By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Lancet, once a respected medico-scientific journal and now just another me-too mouthpiece for theusual suspects, ran an editorial this week on climate change – on which subject it has neither expertise nor a missio canonica to pronounce. Here is a letter to the editor in response:
Sir, – Your notion of a “climate crisis” (editorial, December 2), though fashionable among the classe politique, is misplaced. That notion sprang from an elementary error of physics perpetrated in the 1980s by climate scientists who had borrowed feedback formulism from control theory, another branch of physics, without quite understanding it. Interdisciplinary compartmentalization delayed its identification until now.
After correcting the error, anthropogenic global warming will be only one-third of current midrange projections, well within natural variability and net-beneficial to life and health. CO2 fertilization (for CO2 is plant food) has assisted in steadily increasing crop yields – this year’s global harvest has set yet another record – and in improving drought resistance (Hao et al., 2014) and greening the planet.
Your suggestion that warmer worldwide weather has caused net loss of life, particularly among the world’s fast-declining population of poor people, is fashionable but misplaced. Cold is a bigger killer than warmth. Research conducted three years ago for the European Commission found that, for this reason, even if there were 5.4 C° global warming from 2020-2080, there would be 100,000 more Europeans than with no warming at all.
However, now that nearly all major banks – citing “global warming” as their pretext – refuse to lend to developing countries for coal-fired electricity (dates from which they decided to abandon the poor are below), a billion people lack the capacity to turn on a 60 W lightbulb for just four hours a day (the International Energy Agency’s scarcely generous definition of “access to electricity”).
According to the WHO, 4 million annually die of particulate pollution from smoke in cooking fires because they lack domestic electrical power and, for the same lack, 500,000 women die in childbirth. These are just two of the many causes of death from lack of access to electricity that kill tens of millions annually. The chief reason why so many cannot turn on a light is not global warming but misconceived policies intended to address what is in reality a non-problem.
More than 90% of all new greenhouse-gas emissions (BP Annual Review of Energy, 2019) are in nations exempt from the Paris agreement, which, after correction of the error of physics, is in any event supererogatory.
You have said China must do more, but China – though it has its own space programme and continues to occupy Tibet by military force – is exempt from Paris on the ground that it is a “developing country”. It is not required to forswear its sins of emission.
Your advocacy of “low-carbon diets” is fashionable but misplaced. Like it or not, we have evolved over 2 million years to eat meat, which can provide all necessary energy, nutrients and vitamins. Yet ill-informed official guidelines on both sides of the Atlantic recommend low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. Those recommendations have demonstrably been the chief cause of the surge in obesity and diabetes in both the UK and the USA. They were abandoned by court order a decade ago in Sweden at the instance of a brave doctor whom the medical authorities had attempted to prosecute because she cured all her diabetes patients by ignoring the guidelines and recommending a high-fat, low-carb diet.
Your advocacy of “renewable” energy is fashionable but misplaced. Using 14th-century technology to address a 21st-century non-problem would be silly enough in itself. What is worse, however, is that “renewables” have not only quadrupled the price of electricity but have also added to CO2 emissions. The chief reason for this apparent paradox is that the more windmills and solar panels are connected to the grid the more grossly-inefficient, CO2-emitting spinning reserve must be maintained in the often vain hope of preventing blackouts when the wind stops or the night falls.
Besides, the trillions that have been squandered on fashionable but misguided attempts to abate greenhouse-gas emissions have made no difference at all. The radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases has increased in a fashion very close to a straight line (the dotted line above) for 40 years.
With respect, The Lancet should study more science and economics, however unfashionable, and peddle less totalitarian politics, however fashionable and profitable – and deadly.
Yours faithfully,
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There is no “Greenhouse Effect”. it is a fantasy. The average temperature over the surface of the Earth does not sit in the middle of the range of 271.3K at the sea ice interface and 305K the maximum possible ocean temperature (average being 288K) by any “Greenhouse Effect” nonsense. It is just the average of the two extremes.
Most people get the lower average – seawater does not exist as liquid below 271.3K. Sea ice is a good insulator so reduces rate of heat loss from the water below.
The other extreme it not as clear but knowing that the atmosphere switches to cloudburst mode when the atmospheric water column reaches 30mm gives a clue. At 38mm water column, daily cloudburst becomes possible and is onserved as monsoon or cyclones at latitudes above 10 degrees where Coriolis acceleration spins up the cloudburst to self-sustaining weather events.
