Beam me to Planet Gore !
Within The Frame Of Physics By Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner Full paper, 114 pages, 1.54MB at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
This approved non-technical summary by Hans Schreuder, 24 June 2008
“The authors express their hope that in schools around the world the fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly, not by using shock-tactic 'Al Gore' movies and not misinforming physics students by confusing absorption/emission with reflection, by confusing the tropopause with the ionosphere and by confusing microwaves with shortwaves.”
My daughter has been fighting the good fight on this front her entire college career. She is now a senior and will be graduating this spring from college with her physics major. :-) Some professors were rabidly pro-global warming. I have always told her that the ones that didn’t say one way or another were probably not pro-global warming, but were protecting their careers.
Thanks for the article. She is having surgery today and I’m saving it for when she is coherent enough to read it.
Excellent
The paper is mostly spot-on, IMO. One little problem:
“In summary, no atmospheric greenhouse effect, nor in particular a CO2-greenhouse
effect, is permissible in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics.”
There actually is an atmospheric greenhouse effect. The atmosphere works exactly like the walls of a real greenhouse - as an insulator. Spontaneous or Anthropogenic CO2 based warming is total BS, though IMO. CO2 gas is not some kind of super-insulator - and statistically speaking - too small to count. Most of their theory revolves around IR absorption and retransmittance altering flux. Problem is, all that happens nearly real time. How much can it really alter the energy balance in terms of atmospheric heat retention?
The IPCC models also contain a (badly) flawed assumption - that warming effects are lasting and precipitate more warming effects. Nah. Any heat not absorbed by the ocean or into the earth itself is radiated off quickly into an immense vacuum with infinitely more power to absorb heat than than the atmosphere has the capacity to store it. The upper atmosphere acts like the glass walls of the greenhouse limiting the percentage of the atmosphere in direct contact with space available as a medium for heat exchange. Heat in the lower atmosphere is effectively sequestered. The only way that changes is if the insulating properties (heat conductance) of the upper atmosphere, or the physical size of the atmosphere, or the rate of convective exchange with the lower atmospher is being changed. Not enough CO2 to substantially alter any of that. CO2 could kill us - it’s poisonous at high enough concentrations.
I think there’s evidence that the water cycle including albedo, cloud albedo (ignored by IPCC), ice, and rates of oceanic circulation (turnover) have the ability to alter global climate - but really they ARE global climate. Can we alter them? Maybe. But that’s not the question the AGW hypothesis poses.
I guess if someone hypothesized that all the climatologists running around in icebreakers taking global temps are causing some small amount of warming by affecting albedo - it would be very hard to dispute on the basis of physical chemistry or pure physics.
So yeah, it’s the Sun. And the water cycle. And the IPCC’s hypothesis can be falsified, IMO. And yes the model attempts to solve an unsolvable equation with too many data points and variables to be plugged into a hypothetical computer with enough processing power. Even if the whole human race were set to the task immediately. And the values of other unsolvable flux equations are fed into it as raw inputs. About as scientific, accurate, and useful as a Ouija board or stopped clock. GIGO. The perfect grant-monkey project.
“When a thing defies physical law, there’s usually politics involved.”
-P.J. O’Rourke
Fantastic clarification of physical ***LAW***. Written in true scholarly tradition honoring the human mind.
Gerlich and Tscheuschner (pronounced I think Gelih and Shoosner), real physicists coming to the rescue of their profession’s credibility crisis.
But this non-tech summary has been around for almost 2 years now, and we can imagine that it would be still buried as ‘heresy’ if not for the unfolding EAU whistle blowing heroism aka ‘Climategate’.
I wonder if the authors suffered socially.
CO2 debunking bookmark for reference
Thank you for the link. Am reading the full paper now. Looks like it deserves to get wider recognition. Will pass it on to friends and colleagues.
Excellent.
mark
BFL
There is one overriding, AMAZING point in this article - and I have never considered it BUT NOW it seems OBVIOUS!
= = = THE KILLER CONCEPT IS THIS!!! = = =
If CHANGES in CO2 concentration at this LOW level (in forty-nine years beginning in 1958, CO2 increased by approx 62 ppmv - 0.0062% - and is approaching a total concentration of 0.04%)...
... could have such a profound and accumulative effect (FORCING an increase in the average temperature of THE ENTIRE PLANET’S ATMOSPHERE of several degrees in just a few decades, or even a century and a half)...
THEN THIS EFFECT WOULD BE EASILY OBSERVABLE IN LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS!!!
It would NOT be subtle - it would be readily detectable, and a consistent PHYSICS-based explanation and mechanism would exist.
It would NOT be some mysterious effect. This is NOT quantum mechanics! This is “normal” classical physics.
AGAIN - to reprise the argument - AND PLEASE NOTE THE UNITS - CO2 has increased by about six-thousandths of one percent in fifty years. If this continues another 50 or 100 years, disaster awaits - the average temperature of the entire planet will increase 2 - 4 - 6 degrees? (pick a number)
If this CO2 effect existed AND was of this POWER, it would be readily measurable in the lab.
SO - Where is the lab data and analysis supporting this effect - not just computer models - but real-world, reality-based measurements?
Game-Set-Match on JUST this argument alone, IMHO