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According to American climatologist, Judith Curry, there are plenty of things to be skeptical about when it comes to Anthropogenic Global Warming, but the basic physics of gaseous infrared radiative transfer is not one of them.

Dr Curry, is the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the co-author of ‘Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans’ (1999), and was speaking out against claims in a book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’. 

There has been some discussion of radiative transfer theory at this blog mostly via notes I have posted from Alan Siddons, Holden, Massachusetts, who is a chapter author in the book and is very skeptical about the basic physics of radiative transfer as applied by mainstream climate scientists and in the IPCC reports.  

I was recently alerted to a blog post Dr Curry has started, ostensibly to discuss this physics and its application to global warming theory.   It seems to have stirred up interest again in this issue. 

An occasional commentator at this blog, known as Cementafriend, is also skeptical, in particular about how the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is applied by the climate scientists. 
Following is a note from Cementafriend to resurrect the issue here:

Is the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation used correctly

D Kern in the text book “Process Heat Transfer” states “Radiant energy is believed to originate within molecules of the radiating body, atoms of such molecules vibrating in simple harmonic motion as linear oscillators. The emission of radiant energy is believed to represent a decrease in the amplitudes of the vibrations within the molecules, while an absorption of energy represents an increase.”

But from where does the Stefan-Boltzmann equation come?

[Read more…] about A Note on the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation

COGNITIVE science is about the action and process of knowing, that is about intelligence and rational and non-rational intellectual processes. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a professor of Psychology specialising in cognitive process. He thinks the cognitive processes of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) sceptics is deficient and on the same level as “truthers” and other “conspiracy theorists”.  Furthermore, he is not backward in telling anyone who will listen that sceptics are “damn liars”.

Lewandowsky’s fulminations against sceptics continues a sinister trend in the AGW debate with a number of prominent AGW supporters casting aspersions about the moral legitimacy of scepticism and calling for sceptics to be jailed or prosecuted or at the very least banned as Senator Bob Brown advocates for leading sceptic Andrew Bolt.  However,  Lewandowsky’s diatribes go beyond legal and political action and calls into doubt the sanity of the sceptical position.

This is serious, for merely questioning the ‘science’ of AGW one now faces the opprobrium of having one’s mental ability questioned.

Lewandowsky has been very active, having several articles published at the ABC’s Unleashed. His most recent one is  cunning.  Apparently realising that the old stand-by of arguing from authority is not having any success in converting an increasingly cynical public, Lewandowsky has attempted to directly involve the public in the scientific process of validating the evidence for AGW. This process is described in his latest ABC article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43020.html

Because Lewandowsky is an award winning statistician and uses statistics in this latest paper another award winning statistician, Dr David Stockwell, thought having his sanity queried was worth the risk of highlighting the egregious statistical errors of Lewandowsky’s article.

While prepared to publish Lewandowsky’s offensive opinion, the ABC refused to publish the following rebuttal: 

[Read more…] about David Stockwell and Anthony Cox reply to Lewandowsky and His Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics