By Kirk Myers

Editor’s note: In response to reader interest in Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi’s provocative greenhouse theory challenging the widespread belief in man-caused global warming, Climate Truth has asked the former NASA researcher to explain his work further. Earlier this week he attacked the prevailing climate-change theory, calling it “a lie.”

At Dr. Miskolczi’s request, we also have posted his letter sent last year to the Environmental Protection Agency, summarizing his research and questioning the agency’s efforts to declare CO2 a harmful pollutant that poses a threat to earth’s climate.

Climate Truth: Has there been global warming?
Dr. Miskolczi: No one is denying that global warming has taken place, but it has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect or the burning of fossil fuels.

Climate Truth:  According to the conventional anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, as human-induced CO2 emissions increase, more surface radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, with part of it re-radiated to the earth’s surface, resulting in global warming.  Is that an accurate description of the prevailing theory? 
Dr. Miskolczi: Yes, this is the classic concept of the greenhouse effect.

Climate Truth:  Are man-made CO2 emissions the cause of global warming?
Dr. Miskolczi: Apparently not. According to my research, increases in CO2 levels have not increased the global-average absorbing power of the atmosphere.

ClimateTruth:  Where does the traditional greenhouse theory make its fundamental mistake?
Dr. Miskolczi:  The conventional greenhouse theory does not consider the newly discovered physical relationships involving infrared radiative fluxes. These relationships pose strong energetic constraints on an equilibrium system.

ClimateTruth: Why has this error escaped notice until now?
Dr. Miskolczi: Nobody thought that a 100-year-old theory could be wrong. The original greenhouse formula, developed by an astrophysicist, applies only to the stars, not to finite, semi-transparent planetary atmospheres. New equations had to be formulated.

ClimateTruth:  According your theory, the greenhouse effect is self-regulating and stabilizes itself in response to rising CO2 levels. You identified (perhaps discovered) a “greenhouse constant” that keeps the greenhouse effect in equilibrium.  Is that a fair assessment of your theory?
Dr. Miskolczi: Yes. Our atmosphere, with its infinite degree of freedom, is able to maintain its global average infrared absorption at an optimal level. In technical terms, this “greenhouse constant” is the total infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere, and its theoretical value is 1.87. Despite the 30 per cent increase of CO2 in the last 61 years, this value has not changed. The atmosphere is not increasing its absorption power as was predicted by the IPCC.

ClimateTruth:  You used empirical data, rather than models, to arrive at your conclusion. How was that done?
Dr. Miskolczi: The computations are relatively simple. I collected a large number of radiosonde observations from around the globe and computed the global average infrared absorption. I performed these computations using observations from two large, publicly available datasets known as the TIGR2 and NOAA. The computations involved the processing of 300 radiosonde observations, using a state-of-the-art, line-by-line radiative transfer code. In both datasets, the global average infrared optical thickness turned out to be 1.87, agreeing with theoretical expectations. 

ClimateTruth:  Have your mathematical equations been challenged or disproved?
Dr. Miskolczi: No.

ClimateTruth:  If your theory stands up to scientific scrutiny, it would collapse the CO2 global warming doctrine and render meaningless its predictions of climate catastrophe. Given its significance, why has your theory been met with silence and, in some instances, dismissal and derision? 
Dr. Miskolczi: I can only guess. First of all, nobody likes to admit mistakes. Second, somebody has to explain to the taxpayers why millions of dollars were spent on AGW research. Third, some people are making a lot of money from the carbon trade and energy taxes.

ClimateTruth:  A huge industry has arisen out of the study and prevention of man-made global warming. Has the world been fooled?
Dr. Miskolczi: Thanks to censored science and the complicity of the mainstream media, yes, totally.

--------------

Dr. Miskolczi’s letter to the EPA

June 20, 2009

Environmental Protection Agency
EPA DocketCenter (EPA/DC)
Mailcode 6102T
Attention Docket IDNo. EPA-HQ-OAR-2009-0171
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460

This comment is to demonstrate, that the origin of the observed global warming (positive global average surface temperature trend) in the last few decades can not be caused by the observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

In theoretical radiative transfer, the absorbing power of infrared active gases are measured by the total infrared optical depth (TIOD). This dimensionless quantity is the negative natural logarithm of the ratio of the absorbed surface upward radiation by the atmosphere to the total emitted surface upward radiation.

The recent value of the TIOD is 1.87, which value fully complies with the theoretical expectation of an optimal (saturated) greenhouse effect of a greenhouse gas (GHG)-rich planet. (Miskolczi - 2007).

With relatively simply computations, we show that in the last 61 years, despite the 30 percent increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the cumulative greenhouse effect of all atmospheric greenhouse gases has not been changed - that is, the atmospheric TIOD is constant.

Enlarged here.

According to the most plausible explanation of the above fact, the equilibrium atmospheric H2O content is constrained with the theoretical optimal TIOD. Our simulation results are summarized in . . . Fig. 2.
. . . Apparently, increased total CO2 column amount is coupled with decreasing H2O column amount. As the result of the opposing trends in the two most important GHGs, in Fig. 2 the red curve shows no trend in the TIOD. In the last 61 years, the infrared absorbing capability of the atmosphere has not been changed; therefore, the greenhouse effect can not be the cause of the global warming.

In case of fixed atmospheric H2O column amount, simulation results show that according to the positive trend in the CO2 content of the atmosphere, there would also be a significant positive trend in the TIOD (blue curve).

The above results are the plain proofs that the IPCC consensus on the causes of the global warming is totally wrong, and the physics of the greenhouse effect requires serious revisions.

Dr. F. M. Miskolczi

Relevant References:
F. Miskolczi: Id?jaras 111 (2007) 1-40,
F. Miskolczi and M. Mlynczak: Id?jaras 108 (2004) 209-2
D. Kratz et al.: JQSRT 90 (2005) 323-341

See post here.

