I’ve still not received any reply from Nature Climate Change editor Rory Howlett to my query about why he allowed the term “deniers” in scientific literature (Bain et al), and neither has Bishop Hill to my knowledge. Lord Leach however, has weighed in, and has sent me his letter for publication here with permission. – Anthony
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Dear Dr Howlett,
The use of the term “denier” does your journal a disservice, both for its vagueness and for its insulting overtone.
What does a “denier” deny? Certainly not Climate Change: nor global warming since records began in the late 19th century: nor the likelihood of human influence on temperatures. What, then?
A “denier” denies certainty on a complex and still young scientific subject. A “denier” questions assumptions about the near irrelevance of solar, oceanic and other non-anthropogenic influences on temperature. A “denier” prefers evidence to model projections. A “denier” tests alarming predictions against actual observations. In short, a “denier” exhibits the symptoms of a genuine seeker after scientific truth.
I wish the same could be said of “consensus” writers – or that they showed the same restraint and courtesy towards different opinions shown by sceptics such as Watts Up With That
Yours sincerely
Rodney Leach
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I was surprised to see WUWT mentioned. I thank Lord Leach for the hat tip.
If you haven’t written a letter, you still can. See the details here:
Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature
Some letters to the editor in the UK might also be helpful.
UPDATE: Jo Nova has an excellent letter also:
Dear Dr Phil Bain,
Right now, it’s almost my life’s work to communicate the empirical evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
I can help you with your research on deniers. I have studied the mental condition of denial most carefully. There is a simple key to converting the convictions of people in this debate, and I have seen it work hundreds of times. Indeed, my own convictions that lasted 17 years were turned around in a few days. I can help you. It would be much simpler than you think.
Firstly, to save time and money we must analyze the leaders of the denial movement. I have emailed or spoken to virtually all of them.
They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century. According to Hansen et al 19841, Bony et al 20062, and the IPCC AR4 report3, the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feedbacks).
All they need are is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models. Key leaders in the denial movement have been asking for this data for years. Unfortunately the IPCC assessment reports do not contain any direct observations of the amplification, either by water vapor (the key positive feedback4) or the totality of feedbacks. The IPCC only quotes results from climate simulations.
Since science is based on observations and measurements of the real world, it follows that a denier of science (rather than a denier of propaganda) must be denying real world data. I’d be most grateful if you could explain what “deniers” deny. Deniers repeatedly ask for empirical evidence, yet must be failing badly at communicating that this is the crucial point because none of the esteemed lead authors of IPCC working Group I seem to have realized that this paltry point is all that is needed. All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming, so the observations they deny must be written up many times in the peer review literature, right? After five years of study I am still not sure which instrument has made these key observations. Do deniers deny weather balloon results, or satellite data, or ice cores?
When you find this paper and the measurements, it will convince many of the key denier leaders. (But being the exacting personality type that they are, deniers will also expect to see the raw data. So you’ll need to also make sure that the authors of said paper have made all the records and methods available, but of course, all good scientists do that already don’t they?)
As a diligent researcher, I’m sure you would not have described a group with such a unequivocally strong label unless you were certain it applied. It would be disastrous for an esteemed publication like Nature to mistakenly insult Nobel prize winning physicists, NASA astronauts, and thousands of scientists who have asked for empirical evidence, only to find that the Nature authors themselves were unable to name papers (or instruments) with empirical evidence that their subject group called “deniers” denied.
If those papers (God forbid) do not exist, then the true deniers would turn out to be the researchers who denied that empirical evidence is key to scientific confidence in a theory. The true deniers would not be the skeptics who asked for evidence, but the name-calling researchers who did not test their own assumptions.
The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders. If you can find the observations that the IPCC can’t, you could change the path of international action. Should you find the evidence, I will be delighted to redouble my efforts to communicate the empirical evidence related to climate change.
Awaiting your reply keenly,
Joanne Nova
—————–
REFERENCES
1 Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
2 Bony, S., et al., 2006: How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? J. Clim., 19, 3445–3482.
3 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8.6.2.3. p630 [PDF].
4 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14, p631 [PDF] see also Page 632.
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davidmhoffer says:
June 21, 2012 at 6:09 am
majormike1 says:
June 21, 2012 at 12:08 am
Your back radiation sounds a lot like insulation.>>>
bingo.
============
Only if you have no sense of scale..
