Saturday Silliness – New Research Shows Moon Causes Warming and Affects Climate

WUWT reader “thin air” submits this spoof for weekend fun.

June 20, 2014.   Princeton, New Jersey.   Recently climate scientists here at the “Center for the Study of Earth and Moon” have discovered a dramatic warming effect on the Earth’s climate, which is likely to be caused by the orbit of the moon around the earth.  It is estimated that up to 18% of the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans observed in recent years, could be caused by moon and its power for reflecting heat-causing photons upon the earth and creating the tides.

Photons are the tiny “wavelets”, or particles, that carry energy and compose the light we see.  Photons are also reflected by pollutants such as water vapor which cause clouds, and other greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide.

“Scientists has long suspected that photons are root cause of the warming of the earth, and now we have shown through advanced computer models that the moon also plays a key role in the physical processes that warm the earth”  said Dr.  Albert Stein,Ph.D.  and the lead scientist on this important NASA-funded research.

Kepler Issac, a  graduate student at Princeton University and senior research assistant on the project explained:   “Think of the moon as a giant particle of carbon floating in the sky.  Light hits it and bounces back at us, even at night.  Ever since the beginning of time, humans have looked up and seen the moon shining brightly and thought it was just an innocent or romantic object.  Well, it turns out that it is much more insidious.  It could someday make the earth warm-up even faster unless,  urgent measures are taken.”

The scientist’s surprising claims  were greeted with skepticism at first among the leading climate scientists, until the well known climatologist Gevun Schmud of NASA put their results in context:  “Their paper on covers the warming trends on the earth over only the last 17 years.  Since there has been at most 0.01 degree of warming in that time frame (plus or minus 0.5 degrees of uncertainty), I suppose the moon could easily reflect enough light to cause 18% of that warming.  And while the moon is not made of cheese or carbon, it surely has some carbon in it, and that could be a problem in the future.”

The researchers are now proposing the second phase of their advance research program. ” We will look at the feasibility of  putting large mirrors in orbit around the moon, to block light coming from the moon to the earth. These will reflect the light bouncing off the moon into outer space where it will do no harm” explained Dr. Stein.  “If that does not appear to be economically viable, we will consider methods for moving the moon into a different orbit, perhaps around Mars, where it is much colder and the extra heat will be welcome.”

In favor of the second option,  the researchers pointed out that since the moon also causes the tides, both the oceans and our climate on earth will be much more stable without the moon.  “With the tides moving the oceans up and down twice a day, this puts a huge amount of heat into the oceans,  erodes our coastlines, and disturbs fish that are trying to sleep.”

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