A Hotter Sun May Be Contributing To Global Warming

no reason to be here writes "The sun seems to be getting hotter. Total radiation output has increased .05% per decade since the 1970s. This article over at Yahoo! News has the scoop. Though .05% may not seem like much, if it has been going on for the last century or more (and circumstantial evidence suggest that it has), it could be a significant factor in the increase in global average temperature noticed during the 20th century."

Palm Trees

[smillie]

One of the more interesting things my geologist friend pointed out to me was the fossel recond in Michigan (for our European friends, Michigan is a state on the border with Canada). We have palm tree fossels all over Michigan. Our current climate won't support palms now but some time long ago Michigan was much warmer than it is now.

He also mentioned that Michigan was buried under about a mile of ice at one time too.

These weather changes were long before man came on the scene. I'm all for Michigan becoming tropical again but that is likely to cause problems for the southern part of the US.

He warns us *NOT* to assume this means CO2 is OK

[Guy Harris]

The article says

That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.

so, no, this

• is not just some evil US/oil company plot to discredit the idea that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming;
• is not an indication that all those people saying that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming were wrong and we don't have to worry about continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Note, for instance, that the article also says

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade

since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

(emphasis mine).

I.e., they have only observed it over a approximately 20-year period, so they don't know whether it's been going on for a century or more, but if it hasn't, it wouldn't make a significant difference to the climate.

Re:Waaaiiitt just a minute.

[Gortbusters.org]

I was gonna go for the sarcastic comment... of course it's ultimately the sun's radiation which is warming the planet. The problem is that while the atmosphere is losing its ability to filter radiation, the radiation is slightly increasing.

Re:arrogance

[sheldon]

"And pollution is bad, it just makes cities unpleasant."

Unpleasant? Isn't that a bit of an understatement? [npr.org]

Or is death merely an unpleasant experience, like having to stand in line too long at the grocery store?

"But fight these things for a real reason, not one that doesn't hold stand up to scrutiny."

You've got a long way to go buddy if you are seeking out real reason. Claiming pollution doesn't cause any harm... Ha!

I'm not an environmentalist, but it's quite clear you've drank the anti-Environment koolaid.

Re:arrogance

[Ptraci]

I was an adult during the seventies (still am, for the most part), and I don't remember anything about global cooling coming up. People were most concerned about the possibility of running out of fossil fuels, and the loss of habitat for many species of animals. Since then there has been much speculation about the possibility of global warming causing glaciation in some parts of the world by changing the ocean currents.

Re:Just goes to show one thing...

[hackstraw]

No matter how much we humans think we can figure out about our world and the universe, there's always some phenomenon that we don't account for yet we plod forward anyway. This is not to say that humans are not contributing to global warming, but we should be looking more into the natural physical phenomena that could be contributing to a problem that affects us.

How about looking at the geological and fossil record for some evidence? In the recent past (geologically speaking) there have been 4 ice ages and 4 "thaws", and before that the temperature of the Earth was erratic at best. Also, homo sapiens are only 40,000 or so years old, and industrialism that we think is causing global warming and whatnot has only been around about 100 years.

The Earth and life was here before humans, and most likely will go on after we are gone.

it's not cow farts

[js7a]

I'm still believing it's the cow farts.

It is not, primarily, the cow farts, although they alone probably cause more global warming than any 0.00005/year change in solar output. Carbon dioxide [bovik.org], from whatever source, forces heat that would normally be radiated into space to remain in the atmosphere. The extent is very easy to quantify, and it's a hell of a lot more than 0.05% per decade.

This article is just more fossil fuel apologist crap. It makes SUV drivers feel a little bit better about sending all that cash to Saudi Arabia when they fill up their huge gas tanks.

Bush and Cheney have been using gas "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but is not a sound basis for energy policy" on their own people!

Re:Palm Trees

[barakn]

Unfortunately that doesn't rule out the possibility that Michigan has changed latitude. You have heard of plate tectonics?

