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"The Sky is Falling" says NASA's Gavin Schmidt

Steve Case

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As Rush Limbaugh says, "You can't make this stuff up."

The sky is literally falling because of climate change, says top NASA scientist

As the world reaches a globally significant carbon emissions milestone, the sky
is literally falling as as result of climate change, says a top scientist at NASA.

This year was the hottest year on record according to the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and saw globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere not seen in roughly three million years.

"Carbon dioxide cools the stratosphere and when the stratosphere cools, it actually
shrinks the size of the atmosphere," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, told National Observer. "So if you’re about 80 kilometres
up, you actually are seeing the sky falling. It’s going down by a number of kilometres.”
 
What's 'made up' about it? It's physics.
 
This is one of many reasons why a real discussion on climate change is impossible now.

BTW, Rush Limbaugh has zero interest in the discussion. His interest is what it always is, applying a business model of making a decreasing demographic increasingly scared and angry at opposition then turning around and calling it "informing."
 
Rush is the last person I'd want to get scientific advice from. That would be almost as bad as getting martial advice from him.
 
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This is one of many reasons why a real discussion on climate change is impossible now.

BTW, Rush Limbaugh has zero interest in the discussion. His interest is what it always is, applying a business model of making a decreasing demographic increasingly scared and angry at opposition then turning around and calling it "informing."

Rush is the last person I'd want to get scientific advice from.
Exactly folks. Take note that the OP quotes Rush Limbaugh. How much studying and how many classes did Rush Limbaugh take and pass in an accredited school on meteorology? None. But according to the right's viewpoint, the vast majority of scientist that do study this, and are respected in their field, say there is nothing to climate change.

This is almost like having a plumber do heart surgery on you because he sees your political point of view. :roll:
 
People like you are what's wrong with America. You reject the testimony of subject matter experts for radio talk show hosts who argue from emotion to get ratings.
I think part of the issue is that Gavin Schmidt has become a AGW proponent spokes person,
more than a Scientist.
One of the article attributions was that the El Nino and the wildfires in Alberta were caused by AGW.

A greenhouse gas monitoring station in Hawaii predicted that those record CO2 concentrations will not dip below 400 pmm for many generations to come, and last spring, federal scientists also linked ​El Niño to the Fort McMurray wildfire that forced the largest evacuation in Alberta's history, shutting down several oilsands producers during the emergency.
Yet when one follows the link,
Here's what the science really says about Fort McMurray and climate change | National Observer
The story is not quite the same
Those unusual weather conditions have been widely attributed to El Nino, a naturally-occurring phenomenon linked to warm ocean water that disrupts the weather.

But Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire from the University of Alberta, and many other climate change scientists agree that while the Fort McMurray fires cannot be directly linked to the carbon pollution produced by humans, Canadian wildfire activity of the past few years is well above average. And it's connected to the warming climate.
 
It's always fun to throw in Rush Limbaugh and watch the liberals go crazy.
Reminds me of my favorite Mickey Mouse Cartoon:

 
What's 'made up' about it? It's physics.

Really?

How me other fields of science that uses such terms.

"You actually see the sky falling..."

Really now.

How professional!
 
This is one of many reasons why a real discussion on climate change is impossible now.

BTW, Rush Limbaugh has zero interest in the discussion. His interest is what it always is, applying a business model of making a decreasing demographic increasingly scared and angry at opposition then turning around and calling it "informing."

The pundits at the other end of the discussion don't care any more than he does.
 
As Rush Limbaugh says, "You can't make this stuff up."

Limbaugh, that great scientist with the single semester of community college under his belt.
 
I think part of the issue is that Gavin Schmidt has become a AGW proponent spokes person,
more than a Scientist.

So true.

He is more pundit than scientist. He should care about the actual facts, and letting the chips fall wherever, rather than pushing an agenda.
 
Really?

How me other fields of science that uses such terms.

"You actually see the sky falling..."

Really now.

How professional!

