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."

Comments

Junk Science

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

Does this mean

[dimator]

So I can keep driving my Lincoln Navigator around, even if I have no destination in mind? Excellent!

Re:Does this mean

[cp99]

No. It's not that simple. This guy is trying to explain longterm period oscillations in tempertures, something that scientists don't blame on global warming.

His data is quite interesting, however, it breaks down between 125 000 and 115 000 years ago (something which he notes in his research paper).

Global Warming != Junk Science

[Pauly]

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?

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[gartogg]

much of the "research" that "proves" the link between global warming and hmanity is junk. That doesn't mean it is not true. There ARE true statements that cannot be proven.

Basically there is no decent way to prove a connection like this, so any guesses (either way) are just that, guesses.

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[big_hairy_mama]

I'm not going to argue global warming either way, but I suppose this is a lot like tobacco companies claiming that there is no "proof" that nicotine is addictive or causes cancer. Of course there is no proof -- anything that relies on statistics to proove something will never actually proove it, only show that it is very likely. For proof we would have to go into the cells and actually witness the chemical processes.

So how can you expect proof, without being able to trace every carbon dioxide molecule from its birth at the rear of an SUV through it's life as it blankets the earth? All you can do is look at the data and find patterns.

(I agree with the parent, this is aimed more for the parent's parent comment.)

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[Pauly]

Profit is not a motive?? You don't get the research grant if you don't show a reason. As a current researcher myself, I know how difficult it is to shake down the military for cash, unless you have a solution to their problems.

The military is hardly the primary source of funding for this research. Think DOE. The military's bottomless trust fund certainly makes barons out of its contractors, but few if any of those are pursuing global warming/climate change inititiatives. In any case, I'll suspect the profit motive when a climatologist runs me down in a Escalade. Maybe I'm too old, but my peers all drove bicycles.

If we're making such drastic changes, which is arguable at best, then how can minor changes help one damn it?

An example: The CFC's emitted as propellant and leaked as coolant nearly wiped out the ozone layer. Enforced by international treaty, we changed the chemical compounds used for these purposes to a similar, but benign cousin of CFC's and we are now making progress undoing that damage. In terms of global warming, raising the CAFE standards would be a major step in the right direction.

I'm tired of hearing this "junk science" rap. It's entirely too much like Dubya's "fuzzy math". If you're willing to dismiss an enormous field of study, and each of its thousands of scientists in a single, trite phrase, you're not part of the discussion. Show me some valid, non fossil fuel industry sponsored research that counters research published by the likes of the National Academy of Sciences.

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[Pauly]

So how can you expect proof, without being able to trace every carbon dioxide molecule from its birth at the rear of an SUV through it's life as it blankets the earth? All you can do is look at the data and find patterns.

This is very well put. I suspect we come from different prejucices when it comes to this issue, but I couldn't agree with you on this point more.

Bottomline: I don't smoke because I know it's really bad for me. I also make active choices in my life to minimize my negative effects on the environment because it's good for everyone. And just like a smoker who doesn't give a damn, the western cultures may never stop its destruction of the environment.

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[Pauly]

What the folks with an IQ greater than their shoe size probably realized from my post, is that I was pointing out the conflict of interest between supposedly objective scientists and the need to get funding for their research. That money doesn't fall from the sky you know. And to get funding, you have to sell yourself/your research. So naturally, it's in the climate researchers best interest to talk big about global warming, even in the face of dubious evidence, to get that next grant. Get it now?

Lucky for me, I have enormous feet. You're just another hypocrite: you want to dismiss the research of scientists based on some highly dubious profit motive with one hand and on with the other hand cite the work of an economist author as refutation of this whole field of research? How many people care to read what a meteorologist has to say about macroeconmics?

And thanks for stooping to insults to get your point across. I see I no longer need to waste my time in this discussion. I'll take

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[Kibo]

Well profit to scientists isn't always measured by a number in a bank account. Sometimes it's measured by the number of times their name comes up in appendicies.

That said, like any other large field of study there is the good and the bad. CFC's and their effect on the enviroment being an example of the good. From what I know of the studies that focus on heating of the earth due to mans activity, their predictions are more dire, and their methodes more suspect. I hear tale of scientists taking measurements in the same locations as they were taken a century ago when they could still be described as "the new world". And they don't normalize between a virgin forest and a building surrounded by an asphalt parking lot. It would be one thing if they were accounting for differences, but in many cases it seems that not factoring for those biases in measurment because they agree with personal biases the researchers may hold. And that IS junk science. It's also that practice of abusing statistics that let's someone like Bush get away with dismissing things as "fuzzy math".

