New Research Reveals the Missing Piece of the Climate Puzzle

MIT Reveals Missing Piece of the Climate Puzzle

Outgoing longwave radiation from CERES Instrument on NASA Aqua Satellite for March 18, 2011, near Vernal Equinox of 2011. Credit: Courtesy of NASA

In a newly published study, MIT researchers show that a canonical view of global warming tells only half the story and reveal the missing piece of the climate puzzle.

In classrooms and everyday conversation, explanations of global warming hinge on the greenhouse gas effect. In short, climate depends on the balance between two different kinds of radiation: The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space.

Upsetting that energy balance are rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), that increasingly absorb some of the outgoing longwave radiation and trap it in the atmosphere. Energy accumulates in the climate system, and warming occurs. But in a paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers show that this canonical view of global warming is only half the story.

In computer modeling of Earth’s climate under elevating CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse gas effect does indeed lead to global warming. Yet something puzzling happens: While one would expect the longwave radiation that escapes into space to decline with increasing CO2, the amount actually begins to rise. At the same time, the atmosphere absorbs more and more incoming solar radiation; it’s this enhanced shortwave absorption that ultimately sustains global warming.

“The finding was a curiosity, conflicting with the basic understanding of global warming,” says lead author Aaron Donohoe, a former MIT postdoc who is now a research associate at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “It made us think that there must be something really weird going in the models in the years after CO2 was added. We wanted to resolve the paradox that climate models show warming via enhanced shortwave radiation, not decreased longwave radiation.”

Donohoe, along with MIT postdoc Kyle Armour and others at Washington, spent many a late night throwing out guesses as to why climate models generate this illogical finding before realizing that it makes perfect sense — but for reasons no one had clarified and laid down in the literature.

They found the answer by drawing on both computer simulations and a simple energy-balance model. As longwave radiation gets trapped by CO2, the Earth starts to warm, impacting various parts of the climate system. Sea ice and snow cover melt, turning brilliant white reflectors of sunlight into darker spots. The atmosphere grows moister because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which absorbs more shortwave radiation. Both of these feedbacks lessen the amount of shortwave radiation that bounces back into space, and the planet warms rapidly at the surface.

Meanwhile, like any physical body experiencing warming, Earth sheds longwave radiation more effectively, canceling out the longwave-trapping effects of CO2. However, a darker Earth now absorbs more sunlight, tipping the scales to net warming from shortwave radiation.

“So there are two types of radiation important to climate, and one of them gets affected by CO2, but it’s the other one that’s directly driving global warming — that’s the surprising thing,” says Armour, who is a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Out in the real world, aerosols in air pollution act to reflect a lot of sunlight, and so Earth has not experienced as much warming from shortwave solar radiation as it otherwise might have. But the authors calculate that enough warming will have occurred by midcentury to switch the main driver of global warming to increased solar radiation absorption.

The paper is not challenging the physics of climate models; its value lies in helping the community interpret their output. “While this study does not change our understanding of the fundamentals of global warming, it is always useful to have simpler models that help us understand why our more comprehensive climate models sometimes behave in superficially counterintuitive ways,” says Isaac Held, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory who was not involved in this research.

One way the study can be useful is in guiding what researchers look for in satellite observations of Earth’s radiation budget, as they track anthropogenic climate change in the decades to come. “I think the default assumption would be to see the outgoing longwave radiation decrease as greenhouse gases rise, but that’s probably not going to happen,” Donohoe says. “We would actually see the absorption of shortwave radiation increase. Will we actually ever see the longwave trapping effects of CO2 in future observations? I think the answer is probably no.”

The study sorts out another tricky climate-modeling issue — namely, the substantial disagreement between different models in when shortwave radiation takes over the heavy lifting in global warming. The authors demonstrate that the source of the differences lies in the way in which a model represents changes in cloud cover with global warming, another big factor in how well Earth can reflect shortwave solar energy.

