Too Clever Physicists on (Anthropogenic) Global Warming

The resignation of the Nobel laurate Ivar Giaever from the American Physical Society APS has triggered APS to clarify its previous statement on Anthropogenic Global Warming:

• Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

as follows:

• The APS says climate change statement does not assert that "anthropogenic" (man-made) climate change is incontrovertible – but that the evidence of global warming is.
• The graph of global temperature vs. time for the last 30 years shows just that.
• Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.
• That statement is based on basic principles of molecular physics and thermodynamics.

We see here an example of suggestive logic evidently embraced by the 48.000 members of the society, minus 2 (Ivar Giaever and Hal Lewis):

1. Global temperature has been observed to increase the last 30 years (why/how much?).
2. Greenhouse gases from human activities affect global climate because of basic principles of physics (why/how much?)

As such, 1 + 2 says nothing from a physics point of view since the question why/how much? is not addressed at all.

However, the intention with the coupling 1 + 2 made by APS is to make the innocent reader

draw the conclusion that AGW is a threat to humanity, because of basic physics.

APS is clever enough not to repeat the conclusion in in the original statement, or draw any conclusion, but instead helps the reader on the road by

• APS does not assert that AGW is incontrovertible.

Of course APS knows that nothing but definitions are incontrovertible in physics, and so the clarification is completely empty, but evidently believed to be highly suggestive.

APS gives yet another piece of evidence that something is seriously wrong with modern physics: We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now, because of basic principles of physics.

The next step is to reduce the number of greenhouse gas emitting human beings (beginning now), because of basic principles of molecular physics and thermodynamics, which of course are incontrovertible.