Climate change activists are dogmatic. Greenhouse gases released by human activity are warming the earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Thus, doom and gloom and civilizational collapse await us if we don’t decrease the number of cows, gas-guzzling cars, and factories.
But is it really that straightforward?
In a Wall Street Journal column published Sunday, Andy Kessler proposes that Earth’s atmosphere is actually able to regulate itself such that temperatures remain relatively constant despite changes in greenhouse gases or the radiation of the sun. (READ MORE: Climate Alarmists Swing From Megadrought to El Niño)
The mechanism for doing so, Kessler believes, is a negative feedback loop. This is a natural process by which the negative effects of a reaction cause that reaction to slow down or stop.
The hypothesis on climate self-regulation, which is termed the Iris Effect, was first proposed by atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen in 2001. It postulates that cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate in reaction to rising temperatures.
Additional radiation is then able to escape from Earth’s atmosphere, causing a cooling effect. Kessler calls this a “safety valve.”
In an interview with Kessler, Lindzen, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.”
Kessler writes that a 2021 paper authored by Lindzen “shows strong support for an Iris Effect.”
The paper’s abstract says, “At this point, the strong areal reduction of cirrus with warming appears very clearly in both climate models and satellite observations.”
The paper states that the Iris Effect results from both “decreased cirrus outflow due to increased precipitation efficiency” as well as “concentration of cumulus cores over warmer areas.”
The paper reviews 20 years of research on the topic.
Additionally, a 2015 paper authored by Thorsten Mauritsen and Bjorn Stevens implemented the Iris Effect into other scientists’ climate models. The scientists found the changed models to be more accurate at modeling historic climate changes.
Kessler also points to the faint young sun paradox as evidence for the Iris Effect. The paradox points out that Earth’s climate is mostly the same today as it was 2.5 billion years ago, even though the sun had 30 percent less energy then.
Clouds, theoretical physicist Steven Koonin explained to the Wall Street Journal, are “notoriously difficult to model,” so climate scientists often adjust or “tune” clouds “to match observations.”
This, Lindzen argues, provides scientists with an opportunity to distort their research to match the activist narrative on climate change.
He claims that scientists who dissent from his perspective on the Iris Effect “adjust their models, especially coverage and reflection or albedo of clouds in the tropics” in order to “maintain the warming narrative.”
If true, this is highly convenient. There’s no need for drastic governmental measures to decrease Earth’s temperature. We can simply trust the Earth to mitigate any effect of excess warming.
As Kessler points out, it’s almost as though Earth was created by engineer who fine-tuned it such that it would keep its temperature stable and life-sustaining.
READ MORE:
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