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Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars
MCraigW writes "Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes might have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause. Mars, it appears, has also been experiencing milder temperatures in recent years. In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide 'ice caps' near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun."
I told you so.
says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
Ya but what changes? Can we measure said changes? What about global dimming?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
So you mean only source of heat and energy for the planet is responisble for it's weather and tempreture? Wow. I bet these guys went to post-graduate school to figure that one out.
What's Gore's sequel gonna be called?
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Take THAT hippie environmentalist tree huggers! I'm gonna go set a pile of styrofoam on fire in celebration.
I am more worried about carcinogenic crap in the ground, in the water and in the air than global warming. .. the global cancer rate is going to go up.
Under the guise of "global warming isn't real"
Thanks a lot.
We need clean nuclear power ASAP charging our electric cars, not driving around cancer fumers.
Those of us with brains have known for a great while that the anthropocentric model of global warming was a load of hooey, but if we dare to present papers on the subject, we are inevitably ostracized from the scientific community. I'm glad to see some Russian scientists have the yaichki to push forward with scientific reasoning.
We must destroy the sun!
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Sure, Sun has done some less than proper things, but you can't blame them for warming the earth can you?
CO2 dissociates in water to produce carbonic acid. The increased acidity can have major impacts on eg corals by dissolving their exoskeletons. Even if high levels of atmospheric C02 do not cause global warming, it is still a problem.
How long do we have to argue about the why before we just start to try to ADDRESS THE PROBLEM? Seriously. I don't care WHY you think the Earth is warming, all I care about is people trying to DO something about it. I really really don't care if Pat Robertson calls it Intelligent Warming because God is chilly. Why do we have to waste time arguing about the cause? If a guy comes into an ER, and passes out, they don't stand around arguing about why he passed out before they help the guy.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Global warming is such a politicized issue from both sides, and a lot of money from both environmentalists and big oil is going into 'proving' it, that it's really quite difficult to know what is happening at all. This is in addition to the natural difficulties of the subject, who can say for sure what is happening in such a big place as the earth? Sure we have the satellites measuring temperature, but we know they had errors once, how do we know they are not in error still? Anyone who says they 'know' global warming is/isn't reality ought to be treated with suspicion.
That said, taking care of the environment in general is a good thing. So either way we ought to research renewable energy, keep recycling, etc.
Qxe4
Yeah, and they measured the temperature and CO2 levels on Mars for the last couple hundred millennia as well!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Which was wrong, notwithstanding any view of global warming.
YES! Vindicated at long last! Pollution shall no longer wear the veil of a pariah.
Let the factory chimneys sing with the roar of a an infinite toxic refuse stream! Let us discharge its glories from the highest peak to the lowest depths of the sea!
crackpot:
"His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.
"And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report."....
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect, in which atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide help keep heat trapped near the planet's surface.
He claims that carbon dioxide has only a small influence on Earth's climate and virtually no influence on Mars.
But "without the greenhouse effect there would be very little, if any, life on Earth, since our planet would pretty much be a big ball of ice," said Evan, of the University of Wisconsin.
It is common knowledge that the sun goes through cycles in which its output is increased thereby increasing the the solar radiation that strikes its planets. However we are still putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which act to trap the solar radiation on the Earth. No reputable scientist will claim that every fraction of a degree in temperature increase is due to human influence on our atmosphere but they do know that the methane and carbon dioxide that we put continually pump into the atmosphere acts as a solar trap and can't help but raise the overall temperature of the planet.
If it's true, and if global warming isn't really our fault, that would be sort of a relief, since we wouldn't have to clean up our act. Of course, it would also mean that Mars is equally screwed. So much for moving there. I guess I'll just stop worrying about it and go back to playing video games.
The Martians still use CFC's.
Actually, Mars may be a good model for human inputs of CO2 since as the Martian polar dry ice caps evaporate it simulates the effects of human produced CO2. So, no, actually, this doesn't prove that the sun is the sole cause of planetary fluctuations in temperature.
This only strengthens my theory that The Sun is working with Microsoft, France, and, ironically, Blizzard to craft our ultimate destruction.
cha-ching. money baby... money
It is manbearpig! I'm super-serial!
As far as your latest apologist whacko theory is concerned, it is more than obvious that vast amounts of
CO2 and Methane are carried away from Earth's atmosphere by solar wind into space where it is deposited on
the other planets of the solar system. That's why we're losing the martian polar caps! It's YOUR IMMENSE
CARBON FOOTPRINT that's causing it so WE REALLY NEED THAT CARBON TAX YESTERDAY!!
Your SUV is consigning the solar system to a fiery death.
Pluto - http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warmin g_021009.html
t a_trunc_sys.shtml
j r.html
Triton - http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980526052143da
Jupiter - http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
LUKOIL and Exxon?
I see a major increase in the amount of conservatives believing scientists.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
When the temperature hits 200 F in a couple of years, we will be glad to know we didn't cause it.
Honestly, I think humans have some effect on climate. You can't increase the concentration of an important greenhouse gas like CO2 by nearly 50% and not see SOME effect. On the other hand, to totally dismiss the effect of the sun like the IPCC has is foolish. (By the way, IPCC is hardly unbiased and I tend to discount their opinions on such matters. They are not the ultimate authority on climate change, being just as biased as any oil company shill).
In the simplest terms, you've got an equation that determines the surface temperature of a planet. The biggest effects are the output of the sun and the albedo of the planet. Atmospheres are only a second-order term. Granted, the atmosphere raises the temperature by about 50 kelvins and we're concerned with 1 kelvin, but the fact still remains that a 1% change in solar flux or albedo will have more of an effect on temperature than a 1% change in the atmosphere's absorption. Of course, the question still remains as to how much the solar flux and albedo of Earth have changed versus how much more radiation our atmosphere absorbs.
Either way, no way I'm giving back my Oscar! -Al
'ice caps' near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
3 summers is hardly an indicator of a long-term trend.
Table-ized A.I.
FTFA
"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.
In Soviet Russia, the earth warms the sun.
NASA has been sending probes and landers to Mars since the 70's. How long will it take until some radial environmentalist group decide that this is the result of man's interference there? While any rational person would see this article as a reason to question global warming theories on Earth, some people will see this as an excuse to blame humans for Mars' melting ice caps. Be prepared for this to be used as a new unfounded excuse.
Let's just make sure that Uranus stays cool!
Sir it's always good to see another of the same persuasion and I fully endorse your article and I would
ask you to do the same for my reply to this heresy. Here is what I told these man-made global warming
denial morons just a few minutes ago countering their childish theories with sound science-inspired deep
thinking on the matter:
As far as your latest apologist whacko theory is concerned, it is more than obvious that vast amounts of
CO2 and Methane are carried away from Earth's atmosphere by solar wind into space where it is deposited on
the other planets of the solar system. That's why we're losing the martian polar caps! It's YOUR IMMENSE
CARBON FOOTPRINT that's causing it so WE REALLY NEED THAT CARBON TAX YESTERDAY!
I can't wait for the day we can take them to court for their hate crimes and then lock them away for good.
Maybe bacteria from the half-dozen or so Mars probes of the 70's has spread on Mars and is starting to change it. By some accounts the sterilization done to the probes by both the US and Soviets was inadaquate.
Table-ized A.I.
You know, this is extremely interesting. Mars' climate is vastly simpler than Earth's. The lack of oceans alone reduces the complexity enormously. Earth's biology, and its ability to convert and store massive amounts of gases adds additional complexity. Throw in humans, and its pretty much impossible to figure out what's really going on. Although Mars has an atmosphere, the processes going on there are so much simpler that external forces (the sun) will result in faster and more dramatic change. Thus Mars would be a great litmus test of what impact the changing sun might have on Earth. I have a hunch that if this is really the cause of what is happening on Earth, and if we had this quality of Mars data going back further in time, we could have possibly predicted the trends we are seeing on Earth now.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
isn't it, considering the CO2 poles are now melting. What effect is the new atmospheric CO2 having on the surface temperature on Mars?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Answer that or STFU.
Without knowing why it's happening you don't know what to fix or if you even can fix it. Say for instance it's the sun and it's only the sun causing global warming. What in the hell are you going to do about the sun? I'll tell you what you're going to do about the sun. You're going to sit there and put on your sunblock and shut the fuck up. The sun owns our ass like George Takei owns.... somebodies ass. What if it is "Intelligent Warming because God is chilly"? What are we going to do about it?
The part where we try and figure out the cause is the most important part there is. Otherwise we stand a good chance of wasting resources we don't have or screwing something up that isn't broken to begin with.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Are you crazy? You can't just ASSUME what wrong with the guy & begin to treat him for your guess. More than likely you'll KILL him. So much for "do no harm."
If you've actually ever been in an ER, you know they don't do anything until they know the cause. Know the cause, know the treatment. Anything else, you're seeing a witch doctor or something.
Bring it back to the article, you're missing the central point. If carbon emissions really aren't causing global warming, reducing them will have absolutely no effect. The earth will still get hotter, we're still be in square one, only with less time & money.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
. . . because if our CO2 emissions aren't to blame, then we have a much more serious problem here. I hate the stupid Green Peace commercials, and the smug, self righteous environmentalists, and my first instinct is to be happy every time some thing like this comes up that might prove them wrong and knock them down a peg, but the fact of the matter is that if we aren't causing it, we're going to have a much more difficult time doing anything about it.
The bottom line here is that it doesn't matter whether we're causing Global Warming or not, we still need to move towards renewable energy, if not for the environment, then for the economy. If global warming is going to be the boogeyman that scares people into investing in alternate energy sources, then I'm all for it, even if it means siding with the environmentalist doomsayers.
Ignorant at worst.
We know that there is a historical correlation between CO2 composition of the atmosphere of earth and the mean temperature dating back hundreds of millions of years. Sediment, Ice core and geologic records have been used to cross verify this correlation- so thats good science. We know tha in every computational model we have assembled on atmosphere that CO2 concentrations tend to rpoduce a warming effect- so thats good science. So here we have good scientific knowledge indicating not just correlation, but causation. Its not refuted either. No climactic model has demonstrated that CO2 does not have some warming effect- the only question is how much. To my knowledge, no rise in CO2 in earths history has not also correlated with an increase in temperature. So lets count it down:
Like Planks constant or like Newtons laws, its cross-verified in a number of different domains.
Like Relativity, it has never been outright contradicted.
Like all good statistically grounded hypothesies, we have indication of both correlation and causation.
So why should the hypothesis: CO2 increase leads to global warming be rejected? I see no rational reasons, only political, emotional, religious or superstitious reasons.
To continue, With respect to understanding the martian climate:
We have only the thinest, and I mean anorexically thin knowledge of only a very small temporal slice of martian climate. We have only been collecting data on mars for a few decades, and what data we have is spartan and does not reliably indicate climactic conditions in the same time frames we have on earth. If mars is warming, AND I DO MEAN IF, we have no idea as to the cause.
Nobody would deny that the sun will have a direct input on the climate of all planets in the inner solar system. Nobody will deny that the Sun has variability in output over time. But the salient question is what is the primary causal factor most responsible for historic warming trends. The answer is the chemical and possibly particulate composition of Earths atmosphere.
