Posted by
reasonmclucus on Saturday, March 08, 2008 4:22:35 PM
Hungarian scientist Ferenc Miskolczi has discovered the greenhouse gas equation Arthur Milne developed in 1922 contains a serious flaw. Milne
mistakenly solved the differential equation involved by assuming an
infinitely thick atmosphere. Miskolczi was working for NASA at the
time and NASA suppressed his report which contradicted NASA's
claims.
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."
Miskolczi rewrote the equations and the modified equations
don't indicate a runaway greenhouse effect. His equations indicate a
limit to any greenhouse effect. Thus even if there is a greenhouse
effect it cannot do what the Rev. Al Gore claims it will do.
Research by Stephen Schwartz also challenges claims of a runaway greenhouse effect.
I
haven't studied differential equations for a few decades, but I do
remember that guessing at values for variables is sometimes used to
solve differential equations because of their complexity. However,
there are two values that should never be used, infinity and zero.
These two numbers have special mathematical properties that make them
unsuitable for this purpose. For example, you may remember learning
that division by zero is impossible. However, there is one special case
in which division by zero is possible, zero divided by zero. The test
to determine if division is correct is multiplication. Zero
multiplied by any other number is zero so zero divided by zero can be
any number.
In the real world it might be possible to a zero
amount of any commodity, but not an infinite amount. An infinitely
thick atmosphere would also be infinitely massive, i.e. a super black
hole. In an infinitely thick atmosphere it wouldn't make any
difference what the gases were because the gravitational attraction
would be so high that radiation could not escape.
In
fairness to Milne, his research dealt with stellar atmospheres rather
than planetary atmospheres. Milne unsuccessfully attempted to develop
a competing theory to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.