There's A New Denier In Town, Or: Who The Heck is Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel?

Oliver Manuel is a dissident nuclear chemist best known for his "Iron Sun" Theory. Lately, Mr Oliver has been dipping his toes into the Climate Change skeptic community, and a paper in Energy and Environment may be in the works. By way of "prefutation", here is a bit of background on the man and his work.

The inspiration for O. Manuel's novel ideas came during the 1960s, when he noticed that the abundances of certain elements in meteorites were distinctly different from those in the Earth and much of the solar system. From this humble beginning, Mr. Manuel developed his theory that our solar system was created during the explosion of a super-nova five billion years ago, and that our sun is the collapsed, mostly iron remnant of that super-nova (see figure above).

Although many scientists acknowledge the fruitfulness of Manuel's original observations, and although he is still a member in good standing (as it were) of the relevant scientific community, by his own admission "Ninety-nine percent of the field will tell you [The Iron Sun theory is] junk science."

Recently (this year, I believe), Mr. Manuel has began hanging out at Denialist websites like Climate Audit, and expressing skepticism in regards to AGW. For example:

I suspect that NASA has used some of the same tricks to peddle AGW (anthropologic global warming) that it used to promote the myth that planet Earth is heated by a steady, H-fusion reactor in the core of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.

He has also been promulgating the idea that, somehow, his ideas explain the current climate phenomenon. So what connection does The Iron Sun Theory have with a warming Earth?

Well, not very much, it would appear. While Mr. Manuel argues here and, in greater detail, here, that the Iron Sun theory explains the mechanisms behind the solar eruptions, magnetic fields, sun spots, and so forth, that can have an effect on Earth's climate, there is no attempt to explain the specific temperature trends observed over the past century or so. No attempt, for example, to explain why temperatures have continued to rise while solar activity has fallen.

If I were to guess, I would say that Mr. Manuel is looking to raise the profile of his pet theory by tying it to dissenting positions in other fields. Denialists tend to be far more supportive of one another's ideas than is the case in the scientific community as a whole. Its a bit like North Korea forming alliances with Iran; the outcasts tend to stick together.

Peer Review At E&E: A Case Study

Bill Hughes, editor of the climate change denialists journal of choice, Energy & Environment, is threatening to sue the lads at RealClimate over the claim that E&E has "effectively dispensed with substantive peer review ". Its a bullshit suit, and won't ever happen, but I thought it might serve as inspiration for this mini-case study of how E&E editors (or at least Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen) deal with the material submitted to them. The author is Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel, and he published this book review in their Sept 2008 issue, and Earth's Heat Source - The Sun in January 2009. From the abstract of the latter:

The Sun encompasses planet Earth, supplies the heat that warms it, and even shakes it. The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumed that solar influence on Earth's climate is limited to changes in solar irradiance and adopted the consensus opinion of a hydrogen-filled Sun — the Standard Solar Model (SSM). They did not consider the alternative solar model and instead adopted another consensus opinion: Anthropogenic greenhouse gases play a dominant role in climate change. The SSM fails to explain the solar wind, solar cycles, and the empirical link of solar surface activity with Earth's changing climate. The alternative solar model-molded from an embarrassingly large number of unexpected observations that space-age measurements revealed since 1959-explains not only these puzzles but also how closely linked interactions between the Sun and its planets and other celestial bodies induce turbulent cycles of secondary solar characteristics that significantly affect Earth's climate.

So, yeah, Manuel is that guy that thinks the Sun is like a giant, really hot ball-bearing.

In any case, Manuel first starts circling denialists blogs and forums in 2007, including the Climatesceptics mailing list, of which I am a proud member. In late 2007, Sonja reached out to Manuel, who had been promoting his ideas on the list, as follows:

Dear Oliver
Would you have time to write a rather readable paper for me, addressing not the science community or even climate scpetics, but the energy policy community, with your challenging ideas?

