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Groups > sci.physics > #520906
| Subject | Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | sci.physics |
| References | <ZIOdnULaFtdRiWvInZ2dnUU7-VkAAAAA@giganews.com> <o7ihcc-h2p.ln1@mail.specsol.com> |
| From | Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> |
| Date | 2015-09-13 20:08 -0500 |
| Message-ID | <ZIOdnXTaFteAg2vInZ2dnUU7-VmdnZ2d@giganews.com> (permalink) |
On 9/13/15 7:50 PM, jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com wrote: > An utter, puerile lie, spamming shit head. I'm afraid not, jimp. You are blinded by your anger problem. Try Rancho Cucamonga Anger Management Classes > http://www.yellowpages.com/rancho-cucamonga-ca/anger-management-classes Someday, you will thank me, jimp. The Climate Story Nobody Talks About > http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/09/10/438913284/the-climate-story-nobody-talks-about > Just two centuries ago, humanity barely understood that a planet's > climate could change at all. People were still digesting the idea > that Earth was a whole lot older than 6,000 years. But by the 1870s, > most scientists accepted that our planet had experienced prolonged > climate shifts — in the form of ice ages — dating back tens or > hundreds of thousands of years. Explaining the causes of the ice ages > was, however, far beyond the capacities of science at the time. That > meant humanity would have to build those capacities. > > Across the latter half of the 20th century, an effort worthy of > multiple Manhattan Projects unpacked something entirely new and > entirely remarkable: a science of planets in all their complex glory. > Wind, oceans, ice and rock: All of it had to be accounted for if the > story of Earth and its climate was to be told. > > But we couldn't tell Earth's climate story without understanding > climate on other planets, too. That's why it's no accident that > climate science came to maturity in the space age. > > This is the first point to understand. All the effort and all the > genius poured into humanity's bold exploration of the solar system > have found their deepest expression in the science of climate. > > But, it's Venus that's the real poster child for climate science > triumph, extra-terrestrial or otherwise. Even though it's about the > same mass and size as Earth, temperatures on Venus hover around 860 F > (hot enough to melt lead) and there is almost no water anywhere on > the planet. Venus is as close to hell as you'll find in this solar > system — and its location closer to the sun does not, by itself, > explain it's terrible state. > > In other words — with our modern understanding of climate — we now > know that if Earth were placed in Venus's location, the greenhouse > effect would go nuts, heating the planet and driving water molecules > high into the atmosphere where sunlight zaps them apart. What's left > is a hot, dry atmosphere composed almost entirely of CO2. That's a > runaway greenhouse effect. "There's good evidence this happened on > Venus," says Kasting, who points to detailed chemical analysis of the > Venusian atmosphere that proves the water was lost to space. > > Now, let's return to the climate of our own blue world. Catling can > easily tick off a list of terrestrial climate science's epoch-making > achievements. There's the development and deployment of a global > monitoring system for the planet. "A major achievement of modern > civilization," Catling says, "is the continuous satellite monitoring > of the Earth's weather, climate and atmospheric composition, in > combination with thousands of monitoring stations on the surface." > Then, there's exhaustive work measuring molecular properties of > atmospheric gases to understand how they interact with both sunlight > and heat radiation emitted by the Earth. One also can point to the > development of high performance computer simulations of planetary > climate. "The advances in computing to solve the physics and > chemistry of the atmosphere cannot be overstated," Catling says, > pointing out this advance led to huge increases in weather prediction > accuracy. > > More than anything, however, the real triumph of climate science > comes in its ability to understand what's happening to the Earth now. > Del Genio describes it in the simplest of scientific terms: > > "The major achievement of terrestrial climate science is that 34 > years ago, Jim Hansen and colleagues published a paper in Science > making the first prediction of the rate of climate change over the > next few decades as a result of CO2 increases [see Figure]. Looking > at how much the Earth's surface temperature has actually changed in > that time, they came remarkably close. That was a true prediction of > the future, and sufficiently long ago that we have the chance to see > how good it was." -- sci.physics is an unmoderated newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of physics, news from the physics community, and physics-related social issues.
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The Climate Story Nobody Talks About Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-13 19:29 -0500
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-13 19:30 -0500
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-09-14 00:52 +0000
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-09-14 00:50 +0000
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-13 20:08 -0500
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-09-14 02:26 +0000
Re: The Climate Story Nobody Talks About gilber34 <invalid@invalid.com> - 2015-09-13 20:35 -0500
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