Basic equations behind Global Warming inaccurate

[Beowulf]

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well. "I fell in love," he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.

"Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.

How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.

Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution -- originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today -- ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. "Money", he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

His theory was eventually published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in his home country of Hungary.

The conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth's response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated. It also helps to explain why current global climate models continually predict more warming than actually measured.

The equations also answer thorny problems raised by current theory, which doesn't explain why "runaway" greenhouse warming hasn't happened in the Earth's past. The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes, followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling -- exactly what the paleoclimatic record demonstrates.

However, not everyone is convinced. Dr. Stephen Garner, with the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), says such negative feedback effects are "not very plausible". Reto Ruedy of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies says greenhouse theory is "200 year old science" and doubts the possibility of dramatic changes to the basic theory.

Miskowlczi has used his theory to model not only Earth, but the Martian atmosphere as well, showing what he claims is an extremely good fit with observational results. For now, the data for Venus is too limited for similar analysis, but Miskolczi hopes it will one day be possible.

Graph and equations at DT.

[Mange]

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. "Money", he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Standard conspiracy theorist rhetoric. And read my lips: Mars and Venus don't have the same atmospheres or dynamics as the Earth. Still, it's interesting and it would be good to see it published in a major international peer-reviewed journal.

[TimothyC]

Regardless of the accuracy of Miskolczi's paper, I'm willing to bet that this is used as yet another "See! scientist screwed up and blocked what they didn't like!" refrain. Also my Google-fu is lacking today so I can't find any bibliographical data on the man.

Standard conspiracy theorist rhetoric. And read my lips: Mars and Venus don't have the same atmospheres or dynamics as the Earth. Still, it's interesting and it would be good to see it published in a major international peer-reviewed journal.

While I agree with your second and third points, I do want to point out that flawed models have been known to exist (nuclear winter anyone?). Aswell, money can be a very powerful motivator in a bureaucracy (Post Katrina housing as an example).

[Spin Echo]

I had a job interview recently where one of the guys interviewing me claimed that the L-shaped CO2 curve shown by Al Gore in his movie is incorrect. He said that CO2 gets lost when stored in the ice cores, so they are showing less CO2 in the ancient atmospheres than there actually was. He said that the modern CO2 measurements and those from ice cores didn't match up, but people connected them together anyway.

I never did bother to chase that one up.

[Admiral Valdemar]

One scientist, and a guy who happens to find no issue in speaking at conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute. Colour me unimpressed.

We shall see how his paper fares amongst his peers.

[phongn]

One scientist, and a guy who happens to find no issue in speaking at conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute. Colour me unimpressed.

Well, presumably the Heartland Institute is desperate to find anyone who wants to speak out against GW? Also, it looks like he still agrees with global warming, just not the catastrophic runaway warmth scenarios.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The jury is still out on that aspect of it anyway, since the IPCC never factored in positive feedback loops due to their new and untested nature. If this guy is right, then we have the same problems still to contend with, as per the IPCC AR4 and related papers. No small problem.

If he is wrong and Hansen et al are right, then the IPCC is optimistic at best and the maps need to be redrawn to go with the chaos from climatological shift upping a gear.

[phongn]

The jury is still out on that aspect of it anyway, since the IPCC never factored in positive feedback loops due to their new and untested nature. If this guy is right, then we have the same problems still to contend with, as per the IPCC AR4 and related papers. No small problem.

Right, that'll be a mess, but one we can deal with, however costly (and, as usual, we should be glad most of us live in the industrialized world). His idea of a negative feedback loop would probably further reduce IPCC's conservative estimate as well since they don't have any loop forcing.

If he is wrong and Hansen et al are right, then the IPCC is optimistic at best and the maps need to be redrawn to go with the chaos from climatological shift upping a gear.

Well, better hope that's not going to happen.

[Admiral Valdemar]

To be honest, as with other crises working against us such as water, food and energy shortages, I feel the public and governments in general are far too apathetic to this whole thing. It's bigger than any other issue in the news today, or anything that will be in the news bar nuclear war and alien invasion.

Yet, as the budget for the UK yesterday showed, no one is keen on putting their money where their mouth is. All industrial emissions must end now to get warming to halt by mid-century? Good luck with that. We're looking at a maximum of two-thirds less CO2 by 2050, if even that, and this by governments that actually don't openly question the cause for the sake of appeasing big business.

Taxing doesn't seem to work, and rationing or dictating what people can do will end in tears. People are stupid and selfish that way, so I have to side with those hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. The stumbling block is societal conditioning, not technology or money.

[Strider]

As an Astrophysicist, I'd say what he's saying has a ring of truth even though this is obviously not my subject. First of all, positive feedback loops tend to be rare in nature, and those that exist tend to have a way of going off in fairly small amounts of time. Negative feedback loops are in fact, quite common and physical: for example the core dynamics of the Sun are a negative feedback loop that counteracts changes in temperature. Also, the stuff about simplifications and left off terms from 80 years ago is eminently believable, that sort of shit happens because theory is HARD and terms often have to be left off. The term gets left off for too long and people forget why it was justified to drop it and forget the bounds of the theory (or simulation, ect).

For those of you who want to use Venus as an example of a "runaway" greenhouse, remember the Sun was cooler ~4 Gyr ago and if the Greenhouse did runaway on Venus in the intervening time it was on a planet with a higher baseline temperature than Earth's, which rescales everything.