Re:arrogance - Don't kid yourself.

[CemeteryWall]

some of this is from an earlier post earlier post [slashdot.org]

Let me say it again. Look at these graphs. The data, taken from ice core studies, shows four ice-ages in the past 400k years. For each dip of the CO2 graph [ornl.gov] there is a similar dip in the temperature graph [ornl.gov] showing a high degree of correlation. The extended CO2 graph [faxfn.org] shows an enormous increase in CO2, over the past century, well outside the range of the past 400k years. This recent rise is almost a vertical jump, indicating we may be changing the climate drastically.

It is possible that the sun has some effect in triggering these cycles but these graphs show such a large correlation between CO2 and temperature that it is impossible not to believe the scientists of the IPCC. Yes, human activity is causing global warming. (In the UK we experience this now as global wetting - with increased heavy rainshowers).

To me your reaction sounds just like those "smoking doesn't cause cancer" line from the 1960s. Don't kid yourself.

Hotter sun vs. global warming

[schrottie]

This is the crappiest discussion on /. I've seen in a while: Couple of facts: There is (currently) no model to simulate neither weather nor climate. not regionally nor globally. There is, at this point, no proven hint that human-released co2 has had any impact on earths climate. (see point 1) In fact, there is no reasonable explanation for earth cooling down 'til the late 17nth century an then getting warmer. My god, this list could continue forever....

Re:Look at the actual data

[barakn]

The data that everybody else has been talking about comes from multiple satellites and spans several decades. And no, there is not "considerable day to day variation." Most of the variation comes on a monthly cycle, the approximate amount of time it takes the sun to rotate once as seen from Earth. Your "upward trend from 1996 to 2000, and then some dropof" comes from the last solar maximum. In considering long term trends, it is far better to have data from more than one solar cycle, and the recently released data was used to compare the average solar irradiance during two consecutive solar minimums.

Re:How long before...

[NortWind]

To counteract a 0.05% increase in solar output, you only need to block 0.05% of the sunlight from hitting the earth. This is not as much as you might think, since the earth presents a face of 4000^2 * Pi square miles. This is about 50M sq miles, so 0.05% of that would be 25K sq miles. Mylar today is commonaly available in 1mill (0.001") thickness. [sgs-hydroponic.com] So, assuming we put this into the space between us and the Sun, you would need a packet of mylar sheets 1 mile square by 2' thick.

Putting aluminized mylar into space was tried for a different purpose by the Echo [aeragon.com] satellite. Some nice people have already calculated that a single shuttle flight could carry a 700 meter balloon [lgarde.com] up. Some more efficient lifting technology would be very welcome for this project. Thinner Mylar would also be a great help.

Re:How long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen already escapes. The atomic weight of H is very low. The kinetic energy of normal temperature (earth scale) is already enough for escape velocity.

Better links than yahoo news

[barakn]

The following links have graphs and images. Here [nasa.gov] and here [space.com].

Re:Waaaiiitt just a minute.

[gandhii]

wow.. some totally obvious, and humerous in my opinion, sarcasm.... and still someone finds a way to throw in some U.S. bashing.

Before I start some more of it ... I should specify that like all good americans I'm quick to criticize my gov and society,, but I do make an effort to keep it related to the subject at hand.

Neither news, nor refutation of human forcing

[gessel]

Global warming as a consequence of climate forcing due to re-reflected radiative heat is not open to question in serious scientific circles. Like the 10 pro-war protesters standing across from 200,000 anti-war protesters who get equal time in the media, so too does Lomborg [sciam.com] get substantial coverage as somehow equivalent to the overwhelming majority of climatologists who's research contradicts the censured economist's shallow efforts.

Yet fooling the press and the anti-scientific does not fact make. Those who dispute global warming are like Flat Earth [alaska.net] types and creationists [sho.com], rallying around fallacy and refusing to consider facts they find inconvenient. It's all Cargo Cult Science [brocku.ca].

Some /. readers are probably adept enough at math to review the raw data and decide for themselves: solar irradiance data [nasa.gov] has been tracked and known for many years and is built into climate models [nasa.gov] that show, unequivocally, the consequences of human induced climate change. Even Bush finally admitted [bbc.co.uk] it.

Will the earth survive such changes? Of course it will. Will the human race survive? Probably. Will the long term cost of continuing to burn fossil fuels exceed the short term cost of switching to low carbon-load alternatives? Almost certainly.

But when evaluating the arguments of anti-environmentalists, which seem so utterly out of sync with even basic science, one must remember that, like their spiritual mentor James Watt, those that believe that Armageddon [time.com] is around the corner will do nothing to protect the rights of future generations.

Re:yet another excuse

[Jason Earl]

Source [globalwarming.org]

Is global warming occurring?

According to Accu-Weather, the world's leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."

Satellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.

Projections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation. Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

Are humans causing the climate to change?

98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

In short, global warming could be happening, and it is possible that man even plays a part in global warming. However, there are certainly less controversial reasons to cut back on our oil consumption. Narrowing the argument to global warming simply hurts the cause of environmentalists.

Re:yet another excuse

[Guy Harris]

Volcanoes spew more sulfur dioxide than every man-made source combined.

Citation, please? This page [nodak.edu], for example, says

Andres and Kasgnoc (1997) estimated the time-averaged inventory of subaerial volcanic sulfur emissions. There inventory was based upon the 25 year history of making sulfur measurements, primarily sulfur dioxide (SO2), at volcanoes. Actual measurements of subaerial volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions indicate a time-averaged flux of 13 Tg/yr sulfur dioxide from early 1970 to 1997. [Note: a Tg is equal to 10E12 grams]. About 4 Tg come from explosive eruptions and 9 Tg is released by passivedegassing, in an average year. When considering the other sulfur species also present in volcanic emissions, a time-averaged inventory of subaerial volcanic sulfur emissions is 10.4 Tg/yr sulfur.

Volcanoes and other natural processes release approximately 24 Tg of sulfur to the atmosphere each year. Thus, volcanoes are responsible for 43% of the total natural S flux each year. Man's activities add about 79 Tg sulfur to the atmosphere each year. In an average year, volcanoes release only 13% of the sulfur added to the atmosphere compared to anthropogenic sources.

so either

1. your claim is incorrect;
2. the claim on that page is incorrect;
3. volcanoes may emit more sulfur dioxide but, if you take all sulfur emissions into account, more comes from man-made sources;
4. you're referring to pre-1970 data;
5. you're referring to post-1997 data.

Re:Palm Trees

[barakn]

most of the plate movement is predomanently east/west due to north/south plate faults.

Which doesn't imply it was that way in the past. This link [dinosauria.com] shows North America lying on its side on the equator 510 million years ago (earlier than palm trees).

Re:How long before...

[The Master Control P]

Basically, hydrogen has such a low density that it drifts to form a fog from about 1000 to several thousand miles above earth, where it gets carried off by the solar wind.

May or may not

[InodoroPereyra]

Despite the tone of Yahoo's article, and despite the fact that unfortunately physicists are resorting more and more into spectacular announcements (and I am a physicist), the issue is not settled. This search at the NASA's ADS [harvard.edu] will show you a bunch of papers on the topic (even tough some entries are unrelated). Just browse the abstracts, you will see that not everyone in the astrophysics community agrees that variations in solar radiation are the main cause of global warming.

Re:arrogance

[nomadic]

Because it is natural?

You know something the scientists don't?

Because it was happening long before humans were using fossil fuels

This is the centerpiece to the anti-environmental/conservative/libertarian argument. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of simple logic, though; because A caused B in the past, it does not follow that ANY occurence of B must have been caused by A. To put it in elementary logic, (if A then B) does not equal (if and only if A then B).

Re:it's not cow farts

[js7a]

seasonal changes are quite large and result from small changes in the sun-earth distance.

You may be a chemist, but you are no meteorologist.

Seasonal changes result from the angle of solar radiation incidence, not changes in sun-earth distance. When it is winter in the northern hemisphere, it is summer, not winter, in the southern hemisphere.

Isnt it a matter of scale?

[LordZardoz]

"Total radiation output has increased .05% per decade since the 1970s. -- Though .05% may not seem like much, "

The problem with percent measurements is that the frame of reference matters a whole lot more then you think. A Half percent of a million is still $5000, and for some people, myself included, that is a nice chunk of cash.

A quick shot on google gets me the information that the tempurature of the Sun is about 15 million
degrees celsius. When you consider that for human usage, our comfort range is from about -40 to 40 celsius, a .05% solar temp increase is pretty damn scary when converted to real numbers for us.

Luckily, there are a great many factors to take into account that effect the earths temp, so an increase of 55 000 degrees is not going to fry us. Despite that, a half percental change is probably alot signifigant then you expect it to be.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:I dont buy it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This cant be a sustained effect. If the sun were continuously increasing its output by .05% a decade, the sun had a total output of 1 watt ~ 1.25 million years ago.

Hmm. I suggest you read the article before posting. Where exactly did it say it was continous over the entire history of the sun? I think they are more talking about recent history. Anyway, this article was not pro oil. The scientist believed that this may be a part of the warming trend, and emissions may still be a factor.

Re:How long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just increase the albedo locally, and reflect excess. No floating space junk necessary.

Re:How long before...

[rossz]

The U.S. didn't sign the Kyoto treaty because parts of it would violate our Constitution (specifically, the 4th Ammendment). The government CAN'T sign a treaty that violates our Constitution.

Not exactly new

[DanAnderson26]

The BBC had this story in 1998.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Of course, back then climate research was marginally less political since Clinton had already declared global warming to be caused by human influences (it is funny how otherwise intelligent people throw the scientific method out the window on this topic...The whole "greenhouse gas" panic is the finest example of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' logic (err illogic) I have ever witnessed.)

If you really care about this debate from a scientific perspective you should read Dr. Sallie Baliunas (who has real credentials as opposed to many of the chicken little crowd who in the April 28, 1975 issue warned us that we were causing the next ice age and semi-advocated melting the polar ice caps by covering them with black soot)

Besides, if there was a real consensus about CO2 being at fault Kyoto would have been about reducing CO2 emissions and not about redistributing US wealth by having us "buy pollution credits" from third world countries.

Dan

Related articles

[leek]

Original source of Yahoo-dumbed-down article, with graphs:

Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming [space.com]

And another:

NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate [sciencedaily.com]

Re:sun screen for the earth

[fluffy666]

What, you mean like this? [cbsnews.com]

Re:gawd, where to begin...

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Just curious where you found that information I can't seem to find any reference to NASA shuttle launches emitting any CO2. Considering their rocket fuel is liquid hydrogen an oxygen, water vapor is about all the engines ought to leave behind.

Well, there's the small matter of having a pair of the world's largest solid fuel rockets [space.com] strapped to the whole contraption as it climbes skyward.

Otherwise, you're partially right. It'd be good if water wapor was indeed the only way to combine oxygen and hydrogen, but unfortunately the high temperatures involved will give rise to some H2O2 [h2o2.com] (Hydrogen peroxide). I seem to remember another, but cannot recall it now.

UK to launch spacecraft to check hypothesis

[psychofox]

The BBC is reporting that the UK is thinking of launching a probe to investigate this hypothesis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2880845.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Two interesting points here:

It is intended that this will be the UKs first 'UK only' space mission.

The mission is not slated to take place until 2023.

Re:From where comest the CO2?

[cev]

You are suggesting that the average car only travels 2.5 miles per day? It is easy to calculate that each gallon of gasoline produces 18 pounds of CO2.