A recent, prolonged lull in the sun's activity did not prevent the Earth from absorbing more solar energy than it let escape back into space, a NASA analysis of the Earth's recent energy budget indicates.
An imbalance like this drives global warming — since more energy is coming in than leaving — and, because it occurred during a period when the sun was emitting comparatively low levels of energy, the imbalance has implications for the cause of global warming.
The results confirm greenhouse gases produced by human activities are the most important driver of global climate change, according to the researchers.
They found that the Earth absorbed 0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter than escaped back into space during the study period from 2005 to 2010, a time when solar activity was low. By comparison, the planet receives 0.25 watts less energy per square meter during a solar minimum, than during a period of maximum activity in the sun's 11-year cycle. (Currently, the sun is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, with activity expected to ramp up toward solar maximum in 2013.) .
CLICK to read the above report from Wynne Parry, LiveScience.com at Space.com
Two studies suggest for the first time a clear link between global warming and extreme precipitation.
There's a sound rule for reporting weather events that may be related to climate change. You can't say that a particular heatwave or a particular downpour – or even a particular freeze – was definitely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. But you can say whether these events are consistent with predictions, or that their likelihood rises or falls in a warming world.
Weather is a complex system. Long-running trends, natural fluctuations and random patterns are fed into the global weather machine, and it spews out a series of events. All these events will be influenced to some degree by global temperatures, but it's impossible to say with certainty that any of them would not have happened in the absence of man-made global warming.
But over time, as the data build up, we begin to see trends which suggest that rising temperatures are making a particular kind of weather more likely to occur. One such trend has now become clearer. Two new papers, published by Nature, should make us sit up, as they suggest for the first time a clear link between global warming and extreme precipitation (precipitation means water falling out of the sky in any form: rain, hail or snow).
The amount of CO2 is so trivial in the real atmosphere that this so called 'experiment' is irrelevant even if it means something in itself. However to deal totally with the nonsense we have to look at this profoundly dishonest experiment in detail.
In the experiment (at the end of the clip) it is noted that CO2 (or water vapour etc) filling a tube "absorbs more heat" (infra red) radiation going through it than air itself.
This 'experiment' is a non-equilibrium situation. Of course the CO2 absorbs infra red. However in doing so the gas itself warms and also emits more infra-red itself until the whole tube of gas is the same temperature as the warm end.
THIS is the final situation whether you double, quadruple or half the amount of CO2 in the tube. The end result is the gas is the same temperature as the source. The final situation takes longer to be reached if there is less CO2 or water vapour but still it gets there.
This is a personal recording I uploaded to YouTube - the sound quality is poor. GR
The CO2 experiment presented at the famous Royal Institution in London is mentioned in this clip from the BBC Panorama production "What's Up With The Weather" on the 28 June It was used to show viewers that the "science is sound" on CO2 being a "Greenhouse Gas".
Now comes what I consider to be the "flaw" in that experiment, it was carried out by replacing a normal atmosphere to that of an atmosphere with 100% CO2.
The question is this, was this the correct way to show how CO2 changes the Earth's Atmosphere?
The Atmosphere on Earth contains about .04% CO2, and the amount of "Human" CO2 is about 4% of that, the simple fraction to use to work out the amount of "Man Made" CO2 is 4% of .04%
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