‘Global Warming’ Is Rubbish Says Top Professor

Climate change is once again back on the agenda following the publication of a number of reports from Government and the UN.

On Monday, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first report in seven years on the now widely accepted phenomenon known as ‘climate change’.

And this week, the House of Commons Science and Technology committee also published a report, damning the media for confusing ‘fact’ with opinion and pushing the message that, in terms of freak weather, ‘the worst is yet to come’.

In spite of the seemingly overwhelming tide of scientific opinion on the matter, there are still some who steadfastly refuse to jump on the ‘global warming’ bandwagon.

Emeritus Professor Les Woodcock is one of them. When I ask the former NASA scientist about ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, he laughs.

“The term ‘climate change’ is meaningless. The Earth’s climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis [about] our climate [which says it] has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth’s surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences.

“The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the ‘greenhouse gas’ causes ‘global warming’ - in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent.

“There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years.

“Anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean anything in science, its not significant.

“Events can happen with frequencies on all time scales in the physics of a chaotic system such as the weather. Any point on lowland can flood up to a certain level on all time scales from one month to millions of years and its completely unpredictable beyond around five days.

“We can go back to great floods and Noah’s Ark in the Middle East regions which are now deserts.

“The reason records seem to be being frequently broken is simply because we only started keeping them about 100 years ago. There will always be some record broken somewhere when we have another natural fluctuation in weather.

“Its absolutely stupid to blame floods on climate change, as I read the Prime Minister did recently. I don’t blame the politicians in this case, however, I blame his so-called scientific advisors.”

But surely most of the world’s leaders, scientific community and people in general can’t be wrong can they?

Prof Woodcock hits back: “This is not the way science works. If you tell me that you have a theory there is a teapot in orbit between the earth and the moon, its not up to me to prove it does not exist, its up to you to provide the reproducible scientific evidence for your theory.

“Such evidence for the man-made climate change theory has not been forthcoming.”

He adds: “It’s become almost an industry, as a consequence of this professional misconduct by Government advisors around the world, not just UK - you can’t blame ordinary people with little or no science education for wanting to be seen to be good citizens who care about their grandchildren’s future and the environment.

“In fact, the damage to our economy the climate change lobby is now costing us is infinitely more destructive to the livelihoods of our grand-children. Indeed, we grand-parents are finding it increasingly expensive just to keep warm as a consequence of the idiotic decisions our politicians have taken in recent years about the green production of electricity.

“Carbon dioxide has been made out to be some kind of toxic gas but the truth is it’s the gas of life. We breath it out, plants breath it in. The green lobby has created a do-good industry and it becomes a way of life, like a religion. I understand why people defend it when they have spent so long believing in it, people do not like to admit they have been wrong.

“If you talk to real scientists who have no political interest, they will tell you there is nothing in global warming. It’s an industry which creates vast amounts of money for some people.

“Even the term ‘global warming’ does not mean anything unless you give it a time scale. The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s not permanent and it’s not caused by us. Global warming is nonsense.”

 

(continued)

He adds: “Light bulbs are a good example of the contradiction with the green movement. Europe has outlawed the tungsten lightbulb. Tungsten is a harmless metal, like gold, it does not react with anything and yet now, in the name of conserving energy, we have low energy light bulbs full of toxic chemicals, including mercury vapour, which is poisonous. If you smash a low energy lightbulb, the advice from the Department for the Environment is to vacate the room for 15 minutes.”

The Environment Agency website has this to say on low energy lightbulbs: “Energy saving light bulbs and fluorescent light tubes contain small amounts of mercury... mercury is a hazardous substance, these lightbulbs should be disposed of in accordance with hazardous waste regulations.”

Claims of a new elemental ‘state’ challenges scientific opinion and could have implications for business in the future.

Prof Woodcock is also challenging other scientific dogma and now he’s come up with a radical theory about matter.

He explained: “It’s called a fourth state of matter. A colloid is a material in which one phase (solid, liquid or gas) disperses as very small particles or droplets in another (solid, liquid or gas).

“Colloid science is a huge part of condensed matter physics and, indeed everyday life, for example: blood (solid in liquid) milk (emulsion of an oil in water).

“Up to now, the two phases are different materials. Colloids are stabilised by forces at the surface of the dispersed phase which has a very large surface area. In colloid science, the dispersed phase and the continuous phase are two different materials, like air and water.

“There are nine possible different types of colloid: clouds are a colloid of liquid in gas, foam is a colloid of gas in liquid, wet sand is a colloidal dispersion of solid in liquid, dry sand is a dispersion of solid in gas, porous rock above sea level is a colloid of gas (air) in solid (dry sponge), porous rock underwater is colloid of liquid (water) in solid (wet sponge), uncorroded rock is an aggregate of solid in solid (like set concrete), the remaining one is emulsion (liquid in liquid).

“To my knowledge, there is no colloid of gas in gas.

“For a pure material, like water, at low temperatures it was believed there was just solid liquid and gas. In 1873 van der Waals was awarded the Nobel Prize for his PhD thesis on the critical point above which liquid and gas become the same. This hypothesis has been accepted for 140 years but what we find now is that there is no continuity of liquid and gas and no critical point. The liquid and gas phases are separated even up to high supercritical temperatures by [something called a] mesophase which is neither pure liquid nor pure gas nor a hybrid. It is a colloid of gas in liquid or liquid in gas.

“This is a fourth equilibrium state that is not solid liquid or gas, a colloid of the same material dispersed in itself as a different phase is new science.”.

FACTFILE

Carbon dioxide (CO2) was discovered around 1770 by Joseph Priestley, who also discovered oxygen (O2) in 1774, for which he is better known.

A scientist called Le Chatelier proposed the so-called ‘equilibrium law’, which has been used to argue if CO2 increases in the atmosphere, plants will metabolise it faster.

Before the Industrial Revolution there used to be about 27 molecules of CO2 for every 100,000 molecules of air - now there are roughly 39 molecules per 100,000.

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co....rming-is-rubbish-says-top-professor-1-6536732

 

If only Leslie V. Woodcock had any qualification in the field of climate or environmental science, that might lend his statements some credibility. As a chemical engineer, however, it would seem he's making bloviations on a topic which is definitely not in his area of expertise.

 

And just which branch of science do you think would be more equipped to determine the heat transfer of CO2? The heat capacity of the atmospheric gasses? The heat transfer coefficient of the atmospheric gasses? The radiational heating of the gasses?

Or maybe a better question would be what field would be better equipped to determine the heating effect/cause?

 

Agreed, RLM. His qualifications in chemical thermodynamics give him a very intelligent, rational and insightful understanding of all the energy mechanics you mentioned.

Leslie Woodcock was educated in the UK and received his phD at the
University of London in 1970. He has held academic appointments at
the University of Cambridge, University of Amsterdam, University of
Bradford and UMIST where he is Emeritus Professor of Chemical
Thermodynamics. He has also served as senior research consultant at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Laboratory, as a consultant to Unilever and
the International Fine Particle Research Institute, a visiting professor at
the University of Singapore, and a guest scientist at the
U.5. NIST. Prof. Woodcock is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry,
a founding editor of Molecular Simulation, and a recipient of a
Max Planck Society Visiting Fellowship. Over his career, he has received
wide recognition for his research contributions to understandinq
the behavior of liquids and complex materials.

Prof. Woodcock has more than 70 published journal papers in Chemical
Physics (Letter), Journal of Physics, Nature (physical Letter), Nature
(Letter), Nature (Scientific Correspondence), Journal of Chemical
Society (FaradayTransactions), ChemicalPhysics Letters, physical
Review Letters, Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, Chemical
Engineering Science, Powder Technology, progress in Colloid and
Polymer Science, Physical Chemistry and Chemical physics, Molecular
Physics, Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Molecular Liquids,
AlChe.E Journal, Ind. Eng. & Chem. Res. Journal, and Journal of Chem.
Eng Data

http://fkk.uitm.edu.my/v1/images/stories/shortcourse/prof_leslie_2.pdf


Apparantly however, the libs will accept a political science degree and a law degree as sufficient qualifications to make comments regarding so-called "global warming" and/or "climage change" are more than willing to follow those people without question:

Obama calls global warming a ‘fact,’ ignores flat temps

January 28, 2014
During the State of the Union, President Barack Obama stated that global warming is a “fact” and that the science was settled. But Obama’s remarks ignore the fact that global temperatures have not significantly risen in 17 years.

“The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way,” Obama said. “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say, ‘Yes, we did.’”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/28/obama-calls-global-warming-a-fact-ignores-flat-temps/

 

LOL

 

So you found one scientist who doesn't believe in global warming. What about the 90% who do?

 

LOL... I could just hear you several hundred years ago saying, "So you found one scientist who doesn't believe the earth is flat. What about the 90% who do"? LOL

Well, it isn't just one scientist and "global warming" is not a 100% proven scientific fact. Now, if you believe Professor Woodcock doesn't know what he's talking about and then explain your reasoning and/or disprove what he's saying then perhaps I'll listen to you.

 

None of papers published by Woodcock given in the list above has anything to do with climate science. While chemical thermodynamics, colloids and polymers are perhaps tangentially relevant to climate science, expertise in chemical engineering is not a qualification to speak authoritatively about climate science. On the other hand, a consensus of the overwhelming majority of those who specialize in the field is sufficient reason for somebody (like a politician) to accept their statements as authoritative.

The "flat temperature since 1997" hobby horse of the denialists is actually a canard.

 

Just how is 2005 data going to refute the trends from 1998 to 2014? Half of the time frame occurred AFTER your paper was issued.

BTW, do you have a clue what thermodynamics is? Just what part of global heating (if it exists and regardless of its cause) is not covered by thermodynamics?

 

1 more question. Just how many degrees does that 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of ocean heating (first chart) equate to? If you could possible translate that figure, you might not be so proud to publish those figures.

 

There weren't many scientists who ever believed the earth was flat, actually. Galileo knew it wasn't over 500 years ago and was persecuted by the church. Many didn't follow through with their knowledge because they enjoyed living, not burning at the hands of zealots. This guy doesn't disprove global warming in any way. The burden of proof does not lie with those who scientifically back something, such as global warming, with a century of data, but with those who claim it doesn't exist. And so far, this guy is just one in a handful who have failed to do so.

 

You have it backwards. If someone is going to make a scientific claim, the burden of proof is on them, not the audience.

 

Global warming - the information being presented to the general public is politically agenda driven. There will be costs and there will be benefits. There will be losers and there will be winners.

 

You know, I don't know if any of you watched the Cosmos episode about a week ago about the fight to remove lead from gasoline but it couldn't be a more direct comparison of the climate change debate if it had been scripted.​

​

The show detailed the petroleum industry's effort to sow doubt in the public's perception that adding lead to gasoline was causing any environmental health problems. They knew it did, they knew that their practice was spreading lead to playgrounds, the ocean, and even the arctic regions. A scientist named Patterson had the evidence and spent 20 years tying to end the practice of adding lead to gasoline while the petroleum industry paid a guy named Kehoe to refute the scientific evidence with no more than anecdotal evidence and outright lies that made the public feel better. Anyway, the same industry has paid multimillions of dollars to again sow doubt in the public's perception of the environmental dangers posed by burning fossil fuels. Clearly, the petroleum industry has a history of trying to deceive the public purely for profit and highlighting a guy like this retired professor while ignoring the 98% of scientists that have linked burning fossil fuel with climate change is nothing more than them falling back on their old deceitful ways until they are forced to change by public demand.​

​

Our Right wingers today would be the same type of people that were fooled by fake industry paid scientists like Kohoe back during the lead debate. Today we all accept the fact that lead is a health danger because science won that battle and science will win this battle also. And the idiots on the Right that buy the nonsense the petroleum industry is pushing will look like fools again. Ignore their crowing and cackling, they are too dumb to know when they are part of an industry financed cover up.​

​

 

That link was not to any single paper, but to a compilation of data from a number of sources (Murphy 2009, Domingues 2008, Nuccitelli 2012, and others). Apparently, you just read the little blurb at the top of the page which is clearly marked as "Climate Myth..." and stopped there, because you're completely wrong about what is presented on the page.

"Thermodynamics" is not the same thing as "chemical thermodynamics," which is Woodcock's field. The fact is, chemical thermodynamics has more to do with analyzing chemical reactions in the laboratory than with climate science. Atmospheric thermodynamics (as opposed to chemical thermodynamics) is one element of climate science, nothing more. Woodcock is not a climate scientist.

I didn't publish anything, I linked to a page with some information. The purpose of the first chart is not to show temperature, but to show the relative effects of climate change thus far on the oceans as opposed to the land and atmosphere. The point being made is that while the land and atmosphere have shown a definite measurable increase in heating, the oceans have shown a much more dramatic increase. This is one aspect of climate science which shows that the constant bleating about "flat temperature" is nothing more than ignorant bullshit, which is gladly swallowed by the gullible whose political agenda includes denial of current climate science.

 

As a graduated chemical engineer, I did not take anything called "chemical thermodynamics". I took "Thermodynamics" and I assure you Mr. Woodcock did also.

Since you are such an expert, pray what the affects of "200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of ocean heating" are if not a rise in temperature. Hint: a Joule is directly convertible to BTU's. So my question remains, " Just how many degrees does that 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of ocean heating (first chart) equate to?"

 

I think it's an absolute shame that research into man's effect on the earth's climate has become a political issue rather than solely one of science.

 

Shock!

 

I note your attempted deflection from the simple fact that Woodcock is not qualified to pontificate on climate science. The field of chemical thermodynamics is definitely not the same thing as atmospheric thermodynamics. As a chemical engineer, you should be well aware of that fact.

Hey amigo, I never claimed to be an expert, but I can spot bullshit when I see it. I'm not going to do your homework for you, either.