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["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

sorry a bit off topic but timely & too cute and as good a theory as some 
others.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/ 1 Apr 2007The Sheep 
Albedo FeedbackFiled under: * Climate Science— raypierre @ 9:51 am The already-reeling 
"consensus" supposedly linking climate change to CO2 is about to receive its final coup-de-grace 
from a remarkable new result announced in a press conference today by Dr. Ewe Noh-Watt of the New Zealand 
Institute of Veterinary Climatology [1]. Noh-Watt and hisco-workers, describing work funded by a generous 
grant from the VeterinaryClimate Science Coalition, declared "We have seen the future of climate --and 
it is Sheep." Prof. Jean-Belliere Poisson d'Avril, star student ofClaude Allegro Molto-Troppo 
(discoverer of the Tropposphere) reacted withthe words, "Parbleu! C'est la meilleure chose depuis les 
baguettestranchées!"The hypothesis begins with the simple observation that most sheep arewhite, and 
therefore have a higher albedo than the land on which theytypically graze (see figure be!
low). This effect is confirmed by the recentSheep Radiation Budget 
Experiment. The next step in the chain of logic is tonote that the sheep 
population of New Zealand has plummeted in recent years.The resulting 
decrease in albedo leads to an increase in absorbed Solarradiation, thus 
warming the planet. The Sheep Albedo hypothesis draws someinspiration from 
the earlier work of Squeak and Diddlesworth [2] on theeffect of the ptarmigan 
population on the energy balance of the Laurentideice sheet. Noh-Watt hastens 
to emphasize that the two hypotheses are quitedistinct, since the species of 
ptarmigan involved in the Squeak-Diddleswortheffect is now extinct. The proof 
of the pudding is in the data, shown in the Figure below.  Here,the Sheep 
Albedo Index is defined as the New Zealand Sheep population ineach year, 
subtracted from the 2007 population. The index is defined thatway because 
fewer sheep means lower albedo, and thus a positive radiativeforcing. It can 
be seen that the rece!
nt warming can be explained entirely bythe decline in the New Zealand 
sheep population, without any need to bringin any mysterious so-called "radiative forcing" from carbon dioxide, whichdoesn't affect the sunlight (hardly) anyway -- unlike Sheep Albedo. Someresearchers have expressed surprise at the large effect from the relativelysmall radiative forcing attributable to New Zealand Sheep, or indeed to NewZealand as a whole. "This only shows the fallacy of the concept ofRadiative Forcing, which is after all only a theory, not a fact," saysNoh-Watt. "Evidently there are amplifying feedbacks at work which give theSheep Albedo Index a disproportionate influence over climate.""A real breakthrough was using the statistical technique pioneered byFrusen-Glädje and Haagendassen in their study of the solar-climateconnection." said Noh-Watt "Just as in their case, to get a good match tothe observed climate, we had to optimize our smoothing algorithm bysmoothing some parts of the sheep record more than others, and thenrescaling the results." The optimiz!
ed smoothing was applied to the years1975-1991. Noted skeptic Rasmus Benestad has criticized this 
technique asmeaningless curve-bashing (see footnote [3] below), but according toNoh-Watt, " 
All these guys are interested in is getting rich by riding theirbicycles to work and selling 
carbon credits to the EU." Not everybody agrees with the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Leading 
the flock ofskeptics is the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild. Their spokesman, SteveRamsturf (no 
relation) was quoted as saying "Baaah, Humbug. No matter whatgoes wrong with the world, 
they're always trying to blame the poor NewZealand Sheep Farmer. First it was the methane belch 
tax. Now this Albedothing. "The recognition of the role of sheep albedo opens up some 
fascinating newpossibilities for climate change mechanisms. There is in fact an 
importantdestabilizing feedback in the system: as climate gets warmer, there is lessdemand for 
wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep populationtends to drop!
, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this canlead to a 
"runaway sheep-albedo feedback," which is believed to have led tothe present torrid climate of Venus. Most researchers do not think thiscould happen on Earth, though. In fact, Oprah and Averell Chanteur, authorsof the popular "Unstoppable" series (soon to be a major motion picture) saythat the warming will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, with lessenslavement of domestic wool-bearing animals. The hypothesis is laid out intheir forthcoming book, "Unstoppable Sheep, every five or six days," whichexpands on earlier popular titles in the series, such as "Unstoppabledaylight, every 42 hours," "Unstoppable Summer, every 17 months, " and theever-popular autobiographical work "Unstoppable nonsense, every two or threeyears." However, Dirk Blitzen, noted researcher from Hogwartz Institute ofTechnology, has proposed an additional wrinkle on the sheep-albedo idea,which he calls the "sheep-Iris effect" (see Dasher et al. [4] for details).According to Blitzen, a reanalysis of L!
andsat images shows that as theclimate gets warmer, sheep tend to huddle together less. Since wool has 
alower emissivity than bare ground, the lack of huddling allows more infraredemission to escape from the 
ground, cooling the planet and stabilizing itsclimate. "Frankly, I don't see how the climate can 
change much at all,"stated Blitzen in recent testimony before the House of Lords, "To be 
honest,at this point I have a little trouble figuring out how there can even besummer and winter. In the 
end, I think it will turn out to be a problem withthe data." Ozark Junior College satellite expert 
Jhon Chrystal agrees; hisnew analysis  of MSU satellite data in fact casts doubt on the 
"consensus"that summer  and winter have different temperatures. But the sheep story may not be as 
simple as it seems. Hendreck Svampmark ofthe Danish Institute for Solar-Sheep Interactions notes that at 
the sametime the number of sheep has been going down, the number of cows (which havea lower albedo !
than sheep) has been going up. "We believe that what isreally behind i
t all are Galactic Cowsmic Rays, which are  transmuting sheepDNA into cow DNA." Svampmark 
hypothesizes a currently undetected particleflux, which he calls "Cowsmic," because there is 
no observed trend in any ofthe better-known components of the Galactic  Cosmic Ray flux. "We are 
tryingto get money to put sheep in dark-matter accelerators to test ourhypothesis, but there's a 
hold-up with PETA. It's all a big conspiracy toprotect the consensus, I say."