Global warming proved false

[billvon 3,084]

In a stunning development, researchers in New Zealand have proven that global warming may be caused by albedo changes instead of anthropogenic releases of CO2! Deniers everywhere have embraced this new work as proof they have been right all along. Take that, stupid Al Gore!

Soon the climate change alarmists will be foiled, children will be happy and the world's economies will rebound from the onslaught of the alarmist's evil plans.

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The Sheep Albedo Feedback
Filed under: * Climate Science
April 2007

The already-reeling "consensus" supposedly linking climate change to CO2 is about to receive its final coup-de-grace from a remarkable new result announced in a press conference today by Dr. Ewe Noh-Watt of the New Zealand Institute of Veterinary Climatology [1]. Noh-Watt and his co-workers, describing work funded by a generous grant from the Veterinary Climate Science Coalition, declared "We have seen the future of climate — and it is Sheep." Prof. Jean-Belliere Poisson d'Avril, star student of Claude Allegro Molto-Troppo (discoverer of the Tropposphere) reacted with the words, "Parbleu! C'est la meilleure chose depuis les baguettes tranchées!"

The hypothesis begins with the simple observation that most sheep are white, and therefore have a higher albedo than the land on which they typically graze (see figure below). This effect is confirmed by the recent Sheep Radiation Budget Experiment. The next step in the chain of logic is to note that the sheep population of New Zealand has plummeted in recent years. The resulting decrease in albedo leads to an increase in absorbed Solar radiation, thus warming the planet. The Sheep Albedo hypothesis draws some inspiration from the earlier work of Squeak and Diddlesworth [2] on the effect of the ptarmigan population on the energy balance of the Laurentide ice sheet. Noh-Watt hastens to emphasize that the two hypotheses are quite distinct, since the species of ptarmigan involved in the Squeak-Diddlesworth effect is now extinct.

The proof of the pudding is in the data, shown in the Figure below. Here, the Sheep Albedo Index is defined as the New Zealand Sheep population in each year, subtracted from the 2007 population. The index is defined that way because fewer sheep means lower albedo, and thus a positive radiative forcing. It can be seen that the recent warming can be explained entirely by the decline in the New Zealand sheep population, without any need to bring in any mysterious so-called "radiative forcing" from carbon dioxide, which doesn't affect the sunlight (hardly) anyway — unlike Sheep Albedo. Some researchers have expressed surprise at the large effect from the relatively small radiative forcing attributable to New Zealand Sheep, or indeed to New Zealand as a whole. "This only shows the fallacy of the concept of Radiative Forcing, which is after all only a theory, not a fact," says Noh-Watt. "Evidently there are amplifying feedbacks at work which give the Sheep Albedo Index a disproportionate influence over climate."

"A real breakthrough was using the statistical technique pioneered by Frusen-Glädje and Haagendassen in their study of the solar-climate connection." said Noh-Watt "Just as in their case, to get a good match to the observed climate, we had to optimize our smoothing algorithm by smoothing some parts of the sheep record more than others, and then rescaling the results." The optimized smoothing was applied to the years 1975-1991. Noted skeptic Rasmus Benestad has criticized this technique as meaningless curve-bashing (see footnote [3] below), but according to Noh-Watt, " All these guys are interested in is getting rich by riding their bicycles to work and selling carbon credits to the EU."

Not everybody agrees with the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Leading the flock of skeptics is the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild. Their spokesman, Steve Ramsturf (no relation) was quoted as saying "Baaah, Humbug. No matter what goes wrong with the world, they're always trying to blame the poor New Zealand Sheep Farmer. First it was the methane belch tax. Now this Albedo thing. "

The recognition of the role of sheep albedo opens up some fascinating new possibilities for climate change mechanisms. There is in fact an important destabilizing feedback in the system: as climate gets warmer, there is less demand for wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep population tends to drop, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this can lead to a "runaway sheep-albedo feedback," which is believed to have led to the present torrid climate of Venus. Most researchers do not think this could happen on Earth, though. In fact, Oprah and Averell Chanteur, authors of the popular "Unstoppable" series (soon to be a major motion picture) say that the warming will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, with less enslavement of domestic wool-bearing animals. The hypothesis is laid out in their forthcoming book, "Unstoppable Sheep, every five or six days," which expands on earlier popular titles in the series, such as "Unstoppable daylight, every 42 hours," "Unstoppable Summer, every 17 months, " and the ever-popular autobiographical work "Unstoppable nonsense, every two or three years."

However, Dirk Blitzen, noted researcher from Hogwartz Institute of Technology, has proposed an additional wrinkle on the sheep-albedo idea, which he calls the "sheep-Iris effect" (see Dasher et al. [4] for details). According to Blitzen, a reanalysis of Landsat images shows that as the climate gets warmer, sheep tend to huddle together less. Since wool has a lower emissivity than bare ground, the lack of huddling allows more infrared emission to escape from the ground, cooling the planet and stabilizing its climate. "Frankly, I don't see how the climate can change much at all," stated Blitzen in recent testimony before the House of Lords, "To be honest, at this point I have a little trouble figuring out how there can even be summer and winter. In the end, I think it will turn out to be a problem with the data." Ozark Junior College satellite expert Jhon Chrystal agrees; his new analysis of MSU satellite data in fact casts doubt on the "consensus" that summer and winter have different temperatures.

But the sheep story may not be as simple as it seems. Hendreck Svampmark of the Danish Institute for Solar-Sheep Interactions notes that at the same time the number of sheep has been going down, the number of cows (which have a lower albedo than sheep) has been going up. "We believe that what is really behind it all are Galactic Cowsmic Rays, which are transmuting sheep DNA into cow DNA." Svampmark hypothesizes a currently undetected particle flux, which he calls "Cowsmic," because there is no observed trend in any of the better-known components of the Galactic Cosmic Ray flux. "We are trying to get money to put sheep in dark-matter accelerators to test our hypothesis, but there's a hold-up with PETA. It's all a big conspiracy to protect the consensus, I say."
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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/

[stevebabin 0]

"Science, logic and reason will fly you to the moon. Religion will fly you into buildings."
"Because figuring things out is always better than making shit up."

[SpeedRacer 1]

but if they fly they produce more greenhouse gases.

Speed Racer
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[Amazon 7]

I just knew it was all the sheep.. following along....

[pop 0]

I bet Clay had something to do with this.

7 ounce wonders, music and dogs that are not into beer

[shropshire 0]

The Violence of the Lambs?

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Amazon 7]

[itllclear 1]

Oh No!

Not a sheep shortage!

"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."