A global warming denialist known as Judy Cross has been storming the web community Care2 for over a year, posting propaganda on her beliefs. Here’s an example of her rantings:

http://www.care2.com/news/member/185088952/752943

“This is a lucid, logical, well-researched 32-page doc, compiled by long time IPCC expert reviewer, Dr Vincent Gray, explaining why the current claims of man-made global warming are a “global scam”. ”

http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/warmingscam1505.pdf

Oh, really? Well, I proceeded to dismantle the credibility of that paper.

First, there is the title of it:

“The global warming scam is the result of the widespread belief in a new religion, based on the deification of a nebulous entity, ‘The Environment’. ‘The Environment’ is an extension of the concept of ‘Nature’ which was held sacred by the Romantics, but it is a much more demanding deity, requiring constant and increasing sacrifices from humans. Environmentalism is just the latest attempt to find a substitute for the theory of evolution and it is paradoxical that it can be so widespread when next year (2009) is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his major work “The Origin of Species as the Result of Natural Selection”. All of the basic beliefs of Environmentalism are in direct conflict with contemporary understanding of the principles of Darwinism. Despite this fact, many scientists are supporters of Environmentalist dogmas and some are prepared to claim that they are compatible with Darwinism.”

What the contradiction exactly is between evolution by natural selection and the moral imperative to protect our environment is never made clear.

Then we find this bit of nonsense on page 9:

The Unknown 

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don’t know

We don’t know.

(Compiled from defense secretary Rumsfeld’s remarks at a press conference.) 

VERY unprofessional, as well as totally irrelvant to the actual issue of global warming, of which Rumsfeld was no expert. Perhaps we are seeing Gray’s political bias here.

In addition to containing lots of assertions, the paper’s writer, Vincent Gray, is clearly ignorant of basic math. On page 23, we read:

The most dishonest statement in the 4th Science Report of the IPCC (Solomon et al. 2007), is to be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section on page 104:

A common confusion between weather and climate arises when scientists are asked how they can predict climate 50 years from now when they cannot predict the weather a few weeks from now. The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days. Projecting changes in climate (i.e., long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue. As an analogy, while it is impossible to predict the age at which any particular man will die, we can say with high confidence that the average age of death for men in industrialised countries is about 75.

This statement makes no logical sense. If “the chaotic nature” of “weather” makes it “unpredictable” then how can changing its name to “climate” suddenly make it “a more manageable issue”? The question is supposed to be about forecasting, yet we are given an example suggesting that an “average” has “high confidence” when an individual figure has not — a completely irrelevant proposition. There is no guide on how future “averages” or individual figures for the age of death might be forecast. If the suggestion that future “climate” can be forecast when future “weather” cannot were true, one might ask why weather forecasters seem to be unable to find a way of suddenly removing all the “chaos”. The “analogy” is ridiculous. There is no suggestion that we can predict either the average age of death or that of an individual by any known method. There is no evidence whatsoever that the “chaos” associated with the weather has been eliminated or made “more manageable” merely because they changed the name to “climate”.

Having studied how averages are calculated in a grade school math class, I am amazed that anyone claiming to be a scientist would make such an asinine statement! Plus it is obvious that “weather” and “climate” are NOT interchangable terms!

Also on pages 23 and 24 of that same report, Gray accuses the proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis of using a “FLAT EARTH THEORY” to explain how Earth absorbs and radiates energy from the Sun. What the shape of the Earth has to do with the flaws of the model is never made clear. It seems the model could apply to a round Earth, a cubic Earth, or even a pyramid Earth, as well as a flat one.

Conclusion: Vincent Gray is an example of a FAKE EXPERT, one who writes papers to appeal to the scientifically illiterate. I’ll never trust anything he says again!

Now, here is a REAL paper written by actual experts:

http://old.iupac.org/publications/pac/2001/pdf/7312×1917.pdf

Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 73, No. 12, pp. 1917–1927, 2001.

Electrochemical approaches to alleviation of the

problem of carbon dioxide accumulation*

C. M. Sánchez-Sánchez 1,‡, V. Montiel1, D. A. Tryk2, A. Aldaz1, and A. Fujishima2

1Grupo Electroquímica Aplicada, Departamento de Química Física, Universidad deAlicante, Ap. 99, E-03080, Alicante, Spain; 2 Department of Applied Chemistry,School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Abstract

 : The electrochemical reduction of CO2, which includes a number of different specific approaches, may show promise as a means to help slow down the accumulation of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Two types of approaches are examined briefly here. First, CO2  can be used as a reagent in the electrocarboxylation reaction to produce organic carboxylic acids, for example, the pharmaceutical ibuprofen. Second, CO2  can be converted to a fuel, either directly or via synthesis gas. The latter can be produced with reasonably good energy efficiency in a gas-diffusion, electrode-based cell even at present with existing electrocatalysts. Oxygen gas is produced as a by-product. Further work is needed to improve the selectivity and efficiency in this and other approaches.

This paper illustrates how real scientists operate, and all are welcome to review this paper, especially in comparison with the paper made by Vincent Gray, and thus I hope you can see who is the fake and who are the genuine experts!