APS responds! – Deconstructing the APS response to Dr. Hal Lewis resignation

Masterful response by APS. Who says scientists aren’t skilled at PR? (sarc)
I can only imagine the inquiries they’re receiving by their membership. It appears they’ve grossly underestimated Dr. Lewis. I can’t think of a more useful or honorable way to end a long and distinguished career. My sincere gratitude to Dr. Lewis and his noble associates.

Any reaction to the President of the Royal Society’s piece in today’s (The) Times?
REPLY: without a link, no – Anthony

Maybe in his chemistry set at home at sea level but certainly not in the upper atmosphere where pressure and temperature are much different.

As are the radiative scattering properties of the ensemble.

Dennis Wingo said
“As for the rest of it, maybe physicists will start zeroing in on the effects of CO2 from a physics standpoint, using the well known equations on the subject and maybe, just maybe, blow a hole in the entire AGW theory.”
* * *
Excellent point. Many phsyicists are questioning it. But, as ususal, their studies arent published in “Nature” or any other pro-AGW journal.
This is one of the best I’ve read.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161

Robinson says:
October 13, 2010 at 1:16 pm
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS “Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank…… Other members of this board include current IPCC chief Pachauri and Lord Oxburgh, of Climategate exoneration fame.”
If the Chair is on the Advisory Board, he/she must be removed immediately. This is one stinking conflict of interest. It screams “conspiracy” and “cover-up.”

