[James Delingpole talks with Dr Rex Fleming, author of the book The Rise and Fall of the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change. They discuss why human caused climate change is false and how that view is driven by money and politics, and not science.
— KATANA]
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The James Delingpole Channel
Dr. Rex Fleming
Jul 25, 2019
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Published on Jul 25, 2019
Delingpod 29: Dr. Rex Fleming
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Jul 25, 2019 Key participant in the Global Weather Experiment, former director within NOAA, and notable CO2 heretic, Dr. Rex Fleming explains how and why the major US scientific organizations suppress “deniers”–and why he’s right and they’re wrong. His book tells all: https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Dioxide…
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TRANSCRIPT
(45:43)
[00:00]
James Delingpole: Welcome to the Delingpod with me Delingpod. And I’m delighted to welcome my guest this week. He’s come over from America. He’s called Dr. Rex Fleming. And I was contacted by his daughter, who said:
“My dad is coming to speak at a conference called the World Congress on Geology and Earth Science.”
And I couldn’t attend it, because I was got actually going to my friend, Christopher Booker’s funeral that day.
But anyway, heroically, Dr. Fleming has come over from this hotel at Heathrow Airport to my pad. And he wants to tell me about his theories on global warming. But like me, he’s a skeptic. Unlike me he’s actually a scientist of considerable expertise. So Rex tell me about your history on science. You’ve got a undergraduate degree in maths, is that right? And a PhD in Atmospheric Science?
Dr Rex Fleming: Correct.
James Delingpole: Right. So you’re quite on top of this subject. And in your career what did you do? You mentioned you worked at NOAA
Dr Rex Fleming: I did. My PhD was involved in a unique kind of mathematical computation involving, not just the weather, but also the uncertainty of the weather. And that led to some notoriety. And I eventually got called to become a head of the global weather experiment, which took place in 1979.
And since then I’ve been involved in climate activities and served in a lot of different panels, and had a few awards, here and there. But basically, …
James Delingpole: What was the global warming the thing you mentioned in 1979? The global?
Dr Rex Fleming: It’s called the Global Weather Experiment.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: Many countries participated with satellites, and ships, and special observing systems, around the planet. Drifting buoys in the oceans. And it was a year-long project. I managed it for the United States.
James Delingpole: Right!
Dr Rex Fleming: What resulted from that, we learnt a lot more about the atmosphere. It led to further, greater involvement of various observing systems, which have improved weather prediction since then. But weather prediction is still an unsolved problem. It’s a chaotic atmosphere we live in. And therefore climate is chaotic.
I got involved in the climate studies many years ago on the other side of the issue actually. I actually supported people and managing in the office I did in Washington DC. And I funded scientists who were pushing carbon dioxide as the cause of climate. I had my doubts.
But that’s the way the world was going in those days. And eventually I just read enough to realize, it’s a totally wrong direction. And so, in the past, I would say, ten years I have been on the other side.
James Delingpole: So you’re saying there was a period where you actually might have believed in the anthropogenic global warming theory?
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes. There was a period.
James Delingpole: And so you were pushing people, grant money, in the direction of people researching that.
Dr Rex Fleming: Yeah. I was satisfying grants, yes.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: I wasn’t pushing it. But my job was to fund people who wanted to do that.
James Delingpole: So do you regret now that dark, …?
Dr Rex Fleming: Oh yeah. Yeah, that was a dark period in my life. Yeah, absolutely!
James Delingpole: Because NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been implicated, … I’ve written about this a few times. That it’s been twisting the evidence hasn’t it? It’s been meddling with the raw data.
Dr Rex Fleming: A few individuals, I know who they are – I did not mention their names in the book. And I don’t want to get to many enemies. I’ve mentioned a few already, but not everybody.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes, there were people in NOAA who actually fiddled with the data to make their President look good at various meetings, with our past President.
James Delingpole: Obama, were talking about?
Dr Rex Fleming: Yeah. And they would change the ocean data, they would change atmospheric data. They would not admit that they had observing stations too close to the centres of cities, that were giving temperature measurements too high.
James Delingpole: Yep. The heat island effect.
Dr Rex Fleming: Yeah. And they would not own up to that. It took other individuals who were quote “deniers”, to point this out. And NO AA has denied it. And it’s all part of the debate.
[05:00]
James Delingpole: This is funny. Because I think you are the first person who’s been inside the system that I’ve spoken to, that can report back what’s going on. So are these guys, what’s their motivation? Is it that they want to go with the flow, they want to go along to get along? Is it, because they actually believe this stuff? Is it because they’re, I don’t know, intellectually corrupt? What’s the motivation?
Dr Rex Fleming: I don’t think they’re intellectually corrupt. But they are corrupt in the following sense. When you are working for a company, or working for the government, you want to keep your salary growing. You want to be successful, rise in the system. And what a government employee does at the upper level, they want to keep their funds coming in. And when the media in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is pushing a subject like that, you want to be a part of the growth. You want your organization to grow. And so you don’t fight it.
And I think that’s part of it. People just not willing to fight it, just trying to keep their jobs, keep the salaries going up. It’s wrong! It’s absolutely wrong!
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: That’s what some people do. I know, also scientists in NOAA who are intellectually very accurate and correct, who disagree with this carbon dioxide cause. But can’t speak out. If you spoke out in the Obama administration you could be fired.
James Delingpole: Yes.
Dr Rex Fleming: So they don’t speak out. And when they retire, they speak out. There are several examples. I should have given a few in my book. But I did not. Of people who are well-known in NOAA, once they retired they opened up.
James Delingpole: This I’ve noticed a lot. Whenever I go to the heartland climate conference, a lot of the scientists one meets there are Emeritus Professors. They’ve had their time in the sun. And they’re out of the system now. Yeah, that they’re all probably over 70, most of them. And the Left uses this as a way of saying:
“Well look at these doddery old fools. They don’t know what they’re talking about!”
When, in fact, these are the only people who are able to say this stuff!
Dr Rex Fleming: Exactly. They’re able, they’re smart enough. And once they’ve left the system, they’re free to speak out, and they have.
James Delingpole: But what about:
“Hasn’t the climate changed now?”
To coin a phrase. Now that President Trump’s in office has there not been a change at all in these places? Or are they still holding out against the reality?
Dr Rex Fleming: Unfortunately, although I think Trump disagrees with the warming. He has stated it in the past, and he hasn’t been firm enough on that point of view, quite yet. But the government people clearly still say the same thing. And it isn’t just the government.
It’s also the scientific organizations within the United States, that I’m familiar with. And there are three of them. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union. And maybe the most important one, American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, who produce Science Magazine.
All three of those organizations will not support, a quote, “denier”. I could not get published in any of those organizations. They all put out periodicals, as a “denier”. I’ve made a recent check about a year ago to see what their policies have changed. Nope! They haven’t changed. So I had to go to Europe to publish a paper. And when I did, it was peer-reviewed in Europe, and it got through. And it’s been very successful.
James Delingpole: This is your paper saying that carbon dioxide climate theory is a busted flush?
Dr Rex Fleming: Correct! That’s a phrase I wouldn’t have used [chuckling] but it denotes the Right connotation!
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: It is definitely over. And I produced that paper, I’ve had enormous response. I’ve had 3,000 people around the country request copies of it. And then last March, March of 2018, that paper resulted in me being asked to be a keynote speaker at a climate conference in New York City, last May.
And it was the first time I had ventured out into the public myself, in a visible way, and I gave at the keynote speech. I expected a lot of trouble. I didn’t get any trouble! Nobody objected, nobody asked any serious objective questions. I was very pleased. And there were two other people at the conference who didn’t say exactly the same thing. But clearly were on my side of the issue. So there were three of us in the group of maybe a hundred, who have felt the same way.
James Delingpole: So these are fellow scientists mostly, attending this conference?
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes.
James Delingpole: Right. So do you think that, can we be optimistic about that the conclusions drawn from that? Is it that there is a change in the scientific community, or not?
Dr Rex Fleming: Oh, very definitely! Since that talk I’ve had so many people approach me. And I’ve seen various publications. There’s a fellow who puts out a blog out of Germany, whose name escapes me at the moment.
James Delingpole: Oh, I think I know who you mean, yes.
Dr Rex Fleming: Gosselin.
James Delingpole: Yes Pierre Gosselin, yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: He has put out information indicating that hundreds of papers came out in 2018, now declaring the sun is a more probable cause, than carbon dioxide.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: Without the proof! But nevertheless, papers that suggest that. So that’s a big change. And there are now people who’re talking about the coming cooling, which maybe we’ll get into in this discussion.
James Delingpole: Well, yes. I’m now going to ask you to do something very, very hard. I’m going to ask you to explain in ways that all my listeners, … Actually, I think I’ve got one listener. He’s called “the special friend”. Or he, or she, is called the special friend. My special friend who may not be acquainted with atmospheric physics, explain why it is that this theory which has become the dominant theory of the environmental movement that man-made CO2 is warming the climate on an unprecedented, and catastrophic level.
How is it that all these scientists are wrong? And why should we trust you?
Dr Rex Fleming: Several ways to approach that answer. One is how I got started, which is about in 1850 when our current modern warming started. I think that got confused with the Industrial Revolution. But let’s not start there. Let’s start with the physical cause.
We now have a very solid physical cause of climate change, and it’s based upon three functions. Two of them that go on sort of constantly, and a third one maybe will get to. But the two functions are the solar magnetic field, and cosmic rays. First of all, the solar magnetic field is invisible. It’s extremely powerful, thousands of times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. And that’s one factor.
The second factor, and it goes up and down in strength. The second factor is the impact of cosmic rays that infiltrate the atmosphere. Cosmic rays are nothing more than star dust. It’s the protons from exploding stars. And very large massive stars have a relatively short lifetime, and explode. And when they explode their protons and electrons go all over the universe.
So these cosmic rays are constantly coming through towards the earth. When the sun’s magnetic field is strong, rejects these cosmic rays. They do not enter the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re deflected away. But when the sun’s magnetic field is weak, they come through all the way to the surface of the earth. And these cosmic rays produce vast areas of low-level clouds, which cool the planet.
And that’s the main reason where we have warm periods and cold periods. For example, the Medieval Warming, that was several hundred years ago, then followed by the Little Ice Age, followed by our current modern warming. Those are long periods.
Our current modern warming been going since 1850. And the sun is getting stronger and stronger. It’s magnetic field is being stronger. So those are the two factors that caused the climate change. And have nothing at all to do with carbon dioxide!
James Delingpole: Right. And so why is this stuff ignored by the anthropogenic global warming theorists? Given that if it’s so well known?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, it’s not so well known, because the magnetic field parts may be out there for 50 years, or. So but they’re all in this groove of getting funds for huge, bigger, computer systems to run these massive climate models. And they want their salaries to increase. They don’t want to change! It’s been a boondoggle! It’s been a wonderful gravy train for atmospheric scientists for 50 years now. Since the mid 70s, late 70s. So they don’t want to hear the truth. If they believe it they don’t want to divulge it.
[15:00]
James Delingpole: Well, it’s that Upton Sinclair quote, isn’t it?:
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it.”
Dr Rex Fleming: Exactly!
James Delingpole: Yes. I know Henrik Svensmark who’s been one of the main proponents of Cosmic Ray theory. He’s been dismissed as a kind of an eccentric loon, hasn’t he, by the mainstream?
Dr Rex Fleming: However, he and Nigel Calder, a Brit, I think?
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: Produced a book called The Chilling Stars, wonderful book, and very successful, well-read. Lays this whole situation out very beautifully. Goes through his history of the fight he had to go through. People now know that that theory is solid. And people have come to me in looking at my paper and say:
“Yeah, we agree with Svensmark. You’ve brought his name up. Yeah, he’s a good scientist.”
James Delingpole: So what’s your insight in your book, which you’re publishing shortly, the rise and fall of the carbon dioxide theory of climate change? What are you bringing to the party?
Dr Rex Fleming: First of all the book is published as an e-book, right now. The hardcover is available on a couple of weeks from Springer Press. It’s 176 pages, and it covers several important thing. One is the history of this debate. And it’s dramatic at times. So it’s an interesting subject in itself. I’ve covered the Svensmark’s theory, why we do have the change. I’ve covered what’s happening in the future, which is very important.
James Delingpole: We’ll come to that in the innings, because that’s nice and depressing [chuckling], unless we do something to stop it. But just going back, you’re saying that the history is quite dramatic. What were you thinking of?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, we have to go all the way back to 1896, when a Swedish scientist first came up with the idea that he thought carbon dioxide would cause a planet to warm.
James Delingpole: Is this Svante Arrhenius?
Dr Rex Fleming: Yeah, Arrhenius. Four years later another scientist from Sweden came out and said:
“No! No! It’s just not the case. There are reasons why it was not true.”
And they were pretty solid reasons, and the theory dropped. It basically didn’t come up again until much, much later. I don’t know if I should go into Margaret Thatcher’s role, or not.
James Delingpole: Well, I think you should mention Margaret Thatcher. I’ve written about this is as well, that yes, she hasn’t been very helpful. She wasn’t very helpful to the cause of scientific [word unclear]
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes, she had her reasons to be against the coal industry back in those days of Labour disputes, and she was against the high prices of Arab oil, and wanted nuclear energy for the country. And therefore when somebody came up with this latest revival of the fossil fuel problem, she jumped on it. And put out money for people to prove that it was true that fossil fuel was a problem.
And everybody in the world jumped on that. And that’s what started this. And then the press got involved. And it’s just grown, and grown, and grown! And that’s part of the problem.
James Delingpole: Well, yeah. How does that strike you? Are there any other historical examples, I wonder, of a kind of minority eccentric theory, which has no solid scientific basis, becoming the dominant thinking of the time, despite the existence of much better stronger theories?
Dr Rex Fleming: I’m not sure this is the kind of answer you want to hear. But there’s a historical precedent of people, way back, who thought the earth was flat.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: And one particular scientist came up, and was to be excommunicated from this church, because he thought the world was round. And that took a while for people to get to the point that it was, in fact, round. This is the same kind of thing that’s happened now.
We’ve got a minority people, a couple of scientists, Svensmark and his friends, will come up with a counter theory. And that has been a struggle to overcome that. Just like it was a struggle to overcome the flat earth, round earth, problem.
James Delingpole: You were showing me some charts earlier early on, before, you were giving me a run-through of your theories. And what you were, my computer’s breaking down. One of the points you made was that the carbon dioxide levels, historically have risen as a result of warm temperatures, not the other way around.
Dr Rex Fleming: Correct.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: If we go back even further in history the maximum carbon dioxide occurred a long time ago. And when the Earth’s tectonic activity was strongest, volcanoes were rampant, …
James Delingpole: What levels are we talking, because we’ve now got roughly what 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide.
Dr Rex Fleming: It was a factor of a thousand larger when that tectonic activity. Then carbon dioxide slowly evolved, lower, lower values. Went up and down through the years. Where we are now to the point where it’s only 400 parts per billion, roughly. A little bit more.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: And that’s near the lowest point in earth’s history.
James Delingpole: So we’re in a carbon dioxide starved, …
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes.
James Delingpole: , … Period, at the moment.
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes. Then there was a series of ice results from Antarctica. Ice cores taken from various countries. First the United States, and then France. And then the Soviet Union. Over different periods of time. And they found in each case that the temperatures lead the carbon dioxide.
James Delingpole: Right!
Dr Rex Fleming: And you have to have a ice core that has proper resolution to see that.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: In Al Gore’s famous movie, he showed a figure of temperature and carbon dioxide from an ice core. But that was one of the very early ice cores and the two temperatures, the two curves, were almost on top of each other.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: He said:
“Oh this looks like a pretty good correlation to me.”
Well, it was in that case. But the resolution of the ice core was not good enough. When you get high resolution in the ice core you can see the big difference between temperature and carbon dioxide. And every one of those scientific results temperature led the carbon dioxide!
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: So it was a 420 thousand year period of zero correlation of carbon dioxide and temperature. And if they’re not correlated, that can’t be a cause. They’ve got to both go up and both go down at the same time. So for every period of history we’ve looked at, from the four billion years of the Earth’s atmosphere existing, there’s no correlation! The observations alone prove the concept that carbon dioxide is not a cause of the climate.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: It has to be something else. And we now know that something else is from galactic space, and our Sun.
James Delingpole: But so why are some of the people pushing hardest anthropogenic global warming theory? People from the organizations like the British Antarctic Survey. These people who’ve been taking these ice cores samples. They tend to be the ones really, their are true believers in manmade climate change.
Dr Rex Fleming: Yes.
James Delingpole: So how can they look at the data, look at these ice cores, and draw completely different conclusions from the one that you’re drawing?
Dr Rex Fleming: Because there is no scientific conclusions drawn from the pro carbon dioxide’s causes of climate change. It’s all hearsay. It’s all based upon desires to eliminate fossil fuel. They think faster fuel is a problem. Fossil fuels running out. They’re wrong in both cases. Fossil fuel is not running out. We’ve got five hundred years supply for the world. There’s so much fossil fuel out there it’s amazing.
Liquid natural gas is not being produced in many countries and being shipped by ship to other countries that don’t have liquid natural gas. It is the cheapest fuel. It’s the most least controversial. It’s the cleanest fuel. People just want to get rid of fossil fuel for several reasons.
One is entirely political. I don’t want to get into the subject of socialism. But they’re pushing socialism. Again it’s failed throughout history. But they’re pushing it again. And they’re using a calamity, as a measure to get people’s attention. So the climate is a good one to use. Because the media and scientists have wrongly, without any proof, assumed that this is the problem.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: I can give you a reason why I think it all came up.
It all came up, because of the Industrial Revolution, which is in around the same time period as this current modern warming started.
James Delingpole: Yes.
Dr Rex Fleming: Which is 1850. Industrial revolutions, 1810, 1860, in various phases of it, that was a time of tremendous growth of carbon dioxide, because of all the industry being formulated in the new factories. And the temperatures rose. But they rose, because of the Sun, when having a solar maximum due to the magnetic field being very strong, and the cosmic rays were coming in. And we have isotopes of beryllium and carbon-14, which match up that incoming cosmic rays very precisely.
So we’ve got absolute proof that the cause of the modern warming is, in fact, due to the sun’s magnetic field and cosmic rays. Nothing to do with carbon dioxide! And we’ve got carbon dioxide measurements from that period onward, which keep rising, keep rising.
But even in the 20th century after World War II, there was a period of time, where there was a 35 year period of 1940 to 1975. 35 years of cooling, within the modern warming. CO2 kept going up, didn’t show any difference. But solar records showed a difference. And now we got absolute proof in the 20th century. Along with proof from all past history that CO2 is not a problem.
James Delingpole: Right. But do you think that we’ve reached the stage where it’s so far gone, that so many vested interests depend on CO2 being a problem. The renewables industry, for example, which wouldn’t be viable without the subsidies they get from governments which believe in CO2 is a problem. Do you think there’s any chance that they’re ever going to admit that they’re wrong?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, you brought up an interesting point, and an important point, that the renewable energy people of wind and solar, they have a lot of money to make, and are making it through government subsidies. They like to see fossil fuel go away. They would make far more money. But fossil fuel is cheaper! So the only reason they’re even popular is, because government subsidies. It’s the government who’s involved here. And it’s the government who tax the hell of out of fossil fuel. That’s why fossil fuel is so expensive here in England. Petrol, unbelievable prices compared to the United States.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: But, so it’s a hard thing to fight big industry like that it’s hard to fight governments who want bigger governments, and more taxes. It’s a difficult challenge. But I’m telling you there are enough scientists now coming around, and there’s enough people out there who don’t want to pay these high costs for energy, who are going to come around to when the truth is out. And the truth is coming out!
Maybe we have to produce a movie like Al Gore did? But eventually we’re going to get it out with our articles, with our books. There are over 20 books on Amazon.com right now that talk about the fallacy of carbon dioxide warming. They don’t have the proof that my book has. They have some proof, but not the entire proof that my book has. But they’re out there. And they’re talking about the fallacious lies that are put out by government, by media. And the truth is slowly, slowly, coming up.
James Delingpole: So, what is the killer point in your book, that that takes only the argument to new levels?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well there are the three arguments. The two of them have been put up by other people. One is the, …
James Delingpole: Cosmic rays, …
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, one is, there is an alternative, but a factor that most people do write about in these previous books I mentioned on Amazon.com, is that the past climates have been warm and cold, and warm and cold, with no changes in carbon dioxide.
James Delingpole: Yeah!
Dr Rex Fleming: How can that be a cause? There’s no correlation. So that’s a big reason. A second reason is another theory, which is the Svensmark’s theory of CO2 not being a cause. And cosmic rays and the sun’s magnetic field being the cause.
What I’ve brought new to the table is a detailed look at radiation, which you never see in the literature. They never go that deeply. In the articles that talk about this, they never go that deeply into the day-to-day changes in radiation from forcing, from carbon dioxide. And what it actually looks like.
All they show is model results when they’ve jacked up the models with carbon dioxide increasing every year, until they get a doubling. That’s why all these climate models are way too warm, compared to reality. And we got proof of that all over the place. But the proof never comes out in the detail. And that’s what I’ve provided in my book.
I now have the detail, on a day-to-day basis. I found radiation interacts with our atmosphere, and how it, the radiation intensity, although it is strong near the surface, it depletes as you go higher in the atmosphere. And it becomes non-existent, virtually non-existent at 16 kilometers. And at 16 kilometers the only heat left from that initial heat is so trivial, and the absorption coefficients of carbon dioxide are so small, that it gets radiated to space. And that’s what’s happening to the heat, the leftover heat from the carbon dioxide.
James Delingpole: Which is why there’s no tropical hotspot, because it’s not, …
Dr Rex Fleming: Correct. There is nothing in the tropics, there’s been no tropical heating for the last, 200 years. But the models all show it big time.
James Delingpole: So are you saying, I’m just trying to understand it in a kind of layman’s way, that anthropogenic warming theory has it that this CO2 gets trapped within the atmosphere. And has a kind of a potentially catastrophic heating effect. Whereas you’re saying, … And that it accumulates, it gets trapped. It doesn’t leak out. Whereas what you’re saying is that actually this radiation is being dispersed into the atmosphere, …
Dr Rex Fleming: And depleted.
James Delingpole: Depleted. And that’s the difference between the hotness that they’re predicting, versus the reality we’re observing.
Dr Rex Fleming: Exactly! Let me say a bit more about that surface heating. It’s been called “greenhouse gases”. The atmosphere is not a greenhouse. A greenhouse has a roof, our atmosphere has no roof.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: But there is a thermal layer, about a kilometer thick, that exists due to water vapour, and carbon dioxide. They both absorb solar radiation. And that solar radiation is turned into long wave thermal radiation. And that’s what heats that lowest one kilometer. That heat then, … And, by the way, water vapour is five times as important as carbon dioxide.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: In the lowest layer. A factor of five. Nevertheless, both sources of radiation decrease as you go up. Because radiation is given by the Planck function. The intensity of radiation is driven by that Planck function, created by Max Planck, way back in 1900. So that heat which is strong at the surface, keeps rising. And it’s an energy. Energy is not created by carbon dioxide and water vapour. But it’s absorbed by those two gases. And that absorption is then used to drive an engine. It’s driving the engine of the atmospheric circulation and the irrigation system of the planet.
So that radiation slowly depletes, vertically with height. And when you get up to 16 kilometers there’s nothing left! It’s a trivial amount left. And again there are coefficients that absorb radiation. And the coefficients that radiation are so small that radiation at 16 kilometres, and the heat left over there, it’s just radiated off to space.
James Delingpole: Right. I suddenly realized I made a mistake in my description of CO2 theory. That it’s not the CO2 that gets trapped, it’s the CO2 that traps the heat. But yeah, anyway just correcting myself for posterity. I see! So this factor is not built into any of the, what was it, 21 models, you said?
Dr Rex Fleming: 20, and some,
James Delingpole: 20 and some. And so this ought to reshape our thinking about how climate works and the nature of the problem. But why are they not spotted this then, all these supposed experts? How come you’ve spotted it and they haven’t?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well the climate experts, let’s talk about the modelling experts. They’re the ones who really drive it, because they need supercomputers. And we all like, as the mathematician myself, I would love to see a supercomputer in my home, and do all kinds of fun things! There are very expensive and it takes big bucks to buy a supercomputer these days.
James Delingpole: You’ve got a supercomputer at home?
Dr Rex Fleming: No. I have a powerful laptop.
James Delingpole: All right. Okay.
Dr Rex Fleming: I could tell you about my laptop in a minute. But these scientists need the money to get the computers. They don’t want to change what’s been going now since the Iron Lady introduced this situation.
James Delingpole: Yeah.
Dr Rex Fleming: And so they keep grinding ahead producing their forecasts, writing articles, but never, ever, have you seen the detail in those articles that I have in my book.
James Delingpole: Right.
Dr Rex Fleming: They just don’t want to discover it, I don’t think.
James Delingpole: So yesterday, I think it was, I’m in various email groups with the climate scientists, well not climate scientists, proper scientists, [chuckling] you know, atmospheric physicists, and stuff. And they were expressing disappointment at the Trump administration appears to have been got at, yet again, by “the swamp”.
Because President Trump you remember was talking about having a red team/blue team discussion of the CO2 issue, and getting scientists on both sides of the argument to thrash it out and to form a decision, from a verdict, based on their discussions. And he’s now decided to nix that.
Apparently because the GOP, the Washington conventional swamp, that that never wanted Trump to be in power anyway, they’ve said:
“No! No! We can’t be seen to be climate change deniers, not when we’re facing people like AOC. Not when the entire the Democrat partyis it’s deciding it’s campaign slogan is going to be we’re gonna solve the planet’s climate problems.”
So I still worry that there’s going to be just a sort of minority of us who are speaking the truth. But where the clamour of The Times is for more to be done. That this is a planetary emergency, as were being told by David Attenborough, and Greta Thornburg, and others. So how do we win this one?
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, we need people like Trump to follow through with his original plan. That plan is not dead. I have been informed that this team has not been formed. And the international, or even the national debate on the subject has not been brought to the forefront yet. But I understand it’s still being thought about. And enough people want to be a part of it, Judy Curry is somebody you probably.
James Delingpole: Yeah, yeah, Judy Curry.
Dr Rex Fleming: She’s a proponent of it. And many people are. So I think it’s gonna slowly happen. We do need to get a open free discussion from scientists on both sides. When that happens the people in my group, the quote “deniers” who have so much evidence, we will to easily defeat the people on the other side! They bring nothing to the table of scientific proof! All they have is hearsay. All they have is media coverage! All they have is government people saying it’s true. They say it’s true, but they have no proof that is true!
We have, on the other hand, proof that the opposite is true. So we will win that debate if it ever gets out there. Nobody wants it, because of the political reasons. But it’s going to eventually get out. We just have to keep working on it. People like you and I gotta keep pushing it. We have a lot of followers, there’s more all the time.
We’ve seen already a tremendous change in the past two years, the number of scientific papers coming out on the solar side, versus at the anthopogenic side. So there’s encouraging news happening.
James Delingpole: Yeah, well except, of course, the unencouraging news is that by your theory we’re approaching a new solar minimum, which is gonna hit us, … Oh! That’s right you said it moves the solar minima, comes in, what? How many year cycles? Three hundred and fifty years?
