Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth

[DForrest53]

http://www.livescience.com/environme...s_warming.html

Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 12 March 2007
07:27 am ET


Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.

Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon.

While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species.

Wobbly Mars

Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun's output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by

“Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel."

But Abdussamatov’s critics say the Red Planet’s recent thawing is more likely due to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. On Earth, these wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, are thought to contribute to the onset and disappearance ice ages.

“It’s believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations,” said Jeffrey Plaut, a project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. “The Earth also goes through orbital variations similar to that of Mars.”

As for Abdussamatov’s claim that solar fluctuations are causing Earth’s current global warming, Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington, says the idea is nonsense.

“That’s nuts,” Long said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t make physical sense that that’s the case.”

In 2005, Long’s team published a study in the journal Science showing that Earth experienced a period of “solar global dimming” from 1960 to 1990, during which time solar radiation hitting our planet’s surface decreased. Then from the mid-1990’s onward, the trend reversed and Earth experienced a “solar brightening.”

These changes were not likely driven by fluctuations in the output of the Sun, Long explained, but rather increases in atmospheric clouds or aerosols that reflected solar radiation back into space.

Other warming worlds

Others have pointed out anomalous warming on other worlds in our solar system.

Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:

“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”

Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.

“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”

In fact, scientists have alternative explanations for the anomalous warming on each of these other planetary bodies.

The warming on Triton, for example, could be the result of an extreme southern summer on the moon, a season that occurs every few hundred years, as well as possible changes in the makeup of surface ice that caused it to absorb more of the Sun’s heat.

Researchers credited Pluto’s warming to possible eruptive activity and a delayed thawing from its last close approach to the Sun in 1989.

And the recent storm activity on Jupiter is being blamed on a recurring climatic cycle that churns up material from the gas giant’s interior and lofts it to the surface, where it is heated by the Sun.

Sun does vary

The radiation output of the Sun does fluctuate over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. But the change is only about one-tenth of 1 percent—not substantial enough to affect Earth’s climate in dramatic ways, and certainly not enough to be the sole culprit of our planet’s current warming trend, scientists say.

“The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record,” said Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann.

The link between solar activity and global warming is just another scapegoat for human-caused warming, Mann told LiveScience.

“Solar activity continues to be one of the last bastions of contrarians,” Mann said. “People who don’t accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change still try to point to solar activity.”

The Maunder Minimum

This is not to say that solar fluctuations never influence Earth’s climate in substantial ways. During a 75-year period beginning in 1645, astronomers detected almost no sunspot activity on the Sun. Called the “Maunder Minimum,” this event coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a 350-year cold spell that gripped much of Europe and North America.

Recent studies have cast doubt on this relationship, however. New estimates of the total change in the brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum suggest it was only fractions of a percent, and perhaps not enough to create the global cooling commonly attributed to it.

“The situation is pretty ambiguous,” said David Rind, a senior climate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has modeled the Maunder Minimum.

Based on current estimates, even if another Maunder Minimum were to occur, it might result in an average temperature decrease of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, Rind said.

This would still not be enough to counteract warming of between 2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit from greenhouse gases by 2100, as predicted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

LiveScience staff writer Andrea Thompson contributed to this article.

Have at it hippies.

[Colombian Necktie]

I saw that on The Onion.

[Hutch]

Funny, I was just listening to this "documentary" that aired in the UK last week: The Great Global Warming Swindle.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...=great+swindle

One of my co-workers was trying to tell me that manmade CO2 output is around 5% of the total CO2 output of the earth, what with decomposition, bacteria, volcanos, etc. Anyone got any data on that?

[ptavv]

I can tell you that "air" is 0.04% CO2.

I'll see if I can dig up any numbers on man-made CO2 output.

[mrryde]

i outputted methane twice while reading that

[warthog]

I am wondering why this BBC program is considered a "documentary", while Al Gore's award winning film is considered THE DOCUMENTARY?

I am usually sceptical of those crying wolf the loudest. It would seem to me that this is the first complete documentary I have seen with scientists questioning the Global Warming theories so readily accepted today.

Why is that?

[MeatPuppet]

I am wondering why this BBC program is considered a "documentary", while Al Gore's award winning film is considered THE DOCUMENTARY?

I am usually sceptical of those crying wolf the loudest. It would seem to me that this is the first complete documentary I have seen with scientists questioning the Global Warming theories so readily accepted today.

Why is that?

Duuuude! Stop, you are screwing up.

Repeat after me, "Man is the only cause of global warming...man is the only cause."

OK, got it?

Some nice men will be visiting you in the next couple of days to make sure your mind is right on this subject. Be nice to them, it will be easier that for you that way.

[TomK]

I am wondering why this BBC program is considered a "documentary", while Al Gore's award winning film is considered THE DOCUMENTARY?

I am usually sceptical of those crying wolf the loudest. It would seem to me that this is the first complete documentary I have seen with scientists questioning the Global Warming theories so readily accepted today.

Why is that?

Because fear sells, humans like to think we have control over nature, science at the margins of detectability is messy and people prefer certitude, and the media wants thier news NOW! (even if it's wrong).

Science is just as subject to trendyness and fads as any other human endeavor, but over time it tends to sort out the truth eventually. That process takes way to long for the short attention spans of most folks, so the hyped stuff takes over for a while. Look back at the 1970's and the impending ice age hype. That wasn't sexy enough so in the 90's the hypers switched to GW.

I have long believed that the science of climate showed that solar output variability was the single biggest factor in climate, but that plays against all of the factors that have made human-casued global warming such a big seller in the marketplaces of ideas and research funding.

[RootSkier]

Fuck it, I'm getting a Hummer.

[Odin]

Fuck it, I'm getting a Hummer.

Don't Do It!

Forget Global warming for once and think about your penis.

It is a proven fact that women equate guys who drive hummers with small penii.

That is why you should drive a Mini cooper with a cucumber stuffed down your pants.

"I'm a star, a bright shining star"

[Hutch]

I am wondering why this BBC program is considered a "documentary", while Al Gore's award winning film is considered THE DOCUMENTARY?

I am usually sceptical of those crying wolf the loudest. It would seem to me that this is the first complete documentary I have seen with scientists questioning the Global Warming theories so readily accepted today.

Why is that?

I used quotes because of the following



1. Martin Durkin, the creator of TGGWS, made a film a few years ago about how breast implants are healthy for women. Seems to me to have the same appeal as "anthropogenic climate change is not our fault."

http://www.lobbywatch.org/p2temp2.as...38&page=1&op=2


2. One of the scientists who Durkin quoted now says his comments were taken out of context: "But there is one scientist in the film whose work has not been debunked: the oceanographer Carl Wunsch. He appears to support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising global temperatures. Wunsch says he was "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" by the people who made it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...032570,00.html

Also, I don't think it was aired on BBC, it was Channel 4. I'll let one of the blokes chime in on the credibility of that station, I have no idea.

[Jer]

Boring retread.

[Dantheman]

Look back at the 1970's and the impending ice age hype. That wasn't sexy enough so in the 90's the hypers switched to GW.

The Earth was getting cooler in the '70s. At the time, coal power plants were spewing massive quantities of sulfates into the atmosphere. Sulfates are really good at reflecting solar energy and there were enough of them to produce a net cooling. But, sulfates also create acid rain so now most (but not enough, acid precip is still a major problem) sulfates are scrubbed from coal plant emmissions in the US and Europe. Actually, some people have suggested pumping large quantities of sulfates into the upper atmosphere to counteract GHG warming. An interesting idea with some reason to believe it would work, most of the cooling experienced after a major volcanic eruption is caused by sulfates, but its generally best to not tempt the law of unintended consequences.

