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A Hotter Sun May Be Contributing To Global Warming
no reason to be here writes "The sun seems to be getting hotter. Total radiation output has increased .05% per decade since the 1970s.
This article over at Yahoo! News has the scoop. Though .05% may not seem like much, if it has been going on for the last century or more (and circumstantial evidence suggest that it has), it could be a significant factor in the increase in global average temperature noticed during the 20th century."
Well then, in addition to the deteriorating atmosphere a small increase in the Sun's output of radiation only compounds the global warming problem.
The threat of global warming is real.
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Free your mind.
...until you start talking about the enormous quantities of radiation something like the sun gives off? Apparently this is no great cause for alarm or we'd have heard this before. Anyways,
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The sun has been causing global warming? Now who would have ever expected a giant ball of uncontrolled nuclear explosions to change at all and have any effect on the warming of our planet.
I'm still believing it's the cow farts.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Sun Microsystems is WHAT?!
more logical than what they have been saying about global warming being caused by "greenhouse gases" and whatnot. Plus, who really knows about temperature, its not exactly something that you can study for a week and reach a conclusion. You need years (probably thousands) to do things accurately. Plus, if you look back temperatures on earth over time (sorry no links at the moment) it appears to have a sinusodial appearance. Eh, I'm not worried about it.
SIGFAULT
No matter how much we humans think we can figure out about our world and the universe, there's always some phenomenon that we don't account for yet we plod forward anyway. This is not to say that humans are not contributing to global warming, but we should be looking more into the natural physical phenomena that could be contributing to a problem that affects us.
And no, this isn't an excuse for the rabid dogs on either side of the environmental debate to start jumping up and down either for or against human contributions to global warming, nor is it our only problem. I hope this discussion doesn't turn into this, though I fear it will.
i always thought it was arrogance to suggest that, to the exclusion of all other factors, humans had the greatest impact on global warming.
don't think me a corporate whore or anti-environmentalist; i'm willing to bet that we have some impact... i just think we don't know enough about our ecosystem and it's interaction with the universe around us to automatically assume that it's all our fault.
woof!
is earth moving closer to sun?
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
...some country have a scientific comitee (*cough* US *cough*) use this as an argument there isn't global warming due to pollution and that one don't really have to reduce CO2 emission or other Serre-effect gas ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A hotter stove led to the 2nd degree burn
Watch the environmentalists whinge about how all our use of fossil fuels is contributing to solar warming.
I think Al Gore has a new plank for 2004...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
The EVIL sun and its weapons of mass destruction must be stopped! If the sun does not capitulate and give up its weapons of mass destruction, a coalition of the willing will be led to rid the earth of this tyranny! Support Earth! Donate your Ice cubes. If you are not with us, you are with the EVIL Heat producing SUN!
Of course.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
The sun is getting hotter! We're serious! See, we were right all along, all the fossile fuels we've burned haven't had any effect on the climate. There is plenty of oil left for the next 200 years and you'll be dead by then so who cares?
This sounds like a big-oil scam to me. I wish it was, because it obviously isn't. But I'm sure they'll use this to their advantage to justify not making cars more fuel efficient, building more coal burning plants, drilling in Alaska, etc.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Ya' know, every once in a while they come up with an entirely new scientific excuse for global warming. Finally I'd get tired of this and begin to ignore all what is said about global warming.
The Sun is gonna get larger, starting to fuse helium, then beryllium, and finally burn the Earth in about a few billion years, so who cares anyway?
0x2b or not 0x2b, the answer is -1
We've got to force the people who live on the sun to stop using styrofoam boxes for their Big Macs!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Due to the large amount of ore that must be refined to build SUV for Americans, the magnetosphere of Earth has deformed and is now causing the Solar Corona to expand. This expansion is causing increased radiation, and hence, higher ambient temperatures on Earth.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
We're screwed. It's been nice chatting with all of you guys, you're great. See you all in hell, or heaven, or purgatory, if you're catholic.
Now all we need is to hear that jupiter has started to fall towards us.
If it keeps up, mars will warm up and might become inhabitable, and also we might have to retreat there. Oh well, not for a while ;-)
I strongly doubt that there is enough evidence to support such a claim at the present time. The era of satellite observations of the sun has only really just started, and any rise may be simply noise from a short duration sample, or due to the decreasing minimum signal capable of being detected.
It's an interesting claim, but the authors are going to have to do a lot of convincing, and in the meantime this news will be twisted to support those opposed to, say, the Kyoto treaty.
This would certainly seen to make sence considering the cold spells which were experience around 1900s. With in mind the film footage of cars driving on the Thames (main river through London, England) round people ice skating when in winter it would completely freez over.
I'm not completely sure though that the amount of greenhouse gases some of the nation of the world(including mine) have given out can be counted as blameless.
If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
WOOOOOHOOO! Time to bust out my H2! 9mpg *this* Baby!!
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
It's true! I saw it on the newstand at the grocery: THE SUN WILL EXPLODE IN LESS THAN 6 YEARS
Is this just another saying that we son't need to cut down on oil consumption? That air pollution really isn't a problem? No matter whether global warming is due to excess CO2 production or increased solar output, fact remains that our addiction to oil is completely fucking up our climate
now let the americans mod this down.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
I have two comments, first on a larger scale we need to explore other planets and colonize them. Its really that simple. There may or may not be aliens that could attack us here, but there are other problems, like the Sun now becoming hotter, and a possible astroid. Much like data centers, we need redundancy! My other comment is that people still need to be concerned about the environment, not just about global warming, but also with all of the other problems that our polution has caused.
Wouldn't it be nifty if they found that the sun is turning to a red giant right now, and we have 50 years before we are cooked. Space race all over again anyone?
The sun is increasing output just to keep up with our solar power demands. Soon the oceans will start rising from our wave-power harvesting generators, and the earth is already spinning slower due to wind powered turbines! People of the earth unite: stop using these dangerous alternative fuels! Petroleum-based fuel sources are the only way to keep our planet safe for our cihldren and their SUVs!
The problem is that solar-type stars may vary on timescales of hundreds and thousands of years (in addition to the known sunspot cycle of our Sun of about 11 years), dominating the long term weather patterns here on Earth. It's still a highly debated point, though, mostly because we've only head modern instruments doing accurate solar flux monitoring for the past 50 years or so, and before that we have to rely on indirect methods, such as historical records of large groups of sunspots seen with the unaided eye.
One of the longest running experiments in modern astronomy has been the monitoring of solar-type stars at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California. I was fortunate enough to meet the people who run this experiment - it's not too often you see papers with 40 years of data from the same instrument!
Dr Fish
Since there's enough evidence to suggest that burning fossil fuels affects climate change, and also the sun is getting hotter, this is all the more reason that we must control our consumption (the former variable, within our control). Anything less would be reckless.
If the Sun is indeed warming, then we may still need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The last thing you want to do on a hotter stove is clamp the lid tighter.
Sigh. If Greenies had just concentrated on the fact of global temperature increase or decrease, the debate would be simply on technical solutions. Instead they made it a religious issue. Now any time something like this comes out, those of the other religion will start demanding sacrifices of oil.
He also mentioned that Michigan was buried under about a mile of ice at one time too.
These weather changes were long before man came on the scene. I'm all for Michigan becoming tropical again but that is likely to cause problems for the southern part of the US.
Dyslexics Untie!
It was found that 100% of so called 'gun related' deaths were actually caused by the Sun!
Charlton Heston remarked "Get you're hand of me you damn dirty ape!"
when the Sun will be oficially in a nova state?
