The primary debate about �global warming� / �climate change� is whether there is scientific proof that human activity (rather than natural causes) is responsible for significant climate change.

A new peer-reviewed paper has just delivered a major blow to the �greenhouse gas� assumptions that are central to the arguments of most climate alarmists. The paper, published in the International Journal of Modern Physics, is entitled Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics. Both the abstract and a pdf of the full 115-page paper are available to the public.

Here are a few central points from this paper, done by two German physicists who understand that we have witnessed the erosion of the scientific method in order to support a political agenda. I have interspersed a few extra words of my own [set off in square brackets like this] for clarity.

There are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses [hothouses on farms and in indoor gardens] and the fictitious atmospheric green house effect... The terms "greenhouse effect" and "greenhouse gases" are deliberate misnomers...

The temperature rises in the climate model computations are made plausible by a perpetuum mobile [that is, the physically impossible "perpetual motion machine"] of a second kind. This is [accomplished] by setting the thermal conductivity in the atmospheric models to zero, an unphysical assumption [and an impossible action]...

The CO2 greenhouse effect ... is a "mirage." The horror visions of a risen sea level, melting pole caps and developing deserts in North America and in Europe are fictitious consequences of fictitious physical mechanism as they cannot be seen even in the climate model computations. The emergence of hurricanes and tornadoes cannot be predicted by climate models because all of these deviations are ruled out. The main strategy of modern CO2 greenhouse gas defenders seems to [be to] hide themselves behind more and more pseudo-explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training...

If conclusions out of computer simulations are to be more than simple speculations, then in addition to the examination of the numerical stability and the estimation of the effects of the many vague input parameters, at least the simplifications of the physical original equations should be critically exposed. The point discussed here was to answer the question, whether the supposed atmospheric effect has a physical basis. This is not the case. In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular, [no] CO2 greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus, it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy.

This paragraph from the abstract also provides food for thought:

The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that may authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861) and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics, such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature, it [this belief that counters the 2nd law of thermodynamics] is taken for granted that such a mechanism is real and stands on firm scientific foundation.

Perhaps we really need to consider the negative impact of government sponsorship and funding of research. We now have a graphic example of how vulnerable such a system is to being captured to support a political agenda. And perhaps, if our Democratic leaders are so interested in "helping" people they may consider Bjorn Lomborg's suggestion that the funds intended to delay the impact of the false belief of AGW, would be much better spent on projects with well-known high-value payoffs for people around the world.

UPDATE 3/23/2009 6:55 am: An alert commenter noted my error in the original title, which now has been corrected. However, his assertion that an article published in a well-respected journal is "bunkum" by "unknown scientists" is a classic illustration of my point about the politicization of science. The AGW alarmists repeatedly try to shut off debate by demonizing anyone who deviates from the politically correct party line.

Labels: global warming????