Dr Rex Fleming: Three hundred fifty year cycle. But it’s coming due from the coldest period of the Little Ice Age, which were when millions of people died of starvation. It was so cold. And especially here in England many problems. From that point, 1680, you had 350 years to that you get 2030. It’s 11 years from now, when there’ll be a rather substantial solar minimum. Solar minimum being again not the insulation of the sun, but the magnetic field of the sun.
James Delingpole: Yep.
Dr Rex Fleming: Minimal activity. This is probably going to be the single biggest reason we’ll get a change of policy, is when it starts getting colder. And it’s going to get colder. How much colder, we don’t know. Again is just as the atmosphere is chaotic, climate is chaotic. There are no exact answers, ever! But there are approximate answers.
And so plus, or minus five years from 2030, there’s going to be the solar minimum which is going to expose itself to the point where temperatures gonna start getting colder. And when it gets colder, there’s gonna be less food production. There were a billion people on the planet back in the Little Ice Age times.
And in 2030 there’s gonna be greater than 8 billion people on the planet. How are we gonna feed that many people if we have any kind of a famine? Well it’s going to take an enormous amount of planning. And that planning is going to have to start fairly soon. And I think it will when this word gets out, my book, and other books come out. And there’ll be other followers. And there are other people, other theories, that also disagree with the man-made cause.
So it’ll all get out. And eventually we’ll see some changes in the real atmosphere, in the real climate. And then [chuckling] they’ll have to realize they’ve been wrong, all along. And then we’ve got a serious situation is at hand.
James Delingpole: Well, may I make a suggestion? That obviously these people will want to make amends for their wrongheaded theories, which would cause so much damage. So I’m sure they will want to volunteer to be provide food for the starving poor.
I think the first people to go, to be too fed to the starving masses, should be all those, all your former NOAA colleagues, perhaps? [Rex chuckles] The ones who’ve been pushing this nonsense! Because have you ever had this? I get this.
Somebody actually emailed me the other day from Canada claiming to be an environmental lawyer. And he suggested that one day people like me are going to be tried at The Hague for, what was it? Ecocide, or something. That by denying climate change, manmade climate change, I’m somehow contributing to terrible things.
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, he’s exaggerating, of course, I would love to see this get into the courts. It’s already been defeated some years ago in England. Al Gore’s movie was a farce with many errors in it. And it was brought to court, and the deniers won that case. And they had to back off producing that movie and sending it around to the UK schools.
That’s one example. I would like to see more of that actually, because in every case the scientific, … You can argue about rumours but you can’t argue about scientific facts. We have the scientific facts on our side. There are zero scientific facts on the other side. And so that’s going to really help.
The real question is how do we accelerate that? We do need people like President Trump and other world leaders admitting to this fact. And indeed deciding to do something about it, and try to change things. But it won’t be easy. But I think it’s gonna happen, and the weather itself we’ll make it happen.
James Delingpole: Well yeah. One further question. You’re not in the first flush of youth. Have you taught people, … Because one of my worries is that all the people in academe they’ve bought into this whole climate change scare theory. And they are teaching PhD students the same rubbish. And those PhD students will presumably be one day teaching other people. Do you get any sense that the kind of younger generation of PhD students and scientists, are wising up?
Dr Rex Fleming: Actually it’s worse than that, because the pro-carbon dioxide cause of climate, are pushing this in the high schools and grade schools.
James Delingpole: Indeed.
Dr Rex Fleming: Younger kids are being scared to death of the future based upon this false catastrophic theory. Another thing we have going for our side though is, they’ve been pushing this thing for a long time. And they’ve been saying:
“Oh, it’s going to be horrible in ten years!”
Twenty years ago they said that. It hasn’t been horrible. Nothing has changed. There’s been no catastrophes. The storms we have, are natural weather variability. They’re not due to climate, that’s just natural weather. When warm periods and cold periods we have storms, we have droughts, we have floods, we have hurricanes, we have tornadoes. They all happen warm, or cold.
But the dramatic things like Al Gore talked about, of in the future, it never happened! Jim Hansen of NASA said some crazy things way back about what warming is gonna be. And your Max Ridley, he has called that out in one of his presentations, that how wrong it was. And they keep making these claims and they never come true! There’s not been one claim that’s ever come true! So we have that going for us. And so eventually, the truth comes out. I’m optimistic. I just hope I’m alive long enough to see it.
James Delingpole: Yeah, well yes. So do I! Good. [Rex chuckles] Well, just a reminder, your book is called the rise and fall of the carbon dioxide theory of climate change by Dr. Rex Fleming. Well Rex, it’s been pleasure meeting you and I do hope that we get rewarded by people joining our side one day.
[45:01]
Dr Rex Fleming: Well, I thank you. I’ve enjoyed meeting you and I really enjoyed your book. You’ve wrote several. But the one called, The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism. You’ve got wonderful quotes in here. They’re very clever, and very convincing. And I’ve used two of them in my book. And I’ve quoted you exactly! So you’re in the references!
James Delingpole: Excellent! Okay. Thank you very much and goodbye.
Dr Rex Fleming: Goodbye.
[45:43]
END
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YouTube Comments
61 Comments
marmoset3
2 years ago
Great podcast. It needs more like Dr Fleming to come out.
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Dezzasheep
2 years ago
I worked in offshore wind before a career change… always made me laugh that huge windfarm arrays actually CONSUME energy to slowly turn the blades (stop ceasing gears etc) during periods of low wind…. which is often.
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uncle jj 13er
2 years ago
Now THAT’S something nobody ever hears about. Thanks.