And please, lets not play the 'volcanism' card: the atmospheric isotopic levels are not consistent with the increase in atmospheric CO2 being caused by Volcanism, and we also have no data to convince us that volcanism is increased in the 19th and 20th centuries world wide. If wishes were horses, but they're not.
For those of you who can not/will not grasp the sheer simplicity of the scientific and logical case, lets try common sense: Man is pumping out CO2 to such a degree that it is producing LARGE AND MEASURABLE changes in the atmospheric content of CO2. At the same time, it seems clear that we are warming. At the same time, we have all this data sitting around saying 'if you increase CO2, then all other things being equal, you will get a warmer temperature'.
Now, what would the rational human being conclude? Much less the scientist?
Association of Global Warming with 'fringe' political philosophies or repugnant 'anti technocratic/anti industrial' viewpoints does not in and of itself make Global Warming an invalid hypothesis. Quite simply- Man has a limitless demand for energy and a vested interest in maintianing a habitable environment. Any individual, country, industry or etc that can provide this energy and demonstrate that it can do so in a way that maintains a habitable planet stands to make a fortune. There is money to be made, simply put. Accepting the rational scientific case for anthropogenic global warming does not entail accepting ideologies that people find repugnant. If anything, the enterprising person might look at this as discovery of a breeding ground for new Value Added products, and new business models.
But, I have afeeling more people are interested in laughing at/pissing on tree huggers and al gore then they are about insuring the futre of Humanity and western Techno-Industrial civilization.
Call me a chauvinist, but the point is that the Demon Haunted World sucks. Lets not go back there. And Ignoring catastrophic climactic change is a shure fire bet to land us back there. We have brains, people, lets use them.
I actually was nearly finished writing a "Mod parent up" post, when I realized you're not quite right. Causes _are_ important because they affect how we treat it. A better analogy (if we *sigh* need an analogy) would be if someone came in coughing blood and vomiting. It's very important to know whether that's drug related, viral, cancer, etc, before you can treat him effectively. So it is relevant whether it's carbon emissions, or solar activity, or some other unknown factor. If carbon emmissions were irrelevant (just SUPPOSE, I'm certainly not advocating that as truth in any way), then spending money to cut emissions would be a waste of resources that maybe we need to build a solar shade (or whatever).
That said, however, there does come a point when you need to say, OK guys, the house is on fire, and it's time to do SOMETHING, even if more information would be handy. And to the extent that we are nearing that point, the bickering over causes does need to stop, particularly if it's just going to be all heat and no light.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
This is in addition to the natural difficulties of the subject, who can say for sure what is happening in such a big place as the earth?
More to the point, we've only been observing weather in any sort of scientific way for just a little over a century. Much evidence does point to warming cycles happening on a long period, over centuries - think of the frequency of ice ages. Our observations have been for but the blink of an eye. And I would bet that's all that is happening now.
Remember too that a mere 20 years ago, the big worry was global cooling, again caused by human pollution (this time blocking out the sun). Predictions of an impending ice age were running rampant. I seem to remember it being on the cover of TIME sometime in the mid 1980s.
The science behind all this is in its infancy, and it's a subject ideal for fanning anti-capitalist flames about how evil the automotive and energy companies are.
Having said that, of course, careful resource utilization is important. I don't think a hybrid car is the answer - more complicated, meaning more expensive to fix, meaning less likely to be fixed as it ages, meaning accelerated replacement cycle, meaning more coal to smelt the steel, meaning arguably no net environmental benefit. Buy an SUV, but only if you need one. Buy a truck, but only if you need one. Otherwise, stick with a small car, maintain it well, and plan on keeping it for 20+ years. Can it be done? Absolutely. My first car was a 1980 Chevette. I bought it for $200 in 1992, spent about $500 in repairs over 8 years, sold it for $1000, and I know it was still on the road in 2005. And though it didn't need an emissions test (too old), I got one anyway, just to see if it needed anything - timing, vacuum leaks, ignition, etc. - after all, fuel is expensive, and a poorly-tuned car wastes it. In 1998, my then 18-year-old 'Vette passed the test for a 1987 model.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It must be those SUVs NASA is operating on Mars that is the cause of the temperature rise...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The sun. Duh.
[sarcasm]
now lets just blow up the sun, no more global warming.
[/sarcasm]
As usual, some useful discussion of these issues can be found on RealClimate.org. The following two articles are worth a look, though neither is especially recent:
The punchline from the latter article is, "There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth..."
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
how many houses does Al have there?
There is simply too much glass..
and is experiencing hot flushes. Give old Mother Earth a break...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
News at 11, the ocean is wet.
God spoke to me.
Or, in modern vernacular, "chill out, dude."
Seriously - you can't "do" something helpful, unless you have a clear reason why you are doing it.
After all, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"... which I personally think is a result of the Law of unintended consequences.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It's sad when contributors pick and choose only the parts of an article that support their own viewpoint and hope that readers are unwilling to read the whole article. Anyone who has RTFA can see that fully half of the article is a repudiation of this man's hypothesis by most of the scientific community:
Choice quotes
"His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University. "And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report."
Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations."
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect, in which atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide help keep heat trapped near the planet's surface.
To add to this, I'd like to point out that global warming deniers are quick to dismiss 650,000 years of data about earth's temperature as not being representative of the facts, but they jump on 3 years of data (and data confined to a local area and not the whole planet) as evidence against global warming, solely because they think it supports their opinion. If they were serious about science, they would apply the same rigour to the arguments they agree with as to the arguments they disagree with.
I came here for a good argument
So...what's with all the capital letters?
Searching through for his previous works he has never published anything on climatology. This would be make his speculations well outside his field of study. Now, being a physicist myself I know that knowing physics gives you better understanding many other things. But, his one article doesn't get precedence over the mounds and mounds of other published work by people in the fields of climatology, environmental sciences, atmospheric sciences, etc. who are considered experts and are well published. If anything he might just be mentioning global warming to get money, as some /.'ers assumed about the deep sea temperature oddities article a while ago. Both sides can do it you know :).
Patrik
----------
Just your ordinary BOFH
http://killertux.org
So. The Sun, which we can't control, is cooking all the planets. Whew! I feel much better now. Now we don't have to give up our SUVs. When it comes time to evacutate the last New Yorker like in that episode of The Twilight Zone where the Sun went out of control, they can drive off in an SUV and not feel the least bit guilty. Except, in that episode, the women were really living in an NYC that was in the grip of an ice age, and the whole thing was a dream. Hold on, let me pinch mys#%@# NO CARRIER.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Now the liberal Martian bacteria are suggesting imposing CO2 quotas while the libertarian single-celled organisms don't want to impose any regulations.
No word from the conservative cells.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. -- C. Montgomery Burns.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Technically, doesn't the Sun warm Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc?
Somebody was trying for the "shock and awe" kind of headline. "WOW! I never knew that the Sun actually warmed the earth. And on top of that, it's heat warms Mars as well? Amazing..."
We're going to see the god-damnest crap pouring out of ExxonMobile and their buddies' PR machine over the next year or two, and that Mr. Abdussamatov gets a hearing now is just a taste of what's coming. Hell, if I wanted to make series money, I should be sniffing around Madison Avenue and K Street right now, instead of wasting time dealing with crackpots on /.
Addressing the parent post, it's true that Methane is one motherfucker of a greenhouse gas, and plants crank it out. Plants have always cranked it out, because plants have been rotting since the beginning of life, so that's just part of the baseline. What's different is the extra gas that 1.3 billion domesticated cattle are passing every day. What's different is that billions of frickin tons per year of carbon being cut loose from fossil fuels, vast quantities that leave the the methane as not much more than a rank odor.
Luke, help me take this mask off
DING DING DING!
Did it really take two missions to Mars and the head of an observatory to tell you that?!
What's the word I'm looking for here? thanks.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Thank heavens you posted that. I had fallen under the sway of the 99.99% of scientists who say global warming is real. I'd also foolishly taken at face value the core samples from the last half a million years, the disappearing ice caps and glaciers, and so on. But your assertions, so strong and confident, more than counter-balance all of that nonsense. And the truth of your words is so obvious that you correctly didn't feel the need to even bother posting a single link to back up anything you said.
It seems obvious in retrospect. Why haven't more people tumbled to the truth that scientists always fudge their own data, and conspire to keep the fudging secret, in order to impoverish our hard-working and honest industrialists? These god damn scientists, they can never give a billionaire an even break.
Thank god for you and Rush Limbaugh, Argoff, or I just wouldn't know what to think.
If you wish to debate that Earth's orbit alteration is not significant for Earth's recent climate change please explicitly say so.
I ask this because you use a quote about Mars' orbit alteration then refer to "human global climate impact"; and Earth's human global climate impact should not be included in a discussion about orbit alteration being the conventional theory for the climate change on Mars
Trying to rehabilitate my karma. I swear I'll never mention Al Gore, dolphins, and solar wind in the same post again.
Honest.
What?
Was I the only one who saw this headline and the only thing I could even think was "Duuuuh"?
i hear there may be a few more planets floating around out there. be nice too if they were warming up too.
- js.
I just want to say that the headline for this story is one of the funniest I have seen in a long time.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Global warming is caused by Man, what a load of crap. Put this in your pipe and smoke it Al Gore, you fucking opportunistic slime bag. He has no political legs, so he latches on to Global Warming, something he knows absolutely nothing about, oh yeah, he invented the Internet, I forgot about that one. It scares the fuck out of me that people like this have any power whatsoever. All Politicians suck big ones.
Maybe we should send Al Gore to Mars so he can warn Martians about driving their SUVs.
This does not seem like a troll at all to me; I'd mod this insightful if I had points.
no. no they didn't. he used 3 years of data. he's a crack pot and his notion was pretty much trounced on page two of that article (wobble).
tasty electronic music vittles
You cant go by what this scientist states since the article states that most scientists disagree with him.
I have been active for renewable energy long before there was the global warming hypothesis.
First of all, there is far more energy available via solar, wind, wave, and geothermal than there is via hydrocarbons, and thus the inevitable price will be lower.
There is 10,000 times the world's current energy usage available via Solar.
250,000 times world's current energy usage via Geothermal.
Off-shore Wind in the short run can provide up to 10X the world's energy needs.
Second, renewable energy is crucial for the development of the Global South.
Solar is plentiful in the Global South and does not require exclusive monopoly rights be assigned to giant companies nor being locked into a global supply chain under the control of the imperial powers.
Third, closing the Metabolic Rift between waste, especially human and animal waste, and utilizing shit gas energy, manure as soil, fertilizer, etc. is crucial for reducing the damage to our water and land.
Fourth, the usage of renewables (solar, wave, wind, geothermal) in combination with desalination is crucial for providing clean, fresh water to the world at an affordable price for both drinking water, but even more crucially agriculture.
Long before, there was the current CO2=global warming activism/concerns/hypotheses/hyperbole, people like myself saw the importance of renewable energy.
The lives of billions of people could be improved radically TODAY via renewable energy.
It doesn't take fears of Armageddon hitting 50 years down the line to motivate people to adopt renewable energy.
