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“Climate change” is in the news daily, with each featured story getting an attention-grabbing sensationalist headline. The frenzy is at its peak now because it’s the time of year for tropical storms and wildfires. However, to appreciate that these stories are pure narratives, it’s a good time to consider the facts behind the so-called “greenhouse gases.” Several atmospheric gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor, absorb light in the infrared region. These are collectively known as the “greenhouse gases” because absorbing infrared energy warms up the air—hence the name greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide, on a per-molecule basis, is six...

A study published by Korean scientists has thrown cold water on the idea that cutting the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will automatically lead to lower temperatures. In the study, the Koreans simulated how removing large amounts of carbon would affect the progress of local climate changes related to global warming. Computer modeling looked at the hypothetical scenario in which “carbon dioxide concentrations continued to rise from present-day levels for 140 years, then were gradually reduced back to the initial levels over another 140-year period,” according to Space.com The study results suggest that the local climate in these areas...

It might seem like the weather’s getting warmer here on Earth, but Mars appears to have an even bigger global warming problem. High-resolution images snapped by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red Planet’s poles have dwindled dramatically — by more than 10 feet — over a single Martian year (equivalent to 687 days or about two Earth years).

an illustration of a planet covered in active volcanoes Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Chris Smith / KRBwyle Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet they suspect is covered in volcanoes — making it a promising lead in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Volcano planet: An international team of astronomers spotted the exoplanet, dubbed “LP 791-18 d,” using data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and ground-based observatories. Based on their analysis, it has a radius 1.03 times that of Earth’s and a mass .9 times that of our home planet. It’s now...

In findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report that elephants play a key role in creating forests that store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of its ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming. **SNIP** Within the forest, some trees have light wood (low carbon density trees) while others make heavy wood (high carbon density...

STEVE (short for "strong thermal velocity enhancement") is a long, thin line of hot gas that slices through the sky for hundreds of miles. The hot air inside STEVE can blaze at more than 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) and move roughly 500 times faster than the air on each side of it, satellite observations have shown. Whereas the northern lights occur when charged solar particles bash into molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, STEVE appears much lower in the sky, in a region called the subauroral zone. That likely means solar particles aren't directly responsible for STEVE, Live Science...

Earth's atmosphere is rising because of climate change, a new study shows. Weather balloon measurements, taken in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 40 years, reveal that the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere — called the troposphere — has been expanding upward at a rate of roughly 164 feet (50 meters) per decade, and climate change is the cause, according to findings published Nov.r 5 in the journal Science Advances. ... ...Climate change isn't the only human-made driver of the rising tropopause. The stratosphere — the layer above the troposphere — is also shrinking....

The radical-leftist-billionaire-fearmonger Bill Gates is working with scientists to determine if they can control temperatures by spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to partially block the sun. Here's the news item:A Bill Gates Venture Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong?Microsoft’s MSFT +1% billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into...

The first test of a project backed to spray millions of tonnes of chalk into the stratosphere, in an attempt to 'dim the sun' and cool the Earth, could happen in June. Harvard University experts will test the system by sending a large balloon 12 miles above the Swedish town of Kiruna and have it drop 2kg of chalk dust into the stratosphere. The aim of the estimated $3 million mission, backed by billionaire Bill Gates, is to have the chalk deflect a portion of the sun's radiation, stop it from hitting the surface, and cool the planet. The idea...

Last month, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpassed 415 parts per million, the highest in human history. Environmental experts say the world is increasingly on a path toward a climate crisis. The most prominent efforts to prevent that crisis involve reducing carbon emissions. But another idea is also starting to gain traction — sucking all that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it underground. It sounds like an idea plucked from science fiction, but the reality is that trees and plants already do it, breathing carbon dioxide and then depositing it via roots and decay into the soil....

