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Dear all

Shown below is my letter to the editor of the Stanford Alumni Magazine. It appeared only in the on-line edition.

(www.stanfordmag.org). You can probably guess why it was not published in the print edition:

Letter to the Editor: What Doesn’t Add Up

Ted Arbuckle’s letter (“Research Flaws,” July/August) correctly points out that “climate science,” which promotes the fear of anthropogenic global warming, has ignored the scientific method because of the money to be made in perpetuating the theory, in the same way that drug and biomedical research is often biased to produce the desired outcomes given the large sums of money involved. As a result, he points out that those of us who disagree with that fabricated “consensus” have our scientific credentials challenged and are denigrated as “deniers.” Their claim that the science is settled provides them with an excuse for refusing to discuss the science involved.

Arbuckle calls for someone to investigate climate change science because “something doesn’t add up.” So let me try.

I became a graduate student at Stanford after serving as a forecasting and research meteorologist in the U.S. Navy. I had learned what climatologists and meteorologists had known for about a century and what most who call themselves climate scientists apparently never learned. Weather and climate are controlled by natural laws on an enormous scale that dwarfs human activity. Those laws engender forces and motions in our atmosphere and oceans that are beyond human control.
Those forces and motions are driven by the following. First, the motions of the Earth relative to the Sun: the periodic changes in its elliptical orbit, its rotation about its polar axis; the changes in the tilt of that axis; and its precession. Second, the variation in solar activity that influences the radiant energy reaching the Earth and modulates cosmic ray activity, which influences cloudiness.

Third, the distribution of land and water on the Earth’s surface, which controls the atmosphere’s temperature distribution, moisture availability, monsoon effects, hurricanes, and other storm tracks and intensities. Fourth, the topography of the Earth’s surface, which causes copious precipitation on the windward side of mountains and aridity on the leeward side. Fifth, the fluid motions within the oceans that determine moisture availability and ocean surface temperatures (El Niño and La Niña cycles).

Water in all of its forms is the main agent through which those forces operate. It provides moisture to the atmosphere, heat transport by evaporation and condensation, and the enormous circulating mass of the ocean whose heat capacity dominates. And finally, water provides the cloud, snow and ice cover that control the radiative equilibrium between the sun, Earth and free space.

While the presence of 0.04 percent of CO2 in our atmosphere is essential for life in the biosphere, the notion that such a minor constituent of the atmosphere can influence or control the forces and motions enumerated earlier is absurd. All the “climate scientists” seem to see something unprecedented in recent changes in the Earth’s average temperature. They are inevitably cherry-picking factoids such as the recent heat wave in the United States, as they purposefully ignore the totality of the data. The Earth’s average temperature last month showed nothing remarkable. Recent changes have been matched or exceeded many times in the past: the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, The Holocene, and the periodic interglacial warming of the last million or so years that preceded them—all long before any significant human production of CO2.

More details are available in several books that have recently been published. The one I recommend is Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, because I am one of its co-authors. It would be disingenuous not to point out that, for whatever their motives, some of the major supporters of the human-caused global warming/climate change theory were faculty members at Stanford who should have realized a long time ago that something doesn’t add up. The catastrophe that they were fear-mongering about may indeed be realized, but only if we are stupid enough to continue to implement draconian measures and policies of “carbon control” based on the erroneous theory they espouse.

Martin Hertzberg, PhD

Original article by Ted Arbuckle

It is no surprise that the science around drugs and biomedical research is often biased to produce the desired outcomes, given the large sums of money involved. It is comforting to learn that John P.A. Ioannidis is applying real scientific methodology to examine this faulty research, which should lower costs, produce better outcomes and, it is hoped, in the long run improve the objectivity of medical research.

But medical research isn't the only realm where Ioannidis's methods could be applied. Climate science and those who promote anthropogenic global warming have ignored the scientific method because of the money to be had by perpetuating the questionable theory. Although Michael Mann's famous "hockey stick" analysis in 1998 that kicked off the mania was proven completely invalid, the triumvirate of the media, academia and governments continues to divert billions of dollars from the world economy that could be much better spent solving real problems.

As Ioannidis states in the article, "In science we always start with the possibility that we can be wrong. If we don't start there, we are just dogmatizing." But dogmatizing is exactly what the climate change industry does when it marginalizes scientists that disagree with them by calling them "deniers" and insists that the "science is settled" or there is a "consensus" on the matter. As with health care, billions of dollars are being spent on cures to retard global warming that will likely have no remedial effect. Society would be well served if someone like Ioannidis could investigate the climate change science, because as [the headline] states, "Something Doesn't Add Up."[/b]

Ted Arbuckle, '69
San Francisco, California