As an environmental engineer for more than 47+ years I have reviewed many experiments and data related to water,wastewater treatment , air pollution control, ground contamination, an other aspects of the environmental condition. When I started look at the issue of Mann-made global warming cause by the “greenhouse gas effect” I asked one question-Where is the creditable experimental data showing that the “greenhouse gas effect exists”? In more than 5 years of asking many universities ,governmental agencies, “scientists?’and the internet , I have yet to get an answer. The closes is three experiments from different source that think they have proved the “greenhouse gas effect” each has at least 3 to 10 scientific faults that show that the experimenters do not know physics. The work of many renown physicist has shown that the “greenhouse gas effect” violates fundamental laws of physics. I have developed an experiment that shows that the “greenhouse gas effect does not exist”
below is a list of references that show that the “ghg effect” and Mann-made global warming is a political hoax.
When the AGW continually using circumstantial evidence instead of real evidence you know they do not have the real thing.
List of references:
The paper “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effect within the frame of physics” by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner is an in-depth examination of the subject. Version 4 2009
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c World
Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
Report of Alan Carlin of US-EPA March, 2009 that shows that CO2 does not cause global warming.
Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics” by Dipl-Ing Heinz Thieme This work has about 10 or 12 link
that support the truth that the greenhouse gas effect is a hoax.
R.W.Wood
from the London, Edinborough and Dublin Philosophical Magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL shelf mark p340.1.c.95, i
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
By Alan Siddons
from:http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html at March 01, 2010 – 09:10:34 AM CST
The below information was a foot note in the IPCC 4 edition. It is obvious that there was no evidence to prove that the ghg effect exists.
“In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.”
After 1909 when R.W.Wood proved that the understanding of the greenhouse effect was in error and the ghg effect does not exist. After Niels Bohr published his work and receive a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. The fantasy of the greenhouse gas effect should have died in 1909 and 1922. Since then it has been shown by several physicists that the concept is a Violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Obviously the politicians don’t give a dam that they are lying. It fits in with what they do every hour of every day .Especially the current pretend president.
Paraphrasing Albert Einstein after the Publishing of “The Theory of Relativity” –one fact out does 1 million “scientist, 10 billion politicians and 20 billion environmental whachos-that don’t know what” The Second Law of thermodynamics” is.
University of Pennsylvania Law School
ILE
INSTITUTE FOR LAW AND ECONOMICS
A Joint Research Center of the Law School, the Wharton School,
and the Department of Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Pennsylvania
RESEARCH PAPER NO. 10-08
Global Warming Advocacy Science: a Cross Examination
Jason Scott Johnston
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
May 2010
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the
Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection:
http://ssrn.
Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv: ‘There is no direct evidence showing that CO2 caused 20th century warming, or as a matter of fact, any warming’ link to this paper on climate depot.
Web- site references:
http://www.americanthinker.com Ponder the Maunder
wwwclimatedepot.com
icecap.us
http://www.stratus-sphere.com
SPPI
many others are available.
The bottom line is that the facts show that the greenhouse gas effect is a fairy-tale and that Man-made global warming is the World larges Scam!!!The IPCC and Al Gore should be charged under the US Anti-racketeering act and when convicted – they should spend the rest of their lives in jail for the Crimes they have committed against Humanity.
The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.”
—Albert Einstein
I have several other references that Ican add if necessary.
30 June 2010
On Some Flaws in Greenhouse Gas Global Warming
I have just finished reading an excellent article by Alan Siddons called The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory on American Thinker from way back on 25 February 2010. The article is a little slow in developing, but finishes with a death blow to the usual theory put forth by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming advocates. I intend to explain more concisely what Siddons explained and to add comments of my own in this post which make the deathblow much more gory.
First of all, I am going to enlarge the context of the discussion. The primary source of heat for the surface of the Earth is the radiant energy of the sun. The solar wind of the sun, materials dumped into the atmosphere from space, heat from the deep interior of the earth, and the interplay of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and the sun’s magnetic field are also contributors of heat, though the sum of these is much less than that from the sun’s radiant energy spectrum of ultraviolet (UV), visible, and infra-red (IR) light. The entire catastrophic greenhouse gas hypothesis ignores effects upon the incident IR portion of this spectrum of light from the sun. This is foolish.
UV light is 11% of the radiant energy from the sun. The UV light variance of 0.5 to 0.8% with the solar cycle is much larger than is the visible light variance of 0.22%. UV light is absorbed throughout the atmosphere, but much still reaches the ground and is absorbed there. The amount of UV radiation absorbed in the upper atmosphere is highly dependent upon the amount of ozone there. The amount of ozone is highly dependent upon the solar wind, CFCs, and volcanic activity. When UV light is more absorbed in the stratosphere than the ground, its surface warming effect is diminished. The absorbed energy is re-emitted as IR radiation and much of that energy is quickly lost to space.
The entire atmosphere is transparent to visible light which is the form of 44% of the radiant energy from the sun, so aside from reflection from clouds and aerosol particles, the visible light reaches the ground or oceans and warms them near their surfaces.
Finally, the IR radiation is not absorbed by nitrogen, oxygen, and argon gases which make up 99% of the atmosphere, so a large fraction of it directly warms the Earth’s surface. Some, is absorbed by the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor, and small amounts are absorbed by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The incoming IR radiation absorbed in the atmosphere is less effective in warming the Earth’s surface than is that which is absorbed by the Earth’s surface directly. This is because some this energy absorbed in the atmosphere then is radiated again in the form of IR radiation, but now half or more of that is directed out to space. In other words, more water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere results in a less effective warming of the surface than does less of these gases with respect to the incoming IR energy from the sun. The greenhouse gases have a cooling effect on the original solar radiance spectrum for the 45% of the solar energy in the form of IR.
In each case, whether UV, visible light, or IR, not all of the radiation of that form striking the Earth’s surface is absorbed. Some fraction is reflected and the fraction is very dependent on whether the ground is covered with snow, plowed earth, grasses, forests, crops, black top, or water. There are two real ways that man does have some effect on the Earth’s temperature. He changes the surface of the earth over a fraction of the 30% of its surface which is land. He also converts fossil and biomass fuels into heat. Compared to the overall natural effects, these man-made effects are small, yet they are probably large compared to the effect of his adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere.