Whoops! The Earth's atmosphere is far bigger than we had realized, scientists have announced. The outermost part of our atmosphere reaches nearly twice as far as the Moon and is about 50 times as big as our own planet, new research has shown. “The Moon flies through Earth’s atmosphere,” says Igor Baliukin of Russia’s Space Research Institute, lead author of the paper presenting the results. “We were not aware of it until we dusted off observations made over two decades ago by the SOHO spacecraft.” At the boundary of own atmosphere and outer space, there is a cloud of hydrogen...

Forget deflecting asteroids from hitting Earth—some engineers are drawing up a strategy to steer asteroids toward us, so our atmosphere can act as a giant catching mitt for resource-rich space rocks. What might sound like a crazy idea is actually quite business savvy, according to Minghu Tan, a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom who co-authored the new study. That’s because such near-Earth asteroids can host supplies, such as water and precious metals, that could support future human missions to space. But other scientists are skeptical that the concept will ever get off the ground....

Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston. Project leader, Professor Ian Power (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) said: "Our work shows two things. Firstly, we have explained how and how fast magnesite forms naturally. This is a process which takes hundreds to thousands of years in nature at Earth's surface. The second...

Scientists have detected electromagnetic anomalies before major earthquakes, like the magnitude 9.0 event that struck Japan in 2011, triggering a massive tsunami that wiped out coastal communities like Ōfunato, shown above. Can electric signals in Earth’s atmosphere predict earthquakes? By Julia RosenDec. 21, 2015 , 1:45 PM SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Ask seismologists when they’ll be able to predict earthquakes, and the answer is generally: sometime between the distant future and never. Although there have been some promising leads over the years, the history of earthquake forecasting is littered with false starts and pseudoscience. However, some scientists think that Earth’s crust may give hints...

The plan for an artificial Martian magnetosphere may sound “fanciful,” but researchers say that emerging research is starting to show that a miniature magnetosphere can be used to protect humans and spacecraft.NASA Earth is most fortunate to have vast webs of magnetic fields surrounding it. Without them, much of our atmosphere would have been gradually torn away by powerful solar winds long ago, making it unlikely that anything like us would be here.Scientists know that Mars once supported prominent magnetic fields as well, most likely in the early period of its history when the planet was consequently warmer and...

Such a shield could leave Mars in the relatively protected magnetotail of the magnetic field created by the object, allowing the Red Planet to slowly restore its atmosphere. About 90 percent of Mars's atmosphere was stripped away by solar particles in the lifetime of the planet, which was likely temperate and had surface water about 3.5 billion years ago. According to simulation models, such a shield could help Mars achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth in a matter of years. With protection from solar winds, frozen CO2 at Mars's polar ice caps would start to sublimate, or turn directly...

Geneva (AFP) - The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has passed an ominous milestone, ushering the planet into "a new era" of climate change, the UN said Monday. For the first time on record, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere averaged 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2015, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. CO2, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, has previously passed the 400 ppm threshold on certain months in specific locations but never on a globally averaged basis, WMO said. The UN agency also reported that...

Full title: Ancient bubbles in Australian rocks show early Earth's air weighed less than half today's atmosphere Air bubbles trapped in 2.7 billion-year-old Australian rock suggest the Earth's atmosphere weighed less than half of today and was much thinner than previously thought. Researchers analysed the size of air bubbles that formed at the top and bottom of lava flows along the Beasley River in Western Australia's Pilbara region almost three billion years ago and used the data to calculate the atmospheric pressure at the time. The results suggest that the air at the time exerted at most half the pressure...

But good luck breathing in the bone-crushing gravity.A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating. The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the...

A funny thing happened on the way to the warmists’ nightmare: the Earth’s deserts have started to turn green.  The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, may have ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, but the Earth’s deserts metaphorically are filing a dissent.  On behalf of all carbon-based life forms  – which would be every living thing on the planet. Anthony Watts reports at Watt’s Up With That: Enhanced levels of carbon dioxide are likely cause of global dryland greening, study says From the “inconvenient truth” department and INDIANA UNIVERSITY: Enhanced levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are a...