I have not read this book, but it has been raising some volume in Skeptic websites. What strikes me is the number of authors, it has (9 by my count).
Strangely, one of the authors, Oliver K. Manuel, is a person I’ve banned from WUWT for carpet bombing threads with his vision of the Iron Sun Theory, which I personally think is nutty. So, that right there gives me some pause. But, I haven’t read the book, so it may have nothing to do with that. OTOH, he’s one of the most well mannered commenters you’ll ever find.
The main thrust of the book seems to be discovering what they say is a flaw in understanding and accounting for 13C/12C isotopes within carbon dioxide, and this then points to a different signature related to human produced CO2.
Over at Climate Change Dispatch, they have this to say about it:
Newly released science book revelation is set to heap further misery on UN global warming researchers. Will latest setback derail Cancun Climate conference?
Authors of a new book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ claim they have debunked the widely established greenhouse gas theory climate change. In the first of what they say will be a series of sensational statements to promote the launch of their book, they attack a cornerstone belief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – what is known as the “carbon isotope argument.”
Mišo Alkalaj, is one of 24 expert authors of this two-volume publication, among them are qualified climatologists, prominent skeptic scientists and a world leading math professor. It is Alkalaj’s chapter in the second of the two books that exposes the fraud concerning the isotopes 13C/12C found in carbon dioxide (CO2).
If true, the disclosure may possibly derail last-ditch attempts at a binding international treaty to ‘halt man-made global warming.’ At minimum the story will be sure to trigger a fresh scandal for the beleaguered United Nations body.
Do Human Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Exhibit a Distinct Signature?
The low-key internal study focused on the behavior of 13C/12C isotopes within carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules and examined how the isotopes decay over time. Its conclusions became the sole basis of claims that ‘newer’ airborne CO2 exhibits a different and thus distinct ‘human signature.’ The paper was employed by the IPCC to give a green light to researchers to claim they could quantify the amount of human versus natural proportions just from counting the number of isotopes within that ‘greenhouse gas.’
Alkalaj, who is head of Center for Communication Infrastructure at the “J. Stefan” Institute, Slovenia says because of the nature of organic plant decay, that emits CO2, such a mass spectrometry analysis is bogus. Therefore, it is argues, IPCC researchers are either grossly incompetent or corrupt because it is impossible to detect whether carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is of human or organic origin.
…
The 13C/12C argument being attacked by Mišo Alkalaj may be found in IPCC’s AR4 – The Physical Science Basis Working Group. The IPCC clarifies its position on Page 139 of that chapter.
According to Miso the fatal assumption made by the IPCC is that the atmospheric concentration of the 13C isotope (distinctive in prehistoric plants) are fixed. They also assume C3-type plants no longer exist so would need to be factored into the equations. Indeed, as Miso points out such plants, “make up 95% of the mass of all current plant life.”
Therefore, decay of 95% of present-day plant material is constantly emitting the 13C-deficient carbon dioxide supposedly characteristic of coal combustion—and CO2 emitted by plant decay is an order of magnitude greater than all human-generated emissions.
…
From Amazon.com:
Even before publication, Slaying the Sky Dragon was destined to be the benchmark for future generations of climate researchers. This is the world’s first and only full volume refutation of the greenhouse gas theory of man-made global warming.
Nine leading international experts methodically expose how willful fakery and outright incompetence were hidden within the politicized realm of government climatology. Applying a thoughtful and sympathetic writing style, the authors help even the untrained mind to navigate the maze of atmospheric thermodynamics. Step-by-step the reader is shown why the so-called greenhouse effect cannot possibly exist in nature.
By deft statistical analysis the cornerstones of climate equations – incorrectly calculated by an incredible factor of three – are exposed then shattered.
This volume is a scientific tour de force and the game-changer for international environmental policymakers as well as being a joy to read for hard-pressed taxpayers everywhere.
==============================================================
There is also a kindle version available on Amazon.com.
At this point I can’t recommend the book from either a pro or con perspective, I’m just making it known to WUWT readers.
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Ed Murphy says:
November 30, 2010 at 1:13 am
Thank you Keith Minto for the geologist Timothy Casey site.! That’s what we need around here.
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
I have read those pages, lots of assumptions, but the main argument fails:
Gases from volcanic eruptions have a 13C/12C ratio about 5 to 8 ‰ below standard (δ13C about -5 to -8 ‰, some are even positive). But the current atmospheric CO2 is already below -8 ‰, thus at or below the volcanic vents/eruptions. Thus an increase of volcanism would INcrease the d13C ratio, but we see a DEcrease, both in the atmosphere as in the upper oceans, which parallels the use of fossil fuels:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
Even further back in time, the ice cores show only small d13C changes between glacials and interglacials, far less than the drop in the past 160 years.
