NASA figures on global and solar warming?

Question

Does anyone know if NASA finally jumped on the global warming bandwagon. I had heard they always refer to solar warming figures of the other planets to show current global warming is within the variation of the other planets current warming trends. If you have the link to NASAs planet warming data that would be appreciated.

I'm not seeing the related data I had found in news articles concerning increased temperatures found on several planets, moons, etc. I was hoping to find the source documents but the one sided comments haven't helped as the news article information had to come from someplace.

Answer 1

No they don't. NASA studies other planets because that's part of their mission - they don't do it to study global warming. If they see warming on other planets, they report on it and speculate as to why it's happening. For example, NASA believes that Mars is warming due to dust storms darkening its surface:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070404-mars-warming.html

James Hansen is NASA's foremost climate scientist (and one of the foremost in the world). He was one of the first scientists to conclude that humans are the primary cause of the current warming, and his studies continue to show this today.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/jhansen.html

So yes, NASA "jumped on the global warming bandwagon" a long time ago.

Please don't listen to the lies told by Jello below.

Answer 2

As you can see from the other posts, AGW believers have siezed on a report written on global warming on Mars and claim that Nasa has shown that the sun isn't warming, despite the fact that the findings are consistant with an increase in solar intensity.

Nobody has ever directly measured global warming or cooling on any other planet. What happens is sometimes astronomers think they see changes in a planet or moon and they've speculated that that body is warming or cooling based on that change. Just because they think they've seen a change doesn't mean there is a change, for example since the 1950's the estimated size of Pluto has gone down by a factor of 100. It's probably not because Pluto is shrinking - just every time they measure it, it looks smaller.

They've recently dug out some 4 year old data on Mars and some 25 year old data and written a report to try to explain why the ice caps are shrinking. They findings are that it is plausible (they don't say probable) that the colour of Mars got darker which contributed to the shrinking of the ice caps. Their findings are still consistant with an increase in solar intensity as the estimated change in albedo (reflectivity) of Mars didn't fully predict the observed changes in ice caps.

Their report also seems to say that the overall change in albedo is very slight, some areas have increased by up to 10% which tends to be offset by others decreased by up to 10%. Nasa seems to be a bit shy about saying what they estimate the total change in albedo is and whether this is within the range of uncertainly of the measurements. They've provided a before and after picture of mars that shows a light before shot and a dark after shot. This is deceptive because the change in albedo is too small to see with the naked eye.

Answer 3

NASA has accepted the reality of mostly man made global warming for a long time.

Here's their temperature data:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

The NASA scientists who did the work on Mars have always said it is due to giant dust storms unique to Mars, not the Sun.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/2007/marswarming.html

NASA measures the Sun routinely, and knows solar radiation has been decreasing a bit. Some of the data for this article came from NASA.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar
climate forcings and the global mean surface
air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A
doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

Here's a fact sheet from NASA.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/

Answer 4

Yes - NASA uses climate. There's money to be made for them. By using global warming, politicians give NASA bigger budgets.

The first time NASA used politics was during the ozone hole debate. Just before the 1992 election, NASA had a press conference to announce that an ozone hole was opening up over Kennebunkport, Maine, the Bush's family home.

This of course was total fabrication, but it influences the course of the election.

Now global warming is their tool, and Dr. Hansen has made millions supporting the cause.

Answer 5

Dana's absolutely right