Recent news reports about a predicted decline in the sun’s magnetic activity pose the question, asking if the earth will be cooling off because of it. Let’s ask the Bad Astronomer, Dr. Phil Plait.
The answer — spoiler alert! — is almost certainly “no”. I want to make sure that’s clear, because I will bet essentially any amount of money that some climate change denial sites will run with this story and claim that we don’t need to worry about global warming. That’s baloney, and what follows is why. The reasons take a minute to explain, but of course that’s where the cool stuff (haha!) is. So let’s take this one step at a time. And if you have the attention span of an E. coli bacterium, you can skip down to the conclusion section.
What follows is a pretty comprehensive but simply written explanation of the sun’s magnetic cycle and its effect on Earth’s temperature.
No comments:
Post a Comment