CLIMATE CHANGE: A position on a flawed foundation

In the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, there is 100% consensus among scientists on the physically and ecologically incorrect Expert opinion on climate change

Since October 2020, the website of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic has featured AVex Expert Opinion 4/2020 on climate change, whose expert guarantor is the Institute for Climate Change Research (ÚVGZ, CzechGlobe). However, this opinion, intended for the government and parliament as an expert guide for the implementation of practical climate policy in the Czech Republic, is built on a physically false foundation when it claims that: “About one third of this energy comes in the form of solar radiation and the remaining two thirds in the form of radiation from the atmosphere towards the Earth’s surface, i.e. the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere” (AVex 4/2020, p. 2). With this physically untrue statement, ÚVGZ experts are trying to convince the government and parliament that the increasing atmospheric concentration of CO₂ and its intensifying greenhouse effect are the main cause of global warming on Earth.

The claim that the sun supplies only 1/3 of the energy globally to the earth’s surface and 2/3 radiates from the atmosphere is a world-unique claim by the authors from ÚVGZ, which they do not demonstrate even a single impactful publication of their own, which is an elementary form of verifying the veracity of any innovative scientific claim as well as a condition for possible scientific discussion and criticism of the published text. This claim of the ÚVGZ denies the basic textbook knowledge of humanity that the dominant source of energy on Earth is the sun. Therefore, in the expert opinion, the authors refer to the article Trenberth, Fasullo (2011) (liter. 26). We already sent an email to the first author K. Trenberth in 2023 asking if he could confirm that in his article there is a statement that a third of the energy on the earth’s surface is supplied by the sun and the remaining two thirds by radiation from the atmosphere. His answer was clear: “This is not a statement I have made” (That is not my statement). And he adds “I am attaching our image of global energy flows in 2D. Incoming radiation is on the left, outgoing radiation is on the right. Longwave radiation reaching the Earth’s surface comes mostly from the near-surface atmosphere and can be estimated using temperature and Stefan Boltzmann’s law”.

It turns out that ÚVGZ experts still do not admit that the graph of global flows of energy coming to and from the Earth is constructed on the basis of Stefan Boltzmann’s law of thermodynamics. This clearly follows from the email of D. Janouš (contact person AVex 4/2020) to the ŽP Committee of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic dated 19.1.2024, in which he refers to the picture of the author Trenberth and writes to him:160 W the earth’s surface receives from incident solar radiation and 333 W from atmospheric radiation. It is completely unrealistic that Trenberth would suddenly deny these global insights“. In fact, K. Trenberth does not deny his values ​​of incoming and outgoing energy flows at all, he only shows that he consistently distinguishes the left side of the picture with the orange incoming flow of short-wave solar energy and the right side with the gray-ochre outgoing long-wave thermal radiation of the Earth’s surface and back-radiation of heat from the atmosphere . The authors from ÚVGZ clearly demonstrated by email to D. Janouš that they are reading Trenberth’s picture of energy flows completely incompetently when they directly compare 160 W of solar radiation with 333 W of thermal radiation of the atmosphere. And in addition, nowhere did they explain why the outgoing energy flows emitted thermal radiation from the earth’s surface. In both aspects, it is a purposeful distortion of Trenberth’s picture by the authors of the ÚVGZ, who thus want to emphasize the extraordinary importance of CO₂ in the atmosphere and from the greenhouse effect. However, the reader can clearly see that this was achieved by manipulation of energy flows and an incompetent direct comparison of solar energy flows with the thermal radiation values ​​of the much colder Earth’s atmosphere, which ignores the principles of Stefan Boltzmann’s law of thermal radiation of bodies proportional to their own temperature.