On the face of it, this sounds rather foolish. Mars has a very different atmosphere and orbit. Given variations in solar output and orbit. there is a good chance that at any given time Mars is either warming or cooling. So whatever is happening to climate on earth, it would not be surprising to see the same thing happening on Mars, even if the causes were entirely different.
And everyone said Microsoft was evil.
Forgetting greenhouse gases, changes in the sun, etc for a moment, isn't is conceivable that the fact we're burning so much stuff, and putting out so much heat is a factor in global warming?
In addition, most of our energy generation and populsion devices are fairly inefficient. A significant portion of the energy consumed is wasted as heat, which is then dissipated into the environment in one way or another.
Maybe all heat generating devices have minimal impact on global temperature, I don't know. I'm not a climate expert. But I've just never seen any mention of it at all....
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Stars move up and to the left in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:H-R_diagram.png during their main sequence lifetime which means they
get cooler but more luminous. It it the luminosity that is most important for the temperatures of planets. Watch the evolution here http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys230/lectures/star _age/evol_hr.swf and you'll see that a factor of 2 in a billion years is about what
the evolution looks like. That is less that a part in 100 million per year. So, main sequence evolution is not the sort of thing we can
measure right now. There are changes in solar brightness at a larger level and on shorter timescales though recent changes do not account for
the measured warming. See a rough calculation here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/executive-summ ary.html.
s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar: It's steady. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Or, it suggests that our planet's recent climate changes might have a natural AND human-induced cause.
http://outcampaign.org/
Let's send him to Venus instead. That planet is suffering the worst heat wave
since the sun ignited.
However, the same things that will reduce CO2 emissions (taking fossil-fuel powered cars and coal-fired power stations out of service) will also tackle some of the biggest sources of these other pollutants. In fact, it's my guess that the savings in health costs would, on their own, go a long way to offsetting (if you'll pardon the pun) the costs of tackling CO2 emissions.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Now I haven't even read the article in question, but I can tell you this: this is just another example of conservative drivel drummed up by the right to scare thousands of citizens into believing that global warming on Mars is a serious threat. This is a cycle people, these things happen over time, and it is well documented. These crackpot scientists flaunt their "theories" without any shred of proof that isn't refutable by even a simple search for the real facts on an internet search engine, or sifting through respectable, balanced news sources like Newsmax and Fox News.
/sarcasm
When will people wise up and not let these cientists dictate what is fact from fiction, using scare tactics to create a fear and a false sense of hopelessness in the current administration?!
We can use hydrogen bombs.
Let's ship 50 thousand of them by DC-9 planes.
-- "His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion."
Wow! That's sticking it to him. He's repudiated allright.
--"And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report".
You mean "He Contradicts our kick-ass report we delivered to the UN". Still more repudation.
-- "Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations."
I think he meant "Aww bah! I don't wanna hear any of this, it contradicts scripture". What a masterful debunker of
"mere ideas".
--"Perhaps the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect, in which atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide help keep heat trapped near the planet's surface."
Perhaps the biggest blunder in the official theory is the fact as global warming increases so does the amount
of land increase that is hospital to plant life. The Vikings tilled the fertile earth of Greenland which is at the
moment covered by ice. Plants get their carbon mostly from the air.
I grew up in south Florida, living in Fort Lauderdale since I was four and recently moving to Miami.
we used to have three months of winter. granted it was between 38F and 65F in our winters.
now our winter consists of a cold front for five days. we have two days of sweater weather a year now!
don't even think about our summers. you can't get in your car until you cool it off for about ten minutes.
They're using their grammar skills there.
That's true, unless you consider the scientific worldview to be a valid, dependable, fruitful, beneficient way of looking at the world. As a person who wears eyeglasses, uses medicine, rides in automobiles, travels in airplanes, enjoys the internet/electricity/air conditioning/light bulbs/telephones/etc, I have to confess that I'm biased in favor of science. Scientists, despite what you seem to be saying, have come to the conclusion that global warming is both happening and is being worsened by human actions. They have already taken that hot ball of plasma in the sky into account. Are you really entertaining the idea that scientists forgot to take the sun into account when figuring out global warming? The entire community of climatologists would have to be complete morons. Are you saying that's the case?
"But this is not a troll; there are plenty of scientists observing the sun."
Your post is not a troll but TFA certainly is.
For anybody wondering about the attribution of various +/- forcings affecting climate, including variations in solar flux, please see figure SPM-2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM report. For those who like the Mars idea as expressed in TFA please explain why 3yrs of data should be accepted as a trend, let only accepted in preference to a theory that has made some accuate predictions and has an observational record that uses multiple idependent lines of inquiry for periods that are up to a few orders of magnitute longer?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
When probes starting flying by Mars in the seventies Mars was undergoing a global dust storm. This would have had the effect of a nuclear winter and cooled the entire planet, allowing the ice caps to grow. Our initial point of reference is immediately after this period before Mars completely recovered. The fact that the ice caps have receded and the planet has warmed up since then is unsurprising.
We are only touching the surface of martian and earth weather. Adding multi-month and possible several year long global dust storms to the mix makes predictions much much harder. Scientists can't even adequately explain why Venus and Mars are so acidic. Which probably has the simple explanation that a lack of an effective magnetic shield has allowed solar wind to strip away surface and atmosphere hydrogen...
Now, granted, I normally argue on the side of people disproving greenhouse gas induced climate change, but arguing with Mars as a counter point is old news. We need to find an effective way to track the thermal output of the sun over long periods of time. We only have anecdotal evidence and unproven simulations on either side of the argument. Right now we are running a fever without having an appropriate solar thermometer or even long term precise records of Earth(millions of years).
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
I think there is a massive potential for fixating on stories like this to rationalize continuing bad behavior. I've heard gaps in the fossil record being used as a reason to throw out Evolution as the source of life and replace it with the Bible. Solar cycles are well known and do vary. The cycles do cause temperature change. So does volcanic activity. To accept this as the cause we have to ignore the fact that the temperature change has mirrored increases in CO2. CO2 does cause a rise in temperature. No one is really debating that yet there is a lot of other possible causes being pushed. The other things will contribute to increases but they always have. This spike in temperatures is unpresidented and so are the levels of CO2. At no time in traceable history has the CO2 spiked this fast. The source is obvious. We're pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the environment. Playing smoke and mirrors won't make that go away. We know what CO2 and temperatures have been like on Earth. What we don't know is what the poles of Mars have been like over the last few hundred let alone few thousand years. This is likely a normal retreat of polar ice which will reverse in five, ten or a hundred years. We can't let possible secondary causes distract from the real cause, us. It's very dangerous to take the position that we won't do anything until we can eliminate all other possible causes. Remember five years ago it was only crackpots that believed in global warming. Now the biggest naysayer the US President has admited to global warming. That's a massive turnaround. The problem is while we debate causes we are approaching a point of no return. We may have already gotten there. We know CO2 is damaging the environment and that isn't being debated. Better to play it safe and radically cut CO2 production. Right now the debate is about spending billions. In twenty five to fifty years the numbers will be in the trillions. Take your pick, SUVs or most of the coastal property in the world including most of the inhabitated part of Florida. And that's just one side effect of global warming. Believe it or not there are worse ones. Let's say we got word that an asteroid had a 50/50 chance of hitting in 25 years and it would devastate the coast and throw us into nuclear winter killing most life on earth. Now would you say to wait until we are sure even if we won't know until the year before? Or would you say to prepare? The effects of global warming potentially are as severe as an asteroid strike and yet there is no debate about it hitting the only debate is about the size of the global warming asteroid. Do you want to take the chance it's a dinosaur killer or do you want to do something about it while you can?
You can only measure the changes with Habibullo Abdussamatov's patented
Space Solar Limbograph
I am not making this up.
My question to you is--how much longer do we study this problem? How much longer do we scratch our collective chins and furrow our collective brows? If in five years, the climatologists are STILL saying the exact same thing they're saying NOW, will you be convinced? Mind you, oil companies and conservatives (who can't grant the evil liberals political capital by acknowledging that environmentalism is a legitimate and compelling issue) will still oppose the idea, right up the bitter end, and the media will STILL be breathlessly covering the "debate" as if the science wasn't firmly established. Would-be uber-skeptics on Slashdot will still be preening and saying "we can't be sure". But at what point will YOU be willing to believe the climatologists? Five years from now? Ten? Never? I need to know. At what point do you believe the climatologists on questions of climatology? This is important, so please get back to me.
After we're done dealing with Islam, it's gonna be the eco-terrorists' turn.
Judging by the way you're "dealing" with Islam, the "eco-terrorists" have nothing to fear, then...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is what happens when you switch to Intel chips!
He has a point. In this case, the lab work shows causation and not merely correlation. The correlations are between atmospheric CO2 and temperature. People hesitate to call the relationship there causation because there is inadequate time resolution. You don't know for sure that the increase in CO2 came before the increase in temperature or the other way around. However, we stand on the brink of a brave new world: I urge skeptics everywhere to take the experimental approch and reduce the CO2 concentration to the pre-industrial level.
This is the only sound science approach. If we're not sure about global warming, we need to check on this. Let's track temperature changes as we remove carbon from the air just as quickly as we've put it in. It is the only way to settle the debate.
Yes, in an ideal world, we should know the cause before we act. However, there is such a thing as paralysis through analysis. If we spend too much time studying the problem without doing things, we are likely to end up with a harder problem to solve once we know what the cause is. We need to strike a balance, by continuing to study the problem and learn more about the causes and best solutions, while at the same time enacting partial solutions based on our best knowledge of what is going on. We have to balance the risk that our initial countermeasures are useless (unlikely IMHO, but they might or might not be as helpful as we hope; they might even be harmful, I suppose) against the risk that if we wait to get started the problem becomes harder and more expensive to solve. My intuition is that the result of that analysis is that we shouldn't yet panic, we should keep researching the problem, and most importantly we should start trying for the low hanging fruit in terms of greenhouse gas reduction.
"Global Warming' is a subject where demagoguery prevails over reason. Talk shows, magazines, newspapers, and bloggers insist that everyone knows global warming is real, 'most scientists' agree that we are the cause, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously ignorant, unenlightened, uncaring, selfish, and not very bright. The flat earth society has returned.
The truth is that the earth has been warming for 10,000 years since the last ice age and no one actually KNOWS why. When some tiny intellect trots out the latest mumbo jumbo about CO2 levels and the greenhouse effect, they are attempting to claim (though they don't know it) that some computer model somewhere shows that the measured increase in CO2 over the last 40 years will increase global surface temperatures. The models are so poor and filled with so many assumptions that any such claim is meaningless. Things that affect global surface temperatures include variations in the sun's output, particulates in the atmosphere, cloud cover, atmospheric composition, variations in energy released from thermonuclear reactions in the earth's core, ocean circulation patterns, tectonic plate movements, and movements of the earth's magnetic pole. We can't possibly predict the future direction of ANY of these with our present knowledge. The next time someone starts talking about methane emissions from cows leading to global warming and rising sea levels, walk away. The earth may be warming but we are just going along for the ride.