Simply put, the shutters go up once the sea surface reaches 27C and sunlight is effectively blocked as the temperature approaches 32C such that open ocean surface temperature can never exceed 32C. Sunlight reflected rises dramatically above SST of 27C:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg3qPDHvnq-L6w5-5
By 28.5C the net energy into the tropical ocean surface is in decline:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg3vzCCr-yZNwAEVd
So please avoid giving credence to the “Greenhouse Effect” fairy tale.
The Earth is not warming up. The global surface temperature cannot change in century or millennia time scale and does not. This is the temperature data for the Nino34 region for the past 40 years:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg3j-MHBpf4wRGuhf
Zero trend as it must be. There are swings up and down due to ocean circulations but no longer term trend.
Any temperature measurement system that shows a trend across the entire surface is suspect. Look for the flaws in the measurement system. Earth has an exquisite thermostat that has maintained water over the surface for billions of years. Nothing can change that short of a massive asteroid hit. Massive volcanoes cause perturbations that are ironed out over a few years.
As soon as I see someone perpetuating the nonsense of “Greenhouse Effect”, I know they have little understanding of how the energy balance on Earth is maintained to set the surface temperature within a narrow range.
When they measure temperature over land do they accommodate for lapse rate? It’s anywhere between 0.5 to 1 degree C per 100 metres.
Dear Chris Benchley,
A very good telling of reality. Sadly, I don’t think it is very effective outside of rousing this milieu.
How many who commented actually read the depressingly nonsensical editorial it responds to:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32579-4/fulltext
I doubt anyone responsible for writing that editorial want to consider the factuality of their message.
In any case, the editorial is just the most recent fart from the Lancet’s ongoing climate change flatulence:
https://www.thelancet.com/countdown-health-climate
Yours respectively,
Dave of VerdeViews
In response to “verdeviewer”, the late Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP, used to say: “Truth alone is worthy of our entire devotion.” One shuold never tire of telling the truth in the face of falsehood, for in traditional theology the dividing line between an honest attempt to state what is true and a dishonest attempt to state what is false is coterminous with the dividing line between good and evil.
One should never fall silent merely because no one seems to be listening. It is only where those who love the truth fall silent through fear of damage to their reputations from the peddlers of falsehood that the falsehoods prevail.
Monckton of Brenchly: Apologies for fracturing your name, a rudeness inspired more by copious wee drams of Glenmorangie than distaste for aristocracy. Hooray for truth telling! Keep up the good work!
Lord Monckton,
You wrote
“They were abandoned by court order a decade ago in Sweden at the instance of a brave doctor whom the medical authorities had attempted to prosecute because she cured all her diabetes patients by ignoring the guidelines and recommending a high-fat, low-carb diet.”
Any chance you have a reference, or at least the name of said doctor?
Andy,
When googling, try a list of words that might appear on the website you are seaching for.
e.g. Sweden doctor medical authorities prosecute cured diabetes patients high-fat, low-carb diet
gets you to:
http://blog.wellnessfx.com/2013/11/07/sweden-goes-low-carb-high-fat/
Thanks TonyN and Steve Richards
AndyHce, a bit of googling gave this lady who lost her job in 2006. Dr Annika Dahlqvist, a gp, with a strong interest in diet issues has led an interesting life. See here: pop this link into google translate:
https://annikadahlqvist.com/om-dr-annika-dahlqvist/
and read her bio.
I found her from a paper called: Food Fight! The Swedish Low-Carb/High Fat (LCHF) Movement and the Turning of Science Popularisation Against the Scientists
See: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505431.2011.632000
It seems that Sweden’s “Low Carb High Fat” (LCHF) movement is large and strong. Who knew!
Thanks for the links. Being a carnivore myself it is always great to see some countries have, for a period of time, adopted a more sensible approach to dietary suggestions. This may have also helped their numbers of wuflu deaths being so relatively low despite no lockdowns.
Unfortunately the USDA food pyramid for the US 2020 doubles down on loading up the carbs and plant oils, there will be little to no type 2 diabetes ‘remission’ coming from that advice anytime soon. (this is the one fault from Lord Monckton’s submission that in medical terms remission would be more correct for type 2 than cure).
The Lancet hasn’t been reputable pretty much this century. Remember the horrendous Iraq deaths statistical study, claiming 850k deaths, that was beyond mule fritters?
