/fulltext.pdf
Rebuttal of ‘‘On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s
climate. Are humans involved?’’ by L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar W. Aeschbach-Hertig, Environ Geol (2007) 52:1007–1009
http://www.springerlink.com/content/36w570322514n204/fulltext.pdf
Response to W. Aeschbach-Hertig rebuttal of ‘‘On global forces
of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?’’
by L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar
G. V. Chilingar Æ O. G. Sorokhtin Æ L. F. Khilyuk
http://www.springerlink.com/content/vl7536426072q7j7/fulltext.pdf

Accumulation of large amounts of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere should lead to the cooling and not to warming
of climate as the proponents of traditional anthropogenic
global warming theory believe (Aeschbach-Hertig 2006).
This conclusion has a simple physical explanation: when
the infrared radiation is absorbed by the molecules of
greenhouse gases, its energy is transformed into thermal
expansion of air, which causes convective fluxes of air
masses restoring the adiabatic distribution of temperature
in the troposphere. Our estimates show that release of small
amounts of carbon dioxide (several hundreds ppm), which
are typical for the scope of anthropogenic emission, does
not influence the global temperature of Earth’s atmosphere.

Obviously these are very controversial, especially in the present political climate. These complement Roy Spencer’s new discoveries of very low climate sensitivity. It will be interesting to see whether these contrary theories or AGW proves to be correct.

I’ll just refer to the work cited by Danish geophysicists as refereed and serious . They had the scientific courage to make corrections and continue to perform exeriments. I think we san still see that there was a strogrer correllation than that from CO2 increasing in the 40s – 60s while temperatures dropped. Iknow I had to walk to school through the snowdrifts.
I would like to change my drift and offer an insight into fluid inclusions in ice. Fluid inclusions are valuable in genetic studies of hydrothermal mineral systems because they give insight into chemistry and PT relationships at the time of formation of a mineral. Quartz is useful, but not often interesting in todays world except as an academic study. The other mineral used is sphalerite (ZnS). Fluid inclusions in sphalerite can be frozen and evaporated and yield (given statistical constaint N= large number) regarding the saliity of the mineralizing solution and the temperature (I am oversimplifying sorry). Fluid inclusion data, is only used if it can be shown to be from a closed system. No inclusions are allowed that sit on fractures, odd bubble shapes, etc. which indicate secondary inclusions that are unreprentative and possibly corrupt. There are stats tests as well.
Is it totally crazy making to see inclusions from ice used in a refereed paper on ancient climate. Unless I am missing something, it takes centuries for snow to become firn and firn to become ice. During that time it is certainly an open system and light isotopes migrated and heavy isotopes build up proportionately. Even the crystaline structure of ice is an open system. Does it not expand upon freezing? There are a few posibilities we do not even fathom on this , but it is an open system. The difficulties lead me to suggest that the referee system for ice work needs an independent qualified person to evaluate the data and the conclusions prior to publication of such work. CO2 may trail warming, or it may lead. Who knows if the raw data comes from an open system.

Joel Shore said,
“‘Mathematical proof that there is no ‘climate crisis’ appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.’ That whole sentence is a downright lie….”
Let’s see. A mathematical proof is a series of mathematic equations used to provide a logical series of assumptions to explain that a certain relationship exists. Did Viscount Monckton provide such a series, validity of such series open to being contested and argued? Yes, he did.
Did it appear in Physics and Society, and is that a journal of the APS? Yes, it did appear. Physics and Society is officially classified as a newsletter by APS, but the definition of journal does not imply a publication size, just a periodical published by a learned society. Meets the criteria, in my eye.
Was the the paper peer reviewed? This seems the contentious point to some, citing that Dr. Saperstein read the paper for presentation clarification purposes. Based upon Dr. Saperstein’s listed academic accomplishments compared to Viscount Monckton’s, I’m sure that Joel Shore would consider the good Doctor was more Monckton’s superior academically rather than peer, but that should improve the status of the paper based upon his reputation.
Did he review the paper? He provided criticism and suggested corrections that Viscount Monckton implemented. This meets the definition of review.
Was this a major paper? It was the first paper of its type to appear in a “recognized publication” of a scientific society of the stature of the APS. That certainly makes it groundbreaking and important. Comes close to the definition of major.
Based upon a strict breakdown of the sentence, I cannot find a lie in it. Where do you see the lie, Joel?
Source definition of Proof – Dictionary.com “Mathematics, Logic. a sequence of steps, statements, or demonstrations that leads to a valid conclusion.”
Source definition of Journal – Dictionary.com “a periodical or magazine, esp. one published for a special group, learned society, or profession”
Source definition of peer – Dictionary.com “a person who is equal to another in abilities, qualifications, age, background, and social status”
Source definition of review – American Heritage Online dictionary through Dictionary.com “To examine with an eye to criticism or correction”
Source definition of major – Dictionary.com “great, as in rank or importance”

Keith,
You can believe whatever you want to believe in your own world. But, no serious scientist or mathematician would call Monckton’s diatribe a “mathematical proof”. There are, in fact, no proofs in science since it is deductive. (You can prove things in, say, mathematical physics but the proof will be about a mathematical model of the physical system, not the real world.)
At any rate, your own source noted that the steps in a proof must “lead to a valid conclusion”, which Monckton’s does not. His final equation [Eq. (30)] is not even self-consistent for heaven’s sake: He uses one value of the forcing for doubling CO2 in deriving his value for kappa from empirical data [Eq. (26)] and then another one when he wants to multiply everything together to get the climate sensitivity!!! That is like saying x*(3/x) = 6 is true if x=2 where we want it to (in the first term in the equation) and x=1 where we want it to (in the second term).
As for it being peer-reviewed, I think the Forum on Physics and Society and the APS know better than you if it was peer-reviewed. And, I think you take the definition of “peer review” too literally when you say it just has to be by someone of Monckton’s own standing or better. Does it mean that any 3-year-old can submit a paper to a seriously scientific journal and they can send it out for a review by a 5-year old because he is “superior academically”?
Like I said, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I can guarantee you that almost nobody who reads that newsletter regularly is going to find that sentence in the press release to be at all accurate and most are going to be angry by those blatant misrepresentations. That is hardly a way to win converts from that community over to your side, but then, I think it’s pretty clear that this wasn’t Monckton’s purpose anyway.

Lucy Skywalker: “To have had this would have immediately refute statements like “Monckton is a slick and audacious operator” and other statements that suggest he is incapable of good and honest science.”
My comment about Monckton being a “slick and audacious operator” did not refer to the science, but rather to the man’s penchant for self-promotion. I’m not qualified to comment on the science – or in this case the mathematics – so have not done so.
However, I recognise self-promotion at work when I see it, and at least in this particular case Monckton and his associates worked assiduously to create a false impression that was favourable to his case.
Like you, I am also keen to see scientific issues settled by scientists, and am prepared to wait until a scientific view emerges. I only wish that Monckton were as patient, and not so eager to jump the gun and attempt to push the argument in his favour before it had a good airing.