A Hotter Sun May Be Contributing To Global Warming 536
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."
Double the cookage (Score:0, Insightful)
The threat [gortbusters.org] of global warming is real.
Just goes to show one thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, this isn't an excuse for the rabid dogs on either side of the environmental debate to start jumping up and down either for or against human contributions to global warming, nor is it our only problem. I hope this discussion doesn't turn into this, though I fear it will.
arrogance (Score:5, Insightful)
don't think me a corporate whore or anti-environmentalist; i'm willing to bet that we have some impact... i just think we don't know enough about our ecosystem and it's interaction with the universe around us to automatically assume that it's all our fault.
How long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This seems... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Global warming" is a documented scientific fact. Without the greenhouse effect our planet would be uninhabitable.
Now whether this effect has been exacerbated by human creation of greater atmospheric carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, etc., that's up for debate. Personally I think since we're not sure, we should err on the side of caution and try and cut emissions as much as possible.
All the more reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Before We Wack Out On "Global Warming Isn't Real" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh. If Greenies had just concentrated on the fact of global temperature increase or decrease, the debate would be simply on technical solutions. Instead they made it a religious issue. Now any time something like this comes out, those of the other religion will start demanding sacrifices of oil.
Re:How long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US government ALREADY doesn't take global warming seriously. Bush was pretty quick on the draw to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol when he entered office. I guess Kyoto and pumpin oil don't mix.
G Dubya withdraws from Kyoto [bbc.co.uk]
Re:.05% doesn't seem like much... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, which is why the scientist said that it would be significant if it's been going on for a century or so. That would be a 5% increase (actually more, due to the wonders of compound interest), which certainly would be important.
Re:Double the cookage (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm prepared to believe that CO2 is the primary culprit, but I regard as a question of science, not blind religious faith. The mindset you and "aepervius" seem to have, that CO2 must be treated as the cause of climate change, regardless of what new facts emerge, is, well, embarassing.
Sounds Reasonable... (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless the theory is that dinosaurs also used aerosol cans, leading to their own demise. Asteroid theory, ha! The pieces start to fall together...
Note to moderators: The first paragraph is insightful, the second is an attempt at humor.
Re:arrogance (Score:4, Insightful)
could it be (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas, reason is out of style.
Re:Too short a baseline (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yet another excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The article cites the leader of the study as indicating that you shouldn't draw such a conclusion from it:
so he explicitly says that this does not show that you can't blame it on greenhouse gases.
No, because there are forms of air pollution other than CO2, and they also cause problems.
So, if global warming is not at all due to excess CO2 production (as opposed to being due to increased solar output and excess CO2 production, which is one possibility), what part of climate fuckage is caused by our use of oil?
Re:arrogance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for questioning orthodoxy!
But I also question your ability to read the minds of people you apparently haven't met. I know a number of people who do environmental work for a living. As in everything else, some are clueless and some are happy to take somebody else's word for things that fit their prejudices. (Thanks goodness that doesn't happen here on Slashdot.) But many are smart and sincere, and have the kinds of science background to be able to evaluate the claims well.
Re:Before We Wack Out On "Global Warming Isn't Rea (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, but if it turns out the sun is causing 99% of the global warming we've seen, and CO2 is causing 1%, you have to ask yourself whether its worth spending trillions of dollars to get that 1% back.
Re:yet another excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of good reasons to cut down on oil consumption. Heck, cutting down on oil consumption would even *gasp* save money, which is always a good thing. Decreased oil consumption would certainly help out with our problems in the Middle East. Not to mention that limiting oil consumption would decrease other harmful side effects such as smog and acid rain. In short, using less oil is clearly in the U.S.'s best interests. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that.
That being the case, why the environmentalists put so much emphasis on global warming is beyond me. The science behind global warming is iffy at best. Even the scientists with the most dire predictions (and the biggest axes to grind) are quick to point out that they are making a lot of assumptions. Instead of focusing on the many clearly measurable reasons to limit our use of oil the environmentalists have jumped straight for the doomsday scenario. In my opinion this loses their movement a great deal of credibility. Instead of focusing on the science, the have jumped headfirst into the sensational. In many ways they are just short of the homeless guy with the "The End is Near!" sign around his neck. Until they have better evidence they should stick to the arguments that clearly can't be refuted.
This article is a good example of how difficult it is to predict global weather trends. There are simply too many variables and not enough information. It's entirely possible that the earth is getting warmer because *boggle* the sun is burning hotter. Does this mean we shouldn't cut down on our use of oil? Of course not. We should just stop focusing on global warming as the primary reason to limiting oil production.
Re:yet another excuse (Score:3, Insightful)
(Which is also caused by the use of other fossil fuels, e.g. coal.)