I have always thought that global warming was caused by something other than humans. After all we've gone through a couple of ice ages so far, which tells me that it's completely natural for slow (albiet drastic) temperature changes.
Unless the theory is that dinosaurs also used aerosol cans, leading to their own demise. Asteroid theory, ha! The pieces start to fall together...
Note to moderators: The first paragraph is insightful, the second is an attempt at humor.
The article says
so, no, this
Note, for instance, that the article also says
(emphasis mine).
I.e., they have only observed it over a approximately 20-year period, so they don't know whether it's been going on for a century or more, but if it hasn't, it wouldn't make a significant difference to the climate.
that man's activities have had little or no effect on the climate of the earth, and the fossil record *proves* the average temperature of the earth has been much higher and much lower in the past, that the size and shape of ozone hole is purely due to solar cycles, and insolation is the key to climate?
...is selling 64-bit Macs.
I'm just kidding, still, considering the pounds of snow we had to shovel this past winter here in the Costal Mid Atlantic USA, I could have used a bit-o-warm sun.
--- have you healed your church website?
Umm...no one said Global Warming wasn't real. The debate is the matter of "why".
I think you'll even find quite a few of those evil republicans and conservatives who will acknowledge that yes...temperatures are on an upward trend. Because they kinda are.
The oceans are suspected of contibuting to global humidity.
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Quick! Call Mr. Burns!
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
Actually, if you think about it, nature may be able to tolerate all that is being done to the environment by people in the sense that it has experienced both far higher and far lower temperatures before. Perhaps humans are not directly responsible for global warming, but I do believe that it's fair to say that if nature begins to become severely damaged by the actions of humans, that nature will eliminate humans to preserve itself. Wouldn't that be cute?
I was gonna go for the sarcastic comment... of course it's ultimately the sun's radiation which is warming the planet. The problem is that while the atmosphere is losing its ability to filter radiation, the radiation is slightly increasing.
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Free your mind.
If the Sun is indeed warming, then we may still need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The last thing you want to do on a hotter stove is clamp the lid tighter.
Right, but if it turns out the sun is causing 99% of the global warming we've seen, and CO2 is causing 1%, you have to ask yourself whether its worth spending trillions of dollars to get that 1% back.
but I need hot pockets and spongebob videos.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
What I don't understand about those who deny global warming is that the reasoning keeps changing. First they claim that there's no appreciable difference in the earth's temperature. Then there is, but it's it's all part of the circle of climate change that's been going on forever. Now it's because the sun is getting hotter. Does that mean, in the eyes of the denyers, that the Earth is, indeed, getting hotter? Or is the earth actually getting cooler thanks to us 'umans, but the hotter sun is compensating for the change? I just don't understand anymore.
Oh it's a hot one...
Someone posted a link to this article. We have less than six years. That's good news for people who hate Enterprise since it definitely won't be still on in 6 years.
Scientists have been studying sunspot activity since the 1300's. For the past few hundred years there has been a regular pattern of peaks and quiet.
In the last few decades though, that pattern has changed to where the sun's sunspot activity is MUCH higher than it has ever been and the activity period has been going on without stopping or having very short quiet periods.
The whole "global warming is caused by humanity" argument has a few merits, of course, but it's a miniscule drop in the bucket compared to the power of the sun.
On the plus side, it gives humanity something they can combat, instead of watching helplessly while the sun goes nova and wipes out life on earth.
It might actually explain why earth has had no contact from alien civilizations: If you extrapolate even a very conservative version of the Drake Equation, and then look at the amount of time it would take for even ONE space faring civilization to completely colonize the galaxy, we should be bumping into aliens constantly.
The fact that we haven't might mean that even on a planet where intelligence eventually evolves, that habitability-period of the planet is never long enough for the beings living there go get off of their world before either their sun goes nova, they get wiped out by a killer asteroid or they destroy themselves.
If we look at the earth as being an average planet in the universe, then we know that all those scenarios are possible.
Sort of makes you reflect that we should be developing ways to colonize space and spread our proverbial eggs from this one basket instead of waging useless wars on each other that only produce suffering.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Thats like me taking a look at the stock market for the last 2 years and concluding that the stock market must have been 20 times higher 20 years ago.
That guy is no scientist.
Their extremely powerful gravity fields, multiplied by millions, is drawing heat not only form the sun, but from everywhere else, like a thermal black hole. Also, they are expelling larger than normal air exhalations that are superheated, and large diets are also contributing to more methane buildup. This triple threat attack is the main cause of global warming.
Ban fat people, enact legislation to ensure slimness in the human form.
I don't understand why failing to sign the Kyoto Protocols causes the sun to shine hotter? Is it because the Solarians refuse to reduce their greenhouse gasses?
Or is it because we've outlawed Freon, that the Solarians can't run air conditioners?
No troll is too obvious for the Slashbots. Gawd, this thing just screamed I'M A TROLL! I'M A TROLL! I'M A TROLL! Almost a textbook example. And you guys all fell for it!
See! Our pollution is not only affecting our own ecosystem, but even the temperature on the Sun!!
Damn CFCs and CO2 killing our sun!!!
global warming *will* increase snowfall in places like the NE USA - because the warmer air can carry more moisture. When that warmer, wetter, air hits a cold mass - that's when you get the heavy snow storms like we had this year.
Note that I am *NOT* claiming that this years storms were caused by global warming...
Clear, Dark Skies
There's not that much data; only one satellite has been taking long term measurements, and that for less than a decade. But here is the data. There's considerable day to day variation, even when seen from orbit. (From the ground, it's hopeless.) There's an upward trend from 1996 to 2000, and then some dropoff. The total change is about 2 watts/square meter, from about 1366 to 1368 W/m^2.
I've been trying to convince my campus for 2 years that global warming "trend" is a farce. If you take a look at the solar activity VS co2 levels on earth, you'll recognize an incredibly close correlation.
Currently the trend is up. They extrapolate the chart and say we are all going to be baked sausages in 100 years. Same thing in the 80s when the trend was down and everyone was worried about "global cooling"
Yet again, I can't help using global warming as a nice excuse to go Nuclear. "Look ma! No CO2!"
I think the updated term for all of this is "global climate change", not just warming. Climate change certainly does involve melting of glaciers and warming of water bodies but it's also linked to more frequent flooding, drought, and unpredictable/extreme whether. Global air and water bodies interact in complicated ways, and it's reasonable to assume that an irregularity in one component can influence irregularities in related components.
Well, perhaps one could argue that for the "This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," quote, although the quoted statement is true, and he does say "if sustained over many decades".
No, it's like you taking a look at the stock market for the last 2 years and concluding that, if that trend had continued over the past 20 years, the stock market would have been 20 times higher 20 years ago. (In his case, of course, there is an overall warming trend, so the analogy breaks down there.)
Sorry, I'm not Gordon from Caltech :)
I was a postdoc at Steward Observatory and I worked on a fiber-fed echelle spectrograph which was on the 100 inch telescope. I talked with one of the telescope operators who runs the HK monitoring program whilst we were setting up our spectrograph. A fine telescope, great staff and pleasant surroundings on the mountain above the L.A. basin smog!
Dr Fish
And once you suckers start to retreat to Mars, I'll be definitely collecting royalties thanks to my handy-dandy acre of land on Mars!!!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
President Bush announces that he is taking the rising threat of global warming into America's capable hands by ordering a pre-emptive strike on the sun. In related news, Exxon reports the demand for petroleum in heating applications has fallen 75% in the last decade...
Here's a link to the original item from NASA, which includes a link to the abstract for his paper; unfortunately, the link on that page to the PDF for the paper is broken.
