NASA Study: Global Warming Alarmists Wrong

NASA has released a new study that may prove global-warming alarmists have been wrong all along.

Data from NASA's Terra satellite covering the period 2000 through 2011 shows that when the earth's climate heats up, the atmosphere appears to be better able to channel the heat to outer space.

The satellite data call into question the computer models favored by global warming believers and may put to rest controversy over the discrepancy between the computer models and actual meteorological readings.

Co-author of the study, Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama's Earth System Science Center, said in a press release, "The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show. There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

In an Op-Ed in Forbes, senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute James M. Taylor, said, "In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space.

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Scientists ponder sun's next move from quiet phase

Could a cooler sun, which some solar astronomers now predict, save us from global warming?

The short answer is "no," scientists say.

"That would be convenient and would make a lot of people happy," said Greg Kopp, a physicist with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado.

Kopp notes that the sun has been in a quiet phase during the last decade's rise in global temperatures.

"Human-caused climate effects are far outweighing the solar effects currently," said Kopp, who is an instrument scientist for a NASA satellite that measures the sun's heat output, or total solar irradiance.

Satellites have measured the sun's radiation at the point where it reaches Earth's atmosphere for 32 years. The average difference between energy at the peak and minimum of solar cycles is less than 0.1 percent.

That flux is easily absorbed and balanced by the Earth's oceans, Kopp said, and has a minimal effect on the Earth's temperature.

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