I'm not sure I'd call acid rain a climate problem, though.
Re:How long before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:it's not cow farts (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a chemist, and you're quite right. Carbon dioxide does store energy that an IR transparent gas would not trap in our atmosphere. But you glibly assume that it is easy to measure the effect of this trapping on global climate. This is not true, and is the reason there there is active debate to this date, even among responsible, non-oil funded scientists over the degree of the effect.
At any rate, this effect *is* secondary to the effect of the sun's output...it is the largest source of energy for our planet, and any change in its output, even small ones, makes a large difference in our climate.
This is why we have seasons...and seasonal changes are quite large and result from small changes in the sun-earth distance.
If this report is true, and the sun's output has in fact increased over the last decade, it would be an important factor to account for, that to my knowledge, has not previously been considered.
And it is at the same time bad news. If true, then human behavior may not be as responsible for climate change as we all have thought, and that makes the effects we would like to avoid that much harder to avoid....
Re:How long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is very sad that the US did not sign the Kyoto. But to be fair, not very many countries are taking CO2 cuts seriously.
The rest of the developed world (Europe, Japan, etc) did sign the protocol, but now it seems like many of them (e.g., Japan) will not follow their obligations.
The developing world currently stands for about 50% of world CO2 emissions. Their emissions are increasing explosively. They did sign the Kyoto protocol, but for their part the protocol was virtually without obligations.
Tor
Re:How long before... (Score:2, Insightful)
The funny thing is, after reading the replies here, BOTH SIDES of the global warming debate claim it proves their theories.
geesh.
-John
gawd, where to begin... (Score:5, Insightful)
Accu-weather, a commercial concern controlled by commercial interests, knows which side of their bread is buttered. Instead, you might consider the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [grida.no], which directly attributes the observed tmeperature increase to radiative forcing of greenhouse gasses.
This is the misinformation that pisses me off the most. I have been in direct telephone contact with the pair of so-called scientists from Huntsville, Alabama who published this crap. Their measurements of cooling above the troposphere are completely consistent with global warming in the troposphere, where radiative forcing keeps heat trapped at the surface of the Earth. Guess where the Huntsville team gets their funding? NASA. Guess what agency pumps carbon dioxide equivalent to driving a SUV two million miles into the atmosphere every time a shuttle launches? NASA.
Take another look at the r^2 value on the curve fit graph of atmospheric CO2. [bovik.org] That value means that all but about 1% of the variation of that curve can be explained by those four numeric parameters of that logistic sigmoid curve. One thing that isn't uncertain is that if we don't start wholesale conversion to wind power pretty damn soon, there will be twice as much atmospheric CO2 in 2060 as their was in 1500. Did you know that less than 150,000 modern wind turbines could supply the entire U.S. power grid demand?
Oh, PLEASE! Water vapor, unlike CO2, becomes reflective (clouds are white) when it condenses from vapor to aerosol, which it does under temperature increase conditions (greater transpiration at greater temperatures raising humidity.) This tends to nullify water's heat trapping over time.
Both halfs of that statement are a baldface lie. The "prior to 1940" statement directly contradicts the observed data [grida.no], and anyone who thinks greenhouse gas emissions "upsurged" after 1940 needs to take another look at the graph [bovik.org] and/or read up on the history of coal mining.
Pathetic.
I guess the senate voting it down 99-0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:2, Insightful)
That might be, assuming we are so arrogant to believe that we no better than nature (which has been working fine without us for billions of years).
This is an argument of desperation for the global warming crowd. It used to be that we had to cut CO2 because we were causing global warming. Now it looks like the argument might be "Well, we're not really causing global warming, but we have to do our part to reduce NATURAL global warming."
I have a better idea for the Global Warming PAC: "The gig's up!"
sun screen for the earth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:4, Insightful)
How valid of an argument is that? The industrialized countries produce the majority of pollution, so that should be the focus of the treaty! Why focus on something that has minimal return globally?
On the other hand, I could see industrialized nations complaining if the majority of other industrialized nations don't comply, simply because it would make competition between them less fair.
The US is and claims to be a global leader. It should set the standard on the environment. The fact that it doesn't live up to that is puzzling.
I have a feeling that the other solutions they are looking for it better ways to live with our worsening atmosphere. "Hey, we could just wear gas masks every day, so there's no need to cut emissions further." That kind of thinking. I surely hope not.
Re:arrogance - Don't kid yourself. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and as to your heavier rain showers, particles in the air cause heavier rain showers, too. Ever hear of cloud seeding? My city is large enough to cause local weather variations, too. I've seen blizzards split around the city - clouds and snow in all directions, and a partially clear sky above. It looks really cool on weather maps, but I'm not attributing that local variation to global warming, either.