The ubiquitous meme “like a thermal blanket” coupled with a real sense of scale shows this blanket to be so full of holes that it’s actually for all practical purposes, 100% hole.
I find it difficult, not being a scientist myself, to comprehend that there are scientists without any sense of scale.
I find it difficult, not being a scientist myself, to comprehend that there are scientists without any sense of scale>>>>
And I find it difficult to understand how people who admit to having no science background can insist that their conclusions are correct while at the same time refusing to learn the basics first hand so that they would be speaking from an informed opinion.
I could play the “cite war” and bury this discussion with cites that “prove” my point and “disprove” Jeff House and Myrrh. To what end? My cites are better than your cites? I have more cites than you do so I win? This stuff is basic physics, and I have urged getting conversant with the basics as a means of having a meaningful discussion. If you are unwilling to learn the basics, to find means of verifying the basics on your own, and to proceed with the discussion from a firm foundation based on fact, then there is nothing to discuss.
Declaring yourself “not a scientist” while at the same time declaring your understanding of the science to be superior to that of the scientists is laughable. Either learn the science, or don’t. In the meantime, billions of dollars are spent in the private sector every day to design products based on the exact physics I have tried to explain to you. If you truly believe that the physics doesn’t work that way, that’s up to you. In the private sector, if you spend major amounts of money on designs that don’t work, you lose your job. I’ve pointed you both at the basics you need to understand prior to discussing experiments like Wood’s in any meaningful fashion. If you don’t want to do that, you are choosing to wallow in your own ignorance while the world proceeds along designing and building products every single day based on the exact same physics. If Joel Shore (PhD in physics and a rampant warmist) and Richard Lindzen (PhD in physics and a rampant skeptic) were in this thread, you’d find very quickly that on the matter of backradiation, they pretty much agree, as do millions upon millions of engineers whose job security is predicated upon applying the principles I’ve pointed out to you properly.
“None are so blind as those who will not see”
Johnny Dark
Butterflies Are Free
dropping thread
davidmhoffer says:
June 21, 2012 at 11:44 am
Declaring yourself “not a scientist” while at the same time declaring your understanding of the science to be superior to that of the scientists is laughable. Either learn the science, or don’t. In the meantime, billions of dollars are spent in the private sector every day to design products based on the exact physics I have tried to explain to you. If you truly believe that the physics doesn’t work that way, that’s up to you. In the private sector, if you spend major amounts of money on designs that don’t work, you lose your job. I’ve pointed you both at the basics you need to understand prior to discussing experiments like Wood’s in any meaningful fashion. If you don’t want to do that, you are choosing to wallow in your own ignorance while the world proceeds along designing and building products every single day based on the exact same physics. If Joel Shore (PhD in physics and a rampant warmist) and Richard Lindzen (PhD in physics and a rampant skeptic) were in this thread, you’d find very quickly that on the matter of backradiation, they pretty much agree, as do millions upon millions of engineers whose job security is predicated upon applying the principles I’ve pointed out to you properly.
Real engineers know that your backradiation claim is ridiculous. Why didn’t Joel come back with the mechanism I asked him for? Because he couldn’t provide any to show how the net is achieved in the claim “heat flows from colder to hotter and hotter to colder and the net heat flows from hotter to colder”. How?
Real scientists know the difference between Heat and Light. They know that the direct heat from the Sun does reach the Earth’s surface, your comic cartoon energy budget has excised it.
It is the direct heat from the Sun, thermal infrared which heats the land and oceans, not as you have it, shortwave, claiming Light does the work of Heat.
If real engineers disappear you’d never understand enough to be able to design and build the different appliances we have using Light and Heat from the Sun.
Photo comes from the Greek, meaning LIGHT. Thermal comes from the Greek, meaning HEAT. These are not the same energies. This is basic bog standard physics knowledge in traditional science.
– here the real basics:
http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/00442/wusolarenergy.html
“Solar energy is power that comes from the sun. Solar energy can be harnessed in two different ways. One way is through photovoltaic conversion. Another way is through solar thermal conversion.
