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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday February 21 2019, @01:19PM   Printer-friendly
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.

http://joannenova.com.au/2019/02/nasa-hides-page-saying-the-sun-was-the-primary-climate-driver-and-clouds-and-particles-are-more-important-than-greenhouse-gases/

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)?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @07:49PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @07:49PM (#805273)

    The moon also has a month long day and no high heat capacity oceans.

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 23 2019, @04:07PM (4 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday February 23 2019, @04:07PM (#805605)

    True. However, heat capacity is mostly relevant to stabilizing temperatures, keeping them closer to the average - it doesn't alter what the average is. Except insofar as it reduces peak thermal radiation, which is decidedly nonlinear with temperature.

    Sadly I think the moon is as good as it gets for actual physical data. We could instead look at purely computational estimates such as the effective temperature - but those model the planet as something only barely more sophisticated than a perfect black body (which will be appreciably warmer)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:00PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:00PM (#805782)

      >"However, heat capacity is mostly relevant to stabilizing temperatures, keeping them closer to the average - it doesn't alter what the average is."

      Sure it does, due to holders inequality: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6lder's_inequality [wikipedia.org]

      More uniform temperatures will have a higher average temperature for the same amount of energy.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:23PM (1 child)

        by Immerman (3985) on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:23PM (#805975)

        Indeed. So, can you suggest a non-controversial estimate of the equilibrium temperature of an Earth-bright object in our orbit without greenhouse gasses? It is one of those really important data points in the whole conversation, and I've found precious little relevant data.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25 2019, @03:07PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25 2019, @03:07PM (#806314)

          No, the climate researchers have only provided "algebra lessons" like the calc to get 255K, and then climate models w thousands of parameters to tune.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:34PM (#805792)

      See section 3 here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013arXiv1303.7079L [harvard.edu]