Thursday, March 02, 2006

Global Warming and Clouds

Yes, that's right - clouds.

A BBC article today cites a Cambridge University professor that says contrails from jet aircraft combined with increased cloudiness from global warming will render Earth telescopes useless by 2050.

I know what you're thinking - is there any evidence for this cloudiness increase prediction? In short - no. In fact, a quick Google search shows that although cloudiness may increase with supposed man-made "global warming," these clouds would reflect and dissipate more of the sun's radiation and actually cool the planet.

All I can figure is that any scientist that wants to be published or reported on by a media outlet has to connect global warming (no facts needed) to any catastrophic world problem or negative change. If I was a professor at an Ivy League college in America and said that global warming was going to kill all kittens in 40 years due to the poor little kitties' inability to handle increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere I too could be published in a BBC article (again, no facts needed).

I think I'm going to move to Antarctica where 1) it is sunny, 2) it will be about 60 degrees in 20 years, and 3) no kittens will be able to survive. See you all there!

1 comment:

The Big Ticket said...

An additional point to this foolish speculated 'catastrophe' is the fact that the end result is not a big deal! Now I'm no expert astrophysicist, but I do often enjoy going online and looking at the latest photographs/documentation from deep space and the large majority of it is fed down to Earth by Hubbell or other high-powered satellite telescopes. In another half-century I would assume the necessity of observatories on the surface of the Earth being able to rival or surpass that of the *already better* orbiting telescopes wouldn't exist. Although the movie Armageddon taught us that the most amateur of space enthusiasts can discover a species-threatening disaster and save the world, I think the experts should stick to validating global warming claims rather than toss out 'alarming' tid bits such as this one.