Already in October 2022, we pointed out in an open letter to the president of the AVČR the fact that the AVČR expert opinion 4/2020 on climate change does not mention the active systemic role of water and natural vegetation in climate control and unilaterally declares only CO emissions₂ for causing global warming. We published the essence of the open letter on 22 October 2022 in MfD. The management of ÚVGZ (Marek M., Trnka M., Janouš D.) published a reply on 29/10/2022 that their expert opinion is in order. This was supported by claims that even in the Czech Republic, the sun only supplies ¼ of the heat and ¾ radiates from the greenhouse layer of the atmosphere. We also learned that this energy remains in the Earth’s climate system and that the energy of evapotranspiration cannot affect the balance of the global climate. These physically untrue claims of the ÚVGZ are already refuted by high school physics and ecology textbooks. The heat balance between the earth’s surface and the atmosphere can be easily measured with affordable instruments during school teaching, and the nonsense of the claim that the atmosphere radiates to the earth’s surface and actively heats it is refuted by the published results of long-term measurements using non-radiometers.

Despite our scientific reservations and the reservations of the quoted K. Trenberth, the expert opinion of the ÚVGZ (CzechGlobe) continues to push the Czech economy to extinction through scientifically unsubstantiated emission allowances and thus unreasonably high energy prices and raises fears of the collapse of civilization. The Academic Council of the AVČR prevented the discussion on the causes of climate change planned in the Commission for the Environment and at the end of January dismissed the proponent of the discussion from his long-standing honorary advisory position in the Commission for the Environment. The management of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic thus assumed full academic direct responsibility for the false expert opinion.

Stubborn enforcement of increased CO concentration₂ in the atmosphere as the main causes of climate change diverts attention from the fundamental anthropogenic causes of climate change, which are the ongoing deforestation and destruction of original vegetation on a global scale, drainage, urbanization, which lead to overheating and drying of the landscape. The recent night frosts, which destroyed the fruit harvest at the regional level, proved that the Czech landscape behaves like a steppe and a desert. These frosts are caused by an increased flow of heat from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere, i.e. a reduced greenhouse effect, because there is less water vapor in the atmosphere. The decrease in clouds is accompanied by an increase in the input of solar energy to the earth’s surface, which is not initiated by an increased input of solar energy to the outer layer of the atmosphere.

In the AVex opinion, there are references to educational materials for schools, in which erroneous statements are repeated and the essential role of water vapor and living vegetation (biosphere) in shaping the regional and global climate is not mentioned. The very authoritative statement of the ÚVGZ management in the public press (MfD 29.10.2022) that vapor energy is not among the factors that could by themselves affect the climate balance at the global level is a direct denial of the central statement of the Amsterdam Declaration from 2001 that the Earth behaves as a unified self-regulatory system, signed by the world’s leading climatologists. However, the ÚVGZ’s claim is again not substantiated by an impactful publication. So even this claim cannot be subjected to criticism in scientific journals. The question is imposed, what is the quality of the scientific data on which the legislators are based and which the government is guided by in the climate policy towards so-called climate neutrality, i.e. decarbonization. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the greenhouse effect has increased as a result of the increased concentration of greenhouse gases (mainly CO₂ and methane) from the middle of the 18th century to today by 1 – 3.5 Wm^-2, it is a calculated value, not measurable. As a result of less cloud cover, solar energy input has been growing by roughly 5W.m since the 1980s^-2 per decade and the heat flow from the earth’s surface to the atmosphere increases. So the measurements show that the greenhouse effect is diminishing. The flow of heat into the atmosphere under clear skies normally exceeds the value of 100W.m^-2. How is it possible that since 2020 there is an AVex 2020 expert opinion on climate change on the AVČR website, where it is claimed that the atmosphere radiates towards the earth and heats it by 2/3, while the sun heats it by 1/3. Were the fruit trees scorched by the heat or frozen? These are the arguments for decarbonisation, emission allowances, etc.

We have been trying to generate professional discussion on this vital topic for many years. That is why we chose the form of an open letter in the fall of 2022, we repeatedly wrote to the leadership of the AVČR, spoke at seminars in the Parliament. The arguments we present are published. Without response. Our society decarbonises, calls it climate neutrality and doesn’t know what it’s about. We let the forests dry, 10 hectares of agricultural land is lost every day, which partially ends up under concrete and halls. The youth blame themselves for breathing because it increases the concentration of CO₂ and threatens the planet. In principle, the solution is simple: offer solar energy on the largest possible surfaces, water and life, which begins with primary production – plants.

Doc. RNDr. Jan Pokorný, CSc., Doc. Ing. Josef Seják, CSc.

AVex 4/2020,