The fact of the matter is, for much of it's history the Earth's temperature has been much higher, on average, than it is now. Our buring of fossil fuels is unquestionably having some effect. But there is a question to as to how much. And introducing bias, or at least not accounting for it, in measurements doesn't do anything to answer that question. And to those people who would view earth as a static, unchanging enviroment, if not for man's intervention: Everytime someone has put forth such a view point, science has eventually shown it to be overly simplistic, and unltimately incorrect.

If more of the climate researchers were more interested in making sure their data reflected the objective truth, whatever it happened to be, without any sort of political ax to grind, or name to make, perhaps they'd have the credibility you think they collectively deserve. But even you take your shots. You seem to be of the impression that all people who do research that is even partially sponsored by the fuel industry MUST sell out, and their results should be immediately discounted. Might not someone, differently inclined, be able to make a similar assertion about a climatologist so personally worried about global warming that they bike to work? Obviously, such a person has very strong personal views on the subject, and might not be as able to restrain their personal bias.

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[big_hairy_mama]

I suspect we come from different prejucices when it comes to this issue

I'd be interested to hear your prejudices, since you are one who actively tries to reduce pollution (as you say). I suspect they're actually pretty close to mine.

Really, given the nature of CO2, it's a pretty big coincidence that a natural rise in tempurature just *happened* to start just as humans became industrialized. But it's also tough to ignore the fact that there certainly have been drastic climate changes in the Earth's history, apparently on very short timescales, during times when humans couldn't have been the cause. That's why I don't like to argue it, because there is evidence going either way.

Whether or not global *warming* is actually caused by humans, global *pollution* and destruction of life is a little harder to refute. Whether or not we cut down on C02 emissions, this planet is still going straight to hell. All of us have to do a little bit more.

Re:Global Warming != Junk Science

[Muad'Dave]

What's a frostall? Is that where you keep your 70's wig?

Not out of the woods

[darthBear]

Even if this guy is right it doesn't mean we can continue to be abusive of our environment. Global Warming is just one concern we face. The link between human activity and a general degredation of the environment is quite clear. Couple that with our dependance on our environment and it is painfully evident that we can no longer afford to treat our environment with disrespect.

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)

Re:Not out of the woods

[Gaijinator]

Thank you for providing no factual information whatsoever. While his results may be true, telling us that he is a "left-wing sympathizer who is vegetarian because he does not want to kill animals" is entirely useless. 1) He may be saying this to make people more likely to believe he is an impartial researcher, 2) acceptance of his theories should be based on their reflection of the facts, not what kind of food he eats, 3) giving lectures/debates at famous places does not make a theory true - this is similar to saying, "If it's on TV, it must be true." And remember, Gene Ray of Time Cube fame lectured/debated at MIT.

Remember: Everyone is biased. That's why you need to look at the facts instead of trying to find someone who can justify your views. But then, you have to be able to overcome your own biases for this to happen.

I see a lot of talk about CO

[PhysicsGenius]

First of all, the Sun is obviously unrelated to global warming.

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.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Jerf]

This is either a troll (as the last paragraph hints at), or someone who, like the vast majority of people who go on about the environment, have basically no clue about the enviroment, up to and including many environmental scientists (a degree and a lot of schooling is still no guarentee that one can understand on even a superficial level such an interrelated and complicated system). I do not exclude myself from this general condemnation, though IMHO I at least have a clue at how freakin' complicated this sort of thing can be. Let me show you why the parent post is too naive to be of value.

Basically, heat is aggressively non-linear. Just because you add a thousand gigajoules of heat to the planet does not mean the planet is a thousand gagijoules hotter. That's only true for an instantaneously fast heat addition (asteroid strike?) and then still only true instantaneously after the heat addition. Immediately, the planet begins radiating away any energy it has that brings its temperature above the local background temperature. Within hours, the heat of the planet with the addition of the heat and without the addition of the heat may vary by only a single-digit percentage of your added heat; within days, the effect is negligible.

To truly heat the planet in this manner, you need huge amounts of energy dumped into the environment on a long-term level. Note that even the energy inputted into the enviroment by the Earth's volcanic activity isn't enough to heat the planet much. Mankind's contribution is virtually nil in this fashion; it's so small it doesn't even register.

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.

The CO2 works in another manner; it prevents the heat radiation from leaving the planet. Now, this can have a real, measurable effect, though it is debatable about exactly what that effect is, because the planet's interconnectedness continues to defy our analysis to date. (Ref: Examine the hypothesized "oceanic CO2 sink", which may or may not exist, which may or may not someday fill up, which may or may not be affecting our environment, which may or may not be a disaster waiting to happen... you get the point here, right? The key is "may or may not".) Preventing the radiation from leaving affects the ability of the sun, the only source of heat large enough to matter compared to anything else, to heat the planet. This may directly affect the temperature of the planet.

Then again, there may be processes to counter this, and our contributions also decay over time (though perhaps not in a time that we care about).

This sort of problem is the reason why I hesitate to believe anyone who flatly claims that "The world is heating up, it's largely Mankinds fault, and this is a bad thing that we must put a stop to." We are barely capable of giving compelling evidence for the first, though we still can't justify trends into the future very well. The second is still highly speculative, as we can't claim to understand the planet well enough to prove why the temp may be climbing, except that the sun putting out more or less heat is pretty damned obvious, and as the only input to the system of value, pretty damned importent and I think seriously understated in the popular press. (I hope it's not underestimated in the climatology community itself, in a zealous effort to get funded.) The third is downright irresponsible; beyond the first-order effect that the sea level will rise some number of feet, an amazingly unimportent effect overall (what, are we supposed to believe that people are actually going to drown because they refuse to leave their now 3-feet under water homes? Maybe they deserve to, if they're too slow to get out of the way of a multi-year process!), we don't much know what will happen. It may even be wonderfully beneficial; the dinosaur-era plant life seems to have liked it. Perhaps it will double the world's fertile soil? Perhaps it will kill us all? Who knows?

Chill out a bit and enjoy the ride. The environment should be cared for, but we're still a long way from being able to dogmatically assert much about the environment in general. I'd be much more worried about dumping toxins in our local environment, or just the general inefficiencies of our industrial processes (being slowly rectified), then getting up in arms about a climate process that will probably happen without us anyhow, and nobody has ever made a compelling case for being a disaster anyhow.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Evil Pete]

A lovely troll :-)

For those who may think otherwise:

• The sun may be related to global warming, there is no reason why the sun cannot be a very slow variable star over many years.
• If you heat up your environment it is radiated away to space very quickly. After all just think how fast deserts lose their heat at night ... you can be cooked in the day and literally freeze at night.
• "CO2 is perfectly transparent" Um errr. Well yeah at optical frequencies it is , but not at infra red frequencies , which is what radiant heat is ... infra red. At infra red frequencies the atmosphere is partially transparent. Adding CO2 will reduce the transparency thus allowing less heat to escape.

Good troll though. Liked the 30 gigajoules bit. Lessee , that's enough energy to lift 1 metric ton a distance of 3,000 kilometres. Wooo. Well if you're going to tell a lie better to make it a big one. Or else we could use coal as rocket fuel.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[olman]

There's one thing to be said for reducing CO2 emissions. Even if it had zero positive effect on environment as such, to achieve reduced CO2 levels you have to cut back use of fossile fuels dramatically. In my books, that is a Good Thing. Local cuddly nuke plant does not spew crap all over the sky while making electricity to power up my PBEM session!

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Lars T.]

Congrats PG, you got them again.

Just the "fact" that 1 ton of coal produces about 3 kg CO2 instead of about 3 tons is great - and nobody noticed.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Pauly]

Basically, heat is aggressively non-linear. Just because you add a thousand gigajoules of heat to the planet does not mean the planet is a thousand gagijoules hotter. That's only true for an instantaneously fast heat addition (asteroid strike?) and then still only true instantaneously after the heat addition. Immediately, the planet begins radiating away any energy it has that brings its temperature above the local background temperature. Within hours, the heat of the planet with the addition of the heat and without the addition of the heat may vary by only a single-digit percentage of your added heat; within days, the effect is negligible.

This is a very interesting comment. I'm curious to learn more of this theory. Can you cite a source? In particular, I'm curious to see how much of this theory is based on fundamental thermodynamics, and how much of it is based on global chemistry.

And yes, this is very complicated subject. That's why I'm glad to see experts from the many fields studying climate change working together.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Jerf]

Simple thermodynamics, rate of heat transfer proportional to the difference in heat. I don't cite a source because it's, well, just simple thermodynamics. I don't give exact numbers because I don't know them, and freely admit so; the principle holds. In days, weeks, even years, doesn't much matter, the heat will be gone into outer space. To affect the sytem, one must either change the input rate in the long term ('raise the room temperature'), or affect the outgoing rate by manipulating things like the CO2 level.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Jerf]

The heating of the world has been well and truely observed.

I don't mean to deny the evidence, I just mean that on a global scale, we're just recently and just barely capable of showing it. To a large degree, we're still inferring off of limited data (a scientifically valid thing to do), rather then looking at trillions upon trillions direct measurements of temperature from now to several hundred thousand years ago, which would eliminate the need to infer through direct and complete evidence. It's a scale thing; I meant "barely capable" literally; capable, but not really by a lot.

The second I don't have much to say. As for the third, I know I'm not a climatologist, but I do know exactly how easy it is to tweak a computer model to make it say what you want it to. There's too much politics involved IMHO to get a clear view of what climate change will mean. And from a sampling of the document you pointed me at, I smell politics more then I smell science. Two reasons: I refuse to believe that global warming would be an unmitigated disaster, and the report seems to be sitting around thinking up ways things might go wrong. Well, that's great and has its place, but things are always going 'wrong', for some rather narrow human definition of 'wrong'.

Change happens, with or without humans. "Adapt or die" is the motto of nature. It's easy to cast me as excessively blase on this issue by taking this line to the extreme, but that's not my position. I'm just saying that there is nothing holy about the configuration that the world is currently in. That's a good thing, because this configuration is temporary, whether we like it or not. Some forests will die, some grasslands will become forest, some deserts will grow and others shrink. Take the paper you referenced, and replace the concerns in it with new ones concerned about "global cooling". In the parts I sampled, you can hardly tell the difference. "Arid ecosystems are very sensitive to water issues because of a lack of reserves of water and nutrients. Global warming could stress these systems." So could global cooling, an epidemic of rats, or even things staying the same.

"In conclusion", as you may have guessed, the paper didn't impress me. (Though you are right, it did interest me.) I don't it was a waste of time, but I'm not sure it's all that useful in the end.

Re:I see a lot of talk about CO

[Jerf]

You negate yourself: how can something you admit to be highly complicated be summarized by something you admit to be simple?

Incorrect. The two subjects of the statements are totally different. There is no conflict. The system as a whole is really complicated. The system can merely slow down or speed up the basic thermodynamic processes, though, it can't do away with them, thus I feel justified in claiming that the heat will sooner or later dissapate.

If you, with your knowlege of atmospheric thermodynamics, know of a way to fully violate the normal processes of thermodynamics such that the heat totally fails to disappate, please share it with us instead of creating non-existant logical conflicts. (Don't fiddle with scale-jumping; I was already talking planetary scales.)

Re:Global Warming == Junk Science

[puckhead]

Rapid climate change is normal. The medieval warm period (exacerbated by knights galvanting about in thier SUVs) was quite sudden. The little ice age, beginning 400 years later thanks to the efforts of 14th century enviro-socialists wearing sensible shoes, was just as sudden.

Letting Scientific American do the hard work

[Pauly]

Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist

Good. Take your holier-than-thou attitude, hop on your environment saving bicycle, and ride off into the sunset.

Will do...and you feel free to go shoot up the rusting camaro in your backyard and beat your wife.

Re:Letting Scientific American do the hard work

[zulux]

..and you feel free to go shoot up the rusting camaro in your backyard and beat your wife.

It's a Firebird... the Camero is in the front-yard. And she likes it.

Before we all get carried away with this stuff ...

[Evil Pete]

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.

Exactly.

[edunbar93]

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.

Nit-pick.

[Christopher Thomas]

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

Three kinds of lies

[killmenow]

associate professor in statistics

There are three kinds of lies:

1. lies
2. damn lies
3. statistics

People on either side of any debate publish "information" that only favors their view.

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.

Re:Junk Science - burden of proof

[ch-chuck]

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.

Re:Junk Science - burden of proof

[M-G]

Bravo!