Do not mention the sun
13 Sep 2023 | OP ED Watch
As the recent kerfuffle over Patrick T. Brown’s mea culpa in getting published in Nature shows, there is a preferred narrative that must be adhered to if you don’t want something nasty to happen to your climate-science career. But truth has a way of shining forth through the cracks. For instance in a CNN piece about the clouds on Neptune. And Neptune is safe from Earthly kerfuffles, right? Well, no. You see, “Thanks to an analysis of nearly three decades’ worth of Neptune observations captured by three space telescopes, scientists have determined the ice giant’s diminished clouds may indicate that shifts in their abundance are in sync with the solar cycle, according to a recent study published in the journal Icarus.” But clouds have a huge influence on temperature here on Earth, one that climate models handle exceptionally badly. And if Mr. Sun is affecting them on Neptune, which is way the heck and gone from old Sol, some 2.8 billion miles or 30 “astronomical units”, where it gets just 0.1% of the sunlight we do, which isn’t surprising since it takes light four hours to get there from the sun, guess what’s happening here.
The story is an interesting example of what happens when you do your science scientifically. As CNN says, “Astronomers have been puzzling over a mystery on Neptune, and now they think they have unlocked its secret.”
Ah. So not settled? No. It seems clear that:
“The ice giant’s ghostly, cirrus-like clouds largely disappeared four years ago. Today, just a patch hovers over the planet’s south pole.”
The question is why. And scientists, real ones, love a mystery:
“The findings are ‘extremely exciting and unexpected, especially since Neptune’s previous period of low cloud activity was not nearly as dramatic and prolonged,’ [study lead author Erandi] Chavez added.”
https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2023/09/13/do-not-mention-the-sun/
