Cohler/Soon: “Rebuttal to Nikolov on global temperature” | Tom Nelson Pod #371
HomeTom Nelson › Episode

Cohler/Soon: “Rebuttal to Nikolov on global temperature” | Tom Nelson Pod #371

1:38:26 Feb 10, 2026
About this episode
Jonathan Cohler and Willie Soon present a rebuttal to assertions made by Ned Nikolov about the physical meaning of global mean surface temperature (GMST). They argue that GMST is a physically meaningless statistical construct that cannot represent the Earth's thermal state or energy content due to its basis in non-equilibrium thermodynamics. They emphasize that temperature is an intensive property and its aggregation across different systems is fundamentally flawed from both mathematical and thermodynamic perspectives.00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction00:38 Global Temperature: Physically Meaningless01:28 Thermodynamics and Its Importance02:26 Disagreement in Science02:58 Essex Etal 2007 Paper Discussion04:25 Defining Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST)08:04 Temperature and Energy Relationship15:43 Critique of Nikolov's Claims34:26 Averaging Methods and Their Flaws49:28 Debunking Global Temperature Myths49:48 The Flaws in Global Temperature Estimation51:23 Classical Realism and Thermodynamics53:06 Critique of GMST and Climate Models54:23 The Paris Agreement and GMST55:47 Misconceptions in Climate Science01:14:21 The Role of AI in Climate Research01:20:03 Concluding Thoughts and Future Workhttps://jonathancohler.com/https://x.com/cohlerDDP July 2025 presentation: “The Father of Lies: Hijacking Climate Science - Jonathan Cohler”: https://youtu.be/o_YJgD5cy1IDDP July 2025 presentation: How well can we measure the Earth’s energy budget? Willie Soon, Ph.D.: https://youtu.be/tI0qmV2Bbc8=========Slides, summaries, references, and transcripts of my podcasts: https://tomn.substack.com/p/podcast-summariesMy Linktree: https://linktr.ee/tomanelson1
Select an episode
0:00 0:00