Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening On the Sun 342
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Robert Lee Hotz reports in the WSJ that current solar activity is stranger than it has been in a century or more. The sun is producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected, and its magnetic poles are oddly out of sync. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is 'a total punk,' says Jonathan Cirtain. 'I would say it is the weakest in 200 years,' adds David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record, with the sun's magnetic poles out of sync for the past year so the sun technically has two South Poles. Several solar scientists speculate that the sun may be returning to a more relaxed state after an era of unusually high activity that started in the 1940s (PDF). 'More than half of solar physicists would say we are returning to a norm,' says Mark Miesch. 'We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.' If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn't be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. 'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'"
Global warming.. (Score:5, Funny)
Just sayin.. you're warned..
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Funny)
The human ingenuity has no limits! We saw a new ice age coming and created the polluting industrial society to counter the effect.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was alive then, and I can remember the CIA put forward proposals to do things like scatter soot on the Antarctic, dam the Gulf Stream and create a huge lake in the middle of Africa. The environmentalists on Earth Day 1970 were all warning about a new Ice age.
Here are a couple of papers from the scientists of those times...
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0493/106/3/pdf/i1520-0493-106-3-413.pdf
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0450(1971)010%3C0703:TEOAAO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Informative)
To say that the science beyond 'global cooling' / "new ice age" in the 1970's was anywhere near as robust or accepted by scientists in the field (as opposed to bored journalists and second tier science fiction authors) is simply untrue. A number of papers were written, people thought about it, but it never gained the acceptance that the current climate change scenarios have.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it very interesting how you so easily fall into that trap; the idea that consensus governs reality.
No, reality lies outside of consensus. Sometimes it takes decades (occasionally, centuries) for consensus to match reality.
That's not to say global cooling is the correct model, but to claim it is incorrect simply because it has not gained a consensus inside of 40 years is rather disingenious.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that when the reality is unknown, you make your decisions on the best available evidence - the consensus. You don't grab on to whatever contrafactual theory you prefer and hope that history vindicates you by dumb luck. The man who bets his savings on a million-to-one shot is a moron whether the horse wins or not.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post is completely correct.
Nevertheless, consensus is not the same as reality. A true scientific mindset appreciates not only the fact that consensus may point to a clear conclusion, but also the potential that it might be wrong.
I am not correcting your choice, I am correcting the way you chose it. Truth is not democratic in nature.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:4, Interesting)
The incompleteness of its own knowledge must be one of the subjects a wise consensus addresses, yes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nevertheless, consensus is not the same as reality. A true scientific mindset appreciates not only the fact that consensus may point to a clear conclusion, but also the potential that it might be wrong.
I am not correcting your choice, I am correcting the way you chose it. Truth is not democratic in nature
Not to detract from the post's point, but it does conflate democracy with consensus. And that is terribly wrong.
Democracy is about viewing the world through a binary filter so that the choice to take any action is decided by Yes/No votes. And counting the votes. Consensus is different. It is about arguing over how to view the world until the overwhelming number of those involved agree on a point of view. The actions that follow from that PoV are then obvious.
There are two kinds of consensus:
1. Normal co
Re:Global warming.. (Score:4, Interesting)
consensus is not the same as reality
And authority is never the source of truth. It's a good reminder, and one that needs to happen frequently.
At the same time, authority is frequently a necessary shortcut. Most casual participants in the Global Warming "debate" don't have the time to deep-dive the dozens of interrelated specialties needed to understand climate science. Instead we choose the narrative we find most convincing, whether it's ((greedy grant-seeking scientist supporting Al Gore's vision for controlling us all)) or ((greedy carbon-heavy corporations fueling disinformation campaigns against truth-seeking academics)). Arguing-to-consensus supports the latter by reminding us that there's strong agreement among people doing real-world investigation, and that's the closest to the truth we can get in time to make a decision.
Truth is not democratic in nature.
Another good reminder, but I'll nitpick a little: the scientific community isn't a democracy but a worldwide collection of highly-specialized researchers. Fallible? Yes. Corruptible? Some of them. But it's not the same thing as inviting all members of the populous to pick their favorite option after 8 months of intense media campaigns.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be amazed at how many politicians (and I'm thinking of politicians specifically here) take the lack of certainty in the outcome of an event as a justification for doing whatever sounds really good to them at that particular moment in time.