It's all those NASA SUVs (Science Utility Vehicles) driving around on Mars, that are causing Mars global warming. All they need is a small two wheel drive soil sampler or even the old lander but nooo they have to get the latest SUV just to impress all their friends.
One of the last few psuedo-skeptics....*sigh*.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Interesting link that proposes (with some reasonable arguments, to me anyway) that Earth's temperature is already near saturation.
h tml
http://www.ianschumacher.com/maximum_temperature.
"Probably some local fisherman out for a pleasure cruise at night through eel-infested waters."
Well, as long as their hovercraft isn't full of eels, I see no problem.
Ah yes, I was wondering when somebody was going to bring up consensus as though it were an irrefutable argument. When it comes to facts, consensus only means that everybody agrees, it doesn't mean they're right. (or wrong either, for that matter) There was once a consensus that the world was flat; did that make the world flat? There was once a consensus that there were exactly four elements; did that make this true? There was a consensus that life could be generated spontaneously from dead matter; did that make spontaneous generation a fact? I could go on and on, but I think you get my drift.
I'm not saying that global warming isn't happening; there's ample evidence that it is. I'm also not saying that pouring C02 into the atmosphere can't have an effect. I am, however, saying that we don't know, yet, how much of an effect it's having and if it's significant, how much we have to cut back to stop things from getting worse. Before we do anything drastic, we need to find out the answers to those questions, and we can probably find out fairly quickly for "only" about $25,000,000. I'm not asking for endless studies, or decades of time, just time to do some simple, basic, fundamental research on just what's going on, for a lot less than Kyoto would cost us.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
that the majority of people here that bag global warming fail to recognise the fact that no scientist actually disputes global warming, they dispute if we are the MAIN cause. No actual science body is actually denying it, or denying we are one of the many factors. in saying that, while the sun probably is causing both planets to heat up, it doesnt help that our emissions are contributing to the warming. the bigger question is, what have you personally done to change this? myself, after i saw "an inconvient truth" i thought i could contribute by getting a car that doesnt have as much emissions, so i bought a mazda. i also added myself to my electricity company's green plan, which changes your source of electricity from coal to solar and wind. so before you go denying global warming, while driving your suv and stating sudo facts that have been fed to you by organizations who benefit from not complying to the kyoto treaty, stop and think about what you could do. the other point is, what is there to lose? wouldnt you feel better knowing you contributed to a better enviroment and then later being proven wrong that we havent caused it.at least you did the right thing at the time, rather than driving your SUV around, and then singing "we're doomed, we're doomed" and blaming it on everyone else but yourself? sorry, i just get annoyed when people put their head in the sand.
The submitter has a link to JunkScience.com on his homepage. He also is a self-described "conservative" (not that there's anything wrong with that, but it lets us know why he chose to put so much negative spin on this story).
Right now I'm seriously debating this whole human caused global warming stuff. I have a few reasons for this, first most of the people who are yelling and screaming about global warming are the same one that were screaming about ozone depletion. After a few years of real science and not the agenda driven drivel that was being spewed it turns out that are ozone layer actually developes and repairs it's self all the time. Secondly people are ignoring the very real and tangable evidence all around us, geology. Simply put are world is a dynamic and changing enviroment. Lakes turn to deserts, tundra turns to farmland, the planet on it's own heats and cools. The whole notion that man is the sole cause of global warming is a bit ridiculus simply because it assumes incorrectly that the planes ecosystems and enviroments do not change. Finally there is the big hole in the human caused global warming issue, the ice age. About 10,000 years ago this planet was cover in 70+% of ICE, but yet the planet heated up and the ice melted. How did this happen? I doubt it was cavemen driving around in prehistoric SUV's, or Wooly Mamoths farting to much. The planet of it's own accord heated up to melt the ice and bring us into a warming trend. Then we go through early civilization to the French Revloution. It was during this time that the planet experienced a small ice age. There again though the planet went from cooling to heating again. We as humans don't are just barely scratching the surface of understanding the vast planetary changes that can occur on earth.
This is pure bullshit.
When I was working ER and we had an infant come in with a life threatening fever, we didn't sit on our thumbs while waiting for the lab results to tell us about the cause. We initiated treatment to control the most damaging symptoms: get that fever down. And we tried to do that before the kid started to have convulsions.
There is a human component to global warming that can be addressed right now. We know it is there: we can estimate the megatons of carbon dioxide we've generated from sequestered sources over the last hundred years. We don't know whether it is the only cause and we don't know if it is the major cause, but we can attempt to reduce this part of the problem while we wait for answers from the lab guys.
So yeah, I don't have a whole lot of respect for people who think the answer to global warming is to wait for the diagnosis before acting, and meanwhile it's "Party on, Dude". I really wonder how they can string together sentences with brains that are that moronic.
workin hard on that GPL release eh pals?
This is the "no shit" moment where everyone who has been saying that the "sky is falling, and it's your fault" proponents are out of their minds.
I'm not denying that burning carbon-based fuels is bad for the ecology. I'm not denying that polution sucks, and that we over-consume. I accept all these things - but they aren't causing any sort of significant climate change. There simply isn't any correlation between temperature and CO2/etc. production.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Would the Sun be heating up or cooling down? If the Sun were becoming less energetic, cooling down, would it put out more energy in the infrared spectrum as opposed to the higher visible and ultraviolet bandwidths? There could be a difference not only in the heat it puts out but also the other types of radiation it produces. What would happen to plant life if there was more or less ultraviolet energy available for photosynthesis? No plants = no food. Maybe just looking at heat output is a bit short sighted. What is the change in power for the other parts of the radiation spectrum?
No offense, dude, but go take a physics class. That goes for whoever modded _that_ "informative" too.
1. Heat flows from the sun to the earth, and from both to the vast expanses of open space anyway. It's not the outside space that's heating the Earth, but the Sun.
2. The laws of thermodynamics have to do with atom/mollecule movement, and transfer of heat between bodies in contact. The only (ok, vast majority of) energy flowing in or out here has _nothing_ to do with thermodynamics as such, since there are no two bodies in contact exchanging heat (i.e., exchanging mollecule movement by impact.) What is happening there light being absorbed and radiated, and yes that can happen in the opposite direction just as well. There are relevant laws there, e.g., Stefan-Boltzman, but the second law of thermodynamics isn't it.
E.g., you can cut sheet metal with a focused laser beam even though the heated point is basically a hell of a lot hotter than the laser. It will absorb the light anyway. E.g., to address your "inside" and "outside" concerns, you can fry an ant with a magnifying glass even though the ant ends up hotter than the surrounding air. That's because the energy comes from the sun, not from the outside air.
So, sorry, the GP post was right, you are wrong.
But to get back on topic, what's happening is that the earth receives some radiation energy from the sun, and it radiates some back into space. The equilibrium temperature is when the energy radiated equals the incoming energy. Basically if energy E is incoming, then the equilibrium temperature T is when surface times emissivity times Stefan-Boltzmann constant times T to the 4'th power equals E. That's all.
The "insulation" and its non-uniformity across wavelengths messes things a little, but as long as the temperature variations are relatively small, the wavelength don't shift horribly much, so basically the proportionality stays. And a global warming of 1 Celsius (which at least at one point was all the heating Earth had experienced) isn't enough to throw it off the hook. If the Earth's temperature is, say, approximately 300 Kelvin (for the sake of a nice round number), we're talking a third of a percent increase. Since the rest is constants T1^4/T2^4=E1/E2, so it only takes an increase of (1.00333)^4=1.0134, or 1.34 percent increase in incoming energy to fully explain it. Better yet, since Stefan-Boltzman applies to the Sun too, to fully cause it, the Sun would have to experience the same heating the Earth does. A third of a percent heating of the sun creates the extra energy to heat up the Earth by a third of a percent.
So that's basically all the debate here: did our "insulation" change over time, or is it simply that the Sun got slightly hotter? The former wouldn't explain why Mars is heating up too, while the latter fully does.
Funny the things one can learn by paying attention in physics class, really.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, the sun is responsible for some global warming, that is well-known and has been taken into account. Changes due to greenhouse gases are on top of that. The contribution due to solar changes make acting particularly urgent because it leaves even less room for human contributions.
The scientist who looked at the polar ice cap melting said it was from a global climate change on mars, while discussed in this link http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192 the ice caps are melting due to regional climate change. That conclusion was based on numerous data measurements across the planet of mars. The inferrence of solar radiation and global climate change on mars is baseless.
Wow, I knew my new Sunblades were hot, but Mars!?
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
...please...for the...love of {DIETY OF CHOICE}...mod...parent...up...
Heat rises. That creates wind. The Earth isn't going to get appreciably hotter, it's just going to get windier. I don't think we're going to see much surface temperature change, but if we could look at the energy being stored and dissipated in the atmosphere, we'd see a dramatically different story. That's why any environmental alarmist worth their salt will talk about "climate change" and not "global warming".
:P
Now, Earth and the ecosystem is a buffer system, and buffer systems tend to try to hold conditions steady. Of course, once they get pushed to the edge, they abruptly go way off. So things should get interesting.
On the bright side, hopefully when things get really really bad and people start dying en masse, we'll finally make some policy changes and the ecosystem will correct itself again relatively quickly. But I'm not holding my breath. In all previous environmental issues, we've had to wait for things to get really bad to take any action (industrial pollution vs. deaths due to London fog, the ozone hole, etc.). Just too bad we can't figure out a way to hold people accountable for not taking action sooner
Yesterday we learned that "correlation is not equal to causation" (Give back that Oscar, Al). Today's lesson is on the folly of linear extrapolation. A new-born baby often triples it's weight in the first year. At what age does the kid have an event-horizon?
We know that the Earth has warmed and cooled in cycles. During the "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP) Greenland was warmer than it is today. The Vikings had a productive settlement there. It was evacuated as a consequence of the end of MWP and the start of the "Little Ice Age". Why should be assume that the current warming trend will continue indefinitely?
Clearly we need to continue to monitor the warming trend. But it's premature to assume that trend will continue indefinitely, the ice caps will melt, the oceans will rise, and the wolves will attack.
[Insert pithy quote here]
On the other hand, if we do nothing, humanity can finally achieve world peace (through self-extinction).
-GiH
For example, when I microwave my burrito... it gets hot.
Clearly the sun and the burrito have a microwave cause for being heated, rather than human reasons.
"Oil companies... give money now!"
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
As science promotes health among the infirm and physically unfitt, those who survive into their 80s will be more prone to degeneration than those who would otherwise have died earlier of heart attacks, anurisms, pancreitis, SIDS, etc.
If you want reasons to cut down on polution, look at incdences of childhood and early adult non-cancerous lung failure (fine particulate "white/black lung"), allergies, and asthma.
-GiH
I am SO not a medical practictioner.
From TFA: "The solar irradiance began to drop in the 1990s, and a minimum will be reached by approximately 2040," Abdussamatov said. ... If according to him, the solar irradiance is the main factor on the climate on earth and Mars, how is then this drop consistent with the higher temperatures in recent years?
Scientists discover the sun heats the earth!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
We NEED to promote development of better ways to cool our homes, protect our elderly, and deal with the other effects of increased heat. We need to start looking at the 20-30- and -50 year flood plains; start moving people or building dams now.
