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Climate Change Linked to Sun's Magnetic Field
-douggy writes "Found this story at Science daily - Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth. Couple this with the fact that the climate (global temperatures at least) also mirror the sunspot cycle almost perfectly. Makes an interesting case for global warming really."
There is no such thing as global warming. It is junk science and I challenge any scientist in the world to prove, again, PROVE, there is any warming pattern outside of those that have already existed in millions of years.
It's like taking a one week snapshot of the stock market or taking a 100 million year picture of it. Does anyone else understand this besides me?
Don't let the research grant loving "we'll say or do anything for another dollar" scientist scare you into believing this.
I think chicken little once said "the sky is falling, the sky is falling".
It is junk science
I am amused by how many people say "Global warming is junk science", yet never, ever give a concrete example of HOW it is junk science.
Don't let the research grant loving "we'll say or do anything for another dollar" scientist scare you into believing this.
And we should instead believe the scientists who are hired by the oil companies?
Please....
So I can keep driving my Lincoln Navigator around, even if I have no destination in mind? Excellent!
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Global warming is not junk science. As a former knowledge-craving, research-grant-supplicant, I assure you profit is nary a motive among the world's climate researchers. Only politicians, pundits and preachers profit from scare tactics.
As for your time-scale assertion, you're correct, we cannot PROVE(obnoxious style yours) that the warming pattern we have found existed outside the time frame of the Industrial Revolution. But that doesn't matter since that is not the point.
The point is that humans are changing the global climate relatively drastically in such a short period of time that it outstrips the rate of normal climate variation. Sure, the changes we're experiencing might happen on their own over the next 100 million years. I for one would rather it happen then than in the next 50 years. To frostall this, we could make just minor changes in our so-called American "lifestyle." What is a little less gluttony in light of the bounties of future climate stability?
Maybe your SUV is more important to you?
Even when it comes to global warming, to assume that CO2 and greenhouse gasses in general don't have an effect is to ignore a large body of scientific evidence. (Note scientific meaning arrived at by the scientific method)
It doesn't matter if we fuck up the environment and destroy the ozone layer.
Second, carbon dioxide isn't the cause of global warming either. That's just a smokescreen (ha!) to cover our USian asses.
Think about it, CO2 is perfectly transparent. But the real kicker is that even if CO2 was human-caused and even if CO2 caused warming, it would be dwarfed by the real problem: profligate energy consumption.
Burning a (metric) ton of coal produces about 3 kilograms of CO2. According to the DOE (I can't find the link) those three kilograms of CO2 will cause about 30 kilojoules of energy to be trapped on the planet. But how much energy does a metric ton of coal contain? About 30 gigajoules. That's where all the heat is coming from.
So cutting carbon emissions, even if that was related, won't work. Why? Because all sources of power produce heat. Nuclear power is only about 30% efficient--the other 70% of E=mc^2 is dumped to the environment. Fusion is even worse. Hell, I wouldn't be at all surprised just burning the 2000 Cal/day for 6 billion humans wasn't enough to cause the effects we're seeing.
The only solution is a massive program of eliminating energy waste by halting all computer use (computers use 25% of all energy in the US) and anyone who burns more than their allotted share of calories should be put on an enforced diet.
And people got angry when they announced not to release Solaris 9 for Intel!
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist Will do...and you feel free to go shoot up the rusting camaro in your backyard and beat your wife.
This is talking about a 100,000 year cycle. So it has NOTHING to do with the Greenhouse debate. Right ? Absolutely.
Also the Milankovic Cycle of heating due to orbital factors has a very good fit to the onset and end of the various ice ages over the last 2 million years. So I wouldn't agree that this is the trigger of Earth bound climate yet. Again this has nothing to do with current global warming.
Bitter and proud of it.
Personally, I think global warming is at best, improbable. But that doesn't mean we should go ahead and churn out thick black columns of smoke from coal burning smokestacks. I think that our use of fossil fuels doesn't have a global effect, but rather a local one that is even more disastrous than some far-off, dystopian prediction based on data fit to a curve that's iffy at best.
The really funny thing is that this disaster is happening now, and we don't even notice it, because it's so pervasive as to be "normal." I'm sorry, but it shouldn't be normal for kids to grow up with asthma and serious allergies.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The hotter you want to heat something in this manner, the more energy you'll have to add, exponentially; the hotter the planet is then it "should" be, the faster the heat will leave.
Nit-pick: This isn't exponential. The earth's energy loss due to radiative emission is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. So, the power input you need to (constantly) maintain to raise the earth's temperature by a given amount is:
dP = a[(T + t)^4 - T^4]
...Where T is the usual average temperature of the Earth, and t is the amount you want to raise it by, in degrees Kelvin. "a" is a proportionality constant equal to P0 / T4, where P0 is the solar power absorbed by the Earth (about 1.3e17 W).
Assuming your change is much smaller than the absolute temperature (around 300 degrees K), this is a roughly linear relation with respect to t:
a[4T^3 * t]
or
P0 * 4t/T
There are three kinds of lies:
- lies
- damn lies
- statistics
People on either side of any debate publish "information" that only favors their view.The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.
while these articles don't directly touch on the sun's magnetic field affecting climate it does discuss how the sun affects the Earth's energy balance.
Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment
First Paragraph: "Without the Sun, the Earth would be no more than a frozen rock stranded in space. The Sun warms the Earth and makes life possible. Its energy generates clouds, cleanses our water, produces plants, keeps animals and humans warm, and drives ocean currents and thunderstorms. Despite the Sun's importance, scientists have only begun to study it with high precision in recent decades. Prior to 1979, in fact, astronomers and Earth scientists did not even have accurate data on the total amount of energy from the Sun that reaches the Earth's outermost atmosphere. Variable absorption of sunlight by clouds and aerosols prevented researchers from accurately measuring solar radiatio before it strikes the Earth's atmosphere."
Watching the Sun: Measuring Variation in Solar Energy Output to Gauge its Effect on Long-term Climate Change
and a very cool image of a solar storm
.:: proud supporter of dc united
Instead of arguing over what evidence there is or isn't to support the global warming "theory", why don't we focus on what we DO agree on? Fossil fuels are very bad for us in the long run, and since we have the technology to kick this habit, we have every interrest in doing it ASAP. Most people who disagree with the link between global warming and human activity will agree with some other harmful aspect of using fossil fuels. The rest are simply out of their minds, if you ask me.
This may or may not have something to do with global warming - you can't simply dismiss it because the over all time span is so large. The cycle itself lasts for 100,000 years, but that doesn't mean there can't be noticable effects from changes in the sun over a much shorter time period.
I think the burden of proof is on the proponents of gw, to show that it is real science. I could make the outrageous claim that ailens landed in my backyard, but it would be up to me to cough up the evidence of that extraordinary event, not on /you/ to disprove it. Specifically, we want conclusive proof that GW is a result of human use of CO2 releasing activity before shutting down entire industries and displacing millions of employees, like some kind of primitive race tossing virgins into the volcano to appease an angry weather god or to bring the sun back from winter solstice before it disappears over the horizon forever, or to atone for some communal cosmic guilt trip.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It seems that none of you actually got through the first chapter of Lomborg's book. If you had, you would probably realize that his ideas are the middle ground. He puts forth three basic premises. 1) Things are not as good as they could be. 2) Things are not as bad as most of the environmentalists say they are. 3) A careful analysis of the data shows that in many respects, things are getting better, not worse.
I would recommend this book to anyone on either side of the argument. It does show a lot of effort to collect data from a variety of sources, and to make sense of the long term trends in the environment.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
You guys are generally a lot younger than me; I've seen several of these scams. Here's the drill: get someething no one can prove/disprove, get a couple of scientists to go along with it, and spread it by word of mouth. Sometimes you'll get pretty far.
Ya see, peacetime is a fertile field of silliness. When we're not playing Chicken Little over one topic, we're doing it over something else.
Some famous farces:
- In 1973, we were told that the world's supply of fuel was almost exhausted. Any day we'd all be walking to work. Odd though, as soon as gas was well over a dollar a gallon, we've been able to pump another 30-40 years of fuel without fear.
- In mid-70's there an episode of Barney Miller that featured a new concept: global cooling. Yep, people thought an Ice Age was coming. Ooh! Time to get out the coats!
- Every decade or so, we get re-mystified by 'The Bermuda Triangle', but it turns out this was an example of overhype perpetrated by real-estate yahoos. Take ANY section of ocean the size of 1/4 the US and you can make the same claims. Movies, books, fear and panic...How many airliners have we lost going from NYC to Bermuda?
- Feng Shea (sp?) The perfect farce: only a practitioner can tell if things are 'wrong', and the details are shrouded in mystery, and these people extort millions to 'get things right'. And there's no threat of malpractice; no proof, no lawsuit. What a sweet gig- most city-sized 'readings' cost in excess of $200,000 USD.
- The Ozone Hole: Same thing. The common man can't see it, but government policy had to change. People were required to change out air conditioner fluids. Once the cost of these new fluids were in place and the old ones were illegal, we learn that it has no effect.
- Water saving toliets. Thanks, AlGore...
Flush twice- it's a new toilet.
It goes on and on. Global warming is one of these. The man on the street can't prove or disprove, and no one wants to believe it's just the increasing amounts of concrete around these weather stations, which are typically in towns, not out in BFE. (At least, in the last few decades).
People don't understand (that is, grok) the perspective. Most people see the world through a television screen. They think that from space that all towns are back-to-back. (Actually there's a LOT of in-between space!)
And they see the sky as millions of miles high. In fact, the atomosphere is only a thin, 6-mile high coating on a planet in the neighborhood of 24,000 miles around. On a good-sized globe, the atmosphere's about the thickness of a sheet of paper.
Maybe people *have* to be afraid of something OR be at war. Maybe now that everyone's already afraid of real dangers, we can stop believing every cock-and-bull story that comes down the line.
Or, maybe certain people learn how easily we're fooled and how quickly we'll pay money for a good joke.
But right now I've gotta go. I just bought a Corvette which crashed right from the showroom. The thing was cheap: a man died in it, so I got it for a song! I just have to get the smell outta the fiberglass.
(Another one of my favorites!)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Bravo!