Wherever the atmosphere is heated, there is transfer of heat. In the outer, very low density atmosphere, the primary means of heat transfer is radiant transfer by IR emission from an energetic molecule or atom, since collisions of molecules and atoms for direct energy transfer are rare. In the denser atmosphere, most energy transfer is due to collisions and the convective flow of masses of warmed air. Near the Earth’s surface, almost all of the energy lost by the warmed surface is due to gas molecules striking the surface and picking up heat and then colliding with other molecules to transfer heat from one to another. Once a body of air is so heated, then masses of warmed molecules are transported upward into the cooler atmosphere at higher altitudes or laterally toward cooler surface areas by convection. Any warmed molecule, most of which are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon will radiate IR radiation. However, no molecule or atom at a low temperature such as that near the Earth’s surface is a very effective energy radiator, since the Stephan-Boltzmann equation depends upon the fourth power of the absolute temperature, which commonly near the Earth’s surface is about 290K. Thus, gas molecule collisions and convection are the very dominant means of heat transfer. These processes on balance cool the surface of the Earth and redistribute some of the heat back into the upper atmosphere and cooler places such as those shaded from the sun or the arctic regions.
The favorite claim of the catastrophic greenhouse gas global warming people is that an increase of carbon dioxide and methane gas in the atmosphere will cause energy radiated into the atmosphere from the ground to be absorbed by these molecules and they will radiate half of it back toward the ground, where that energy will warm the surface again and reduce the cooling due to the ground originally radiating that heat into the atmosphere. According to Alan Siddons, less than 1% of the cooling of the Earth’s surface is due to IR emission of the surface or the gases near the surface. More than 99% is due to direct contact and convection.
Since the dominant source of energy warming the surface of the Earth is the sun, let us do a simple calculation based upon the facts presented above. Let us say that greenhouse gases absorb a fraction f of the incoming IR radiation from the sun, which is 45% of the sun’s incoming energy. Thus the energy absorbed by greenhouse gases from the incoming spectrum of solar energy is 0.45f and a fraction of this, say k is radiated back into space without coming near the surface. NASA says k is 0.5, but it is actually slightly larger than that given that much of this absorption occurs at appreciable altitudes. The total cooling due to greenhouse gases, somewhere in the atmosphere, is now 0.45fk. Of this energy, had it become incident upon the surface as IR radiation, a part would have been reflected rather than absorbed. The fraction that would have been absorbed is q. The net energy then lost to the warming of the surface is then 0.45fkq.
Now, let us suppose that a fraction g of the total energy from the sun is absorbed in the Earth’s surface or in the very lower part of the atmosphere. We know that g is a larger fraction of 1 than is f, since most of the solar radiation does reach the ground, including that part in the IR part of the spectrum. Of the energy g absorbed in the surface, only 0.01 times it is emitted as IR radiation according to Siddons. Since the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere is unchanged the amount of outgoing radiation, serving to cool the surface, is now 0.01gf. A fraction j of this energy will be emitted by the IR warmed greenhouse gas molecules back toward the ground. NASA has said this fraction is 0.5. Let us then say j is about 0.5. The greenhouse gas warming of the surface due to absorbing IR radiation from the ground would then be about 0.005gfq, where q is the fraction of back-reflected IR radiation that was incident upon the surface and absorbed. Remember that some radiation is reflected.
Now we will compare the greenhouse gas cooling effect upon the incoming solar radiation of 0.45fkq to the re-warming of the surface due to 0.005gfq times the total solar radiant energy. Breaking down the parts:
0.005 is much less than 0.45, in fact it is 0.011 times as large.
f appears in both factors, so the comparative effect is cancellation.
The factor q appears in both the cooling and the warming quantities, so it cancels.
k is somewhat more than 0.5, while g is the surface absorptivity for the entire solar spectrum and is likely to be near 0.7, or quite comparable.
So let us say g and k are an approximate trade-off.
Thus the net cooling effect of greenhouse gases is very greatly dominant because the re-heating effect is approximately 0.01 times the cooling effect.
In sum, using a simple calculation we can approximate the effect of greenhouse gases on the surface temperature of the Earth. It turns out that the cooling effect due to keeping incoming solar IR radiation away from the surface is about 100 times the re-heating effect proclaimed by greenhouse gas alarmists. Now, if the effect were very large in either case, this might be cause for concern. We would likely be better off heating our planet than cooling it. But, then we are heating with land use changes and the release of energy from fossil fuels, so the generation of cooling CO2 may simply be compensating for these other small effects. Much more important to this issue than CO2 and methane is water vapor in any case. So, most of this cooling effect is due to water vapor and only a small part is due to CO2 and methane.
Now, of course so much is going on here that this calculation is but an indicator of the likely net effect of greenhouse gases. A more careful calculation would consider the different weight of IR frequencies in the original spectrum of the sun and in the Earth surface emission spectrum. But, any changes due to these secondary issues are likely to be small compared to a factor of 100. In any case, this calculation makes mincemeat of the usual simple rationale for greenhouse gas warming alarmism. It is insane to focus only on the outgoing IR radiation from the Earth’s surface while ignoring the large part of the sun’s total incident radiation which is IR from the get-go. It is also insane to ignore gas collisions and convection currents as mechanisms for heat transfer.
I used the greenhouse gas term in the presently conventional way, but in reality, all gases when warm radiate IR energy and as pointed out by Alan Siddons, they are all really greenhouse gases. But, here I used the term only for those gases that absorb IR energy.
Posted by Charles R. Anderson, Ph. D. at Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Labels: Alan Siddons, CO2 emissions, greenhouse gases, solar radiation
Charles R. Anderson, Ph. D.
Dr. Anderson is the founder of AME and is a co-owner of the company. Dr. Anderson has long specialized in the characterization of surfaces, interfaces, thin films, and coatings. He began applying surface analysis techniques to the solution of materials problems in 1972 with the use of Auger spectroscopy and Mössbauer emission spectroscopy to characterize the magnetic properties of surfaces. Since 1980, he has used XPS or ESCA extensively for the analysis of materials properties, often combining XPS and Auger results with those of other techniques such as microscopy, DSC, SEM, FTIR, EXAFS, Rutherford backscattering, electrochemistry, thermogravimetry, SEM, and XRD to solve complex materials problems. He has had a wealth of experience with surface chemical phase identifications, corrosion, battery development, adhesive failures, contamination, electronic packaging, thin film and bulk materials composition, composite interfaces, particle and sintered ceramic surfaces, surface oxidation and degradation, and many other applications of surface analysis. He has served as an officer of the ASTM Committee E-42 on Surface Analysis and an U.S. Expert on several sub-committees of the ISO Technical Committee 201 on Surface Chemical Analysis. He worked for Case Western Reserve University as a post-doctoral fellow, the Dept. of the Navy as a research physicist, and Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin as a senior scientist before founding AME, Inc. in 1995. Dr. Anderson especially enjoys integrating the results of multiple analytic techniques to solve tough materials problems. He has assembled a team of materials scientists and engineers with complementary skills and experience who all enjoy working together to solve challenging problems. He is or has been a member of AVS, ASM, MRS, ASTM, the Electrochemical Society, ACS, APS, and SAMPE.
PS:As an environmental engineer designing wastewater treatment plants the fact that about 99% of them are biological has slipped by the Environmental Wackos- everyone of them convert waste material in the sewage to CO2 and organic material that is frequently burned producing more CO2. Now if there is so much danger from CO2 do we shut down every sewage treatment plant in the world? What other collateral damage will occur from continuing the lie of greenhouse gas effects and Mann-made global warming. I know of one suicide/murder (family of 5) because the poor soles did not understand that “Mann-made global warming/climate change “is a total hoax/fairy-tale ,lie. Does the World court reside to change AL Gore and other conspirators with complicity to Murder?
The Third world counties are planning to sue the Developed counties for Trillions of Dollars ,E U’s,and Pecos for damages from “Mann-made global warming that does not exist”. The court costs will cause poverty throughout the World except the lawyers and the “climatologist that don’t know what they are talking about.
Will the APS and others reverse their positions to cover their asses?