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Just a lowly Truck
2 years ago
Yet another excellent podcast, thanks James. One of my few go-to places for genuinely good information. I am guiding all my sound friends here and they are reporting great things.
BTW: I have noticed climate fascists have dropped away from the comment sections of these types of talk where proper science is discussed. I wonder why🤔
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Alpha Lobster
2 years ago
This is Trump’s long lost scientist brother or what? Another amazing podcast James. Thank you 👍
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Johan Silen
2 years ago
Thank you for an excellent interview! Finally detailed support to my own reasoning. Unfortunately I am skeptical against the thought that alarmists would self correct their views
. You can blame a cooling on changes to the circulation due to warming (sic). It seems nature needs to teach us a hard lesson! The great Svensmark theory gives us interesting possibilities to study and understand history from a new point of view.
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Flavia Britannia
2 years ago
This was a really good interview. I’m not in climate science but in an adjacent field not too far away, and I have always had doubts over the influence of CO2.
I heard a talk recently and there is another factor that has also been overlooked that could have an influence on the climate. When looking at the energy from the sun that hits the earth, the total solar irradiance, they assumed all the spectra, from infra red to visible light all the way up to x-ray, rise and fall together. Recent evidence shows otherwise. So even when the visible light irradiance goes down and they say the sun’s intensity is low, ultra violet and x-ray spectra may be high and these high energy spectra have been shown to influence the climate.
The guy who gave the talk was very PC about climate change though, probably because he was in solar physics not Earth climate, saying “I’m sure it’s just a small influence because the main cause, is of course CO2”.
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Gary Coleman
2 years ago
Excellent explanation re the natural causes of climate changes, as well as some of the politics involved. And an eye opener for many re the connections of the Terrible Trio: money, power and the foolishness of pushing man made carbon dioxide as the villain.
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Sandy A
2 years ago
That bit about the radiation was very interesting. If I understood him correctly, Dr Fleming has just blown the greenhouse hypothesis out of the water.
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UND3RGROUND MAN
2 years ago
this video is on youtube, Svensmark The Cloud Mystery, and covers the cosmic ray theory – well worth a watch
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Sandy A
2 years ago
@UND3RGROUND MAN Yes, you’re right; it’s well worth a watch. Thanks for directing me to it. Apart from explaining the cosmic ray theory very clearly, it also demonstrates how scientific inquiry is being suppressed by adherents to the co2 orthodoxy. Did you notice how many times they referred to the ‘climate community’? Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think scientists should be forming ‘communities’ around their favoured theories.
As for Fleming’s remarks about radiation, it seems to destroy the premise that atmospheric CO2 is absorbing radiated heat from the earth. If the radiation is dissipated before it reaches the co2 layer, the hypothesis is disproved. I may have got it wrong, but I think that’s what he was implying.
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Sandy A
2 years ago
@Xenomoly Bloom Yeah. The ‘climate community’s are just fellow passengers on the climate gravy train.
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Snorre Næss
2 years ago
Fantastic, let’s share and like and subscribe to boost this excellent podcast in the YouTube-algoritm
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Burgess Park
2 years ago
Very interesting – thank you both
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Lynndon Harnell
2 years ago
From a perspective of someone who worked for an energy corporation, they love renewables because the (subsidised) profits are much larger. End consumer pays.
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Michael Cunningham
2 years ago
Just a thought. Kirkby et al, at CERN discovered that biogenic vapours emitted by trees, which are oxidised in the atmosphere have a significant impact on the formation of clouds, thus helping to cool the planet. As the human population has grown, there has been a corresponding increase in deforestation. Could there be a link between deforestation and the heating of the planet?
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Bryan Bufton
2 years ago
In the 1970s we were told a mini ice age is approaching. and 1976 summer was bloody hot as hell in the UK
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Bryce Kerr
2 years ago
It really is the Emperors new clothes type of situation. I get sick to death of hearing about it.
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Sir Rather Splendid
2 years ago
Always good to hear from a certified authority, though Dr Rex is not the clearest of speakers. I have a physics degree but found it difficult to follow his reasoning.
Cosmic-ray heating of the atmosphere does sound a little exotic and even improbable, but would need to read more about this as Dr Rex’s explanation was rather thin, an ‘argument from authority’ rather than anything convincing.
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Alex Busby
2 years ago
When the IPCC itself is STILL, after 30+ years and untold $billions of research, unable (or perhaps unwilling?) to nail down climate sensitivity to any order of worthwhile precision, any normal person would start to ask very serious questions of the so-called ‘settled climate science’.
IPCC have central ECS at 3C per doubling of CO2, with a margin of error of +/- 1.5C. That makes their range approximately 3C, which is 100% of their central estimate! Settled my eye!
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Bryce Kerr
2 years ago
I predict that gas will be touted as the clean green energy, many nations rely on it, it’s not getting the bad press that oil and coal are getting, and you can see countries vying for the rights to these large fields. Gas has been the underlying reason for recent disputes, Qatar was a prime example, Russia gets hammered by the UK and the US but notably not by Germany!
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Mike Hayden
2 years ago
Bonjour señor Delingpole 👍
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From mb Mars
2 years ago
Maybe no proof … but you can feel the sun is incredibly warm (the feeling here on earth).
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1000frolly PhD
2 years ago
Mr Delingpole; great work.
Now interview me.
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Wilma Heste pigen
Wilma Heste pigen
2 years ago (edited)
1000frolly PhD – You are an oracle of climate science as far as Im concerned. I want to hear an interview with you!
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An Daimhíneach
2 years ago (edited)
Proof doesn’t matter if you’re sharing it with dolts and/or idealogical zealots for whom proof against their beliefs is both agonizing and unforgivable.
