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It didn't take long before the vast majority of people were drawn into this scare scenario, predicting catastrophes from melting ice caps, rising sea levels, floods, diseases spreading, loss of species, dying corals and sea life, and much, much more. World conferences were organised to jolt politicians into action, which led to the inauguration of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advise what is happening, how serious, and what to do. In the meantime, the World Wide Web matured, reaching billions of people with millions of pages of scary predictions. There appeared universal consensus (by the 'warmists') that 'the science was settled' and that it was now time for action - very costly action.

However, in reality, the science was far from settled, and skeptical scientists (the 'skeptics') who had been blocked from the scientific process, began to use the Internet to disperse criticism and alternative observations and explanations.

"It's very disturbing that we do not understand the climate on a planet [Venus] that is so much like the Earth. It is telling us that we really don't understand the Earth. We have ended up with a lot of mysteries." - Professor Fred Taylor, a planetary scientist based at Oxford University and one of the ESA's chief advisers for the Venus Express mission

This is where I became involved, and from here on, this introduction is about my (Floor Anthoni) personal motivations and observations. Rewind to 1987 when I began to realise that the seas around New Zealand were degrading at an accelerating pace. It motivated me to stop doing what I did (computers and electronics) and to begin 'saving the sea'. That meant a lot of re-schooling (in marine ecology). I soon realised that education was the key t conservation because we need to learn more before we can 'do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time'. In 1997 the Internet led the way, and I began writing this very large educational web site. My aim is 'accelerated learning' such that the reader can learn 100 times faster than I did.

With very large chapters like oceanography, soil, degradation and ocean acidification already completed, a large chapter about climate and global warming was just the next step. I expected that this would have been done by someone else a long time ago, but to this day, there is no web site that would qualify. Sure, there are scores of extensive web sites, both in the 'warmist' camp and in the opposite camp, but one can easily get lost in the way they confuse. A site is needed that provides critical step-by-step learning, while dissecting the science and throwing challenges in as well, and all that without bias.

So here it is. This section is split into five new chapters added to three already existing ones, completing the trilogy of land, sea and air:

Chapter 1: Marble in space. The world hangs by an invisible thread between the hot sun and cold space. It has managed to stabilise its temperature somewhat but large swings (the ice ages) are still there. Here you'll learn about imaginary atmospheres to understand ours, and about albedo, Milankovic cycles, the restless sun, the influence of cosmic radiation and other influences

Chapter 2: Water, ice and vapour. Water is the strangest, yet most common substance on Earth. Many of its strange properties are what stabilises the climate, causes ice ages, and most importantly, on which life depends. You'll learn about its physical properties, humidity, latent heat, ice shelves, glaciers and ice ages.

Chapter 3: Measuring temperature. It is surprisingly difficult to measure temperature in a way that matters to understanding climate and its changes. You'll learn about thermometers, the Stevenson Screen, Urban Heat Island effects, weather balloons, paleothermometers, proxies and where the heat content of Earth is found.

Chapter 4: Anthropogenic global warming, or how fossil fuels are thought to warm the planet and cause climate change. you'll learn about the IPCC and its computer models, to discover that a massive fraud is in the making. You'll learn about hockey stick graphs and the basis of proof offered by the IPCC.

Chapter 5: Greening planet. Both rising temperatures and rising carbondioxide concentrations are very beneficial to all life. Here you'll discover the positive sides of carbondioxide.

Don't miss out reading the other chapters as well:

Ocean acidification: the scare industry migrated from global warming to climate change to ocean acidification but here you'll discover how the ocean's chemistry really works, what is known and not known, and why so many experiments have been fraudulent.

Oceanography: about the oceans, the biggest part of Earth by far. You'll discover how waves work, tides, storms, dunes and beaches and much more. This also contains the circulations of water and air and how climate and weather are formed around the world.

Soil: this very large chapter introduces you to our most important resource, how it is formed, what lives on it and where and why, and how we are losing both its quality and quantity, and what we must do. It also makes you understand the major biomes in the world.

Conclusion? A conclusion is not needed. Just let the facts speak for themselves and make up your own mind. Is the IPCC report accurate, inaccurate or fraudulent? Is climate understood, poorly understood or misunderstood? Is 'climate change' natural or caused by humanity? Is warming inconsequential, worrisome or catastrophic? Is the science (knowledge) settled, not settled or mainly absent? Etc.

