Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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!"
True, although this could actually be built-up heat that has resulted from the continuous process in which the sun cooks our planet.
Could be, but it's more likely that it's heat caused by the extreme pressure at the Earth's core caused by gravity...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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
So, your recommendation would be to cause oh lets just say a 10-15% decline in global GDP because it *MIGHT* help... Here are the 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.
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.
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.
4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here.
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)
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.
These things are completely beyond our control, if we spend billions (and I'd argue it would cost many trillions) to "fight" global warming, well if you want to fight against the solar system, go ahead but I'm not giving you my tax dollars to do it.
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
That 1% of total greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be significant dependant upon the effects. Given that 'natural' greenhouse gases contribute around 33 degrees C (IIRC) to average temperature as is, even just a few percent increase over norm could result in a significant average temperature increase. Significant in this case being potentially enough with other feedback factors and criticalities to cause climate shift. Also, that 1% addition is mostly of gases with long lifespans as far as the cycle of the atmosphere goes. Seabed evidence seems to indicate the recapture timespan of a massive release of carbon at shortest (again from my recollection) of 5,000 years. So, even just a 1% per year release over the normal sources with only a 1,000 year for the biosphere to recapture would put CO2 levels at about double after a century. Note: This is not an actual calculation just an example to show that even the numbers you post could be significant in a longer term scale.
Water vapor tends to balance out to normal levels in the order of weeks instead of millenia (as is the case for CO2 and other such forcing inputs). Thus, water vapor is an important factor in an amplification sense, but not so much in terms of the amount added to the atmosphere for determination of climate change.
The problem with most climate change denial arguements is the lack of quantitative analysis. So while they may seem sound at first, they tend to be factors that are already counted into the overall physics. Attempts to characterize the science or scientists as political or ideological are ad hominin attacks at best. The science and data are there, if you or anyone else truly has a better explanation for the data you are more than welcome to submit your theory/evidence... the only criteria that is has to withstand scientific scrutiny.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
You can only measure the changes with Habibullo Abdussamatov's patented
Space Solar Limbograph
I am not making this up.
May as well. We contribute less than a percent of the entire amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Everything else comes from volcanoes and water vapor.
g as.html
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/vol
"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.]. Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!"
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.
So, your recommendation would be to cause oh lets just say a 10-15% decline in global GDP because it *MIGHT* help...
The Stern report, authored by the former World Bank chief economist, says more like 1% of global GDP to prevent a 10-20% drop due to warming.
The Earth has been warmer than it is now before!
I suppose if a huge asteroid were on course to hit Earth, your argument would be "the Earth has been barren and molten rock before! let's not do anything!"?
CO2 levels are not high now.
CO2 levels in the last 720,000 years never went over 300 as we know from the EPICA ice cores. We're over 375 right now.
I love that you're smarter than thousands of climate scientists, essentially every relevant scientific organisation, and the 154 nations who had to unanimously sign off on the IPCC's conclusion that there's a 90% certainty that human activity is causing warming at least in part. When's the Nobel being awarded?
See the defense many Gore fanatics brought forth to defend his gluttony: Sure the coal plants in Tennessee are going overtime to power his mansion, but his investment group invested in some nebulous scheme that might possibly reduce CO2 somewhere.
Actually, as Gore pays higher electrical rates to get clean power, those coal plants aren't doing anything on his behalf.
Oh, and according to the power company, the one-man think tank who issued your talking point is full of shit.
"Johnson said his group got its figures from Nashville Electric Service.
But electric company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never got a request from the policy center and never provided them with any information."
The worst case scenario according to IPCC is only a 1 inch sea level rise in 100 years, how is that going to cause a 20% drop in GDP?
t y&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:off icial&client=firefox-a
? type=worldNews&storyID=2007-02-02T212335Z_01_NOOTR _RTRJONC_0_India-286068-7.xml
No, it's not. They're predicting 4-30, and they've been widely criticised for being too conservative on the issue - ignoring unusually fast melting in Antarctica and Greenland, for one thing.
Sure if sea levels rise 6m it will displace quite a few people, but I still don't think it would cause that much upheaval.
10% of Bangladesh would be under water with a 1 meter sea rise. That's about 15 million refugees in one nation alone, and you can be sure Bangladesh can't afford to pay 10% of their population's land just to let it get eaten up by the ocean.
A 6 metre sea rise would also destroy Miami and a number of other major cities on the East Coast of the US. We're talking about pretty huge repercussions with that big of a sea rise.
The Stern report isn't just pulling numbers out of their asses.
As far as the asteroid is concerned what would your recommendation be?
You're missing my point. The OP stated that the Earth had seen much higher CO2 in the distant past. My point is that just because it has happened previously doesn't mean it'd be fine if it happened again - after all, the Earth started up molten and airless, but that wouldn't be conducive to human survival today.
That is what you environmentalists don't get, you never factor in risk/reward
Again, read the Stern report. For a 1% cost of GDP we protect 10-20% of GDP. How is that not factoring in risk and reward?
On the CO2 front I guess Scientific American got it wrong then I'm just quoting their article verbatim... So either they are lying, or you are, but whatever.
If you have the article in front of you to quote from, surely you can provide a citation?
I'm reasonably sure I'm not lying, and so is NOAA: Vostok's 420,000 years of data and EPICA's 650,000 years of data, for your perusal
The IPCC did not state anywhere any sort of statistical probability as you state.
http://www.google.com/search?q=IPCC+90%25+certain
" The scientists said it was "very likely" -- or more than 90 percent probable -- that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explained most of the warming in the past 50 years.
That is a toughening from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report in 2001, which judged a link as "likely", or 66 percent probable." - http://in.today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx
How does that not support my statement, quoted as follows: "there's a 90% certainty that human activity is causing warming at least in part"?
I don't see #1 - the 60% chance figure - in the 2006 IPCC report. Sure you're not looking at the 2001 report?
Sorry, I got cut off before I could add:
g as.html
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/vol
>snipComparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 1998) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2.]. Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!
Oh, do you homework before spouting such nonsense next time, please.
In 1859 John Tyndall discovered the radiative forcing effect of water vapour, carbon dioxide, and ozone [for the details see James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)]. He later postulated that changes in the atmospheric concentrations of these gases may be responsible for climate change.
His lab work showed causation, not correlation.
*sighs at the general ignrance of the loudmouths on here*
empty vessels indeed...
If there is causation then why do paleo climate records show increases in temperature proceeding increases in CO2 levels?
e oclimate.htm. It would be too obvious that the temperature changes proceeded changes in CO2 concentration.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/vostokco2.html
From the abstract:
"High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 +/- 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations."
You get that? CO2 increased 400-600 years AFTER the glaciers receded.
This is why when certain scientists graph the CO2 data from the Vostok ice cores, they never overlay temperature on the same graph: http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/pal
The uncertainty is not about whether CO2 in the real atmosphere causes warming. It's about the warming and cooling contributions from other sources — how much of the total warming can be attributed to each source. (The direct contribution from CO2 can be calculated directly from adsorption physics, but there is uncertainty about how feedback effects amplify its contribution, as well as the contribution of other sources.)
There is not now enough remaining uncertainty to attribute global warming to non-CO2 sources; see the IPCC estimates in Figure SPM-2 of their latest publication.
That is completely absurd. Even thermometers hundreds of years ago could accurately measure temperatures to better than 1 degree accuracy.
I work for one of the leading global suppliers of meteorological equipment. The issue isn't with how accurate the sensors can be, it's if they are being properly calibrated and maintained. In the US we do a fairly good job, although if a sensor is reporting off by a degree or two it is within accepted functional range and will pass any inspection.