It is not, primarily, the cow farts, although they alone probably cause more global warming than any 0.00005/year change in solar output. Carbon dioxide, from whatever source, forces heat that would normally be radiated into space to remain in the atmosphere. The extent is very easy to quantify, and it's a hell of a lot more than 0.05% per decade.
This article is just more fossil fuel apologist crap. It makes SUV drivers feel a little bit better about sending all that cash to Saudi Arabia when they fill up their huge gas tanks.
Bush and Cheney have been using gas "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but is not a sound basis for energy policy" on their own people!
Note you do not provide any dating data.
If Michigan was warmer at one time, then it probably was at a different point on the earth. Remember that the continents move around.
If Michigan had ice, remember that we are in an ice age. Yes, we are in an ice age, just at a low point. Following description was from a discovery channel special (in Canada): About 2 to 3 Million years ago South America and North America connected. This caused the warmer water from the Pacific to not be able to flow into the Atlantic. Thus started the Ice Age.
As a result of this ice, we are here.
To put it briefly - North Africa turned into a more open area. You can't just climb up a tree to get away from preditors. So what do you need? Being smarter helps.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
The global warming myth is almost getting as popular as the evolution myth... What's next? Microsoft claiming that Windows is secure? oh, wait...
Luke-Jr
now powered by AMD
Vote for global prefs bug
Let me say it again. Look at these graphs. The data, taken from ice core studies, shows four ice-ages in the past 400k years. For each dip of the CO2 graph there is a similar dip in the temperature graph showing a high degree of correlation. The extended CO2 graph shows an enormous increase in CO2, over the past century, well outside the range of the past 400k years. This recent rise is almost a vertical jump, indicating we may be changing the climate drastically.
It is possible that the sun has some effect in triggering these cycles but these graphs show such a large correlation between CO2 and temperature that it is impossible not to believe the scientists of the IPCC. Yes, human activity is causing global warming. (In the UK we experience this now as global wetting - with increased heavy rainshowers).
To me your reaction sounds just like those "smoking doesn't cause cancer" line from the 1960s. Don't kid yourself.
A Hotter Sun May Be Contributing To Global Warming
Really. Did they figure this out themselves, or do they have a team of monkeys working on it?
Wait a minute, I don't like where this is going. Back to flat Earth for me.
I'm sorry everyone, but global warming is caused by my Nvidia FX card.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
All we have to do is file a patent on global warming, then sue the sun to stop violating our patent. Easy as pie.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
But why is it getting hotter? Well, here's one to send in to your local "science" reporter:;)
This is the crappiest discussion on /. I've seen in a while:
Couple of facts:
There is (currently) no model to simulate neither weather nor climate. not regionally nor globally.
There is, at this point, no proven hint that human-released co2 has had any impact on earths climate. (see point 1)
In fact, there is no reasonable explanation for earth cooling down 'til the late 17nth century an then getting warmer.
My god, this list could continue forever....
The following links have graphs and images. Here and here.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
A really big heatsink. A Globalwin CAK-3452343443 ought to do it. Kinda noisy though.
At a constant rate of increase of 0.05% every decade the sun's output will double in ~13,880 years? And projecting that backwards the sun's output was half of what it is today ~13,860 years ago? Given that the latter projection is demonstrably untrue, one must assume that this is actually part of a cyclical trend (and the article speculates that the trend might be short-term).
wow.. some totally obvious, and humerous in my opinion, sarcasm.... and still someone finds a way to throw in some U.S. bashing.
... I should specify that like all good americans I'm quick to criticize my gov and society,, but I do make an effort to keep it related to the subject at hand.
Before I start some more of it
--oh heck ya, I remember them, there was tons of stuff written and talked about on global cooling then. Just as many proportional as global warming now. and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if a lot of it was destroyed on purpose, too, just too embarassing to some.
My solution is to walk softly on the earth. That doesn't mean I am not going to walk, either.
Look, I know this is a bit selfish (and naive).. but I've been living in a place where this past year seems to be getting 8 to 10 months of pure winter.. when in the past (due to global warming) it was only about 2-3 months.
To that end, I wouldn't be suprised if there eventually surfaces a coalition FOR global warming..
SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE A_WINNER = "YUO";
Please ... will someone think of the penguins?
It's also a dumb treaty that would have just shifted pollution output from the industrialized nations to the 3rd world nations. same amount of pollution, w/ lower regulations. yay! actually, it may be a plot to poison the 3rd world and make them sterile and riddled with cancer.
If your thinking is we need to control climactic change, then you're right. But I think what it means is that the earth is already set up to deal with some climactic change. For us to counter it would be altering the environment and would have the unpredictable results we associated with that.
I don't see how this has much effect on what we should do about global emissions.
the sun is by far the hottiest planet in the solar system and it would burn you if you tried to eat it
Although the mainstream media has picked up on global warming quite a bit lately, there's still quite a few reputable sceintists whose questions haven't yet been satisfied about evidence that contradicts the thoery of global warming.
On the other hand, maybe the tree huggers will finally get off our backs now, since nothing we do here on earth (anyone fancy laws against thermodynamics?) matters a whole lot with regard to the mean temperature of the earth as a whole.
(/sarcasm)
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Yet fooling the press and the anti-scientific does not fact make. Those who dispute global warming are like Flat Earth types and creationists, rallying around fallacy and refusing to consider facts they find inconvenient. It's all Cargo Cult Science.
Some /. readers are probably adept enough at math to review the raw data and decide for themselves: solar irradiance data has been tracked and known for many years and is built into climate models that show, unequivocally, the consequences of human induced climate change. Even Bush finally admitted it.
Will the earth survive such changes? Of course it will. Will the human race survive? Probably. Will the long term cost of continuing to burn fossil fuels exceed the short term cost of switching to low carbon-load alternatives? Almost certainly.
But when evaluating the arguments of anti-environmentalists, which seem so utterly out of sync with even basic science, one must remember that, like their spiritual mentor James Watt, those that believe that Armageddon is around the corner will do nothing to protect the rights of future generations.
Break out the marshmallows!!!
-note: Dis - aster = "Evil Star"
This is an Outrage - a possible cause of environmental change that cannot be Blamed on human activity! Supress this!
The "natural state" of the world is change.
Deal With It.
As the Max-Planck institute for meteorology already stated some time ago one third of the global warming during the last century has been caused by the sun. That's 2/3 for us alone so the US should just sign the Kyoto treaty and stop arguing as a first step. And no, apparently their great woods didn't save our climate.
Oh and some of the posts in this forum are so ignorant and stupid that reading them makes me sick. Global warming is no green conspiracy but one of the major threats in the 21st century. And indeed global warming can cause a new ice age, at least for some parts of the earth. Global warming is causing a slowdown of the gulf stream and if it drops to half its current speed it will just collaps and not start working again during the next couple of hundred years. If you ever had geology at school I won't need to explain to you what this means and if you hadn't then just use Google for a change.
I think the best way to look at Earth's climate to analyze the sunspot cycle, which has been scientifically monitored shortly after Galileo started using telescopes for astronomical research.
We do know that during a period of around 100 years in the 17th and 18th Centuries there was actually NO recorded sunspots--that matched almost perfectly the last time Europe had significantly cold winters caused not by a major volcanic eruption.
Earth's climate has warmed recently due to the fact sunspot activity during solar maximum periods have been exceptionally strong. In my personal opinion, I think Earth is just returning to a period of warmer temperatures more akin to the times when the dinosaurs were the highest lifeforms.
The sun has been causing global warming? Now who would have ever expected a giant ball of uncontrolled nuclear explosions to change at all and have any effect on the warming of our planet.