Reference: “Shortwave and longwave radiative contributions to global warming under increasing CO2” by Aaron Donohoe, Kyle C. Armour, Angeline G. Pendergrass and David S. Battisti, 10 November 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1412190111

The work was supported by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

71 Comments on "New Research Reveals the Missing Piece of the Climate Puzzle"

  1. Notice how it doesn’t say global warming isn’t happening. Deniers will find a way, however.

    • Notice how it’s all COMPUTER MODELS! There are no facts presented! And you anti science deniers lap it up! How about they send a balloon aloft to try and see if what their models claim…..IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING! Wow! What a novel concept! Doing ACTUAL SCIENCE AND NOT JUST SCIENCE FICTION!

      You sad excuses for so called “critical thinking” don’t do a bit of it! Computer models ARE NOT DATA! How many times does that FACT have to pointed out to you?

      • Sending a balloon aloft. Hummmm. That’s very innovative. I guess we can just dump all the DATA collected from satellite imagery.

        • Satellite data shows NO additonal WARMING for almost two decades. In fact, if all five global temp datasets are averaged, the trend still indicates no warming for the past 13+ years !

          Now, even if it was warming, there’s still no evidence linking co2 increase to global warming (none!)

      • They don’t have to send balloons aloft. They have satellites these days and NASA is sending them up to do actual measurements to confirm the information generated by the computer models.

    • Actually, the temperature records say it isn’t happening. At least, not since 1997.

  2. Notice all of the articles desperately trying to promote this fraud are running daily now? This is what was running in the 70’s….”Global cooling” hysteria in the 1970’s— Earth Day 1970 Kenneth Watt, ecologist: “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” BWA…..BWAAAAAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!

    • Bats#!t, you just keep right on believing what you want to believe. The rest of us will move on to the future.

      By the way, did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason we haven’t entered a new ice age is because of global warming?

      • Then we saved the planet.

      • bats#!t ahhaha excellent

      • Even the most rabid scientist “believers” in human caused global warming recognize that co2 level would have had no impact until about 1950. (That’s because their models cannot explain what happened before that.

        Now their models cannot explain what’s happened in the past couple of decades.

        Ask anyone to provide EVIDENCE that co2 increase has had any measurable impact on global warming.

  3. Interesting. The more “we” learn, huh?

    It therefore should be thought that since the heavy lifting is due to the lowering of bright reflectivity thus the planet absorbs more energy… that adding sea ice at the Antarctic (from its thickness melting) will therefore lessen the absorption by the heavy lifter. The thinning ice-area remains the same thus still reflecting the same; while at the same time the melt creates more reflection area.

    Another good study would be to determine how much the Planet-system tends to adapt and maintain a balance of incoming and outgoing waves.

  4. And yet no warming for the last 15+ years…no crisis…ice caps not melted, Florida not underwater. Where is this doomsday, Chicken Littles? So disappointing.

    Computer models have less to do with reflecting sunlight and more to do about reflecting the political biases of those that write them. They are not data and thus not fact. But don’t tell Al Gore, or not only will there be no warming, there will be no more funding for more of these valueless studies.

  5. Climate effects have been studied back as far as the 15th Century, correlating data with sun spot cycles, and climate change models for over 60 years. This is another example that we really don’t know all the science and variables.
    . . . It is wrong to call it settled science . . . What we have is evolving understanding of the science. And some systems, especially those as complicated as climate, perhaps, can never really be modeled . . . As discussed in the Chaos theory and the “Butterfly Effect” which becomes more applicable the more detailed the model.

  6. That doesn’t explain why the global atmosphere is still on a slight cool-ward slope.

  7. Christopher Smith | November 11, 2014 at 2:03 pm | Reply

    This study needs to be expanded, because I see no mention of the effect of the 110 million acres of new trees that took over farm land with the collapse of the Soviet Union. These trees have a tremendous effect on short wave absorption, as any glider pilot will tell you.

  8. I would like to point out that, once again, the headline for this piece does not match the contents. The headline says that “New Research Reveals Missing Piece of the Climate Puzzle.” It does no such thing. The body of the story describes, yet again, another computer model that provides one possible explanation for the “climate puzzle” assuming that the assumptions and the way they have been quantified are correct. It still requires verification through the collection of real-world data (not more computer simulations) before it can be said to have “revealed” anything. Otherwise, all you have in this “research” is GIGO (garbage in garbage out). It is just more theory without factual verification. If you want to do serious journalism, please try to get your headlines straight.

  9. Is it really possible that computer models of the atmosphere are not 100% accurate? From the sound of this aritcle they are not 50% complete.

  10. William Balgord, Ph.D. a geochemist says the models are wrong, can’t account for the 18 year pause in global warming since 1996-97. Also models also fail to replicate known temperature records beginning in 1950.
    It is all about who is going to control and reap the gold from selling carbon credits. Right now well connected universities, grant writers and politicians are setting themselves up to run the show. Can you imagine the size of the government agency to buy and sell carbon credits?

  11. What’s really missing is truth and intelligence, instead of the propaganda and faked, selective data….

  12. We taxpayers pay $23 billion/year to counter man-made global warming. Why? NOAA data shows warming is slowing over last 18 years even with large rise in CO2. Wonderful MAMA Nature and her cycles with her honey Mr. Sun, and with water vapor, oceans and volcanoes when she blows her top, and either opens methane holes or blows wind causing a polar vortex when she has gas, all as her home the Earth tilts on its axis. Search:
    “natural-tilts-earths-axis-ice-ages-harvard-geophysicist”

  13. The story we told you about global warming was wrong, but we’re still right anyway because… Such BS. It should be published first that the climate models got it wrong. Then we’ll decide when to ever believe them again. This finding is only published because it wound it’s way around to say, lads we were right after all even if we didn’t know what we were talking about.

  14. The writer of this piece leave off the entire story in an attempt apparently to verify their belief in AGW. The study claims it models various short and long wave radiation better than current models, it does not and never attempts to claim CO2 is currently warming the world. The facts are pretty clear, the world has not warmed despite increasing CO2 levels in at least 16 years, since the troposphere shows no trend in 55 years it may be much longer. The current models grossly overstate warming so have never predicted the actual warming or lack of warming of the planet. This study does not correct a fundamental flaw in the models. They use 1951 to 2012 data sets thereby ignoring the little ice age, the medieval warm period, the cooling from 1880 to 1912, the hiatus in warming from 1940 to 1980 and a several studies on temperature and CO2 levels that go back 2000 years. It is like you took your temperature in the morning found you had a slight temperature and projected that increase out 15 years, total nonsense but that is what they are doing.

  15. Not “the” missing piece of the climate puzzle, but “a” missing piece. There are probably numerous other factors as yet unaccounted for. But those are just “inconvenient truths” to be glossed over by zealots.

  16. so even the basic greenhouse co2 effect is not understood. how the heck is the science settled then?

  17. Raymond Borland | November 11, 2014 at 3:03 pm | Reply

    The author is proposing a different way that CO2 effects atmospheric temperatures. This is very significant because climate models have used an incomplete and incorrect assumptions about the effects of CO2. they have assumed CO22 is a primary driver of climate change and that also has not been established because water vapor, clouds, types of clouds, altitude of clouds and even solar storms have been left out of the models. Even if we could measure all parameters that affect climate we still can never forecast climate with precion because nonlinear equations have enormous variable outcomes due to only tiny changes n input parameters. This has been shown in Chaos Theory and weather and climate are rules by chaos mathematics. it is shere folly to think one parameter, man made O2 is linearly related to atmospheric warming and climate change.

  18. If at first you don’t get it right just make up a new model .

  19. anything coming out of MIT lately should be viewed with skepticism as their professors apparently lack integrity.
    “Professor” Johnathan Gruber, SHAME ON YOU!

  20. I think a far more appropriate title of this article should have been…

    New Research Reveals ANOTHER Missing Piece of the Climate Puzzle

    Definitely not “the” missing piece. How many times have we heard that people have found “THE” missing piece? Sorry, I have done research and I would be my life’s earnings that there will be MANY more substantial finds in the area of climate study.

  21. So it the “settled science” settled now?

    Is is settled now?

    How about now?

  22. They found the answer by drawing on both computer simulations and a simple energy-balance model. enough said

  23. I’m sure glad of global warming or it’s gonna be fricking cold this winter. I mean it’s 25 degree here already and the ski slopes are booming. Of course it’s only local weather which can get down to 100 degrees below zero and still qualify for global warming, right?

