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Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

science.org

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Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#131

Post by mextrezza »

hollerith wrote: post #126
ChainOfFools wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what's wrong about OP's use of the term in the context they are using it. In the context given the number of days in the denominated unit is 1. Which means as dividend or factor it is going to give you the same result. Again in this context watts per day is much more intuitive for most people too reason about.

I don't mean to be rude, but anyone who thinks watts/day and watt days are ever interchangeable will have severe problems reasoning about anything electricity-related or energy-related. It is akin to thinking that "2 apples" and "an apple divided by 2" are interchangeable because both expressions involve the concept of an apple and the number 2.

> over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day

i'd definitely rewrite it myself, but it's also a correct way to specify that there are no days of the week, year, or whatever (solar cycle) in which the terawattage is below 170k. Not very intermittent, is it!

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#132

Post by hollerith »

mextrezza wrote: post #131
hollerith wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be rude, but anyone who thinks watts/day and watt days are ever interchangeable will have severe problems reasoning about anything electricity-related or energy-related. It is akin to thinking that "2 apples" and "an apple divided by 2" are interchangeable because both expressions involve the concept of an apple and the number 2.

> over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day i'd definitely rewrite it myself, but it's also a correct way to specify that there are no days of the week, year, or whatever (solar cycle) in which the terawattage is below 170k. Not very intermittent, is it!

I deleted the part of my comment you quoted. Sorry about that.

I agree with you, FWIW.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#133

Post by DennisP »

jijijijij wrote: post #123
DennisP wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious proposal to do that with a fleet of wind-powered ships, seeding low-lying clouds with seawater. Wikipedia cites a cost of $5 billion/year for a large deployment, and a maximum potential of offsetting two-thirds of our current anthropogenic warming. If we stopped doing it then things would be back to "normal" in a couple weeks. There would be local weather changes, but less than what's caused by unab…

IMO implementing solar shielding measures, while still pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a recipe for a rapid climate apocalypse, an epic dilemma, probably worse than adapting to progressive climate worsening. We've just got a taste of it, when we realized the sulfur contamination by crude oil burning cargo ships was unknowingly off-setting climate effects by solar shielding, because cleaning up emissio…

> chemistry happening in the upper atmosphere

That's not a concern for the idea I linked, which restricts itself to the lower atmosphere, using nothing more than seawater.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#134

Post by hintymad »

A naive question: why is global warming bad for the earth, especially for the environmentalists? I mean I get it that it will be bad for human, but the biosphere thrived in much warmer pre-historical ages, right? Or rain forests still have the highest biodiversity nowadays, right? For people who hate human activities to preserve a thriving earth, wouldn't they welcome global warming?

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#135

Post by spott »

hintymad wrote: post #134

A naive question: why is global warming bad for the earth, especially for the environmentalists? I mean I get it that it will be bad for human, but the biosphere thrived in much warmer pre-historical ages, right? Or rain forests still have the highest biodiversity nowadays, right? For people who hate human activities to preserve a thriving earth, wouldn't they welcome global warming?

On an ecological scale, it isn’t the heat that is a problem, it is the speed it is increasing.

In the past, temperature changes have been slow enough for evolution and ecological systems to adapt, but now it is happening fast enough that these systems can’t adapt fast enough.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#136

Post by Aerroon »

amazingamazing wrote: post #60
TheBigSalad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could solve this problem in a few years with technology if we really wanted to.

Not without pain, nope. Reality is the world’s rich are the culprits. If they stop consuming problem solved. No amount of angry downvotes will change this basic fact. People will learn to live modestly, voluntarily or by force.

Just to be clear though: "the world's rich" here doesn't mean "billionaire CEOs" that a lot of people think of. It means the average American and European.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#137

Post by winter_blue »

perihelions wrote: post #96

(.pdf) https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3974146/v1/df9... ( "Oceanic cloud trends during the satellite era and their radiative signatures" )

I just noticed that the author of the paper has a @nasa email address, and I feel sad thinking that this kind of research won't be happening anymore soon, because Republicans don't like the truth and prefer to lie / deny / obscure the truth about climate change, rather than face it sincerely head-on.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#138

Post by amazingamazing »

Aerroon wrote: post #136
amazingamazing wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not without pain, nope. Reality is the world’s rich are the culprits. If they stop consuming problem solved. No amount of angry downvotes will change this basic fact. People will learn to live modestly, voluntarily or by force.

Just to be clear though: "the world's rich" here doesn't mean "billionaire CEOs" that a lot of people think of. It means the average American and European.

Yup

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#139

Post by gmuslera »

hintymad wrote: post #134

A naive question: why is global warming bad for the earth, especially for the environmentalists? I mean I get it that it will be bad for human, but the biosphere thrived in much warmer pre-historical ages, right? Or rain forests still have the highest biodiversity nowadays, right? For people who hate human activities to preserve a thriving earth, wouldn't they welcome global warming?

Speed. Adaptation to change takes time, fast changes lead to mass extinctions.

And we are not in a stable situation, we don’t know wha will be the new normal, nor when it will be reached, and finding more positive feedback loops like this one put everything in the extreme side of things.

Re: Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

#140

Post by themullet »

munchler wrote: post #24
themullet wrote: post #21

It's worth noting Neptune clouds are doing similar due to the suns 11 year solar cycle. https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/neptunes-disappeari... AI summary; "Yes, astronomers have observed that Neptune's prominent clouds have largely disappeared, and NASA scientists suggest this phenomenon is linked to the sun's 11-year solar cycle and its impact on Neptune's atmosphere"

Not the same thing. According to this article, Earth's cloud cover has been shrinking for decades.

The article has 1.5% per decade and that's over the past 2 decades, which could be accounted for by the measuring point, especially with an 11 year solar cycle.
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