;)
Its a lie. Its the Republicans, plain and simple. And if it IS the sun, then the Republicans are who made the sun hotter. And if the sun is hotter due to a natural phenomenon, then the Republicans sped it up with their capitalism. If we didn't drill for oil, the sun wouldn't be so hot. The sun is heating up because of greenhouse gases. Its the Conservative's fault the sun is hotter, it was the tax cut that caused it. SUV's. Too many in on the planet causes more tidal friction on the sun, so its the SUV's fault, which is the Republican's fault because they own stock in the companies that make the SUV's, who are being irresponsible for giving the public what it wants, since everyone knows only Hollywood types should drive SUV's, not these damn soccer moms and farmers. Its because of the decline of endangered species. The sun is warming up because of drilling in ANWR, which hasn't started yet. The sun is part of the vast right wing conspiracy. Its the Republican's war causing it. Its because the sun is angery at us for our ways.
Ok, did I leave any out? Just wanted to help and get the new talking points out for the libs
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's hot.
The sun is not a place where we could live, but also remember here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
The sun is a ball of incandescent gas, a giant nuclear furnace, specifically. Inside, hydrogen is built into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees.
There's little to be done about the sun, currently. We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy. Without the sun, without a doubt there'd be nobody here to talk about it.
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.
The Sun is Large
If the sun were hollow, a millions Earths could fit inside. And yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.
The Sun is Far Away
About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small. And even when its out of sight the sun shines night and day.
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
(apologies to TMBG)
Read this, from HowStuffWorks.
The size of the sun is a balance between the outward pressure made by the release of energy from nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When the core runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will contract under the weight of gravity; however, some hydrogen fusion will occur in the upper layers. As the core contracts, it heats up and this heats the upper layers causing them to expand. As the outer layers expand, the radius of the sun will increase and it will become a red giant. The radius of the red giant sun will be just beyond the Earth's orbit, so the Earth will plunge into the core of the red giant sun and be vaporized.
Of course this will take several billion years, but it sure beats the hell out of global warming. =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Is this new information? Hasn't the sun always been emitting more and more energy over its lifetime? I was under the impression that this was part of the basis for the Gaia hypothesis - that the planet as a whole reacts to changes such that life maintains favorable conditions on the planet for life to exist. I am not defending this hypothesis, just restating it. One reason this idea was developed has to do with the radiant energy problem of the sun. The sun has been emitting more energy over time, yet surface temperature conditions have not changed much (on the average) over a long period of time. An explanation has to do with the Gaia hypothesis. The planet, as a whole, undergoes changes that work to counterbalance the external change. Such changes include more cloud cover to refelct more light; a change in plant distribution (i.e. grasslands, forests, etc.); oceanic CO2 load to change the greenhouse effect; etc.
AP news story...
"Dinasaur flatulance believed to have caused their own extinction"
I get so tired of the greenpeace etc. people. Finally a story with some real science.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. When 'global warming' started getting press, I pointed out that we hadn't been accurately recording temperatures for long enough to know if it wasn't natural. A big problem in some of the sciences is stuff like this; scientists discover a phenomenon (global warming), and then assume that a coorelated phenomenon (greenhouse gasses) is its cause. In fact it is very hard to discern the difference between a coorelation and a cause, which led people like David Hume to say that the two are one and the same. This is a big pitfall of the scientific method, and one of the reasons why I never take much-ballyhooed theories at face value. Of course, by the same token, I doubt this study as well, albeit a lesser amount.
Does this mean I can drive an SUV to the corner store guilt-free?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
# Python is more powerful and readable than C++
for idiot in conservatives:
idiot.open(MOUTH)
idiot.insert(FOOT)
idiot.fflush(TOILET)
New Scientist published, in their paper weekly, years ago, that *Earth's temperature disconnected from the Sun's temperature/cycle in the mid '80s*.
Also, it seems that in natural temperature-cycling of Earth's climate, temperature-change happens-before CO2-change, but we poured billions-of-tonnes of CO2 ( I can't even imagine that correctly ) into our atmosphere lately, so...
using this as 'proof' that global warming is just some liberal propaganda, as some other propagandists would want/need to do, don't wash... ( I'm using world-context, rather than just some specially-limited context, for this discussion, obvaneously )
Solar temperature and Earth-climate-temperature cannot be defined out of being actual.
It's like how someone who actually measured the current-flow in the northern Atlantic discovered that in '99 it was flowing in .. the wrong direction ..
( originally N m/s one way, now some other 'n' cm/s the other direction ).
-shrug- change the thermal masses, change the way they interact, displace one-another, flow, etc.
making-believe that our long-committed actions don't have capability to touch us, because .. what, because our make-believe is immoveable power?
our climate is crashing.
El Nino broke from a 6-8y cycle in the '70s, now is on a 2-4y cycle.
Previous 400 000 years we know it hadn't been on a 2-4y cycle ( from entrapped atmosphere taken from ice-cores off Vostok Antarctica ).
Some thermal energy shunted from thermal, to kinetic, energy in the '70s: the bottom of our atmosphere became violenter.
That means that looking at the planetary temperature doesn't show the energy-increase, it only shows the energy-that-remained-thermal increase...
This one was discovered by seismographs(sp?), showing the background waves-pounding-against-continents noise jumped, globally, then.
The disconnect from Solar cycle, in the '80s, I already mentioned.
The loss of 2000 cubic kilometres of ice from Antarctica, between '95 and '02 ( inclusive, I believe ) means our planet isn't reflective so much as it was...
IIRC Antarctica lost 215km of radius of ice, in the ?70 years before 1950 ( profound loss of reflectivity of heat, perhaps? )...
There's a particularly huge ice-plain that's now expected to collapse quickly, but They don't know when, but They know it'll rather-likely mean a 6m or 7m increase in ocean-level.
It's now believed very likely that there isn't going to be ANY ice in the Northern hemisphere, in the summer, by the end of this century ( again, lower reflectivity? also, earthquakes from the melting glaciers, and rebounding Greenland, and Iceland crustal plate, etc. )
'Deal with it' seems the only choice now...
Either proactively, or, after we've had our WWIII/tantrum, what's left of us will deal-with/be-in what remains.
...
Coupla reasons for knowing the tantrum's perfectly inevitable:
1. ecology-break instantiates 'wars', always. ... ~5000 years. This suggests that few remained to loot thoroughly, without getting dead ( contrast with the huge temple in Egypt, that's totally missing, now: every last speck of it is gone, except for the twin quartzite statues that once stood astride its doorway ).
Look at Uruk, now Iraq, ~5000 years ago... huge metropolis, that broke its local ecology, and it broke sooo quick, some have gone through the Iraqi desert picking up coins, that've lain there for
2. Political Religions, Intolerance of Community/Harmony, And Other Predator/Agression-addiction/Cancer-modes:
If one cell-type within your body decided "Me First!", say muscle-tissue, and it killed-off your bones, kidneys, and neurons, YOU wouldn't be likely to survive. This is usually called cancer, when it happens within one's body.
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
This cant be a sustained effect. If the sun were continuously increasing its output by .05% a decade, the sun had a total output of 1 watt ~ 1.25 million years ago. Therefore, the solar variance is not continuous, it must be cyclical. We dont know where in the cyccle we are except to know were in the upswing portion. In 10 years it may go down again. The fact that the sun is contributing to global warming should be seeen as something that points us TOWARDS restricting carbon emissions, not away from it. If global warming has multiple causes, its even more important to restrict the human controllable ones to prevent environmental change.
speaking of farts.
if someone farts in a room, the air quality is
effected.
ditto if you piss in the pool
so why is that when we spoo stuff 24/7/365 all
over the globe nothing is supposed to happen ?
life made the current atmosphere and life (us)
can unamke it.
capiche.