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It was actually a toss-up at the time (in science, not public opinion) as to whether warming or cooling would dominate climate in the next few decades. Not, as a survey of the popular press would have you believe, a slam-dunk for cooling.
Re:Global warming.. (Score:5, Informative)
It was actually a toss-up at the time (in science, not public opinion) ...
Perhaps but the fact that from 1965 to 1979 the number of papers on warming outnumbered the number of papers on cooling by 6 to 1 shows they were already leaning toward warming. Link. [confex.com]
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Exactly, it's not as simple as people would like to think. Sulphur oxides and particulates reflect light and heat back out into space, while carbon oxides trap it in the atmosphere. With the two mechanisms competing against each other it's hard to know which one will win out.
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What the effect of global warming will be at what we can do about it are the subjects of the IPCC Working Group II and Working Group III reports respectively. The reports for the AR5 are due out next year but to could go back and review the reports from the AR4 now. The science in those areas is less certain than the basis for the Working Group I report on the causes but they compile the best science we currently have.
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bring in there second coming ... You're link is a horrible article
What's wrong with the article? Does its author think so little of the value of clear communication that he can't be burdened with the task of learning the differences between "your"/"you're" and "there"/"their?"
Yeah, that's frustrating.
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Excuse me using extrem vocablary, but this is utter bullshit!
Here's [edge.org] a quick run-down from the man responsible for the (media-created) "global cooling" of the 70s.
Besides the excellent explanation of what went wrong in the first place, how he found out about it and published his new findings immediately, the part I especially like about that article is the the final paragraph:
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Just sayin.. you're warmed..
You missed one half of an m...
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When will people finally realize that anthropogenic solar cooling is a real issue that affects all of us?
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Clowns? so you don't understand science, can't think about the future and the only argument is an ad hom?
It's climate change (Score:5, Funny)
Climate change is messing up our sun!
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Humorous, but possibly true... is the sun's climate changing?
Re:It's Edward Snowden !!! (Score:5, Funny)
It's all the fault of Edward Snowden !
Edward Snowden would be a good name for some evil antagonist who creates heavy global cooling.
Re:It's Edward Snowden !!! (Score:4, Funny)
Scientists don't know everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists don't know everything about everything, but they want to know. That's how science works: it's a process.
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That's nice, the rest of us will work through the difficulties of human endevours and still try to piece the truth together.
Re:Scientists don't know everything (Score:5, Insightful)
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The peer review process, which has been around quite some time, works to prevent exactly the problems you claim exist with science today
No, the peer review process is broken as several articles here have pointed out recently. Little actual review is accomplished as there's no money in the review, and you don't get any credit for doing so.
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IT's not broken, but it can have problems.
Of course most article who claim peer review is broken don't understand peer review. For example, publishing is just the beginning of peer review, but many people here treat it as the final process of peer review.
And the quality of the initial review will change depending on the journal. At this moment in time, Open Access publishing is pretty horrible with the initial review of the paper.
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Yes, research that disproves what the other guy said has never made anyone's career or been a competitive avenue for funding. Cranking out exactly the same study as everyone else is a surefire way to academic stardom and a thriving grant portfolio.
Thanks alot, Sun... (Score:5, Insightful)
...hey, if it buys us a hundred years to figure this pollution shit out, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.
Are you?
she said "modest" (Score:2)
so more like an extra year or two, at best, and probably more like a few months.
it's later than you think, and possibly too late already, only we hope not.
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Re:she said "modest" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like being in a car hurtling towards a cliff and deciding not to do anything, because we don't really 'know' whats going to happen, it's all speculation.
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This is American news. Over in Europe, most governments have been looking into the impacts of long-term global cooling for the past decade. Or so says that liberal hard-on machine Slate; I'm surprised Fox News hasn't jumped on this, doubly surprised that Republicans are usually the ones to call bullshit on the modern global cooling theory and immediately start spouting about how global warming is a well-established scientific fact. It's like the political ideologists can't keep straight what side of whi
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global warming is a well extablished fact. I wonder which part of the science you don't knoe?
Help me find out:
1) Do you not know visible light comes from the sun?