“During photovoltaic conversion, solar energy is collected through panels, called solar panels. Solar panels are covered with large modules which are covered with lots of little PV cells, or photovoltaic cells. The PV cells collect the light from the sun. Once the light is inside a PV cell there is a semiconductor made of a thin sheet of silicone crystal which takes in the photons from the sunlight. A photon is a particle of solar energy. Within the semiconductor, energy of the photons shifts to the electrons. This energizes the electrons. Then the electrons break out of the semiconductor to get to the silicone atoms. Then they flow into the electric current. Usually a solar cell is made of a glass protective layer, an anti-reflective coat, and electric contacts.”
“…Usually PV cells don’t generate much electricity. PV cells generate about ½ a volt per square decimeter. A solar panel making fifty watts of electricity is about four decimeters by ten decimeters.”
——
Real Light from the Sun works on the electronic transition level, it energises the electrons, it does not move the whole molecule into vibrational states as does Heat, which is thermal infrared and which is what it takes to heat up matter.
Visible Light from the Sun is reflected/scattered in the atmosphere because it is absorbed by the electrons of nitrogen and oxygen. The electrons are energised briefly and when they come back to ground state they give off exactly the same energy level which they absorbed – blue visible light is more easily scattered by the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, that’s how we get our blue sky.
Back to the same article:
“Another type of solar energy is solar thermal conversion. In this process, there are thermal conversion panels (panels that absorb heat) which are grouped together often in a dish or trough system. The solar energy is then absorbed and concentrated into a line or a point that heats a pipe filled with fluid. These systems can concentrate the intensity of sunlight up to 10,000 times of normal sunlight.
——
panels that absorb heat – they absorb the Heat, the direct thermal infrared from the Sun, that’s how they work. Thermal infrared direct from the Sun is a powerful energy, it directly heats up matter. Heat from the Sun heats up matter, Light from the Sun doesn’t.
The best you can do with the tiddly little Light energy is make a tiddly bit of electricity.
Back to the article:
“Many people use a solar heating system to heat their house. This type of system is more effective than using a PV system to heat homes or water. You can tell the difference because solar heaters can turn 60% of the sun’s energy into heat whereas PV systems can only change 12% to 15%. Solar heaters are able to heat large things like pools, water, and houses. So as you can see, when it’s heating, you are better off using a solar heater.”
——
If it’s real heating you want, of big things, of land and oceans, then you use the direct thermal infrared heat from the Sun.
Real engineers in the real world know this.
Your claim is that shortwave, Light, does the powerful work of HEAT from the Sun, but when I ask for proof of such strange ideas no one ever comes back with any. Because it doesn’t exist.
The comic cartoon energy budget you use is basic b*ll*cks. This has been deliberately created to promote AGW and to dumb down the general science understanding of the oiks. This is a far greater con than the lying cheating shenanigans about temperature.
Take a look at your cartoon – where’s the Water Cycle? Where’s the real atmosphere of the heavy fluid ocean of gas which we have in the real world? Where are the real molecules with weight, volume and attraction subject to gravity? Where the wind and weather systems in your world when you have no convection? Where’s sound in your world of empty space with imaginary ideal gas molecules zipping around at great speed bouncing off each other?
You’ve been had.
Some children are still learning real basic physics:
http://techxcite.pratt.duke.edu/curriculum/solarcooker.php
“Solar Energy: Cooking in the Sun
This TechXcite: Discover Engineering! module introduces kids to the direct use of solar thermal energy through the design of a solar oven. Finding ways to use energy more efficiently will be an important part of engineering in the 21st century. Solar thermal energy is used in solar ovens, passive solar architecture, and to generate electricity in some applications. In this module, kids do some initial experiments to explore heat transfer through radiation and conduction. Then, they learn how to locate the sun in the sky by finding the solar angle and solar azimuth at a particular time during the day. They then utilize this knowledge to design and build a solar oven.”
Real engineers know which energy they’re working with and the different properties and capablilities of each:
http://www.solarthermalmagazine.com/2012/03/01/solar-pool-heater-manufacturer-hits-price-per-btu-breakthrough/
“Using performance rating data from the independent Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) – which measures a solar collector’s ability to efficiently transfer thermal energy from the sun into usable heat (in the case of solar thermal, BTUs) – Sunlite™ is rated at 1,000 BTUs per square foot. Based on the manufacturer’s newly released pricing, Sunlite™ carries a price per BTU of only $0.002 – making it the most cost-effective solar thermal BTU on the planet.”
How would you even begin to check out their cost efficiency claim here?
In your fictional fisics the direct thermal energy from the Sun doesn’t play any part of heating the land and oceans – where is your fantasy world?
And just for interest a p.s. on solar thermal systems: http://www.solarthermalmagazine.com/2012/06/08/new-technology-increases-concentrated-solar-thermal-energy-conversion-efficiency-by-60-percent/
@Myrrh
For what it’s worth, I am an engineer and energy and mass balances are part of my stock-in-trade.
Davidmhoffer is right, you and Greg House are wrong. Period.
D. J. Hawkins says:
June 21, 2012 at 4:01 pm
@Myrrh
For what it’s worth, I am an engineer and energy and mass balances are part of my stock-in-trade.
Davidmhoffer is right, you and Greg House are wrong. Period.
==========================================================
This is a rare example of the most valuable scientific contribution to the scientific debate. Thank you.
Do you know why the Aether hypothesis for the transmission of light is no longer popular, aside from being wrong? The knuckleheads who continued to believe in it eventually died. You and Myrrh are so far from right it can’t even be called wrong. Please aquire a fundamental text on heat transfer, or even a Schaum’s Outline (McGraw Hill, $22.00) and stop embarrasing yourselves.
D. J. Hawkins says:
June 21, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Do you know why the Aether hypothesis for the transmission of light is no longer popular, aside from being wrong? The knuckleheads who continued to believe in it eventually died.
==================================================
This looks like a right analogy applied to the AGW concept. It was popular in some circles from 1860 till 1909. Climate sensitivity of CO2 was there, back radiation warming the Earth surface, everything. Then came professor Wood with his easy experiment and the AGW concept died.
What we have now is a sort of a scientific zombi dug out my some people, who call themselves scientists.
Is Leach a buddy of Lawson? Another ‘lord’, Lawson not only has much of his wealth invested in oil, but is a paid lobbyist for the oil industry and a vociferous denier, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/mar/06/climate-change-sceptic-lawson-coal shows another of his ‘interests’ is dirty coal. He is behind the ludicrously titled ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation’ http://thegwpf.org/, funded by the oil industry to promote dissinformation. There are quite a few rich, old men in the denial camp, the buffoon David Bellamy is another, Noel Edmonds another [all Brits] none of them with even a smattering of science qualifications, but all with huge houses in the country and opposed to wind farms ‘spoiling their view’. Selfish to a man.
REPLY – That’s nice, dear. But is he Right or is he Wrong? That would be the relevant question. ~ Evan
Greg House, so AGW died in 1909, and despite that tens of thousands of scientists are spening their lives investigating the many aspects of AGW, governments around the world have accepted it as fact even if they are failing to actually do anything about it, bodies such as the UN and NASA, not to mention the Pentagon accept it as fact, and the planet is getting hotter and with all the effects predicted like extreme weather events. Are you from another planet?
Myrrh – you appear to have difficuulty understanding energy. ‘It is the direct heat from the Sun, thermal infrared which heats the land and oceans, not as you have it, shortwave, claiming Light does the work of Heat.’ I’ll remember that next time I sunbathe. Could have sworn the sunlight made me hot, but it was thermal infrared all along. So in order to stay cool in sunlight we just need an infrared filter? Could be major business opportnities there, especially in Africa.
Oneworldnet- awesome strawman fail with the Lawson thing, dear (lol).
Oneworldnet- The CRU gets money from Shell and BP, according to their website, so what’s your point? Here’s an angle for you to ponder: Big oil wants the alarmists to win. Its simple, and it’s about banking and political clout. No mitigation efforts are going to touch Big Oil, they have too much clout. Mitigation will put their smaller competitors (and coal) out of business, which is AOK by them, given that they are monopoly capitalists. Carbon taxes are intended to be collected by the World Bank. The Rockefellers (as an example) are big oil, as well as big in banking (Jpmorgan chase/federal reserve). To think they dont own part of the World Bank is ludicrous, so it follows that they would fund whatever side would get that tax money rolling in. That’s how they work. Twisted, yet genius. You are naive. The skeptics are among the good guys, and if the UN wins and brings the hammer down, you are going to rue the day you backed their silly empty propaganda campaign.
And, Oneworldnet, you asked Greg House if he was from another planet, which was rhetoric on your end, but if Greg had been from another planet, let’s say Mars, he would have reported that it was warming there too up until 1998 (NASA agrees- google mars warming). That’s weird. How did our industrial co2 increase get to Mars?