In addition, there is no known increase of volcanism or plant decay or anything else which could explain the increase of CO2 and the decrease of d13C over the past 160 years, without violating the mass balance or other observations…
Re post by: Paul Clark says: November 30, 2010 at 12:39 am
Paul, I can understand why it might seem nutty to you that the sun could have an ongoing nuclear reaction without blowing itself up (that’d be a supernova)…. but believe me, the physics seems to work, and is best fit for our observations too. I know most folks think nuclear, and they think bomb, but it is actually easier to get a nuclear reaction that doesn’t blow up like a bomb than one that is. There have been serveral research accidents where if the scientists hadn’t realized what occurred and physically disrupted the process, the reaction would have continued or even escalated and the results would have been far worse. They were heros.
Not only that, and this is something most folks don’t realize, but there is evidence of naturally occurring, self sustaining nuclear reactions having occurred here on the earth in the past. Just google Oklo, or “naturally occurring nuclear reactions” or something along those lines. That Oklo was a fairly long running naturally occurring nuclear reaction has been pretty well established for decades now. Pretty darned fascinating too, isn’t it? Things just have to occur in the right geometry and composition for this sort of thing to occur. The sun is rather prime in that regard.
Anyhow, here’s a start for you:
A. P. Meshik, C. M. Hohenberg, and O. V. Pravdivtseva
Physics Department, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
[Featured in Phys. Rev. Focus] [Featured in Physics News Update] Received 13 May 2004; published 27 October 2004
Using selective laser extraction technique combined with sensitive ion-counting mass spectrometry, we have analyzed the isotopic structure of fission noble gases in U-free La-Ce-Sr-Ca aluminous hydroxy phosphate associated with the 2 billion yr old Oklo natural nuclear reactor. In addition to elevated abundances of fission-produced Zr, Ce, and Sr, we discovered high (up to 0.03 cm3 STP/g) concentrations of fission Xe and Kr, the largest ever observed in any natural material. The specific isotopic structure of xenon in this mineral defines a cycling operation for the reactor with 30-min active pulses separated by 2.5 h dormant periods. Thus, nature not only created conditions for self-sustained nuclear chain reactions, but also provided clues on how to retain nuclear wastes, including fission Xe and Kr, and prevent uncontrolled runaway chain reaction.
© 2004 The American Physical Society
URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.182302
I apologise for not reading all of this thread, but Ferdinand is right! The del C13 data point unequivocally to anthropogenic sources of approximately 110ppmv, that is 30%, of the current atmospheric CO2 load. Of course, the big question is, how much is this added 110ppmv adding to the amplitude of the global mean surface temperature excursions since 1850? For various reasons, I agree with Lindzen and others that the likely enhanced surface temperature effect is of the order of 0.3 degrees C at present…but that is another discussion….
E.M.Smith: I’m very sceptical of your assertion “A spinning sphere of liquid metal generates a magnetic field” if that is to imply that it would self-generate a field where none previously existed. I have spent decades on magnetics and electromagnetics, and can’t see a mechanism for this. Sure, a molten ball of metal with eddies already in a magnetic field will modify the magnetic field and, if one puts work into turning the ball (because there will be resistance which will end up as heat through eddy currents etc) then you might very well get a stronger field than the external one, and (by putting in work) can make it self-sustaining. But you need an external magnetic field to start with. And that is explicit in the paper you referenced, which says
“DTS [Derviche Tourneur Sodium] is an experiment devoted to the study of MHD turbulence in the presence of a strong magnetic field and rotation in the magnetostrophic regime…
2.2 Imposed magnetic field.
…only an imposed magnetic field may change the properties of the hydrodynamical flow of liquid sodium…
The inner sphere is filled with permanent magnets, which impose a strong,
mainly dipolar, magnetic field on the fluid flow…
The magnetostrophic balance can also be tested in smaller scale experiments
with an imposed magnetic field.
From this and the 2008 paper “Generation of magnetic field by dynamo action in a turbulent flow of liquid sodium”
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0701/0701075v1.pdf
it is clear that above a certain threshold there is a dynamo action that takes place, and that it self-generates a magnetic field provided one puts energy into the apparatus. Well, this is not entirely surprising, but what would be surprising would be for this to happen without a magnetic field in place to start with, and the last mentioned article certainly shows that the ambient magnetic field is required:
“Below the dynamo threshold, the effect of induction due to the ambient magnetic field is observed.”