2) Do you not know that when visible light hits something Infra red is created?
3) Do you not know that CO2 is 'clear' to visible light?
4) Do you not know that CO2 is opaque it infra red?
Those are scientific facts.
So the hypothesis based on those facts is that the trapped energy will increase on earth.
That means an increase in global temperature and
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...hey, if it buys us a hundred years to figure this pollution shit out, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.
Are you?
Nah, not doing it even if the horse's not a gift.
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From what I've seen it buys about a decade at best. And it does nothing about the ocean acidification problem.
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You know as well as I do that the deniers will cry about how it was the Suns fault all along
A scenario which hasn't really been ruled out, you know. All sorts of things have been blamed for why climate models don't match reality - sunlight blocking soot, solar activity changes, and heat absorbed by oceans. I see it as models not matching reality. It may be that one or more of these excuses are valid or it may simply be that the models are in error.
whenever the higher intensity state returns we'll be right back where we are now.
Which isn't a bad place to be. Keep in mind that humanity does other things than merely emitting carbon dioxide such as reducing poverty.
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I don't think it's the position, but the trend, that he's complaining about when he says "where we are right now". This is a fine state to be in, but it's evidently not a steady state.
Puzzled reader says strange things are happening a (Score:2)
Sun’s Hemispheres Out Of Sync During Magnetic Field
Written by: Tara Dodrill Trending August 8, 2013 3 Comments
Sunspots we miss you!! (Score:2)
Please come back my crappy antenna needs all the help it can get.
glass half empty (Score:4, Funny)
'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'
That's a glass half empty point of view. If we hadn't added a protective layer of CO2 to our atmosphere we could be in an ice age right now.
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If the difference between high solar activity and low solar activity is just a slowing of warming, how do you conclude that we would be in "an ice age" were the warming not present?
Re:glass half empty (Score:4, Informative)
The difference between high and low solar activity is small (0.1% difference).
With solar radiation at the average level of ~1366 W/sqm the variation is a tiny 1.3 Watts...
The temperatures during the so-called Little Ice Age were lower than average by less than 1 degree Celsius.
Calling the period an "Ice Age" is incorrect.
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We're in an interglacial, which I would've thought was my obvious meaning from the context.
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So, the sun is behaving differently than any other time in it's recorded history. Researchers don't know why. But Judith Lean feels comfortable stating conclusively what effec
Mayan Calendar (Score:4, Funny)
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On top of that, the Gregorian calendar is also soon coming to an end. It can only mean bad things...
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Leave the sun alone (Score:2, Funny)
Nooooo (Score:3)
After witnessing the Aurora, I say this is sad news. Quiet sun means fewer displays like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEHRoyvh_Ec [youtube.com]
And maybe no more of those wild sun moments when satellite engineers go berserk in fear.
What's happening Flash? (Score:5, Funny)
Only Doctor Hans Zarkhov, formerly at NASA, has provided any explanation.
Nukes (Score:3)
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Danny Boyle already made that movie.
stop looking at the sun (Score:2, Insightful)
for causes and effects of global warming. It's a nearly
stable factor.
Do something about the shit under your nose.
Not taking a stance here, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I note that global climate seems to be going through a startlingly fast, almost uniquely fast change. (Well, ok, there are similar almost-vertical pulses of warming about every 120-140kY.)
The sun seems to be going through a startling, unobserved mixture of activity.
Generally, when one startling random happenstance occurs in close proximity to another, it's not unreasonable to wonder if they're connected.
One might point out that our understanding of solar cycles comes from direct observation of approximately only 250-some years.
Observation of a system can only observe periodicity of 0.5N, and suggest confirmation 0.33N; that is you only get a HINT that something is periodic after you see it twice, and really only a strong suggestion of periodicity after the third observation. Turning that around, then, the longest periodic cycles within our 4.5-billion-old Sun that we could have directly observed is not much more than 80 years. (Granted, one can make some inferred solar observations on a longer scale based on tree ring data, etc.)
That's an amazingly short time, given the scale of our sun's span. We don't really know all that much about it.
Nothing to worry about! (Score:2)
It's just the photino birds.
we - don't - understand - so - much - (Score:2)
... that if anyone presents you a model of anything, it is likely wrong to a degree they can only guess at.