I am indebted to the many scientists who often spent their entire career trying to extract meaningful data from the past. I have also been fortunate with the development of the Internet and am equally indebted to so many people who shared their ideas so unselfishly. Yet so much confusion has been caused and spread by dishonest people.

Finally, don't be intimidated by the amount of time needed to study all of the above. Think for a moment how much time it has taken me to put it all together and for thousands of scientists to deliver the data. I have included many drawings and graphics so you won't need to worry about the calculations. Even so, it is only natural to read some of it several times. And if there are things that are not quite clear, or should you find mistakes, e-mail me so that it can be fixed.
 

If these chapter were useful to you, tell others, as many as you can and as soon as you can. Link to this chapter from whichever website. If you are financially comfortable, consider making a donation. Together we can make a better world.

• 1824: greenhouse effect discovered by Joseph Fourier, published in: Mémoire sur les températures du globe terrestre et des espaces planétaires. He later rejected the idea. At the time electromagnetic radiation was not known, and scientists thought that energy was transferred by an invisible substance, called aether. A concise history of the greenhouse effect, by Timothy Casey: http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/, describing the work of Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and others, also clearing up some misunderstandings.
• 1861: John Tyndall published that certain gases can absorb thermal radiation.
• 1896: Svente Arrhenius proposes a Greenhouse Warming hypothesis, which posits that global warming could occur due to Man's activities. He calculates +1.5ºC for a doubling in CO2 and that a complete absence of CO2 could cause -14.6ºC cooling, by far enough for a new ice age. It is based on the assumption that heat is re-radiated entirely.
• 1900: K Ångström's experiment with CO2 showed: 1. CO2 is transparent to 90% of infrared radiation applicable to temperature variation. 2. Those infrared bands that CO2 readily obstructs are already almost totally blocked by atmospheric CO2. It essentially means that increased CO2 has no effect.
• 1909: Möller (Germany) writes an influential textbook on meteorology formulating the greenhouse effect on radiative transfers.
• 1938: George Callendar revives Arrhenius' Greenhouse Warming hypothesis, becoming perhaps the father of the current dogma. He cherry-picked CO2 concentrations from a wealth of data available at the time, to prove that CO2 has been rising steadily from about 280ppm (1940-1950)
• 1956: Gilbert Plass did a detailed study of the absorption spectra of atmospheric gases and concluded that a doubling of CO2 could increase surface temperature by some 3 degrees C.
• 1957: Revelle & Seuss quote: "Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind which could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the air and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years."
• 1957-1958: International Geophysical Year, spurring the drilling of ice cores
• 1958: accurate CO2 measurements begin at Mauna Loa under the watchful eye of Charles D Keeling, initiated by Roger Revelle, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
• 1960: young astrophysicist Carl Sagan popularises the greenhouse effect on Venus.
• 1962: The UN General Assembly invites the Council of Science Unions (ICSU) and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to develop a research programme on atmospheric sciences.
• 1964: The ICSU committee on atmospheric sciences is created, chaired by Bert Bolin, an early computer modeler.
• 1967: The Global Atmosphere Research Programme (GARP) is established, with chairman Bert Bolin.
• 1970-75: scare rages for a coming ice age.
• 1970: World Earth Day
• 1972: first Earth Summit in Stockholm. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is proposed by Maurice Strong. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is established.
• 1972: Alfred Shack showed that the radiative component of heat transfer by CO2 can be neglected at atmospheric temperatures, thus proving that CO2 cannot have an important or even measurable effect on climate.
• 1972 Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm, Sweden. Its Stockholm Declaration addressed the global issues of overpopulation, misuse of resources and technology, unbalanced development, and the worldwide dilemma of urbanization
• 1975: The first use of a General Circulation Model to study the effects of carbon dioxide doubling, by Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald at Princeton University.
• 1976: Jack Eddy discovers the importance to climate of periods with little or no sunspots, explaining the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum.
• 1979: satellites begin measuring sea ice extent.
• 1979: First World Climate Conference in Geneva: it confirmed the long-term significance of CO2 for global climate.
• 1979: NASA's James Hansen's team of climate modelers convinced a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel to report [PDF] that doubling atmospheric CO2 -- which thought to have risen from 280 ppmv in the pre-industrial 1800s to over 335 ppmv -- would cause nearly 3°C of global warming