“In the present experiment, fluctuations enter…due to the interaction of the velocity field with the ambient magnetic field. ”
There is no known mechanism, even in the light of these experiments, for getting any planetary or solar dynamos going without the presence of an external magnetic field to start with, or a magnetic field internally generated by current through the bodies.
I’d just like to add that I too have found Oliver K manuel to be one of the most polite posters on many blogs.
His continued repetition of his iron core sun theory doesn’t bother me in the least.
Nutty or not I wouldn’t know, but some of the most likeable and interesting people are the nutty (or eccentric) ones.
To Mr Manuel who I’m sure still reads WUWT; If you are as passionate as you appear to be about an iron core sun, keep up your passion and keep fighting for your ideas.
Tom in Texas says:
November 29, 2010 at 8:36 pm
From Amazon:
The only adverse comment I make is that at the end of the book it allows the reader to download a complimentary companion eBook in PDF format. I downloaded it but the PDF simply would not open, instead an error message appeared. I downloaded it a second time but the same problem occurred. I have no idea what else I can do
Which browzer did you use? – occasionally downloading big pdfs I have had problems using Google Chrome but Microsoft IE (8, 9) worked better.
Frosty was Pete says:
November 30, 2010 at 1:33 am
Ferdinand could you please comment on the carbon released since 1750 by deforestation, and loss of carbon from the soil since the green revolution. Where did it all go, and how would that effect carbon ratios.
Deforestation has a similar effect on d13C changes as fossil fuel burning, but depends of the difference in carbon loss of the deforestation and the carbon gain of the crops which are planted instead. In general it is thought that there are extra emissions of some 2 GtC/year from deforestation to the atmosphere, above the 8 GtC/year from fossil fuel burning. I don’t take these figures into account, as these are quite unreliable, compared to fossil fuel use, which are based on national inventories of fuel sales (taxes!) and burning efficiencies for the different types of fuels.
Thus the extra emissions from deforestation add to the total emissions and help to reduce the d13C ratio’s, but the latter also is influenced by the CO2 exchanges between oceans and atmosphere over the seasons.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 8:50 pm
—–
Thanks, Leif!
I find the label you attach to Oliver to be both undeserved and offensive.
We all have views and opinions and nobody is right all the time.
WUWT should stand above the ugly warmist blogs by virtue of honesty and tolerance for diverse opinion.
Don’t let the bad corrupt the good.
And to Oliver, thank you for your comments contributions to many blogs.
You have many friends.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 8:50 pm
iron loses it magnetic field when heated to above ~770 degrees C.
Wouldn’t iron continue to have diamagnetic properties above that temperature Leif?
ScientistForTruth says:
November 30, 2010 at 3:33 am (Edit)
E.M.Smith: I’m very sceptical of your assertion “A spinning sphere of liquid metal generates a magnetic field” if that is to imply that it would self-generate a field where none previously existed.
http://www.crystalinks.com/earthswobble.html
“Scientists in Riga at the Institute of Physics at the University of Latvia are continuing to work on a much more physical mock-up of the core.
Their model consists of two concentric steel cylinders, three metres high and 80 centimetres in diameter, filled with molten sodium.
A propeller drives the sodium down through the inner cylinder in a helical flow.
The metal returns up the outer cylinder, and electric currents create a magnetic field.
“Sodium has – by a factor of 50 – better electro-conductivity,” the University’s Dr Agris Gailetis told Science In Action. “Sodium is moving 10,000 times faster.
“But of course our system is much, much smaller… but altogether, these factors are making our experiment not very different from conditions inside the Earth.” “
As a plant physiologist I can say with confidence that C3 plants are NOT extinct.
In fact they comprise well over 80% of the Earth’s flora. The remainder are C4 and CAM photosynthesis plants.
One possibility is that because C4 plants are more efficient at higher temperatures than C3, the statement (if it is correct) about C3 being extinct reflects the IPCC’s
expectations for a hot Earth.
What is the deal with the cover of this book? The title, the moon landing, the dragon? What has any of this got to do with global warming?
As to iron in the sun, isn’t the build up of iron and other heavier elements one of the issues that cause super novas as stars age? If stars were primarily iron wouldn’t that be observable by the light emitted? Not to mention wouldn’t it require a total redo of every theory of Cosmology we have since the composition of basic elements comprising the universe would be totally thrown out of whack.
John,
I find Dr. Manuel very interesting as well, but until recently all he did was carpet bomb threads with the exact same post.
He is clearly bright, but that does not exclude the possibility that he is obsessive, repetitive, and even wrong about the sun.
What is clear is that when he does talk about some of his thoughts on climate issues, he is interesting.
I always apply the cocktail party rule when considering blog manners:
It is the host’s party, guests should not be boorish, and most of all guests should not annoy the host(ess).
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 11:27 pm
………Basically the same process that generates Sun’s magnetic field, namely the dynamo process where convective motions [driven by temperature differences] of the conducting interior across an already existing [weaker] field induces electric currents that regenerates, amplifies, and maintains the magnetic field.
======================================================
This can be emulated in the laboratory, without an outside electical input Leif?….. Or is it purely a theoretical model?
Very interesting comment there, Tallbloke…. Sounds a bit like what Leif was saying.
Interesting thread with some excellent posts.
I’d always assumed that the argument (“the burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution has been responsible for almost all the observed increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide”) as presented here:
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page20.htm
was essentially correct. It certainly addresses many points raised here. If it’s wrong, how?
* On a point of order, Anthony Watts didn’t say that Oliver Manuel was “a nut”; he said that his iron sun theory was a “nutty idea”. The first would have been offensive but the second surely isn’t. It’s badinage. Besides, the good prof was banned for “carpet-bombing” threads, not for intellectual non-conformity.
E.M.Smith says:
November 30, 2010 at 12:18 am
So I’m basically saying that the surface ought to be light elements, and the heavy stuff ought to head toward the core; but as you get closer to the center that segregating force tails off and who knows what gets TO the core.
Small stars are convective throughout, large stars have convective cores, so for both of those the interior will be well mixed. Stars like Sun has a radiative core so that mixing does not occur. The main reason the core is not made of iron is there simply is not enough [only 1/5000 by mass].
Then again, you ARE a solar scientist, so you might well be “who knows” 😉
Kev-in-UK says:
November 30, 2010 at 12:24 am
just a comment on the C12/C13 issue – as far as I can make out, the errors in measurements, and the scale of the Carbon reservoir (in the atmosphere, oceans, rocks, etc) would make it virtually impossible to determine a human signature.
Paul Clark says:
November 30, 2010 at 12:39 am
The corona of the Sun is millions of degrees C. The photosphere is 6000C, then it’s supposed to get hotter again as you move into the core. How does the photosphere stay cool when it is in between two hotter layers? Something’s not right.
It stays cool because the corona is extremely tenuous [and therefore very little heat content in spite of its high temperature].
A sunspot consists of cooler matter upwelling from below. An open mind would say that it is cooler because the lower layers are cooler. A closed mind would make up some kind of patch, like plasma magnetic field makes the vibration slow down, to protect the older theory instead of taking Occam’s razor.
A sunspot is cooler because its strong magnetic field suppresses the convection that brings heat to the surface. The ‘open mind’ is just wrong on this.
There’s a lot of iron in all planets; why should the sun be an exception? The idea that there a slowly burning nuclear explosion in the core that doesn’t blow the sun up is balmy to me.
The sun is not an exception, it has a lot of iron, it just has a lot more of hydrogen and helium. The sun doesn’t blow up because the nuclear reactions are extremely gentle. A kettle of water heated at the same rate would take a week to get to boil.
“helioseismology” Huh? In what way — what has been measured that backs up a thermonuclear core? “..solar oblateness, other stars..” What does that show to deny an iron core?
Allows us the measure the speed of sound in the interior. The speed of sound depends on temperature and on composition, so allows us to get a check on our ideas about the interior.
max_b says:
November 30, 2010 at 2:37 am
Thanks… I wish I could find summat to read (which I could understand) which would explain why C-14 production rate is not modulated by changes in atmospheric temperature. I guess if I ask, you’re gonna tell me the the same goes for beryllium-10 production rates?
The production rates are not determined by temperature. For muons is is the detection that is temperature dependent. The process works something line this: muons only lives a a very small fraction of a second so many of them decays before they reach our sensors on the surface. If the atmosphere is warmer, it expands and the cosmic rays run into the air at a higher altitude, so the muons resulting from the collision are generated at a higher altitude and thus have a longer way to travel before reaching the surface, during which longer time more muons decays, so we we see less.
There is a temperature [and hence climate] issue with 14V and 10Be, in the sense that the ‘deposition depends on the climate. E.g. 10Be is mostly produced at lower latitude [simply because most of Earth is at lower latitudes] and is transported to the poles [and the ice] by temperature-dependent atmospheric circulation.
