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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."
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?!
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!
...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
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!
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!
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.
more logical than what they have been saying about global warming being caused by "greenhouse gases" and whatnot.
"Global warming" is a documented scientific fact. Without the greenhouse effect our planet would be uninhabitable.
Now whether this effect has been exacerbated by human creation of greater atmospheric carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, etc., that's up for debate. Personally I think since we're not sure, we should err on the side of caution and try and cut emissions as much as possible.
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!
Yes, which is why the scientist said that it would be significant if it's been going on for a century or so. That would be a 5% increase (actually more, due to the wonders of compound interest), which certainly would be important.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I'm prepared to believe that CO2 is the primary culprit, but I regard as a question of science, not blind religious faith. The mindset you and "aepervius" seem to have, that CO2 must be treated as the cause of climate change, regardless of what new facts emerge, is, well, embarassing.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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 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.
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
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
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?
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:;)
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.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
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".
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!
I'm a chemist, and you're quite right. Carbon dioxide does store energy that an IR transparent gas would not trap in our atmosphere. But you glibly assume that it is easy to measure the effect of this trapping on global climate. This is not true, and is the reason there there is active debate to this date, even among responsible, non-oil funded scientists over the degree of the effect.
At any rate, this effect *is* secondary to the effect of the sun's output...it is the largest source of energy for our planet, and any change in its output, even small ones, makes a large difference in our climate.
This is why we have seasons...and seasonal changes are quite large and result from small changes in the sun-earth distance.
If this report is true, and the sun's output has in fact increased over the last decade, it would be an important factor to account for, that to my knowledge, has not previously been considered.
And it is at the same time bad news. If true, then human behavior may not be as responsible for climate change as we all have thought, and that makes the effects we would like to avoid that much harder to avoid....
You say
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.
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.
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.
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