I'm not a climate scientist. I don't even play one on TV. There do seem to be serious problems with the catastrophic anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) thesis, but I remain an agnostic, and I refuse to use political-economic criteria to judge scientific credibility.
Nevertheless, this interesting article about German physicists who insist that AGW is bunk is worth reading.
From the physicists' paper:
(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
HT: Brad Spangler
I am a physicist, and in no way an expert in Climate issues, as most of us are not. I agree with you that there are debates as to causality, and especially to resolution. This conversation is interesting, but purely philosophical. More important are issues of basic survival. We are finding ourselves running from the effects of climate change the way prey runs from a predator. This doesn't mean the predator is evil, but as prey we need to protect our own survival. Nature will somehow pick a proper balance though in the end.
ReplyDeleteI have been informed that this paper is crank-work that was debunked long ago. I don't know. Here are the links that were provided me:
ReplyDeletehttp://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-you-never-wanted-to-know-about.html
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/open-thread-11/
In particular this comment:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/open-thread-11/#comment-29463
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/gerlich_and_tscheuschner_oh_my.php
and, what may end up being a peer-reviewed rebuttal:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/04/reading-assignments-rabett-run-labs-has.html