The Augean Stables of Climate Materials for Schools - an example from the teaching of English language in Germany

So many people have been duped by climate dogma which insists on catastrophic effects from rising CO2 that signs of it appear in all sorts of places.  It can of course be found in geography and popular science books for children, and in many websites, but it can also be found in language lessons.  I myself came across it while studying French.  Here is an example from a textbook used for teaching English in high schools in Germany, well-annotated by critical observers from the policy think-tank KE Research:

Source: http://www.ke-research.de/downloads/Greenhouse.pdf

Their conclusions are: 

# “Greenhouse gases” and clouds continuously radiate energy into outer space. Thereby they cool the atmosphere. This enables the atmosphere to cool the ground. This has been going on over billions of years.

#  Since IR active gases cool the Earth (at least indirectly), an increase in their concentration cannot cause a raise of temperatures. This constitutes a disproof of the CO2 warming hypothesis (yellow block in the “Green Tower” in fig. 1).

# All further claims of the climate dogma (computerized climate prophecy, apocalyptic consequences, need of political action and “climate protection”) would only make sense if the CO2 warming hypothesis is proven. But as the hypothesis is demonstrated invalid by our comparison with the Moon, the claims derived from it as well as the actions suggested make no sense. The entire CO2-based “climate research” proves to be pseudo science – or charlatanism.

# In certain countries, public education is misused by governments to implant fears in the brains of students – being the result of a wrongly built understanding of nature.

This is right at the heart of the debate, or rather it ought to be.  Instead these are amongst the so-called ‘sceptical’ views that are often ridiculed or ignored.  But the basic assertion that radiation in infra-red from the atmosphere to space is an important component of Earth’s cooling mechanism is correct.  Their second point is far more contentious.  It is not clear to me what the overall, or net effect of CO2 in the climate system is.  I can also go along with a modest warming contribution of CO2 thanks to it delaying heat loss from the surface to space by absorbing Earth radiation (in the relevant narrow bands for CO2) before re-emitting it in all directions.  Simple calculations suggest a value of the order of 1C for this warming for every doubling of ambient CO2 levels.  One day, perhaps we shall see computer modelling of CO2 in the climate system.  We do not have that at present.  Instead the GCMs have proven to be a rather expensive way of confirming that when you suppress heat loss from an exernally heated object, that object’s temperature will, all else being equal, rise.  This is done in the models by imposing an instantaneous drop in radiative heat loss at the outer edge of the atmosphere for a given increase in ambient CO2.  This paper by KE Research is one which suggests that the role of CO2 is more complicated than that.  The current GCMs cannot help resolve this since they work from a presumed net effect of CO2, i.e. they incorporate a conclusion rather than discover it from the model runs.

Hat-tip: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/why-atmosphere-is-not-greenhouse.html (which also provides an extract from a new essay by Tim Ball on the greenhouse effect: http://drtimball.com/2013/a-greenhouse-as-analogy-for-the-atmosphere-is-completely-wrong/ )

There is also a recent post by Roy Spencer, with discussion in the comments on the same topic: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/does-a-greenhouse-operate-through-the-greenhouse-effect/

The extract from the paper does not show up very clearly in the image above, so here is a higher-definition version just of the textbook page:

Climate Control Freakery: a disturbed academic in Australia has his sights on the children

Writing on the Wall, or just the zealotry of someone disturbed out of all proportion by the talk of climate catastrophe?  It is shocking to note that this man is a lecturer in a university.  Here is what he has in mind for children:

5. Children

Hundreds of millions of children are already the victims of the worsening climate crisis and it is estimated that 6 billion under-5 year old infants will die avoidably this century due to unaddressed climate change. All children are acutely threatened by man-made climate change. Some ideas for climate action re children:

5.1 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed (e.g. Climate Commission-informed), clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all primary school children as a booklet, book mark, and refrigerator magnet.

5.2 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed, clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all secondary school children as a booklet, book mark, and refrigerator magnet.

5.3 Green apparel as a badge of environmental concern (children can declare themselves for their future; make every day St Patrick’s Day).

5.4 Carefully-designed, ethical, science-informed, clear summaries of the climate crisis and solutions should be provided to all parents, school teachers, clergy, sports coaches, music teachers and indeed all those involved with children activities.

5.5 Smart ways of explaining to children that we have just One Planet and that any species extinction is unacceptable.

5.6 Awards to children (from badges to books) for good works for the Biosphere.

5.7. Local, state, national and global awards for outstanding environmentalism by children.

5.8 Children must be ethically encouraged to boycott ecocidal and terracidal products and services.

5.9 Children should be ethically encouraged to ask what their elders are doing in the War on the Planet. and instructed about the terms intergenerational equity, intergenerational justice, intergenerational inequity and intergenerational injustice.

5.10 Climate activists must educate and mobilize children who have the time and energy to help save their world.

5.11 Children and young people in general instructed about intergenerational equity, intergenerational justice, intergenerational inequity and intergenerational injustice.

5.12 Just as a children were ethically instructed about the consequences of nuclear war in “When the wind blows” by Raymond Briggs (1982), so they should be similarly made aware of the consequences of climate change inaction


Perhaps if someone pointed out to him that there is no sign of a 'climate crisis' anywhere, let alone of 'the worsening climate crisis', it might help him understand that the crisis projected as a possibility by such as the IPCC is not due to arrive for many more decades.  Their alarm is based upon crude and inadequate computer models which have enjoyed a dismal track record to date, and which show little sign of real improvement despite the billions of dollars thrown at and around them for the past 20 years or more.

So far, this century and last, the climate has done nothing extraordinary.   But we have seen some extraordinary actions proposed for the control and manipulation of society.  Such as the above.

Hat-tip: Greenie Watch: http://antigreen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/dotty-warmist-aiming-for-minds-of.html#links

PS It would make a good exercise for senior pupils to Fisk or otherwise comment on the implications of each point.

Learning about CO2 and climate? Here's a handy graphic to show how just how low the current levels of this vital gas are.

Source: http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/GeoCO2.png

For many more very smartly presented charts, with occasional other items such as press releases to add some context. click rightwards from here: http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/Byrd0.png.html

Hat-tip: Tom Nelson

Satellite graphics show the Earth's surface cooling during the years 1982 to 2006

"The amazing finding of the present study is that we do not observe global warming in the period 1982-2006, but significant cooling."

Source: Andries Rosema, Steven Foppes, Joost van der Woerd

Surface temperature as in 'temperature of the surface' is not what is routinely measured or referred to in meteorology.  Surface temperature in meteorological observations usually refers to air temperature close to the ground, usually around 5 feet (1.25 to 2.0 metres) above the surface - the height at which weather stations are meant to take this measurement.

But what of the actual surface temperature?  This is tricky to measure given the wide variety of surfaces, and the lack of any convention as to depth.  But a geostationary satellite can take a broad view, in the case of Meteosat this mainly has a 5km resolution for temperature estimates.  Looking down from above, that level of coarseness will help reduce the variation that would be expected at finer scales.

In their study published this year in the journal Energy & Environment, the three authors report how they took 25 years worth of satellite imagery from Meteosat from noon and midnight each day, and extracted estimates of surface temperatures from them.  They used infra-red wavelengths for which the atmosphere is largely transparent in cloudless skies.  But of course, there is always cloud to be seen in any hemisphere image.  Their method to reduce the effect of clouds was to look at successive time periods (of 10, 20, and 30 days) and choose the highest temperature found (the 'brightest pixel') within each period.  The hope is that that is likely to be from a relatively cloud-free day since cloud tops are much cooler than the surface.
There are other adjustment and computations to be made as described in the paper, but the authors seem reasonably confident that their results are sensible.  They provide subsets of their data plotted as time-series for typical and atypical locations, and find the results plausible in each case.

There are no equivalent ground-based measurements to provide a cross-check for these results, but perhaps it may be possible to construct estimates of what they might be for simpler locations, e.g. sea areas.

These results will hopefully be subjected to considerable scrutiny and review, but I report them here at this stage simply as an illustration of 'unsettled science'.  We have here results which on the face of it contradict the claims of relentless warming pushed by such as James Hansen in the late 1980s, including at the infamous hearing of 1988 in Washington.  So many people have subsequently picked up on such claims and treated them as gospel that we are today in a very unsatisfactory position of having zealots for alarm poisoning discourse in this area, be it political or be it scientific discourse.  Good teaching should help pupils step back from this unedifying spectacle, and form calmer and more considered opinions of what is going on.

Hat-tip: Greenie Watch which provides a link to this article on the above paper.

Note added a few hours after posting  Some recent comments on this paper can be found here: http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/earth-surface-cooled-from-1982-to-2006.html
Note added 09 August 2013  Project for the reader.  The site CO2 Science provides a temperature plotter which can be used to look at temperatures attributed to zones 5deg (lat, long) on the side.  It might be interesting to see how these computed mean surface air temperatures plots compare with those for specific locations provided in the paper over the same time periods.

Ten-minute trainer: a case against the establishment case for alarm over CO2

For teachers with 30 minutes to spare, and a suitable class (perhaps one whose important exams in this area have been completed successfully), here is a brief YouTube clip which does a cool, calm, and collected job of undermining the case for alarm over CO2 - a case which may be taken for granted in your curricula.  He is particularly critical of the 'positive feedbacks' which are a crucial part of the case for alarm:


This is a short video of about 13 minutes (no 10-minute trainer takes exactly 10 minutes!) linked to at the NoTricksZone which notes it was linked to in a tweet by Tallbloke.

The video is the work of David Evans in Australia. More details of his case can be found here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

and he has also produced some very good, but longer videos here: http://joannenova.com.au/2012/04/david-evans-explains-the-skeptics-case-youtube/

Some minor points. 

(1)   The claim that positive water-vapour driven feedback is ‘assumed’ in the models is not quite correct.  What they assume is that global relative humidity stays constant as temperature rises.  This necessarily means water vapour levels will increase in the models, and this is what is believed to lead to the positive feedback that appears in them.  In practice, there is some evidence that relative humidity has been decreasing in recent decades. 

 Source: http://www.climate4you.com/ 

(2)    The first graphic in the short video shows ‘observed temperature increase’ as the output of models.  If it was in fact the observed temperature increase, then the models would be doing a perfect job on them.  Actually the output of models is ‘expected temperatures’, or 'predicted temperatures'.  When these are compared with observed temperatures, the discrepancies are obvious.