Man-Made Global Warming?

by Anthony Bright-Paul

The question is simple: Is there such a thing as man-made or Anthropogenic (created or caused by man) Global Warming?

I am moved to deal once again with this question and in the simplest terms possible, because of two conversations I have had over the phone with two of my oldest friends. I first met Simon Penseney and Rachman Mitchell in 1950 at Coombe Springs where we were studying the Gurdjieff methods under J.G.Bennett. We were there for the arrival of Subud in the person of Bapak and Ibu, Icksan and Ismana in 1957, an account of which is given in my book “My Stairway to Subud” and we have remained friends to this day.

Now the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics states quite simply that all heat, by itself, flows from hot to cold and never vice versa. When I put this to Simon, he replied that he knew that very well as a mechanical engineer. And the truth is that we all know this law very well – we all know that everything that is hot also cools. Everything. All heat has to be generated. Nothing gets hot by itself, but by itself everything cools.

We humans are a great example of just that. We take in Carbon in the form of food, we mix it with Oxygen, which we inhale, to produce energy and we exhale Carbon Dioxide, all 7 Billion of us every day of our lives and every minute of the day. All combustion works on the same principle – there must be Oxygen to allow combustion and the result is Carbon Dioxide. Does Dr Rachman agree? Can there then be too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as some would have it? Hardly, since green leaves and phytoplankton love CO2. As it is said, leaves are busy. Green leaves take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen as a by-product. This is a well-known biological fact. What is not so well known is it that the enormous masses of the many different types of phytoplankton in the oceans are also actively producing Oxygen. This is the great carbon cycle, produced by Great Nature! So where does the warmth on this earth come from? We all know the answer to that. There is a great star in our sky that we call the Sun. It is between 91 and 95 million miles away. Outside the atmosphere of this Earth of ours there is Outer Space. Is Outer Space hot? The answer is no, but why not? Since Outer Space is nearer to the Sun, it should by all logic be hot. But it is not. Some people say that it is very cold. But it is neither hot nor cold, and the reason is that it is a vacuum. A vacuum is by definition empty. There is therein nothing to get either hot or cold.

This provides us with a principle. The Sun radiates and this radiation has to encounter something for that something to get hot. Radiation has to encounter mass to produce heat.

We can all observe that there is snow on the top of high mountains. Even if we walk up a mountain it is demonstrably colder near the summit. If one drives in the Alps one can ascend past the snowline, as I myself have done on the way to winter skiing. Without chains I once made a very hairy journey I will never forget, and how thankful I was not to have slithered over the edge on this mountain pass. So everybody knows from simple observation that it gets colder with altitude. Everybody who flies and watches the monitor can see how very cold it is outside at 30,000 feet. Why is this, when one is flying nearer to the Sun?

Standard Atmosphere used by Airlines states that temperature decreases some 2° Centigrade for every thousand feet of altitude. This is also known as the Adiabatic Lapse rate. So if for example the temperature at ground level is 15°C it will be 13°C 1,000 feet up. At 5,000 feet up it will be 5°C, and at 10,000 it will be minus 5 degrees Centigrade. That means that the temperature of all the gases of which air is composed at that height will be minus 5 degrees C. So what is air composed of? It is 99% a mixture of Oxygen and Nitrogen, with the other 1% made up of what are wrongly called the Greenhouse Gases, which includes Water Vapour, by far the largest part, and less than 0.04 % of Carbon Dioxide.

The simple question is this: If the air temperature is minus 5 degrees, what will the temperature of the carbon dioxide be? You have it in one. It will also be the same, minus 5°C. If the ground level is 15°C, what will be the temperature of the carbon dioxide? Right, it will also be 15 degrees C.

So here we see clearly that the temperature at the Earth’s surface is always warmer than the air at altitude. So let me ask you a question. Can the air at say 1,000 feet up heat the air at the surface or even heat the surface itself? Of course it cannot, bearing in mind that heat always by itself flows from hot to cold. Heat is never trapped; it is always flowing. There is no way that a cold air could possibly heat a warmer surface. That is obvious, is it not?  It would defy a fundamental law of Physics.