  24. This seems to imply that once the earth’s albedo had decreased enough for short wavelength radiation to be the prime driver of warming that CO2 concentrations would be moot and warming will continue regardless of then future cuts to emissions. it would seem to make the need for action today more urgent.

  25. How can there be a missing part to the HOAX?
    Global Warming only exists because there is Government Funding for it…

  26. Rodomontade Hornblower | November 11, 2014 at 4:09 pm | Reply

    The missing piece is any semblance of the scientific method.

  27. Big surprise! The math just does not support carbon taxes!

  28. Yes molecular Oxygen happens to absorb UV energy and becomes Ozone which can further absorb UV at a slightly different wavelength UVa UVB. This allows energy from the Sun to cascade in intensity before reaching the Eath’s surface where it would then convert to light and then heat.
    We have been reversing Photosynthesis through combustion and that is why we are experiencing more heat and UV damage.

  29. Just more conjecture.

  30. The ONLY missing piece in the global warming/climate change HOAX is ANOTHER grant application for MORE money to continue the hoax.

    The entire ‘ENVIRONMENTAL’ crusade is a SCAM

    The ‘scammers’ have lost – and are kicking and screaming about it!

  31. So it is cloud cover that is going to have the final say! Is that why we have been seeing “chemtrails” for years, that do indeed coalesce into clouds? Increased cloud cover will deflect the sun’s short waves as the white of the ice would have? Who are the scientists that figured that out?

  32. More politically-propagandized BS to feed stupid people with advanced degrees who know their acadenics but fail in knowing how to use common sense.

  33. These climate models keep coming up BS over and over again. Nobody know what’s going on. Nothing new here.

  34. Amazing nonsense with too much computer modeling based on half ass assumptions. Universal gas law dismisses this theology entirely. The earth’s atmosphere expands and contracts when heated. The experiments with co2 verses ordinary air in a glass bottle in the sun did not allow expansion of gases. In order for the hypothesis of greenhouse gas warming to occur with a trace amount of c02 or methane added the atmospheric pressure has to change . volume has also got to change in a substantial way that it can be observed. The green house gas narrative is nonsensical because water vapor in the atmosphere and just proximity to humid bodies of water are known to affect climate and all climate on earth is actually that local. It is true that the earth atmosphere is a blanket of sorts that envelops the surface helping to moderate temperatures but beware it not only moderates heat but it moderates cold too. Go to planet Venus and the atmosphere is some 80 times what one earth atmosphere unit is. That is like being ten thousand feet under the pacific ocean hear on earth and given the inverse square law in proximity to the sun, Venus is close enough to make a big difference in solar radiation gain. High atmospheric pressure would definitely raise temperatures given what universal gas law says happens. As for expanding atmospheric gases when heated they tend to radiate more infrared into space the higher they go . It is simple geometry and no wonder the high atmosphere gets cooler it radiates away its residual heat. Funny thing about taking data readings by satellite we record what was hot on earth and is less hot after it radiates energy that is detected.

  35. More settled science…

  36. So what they’re saying is that CO2 is NOT the problem?

  37. That sounds like a very insightful and logical explanation. Thank you.

    ….. Now can you explain how and why Global Warming is happening on Mars, as well?

  38. A very interessting abstract and very good ideas to follow up upon – keep up the good work!

  39. No, the missing piece is the actual warming.

  40. More stupidity from the authority. When will they open their eyes and recognize climate change is driven by the sun and earth’s primary regulating agent, water… Three (3) phases of balancing power with CO2 taking a ride.
    What are all these highly authoritative figures going to do in light of truth and reality?

  41. This reminds me of the mental gymnastics used to show CFCs causing the ozone hole to expand in the nineties. I seem to remember that the popular opinion was that the ozone hole would continue to grow for 50 years even if all CFC emissions were stopped immediately. There was data showing the hole expanding and contracting earlier in the 20th century, but that data was dismissed saying “They didn’t calibrate their instruments properly back then.” It will be interesting to see how accurate the climate change models are when we look back 25 years from now. (Some one will have to remember for me because I will have Alzheimer’s by then)

  42. More variables being added to the equation to determine a trend that has never been established that exceeds the the natural trends of the past in order to set governmental policy. Is that irony or over excited scientists revealing the newest variable with a conclusive trend while acknowledging that other variables may upset the predictions?

  43. I’ve thought for a few years now that the ice melting and the darker sea absorbing solar energy was having a greater effect than was being recognized… it just seemed like common sense to me, so I’m happy to have a bonafide brainiac confirm my simpleton observation and assumption.

  44. Models, Models Models, ad infinitum, of course the facts on the planet are no increase in temperature for 18 years. Facts will be continued colder temperatures for next 20 or 30 years. It is the Sun people tied to cloud/moisture cover.

  45. If media doesn’t grow a pair and start exposing the geoengineering that’s going on right now, none of that crap you just reported is even going to matter. Be brave, do the right thing, and stop those in power from doing the exact wrong thing. You have the power to make a difference.

  46. Data Contradict Warming Hypothesis: Relative Emissivity Is Not Declining As IPCC Models Predicted!

  47. more censorship of oposing views

  48. devbahadurdongol.blogspot.com | November 11, 2014 at 7:50 pm | Reply

    How do you prove your statements – validity and verifications?
    How do you define GHG?
    CO2 is not a gas? It traps heat means, the gas is an insulator, can be fixed and does not rise up as freely moving molecules to deliver heat to the colder zone? Only applicable to CO2 and not to other gases of the atmosphere?

    Rubbish article. Statements are meant to mislead world. Stop it. Global warming due to gases is impossible

    WHAT ARRHENIUS DID NOT KNOW!

    1. Green house. It requires solid transparent materials to form a green house.
    2. GASES are freely moving molecules.
    3. Gases can’t form green house.
    4. They can’t be fixed to make walls / roof of a structure like ‘green house’.
    5. All matter / gases in Nature can hold Heat, so they can absorb heat like any gas e.g. CO2.
    6. Convection method of heat transmission. Heat is always transmitted from higher to lower temperature.
    7. O2 is 700 times more than CO2.
    8. N2 is 2700 times more than CO2.
    9. CO2 is not a pollutant. We carry the gas in our blood since birth and live throughout
    the life with the gas.
    10. Plants use the gas to prepare food. Then, HOW CAN THE GAS BE A POLLUTANT?
    11. If GW were due to ‘green house effect” (GHE), the upper layer of the Troposphere (our climatic atmosphere) should be warmer than the flat land areas because warm air goes up. So the top of the MT. Everest should be hot zone. The earth would have never been colder than the beginning 4 billion years ago.
    12. Our atmosphere is not closed like a green house.
    13. Our climatic atmosphere (Troposphere) should be always warm as the Sun always shines on the half of the Earth.
    14. It wouldn’t be cold during night (after the sun set and before the sun rise).
    15. Minimum temperature is recorded about half an hour earlier than the sun rise.
    16. We know it is always colder during night than during sunny days.
    17. REFLECTION: gases don’t reflect. They are transparent. Light pass through too small particles.
    18. Materials become opaque when they reflect light.
    19. Every molecule radiates absorbed heat when the surrounding is colder. It absorbs heat when the surrounding is hotter.
    20. Foggy, smoggy, and cloudy days are colder than bright sunny days.
    21. Gases are not layered in the Troposphere; it is a homogenous mixture of gases. If it were layered the heaviest gas, CO2 would be at the bottom not on top. Then animals wouldn’t survive. We need O2 to be alive.
    22. Gases of atmosphere should be still (no breeze, no wind) to be layered. Breezes, winds, hurricane, tornadoes, convection current or any motion thoroughly mixes all the gases.
    23. Molecules of fluids move upwards when heated and downwards when cooled – the convection current.
    24. CO2 is transparent, colorless, odorless, and heaviest gas of the atmosphere. It does not make shadow as clouds do.
    25. If something does not allow going out means does not allow getting in as well. GHE applies only with the solid transparent materials like glasses and plastics not for the fluids (gases and liquids).
    26. Methane is negligible, only traces.
    27. Insulation traps heat partly. Gases alone can’t trap heat. Gases can’t work as an insulator in the open space. Our atmosphere is not insulating the earth. it should be air tight for effective insulation. The clothes we put on, the four walls and roofs etc. work as insulator, lesser the passage for air to pass through in and out the more effective is the insulation.

    # Physical properties of fluids (gases and liquids) and atmosphere don’t support them on GHG idea at all scientifically.
    So they don’t have proofs. My Scientific analysis is 100% proof

    So gases are not responsible for global warming but cooling the earth.

    Only purpose of the Quito protocol (only a propaganda or misinformation, jargon, cant, hoax and so on.) is for monopolizing the industry by the developed rich countries – saying indirectly to the poorer countries to stop industrialization; and, instead they would support the developing world by donations.

    The main reason for global warming is due to the mistake done by human being for explaining the rain cycle wrong way that it occurs by the evaporation of the sea water. If it were so, now-a-days we should have rains more often than in the old days – global warming and expansion of the sea surface, both are favorable for evaporation needed for rain cycle. Sea surface temperature (average 15C) is not hot enough to lift water vapour to form cloud needed for the rain cycle. If that is possible we will have rains all the time, (even during winter we have that temperature in Nepal on the average).

    We are making more and more land areas drier and drier by urbanization – covering land by concretes, black top roads, deforestation, and expanding deserts. So evaporation from the land areas is decreasing, as a result cooling of the land areas is decreasing significantly. Land areas are hotter than sea surface temperature.
    We can control climate or present climate change is reversible just by determining how much land surface area of the earth to keep moist. More the land surface moist, the more rain cycle and cooler earth surface.

    I shall be grateful to you if you could go through my blog for details and share with your friends.

    Ozone depletion is not possible. Ozone as such can’t exist as a layer. It is extremely unstable and heavier than O2. It breaks into oxygen atoms as soon as it forms (if not kept pressurized in a closed container).It is formed when oxygen molecules breaks into atoms with heat of high temperature (UV). Stratosphere is tremendously cold zone and extremely low pressure. Ozone formed breaks down into oxygen atoms as soon as it forms and releases heat. Even at sea level at NTP ozone is unstable. So ozone layer exists only in theory. Intermittently forming of ozone will continue until the oxygen is in the atmosphere and we receive UV from the sun. So ozone depletion is not possible. Ozone formation is a step to return heat back to space.
    It is not ozone that blocks heat but O2 and in the process O3 is formed to release the heat absorbed by O2

    Don’t blame too scarce CFC (and too heavy to reach the stratosphere) for thinning stratosphere. In reality, Millions of jet flights everyday are consuming too much of oxygen of the layer.

  49. Was Jonathan Gruber involved in the study?

  50. They found the missing link!!!! It’s Al Gore.

  51. So the energy changes from short-wave in to long-wave out?

  52. The big LIE of Global Warming, pushed every single day of the week by Gayhoo and the Associated Depressed along with all the left wing media. Give it up, it is a HOAX, a SCAM a complete and BOGUS LIE, we are not buying your crap, Al Gore, Obama and the gang are a bunch of Communists that want to tax us all to death with a new Carbon Tax so they can live as high rollers on the back of all the taxpayers!!!!

  53. Willard Whiteman | November 11, 2014 at 9:03 pm | Reply

    Scientists should just stick with finding Sasquatch.

  54. When did science fiction become science fact?

  55. No heat is trapped in the atmosphere. It eventually makes it out to space. By the way, you can remove 100% of the CO2 added by man and there would be no change in the temperature. Too little to be concerned about.

  56. What surprises me about this story is how little climate scientists seem to understand the basic math. An increase in CO2 impedes the release of heat but that cannot significantly slow it. If it did then global temperatures would run away very quickly, like major changes in weeks or months. Instead the temperature rises until heat is forced through the CO2 at the same rate it is absorbed and then the system stabilizes at the new equilibrium temperature. The temperature changes even if there is no change in power in or out. That is simple negative feedback system math. This does not inspire my confidence in modern climate science.