> It's beginning to look like their agenda all along was
> to slow economic activity, and concern about the environment
> was only ever a vehicle for pushing that agenda.
Congratulations, you have just taken a small step into a larger world. Most debate you see in the popular press is like that, a public position covering one or more real reasons.
In the case of the enviromentalists they break down into two basic groups. The ground troops, who tend to be well intentioned but ignorant, actually believe they are the guardians of Gaia. Don't think too highly of them though, they are active because it boosts their ego to think themselves the chosen holy warriers of Gaia. Which is why they almost always exhibit such religious zeal and are impervious to any arguments counter to their preconceived notions. The leaders are almost always diehard Socialists/Communists, which is why the movement as a whole is often disparagingly referred to as "Watermelons", green on the outside, red on the inside.
And it isn't just the environmental movement, almost EVERY political argument is carried out the same way, which is why most people get turned off on politics, because when first taking an interest they realize that the two sides of any issue are talking past one another with arguments that don't match what they seem to actually stand for. Stick with it a bit and it starts to make more sense.
Just to show another example of how it works, consider current events. Nobody in this Iraq situation is coming anywhere close to stating their true positions.
Bush has becided that the only way to end Islamic fanatics wanting to blow stuff up is to end the tinpot dictatorships over there, Saddam was a convienent target to get a foothold over there. He is convinced (and I tend to agree) that if the US takes and holds one of those middle eastern kingdoms for a few years and remakes it in our image, the example will spread and a rising standard of living will end the desire to strap a bomb on. Of course that is the last thing he can actually SAY if he expects support from ANYONE. None of the aforementioned tinpot dictators would help overthrow themselves, the Demorats would be agahst at the notion that we want to spread our diseased notions of representive government and capitalism, Europe would 'just know' we are embarking on Pax Americana, etc. So we get weak arguments about WMDs, support for terrorism, etc.
France, Germany and Russia are fighting to keep Saddam in power long enough for sanctions to be lifted so they can cash in on the oil contracts they signed. They also want to prevent anyone from discovering just how much they have been breaking the UN sanctions by selling all sorts of deadly stuff to Saddam. And of course they all despise the US and want to see the last superpower humbled and reduced in influence because they feel small and insignificant and prefer to make us small instead of becoming great themselves. And they can't admit (even to themselves in some cases) to any of those reasons, so we get the current tripe from Paris.
The protestors against the war here in the states are mostly being financed by the Worker's World Party and others in the "Hate America" clique. The warm bodies are mostly the "I hate Bush" crowd. In Europe the protests are mostly Anti-American for whatever the current excuse happens to be. Same for the college students in the middle east. After all, most of the Muslim world doesn't actually like Saddam and his Islamic Socalists (Baath party) but if America is fighting him they know which side to pick.
Democrat delenda est
Despite the tone of Yahoo's article, and despite the fact that unfortunately physicists are resorting more and more into spectacular announcements (and I am a physicist), the issue is not settled. This search at the NASA's ADS will show you a bunch of papers on the topic (even tough some entries are unrelated). Just browse the abstracts, you will see that not everyone in the astrophysics community agrees that variations in solar radiation are the main cause of global warming.
Gee, the sun is getting warmer, hence the earth is getting warmer, man these scientists are sooo smart. Maybe this info. took so long to get out b/c of the environmentalists wanted a change in car emmisions so badly that they ignored the obvious, the sun provides heat, it is constantly changing and will eventually consume the earth. I think that I speak for a lot of people when I say, Captain Obvious strikes again.
Yeah, those page 3 girls make me hot, baby!
Global warming is caused by filtering we would like to avoid.
The greenhouse effect is caused by the fact that IR electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by "greenhouse" gasses, trapping energy on our planet that if these gasses were absent, would reflect harmlessly into space.
The ozone layer, on the other hand, filters out harmful UV radiation that generally is not trapped even by greenhouse gasses.
You say
.. of this correlation so we can tell how it compares with the one referred to in "Don't kid yourself" above?
they have only observed it over a approximately 20-year period
One, it's more like 25 years from the late 70s.
That means about 1.25% increase. That doesn't sound insignificant to me. Remember, the sun is pumping energy into the earth 24 hours a day, every little bit adds up.
I dont think python will ever be mainstream though. I can't even convince my employer to allow me to prototype in wxpython, even though RAD is what it's best at. I have to slog away with C++ because that's the way its always been done here.
First of all, let me say that I support the use of less fossil fuels -- I'm all for things like hydrogen-powered cars, nuclear power, etc. So for any Greens that may want to refute the rest of this post, keep in mind that I'm not a total anti-environmentalist.
Anyway, an earlier poster mentioned that we're coming off of solar max, so of course temperatures have been getting warmer. I'd like to point out that we're actually coming off of several solar maxes: the 11, 100, and 1,000 year orbital maxes, to be precise. For those who may be unaware, we not only get peaks and valleys in solar flare/sunspot activity, but our orbit around the Sun brings us closer and further away in predictable cycles as well.
My uncle actually put together a very good study on Space Weather for the National Space Architects a while back. It's still quite relevant, and is available in PDF form on my web site.
How To Get Humans To Mars
OK. So why hasn't this shitty thread been modded offtopic yet? because its about geeky programming? hypocrites.
Hotter sun = hotter earth.
Good job we pay these guys a fortune, that would never have occurred to me.
The earth's climate has fluctuated enormously over the past few hundred thousand years, with ice ages and warm periods. Prior to that, the sun was younger and warmer than it is today. Everything is changing all the time.
The question is, is change bad? If the sun is warming, do we need to take steps to counter the change? Should we devote our efforts to keeping the average temperature of the earth exactly the same as it was in 2003 or 1970 or some other canonical time? Were we living in Nirvana then?
Maybe we should instead change our attitudes towards change. Surely the vast changes in our culture, our technology, and our civilization make a huge impact on our lives. Would anyone say we should freeze these characteristics at a 1970 level? Stop global cultural change?
No, I think in those areas we recognize that change is going to occur. Some may be good and some bad, but we accept that we will have to adapt. Instead of expending enormous efforts in trying to freeze the physical world, let us adopt a similar attitude of flexibility towards changes there as well.
Change will always happen, and the distinction between natural and artificial isn't even philosophically meaningful (since humans are natural). We should develop the technology to deal with change, the strength of character and flexibility to adapt to it. Let us welcome change rather than viewing it as an enemy!
Where might be the best place to find a readable and _holistic_ overview of global warming?
:/
All the reports I@ve seen and read over the years never take in all the factors. I suppose that's because it simply hasn't been done or we just don't know.
The closest thing I've seen is the ISSI report and presumably work presented at Kyoto must have built on this.
But both of these reports tend to look at graphs of temp. change, CO2 levels etc, etc.
But there is growing evidence that we could be sitting close to a threshold level; when we go beyond a point the effect feeds itself rather than stablising. One example of the threshold effect over stabilisation is ocean Methane stores.
How can we be sure Global Warming/Sea-level change is due to us? Or even just us producing CO-2 when there are all these variables plus more:
- isostatic changes inc. rebound (the 'height of the ground changing)
- sun cycles (including Spots, those loops and all the others; there's loads I can't remember)
- CO2 and erosion. ozone related geological stores
- ocean as a store for ozone related agents such as CO2
- vegetation: does it really help? rainforests don't slow or stabalise temperature all the time. Evergreen forests seem to increase CO2 output
- Milankovitch and orbital cycles
A flow chart of variables is what I need to get things straight in my head.
IMHO with what little I know I feel that even if the earth was/is able to soak up our impact that impact is stored and remains with us; we can't eject the problem into space - if we did that would surely create a problem.
Equilibrium...
A blog I run for the wealth
Accu-weather, a commercial concern controlled by commercial interests, knows which side of their bread is buttered. Instead, you might consider the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which directly attributes the observed tmeperature increase to radiative forcing of greenhouse gasses.
This is the misinformation that pisses me off the most. I have been in direct telephone contact with the pair of so-called scientists from Huntsville, Alabama who published this crap. Their measurements of cooling above the troposphere are completely consistent with global warming in the troposphere, where radiative forcing keeps heat trapped at the surface of the Earth. Guess where the Huntsville team gets their funding? NASA. Guess what agency pumps carbon dioxide equivalent to driving a SUV two million miles into the atmosphere every time a shuttle launches? NASA.
Take another look at the r^2 value on the curve fit graph of atmospheric CO2. That value means that all but about 1% of the variation of that curve can be explained by those four numeric parameters of that logistic sigmoid curve. One thing that isn't uncertain is that if we don't start wholesale conversion to wind power pretty damn soon, there will be twice as much atmospheric CO2 in 2060 as their was in 1500. Did you know that less than 150,000 modern wind turbines could supply the entire U.S. power grid demand?
Oh, PLEASE! Water vapor, unlike CO2, becomes reflective (clouds are white) when it condenses from vapor to aerosol, which it does under temperature increase conditions (greater transpiration at greater temperatures raising humidity.) This tends to nullify water's heat trapping over time.
Both halfs of that statement are a baldface lie. The "prior to 1940" statement directly contradicts the observed data, and anyone who thinks greenhouse gas emissions "upsurged" after 1940 needs to take another look at the graph and/or read up on the history of coal mining.
Pathetic.
What he said. If you'd rather believe US politicians and petroleum lobbyists, that's fine. Put your money where your mouth is and build a house on some nice low-lying land, preferably in the hurricane belt.
No, we don't *know* what's going to happen, because there's never been anything to really compare with the last hundreds of years, climate and emissions-wise. But carrying on with the CO2 (& methane, etc.) output is a really good way to find out if the consequences will be as dire as some people predict.
furffu.
And here I was all worried about cows and greenhouse gasses! Cows can fart all the methane they want! Whew ,what a relief.
Gee does this make solar-electric cells more efficient?
We all float down here.
Everyone claims that global warming IS happening because of what's happened in the past 20-30 years. Can we claim that we know everything from those 30 yrs? It's pretty arrogant if you think that you know exactly what's going on with the earth from 30 yrs considering that the earth has a 4.5 billion year history. All I know is that the weather has been getting warmer over the years.
Global warming, global smarming.
If the lifespan of the planet earth was the length of your arm, the time with accurate temperature data would be your fingernail.
Real good sampling to come up with this theory...
Even if we built buttloads of space elevators and space arcs pronto, we still wouldn't be able to move as much as a hundredth of the Earth's population in 50 years.
Now, 500 years would be a better deadline for this.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Don't forget that people who voted for Ralph Nader are also partly to blame. Their ballots apparenly split the sun's gravitational field, which obviously contributed to all this overheating.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Perhaps you should also consider if that 1% is important. Only an idiot would just say it's only 1% (at the moment), and conclude that's it not a problem worth worrying about. That's an assumption. And as they say, assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
Or something, until you live in a place like NJ you should not talk pollution sucks, it is unpleasant, hard to breathe, and basically kills wildlife. Have you ever seen black rain because I have, if we have the ability to prevent this stuff we should because we can.
Had nothing to do with Bush's "quick draw" decision? Maybe, just maybe, Global Warming (TM) really does have more to do with solar output than greenhouse emissions. Dogma isn't science, it is superstition supported by conformity. I get the impression some of you guys would rather sweep inconvenient facts under the rug less it undermine your little religious crusade.
it could be read as underlining the importance of controlling the output of greenhouse gases by technical civilization. The greenhouse gases are not just capturing more of the available solar radiation, they may be capturing more of the INCREASING solar radiation. Consequently, this would indicate that it is more important than ever to control greenhouse output. Facts are not apologist crap. Interpretations however may be.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
In this show:wild weather, the host, Donal MacIntyre, presented information that graphed rainy days against days of the week in major American cities. Sure enough it rains much more on Friday thru Sunday than the rest of the week. Why? Because all that work week traffic ends up seeding the clouds until so much particle build up causes rain. By Monday, the corresponding lack of traffic, allows the weather to dry out again.
Now if weather varying predictably by the day of the week isn't man made, then I don't know what is.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I vote for monkeys.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
In about a billion years, almost all CO2 will have been removed from the atmosphere. From there, the continuing increase in energy will cause our oceans to evaporate and then boil. The water will go up into the stratosphere, where high energy radiation will break it into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will escape and earth as we know it will be sterilized. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
This is still GWB's fault, right?
Not to nitpick here, but correlation does *not* imply causality - therefore, this is a non-experimental study. I know this is really the only evidence scientists have to work with, as you can't control all these conditions experimentally.
I guess I'm saying that you should take these studies with a grain of salt.
Alas, reason is out of style.
:(
Well, it is CommonSense(tm).
Unfortunately, common sense seems to be more common than sense...
--R
Seems to me we (earthlings) could put up a filter between the sun and the earth and attenuate/reflect the amount of energy reaching us, therefore cooling the earth down. I'm sure there must be some technical reason this is a crazy idea, so someone please fill me in!
Because we're still warming up from the last Ice Age.
Earth usually has been warmer than it is now, so I hope it warms.
But we're probably still in the recent Ice Age pattern, so we can expect more freezing until its cause stops whatever it is doing.
However, if you want to do something about Global Warming, you have the wrong target. You'll have to do something about the greenhouse gas that causes over 90% of the Earth's warming.
Water vapor.
This will increase the performance of my solar stove, so I can pay even less to the highway robbers, er... I mean, utility companies.
The sun is warmer, so that makes us buy more cars. Then those increased cars means more pollution - and then the pollution causes global warming... hell, cars probably have pecial "car-rays" that reach out to the sun to cause this warming.
In fact... it is probably only in America that this happens. America seems to get the blame for all the evil these days, so I'd totally blame them for fucking with the sun.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Its the Republicans, plain and simple. And if it IS the sun, then the Republicans are who made the sun hotter.
Now would be a good time for someone to post the "Moon is a Liberal Myth" troll.
cpeterso
Fair, but there are huge portions of the universe one cannot verify experimentally.
That being said, a theory has been proposed and a mechanism given that states CO2 levels cause an increase in heat - this theory seems supported by the evidence.
If the two are merely linked causully, it is then necessary to propose an alternate theory that equally well explains the evidence, has a clear mechanism, and explains the link between CO2 and temperature.
Superman star Christopher Reeve has hit out at the controversial Scientology cult - claiming he opted out of becoming a member because he was "skeptical" about its authenticity.
Well, if this is true, then I'm afraid that the only solution to global warming is to put out the sun.
I wouldn't call a reaction that is expected to continue for billions of years uncontrolled.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
- Well, that explains it, off I go in my SUV.
- Bull, all the SUVs are the worst part.
