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."
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.
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.
Well, that's clearly a gross oversimplification. For starters, the Earth has its own geothermal heat, and without greenhouse gases, the sun's heat would be reflected back out into space, leaving the planet quite cold. The presence of CO2 in the atmosphere clearly does warm the Earth. Nobody seriously debates that. The Earth has also been getting warmer in recent years. Nobody really debates that either. The only question still open for debate is whether humans are the primary cause of the increase in temperature.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Let's suppose that the orbit alteration is not the case. Wouldn't it still make sense to prepare for the worst? Why not stop CO2 emissions, we're better off slowing CO2 output and being wrong about global warming than we are heating up the planet with CO2 and being wrong about not having a human global climate impact.
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
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 you don't know why, you can't fix it. Duh.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Ya but what changes? Can we measure said changes?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure there are solar physicists around the world observing every measurable characteristic of the sun (that we can measure from here) all the time. Seems a bit silly to infer what's going on with the sun by looking at Mars instead of the sun itself. Unless some solar observations back this up, this'll probably be the last we hear of it.
Because if we try to change what's going on without understanding the situation we might easily decide on a cure that's totally ineffective. If C02 emissions aren't a major factor (And I'm not saying they aren't.) then lowering them won't help much, if at all. It's better to spend a little money learning what's really going on before we spend a huge amount of money on possibly useless countermeasures.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
There are two questions still open for debate --
Are humans a significant cause of the increase in temperature?
Are steps to mitigate the human effect on temperature worth taking?
I believe the answers are yes and yes, but we don't have to be the primary cause to make it worthwhile to reduce our carbon emissions.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
Unfortunately, I just lost my mod points by replying to a previous comment in this thread. But this is not a troll; there are plenty of scientists observing the sun directly, whereas we know bugger all about the weather patterns on mars. If there were significant changes happening to the sun, we would already know about it. Anyway, does the source of global warming actually matter much?
The bottom line is the correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature is well known (you can reproduce it in a simple lab experiment), so does it actually matter, in the end, what the source of warming is, if we aleady know how to prevent it? That is, even if the recent increases in temperature are due to some other cause, we know for sure we could reduce the effect by reducing human output of greenhouse gases (exactly how much we can reduce it by, is another question...).
"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."
You've never watched "House" have you...
Geting back on topic, moving to more efficient vehicles has other advantages than just reduced CO2 emmissions, oil will eventually run out.
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...
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It doesn't even go that far. Err it does exactly as your saying.
See how those sentences sound totaly different but convey the meaning I want to have? I will let you in on this secrete of mine in case your wondering what the hell I'm doing.
Like you said, The IPCC when making this statment about humans likley to be causing global warming, were looking for a rock and found a rock. They didn't pay attention to the dirt, the bugs or worms in the soil, they were lookin for a rock and found a rock. And now they are saying that area over there is full of rocks. But when you look at it, You see rich farm land teaming with life and nutrience and a couple of rocks. The IPCC didn't go on a quest to find out what was causing the earth to warm, the went on a quest to find if it was warming and if humans could be the cause. And they found that. Yes, humans could be causing the earth to be warming. But they statment shouldn't be taken as more then that.
I have also looked at all these reports that the vast majority of the science comunity belives humans are causing global warming. And all these reports revolve around a few peer review articles were a sample of scientist were asked it the papers were flawed and to make sure tey used good science. The people who said they didn't see any flaws or that good science was used were counted as people supporting the outcome of the papers. The minor few who had an objection with them for some reason, were counted as disagreeing with them. The endresult was the vast majority of scientist agree with global warming and that humans are the cause. But the questioning had nothing to do with this. It is a play with words and misinterpretations of wording used for a specific purpose.
The relevence here is that it is possible to create a model, perform experiments, be completly and scientificly acurate and still get it wrong. This is the nature of science and why people check others work. And this is why science finds new discoveries that change the way we think about things.
So you are right. Their job was to find evidence of global warming and that humans were the cause. They did exactly this. But the GP is very wrong in making the asertion that this rules other explainations out. It doesn't touch the validity of other explainations. What he doesn't seem to know is that the truth doesn't change with popular opinion. The truth always is and we change how we understand it. This change in understanding changes popular opinion. He has stopped trying to understand the truth and just wants to regurgitate popular opinion. Even when it is wrong.
Now the line about truth not changing came from someone else. I wish I could quote him on it but I forget his name and what context it was said in.
Probably just that correlation doesn't imply causation. There's a strong (negative) correlation between the number of pirates plying the seas and global warming, too, but that doesn't mean the solution to global warming is to increase piracy on the high seas.
I do.
Right, which is exactly why it's important to understand whether or not the global climate change is anthropogenic. We want to know why it's happening rather than jumping to conclusions or just doing something drastic for the sake of doing something. Furthermore, there is quite a bit of evidence that the global climate has varied within 5 degrees within the time period which humans have existed. I think that humans will survive this, but I don't think that's the point. It's not about human extinction, but it's OK if you want to believe that (or continue overstating your case to make others jump on the bandwagon).
Most current research tends to show that human Co2 has some affect on the climate, but nobody is really sure how. There may be a number of other factors at play. The problem is that nobody really knows, any many people aren't willing to make major sacrifices regarding something that we need more information about. I don't think that we should panic and make irrational changes which will have severe and immediate economic effects on a global scale. Perhaps it would be wiser to make an evolutionary shift in technology and lifestyles, which the global economy can afford...and maybe do it in a manner consistent with our understanding of the phenomena that we're just beginning to understand.
So you suggest a new blind path to avoid a death warrant that you can't prove exists? You're overstating your case, my friend (or really believe everything that you read). Doing something for the sake of doing something is equally unjustifiable, especially when all sides of the issue are confounded with politically charged BS.
