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."

Comments

Palm Trees

[smillie]

One of the more interesting things my geologist friend pointed out to me was the fossel recond in Michigan (for our European friends, Michigan is a state on the border with Canada). We have palm tree fossels all over Michigan. Our current climate won't support palms now but some time long ago Michigan was much warmer than it is now.

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.

He warns us *NOT* to assume this means CO2 is OK

[Guy Harris]

The article says

That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.

so, no, this

• is not just some evil US/oil company plot to discredit the idea that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming;
• is not an indication that all those people saying that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming were wrong and we don't have to worry about continuing to burn fossil fuels.

Note, for instance, that the article also says

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

(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.

Re:Waaaiiitt just a minute.

[Gortbusters.org]

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.

Re:arrogance

[sheldon]

"And pollution is bad, it just makes cities unpleasant."

Unpleasant? Isn't that a bit of an understatement?

Or is death merely an unpleasant experience, like having to stand in line too long at the grocery store?

"But fight these things for a real reason, not one that doesn't hold stand up to scrutiny."

You've got a long way to go buddy if you are seeking out real reason. Claiming pollution doesn't cause any harm... Ha!

I'm not an environmentalist, but it's quite clear you've drank the anti-Environment koolaid.

Re:arrogance

[Ptraci]

I was an adult during the seventies (still am, for the most part), and I don't remember anything about global cooling coming up. People were most concerned about the possibility of running out of fossil fuels, and the loss of habitat for many species of animals. Since then there has been much speculation about the possibility of global warming causing glaciation in some parts of the world by changing the ocean currents.

Re:Just goes to show one thing...

[hackstraw]

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.

How about looking at the geological and fossil record for some evidence? In the recent past (geologically speaking) there have been 4 ice ages and 4 "thaws", and before that the temperature of the Earth was erratic at best. Also, homo sapiens are only 40,000 or so years old, and industrialism that we think is causing global warming and whatnot has only been around about 100 years.

The Earth and life was here before humans, and most likely will go on after we are gone.

it's not cow farts

[js7a]

I'm still believing it's the cow farts.

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!

Re:it's not cow farts

[js7a]

seasonal changes are quite large and result from small changes in the sun-earth distance.

You may be a chemist, but you are no meteorologist.

Seasonal changes result from the angle of solar radiation incidence, not changes in sun-earth distance. When it is winter in the northern hemisphere, it is summer, not winter, in the southern hemisphere.

Re:arrogance - Don't kid yourself.

[CemeteryWall]

some of this is from an earlier post earlier post

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.

Re:Look at the actual data

[barakn]

The data that everybody else has been talking about comes from multiple satellites and spans several decades. And no, there is not "considerable day to day variation." Most of the variation comes on a monthly cycle, the approximate amount of time it takes the sun to rotate once as seen from Earth. Your "upward trend from 1996 to 2000, and then some dropof" comes from the last solar maximum. In considering long term trends, it is far better to have data from more than one solar cycle, and the recently released data was used to compare the average solar irradiance during two consecutive solar minimums.

Re:How long before...

[NortWind]

To counteract a 0.05% increase in solar output, you only need to block 0.05% of the sunlight from hitting the earth. This is not as much as you might think, since the earth presents a face of 4000^2 * Pi square miles. This is about 50M sq miles, so 0.05% of that would be 25K sq miles. Mylar today is commonaly available in 1mill (0.001") thickness. So, assuming we put this into the space between us and the Sun, you would need a packet of mylar sheets 1 mile square by 2' thick.

Putting aluminized mylar into space was tried for a different purpose by the Echo satellite. Some nice people have already calculated that a single shuttle flight could carry a 700 meter balloon up. Some more efficient lifting technology would be very welcome for this project. Thinner Mylar would also be a great help.

Re:How long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen already escapes. The atomic weight of H is very low. The kinetic energy of normal temperature (earth scale) is already enough for escape velocity.

Re:yet another excuse

[Jason Earl]

Source

Is global warming occurring?

According to Accu-Weather, the world's leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."

Satellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.

Projections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation. Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

Are humans causing the climate to change?

98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

In short, global warming could be happening, and it is possible that man even plays a part in global warming. However, there are certainly less controversial reasons to cut back on our oil consumption. Narrowing the argument to global warming simply hurts the cause of environmentalists.

Re:How long before...

[The Master Control P]

Basically, hydrogen has such a low density that it drifts to form a fog from about 1000 to several thousand miles above earth, where it gets carried off by the solar wind.

UK to launch spacecraft to check hypothesis

[psychofox]

The BBC is reporting that the UK is thinking of launching a probe to investigate this hypothesis.

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.