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Surprise Discovery In Earth's Upper Atmosphere
elyons sends word out of UCLA of a completely unexpected discovery in the physics of the Sun-Earth interaction — a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. "'It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down,' said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. 'We all have thought for our entire careers — I learned it as a graduate student — that this energy transfer rate is primarily controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field. The closer to southward-pointing the magnetic field is, the stronger the energy transfer rate is, and the stronger the magnetic field is in that direction. [It turns out that] if it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger.'" The researchers have two papers on the discovery coming out in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Saying "It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun" when they're talking about the interaction of the solar wind and the magnetosphere is more than a little disingenuous....
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
The problem many people (or at least I!) have with PARTS of the GW / global climate change conversation is that it's clear that we have at best a minimalistic understanding of climate. I don't even think most climate scientists would deny this... Like you point out--this is a great example of a really interesting (and fundamental!) discover. New discoveries in terms of carbon sequestration (or lack thereof in many cases), cloud vapour / temperature interactions, etc are being found all the time. The technology we have available to monitor global temperatures and carbon levels, arctic ice, etc, and the tools (better satellites, etc) are likewise exponentially improving.
I don't think you can find a person out there who would deny that strong scientific progress is being made.
The problem is with the non-science aspects of the movement. Heck, the problem is that it IS a movement. Things like Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and some scientists who do seem to be more interested in a political agenda more than a scientific one do not help. That is to say, of all the parts of what you call the "hoopla about GW" (nice desc!) we can really do without the hysteria and the partisan politicking (why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose ;-) )
Why is this being tagged "climate change" with people yammering about global warming? This is a previously unexpected form of energy transfer but would have been occuring since...oh...our planet had a magnetosphere and there is not a single mention in the article concerning climate change or global warming.
Something a scientist writes might also be so steeped in jargon that it's less intelligible to anyone not familiar with that particular research field. That's why we need more people like Niel deGrasse Tyson, who can live in the academic world but also communicate very well with non-academics.
Based on purely anecdotal evidence, it seems to be getting worse: my impression is that climate scientists who entered the field after it became a partisan political issue are much more likely to have axes to grind one way or another. The 40+ y.o. PhDs entered the field because they were interested in science, but a lot of the under-40 crowd entered the field to join a battle on one side or another.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10