All those banks that scorn the poor, they walk away from coal loans and China walks in as a SAVIOR to put them in debt and in thrall…
China WANTS all the banks to walk away from coal!
I wonder if any one has paid any attention to the REAL effects of dismissing the energy needs of poor countries – if the West shows it could care less and China shows they are happy to “help,” gives free political capital to China over and over again… Already South America is beholden on multiple levels to Chinese debtors and exploiters…
Fortunately, not being a medico or related profession I have no reason to read The Lancet. That said I do remember the utter junk paper it published, without peer review as it wanted to publish ahead of the US Presidentuial election in 2004, about civilian casualties in Iraq post invasion.
The statistical sampling was carried out by locals, for obvious personal security reasons, on ludicrously coarse sampling regime, i.e. a handful of locations including in places like Falluja which were still undergoing massive insurgency events involving tens of thousands of troops and insurgents, and lo and behold a grossed ( grotesqued) up national figure was extrapolated that was many times estimates based on actual counts conducted by the likes of Human Rights Watch.
The admitted reason for not even ‘pal’ review was given as getting in before the US election, i.e. to try and trash George W’s chances. Who would even use the Lancet for toilet paper after that?
Is the sort of schlok that Milord eviscerates herein any real surprise? It seems that is about the level of the Lancet. Perhaps the Lancet board needs to apply that insrument to the boil its own practices have become.
“You have said China must do more, but China – though it has its own space programme and continues to occupy Tibet by military force – is exempt from Paris on the ground that it is a “developing country”. It is not required to forswear its sins of emission.”
Top 10 sea ports:
China 7, USA 0;
Top 10 airports:
China 2, USA 0
Maybe the USA should be the developing country.
US : 700 military bases and an application for a new Pacific center to “counter China”.
Imagine the cost!
China does not have that burden.
While your attempt at using logic and facts to educate them is admirable, there is only one way to stop a hysterical mob of idiots – defund them. We need to convince people to stop contributing to NGO’s that push propaganda as science. We need to stop electing politicians that do not have the common sense to at least ask questions before funding and subsidizing failed technology approaches. We need to shun science journals that allow drivel to be published.
If they want an all electric car world, then it should be upon them to build electric cars worthy to compete and win without subsidies or regulations that force them upon people.
If they want a wind turbine electric grids, then it should be on them to solve for the “intermittent power” problem first, before building anymore turbines and without more subsidies and without drastically raising costs.
And when it becomes obvious they cannot deliver, we should put our efforts into new forms of nuclear energy, and better use of natural gas a efficient fuel for power companies.
In response to Robert of Texas, all the arguments he has mentioned have been tried. But the only way to defeat this nonsense is to show that the notion of global warming large enough to be dangerous is based on the elementary error of science that our team has identified.
HYPOTHESIS: RADICAL GREENS ARE THE GREAT KILLERS OF OUR AGE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., April 14, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
by Joseph d’Aleo and Allan MacRae, September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
As I see it, the “Greenhouse Effect” by predominantly water vapour, is based on a theoretical resistance to radiative transfer from the surface to space based on temperatures of the upper atmosphere as they actually are, i.e. minus 60ºC at the tropopause and minus 18C mid troposphere, which would imply an average surface temperature of 60ºC.
This resistance to direct radiative cooling to space stimulates convection by increasing the near surface lapse rate to become super adiabatic and for convection to begin, sensible heat to within the boundary layer and latent heat above it.
Without convection, solar radiation coupled with this clear sky “greenhouse” radiative resistance would result in much higher daytime surface temperatures very close to the surface.
So any talk of an average surface temperature of minus 18ºC without water vapour and carbon dioxide is a complete misunderstanding of the reality of a pivoting of the thermal gradient around the minus 18ºC midtroposphere temperature by convection which reduces the average surface temperature by 45ºC and moves that extra sensible and latent heat into the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere for dispersal from the equator to the poles.
“large variations in column‐integrated water vapor above 850 mbar and particularly above 500 mbar account for nearly all the gradient in the greenhouse effect in the middle and upper troposphere. Coincident outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) analyses derived from satellite observations show active deep convection in areas with high clear‐sky greenhouse trapping and upper level moisture and generally clear, suppressed conditions elsewhere.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94JD02323
Thank you m’lord for the splendid summary. It is good news to hear that you have a way of leaning on Boris. He does seem to respond to being leaned on. Please use it to good effect. And don’t tell anybody else what it is, until after it has worked.
