| Global warming has
finally been explained: the Earth is
getting hotter because the Sun is
burning more brightly than at any time
during the past 1,000 years, according
to new research. A study by Swiss and
German scientists suggests that
increasing radiation from the sun is
responsible for recent global climate
changes. Dr Sami Solanki, the director
of the renowned Max Planck Institute for
Solar System Research in Gottingen,
Germany, who led the research, said:
"The Sun has been at its strongest over
the past 60 years and may now be
affecting global temperatures. The Sun
is in a changed state. It is brighter
than it was a few hundred years ago and
this brightening started relatively
recently - in the last 100 to 150
years." [Telegraph]
Global warming and melting polar ice
caps are not just problems here on
Earth. Mars is facing similar global
changes, researchers say, with
temperatures across the red planet
rising by around 0.65 degrees over the
last few decades. [Register]
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| For about 300 years Jupiter's banded
atmosphere has shown a remarkable
feature to telescopic viewers, a large
swirling storm system known as The Great
Red Spot. In 2006, another red storm
system appeared, actually seen to form
as smaller whitish oval-shaped storms
merged and then developed the curious
reddish hue. Now, Jupiter has a third
red spot, again produced from a smaller
whitish storm. ... Jupiter's recent
outbreak of red spots is likely related
to large scale climate change as the gas
giant planet is getting warmer near the
equator. [NASA]
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| Neptune has been getting
brighter since around 1980; furthermore,
infrared measurements of the planet
since 1980 show that the planet has been
warming steadily from 1980 to 2004. As
they say on Neptune, global warming has
become an inconvenient truth. [World
Climate Report] |
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Looking at annual global
temperatures, it is apparent that the last
decade shows no warming trend and recent
successive annual global temperatures are well
within each year's measurement errors.
Statistically the world's temperature is flat.
The world certainly warmed between 1975 and
1998, but in the past 10 years it has not been
increasing at the rate it did. No scientist
could honestly look at global temperatures over
the past decade and see a rising curve. It is
undisputed that the sun of the later part of the
20th century was behaving differently from that
of the beginning. Its sunspot cycle is stronger
and shorter and, technically speaking, its
magnetic field leakage is weaker and its cosmic
ray shielding effect stronger. So we see that
when the sun's activity was rising, the world
warmed. When it peaked in activity in the late
1980s, within a few years global warming
stalled. [Telegraph]
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a
cooling planet has exploded. China has its
coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its
first snow in all recorded history. North
America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with
places like Wisconsin the highest since
record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic
sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas,
Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South
Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list
goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence,
to be sure. But now, that evidence has been
supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four
major global temperature tracking outlets
(Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released
updated data. All show that over the past year,
global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
[DailyTech
2/27/2008]
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Okay, take notes, there will be a quiz at the end of
class.
First of all, greenhouse effect is not a bad thing. Without
it, our planet would not support life as we know it, as the
average temperature would be too cold to support liquid
water.
Water vapor is the single most potent greenhouse gas in the
atmosphere, trapping more heat than carbon dioxide and
methane put together. Estimates of the impact of water vapor
on global warming vary widely from a minimum of 60% of all
greenhouse effect to 98% of all greenhouse effect, but even
at the minimum of 60%, that leaves 40% of greenhouse effect
to be shared by all other chemicals combined, including
carbon dioxide and methane (which has ten times the
greenhouse capacity pound for pound as carbon dioxide).
Now then, looking at Carbon Dioxide, we find that only
.117% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly attributable
to human technology such as automobiles. .117% is a rather
small amount. If we were to measure out .117% of a football
field, it comes out to 4.212 inches, barely long enough to
get off the touchdown line.
So, if humans ceased all technological activity, we would
still see 99.883% of the carbon dioxide remain in the
atmosphere, assuming all other factors remain stable (which
is, of course, silly.)
Over the last few years, there have been very careful
studies in Antarctica which clearly show global temperatures
rising together with atmospheric carbon dioxide. Global
warmers have sent me several of these research papers with
the usual "Ah HA!" type comment, but on reading the papers
it is clear that the global warmers stopped at the abstract,
because what these recent studies show is that Carbon
Dioxide levels increased AFTER the rise in global
temperature. Let me re-state that. Studies of Antarctic
ice show that the Earth would get warmer, and THEN Carbon
Dioxide levels would increase. And there is nothing at
all mysterious about this. Carbon dioxide is a very unique
chemical in that it is more effectively dissolved in liquids
in lower temperatures. Normally, air will hold more water
when warm, sugar will dissolve in water more quickly when
warm, but carbon dioxide will escape from solution as the
temperature rises, which is why your beer will soak your
shirt if it is too warm when you open it.
So, as the sun warms the Earth (as recorded in the ice)
carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans and lakes bubbles
into the sky like too-warm soda pop fizzing over the top of
the glass, and as the Antarctic ice reveals, winds up in the
atmosphere.
Now, this is not to say that I think we should waste our
planet's resources. Quite the contrary, I think we need to
be very careful of what we have, because we are not likely
to get a replacement planet any time soon. But the global
warming "hype" is exactly that,
hype to sell products and policies. If you want to do
something about the damage to the planet caused by oil,
STOP THE WARS BEING FOUGHT OVER IT!
| Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the
average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan
consumes on a daily basis -- either directly,
through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and
helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air
strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000
soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and
30,000 in the surrounding region (including
sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian
Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5
million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab
for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East
war zone. [Pacific
Free Press]
The [Iraq] war is responsible for at least
141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put
this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to
date equals the emissions from putting 25
million more cars on the road in the US this
year. [climateandcapitalism.com]
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