Also, if any of you really believe that there is no way human activities can significantly influence the global ecosystem, you need to open your eyes to the scale of modern society's ability to consume resources and generate waste.

[Hutch]

Boring retread.

Now we have to check teletips OT forum before we post something here?

Come on, Dave.

[The AD]

My take is if the sun is, in fact, contributing to the current warming of the Earth then it makes it even more vital to curb greenhouse gas emissions. They sure as hell aren't going to help the matter.

[panchosdad]

Dantheman gets it right about that global cooling/warming trends of the last few decades.

There is however an alarming trend of political correctness that treats any dissent or counter arguements about global warming as heresy, not worthy of debate. Global warming is not a scientific fact. There is, in my view, enough evidence to treat it as a serious threat, and to take substantive steps to reduce our carbon output. Look at it like insurance. You don't assume you're going to get hurt or sick, but it's a good idea to cover the worst case scenarios. The cost of insurance (reducing carbon output) isn't that high, it makes sense in many other ways (reducing reliance on middle eastern oil for one). The costs of rising global temps will be many times more.

Sorry to interrupt anyones rant.

[Hutch]

I can tell you that "air" is 0.04% CO2.

I'll see if I can dig up any numbers on man-made CO2 output.

I guess you didn't find what you were looking for?

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.]. Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!

[MeatPuppet]

My take is if the sun is, in fact, contributing to the current warming of the Earth then it makes it even more vital to curb greenhouse gas emissions. They sure as hell aren't going to help the matter.

I agree. But here is the problem. Unless I am mistaken, nobody can say, with any degree of certainty, what effect our actions will have on GW. For example, if the Kyoto Protocol had been instituted and all the goals meet, how much would that have slowed down GW? Or would it have slowed down GW at all? I would think that if such things were known, that information would be everywhere. But it's not.

It would seem that the solution(if there is one) would involve some new technology(or a new application of an already existing one) that will remove the source of the problem. But we don't have that.

What we have instead, is a bunch of people running around trying to put all kinds of restrictions on business and industry without any expectation that it will improve the problem that they site as the reason for the restrictions. Somebody help me out here. What am I missing?

Going on a diet is all good and fine, but if you don't increase your physical activity, you aren't going to lose weight. If you do increase your physical activity you will have far fewer restrictions on what you can eat and still remain healthy.

Again, what am I missing?

[3DB]

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I'll do the next best thing...block it."

[ptavv]

I guess you didn't find what you were looking for?

I didn't. I looked but had to get a bit of work done.

I did find this gem though (which, when combined with your stat would answer the question "How much CO2 that's out there is human generated?" [although it doesn't really because we don't know how much CO2 is absorbed by plants and the ocean on a yearly basis]).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2

...[The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is] about 2.996×10^12 tonnes...

(I've paraphrased)

[Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo]

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I'll do the next best thing...block it."

[The AD]

Again, what am I missing?

What you're missing is you've got to start somewhere. Maybe things like the Kyoto Protocol won't solve the problem, but you've got to start somewhere, and they sure as hell can't hurt.

[truth]

I blame Mexico.

[MeatPuppet]

...they sure as hell can't hurt.

If the solution is new and/or innovative technologies, choking the economies of the nations most likely to produce them, just might.


...or, it just might put enough of a squeeze on them to encourage them to produce the technologies that they would otherwise be slower to produce...


I tend to think it is the former. If it's the later, then it goes against my free market/libertarian mindset and I still have a problem with them. For dishonesty, if nothing else.

This has become a battle of ideologies, I wish it were more a matter of science and a rational response to the facts.

[Jer]

Now we have to check teletips OT forum before we post something here?

Come on, Dave.

Nah, it's even worse than that: you have to check the TTips OT in order to click through a link to another site that debunks the same ol' retreaded arguments made in the documentary that is referenced in the article about the impact of solar fluctuations on climate that was quoted by the OP.

Carry on.