Are the editors of the Lancet real doctors, or are they green/red entryists of the usual enthusiastic Gramscian kind? Or, I suppose, both?
Shouldn’t the letter better be addressed to Mr. Horton, Lancet Editor-in-Chief?
He has a mixed record, being virulently AGW, while slamming the US and UK for delaying COVID measures, praising China for getting it’s act together.
This very same Horton delayed 12 years to retract Andrew Wakefield’s study, linking the measles vaccine to autism. He only took weeks to retract the Lancet Surgisphere HCQ hoax.
In response to Bonbon, the letter was of course sent to Horton.
Lord Monckton, on first thought, I was going to humbly and respectfully request that you send a copy of your above letter to Mr. John Kerry, US President-elect Joe Biden’s person designated to be his administration’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (aka “climate czar”).
But upon further reflection I realized that both Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry were in the class having the mentality of “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up”, and that such action by you would be futile.
The only high-level US politician that can think of who may be receptive to the facts that you eloquently summarize and present would be current Senator Ted Cruz, Republican representing the State of Texas. He is somewhat famous for his performance in verbally demolishing the global warming position of the Sierra Club via persistent questioning of its then-president Aaron Mair in a US Senate hearing on October 6, 2015.
Here’s the link to the video (which I highly recommend to you, if you have not previously watched it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9-tY1oZNw&list=FLMCbHeNDDa-ixzv4Pdk1HNg&index=542
And here’s the link to the transcript of the audio, taken off the video:
http://www.globalwarming.org/2015/10/07/sierra-club-presidents-testimony-reveals-its-worse-than-we-thought-climate-change-no-group-think-about-climate-change/
The list of banks fills me with anger and despair, but it points to an enormous opportunity for enterprising financial institutions that aren’t on the global warming bandwagon. Are any Western banks taking advantage of this, or has the entire field been left open to China?
Can we try to persuade governments that the same kind of procedures, audits, certifications that apply to many areas of our lives, particularly products should apply to climate science?
I think the problem is few people will listen to alternative views on climate because in their view we’re in a climate emergency and must persuade the world to act because the apparent consensus of experts cannot possibly be wrong, sceptics are not qualified and are either stupid or deliberately trying to cast doubt and cause delay because they are being paid to or don’t want to change their lifestyles. Even if we could get through I imagine many will still not change, afraid of the consequences to them of questioning the apparent consensus and approved experts.
So I think we need to first show why all the above is wrong and dangerous:
My concern is that rather than being a win/win situation if we have the science wrong we are in a very dangerous position because we do not adequately understand longrange weather/climate and don’t know what real dangers lie ahead.
In many other high consequence areas of everyday life we have a system to avoid dangerous mistakes and give us confidence, like food hygiene certificates, kite marks for household goods, a wide system of procedures, independent audit, certification for aviation etc. From what I can make out little or none of this applies to climate science which to my mind is also producing a product of very high consequence if it fails. We would not accept lack of this in the examples above, so why climate science where the stakes are very high?
I think the relatively recent 737Max issue may be a good example, I may have it wrong, but think the problem was the FAA failed to remain independent of Boeing and failed to correct their inadequate use of procedures. The apparent consensus of experts seemed convinced the plane was safe. I think this example shows that despite our best efforts and intentions, however impossible it may seem the apparent consensus of experts can be wrong. If we do not have a suitable system, or in this case if it fails there are likely to be disastrous consequences for everyone. Shows the importance of learning the right lessons from mistakes (e.g. aircrash investigations), procedures, independent audit, certifications. In these kinds of engineering situations we also have many supplier/customer interactions where many of the customers will also be large engineering companies who need to be sceptical their suppliers product will do what it says on the tin which I think also greatly improves reliability.
I am not sure the current science system is the right kind of system to develop this kind of important product (understanding longrange weather/climate) with such massive implications for us all both if it is right or wrong; I think engineering works quite differently.
I presume much of the above mentioned procedures, audits, certification etc (e.g. food safety, household appliance, aviation etc) comes from governments; can we try to persuade governments that the same should apply to climate science? This is about getting the decisions right, avoiding dangerous mistakes.
I need some data on the actual service life of wind turbines before failure/replacement. Anyone got a decent source… Google-Fu has failed me…