Articles Tagged "Martin Hertzberg"

A staunch liberal and former navy weather expert writes to the New York Times and his local newspaper, the Summit Daily News to correct absurd media claims connecting ‘Superstorm Sandy’ to man-made global warming.

Citing one of the world’s top meteorologists as his source Dr. Martin Hertzberg tears a hole in the cherry-picked alarmist claims made in an article by Tim Lydon, an Alaskan parks ranger and occasional jobbing journalist who gets plenty of column inches pontificating about meteorology without any apparent science training. Dr. Hertzberg is co-founder and senior fellow of Principia Scientific International, a fast-growing science body campaigning for higher standards and greater transparency in discredited government science. While the Summit Daily News has published Hertzberg’s riposte there was no such joy at the NYT. Below is an unabridged version of Hertzberg’s letter:

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.

Friends,

I can proudly announce that Amazon is now selling the ebook version of the groundbreaking climate science publication, ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.’

Our UK publishers, St Matthews Publishing and our US publisher Stairway Press will have their respective paperback versions for sale early in December.

Never before have so many of the world’s leading experts, skeptical of the global warming fraud, come together in one united front to slay that mythical beast. This publication is the new benchmark; here a line is drawn and a battle fought for our future and our children’s future.

‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ is the world’s first and only full volume publication that expertly debunks the established theory of man-made global warming- the so-called ‘greenhouse gas effect.’ Prepare to be astounded. The hardest job for me has been keeping the facts we reveal under wraps for so long!

John O'Sullivan

*** PROMOTIONAL MESSAGE***

I do not make this prediction lightly: so utterly irrefutable and powerful is its message that 'Slaying the Sky Dragon’ will become the biggest selling science book since Stephen Hawking’s ‘Brief History of Time.’

One year after Climategate the greenhouse gas theory, the absolute cornerstone of IPCC ‘science,’ is torn to shreds. In an unprecedented achievement 24 international experts (over 2 volumes) have worked tirelessly to compose the definitive masterpiece of skeptical science.

If Prof. Frank had done his science homework by researching the totality of the climatological data rather than regurgitating the cherry-picked, fear mongering hysteria of environmental lobbyists, he would have realized that a carbon tax will have no effect either on atmospheric CO2 or the weather.

His "hottest 12 month period of record" in the US was accompanied by average global temperatures that were quite normal. Blocking high pressures are quite common during the warmer months. They give cloudless skies when the Sun is nearest to Zenith, descending air which is adiabatically heated and dried, giving heat waves and droughts. They are quite common and have nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. The recent one in the U S was rather mild compared to the ones in the mid 1930's that gave us the "dust bowl" at a time when human CO2 emission was much lower than it is today.

So in case the Times is really interested in presenting an accurate analysis rather than aiding and abetting one of the greatest frauds in the history of science, I have attached an article for your consideration, in the hope that you will at least begin to set the record straight on this issue.

The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide by Dr. Martin Hertzberg

I served as a forecasting and research meteorologist while on active duty with the U. S. Navy. It was then that I first learned what climatologists and meteorologists have known for centuries and what the current crop of so-called “climate scientists” and EPA administrators apparently never learned: that 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. Weather and climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth, and will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone.

The recent exchange of letters entitled "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" and "Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate" are, either implicitly or explicitly, appeals to politicians based mainly on arguments from "Authority". It is tragic that what should have been an objective evaluation of the available data by independent scientists, has instead degenerated into a partisan political diatribe.

Weather and Climate are controlled by natural laws on a scale that is enormous compared to the scale of human activity. Those natural laws engender forces and motions in the Earth's atmosphere, its oceans, and its surface that are beyond human control. Weather and Climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth, and they will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone, either individually or collectively as the human race.

Those forces and motions are driven by the following phenomenon. First, there is the motion of the Earth relative to the Sun: the periodic changes in its elliptical orbit, the rotation of the Earth about its axis, the periodic changes in the tilt of that axis, and the periodic precession of that axis. Second, there is the variation in Solar activity which causes changes in the amount of radiant energy that reaches the Earth and also causes variations in the Cosmic Ray input into its atmosphere, which effect the Earth's cloudiness. Third, there is the distribution of land and water on the Earth's surface which controls the temperature distribution of the atmosphere, the availability of moisture, monsoon effects, and the paths and intensities of hurricanes, typhoons, and other storms. Fourth, there is the topography of the Earth's land mass which causes copious precipitation on the windward side of mountains and aridity on the leeward side. Fifth, there are the motions within the Earth's oceans that determine moisture availability and its surface temperature distribution (El Nino and La Nina cycles).

Below we have much pleasure in presenting Dr. Hertzberg’s astonishing lecture before a large audience at the Café Scientifique at the Summit, Frisco, Colorado April 27, 2010. A well-respected analyst and commentator on climate change science, Hertzberg has a Ph D in Physical Chemistry from Stanford. He also worked as a U.S. Navy meteorologist in a illustrious scientific career and is the author of several U.S. patents.