Yet there are learned Professors who would have you believe that heat can be somehow back radiate from clouds, or that tiny molecules of Carbon Dioxide, which are perhaps below freezing and invisible to the human eye can somehow radiate every which way including downwards toward the Earth’s surface.  And some people are taken in by this manifest fraud, not less some people among us all in the Subud Brotherhood. Just test it for yourselves. Can a cold object warm a hotter object? Let me know if it can.

Once we have established this, we have to ask ourselves what warms the air?  It is all too easy to think that the air temperature is caused by the Sun. But reflect one moment. If the air temperature were caused by the Sun, then the top of our atmosphere would be the warmest place and not the coldest. The top of mountains would be hot and the valleys would be cold. But that is simply not the case. What is the explanation?

We have to go back again to: – Radiation has to encounter Mass to produce heat. If we sit out in the summer sun, we will get hot, we may get sunburnt. Why? Because you and I are substantial, we are mass. In the same way, the radiation from the sun encounters the earth and the oceans and lakes – and thus Radiation encounters mass and produces heat. The heat of the Earth and the Oceans warms the atmosphere and not the other way round.

Once we understand this many things become clear. The Sun heats the Earth through radiation, and the Earth heats the atmosphere.

The Global Warmers believe that Carbon Dioxide and indeed all so-called greenhouse gases trap heat and thereby cause Global Warming. But can heat be trapped? If I put on my oven within half an hour the temperature is raised to 250C, that is, while the power is on. Once the power is off no more heat is generated. The heat disperses into the surrounding air. Heat is never trapped.

The same occurs with a Glasshouse. The radiation from the Sun passes through the transparent glass, as it does through transparent Oxygen and Nitrogen, and heats the ground within. The air is warmed by conduction and convection. The temperature rises as the air is confined in the enclosed space. Is the heat trapped? Not at all. All heat has to be generated. Once the Sun goes down the heat disperses. Heat cannot be trapped.

If heat could be trapped we would all be able to walk around carrying a box with permanent heat inside, like an everlasting hot water bottle. What a boon that would be for old age pensioners, for industry or for mountaineers!

So the question arises, Is the Globe Warming?  I hope so! As the Earth is rotating on its axis and travelling on an elliptical course round the Sun, one half of the Earth at any moment in time is in shadow and the other half is in sunlight. As the Sun rises we get warmer and as night falls we get cooler. That much is obvious to a simpleton. And as the Earth is tilted on its axis and also wobbles, the Milankovich Effect, so we also have the seasons. While it is winter in the UK it is summer in New Zealand. Is this daily and seasonal warming caused by man or by Great Nature? Take your pick, but I have never yet heard the greenest of the Greens claim that Man was affecting the annual journey round the Sun.

In addition to the lunar month and the annual trip round the Sun we also have the great cycles of Ice Ages and Warm Periods. The Holocene Maximum that was said to have lasted 3,000 years was a huge Warm Period. Much more recently we had the Roman Warm Period and most recently the Mediaeval Warm Period. This was followed by The Little Ice Age from which we have been emerging since about 1650. Did man cause these Ice Ages? Or did man cause the subsequent warming?

Much is made of the so-called evidence of warming. For example, every year the Arctic sea-ice recedes in summer and forms again in winter. Is this caused by man? Since the temperature even in summer only hovers above zero then it is clear that any melting cannot possibly be caused by the atmosphere. Indeed since we already know that radiation has to encounter mass to produce heat, we know that the cold air immediately above the ice could not possibly cause the melting. There is only one possible answer and that is warm water. As the Sun shines on the Equator and the Tropics the ocean waters are warmed and great ocean currents head North and South. In the Northern Hemisphere we have the Gulf Stream, which also tends to keep the UK mild. In addition there are the untold number of great Black Smokers, hydrothermal vents, spewing hot water at some 500C into the old abyss.

This brings us to another fact, which is that the core of the Earth is hot. How do we know this? Very simply by volcanic eruptions throwing up rivers of red-hot lava; by geysers throwing up boiling water and by the above-mentioned hydrothermal vents. Nobody that I know of has yet claimed that man has caused the internal heat of the Earth. And yet we still have a substantial body of people who hold a sort of religious belief that Man is causing Global Warming and thereby causing the Climate of the Earth to change.

In order to discuss this sensibly and calmly without rancour it is first of all necessary to define what we mean by the term Globe. Do we include the core of the Earth? Do we include the depths of the Oceans? Do we include the Troposphere, the Stratosphere, the Mesosphere and the Thermosphere? The Thermosphere at some 25 miles up is come minus 80C. and yet at the Harmon line on the edge of Space there are a few hot molecules, so I understand.  The Globe is a mighty complicated spinning sphere hurtling through space. Could man possibly be warming it up with a trace gas, CO2, which is itself the result and not the cause of combustion, and whose temperature varies with altitude? I leave that question to my good friends in the Subud Brotherhood. If in doubt, perhaps they might test that very question.

Leaving aside for one moment the vexed question of whether man is causing warming or changes in climate let us look at the graphs so beloved of  ‘scientists’. Some of these graphs show warming and then cooling. When there is cooling as per a recent graph published in the Daily Mail, then the Sceptics crow and the Guardian replies that a 12 year cooling is just a blip. But what is the Reality?

The reality is that there is no single place on Planet Earth where a thermometer and a Stephenson Screen could be set up to take the Earth’s temperature. Is there? Here is a copy of the opening of an email I had from a Canadian scientist:

The surface area of the Earth is 510 million square kilometers and each km² contains 10,000m² and each m² can change in temperature from second to second with 3600 changes per hour, 86,400 changes per day, 2,600,000 changes per month, and 950,000,000 changes over the course of a year so there is in fact a global temperature but it is impossible to measure!

Do you get that?  On each square metre, on the very square metre my friend on which you are presently standing there are 3,600 changes of temperature an hour. Mind-boggling. Temperature everywhere, at every level, is changing because the Earth is rotating. Temperature is in a constant state of flux. So scientists do produce magnificent graphs of warming and cooling, but when challenged as to how they produce their figures they are inclined to be coy. We all know that Dr Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit, which works closely with the Met Office, inexplicably lost his datasets when challenged under the Freedom of Information Act. Of course he was absolved from any wrongdoing. I myself often mislay my spectacles.

Since Global temperature is impossible to measure, then what follows? I leave that to my Subud friends, trusting in their intellectual integrity! Ha.

Unfortunately the beliefs inspired by the Anthropogenic Global Warmers, many of whom sincerely want to preserve the environment, have lead to its mass destruction. While we may agree that coal fired Power Stations are often ugly, and areas of nodding donkeys likewise, few things compare to the wholesale destruction of our beauty spots, cliff tops and mountainsides than the proliferation of Wind Turbines. Were they efficient at producing electricity they might be forgiven, but since they have to be backed up by ordinary gas or coal fired power stations, and since they take up some 1,000 times the acreage of an average Power Station, there is little to be said for them except they ruin the environment.  And yet those who consider themselves Environmentalists push them, even though they slaughter raptors in droves and their drone makes life impossible. They are so inefficient that Governments have to subsidise them, which leads to fuel poverty for more and more people here in the UK. While Ministers wring their hands and blame the suppliers for having complicated tariffs, not everyone realises that the suppliers of gas and electricity are obliged to take up power from these same inefficient sources, so that everyone has to pay twice.

Perhaps the worst scenario occurs in the United States, where large amounts of corn are used to create bio-fuels in the name of ‘carbon-free’ fuel. In view of the starving peoples in some areas of the world, some might consider this a modern day sin against the Holy Ghost. What do you think?

October 2012
Copyright 2012 Anthony Bright-Paul

Global Temperature Changes

This Chart appeared recently in the Daily Mail (16^th October 2012) with an article by David Rose, whom I much admire, to the acclaim of many sceptics.

However, a word of warning! In spite of the 3,000 weather stations from which these figures were derived, nevertheless is there such a thing as Global Temperature? Clearly there is not.

As I sit writing, the temperature in Farnborough is advancing. It is not yet noon. But what is the Global Temperature in the United States, where the Sun is barely rising, where it is night in California, still in darkness. Is the temperature in Liverpool the same as my temperature here? Not at all. In the Isle of Man, where I often holiday, an island that is barely 30 miles long, the weather and the temperature in the south of that small island varies. Is the temperature at Ramsay in the North the same as at the Calf of Man? Not likely!

People are very easily taken in by this Global Temperature business. The fact is that there is not one point on the Earth that you could place a thermometer in a Stephenson screen and take the temperature. Even if you could, just imagine how do you get the average temperature of one day; then one week, then one month and then one year. And that is of just one single static place.

The fact is that it is impossible for any man to be in every place on this Earth all at once, in any one moment. Imagine if you like, that you were God and were able to be in every place at once and in every moment of Time; Past, Present and Future. It is inconceivable!

But scientists say, I hear you cry! What do scientists say? Care to read it up, and see how everything is actually measured?  You can get a pretty good picture if you plough through all the material available on Google. There is our friend Dr Phil Jones at the Climatic Research Unit, whom you may remember from the Climategate emails. He was absolved from any wrongdoing, but unfortunately mislaid a lot of data. Not that it would have mattered too much.

But what were these gentlemen measuring? That is the point. Until we know what they were measuring and at what time of day and so on, any average that they present is completely meaningless. Mostly they are taking near surface temperatures, contrasting them with what they consider a norm and producing a figure.

Well, do you as a layman consider that 3,000 stations cover the whole Globe?  They are just pinpricks on the surface. But the surface is uneven. Let us take say Lhasa and Kathmandu, which are fairly high up and average that with Calcutta and the delta of the Ganges. As soon as you think about it seriously you can see what room there is for scientific chicanery.

But is that all? 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans. Happily there are a lot of ships that use canvas buckets to take samples of the surface. Some ships now use their intake of seawater for attaining measurements. Do you find this satisfactory?

The oceans are deep. To what depth are these measurements taken? If we talk about a Global temperature we need the temperature of all the water at all the depths. Just to get a bucket at the top, will that give you a Global temperature? 

The Earth is uneven. What is the average temperature of Mt Blanc, the summit of which is covered in snow even during the summer? Glorious it is I assure you. Let us average Mt Blanc with Timbuktu in Equatorial Africa, and we should get zero. No wonder Dr Jones was rather coy about his datasets.

So my friends, so my colleagues, whom I am glad to say question everything, as I do, in other word they are naturally sceptical, not willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes, do not jump up and down because some figures have arrived to show there has been no warming for a dozen years. For these figures are just as meaningless as the ones the Alarmists portray. Why! The Guardian is at it already, declaring that Rose’s figures are just a natural blip in the upward trend.

But there is no Global Warming. There is no such thing, because there is no Global Temperature. There cannot be Global Warming until such time as you have defined the Globe. Does the Globe include the Troposphere and the Stratosphere? Does it include the Mesosphere and the Thermosphere, which borders on Outer Space and which is very nearly vacuum, so devoid is it of Mass?

Then what about the Oceans? Are Oceans warming? To say that they are warming betrays an unbelievable naiveté. One does not have to be a scientist to be absolutely stupid! Let us not forget the Earth, itself. Is the centre of the Earth getting hotter or warmer? Since the centre keeps releasing its internal heat in volcanic eruptions, in geysers, in oceanic thermal vents, it is more likely that the centre is cooling. 

If, we who are Sceptics, go along with the Alarmists and argue that for certain years there has been cooling, we are offering them a hostage to fortune. We are effectively agreeing that these figures of theirs are meaningful, whereas I say to you that they are meaningless and the product of corruption, of a false and pseudo science. That is not science – it is legerdemain!

The only thing that we can say with some certainty is that Europe is somewhat warmer than in the time of the Little Ice Age. There is no Global temperature and there never can be any. Every day and every season different parts of the Earth are warming and cooling, according to the Sun, to night and day, to the angle of the Sun, the seasons, the proximity of the Earth to the Sun in its journey round the Sun.

In so far that there is some warming in some regions, it is entirely dependent on either the radiation from the sun or heat escaping from the centre of the Earth. Anyone who imagines that they can control either of these factors is a fraud and a mountebank. Those wicked and corrupt witches and wizards have put a whole generation to sleep. Wake up, my friends, lest we sleepwalk to disaster!

October 2012
Copyright 2012 Anthony Bright-Paul