"Here’s an amazing piece of anthropomorphic editorializing from NASA disguised as science.
“Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system.
But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.”
Our planet is trying to do what?
This rubbish comes from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen’s old outfit now run by Gavin Schmidt, the guy who says “most climate deniers are sociopaths” and is all-in on alarmism.
... this ... anti-scientific rhetoric is disquieting.
... several other weird pieces of alarmist orthodoxy:
... that the natural carbon cycle is always in balance due to the dynamic adaptability of nature, whereas our CO2 causes it to choke and stop balancing the stuff.
... the idea that there is a temperature the planet “wants” to be, a proper temperature, a good happy Gaia temperature, but then we go aaack, crank up the thermostat, disharmony in the biosphere causes cosmic disaster.
This idea of cool, static bliss was put forward by John Kerry in his infamous 2014 Jakarta speech about all the GHGs being in a layer half an inch thick at the top of the sky.
Unchallenged by the “you’re not a climate scientist” crowd, he intoned bizarrely that “for millions of years –
literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature.
Average temperature of the Earth has been about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which keeps life going.”
... Mother Earth doesn’t “want” such a thing and instead “is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out” to create a flat, perfect, Gaia-is-serene 57 degrees “which keeps life going” of the sort we’re used to, squirrels and things, but not some wretched Brontosaurus or Megatherium that needs more warmth.
Bosh.
... If we really can control Earth’s temperature, what level should we choose? Is there some reason to think 57 degrees is ideal, other than some politician’s speechwriter hallucinating that it’s been that way for a long time?
Might it be better to stabilize it at 59.37?
What is warmth even for?
Is it good for life?
A major reason for thinking it’s not is the alarmist claim that once global warming starts it’s necessarily a runaway process.
... it’s not so, if the planet tends to stabilize itself but we get to set the temperature at which it then settles down, might we go yeah, add half a degree, good for the crops?
Or crank that thing down, India’s too hot?
Why not 55 degrees?
Or 83?
... despite Kerry and Goddard’s nonsense, the best estimate is that the planet has normally been at around 22°C for the last half-billion years not this chilly, life-inhibiting 12°C that in the United States is 53.6°F
(so where Kerry even got his 57°F is a mystery though not one you probably want to explore with him given his apparently unfamiliarity with photosynthesis or the geological record).
And life seemed to be happy at those higher levels …
... But we cannot dwell on these issues because we must deal with some more egregious anti-science in the Goddard piece.
Specifically the boast that “Climate modeling predicts that human activities are causing the release of greenhouse gases and aerosols that are affecting Earth’s energy budget.
Now, a NASA study has confirmed these predictions with direct observations for the first time”.
Wow. They stood up there on Kerry’s blanket and watched it happen.
... How?
Uh, in a computer filled with assumptions.
Their “direct observations” are actually the result of piling Assumption on Algorithm to reach the top of Olympus and see if the gods are angry.
Which they apparently are.
... they assert that the researchers calculated the impact of water vapour, clouds and so forth.
... AIRS may measure “water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere” it doesn’t do it by taking each cubic cm of the stuff and wringing it out. It peers down and uses complex algorithms to assess what’s going on in the entire stack.
And the models cannot begin to cope with clouds because the computers operate on a macro scale and clouds are crucially a micro phenomenon.
... while “changes in water vapor will affect how much energy ultimately leaves Earth’s system” the researchers don’t know how much vapor there is or how it affects the balance.
Certainly not to a decimal place.
... Goddard trumpets, “The team found that human activities have caused the radiative forcing on Earth to increase by about 0.5 Watts per square meter from 2003 to 2018.
The increase is mostly from greenhouse gases emissions from things like power generation, transport and industrial manufacturing.
Reduced reflective aerosols are also contributing to the imbalance.”
Mostly?
... a bit vague for people doing direct observation.
... “The new technique is computationally faster than previous model-based methods, allowing researchers to monitor radiative forcing in almost real time.”
So it’s not direct observation at all.
It’s just a faster computer model making the same assumptions about the same data except “in almost real time.”
And those assumptions are that natural processes cannot explain recent increases,
after which they produce as if it were an independent empirical observation the logically necessary conclusion
that natural processes cannot explain recent increases.
( ... historian Daniel Boorstin (says) that “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”)"