- Other
And, of course, the comments that fall into 'Other' will be the interesting ones.Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I imagine that the sun would have a decent shot at a prior art defense ;)
`which fortune`
The BBC had this story in 1998.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm
Of course, back then climate research was marginally less political since Clinton had already declared global warming to be caused by human influences (it is funny how otherwise intelligent people throw the scientific method out the window on this topic...The whole "greenhouse gas" panic is the finest example of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' logic (err illogic) I have ever witnessed.)
If you really care about this debate from a scientific perspective you should read Dr. Sallie Baliunas (who has real credentials as opposed to many of the chicken little crowd who in the April 28, 1975 issue warned us that we were causing the next ice age and semi-advocated melting the polar ice caps by covering them with black soot)
Besides, if there was a real consensus about CO2 being at fault Kyoto would have been about reducing CO2 emissions and not about redistributing US wealth by having us "buy pollution credits" from third world countries.
Dan
Well, if you're going to throw theories out about what the graphs mean, why not turn them around. What if the source of the reduction in temperature (another side-effect of solar energy) caused a reduction in CO2. Just imagine, the worlds flora gets less solar energy, and can't produce as well, and can't produce CO2 as well. Incidentally, the temperature goes down, which doesn't help the plants either. When things go the other way, both graphs spike.
;)
Oh, and as to your heavier rain showers, particles in the air cause heavier rain showers, too. Ever hear of cloud seeding? My city is large enough to cause local weather variations, too. I've seen blizzards split around the city - clouds and snow in all directions, and a partially clear sky above. It looks really cool on weather maps, but I'm not attributing that local variation to global warming, either.
I'm not saying I believe this, but you can't take two disparate elements, and guess you know what the whole ecosystem was doing.
All the scientists are guessing, to one degree or another. They don't have 100% certainty with most of the big things, wich is why the theories keep evolving. Obviously, there is one right answer, and we might even find it. The likelier option is that more than one thoery is partly right.
Of course, we may never know, at least until we've been able to collect a decent sample ourselves. Personally, I'll keep guessing.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Please keep in mind that the atmosphere only filters out so much: http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/eman/weather_statio n/solar.html
Some wavelengths would hardly be affected, many by 1/3, and others - like UVC - by a lot.
In other words, were our atmospheric protection lost completely (not magentic field), the damage is containable regarding our health. As regards the weather, ... ?
Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming
And another:
NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate
It's about bloody time that the "hotter sun" concept breaks into the mainstream. That's what I have been repeating over and over about the reason why the best computer climatology models fail to reproduce known climating history, and hence prove their uselessness. It's because they are based on a "solar constant" (about 900 W/m2 at equatorial peak if I remember correctly) but the solar output is not a constant.
(Hey, sounds like this old Murphy's law of programming: "Constants aren't".)
Two years ago, the Science magazine carried a paper explaining how researchers examined sediments in Yutacan and proved that solar output increase, with a cycle of about 208 years, forced a drought on the Maya that was probably the last straw and destroyed their empire. Findings are correlated with other data. See "Solar Forcing of Drought Frequency in the Maya Lowlands" by David Hodell et.al. Very important paper for anyone who wants to understand climatology.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
So maybe now the global warming activist kooks will proceed to go after the Sun's government and leave the US alone. I will help fund the construction of a spaceship to send all these kooks as ambassadors to Sun-land.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
"They know it'll rather-likely mean a 6m or 7m increase in ocean-level."
And did Major League Baseball plant this in your head?
I'll bet you are close to this guy.
Dan
actually a team of monkeys working at typewriters. did you know they just discovered the bible as well?
Well, if you're going to throw theories out about what the graphs mean, why not turn them around. What if the source of the reduction in temperature (another side-effect of solar energy) caused a reduction in CO2.
I would tend to agree with your prespective that one should be very cautious before determining causality from the graphs discussed in the parent posting. It seems to me that a giant icesheet smothering 1/3 of the Northern Hemisphere would tend to put a pretty good damper on CO2 emmissions from natural decay of plant matter in what today is largely forests and grasslands in Canada, Europe and Siberia.
you have to ask yourself whether its worth spending trillions of dollars to get that 1% back.
True, but if a) we can control emissions, and 2) emissions lead to heating, and iii) we can't control the sun, it's a measure we should consider. Using market-based incentives can reduce the cost by orders of magnitude as well.
Personally, I like Brin's (or was it Pournelle's?) idea to increase the albedo of earth by painting all the rooves and roads white. Cultivating rooftop gardens is also a fun and low-cost way to sink carbon, temporarily. But moving to fuels that aren't as valuable for their other products as fossils should be on the table.
Umm...no one said Global Warming wasn't real. The debate is the matter of "why".
Yeah, but "Global Warming" is usually shorthand for "anthropogenic global warming," both in its use by evil conservatives and evil greenies. And I've seen several posts basically postulating that very thesis.
republicans and conservatives who will acknowledge that yes...temperatures are on an upward trend
Not as many as should, now that the science is better. It's slightly understandable given the greenie rush to assert consensus before it existed (though now the concensus is there on the temp increase and 90% there on anthropogenic greenhouse gasses as a cause, if not yet THE cause). However, more bad science doesn't defeat bad science. Time to stop trotting out Dixie Lee Ray, Mount Pinatubo, and the upper atmosphere measurements.
Maybe they'll let me get r-12 for my cars air conditioning system again. r-134a sucks ass! These Texas summers are killing me!
wow, at 900 W/m2, than at the rate of 0.05% increase, in 20 years it would increase to 909W/m2, right? Or is that just at the surface, and our percieved increase would be much smaller? All in all, and interesting read.
It scares me to think that someone who claims to be a chemist (and therefore supposedly educated) thinks that seasons are caused by changing distance between the Sun and the Earth. This isn't like misunderstanding the fine points of quantum mechanics. It's like telling people that on the moon things float away, or that rockets can't travel in space, because they have nothing to push against. Is it really possible that a person can get a chemistry degree without realizing what causes summer and winter?
You're contant breathing is creating CO2 and destroying the environment through global warming! Be a responible enviromentalist and stop breathing!
Me thinks the dips are caused by differences in the CO2 measuring technology that was available back in the ice ages.
So, Bush can count on you again in '04? ;)
Since the US is the biggest and most irredent poluter when it comes to green-house effect polutants.
Although the international community (ho, like if the US care about that) should keep an eye on countries like China, India or Brazil the most important contribution has to come from the biggest polluter of them all.
... unless you can cite here wath percentage of CO2 belongs to the US, China and India.
After you get that information come back to this thread and apologize.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Someone may think that climate changes may then kill some current empires...
To keep the climate from changing faster than the ecosystem can adapt, we'd better get serious about greenhouse gases. I can just see oil tycoons saying "see, it's not our fault, so keep burnin' oil", but that's the exact opposite of the sensible course of action. To the extent that humanity can control the environment to keep it good, we should do what we can.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Who are you, SH or ObL?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Read the fucking article.
CO2, like any greenhouse gas, acts as a blanket, keeping warmth in. That's not in dispute by anybody.
This dude would seem to dispute that.
From the link:
Does the atmosphere (or any greenhouse gas) act a blanket?
At best, the reference to a blanket is a bad metaphor. Blankets act primarily to suppress convection; the atmosphere acts to enable convection. To claim that the atmosphere acts a blanket, is to admit that you don't know how either one of them operates.
Not that I buy his semantical reasoning. He just disputes the fact that greenhouse gasses act as blankets.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
Didn't you know that the polution is the cities is caused by pigiouns farting and has nothing to do with the huge Oil (thanks sadam) consumption of western countries.
Glad i proved that one had nothing to do with Truth Justice and the American way.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
True, but do you really think that the two coinciding events, man appearing and burning fossile fuel that has been stored in the earth over millions of years in 200 years, and a rising of CO2 level to 3 times of that what has been detected in the past millions of years within the incredibly short timescale of only 200 years, leave any reasonable room for the correlation being reverse?