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Ledi Bak
2 years ago (edited)
What is the real name of the paper they are talking about in the beginning?
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Liam Hemmings
2 years ago
Better not listen to this expert, much better to listen to a child from Sweden.
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TL Winslow
2 years ago
Linked to this video at https://www.quora.com/Should-a-climate-scientist-who-suspects-that-global-warming-is-not-happening-be-allowed-to-continue-to-do-research/answer/TL-Winslow
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Peter Guest
2 years ago
To Tony Oliver from 2 days ago
You seem unwilling to have an online discussion of the points I made in response to your thinly veiled contempt of what James and his guest were discussing regards Peter from Oz
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Tony Oliver
2 years ago
So Dr Fleming claims “… one particular scientist [who?] came up and was tried, to be excomnunicated from his Church because he thought the world was round…”. The Church has never taught that the Earth is flat and no one has been excommunicated for claiming the Earth is round. I wonder what other baseless claims Dr. Fleming is prepared to make… Oh I know…
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The James Delingpole Channel
The James Delingpole Channel
2 years ago
He’s not an historian. So what?
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Tony Oliver
2 years ago
@The James Delingpole Channel Priceless! Why ask him that question then? And why didn’t he say something like “Off the top of my head I can’t think of any”? Instead, he mumbles a schoolboy howler while you, no doubt, nod sagely. Presumably you asked him that question thinking he would have an answer that was factually correct? It wasn’t and you failed to correct him. You’re not a scientist James, does that mean you are not to be held accountable for any statements you make about the science of Climate Change? If so why should you be taken seriously? I have no problem with challenges to scientific orthodoxy by laymen or professionals, but when arguing about the truth of say, anthropogenic climate change, it’s a good idea to actually value truth.
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Peter Guest
2 years ago
Tony Tony Tony You havn’t exactly nailed your colours to the mast but I suspect that you believe that AGW is a serious problem
The current warming that we are experiencing didn’t start at the beginning of the modern industrial age ( mid to late 1800’s) it started at around 1700AD at the depths of the little ice age, and has warmed around 2.0 degC in the last 300 years. CO2 has been bumping around 280 to 300 PPM right through all of this period and only took off after 1945, post the second world war, it is now around 400 to 410 PPM. Most of the 2.0deg C warming occurred before 1945 when CO2 could not have been a factor.
In addition to this mercury thermometers are not as sensitive as the modern digital thermometers and do not respond as quickly to air temp fluctuations. As an example the temp of the air 30 centimetres above an asphalt road on a sunny day can be as high as 20 degC above the surrounding area and as this air heats up its density is reduced and it rises as a pool of hot air. this is happening on most surfaces in the environment creating a situation where the temp profile in the air is not constant but pulsing up and down. A mercury thermometer cannot detect as much of this fluctuation as a modern digital thermometer, . A modern digital will detect more of these spikes resulting in higher day time temps than 45 years ago.So I think it will not be too many more years before this AGW scare will fall apart Regards Peter Guest Australia
PS I love your work James Keep it up.
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Tony Oliver
2 years ago
@Peter Guest My colours are well and truly flying from the masthead – they declare my allegiance to the facts. I corrected Fleming’s silly claim (which JD ought to have done, but failed to do) and I was met with a response of “He’s not an historian. So what?” as if that was an excuse for propagating nonsense. That cavalier attitude to truth is reason enough not to take JD or his guest seriously. As for the rest of your comment, unlike JD I have read peer-reviewed scientific papers on Climate Change and I find the evidence for the anthropogenic signature persuasive, but that’s not why I posted my original comment.
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Peter Guest
2 years ago
Thanks for the response Tony, most people who believe in dangerous AGW would not reply in a civil way to people who hold views
like mine, they would just start hurling abuse.
Can you comment on the points that I made? In general I believe that man has had some contribution to the current temps but it is mostly natural.
Regards Peter Guest
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Philip Shehan
2 years ago
@Tony Oliver JD is not only not a scientist. He has said he does not read the scientific literature published in journals.
He riffs on interpretations written in “skeptic” blogs.
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Paul Pukite
2 years ago
@The James Delingpole Channel … and you’re not a scientist
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RabidMortal1
2 years ago
@The James Delingpole Channel Well he’s not really a scientist either. He worked for NOAA for less than ten years in the 1990s then went into the private sector. And a PhD from 1970 without actively keeping abreast of current research is essentially meaningless.He’s not informed on the research that’s taken place over the 30 years since he left science. As a comparison, would you trust your MD’s opinion on ANYthing if he hadn’t been practicing for 30 years?
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Philip Shehan
2 years ago (edited)
@The James Delingpole Channel
Fleming claims he wrote a book on the subject. It is the first thing he declares important. ‘the history of this debate’ You ask him about that topic specifically.
He gets a number of things wrong. Publications on CO2 as a major climate forcing did not cease after Arrhenius and revive with Margaret Thatcher. Scientists were not excommunicated for challenging a flat earth.
Declaring “He’s not an historian” just won’t wash.
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endeavour356
2 years ago
Opinions without evidence are simply prejudice
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Erik Morsing
2 years ago
“But four centuries ago, the idea of a heliocentric solar system was so controversial that the Catholic Church classified it as a heresy, and warned the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to abandon it ……. Ultimately, Galieo’s book was banned, and he was sentenced to a light regimen of penance and imprisonment at the discretion of church inquisitors. After one day in prison, his punishment was commuted to “villa arrest” for the rest of his life. He died in 1642.”
Source: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-galileo-and-his-conflict-with-the-catholic-church
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