EnviroSpin Watch

"It's the albedo, stupid!"

Do visit this excellent post, 'Evidence for climate change', on Panchromatica, a most helpful Weblog. I have been arguing for years that human landscape changes are as important as the more politically correct human climate influences, like so-called 'greenhouse gases'. The albedo is only one aspect of such changes, by the way, and refers to the surface reflectivity of the Earth.

A new study from NASA, referenced at the site, suggests even more complexity by arguing that human changes to the land surface over the last 300 years may have already altered the climate more than would occur from human-produced greenhouse gases. "Land surface changes, like urban sprawl, deforestation and reforestation, and agricultural and irrigation practices strongly affect regional surface temperatures, precipitation and larger-scale atmospheric circulation. The study argues that human-caused land surface changes in places like North America, Europe, and southeast Asia, redistribute heat regionally and globally within the atmosphere and may actually have a greater impact on climate than that due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases combined." Well, well. Reflect on that, folks - in the past, I have even been attacked for daring to suggest such a thing! Naughty sceptic! Slap, slap! Go NASA. Philip.