Really Sciency

Visit my other blog 'Really Sciency' looking at Climate Science and its portrayal, misrepresentation and denial in the media.

Thursday 22 September 2011

THIS IS NOT WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING.


So short of supporting data, it doesn't take much for climate skeptics to get into a frenzy and they were given just enough for their melt down by 'AtlasGate'. Yes we have yet another manufactured 'gate' for them to stoke their conspiracy theories with.

A new edition of The Times Atlas, published by Harper Collins was launched with a press release that made news in many papers. Ironically Harper Collins is part of Murdock's portfolio well known for publishing climate skepticism.

The press release said that changes to the maps had been made to reflect changes on the ground, many caused by mankind's influence on the environment. So it contains smaller lakes, shorter thinner rivers and less ice on Glaciers including Greenland. When I came across the story in my free copy of the Metro I paid little attention because I know several lakes and rivers have been drying up and glaciers have been retreating. But the publishers made an error with the amount of ice loss in Greenland, one I would like to think I would have spotted if I had paid attention to the reports in any details because they seemed to imply that Greenland had lost about 15% of it's ice since the last edition only 12 years ago. If such a trend was true and continued for about another 25 years about half of all the ice would be gone and there would be a lot of people up to their necks in water. I'm glad to say things are nowhere as dire as that.

Of course such a glaring error was spotted, not by a climate skeptic but by a polar scientist who should know the actual state of things in Greenland and he set to put things right and most newspapers and science web sites have now covered the error but the skeptics went manic on these new sites and their own blogs

On Scientific American
"Error? Try wishful thinking by the global warming groupies."
And;
"the lies this movement depends on to bolster its failed predictions"
The Daily Mangle;
"Looks to me like they are yet again exagerating this global warming sh** ,people need the truth and that doesn't mean government truth who pay scientists to say what they want to hear. "
Christopher 'Bonkers' Booker had this to say;
"one of the world’s most respected reference books, it seems, has been caught out perpetrating what amounts to yet more propaganda for the belief in global warming."
Bishops Hill printed the whole statement issued by Jeffrey Kargel on Cryolist which included in caps;

THIS IS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. THIS IS NOT WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING.
Too true.

So lets get some critical perspective. The publisher Harper Collins made an error, a rather obvious and embarrassing one that was spotted by a well qualified scientist who set about putting the record straight. It wasn't some sinister conspiracy to perpetrate a crime. It wasn't lies, it was a mistake.

So I wonder, since these skeptics are in support of a scientist stating that that 'THIS IS NOT WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING', do they support what the scientist states about what the actual science is saying? From his statement;
"what actually IS happening in Greenland, and it involves some incredibly rapid changes, mainly increasing melting, thinning, and retreat; and slight thickening in some sectors, but overall Greenland is a story of massive, rapid retreat. "
Somehow I suspect not, but if there are any out there please stand up. These people can't have it both ways without looking like a hypocrite. If scientists say something isn't the case and state the actual case only a hypocrite would cry foul about an error while rejecting the actual facts.

Thursday 15 September 2011

Oil Company covertly funds organisation to rubbish future rivals

Do you know that Climate change targets 'will add £500 to family's fuel bill within four years'. It came as news to me because I have already posted on a report in the Telegraph claiming it would add only £300 by 2020, and they clearly didn't get their sums right.

But it must be true because it said it here in the Daily Mangle and it also had a photograph of a poor impoverished family posed by models to emphasise the point. Apparently these outrageous costs are due to ' building thousands of wind turbines and connecting them to the National Grid'. And from the comments many of their readers, especially the so called 'skeptics' were outraged. Such a shame that they couldn't be the least sceptical about these claims.

Impoverished Family (picture posed by models)


The article was based on a report by Dr Richard Wellings, of the the very official sounding 'Institute for Economic Affairs'. But what worried me is that Dr Wellings is an economist also said that there was a high level of scientific uncertainty that still surrounds the issue of climate change’. Well not among the scientists there isn't, so if he is basing his economic forecasts on uncertainties that do not exist in the scientific debate then is calculations must be off. 

But it makes a good scary story (and skeptics call climatologists scare mongers!), but would it be a tactic to promote his new book  on centre-Right thinking, 'The Future of Conservatism'? This certainly sounds like a political book free from balance and bias so I doubt that the real science or evidence in general would be required for it's conclusions.


But who is the 'Institute for Economic Affairs'? It sounds official, credible and even that it might be knowledgeable on such matters. But no... The Institute for Economic Affairs is a 'free-market think-tank. Its mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems'. In other words it is a conservative organisation against any regulation that might affect companies to do business unrestricted, this would include keeping as much freedom to pollute as possible and of course avoid any regulation that might involve emissions.
 
As a real sceptic I wondered how such an organisation gets funds and found it is 'entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals, companies and foundations who want to support its work, plus income from book sales and conferences. It does no contract work, accepts no money from government and is entirely independent of any political party or group'. Well it might not directly accept funding from any political party or group but it's publications are entirly biased to the political right. 
 
And who might these funding individuals and companies be? It was hardly any surprise when I found out that one of the was  ExxonMobil who has given them at least $50,000.
 
It should be no surprise that the shoddy and biased journalism at the Daily Mangle did not either find or reveal this connection.
 
So what is the real story here? Simply;
Oil Company covertly funds organisation to rubbish future rivals.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Why can't the Telegraph do simple Arithmetic?


United Kingdoms Future Energy Policy.


The direction the UK takes to ensure its future energy needs is making headlines at the minute. Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a Liberal Democrat, is getting a lot of criticism from the right wing press and Conservative politicians. No more so than Roger Helmer in his blog who suggests Huhne’s policies will ‘close down the entire British economy overnight’.

Mr Helmer also claims that economists point out ‘the policy is doomed to fail’, and ‘It will drive up electricity prices, force millions more households into fuel poverty, and undermine the competitiveness of European economies, and especially of the British economy’.

With so much at stake I asked twice on his blog who these economists were and perversely the only name he gave me was Lord Stern, apparently as the only economist on the planet that agreed with Huhne.

But this story has escalated in the last few days with a leaked letter to PM Cameron from his senior energy adviser, Ben Moxham, and is being shamefully misrepresented in the Telegraph with claims that the letter poured scorn on Huhne’s policies and these policies would add £300 to household energy bills. I say misrepresented because the actual letter has also been made available on the Telegraph web site and it is clear that the Telegraph has spun this story to fit it’s anti-green bias.

Important points in what Ben Moxham’s letter actually says;

This letter is a brief report of Moxham’s analysis of  DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) assumptions.

It determines that ‘Policy costs currently make up around 10% of the average household energy bill’ and this proportion will rise. But it makes no determination if this rise will actually lead to higher costs for the consumer because as well as relying on overall policy, it all depends on the future wholesale price of gas. The letter said;

“Turning specifically to gas, if one were to assume low gas prices in 2020, the cost of policies to encourage more nuclear and renewables would be high – since it would turn out cheaper not to pursue these policies and to instead to be more reliant on gas. On the other hand, if one were to assume very high gas prices in 2020, being more reliant on nuclear and renewables could conceivably make consumers better off compared to the alternative of greater reliance on gas.”

There are two things to understand about the above paragraph;

  1. It is not talking solely about ‘green policies’ as the Telegraph claims. It is also talking about nuclear. So to claim that any resultant price rise is because of green policies when most environmentalists would baulk at the thought of nuclear is misrepresentation.
  2. We need to know what price of future gas DECC has set. If it is too low then it will look as if any policy change will cost more than doing nothing and if it is too high it will be too optimistic about costs. Moxham gives us the answer; ‘DECC's analysis is based on a mid-case gas price counterfactual, assuming a gas price broadly consistent with today's forward prices

So the analysis, on this point, seems to be accepting that Huhne’s department has made realistic and reasonable assumptions about ‘a significant factor behind the household energy price’.

The letter also states ‘Our policies would have a relatively small impact on household gas prices
Our policies would increase household electricity prices by 25% in 2015 and 30% in 2020 compared to what they would have been in the absence of policies.’

So it is clear that the price increases are only referring to electricity prices because there is ‘a relatively small impact on household gas prices’. The letter also helpfully gives us a break down of ‘the average household energy bill’ which is ‘£1,059, made up of £591 spent on gas and £468 spent on electricity’. So simple schoolboy arithmetic can calculate a 30% rise in electricity (for 2020).

30% of £468 is £140.40. Where does the Telegraph get an increase of £300 from?  Well it looks as if they cant comprehend the letter and used the whole £1,059 bill. What are the chances of them ever admitting to this schoolboy error and correcting the value? Then again  more than £300 a year as a result of the Coalition’s green policies’ sounds a lot better than admitting to half that for an energy policy that includes nuclear.

But £140 is still a significant amount to add to household energy costs (nearly £12 a month), so what does DECC and Moxham have to say about that? Here we find the only valid criticism of one by the other. This increase is supposed to be offset by households adopting energy efficiency measures.

“The impact of our policies on household electricity bills (as opposed to prices) would be lower due to the effect of other policies, notably energy efficiency measures, in lowering electricity consumption: i) According to DECC, the effect of this lowered consumption on household electricity bills would outweigh the impact of policies in raising prices, leading to electricity bills that are, net, 1% lower in 2015 and 4% lower in 2020 than they would be in the absence of policies”.  

So even with the increase on electricity prices DECC claims an over all decrease of 4% in household bills due to the effect of overall policy. Moxham is not so sure because he is uncertain that households will take up proposed energy efficiency measures without subsidy.  Not exactly the headline making stuff that the Telegraph would like but it does suggest that some policies may need tweaked to make energy efficiency more attractive during the next 8 years - hardly undoable or costly in real terms.

Place your bets.

This leaked letter also drew the attention of Damian Carrigton over at the Guardian. He noted how wholesale energy is the most significant cost in consumer energy bills and suggested it was time to ‘place your bets on fossil fuels versus renewable energy’.

I’d bet the break even price point between adopting these nuclear/green policies and doing nothing will be similar to that suggested by DECC and Moxham or perhaps a little more favourable to these policies.  In any case, if it isn’t by 2020 it will be shortly after and as I said on Helmer’s Blog; “We don’t want to be installing the most economic plant then, playing catch up and importing the technology and expertise. We should be doing it now.”

In fact for my penny’s worth I can repeat in part what I said to a poster on Helmers blog;

"We need an energy policy fit for the future and not having a wide range of alternatives wont fit that bill. It doesn’t take an economist to realise that other than short term market variability the fuels we use for most generation are as cheap as they are ever going to be. No one with any wit ever expects to see petrol at £1 a litre or less ever again. Have you considered that these are not only going to get more expensive but that we do not produce enough of them for our own needs? How sensible is it to rely on foreign imports let alone the fact all that money is going out of our own countries pockets? 

But alternatives will only ever get cheaper for the foreseeable future. Price parity with convention generation will happen within a generation. We don’t want to be installing the most economic plant then, playing catch up and importing the technology and expertise. We should be doing it now."

"But we also really need big capital projects like the Severn Barrier. I studied the practicalities of this at Uni more years ago than I care to remember and then it would have reliably supplied over 10% of the whole countries energy needs. The problem is that to build it takes more than one government term, and successive governments have mis-handled energy policy and only considered what they could do to get to the next election. But such big capital projects are exactly what this country needs for both energy and employment. "

Saturday 3 September 2011

Told you so!


Making some headlines is the news that a science Journal editor resigned over a paper co-authored by climate sceptic Roy Spencer. This paper was actually written in 2008 and was apparently missed by the skeptic community until July 2011 when some suggested it proved that climate models were wrong because data from NASA’s Terra satellite showed 'that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”'

I first heard about it from posts on Paul Hudsons blog from message 62. By message 67 it was claimed that Spencer wouldn't be 'putting his neck on the block without being totally sure of the data'.

By 70 it was noted by one poster that it had been published in an obscure journal, 'Remote Sensing' which I agreed woith in my message 74; "Unfortunately Spencer has chosen to publish this in an online journal and one can only assume that it is not up to scratch. It just seems a way to circumvent peer review and create controversy rather than actually add anything to science."


This brought some ire and claims that peer review was over rated any way;

'Your remark that publishing this study on line to avoid 'peer review' is a disingenuous way of saying you do not believe any of the contents.

I am myself sceptical as to the value of much of the quality of peer review at present because so many scientists are presently in the pay of the EU Commission.'

And..
'I'm slightly confused, since the initial reports of this paper stated that "Remote Sensing" was a "peer-reviewed" science journal. Is this not the case?'

I replied to both;
"I didn’t say that it wasn’t a peer reviewed journal, but it isn’t one listed on Web of Science and it has no speciality in the subject of Surface Temperature Feedback.

I haven’t seen who the reviewers were but I suspect they are not the most qualified peers."
Which predictably brought;
"So now there are degrees of "peership"?"
 And my response;

"You think experts on "the science and technology of remote sensing and the applications of remotely sensed data" is best qualified to review a paper on Surface Temperature Feedback (not the technology used to record it) ?

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0143-1161&linktype=1

Why not ask a dentist, veterinarian or biologist?

This is not a credible journal to review and publish research on climatology and you must know there are far better options for a scientist to publish credible research that he intends to stand behind as an addition a body of scientific evidence.

Believe it is credible if you want but please be a true sceptic and don't give it any more bias compared to the far larger body of scientific research that suggests the conclusions of this probably isn't the case and factor in the criticism it is already receiving from other, more qualified peers."

 In case you have guessed the journal and the paper discussed is the same that the Editor, Wolfgang Wagner resigned from and over. Wagner's reasons were that he now accepted  the paper was "fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal".

"Peer-reviewed journals are a pillar of modern science," he writes in a resignation note published in Remote Sensing.

"Their aim is to achieve highest scientific standards by carrying out a rigorous peer review that is, as a minimum requirement, supposed to be able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims.

"Unfortunately, as many climate researchers and engaged observers of the climate change debate pointed out in various internet discussion fora, the paper by Spencer and Braswell... is most likely problematic in both aspects and should therefore not have been published."

So I was right to suggest that the review wan't up to scratch - how could it be when it was outside the Journals normal publishing field. But I think I was also right in suggesting that choosing such a journal was a way to circumvent the normal peer review, from the BBC report;

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, ...  described the tactic of publishing in off-topic journals as a "classic tactic" of scientists dismissive of man-made climate change. "Those who recognise that their ideas are weak but seek to get them into the literature by finding weaknesses in the peer review system are taking a thoroughly disreputable approach".

This isn't really a post to shout out, look at me arn't I clever, it is just good to know that I can be right about somethings.
.




Friday 2 September 2011

What observations would be inconsistent with AGW theory?


It can be fascinating to see how AGW skeptics and out right deniers deal with the supporting science.  Some just go quiet while others try to form logical arguments to allow them to reject it and confirm their own bias. This recently happened to me.
 
On Paul Hudson’s blog a climate skeptic asked;

"Can you tell us what observations would be inconsistent with AGW theory?"

Remembering the question was what observations would disprove AGW, I thought of a list of 5 things;

  1. No increase in ocean acidification.
  2. No warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper.
  3. Satellites not measuring less heat escaping out to space at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorb heat.
  4. The rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, new coral etc, not having the isotope normally released by fossil fuels.
  5. Day time temperatures warming either the same or more than night temps.
The opposite or lack of any of these would seriously call AGW into doubt. The presence of them all has only been attributed to increased GHG effects and the increasing amount of Carbon 13, which is released on burning fossil fuels. This indicates that the increase in GHGs is predominately human caused.

I stated that Science predicted over a century ago that increases in GHGs would produce global warming. Mankind has increased GHGs and the globe has warmed. That warming has all the signatures of an increased green house effect.

Why feel compelled to scratch around for several alternative theories to account for the evidence when the basic physics supports the one theory that all the world’s scientific academies and almost all the scientists researching and publishing in this field agree is the most likely?

The presence of them all only needs a single theory to account for them – AGW.

However the questioning Skeptic never replied. I don’t think that was because he suddenly found himself out of contact with civilisation in some remote part of the world like Milton Keynes, but more likely there was a head sized bucket of sand near by.

But another did try to debunk/disprove my list. But their criticisms showed that they needed several theories, some which seemed not exist or directly contradicted some of the evidence. It even seemed that special, as yet undiscovered, physics would be needed.


  1. No increase in ocean acidification.

There seemed some confusion over my choice of Ocean Acidification (OA) which is definitely increasing. OA has nothing to do directly with temperatures and therefore warming, but I was asked what would disprove AGW. AGW requires an increase in CO2 in the environment. Some people even deny this is the case. OA proves that there is a very measurable build up of CO2 in the environment, even more than that in the atmosphere because much more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans than remains in the air. So while I agree that OA has nothing to do with AGW the lack of it has everything to do with disproving it


  1. No warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper.

Of course the opposite of this is the case. Their rebuttal seemed to consist of an admission that water vapour had risen in the atmosphere and ocean heat content (OHC) had also risen. Since H2O is a GHG then a rise in lower tropospheric temps should be expected.

The problem with this logic is that there was no alternate theory to account for the rise in OHC. The only theory that we know that can account for the way the layers of the atmosphere are warming and cooling is AGW. This was predicted by the theory but was not confirmed until more recently. What has been found matches what was predicted and what should happen with an increased green house effect due to CO2 – not just an increase in water vapour.

  1. Satellites not measuring less heat escaping out to space at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorb heat.

Satellites do of course measure less escaping heat at the wavelengths of CO2. The best rebuttal of this was a claim that CO2 and water vapour have very similar 'absorption' wavelengths - could we actually state with any certainty which might be causing this reduction?

But they do not have the same 'absorption' wavelengths. To suggest this is hoping for something that the actual evidence does not support. Satellites have detected a decrease in IR from space in EXACTLY the corresponding wavelengths attributable to CO2 – NOT water vapour and NOT any overlap that could confuse the two. This is now well established science supported with hard data and confirms predictions.

For their rebuttal to have any merit they need the satellites measuring heat escaping the earth to be mis-calibrated just so, and to give the effect the science has actually predicted while they are actually measuring H2O instead of CO2, and this mis-calibration hasn’t been noticed or apparently affected the rest of the absorption spectrum.


  1. The rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, new coral etc, not having the isotope normally released by fossil fuels.

We know that Carbon 13 is the isotope depleted in burning fossil fuels and the ratio of C13/C12 has been dropping as a result. The only defence they had against this was acceptance that mankind had increased carbon in the atmosphere with the suggestion that it was questionable if this actually made any significant difference. So basically they avoided the evidence by promoting another myth, that increased CO2, of whatever isotope, could not have the effect the physics supported.

            4.5       Increased CO2 would make no significant difference

Well it does make a difference in even simple classroom experiments. Simply doubling CO2 increases temps by about 1C. We do not know of any scientific mechanism or negative feed back ‘in the wild’ that would prevent this effect.

The rebuttal of this was a claim that no lab experiment has been devised that can replicate the complexity of nature. The way CO2 and water vapour might “respond in a non-closed, chaotic system is a million miles away from the lab.”

Of course they may respond differently in a chaotic system, and they. That is why there are uncertainties as to how much a doubling of CO2 will warm the globe – but at this stage there is NO uncertainty that warming won’t occur. Anything else would defy known physics.

The problem with their position is that you need to positively suggest the laws of physics as they work in a lab won’t work as expected in the real world. But using Occam’s razor which is most likely? Would a true sceptic select the least likely over the most likely to form an opinion they would feel comfortable defending?

There is no difference from this position and knowing that the speed of a ball dropped in an experiment can be measured in a lab, but then suggesting if dropped outside it might actually fall up! Or like a poison being developed in a lab that kills rats 100% of the time and scientists suggesting it might only be 90% effective in the real environment but ‘skeptic theory’ would actually need rats to thrive on the stuff.

Such arguments really need a ‘theory’ to suggest why Co2 will actually act in a different way to its established physical properties. To ignore it and suggest it must simply because that is what is needed to refute the science has no credibility.

The ‘classroom’ experiments do demonstrate the effect starkly and are similar to those that have been done for over a century based on the physics worked out by Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius and Chamberlin. Science needs to be totally wrong about how CO2 that traps heat in the environment compared to the lab if ‘skeptic science’ has any standing.