Economic, social, biological, climate (to mention just a few) are to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It is nice people study these things and increase our knowledge. That sort of pursuit is to be encouraged and applauded. But the minute anyone says they have it all understood ... stop listening. They don't.
Think: when was the last time you heard about a model and were told its accuracy _and_ as
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In science, as opposed to the press, a method's limitations are basically the first thing you hear after the method is described. When that qualification is absent, it's the first thing the audience asks about. In this context look at how much of the IPCC reports or the BEST study are concerned with testing method sensitivity.
Quick! (Score:3)
Send people to Mars. While the level of solar activity is low and the risk of CMEs [wikipedia.org] is less.
Re:Troll (Score:4, Funny)
The Sun God is angry! Sacrifice the corporate capitalists to appease the Sun God!!
I'll take the cash value of that Nobel Prize in lottery tickets, thanks.
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Well, no. The Sun God laid back and chilling out, thus the low level of activity.
Re:CLIMATE CHANGE! (Score:4, Insightful)
OMG! More proof of climate change! Quick, give more money to climate 'scientists'!
I bet all you climate-change-deniers are feeling foolish now.
It is interesting how successful the Koch brothers were with their anti-AGW Think Tank funding. They couldn't discredit the science, so they discredited scientists instead. And have created this fantastic meme that it is the scientist side of this discussion that has a big economic interest in it.
Re:CLIMATE CHANGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is interesting how successful the Koch brothers were with their anti-AGW Think Tank funding. They couldn't discredit the science, so they discredited scientists instead. And have created this fantastic meme that it is the scientist side of this discussion that has a big economic interest in it.
Oceania always had a need for an Emmanuel Goldstein. Here, the Koch brothers are attributed with a near mythical level of persuasion even though on the propaganda front they're greatly outspent, for example, by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the EU.
My view is that over the decades, the environmentalism movement has fucked over a lot of people. I know I became disenchanted when Greenpeace (US branch, I believe) libeled Du Pont (incidentally with global warming FUD) while I was working there around 1990. The society-wide distrust of the AGW theory is one of those consequences.
People might still be willing to make small but meaningless sacrifices (such as recycling programs) for the environment, but when it affects your life and those you care about for little, if any, gain, people get more discerning.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikioedia won't tell me how much money Greenpeace has, but the indication I got is that compared to the Koches, Greenpeace is a pauper. Koch could BUY the entire environmental movement if it were for sale. And you act like it's just them, when every oil company and other polluter wants to spread the disinformation.
My view is that over the decades, the environmentalism movement has fucked over a lot of people.
Yeah, DuPont, Monsanto, the oil companies, and all the other dirty bastards that foul my air and wat
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How do you respond to this: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/secret-environmental-cost-us-ethanol-220037254.html [yahoo.com]
I think this is just the beginning. The environmental movement has a lot to answer for, including out of control forest fires, millions of deaths from malaria, and so on. I'm not saying that a clean environment is a noble goal, just that proper evaluations are needed.
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I don't think you can blame the environmental movement for rampant and anti-environmental profiteering by agribusinesses realising that biofuel crops can be a huge money-spinner. I mean literally that very article has environmentalist groups arguing against it.
Re:CLIMATE CHANGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
millions of deaths from malaria
Yeah, that's the point where you really proved that you don't know what you're talking about.
DDT was not banned from the world, only the US. The US does not have millions of deaths from malaria.
In point of fact, DDT is still in use around the world. Unfortunately, mosquitoes have developed resistance to it [wikipedia.org] and humans haven't. The decline is DDT usage is not due to the US banning it, but rather due to the fact that it's not working very well anymore and the health problems it causes for humans are beginning to outweigh the benefits.
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I don't think that the aesthetics of the environmentalism movement should be the main driver of people's decisions with regard to the environment, any more than the aesthetics of libertarianism should decide what people do about their civil liberties.
Re:CLIMATE CHANGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, the Koch brothers are attributed with a near mythical level of persuasion even though on the propaganda front they're greatly outspent, for example, by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the EU.
I hope you realize that's not a very fair comparison. There are at least three fundamental errors that make the comparison misleading:
1) You are comparing two oil tycoons to Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union
The Koch brothers run a privately owned company with an estimated income of around $100 billion per year
Greenpeace has an income of around 0.35% of Koch industries, around 350 million.
The World Wildlife fund has an income of around 0.25% of Koch industries, around 250 million.
The European Union has a budget of around 160% of Koch industries, around $160 billion per year
You needed to throw the European Union into the comparison to make the comparison look even remotely reasonable. Otherwise the groups you're looking at would be at a more than 100 to 1 funding disadvantage. However, other than to make the comparison look less ridiculous, it doesn't really seem reasonable to include the EU in your comparison.
2) You seem to categorizing all money spent by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union (which includes 28 different countries) as propaganda.
This is a ridiculous assumption to make, however, it may surprise you to know that Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union have other things to spend their money on than climate change. Greenpeace maintains a small fleet of ships, and runs a variety of different environmental campaigns, the World Wildlife Fund is more concerned with Wilflife preservationt than Global Warming and the European Union is a government that runs many programs that have nothing to do with climate change.
3) No one know how much money the Koch brothers spend on climate change propaganda.
Koch industries is a privately owned company and thus doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends on anti-climate change propaganda. It seems likely, however, if they spend as little as 1% on opposing climate change they'd outspend the Greenpeace and the WWF entirely. Once you account for the actual breakdown of spending on climate change for those groups, the Koch brothers could easily outspend them with 0.1% of annual revenue.
While I agree that some people do have Koch brother myopia, they are in fact, one of the largest funders of anti-regulatory and right-wing propaganda groups in the world. Most of that funding is done in secret because they are not compelled to reveal any of it. They are in fact, running a shadowy propaganda war against environmental groups because they directly profit from lax environmental laws (because of lower costs, and increased ability to shift clean up burdens to tax payers).
I know I became disenchanted when Greenpeace (US branch, I believe) libeled Du Pont (incidentally with global warming FUD) while I was working there around 1990.
Ah, yes. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Incidentally, I've never really been a big fan of Greenpeace either, but I try not to let the messenger colour the message.
People might still be willing to make small but meaningless sacrifices (such as recycling programs) for the environment, but when it affects your life and those you care about for little, if any, gain, people get more discerning.
That is probably true. However, the problem may be the perception of the gain versus the perception of the cost. I know many people (on Slashdot even) have claimed that switching to a low carbon energy infrastructure would result in global poverty. But to stop global warming completely in it's tracks would cost us close to 2% of world GDP, fairly close to what the world spends on sewers and sewage treatment. If you figure the cost is everyth
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The meme I've seen is "if we do something like the tree-huggers demand of us, we'll all be shivering in the dark". It would be interesting to map its origin and spread.
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The problem with such breezy assumptions is that if the Koch brothers really are spending that kind of money, then why aren't we seeing the results? They should be able to get a lot of reporters to downplay climate change for example. Instead, we see reporters who strain to get climate change into a story.
How would you know if you were seeing the results of that funding or not? It takes a lot of money to conceal the truth. Have you ever considered that maybe your own opposition is one of the end results of that funding? The Koch brothers don't need to generate certainty that climate change isn't a problem, they only need to create enough doubt to enable themselves to continue operating the way they always have.
Incidentally, you are the one who claimed that the Koch brothers "are greatly outspent". What I
Re:CLIMATE CHANGE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Discrediting scientists (and by extension science) is going to be paying dividends for a long time. I wonder how quickly it'll accelerate the USA's loss of leadership in the sciences.
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I am struck by the irony of a group of people whose primary tactic for persuasion has been to call people Deniers and shills, etc in a blatant attempt to discredit them, is complaining that they themselves have fallen victim to the same game.
Karma?
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Shaddup!
Just look at the kings marvelous new robes, and don't be raining on the parade.
They've never seen this before but they are positive this won't slow down global warming.
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they are positive this won't slow down global warming.
the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists said.
Re:Logic anomaly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Logic fail. I may have absolutely positively no idea why a refinery exploded but I can easily forecast what that will mean for gas prices.
Likewise they don't know why the sun is acting the way it is but they DO know that that includes very slightly less output and a shift in spectrum and they do know what effect that will have.