References would be 'scientific ' of course. It could be a Viewpoint, relatively short and not peer reviewed, or a proper review paper, whioch would be.If interested, ask Louise for more detail, please.
Best wishes

Sonja

A year passed. In late 2008, just before the publication of the 2nd piece, Sonja posted a brief note to Climate Skeptics:

Just for info, the people i asked did not think much of Oliver's ideas and complained that he has no evidence and mainly cites himself. Hence his paper could not be published as peer reviewed, but as a viewpoint. As you know, I like to publish what is considered outside currently accepted ideas. But being published in E&E is for debate, not evidence of 'truth'.
Sonja

However, Manuel gave some push-back, noting several peer-reviewed manuscripts, mostly co-authored by him (such as this), to which Sonja eventually responded (in February 2009):

Oliver, I should really shut up about this.

I only got involved because I had to read some peer reviews of your latest paper, and they were not positive , but made me aware that there are deep rifts between solar scientists, including about the sun consists of…..

I do not want E&E to take up the solar debate as well, in part because I do not see the link to energy policy, though there may well be links to climate…though I am not even clear about that.

While I think I can understand the politics behind the AGW (climate) debate, I do not understand why solar scientists fight each other, and hope that this is not related to policy (other than getting research funding).

If not, then a genuine scientific debate may be going on, but I cannot judge this. [I wished my father in law was still alive….he started as a solar physicist but became a famous radio astronomer.

If fact and fiction are so readily distinguished as you suggest, I do not understand why the debate continues.

The only theoretical physicist I know here, did not take your argument seriously) Whom to trust??

All I would like to say is that E&E is not a journal for solar physics, the editor can’t handle it!
Sonja

And then a few days after that, after one of Manuel's supporters had flashed around some video demonstrating that the Sun is a solid dammit!--

You do know you are right in that the pictures taken over a fairly time show ejections coming from a surface that does not change at all. With the exception of the fissures everything remains constant shape. If it were a gas you know what it would look like. Just look at the clouds in the sky. It is a solid. Could it be somewhere near molten, sure. but it has features that do not change over time.

--Sonja changed her tune a little:

Most interesting, I now understand the controversy and that Oliver whilst not among the mainstream, is no crank.

Hydrogen only on top, says Oliver… iron below, but this has much wider implications for the origin of our universe!

I have had to conclude that my French referee was too dismissive….l..there are arguments on both sides, and science should,( but does not it seems at the personal level) thrive on honest argument rather than ridicule.

In any case, I am pleased we published this paper, if not as peer reviewed, but as an opinion piece. This seems fair enough as E&E is not a pure science journal, but is only interested in science as far as it influences the politics of energy policy and technology.

Sonja B-C

So that is the story of Oliver Manuel's publication history with E&E. I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether such treatment constitutes "substantive peer review".

PS. You have to be one of the 500 plus members of the CS list to get a peak behind at their archives; that's why there are no links in the above. You can look at the front page here.

PPS. Here's a link to a preprint of Earth's Heat Source.

E&E Distances Itself From Peiser, GWPF And AGW Denialist Movement

E&E = Energy And Environment, the climate change denialists journal of choice.  Peiser = Benny Peiser,up until recently co-editor of the journal, but now also working for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),  a denialist lobby group headed-up by Mr. Peiser and launched by he and Lord Nigel Lawson, Baron of Blaby (I'm not kidding), and father of the beautiful Nigella.  Lawson is also a long-time climate change denier.

E&E's  last brush with fame was a few months ago, when Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate claimed that the magazine had "dispensed with substantive peer review" and another editor, Bill Hughes, threatened libel in response.  This kerfuffle reached the U.K MSM, and I'm happy to say I helped a bit by relating the story of Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel's dealings with E&E, which pretty clearly demonstrated what a piece of crap the journal has become.

Well, there appears to be a bit of a rethink at the magazine.  Peiser is out as co-editer, and any connection with the GWPF appears to have been severed.  Editer Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen  writes:

A few important announcements need to be made. Firstly, E&E is not the journal of climate sceptics or deniers, as some have asserted, but will continue to publish papers (seriously peer reviewed) and Viewpoints by these people in order to inform the energy ‘community’ - academic as well as professional - that the science debate which underlies so much of its current activities is by no means over. There may well be a need for a pure science journal dedicated to debating the AGW hypothesis and any role for E&E in this debate would disappear if mainstream scientific publications ceased to reject voices that disagreed with the IPCC line. Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser for having acting as my co-editor for several turbulent years, but he has returned to our Editorial Board and will remain a valuable support. His work at the Global warming Policy Foundation now keeps him very busy in London. Also, a clear distinction between this lobby group and Energy & Environment may be now be desirable.

