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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: miraje who wrote (13188)	5/31/2007 2:16:46 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36921

The British Glenn Beck. Give them each 50 more points in IQ and they will be all the way up to 75.

To: miraje who wrote (13188)	5/31/2007 2:38:20 PM
From: mistermj	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36921

Do you really want to stump up your money to pour it into a Black Hole of Green Taxes governments based upon computer-generated apocalyptic visions? I think many of the greenies would still want to do that. It's not so much about climate as it is feeling good about braking or "breaking" capitalism.

To: miraje who wrote (13188)	6/1/2007 3:19:22 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 36921

Moon might be best place to study Earth's climate 16:46 31 May 2007 environment.newscientist.com What is the best place to study the Earth's climate? The Moon, according to one US researcher. Shoapeng Huang, at the University of Wisconsin, has got hold of temperature records taken by instruments that were left on the Moon's surface in 1971 by the Apollo 15 mission. "One of the main scientific objectives of the Apollo 15 mission was to drill two boreholes about 3 metres into the lunar soil and insert specially designed probes," he explains. "The point was to see how temperature varies with depth, in order to calculate the heat flow outwards from the interior of the Moon." But drilling into the Moon's surface proved more difficult than anticipated and several thermometers ended up being left on the Moon's surface. As a result, NASA gathered 41-months-worth of data showing variations in the Moon's surface temperature. Reflecting Earth Huang got hold of this data, which spans mid-1972 to late 1975. The daytime temperatures, affected by radiation coming from the sun, are not so interesting, he says. But night temperatures on the Moon are driven by radiation from the Earth. And the Earth's radiation should decrease as rising levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere retain more and more of the sun's energy. "So, if the Earth reflects less energy back into space, then the Moon should feel it," says Huang. The NASA records show a slight increase in night-time temperatures between 1972 and 1975, says Huang. He thinks this could be a consequence of "global dimming", the phenomenon which led to cooler temperatures on Earth at the time. The dimming is thought to have been caused by an increase in reflective particles in the atmosphere. Based on these results, Huang would like to see further investment in getting instruments to the Moon to monitor the Earth's radiation from there. He points out that the Moon is the Earth's only stable natural satellite and does not have an atmosphere, biosphere or any water, all of which would interfere with radiation from Earth. Tilted orbit Others are not so convinced. Measuring "earthshine" is not a new line of research. Data about changes in the Earth's radiation are key to understanding the exact extent to which greenhouse gases are trapping energy from the Sun. NASA, among others, is already attempting to monitor earthshine using a man-made satellite instrument called CERES. "Actually, the Moon is a very poor place to monitor the Earth's changing radiation signal," Bruce Wielicki of NASA told New Scientist. Wielicki, who runs the CERES experiments, recently ran a study in which he used computer models to simulate Moon-based observations of earthshine (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI:10.1029/2006GL028196). "As we did this simulation and compared earthshine to other [radiation] data sets, it became increasingly clear why the Moon is a poor location," says Wielicki. They found that the Moon's tilted orbit relative to Earth prevents the instruments on its surface from getting good measurements from the poles. What is more, a day on the Moon lasts 28 Earth days. The mismatch makes it difficult to interpret variations in radiation, which can be caused by seasons on Earth. Wielicki also points out that placing instruments on the Moon is much more expensive than launching them into low Earth orbit.