NASA Gagging Policy: Climate Scientist Resigns over Controversy

johnosullivan

June 2nd, 2010 | Original link:  http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/17649.html

 In a bad week for NASA, evidence shows the beleaguered space agency gagged its climate scientists. But the policy is starting to back fire as ex-employee speaks out.

Confirmation of the gagging policy comes from ex-NASA high-flier, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, who upset his former employers with the 2007 publication of his paper, ‘Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres,’ in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service.

Miskolczi claims his illustriously-funded government employers tried to silence him to preserve public credibility in its policy on global warming. The noble doctor refused to be gagged and out of scientific principle chose to quit and speak out.

The root of the problem was in the ex-NASA man’s debunk of the greenhouse gas (GHG) theory.  Dr. Miskolczi claims he “proves that the classic solution [greenhouse gas theory] significantly overestimates the sensitivity of greenhouse forcing.”

But No NASA Gag on Warming Advocates

Now contrast and compare to what ‘New Scientist’  reported in 2006 when pro-green doomsayer, James Hansen was chastised by his employer for daring to suggest any such gag was in force. Hansen has been a prominent and public climate doomsayer ever since.

Back then Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at NASA, denied that there was any effort to silence Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

Pointedly, unlike Miskolczi, Hansen didn't resign from his well-paid post. Yet, unlike Miskolczi, his petulant outburst garnered much pro-green media interest.

Greenhouse Gas Theory ‘Bogus’

Now free from the shackles of NASA censorship, Dr. Miskolczi is finally coming to the fore as a serious critic of the theory behind man-made global warming. He is gaining note for proving that the Earth has an in-built ‘safety mechanism’ that prevents runaway global warming from greenhouse gases.

The top Hungarian physicist, in fact, identified that the greenhouse effect upon which the whole man-made global warming theory is based, is probably bogus. The highly-principled researcher discovered that the sum of all radiation absorbed in the atmosphere is equal to the total internal kinetic energy of the atmosphere. That in turn then is equal to the total gravitational potential energy.

In other words, the planet is most capable at keeping itself in a heat energy balance and is not vulnerable to so-called runaway warming. Thus, there is no ‘tipping point’ to fear from any atmospheric increase of a trace gas such as carbon dioxide.

Support for Climate Skeptic

The disgruntled former NASA man's views are much in tune with world-renowned Swedish climate professor, Hans Jelbring. It seems other scientists are becoming more open in their agreement with such findings.

More recently, science author Heinz Thieme and 130 German scientists  have also come out to refute the greenhouse gas theory as a plausible explanation of the mechanism of Earth's climate.

This is not what NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) want the public to hear as President Obama’s Democrat administration struggles to force through swinging cap and trade taxes in the backdrop of an already over-stretched U.S. economy.

NASA’s Dr. Curry: NASA Numbers “drastic oversimplification”

Indeed, so persuasive is Dr. Miskolczi among his scientific peers that no advocate of the GHG theory (that relies on the Stefan-Boltzmann “black body” numbers) has yet been able to refute him. As I recently reported, NASA is now in a considerable quandary over what exactly is the correct equation for Earth’s energy budget with their education department currently printing high-school textbooks disagreeing with the orthodox theory.

As explained to me lately in e-mail correspondence by NASA’s Dr. Judith Curry: “Everybody would agree that the simple black body planetary energy balance model is a drastic oversimplification, it is used only for illustrative purposes.”

So I asked Dr. Curry if NASA had a better set of equations than the crude Stefan-Boltzmann “black body” numbers: no answer.

Indeed, Stefan-Boltzmann who devised the “blackbody” equation never intended his numbers to be applied to a three-dimensional rotating planet. So why NASA’s reluctance to accept a more sophisticated and accurate new climate equation-or, at least use the tried and tested numbers that safely got Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon?

 New Revelations Encourage Scientists to Speak Out

Signing up to join Dr. Miskolczi in the skeptic attack on the debunked greenhouse theory are dozens of eminent international scientists in tandem with a startling new research paper that proved NASA Apollo Moon mission scientists, forty years ago, had a better set of climate equations than the “black body” numbers that NASA's own Dr. Curry says are," only for illustrative purposes. Why doesn't NASA now come clean about this?

Concern about the science behind the man-made global warming theory grew after the November 2009 Climategate. The official British Oxburgh Inquiry into alleged ‘cherry-picking’ of climate data confirmed scientists acted with subjective advocacy and being over-zealous ‘poor statisticians.’

NASA to stall and Help Climate Bill in 2010?

U.S. Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman, who unveiled their climate bill earlier this month, will be sweating that NASA keeps this under wraps as they seek to force through their controversial climate bill passed before the break for Independence Day on July 4.

So if NASA truly has no gagging policy over the climate controversy then perhaps it should come clean and make a statement on these latest developments and remove all doubt?

References:

Jelbring, H.R. (2002), 'The "Greenhouse Effect" as a Function of Atmospheric Mass,' published in 2003.

Miskolczi, F.M. (2007) ‘Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres,’ Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service; Vol. 111, No. 1, January–March 2007, pp. 1–40.