By Paul Chesser

The BP rig explosion has caused the greatest oil mess in U.S. history, and eco-activists are puzzled as to why they can’t exploit it to advance initiatives such as climate-change legislation. “It’s hard to imagine a more useful disaster,” wrote two Washington Post environmentalist reporters, noting a squandered opportunity.

Could it be because we’ve heard similar alarms before? We were told in past decades about the pulled pin on the overpopulation grenade, an impending ice age and a nuclear-caused scorched earth. Photos of starvation and Hollywood “Day After” productions accompanied the ominous predictions.

More recently, we’ve been lectured about so-called hazards such as fossil-fuel-caused global warming, mountaintop coal mining and hydraulic fracturing to reach natural-gas deposits. Smokestacks and drills interchanged with unaltered woods and wildlife conveyed approaching doom, thanks to human corruption of the planet.

But now the Homo sapiens are tired of the blame, not to mention the photoshopped images that falsified many of the accusations. Coca Cola’s polar bears seemed more real.

The Post reported that while the BP leak concerns everyone, public reaction reflects a desire to address our oil-exploration problems so we can continue to access and use fossil fuel resources, as opposed to the environmentalists’ “end it all” plan.

“People’s outrage is focused on BP,” said Yale University public-opinion researcher Anthony Leiserowitz. The spill “hasn’t been automatically connected to some sense that there’s something more fundamental wrong with our relationship with the natural world.”

Missing those signals, environmental extremists want to use the disaster as an excuse (once again) to modify human behavior via forced curbs on greenhouse gases.

Their approach was to corrupt science with the climate-change cause. Degreed leftists like the Union of Concerned Scientists have pushed the global-warming agenda for years, and not just in objective disguises like the National Academy of Sciences. One of their top alarmists, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, is author of the November release “Science as a Contact Sport.” The researchers at the University of East Anglia in England and Penn State University’s Michael Mann took this principle to heart when they conspired to exclude the works of skeptical climate scientists from research journals. And Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Benjamin D. Santer was famously revealed in the Climategate e-mails to want to “beat the crap out of” skeptical climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, formerly of the University of Virginia.

Not quite Mel Gibson, but the revelation of this secretly menacing attitude wasn’t the beginning of the climate activists’ woes anyway. The global-warming movement had lost standing (according to several polls, including quarterly ones from Rasmussen Reports, as well as Gallup) before the Climategate scandal broke in November. Now their credibility is at an all-time low, as illustrated by their current failed messaging.

The environmentalists’ public displays have become hackneyed and cliched. A Hands Across the Sand demonstration against offshore oil drilling, co-sponsored by nearly all the recognizable groups (including Greenpeace, Sierra Club and Audubon, plus MoveOn.org and others) drew scant media attention and participation only from the activists’ marginal ranks.

If the environoiacs want to capture the minds and the energy of average Americans, blaming them for their “addiction to oil” is the wrong way to go about it. Whoever came up with the public relations idea to equate our everyday low-cost, lifesaving energy use to back-alley junkie dependencies needs to go back to marketing school.

Put all the ingredients together - the Climategate deception, fraudulent scare tactics, guilt trips and stupid messaging - and the recipe flops. Americans have figured out they don’t like the taste, and they don’t believe the environmentalists when they say it’s good for their health.

Read more here.

By Susan Ferrechio, Washington Examiner

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s climate and energy proposal is more ambitious than many Senate Democrats would like, particularly in an election year. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring a comprehensive energy and climate bill to the Senate floor by the end of the month that will include a cap on carbon emissions produced by the nation’s utilities.

Reid announced his plans after huddling with President Obama about the Senate’s July agenda and said he wants to introduce the bill, which has not yet been written, the week of July 26.

Reid was vague on details, but signaled he wants the bill to require the nation’s electricity providers to pay a price for emitting carbon, which the EPA says will lead to global warming.

“We’re looking at a way of making sure that when we talk about pollution, that we’re focused just on the utility section,” Reid said, adding that the bill would also include language aimed at reducing energy consumption, producing more clean energy and creating “green jobs.” The legislation would also address the Gulf oil spill, he said.

Reid’s proposal is more ambitious than many Senate Democrats would like, particularly in an election year and amid polls showing voters care far more about the economy and less about global warming.

Democratic lawmakers said It will be difficult, if not impossible, to find the 60 votes needed to block a Republicans filibuster if the measure includes a cap on carbon, which would raise energy prices.

Following a lunchtime meeting with Reid, Senate Democrats were shaking their heads at the prospect of a carbon cap, even one limited to utilities.

A handful of senators stood up in the meeting and told Reid they oppose moving forward on a bill that will never garner 60 votes but will force them into a politically damaging debate.

“The Chamber of Commerce is going to spend $75 million trying to defeat Democratic candidates, which is more than both the Republican and Senate campaign committees put together,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said after the meeting. “In other words, doing something for the sake of doing it didn’t seem to be carrying a lot of favor in there.”

Reid is moving ahead nonetheless. He told reporters he would meet Tuesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Carol Browner, Obama’s director of energy and climate change policy.

“I now have a rough draft of what we’re going to do,” Reid said.

He refused to describe his proposal as a cap on carbon emissions, a term that has become politically toxic in recent months.

“Those words are not in my vocabulary,” Reid told a reporter. “We’re going to work on pollution.”

There are at least two proposals in the Senate to put a carbon cap on utilities, one authored by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and another in the works by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who earlier this year introduced a bill calling for an economywide cap on carbon.

The Bingaman draft calls for capping carbon emitted by utilities at 25,000 metric tons per year beginning in 2012. The draft also calls for reducing overall carbon emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and 42 percent by 2030.

Read more here.