Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I'm going to need sources for #3 and #4 because they don't seem reasonable from a quick math check. Snow turning into ice and being less reflective is equivalent to moving the earth 19% closer to the sun? Keep in mind this doesn't mean the earth would receive 19% more of the sun's rays, but much more than that because the energy from the sun falls away non-linearly with distance (square of the distance).
Venus receives twice the sunlight as Earth. I find it highly improbable that simply melting all snow away would increase temperature as if there was twice the amount of sunlight.
Snow only covers 12% of Earth's surface and mostly at the poles (where sunlight hardly hits anyhow), so this small thing isn't likely to have the affect claimed here.
Smells like BS, but I appreciate numbers so that we can evaluate the veracity.
*As an aside, these absurd, intentionally deceptive, apocalyptic claims are exactly why people not only avoid joining the Green Religion, but are actively antagonistic against it. If these false prophets piped down, the Green Religion might actually appeal to a broader audience, or at least not be ridiculed so much.
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* It's their rate of energy absorption that's being evaluated.
* I've left the solar constant alone.
* I've left the albedo alone.
* The only way you can get snow or ice to absorb the difference in energy is to move Earth closer to the Sun.
* Bowen gave enough information to plug into the inverse-square law which governs the amplitude of solar radiation.
* The new radii just fall out of the math.
* If you park Earth right next to the Sun, the solar insolation becomes, 12,098.18624-quadrillion Watts/meter, instead of 1,397 W/m.
* We're only talking about ice caps and glaciers once covered by 'pure powder snow'.
* The snow IS that effective in cooling the entire planet.
* 144 Btu which converts one pound of 32-F ice to one pound of 32-F water, then raises the one pound of 32-F water 144-degrees!
* This is the latent heat of fusion.
* Remember 'the midnight Sun'?
* The Sun never sets in the Arctic and Antarctic for months at a time?
* Don't trust my math. I never think about what I say. Check it out yourself.