“And the place didn’t get warmer. So the theory is kaput. These papers should have been called ‘The end to the global warming fiasco’.” – Kary Mullis

In February 2002, Kary Mullis talked on stage at a TED conference in Monterey, California. Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 “for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.” He talked about how experimental science got institutionalized, that he did experiments from an early age, and how science requires honesty, which is lacking in some scientists. A video of this talk has been uploaded to YouTube, on TED’s channel, on January 6, 2009. At the time of writing, it has only 137,425 views.

In the last ten minutes or so, Kary brings up two studies regarding global warming. These studies state that more energy from the Sun was coming in versus going out, but the Earth didn’t get warmer. So this climate model doesn’t hold up. Kary also mentions that the average measured surface temperature is going up slightly, that this is due to the nighttime temperature going up and not the daytime temperature, so that the average over the entire day is rising slightly. If it was global warming, the daytime temperature would go up too. But it isn’t. The nighttime temperature has gone up a little bit due to the urban sprawl. Where measuring equipment used to be outside of town, the ever expanding cities have now surrounded the measuring equipment. It is called the skyline effect. At night, the city is warming up the measuring equipment. It is important that you know what you are measuring.

This skyline effect is also known as an urban heat island. According to Climate4you, it has been long recognized that urbanization can seriously contaminate the global climate signal. A metropolitan area is significantly warmer than its surroundings. That it is warmer than a nearby urban area is well known. Small Arctic settlements can have a considerable temperature effect. This comes as no surprise if you think about the concrete and reflective surfaces (for example, windows and cars) in cities. Think about indoor fireplaces built with stones, designed to accumulate heat and then release it slowly later. So does the concrete and stone of a city release its heat beyond sunshine hours. Reflective surfaces bounce heat back into the air or towards measuring equipment, and increase the temperature.

The two studies are “Evidence for Large Decadal Variabilitty in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget” by Wielicki, Bruce A. et al. and “Evidence for Strengthening of the Tropical General Circulation in the 1990s” by Chen, Junye et al. Both studies start in a similar vain. Namely, the Earth’s energy balance is determined by what radiation comes in from the Sun and what the Earth sends back out. Chen et al. write:

“The energy exchange between Earth and its environment is determined by the emitted thermal [longwave (LW)] flux and the reflected part of the solar irradiance [shortwave (SW)] flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). Equilibrium of Earth’s climate requires that the global annual mean net radiation flux at the TOA be approximately zero.”

It is proper in the pursuit of scientific knowledge to cite your source. In this way the reader knows where you’ve started, and subsequently what you add to the scientific body. If you do not cite a source, you are merely stating your opinion or hypothesis. Subsequently you can support this opinion or hypothesis with your research, and eventually the conclusion of your study. Note that no such nuances are made at the start of the paper. At best it is a statement, and at worst it is presented as a fact. A fact that needs no basis other than that it must be true because everybody knows it to be a fact. Could it be that other factors besides this radiation flux contribute to the “equilibrium of Earth’s climate”? Wielicki et al. at least refer to a report in their first paragraph. Though this is only supporting components that make up this radiation flux, such as clouds, and is not addressing whether this radiation in radiation out model is actually complete. They write:

“Earth’s climate system is driven by a radiative energy balance between the solar or shortwave (SW) radiation absorbed by Earth and the thermal infrared or longwave (LW) radiation emitted back to space. The balance both modifies and is modified by the components of the Earth-atmosphere system such as clouds, the surface, and the atmosphere (1). Therefore, the TOA radiation budget is crucial in determining climate variability and feedbacks, whereas its measurement provides a severe test of our ability to represent physical processes important for simulations of future climate.”

What about volcanic activity? Might this be contributing to heating of the surface or the atmosphere? But let’s not be stopped by these foundational questions and see what these papers tell us about the radiation flux, or radiation budget.

Wielicki et al. conclude that natural variability is larger than thought, and this was badly predicted by the climate models of the time. They caution against attributing these results to greenhouse gas warming. They write:

“We conclude that the large decadal variability of the LW and SW radiative fluxes shown in Figs. 1 through 3 appear to be caused by changes in both the annual average and seasonal tropical cloudiness. In general, these changes are not well predicted by current climate models, or by the NCEP Reanalysis. Indeed, current assessments (1) of global climate change have found clouds to be one of the weakest components in climate models. This leads to a threefold uncertainty in the predictions of the possible global warming over the next century. … However, we caution against interpreting the decadal variability as evidence of greenhouse gas warming. Whether the changes seen in the radiative balance in the last two decades are the result of natural variability or are a response to global change remains to be determined.”

Chen et al. concludes in a similar manner. Natural variability rather than forced climate change is also a possibility. They write:

“The possibility that lapse rates were decreasing instead before 1980 (23) suggests that the observed intensification of the Hadley-Walker cell may be due to natural variability on decadal or longer time scales rather than to a forced climate change; however, the length of the satellite data record is too short to distinguish between these two driving mechanisms.”

One would do well to remember the precautionary principle. However, this has not stopped decades of propaganda, nor has it stopped interventions for a problem that may or may not exist, one proposal or execution more extreme as the other. Proposals and interventions that are equally uncertain as to their short and long term effects.

Check out the Climate Change Swindle post for more data on how the global warming and climate change narrative is propaganda: https://www.modernsamurai.info/ccs/

Further Reading

Chen, Junye et al. Evidence for Strengthening of the Tropical General Circulation in the 1990s. In: Science, Vol. 295:5556, pp. 838-841. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1065835 [16 August 2023]

Climate4you. The urban heat island. http://climate4you.com/UrbanHeatIsland.htm [17 August 2023]

Kary Mullis’ Nobel Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1993/mullis/facts/ [16 August 2023]

Kary Mullis’ TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNOtiRB3uyk [16 August 2023]

Wielicki, Bruce A. et al. Evidence for Large Decadal Variabilitty in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget. In: Science, Vol. 295:5556, pp. 841-844. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1065837 [16 August 2023]