...or we can be idiots and wait till shit blows up to notice there's a problem. Your call I guess?
-GiH
Geez, I thought we just turned up the heating during summer!
Talk about inconvenient...
Page missing.
To those that think the sun has no inffluence, wakeup turds, its the ONLY INFLUENCE, bar massive volcanoes emitting 1000s times more stuff than any LA day.
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural--and not a human- induced--cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)
Mars North Pole image
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RELATED
* Photo Gallery: Global Warming
* New Mars Pictures Show Signs of Watery "Aquifers" (February 16, 2007)
* Climate Change Predictions Not Exaggerated, Analysis Says (February 1, 2007)
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
Solar Cycles
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.
By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.
Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If you assess risk by mass, then you can blame global warming on cows. Methane reduces ozone. Cows fart out lots of methane and other stuff. By mass, they produce much more than all aircraft. This is probably wrong, but widely quoted. But aircraft chuck their stuff out in the upper atmosphere, where it gets further and probably has a lot more effect.
We cannot do the traditional experiment - have two worlds, one with a population and one without, and measure the differences. However, we can look at the natural experiments in the solar system. If the icecaps of Mars have shrunk at the same times as the icecaps of Earth, then there may be a link. If we think there is a link, then we try and gather more evidence. This is what science does. It's a bit dull, and it rarely moves as fast as we like on important issues. It may be more fun to report on academic rows, controversies, and consparacies. But they really don't help much in the long run.
"The Scientists", i.e. only if you agree with the global warming dogma, are you a scientist?
"There is no debate amoung legitimate scientists"?
You sure don't sound like a scientist to me.
A real scientist knows that you can prove no theory, only disprove one. The evidence for global warming is strong, but I personally do not find it overwhelming, and the issue has become very politicized. We've seen many theories flip-flop in in the past (cold fusion, ice ages, continental drift, magnetic monopoles, business cycles to name a few). I have a hunch that global warming is on weaker ground than Al Gore (inventor of the Internet) would like.
The effect of the sun on our temperatures is now getting a lot of attention from "illegitimate scientists". I am curious to see what they conclude.
This is from the draft of the upcoming 4th Scientific Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
"1.4.3 Solar Variability and the Total Solar Irradiance
As early as 1910, Abbot believed that he had detected a downward trend in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) that coincided with a general cooling of climate. The solar cycle variation in irradiance corresponds to an 11-year cycle in radiative forcing of about 0.23 W m-2. There is increasingly reliable evidence of its influence on atmospheric temperatures and circulations, particularly in the higher atmosphere (Labitzke and van Loon, 1997; Reid, 1991, van Loon and Labitzke, 2000; Balachandran and Rind, 1995; Brasseur, 1993; Haigh, 1996). Calculations with energy balance models (Wigley and Raper, 1990a; Reid, 1991; Crowley and Kim, 1996; Bertrand et al., 1999) and 3-dimensional models (Wetherald and Manabe, 1975; Cubasch et al., 1997; Cubasch and Voss, 2000; Lean and Rind, 1998; Tett et al., 1999) suggest that such relatively small changes in solar radiation could cause surface temperature changes on the order of a few tenths of a degree centigrade.
The solar radiation can be derived from the sunspot number. Naked-eye observations of sunspots date back to ancient times, but it was only after the invention of the telescope in 1607 that it became possible to monitor routinely the number, size and position of these "stains" on the surface of the Sun. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, numerous observers noted the variable concentrations and ephemeral nature of sunspots, but very few sightings were reported between 1672 and 1699 (for an overview see Hoyt et al.,1994). This period of low solar activity, now known as the Maunder Minimum, was one of several which occurred during the climate period now commonly referred to as the Little Ice Age (Eddy, 1976). There is no exact agreement as to which dates mark the beginning and end of the Little Ice Age, but from about 1350 to about 1850 is one reasonable estimate.
During the latter part of the 18th century Wilhelm Herschel (1801) noted the presence not only of sunspots but of bright patches, now referred to as faculae, and of granulations on the solar surface. He believed that when these indicators of activity were more numerous, solar emissions of light and heat were greater and could affect the weather on Earth. Heinrich Schwabe (1844) published his discovery of a "10-year cycle" in sunspot numbers. Samuel Langley (1876) compared the brightness of sunspots with the surrounding photosphere. He concluded that they would block the emission of radiation and estimated that at solar maximum the sun would be about 0.1% less bright than at the minimum of the cycle, and that the Earth would be 0.1-0.3C cooler.
Measurement of the absolute value of total solar irradiance (TSI) is difficult from the Earth's surface because of the need to correct for the influence of the atmosphere. Langley (1884) attempted to minimise the atmospheric effects by taking measurements from high on Mt. Whitney in California, and to estimate the correction for atmospheric effects by taking measurements at several times of day, i.e. with the solar radiation having passed through different atmospheric path-lengths. Langley's value of TSI of 2903 W m-2 is considerably larger than current estimates, of about 1365 W m-2. Between 1902 and 1957 thousands of measurements of TSI were made from mountain sites by Charles Abbot and a number of other scientists around the globe. Values ranged from 1322 to 1465 W m-2. Foukal et al. (1977) deduced from Abbot's daily observations that higher values of TSI were associated with more solar faculae.
In 1978 the Nimbus-7 satellite was launched with a cavity radiometer and provided evidence of variations in TSI (Hickey et al., 1980). Additional observations were made from the Solar Maximum Mission, launched in 1980, with an active cavity radiometer (Willson et al., 1980). Both of these missions showed that the passage of sunspots and faculae across the Sun's disk influenced TSI. At the maximum of
id rather reduce the population of beef/cattle by 99%
;)
We dont need them, they waste tonnes of water and pollute like hell.
There are other meat alternatives that grow faster and damage land a lot lot less.
No, its not whales
But it couldnt hurt to eat less beef.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...That we can now continue polluting and destroying our planet, because its not our fault that its warming up?
Whatever this study represents, its doesnt mean we should stop the action of making this world a cleaner place. US knows how to make things dirty, and rest of the world has to clean...
If you look at Iraq and Afganistan or Athabasca Tar Sands you can see some more obvious environmental changes caused by fossil fuel dependency. Not that wars and massive environmental damage are limited to energy products and are different than over-fishing, clear cutting, continuous cropping, etc.
The Peak Oil Theory is another pointless discussion. It's like discussion on 'Peak Diamonds'. Have we reached the diamond peak? If we have and we run out of diamonds, how are future young couples going to get engaged and married? Oh, they are doubling the retail price of diamonds, I can understand that, they are past "peak" production.
As a parent I try and teach my children to share their toys, not waste their supplies, to save some of their candy for another day and to clean up after themselves. These aren't hard concepts to grasp, even for a 3 year old.
I think as individuals we are born with a sense that we should "Take what ya' need and you leave the rest" as Robbie Robertson put it.
End of discussion.
In the US, poverty is defined by the government as falling below a certain income level. If you are single and not someone's dependant (as in a child or a university student where your parents are paying your way) poverty is defined as making less than $10,210, for a family of four less than $20,650. Now compare that to an African nation, Congo in this case, where the per capita GDP, not income, is $700. Clearly the two countries have a different definition of poverty. Over in Congo, making $10,000 would put you in the top earners, perhaps even the top percent whereas in the US it is considered to be poverty.
You have to be real careful when you see estimates across countries of many things because often they don't use the same metric. There's not a global poverty metric and really, there can't be. The US is richer and thus it makes sense to consider poverty to be at a higher level than a severely impoverished country. That doesn't mean their plight is the same.
It seems you misunderstood the expression ad-hominem. If the argument had been "I know Abdussamatov, and he is a nutcase, therefore his opinions must be wrong", we would have had a case of ad-hominem. In this case, the argument is "what Abdussamatov says is wrong, and therefore he must be a nutcase".
It is not necessarily valid, but it is no example of an argumentum ad hominem.
Why can't it be a crazy solar cycle *AND* human intervention?
If there's anything we've proved from all this science and conference nonsense going around on the news, is we can do tiny things and make drastic changes to the environment. If we were concentrating on keeping the Earth nice and cool during a crazy solar cycle, we could probably do it.
Having the fossil fuels, CFCs and all that stuff in the way is going to make a warm decade unbearable, basically. That's the problem; if we hadn't fucked the environment we may well just have been in for a great set of summers and mild winters. Now we'll get a Katrina-grade hurricane every year, half of Alabama flattened by tornados, freak ice storms in Australia..
Yes, you are missing something. The choice is not between "do something to limit the effects of carbon dioxide" and "do nothing". The "do something" option actually costs money and resources, which could have been spent on other things. The "do nothing" option implies doing other things with the resources. It can be things like improving health care, building new art museums, start new wars or anything. Some of the other things are laudable. Some are not.
All facts I have access to, tell me that we should cut carbon dioxide emissions drastically straight away. That is my personal opinion, your opinion, and it is shared by most scientists in the world.
However, someone with access to other facts, like Abdussamatov, may be perfectly justified in claiming that there are more important problems in the world than carbon dioxide.
If it had been true that the sun was the main culprit, it would be better to find ways to live with the increased temperatures rather than doing things that have no effect anyhow.
Indeed. I'm not seeing too many comments addressing the fact that just because there's another cause doesn't mean it's not a concern. Besides that, I haven't seen any comment yet on the thought that human-produced CO2 may multiply the effect of the increased solar output. Wouldn't that make sense? The fact that the solar output is increasing seems to indicate that reducing greenhouse gasses is even MORE urgent.... and yet, there will be people who take this as a sign that humans can continue in their wasteful ways.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
300 Parts Per Million is the vast historical Tipping Point of Carbon in the Atmosphere.
We're past that. To take out of the equation the Human Cause of Global Warming we MUST get back to 300 Parts Per Million.
No one is mentioning the Other Correletion: Population.
We blew past 300 parts per million because we are Doubling our Population so rapidly.
Even if global warming isn't a problem Population and Energy will still be issues.
The fight against Global Warming by the Oil/Coal Prostitutes will still Not Prevent Other Population created Problems.
It will however somewhat protect them from bearing some responsibility.
...blaming somebody else for their misdeeds.
Face it: Global warming is real, human made and will be a huge catatrophy that will be a dominant influence on the human race for centuries.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Since he likes his little gold statue so much, I'm afraid he would think that solar warming is a bit of an inconvenient truth.
The original article mentions Mars as having global warming, but scientists are also reporting that Jupiter http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_j r.html, Triton http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton-0715.htm l and Pluto
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warmin g_021009.html may also be warming up. Coincidence again?
I see the recent IPCC report mentioned often, but I wonder how many folks that refer to it have only actually heard about it through the news or even actually read the summary. I wonder because at least 7-8 of the scientists that wrote the detailed reports have complained that the IPCC official summaries and press releases show the opposite conclusion from the detailed reports. In other words, at least some (if not much) of the actual science behind the IPCC report apparently was unable to find any definite correlation between humankind's effects and climate. That doesn't mean that anyone thinks current pollution levels should continue, or even that the Earth isn't getting warmer right now. One interesting series of articles about those scientists is at http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=2 2003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
Personally, I'm suspicious of the global warming industry because of some of the funding issues I've read about (but don't have references handy, sorry). For one, the funding rate went up by a factor of about 100 after global warming was announced around the time of Pres. Regan. Also, it seems that anyone who attempts to publish any research contrary to popular views has their funding cut (and some have lost their jobs completely). To me, that sounds like an organization that wants to stay alive at any cost, rather than one interested in real science. Especially since the funding seems to be tied to producing proof that, rather than determining if, Man is responsible for global warming.
Nice strawman. The philosophical problem of fact vs. perception does not absolve us from the requirement to act.
Sun is also warming up to the open source community. Go Sun! Go!
1. I don't want to see him in that suit.
2. I don't want to see him fly.
3. He's got to fight a giant spider in the third act.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
on the original poster, how about reducing emmissions simply because its
healthier not to breath in all that crap?
on this poster commenting on population - I do wonder if these climate models
actually consider the heat output of the increased population of the past 100
years? Nevermind the fossil fuel use, just the heat of bodies (and associated
increased food stock) alone has to add quite a few Joules.
If the temperature rise is due to the sun and not due to CO2 emissions, cutting back on CO2 emissions isn't going to help. We will need to spend our money on doing something else that is going to help. If we spend all our money on reducing CO2 and it doesn't work, we are screwed.
Mark Steyn: How Gore's Massive Energy Consumption Saves the World
Talk about inconvenient truths...
... so no one's going to read this, and it's slightly off-topic anyway. I'm prepared to take the Karma hit.
I posit that the causes of global warming doesn't matter. What does matter is entirely economic: a move away from non-renewable fossil fuels, the raise in standard of living world-wide by instituting pollution controls, and the leveling of the economic playing field by putting the same pollution controls in country X as in country Y.
This article says that the sun causes global warming. Well no shit. Of course it does. And a fluctuation of the solar output would spike temperatures on Earth and Mars. This still doesn't excuse our society from the fact that in the past century+ of industrial growth, we have been wasteful and that the continuing argument for that wastefulness is the fact that in the short term the costs of using and developing new technologies is more expensive using a cost-benefit analysis. What happens when fuel becomes too expensive and the technology isn't on-line to provide a cost-efficient alternative?
In brief, I'm tired of the argument on whether or not global warming is cause by human beings. It's a moot point. The important point is that current fuel usage is non-renewable and wasteful. Everything else is just published results.
The global warming of mars is caused by the greenhouse gases that the rovers have emitted
for fuel efficient Mars Rovers.
He is a republican and will find loads of funding by oil companies and the USA federal gov. Never mind that he is russia.
If a higher solar output is heating up the Earth and Mars, then the other planets should be heating up too. Is there any evidence of a warming up of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus etc. ?
It's greenhouse gas emissions from the rovers!
For the love of God, mod parent up.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
ROFLMAO!
well yes Sherlock, it does.
if it ain't caused by us, it is unlikely it can be stopped by us.
therefore we should ameliorate the effects rather than attempt halt the cause (stop the sun?).
It isn't the *amount* that is disturbing: it is the curve of change, the *rate* of change, that is disturbing. Using the known data (including hundreds of thousands of years of ice cores), there is no precedence for the rate of change we are currently experiencing.
As far as a few degrees C: every erg of additional energy we store on earth help contribute to larger, more devastating storms, for instance. Every fraction of a degree increase allows pests such as beetles survive the winter cold in places like Alaska, allowing them to decimate millions of acres of pine trees in the summer.
Life itself is not fragile, just as your body is not fragile. Ecosystems are fragile. These little changes we are experiencing now will transform the earth a little. And if the *rate of change* does not decrease, the changes will get more dramatic.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The main problem as I see it is that you always have to validate computer models by making specific predictions and seeing if they are correct. You can't just make it fit past data and say it is a good model. Otherwise you could just fit a polynomial of a certain order to any data and perfectly predict past results with little predictive capacity. I do this type of testing and modeling for a living. And we constantly think we have a system modeled well and then we expand the testing to conditions out of family the models break down. I don't see how people expect to be able to model something like earths climate when there are almost infinitely many factors that feedback at different rates and some that we may not even know about. It is pointless to try to make policy decisions on CO2. I consider myself a reasonable environmentalist. I want clean air, clean water, and I willing to pay extra for those things. But even speaking about CO2 as a pollutant is just wrong.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I'm with him. I think the current global warming craze is a crock, as much as global cooling was. However, fuel-efficiency is always a top consideration in cars I buy (my current gas-sipper is actually too small for my family), use public transportation when I can, and buy efficient-everything (including almost all CFL in the house). In my younger days I did go to excess, I actually had a car with a moderately-tuned 2.5l V6. OMG!
Could I do more? I would if I had more money to do it with. But right now I'm doing my best to save energy. And I mean save REAL energy -- it's not like I'm Al Gore and suck up 20 times the national average for my house, but pay "carbon credits" back to myself to make me feel good.
In summary, it's not about greedily not wanting to change a lifestyle, but about intellectual honesty.
Ummm...wow. So this guy doesn't even buy the idea that CO2 traps heat in the Earth's atmosphere?
A friend was asking if I knew of any citations that prove that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that affects the Earth's atmosphere and to what extent it does. He's a degreed engineer who made an honest effort to do a literature search.
All I could offer was "umm, Venus?," but that's pretty weak. If anybody has cites handy, please leave replies here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Love sees no species.
The only kind of planetary warming that has relevance to Earth is warming due to increase in solar output, because that is the only factor Earth shares in common with other planets.
Solar output has been increasing for some time. However:
1. The warming on Mars is not due to an increase in solar output; solar output actually decreased slightly over the period that its warming was observed. (It's also not global warming, but rather regional warming of Mars's south pole.) See here.
2. According to the article you cite, the warming on Pluto is not due to an increase in solar output. It is due to orbital variations: Pluto recently passed perihelion.
3. According to the article you cite, the warming on Triton is not due to an increase in solar output. It is due to changes in surface albedo (the amount of solar radiation that the planet reflects vs. absorbs).
4. According to the article you cite, the climate changes on Jupiter are not due to an increase in solar output. They are due to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns. (It's also not clear from that article whether the overall effect is global warming; there is warming at the equator and cooling at the poles.)
In short, other planets don't tell us much about global warming on Earth. Even if they were all warming for the same reason, that reason would have to be solar output, and we don't need to study other planets in order to know about that: we can measure solar output directly.
As it turns out, solar output isn't sufficient to explain the observed global warming. It has been increasing overall, but not by very much. It explains a little bit of the warming, but not most of it. See this article for more details (subscription required).
Mine is Good
Pinatubo produced several million tons of CO2 over a couple of days.
Problem with that is
a) We don't get a Pinatubo eruption every day
b) Big eruptions don't last years
So add em in and you're still short.
Geez, we send one little car to Mars and all of a sudden people are screaming Global Warming!
Big energy (and their political supporters) have all tried to put forward simple statements and try to disprove it by hand waving over discontinuous facts. This current story is just like it. This guy is claiming that the planetary wobbles are causing this. But he even points out that current solar energy is decreasing (which it is).IOW, he is trying to take 2 facts and exaggerate them so that they MAY account for it, while disregarding that one of his facts actually works against him.
Simple use your head here. Look at the fact that ALL climate scientists who are looking directly at this are saying that it is occurring. There are lots of people who are not experts in this field (almost all are politicians who had a science label applied to their poly sci degree) are claiming that it is not occurring. But nobody who is current and knowledgable in this field is saying it.
There are some who say that their work does not support it, such as Dr. Grey @ colorado state, but they have not produced data to support it. They admit that it is a gut feeling. In particular, Dr. Grey will say that the hurricanes are on a natural increase in strength and numbers (of which I believe him). His real argument is that global warming is not causing what we are seeing recently WRT his hurricane study. That makes sense. But it does not preclude that GW could increase it more than what is expected esp in the near future. As it is, simply look at the recent tornado's that have been hitting the south east. That is not normal within the context of recorded history or natural findings.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I thought that UltraSPARCs ran hot, but whole fucking planets? Good job Sun.
Thermodynamics class is a distant memory, yet I have to say that his blackbody argument made intuitive sense. I don't see how the earth can trap more energy then a black body and therefore it cannot have a higher temperature -- blackbody is the upper limit. Essentially people have been talking about greenhouse gases like they are a one-way mirror, and theoretically if you have a one-way mirror it's easy to see how internal temperatures could be higher than that of a blackbody, except that one-way mirrors don't exist in the real world (at least I'm pretty sure they don't and there is no physical equivalent to a one-way mirror in the real world). If a black body is the upper limit, then it seems like the Earth is very close to its upper limit. No?
/ S2fqLEsOtha64-EgR_rLE2-). In the link above (an applet) notice how it looks like there were higher temperatures in previous interglacials? Also set the x-axis to CO2 and the y-axis to temperature. What do you see? I see a strong correlation with the CO2 that suddenly stops ( saturation?)
Also, look at the long-term temperature record (http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/view
There seems to be a lower and upper bound. The earth seems to be bouncing between two states, kind of like a Lorenz butterfly. If anything I would be more worried about us perturbing the 'orbit' of the system in such a way to send us into an Ice Age. Given the apparent dynamics of the system (2 strange attractors?) that would seem a much more likely danger.
The guy brings up an interesting point and I would be interested in a scientific refutation ( and no handwaving or arrogant dismissal that seem so typical by scientists these days).
notice the headline here: "Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars".
Had that read "Man May Be Causing Global Warming" you'd have a million fucktards on here screaming that it's not a question of "may" and that it's a fact.
The bullshit is getting old guys. The more you scream the less we hear.
Ok, numerous economists say that at MOST a 1% GDP drop and several are saying that it will increase GDP by making available more cheaper energy available. But since you are prone to BS, it is time to ask for facts.
1) The Earth has been warmer than it is now before! We are not seeing temperatures outside the spectrum of nature, and even assuming worst case according to the IPCC we won't be outside normal for more than 500 years.Link please.
2) CO2 levels are not high now. There was an article in Scientific American which documented this, CO2 over the last 2 million years has fluctuated between ~200ppm and ~1400ppm. Right now we are at about 300ppm.Link Please. BTW, 1400PPM when there is land based life is not really useful. Of course, in the end, the real question is what will the temps be like when it is at 500ppm? If earth is a living hell, then perhaps we do not wish to hit at the upper end of normal.
3) The Sun and the Orbit of the Earth both fluctuate and are beyond our control and both influence the climate much more than anything we could possibly do.A Link with some real facts please.
4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here.Yes, and the sun sets daily and then rises. And that has just as much to do with this GW issue
5) The last temperate age melted almost all of the polar ice and caused sea levels to rise 4-6 meters this was 125k years ago. It is safe to assume it will happen again (with our without us)What does this have to do with our current issue? Absolutely nothing.
6) We are still coming out of the last ice age, and we haven't seen temperatures comparable to the last temperate age yet, so we can easily assume temperatures still need to go up before the cycle starts again.And that has been accounted for on the models. And yet, it is now increasing faster that what would be expected.
