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from the but-Al-Gore-told-us-different dept.
The supposed deleted text:
The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth's climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes convection which carries warmth and water vapor up into the sky where clouds form and bring rain. In short, the Sun drives almost every aspect of our world's climate system and makes possible life as we know it.
Earth's orbit around and orientation toward the Sun change over spans of many thousands of years. In turn, these changing "orbital mechanics" force climate to change because they change where and how much sunlight reaches Earth. (Please see for more details.) Thus, changing Earth's exposure to sunlight forces climate to change. According to scientists' models of Earth's orbit and orientation toward the Sun indicate that our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling — perhaps the next ice age.
However, a new force for change has arisen: humans. After the industrial revolution, humans introduced increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and changed the surface of the landscape to an extent great enough to influence climate on local and global scales. By driving up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere (by about 30 percent), humans have increased its capacity to trap warmth near the surface.
Other important forcings of Earth's climate system include such "variables" as clouds, airborne particulate matter, and surface brightness. Each of these varying features of Earth's environment has the capacity to exceed the warming influence of greenhouse gases and cause our world to cool. For example, increased cloudiness would give more shade to the surface while reflecting more sunlight back to space. Increased airborne particles (or "aerosols") would scatter and reflect more sunlight back to space, thereby cooling the surface. Major volcanic eruptions (such as that of Mt. Pinatubo in 1992) can inject so much aerosol into the atmosphere that, as it spreads around the globe, it reduces sunlight and cause Earth to cool. Likewise, increasing the surface area of highly reflective surface types, such as ice sheets, reflects greater amounts of sunlight back to space and causes Earth to cool.
Scientists are using NASA satellites to monitor all of the aforementioned forcings of Earth's climate system to better understand how they are changing over time, and how any changes in them affect climate.
Supposed screenshot of the page: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/debunk/us/nasa/nasa-climate-forcings-2010.gif
Supposed archive.org link (no longer works):
https://web.archive.org/web/20100416015231/https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/big-questions/what-are-the-primary-causes-of-the-earth-system-variability/]
Articles from 2010-2011 quoting the link and then noting it has disappeared:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/climate_change_its_the_sun_stu.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/01/nasas_muzzle_hustle.html
Is this fake news? Can anyone here verify whether this page ever existed (or not)?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:04PM (15 children)
The earth has been warming for the past couple of centuries. But the effect of CO2 - which is a very minor greenhouse gas - is unknown. If it causes more water to evaporate, well water is a major greenhouse gas. Only...clouds form, have a high albedo, and that's a cooling effect. The only thing that is certain is that all of the computer models out there are complete nonsense. I can build you any number of models that perfectly fit past data, and make completely different projections for the future.
In my opinion, we should be doing exactly and only three things:
- Take reasonable measures to limit CO2 emissions. Not because CO2 causes global warming (because we don't know that it does), but simply because carrying out random experiments on the planetary atmosphere is not the very cleverest thing we could be doing.
- Invest in understanding climate. Stop removing climate stations; install new stations especially in remote areas, where we have almost no coverage at all. Get the stations we have away from UHI effects.
- Publish the data. Stop adjusting data and hiding/losing the original, raw information. [blogspot.com] This nonsense is even starting with satellite data, because it so inconveniently fails to show enough warming. Researchers can make adjustments, and justify them - but "losing" the original data is completely inexcusable.
If we actually stop with all the panic-inducing idiocy, who knows? In a decade or three we might actually know enough to talk about the matter intelligently.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:10PM (1 child)
usually the best way to interfere in complex systems is to do nothing at all.
(Score: 2, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:30PM
So you are saying we should not build the wall?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:45PM
Who in authority wants us to talk about the matter intelligently? That's the first question, and it is wrong to assume that those in authority automatically do or do not. And if they don't want us to talk intelligently, why wouldn't they is good second. What we might do about it is the third.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:48PM (8 children)
Hunters and fishers donate more to conservation than other groups. They are outside watching what nature is doing first hand all the time. The ones I have talked to are usually republican and almost all know something is up. Their objection is that all of the lefts proposed solutions are new laws. They are generally pro freedom and prefer a solution where more people contribute individually and voluntarily like they do.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:17PM
Dead on the money.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:42PM (1 child)
Hanging around Dick Chaney while hunting could be hazardous to your health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @02:30AM
This joke is almost too old for Joe Biden.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:43PM (1 child)
The problem is that this then puts them in an alliance with the OTHER kind of Republicans. The people who will claim that it's actually illegal for a company to do anything other than "maximize shareholder value" and that they are therefore legally required to continue polluting as long as it's legal and cheaper to do so...
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Friday February 22 2019, @08:52AM
For science fiction readers, this should be an alien invasion moment for humanity. For all of us who care about the environment it is time to unite and do our part to fix the problems we can. Letting people like this drag you into inaction and name calling and team sports style politics will make it worse for everyone.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Thursday February 21 2019, @05:17PM (2 children)
And how do hunters and fishers end up spending so much on conservation? It doesn't have anything to do with the taxes we levy on those specific activities in the form of licenses and such does it? If you have a different answer, I would love to see where you got the data.
If something is truly a public resource, we tend towards a tragedy of the commons.
Hunting and fishing are terrific examples of (largely) averted tragedies through regulation. Nowadays it is part of the culture, those who use those resources pay for maintenance, and harvest within regulated limits in the interest of conserving the environment and stock.
I can imagine that the direct analogy applied to carbon dioxide would be exactly the kind of laws you are talking about disliking. So what solutions do they like?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @08:38PM
you're a sycophantic slave. these licensing schemes are only to con people to give their natural rights to feed themselves away to some leach piece of shit sitting at a desk. Also, to use tax dollars to steal natural resources for the elite of the world. why do you think the national parks, etc are owned by the UN? world heritage sites, etc. this is about keeping the rabble out of their lawns of the future. governments could have just passed proper laws that place limits on what people can kill without these licensing schemes, but then they would have been accountable to the voters and you wouldn't have to fund their leach industry. instead, once they get these lazy minded slaves to agree to licensing they can just make up any crazy rules they want and stick their nose into everything. just watch these park pig shows on tv to see examples of how fucking stupid the regs are already getting. even where hogs are breeding out of control and damaging property these state pigs want you to have a license, and wear a vest on your own property. that's right. if you have invasive wild fucking boars tearing up your property or endangering your kids you're supposed to beg permission from some piece of shit leach. fuck you.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Friday February 22 2019, @08:41AM
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:02PM
Do you actually believe the nonsense and the claims that are shitting out of your brain?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:45PM
>I can build you any number of models that perfectly fit past data, and make completely different projections for the future.
Then do it. You''d be making a large contribution to the research.
If you can build a GCM that predicts El Nino and other oscillations from scratch, and that accounts for temperature trends without a CO2 forcing, you will have accomplished something that nobody else ever has.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @07:05PM
Wow! A true conservative, finally! But notice how he denies anthropomorphic climate change while at the same time arguing against not doing anything, but instead admits that CO2 is the motor behind changes in the atmosphere.
Good, but I still miss frojack. Just can't get any climate change deniers like him anymore. Sad.