Anthony,
I would like to clarify one technical point for your visitors. It relates to: “This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
The statement is fact, but it does not by itself imply that additional amounts of atmospheric CO2 will not cause significant warming. Straightforward radiation transfer calculations have established that the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 would be to increase global average temperature by only about 1 deg. C. — if there were no other climate effects involved. However, these other effects, generally called “feedbacks,” can amplify or attenuate the primary radiation altering effect of additional CO2. The most prominent feedback is the “cloud-water vapor feedback,” which is very difficult to calculate or determine empirically. The IPCC says these feedback effects are in aggregate large and positive, giving rise to their most recent estimate of 2 to 4.5 deg. C for doubling, with a most likely value of 3 deg. C. However, a substantial body of other research points to a much lower value, much closer to the zero feedback value of 1 deg. C, or even lower. The actual aggregated effect of feedbacks is a critical aspect of the debate.

Heh! IPCC dug a big hole, and many famous people and even whole scientific organizations, university departments, and NGOs have fallen into it. What is hilarious is that they all are still digging!

Jimbo says:
October 13, 2010 at 11:12 am
“The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.”
“Then are the following in error or am I missing something?”
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
No, you havent missed anything. Its the ordinary AGW propaganda, as allways.

“REPLY: Ah aged mega troll “Boris” returns with a smackdown. You might want to read Dr. Roger Cohen’s note above. Since you obviously didn’t see it, I’ll put it in the body in large print for you and the kids. -Anthony”
Heh, I guess their response was also “composed over lunch.”
“At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scient[ist]…”