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

To: Land Shark who wrote (30761)	10/8/2010 12:09:02 AM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Kant, one of the radiative forcings is the greatly increased reflection of incoming light due to human habitation. If you get Google Earth and consider satellite views around the land areas, you'll see that where there are people, the surface is a lot lighter coloured than where there is forest. For example zoom over New Zealand and you'll see the deep dark green of remaining native forests. Where there is farming and much more so where there are buildings, there is much lighter colouration. That is true around the world. There is a LOT of surface affected by human habitation and a LOT more sunlight is reflected than was the case when forests were rampant 2000 years ago. That would help explain why the "travesty" of no global warming to speak of is happening despite CO2 having been increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm if we assume that their theory is correct that that should be warming the planet. If people were to paint roofs white, there would be a significant increase in reflection. With all that lightening, we are likely to be pushing ourselves towards reglaciation, apart from the natural cycles of plant cover retreating towards the poles as integlacials get underway and deserts grown, then recovering ground as reglaciation cools Earth again and buries plants nearer the poles. Clouds also form closer to the equator and therefore increase reflection as reglaciation gets underway. That's because the surface area at equatorial latitudes is huge compared with Arctic circle latitudes. A 1000 km wide band of cloud around the equator causes hugely more reflection than a 1000 km wide band of cloud around latitudes near 45 degrees or 60 degrees. Mqurice