On a personal note Ed Hoskins

Ed Hoskins had an educational grounding in science subjects. He qualified both as a Dentist with distinction at Guys in London in 1962 and as an Architect in Cambridge in 1969 with a double first.

Having worked within a research group at the Architecture school, The Martin Centre, involved with the quantifiable aspects of Building and Planning, Ed was responsible for setting up and running the spin-off company Applied Research of Cambridge Ltd stemming from that group. In 1969 it was one of the earliest spin-off companies of the “Cambridge Phenomenon”.  Ed ran the company for sixteen years till its sale to its American distributor in 1985.  By then ARC had a staff of 150 worldwide with particular successes in USA, Australia and Japan.

The company produced Computer Aided Design software products for Architecture and Engineering and for Geographic Information Systems. The markets for its software were world-wide.

Since retirement Ed has taken an interest in the questions of Global Warming / Climate Change and has published several notes quantifying various aspects of the dilemmas raised and the remedies being pursued.  He uses his abilities in business planning and presentation to make contributions that are hopefully useful and accessible at a layman’s / politicians’ level.

This note makes use of illustrations and references much of Ed’s earlier analyses and may make a useful contribution to thinking about future policies.

Ed’s views are not politically correct.

Even so, they raise questions which should be fully addressed when making government policy towards UK Energy and Climate Change.

On being a denier

With my views I would be derided by Catastrophic Global Warming Alarmists as a “denier” or even as a “deplorable denier”, but:

• I do not deny that climate changes.  It does it all the time, the Climate can go either way either warmer or colder.
• I do not deny that the previous millennium 1000 AD – 2000 AD was the coldest millennium of the current benign Holocene epoch.
• I do not deny that the early Holocene period was warmer than now.
• I do not deny that the early Holocene had roughly flat temperatures including its notably warm “Holocene Climate Optimum”.
• I do not deny that the millennia of the recent Holocene since a tipping point about 3 thousand years ago, about 1000 BC, has been progressively cooler.
• I do not deny that and the planetary mechanics of the Solar system has a major long term influence on the World’s climate.
• I do not deny that variations in the output of the Sun at its full spectrum of visible and non-visible wavelengths has a significant and often unappreciated influence on the World’s climate.
• I do not deny that the Holocene climate “optimum”, around 7-6000 BC, was some 3°C warmer than the depths of the Little Ice Age, ~500 years ago.
• I do not deny that each of the earlier temperature peaks in the Minoan, Roman, Medieval and Modern warm periods of the Holocene epoch have each been successively colder.
• I do not deny that the world got warmer in the latter half of the 20th century, just as it did in the earlier half of the 20th century, at about the same rate and to about the same degree:  at that earlier time there was no possibility of any influence from Man-made CO2.
• I do not deny that as the world has gotten significantly warmer since the Little Ice Age, and that this warming has produced a much more congenial and beneficial climate for man-kind and throughout the biosphere.
• I do not deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  But, because the effects of CO2diminishes logarithmically from 420ppmmv onwards the warming effect of CO2 can only now be small
• I do not deny that the truly miniscule contribution of Man-made CO2, is only one of several warming influences, the most important of which are water vapour and clouds and the out gassing of CO2 from warmer oceans.
• I do not deny that about 75% of the warming effectiveness of CO2 (up to ~150ppmv) gas is essential of the support of plant life and consequently for the survival of all life earth.
• I do not deny that the influence of CO2 on temperature diminishes with increasing concentrations
• I do not deny that at ~420ppmv ~85% of the effectiveness of CO2 as warming greenhouse gas is already expended.
• I do not deny that man, by burning fossil fuels, is contributing to a certain extent to the increase of atmospheric levels of CO2.
• I do not deny that the emissions of Man-made CO2 are inevitably going to rise until the underdeveloped world, still more than 80% of the world’s population, has universal access to satisfactory electricity supply and other life enhancing affordable energy sources.
• I do not deny that Man-kind pollutes the environment and that he does do significant toxic damage to the planet.
• I do not deny that real pollution from Man-kind’s damaging activities poisoning the planet should be tackled aggressively
• I do not deny that all adverse activities such as the extraction of minerals to support the Weather-Dependent “Renewables” manufacture and installation should be viewed as dangerous pollution.
• I do not deny that even  at its current concentration (420ppmv) the World and its plant life are still in a state of relative CO2 starvation.

