UPPERWEATHER.COM _{-Meteorological Musings}

I was reading an article today, Earthlog: Climate change boomerang, that was pretty bad.

What scientists mean by global warming, though, is the sun's radiation being trapped near the Earth's surface by greenhouse gases. This has been going on for millions of years and is now happening at a faster rate thanks to rising emissions of fossil fuels.

What? Does any of that make any sense to anyone? Luckily, There were comments that talked about it, and made me laugh.

"What scientists mean by global warming, though, is the sun's radiation being trapped near the Earth's surface by greenhouse gases. This has been going on for millions of years and is now happening at a faster rate thanks to rising emissions of fossil fuels."

No Charles, that isn't what scientists mean by global warming; indeed the paragraph I've quoted is scientifically illiterate. That's what you get when you move into science pontification from an education in, er, english and philosophy.

One good way to think of the C02 issue is that changing the makeup of the atmosphere changes the Earth's emissivity, and thus in simple terms a different temperature is required to re-radiate incident radiation from the Sun as per the Stefan-Boltzmann law. Your statement makes it sound as if the Earth has been storing energy for "millions of years" (the Earth is billions of years old, FYI) and that somehow this has "got worse" of late. Piffle.

Are there any Environment Editors or Environment Journalists out there who have so much as an O Level in one of the sciences? Posted by Ian B on May 2, 2008 5:16 PM Report this comment

Good Job Ian B!

Then came the real knee slapper. I have been wanting to comment on this subject for a while. How funny it is that Global Warming is taking a break for the next ten years. None of the Climate Models ever caught it. I guess they just could not ignore the drop in temperatures since 1998 any longer. This comment says it all in a great way for me.

Thank God, according to Charles Glover, that GW (not climate change?) is back. I thought for one moment we were going to get some good news. I understand it will be back in 2015. Any chance of knowing in which week - so that we can organise our holidays. Thanks. PS I haven't heard anything about GW being postponed to 2015 from the BBC. Posted by Paul Totherleg on May 2, 2008 4:33 PM

Yes, Paul Totherleg says it all. I want to know the week also!!