Solar Radiation: How Sunlight Heats the Planet
What is solar radiation?
Our sun is 99% of the total mass of the solar system. It’s this healthy dose of solar energy that heats up our planet.
The balance of Earth’s temperature relies on how much energy enters and leaves the planet’s system.
- ABSORPTION: When incoming energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth system, Earth warms.
- REFLECTION: If the sun’s energy is reflected back into space, Earth avoids warming.
When absorbed energy is released back into space, Earth cools. Natural and human causes can influence Earth’s energy balance.
How does the sun heat our planet?
Fusion reactions power the sun. It takes sunlight 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach us. This is the solar radiation that heats our planet.
The sun is 1 astronomical unit to reach us. Because Earth is in the Goldilocks zone, we receive the right amount of heat to harbor life.
By providing a healthy portion of UV rays, plants use it for photosynthesis. Without sunlight, you cut plants off from the energy needed for photosynthesis.
How does it relate to the greenhouse effect?
Earth relies on solar radiation to heat the planet. Overall, it depends on how much energy enters and leaves the planet’s system.
When the sun’s energy is reflected back into space, Earth avoids warming. By releasing solar radiation back into space, Earth cools.
When incoming energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth system, Earth warms. The greenhouse effect increases warming by acting like a lid on a container.
Like a sealed plastic container, greenhouse gases can keep heat trapped in. For example, sources of air pollution include carbon dioxide, methane, and CFCs.
What is a fusion reaction from the sun?
If you look at the composition of the sun, it’s mostly hydrogen and helium. Stars like our sun undergo thermonuclear reactions where four hydrogen atoms combine into helium through heat.
According to Einstein, you can’t lose mass. But you can convert mass to energy. So all stars do during their life cycle is just burn hydrogen into helium and release energy.
Typically, main sequence stars like the sun go through this process for about 95% of their life.
“Eventually, all fires burn out. Our sun has a life expectancy of about 10 billion years. Currently, we’re into year 5 billion years of our Sun’s lifespan.”
The concentration in the atmosphere of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) was claimed to have risen on only one occasion. That was in the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore. The famous “hockey puck” graph showed that a rise in atmospheric CO2 caused a rise in global temperatures. It was all later debunked by scientists. They demonstrated that the time-lines of the CO2 and temperature were switched in order to meet their narrative. However, Al and his people forgot the properties of CO2 did not change. What they ignored was that the warming water temperatures released more CO2 into the atmosphere because the solubility coefficient of CO2 decreases as water temperature increase. The two values are indirectly proportional.
Due to the fact that water is the best and greatest buffer of CO2 and that 71% of Earth’s surface is covered by water, CO2 has been remarkably stable for eons of time. There have been increases and decrease in CO2 but when there have been increases such as from a volcanic eruption, the resulting cooling from the cover has increase the solubility of CO2 in the surrounding water hence creating a balancing effect.
The bottom line is that there has been no significant change in atmospheric CO2 for billions of years. So, there can be no change in the molecular reflection capability of solar energy. Heating of Earth’s atmosphere is probably occurring because of various pollutants and garbage spewed into the atmosphere such as metal particles being burned up during satellite re-entry and chem-trails. However, there is no ability in those factors that can be used to control the population.