Note that this isn't the first time E&E has been burned for their stance re AGW; in 2010 both Bjorn Lomborg and Jim Skea quit the editorial board over this issue.

No Effect

From James Annan, climate scientist:

Do solar/heliospheric changes affect the earth's climate?

That was the title of the keynote talk at a workshop held here last week. To save you the trouble of reading any further, I should just say now that the answer provided was "no, at least not to any significant extent since the middle of last century".

I may play around later with Inhofe's updated (650 scientists!) list of deniers. But one of the new names on the list is Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel, who I have previously written about here.

TolGate

Richard Tol, the climate change denier's favorite economist (and a guy with hair that, lets face it, is world-class in its sheer freakiness), gets smacked down for both his role in the Irish economic collapse and some dubious science:

No less disturbing than the drift into boosterism in the ESRI’s forecasts are the political activities of Richard Tol in the climate field, activities that blur uncomfortably and insidiously into his research work.

Tol has engaged in a long-term collaboration with Bjørn Lomborg, himself the subject of a detailed critique by Howard Friel titled ‘The Lomborg Deception’ and categorised by its publisher, Yale University Press, under the subject-heading of “Fraud in Science”.

Lomborg operates the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) which, in spite of its title, has served solely as a vehicle for the political views of its leader. The Copenhagen Consensus projects involve Lomborg hand-picking researchers, with Tol a favourite, to engage in rigged research projects which Lomborg further distorts beyond the point of fraud to oppose any reduction in fossil fuel use.

For the 2008 project, Tol co-wrote a paper along with Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University and two researchers from the Electric Power Research Institute, a US trade association. The two climate change proposals were ranked against numerous development and human welfare issues and came in 29th and 30th out of 30.

Long-term Lomborg critic Kåre Fog took Tol, whose FUND computer-model was the basis for the simulation, to task about the study. Tol admitted that the study used a discount rate that fell gradually from 5% whereas all the competing proposals used a 3% rate. Tol excused himself by saying that re-writing the model to use the 3% discount rate was too difficult and that the other proposals should have used his rate, even though the project specifications dictated 3% and he has at other times successfully employed FUND with other rates. This inherent bias caused the bottom ranking.

Fog’s criticisms did not end there. Tol claims his research showed a net benefit from global warming until mid-century, after which the effects turn sharply negative. For this purpose, welfare effects were calculated in local economy terms, with deaths for example being costed at a certain multiple of local per-capita GDP. Thus a single European saved from winter influenza, probable – in actuarial terms – to be elderly and infirm, outweighed not one but many Africans dying – likely in the prime of life – due to global warming.

Subsequently, Lomborg and Yohe had a spectacular falling out. In a bruising exchange in the pages of the Guardian, Yohe accused Lomborg of “misrepresenting our findings thanks to a highly selective memory”. The exchange was temporarily concluded by a joint article where Lomborg and Yohe agreed that the reason CCC climate proposals “failed the cost-benefit test … could be traced to faulty design”. Given that the designs were Lomborg’s own, this was a humiliating admission.

He also pals around with Ian Plimer, a proponent of Manuel's "Iron Sun" theory.

Ian Plimer And The Iron Sun

Aussie climate change denier Ian Plimer's has a new book out, entitled Heaven and Earth. In it, he rehashes the usual nonsense to show that climate change is a hoax, Al Gore is fat, and so forth. There's a good review of it here from astronomer Michael Ashley. Reading through his review, I came across the following passage:

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page 120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled 'The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass'. This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.

Here Plimer is referencing one of my favorite deniers, Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel, who is most famous for suggesting that the sun is not a Hydrogen-driven fusion engine but a big ball of iron created by a an ancient super-nova and that, if this is the case, it explains...somehow... the various "solar cycles" that allegedly drive global warming, where the standard model...for some reason...does not.

Since his name has come up, I would refer readers to this earlier post of mine, where I talked a little more about his theories, his place as a dissident within the solar physics community, and speculate as to why he hooked up with the deniers.