The Science (Fiction) of the Greenhouse Effect

source: The New American
by Rebecca Terrell

Two German physicists have written a paper debunking the "theory" of the greenhouse gas effect by demonstrating how it violates basic laws of physics. Their paper, Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics, was published last year in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Modern Physics.

The authors are Gerhard Gerlich, a professor of mathematical physics at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig, and Ralf Tscheuchner, a retired professor of theoretical physics and freelance lecturer and researcher in physics and applied informatics.

Gerlich and Tscheuschner first define carbon dioxide as a trace gas accounting for less than one percent of air's volume and mass. They say even a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO2 would hardly change the thermal conductivity of air. If it did, the change would be well within margins of error currently in place.

From this short tutorial, the scientists go on to show the vast difference in physical laws between real greenhouses and Earth's atmosphere. They expose the fallacies in accepted definitions of greenhouse effect from several popular sources. "It is not 'trapped' infrared radiation which explains the warming phenomenon in a real greenhouse but the suppression of air cooling." Gerlich and Tscheuschner explain Earth's atmosphere does not function in the same way, nor does it function in the way global-warming alarmists describe as "transparent for visible light but opaque for infrared radiation."

Then they make the point that climate models used to predict catastrophic global warming violate the second law of thermodynamics. The law states any closed system left to itself will continually deteriorate toward a more chaotic state. The German scientists illustrate how the idea of heat flow from atmospheric greenhouse gases to the warmer ground violates this principle. There would have to be a heat pump mechanism in perpetual motion in the atmosphere to transfer heat from a low to a high temperature reservoir, and such a machine cannot exist. They call the greenhouse effect a fictitious mechanism. "The claim that CO2 emissions give rise to anthropogenic [man-made] climate changes has no physical basis."

Throughout the paper the authors show that those who advocate the greenhouse gas theory use faulty calculations and guesstimates to arrive at their catastrophic conjectures, and though Gerlich and Tscheuschner make no specific accusation, they point out how many respected scientists have blamed alarmists for intentional fraud rather than mere scientific error. They also reveal that the idea of a greenhouse effect is modern and never mentioned in any fundamental work of thermodynamics, physical kinetics, or radiation theory. According to them, it is impossible to replicate forecasts made by climate modelers' computer simulations with any known scientific formulae.

Though their 115-page paper includes clear explanations, nearly 200 equations, tables and graphs, and 205 references, it should come as no surprise that Gerlich and Tscheuschner have been blacklisted by the climate-change community. "Stupidity," "crackpot," "dross," and "bunkum" are several of the descriptives used in online blogs blasting the paper. The first edition of the Gerlich/Tscheuschner paper released in 2007 caused enough of a stir to prompt Arthur P. Smith with the American Physical Society to issue a 2008 rebuttal, "Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect." Yet in his nine-page article, Smith cited only five sources, one of which was the Gerlich/Tscheuschner work, and failed to address most of the points raised in it. The 2009 update of the original Gerlich/Tscheuschner piece has yet to be disproved, though for the most part alarmists continue to ignore it in their mad rush toward global eco-government and a world-wide carbon trading market worth billions.