Global warming is causing a mass “die-off” on the Great Barrier Reef. Authorities have enacted the highest emergency response level.
“The corals in the remote far north of the reef experienced extremely hot and still conditions this summer, and were effectively bathed in warm water for months, creating heat stress that they could no longer cope with,” said Russell Reichelt, the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
The weather conditions are causing extreme bleaching resulting in the death of large amounts of coral.
“This is the worst coral bleaching event ever to hit this most pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef,” said WWF spokesman Richard Leck. “We can turn this around. The reef can recover but we must speed up the shift to clean, renewable energy and we must build reef resilience by reducing runoff pollution from farms and land clearing. Australia must speed up the transition to clean energy – like solar and wind – by setting a target of 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035.”
In the 1990’s, the Membrane Domain started publishing research on human induced climate change. The research team was the first to put forth the hypothesis that global warming is an exponential phenomenon. Up to that point, the scientific community had based their forecasts on a linear event. The Membrane Domain suggested the model was more like a bathtub curve or hockey stick curve.
Since that time, the hypothesis has been proven. One of the main factors are chain reactions that are caused by the result. The chain reactions have been given the name “feedback loops”.
“Feedback in general is the process in which changing one quantity changes a second quantity, and the change in the second quantity in turn changes the first. Positive feedback amplifies the change in the first quantity….” (Wikipedia)
An example of a feedback loop, it the melting of Arctic sea ice. Methane, one of the most severe greenhouse gases, is trapped under the ice. However, when global warming causes the sea ice to melt, methane is released. When methane is released it intensifies global warming, resulting in more ice melting. In turn, more methane is released causing an acceleration in global warming… and so on.
Another example was sited in a report by NASA:
Greenland’s snowy surface has been getting darker over the past two decades, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt. The feedback loops work like this: During a warm summer with clear skies and lots of solar radiation pouring in, the surface starts to melt. As the top layers of fresh snow disappear, old impurities, like dust from erosion or soot that blew in years before, begin to appear, darkening the surface. A warm summer can remove enough snow to allow several years of impurities to concentrate at the surface as surrounding snow layers disappear. At the same time, as the snow melts and refreezes, the grains of snow get larger. This is because the meltwater acts like glue, sticking grains together when the surface refreezes. The larger grains create a less reflective surface that allows more solar radiation to be absorbed.
A third example of feedback loops can be witnessed as a result of ethanol in gasoline. Ethanol in gasoline causes an increase tropospheric ozone. Tropospheric ozone is a result of a volatile reaction that occurs from vehicle emissions, a warm temperature and ultraviolet light. Tropospheric ozone causes tree death and deforestation. The decline in trees lessens the carbon dioxide sink that trees provide resulting in more global warming. More global warming results in more days when the conditions are right for the creation of tropospheric ozone.
NASA — Greenland’s snowy surface has been getting darker over the past two decades, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt, a new study of satellite data shows. That trend is likely to continue, with the surface’s reflectivity, or albedo, decreasing by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century, the study says.
Greenland’s Darkening Ice
The Columbia study says:
Greenland’s snowy surface has been getting darker over the past two decades, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt, a new study of satellite data shows. That trend is likely to continue, with the surface’s reflectivity, or albedo, decreasing by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century, the study says.
While soot blowing in from wildfires contributes to the problem, it hasn’t been driving the change, the study finds. The real culprits are two feedback loops created by the melting itself. One of those processes isn’t visible to the human eye, but it is having a profound effect.
The results, published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, have global implications. Fresh meltwater pouring into the ocean from Greenland raises sea level and could affect ocean ecology and circulation.
“You don’t necessarily have to have a ‘dirtier’ snowpack to make it dark,” said lead author Marco Tedesco, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and adjunct scientist at NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. “A snowpack that might look ‘clean’ to our eyes can be more effective in absorbing solar radiation than a dirty one. Overall, what matters, it is the total amount of solar energy that the surface absorbs. This is the real driver of melting.”
The feedback loops work like this: During a warm summer with clear skies and lots of solar radiation pouring in, the surface starts to melt. As the top layers of fresh snow disappear, old impurities, like dust from erosion or soot that blew in years before, begin to appear, darkening the surface. A warm summer can remove enough snow to allow several years of impurities to concentrate at the surface as surrounding snow layers disappear. At the same time, as the snow melts and refreezes, the grains of snow get larger. This is because the meltwater acts like glue, sticking grains together when the surface refreezes. The larger grains create a less reflective surface that allows more solar radiation to be absorbed. The impact of grain size on albedo – the ratio between reflected and incoming solar radiation – is strong in the infrared range, where humans can’t see, but satellite instruments can detect the change.
“It’s a complex system of interaction between the atmosphere and the ice sheet surface. Rising temperatures are promoting more melting, and that melting is reducing albedo, which in turn is increasing melting,” Tedesco said. “How this accumulates over decades is going to be important, because it can accelerate the amount of water Greenland loses. Even if we don’t have a lot of melting because of atmospheric conditions one year, the surface is more sensitive to any kind of input the sun can give it, because of the previous cycle.”
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that oceans are rising at a faster rate than any time in the last 3,000 years.
“We can say with 95 percent probability that the 20th-century rise was faster than any of the previous 27 centuries,” said Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University. It is likely that the current sea level rise is the greatest in history; however, it is difficult to research earlier in time.
