Seminole County Environmental News ExaminerKirk Myers

A former NASA contractor whose theory demonstrating that the greenhouse effect is constant and self-regulating and that increases in human CO2 emissions are not the source of global warming is fighting an uphill battle to publish his controversial work.

Developed by prominent atmospheric physicist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, the new theory is enormously significant because it demolishes the prevailing doctrine of anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW), which blames humans for pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and triggering runaway global warming that could eventually lead to catastrophic climate change.

All conventional greenhouse concepts are based on the idea that rising greenhouse gases cause an increase in atmospheric absorption, which in turn leads to atmospheric warming and higher surface temperatures. But Miskolczi’s research upends that conventional theory.

After studying hundreds of atmospheric profiles (extracted from the TIGR2 global radiosonde database from the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris), Dr. Miskolczi, a former contract researcher for NASA’s Langley Research Center, discovered a self-regulating mechanism, or “constant,” that keeps Earth’s greenhouse gases in equilibrium. According to his equilibrium theory, this constant cannot be altered by increases in emissions of CO2 or other atmospheric gases such as methane.

“The only thing my theory is telling us is that the nature of the greenhouse effect is such, that under the conditions we have here on Earth, the atmosphere will maximize its cooling by keeping its infrared optical depth – or infrared absorption – at a preferred critical value,” explains Miskolczi.

In simple terms, Miskolczi has discovered a new law of physics that sets an upper limit to the greenhouse effect. According to this law, the surplus temperature from greenhouse gases is constant and cannot be increased. Why? Because the earth’s greenhouse blanket functions dynamically to maintain equilibrium in response to changes in greenhouse gases such as water vapor, CO2, methane and ozone.

“With relatively simple computations using NOAA's annual mean temperature, H20 and CO2 time series, I have shown that in the last 61 years, despite a 30 percent increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the cumulative atmospheric absorption of all greenhouse gases has not been changed and has remained constant. There is no runaway greenhouse effect. The anthropogenic global warming theory is a lie, unless somebody proves otherwise,” Miskolczi says.

The most plausible explanation of the equilibrium effect is that rising CO2 in the atmosphere replaces an equivalent amount of water vapor to maintain a constant greenhouse effect. The chief cause of global warming, according to Miskolczi, is not CO2, but changes in albedo (reflected sunlight) and in the solar constant (amount and rate of solar energy reaching Earth).

Research ignored by NASA

Miskolczi’s research was greeted less than cordially by his bosses. After submitting his results to Applied Optics, a respected peer-review journal, he was told to withdraw the paper by his employer, Analytical Services and Materials, a NASA contractor. When he protested (the paper was midway through the review process), his boss withdrew it. He later confronted his NASA supervisor, Dr. Martin Mlynczak, and was simply ignored, he says.

When contacted by phone, Mlynczak refused to discuss the issue. “We’re not going to comment on that,” he said.  But, later, NASA public affairs spokesman Chris Rink said the agency "felt the paper did not offer any new insights."  Yet Examiner.com discovered that Miskolczi and Mlynczak had co-authored and submitted a similar research paper with nearly identical atmospheric equations in 2004.

After his paper was withdrawn, Miskolczi’s relationship with his supervisors deteriorated. “Since all of them are experts in the field, I presume they fully understood the implications of the findings,” he says. “They never challenged my results or shared my research with other greenhouse experts. They were just keeping silent. NASA is not an honest research environment.”

Miskolczi submitted an official request to NASA seeking release of his paper for publication, but months went by and he heard nothing, he says. "They just sat on it."

In October 2006, Miskolczi ended his relationship with the agency. In his resignation letter, he criticized NASA for thwarting the publication of research that has "far-reaching consequences in the general atmospheric radiative transfer.”

“My idea of freedom of science cannot coexist with the way NASA handles new climate-change-related scientific results,” he wrote. 

Miskolczi's decision to leave disappointed NASA, said Rink.  "NASA thought well of his science and research and wanted to fund his research into the greenhouse effect and radiative transfer for a four-year period.  But he turned us down and walked out."

Miskolczi’s research paper was eventually published in the January-March 2007 issue of IDOJARAS, the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, after being rejected by leading journals such as Journal of Geophysical Research, Science, Tellus-B and Astrophysical Journal.

Other scientists silenced

The release of Miskolczi’s paper seems to have unnerved some members of the global-warmist community, including a few government officials. Hungarian physicist Dr. Miklos Zagoni was ousted last year as senior climate advisor of the Budapest Ministry of Environment and Water after publicly supporting Miskolczi's research.

Explains Zagoni: “First the government tried to frighten me, and then when that did not work, they kicked me out from my job. I lost my job because of my scientific convictions. I wanted to talk publicly about Dr. Miskolczi’s results, but in the pre-Copenhagen days it was not tolerated by my government superiors.”

Zagoni had been a staunch advocate of the AGW theory. But his views shifted after studying Miskolczi’s research.

“NASA never falsified or even tried to falsify Miskolczi’s results. On the contrary, they fully understood it. They know that it is correct and see how important is,” he says.

Although his work has appeared twice in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorologcal Service, other scientific journals refuse to publish Miskolczi's research and subject it to the intense peer scrutiny that would either confim or falsify his theory. 

As Examiner.com columnist Dianna Cotter has reported, not a single scientist has stepped forward to disprove his theory of a greenhouse constant that keeps the greenhouse effect in equilibrium and prevents carbon dioxide emissions from raising global temperatures. 

There may be a very simple explanation for the silent treatment, Miskolczi says.

“There are billions of dollars of research grants at stake.  And nobody likes to admit his mistakes . . . and that hundreds of research papers in high-reputation scientific journals dealing with the classic greenhouse theory were a waste of time, effort and money."

Kirk Myers' Examiner.com column appears several times weekly. To receive alerts when a new article is published, click on the “subscribe” button at the top of the page. For a comprehensive look at global warming, including research and video presentations, please see links on the right.

Myers also can be reached via Twitter: @MyersKL

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