One of the most frustrating aspects of covering science and technology news is the continuous media blackout on reports showing the impact of geology and the Sun on the complex behavior of the Earth’s climate.
For example, Science just published an article claiming that the reduction of sulfur-particulate pollution from ships diminished the cloud coverage and resulted in even more global warming than the dreaded fossil-fuel-generated carbon dioxide generated by itself.
The scariest part of the story: The “experts” toy with the possibility of some ill-advised geoengineering based on pet theories.
Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships’ sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule “is a big natural experiment,” says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We’re changing the clouds.”By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster, several new studies have found. That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions. It’s as if the world suddenly lost the cooling effect from a fairly large volcanic eruption each year, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University.The natural experiment created by the IMO rules is providing a rare opportunity for climate scientists to study a geoengineering scheme in action—although it is one that is working in the wrong direction. Indeed, one such strategy to slow global warming, called marine cloud brightening, would see ships inject salt particles back into the air, to make clouds more reflective. In Diamond’s view, the dramatic decline in ship tracks is clear evidence that humanity could cool off the planet significantly by brightening the clouds. “It suggests pretty strongly that if you wanted to do it on purpose, you could,” he says.
Meanwhile, the sun has blasted out the highest-energy radiation ever recorded, which is raising questions for solar physics.
In a record-breaking discovery, scientists detected our very own sun emitting an extraordinary amount of gamma rays — wavelengths of light known to carry the most energy of any other wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum. This is quite a big deal as it marks the highest-energy radiation to ever be documented coming from our planet’s host star.Something like 1 trillion electron volts, to be exact.”After looking at six years’ worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays,” Meher Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University and co-author of a new paper about the findings released Wednesday (Aug. 3), said in a statement. “When we first saw it, we were like, ‘We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies.'”Upon deliberation, however, the team realized that such brightness definitely existed — and it was simply due to the sheer amount of gamma rays the sun seemed to be spitting out.”The sun is more surprising than we knew,” Nisa said.
It’s heartening to see a scientist admit the sun offers surprises. Perhaps they will eventually consider the enormous role our star has on heat and light levels, which impact important global climate factors…like temperature.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall I note studies reviewed by Watts Up With That indicating the Hunga-Tonga Volcanic eruption may have generated enough water vapor (a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide) to raise global temperature. The European Space Agency confirmed NASA’s finding, then assessed that the eruption was responsible for “the unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13%.”
Further analysis of the numbers confirms these assessments.
From a recent publication, “Global perturbation of stratospheric water and aerosol burden by Hunga eruption” bold mine:The eruption of the submarine Hunga volcano in January 2022 was associated with a powerful blast that injected volcanic material to altitudes up to 58 km. From a combination of various types of satellite and ground-based observations supported by transport modeling, we show evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% as compared to climatological levels, and a 5-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load, the highest in the last three decades.
I guess it’s hard to extract money and power by regulating underwater volcanoes. Hence, the media is disinterested in this information.
Life began on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. Until “experts” are willing to identify all the players in Earth’s climate, for the sake of continued life on this planet, I urge a ban on geoengineering on a global scale.
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