Slashdot Mirror

... high sunspot activity generally means fewer clouds, which in turn means it gets hotter. When "solar storm" activity is low, more cosmic rays leak in, forming more clouds, cooling the weather.

When more cosmic rays leaked in, the climate didn't change. Richard Alley mentioned (at 42:00 in his 2009 AGU talk) that beryllium proxy data reveal a spike in cosmic ray intensity during the "Laschamp anomaly" ~40,000 years ago, but the corresponding oxygen isotope proxy for temperature didn't change unusually during that time period.

the hockey stick is bullshit

It has been corroborated by a metric shitload of papers.

So, to the best of our knowledge, it is quite correct.

That's ice surface area, which tells you only how spread out the ice is, not how much there is. You need to look at the ice mass, which is declining at an accelerating rate.

Nope. Antarctic ice is melting, at an accelerating rate no less. You are referring to the temporary sea ice that forms each winter. The ice melting off the land makes the ocean less salty, and fresher water freezes at a higher temperature than saltier water. But even though there is a bit more sea ice in the winter, the overall effect is that the ice is melting at an accelerating rate. Yeah, those pesky facts, huh?

Why would the ice in the Arctic and Antarctica be melting if the earth is cooling?

No, ice at both poles has been melting: Antarctic ice is melting and Arctic ice is melting. Sea level is rising mostly because of thermal expansion and also the previously mentioned melting. You can also just look at the instrumental temperature record. You can see the warming and its effects, right?

I wonder what's making all that ice melt then.

On the endothermic front you're making a huge assumption that the magnitude of energy absorbed by melting ice is large enough to make a significant difference to the global temperature, and even if it were so what?

As for your talk about magical heat you're obscuring the basic fact that whatever the mechanism decreasing volume and increasing surface area is actually happening. If I make up a stupid theory about magical bunnies driving the moon around the earth that doesn't actually stop the moon in its tracks.

If you're actually interested bunratty posted a relatively short and understandable explanation but I have no interest in debating your magical heat theories.

That's the surface area of ice, not the amount of ice, which is measured by volume or mass. If you look at the mass of ice in the Antarctic, you can see it's been melting for decades at an accelerating rate. Funny how the real facts get in the way of a good misinformation campaign.

Just kidding... the Antarctic ice has been melting for decades. More precisely, the mass of the old, thick land ice is decreasing due to rising temperatures, but the surface area of the short-lived, thin sea ice has been increasing, partly due to decreased salinity in the Southern Ocean because the land ice is melting. Overall, the Antarctic has been losing ice at an accelerating rate as temperatures have continued to increase.

The ship got stuck in sea ice that broke off the continent because it's melting due to the warming.

The ice they are stuck in is old ice that was able to escape because the ice around it melted. The melting is why more of the ice on land is breaking off and flowing into the sea. Read the article I linked to above.

No. Global warming is the observation that the mean temperature of the earth has increased over the past several decades, as shown in this graph. Only warming is proof of warming. We can also see effects of this warming, such as the Arctic ice and Antarctic ice melting.

As has been explained before, the reason there's lots of ice in the Antarctic sea is that the ice on the land is melting, which makes more of the ice flow into the sea. http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/antarctic-ice-melt

Not only is Antarctica losing ice each year, the ice loss is accelerating.

Here's an article that shows that Antarctic ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in addition to the Arctic sea ice and ice sheets and glaciers worldwide.

The odds are 10,000 to 1 against this unexpected link between cosmic rays and the variable state of the biosphere being just a coincidence, and it offers a new perspective on the connection between the evolution of the Milky Way and the entire history of life over the last 4 billion years,’ Dr Svensmark comments.

So I Googled it and found this article containing a refutation and further examples of over-reaching. I leave it to /. to comment on the accuracy of these links.

And rockets don't work in space because they have nothing to push against, there.
And travel over 16mph in a horseless carriage will kill or maim the passengers through sucking away their air, or by trepidation of the nerves.
And heavier-than-air flight is mathematically impossible.
As is insect flight.
And there are no rocks in the sky, so they cannot fall from there. Claims to the contrary are fraud, or very rarely the result of volcanic eruptions or exceptional waterspouts.
And heavier objects in circular motion will tend to external positions. Ergo, earth, and most celestial bodies, must percforce be hollow.

Claims to the contrary ar necessarily fantasious, or maliciously fraudulent. Off from the lawn with 'ye now. C'mon. Off!

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths

Henrik Svensmark has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global temperatures (Svensmark 1998). The theory goes that the solar magnetic field deflects GCRs, which are capable of seeding cloud formation on Earth. So if the solar magnetic field were to increase, fewer GCRs would reach Earth, seeding fewer low-level clouds, which are strongly reflective. Thus an increased solar magnetic field can indirectly decrease the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), causing the planet to warm. Therefore, in order for this theory to be plausible, all four of the following requirements must be true.

1. Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
2. Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
3. Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
4. Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.

Fortunately we have empirical observations against which we can test these requirements.

You like images more than words? http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/henrik-svensmark/image/image_view_fullscreen