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

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

[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]

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: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: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.