Matthew Courtney,
Sad to announce that Richard S Courtney died on Monday 30th September 2024, the day before his 78th birthday, at his home in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. He had been suffering from the effects of cancer and its treatment for a long time. Coincidentally, this was the day the last coal-fired power station in the UK was shutdown.
In better health, he had been active on this website from the early days. He managed he full gamut of interactions, from authoring an article to getting banned for a while. It is clear that many people here disagreed with his views, but he valued debate and always enjoyed robust interactions. I know that he viewed many here as online fronds and would want you all to know of his passing.
For those who came to this website after he was too ill to comment here, he is of note as the First Sceptic of AGW. The story behind that claim is as follows.
He had worked his way up to Head of Research for the Coal Board in the UK. Back in the early 1980s, the EEC was pushing to put heavy levies on coal to pay for acid rain. France, which had nuclear power stations, saw this as being fair and just and economically advantageous to them. It was Richard S Courtney who first mapped the prevailing winds and the affected forests and determined that most acid rain in Europe was caused by fertilised runoff in river deltas – causing algal blooms and so sulphates. France had no desire to annoy the farming lobby, so the EU legislation went away, with some demands for SOx scrubbers replacing the tariffs.
The Coal Board then asked him what would be the next green scare that could adversely impact industry? He researched and found this obscure theory of Arrhenius that had been rejected as an immeasurably small effect for most of a century. But it could be the next Acid Rain. And it could be even bigger than Acid Rain as everything creates CO2. He warned against the AGW scare before the miner’s strike, before Chernobyl and before Thatcher had reason to promote the anti-fossil fuel (or rather anti-coalminers) movement, 5 years later.
He went on to contribute to IPCC reports and to publish papers on energy and the environment. As well as being a technical editor of the journal, ‘Energy and Environment’.
He is survived by children, grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
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Thanks to Antony and Charles TM for sharing this news.
The typos (“fronds”) are mine.
I rather like being considered a Frond.
Sad news.
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”― Mark Twain
Very sad to hear, I learned a lot from him just reading what he had to say here and being admonished from time to time by him when I said something stupid. Thoughts and prayers for a great man and his wonderful family.
My experience too. I had many interactions with him on here years ago – all positive. Including the times he educated me, and the times he thanked me for educating him on some esoteric things I knew.
You had a great father.
Praying for you and yours.
20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. (1Corinthians 15:20-26 KJV)
19 In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul. (Psalm 94:19 KJV)
You’ll see your dad again
Dear Matt,
Thank you for letting us know and with such generous detail.
Now, instead of praying for your dad (for he is (being a firm believer in Jesus as his Savior), I have no doubt, in heaven where the “serious business” is “joy” — C. S. Lewis), I will be praying for you and all those who will be missing him deeply until you see him again.
With heartfelt sympathy,
Janice
P.S. You coined a cool new noun: “frond” — A friend of whom one is especially fond.
Frond: a fern ally. 🙂
Good to see you, Janice. 🙂
Good to see you, Pat. 🙂
Thank you for the prayers and best wishes, JM and PF.
Death of a close family member is not a desirable situation.
But, it’s terribly true that the paper work is worse than the emotional impact.
Richard was a true scientist and a great bloke.
As Group Civil Engineer in the twilight years of the British Coal industry, he was able to assist me with his expertise on several occasions.
A pity that more members of senior management in the industry failed to stand up against the tsunami of green nonsense.
My sincere condolences.
I might have been a bit clearer.
I was the Group Civil Engineer. (Good Honours degree in Civil and Structural Engineering and a Chartered Engineer.)
Richard was the renouned scientist who was able to confirm (or correct!) my thoughts on technical issues. And also suggest approaches to deal with various attacks on coal as an affordable, reliable and indigenous energy resource after the Miners’ Strike 1984-1985.
Very sorry to hear this. Amazing prescience on AGW. He will be missed.
I’m sorry to hear of his passing and long illness. We didn’t often agree, and he often said so forcefully, but I felt that he was always commenting in good faith. He was a valuable member of the site.
What an admirable comment from Nick. Whatever he says in his comments he never resorts to personal abuse. It’s a pity that some of those who disagree with him can’t follow his example.
Amen to that. I find the name-calling off-putting.
