Beyond the Climate Change Consensus
The International Conference of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
[There is a Greek version of this post — Υπάρχει και ελληνική έκδοση αυτής της ανάρτησης]
Yesterday, there was an important scientific event in Budapest, in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and I am proud and honoured to have contributed to it.
The Hungarian Academy of Science is closely linked to climatology as it is the place where the greatest climatologist in history, Milutin Milanković, developed his theory. Nb., I use the traditional term climatology for the science of climate, as I dislike the postmodern term climate science, which in essence means climate sophistry.
It was the first time that I visited Hungary, even though I have great esteem for it and its people. I regard Hungarians as an exception within the decaying European Union. My visit not only confirmed my opinion, but also enhanced it. I was particularly impressed by Budapest, a city that has retained the grandeur it had before the war. They have repaired the buildings destructed in the WWII war in their original form. They keep the old European traditions, one sign of which (favouring my humble self) is that they respect the old men. For example, we oldies are allowed to use public transportation without a ticket…
The Chairman of the conference, Prof. Gábor Náray-Szabó, made it clear that the Academy is faithful to the “orthodox” climate dogma, except for one academician shown in the photo above. Nevertheless, the Academy embraced an event intended to present contrasting views on climate change. Initially, the plan was for an event with a debate between opposing sides (”blue-red”), but, as I was informed, the Earth Sciences Section did not accept the idea. Not a surprise for me, of course. Climate zealots are incapable of engaging in any kind of scientific dialogue — probably because it would expose their scientific nakedness.
My presentation in the conference can be downloaded from below or from the web site of the Itia research team.1
The main points I presented are summarized in my climate decalogue, which comprises the main results of my recent research. Note that I use the term decalogue with the original Greek meaning, with δέκα meaning “ten” and λόγος meaning “rational considerations” (not to be misinterpreted as “ten commandments” which is the usual meaning in English).
Climate change is real —and climate crisis too (but only in politics).
Climate change has been real throughout Earth’s entire 4.5-billion-year history.
Climate crisis is a purely political issue, with no relationship to the real world.
There is no greenhouse effect (GHE), nor greenhouse gases (GHG), in the atmosphere.
These are misleading terms, whose real meanings are “atmospheric radiation effect” (ARE) and “radiatively active gas” (RAG), respectively.
The ARE mostly depends on the temperature gradient in the atmosphere.
At the equilibrium (an isothermal atmosphere) the ARE is zero.
In case of temperature inversion, the ARE results in cooling, not warming of the Earth.
In the standard atmosphere (with gradient of 6.5 K/km) the ARE is dominated by H₂O (water vapour and clouds).
CO₂ is playing a very minor role (quantified at 4-5%).
The century-long observations of longwave (LW) radiation show no change in the ARE.
The substantial increase of atmospheric [CO₂] did not give a discernible signal.
There is no proof that the increase of atmospheric [CO₂] causes temperature increase.
On the contrary, paleoclimatic and modern observational data support the reverse causality as the increase of temperature happens before that of [CO₂].
Climate models suggest a causality direction opposite from that seen in the data.
The carbon balance in the atmosphere is dominated by natural processes.
Human CO₂ emissions (by burning fossil fuels etc.) are only 4% of the total.
The increase of temperature resulted in substantial increase of natural CO₂ emissions.
The isotopic carbon data (δ¹³C, Δ¹⁴C) show changes in the isotopic synthesis of atmospheric CO₂, but no sign of human influence.
They show that the changes seen are driven by natural processes.
The dynamics of atmospheric CO₂ can be recovered from natural processes only.
Multiple evidence confirms a residence time of atmospheric CO₂ at 4 years, despite “climate science” longer estimates reaching thousands of years.
Temperature increase in the 21st century is consistent with changes in the solar (shortwave—SW) radiation absorbed by the Earth.
My presentation contains several original points, not found in my previous publications. One interesting addition is that shown in the graph below, where I have added the observations of the last three years to the graphical abstract of the 2023 paper:
D. Koutsoyiannis, C. Onof, Z. W. Kundzewicz, and A. Christofides, On hens, eggs, temperatures and CO₂: Causal links in Earth’s atmosphere, Sci, 5 (3), 35, doi:10.3390/sci5030035, 2023.
It can be seen that these newer observations are fully consistent with what we wrote almost three years earlier.
The concluding remarks of my presentation are the following:
Human CO₂ as the climate control knob is empirically untenable once we properly account for:
natural CO₂ fluxes (∼25× larger);
the effect of H₂O (vapour + clouds, ∼20× larger);
the huge complexity of the climate system, including the biosphere’s role.
Climate models are in disagreement with observation while reversing cause and effect.
In complex systems, data are sovereign — and data have falsified the mainstream climate theory.
The emission-centric paradigm was a political project that conscripted science to provide authority.
“Climate science” is therefore not just corrupted science — it is purpose-built instrumentation wearing the lab coat of science while abandoning its method.
Scientists’ job is to kill bad theories and rip science back from politics — not posture as saviours of the planet.
UPDATE 2025-12-15
There is also a video of my talk.
Videos of the other talks are available on the aforementioned website of Itia, as well as in the following report by the initiator, Professor László Szarka.
The report also refers to a scientific event that took place earlier that morning, organized by the Energy Working Group of the Batthyány Society of Professors, as well as to the cultural event that followed, organized by the Academy Club, entitled Sacredness, Tradition, Modernity – Art Nights at the Academy XVI (in machine translation) with dinner. Conference guests enjoyed a concert (Choirs Cantemus and Pro Musica from Nyíregyháza), an exhibition of Byzantine-inspired enamel art (Anastasia Vdovkina), wines (by Enikő Luka from Sopron), and lively discussions with other participants. Photos are available here.
UPDATE 2025-12-19: Photo from the conference
UPDATE 2026-01-06: The full material (presentation slides and videos) of the conference have been posted on Clintel’s site.
PS. Dedicated to my beloved wife Annouska. Today (9 December) used to be her name day. It’s the first time after 42 years that we do not celebrate it as I don’t have her any more…
The Itia website also contains the presentations of the other speakers in the conference and additional information.
I am not an expert in issues involving climatology, but I am certainly someone who has been, is being, and will continue to be affected by political, legal, economic, financial, and educational policies that are shaped by individuals who are seeking to acquire control over the way in which climatology is understood. When time permits, I have read some of your articles on climatology and found them to be quite informative and reflective of other things which I have been, and am, reading. The link which follows connects to a pdf version of a free book which recently has bubbled to the surface of consciousness and is entitled: Climatology, Technocracy, and Sovereignty ( https://www.billwhitehouse.com/Cli-Tech-Sov-New.pdf ). Notwithstanding my lack of expertise, the epistemological battle which is being waged cannot be left to just the experts, but, rather, that epistemic cudgel must also be picked up by nobody's like myself who need to find ways to add their voice concerning this -- and other issues -- in what will be, hopefully, a constructive manner. By adding our voices together -- both expert and non-expert -- perhaps a collective force can be generated which will help counter the problematic narrative in which an unfortunate number of IPCC and other like-minded organizations, individuals, and institutions have sought to sow misinformation and disinformation (with the help of vested interests in government, academia, and the media) in the minds of so many people. Whatever mistakes might be present in the aforementioned book are mine, but I believe anyone who cares to engage that work will find that it reflects a defensible set of positions concerning climatology, technocracy, and sovereignty which might have some heuristic value for whomever takes the time to read and critically reflect on that material.
This article rightly points out that climate depends on cosmic parameters that characterize the climatic conditions of our planet Earth: 1) solar radiation, 2) the atmosphere, and 3) the rhythm of the seasons. Solar radiation is essential to explaining the broad features of planetary climate conditions, which are modulated by the distance from the star (the Sun), the planet's rotation period, and its albedo. The existence of an atmosphere adds an extra level of complexity, modifying the influence of solar radiation and the radiation emitted by the planet, which in turn modifies the climatic conditions on the planet concerned. Finally, obliquity and eccentricity introduce even more subtle and complex climatic nuances from one planet to another, depending on the existence (or absence) of more or less contrasting seasons and their more or less (in)equal lengths.
We must pay tribute to Milutin Milankovitch for understanding this.
The main reason why the concept of the greenhouse effect is not scientifically acceptable is that it violates the first law of thermodynamics: assuming that CO2 plays a role in warming the atmosphere, it cannot heat the surface and be heated by it.
As this article clearly demonstrates, air temperature decreases with altitude up to the tropopause, which is the coldest (non-material) surface of the atmosphere. This observation has never been contradicted anywhere on the globe. Consequently, each layer of the atmosphere can only emit radiation upwards and not downwards.
The endless discussions about the greenhouse effect only reveal ignorance of the first three principles of thermodynamics, which are not intuitive.
Many scientists use paleoclimatic observations from Antarctic ice cores, but why not refer to Greenland ice cores?
In Antarctica, there is about 3 km of ice, providing a description of climate variations over about a million years, while in Greenland there is also 3 km of ice, but it only describes about 140,000 years of climate. This difference can be explained if we accept that ice caps melt from the base and that this has nothing to do with the temperature of the atmosphere. In fact, the triple point diagram for water (H2O) shows that ice can melt at temperatures as low as -60°C and that the rate of melting depends only on the temperature of the ice.
Furthermore, Antarctica has existed for 34 million years and has therefore undergone 34 complete melting cycles while remaining in thermodynamic equilibrium, which implies remarkable stability in global atmospheric circulation.
This simple observation shows that only cosmic parameters can provide sufficient stability to maintain atmospheric circulation over several million years.
There are internal variations within the system, but these must remain sufficiently small for the Earth system to remain in thermodynamic equilibrium, at least on our timescale.
You can read some of my articles at the following address:
https://independent.academia.edu/PaulPettr%C3%A9