It is nice that you presented "facts", but it would be better to back it up. What amazes me, is that the shear number of people outside of the field who express disbelief in GW, come up with discontinuous facts, and absolutely NO model or reasonable explanation for it.
That's not a strawman, it's just the way things are. Consensus does not decide the facts, any more than correlation proves causation. (You do know about that, don't you?) Clearly you need to learn to comprehend what you read because I didn't deny Global Warming, just pointed out that the consensus on the cause isn't evidence of what the cause really is.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
But it's not about "the environment" or "saving the world" or whatever.
It is about technophobia and bad religion.
Within ten years, the United States could stop emitting CO2 from power plants simply by replacing them with nuclear power plants.
Nukes are the answer.
So, why are these Planetary Messiahs and Priests of Gaia against nuclear power?
Because they hate people. Not in a Sarte "hell is other people" way, but in a deep, sick, self-loathing way.
And being too cowardly to commit suicide they seek political means to kill people.
Being anti-nuke is being anti-human.
We should be able to be proactive about it and kill those luddites before they kill us.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many people quick to condemn the notion that global warming might be man-made? Are all these people, who jump at any chance to suggest it's just a theory, all employees of oil companies?
I submit if you do research you may find that most anti-global-warming people are christians. Christianity seems to be one of the few religions on earth where there is absolutely no mandate in their doctrine whatsoever to take care of the planet. Even islam recognizes that there is a duty to treat the environment with respect. As far as I can tell, christianity is unique in this respect. The notion that jesus is going to show up and rescue everybody precludes the idea of being that concerned about the future of the planet. I suspect many people, especially christians may not even be aware that this is an underlying motivation behind the anti-global-warming movement. But it does make sense. Let's face it. God in the bible, is the ultimate destroyer of the environment. Christians, at least those who follow the bible, don't want to entertain the idea that they may have any responsibility to the earth. Jesus is coming any day now... why make ourselves inconvenient for a future that won't happen?
Abdussamatov is a nutcase
Of course Abdussamatov is a nutcase... Anyone who disagrees with the political truth is crazy, and will be unable to secure a political victory. Abdussamatov is a case study of someone who picks through the body of evidence seeking facts which counter the political truth which we all know and adore. For the sake of our civilized world, these kinds must be found out, and re-educated into accepting the political truth. To let these nut cases remain on the loose would be very damaging to the political base of the new world order which will tax and control the output very dangerous and harmful chemical compounds. The first dangerous chemical to be completely quarantined will be carbon, all forms of carbon will be safely stored in a government site. The second dangerous chemical to be completely controlled is dihydrogen monoxide. We all know that dihydrogen monoxide is much more dangerous than carbon dioxide, but the political truth is that carbon dioxide is much more in the mind of the proletariat, and therefore is much more important politically.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
heretics like him should be burned at the stake, the world would be much better of without the vile contrarian rants of the likes of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Okay let's say the pro-warming folks are actually right. The evidence is not there. And computer models don't prove shite. To say they have been wrong before would be an understatement. And we're about to run out of the stuff (fossil fuels) soon anyway. But let's just say that the amount of human produced CO2 is affecting our climate, perhaps even enough to cause the extinction of some species, including humans, before the fossil fuels run sufficiently low to make them economically unfeasable. Seems like science fiction to me. But let's just suppose all of this really would come to pass.
What precisely is it that you folks are proposing we do about it? Seriously. If we really are going to be extinct within the next 50-100 years (before fossil fuels run out), then perhaps it is worth trying to introduce a worldwide death penalty for any sort of combustion. After all, it is to save our entire species. In fact such an extreme measure might even work. Would you be in favor of that? And as far as enforcing it worldwide, surely The Ministries of Peace of most countries would be willing to go to war, perhaps even nuclear war to enforce these requirements against any rogue nation. Again, we are talking about the exctinction of our species. Surely it would be justified. Also, you can't possibly be thinking that the majority of the human population would be willing to voluntarily go back to pack animals and sails as the sole methods of transportation.
I could see nuclear fission plants as being a possible solution, albeit a stopgap one since uranium ore also will not last forever, especially as the sole source for human energy needs. I believe nuclear airplanes have been shown to be possible. And cars and trucks could reduce their range and be powered by batteries recharged by nuclear generated electricity. I particularly like the idea of safer (but less efficient) nuclear tech like pebble bed reactors. Needless to say we would need some place to put all that nuclear waste. And more than a handful of serious nuclear accidents around the globe could also cause the extinction of our (and many other) species. Still the problem with nuclear fission (or even fusion, assuming it will ever be feasible) as a solution is that if combustion is still a cheaper method of energy production, stopping it will still require the use of a World Police State to enforce the global ban on combustion, since the majority of people will still choose the cheapest option.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
No. It is not a fundamentally complicated issue, and no it is not difficult to know what is happening
You can either (1) look to the experts on the issue, or (2) understand the basic issue, and either way it you find a simple easy essentially irrefutable answer.
(1) Looking to the experts: A database review and analysis of 900+ published climatology papers over a decade found that 70-75% explicitly or implicitly accepted human caused global warming. 25-30% of the papers either dealt with strictly prehistoric climate or dealt strictly with methodology and said absolutely nothing either way about the state of the climate. 0%... in fact exactly zero of the 900+ climatology papers over an entire decade... challenged or contradicted human caused climate change. If you look to national academy of science of of any major nation... if you look to the national meteorological society of any major nation... if you look at the geophysical union of any major nation... every single on states that global warming is real and that human CO2 emissions and other human activities are the cause or, at minimum, part of the cause.
(2) Understanding the basic issue: The atmosphere is an insulating blanket keeping the earth warm. The natural warming effect of this blanket is ALREADY around 50F (about 30C). It is simple irrefutable physics... so simple that any elementary school child knows it... that if you make a blanket thicker then it traps more heat and warms you up. It's really as simple as that. No one - not even the greenhouse deniers... no one disputes the fact that human fossil fuel burning has increased the CO2 blanket from 280PPM to over 380PPM. No one disputes that humans have increased the methane blanket and added various other never-before-existing gases that cover various holes that CO2 has in the heat spectrum. The fundamental issue is asbsolutely simple... if you make the blanket thinker and you cover holes in the blanket with other blankets... then you get warmer. Predicting the amount of warming can be quite complex... predicting the effects of that warming can be quite complex... factoring in numerous other effects (such as the sun) *on top* of that can be quite complex. However the fact that humans are making the blanket thinker and that that does trap more heat is dead simple. The people arguing otherwise... almost all of which is bought by corporate PR campaigns.... they can hand wave about a hundred different things to confuse the issue and spread FUD.... but none of it has a single shred of legitimacy unless they can deny at least one of the two fundamental points.... (A) that humans *ARE* in fact increasing the greenhouse blanket or (B) that making the blanket thicker *WILL* trap more heat. That is all you need to resolve the basic issue with a yes/no. Either humans are increasing the blanket or they are not, and either a thinker blanket will trap more heat or it wont. I think it is irrefutable that both of those points are true, and global warming deniers do not address or challenge either of those two points. People can reasonable debate about size of the effect, people can reasonably disagree with predictions of what secondary effects it will cause, people can reasonably argue what (if anything) we should do about it... but there is no reasonable way anyone can dispute the basic true-false fact that human activities are causing a warming effect. Any change with sun as the article discusses... what would not invalidate anything above... anything about the sun would only be multiplier to increase the effect from the fact of human greenhouse gases.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Without knowing why it's happening you don't know what to fix or if you even can fix it.
It's a great thing we've got scientists digging into the subject all the time. And by the way, we do know that radiation from the sun has been strengthening lately. It's been strong enough to explain about 7.5% of the warming we're seeing (with some possibility for error, but not enough to change the conclusion). That's strong enough to warm up Mars, but far too feeble to explain the warming of Earth.
Source: IPCC summary, the Radiative Forcing chart on page 4.
... to know that we can, to some degree, control the climate effects of variations in earths distance to the sun, via control over carbon dioxide and such in our atmosphere.
The controlling minds are of course those who put such products into use that the human population will use for what ever reason but have a side effect of dealing with the distance change.
This is not about politics or science bias. Its about air conditioning comfort, but on a planet scale, instead of just a building or car.
LOOK! Out pollution is so bad that we have caused global warming on Mars! /suck it libs
Beer.
I'm mildly disturbed by how much people simply rally behind their talking points, although not as surprised as I would like to be.
As I see it, this is an interesting perspective, and has the potential to clarify the human contribution to global warming, in either direction. What we need is to figure out how to get historical temperature data for the other planets. Fluctuations caused by external influences should correlate strongly. Deviations are probably caused by local factors. If we find a strong correlation that includes Earth only until recently at which point there is increasing deviation, this is pretty strong evidence for human cause in global warming. If we find a strong correlation that includes the Earth presently as well as earlier, then this is pretty strong evidence for a lack of human cause. I personally would expect the former and be surprised at the latter, but I'd accept the evidence once the astronomers and climatologists have had a look at it.
It would be really nice if you started to check your facts! H2O is a more effective absorber than CO2 is. It is found at concentrations many many times CO2. H2O will be anywhere from 0% to over 4%. That is up to 40,000 PPM compared to 370.
e sis This is not a CO2 gun.
Note: Your 1st link is not found.
It does not take centuries for the CO2 to be absorbed. At most a little over a decade. Plants absorb CO2 from the Air. Water vapour condenses. Both gases move into and out of the atmosphere.
The idea of equilibrium is also misleading. CO2 has been present in the past at concentrations many times what it is now. Geologically speaking, CO2 is not correlated with climate change.
Where do you get the idea of a saturation point? CO2 levels in the Ordovician were 13x to 17x higher than now. There is no evidence this was past a saturation point. During the precambrian CO2 levels were 100's of times higher than now. Now, CO2 levels are actually very low.
Note the temperature of the earth before the Permian-Triassic extinction was about 10 degrees warmer than now. This increased ANOTHER 5 degrees during the event.
The artical you cited talks about a Calthrate gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypoth
Note the development of the Siberian Traps. This was a larger volcanic event than the Deccan Traps in India. It is possible the Deccan Traps were associated with the K-T extinction. Simailarly the Siberain Traps may have been responsible for the P-Tr extinction.
I'm having issues with the idea of a huge buildup of fungal detrital material. Fungi are inhibited by high CO2 levels. At even 1000 ppm we get huge morphological changes in many species. Plants will often do much better at these CO2 levels. Check this: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm But perhpas this does explain it. If the fungi are inhibited then they may well have consumed part of the detrital material but were unable to complete the process and hense ended up themselves becoming the detrital material. This would greatly impede the ability of plants to obtain nutrients since many if not most plants form mychorrizal relationships with fungi.
Suppose CO2 at the time got upwards of 5000 ppm. This would be about 14x the present levels (370 ppm). This is at a level which is dangerous. Its high enough to severely impede fungal growth. At 5% which is 50,000 ppm its lethal. So I see no reason to believe it ever reached into the 50,000 PPM range in the recent geological history and I sort of doubt it was much over a 1000 ppm if it even got up that high during the Pr-T extinction... but it is possible that the fossil record which shows the high percentage of fungal fossiles is providing evidence of how high the CO2 levels actually were.
