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Solar 2006 Climate Science Presentations Now Online
August 21, 2006
We got a glimpse of what climate scientists who are practicing
science are saying at the Solar 2006 Conference last month. In a
nutshell, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is higher now than
at any time in the last million years. The amount of solar energy
now being absorbed by the planet exceeds the heat energy being
radiated to space by almost one Watt per square meter.
For millions of years, global temperatures have risen
and fallen in lock step with levels of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. See the data presented by James
Hansen, head of the NASA Institute for Space Studies, at the Solar
2006 Conference plenary titled The Threat to the Planet: Actions
Required to Avert Dangerous Climate Change:
http://cres-energy.org/documents/meetings/denver_slides12july06.pdf
When global temperatures fall a couple of degrees,
the Earth goes into an ice age. Ice sheets expand across the
continents and sea levels fall. When the Earth warms a few degrees,
the ice sheets melt and sea levels rise. Now global temperatures are
rising and the great ice sheets over Greenland and Antarctica are
melting. Large climate changes have happened on Earth rather quickly
in the past within a few decades during warm cycles because
melting happens much more quickly than ice buildup that depends on
snowfall. These melting data, and the implications for people who
live on coastlines, are important enough that the Science magazine
has devoted two issues to this subject this year:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/311/5768/1673/" |
