Växthuseffekten strider mot fysiken?

The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that 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 is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (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 ◦ C 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.

A thorough discussion of the planetary heat transfer problem in the framework of theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics leads to the following results:

1. There are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effect, which explains the relevant physical phenomena. The terms “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse gases” are deliberate misnomers.

2. There are no calculations to determinate an average surface temperature of a planet
• with or without atmosphere,
• with or without rotation,
• with or without infrared light absorbing gases.
The frequently mentioned difference of 33 ◦ C for the fictitious greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is therefore a meaningless number.

3. Any radiation balance for the average radiant flux is completely irrelevant for the determination of the ground level air temperatures and thus for the average value as well.

4. Average temperature values cannot be identified with the fourth root of average values of the absolute temperature’s fourth power.

5. Radiation and heat flows do not determine the temperature distributions and their
average values.

6. Re-emission is not reflection and can in no way heat up the ground-level air against the actual heat flow without mechanical work.

7. The temperature rises in the climate model computations are made plausible by a perpetuum mobile of the second kind. This is possible by setting the thermal conductivity in the atmospheric models to zero, an unphysical assumption. It would be no longer a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, if the “average” fictitious radiation balance, which has no physical justification anyway, was given up.

8. After Schack 1972 water vapor is responsible for most of the absorption of the infrared radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere. The wavelength of the part of radiation, which is absorbed by carbon dioxide is only a small part of the full infrared spectrum and does not change considerably by raising its partial pressure.

9. Infrared absorption does not imply “backwarming”. Rather it may lead to a drop of the temperature of the illuminated surface.

10. In radiation transport models with the assumption of local thermal equilibrium, it is assumed that the absorbed radiation is transformed into the thermal movement of all gas molecules. There is no increased selective re-emission of infrared radiation at the low temperatures of the Earth’s atmosphere.

11. In climate models, planetary or astrophysical mechanisms are not accounted for properly. The time dependency of the gravity acceleration by the Moon and the Sun (high tide and low tide) and the local geographic situation, which is important for the local climate, cannot be taken into account.

12. Detection and attribution studies, predictions from computer models in chaotic systems, and the concept of scenario analysis lie outside the framework of exact sciences, in particular theoretical physics.

13. The choice of an appropriate discretization method and the definition of appropriate dynamical constraints (flux control) having become a part of computer modelling is nothing but another form of data curve fitting. The mathematical physicist v. Neumann once said to his young collaborators: “If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly.” (cf. Ref. [185].)

14. Higher derivative operators (e.g. the Laplacian) can never be represented on grids with wide meshes. Therefore a description of heat conduction in global computer models is impossible. The heat conduction equation is not and cannot properly be represented on grids with wide meshes.

15. Computer models of higher dimensional chaotic systems, best described by non-linear partial differential equations (i.e. Navier-Stokes equations), fundamental differ from calculations where perturbation theory is applicable and successive improvements of the predictions - by raising the computing power - are possible. At best, these computer models may be regarded as a heuristic game.

16. Climatology misinterprets unpredictability of chaos known as butterfly phenomenon as another threat to the health of the Earth.

In other words: Already the natural greenhouse effect is a myth albeit any physical reality. The CO2 -greenhouse effect, however is a “mirage” [204]. 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 mechanisms as they cannot be seen even in the climate model computations. The emergence of hurricanes and tornados 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 hide themselves behind more and more pseudo-explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training.
A good example are the radiation transport calculations, which are probably not known by many. Another example are the so-called feedback mechanisms, which are introduced to amplify an effect which is not marginal but does not exist at all. Evidently, the defenders of the CO2 -greenhouse thesis refuse to accept any reproducible calculation as an explanation and have resorted to unreproducible ones. A theoretical physicist must complain about a lack of transparency here, and he also has to complain about the style of the scientific discussion, where advocators of the greenhouse thesis claim that the discussion is closed, and others are discrediting justified arguments as a discussion of “questions of yesterday and the day before yesterday”25 . In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available.
Regardless of the specific field of studies a minimal basic rule should be fulfilled in natural science, though, even if the scientific fields are methodically as far apart as physics and meteorology: At least among experts, the results and conclusions should be understandable or reproducible. And it should be strictly distinguished between a theory and a model on the one hand, and between a model and a scenario on the other hand, as clarified in the philosophy of science.

That means that 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. Not the critics have to estimate the effects of the approximation, but the scientists who do the computer simulation.

“Global warming is good . . . The net effect of a modest global warming is positive.” (Singer).26 In any case, it is extremely interesting to understand the dynamics and causes of the long-term fluctuations of the climates. However, it was not the purpose of this paper to get into all aspects of the climate variability debate.

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 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.