Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
You know, back in the 1970s, the Green movement was most worried about global cooling. We're overdue for another ice age, they apparently come every 10,000 years or so. The Green's prescription for staving off this threat was to burn less fossil fuel, cut down fewer trees and so on. Fast forward to the 90s and global warming is in vogue. The cure? Burn less fossil fuel, etc.
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. So don't feel bad about questioning the Green orthodoxy, because it's changed 180-degrees in the not too distant past, and they probably don't even believe it themselves.
Not that we shouldn't conserve fossil fuels; they're going to run out sooner or later. And pollution is bad, it just makes cities unpleasant. And I like furry animals as much as the next man, and I'd rather they weren't driven to extinction. But fight these things for a real reason, not one that doesn't hold stand up to scrutiny.
On a human timescale, no the earth is not moving closer to the sun. The orbits of the planets in our solar system are stable relative to any conceivable timescale. The sun is exerting some forces on the earth - very slowly decreasing our the rate that we spin on our axis, for example.
In thousands upon thousands of years, the earth will only turn on its axis once per year, always keeping the same face toward the sun as it rolls along its solar orbit. This is "tidal lock" much like the earth has achieved over the moon.
The SENATE voted 95-0 not to implement the Kyoto accords.
Why?? Maybe because it only hurt the U.S. and did not apply to China or India! It had nothing to do with the environment, and everything to do with hurting the American economy.
I read that nature is already doing something like that, as per Gaia theory. It's in the Feb. 2003 issue of Discover magazine, P 17. To paraphrase:
:)
The sun's brightness has increased ~30% since it's birth because of the helium ash piling up. On early earth, there was a larger amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to keep us at a reasonable surface temperature.
As the sun gets brighter, the energy influx increases and so more carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere to maintain a steady temperature.
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?
Seeing as the sun will remain stable for another 4 billion years though, I suppose we could use some sort of scheme to (very) gradually slingshot earth farther out into the solar system. For a while we'd probably park 60 degrees ahead of Mars, then commit suicide by trying to fly through the asteroid belt
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
Well, actually we can. Areas around cities tend to be several degrees warmer than the surrounding areas. This is called the urban heat island effect. If we can affect temperature on a local level, why is it so outlandish to think we can do it on a global one?
Now climate is affected by a huge number of variables. One of them is the chemical composition of the atmosphere. That is not in dispute. We can, and have, changed this composition especially as regards carbon dioxide levels. This is also not in dispute, as it can easily be measured. So, the conclusion that we cannot possibly cause climate change is ridiculous on its face. To claim it is "arrogance" to think so is merely a way to avoid addressing the point.
Because the physics of the problem are different between the local and global scenarios. For example, while the urban heating effect you mention is well established, you are assuming that such an effect is cumulative and does not further interact with the adacent weather. However, that same temperature increase will cause a local low pressure area, and associated updraft over the city. As the air rises, it will cool (due to the temperature inversion) and much of the thermal energy will the absorbed by water vapor in the air (water being an exceeding efficient heat sink). The rising column of air and low pressure will bring in local winds from the outlying (cooler) areas, effectively reducing the temperature in a natural feedback system. The whole point is that the regional and global weather system is infinitely more complex than the local weather, and making a generalization about local phenomena does not necessarily carry over to global phenomena.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
There is an approximately 70-80 year cycle of Solar output called the "Gleissberg cycle". (I am not an astrophysicist, so do a Google search.) We are approching the peak of the cycle (the last peak was in 1932). During the last minimum in the cycle (late 60's-early 70's) I rememmber a lot of talk about "global cooling".
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.
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/
>"Modern" nuclear energy is too risky, period.
Risky? Hardly. I can't think of a single fatality resulting from a CANDU reactor, apart from those not related to the fact the plant is nuclear.
Or did you mean "OLD" nuclear energy, like Windscale and Chernobyl? These poor designs should never have been put into production, and people have suffered as a result.
Nuclear energy, done right, is far more safe than any other energy production method. The risks for an installer of solar panels are likely higher than the risks of working at a CANDU reactor. Certainly more people have died as a result of energy dam accidents, and I can't even imagine the numbers that die as a result of toxic smoke spewed from coal and gas fired energy generators.
In fact, CANDU Nuclear Reactors are so safe that even this anti-nuclear article, try as it might, can't find a single death resulting from any accident at a CANDU reactor. Not one. Nada. Zip. Zero.
I'd feel safer working there than programming. Programmers get RSI. I think I'll move to Pickering and see if I can get a job at the reactor. That way I don't have to worry about on the job lethal accidents.
IIRC, there was a posting some time ago that added up the entire waste output from all nuclear reactors since day one. They estimated it would fit in three football fields. At that rate, we'll be able to perform cold fusion before waste management becomes a problem.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Yes, I'm a git.
The thing is that I am trained on the fine points of quantum mechanics, and the rest is sort of lying unused in the back of the head. I instantly regretted posting it, when I thought about it, but I'd already hit the post button.
Now the mods have given it visibility, and I regret it more.
But I stand by my point. The sun's output *is* the primary reason we have weather at all, and fluctuations in that output should be considered, and have not been considered to my knowledge.
And it is a very scary thought that if dramatic climate change occurs because of the sun, and not our impact, as is generally thought, we can do very little to stop it.
You say