Every field of science uses silly, simplified terms when speaking to the nonscientific public.

And since he also explained the actual effect (reduced altitude of the stratosphere) clearly you actually understand what he was saying?
 
So, did any of you dopey liberals watch Mickey's Mechanical Man?
If you did, did you make the association with the term Knee Jerk Liberal?
 
As Rush Limbaugh says, "You can't make this stuff up."

The sky is literally falling because of climate change, says top NASA scientist

As the world reaches a globally significant carbon emissions milestone, the sky
is literally falling as as result of climate change, says a top scientist at NASA.

This year was the hottest year on record according to the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and saw globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere not seen in roughly three million years.

"Carbon dioxide cools the stratosphere and when the stratosphere cools, it actually
shrinks the size of the atmosphere," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, told National Observer. "So if you’re about 80 kilometres

Stratosphere cooling? Wait. What? I thought global warming would heat the air? Eh?
 
Will you show us Al Gore et. al. first please?
Who needs Al Gore when the vast majority of meteorological scientists say there is global warming; that's my point. :shrug:
 
Stratosphere cooling? Wait. What? I thought global warming would heat the air? Eh?


More energy being trapped at the surface by greenhouse gasses means less of it bouncing around the upper levels of the atmosphere. Hope this helps your confusion.

AGW "skeptics" have sometimes pointed at cooling stratospheres as evidence against AGW. Amusing for the reason listed above. Additionally amusing due to the low population in the stratosphere.
 
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Who needs Al Gore when the vast majority of meteorological scientists say there is global warming; that's my point. :shrug:

Yes, there is global warming. Just not enough to be all Chicken Little about it.
 
More energy being trapped at the surface by greenhouse gasses means less of it bouncing around the upper levels of the atmosphere. Hope this helps your confusion.

AGW "skeptics" have sometimes pointed at cooling stratospheres as evidence against AGW. Amusing for the reason listed above. Additionally amusing due to the low population in the stratosphere.

Now wait a sec.

More energy being trapped at the surface by greenhouse gasses would heat that layer of the atmosphere, expanding that air mass, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't this air mass expansion be 'holding up' the stratosphere? Not letting it shrink in size?
 
Now wait a sec.

More energy being trapped at the surface by greenhouse gasses would heat that layer of the atmosphere, expanding that air mass, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't this air mass expansion be 'holding up' the stratosphere? Not letting it shrink in size?

Nope. Larger greenhouse gas quantities at the surface increase the temperature gradient.

Not the subject of OP's article, but an additional factor is ozone depletion. Ozone is a greenhouse gas, and the ozone layer is in the stratosphere, so reduced ozone causes cooling in the stratosphere as well.
 
Yes, there is global warming. Just not enough to be all Chicken Little about it.

Part of me wonders if the globe as a whole represents not a homeostatic system centered around current atmospheric conditions, but a more allostatic one sustaining climate parameters in a way that continues to support life. What I mean is that life has survived on this planet for a rather long time and I find it difficult to believe that such a large and developed system could evolve to the point of being quickly (relative) broken from changes internal to that system. Current shifting conditions could be a naturally-occurring, systemically benign allostatic response that ends up maintaining a life-supportive system despite a change in how we currently understand the atmosphere to work. Granted, I'm no climatologist or physicist; just an organizational psychologist with a curiosity in systems theories. It seems like most people assume that changes in various individual climate variables are intrinsically bad and I'm not sure that is always a valid assumption.

Again, I haven't studied climate in any level of detail; I'm just looking at this information through a lens of what I am familiar with. If my wonderings listed above are completely and patently incorrect to those here on the board who actually do know about the specifics of climate systems I would welcome the correction and the corresponding dialogue.
 
People like you are what's wrong with America. You reject the testimony of subject matter experts for radio talk show hosts who argue from emotion to get ratings.

This is an epidemic problem now and a bit frightening to say the least.

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.
Journalist Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, adds another perspective: “The rise of idiot America today represents--for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power--the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert.
"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america
 
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