War of the Words

A new storm is brewing – Monbiot vs Delingpole.

I think I have worked out where commentator James Delingpole is coming from. He pretends to be a climate change denier and enemy of environmentalists. In reality he’s a mole, paid by Greenpeace to inflict as much damage on the anti-green cause as possible. And he’s doing a marvellous job.

So wrote George Monbiot on the 27th January.

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I’ve changed my mind

(Posted by S2)BPSDB
Clippo recently pointed us to Nexus 6, which led to a bit of a discussion about “the worst climate paper ever”.

I pointed out David Archibald’s nonsense (later updated here), but I maintained that the worst I had read (in my opinion) was by Alexander & Bailey.

But I have now changed my mind – there’s a new (old) kid on the block.

Oliver K Manuel, (Emeritus) Professor of Chemistry at the University of Missouri-Rolla, believes that the Sun (and the rest of the solar system) are comprised of the remnants of a supernova that exploded about 5 billion years ago. As a result of this, the Sun is mainly made of Iron – it just has a thin skin of Helium and Hydrogen at the surface.

This pretty much flies in the face of every astronomical paper on the Sun in the last Century or two. 🙂

What does this have to do with climate change?

Manuel reckons that the heavy, iron-rich core of the sun is “pulled about” by the gravitational effects of the planets, which causes changes to solar output and therefore drives climate change. This only works, though, because the sun is made of iron – if it really was a ball of Hydrogen and Helium then the climate would not be changing.

I can’t remember the last time I read anything this absurd.

Icing on the cake – he actually cites Alexander & Bailey.

Even better – Plimer cites Manuel. 🙂

Manuel’s paper is here.

Bonus points to the first person who can say what Manuel, Archibald, Landscheidt, Alexander & Bailey have in common (other than the Sun).

IMAGE CREDITS:

Image from Caltech

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