By the way, my comment was not even about CO2, as I stated it was about funding Saudi Arabia.
in Indiana this was the coldest snowiest winter in atleast 10 years, the weather runs in cycles, im 30 and even in that time i can see about every 10 years we hit a cycle. in 5 years it will be mostly off this cycle and back to mild summers and winters again, and 10ish years we will hit another harsh winter and hot summer. you can ask any farmer this.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
I read somewhere that the average american automobile emits 2.5 lbs of CO2 per day, whereas the average human being emits an average of 3.5 lbs of CO2 per day. So what do you guess the percentages to be. Wonder how long before the eco-nazi's start advocated nukeing china to save the environment.
Don't flame me because I walk to work. I just don't delude myself into thinking that walking verses driving is somehow a noble environment saving activity.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Your argument is flawed:
Consider this:
Ice Age -> lower Carbon Dioxide levels
Certainly does not imply that
Higher Carbon Dioxide levels -> Opposite of Ice Age = Global Warming...
The methane produced by cows is generated towards the mouth end of a cows digestive system (in the sac that holds partly chewed food prior to "chewing the cud") and is vented through the mouth, not farted.
Of course it is, at least as far as many current industries are concerned. This is not a deep dark secret, it's a simple fact.
Beyond that there are two camps. The first believe that green industries will more than make up for the reduction in economic activity in polluting industries. The second (much smaller) believes that reduced economic activity in general is desirable.
So don't feel bad about questioning the Green orthodoxy, because it's changed 180-degrees in the not too distant past,
Scientists don't know for certain whether CO2 emissions at current or future levels will cause global warming, global cooling, or not have any effect. There are plausible models predicting all three effects (although global warming is by far the most widely accepted model). And if climate change occurs on a massive change, plausible models say that it will be very damaging and costly.
The greens just take a conservative approach, which simply says: massive greenhouse gas emissions are a very recent phenomemon; since we have plausible models predicting grave consequences from this recent phenomenon, let's limit them to remain closer to historical levels until we know more.
It's ironic that the self-proclaimed "conservatives" are the ones most pushing for such a dangerous experiment on a global scale.
Always messing with our sun!
This isn't news. All stars increase in luminosity (and therefor heat output) during their lives. It's just the way things work.
.05% per decade. Three decades is .15%, not 1.25%. Everyone here is somehow seeing .05%/year. 1.25% would be very, very, bad. Over a century, .05%/year would be 5% - we'd all be dead.
So if it's true that global warming is mostly due to the sun, do you still think we should spend billions of dollars to reduce CO2 emissions?
I am not positive about the 900 W. It is around this value, though.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Dont panic!
True human intelligence (or the capacity for such) peaked in the mid 1970's and has been declining since. It has something to do with the changes in the way we educate our young, and insulating them from the true harshness of reality, and instilling personal greed above everything else. This trend began about 1975 in the public schools of California and has now spread across the US and western Europe and now we have too many generations indoctrinated into this way of thinking that has corrupted the minds of our youth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2880845.stm
Two interesting points here:
It is intended that this will be the UKs first 'UK only' space mission.
The mission is not slated to take place until 2023.
You have redeemed yourself in my eyes. My first assumption was that you were the idiot product of a sub-standard educational process, rather than someone who wasn't really thinking about what they were saying. You're not the first to say something stupid and then regret it after you were unable to take it back. Admitting your mistake rather than trying to back it up is in my view is one sign of a first rate scientific mind. No hard feelings?
maybe we're all just getting smaller and easier to heat?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Only evil merkins cause global warming. The Sun and all others are full of choclatey goodness that does no bad.
Dale: "Global warming is a good thing. We'll be able to grow oranges in Alaska."
Hank: "Dale it already get to be 120 degrees in the summer in Texas, if it gets any hotter I'm gona kick you ass"
Please pardon any mistakes, as I was unable to find the actual quote.
The Republican's black hearts are decreasing the earth's albedo, which causes it to absorb more solar radiation and thus increase temperature. Bet you didn't think of that one.
Perhaps the original line... :)
Cop: I can put you in Queens on the night of the hijacking.
Hockney: Really? I live in Queens. Did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?
-- The Usual Suspects
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Heh, you are right... oops.
these graphs show such a large correlation between CO2 and temperature that it is impossible not to believe the scientists of the IPCC.
I agree that the correlation is amazingly clear.
But what is even more clear, and completely impossible to deny, is that (all else being equal) a brighter Sun must lead to a warmer Earth. If the Sun actually increased in brightness at this rate throughout the 20th century, then this change must have been a significant contributor to global warming.
This does not mean that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are insignificant, but it is something that must be taken into account.
OMG, so there is a connection to Sol getting hotter and the Earth getting hotter too, who knew?
FiRe is HOt! How 'bout it!?
- Danny
They are "guessing" in only the most basic terms. That's called science. Based on existing evidence, I'm "guessing" if you're shot in the head at close range with a
There is little in physical science that has 100% certainty, and the counter-arguments are not counterexamples... they are based on attempting to point out flaws in the accuracy, usually proclaiming any error in the test invalidates the theory (which isn't the case).
The arguments used are very similar to the arguments used by the "short earth" christians that claim the earth is about 10,000 years old. These arguments tend to attack the methods it's only 97% accurate! Correlation isn't causality! or the scientists themselves they invented global warming simply to get grant money!. Those arguments are all hogwash... if you examine the copious evidence and still don't believe humans are strongly contributing to global warming, you're either trying to sell something or you believe you get extra points when you get to heaven.
In sovjet russia, fossil fuels are burnt because the CO2 levels are rising!
Of the industrialized nations, the US is alone in having reforested after centuries of clearcutting. Better yet, we've reforested with rapid growing species of trees, which consume even greater amounts of CO2.
In the initial Kyoto rounds, the US was supposed to have received one-for-one credit for reforestation. This provision was taken out at the insistence of the Europeans, effectively punishing the US for its environmentally correct policy. The US promptly -- and correctly -- bailed out.
...-.-
Personally, I like Brin's (or was it Pournelle's?) idea to increase the albedo of earth by painting all the rooves and roads white.
Actually, one of the big causes of the 'urban heat island' effect - which NASA or NOAA found was generating significant local variations in weather patterns - was caused by asphalt used in roads and roofs. Asphalt, being black, absorbs solar radiation effectively in the day, and re-radiates it effectively at night. One recomendation on reducing this effect was to pave roads with concrete, which has a much higher albedo, and which retains much less solar heat. I don't know if this is a national trend, but most road construction in the north Dallas/Richardson/Plano area is all concrete, which is also longer lasting. My guess is that they made that decision on economic grounds, not environmental, especially since this trend probably pre-dated the heat-island research by at least 15 years, but this does show that its workable, and that metro Atlanta (identified as the most effective heat-island studied) would probably benefit from cutting back on its use of asphalt.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Now we just have to figure out how to blame it on humanity anyway.
Why not? Are you controlling it? Then it will be uncontrolled when you die... (billions of years) - (your lifetime) == (mostly uncontrolled?)
Why didn't you mention that responsible scientists recognize that dihydrogen monoxide causes well over 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect? Make sure you control those emissions, even when you talk.
But if you'd really want to go the environmental way, you'd take the buss. That's what I recon has a lot more space to carry passengers than your SUV does.
By selling a SUV I could have enough money to upgrade my computers nicely
Btw, you are on my freaks list, does it mean you get +4 from me?
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -