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Noctilucent Clouds Spread and Mystify
Wired has a feature on noctilucent clouds, once seen only at high latitudes but increasingly visible now lower down the globe. The clouds result from ice crystals at altitudes of 50 miles, higher than five 9s of the atmosphere. What water ice is doing up there, in a region 100 million times drier than the Sahara desert, is only one of the mysteries associated with the clouds. They are a recent phenomenon: the first scientific description of noctilucent clouds was penned in 1885. For a time it was believed that the clouds were an effect resulting from the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano two years before. Since 2002, the clouds have been sighted — and photographed — as far south as Oregon, Colorado, and Utah. Some scientists believe that human-caused climate change is playing a role, but others doubt this. Two satellites are in orbit to study the clouds; NASA's AIM generated this day-by-day movie of clouds in the vicinity of the North Pole during 2008.
Before the chemtrail conspiracists show up. Somebody break out the Orgone generators!
Kinda disappointing that the first thing nowadays when people see something new it's that "Wow, humans really stuffed up the planet" instead of "Wow, that's an interesting natural phenomenon"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Otherwise, it's a closed system and there's no net change in temperature.
You know, except for that whole sun thing.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
Aren't they caused by the space shuttle? I could swear there was an article a couple weeks ago on slashdot about it. Basically they found that they tend to form hours after the shuttle launch, particularly around Antarctica. The shuttle's boosters release X tons of water into the high atmosphere, at altitudes water can't regularly attain, which gets caught by high moving winds that drive it south, where they crystallize.
Interestingly enough we just had a shuttle launch just a couple days ago.
..., such as glaciers melting (and yes, they truly are, worldwide, where I live here in Switzerland, but also in Alaska for example). I understand that there should be healthy scepticism at any scientific claim, but the climate is almost certainly changing, enough so that I can personally see it.
The climate is definitly changing.
As it always has been. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster. But in no way that should be an excuse to keep on polluting the planet.
bickerdyke