Industry excuses for climate change are bonkers.

1. It’s Earth orbit cycles, known as Milankovic cycles, that pull the earth into and out of glaciation. They take about 100,000 years to move between elliptical and circular, however, they are clearly responsible for the rapid warming in the last 40 years which is happening ten times faster than ever seen before.

2. It’s the reversing of the magnetic polarity* of the Earth, which occurs over 1000s of years that is actually responsible for rapid warming since the 1980s, ten times faster than ever seen before, .

   

3. It’s solar activity…which actually declined in the 1970s though global temperature kept increasing.

   

4. It’s either measuring stations being near to cities or measuring stations being moved (because they were near to cities) that accounts for the warming. However, the Artic is the most rapidly warming area and the oceans account for 90% of it, neither of which suffer from urbanisation.

5. The fact that predictions made in 1859 of anthropogenic climate change causing winters and nights to heat much faster are coming true, now means, illogically, that it’s not anthropogenic.

6. Look we have some coloured graphs and 3d images.

7. It doesn’t really matter. It’s getting warmer, the ice is melting, droughts and floods are happening but because it’s mostly affecting the Global South and the poor we’re not that worried.

8. Politicians are trying to control us with a climate scam…except that politicians have abandoned all the ‘green crap’.

9. It’s sudden and unexplained ice melting..caused by increased temperatures, leading to less albedo and more increases in temperatures. It’s sudden and unexplained changes in currents and cloud cover*…caused flipping in ocean currents or by co2 rising and warming the ocean leading to changes in cloud patterns. Changes in ocean oscillations can be used by co2 climate deniers to blame climate change on and to show there is no climate change.

10. Because scientists self-admittedly can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen nothing they say is true and human made climate change is a fraud.

11. There’s nothing to worry about because forcings of CO2 are small…though they have large feedback effects.

12. It’s the teeny weeny tiny bit closer the tilted Northern pole is to the sun (which is very far) that explains the four times greater increase in temperatures there than in the Southern pole….it’s actually the sea ice melting faster that the land ice, both due to co2 emissions.

13. It’s various geo-engineering projects.. though these are unlikely to cause the specific and predicted changes and would probably cause albedo and therefore cooling.

14. It’s weather modification not the climate crisis. Hurricane Helene was deliberately targeted at Republican states so that they couldn’t go out and vote…I’m saying nothing.

    I know exactly where this is coming from but I no longer think that people reposting it are unwitting.

    🐒

* If you look at satellite images of the planet, you will notice the clouds in weather-systems appear bright. Cloud-tops have a high albedo but it varies depending on the type of cloud. Wispy high clouds do not reflect as much incoming sunshine as do dense low-level cloud-decks.

Since the early 2000s scientists have been able to measure the amount of energy reflected back to space through sophisticated instruments aboard satellites. Recently published data indicate planetary albedo, although highly variable, is showing an overall slow decrease. The main cause is thought to be warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean leading to less coverage of those reflective low-level cloud-decks, but it's early days yet.

Albedo is an important cog in the climate gearbox. It appears to be in a long-term slow decline but varies a lot over shorter periods. That 'noise' makes it unscientific to cite shorter observation-periods. Conclusive climatological trend-statements are generally based on at least 30 years of observations, not the last half-decade.

"Clouds are very pesky for climate scientists..."

Karen M. Shell, Associate Professor, College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, writing about cloud feedback for RealClimate.

Earth's albedo is the fraction of shortwave solar radiation that the planet reflects back out to space. It is one of three key factors that determine Earth's climate, alongside the evolution of both solar irradiance and the greenhouse effect. Back in the 1990's, the evolution of Earth's albedo was by far the least understood of the three key factors. To address that uncertainty, it was proposed to measure Earth's albedo continuously over at least one full solar cycle. The long data series thereby obtained also helped scientists to explore potential correlations between varying solar activity and albedo change.

Thus was born the Earthshine project. It began in the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California in the mid-1990's. Measuring Earth's albedo was done by making observations of the illumination of the dark side of the Moon at night by light reflected off the dayside Earth. This method was pioneered in 1928 by French astronomer Andre-Louis Danjon (1890-1967).

Trial Earthshine observations were made in 1994–1995 and regular, sustained data-collection commenced in 1998. Data-collection continued until the end of 2017, representing some 1,500 nights spread over two decades.

Fig. 1: When the Moon appears as a thin crescent in the twilight skies of Earth it is often possible to see that the rest of the disc is also faintly glowing. This phenomenon is called earthshine. It is due to sunlight reflecting off the Earth and illuminating the lunar surface. After reflection from Earth the colours in the light, shown as a rainbow in this picture, are significantly changed. By observing earthshine astronomers can study the properties of light reflected from Earth as if it were an exoplanet and search for signs of life. The reflected light is also strongly polarised and studying the polarisation as well as the intensity at different colours allows for much more sensitive tests for the presence of life. Image and caption credit: ESO/L. Calçada.

In 2005, a new automated telescope was installed in a small, dedicated dome at the BBSO. The two telescopes, new and old, were then run together from September 2006 through to January 2007, for calibration purposes. Observations made with the more accurate automated telescope were then made through to the end of 2017.

Since the early 2000s, scientists have also been measuring planetary albedo with a series of satellite-based sensors known as Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System, or CERES. These instruments employ scanning radiometers in order to measure both the shortwave solar energy reflected by the planet - albedo in other words – and the longwave thermal energy emitted by it. The overall aim is to monitor Earth's ongoing energy imbalance caused by our copious greenhouse gas emissions.

The Earthshine project and the CERES satellite-based measurements (2001-present day) both record great variation in albedo. That is as might be expected, because cloudiness is such an important albedo-controlling factor and varies so much. However, a slightly decreasing trend was detected (fig. 1, Goode et al. 2021).

Figure 2: Earthshine annual mean albedo anomalies 1998–2017 expressed as reflected flux in Wm. The error bars are shown as a shaded grey area and the dashed black line shows a linear fit to the Earthshine annual reflected energy flux anomalies. The CERES annual albedo anomalies 2001–2019, also expressed in Wm, are shown in blue. A linear fit to the CERES data (2001–2019) is shown with a blue dashed line. Average error bars for CERESmeasurements are of the order of 0.2 Wm/2. From Goode et al. 2021.

The data cover two solar maxima, in 2002 and 2014, plus a solar minimum in 2009. Recorded variations in albedo show no correlation with the 11-year solar cycle, the cosmic ray flux or any other solar activity indices. Therefore, the data do not support any argument for detectable effects of solar activity on the Earth's albedo over the past two decades.

In comparison with the CERES data, both show a downturn in recent years, even though they cover slightly different parts of the Earth. To put some numbers on things, in the earthshine data the albedo has decreased by about 0.5 Wm, while for CERES data, 2001–2017, the decrease is about 1.5 Wm. CERES data shows the sharp downturn to have begun in 2015.

The explanation put forward for the difference in albedo decrease between Earthshine and CERES has been further investigated and calibration-drift, a known issue with satellites, has been discounted. Instead, a recent and appreciable increase in sea surface temperatures off the west coasts of North and South America has been cited. The increase has led to reduced overlying low level cloud-deck cover. That would certainly cause significant albedo-decrease. The sea surface warming is attributed to a flip in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), beginning in 2014 and peaking during the 2015–2017 period. It began to decline before the end of the decade.

However, a lot of this is very new, as pointed out by Gavin Schmidt at Realclimate in 2022. The role played by, for example, aerosols is not quantified in any great detail yet. But qualitatively, these developments demonstrate how impacts to the long-wave radiation combined with cloud feedbacks can lead to big shifts in short-wave reflectivity. Needless to say, this complex area is the firm focus of much ongoing investigation and will be for the foreseeable future.

*The rise in temperature has not been caused by the Earth’s magnetic field flipping. ‘In the past 200 years, Earth’s magnetic field has weakened about nine percent on a global average. Some people cite this as “evidence” a pole reversal is imminent, but scientists have no reason to believe so. In fact, paleomagnetic studies show the field is about as strong as it’s been in the past 100,000 years, and is twice as intense as its million-year average. While some scientists estimate the field’s strength might completely decay in about 1,300 years, the current weakening could stop at any time.’ Magnetic north may well be changing since it’s discovery in 1831, but so have other many other things not accused of causing global warming. As it has only been recorded for 200 years there is no reason to believe that changes in magnetic north began with the industrial revolution.

‘During a pole reversal, the magnetic field weakens, but it doesn’t completely disappear. The magnetosphere, together with Earth’s atmosphere, continue protecting Earth from cosmic rays and charged solar particles, though there may be a small amount of particulate radiation that makes it down to Earth’s surface’. If the sun’s radiation was causing the warming we would expect it during days and summers, not what is actually happening; of nights and winters warming faster than days and summers. There is neither a correlation of warming and cooling with acceleration and deceleration of magnetic north (which moves about alot), just a coincidental change in one direction. Nor is there a theory of causation.

The atmosphere is not ferrous; ‘There’s no known physical mechanism capable of connecting weather conditions at Earth’s surface with electromagnetic currents in space.’

‘Solar storms and their electromagnetic interactions only impact Earth’s ionosphere, which extends from the lowest edge of the mesosphere (about 31 miles or 50 kilometers above Earth’s surface) to space, around 600 miles (965 kilometers) above the surface. They have no impact on Earth’s troposphere or lower stratosphere, where Earth’s surface weather, and subsequently its climate, originate.’

‘Plant and animal fossils from the period of the last major pole reversal don’t show any big changes. Deep ocean sediment samples indicate glacial activity was stable. In fact, geologic and fossil records from previous reversals show nothing remarkable, such as doomsday events or major extinctions.’