Re: While we're trading conspiracy theories, is anyone paying attention to global warming?
- From: alanmc95210@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 24 Mar 2006 06:36:18 -0800
john fernbach wrote:
Just wondering.
It might turn out to be important. Maybe even more important than
human beings fighting
over whether we're black / white/ Hispanic/ Asian / Christian/ Jewish /
Muslim / atheist / Buddhist / Gay / Straight etc. etc.
Maybe this will give you food for thought- A. McIntire
"Russian blames global warming on 1908 Tunguska Event
A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the
University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in
the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing
to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the
apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over
the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that
are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning
of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount
of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high
altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of
warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.
Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change
by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight
decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies
in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in
temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the
industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise,
which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different
cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a
remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.
The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought
to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's
atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen
one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of
dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more
than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion
would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of
atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the
trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.
Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect".
Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without
the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat
radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse
gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a
proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to
rise.
Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power
stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon
dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are
all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found
naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of
these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the
beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the
gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global
warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and
even reducing CO2 emissions.
However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov
and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to
Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in
the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant
changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs
the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human
activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global
average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.
The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was
hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall.
Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue,
explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the
most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water
vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron
grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach
the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an
insulating greenhouse layer.
Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels.
According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in
'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities
do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful
greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human
activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance,
which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between
evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."
As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural
phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could
seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent
so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in
the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just
such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which
global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the
twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this
mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is
needed to provide a definitive answer.
From University of Leicester
Posted in energy & environment | login or register to post comments |
2012 reads »
Submitted by BJS on Tue, 2006-03-14 06:10. "
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