Recently an enquirer wrote to a Doctor of Science who is a true-believer in the “global warming” theory, and drew his attention to some of my conclusions to the effect that the science is not as settled as we are being told. The Doctor replied with an ad-hominem attack on me, but also included some scientific argument. Here, I respond to that argument, giving an outline of the reasons why the official version of the science may be doubtful.

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an e-mail in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, seventeen days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems that very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.

For 80% of time, planet Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet. Polar icecaps are rare, plants have only be on Earth for 10% of time and 99.99% of all life that has ever existed is extinct. Global atmospheric CO2 and CH4 have been variable over time and have decreased over time whereas O2 has been in the atmosphere for 50% of time, has greatly fluctuated and has increased over time.

The Earth’s atmosphere differs in essence from that of Venus and Mars. Our atmosphere is not totally cloud-covered, as is Venus: globally, about 40% of the sky is always clear. Also we have huge ocean surfaces that serve as a practically unlimited reservoir of water vapor for the air.

With the help of these two conditions, the Earth’s atmosphere attains what the other two planets cannot: a constant, maximized, saturated greenhouse effect, so that adding more greenhouse gases to the mix will not increase the magnitude of the greenhouse effect and, therefore, will not cause any further “global warming”.