More Global Warming - On Neptune?
This is alarming:
Pasadena (UPI) - A U.S.-led international team of astronomers discovered that Neptune’s south pole is much warmer than the rest of the planet.
The researchers published the first temperature maps of the lowest portion of Neptune’s atmosphere, showing the warmer south pole is providing an avenue for methane to escape from the deep atmosphere.
“The temperatures are so high that methane gas, which should be frozen out in the upper part of Neptune’s atmosphere, the stratosphere, can leak out through this region,” said Glenn Orton of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Orton is lead author of a paper appearing in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. In the paper, the astronomers report the temperature at Neptune’s south pole is higher than anywhere else on the planet by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The average temperature on Neptune is about minus 392 degrees Fahrenheit.
The findings were made using the Very Large Telescope located in Chile, operated by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.
I hope Al Gore is on the case. I just know SUVs are somehow involved… More
Doug
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Reader Comments (6)
Very funny. And I thought there was something to be "alarmed" about until the very end. Yes, it's SUVs on Neptune all right.
What's that? You mean Neptune's south pole exposure to the sun is causing ice to melt which is then releasing methane gas? You mean the gas is appearing without humans driving SUVs? How can that be? Doesn't that prove it's the sun and not humans causing so called global warming on Earth, too? Who woulda thunk!
How are the greenies going to explain this?
I expect Gore and the greenies to tell us that OUR methane is overflowing into the galaxy and polluting the other planets. Yeah, that's it!
Wake up. Global warming is real. It has nothing to do with Neptune, it is our problem here. Listen to the scientists that say it is a serious concern.
As I have said all along, global warming is a natural occurrence reflecting normal increases and decreases in the temperature of the planet. Historical data supports this scientific position. "Global warming" as defined by ecologists and, as a result, the media is based on loosely supported theoretical hypotheses. There exists no conclusive evidence that the planet is experiencing anything other than normal warming and cooling.