"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Monday, July 26, 2010

The Greenhouse Effect Denied

Science of Doom has a nice simple, fully detailed calculation to set people straight on the part or radiative physics they are bound and determined to be confused about. And no less than Roy Spencer also tried to pitch in.
Probably as the result of my recent post explaining in simple terms my “skepticism” about global warming being mostly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, I’m getting a lot of e-mail traffic from some nice folks who are trying to convince me that the physics of the so-called Greenhouse Effect are not physically possible.
Amusingly enough, Spencer himself gets the full denial treatment:

The physical universe sets the parameters for science. Our theories are either correct or incorrect. What is correct in one branch of science is REQUIRED to apply to all branches of science. No branch of science is allowed to bend or rewrite the Laws of Science to benefit their agenda. Yet this is what one former NASA scientist is doing.

Consider this profound Nouveau Science at work. In his article, “Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still”, former NASA scientist, Dr Roy Spencer, attempts to defend AGW and ends up exposing the lie.

Dr Roy: “Back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the greenhouse effect”

Direct translation is “if you don’t believe the ‘little lie’ then you won’t believe the big lie.

What a world. (I also like the convenient auto-linking of "Virginia", in case you forgot who she was. Apparently she was a Commonwealth.)

6 comments:

dhogaza said...

That's a good find ... poor Roy is catching it on both sides.

There's hope for Spencer. He at least keeps science in the picture, though some of the ideas he's tossed out have been pretty wild. He's maintained *some* credibility, he's not totally disgraced himself ala Judith Curry. And he's open about his beliefs, i.e. not afraid to openly endorse creationism, etc.

dhogaza said...

I just skimmed the comments on that thread (200+ and rising).

Unfortunately, there are a few sound heads posting there, so I won't call it the best climate science thread evah, but it's very entertaining!

Deech56 said...

How long has he allowed comments on his blog? Spencer is interesting - clearly he has made a significant contribution with the satellite record, and IIRC, he was one of the first to offer a criticism of Lindzen and Choi.

OTOH, his CO2 attribution work on WUWT was nonsense (as pointed out by Engelbeen) and his sensitivity work is flawed; however, he is at least asking the right question.

Maybe he needs to team up with James Annan.

Antiquated Tory said...

Just found Science of Doom and have been finding it really valuable. One plus is that after reading the same bit of science explained over and over and over again to some particularly dense commenter (there's one in particular who simply refuses to get it), even I, with my Cultural Anthropology degree and my C in Calculus for Premeds from 26 years ago, am happy that I understand the physical science. 15 micrometer wavelength radiation = CO2, suckas!

Unknown said...

Auto-linking of "Virginia" in the Canada Free Press article has disappeared. If I remember correctly, it previously linked to the following article. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25352

Are post-climategate global warming deniers going to oust pre-climategate star scientists of global warming skepticism from their home grounds?

Tony Sidaway said...

This is one of those moments where the monster comes back to bite its potential niche competitors harder than its ostensible enemies. In Life of Brian, for instance, the various factions for the liberation of Judea all recognise that their main concern is not the expulsion of the Roman occupying force but the eradication of their competing factions. More recently, Republican midterm primaries have become unusually bloody because of the Tea Party factor. And thus here we see a battle for the soul of denialism. A popcorn moment.