| 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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