I'm not saying I believe this, but you can't take two disparate elements, and guess you know what the whole ecosystem was doing.
All the scientists are guessing, to one degree or another. They don't have 100% certainty with most of the big things, wich is why the theories keep evolving. Obviously, there is one right answer, and we might even find it. The likelier option is that more than one thoery is partly right.
Of course, we may never know, at least until we've been able to collect a decent sample ourselves. Personally, I'll keep guessing.
Re:arrogance - Don't kid yourself. (Score:2, Insightful)
I would tend to agree with your prespective that one should be very cautious before determining causality from the graphs discussed in the parent posting. It seems to me that a giant icesheet smothering 1/3 of the Northern Hemisphere would tend to put a pretty good damper on CO2 emmissions from natural decay of plant matter in what today is largely forests and grasslands in Canada, Europe and Siberia.
Re:How long before... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:2, Insightful)
God this scares me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Double the cookage (Score:1, Insightful)
IMHO, No shit Sherlock. If, on average, there has been a 5% increase in the Suns heat radiation being absorbed by the Earth in the past Century (Cumulative) wouldn't you expect the result of this to be warming of the Earth? duh.
The effect of the Suns' affect on earths warming assuming even the most basic parabolic curve -F(x^2)=0.05(X-?)+?, (are we over the vertex or still going up?) would suggest that the Earth would still be warming up even if we are reasonably close to the vertex and going on the negative side (Very large mass(balanced thermal dynamics) = good retainer of heat with a delayed dissipation of heat due to heat transfer through the mass as a whole).
Balanced thermal dynamics you ask? If the earth was affected by "Greenhouse gasses" even by the miniscule amount that it could resulting from CO2 being produced by the Evil Internal Combustion Engine (Last, umm, 100 years of mass production) it would be dwarfed by the affect of a 5% hotter Sun(Earth heat absorption).
The guys practicing subsistence farming, noted in your link, are a victm of the Sun and the changing climate being created by it, not the "Internal Combustion Engine" and don't get me started on the Rain Forests.
I have limited mathematics skills and even I can see the futility of your argument.
Unless you can prove to me that CO2 in the atmosphere can effect the temperature of the Earth more than the Sun has over the years, by any significant ammount, I will consider you a crackpot or an idiot parroting a Crackpots professions.
How do you explain the ice ages and heat waves of the past x(yesrs) which were devoid of CO2 being produced by un-natural sources?
It is a cyclical phenonema and CO2 producing "things" are neglegable.
However, I am all for responsible management of our resources. Let Hunters manage the animal population. They will make damn sure they have something to hunt as proven in modern wildlife management.
Let ANWR be drilled. Less than 2K acres out of 2M for a 50+ year supply of Oil (while alternatives are developed) and no longer dependent on foreign sources (which will run out eventually) and no evidence that serious environmental impact will occur. Or any measurable impact at all? How do you explain the increase of wildlife in the present Alaskan Oil Fields compared to pre-development?
Let me guess, Rosenzweig is funded by the Radical Left Wing organizations, correct? I think it is a "Vast Left Wing Conspiracy" myself.
I will shut up now.
P.S. Yea, us conservatives can do that
DS
whatever happened to conservatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it is, at least as far as many current industries are concerned. This is not a deep dark secret, it's a simple fact.
Beyond that there are two camps. The first believe that green industries will more than make up for the reduction in economic activity in polluting industries. The second (much smaller) believes that reduced economic activity in general is desirable.
So don't feel bad about questioning the Green orthodoxy, because it's changed 180-degrees in the not too distant past,
Scientists don't know for certain whether CO2 emissions at current or future levels will cause global warming, global cooling, or not have any effect. There are plausible models predicting all three effects (although global warming is by far the most widely accepted model). And if climate change occurs on a massive change, plausible models say that it will be very damaging and costly.
The greens just take a conservative approach, which simply says: massive greenhouse gas emissions are a very recent phenomemon; since we have plausible models predicting grave consequences from this recent phenomenon, let's limit them to remain closer to historical levels until we know more.
It's ironic that the self-proclaimed "conservatives" are the ones most pushing for such a dangerous experiment on a global scale.
Re:How long before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither do voodoo science and reality.
Get real. After reading this article on the sun getting hotter people still insist humans are responsible for global warming. So what was the reason for global freezing in the 13th century? Lack of burning oil?
Think about it.
Re:From where comest the CO2? (Score:2, Insightful)
2.5 lbs per day + 3.5 lbs per day is apparently too much. Do you propose that instead of reducing the amount of CO2 produced by cars that we instead begin simply culling the drivers?
Re:God this scares me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long before... (Score:3, Insightful)
"That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned."