This is quite something. Sixteen scientists, including such names as Richard Lindzen, William Kininmonth, Wil Happer, and Nir Shaviv, plus engineer Burt Rutan, and Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Harrison Schmidt, among others, write what amounts to a heretical treatise to the Wall Street Journal, expressing their view that the global warming is oversold, has stalled in the last decade, and that the search for meaningful warming has led to co-opting weather patterns in the blame game. Oh, and a history lesson on Lysenkoism as it relates to today’s warming-science-funding-complex. I can hear Joe Romm’s head exploding all the way out here in California.
Excerpts:
No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
…
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
…
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
…
Signed by:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
Full letter is online here at the Wall Street Journal
A physicist, you do sound a bit whiny today. In my humble opinion, you might get more respect if you practiced here, more of what you now seem to be preaching.
“…both of them concerned with the rational criticism of ideas, not of persons.” Amen.
Can you oblige us and critize the following ideas presented, please? (Maybe you have already, in some other forum, my mistake, if you have).
ClimateGate email: Warmist Tom Wigley proposes fudging temperature data by .15 degrees C
2009 ClimateGate email
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]
Allan MacRae said:
“There has been no global warming in more than a decade.”
_____
How long is this meme going to be repeated? The last decade was the warmest decade on instrument record. 9 out of the 10 warmest years on record were in the past decade, and 2010 was the warmest year on record. Hardlly sounds like “no global warming in more than a decade”
That’s easy, Steve! The many folks (and I am one of them) who advocate open climate data and open-source climate models — nonskeptics and skeptics alike — are 100% right! 🙂
In particular, the surface temperature data from Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Project has been a solid move in the right direction!
It’s true that the 2011 BEST data disconfirm the skeptical criticisms of Richard Lindzer’s 1989 article in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled “Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming” …
… but like the navigator says in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove:
Elevator Summary: The open-source climate data of the 21st century have disconfirmed the 1980s skeptical criticism of the WSJ-16.
‘a physicist’,
“I’m sorry, sir. The second graph shows the real numbers.”
Elevator summary: Don’t trust Richard Muller.
R. Gates says:
January 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
///////////////////////////////////////
Mr Gates
The point is simple: If as a mattter of basic physics an increase in the concentration of CO2 leads to an increase in temperature (basic phusics of the properties of CO2 does not allow for no change or a drop in temperature) then for each and every year that there is an increase in CO2 levels unles there is corresponding warming, an explanation is required as to why there was no warming (such explanation being consistent with the underlying theory that an increase in CO2 levels leads to an increase in temperature).
Your point about the top of the curve does not deal with the issue in hand and whilst the last decade may be the warmest decade on record during the instrument period (one which is not certain due to margins of error and other issues with the data set) it is in fact an irrelevant point when considering the fundamental issue behind the theory, namely that as a matter of basic physics an increase in CO2 leads to increase in temperature.
It is because of this, that people repeatedly point out that there has been no statistical warming these past 10 to 15 years or so.
A physicist, I do not see any criticism from you on the Wigley to Jones email from 2009, I referenced earlier. However, since you reference BEST, don’t forget their analysis of the 1940’s warming Tom Wigley proposed “reducing” was primarily due to a very strongly positive AMO. Moreover, BEST shows strong correlation between AMO and land temperatures. Since AMO was strongly positive in the 1940’s, why would anyone need to “reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean”?
Moreover, BEST had this to say about possible uncertainty to man made global warming
“…however, it is also possible that some of the land warming is a direct response to changes in the
AMO region. If the long-term AMO changes have been driven by greenhouse gases
then the AMO region may serve as a positive feedback that amplifies the effect of
greenhouse gas forcing over land. On the other hand, some of the long-term change in
the AMO could be driven by natural variability, e.g. fluctuations in thermohaline
flow. In that case the human component of global warming may be somewhat
overestimated.”
HenryP says
“Henry @ur momisugly Alcheson:
I am not sure how you can say that.
If you use electricity to heat water, and you put up a solar geyser (of which the government utility pays, say, 25% of the total cost in subsidy)
and you subsequently save 40% on your total electricity bill, on consumption, every month,
how can this not be saving energy and money for us all?”
HenryP, if the actual cost of producing electricity from you solar geyser was cheaper than producing electricity from hydro or coal, you would NOT NEED subsidies to get people to buy it. It would by default go into mass production and distribution! Lets take an example. In this example the base cost of electricity from commercial is 10cent/kwh. The real cost of electricity produced from your solar tower costs 14cents/kwh (factoring in production costs and lifetime of unit and disposal of worn out units). The government then decides to offer an 8cents/kwh subsidy in order to get people to use them. As a purchaser you are now getting electricity from your solar geyser at 6cents/kwh and it LOOKS like you are saving 40% on your bill compared to having to pay 10cents/kwh for it.
Indeed YOU are saving money, but the extra 8cents/kwh is being paid by the general population. As soon as EVERYONE takes advantage of that subsidy rather than just YOU, everyone will be paying 14cents/kwh for electricity rather than 10cents/kwh once you include the cost of increased taxes needed to pay for the subsidy.
richard verney says:
January 28, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Yes. Unless they can run an experiment and get data that shows a corresponding increase in temperature to an increase in CO2 concentration as their theory predicts, then I must conclude their theory is incorrect. Simple, really.
….and the attacks begin:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/
Interesting interview of Happer, about the letter etc.:
http://online.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-global-warming-hoax/B951E1BE-01A3-4F92-B871-A4AB9B171419.html?mod=opinion_video_newsreel
He says he got many calls from scientists asking why they hadn’t had a chance to sign it, and were quite offended to be left out!
R. Gates says:
January 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
italThe last decade was the warmest decade on instrument record. …Hardly sounds like “no global warming in more than a decade ital
(I hope the ital works for me!)
As a retired physics teacher, let me try to explain it this way. I will define displacement and velocity in the process. Displacement is the change in position. So if you started at sea level and climbed to the top of Mount Everest, your displacement would be 29,029 feet up. Now suppose you rapidly reached the top in 1998 and then started to slowly walk down at the rate of 10 feet per year. Velocity is the rate of change of position. So in this example, the VELOCITY is 10 feet per year DOWN. Now if you walked down for 12 years, your velocity would be down, even though you would still be very HIGH UP during those 12 years.
So there is no contradiction as you claim. It is perfectly possible to be high up (nine of the hottest years), and at the same time be going down (or possibly cooling in our analogy).
Also see
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.17/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1997.08/trend
#Time series (hadcrut3) from 1850 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.17
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.000101357 per year
#Time series (rss) from 1979 to 2012
#Selected data from 1997.08
#Least squares trend line; slope = -5.60668e-05 per year
So to the end of December, it is 14 years and 10 months for HadCrut3 and 14 years and 11 months for RSS that we have an insignificant negative trend.
I feel the best way to look at the big picture is as explained in this post which shows that the rate of change in the trend gradient for sea surface temperatures (since 1900) is decreasing. I’d appreciate any support for my comment on SkS http://earth-climate-com/SkS120129e.jpg
Correction
I feel the best way to look at the big picture is as explained in this post which shows that the rate of change in the trend gradient for sea surface temperatures (since 1900) is decreasing. I’d appreciate any support for my comment on SkS http://earth-climate.com/SkS120129e.jpg
Henry@Alcheson, BrianH
You guys still don’t get it. I agree that the solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity is a total waste of time. But the solar geyser I am talking about works on a different principle. It works like the opposite of a radiator in your car. You have two riffled glass panels that concentrate the sunlight on the flat metal (copper) underneath. The metal heats up quickly and the water inside gets warm. Rising water goes to the top, through the panels and pipes into the solar geyser, which is usually standing bove the 2 glass panels. There is a series of pipes inside the solar geyser, heating the main body of water. The cooler water drops, gets heated again, and so on. If there is no sun and the temp. in the geyser drops too far, the geyser switches back to the electric power. So you always have warm water.
Let’s say the geyser costs $1000. I get a $250 subsidy, leaving me with a bill of $750.
I subsequently save $60 on my monthly electric bill of $150. After a year, the investment I made is beginning to pay back for me. I guess the the $250 that was paid by the GU is earned back mostly by the simple fact that if everyone is able to make a saving of 40% on their power consumption they can put more customers on the same grid. That is where they save the money.
Everybody wins!
mind you, like I said before, in areas where you have frost during winters, be sure to buy the indirect system as opposed to the direct system.
“2010 was the warmest year on record”
Where? Certainly not here, and my relatives in England were complaining about how cold both winter and summer were.
Meanwhile we’re having an unusually warm winter here this year and it’s a heck of an improvement over shovelling snow at -40C during the ‘warmest year on record’. Roll on the ‘Global Warming’, I say.
HneryP,
In that case you didn’t need the subsidy to make the purchase. Even without the subsidy you are coming out way ahead because obviously the cost of energy the thing is producing is less than the 10cents/kwh. Therefore, it seems like you should make this thing on a large scale and put all of the energy companies out of business because you can provide energy 40% cheaper than they can.
A phycisit (finally) speaks:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-878067
Henry@A physicist
Well, to start off with, that was the question that I posed to Freric. The question I posed to you is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-877972
It includes the question that I have with the CO2, because it takes part in photosynthesis, namely
(more) CO2+Chlorophyl+UV= ( more) vegetation (food).
