On earth system dynamics’ hypothetical “greenhouse effect”

Igor Khmelinskii and Leslie V Woodcock*

We review an editorial article in the climate journal Earth Systems Dynamics (ESD 14, 241–242, 2023): the headline title of which makes two scientifically incorrect assertions: (i) that the greenhouse-gas hypothesis, i.e., cause of global warming by ~1K in 1950-2020, is an established scientific truth, and (ii) that heat emissions from global fuel combustion are, by comparison, negligible. Both statements are inconsistent with the laws of classical thermodynamics, with the limitations of the Earth’s global energy budget multivariate computer models, and with the known absorption and emission spectroscopy of carbon dioxide (CO2). The scientific method of establishing truth requires hypotheses to be tested against experimental results by circumspective scientific scrutiny. Scientific knowledge cannot be established by consensus politics. We question the wisdom of a policy of rejecting articles that may disparage the greenhouse gas hypothesis. By this criterion of science by consensus, the 1543-AD publication of Nicholas Copernicus’s research article, which disputed the prevailing consensus of the Ptolemaic hypothesis of a static Earth system, would have been rejected by Copernicus Publications. The ESD editors cite, as an example, two recent articles, they say, that should have been rejected without peer review. Both articles, which contradict the greenhouse gas hypothesis, were peer-reviewed for sound science, and published by MDPI recently in Entropy. We find that Copernicus Publications' peer-review policy, and this ESD editorial article, in particular, are unethical. A policy of only publishing consensus science enhances an ascendancy of politically motivated subjective pseudoscience, causing a stagnation of our scientific understanding and description of Earth systems.

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Published on: Mar 9, 2024 Pages: 42-50

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/gje.000095
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