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Climate change shock: Burning fossil fuels 'COOLS planet', says NASA
Express UK ^ | December 21, 2015 | By JON AUSTIN

Posted on 12/21/2015 7:02:17 PM PST by Swordmaker

BURNING fossil fuels and cutting down trees causes global COOLING, a shock new NASA study has found.

Major theories about what causes temperatures to rise have been thrown into doubt after NASA found the Earth has cooled in areas of heavy industrialization where more trees have been lost and more fossil fuel burning takes place.

Environmentalists have long argued the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and for other uses is responsible for global warming and predicted temperature increases because of the high levels of carbon dioxide produced - which causes the global greenhouse effect.

While the findings did not dispute the effects of carbon dioxide on global warming, they found aerosols - also given off by burning fossil fuels - actually cool the local environment, at least temporarily.

The research was carried out to see if current climate change models for calculating future temperatures were taking into account all factors and were accurate.

A NASA spokesman said: "To quantify climate change, researchers need to know the Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of Earth.

"Both values are projected global mean surface temperature changes in response to doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations but on different timescales.

"TCR is characteristic of short-term predictions, up to a century out, while ECS looks centuries further into the future, when the entire climate system has reached equilibrium and temperatures have stabilized."

The spokesman said it was "well known" that aerosols such as those emitted in volcanic eruptions and power stations, act to cool Earth, at least temporarily, by reflecting solar radiation away from the planet.

He added: "In a similar fashion, land use changes such as deforestation in northern latitudes result in bare land that increases reflected sunlight."

Kate Marvel, a climatologist at GISS and the paper’s lead author, said the results showed the "complexity" of estimating future global temperatures.

She said: "Take sulfate aerosols, which are created from burning fossil fuels and contribute to atmospheric cooling.

"They are more or less confined to the northern hemisphere, where most of us live and emit pollution.

"There's more land in the northern hemisphere, and land reacts quicker than the ocean does to these atmospheric changes.

"Because earlier studies do not account for what amounts to a net cooling effect for parts of the northern hemisphere, predictions for TCR and ECS have been lower than they should be."

The study found existing models for climate change had been too simplistic and did not account for these factors.

The spokesman said: "There have been many attempts to determine TCR and ECS values based on the history of temperature changes over the last 150 years and the measurements of important climate drivers, such as carbon dioxide.

"As part of that calculation, researchers have relied on simplifying assumptions when accounting for the temperature impacts of climate drivers other than carbon dioxide, such as tiny particles in the atmosphere known as aerosols, for example.

Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York and a co-author on the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said: "The assumptions made to account for these drivers are too simplistic and result in incorrect estimates of TCR and ECS.

"The problem with that approach is that it falls way short of capturing the individual regional impacts of each of those variables," he said, adding that only within the last ten years has there been enough available data on aerosols to abandon the simple assumption and instead attempt detailed calculations.

But, rather than being good news, NASA has concluded the lack of taking these factors into account means existing climate change models have underestimated at the future impact on global temperatures will be.

NASA researchers at GISS accomplished a first ever feat by calculating the temperature impact of each of these variables -- greenhouse gases, natural and manmade aerosols, ozone concentrations, and land use changes -- based on historical observations from 1850 to 2005 using a massive ensemble of computer simulations.

The spokesman said: "Analysis of the results showed that these climate drivers do not necessarily behave like carbon dioxide, which is uniformly spread throughout the globe and produces a consistent temperature response; rather, each climate driver has a particular set of conditions that affects the temperature response of Earth.

"Because earlier studies do not account for what amounts to a net cooling effect for parts of the northern hemisphere, predictions for TCR and ECS have been lower than they should be.

"This means that Earth's climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide -- or atmospheric carbon dioxide's capacity to affect temperature change -- has been underestimated, according to the study."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws its TCR estimate from earlier research, places the future estimate rise at 1.8 degrees F (1.0 degree C).

But the new NASA study dovetails with a GISS study published last year that puts the TCR value at 3.0 degrees F (1.0 degees C).

Mr Schmidt said: "If you've got a systematic underestimate of what the greenhouse gas-driven change would be, then you're systematically underestimating what's going to happen in the future when greenhouse gases are by far the dominant climate driver."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aerosols; agw; climatechange; coal; fossilfuels; gas; giss; globalcooling; globalwarming; ipcc; nasa; oil
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To: Swordmaker

Does this mean we can go back to the ‘WE’RE ALL GONNA FREEZE TO DEATH!’ paranoia? I miss that.


21 posted on 12/21/2015 7:50:44 PM PST by uglybiker (nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-BATMAN!)
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To: Swordmaker

Bkmrk


22 posted on 12/21/2015 7:51:19 PM PST by morphing libertarian
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To: BenLurkin

It is no joke. That is the future as seen by elites. Perhaps a little exaggeration. After all there will be a need for Indian enginners to design toilets and the brushes that scrub them.


