Thursday, August 02, 2007
By Steven Milloy
Himalayan glaciers are melting — but not nearly as fast as the fanciful notion of global warming will have you believe.
A new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature found that the solid particles suspended in the atmosphere (called “aerosols”) that make up “brown clouds” may actually contribute to warmer temperatures — precisely the opposite effect heretofore claimed by global warming alarmists.
“These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particles as cooling agents in the global climate system …,” concluded the Nature news article summing up the study.
Based on data collected by unmanned aerial vehicles over the Indian Ocean, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and NASA reported not only that aerosols warmed temperatures, but they also increased atmospheric heating by 50 percent. This warming, they say, may be sufficient to account for the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers.
Putting aside the fact that the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since 1780 — some 70 years before the onset of the current post-Little Ice Age warming trend and 100 years before the onset of significant global industrialization — full appreciation of the significance of the researchers’ finding requires a brief trip down recent-memory lane, one, incidentally, that no media outlet reporting this finding bothered to make.
Hat tip to
Dr. Roy who included a link to the
summary from Nature.
