Summary of pro and con comments about presenting all sides of CAGW (John Shanahan)

Scientists, engineers and professionals in many fields have wide ranging views either supporting nuclear power, are against it, support use of fossil fuels, are against it, think that carbon dioxide from use of fossil fuels will cause Catastrophic Anthropogenic (manmade) Global Warming, CAGW, may cause some warming, are confident that fossil fuels will not cause CAGW. Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy - USA define "environmentalists" as people who respect the environment. In discussions about serious global warming and all related topic on carbon dioxide from use of fossil fuels, we present papers, PowerPoint Presentations and videos from authors on most sides of the discussion so our viewers can be informed and decide for themselves.

Here are examples of comments by scientists from all sides about Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy - USA's efforts to present documents by people holding different views.

These comments come from people currently or previously associated with the University of Connecticut, University of Colorado, Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University, Stanford University and several universities in Europe.

page 1

Here are comments about our policy to present documents from all sides of CAGW / Climate Change issue: 1) Critical of presenting documents from all sides of CAGW / Climate Change Issue. a) Preposterous. b) Do you want Earth's climate to become like that of Venus? c) Deliberately ignorant. d) 97% of the experts have formed a consensus that CAGW / man-made Climate Change is real.

page 2

2) Supportive of presenting documents from all sides of CAGW / Climate Change Issue. a) Most scientists agree that CO2 from fossil fuels will cause some global warming.

Many think this will be minor compared to natural factors causing climate change. b) Because of groupthink, the average academic scientist is more ignorant about climate physics than much of the general public.

Should the topic come up again, you might mention that for most of the past 550 million years of the Phanerozoic, when multicellular life left a good fossil record, the earth's CO2 levels were much higher than now, four times, even ten times. Yet life flourished on land and in the oceans.

During the Phanerozoic, the Earth never came close to the conditions of Venus. I would hope that the professor realizes the radius of Venus's orbit is only 72% of the radius of Earth's orbit. Since the solar flux scales inversely as the square of the radius, Venus receives about twice as much solar flux, 2637 W/m^2 than the Earth's 1367 W/m^2. According to the IPCC, doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, would be the equivalent of about 15 W/m^2 additional solar flux, nearly 100 times less than the addition Venus gets from being closer to the Sun. In addition, the surface pressure on Venus is about 90 times that of the Earth, and there is plenty of convection so there is intense compressional heating of the surface air, not unlike the heating during the compression stroke of a Diesel engine. It is the much larger solar flux, convection and high surface pressure that makes the surface of Venus so hot.

Little solar flux reaches the surface of Venus and most solar heating occurs above 50 km, in the sulfuric-acid clouds, and above, where the pressures and temperatures are about the same as those above the Earth's surface. Venus actually absorbs a smaller fraction of sunlight than Earth, and scatters more from its clouds. That is one of the reasons that Venus is such a lovely morning or evening "star."

But none of these nerdy details about Earth/Venus differences matter since the Earth has already experimented with much more CO2 than now, and the biosphere loved it.

Burning all the economically available fossil fuel is unlikely to increase the current atmospheric CO2 levels by even a factor of 2. This is much less than the levels that the Earth has already tested. And a doubled level of CO2 would get us away from the near-famine levels for plants that have prevailed for the past tens of millions of years. c) Was just out at McDonald Observatory and spent an hour looking at the sun with various instruments and filters. The sun was very quiet, with very few sun spots. page 3

d) An email received today included in its thread one from someone saying this: This morning I got out my little toy telescope and watched Mercury transiting the Sun. The striking fact was not the little black image of Mercury but the total absence of sunspots. I have seen many transits before this one, but never without sunspots. It seems the sun has gone to sleep as it did in the Maunder Minimum in the seventeenth century. In the seventeenth century we had the Little Ice Age and now we have the pause in global warming. Evidence getting stronger that the Sun is a big player in the climate story.

The CAGW alarmists’ knee-jerk response would be to say, “Obviously that’s not by a serious scientist. Only a scientific ignoramus could have written something that goes contrary to the 97% consensus that catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming is real and we must, absolutely must, spend $$$Trillion$$$ to mitigate it, even if that means trapping billions in poverty for generations to come.”

Except the one who said it was—                      



English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, a Visitor of Ralston College, member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1952, awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1966, Max Planck Medal in 1969, J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1970, Harvey Prize in 1977, in the 1984–85 academic year delivered the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, which resulted in the book Infinite In All Directions, in 1989 taught at Duke University as a Fritz London Memorial Lecturer, in the same year was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, has published a number of collections of speculations and observations about technology, science, and the future, in 1996 was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, in 1993 was given the Enrico Fermi Award, in 1995 gave the Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sponsored jointly by the Hebrew University and Harvard University Press that grew into the book Imagined Worlds, page 4

  

in 2000 was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, in 2003 was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado, and in 2011, received as one of twenty distinguished Old Wykehamists at the Ad Portas celebration, the highest honour that Winchester College bestows— and altogether one of the world’s most (justly) famous mathematicians/physicists

e) This morning I got out my telescope and watched Mercury transiting the Sun. The striking fact was not the little black image of Mercury but the total absence of sunspots. I have seen many transits before this one, but never without sunspots. It seems the sun has gone to sleep as it did in the Maunder Minimum in the seventeenth century. In the seventeenth century we had the Little Ice Age and now we have the pause in global warming. Evidence getting stronger that the Sun is a big player in the climate story. f) We’re on track to become like Venus. All we have to do is burn enough fossil fuel to go from a half-thousandth of an atmosphere of CO2 to 90 atmospheres of CO2, and move 26 million miles closer to the sun. What’s a factor of 180,000 and a short space ride among friends? g) About Venus, see here: http://nova.stanford.edu/projects/mgs/profile.html It provides the temp vs height and pressure vs height of Venus atmosphere, measured by, if I remember right, the 1994 Pioneer mission that descended into Venus’ atmosphere and sent the data back.

At about 50 km height the pressure on Venus is 1000 mbar ~ 1 atm, and temp is 340K i.e. 17% higher than earth’s 290K. After correcting for Venus vs Earth distance to the Sun using the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship, it turns out that Venus temp is equivalent to Earth temp where both have the same pressure, ie on Venus at ~50km and on Earth at 0 km.

The details of the Stefan-Boltzmann calcs are here, it is the basic physics story : http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html Earth has N2 and O2 making up 99% and Venus has 96% CO2 .

I.o.w. CO2 behaves the same as our N2 and O2 which are not greenhouse gases. Ergo CO2 is not a ghg either.

To first order, the temp is determined by the mass of the atmosphere. Then there are 2nd and higher order effects that provide all sorts of variations that send the alarmists howling.

Now don’t be too impressed with Harry Huffman, in other respects he is a complete crank. He believes in unbelievable nonsense in other areas, which is, I think, why he is page 5

shunned even by skeptics. At one stage I got in email correspondence with him and he surprised me with what I consider ‘Aberglauben’ . Forgot what it was, would have to go back to the emails themselves. But his Venus story makes sense.

Venus is not hot due to greenhouse action but because it has retained much more atmosphere. Which in itself is surprising seeing that both planets are equally old, and Venus is a tad lighter in mass. My guess is that Venus outgassed more than Earth did because its density is lower, it is less densely packed. Our outgassing was mostly H2O which could condense at the available surface temp, and also CO2 which found its way into calcites and – later, via forests – into coal. (**) all numbers above from memory, Huffman has the correct numbers.

page 6