But from my examination of the Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming / Climate Change question I do deny the following:

• I do deny that atmospheric CO2 from any source is a dangerous pollutant:  CO2 is the basis of photosynthesis – thus even at its presently low concentration of atmospheric CO2 is the foundation for all life on earth.
• I do deny that CO2 is currently at dangerous levels in the atmosphere:  at the current ~420 ppm it is at a very low level compared to the historic past of our planet when plant life originally evolved, ~5000ppmv.
• I do deny that Man-made CO2 can ever be the most significant control knob for world climate.
• I do deny that any further moderate warming within normal limits, (+2°C or more) would be a global catastrophe.
• I do deny however that an additional +2°C could ever be attained by the emissions of Man-made CO2 from burning fossil fuels, because of the limiting and radical diminution of the Greenhouse effect that applies to increasing concentrations of CO2 into the future.
• I do deny that any continuing warming from Mankind’s CO2 emissions is significantly enhanced by massive positive feed-backs via water vapour and clouds in the atmosphere, that radically enhance the warming that could be produced by higher CO2 concentrations.
• I do deny that there are major worldwide negative and catastrophic risks caused by Man-made Warming / Climate Change.

Motivation

I well recall voicing the opinion in a well-researched paper long ago in 1998 that information about pollution levels in London was being misrepresented and exaggerated by Green activists.  However, that published opinion quickly elicited threats of personal violence and death.

Transport and Health in London

“Believers” in the “Green religion”,  although many are well-meaning at heart, are not necessarily nice people.  They are rarely tolerant and certainly not open to debate.

I am old enough to remember London’s pea soup fogs in the 1950’s:  that was real atmospheric pollution.  The pollution problem was solved in the UK by the Clean Air Act and since those times real air pollution in the UK and throughout Europe has radically improved and is no longer a significant problem especially since tetraethyl lead in motor fuels have been withdrawn.

CO2 emissions were not the cause of the “London peasoupers”:  the cause was sulphur dioxide and soot in the atmosphere combined with Autumnal atmospheric inversions.  Neither are CO2 emissions responsible for the gross air pollution in parts of China.

The characterisation of Man-made CO2 as a pollutant is untenable.  

Any added CO2 in the atmosphere is enhancing the fertility of all plant life and should be welcomed.

It is not to be feared in any way.  

CO2 levels have been ten times the current levels with no excessive warming and the outcome was just more luxuriant plant life worldwide.

 

 

The official publication of “the hockey stick” temperature graph, shown below, convinced the world that there had to be a real Global Warming problem that should be addressed.  And that could be achieved by reducing  the CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels by Western nations.

It certainly convinced me initially.

So I graphed the original IPCC published data from 1990 against the “Michael Mann Hockey Stick”. The comparison shown above was stark.  The intentional deception eliminated the previously well understood Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

I just hate knowing I am being lied to !

Added to the Mann graphic was

“Mike’s Nature Trick to hide the decline”

the original data showed a “decline” and that had to be “hidden”.

The process involved was well explained by Prof Richard Muller in the is short extract from a presentation in October 2010 before his institution of the BEST temperature study.

So as a hobby, I began some exploration starting with the Professor David MacKay’s book Sustainable energy without the hot air.  This book, using as he says “numbers not adjectives”, debunks all the common assertions about the efficacy of weather dependent Renewable energy.

Although he believed that CO2 is contributing significantly to “Global Warming / Climate Change”,  David MacKay had at long last produced a great deal of quantified common sense on the subject of the efficacy of “Renewable” energy.

http://www.withouthotair.com/

This lead me on to a wider exploration of the question of Man-made Climate Change / Anthropogenic Global Warming / Catastrophic Climate Change, etc.

Very sadly Professor Mackay died prematurely in April 2016.  In spite of the fact that he was a green supporter and agreed with de-carbonisation of the Western economies he was devoutly rational preferring mathematics to Green religious conjecture.  And I have been trying to look at these questions, just like him often as “back of the envelope calculations”.

Overall the late Professor David Mackay said it all in his final interview:  ie that by ignoring simple arithmetic, the use of Weather Dependent Renewable energy to try to power a developed country is

“an appalling delusion”

and he eventually admits that in the UK

“there really is no point in having wind power or solar power in the UK”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/03/idea-of-renewables-powering-uk-is-an-appalling-delusion-david-mackay

and later in the same interview he said that:

“if it is possible to get through the winter with low CO2 Nuclear and possibly with Carbon Capture and Storage there is no point in having any Wind or Solar power in the UK generation mix”

But it seems that having bought into the assumption that Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming is an immediate and existential threat that Government elites when faced with these simple but devastatingly wasteful calculations assume a position of “wilful ignorance”, and a stance of “don’t confuse me with the facts, we are saving the world“.

However I would entirely disagree David Mackay’s view that Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS, is an essential technology to be developed in order to avoid CO2 emissions.  I would rather characterise CCS as:

“an expensive and energy wasteful way of throwing away irrelevantly small quantities of useful plant food”.

Nonetheless I would hope that these notes follow his lead in as much they attempt to quantify and thus question many of the aspects of the Green dogma and the assertions of the possibility of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming / Climate Change just with my simple mathematics.

As my exploration has progressed I have become increasingly sceptical about:

• the promotion of probably dubious science
• the withholding of crucial contrarian data
• the evasion of proper “scientific method”
• the political agendas that have invested so much into confirming the assertion of Catastrophic / Dangerous Man-made Global Warming from the emission of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

The outcome has been a world-wide  Global Warming / Climate Change policy fiasco.  The irrelevant fiasco continues.  I have therefore become a devout “denier”.

Indeed I do deny that:

• anything truly adverse is happening in the climate, except the inevitable progress towards the ending of our current benign Holocene interglacial period
• man-kind as a whole can anything about it, except cause major wasted economic resource mainly at expense for the developed world.

So, from being a credulous Believer I have become a Sceptic and thus would now be branded as a “Denier” or better still a “Deplorable Denier”.

Introduction to edmhdotme  pages

This group of illustrated posts poses some of the central questions and solutions about the Man-made Global warming assertion.  It also questions the due diligence with which they have been confirmed as being irrefutable.

Man-made Global Warming Advocates and Alarmists only ever emphasise the catastrophe that awaits the world in the future as a result of Man-made Global warming.

But the obverse is more likely to be true.

Increased levels of CO2 and a rather warmer, probably wetter, climate within natural limits will continue to bring real benefits to the biosphere and mankind just as they did in the previous 20th century and during the warmer periods of our current benign Holocene epoch.

The world could well survive having additional areas available for viable, well fertilised, agriculture.

Instead the short spurt in global warming at the end of the last century has given rise to and has been exaggerated as the

“Great Global Warming Scare”

However this warming has been:

• an entirely natural process
• well within normal limits
• fortunately truly beneficial.

Economic studies now show that there would still be net benefit to the biosphere and mankind in warming up to a further 2°C.  See

Click to access climate_change.pdf

But further warming may be not now be occurring at all.  So it has become clear that any attempts at man-made climate control by reduction of CO2 emissions to reduce global temperatures are ineffective and will be entirely futile.

The UN IPCC, because their predictions are not now supported in nature have been forced to change their nomenclature from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”.  They have simply extrapolated the warming that certainly occurred towards the end of the 20th century as if it was going to continue unabated.  However there has been a hiatus in their anticipated inexorable world temperature increase for the last 20 years.

So Climate can Change both ways either warmer or colder.

But now any adverse weather event, even cold events, such as the recent winters in the Eastern United States, can be ascribed to “Climate Change” by alarmists and blamed on the CO2 production of Man-kind.

Nonetheless all Warmist policy recommendations are only ever intended to control excessive Global Overheating by the attempted reduction of Man-made Carbon Dioxide, CO2 emissions but only those arising from the developed world.

This has to be the ILLOGICAL and BLINDING PARADOX of the Catastrophic Alarmist / Warmist position.   

Control of Man-made CO2 can do nothing to ameliorate a coming cooling world.

But an excellent way to undermine Western economies is to render their power generation unreliable and expensive.  That objective of Green thinking is progressively being achieved by Government policy but without popular voter mandate throughout the Western world.

This site provides a series of short illustrated and referenced articles on the subject of “Global Warming” and / or “Climate Change”.  The notes are intended to work at the level of an intelligent layman with graphics to clearly illustrate the points involved.

 

Never forget:

Sun Tsu’s first art of war:

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” That is exactly what is happening as Western governments pursue self-harming Green Energy policies.  There is no better way to damage Western societies than by rendering their power supplies unreliable and expensive.  Cui bono   Who Benefits  ??

and

The late Professor Sir David MacKay:

“The dependence on Weather-Dependent “Renewable Energy” to power a developed economy is an Appalling Delusion”. 

There’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers and the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering… humanity really does need to pay attention to arithmetic, and the laws of physics.”

Arithmetic? Laws of physics?    They are lost on politicians, to our incalculable cost.