Munden's Bar

Yea thats what I thought too. But that's how The Register subtitled their article on Google's interest in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

Have you noticed how often (or should that be easily?), I am amused?

I'd welcome those off you out there who know more about this than I to validate whether the following text, recently published in American Physics, in a paper written by one Viscount Monkton, is a reasonable description of the facts or not :

"It is of no little significance that the IPCC’s value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind’s effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter κ depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted."

"Since we cannot measure any individual forcing directly in the atmosphere, the models draw upon results of laboratory experiments in passing sunlight through chambers in which atmospheric constituents are artificially varied," writes Monckton. "Such experiments are, however, of limited value when translated into the real atmosphere, where radiative transfers and non-radiative transports (convection and evaporation up, advection along, subsidence and precipitation down), as well as altitudinal and latitudinal asymmetries, greatly complicate the picture."

If true, that is extremely flimsy evidence for basing the current fervent belief that anthropogenic CO2 production is responsible for global warming on. As the article I read this in points out :

In other words, an unproven hypothesis is fed into a computer (so far so good), but it can only be verified against experiments that have no resemblance to the chaotic system of the Earth's climate. ...

The great British-born physicist Freeman Dyson offered an impertinent dose of reality which illustrates the dangers of relying on theory for both your hypothesis and the evidence you need to support it. Since 8 per cent of atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the planet's biomass every year, notes Dyson, the average lifespan of a carbon molecule in the atmosphere is about 12 years. His observation leaves the "climate scientists" models as immaculate as they were before, but suggests a very different course of policy action. It suggests our stewardship of land should be at the forefront of CO2 mitigation strategies.

This isn't climate change denial, but it does disagree with the "general consensus", and as such is being treated the same as denial, with the American Physical Society going as far as adding a disclaimer to the paper in their publication saying they didn't agree with it, even though it seems to someone like myself, not being "in the field", to be a significant potential issue that should be investigated further.

If it's true that important parts of the model are only based on limited research, shouldn't people be duplicating the relevant experiments, or designing better more realistic experiments? After all, we're already seeing some evidence that the predictions are too conservative, shouldn't someone be trying to at least confirm that research? Or is Monkton just blowing hot air?

Via /., it seems that, at least according to George Monbiot :

"...the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that man-made climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris."

Is Phillip Morris really Pentex? (reference only meaningful to Werewolf players )

What the US Army is spending it's research dollars on (and in this case good on 'em!) :

"MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight"