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Satellites Show That Earth Has a Fever
Roland Piquepaille writes "A recent study from NASA says that satellites are acting as thermometers in space. Contrary to meteorological ground stations which measure the air temperature around two meters above the ground, satellites can accurately measure the temperature of the Earth's skin. And this new study, which covers the 18-year period going from 1981 to 1998, shows that the Earth's temperature is rising 0.43C per decade instead of the O.34C found by previous methods. Unfortunately for us, if satellites can more precisely measure this rise of the Earth's temperature, they cannot cure this fever. This overview contains more details and a spectacular image showing the European heat wave of the summer of 2003."
If the ground measurements are 0.34 degrees/decade, and the external measurements are 0.43 degrees/decade, then presumably the extra energy is contained within the circulating atmosphere. Certainly this ought to make the global dissipation happen faster (air tends to move more than water and earth (!) and has a fairly good heat-sink at the space boundary, not to mention the poles). I wonder if they've taken that into account.
On a slightly different note, I've always felt a sense of wonder when thousands of billions of air molecules synchronise their motion and hit you full in the face. I've always thought it ought to have a more poetic name than 'wind', considering the breathtaking nature of the phenomenon. Just a thought
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I am assuming that since the red showed warmer areas, the blue areas would show cooler areas.
And it looks like most of the rest of Eastern Europe was cooler.
It seems to me that most people think that it's getting hotter, well, it probably is.
But I don't think that people realize that they have to take into count mroe than the most recent 200 years of history, that's a pretty small time table for something as old as the earth.
And this new study, which covers the 18-year period going from 1981 to 1998, shows that the Earth's temperature is rising 0.43C per decade instead of the O.34C found by previous methods.
For those who just skimmed the linked article; the article links to another, which says the satellites can only detect temperature on land, but not over snow covered land. Hmm... seems like a skewed data set to me.
How do they know that the colder, snow-covered regions aren't getting colder, to balance out the average temperature? Or maybe the oceans are getting cooler which might also brings down the average temperature to what the ground stations recorded.
Maybe the scientists do know, and this is just a case of bad reporting...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Nope, that is not the worst case scenario.
The worst case scenario is that most of tropical Asia and Southern China becomes a desert. As a result you get 2 billion of hungry people on the move which are part of at least three nuclear armed nations (China, India, Pakistan) and are bordering a fourth one (Russia).
And that is scary...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I'll avoid the moronic statement that emissions reduction goals would have no meaningful impact on the environment. There are so many different ways to impact the environment that its just a plain-old-stupid comment to make.
Now, would you please give evidence, as I'm sure you've thoroughly researched the situation, to provide support for the statement "To really "stop polluting" you would drive the economy to a screeching halt."? I'm curious to see your evidence.
How about this statement?
In either case that means lost jobs.
You mean like the current loss of jobs we've already seen? I suspect that research/development/production of new technologies to help reduce emissions would actually create new jobs. I still don't get why it would cost jobs when there are new opportunities available. This is always the argument I hear against doing anything about our impact on the environment and its a bogus argument.
So please understand there is no we might as well argument to be made here, its more of a we should'nt unless type of situation.
Actually its not. There is absolutely no good reason not to start doing something now.
Unless we are reasonbly sure we are damaging ocean currents and screwing up the climate it makes no sense to certainly RUIN many people well being over it.
. Many scientists are sure we are screwing up the climate and I'd bet their credentials to say so are far more extensive than yours.
What is called for is some money and time to conduct real unbiased studies and learn what we can, and to get all the people spewing forth the "bad science" on both sides of this issue to sit down shutup and move over for legitimate study.
So in your infinite wisdom and knowledge you know that all such studies up to this point are biased and illegitimate. You've read them all?
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
Very Nice as well, but arbitrary facts with no correlation are irrelevant.
True the average temperature of the earth is rising, but your argument is not logical in the sense that fact a does not support argument b.
CO2 emissions cannot be correlated to the increase in the earth's temperature. CO2 emissions and the people who sprout its affect have in no way proven that emissions equal an increase in the Earth's temperature. In fact go to www.pubmed.com and type in Carbon Dioxide Emissions, the scientific community has not proven anything that you blatantly state as being connected to fact a.
Here is a brief Abstract from a very recent journal publication:
"Only recently, within a few decades, have we realized that humanity significantly influences the global environment. In the early 1980s, atmospheric measurements confirmed basic concepts developed a decade earlier. These basic concepts showed that human activities were affecting the ozone layer. Later measurements and theoretical analyses have clearly connected observed changes in ozone to human-related increases of chlorine and bromine in the stratosphere. As a result of prompt international policy agreements, the combined abundances of ozone-depleting compounds peaked in 1994 and ozone is already beginning a slow path to recovery. A much more difficult problem confronting humanity is the impact of increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on global climate. The processes that connect greenhouse gas emissions to climate are very complex. This complexity has limited our ability to make a definitive projection of future climate change. Nevertheless, the range of projected climate change shows that global warming has the potential to severely impact human welfare and our planet as a whole. This paper evaluates the state of the scientific understanding of the global change issues, their potential impacts, and the relationships of scientific understanding to policy considerations."
As has been pointed out countless times before,
correlation does not imply causality, wash and repeat with your argument and others.
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" -Confucius
see pond... see algae bloom see algae bloom kill everything in the pond see algae die out too... all natural people are natural too and with about as much ability to curb their own grwoth as the algae...