I am broadly in sympathy with this website but I agree strongly about name-calling and personal abuse and I quickly stop reading the threads in which it occurs. It’s a pity the current format allows down-voting. Some contributors’ posts, including Nick’s, are routinely heavily down-voted regardless of content.
I agree too, and have been driven to installing Ublock Origin to screen out the worst offenders, and it makes reading the comment threads much better. I am currently blocking bnice2000, myusername and thefinalnail and that has taken care of 85% of it.
Just add the following to your custom filters in Ublock:
wattsupwiththat.com##.comment-author-AUTHORNAME
eg:
wattsupwiththat.com##.comment-author-bnice2000
Thanks to Nick for helping get this right!
Make sure to use the raw html version of the name. You can see it by clicking on the author name if it is a link. So in the above, for instance, you would screen on ‘myusername’ and not ‘MyUsername’. If it fails to work, the most likely explanation is that you are not using the raw html name. If the name is not a link you can use it as it appears.
Peace at last!
I’m always conflicted about policiies of platform-wide blocking / censoring of any utterances.
I think it’s better if individuals just make their own judgements about what they choose to ignore or engage with.
But nobody has to agree with my opinion on this, because opinions are like whazoos- everybody’s got one.
For purposes of persuasion, it is not enough to know what it is that people think. One must also know how and why people think what it is they think.
IMHO, bnice2000, myusername and thefinalnail represent modes of thinking that are widely prevalant outside of WUWT and the skeptic community.
Whatever commentary these people post supplies a useful insight into what climate activists are currently thinking; and to some extent, useful insights concerning how and why these people think what it is they think.
When I read their comments, this is what I take from them: what it is they are thinking, and how and why they are thinking it.
Maybe Michel is afraid that if we all continue reading and considering comments from those in “the naughty corner”, we’ll all soon catch the Stockholm Syndrome?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
Just saying, I don’t wish to associate with these people and won’t let their comments onto my screen. Not proposing banning them from the site. Others can make up their own minds and do or not do as I have.
Replies to their comments are also blocked by the Ublock filter.
Try it, you’ll find it improves the reading experience no end.
Applied on X, it would probably block 90% of all comments.
Michel, I confess that I sometimes need a hit of masochism.
For example, I read articles at The Guardian sometimes.
(after I swat away all their pop-ups begging me to send them money of course 🙂 )
“Peace at last!”
And ignorance maintains your bliss. !!
Such a sad and pathetic little child.
I agree with you Nick. He had a rather bombastic approach if you disagreed with him, but never felt the need to descend to personal abuse. I remember even having a heated exchange with him over the value of teaching people to speak Cornish !!
And thanks to Michel in the comments lower down for an easy way to block the site’s most puerile commenter. I find if I see he/she/it has left the usual string of playground insults, I tend not to read the intervening comments, and skip straight to the next article. That tip will make this site a more pleasurable experience
I always enjoyed reading his articles which were stimulating and the back and forth in the comments was often very informative. It is always sad when another of our generation shuffles off. Go well Richard Courtney.
Ja. I remember him. We had interesting discussions. As far as I remember, we mostly agreed….
Sorry to hear of his passing. My condolences to Matthew & the family.
Condolences to the author and to the family.
“He researched and found this obscure theory of Arrhenius that had been rejected as an immeasurably small effect for most of a century.”
The IR absorbing and emitting properties of CO2 were never in serious dispute. But Arrhenius promoted the misconception that the static incremental radiative effect of rising CO2 concentration must be expected to result in “warming” of the surface – i.e. the accumulation of energy as sensible heat on land and in the oceans. Callendar in 1938, Manabe in the ’60s, the Charney Report in the ’70s, Hansen in the ’80s took this misconception and made it look credible. It was never a sound idea from the start.
Sure, the static incremental radiative effect “impedes cooling.” But it also promotes the general circulation by improving the atmosphere’s active response to daytime surface heating. What will be the net result after all the energy conversion and overturning circulation in the atmosphere? The well-established dynamics of the general circulation, and satellite observations of longwave emission to space, help us grasp that emissions of CO2 and other non-condensing GHGs are simply not capable of driving any “climate” metric – warming of land & ocean & atmosphere, storms, flooding, heat waves, droughts – most certainly not to any harmful extent.
It may take a few more years or decades, but the early misconception and the more recent amplified narrative of climate harm from CO2 will inevitably end up back in obscurity. I keep posting about this to help expose and explain the core error.