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The point is that the fine structure of the sun's activity isn't a "hugely interrelated complex system" as far as the Earth is concerned: it's a point source of heat and light. The sun and the Earth are internally complex systems, but they're simply coupled.
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It's much more coupled than that. We're finding that the sun is massively connected to the Earth via magnetic flux tubes [nasa.gov] that dump charged particles into the magnetosphere, and that the day side of the magnetosphere is sometimes wide open [nasa.gov] to solar wind.
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I was referring to climate science and the atmosphere. Naturally there are other couplings (e.g. the sun's spectrum is advantageous to the growth of plant life) but they're very low-order and very stable versus solar energy output.
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Lately research has pretty much shot down the idea of a really significant role for cosmic rays impacting climate. This Guardian article [theguardian.com] contains links to several recent papers on the subject.
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At this distance the fine detail of the sun's internal operation can be approximated out, in the same way that you don't need to understand nuclear structure to have a good grasp on how human respiration works.
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Winter?
The next ice age is approaching!
Screw Global Warming, nature is messing with us.
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The next ice age is approaching!
There was actually recently a report which claims that the world is heading for a period of cooling [telegraph.co.uk] that will not end until the middle of this century.
Re:The winter is coming (Score:4, Interesting)
I see I'm the only one who RTFA (saw this yesterday). The most this will do is to slow global warming somewhat.
However, in 10,000 years when the seasons have flipped and the northern hemisphere has winter in June and summer in December they'll probably have another ice age. Ice ages are cyclical.
Re:good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good! (Score:5, Insightful)
You think you do, but if you knew more about how the planet operates, you'd know that a warmer planet won't be as pleasant to live in.
Social evolution can happen at a very rapid pace when needed, so I am not worried about that. Humans can and will adapt as needed.
What I do know, is that Geologically speaking, we are still in an ice-age(inter-glacial period, but still an ice age as we currently have ice-caps), so I know for a fact that earthly life as a whole will be quite happy once we have moved away from the unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead.
Sure there will be disruptions, but change is both disruptive and unavoidable, so we will deal with it.
Re:good! (Score:5, Insightful)
What I do know, is that Geologically speaking, we are still in an ice-age(inter-glacial period, but still an ice age as we currently have ice-caps), so I know for a fact that earthly life as a whole will be quite happy once we have moved away from the unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead.
Sure there will be disruptions, but change is both disruptive and unavoidable, so we will deal with it.
See, this is where denialism turns into woo-woo religion. You "know for a fact" that the planet's going to do better once it warms up, do you? You know for a fact that we can indeed deal with this disruption, do you?
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Gather 'round, kids. Parent post is a classic example of the Gish Gallop. [rationalwiki.org]
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but here is the point you, and people like you, don't seem to grasp:
The warming won't end unless we stop emitting, or find a good way to remove excess CO2.
" unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead."
and then what, as it continues to warm? hmm?
Why do people think oh., the caps will melt, and the it will be over and we will be fine?
The caps are currently acting as a break, along with the oceans, when the caps are gone the temperature increase will be faster. And it's
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I didn't realise that the bare survival of the human race was what passed for an acceptable vision of the future these days.
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I don't think you can really call the long steady states of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment "bare survival", or claim that hotspots of social change like the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are "thriving". Progress is restrained in resource-constrained societies, which is what you get during periods of major social upheaval.
If we're going to have social upheaval, I think it should be on our terms, for our reasons, and not the atmosphere's.
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"If you knew about science, you'd know that a warmer planet would be a lot more pleasant to live on. But of course, you don't."
based on what? how is 150 degree summer and no land to grow crops 'better'?
You think it's going to rise a few degrees and then stop? Without us taking action?
Explain how the acid level in the ocean ring and killing off the number 1 Oxygen maker is a a good thing.
"IPCC-predicted temperature increases will cause less disruption than the kind of carbon emission reductions that would be
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Wouldn't postmodernist scientists operate under the assumption that their model was an incomplete description, largely driven by their cultural and social norms as opposed to an underlying reality?
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The truth is that IF solar output is indeed declining, the earth's climate is going to dramatically cool...
You only think that if you think climate scientists are full of it. What climate scientists say is that a new Maunder minimum like period would only delay the warming by a decade or so.