COMensarations
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Global Warming, Anyone?
Thoughts on a discussion.
I’ve been involved with a discussion on the merits of former Vice President Al Gore’s latest movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Someone made a comment that I thought I’d address here, where I have more lattitude in terms of links and discussion.
Here is the last post to me regarding this matter....
Because the orbit of Pluto is so strange, Pluto is sometimes close enough to the sun for the ices on its surface to sublimate.
So. Is the Pluto at perihelion? Or coming up to it?
Actually. It is going AWAY from perihelion at this point. Perihelion for Pluto occured in 1989. The next one is a couple of centuries away. So it’s getting less sunlight ever day now.
Considering that, it’s interesting that astronomers who use Pluto to study distant stars were surprised, a few years ago, when they were watching for it to occlude a particular star. What they had expected when Pluto moved in front of the star they were studying was for the star to blink out. First you see it. Then you don’t. However, what they saw as not a blink out, like someone throwing a light switch. What they saw was the star became ‘fuzzy’. And THEN it disappeared.
You can confirm this report here....
So, it could be that Pluto was at perihelion, over 13 years before this development and it just took time for that toasty warmth to cause an atmosphere to manifest itself enough. But somehow, I have my doubts as to that idea.
When Pluto comes close enough to the sun, the surface of solid Nitrogen sublimates to produce a substantial atmosphere with winds and clouds. Because the planet is so small, however, it does not have enough gravity to bind an atmosphere for very long. Thus Pluto’s atmosphere is being rapidly produced and rapidly lost at the same time. This means that the atmosphere is not in equilibrium.
Okay. I guess my idea of the length of time for an atmosphere to manifest itself to these researhers is in error. And therefore, there is something else at play, considering Pluto is slipping farther from the Sun since 1989.
Therefore, the idea that there is an increase in the sunlight impacting on the planet is again a contender.
Considering that Mars, too, is showing signs of ‘global warming’, it seems more likely that it is the Sun than it is mankind causing this.
Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that Pluto’s global warming was “likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun’s output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto.”
“Likely”, he says? I’d expect better from a professor. Likely has entirely too much wiggle room for scientific endeavors. Don’t you think?
As for the ‘Solar Constant’. The Sun is ANYTHING but ‘constant’. It’s a dynamic item that is continually blowing itself up. It has, as I’ve pointed out ‘cycles’. The 11-year Solar Max cycle is the one we are most familiar with. And I pointed out, in an earlier comment, the recent discovery of an apparant 206-year cycle.
Then there’s the mini-Ice Age of the 13th Century to consider. Let alone the four well documented major Ice Ages.
Face it. The Sun is NOT ‘constant’.
Obviously more research is necessary. But for those people who are impatient, they’ll accept whatever Al Gore tells them.
I think I will see this flick, when it comes out on DVD, just to buy it and review it at my leisure. I’ll probably post something about it afterwards.
In closing, I’m a firm believer that global warming is occuring. I just don’t think that mankind is the principle culprit. This isn’t a matter of ‘denial’. It’s a matter of facts (see above).
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