[ If you are interested, please see more here at this Youtube channel I set up. Please read the full text description at each short time-lapse video.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8vhRIT-3uaLhuaIZq2FuQ ]
In other words, it is the sun and clouds (water vapor) that control atmospheric temperature.
Pretty much, yes. It cannot be otherwise and make any sense at all about what is happening in plain sight.
And the oceans are the heat sink.
David,
Just as I was seldom if ever in disagreement with Richard Courtney – condolences to his family – you and I are seldom far apart on the science.
It is shameful that any effort, let alone large effort, goes into silencing and demonization of sceptics. In time, after the reality becomes obvious to activists, I do not expect to read any apologies from those who have badly affected the course and the reputation of hard science by doing such a poor job with climate science.
Geoff S
Thank you for this reply, Geoff. I hope you are feeling better.
My condolences to you and your family. People who contribute science to this website should be respected and encouraged.
Story tip
FARAGE SLAMS LABOUR PLAN TO IMPORT RENEWABLES FROM NORTH KOREA AND AFGHANISTAN
https://order-order.com/2024/10/11/farage-slams-labour-plan-to-import-renewables-from-north-korea-and-afghanistan/
An AGW visionary. He was probably tagged a “conspiracy theorist” back in the day and like many conspiracy theorists he’s being proved correct.
Sad news. I remember him being pretty straight in his comments. Could never question his passion or ability to express himself fully on a topic.
His replies could get … fiery, but I can’t recall them every getting personal.
(He also appreciated and had a sense of humor.)
Sad news. I had many conversations with Richard here on WUWT. Richard’s thoughts here were always acute and always complete.
He also was also the technical editor of my submitted manuscripts at Energy & Environment.
For a very long time, E&E was the only journal where one could reliably anticipate a fair review of a submitted climate manuscript.
Richard and Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (E-in-C at E&E) were true heroes of open science in a time when the AGW narrative was protected elsewhere.
Peace at journey’s end, Richard.
Also, I didn’t know Richard was such a good-looking guy.
Of course he was.
He has my genes.
🙂
Shoulda known. 🙂
I was definitely thrilled when he posted a number of posts at my old climate forum (Globalwarmingskeptics.info) one of his comments garnered over 100,000 views and a couple others over 25,000 views maybe more but the forum has been gone for 6 years now.
The wayback machine is temporarily offline, thus can’t show what he talks about there but remember his talk about the word Coherence in science research.
I have missed his absence of the last several years as he was unusually clear in his comments in what he wanted to elucidate about something that can be easily understood.
Rest well in peace, Richard!
The great loss of a great man. But I have a fun Courtney story. Back when the IPCC Third Assessment Report came out I wrote a piece about it titled “The IPCC’s Artful Bias.” It is still laying about here:
http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc.htm
So Richard made a bunch of copies and took them to an IPCC meeting. When everyone was out he put a copy at every person’s place. He waited until they returned and the consternation built but left before being thrown out or worse.
His boldness still makes me laugh.
David
Really nice piece of work, David. It’s no surprise that Richard served it up to the IPCC delegates. Following that exposure, any scientist among them remaining unmoved would be reduced to lying.
Your section “The problem of errors in the surface temperature record.” is very acute and prescient, anticipating everything I found about uncertainty and measurement error and the incompetence of the record compilers.
I always enjoyed reading the posts made here by Richard S Courtney. My condolences to the family, he will be missed.
I’m so sorry to hear this news. Richard was early inspiration for me, here on WUWT. He was well able to stand his ground.
My sincere sympathies to his family and friends at this sad time. May he rest in peace.
I am very sorry to hear this news.
I learned a lot from Richard.
I am so sorry to hear about Richard Courtney. He was a very knowledgeable person about climate and his contributions to putting out climate hysteria fires in the UK and elsewhere was invaluable. He was in our climate realist group for years and we were very happy to have had the exchanges of information he shared with us and that we shared with him.
RIP, Richard, you so deserve it.
I was unaware of his background. I just regarded him as one of the sensible voices to be found here that make the site worth reading and contributing to. Now I understand why he was such an important voice. Thank you for giving him the obituary he deserves. Condolences, and may we continue to learn from his contribution and example.
Very sad news. We had some odd arguments, and I doubt we agreed on most things, but they were entertaining, and his contributions will be missed.