Otherwise, why would people add CO2 in (real) green houses to stimulate growth..?
So the CO2 is taking some energy away. Cooling. That gives us our food and wine. Vegetation is increasing, as we have noted before.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
You conveniently ignored that question by jumping to the question I posed to Freric. So I ask again: how much is the extra cooling caused by the CO2 by the increase in vegetation?
The references that you gave unfortunately don’t give me any answers, in the right dimensions.
In fact, they don’t even mention anything about any radiative cooling that may be caused by the GHG’s. So let us start there. I suggest you carefully study this paper here.
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/644/1/551/pdf/64090.web.pdf
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 and other GHG’s as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon-earth. For CO2, follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. You can see that it all comes back to us via the moon in fig. 6 top & fig. 7. Note that the CH4 is cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine at between 2.2 and 2.4 um.
I suggest you finally study fig. 7 and make sure that you understand why I say that GHG’s like O2/O3, CO2, H2O and CH4 are also cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine in the 0-5 range.
The question is now: how much radiative cooling (by re-radiating sunshine) and how much radiative warming (by re-radiation of earth shine) is caused by each of the GHG’s?
You have to come to me with a balance sheet on each substance. So you have that balance sheet on each GHG? Where is it?I could not find it.
(The minute that you come to me with a balance sheet where I see “time” somewhere in the dimensions, I will get very interested. Because what all these so-called great people that you mention apparently never realized is that you have 12 hours sunshine per day and 24 hours earthshine. )
I never follow the crowd. I suggest you do the same. …
If you still don’t understand what I am saying, I suggest you read this report here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
I tried to keep it as simple as possible so that everyone can gain some understanding about the problem of the green house effect.
Alternatively, you can start doing some stats and see for yourself why I say that warming caused by an increase in GHG’s is a myth.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
e.g. the ratio’s of minima and maxima and means are not right, and the global warming is not really “global” at all
A more comprehensive report of mine is here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Hope this helps.
@HenryP;
Your “guess” about where the GU “earns” its money back is baseless. It makes money by selling power; if it sells less, it earns less.
And if the geyser is cost effective, you shouldn’t need to be bribed to use it. If GU wants to LOAN you the money to install it, and collect payments off your bill till it’s paid down, fine. Otherwise the subsidy ends up in higher rates across the board for everyone. Necessarily. I.e., you’re collecting your “benefit” from all the other users who don’t or can’t use geysers (often it’s not useful or feasible).
Consider the finances if EVERYONE had one. Their subsidies and extra charges would balance by necessity. They’d still eventually benefit from lower consumption, assuming the tech performed as advertised. But meanwhile all that payment/collection thrashing about thru the GU just achieves some admin/bureaucratic overhead enhancement.
I have suggested having a list of scientists both for and against “AGW’ along the lines of The Petition Project. The latter of course does not include those who believe in AGW, and appears to be mainly US scientists. I would like to see scientists around the world on the list.
The Petition Project is often criticized for including people who are not “climatologists”. Basic physics is enough to check the data on which the claims of climatologists depends, and I’d rather not include anyone on the skeptic list without a physics qualification (but maybe I’m being too harsh). In addition, knowledge of statistics would be very useful and is notably lacking for certain well-known climatologists.
I think a knowledge of geology is also useful when checking long-term data. This is why I’d like the scientists to state whether they have expertise in physics, statistics and geology. I will agree that a PhD in medicine for example is of little relevance to climate science.
Some of the names on The Petition Project were for major proponents of Creation and ID, and that has caused a distraction which I would rather avoid. But the AGW proponents can believe anything they like and have no particular experience in anything. I certainly don’t want to exclude them.
The Petition states in part:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
I think that is a good statement that scientists can agree or disagree with and be included on one side or other in the proposed list.
Perhaps to start with it would be adequate to simply include the Petition names and add the AGW believers.
There will be a bias against the skeptics since their jobs may be at risk if they sign such a list.
The Petition currently has tens of thousands of scientists prepared to put their names against AGW. So let us have the names of the AGW supporters. I imagine there will be hundreds. Will there be thousands? Tens of thousands? Let us see. Put your names forward.
BrianH says:
Your “guess” about where the GU “earns” its money back is baseless. It makes money by selling power; if it sells less, it earns less….assuming the tech performs…
Henry@Brian
the government utility (GU) in our area is a not for profit.
It does work, I have one on my roof. It did cut my bill by almost half but we are lucky with our weather. A lot of sunshine. But so is CA and other places in the US. Note that in most areas here we do not have flowing gas to the houses, nor is there an abundance of natural gas. So we use electricity for just about everything in the house for energy.