Quote: "Figure 18: Young Eldarica pine trees were grown for 23 months under four CO2 concentrations and then cut down and weighed. Each point represents an individual tree (56). Weights of tree parts are as indicated.
Figure 18 summarizes the increased growth rates of young pine seedlings at four CO2 levels. Again, the response is remarkable, with an increase of 300 ppm more than tripling the rate of growth.
"Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era," Oxford's Wilson explained. (Related: "Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says" [September 13, 2006].) All planets experience a few wobbles as they make their journey around the sun. Earth's wobbles are known as Milankovitch cycles and occur on time scales of between 20,000 and 100,000 years. If Mars' wobbles take anywhere near the time earth's wobbles take, we may be able to expect a long term (200-1000 years period) correlation between temperature and axis wobble on the planets. However, I would not expect to see things correllating on a yearly basis on a dramatic scale like we are seeing. If the Russian scientist has real data that supports his claim, I might jump aboard. I am not impressed with "climate scientists" in general. I think a large percentage of them (on both sides of the debate) are looking for fat salaries and grants. It is a fad, it will die out, and those people will change to new fields.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
BABY!!! congrats!
the sun has a slight bulge round the middle.
wonder who the father is,..probably one of the comets. or are comets sun sperm?
The orientation of the axis of Mars has been about the same as Earth, but it historically has varied by as much as 60 degrees. When the northern pole of Mars has been pointed towards the Sun in the past, the frozen carbon dioxide there melted and produced a greenhouse effect. If this is what is occurring today, then the change is in Mars, instead of the Sun and does not necessarily explain anything about Earth's heating.
I always put on my hip boots when I see phrases like "might have a natural -- and not a human-induced -- cause."
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
If no comparable climate changes have been observed on Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune I would presume the sun as the causal element would be reduced or eliminated.
So have any trends (or lack thereof) been observed on the other planets with substantial atmospheres?
I must confess to a certain amount of admiration for the bit of anti-Gore propaganda to emerge from the right wing attack machine. As dishonest as it is, it is beautifully constructed.
The key allegation, of course, is that Gore is a hypocrite because he lives in a large house that consumes more energy than average. What I think is quite elegant is the way that the perpetrators (a right wing front organization with the typically misleading name of Tennessee Center for Policy Research) use minor deceptions to conceal a big lie. The object is clearly to get people arguing about the minor deceptions, such as overstating Gore's relative energy use by comparing it to the national average rather than the regional average, and in the process to spread the real attack meme across the media. Here it is, shorn of the distractions:
Al Gore wants to destroy Americans' standard of living in the name of fighting global warming
Of course, stated baldly like that, it sounds pretty idiotic, since Al Gore has clearly never said anything of the sort. But look at how cleverly it is concealed to slip it past our critical faculties: The suggestion is that Al Gore is a hypocrite for living in a big house. The only way that could be true, of course, is if Al Gore is opposed to Americans having large houses, which would of course make him the enemy of anybody who owns a big house, or who aspires someday to do so.
Of course, the reality is that Al Gore believes that the use of low carbon emission energy sources, combined with economic incentives (such as carbon credits, a part of the Kyoto Protocol that Gore supports) to promote commercial development of low carbon emission technologies will allow Americans to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing our standard of living. And he is in fact doing exactly what he advocates--paying extra to buy energy from sources that do not contribute to carbon pollution, buying carbon credits, investing in solar technology for his home--which makes him pretty much the exact opposite of a hypocrite.
But truth is not much of a defense when it comes to propaganda as John Kerry and John McCain can attest. Remember how well the "Al Gore can't be trusted" meme stuck even after it was established that all of the supposed examples of Al Gore's "exaggerations" were false. There is clearly a great fear that Al Gore will decide to run. After all, this is a guy who won the popular vote before, and actually warned that the Iraq war was a mistake before we dug ourselves into a quagmire, which is more than you can say for most of the other candidates. And in his lecture tour to raise consciousness regarding global warming, he has overcome his major liability, his former awkward style of public speaking. Clearly the old "Al Gore exaggerates" meme is wearing thin. I think we are seeing the birth of a new attack meme, designed to undermine Al Gore's greatest asset--the fact that he is one of the few modern politicians with any real vision.
Here is a discussion of this issue by climate scientists:
5 /10/global-warming-on-mars/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
It is relieving to read this report of a report (how meta) that we may not be wholly responsible for climate change. However, that does not mean we should lighten up our efforts to move away from petroleum-based fuels and the larger petroleum-based economy and towards non-petrol fuels that have been proven to be as efficient and effective as biodiesel. (For a variety of reasons, I do not consider ethanol to be such a fuel.)
Nor does reading this mean I will relax my efforts in starting the Milwaukee Biodiesel Co-op. The biggest reason to get away from petroleum-based fuels is rooted in the one of the classic planks of the Republican Party: local control. No, I'm not a Republican, but one thing I have come to appreciate as a lowercase-d democratic activist is the Republican's old platform is the concept of local control. Biodiesel fuel lets us have local control over virtually all aspects of fuel production, from growing the crop which it is made from on American farms to where the production plants are located. For people in the upper Midwest, it's even more local. Farmers in my state of Wisconsin benefit from it. My city of Milwaukee benefits when it's used, as unlike emissions from burning gasoline or petrol diesel, emissions from burning biodiesel in vehicles or generators are much less toxic. In fact, they are non-toxic. There are higher emission of some smog-creating chemicals, but we already seeing solutions to this. For example, the forthcoming Volkswagen TDIs will meet California's tough emissions standards for the first time, as VW engineers came up with a way to trap the nitrous fumes prior to release to the atmosphere.
(Now if American car makers got smart and emphasized biodiesel rather than ethanol, we'd all benefit a lot more. Lobbyists have seen it's gone the other way, but that may yet come around.)
-- haaz.
actually, this is nothing other than a proof that our governments have already started terraforming Mars...
Quick! Let's get rocket and fire Al Gore off to Mars! Or the sun!
He's super serial!
Humans build robots on earth.
Earth starts to have global warming.
Humans send robots to mars.
Mars starts to have global warming.
Obviously robots are the cause of global warming.
The solution to global warming is:
DESTROY ALL ROBOTS!
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
The implication is that this "evidence" disproves the effect of greenhouse gases is nonsense. There is no reason to not think that if the Sun is warming then it is additive.
Shouldn't that spell Limbaughgraph? ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I always knew that Sun's new blackboxes (http://www.sun.com/blackbox) put out so much heat that they're heating the Earth, but I never dreamt that the blackboxes' heat would reach Mars!
--deckert
I'm more worried about global cooling than global warming. Even the maximum 11F increase would not be a big deal compared with an 11F decrease. Ice ages are no fun.
In Russia, globe warm you... ah, never mind.
Ughh, yet another huge slashdot discussion where a bunch of people who won't take the time to read the actual science think they should be able to evaluate the evidence for global warming. Invariably analogizing the acceptance of the consensus opinion among climate scientists with religious belief.
Now these climate change skeptics are right when they point out that scientific consensus means nothing against the evidence. It doesn't matter if every single person on earth disagrees with you, if the evidence is on your side you have the better case. However, it is a mistake to infer from this that in practice scientific consensus is irrelevant.
The situation with climate science is much like that of a complicated high-profile murder trial with no smoking gun. We all recognize that it would be a mistake to judge the defendant based on the evidence we see presented in the media. All sorts of biases affect what the media reports but most importantly is the fact that news comes in byte sized chunks. If the prosecution's case is simple (he was found with the gun) while the defense has a long list of little details then the information in the media won't give a fair view of the evidence. This is why we have juries who actually listen to all the evidence rather than having the public vote on the matter.
Now it is the *evidence* which determines what we should think about someone's guilt or innocent and if we sat on the jury no consensus in the public should sway us from what the evidence says. However if we just read some accounts in the media and the jury said, "Yeah we considered those but there was a huge amount of little points that outweighed that" then we would be smart to believe them. If we replace a jury with a group selected to be experts in the field the point is even more clear.
So sure this study may be *evidence* against anthropogenic global warming but whenever a psychic gets lucky that is evidence for telepathy too. The only important question is what the balance of the evidence says. Now if you think that evidence in murder trials can be detailed and long it has nothing on climate science and there is just no way a mass media article can convey the results from thousands of scientific papers and arguments.
But just like with a trial if you really care you can go straight to the source (scientific journals/trial transcripts) and look for yourself. However, if you aren't willing to spend the time to look for yourself then it's just idiotic to try and second guess trustworthy people of good reputation who have.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I knew Mars would be heating from gas emissions in the near future. There are no humans there yet, but we already sending vehicles.
We have had satellites orbiting our planet outside the atmosphere for over half a century now. Most have been solar powered. Measurement of the output of those solar panels would indicate if there has been any increase in solar output.
I'm in favor of someone placing a thermometer on Uranus to see if it is warming up. But I don't want to do it myself!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Great! If we can blame the sun and not human activity then we don't have to do anything about it! Sort of like if a flood is caused by a storm and not by a dam breaking then we don't have to try to swim. Ummm, wait a minute...
... yeah, it does matter which is the cause.
...
But the question is do *what*.
If what you want to "do" is to severely, painfully limit human activity, and, um, the problem isn't caused by human activity and won't be significantly helped by what you want to do, then
Or to use your metaphor: if the flood has nothing to do with the shoddy dam breaking, then maybe applying 99% of GDP to dam inspection and repair might be a hasty course of action
This report and the study underneath it are useless. Publicizing it at all means there are still people trying to justify ignoring realities that everyone else understands.
Three years of data does not even begin to make a long term trend. Polar bears threatened with extinction because ice that has been in place practically forever is disappearing makes a much more compelling long term trend.
There has been a lot of debate over global warming in the wake of this article. There shouldn't be. This has nothing to say about it that we didn't already know based on historical sun cycles for which we have a lot more data. Mars should be warming a bit. The sun is near the peak of a cycle. The earth should be warming a bit too, just not nearly as much as it is.
Davis
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
Research funded by oil companies.
I don't want to do any research to figure out which of you is right, so I'm not going to take sides, however...
The parent mentioned greenhouse gases, including water vapor, and you are only talking about CO2.
OK its getting hotter on earth and mars, but we blame sun? Come on ... it's more probable that our "global" warming affects mars. We just broke precious ecosystem on mars by "global" warming. ;]
I cant stand it anymore goodbye world I'm stoping emission of CO2 right now... well after i find a big cliff
Nice argument. You sure won over the undecided with that one. You've done your cause a great service and made global climate change doubters everywhere look mature and well reasoned by association. Well played. I bow to your superior debating skills.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This agrees with the explanation these scientists give for the real cause of global warming".
Do you think most global warming political advocates know the percentage of CO2 in our atmosphere
or the true relationship between sun activity, clouds, cosmic rays and the Greenland and Antarctica ice core samples?
Are these scientists more convincing than the "Inconvenient Truth"?
Is the Political lobby so far along that true science can't catch up?
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!