It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Description/Abstract Earth's climate is thought to be quite sensitive to changes in radiative fluxes that are quite small in absolute magnitude, a few watts per square meter, and in relation to these fluxes in the natural climate. Atmospheric aerosol particles exert influence on climate directly, by scattering and absorbing radiation, and indirectly by modifying the microphysical properties of clouds and in turn their radiative effects and hydrology. The forcing of climate change by these indirect effects is thought to be quite substantial relative to forcing by incremental concentrations of greenhouse gases, but highly uncertain. Quantification of aerosol indirect forcing by satellite- or ground-based remote sensing has proved quite difficult in view of inherent large variation in the pertinent observables such as cloud optical depth, which is controlled mainly by liquid water path and only secondarily by aerosols. Limited work has shown instances of large magnitude of aerosol indirect forcing, with local instantaneous forcing upwards of 50 W m[sup 66]-2. Ultimately it will be necessary to represent aerosol indirect effects in climate models to accurately identify the anthropogenic forcing at present and over secular time and to assess the influence of this forcing in the context of other forcings of climate change. While the elements of aerosol processes that must be represented in models describing the evolution and properties of aerosol particles that serve as cloud condensation particles are known, many important components of these processes remain to be understood and to be represented in models, and the models evaluated against observation, before such model-based representations can confidently be used to represent aerosol indirect effects in climate models.
Changes in the moment of inertia of the earth, brought about by the redistribution of ocean water from the tropics to ice at high latitudes, couple energy from the spin of the earth into convection in the liquid core. This mechanism may help provide the driving energy for the earth's dynamo. Sufficiently rapid ocean level changes can disrupt the dynamo, resulting (in half of the cases) in a geomagnetic field reversal. The model can account for the previously mysterious correlation reported between geomagnetic reversals and mass extinctions.
Originally posted by Bonified Ween
Search: Monsanto and then Mound Laboratory.... same company
Ducks, geese, coots, and other wild birds, both migratory and resident, have been swimming on the Redox waste water pond and eating the herbage and mud on the bottom. The pond is caused by the discharge of five to ten million gallons of water a day from the heating and cooling coils of reactor vessels in the Redox plant. At least twice in recent months leaks in the coils have permitted solutions of radioactive material to escape to the swamp. Once the leak was in the waste concentrator tank and once in the first oxidation tank, so that the material in the swamp would include significant amounts of every radioisotope found in irradiated uranium, including plutonium and all fission products. This paper discusses the hazards to humans from handling or eating wildfowl and to risk of both internal and external exposure.
Briefs describe 33 charts, graphs, and schematics offering some recent history and perspectives on the world and U.S. energy situation and the problems for survival facing the world. Of interest is Figure 28, showing the Club of Rome's model of the earth in terms of resource consumption, food, money, people, pollution, etc. A computer was asked to extend recent history into the future and results indicate a collapse of the industrialized system towards an agrarian culture around the year 2025. It is noted that the model did not consider technological initiative or man's willingness to change lifestyles. The final (33) schematic is a guesstimate of noticeable impact timescales, indicating when research projects on transition or ultimate energy sources at LASL might be expected to yield impact. (MCW)