I don't exactly buy it yet, but it don't un-buy it either.

[Natorgator]

Regardless of the accuracy of Miskolczi's paper, I'm willing to bet that this is used as yet another "See! scientist screwed up and blocked what they didn't like!" refrain. Also my Google-fu is lacking today so I can't find any bibliographical data on the man.

Not necessarily. NASA's hugely political, especially lately, and of course they're subject to the whims of Congress. Not to mention the Bush Administration has a tendency of censoring whatever they don't like.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, all this does is put us in the IPCC situation again. Frankly, considering the IPCC (even ignoring feedback) was somewhat watered down politically, I would argue that the IPCC report might turn out to be exactly correct in its conservative estimates if this guy turns out to be accurate about his negative feedback loop.

[Darth Wong]

New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.

After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis, and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other climatologists. The data fit extremely well. "I fell in love," he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.

"I fell in love" is a rather odd way to kick off an article which is mostly about attacking the establishment for its bias.

"Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain amount.

The runaway greenhouse effect might indeed be an inaccurate model. But I don't see how "energy balance equations" would be its Achilles Heel. None of those equations violate thermodynamics; the worst he might be able to say is that they neglect to account for some kind of counterbalancing mechanism, or that the data is inaccurate.

How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term from the final solution.

How does the age of the equations disprove their validity? Is the First Law of Thermodynamics also invalid because it is even older?

Miskolczi's story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution -- originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today -- ignored boundary conditions by assuming an "infinitely thick" atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

Strangely enough, the American Institute of Physics said that the differential equations could not be solved analytically at all. Instead, they remained unsolved except for rough approximations, until advancing computer technology in the 1950s and 1960s allowed numerical solutions of those differential equations. In the case of a numerical solution as opposed to an analytical one, there is no need to simplify the equation by dropping terms. I really have to wonder if this part of the article is even true at all.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference ... but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

It's easy to add terms to equations. I can do it right now, to any equation you want. Has he got any experimental evidence to confirm the existence of this mechanism which he models with this added term? Of course, given the shitty quality of journalism in this article and the questionable quality of its source, it's always possible that he really is onto something and he's just being horribly misrepresented by an idiot with a word processor.

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. "Money", he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

That's a very interesting and extremely inflammatory take on things. Which scientific journal did he go to then, since NASA was apparently not impressed despite the presumably overwhelming quality of his work? Or did he suspiciously go straight to the mainstream press?

His theory was eventually published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in his home country of Hungary.

And how was it received? And why not an English language journal, since he must obviously be fluent in English?

The conclusions are supported by research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth's response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated. It also helps to explain why current global climate models continually predict more warming than actually measured.

How is that a confirmation? That sounds like a totally different criticism of global warming theory, using a totally different rationale. I see no scientific resemblance whatsoever between "we need to add a term for a mysterious counterbalancing mechanism that I can't bother describing" and "I think CO2's effect on greenhouse warming is overstated". The only resemblance here is that they both happen to be against global warming, which tells me that this author divides up theories not by their content, but by whose side they are on. This tells us a lot about the author, but precious little about either theory.

BTW, I checked out that article by Stephen Schwartz. It doesn't read like anything resembling the way the author of this article described it. For one thing, the US government happily published it; how does he explain this in the context of his conspiracy-theory bullshit? For another thing, he does not deny greenhouse warming at all, and estimates a temperature change of 0.7K, plus or minus 0.3K. To say that this means the 1K figure being bandied about is "grossly overstated" is, itself, ironically grossly overstated.

The equations also answer thorny problems raised by current theory, which doesn't explain why "runaway" greenhouse warming hasn't happened in the Earth's past. The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes, followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling -- exactly what the paleoclimatic record demonstrates.

Since when does the greenhouse gas theory require this runaway effect in order to be valid?

However, not everyone is convinced. Dr. Stephen Garner, with the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), says such negative feedback effects are "not very plausible". Reto Ruedy of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies says greenhouse theory is "200 year old science" and doubts the possibility of dramatic changes to the basic theory.

Miskowlczi has used his theory to model not only Earth, but the Martian atmosphere as well, showing what he claims is an extremely good fit with observational results. For now, the data for Venus is too limited for similar analysis, but Miskolczi hopes it will one day be possible.

Modeling the Earth and Mars atmospheres in this manner seems like a dubious venture, since they are so very different. We live here on Earth, and we still have trouble collecting all of the data we need for comprehensive models. He claims to have already done so for not only Earth, but Mars?

Everything about this article screams "bullshit".

[TimothyC]

Regardless of the accuracy of Miskolczi's paper, I'm willing to bet that this is used as yet another "See! scientist screwed up and blocked what they didn't like!" refrain. Also my Google-fu is lacking today so I can't find any bibliographical data on the man.

Not necessarily. NASA's hugely political, especially lately, and of course they're subject to the whims of Congress. Not to mention the Bush Administration has a tendency of censoring whatever they don't like.

I didn't say that it was a case of censorship, only that that I'd be willing to bet that people claim it was. Sorry for any confusion.

[His Divine Shadow]

All industrial emissions must end now to get warming to halt by mid-century? Good luck with that.

You know that is such a ludicrous suggestion that even if everyone felt like you on this issue it still couldn't happen. The only solution that can give that kind of result is the shep solution, times 100.