Introduction

This site has been designed, developed, and entirely financed by Jeff Temple, a Chartered Chemical Engineer (in the UK a Professional Engineer equivalent is a “Chartered Engineer”). It has been established for engineers to have their own debate site about the science of Climate Change. Engineers are by their nature inquisitive, and quite naturally often have strong opinions on their areas of speciality. However, Jeff saw that whilst there was a healthy exchange of opinions in the letters pages of many technical journals, there was often a lot of unscientific opinions expressed, whilst frequently hard to follow due to time lapses between the writing of letters and the publication of any response. In this way, Jeff was concerned that science was taking a back seat to emotions, or in some cases, just wrong science. Although Jeff is of the opinion global warming and subsequent climate change are realities, he wants to encourage the debate to be available and open to all, and based on proper science, with an opportunity for all opinions to be published, and rebuttals and corrections issued, and to be able to follow the debate. Jeff commits for this forum to be open to all parties, sceptics included, with a goal for engineers to debate the science of global warming and climate change in an open and honest fashion.

All correspondence from professional journals published on this site is published with the agreement of the relevant publication, and we are indebted to these publishers for allowing, and indeed encouraging, this debate.

In the first instance, the responses have been written by Jeff Temple, but when time permits he will open up the communications to wider exchanges. Although he checks all of his own communications with peers, as well as with climate scientists, before publication, Jeff takes full responsibility for the content. Any errors are his alone. He would be grateful to be advised of any errors, which will be corrected if proven.

In the future it is planned to have an open debate on this site. Anyone is invited to contribute to the debate, and specifically any person is encouraged to write follow-up letters or responses to any opinions given. Jeff will publish all of these without any editing, although he reserves the opportunity to add rebuttals, if appropriate.

Please keep returning to this site, which is in development, and where we will be including more exchanges in the months to come, as they develop.

A few pages have been prepared giving an overview of the science behind Global Warming. These are very far from being an expert view, and if the reader wants more detailed information, he is encouraged to look to more specific sites. This is not a site to cover the whole subject, and is focussed essentially on the debate.

 Rules

The debate must be about Climate Change, and any messages submitted must be expressed without insult, and with proper etiquette. Everyone, from all sides, must be prepared to expect rebuttals.

 Acknowledgements

If any of the readership of Hydrocarbon Processing wanted to better understand the subject, I would suggest “ Global Warming – Understanding the Weather ” by David Archer which is not only an excellent scientific read, but is based on course notes from undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago . Although it contains a number of textual errors, which will be visible to the engineer, it does clarify many questions.

Jeff wishes to acknowledge the many people who publish useful information on the web about the different aspects of Global Warming, publishing the reality about Climate Change, and makes particular mention of Coby Beck. Jeff also thanks staff in the University of Chicago as well as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for their help with reviews of his work.

* The UK spelling of skeptics is sceptics. In deference to my colleagues across the “pond”, these are used interchangeably through the site.