Greenhouse theory smashed by biggest stone

[Celebration]

http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

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Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

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As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

Source: University of Leicester

[Dogmudgeon]

1. But wait ... there's MORE!

This is the blurb that starts the article:

A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

In other words, Shaidurov is "scientifically" trying to let the whole world plutocracy off the hook.

Maybe he'll blame the "libbruls" for destroying the noctilucent clouds, too.

--p!

[EST]

2. No matter the issue, it seems there is always at least one idiot

who will manage to miss or misinterpret some evidence and some other idiot with a political axe to grind will give him an audience.

[phantom power]

10. And a hundred moronic science reporters who will publicize it.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. WATER?? Atomsphere is SATURATED with it. This is nonsense.

Give this guy the Velikovsky Prize.

[hughee99]

4. Interesting... n/t

[Dead_Parrot]

5. That's a curious conclusion...

...given that, historically, impacts and volcanism have lowered the temperature. I'd agree with eppur_se_muova - This man should win the "Golden Sledgehammer of Velikovsky" for making things fit where they don't.

[Celebration]

6. more info needed

We need a whole lot more details than what is given here to figure out exactly what he meant. But it does appear that this is a different mechanism--not clouds of ash blocking the sun but some sort of disturbance to the upper atmosphere that slightly alters the amount of water vapor. Please note that I'm not saying he is correct.

I am wondering what the politics of global warming are in Russia. As I recall they were quite pro Kyoto treaty, correct?

[Igel]

8. They were pro-Kyoto, but it's unclear to me what

their real motivation was.

Post-Soviet CO2 emissions plummeted far below the Kyoto-mandated levels: Soviet-era factories closed, reducing emissions (as production shrank) and Soviet-era technologies were replaced by more efficient energy sources. Therefore they'd be able to sell their CO2 allocations to western companies for a hefty amount of dough.

At the same time, by forcing reduction in the US's CO2 emissions, the Russians would also achieve their more long-term goal of restricting the US. Reduced economy = reduced power.

No doubt there were Russian environmentalists also pushing for it, but that would have either been because they assumed CO2 emissions would soar or out of green solidarity.

[Ready4Change]

7. Tunguska was but a blip.

Compared to events like volcanic eruptions, Tungusta was nothing.

And the upper atmosphere is pecked continuously by space debris, including shards of interplanetary ice, etc... Only the largest are apparent as falling stars. Most go completely unnoticed.

This is BS.

[bemildred]

9. This beggars description.

It seems obvious that in seeking a causative factor, one should look at factors that change, that are changing. This fellow says its very hard to affect water vapor levels, one assumes because of the massive quantities present in the atmosphere already, and then decides to focus on it, looking for some one-shot event to "explain" the minute change in water vapor levels. This is the opposite of scientific investigation. Far more likely that heating would lead to more water vapor through evaporation than that some deus ex machina event would bootstrap us into warming. If one allows that some one-shot event might be responsible, which is certainly possible, then one is left to explain the other incidents of warming in climate similarly, or to explain why the catastrophic solution is particular to the current case. Just my 2c.

[phantom power]

11. Real Climate's statement on this topic:

Firstly, one would anticipate that immediate effects of the impact on climate would be strongest near the time of the impact (allowing for some inertia in the system) and decay away subsequently. Secondly, the timescales for any mechanism associated with the impact (in this case disruption of the atmopsheric water vapour) would need to be in line with the change one hopes to explain. And thirdly, one has to show that this explanation is better than the alternatives. Unfortunately, none of of these requirements are met by this hypothesis.

An impact hypothesis is usefully contrasted to the impacts of a large volcanic eruption like Pinatubo in 1991. There was a very clear dip in temperatures a year or so after the eruption and a subsequent relaxation back to normal. No such event (warming or cooling) is recorded in 1908 to 1910. The timescales for water vapour in the lower atmosphere is on the order of days (see our previous post on the subject), while in the stratosphere it is a a few years. But there are no reservoirs of climatically important water vapour amounts that could still be causing the impact effect to be felt (and to accelerate!) almost 100 years later. And finally, current theories based on greenhouse gas increases, changes in solar, volcanic, ozone , land use and aerosol forcing do a pretty good job of explaining the temperature changes over the 20th Century. It's very hard to see what this idea has to add to that.

In an additional twist, it is suggested that atmospheric nuclear tests from 1940s to the 1970s masked out the effects of the impact due to the supposed mixing up of tropospheric water vapour into the stratosphere after every explosion. This is even odder since stratospheric water vapour is actually quite a significant greenhouse gas, and had this occured to any large extent, it would have been a warming factor, not a cooling one.

So while the physics being invoked here is barely worth discussing, a more interesting question might be why the University of Leicester thought that this was worthy of a press release in the first place, and why this got any traction in the media at all. True, it didn't get much attention, so maybe there is some hope for science journalism after all...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=271

[Swede]

12. The Tunkguska Event was much smaller than many nuclear tests.

The Russian super bomb's yield was estimated to be 60 megatons,while Tunkguska's estimate is 10-20 megatons. I cannot give this any credit.