Back in 1983, well before the fossil fuel industry realised it had a climate problem, the physics and chemical impacts of burning coal, oil and gas were uncontroversial.
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| Donald Trump on Tuesday in the White House. The US President signed an executive order winding back his predecessor's climate policies. |
As US President Donald Trump unveils his plans to roll back his predecessor Barack Obama's climate change policies and end his "war on coal", it's worth a reminder the science has been settled for decades no matter what politicians do.
The Earth had an "effective temperature" that was a simple balance of the solar radiation and what it radiated back to space, I learnt as a Harvard freshman in my entry-level Science A-30 course on The Atmosphere.
Our atmosphere was "an insulating blanket" keeping the planet's surface at about 298 degrees Kelvin (25 degrees) compared with space's 3 degrees K, the matter-of-fact notes I found while sorting out some old boxes show.
Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Donald Trump's anti-climate plans won’t fool nature.”
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