Alcheson says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/27/sixteen-prominent-scientists-publish-a-letter-in-wsj-saying-theres-no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming/#comment-878377
Henry@Alcheson
I agree. It works without the subsidy as well. The subsidy was put up in a period when the GU must have realized that its grid was not big enough to cope with increasing demand.The subsidy period has ended now.
I think it was a good incentive to make people realize that energy costs money, and that we should make good use of what is coming from the sun for free.
Werner Brozek:
I appreciate your basic math and physics lesson ( really your attempt to school me), but I certainly understand rates of change principals quite well. The skeptics would like to believe that we are indeed at some cyclical peak of temps– I understand that. I am however ” skeptical” of that contention. Rather, I have to believe what numerous attribution studies have shown, and that is that the leveling of temperatures over the past decade is caused by natural variability, (i.e. solar, ENSO, etc) and that the underlying forcing from the buildup of CO2, CH4, and N2O is still present, but has been muted by natural variability. The result would be of course, the rather than at a peak, we will rise to higher levels once the natural factors align with the GH forcing. Given this position, one would expect to see new modern instrument temperature records set in the next few years–when ENSO and solar conditions align with GH forcing– meaning of course that we have not reached any sort of peak, nor are likely to for quite some time. Of course the skeptics will always have their laughable fallback position that we are still in a recovery from the Little Ice Age.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
WOW!
A physicist says:
January 27, 2012 at 7:00 pm
If in the next thirty years, Hansen’s predictions remain similarly accurate as they have been in the past thirty years, then (with good reason) Hansen will enter into history as one of humanity’s greatest and most foresighted scientists.
Indeed, A physicist, as clearly demonstrated by his past record of pronouncements in regard to his CO2 = CAGW “hypotheses”, there is surely no doubt that Hansen’s “predictions” will continue to be just as “similarly accurate” as they always are. In other words, since they are always “consistent with” everything that happens and are thus not falsifiable, they will all continue to say nothing of empirical/factual relevance – a method which seems to be your particular area of proficiency, as well, and obviously just as equally gratifying to the both of you, as well as to people such as John Brookes, etc.; and in fact to the 75/77 = “97%” of “mainstream” Climate Scientists who make up the “Consensus”!
Therefore, concerning your 2nd, transcendent question: by now there is likewise no doubt that the value of Hansen’s valiant efforts, well preceding the call of duty but now even officially directed toward achieving the primary mission of President Obama’s “transformed” NASA,
~”to help raise the self-esteem of the Muslim nations in the area of science”, will eventually make his historical value to Humanity very similar to that of your own Prophet’s…and perhaps even approach the magnitude of Comrade Jimmahi Carter’s impact in this most sacred area… directed,as they all are, toward producing Social Justice’s Holy Equality between nations and thus the achievement by Activists of “World Peace through Struggle”.
Indeed, Hansen’s mighty mantra, “CO2 = CAGW”, easily transforms with similar accuracy into “Mecca is the Center of the World!”, or to whatever other verbiage your needs “scientifically” require as the “similarly accurate” TRUTH!!!
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
The result would be of course, the rather than at a peak, we will rise to higher levels once the natural factors align with the GH forcing. Given this position, one would expect to see new modern instrument temperature records set in the next few years
I agree! But exactly how much higher and in how many years? GISS, for example, has a slope of 0.0087 per year from 1940 to date. (It was around 1940 that carbon dioxide levels really started to increase.) If this rate were to be continued for the next 88 years, the temperature would only go up by another 0.77 degrees by 2100. And even the IPCC agrees that added carbon dioxide follows a logarithmic effect (law of diminishing returns). Furthermore, due to a cyclical 60 year cycle that temperatures have been following over the last 130 years, we may be in for twenty years of cooling at this point. This is despite the fact that global carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily over the last 15 years, especially from China. There are indications that solar cycles and global ocean currents are much more important drivers of climate than carbon dioxide.
Werner Brozek says:
January 29, 2012 at 1:13 pm
There are indications that solar cycles and global ocean currents are much more important drivers of climate than carbon dioxide.
But ocean currents and solar cycles don’t present an opportunity for crony capitalism, graft and taxation to mitigate the ‘crisis’ that is CO2.
Brendan H says:
January 28, 2012 at 12:30 pm
[Richard M: “No, all you did is spew useless generalizations based on nothing but what you WANT to believe…This is typical for religious beliefs.”]
I offered several explanations for why I think the signers are groping in the dark. You have opted for a personal attack rather than a reasoned response to my arguments.
Not surprised you confused an accurate description of your actions as a personal attack. You have no idea what the authors know and don’t know. All you did was try and come up with rationalizations that supported your desire for their statements to be false. This is seen in religion all the time.