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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

Ice Age! Ice Age!


41 posted on 12/21/2015 9:36:27 PM PST by TBP (Obama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: immadashell

http://m.livescience.com/53152-does-cleaner-air-worsen-global-warming.html


42 posted on 12/21/2015 9:40:41 PM PST by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: Swordmaker; Ernest_at_the_Beach

ROTFLOL

You gotta see this one, Ernest!


43 posted on 12/21/2015 10:31:33 PM PST by TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason and rule of law. Prepare!)
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To: Swordmaker

They don’t know what they don’t know.


44 posted on 12/21/2015 10:49:56 PM PST by Mike Darancette (CA the sanctuary state for stupid.)
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To: editor-surveyor
>> What caused our last Ice age? <<

Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2020 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades.

The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age....and lasted 400 years.

Good luck surviving with no coal powered electricity

45 posted on 12/22/2015 12:01:15 AM PST by spokeshave (MDSM = Mentally Discombobulated Screaming Media)
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To: spokeshave

What we have here is a lack of Sunspots

46 posted on 12/22/2015 12:15:16 AM PST by spokeshave (MDSM = Mentally Discombobulated Screaming Media)
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To: Swordmaker

Back to Global Cooling. It’s soo predictable! So 70s!


47 posted on 12/22/2015 6:58:38 AM PST by CptnObvious
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To: Swordmaker

bkmk


48 posted on 12/22/2015 10:06:50 AM PST by AllAmericanGirl44
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To: immadashell
This story is from a United Kingdom newspaper article. The chances of a similar article appearing in a U.S. Paper?.

For those of you listening to Rush Limbaugh today he made this exact point 10 minutes ago.

49 posted on 12/22/2015 10:32:42 AM PST by immadashell (The inmates are running the asylum)
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To: spokeshave
.
You are correct WRT sun spots.

As to the cooling in the “little ice age” it was nothing like the real ice age.

During the actual ice age ocean levels were 100 feet or more below today's level.

Check out Ixce Age Civilizations (I have this E-book) and Dancing from Genesis

50 posted on 12/22/2015 12:34:04 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: editor-surveyor

John Casey is a NASA scientist who shares the minority opinion of Global Cooling instead of Global warming. John Casey has some Youtube videos on the subject of the coming Ice Age. The Ice Age comes every 206 years. John Casey says that, “The Ice Age occurs naturally and nothing can be done by humans to change this cycle.” The Elites knew an Ice Age was coming. Adjustments for Global Warming are nonsense to make us jump through hoops.
The Antarctic ice field is growing so fast that scientists cannot supply a meteorological station that was located at the farthest end of the Continent. The southern hemisphere is becoming uninhabitable.
The Artic Circle has stopped growing because the Arctic circle and the Northern coasts of the North American Continent and Siberia have merged with the Arctic into one giant ice field. The Northwest passage is gone!


51 posted on 01/11/2016 2:54:57 AM PST by citizen352 (Anyone may reply or ignore as hey see fit)
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To: citizen352

.
Global cooling is the resounding majority opinion among physical scientists.


52 posted on 01/11/2016 9:23:53 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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