Looking down on earth from above!
How does the sun affet us directly on earth?
Recent lectures on board the Queen Elizabeth liner cruising from Australia to Asian ports on its maiden world voyage,were excellently delivered by Prof. Richard Holdaway,Director of Space Science and Technology, Rutherford Appleton Laboratories,- who explained how space technology via exploratory space crafts and satellites is increasing our knowledge and clarifying much of nature's changes on our earth.
Hundreds of outer space probes have been launched to far away planets and galaxies to the extent that what was once science fiction is now much more in the realms of fact.The instruments which transmit back to earth the information is mind boggling in their complexity and for the detailed information transmitted.
In the 3rd of his 3 lectures he concentrated on the issue of our weather forecasting and aspects of "climate change and global warming,- fact or fiction?"
Infra red technology transmits visually the various heat levels in the oceans and on land. He projected pictures of the warm Pacific ocean showing in red the El Ninio effect for example;plus the same effect as seen on pictures of 500sq. miles of denuded jungle forests (illegally in one month) in the Amazon region of S. America which can have a much more devastating effect on climate change if we denude our forests of trees, than anything else that humans do in industrialized developed countries.
(N.B. We must be aware that we and all living creatures breathe in Oxygen and we breathe out the end product of our metabolic cycles,-as CO2. Photosynthesis in plant life does the reverse,- they use the CO2 and release O2. Population increases require more animal husbandry for food and land clearing for living space and timber for housing.)
The effect of Sulphur dioxide fumes from the volcanic eruptions as e.g. from Mt. Pinantbo of one week which spread over 20 months all over Europe is far more deadly than anything we can do.
The "Ozone hole" expands and contracts with the seasons,- largest over the Antartic where no human involvement occurs, but not worse since the last 200years.
Solar storms are the most important to look out for as they affect our earth the most.(Wikipedia records the effects of the 1859 Solar Storm as recorded at the time). These magnetic effects are seen as aurorae and are deflections of immense solar radiant energy by earth's magnetic field. However they can affect our satellites rotating in outer space through their instruments being flooded by high energy photons, which then affect almost every aspect of our high-tech controlled lives on earth these days. Therefore there is now a stationary satellite (ACE),-one million miles above the earth, magnetically balanced between the earth and the sun so that it does not rotate around the earth as the others do,- which can alert within 10secs. whenever such a solar explosion occurs, allowing monitors to switch-off sensitive instruments in satellites and space crafts before they can affect our e.g. electricity grid, (as happened in Canada in the '90s), telecommunications, etc.
As for CLIMATE CHANGE, Professor Holdaway was adamnant that human-produced CO2 is not the main greenhouse effect causing global warming at present, but it is the water vapour which does that! And humans have no control over it!
While governments and politicians look to raise revenues through taxes,- the real facts are:
1. CLIMATE ALWAYS CHANGES,- IT HAS BEEN DOING IT OVE MILLIONS OF YEARS.
2. EARTH HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANTLY WARMER IN THE PAST.
3. There are 3 causes for global warming and though humans are adding to it, we are just the third part.
a)Solar activity.- We are also getting nearer to the sun until in 5million years we shall disappear altogether!
b)Nature,- e.g. volcanoes;oil fields burn-off; deforestation; ocean evaporation,
c) Human activity.
500 years ago we were much warmer,- there were no cars and factories spewing out CO2.Actually, volcanoes can sometimes cool as well as warm,- i.e. it is not just about us and we must beware the great 'CO2 myth'! At the moment we are in a period of global warming, but it is not just about us. We humans are just part of the equation.
The polar ice is not getting thinner. (He showed a funny cartoon about 2 penguins,- one falls into a hole in the water, the other is quite ok). The temperature on earth is primarily determined by the energy coming to earth via solar radiation and energy leaving the earth through infra-red radiation
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