ScientistForTruth says:
November 30, 2010 at 3:33 am
I’m very sceptical of your assertion “A spinning sphere of liquid metal generates a magnetic field” if that is to imply that it would self-generate a field where none previously existed.
As you yourself point out, there is a pre-existing magnetic field, so no problem.
tallbloke says:
November 30, 2010 at 5:23 am
Wouldn’t iron continue to have diamagnetic properties above that temperature Leif?
Check out the definition of diamagnetism: “Of or relating to a substance that is repelled by a magnet.”.
To tell you the truth, what I find nutty about some passionate scientists is that they refuse to go about the serious work of falsifying their hypothesis. Fortunately, these folks tend to rise to fame in a flash, and die in that same pan.
The doggedly dedicated scientists who stand by the credo, “The null hypothesis is king.” are the ones to read.
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 29, 2010 at 9:40 pm
“It has been discussed extensively and found to be wanting, not because it is ‘different’ but because it is at variance with observations, e.g. helioseismology, neutrino flux, solar oblateness, other stars, etc.”
As (or if!) I understand it, the iron sun model assumes that the sun has accreted on top of an old neutron star. This seems quite reasonable; there must be a lot of them out there (~1e8 or more in the Milky Way galaxy), and once they have settled down a bit (a matter of a few thousand years) they will be able to accrete gas and debris from the interstellar medium. They could be the seed that initiates gas cloud collapse into a star; alternatively, they could be captured by a cloud already in the process of star formation. Either way, we end up with new stars with a neutron star core. Somewhat more of their early luminosity would be provided by gravitational energy, but once they entered the main sequence they would behave much the same as any other star. Fusion would take place in a shell, rather than a sphere, and the fusion temperatures might be slightly different, but most of the star wouldn’t be able to tell the difference; the neutron star is too tiny. I can see there might be a problem with the solar oblateness/gravitational quadrupole moment, since the rest of the sun would have to be that much more oblate (the neutron star being effectively a central point mass); however, one could possibly get around that by assuming that rotation rates increase with depth, driven by the rapid rotation of the neutron star.
ScientistForTruth says:
November 30, 2010 at 3:33 am
“There is no known mechanism, even in the light of these experiments, for getting any planetary or solar dynamos going without the presence of an external magnetic field to start with, or a magnetic field internally generated by current through the bodies.”
There are always magnetic fields, even in interstellar and intergalactic space, which will be amplified many-fold as nebulas condense into stars and planets. This should be plenty to get the dynamo going.
But………..
Quote
The metal returns up the outer cylinder, and electric currents create a magnetic field.
Unquote
Different beast. Same with the natural nuclear reactors. They get hotter towards the core not on the surface.
But not only that, seems we have lost track, is the man made co2 debunked or not. Did the book do that? I liked the references to 1750 and post carbon fuels and deforestation but prior to that date Europe was deforested from about 1300 to 1750 in the same way post 1750 deforested the tropical forests.
Plus is not the Co2 thing only one small part of the books mission?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
You can discuss it as many times as you want; that doesn’t mean the argument is more than tautological. Please confront my argument above, 8th? comment.
Carpet bombing leads to hijacked threads and off-topic discussions. Off-topic tends to create a lot of excess verbiage unrelated to the point being made and obscuring the main point. This is almost always counterproductive.
Thank you Anthony.
Pull My Finger says:
November 30, 2010 at 5:47 am
If stars were primarily iron wouldn’t that be observable by the light emitted?
If the stars were primarily iron they wouldn’t shine at all as you have to put more energy into the process than is produced by nuclear reactions involving of iron [and heavier atoms].
Not to mention wouldn’t it require a total redo of every theory of Cosmology we have since the composition of basic elements comprising the universe would be totally thrown out of whack.
For some people that is precisely the point: they want modern astrophysics to be thrown out and discarded.
hunter says:
November 30, 2010 at 5:57 am
He is clearly bright, but that does not exclude the possibility that he is obsessive, repetitive, and even wrong about the sun.
He believes that there is a vast international conspiracy to falsify or suppress all data that contradict his ideas.
J.Hansford says:
November 30, 2010 at 6:21 am
This can be emulated in the laboratory, without an outside electical input?
You generate the needed electricity by moving a conductor across an existing magnetic field. The electricity that powered your computer when you typed your question was most likely generated that way [except if you used solar panels – or a battery (which must be charged anyway by ordinary power)]