  1. Day time temperatures warming either the same or more than night temps.

We know this is not true and while checking the research to ensure I had the right of it (see: Braganza 2004, Alexander 2006, Zhou 2009), I also came across a paper by Braganza et al in 2003 which shows that winters are warming faster than summers.



The ‘skeptic’ theory used to refute this was similar to that used to dismiss warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper, namely that increases in water vapour, a GHG, in the atmosphere would lead to an increase in night time temps. They insisted that only “amplification through increased water vapour” would lead to this effect.

The ‘theory’ used to support this increase in water vapour was describes as;

Mechanism.
A)Sun heats oceans, oceans heat atmosphere. Major solar forcing throughout 20thC.
B) atmospheric water vapour

But claiming this totally misses the point about day and night time temps. Water vapour does not behave differently as a greenhouse gas in daylight compared to the dark. The physics is simple – really simple – If warming can be attributed to an increased solar forcing then temperatures during the times when this happens, (the Day,) will increase on average more than when it doesn’t, (the Night). It doesn’t matter about any change in water vapour because it will just be as potent as a GHG day or night. Any increase it directly causes will be the same day or night. So how does standard physics cater for water vapour behaving differently, not only day and night but at opposite ends of the planet, summer and winter? There was no answer to that.

What we actually see is the day warming some, as you would expect with additional forcing in the ‘green house’ effect but nights warming more because this additional effect reduces the amount of heat loss during the night. There are no other candidates that would cause this observation. So if they are right there must be another, so far undiscovered mechanism that appears to defeat the laws of physics.

5.5       Major solar forcing throughout the 20th Century.

But I wanted to pursue the claim in their ‘theory’ that there was a MAJOR solar forcing during the 20th century. There hasn’t been one and the Sun has been very quiet during the first decade of the 21st so I wanted to see the evidence that shows that solar forcing during the 20th Century was stronger than normal natural variation, and some figures ( hopefully by a credible scientist or two) that determines how much additional heating this caused and how that can account for the measured temperature increase.

In the end no evidence was given but perversely a claim that to not accept there was major solar forcing meant that I was simply ignoring the evidence!

So I thought I’d look at the evidence on solar activity and presented it to support my point that the Sun wasn’t a good candidate for heating in oceans and atmosphere.

I found this graph here;




It shows the number of sunspots during the twentieth century (considered to relate to solar intensity). The peaks during the last three decades are not even as high as those of the 50s – 60s. I can’t find a graph with trend lines but by eye it looks like a decline from the 60s just when global temperatures really started to increase last century. There is a clear lack of it in recent times. They have correlated in the past so what driver could have broken this trend? Believe it or not, the vast majority of publishing climatologists have a theory with a high degree of certainty.

As to some real evidence of how much solar has increased temps, I found a whole list of science papers;

Benestad 2009: "Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980."

Lockwood 2008: "It is shown that the contribution of solar variability to the temperature trend since 1987 is small and downward; the best estimate is -1.3% and the 2? confidence level sets the uncertainty range of -0.7 to -1.9%."

Lean 2008: "According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years..."

Ammann 2007: "Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century."

Foukal 2006:concludes "The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years."

This Skeptic needed many scientists being wrong about how much any change in solar output has added to current warming, which is now low.

Conclusion: Alternative ‘Theories’ and undiscovered physics.


Skeptics may actually believe that this series of misfortunate events has happened and real sceptics should find it more credible than a century old theory based on the basic physical properties of gasses that says if you increase GHGs in the atmosphere it should warm coupled with GHGs increasing and it warming.

So what really is most credible? Why do they think the science is so wrong on this one subject but trust it on every other subject that has fringe views like evolution, homoeopathy, MMR vaccines, age of the earth and the Big Bang etc.?

The inconvenient science remains. All the evidence from basic physics and heating patters in both daily and seasonal cycles in the atmosphere point to an increased green house effect caused by additional green house gases, particularly CO2 with satellite data clearly showing this is what has been restricting heat leaving the atmosphere, warming the troposphere and cooling the stratosphere.

Increased solar (even if it exists) and increased water vapour (that can only occur with an already warmed planet), have been investigated by many research papers and do not fit the evidence.