Letter from Dr Pierre Latour

September 2008 Edition

A detailed reading of the Earth's thermostat

Congratulations on your brave, accurate and useful Viewpoint editorial. Your scientific facts, analysis and conclusions harmonize with my study of this issue for many years. As a chemical process dynamics and control systems engineer, I studied the requirements for Earth's thermostat and quickly concluded:

1. Earth's temperature is a property of a dynamic chemical process system. A thermostat reduces variations about a desired setpoint by feedback manipulations of energy flows.

2. The system cannot be measured. Current global temperature averaged over latitude, longitude and altitude, adjusted for specific heat of atmosphere, land and water has never been measured in real time (No one can even measure the average temperature of one car, using mass and specific heats of its component metals, plastic, rubber, electronics, liquids, gases, catalysts and wood).

3. The system disturbances are not measurable. Solar radiation, solar wind, volcanoes, fires, storms, clouds and long-term influences are not measurable.

4. The system is uncontrollable. There are insufficient variables that humans can manipulate to influence temperature, anywhere.

5. The system is unknown. The interacting physical model relationships between input disturbances and temperature responses of the Earth's dynamic energy—mass balances are unknown.

6. Humanity has no method for setting the temperature setpoint. Some families even debate setting their house thermostat. Political science is inconsistent with the rigorous mathematical method 1 for setting control system targets to maximize long term expected value profit.

7. The control objective is unknown, probably insignificant. There is no measurable value from such a thermostat.

8. No planet has ever had its temperature intelligently controlled. Great harm can come from improperly designed control systems.

9. Government agencies and journalists are not competent or licensed to practice chemical process control engineering. They refuse to hire or listen to system engineers.

What is known by science about global warming is elementary 2 :

10. Human directed combustion of hydrocarbons to CO 2 has had no measurable effect on atmospheric CO 2 increases since 1900.

11. CO 2 is not much of a greenhouse gas compared to the 300 ppm of other molecules it has displaced in the atmosphere. It is essential plant food.

12. Atmospheric CO 2 lags atmospheric and ocean temperature rather than leading it, according to data published by Al Gore. Cause and effect must be correct before systems can be controlled.

13. This is because ocean water absorbs CO 2 when it cools and releases it when it warms. This scientific fact is well known to those who drink soda water, soft drinks, beer and champagne.

14. Ocean and atmospheric temperature changes are largely driven by solar radiation.

15. Global warming has continued gradually since the ice age ended 15,000 years ago. It ceased in 2000 AD.

16. Global warming is preferable to global cooling for flora, fauna and humans. Reforestation is an inexpensive, useful idea.

17. Scientific consensus confirmed that since 2000, global warming forecasts by the Kyoto Protocol and some politicians were predictably bogus.

18. Since human prosperity has been strongly correlated with human control of energy since 5000 BC, any uneconomic curtailment of hydrocarbon combustion will cause enormous harm to mankind, particularly the poor, handicapped and destitute. Predicted price increases for crude oil and food corn in 2008 are convincing evidence.

19. Political people and even some scientists have enriched themselves from their inaccurate, dire Kyoto Protocol warnings.

20. Political consensus lags scientific consensus by a decade or two.

21. When people get too warm, they take off sweaters, move north, and prefer mountains to beaches.

22. There is no such thing as obscene profits. Free market capitalism will cope nicely.

23. Henny Penny and Chicken Little were wrong; the sky is not falling.

Mankind is not facing eminent danger from climate change, either way. It is experiencing economic harm from coercive government. I am unaware of any reputable source, like the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, the Department of Energy, American universities, the UN or the EU that has ever published anything proving that any of these 23 conclusions are incorrect. This is why I do not worry about unsolvable problems that cost lots of money. It is also why I commend your brave editorial.

I engineered and implemented successful control systems throughout the HPI from 1966 to 2005. I also engineered successful Apollo lunar lander trajectory and vehicle docking controls at NASA from 1967 to 1969. My house and car thermostats work well, too.

LITERATURE CITED

  1   Latour, P. R., "Process control: CLIFFTENT shows it's more profitable than expected," Hydrocarbon Processing , December 1996, pp. 75–80.
  2   Robinson, A. B., S. L. Baliunas, W. Soon and Z. W. Robinson, "Environmental effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide," Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, January 1998, pp. 1–8.

January 2009 Edition

No consensus to be found on climate change

I refer to the letter to the editor from Pierre Latour titled, "A detailed reading of the Earth's thermostat" in the September 2008 issue (p. 45). He is critical of the environmental science underlying climate change, but his own case is weakened by his choice of evidence, which appears to have been designed to mislead. He surely wouldn't do that in his own professional field of process control, so why bring it to this most important debate? Let me take some examples from his letter:

He said that "the system cannot be measured," referring to a global temperature. Climate scientists do not measure a "global temperature," but instead use deviations from historic averages, from a massive number of stations. This is an extremely accurate and reliable method of measurement.

  Dr. Latour also said,"The system disturbances are not measurable. Solar radiation, solar wind, volcanoes, fires, storm clouds and long-term influences are not measurable." A study of available literature shows not only are these very measurable, but can be and have been included into the various models from as long ago as 1992. 1,2 In fact, the Hansen et al. paper actually predicted the temperature impact of Pinatubo volcano (around 0.5°C ) prior to it being measured!

According to Dr. Latour, "No planet has ever had its temperature intelligently controlled," but then again, no planet ever had its atmosphere controlled before by the successful global effort to tackle ozone depletion. In that case, we worked together to reduce emissions of CFCs. Now we should be working to reduce the emissions of CO 2 .

Back to Dr Latour's "global temperature," it is also worth noting that, even if we couldn't calculate a global mean temperature, we still know that climate is changing because we have multiple independent lines of evidence. These include (among many others) the changes we're seeing in ice-covered areas of the world, ocean heat content, species ranges and the timing of key life events such as migration, bud burst and flowering for a wide range of species on a global scale.

The second part of Dr. Latour's analysis was sourced on the only outside reference, from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has drawn substantial criticisms for its list of inaccuracies and cherry picking of statistics to support its arguments, including from the British Royal Society. 3 The self-styled Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine drew strong criticism from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as the paper was presented in a style to mislead the reader to believe that this was a peer reviewed paper from the NAS, which was not true. It was sent out attached to a petition urging people not to support the Kyoto agreement. In their comment, the NAS added the following statement concerning global warming: "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." 4 An effective rebuttal of his Oregon reference is the comprehensive treatment by Dr. Michael MacCracken, past-president of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. 5

The letter also included a muddle of political opinions. Of course, he should feel free to make these points, but if his interest is to justify them scientifically, then his evidence was absent. Dr. Latour, if your intent was to bamboozle and muddle, here is one engineer who is not confused, and who is very clear. We have global warming on earth, caused by man's activities, and we need to act now.  

Letter from Dr Pierre Latour

Response from Jeff Temple

January 2009 Edition

This is my reply to the comments of Jeff Temple.

Full Response (not published – see reasons below)

Here follows the response to the letter from Dr Latour (published in the January 2009 on-line edition of Hydrocarbon Processing Journal), and re-printed alongside, with the kind permission of the Hydrocarbon Processing Journal. I have worked to respond to the majority of Dr Latour's points, and if I have not done this in the rare case, it was because I considered the point irrelevant, of minimum importance, or was an oversight. I have also not shown references for information widely available from the web, such as “ocean acidification”. Finally I have worked hard to keep the debate based on science and understandable for all engineers.

1. I am indeed critical of distorting the science underlying climate change for bogus political power. All scientists and engineers should be, too. I reject the charge the evidence I provided 1 was designed to "mislead" anyone; I was trying to lead by informing. Temple provided no evidence of his bogus claim about my intention.
I am tempted to make the same charge against his reference authors. 2,3 I definitely make that charge against Al Gore. 4–10,12–16 Carefully studying data and graphs, text adjectives and nouns and logical validity of conclusions in atmospheric global warming, AGW and promotions since 1998, I have learned to read the fine print to confirm whether the scientific methods of Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, 11 James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, competent physicians, car mechanics and refinery engineers have been violated. Analysis before synthesis, 4–13 always.

1. I am fully aware that this debate touches the heart of our oil industry, for here we are talking about the products from our processes. As an Oil Refinery Process Engineer, with over 35 years experience, I also have my heart in this industry. However, as responsible citizens, it is a debate which needs to take place. In this document, Dr Latour, and readers of HP, I have attempted to address each and every one of the points raised by Dr Latour, whilst trying to show the science behind Global Warming. Since this is a site for engineers, I have taken the liberty of including a short glossary elsewhere in the site of some of the “climate” terms used in this debate.

2. Jeff Temple's main disagreement is with item 15 of my 23 claims: 1 "Global warming has continued gradually since the ice age ended 15,000 years ago. It ceased in 2000 AD." He offered two rebuttal papers. 2,3 I have studied both of his references, 2,3 and find their data support my claim that Earth's temperature has indeed stabilized since 2000. I provide Fig. 1 and additional recent support references. 4–10,12–16  

2. In his letter (see left), Dr Latour should be responding to my letter above, but in fact has gone off at a tangent, responding to something quite different, which renders his claim for “analysis before synthesis” rather meaningless. Just look at the references quoted by Dr Latour, which I did not use in my letter. For the benefit of the reader I will however respond to Dr Latour's points, even though I did not raise them in my own correspondence.

What we see here from Dr Latour with this point is rather typical of what we will see in this whole debate, so I am glad to start with it. Let us look at the trend information in the attached figure, and let us also include comments from the write up accompanying this figure. The trend shows an increase of Global Mean Temperature of + 0.15 ºC per decade, which includes the years up to 2007. Quoting from the write-up on the site accompanying the graph, (see “temperature trends”), “ During the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 0.05°C/decade (0.09°F/decade), but this trend has increased to a rate of approximately 0.15°C/decade (0.27°F/decade) during the past 25 to 30 years”. Now why was it that Dr Latour included the Figure, but excluded the accompanying text?

3. Mr. Temple's counter-claim against my comment about measurable, observable, controllable, stable and robust characteristics of the dynamic, multivariable nonlinear atmospheric temperature control system under design by Kyoto Protocols misunderstands my meaning. These mathematical concepts are part of the foundation of control systems engineering 18 recorded in AIChE Journal , ACS I&EC Journal , IEEE Transactions , ASME Transactions and annual JACC conferences since 1960. They provide exact necessary and sufficient conditions for these characteristics for all linear systems and some nonlinear systems. I employed some of these for the Apollo command and lunar modules roll-pitch-yaw digital autopilots and lunar rendezvous trajectory designs 11 when I was simulation branch manager, GS-14, Manned Spacecraft Center, NASA, Houston, in 1968 (I was 29 and James E. Hansen 19 was 28). This was when President John F. Kennedy charged competent control engineers rather than lawyers to design national control systems. All competent refinery control system engineers and thermostat closers should assure themselves these criteria are met before embarking on designing, implementing and closing feedback control systems. Not to mention assessing the possible performance, merit and value of such systems. I did this when I closed one of the first computer loops on a commercial oil refinery fluid catalytic cracker regenerator temperature in 1967, aware of the consequences if the regenerator catalyst slide valve pressure drop approached zero. Now I am merely trying to acquaint climate change scientists, physicists, lawyers and politicians promoting such things as Kyoto Protocols that chemical process control system engineering has a useful voice, weak as it is, in climate control engineering. 1 I am trying not to get shot down on my first attempt. I am a registered licensed professional engineer in Texas (chemical) and California (control systems). I charge Al Gore and all 535 members of the US Congress of practicing chemical process control engineering without proper licenses.

3. Whilst Dr Latour's experience and background in Control Engineering is unquestionably most impressive, I think that he misses the point that Climate Science is a mix of disciplines, which must necessarily include experts in satellite technology, physics, geology, oceanology, meteorology, solar physics, computer modelling, statistical modelling, etc, as well as climate scientists themselves, and not just Control Engineering. The conclusions have been very much a team effort.

4. Mr. Temple's counter-claim that global temperature measurements "using deviations from historic averages, from a massive number of stations is an extremely accurate and reliable method of measurement" won't fly. This "method" does not improve accuracy and those "massive number of stations" did not exist since the ice age ended until 1950. I discount his rebuttal 2,3 as irrelevant and stand on my comment. 1 Even if James E. Hansen 19 predicted one Pinatubo volcano effect, how does that prove the global temperature system is measurable or controllable? Do the math first. Does Hansen's remarkable gift allow us to discard, during his lifetime, the mountain of geologic evidence that volcanoes and earthquakes are notoriously unpredictable? Does Temple 's confidence in Hansen prompt him to invest in real estate on any of Mr. Hansen's predictable volcanoes? The tenuous link between CO 2 greenhouse effects and the Earth's temperature indicates humanity has no effective manipulated variable to control temperature; the steady-state gain dT/dCO 2 is almost zero. If so, the system is uncontrollable. 18 Kyoto will fail no matter what the political consensus may be.

4. First, allow me to handle the point about the availability of measurements, since this is indeed a key issue. Did thermometers not exist before 1950? Do we not have other methods of measuring historic temperatures? There is indeed much information available on past temperatures from direct thermometer readings, as well as proxy evidence from tree rings, corals, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, ice cores, boreholes, and glaciers. These give us much historical and independent cross referenced information. Today, what is important to witness is the speed of change, at a speed which has not been seen from the start of our records. Dr Latour's comment in his first letter was “ The system cannot be measured”. That is just not true. We do have the historic trend information, and we add to this the present massive number of stations, which gives us confidence in our conclusions. In short, we can measure! I address this point in greater detail elsewhere on the site, under “ An Engineers Appreciation of the Science Behind Global Warming”.

Now onto Mount Pinatubo . The physics of global warming is well known, and concerns the radiation properties of the “greenhouse” gases in our atmosphere. Over 100 years ago, in 1896 Svante Arrhenius predicted that human emissions of CO 2 would warm the climate. The physics of this was placed into climate models, and in 1988, James Hansen predicted that the global temperature would climb, with a possible brief episode of cooling, in the event of a large volcanic eruption (note he did not predict a volcano erupting, but merely the effects from it). He made this prediction in a paper and before a Senate hearing, which marked the official "coming out" to the general public of the dangers of Anthropogenic Global Warming. 12 years later, he was proven remarkably correct, requiring an adjustment only for the timing difference between the simulated future volcanic eruption and the actual eruption of Mount Pinatubo . To expand on this point, the climate models predict with accuracy the results from changes to inputs into the earth's heat balance, inputs which include volcanic eruptions, changes in the sun's radiation, as well as of course changes to greenhouse gas concentrations.

Finally, Dr Latour said that “The tenuous link between CO 2 greenhouse effects and the Earth's temperature indicates humanity has no effective manipulated variable to control temperature”. Here Dr Latour is wrong. There is a link between CO 2 in the atmosphere and Global Warming, and this has been adequately proven. It is another matter if Dr Latour does not want to believe in known physics and real results (see Dr Latour's Figure 1, for example), and with this effect now known, it is up to us to control emissions of CO 2 .

5. Temple counters my claim "No planet has ever had its temperature intelligently controlled," with an old, invalid, irrelevant argument that, since humans affected atmospheric ozone because it was strongly affected by human-generated CFCs (the cause and effect was strong and the merit was clear and justified), they can affect global temperature by human generated CO 2 (the cause and effect is weak to nil and the merit is unclear and not justified). How does a CFC-ozone effect justify CO 2 emission reductions? The relationship between CFCs and ozone has nothing to do with whether the global temperature control system passes muster of the five engineering characteristics I offered 1 to guide discussion in a helpful, cost-effective way. My claim is true.

5. I am sorry that Dr Latour did not understand my point about CFC's and the ozone layer. The point is that the world has come together before to resolve a global environmental problem, concerning emissions, so why not again.

6. Next, Temple cites convincing evidence that climate changes! Wow! We agree; I never said it didn't; I never met anyone who said it didn't, either. Because it's obvious, self-evident and irrelevant. In Houston , when it gets warmer in the summer, my air conditioning electric bill goes up; when it gets warmer in winter, my furnace fuel gas bill goes down. People wear sweaters when it's cool; they remove sweaters when it's warm. AGW began at the peak of the last ice age, probably >20,000 years ago. Humanity has prospered ever since, particularly since 1900. No problem.

6. I think that this point is away from the subject, whilst the issues touching on science I deal with elsewhere. I also find the belittling of the climate change issue distressing. This is not just a matter of Houston getting a little warmer. Bangladesh for instance is on course to lose 17 per cent of its land and 30 per cent of its food production by 2050. For America , this would be equivalent to California and New York State drowning, and the entire mid-West turning salty and barren. Shouldn't we care for ALL people in the world?

7. Temple complains I mislead by offering only one reference, Robinson, 12 that was not peer reviewed and was criticized by the National Academy of Sciences. First I offer this comment on Mr. Temple's reliance on peer review 7–10 for reliable information. I served as an American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal article reviewer for publication and a National Science Foundation reviewer for university chemical process control research grant requests during the 1970s. While it is the best system devised for quality science, medicine and engineering publication, it is far 7–10 from foolproof; many reviews were 2 to 1 either way. My reference 12 was updated, peer reviewed, published in 2007 13 and, as provided by Temple, analyzed by MacCracken. 21 Robinson 13 has received over 31,000 favorable reviews 20 from American scientists and scholars, undoubtedly more than any other climate change paper. I think this is because it reports important data, facts and logical conclusions based on observation without assumptions. Mr. Temple copied comments on Robinson 12 by NAS on April 20, 1998, based on NAS studies published in 1991 and 1992, six years before Robinson 12 was published: "As the paper was presented in a style to mislead the reader to believe that this was a peer reviewed paper from the NAS, which was not true. It was sent out attached to a petition urging people not to support the Kyoto agreement." NAS had no comment on the validity of the contents of Robinson. 12 Does Temple have any scientific criticism of his own of my reference 12 or my comments on it? Can he support his charge that it has a "list of inaccuracies and committed cherry picking?" I have reread Robinson 12 since 2006 and I cannot see where it was presented in a style to mislead any logical reader to believe it was peer reviewed by NAS. Unless a paper indicates it was published after peer review, the prudent reader assumption is there was no peer review.

7. I think that this is a good time to address the references used by Dr Latour. The reference 4) is Christopher Horner, who is a lawyer, with absolutely no scientific background. Interestingly in his paragraph 24) Dr Latour wrote, “I find technical opinions of lawyers, politicians and non-technical people lag scientists by a decade or more”, and yet he used a lawyer to provide the backbone of his case, using him as a reference 23, yes 23, times. Someone of this nature brings nothing to the table in terms of a scientific discussion. His reference 7) Richard Lindzen is indeed a Professor of Meteorology, but the reference supplied is not of a scientific nature, and I believe has no place in our debate. Just look at the first paragraph of the Abstract from his paper “ For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former. Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective .” The work then goes on to emphasise Professor Lindzen's belief that there is a conspiracy of Global Warming activists, whilst containing only opinions and politics, with a focus that scientists are creating a scare in order to receive funding, but writing nothing of a scientific basis. By the way, Professor Lindzen has never come up with a testable theory, produced data, or presented papers, explaining the current global temperature trend, and nor has he presented any of his recent views in any credible medium.

I would state categorically that information from “The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine”, which Dr Latour uses as a primary source, has no place in a technical debate such as we are having. On their web site this “Institute” lists just eight faculty members (of whom two are dead), no classrooms, or student body. The Chemical & Engineering News , in its editorial of June 9 th 2008, refused to carry a letter which quoted a reference from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine published in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (1) . The editorial said that this journal “is not indexed by Chemical Abstracts Service, Pubmed, or ISI's Web of Science, and articles published in this journal have argued that the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are unconstitutional, that “humanists” have conspired to replace the “creation religion of Jehovah” with evolution, that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that the “gay male lifestyle” shortens life expectancy by 20 years, etc”. The only reference of the “Institute's” work on climate change on their web site is to this paper and the petition. The paper itself is full of errors and omissions. I read this in full some time ago and was worried that maybe I was wrong on climate change. It was only after I read the various critiques, and saw how the report had misused and manipulated information, and had been selective of data presented, that I realised how I had been misled, yet Dr Latour uses this source 45 times as a reference! I invite the readers to similarly make their own judgement, by reading the review by Michael MacCracken (1) . As concerns the petition, despite being frequently cited by global warming critics as showing that thousands of scientists disagree with the consensus on global warming, it contains almost no people with relevant expertise; and its vetting was so lax that it included many fictional signatories. These people come with a reputation. I find it incredible that climate skeptics carry on about supposed lax standards of climate scientists, but are willing to lap up information from this dodgy “Institute”.

For the above reasons, I find the use of these references irrelevant. I leave the readers to judge whether these, plus the others, are good references or not.

I believe that in this debate, we should only rely on peer reviewed reports, published in professional journals, for the presentation of original information.

8. In any case, it is incumbent on Temple , the critic, to show errors in the data and conclusions I offered. What is wrong with sending a paper out with a petition against the Kyoto Protocol (not ratified by the US Senate)? Should papers be kept secret from Kyoto decision makers? Does Temple mind if I read it? Did Temple read it? The NAS comment, "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy" suggests NAS frowns on academic freedom, freedom of speech and the right to petition governments for redress of (scholarship) grievances, enshrined in the US Constitution (Amendment 1), without prior NAS approval. I can see how Robinson 12 embarrassed NAS, but fail to see how it relates to the merits of Robinson. 12 Besides, I carefully avoided using Robinson 12 to support my claim of temperature stability since 2000 since it was published in 1998. Nothing ever published by NAS prior to 2000 can have any possible relevance to our post-2000 dispute. Remember NAS membership is an award recognizing distinguished scientists; those members do not endorse the publications of their research arm: the National Research Council. 7 I will consider evaluating the MacCracken 21 critique of Robinson 13 which Temple offered, after MacCracken 21 is peer reviewed, published and I analyze the merits of Temple's own direct scientific critique of Robinson 12 and the parts of the 23 pages of the MacCracken opinion 21 pertinent to his rebuttal of my steady temperature since 2000 claim.

8. See point 7 above.

9. Temple wants to eliminate erroneous and unsubstantiated information from this AGW debate. I agree with the erroneous part and would have a problem if he brought erroneous information 2,3 for publication in a professional journal like HP . As for "unsubstantiated" information, I disagree. There must be room for unsubstantiated informed opinion. Not every sentence in HP needs references and mathematical proofs. It's filled with editorials, letters, papers and commercial reports of opinions without any peer review. Both references Temple provided 2 ,3 have lots of unsubstantiated opinion. I welcome Temple 's opinion in HP letters. Humans cannot write without expressing opinions in the adjectives they select. If one studies my 70 articles in professional journals like HP since 1963, listed in my resume, one will see I carefully follow Temple 's policy of references. Some were peer reviewed; none of my submissions were rejected. This debate is not limited to learned scientific bodies and peer reviewed journals. 7–10 Al Gore 4 took the AGW debate way beyond atmospheric science to other sciences, engineering, business, politics, governments, human rights, human values, finance, ethics, scholarship and legal fraud liability 4–10 when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted on December 11, 1997. I prefer not to restrict open minds.

9. My point here is that I have seen a lot of rubbish written about climate science in non peer-reviewed articles, newspapers, etc, so I think that for a debate such as this we at least use information from properly qualified people. This would rule out Al Gore for instance as a source (as well as other lawyers).

10. One of many references supporting my claim that Earth's temperature stabilized since 2000 is the Science article 2 cited by Temple . Just look carefully at the data in Fig. 1, middle, for temperature from 2000 to sometime in 2006 before the paper was submitted on October 27, 2006. The figure reveals temperature dropped 0.1°C from 2005 to 2006. It dropped more than 0.2°C in 1998. 10 By my eye, temperature has not increased at all since 1998, but one should remain cautious with analysis of noisy, hard to measure, chaotic systems. Statistical confidence limits would quantify the amount these small changes exceed the margin of errors. To quantify the chemical engineering perspective situation, the data for 1975 to 1998 2,3 show a barely perceptible rise of 0.6°C/33 years = 0.0182°C/yr before it stabilized from 1998–2008. Now that is measured average atmospheric temperature, North Pole to equator to South Pole, day-to-night, winter-to-summer, desert-to-forest, from surface-to-stratosphere, adjusted for pressure and specific heat of components, phases, chemical reactions and radiant heat transfer, consistently applied. Remember the perfect gas law, PV = nRT, shows average atmospheric pressure affects average temperature directly, no matter solar input or CO 2 content. Pressure changes with altitude, a lot.

10. Although I did not use this as a reference, I will respond to this point, and indeed would have been happy to have used it, since it is a valuable work. Looking at the referred to curve, since the climate system has a high internal variability we know well that we cannot take just one year and compare it to the next. More data is necessary to separate signal from noise. If you fit short-term trend lines to the annual global surface temperature data, you will find both positive and negative trends depending on the initial year to chose. For instance, the year 1998 was an “El Nino” year and especially warm as a result. Selecting just this one year as your general example to prove a trend (or lack of it), or comparing data for one small part of the world to global temperatures to disprove the entirety of the science of climate change, just does not work. Only once more years are included in any analysis can judgements be made. Let us take another look the info rmation quoted by Dr Latour, and look at the trend info rmation. Looking at the actual linear trends in the GISS and Hadley data for 2000-2007 shows + 0.25 ºC per decade in the GISS data and + 0.17 ºC per decade in the Hadley data. These are both above the long-term average given by IPCC, namely 0.13 ºC / decade for the last 50 years (uncertainty range 0.10 - 0.16). This shows that the claim “temperature has not increased at all since 1998” is groundless and clear that short term comparisons are misguided.

This point is also valid for the Figure 1 Dr Latour used in his point 2). We cannot come to any conclusion about Global Warming stopping till we are certain we have separated out signal from noise. And if we look at the words referring to Figure 1 on the reference itself, we find “seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, part of a rise in temperatures of more than 0.6°C ( 1°F ) since 1900. Within the past three decades, the rate of warming in global temperatures has been approximately three times greater than the century scale trend.” This gives the exact opposite conclusion to Dr Latour, and yet did not find its way into his words, despite him using the figure. Does this sound like the earth has stopped warming as Dr Latour would claim?

11. Now consider the average temperature in the firebox of any refinery crude distillation furnace: from burner tip to flame tip, throughout radiant section and convection section, corrected for duty, adjusted for pressure and specific heat of components, phases, chemical reactions and radiant heat transfer, consistently applied. If you saw a drift of +0.0182°C/yr, followed by 10 years of stability within plus or minus 0.1°C, would you be alarmed? How about the average temperature inside your crude distillation tower, corrected for throughput, adjusted for pressure and specific heat of components and phases, consistently applied? Can your own bare hand detect a temperature rise of 0.0182°C/yr? Can your thermometer or any refinery thermocouple? Once you can measure these two average temperatures in your crude distiller firebox and separation tower that precisely, let's see if you can extend it to measuring earth's average temperature. I recall HP Editor Les Kane publicly emphasizing the pillar of the HPI instrumentation industry since the 1970s: if you can't measure it, you can't control it. Houston summer highs can reach 40°C and winter lows can reach –2°C, so that annual drift you are so worried about is only 0.0182/42 = 0.043% of the change I experience annually. And even that miniscule increase stopped before 2000. 2,3

11. Would you use a furnace thermocouple to measure the temperature of a human body? Of course not, yet we routinely report body temperature to one decimal place with accuracy. We of course use appropriate instruments for the applied task.

Dr Latour also states that since the increase in global surface temperature is negligible in comparison to the huge temperature differences between the seasons, it should not matter much. Here, he confounds two very different aspects of the climate system. Small changes in mean global surface temperature do indeed matter. This becomes clear when we consider that the temperature difference between pre-industrial climate and the last glacial maximum (~ 21,000 years before present) was only around 6°C . Clearly the world during the ice ages was very different from ours today. As an aside, compare the speed of global warming at the end of the ice age and today. Global Warming until the end of this century could be of a similar magnitude, but happening with devastating rapidity.

12. Another trick is to divert attention from the temperature data stabilization since 2000, which no longer supports the AGW fear by alarming us again about sea level change. This is the main purpose of Temple 's reference, 2 stated in their first paragraph. They even admit in their third paragraph: "It will be difficult to establish the reasons for this relatively rapid warming" causing sea level rise. This is probably because none of the authors is expert in glacier freeze-melt mechanics. They prove at the bottom of Fig. 2 and claim in paragraph 3 that their sea level models are way off. While sea level is no doubt increasing as ice melts, this began when the last ice age ended 18,000 years ago. 4,7,10,12,13 The rate did not change since 1900 when internal combustion cars began. 12,13 Climate models for sea level forecasts don't include the glacier mass balance for snowfall variations thousands of years ago that influence melt rates today. 7,10,12,13 The Sea Level Rise Calculator 14 indicates the whole 33 year, 0.6°C atmospheric temperature rise from 1975 to 1998 eventually results in an ice melt sea level rise of 0.036 inches = 0.91 millimeters . Take out your ruler and stare at 0.91 millimeters over 33 years. Why would anyone trouble themselves to conduct data analysis and publish a paper in Science about that? All of which is irrelevant to CO 2 -caused AGW. Ice mass, IM, melt rate, tons/year, is dIM/dt. The rate of change of ice mass melt rate is the derivative of this or the second derivative of IM, dIM2/dt2, ice mass melt acceleration. 11 If CO 2 production since 1900 affected the normal warming trend and ice melt rate since 16,000 BC, it would be detected in a change in dIM2/dt 2 . But no such change has occurred. 4,12,13 Which is why popular glacier comparison photos 16 between 1920 and 2000 are irrelevent to CO 2 AGW influence analysis.

12. Concerning the point on sea level change, I would first like to tackle Dr Latour on a point of integrity. His quote was “ They even admit in their third paragraph ‘it will be difficult to establish the reasons for this relatively rapid warming' causing sea level rise ”. The whole phrase in context was actually “ Given the relatively short 16-year time period considered, it will be difficult to establish the reasons for this relatively rapid warming , although there are only a few likely possibilities . ” His selective quotation changed the sense of the sentence, making it appear that we could not establish the reasons for sea level rise, whilst the full sentence reveals it is because the time span is too short.

Let us now look at the method he used to calculate the sea level change “ The Sea Level Rise Calculator”, which comes from a site with the www address “Junk Science”. I have the opinion that this is a very appropriate name for this site. Its numbers are just wrong. It is not backed by any credible scientific institution, and its calculations are more than a magnitude smaller than what has been published in peer-reviewed journals. It also excludes any increase from the thermal expansion of the oceans. It is just not science.

We have very sound data of the speed at which sea level is rising, of which the reference I presented in my earlier letter is just one. Satellite data shows a present increase in sea levels of 3.3 mm per year (1993 – 2006). If sea level had been continuously rising (as one can infer from your claim) at a rate of 17 cm per century as we observed in the 20 th century, then it would have been 3.4 metres lower in Roman times. Yet, Roman harbours and walls still remain high and dry today. It is well known that post-glacial sea level rise ended in the mid-holocene sea level high stand (around 6,000 years ago), and global sea level had been slowly falling ever since. The point by Dr Latour is extremely wide of the mark.

Current model estimates (published in the last IPCC report) of further sea level rise until the end of the century lie between 18 and 59 cm . However, the models used for these estimates do not include important but yet poorly understood aspects of ice sheet dynamics, e.g., ice flow response to warming, so this number could be still higher. Sea level rise of this magnitude is something we should definitely be worried about. A rise of 1 m makes a once-per-century storm surge in New York (a multi-billion dollar disaster that floods subway stations etc.) a once-in-3-year event. Do we want to leave this as an inheritance for our grandchildren and their descendents?

13. I no longer automatically accept Science among the more reliable scientific climate change journals. 7,10 I don't accept Proceedings of The Royal Society on faith either. As Temple noted, the seven authors 2 come from "six learned bodies," but none of the "learned bodies" officially endorsed their paper. I am acquainted with one of the authors, James E. Hansen, 19 an advisor to Al Gore for some time who does not represent NASA, he is just an employee. Many scientists have discredited his scientific positions, 4,7 so I recommend readers temper his credibility. If anyone cares to see from the inside how global warming politicians have corrupted American science, study Lindzen 7–9 first, then these citations. 4–6,10 Subsequent to my analysis of Temple's reference, 2 I found compelling evidence 7,10 discrediting co-author Rahmstorf's scientific conduct and I doubt the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research should be considered a "learned body" for climate impact research. 7

13. It appears to me here, that instead of replying about the science, Dr Latour has resorted to questioning the motives of every scientist who isn't a skeptic of Atmospheric Global Warming.

14. While atmospheric CO 2 is increasing, a global CO 2 mass balance, like that chemical engineering mass balance principle used to run oil refineries, shows 4,13,17 that hydrocarbon combustion for human energy is a negligible atmospheric CO 2 source. The major causes are solar-driven 15 ocean warming, lost global floras 13 and increased forest fire intensity 22 due to human efforts to curtail natural burns in the US since 1910. The California , Oregon and Idaho fires overwhelmed all vehicle exhaust CO 2 emitted there during August 2008! Chaos.

14. I think that if Dr Latour made his own calculation on the tons of carbon dioxide given off by one car, on an annual basis, he would be shocked. Go ahead do it. I estimate myself approx 4 tons of CO 2 for a typical European car, doing 12,000 miles per year; higher for less efficient American cars. Now multiply that by the number of cars on the road, add on all the other consumption of hydrocarbons, coal, etc, and tell me it is not negligible, and not having an influence at the ppm level in our atmosphere.

Dr Latour states that forest fires are a cause of global warming, giving the fires of California , Oregon & Idaho as examples. Certainly the burning of the large tracts of rain forest have not helped, but the forest fires from replaceable forests do not contribute to global warming, as the CO 2 is absorbed back into the carbon sink (ie trees) when the forest re-grows. Such a fire should be seen on the global scale, and not imagining an invisible wall around these States. As for the other possible causes, oceans are gaining CO 2 , not losing it (see point 22 below).

15. The mistake is linked to the greenhouse chemistry effect of CO 2 displacing other molecules in the atmosphere at the ppm level. This chemistry is not well established, 2–10,12,13 which is the prime cause of the wide discrepancies in climatologists' modeling forecasts and trends, like Fig. 2. 2 Just because a model is claimed to be "physics based," like the first paragraph in Temple's reference, 2 does not convince me that the atmospheric chemistry, physics, energy balance, mass balances and hydrodynamics are correct. I consider such a statement a scientific faux pas. I prefer to follow measured data, 2–17 properly understood.

15. Dr Latour claims that “ greenhouse chemistry effect” of carbon dioxide is not well established. This is, in his mind, is the reason for the “wide discrepancies of climatologists' modelling forecasts and [observed] trends”. In reality the heat loss or gain effect of the layer of greenhouse gases has nothing to do with chemistry whatsoever. It is radiation physics, measureable and beyond any doubt. T he role of CO 2 in amplifying the greenhouse effect is very well studied and understood. Known spectral properties of the CO 2 and other greenhouse gas molecules in the atmosphere allow a relatively accurate estimate of how increased atmospheric CO 2 concentrations affect the radiation budget of the earth system, so the additional radiative forcing of CO 2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the pre-industrial era can be relatively accurately estimated.

16. The 1995 UN IPCC Report Summary has been discredited by the majority of its own scientific chapter authors, the majority of the scientific community not employed to confirm it 4–7,10–13 and subsequent data. 2–7,10,12–15 Temple's referenced 2 third paragraph admits "concentration of greenhouse gases has risen more slowly than assumed in the IPCC Report scenarios." Its hockey stick temperature anomaly scandal, 4–7,10 promoted by Al Gore, which created so much chaos, was buried in 2004. 4–7,10,12,13 The CO 2 -generated AGW scientific debate was over when scientific consensus discovered it was a massive, deliberate, political hoax. 4–10,12,13

16. Here from Dr Latour, is another mis-quote from the referenced paper. His extract reads “ Your reference (2) third paragraph admits < concentration of greenhouse gasses has risen more slowly than assumed in the IPCC Report scenarios >”. The actual third paragraph read “ Although the concentration of other greenhouse gases has risen more slowly than assumed in the IPCC scenarios, an aerosol cooling smaller than expected is a possible cause of the extra warming .” Dr Latour has taken this extract and by leaving out certain words, one slap bang in the middle of a sentence, has turned it on its head. Shame on him! For the remainder of this point I refer to my paragraph 13) above, although I would comment that the reference concerning the discreditation of the IPCC is amusing. Climate science is an interdisciplinary field, and scientists are not apt to agree completely even within one single field–much less between fields such as meteorology, geology, solar physics, atmospheric physics, computer modeling, statistical modeling, etc. etc. to all the fields that impinge on climate science. However, concerning the IPCC, its conclusions have brought broad agreement and consensus. To the best of my knowledge, there is not one major institute or academy of international standing which even comes close to his personal opinions concerning the IPCC. A joint statement issued by the national science academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, and UK says “ The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus….

The balance of the scientific evidence demands effective steps now to avert damaging changes to the earth's climate” Even the National Academy of Science which was commissioned by the Bush administration to assess the current understanding of global climate change joins in this consensus. Its report, published in June 2001, stated: “ The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue.” Here I provide a list of reputable scientific institutions, and every single one agrees that climate change is a problem. Dr Latour has told us that “ the major causes ( of increased CO 2 ) are solar driven ocean warming, lost global fauna and increased forest fire intensity due to human efforts to curtail natural burns in the US since 1910” . I will come to the solar question shortly, but the others are plainly excluded now. The expert judgment of the IPCC was based on objective and quantifiable analyses and methods, including advanced statistical appraisals, which carefully accounted for the interplay of natural variability, and which have been independently reproduced. Does he doubt the conclusions of all these learned bodies? If so, can Dr Latour please share the exact scientific basis for us all to know and to be educated? What were his own conclusions based upon? What else can the cause of global warming be, since we have discounted his previous suggestions? I have yet to see any alternate sound basis suggested by the climate skeptics.

17. When trying to model a chaotic 23 system, the modeler can input all sorts of empirical parameter tweaks in a computer model that can precisely match the past. But when it involves so much tweaking that it has no predictive power, it is useless. The model becomes nothing more than a "picture" of the past. This is a common empirical modeling problem and is clearly evident in the AGW models. 4,7,10 Anthropologic global warming computer models are based on the simple incorrect assumption that as the Earth's temperature increases, humidity will increase (more water vapor in the atmosphere, trusty old ChE humidity chart), and since water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, the greenhouse gas effect of CO 2 will be multiplied greatly (positive feedback). I was at my home at 1400 August 11, 2008, and my outside temperature registered 91°F . Then it started to cloud up and by 1630 there was a thunder shower. The temperature dropped to 71°F . Where did all the heat go? It went 5.5 miles up, where the temperature is usually about –55°F (as trans-Atlantic pilots like to report) and subsequently out into space, carried there by the powerful heat carrying capability of liquid water when it turns into vapor and consumes 972 Btus per pound and then back into liquid, releasing that latent heat of vaporization into space as thermal radiation. This happens almost every day in the summer in the temperate zones and all the time in the tropics, and it's not taken into account in the AGW computer models, because models can't model rain, clouds, lightning, storms and hurricanes very well at all, 10 because it's too complicated and chaotic. 23 AGW computer models also don't model ocean current oscillations, which are major factors in effecting the Earth's heat balance. 10 This is why 7–10 myopic atmospheric science projections 2 are getting so far away from the observed global temperatures, since the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to it's cold phase in late 2006. There are other problems as well. Computer modeling of climate is a fairly young science 3,7,10 and not yet fully developed enough to accurately model something as complicated as earth's climate chaos. 23

17. Many people make the error, and describe climate as chaotic. Most components of weather are, indeed, highly random and unpredictable; which means that we are unable to predict weather very far into the future. Weather forecasting is dependent on the starting conditions, making predictions based on those starting conditions. These predictions contain small errors, which are amplified as we look forward. A small error at the start can therefore become something large over time (butterfly effect). Climate on the other hand is a sort of average of the weather, and by taking the average we arrive at something that is not chaotic, and which is entirely predictable. We cannot predict with certainty the weather in London or Rome in a week's time, but we can predict with certainty the overall climate in Rome compared to the climate in London , or winter compared to summer, or the climate in a desert compared to a rain forest. The ability to make these predictions hardly describes a chaotic system. In scientific terms, weather is a prediction based on starting conditions which diverge, while climate is a boundary value problem and determined by the boundary conditions, i.e., the incoming solar irradiance and the out-going radiation of the atmosphere (planet earth can be considered like an envelope), therefore, modelling the climate is not an impossible task, as claimed. Climate modelling allows us to look at and understand longer term trends by changing inputs and outputs to the envelope. This confusion between climate and weather is an often cited, but wrong, criticism of prediction of Global Warming.

18. I practiced the art of combining rigorous and empirical dynamic chemical engineering models of most oil refinery processes and closing computer control loops on them to operate better since 1966. One quickly sees closed loops go awry when the underlying models do not match plant behavior. I am sure any process engineer can verify this in his refinery. All these measurable input-output multivariable dynamic interactive effects can be unscrambled to produce an empirical dynamic matrix model for the data period. Its predictive power can be tested and mathematically verified, 11,18 perhaps providing a useful climate planning and control model tool. Dynamic multivariable control applications throughtout the HPI have been reported in HP since their commercialization in the 1980s.

18. Whilst Dr Latour's experience is undoubted, I am not sure the relevance of this point to the debate, since climate is not chaotic, and can be modelled with accuracy.

19. One of many references supporting my claim that Earth's temperature stabilized since 2000 is the Royal Society article 3 cited by Temple . Just look carefully at the data in Fig. 1, bottom, for temperature from 2000 to sometime in 2006 before the paper was submitted on April 4, 2007. You will see it is exactly the same temperature data as in Fig. 1 and Fig. A here of Temple's other reference! 2 Global temperature actually began to stabilize around 1998.10 Both of Temple's references 2,3 offered to rebut my claim, actually confirm it, in spades.

19. Please note that I did not use the referred to paper as a reference in my earlier communication. However, Dr Latour makes the same error of selecting too restricted data for his analysis. See also point 10) for an explanation.

20. Temple suggests the sun cannot be responsible for present AGW and cites Hansen 2 for proof. But this reference does not define what period is meant by "present." Yesterday? Last month? Year? Decade? Century? Millennium? 10,000 years? (There is no AGW since 1998. 10 ) Does Temple mean the sun cannot be responsible for any of it? Ever? No Earth temperature variations whatsoever? Since Earth coalesced 4.7 billion years ago? Hey, no high school physics graduate believes that. There has been some gradual warming for 18,000 years with higher frequency cooling along the way, largely driven by solar variations affecting ocean temperature, with corresponding lags to atmospheric CO 2 and temperature. 4–7,10,12,13 I call it AGW. Recent data proves AGW stabilization in Fig. 1 since 2000 is largely driven by decreased solar wind, 15 blowing Temple 's Hansen reference 2 out of the sky.

20. Aside the first part, which is largely irrelevant to this scientific discussion, the issue of the possibility of solar radiation or solar wind being the cause has been widely investigated, and scientifically discounted. See more in Point 22).

21. The Royal Society paper 3 has a fundamental flaw. The opening abstract (p. 2447) should be changed from "Earth climate" and "Global mean temperatures" to "Earth's surface air temperature," to avoid gross overreaching from p. 2450. They confirm this on p. 2448 when it is noted "solar contribution to global temperature rise in the first half of the 20th century has been detected." On p. 2449, I find, "There is no data on total solar irradiance variations on century time scales so we must rely on reconstructions." This is the beginning of the flaw built into the "reconstructions." 7

I find on p. 2450, "It is not the purpose of this paper to report connections between solar variables and changes in climate on millennial or centennial timescales. Rather, the aim is to study data for the last 40 years (1966–2006) to see if solar radiation could have played any role in observed present-day global warming."

Then, they restrict input data range to Fig. 1, 1975–2006 or 30 years, when 40 years didn't work so well, where temperature rise from 1975 to 1998 is a barely perceptible 0.6°C and 0°C from 1998 to 2006. Two of the four solar variables they selected cycle with a period about 32 years/3 cycles = 10.7 years. This simply indicates a lack of measurable influence of those particular variables on temperature during that 30-year period. But solar activity power has a broad transient and black body energy frequency spectrum, which must be considered in its entirety on temperature variations. 12,13 The proper method of analysis for correlation between dynamic variables is Fourier frequency domain or time series domain mathematics, commercialized for process systems analysis and dynamic multivariable control of chemical processes 18 since 1960 and regularly published in HP ever since. One of the four solar variables selected, Fs, has no discernable 11-year cycle and another one, C, has a distorted sine wave opposite the other two, perhaps mitigating their effects somewhat with the result that solar energy captured by Earth and air temperature were both rather steady from 1975 to 2006. So the data is useless for quantifying cause and effect (anyone need a statistics reference?).

21. Please note that I did not use the referred to paper as a reference in my earlier communication., however I will address his comments. As this point and the next concern the same subject, I address them together in point 22).

22. Here, the flaw enters. 3 The data is "reconstructed" 7 by an arbitrary, non-standard, non-referenced data analysis method in Fig. 3 and then Fig. 4 is concocted to extract proof of the claim that is not in the real Fig. 1 (Fig. A) data! Fudged, massaged and modified are synonyms for "reconstructed." This is a scientific gotcha. I defy anyone to stare at the rather stable data from 1998 to 2006 in Fig. 1 (Fig. A) and the corresponding concocted 7,10 escalating upward curve in Fig. 4 and see how Fig. 4 could possibly represent Fig. 2! The Royal Society reviewers that missed this can be pardoned because the authors buried the flaw in a 6½ page section 3 and 4 flourish of fog, couched in archaic language that sounds scientific. This is one of many examples 7,10 of my model critique in item 17 above. I find on p. 2456 buried in paragraph two, Temple 's "all [reconstructed 7 ] solar trends since 1987 [not 1975, they shrunk the range again from 30 to 10 years! Really need a sharp eye to catch this bait and switch] have been in the opposite direction to those seen or inferred in the majority of the 20th century—particularly in the first half [no data provided for 1900–1975 to support this astonishing assertion]. This should be contrasted with the correspondingly smoothed [reconstructed 7 ] global surface air temperature anomaly for which the trend is upward, global warming, both before and after 1985."

This is worse than cherry picking of a very high order. Besides all that, they try to correlate time syncronized data over 10 years, neglecting the well-known ocean thermal lag 10 of several decades! That is indefensible. (The lag can be quantified from the time series analysis of Al Gore's million year CO 2 versus temperature data that proved CO 2 correlation lags temperature rather than leads it. 4,16 This confirmed the well-accepted theory that the oceans release CO 2 when solar radiation warms them and the atmosphere. Al Gore experiences this inconvenient truth with every glass of champagne.) Then on p. 2457, "Extrapolation of solar activity trends in the future are notoriously unreliable." Agreed! Authors get it right; finally come clean. This disclaimer is compelling evidence the authors realize they don't understand what is going on. So they call for more research! Another science marketing trick. Anyone who believes scientists are not human is naive. 4–10 Their conclusions, p. 2457, include "Our results show the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability—no matter how much solar variation is amplified." This conclusion from preselected temperature data from 1985 to 2006 of 0.2°C to 0.6°C in Fig. 1 (Fig. A) is preposterous nonsense and a poor reflection on peer review by The Royal Society . 11 I call for a retraction of this unscientific and worthless paper. Any researcher who tries to build upon it and reference its conclusions to support their own is hereby on notice of shaky ground. As an aside, there is no scientific theory proposed, 3 confirmed or rejected; just 10 years of someone else's temperature data, Fig. 1 (Fig. A), analyzed by a nonstandard, ad hoc, flawed method, with unfounded, incorrect, misleading conclusions.

22. I first comment that Dr Latour repeated his errors again, firstly claiming that global warming has stopped, and secondly that increased CO 2 in our atmosphere is caused by release from the oceans. First concerning the second point, he wrote “ This confirmed the well-accepted theory that the oceans release CO 2 when solar radiation warms them and the atmosphere. Al Gore experiences this inconvenient truth with every glass of champagne”. Dr Latour, you are wrong again. Please search the web for “ocean acidification” to find the wide concern over the real increased acidification of the earth's oceans (and not loss of CO 2 ). This comes from the increased levels of CO 2 being absorbed into the oceans. I would agree that if solar radiation were the cause, CO 2 would most likely be released from our oceans, but the reverse is in fact happening. The oceans are becoming more acidic, which is incidentally a major environmental concern, killing off coral reefs, and other plant and animal life (and where is the “genuine” environmentalist in Dr Latour now - see his point 27? How about the species being driven to extinction – some studies suggest up to one third of species – which could be doomed for extinction already by the year 2050? ). The issue of the possibility of solar radiation being the cause of global warming has been widely investigated, and scientifically discounted. Dr Latour's own referenced article from D Hathaway says “For the last 15 years or so, the sun's overall output seems lower than normal”. So how can we have global warming if the sun is now excluded? There is no other realistic explanation aside increasing CO 2 levels for Global Warming, so the conclusions stand. As for the remainder of his point, frankly I have not spent too much time on it, as I do believe that he is chasing after tiny faults, but which he tries to use to undermine the whole, to damn the whole concept of Global Warming. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. In fact, there has been much discussion over this paper on the web, and his questioning points have never been raised. Of course, he is free to continue with his own opinions, and I leave readers to make their own judgement whether they carry value to the overall debate.

23. I know about a powerful mathematical theorem that proves stochastic, chaotic, 23 noisy systems like stock markets, hurricane damage, wind gusts, cloud shapes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, solar flare intensity—frequency and genetic mutations cannot be forecast reliably. It explains why no stock market chartist or timer investor method has ever performed consistently better over time than the average, or ever will. They must eventually revert to the mean. It's a law of mathematical statistics. Temple 's reference authors 3 are advised to Google for it before concocting another data "reconstruction" 7 to forecast short-term global temperature; I decline to provide them any more help.

23. Once again Dr Latour confuses weather with climate (see 17 above). Try this. Summer follows winter. The equator has a hotter climate than a glacial region. Rain forests have more rainfall than deserts. Does this look chaotic? Yet all of these can be reliably predicted. I hope that Dr Latour can now understand that climate can indeed be modelled. This is the science, but is often poorly understood by climate skeptics.

24. Temple closed on this low note, "The letter 1 also included a muddle of political opinions. Of course, he should feel free to make these points, but if his interest is to justify them scientifically, then his evidence was absent. Dr. Latour, if your intent was to bamboozle and muddle, here is one engineer who is not confused, and who is very clear. We have global warming on earth, caused by man's activities, and we need to act now."

Temple failed to support this charge with a single statement by me which he considered a muddle of political opinions. So I do not know what he is talking about. My interest is to educate and inform. I do not use science to justify any preconceived notions; I just observe and appraise the facts. I have no vested interest in the AGW debate that has raged for a decade, beyond its benefit/cost for me, my children and the US economy. I am not seeking to win or defeat anyone or make money. I prepared this reply on my own time without consulting anyone or receiving any financial assistance. As to my intent: I have already stated it and find it offensive that Temple should distort it with such unfounded words. I accuse Temple of violating the normal terms of debate conduct and standards of professional etiquette, which I scrupulously honor. His inaccurate and unfair attack on my intention has no place in HP (but I hope this is published verbatim anyway). I am also one engineer who is not confused and who is very clear. Temple stating "we need to act now," without stating what the proposed act is, is nonsense. We have no AGW since 2000; 2–7,10,13 man-made CO 2 since 1900 has had no measurable affect on atmospheric temperature and we should drop the whole charade. I join the large consensus that formed in 2007 among scientists 4,7,10,20 and engineers with no vested interest in the outcome when their debate ended. I find the technical opinions of lawyers, politicians and non-technical people lag scientists by a decade or more.

24. Please allow me to remind Dr Latour of extracts from his letter published in September 2008, “ Political people and even some scientists have enriched themselves from their inaccurate, dire Kyoto Protocol warnings”, plus “The UN, US Congress and mainstream media are not competent or licensed to practice chemical process control engineering. They refuse to hire or listen to engineers.”, and also “I am unaware of any reputable source, like National Academy of Sciences, NASA, Dept of Energy, American universities, UN or EU, that has ever published anything proving any of these are incorrect.” Let the reader's judge if Dr Latour's points were based on sound science, and if they were political, or not.

I also find Dr Latour is a case of “the pot calling the kettle black”. He claims to be insulted (see left), but has no hesitation to insult politicians and some scientists himself (I remind you of his quote “ Political people and even some scientists have enriched themselves from their inaccurate, dire Kyoto Protocol warnings ”) .

I stand by my statement that “The letter also included a muddle of political opinions. Of course, he should feel free to make these points, but if his interest is to justify them scientifically, then his evidence was absent. Dr Latour, if your intent was to bamboozle and muddle, here is one engineer who is not confused, and who is very clear. We have Global Warming on earth, caused by man's activities, and we need to act now."

25. Temple might draw comfort from recent evidence that the global warming prime mover, solar radiation, has been in decline recently. 15 Here is another example of atmospheric science myopia, failing to include astronomy. Although the CO 2 greenhouse gas effect is small, mankind may be fortunate combustion for energy that started in earnest in 1900, produced some CO 2 to mitigate global cooling after 2000. Take a deep breath and relax. Plant a tree. Don't worry about exhaling plant food into clean, fresh air with 380 ppm CO 2 at 1 bar. 7 A little warming may be a good thing. Engineers have as much ability as lawyers to study and understand the AGW debate. 4–10 AGW is not a prime concern of engineers who understand it is not very important. We just want to curtail the $100 billion rip-off since 1996 already committed by non-scientific institutions like the UN to foster the hoax. The federal $0.50/gal subsidy of corn-based ethanol in the gasoline mandate to help Iowa farmers and exacerbate world hunger promoted by former US Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) 24 is but one example.

25. Based on information known, I believe these comments to be wrong, off topic and irrelevant, but worrying, since we should not only be concerned with this subject, but involved with it.

As engineers we have an absolute right to debate Global Warming, but only if we use correct science. However, once debated, it is then up to us as engineers to come up with workable solutions to this situation. That is my single largest disappointment, as far as I am concerned, that letters such as from Dr Latour, which smother the science with false trails, pretends that the debate is continuing.

I have no comment to make on domestic US policy, except to express my agreement with Dr Latour's opinion on corn-based ethanol.

One quick point on professional standards and etiquette, as mentioned by Dr Latour. One selective mis-quotation by Dr Latour I can accept may be accidental, but 2, including taking out key words, I think is pushing belief. I think that he owes the readership of HP an apology for leading them astray with these errors, both of which led one to draw conclusions other than were intended in the original work.

26. I do not agree that the consequences of a wrong decision are catastrophic. This depends entirely on the definition of "wrong," a little wrong or a big wrong. I reject this unscientific, non-quantified, emotion-based scare tactic. It has no place in a technical publication like HP for sure. I submit it is quite possible that mother Earth and humanity will go merrily along combusting hydrocarbons (coal, shale, tar, oil and gas) to CO 2 plant food until those hydrocarbons are no longer economically competitive, no matter what the UN, China , India 7 and Russia do. No, I do not agree that this AGW debate is incredibly important and worth prolonging. In fact, the evidence I provided is now overwhelming that the AGW scare is a hoax 2–10, 12–14 and the debate and taxpayer subsidies should cease forthwith. Al Gore and the UN have already gotten AGW wrong, and the consequences for humanity and Earth are already appalling. China , India and Russia have acted according to this belief since Kyoto 1997, to their credit. Besides there is nothing Europe, North America or Japan can do now to reduce global atmospheric CO 2 significantly in the face of massive, harmless increases from Asia, Africa and South America from 2000 to 2050. Global mass balance 3,12,13 shows developed nations have become bit players due to their energy conservation efforts since 1950. Slowing their population growth has helped, too. I await a credible, detailed benefit-cost analysis 25 of any measure to affect global temperature, with who gains, who pays and how much, before endorsing it.

26. I think it is now proven that “Global Warming” is not a scare tactic, or a hoax, but is serious, and one we need to consider and take action on. As the world's largest single producer of greenhouse gases, the world looks to USA to take a lead, and not to hide behind other people's skirts. Additionally, there are several serious cost estimates available, which all conclude that it would be far more effective to start taking action earlier, rather than later.

27. Now if Temple wants to solve a serious problem of humanity messing up Earth's environment, I suggest he direct his efforts to population control. With a six billion human population increasing rapidly and only 400 rhinos, 600 Siberian tigers and ocean fish stocks disappearing quickly, something is wrong no matter how you define it (I am a genuine environmentalist).

27. I agree, but this is surely irrelevant to the present debate;

I hope Temple finds this reply enlightening, educational, helpful, factual, current, satisfying and polite; maintaining proper professional etiquette for such a hot topic. I even hope he is not alarmed by my good news. If he detects any political undercurrents in this reply, he is welcome to state his claims and cite his evidence, even if it is not from a peer reviewed journal.  

LITERATURE CITED

1 Latour, P. R., "A detailed reading of the Earth's thermostat," Letters to the Editor, Hydrocarbon Processing , September 2008, pp. 45–50.
2 Rahmstorf, S., J. E. Hansen, et al., "Recent Climate Observations Compared to Projections," Science , Vol. 316, May 4, 2007, p. 709.
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Please allow me to summarise. The letter from Dr Latour has shown a lack of understanding of the basics of climate science, a reliance on unqualified people to support his case, selective use of data, and carelessness with quotations.

It appears that there is also an effort to discredit the reality of Global Warming through trying to find tiny holes, or diverting attention from the real issues, then exaggerating the findings, to bring down the whole. Meanwhile, we have yet to hear of a sound alternative to credibly explain away Global Warming.

Dr Latour has picked data to support his own position, his own theories, whilst ignoring the thousands of other results or available information that he was unable to explain. Any neutral and

reliable scientist by contrast will try to explain, in as balanced way as possible what conclusions can be drawn from the information available, taking into account all the uncertainties and question marks they come with.

Dr Latour has attempted to discredit the IPCC for political reasons, ignoring the science, the mass of support for the IPCC from reputable scientific institutions, and giving no convincing technical argument either to counter the IPCC or to support his extravagant theories, whilst putting nothing solid into its place to explain Global Warming.

If we re-read the original letter from Dr Latour, published in the September 2008 edition of HP, we can now see that he is truly in error for the majority of his points. He is wrong, amongst others, on climate science, on the chaotic nature of climate, of the release of CO 2 from the oceans, on measuring Global Warming, on the causes of Global Warming, and on the scientific consensus. This debate should be about sound science. Scientific scepticism and scrutiny are welcome of course. They are the heart of science, and an important part of the overall process. It is unfortunate that specious arguments were used that skilfully exploited the lack of background knowledge in HP's audience to support an unworthy case.

I do hope that having seen and understood the case, Dr Latour will “see the light”, and channel his undoubted talents and energies into the solution.

Yours sincerely

Jeff Temple, BSc(Hons) CEng FIChemE MIE

Shymkent , Kazakhstan

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/Comment_on_Robinson_et_al-2007R.pdf