"Climategate" and Scientific Inquiry, part 1 of 7 (parts 2-7 below)


Hertsgaard (Feb. 7, 2011) referred to Hertzberg as a"climate crank" and that he was no more credible than that of the "Flat Earth Society".

Hertzberg responded, “I am always encouraged when an adversary in an argument, rather than citing the facts or the data, resorts instead to ad-hominem slurs: it can only mean that I am winning the argument.”

Updated below with comments by Alan Siddons

ABSTRACT

Estimates are made for the exchange of radiative fluxes between the Earth’s surface, its atmosphere, and free space on the basis of their average thermal structure and estimated values for the emissivity and absorptivity of those individual entities. The radiative fluxes obtained reflect nighttime conditions but also indicate the components of those fluxes that must be subtracted from the input solar flux for daytime conditions. The estimates show that infrared radiant energy is lost to free space from both the Earth’s surface and its atmosphere.

Under the normal atmospheric temperature structure there is no net radiation from the atmosphere that reaches the Earth’s surface to be absorbed by it, and thus the socalled “greenhouse effect”, as it is traditionally depicted, is devoid of physical reality. The only exception occurs during atmospheric inversion conditions, but even in the presence of such rare inversions, the radiant power lost to free space from the atmosphere as a whole overwhelms the radiant power absorbed by the Earth’s surface from the warmer inversion layer above it. Inversion conditions are thus the only ones in which the so-called “greenhouse effect” can possibly have any form of physical reality. But such inversion conditions, however, are present over only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface for limited periods of time. In addition, since the recent increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations have a trivial effect on the atmosphere’s total emissivity, the effect of those recent CO2 increases on the overall infrared radiative flux balance is insignificant.

There is an important point that was missed in your article about the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. Applying the argument to the “greenhouse gas” theory is quite simple: there can be no “back radiation” from the colder atmosphere to the warmer earth’s surface. It violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as it applies to radiative transfer…’

More following from Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a coauthor of “Slaying the Sky Dragon-Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory”…

‘Consider two flat, parallel surfaces each with unit emissivity facing each other. One surface is maintained at a higher temperature, Th while the other surface is maintained at a lower temperature Tc . If the hotter surface were facing a complete void or surroundings at 0 K, the flux of radiant energy that it would emit and that the void would receive is sTh4.

Dr. Martin Hertzberg of Copper Mountain participated in authoring a book on global warming titled ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.' Summit Daily / Mark Fox

Copper resident says climate change advocates shadow real concerns

Martin Hertzberg says global warming is a farce.

Even if advocates of the phenomenon are right about their claim the Earth is warming, it's not because of humans, he says.

“If there is any global warming, it's natural. But I would go further. The theory that human emission of carbon dioxide having an effect … that theory, in my humble opinion as a scientist, is one of the greatest frauds in the history of science,” Hertzberg said.

The bottom line is that carbon dioxide has a minimal impact on climatology, he says. And he should know, because he was a meteorologist in the Navy, and has since taught the subject as well as turned it into his retirement hobby for the past 15 years.

Since the start of the global warming fad, as he might call it, in the mid-1990s, and since he moved to Copper Mountain as a full-time resident in 1996, he's delved into the subject. He's published several papers and coauthored a book titled “Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.” He rarely lets any mention of climate change in the pages of the Summit Daily go unchallenged, and opinion page readers are accustomed to seeing him voice his doubts on a regular basis.

Reply to article: Vail Valley Voices: Global warming denier's claims are falsehoods by Michael E. Mann

When Scott Glasser's comment of 9/26/11 referred to me indirectly as an “inaccurate” and “irresponsible” “fool” for challenging the theory that human carbon dioxide emission was causing “global warming / climate change”, I felt compelled to respond. My 9/30/11 comment cited the facts and the data that supported my challenge to the theory. In that article, Glasser defended what has been come to be known as the Mann “hockey stick” curve. I responded in my article with the well documented criticism of it from a large number of scientists who carefully reviewed his claims. Also, the so-called “climategate” e-mails revealed an appalling lack of scientific integrity and manipulations by a cabal of advocates of that theory. Mann responded on 10/1/11 accusing me of “false and defamatory statements” packed with “lies and distortions”; of “lying to the public about science”; of a “string of lies tied together”. He stated my “lies are pernicious” and that I am a “charleton”.

In his response, Mann uses an ad-hominem overkill accusing me of lies and lying some six times! Methinks he doth protest too much.

When I am engaged in a scientific dispute with an adversary, and that opponent instead of citing the facts or the data that might support his argument, instead directs an intense barrage of ad-hominem slurs toward me, I am fully confident that I am winning the argument.