23 posted on 12/21/2015 7:52:05 PM PST by free from tyranny
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To: Swordmaker

WOW. We all heard the same things in the late 70s. Aquanet hairspray and coal dust were going to block the sun.


24 posted on 12/21/2015 7:54:04 PM PST by Organic Panic
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To: Swordmaker

So, between all this global warming and all the global cooling, cancelling each other out, we’re really suffering from “Global sameness”

WE’RE ALL GONNA... nothing?


25 posted on 12/21/2015 7:54:09 PM PST by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate "Republicans Freed the Slaves Month")
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To: umgud

.
>> “What caused our last Ice age?” <<

The only ice age we have ever had was caused by the increased precipitation from the hot oceans that remained after the Genesis judgement. (a giant global El Ni~o)


26 posted on 12/21/2015 7:55:23 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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27 posted on 12/21/2015 7:58:51 PM PST by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: umgud
What caused our last Ice age? Why did it melt? SUV's? Coal plants? BBQ's?

Mastodon Farts?

28 posted on 12/21/2015 8:00:12 PM PST by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue....)
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To: Swordmaker
First we're warming.
Now we're cooling.
Now we're warming
Now we're cooling
Cooling. Warming. Cooling. Warming, cooling, warming ....
Sounds like normal weather to me.
29 posted on 12/21/2015 8:13:14 PM PST by StormEye
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To: Swordmaker
The article is claiming that there is now a well-understood mechanism which can mask global warming in the short-term and that this mechanism has always been in place. Their conclusion is that global warming is thus EVEN WORSE than they said before this and we're really in for it when the short-term effects disappear and this much higher warming appears.

There is absolutely nothing that can happen in our future which won't support their justification for removing all of our freedoms.

None of this negates the fact that so-called greenhouse global warming predicts that the upper atmosphere over the equator must heat up. It isn't heating up. That means that there is NO greenhouse effect.

30 posted on 12/21/2015 8:16:07 PM PST by William Tell
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To: Swordmaker

Mammoth farts is what I was thinking.

Hugh and series.


31 posted on 12/21/2015 8:22:35 PM PST by pax_et_bonum (Never Forget the Seals of Extortion 17 - and God Bless America)
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To: StormEye

Or menopause.


32 posted on 12/21/2015 8:23:41 PM PST by pax_et_bonum (Never Forget the Seals of Extortion 17 - and God Bless America)
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To: Swordmaker

It’s the newest eye of newt in the model. Since the other factors were warming their model up way too fast, they had to find something that might cool it down.

How does any of this speculation even manage to approach what we used to know as science?

Science was already departing into hand waving territory when it figured on an evolution having no planning and no miracle. But that’s tame compared to this.


33 posted on 12/21/2015 8:30:02 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Swordmaker

This story is from a United Kingdom newspaper article. The chances of a similar article appearing in a U.S. Paper?...less than one tenth of one percent.


34 posted on 12/21/2015 8:32:43 PM PST by immadashell (The inmates are running the asylum)
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To: cuban leaf
Fat is bad for you. No, it’s GOOD...

Eggs, what about eggs?

35 posted on 12/21/2015 8:33:31 PM PST by GingisK
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To: William Tell

The hornswoggling side of this is that it isn’t subject to testability. Give us the most cockamamie scientific theory you want, and the science of old would accept it, but only if it was good science — we could reproduce it with observations if not live in the field.

Someone should put a memorial stone up for science. We remember it so fondly.


36 posted on 12/21/2015 8:33:56 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Swordmaker

Bookmark.


37 posted on 12/21/2015 9:04:01 PM PST by aquila48
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To: Swordmaker
while ECS looks centuries further into the future, when the entire climate system has reached equilibrium and temperatures have stabilized."

They expect the "climate system" to stabilize? Really? Are they pretending the sun can settle down and play nice or no apparent reason? That is, without going dead?

38 posted on 12/21/2015 9:04:28 PM PST by piasa
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To: Swordmaker
To a totalitarian Progressive, the great thing about Climate Change® is that it can be whatever you need it to be.
39 posted on 12/21/2015 9:10:17 PM PST by IncPen (Not one single patriot in Washington, DC.)
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To: Swordmaker

The game is to tax combustable carbon no matter what.

Global temperatures have been roughly level for almost two decades - they won’t stay that way indefinitely, since the climate is dynamic.

If those global temperatures start going up soon, it’s the greenhouse effect and they resurrect the global warming hysteria - the only solution will be to tax carbon fuels.

If those global temperatures start to fall, they’ve just introduced a way to cover their bases - the only solution will be to tax carbon fuels.

And since coal, gas and petroleum are the only practical large scale energy sources for the forseeable future, they justify more tax revenue no matter what happens.


40 posted on 12/21/2015 9:11:21 PM PST by Stosh
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