  57. So another paper that explains away conflicts between the models/ theory and actual measured data. At what point, do we stop trying to make excuses for failures of matching up the theory and empirical data and start to question the theory. For a long time, we could not explain why longwave radiation exiting the atmosphere was not decreasing. Now we just say the albedo of the earth is changing and we are absorbing more shortwave radiation. Problem is, after the sun drops below the horizon and is no longer warming the earth, all that ‘stored’ energy must be released by thermal dynamics laws. The warmer earth will transfer heat to the cooler atmosphere, which creates LONGWAVE radiation, which for the atmpoasphere to be warming, MUST be declining in the upper atmosphere/ space boundary if it is being absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere.

    Stop making excuses for the failures of the theory and models, start looking at modifying the theory to match empirical data.

  58. The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space.

    Later in the article:
    Both of these feedbacks lessen the amount of shortwave radiation that bounces back into space, and the planet warms rapidly at the surface.

    This seems like a typo or a contradiction. Articles like this meant to serve as explanations should be written more clearly.

  59. Another scientist has pushed back against the doom-and-gloom climate change predictions from the United Nations and other governmental agencies.

    Dr. Leslie Woodcock, emeritus professor at the University of Manchester (UK) School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, is a former NASA scientist along with other impressive accomplishments on his distinguished professional resume.

    In an interview, he laughed off man-made climate change as nonsense and a money-making industry for the green lobby, which approaches the subject with a religious fervor. Explained Woodcock:

    “The term ‘climate change’ is meaningless. The Earth’s climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of ‘man-made climate change’ is an unsubstantiated hypothesis [about] our climate [which says it] has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth’s surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences. The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the ‘greenhouse gas’ causes ‘global warming’ — in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent. There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean anything in science, it’s not significant…”

    Added Woodcock:

    Even the term ‘global warming’ does not mean anything unless you give it a time scale. The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s not permanent and it’s not caused by us. Global warming is nonsense.”

    Politicians and journalists — two groups who ordinarily lack any scientific training or background — insist that the global warming debate is settled and there are no dissenting scientists.

    So-called green guru Dr. James Lovelock also questioned the climate change movement (which used to be called global cooling and then global warming). He described the environmental movement as becoming like “a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts.” He added that “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.”

    In perhaps a further contrary development for the climate change adherents, it’s been reported that the polar ice cap is actually expanding rather than contracting: “… In fact, receding Arctic ice rebounded between 2012 and 2013, growing by 29 percent into an unbroken patch more than half the size of Europe and within 5 percent of what it was 30 years ago, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Last month near the South Pole, a Russian ship carrying scientists and tourists traveled to the bottom of the Earth so passengers might document global warming and shrinking ice caps. But the ship got stuck on ice that was thicker than at any time since records started being kept in 1978.”

    Dr. Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder, has also publicly expressed the opinion that “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years… no actual proof, as it is understood in science, actually exists.”

  60. Now how is it possible to find a “missing piece” in absolute, undeniable, irrefutable, settled science?

  61. Earth has begun reactions to the several actions at a distance because of the approach of the third sun of our trinary solar system. Intel circles call it Nemisis and is also known as the destroyer. As it brings about many effects from exposing space radiation by lack of ozone to the surface, To causing the Yangzee river to turn blood red, we experience increased volcanic activity, and increased earthquakes, but these are survivable if you prepare, even though governments will never tell you the truth, nor that it is the reason for all the activites of the globalists in their preparations…& for the obvious demonic reasons.
    From climate gate and Al “they bath in” Gore, to continuity of government bases and agenda 21. It’s all a return to the last time this red dwarf death star had a PASSOVER. It was in the time of the Hebrew exodus. Now for all you smart readers out there, “cause you just couldn’t make this stuff up”, guess how this is connected to the call of the last days prophet, for the ten lost tribes of Ephraim to come home ?? Well, if we had lives that lasted long enough, somebody would say…De Ja Vu. There’s a lot more to this story than the tier two science in this article I can tell you that.

  62. Hi, I am designing pro environmental and low-energy buildings. Building sector consume about 40% all energy (and is involved in 30% of CO2 emmisions) This is a great article. Kind regards

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