Mann of Penn State says, “The study nonetheless reiterates the conclusion we reached [in 2011] that the acceleration in sea level rise over the past century is unprecedented over at least the past millennium, and that this acceleration is directly related to the spike in surface temperature over the past century.”
The sea level rise caused primarily by greenhouse gases, could force the emptying of coastal cities.
Famous wildlife photographer, Sebastian Copeland, utilized a graphic picture to raise awareness of human induced climate change. “‘For the state of the ice in general, we’re headed into uncharted territory. There’s no doubt about it. The frozen remains of this young bear point to starvation. The faster retreat of the sea ice, a bear’s favoured spot for seal hunting, leads to longer fasting periods and the demise of more animals from starvation.”
NASA released print quality travel posters promoting space exploration.
Greetings from your First Exoplanet
While there is much debate over which exoplanet discovery is considered the “first,” one stands out from the rest. In 1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi b, forever changing the way we see the universe and our place in it. The exoplanet is about half the mass of Jupiter, with a seemingly impossible, star-hugging orbit of only 4.2 Earth days. Not only was it the first planet confirmed to orbit a sun-like star, it also ushered in a whole new class of planets called Hot Jupiters: hot, massive planets orbiting closer to their stars than Mercury. Today, powerful observatories like NASA’s Kepler space telescope will continue the hunt of distant planets.
PSO J318.5-22 – Where the Nightlife Never Ends
Discovered in October 2013 using direct imaging, PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of planets called rogue, or free-floating, planets. Wandering alone in the galaxy, they do not orbit a parent star. Not much is known about how these planets come to exist, but scientists theorize that they may be either failed stars or planets ejected from very young systems after an encounter with another planet. These rogue planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation. Once they cool down, they will be dancing in the dark.
Experience the Gravity of a Super Earth
Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between “Super-Earth” and “mini-Neptune” and scientists aren’t sure if it has a rocky surface or one that’s buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice. One thing is certain though: at eight time the Earth’s mass, its gravitational pull is much, much stronger.
Relax on Kepler-16b – Where your shadow always has company
Like Luke Skywalker’s planet “Tatooine” in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet, Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like Saturn. Prospects for life on this unusual world aren’t good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery indicates that the movie’s iconic double-sunset is anything but science fiction.
Kepler-186 f – Where the Grass is Always Redder
Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially ‘habitable zone’ around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star’s red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that’s very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, NASA’s planet hunting telescope.
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
— “Applied Optics”, vol. 11, A14, 1972
When jet engines fly across the sky, there are two different things that happen. Both are likely causing harm to the environment. Neither are being done on purpose. That is to say — there is no conspiracy to spray chemicals. There is no such thing as intentional “chemtrails”.
What is really happening?
#1 — Jet fuel combustion. The jet fuel exhaust that you can’t see is CO2, particulates and gases which contribute to human induced climate change. They are a major cause of global warming and ocean acidification. The European Union states, “Aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Someone flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average person in the EU does by heating their home for a whole year.”
In 2013, aircraft accounted for nearly 11 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. transportation sector, making them responsible for about 3 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions)
#2 — Water vapor. Jet engines at high altitude, under certain atmospheric conditions, condense water into droplets to form Condensation trails (contrails). These contrails are the clouds that you can see with the naked eye. Dr. Sidd Mukherjee of the Membrane Domain says, “It is clear that contrails contribute to warming (form high level cirrus that blocks more outgoing radiation than incoming solar) and this effect was seen when air traffic was suspended in 2001.”
Another effect recently studied is caused by jet exhausts generating a layer of ice crystals, ice haze, that promotes a more diffuse type of light. Chuck Long, from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said what was occurring is an example of “accidental geoengineering”. He said, “If you look up the definition of geoengineering, it includes large-scale manipulation of parts of the climate system or the environment, and I believe this ice haze from jet traffic does satisfy that requirement.”
The ice haze is scattering the light as it falls on the Earth. The researchers do not think the “sub-visual contrail-generated ice haze” has a major effect on global warming; however, it may have some significant effects on biology, says Prof. Martin Wild of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Plants prefer diffuse light. Mr. Wild explained, “If you have a canopy structure, the direct light is absorbed by the uppermost leaves. Everything below is shaded and so misses out on that energy. But diffuse light can travel deeper into the canopy and can be absorbed by the plants lower down. So in that sense, if you have more diffuse light those lower plants will profit.” What is good for low level plants may be bad for solar panels: “If you’re decreasing the direct light, then you’re decreasing the energy available for those concentrator systems.”
SpaceX is a private company that manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
After several recent failed missions, SpaceX has launched and recovered the first ever reusable rocket. The SpaceX rocket launched multiple satellites into space, then came back to Earth, using rockets to stabilize itself and land on a pad in at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space,” said founder Elon Musk.
About The Mission
With this mission, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will deliver 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit for ORBCOMM, a leading global provider of Machine-to-Machine communication and Internet of Things solutions. The ORBCOMM launch is targeted for an evening launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. If all goes as planned, the 11 satellites will be deployed approximately 20 minutes after liftoff, completing a 17-satellite, low Earth orbit constellation for ORBCOMM. This mission also marks SpaceX’s return-to-flight as well as its first attempt to land a first stage on land. The landing of the first stage is a secondary test objective.
Nine-minute exposure picture of the launch, re-entry and landing burns of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
