The Inconvenient Skeptic: The Comprehensive Guide to the Earth's Climate

by John Kehr

so far in the book. These are basically in order from the beginning of the book and not necessarily in order of importance. 1. The Earth is ALWAYS changing temperature. 2. Those changes in temperature take place on many different time scales. a. Daily b. Yearly c. Short-term (100 year time scale) d. Long-term (> 1,000 year time scale) 3. Shorter-term trends mask the longer term trends. Predicting yearly temperature trend based on a single day or week is foolishness. 4. Long-Term trends are caused by Milankovitch Cycles. This is the glacial/interglacial cycle of the climate cycle. 5. Interglacial periods end when the 65N solar insolation anomaly goes negative. a. The Holocene (modern day) 65N insolation went negative 3,000 years ago. 6. Since the 65N insolation anomaly went negative the range of glaciers in the NH have expanded their range halfway to the equator. Very few NH glaciers are more than 4,000 years old. 7. What happens to energy from the Sun? a. 23% Reflected by clouds. b. 7% Reflected by surface. c. 47% Absorbed by surface. d. 23% Absorbed by atmosphere (mostly all in the stratosphere). 8. What happens to the 47% of energy absorbed by the surface? a. 50% Transferred to atmosphere by Evaporation. b. 11% Transferred to atmosphere by Convection. c. 14% Transferred to atmosphere by Radiative Heat Transfer. d. 25% Transferred to SPACE by Radiative Heat Transfer. e. Any remaining converted by surface