NASA hides page saying the Sun was the primary climate driver, and clouds and particles are more important than greenhouse gases

ZeroHedge asks: What the hell are NASA Hiding?

The NASA site used to have a page titled “What are the primary forcings of the Earth system?“. In 2010 this page said that the Sun is the major driver of Earth’s climate, that it controls all the major aspects, and we may be on the cusp of an ice age. Furthermore NASA Science said things like clouds, albedo and aerosol behaviour can have more powerful cooling effects that outdo the warming effect of CO2.

Today that page says Share the science and stay connected, and “Access Denied”.

The Wayback Machine captured the same NASA “Primary Climate Forcings” link in 2010.

Here’s the text from the original page (my bolding).

The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth’s climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes convection which carries warmth and water vapor up into the sky where clouds form and bring rain. In short, the Sun drives almost every aspect of our world’s climate system and makes possible life as we know it.

Earth’s orbit around and orientation toward the Sun change over spans of many thousands of years. In turn, these changing “orbital mechanics” force climate to change because they change where and how much sunlight reaches Earth. (Please see for more details.) Thus, changing Earth’s exposure to sunlight forces climate to change. According to scientists’ models of Earth’s orbit and orientation toward the Sun indicate that our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling — perhaps the next ice age.

However, a new force for change has arisen: humans. After the industrial revolution, humans introduced increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and changed the surface of the landscape to an extent great enough to influence climate on local and global scales. By driving up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere (by about 30 percent), humans have increased its capacity to trap warmth near the surface.

Other important forcings of Earth’s climate system include such “variables” as clouds, airborne particulate matter, and surface brightness. Each of these varying features of Earth’s environment has the capacity to exceed the warming influence of greenhouse gases and cause our world to cool. For example, increased cloudiness would give more shade to the surface while reflecting more sunlight back to space. Increased airborne particles (or “aerosols”) would scatter and reflect more sunlight back to space, thereby cooling the surface. Major volcanic eruptions (such as that of Mt. Pinatubo in 1992) can inject so much aerosol into the atmosphere that, as it spreads around the globe, it reduces sunlight and cause Earth to cool. Likewise, increasing the surface area of highly reflective surface types, such as ice sheets, reflects greater amounts of sunlight back to space and causes Earth to cool.

Scientists are using NASA satellites to monitor all of the aforementioned forcings of Earth’s climate system to better understand how they are changing over time, and how any changes in them affect climate.

According to the Wayback Machine the text disappeared in early 2011 under Obama’s reign. Some people say Trump hides climate science, but Trump deletes propaganda, while Obama denies the Sun.

The Sun drives the climate on Earth

There are many mechanisms that the Sun can change the temperature of Earth (and not just through solar radiation). As we’ve discussed here many times, not only is there Henrik Svensmark’s theory about the solar magnetic effect on clouds through cosmic radiation, there are also potential effects (backed by observations) that magnetic fluxes, solar particle flow (the solar wind) and changes in the spectrum of of the UV and infra red may affect all kinds of climate markers on Earth. That includes atmospheric pressure, jet streams (Rossby waves), clouds, floods in Europe, rain in Asia, groundwater recharge in China, lightning over Japan, and wind and rain over Chile. The pervasive effect of the Sun even correlates surreally with human fertility, lifespan and jellyfish plagues.

h/t Frank W and Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. Someone picked this up in tweet, but no one seems to know who. Thanks to them too.

I agree with NASA 2010. So call me a denier.

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UPDATE: I’m happy to say the Tweeter was likely @JWSpry – Jamie Spry — who wrote it up on the Climatism blog last year. Doing phrase searches I also discovered Randall Hoven wrote an article on American Thinker way back in Dec 2010 pointing at the page. A month later the page was gone. NASA reading skeptics?

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