• 1980: GARP becomes the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). First Villach conference on climate.
• 1982: Syukuro Manabe & Möller (Germany) influential textbook on meteorology, in which the greenhouse effect is calculated from radiative transfers.
• 1985: the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) discovers the Antarctic ozone hole
• 1985: Second Villach conference of WCRP
• 1985: the US Department of Energy's comprehensive report on the greenhouse hypothesis becomes the basis for the IPCC, setting thermal conductivity and friction to zero, which is not how the atmosphere works.
• 1986 Jul: WMO and UNEP establish the IPCC. Key personel and lead authors appointed by governments.
• 1987: The Brundtland Report "Our Common Future" appears for the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (UNWCED), igniting today's green movements. Maurice Strong is a main protagonist.
• 1988: UNWCED conference in Toronta calls for a reduction in CO2 emissions to 20% of 1988 levels by 2005.
• 1988: IPCC established
• 1988: James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, appeared before a Congressional committee in the summer of 1988, during one of the hottest months on record, and declared that there was no denying it, "Global warming is here!"
• 1989: Stephen Schneider discloses several tricks: "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."
• 1990: First IPCC Assessment Report: "observed temperature changes were broadly consistent with greenhouse models"
• 1992 June:  UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC):
• 1992: UN Conference on Environment and Development ('Earth Summit') in Rio de Janeiro. Adoption of Agenda 21, a global contract that bound governments around the world to a U.N. plan to change the way people live, eat, learn and communicate, all in the name of saving the earth from mankind’s mistakes, particularly global warming. 178 governments signed there and then. Scretary-General Maurice Strong, told the opening session that "industrialized countries had developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma."
• 1995: IPCC Second Assessment Report: "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate"
• 1996: SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) publishes its Leipzig Declaration and a book titled The Scientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty.
• 1997: Fully 160 countries agreed to the legally binding Kyoto Protocol, under which industrialized countries would reduce their collective emissions by 5.2%.
• 1997: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare, who noticed it while studying salmon production patterns. Simultaneously the PDO climate pattern was also found by Yuan Zhang. Nations agree to reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels.
• 2001: the IPCC produce their Third Assessment Report (TAR): "new and stronger evidence of anthropogenic global warming"."Most of the observed warming in the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations (greater than 66% probability".
• 2002: SEPP rebuts TAR with a booklet The Kyoto Protocol is not backed by science.
• 2005 Feb: Nations agree to their Kyoto commitments by 2012.
• 2005 Nov: Lawrence Livermore Laboratories announced that "if humans continue to use fossil fuels in a business-as-usual manner for the next few centuries, the polar ice caps will be depleted, ocean sea levels will rise by seven meters and median air temperatures will soar to 14.5 degrees warmer than current day..."
• 2006 May: Al Gore produces the slideshow/movie 'An inconvenient truth',
• 2007: the IPCC produce their Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): "most of the observed increase in global average temperature is very likely (90% likelihood) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations", "Disernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns".
• 2007 Feb: Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) was established to counteract IPCC's spurious claims. "the IPCC is provoking an irrational fear of anthropogenic global warming based on incomplete and faulty science."
• 2007 Mar: the movie 'The Great Global Warming  Swindle' exposes Al Gore's scientific exaggerations and fallacies.
• 2007 Apr: NIPCC conference in Vienna.
• 2008-2012: EPOCA European Project on Ocean Acidification to advance understanding of the biological, ecological, biogeochemical, and societal implications of ocean acidification.
• 2009 Nov: important e-mails from the IPCC 'climate gang' are leaked onto the Web. They show how a small clique of IPCC scientists acted to propagate a climate of fear for catastrophic global warming and how they defrauded the truth. Known as Climategate, a large number of climate skeptics discover one scientific fraud after another.
• 2010 June: climate scientists statement : “We, the undersigned, having assessed the relevant scientific evidence, do not find convincing support for the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming."

What's new?
yyyymmdd
20100804 - Chapter 3: temperature corruption. How is it done? What is the state of the temperature record? Why?
20100801 - Chapter 2: Does global cooling cause heat-waves?
20100620 - Chapter 5 Greening Planet added.
20100606 - placed the whole section on the Web. Chapter 5 in progress. More changes and additions to come.
20100530 - Chapters 1-4 ready for review

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