I'm not saying that this is or isn't being caused by humans, but you're taking on a position that I consider irrational. If global climate change is based around cyclical patterns that we can't change, there is little point in making drastic, sweeping changes. In that case, we'd better start thinking of ways to deal with our dynamic and always changing world. Just because a few extremists are predicting the end of the world (remember, most scientists aren't writing about the end of the world, or even human existence) doesn't mean that I'm going to jump on the bandwagon. If you believe every prediction of doom that you hear, why not accept 90% of the religions in the world? They all predict your doom if you don't believe, and there's only one way to be safe...start praying.
-Turkey
...read page two of that article. Abdussamatov is a nutcase, and neither recent overall warming of Mars nor any attribution to increased solar output are serious scientifc propositions.
Stephan
Abdussamatov is a nutcase,
Why do you say that? Does he hurl vitriolic condemnations at people who disagree with him? Does he try to shout them down, or demand that their funding be cut off?
BTW, you fulfilled my expectation that there would be an ad-hominem directed at the researcher in question within the first ten replies.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The IPCC has released radiative forcing data for the various greenhouse components, and CO2 is by far the largest component.
You're making the mistake of conflating ozone depletion with global warming, too.
The Mars data is often misunderstood.
"The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.
Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted."
Funny how three years is good enough to prove Martian global warming to the same people who tell us 150 years of data (and 720,000 from ice cores) just isn't enough to base a conclusion off.
I'd be surprised if Pluto weren't warming, given it is just past perihelion and it has some quirky orbital parameters. Funny how when things get closer to the sun they warm up a bit. I'd also point out neither article mentions anything to do with the sun getting hotter, and both have quite plausible explanations for the observed trends on both bodies. These articles in no way supports your "OMG it's a conspiracy!" distortion field, unless you believe the astronomers are in on it with the climatologists and geologists.
Also, if you bother to check your history, James Hansen didn't pull this out of his ass and a bunch of climatologists suddenly said "Brilliant! We can finally crush ExxonMobile/Shell/BP/Chevron!!!". There was quite a bit of review and discussion early on, it's just that the theory that best explained the observations survived, which is how good science works.
PS: I did climate modeling in grad school. If you think it's so bloody simple and we're all just idiots, let's see you build a model than predicts anything useful.
Stephan
Relative to GDP per capita, the US, being the world's shining example of capitalism at work, has the highest rate of homelessness and citizens living in poverty in the world
Way to misquote... In the wikipedia article you linked to:
"The poverty rate in the United States is one of the highest among the post-industrialized developed world. It is, however, important to note that America's poor most commonly have adequate food, clothing and shelter. For example, of those beneath the federal poverty line, 46% own their own home, with an average of three bedrooms."
In the US, many people are unhappy if they can't afford everything that Madison Avenue is trying to shove down their throats. They are unhappy because not everyone in the freakin world can afford a 60" flat panel HDTV and a BMW or Mercedes. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing people like my sister-in-law who has been working the system forever (she doesn't have a job because the government pays her more not to work), goes out and buys that 60" flat panel TV on taxpayer dollars so she can sit on her fat ass and watch TV all day while I work 70 hours a week and pay about $100K in taxes each year, supporting lazy fat slob's like her. Oh yeah, she and her entire family of 6 kids and worthless husband get WAY better medical care than I do, with no deductibles - totally free medical and dental. So don't whine around me how bad "people in poverty" have it in the US, cause it's BULLSHIT.
Wow, another Slashdotter getting modded up for pointing out that correlation != causation.
You know, repating "correlation does not equal causation" is not an excuse to ignore any line of statistical evidence you choose. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but often it is damn suggestive. Most of the evidence linking lung cancer to smoking is "merely" correlation too.
Beside that, experiments do not show merely a "correlation" between CO2 and warming. It is known and very obvious adsorption physics that greater absorption in the IR spectrum than in the visible causes greenhouse warming, when the gas is subjected to visible light and coupled to a heat sink ("the Earth"). The heat sink re-radiates in infrared, and a gas which absorbs more re-radiated heat than incoming visible radiation will inevitably lead to overall warming. As noted by the grandparent, this is easily demonstrated by laboratory experiment.
This is, in fact, the reason why the entire planet is not a frozen iceball: if you leave the greenhouse effect out of the energy balance equations (incoming radiation = outgoing radiation), you'll find that the the temperature of the Earth should be much lower than it actually is. Something is trapping heat, we know for sure. The greenhouse effect is a proven mechanism, and lo, the amount of warming you should get from it is equal to the missing component of the energy balance.
People still debate about global warming, but I can't believe that people are still skeptical of the very existence of the greenhouse effect.
Christ, man. This is not POLITICS or ETHICS or anything where OPINIONS is all that counts. This is SCIENCE.
I'll call a man crazy if he disagrees that the Earth orbits the sun, and it is not just because he disagrees with my "opinion".
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
That's the thing about science; it's not about `truth', it's about progressively more accurate approximations of reality. For a lot of cases, a fairly coarse approximation is all that is required; Newtonian mechanics is valid for all of the situations 99% of people will find themselves in. If you are on the leading edge of science, however, then relying on superseded approximations is a mistake.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Got any data to back that up? We are talking both accuracy and precision. I want to see the manufacturer specs on the actual equipment that has been used at the hundreds of temperature measurings stations around the world for the past 100 years or even 30 years. Go ahead and try to find that data. Or are you claiming that it is not relevant to the discussion? I want to see numbers. After all numbers, quantitative data, is what we are talking about here. If it is so obvious then show me. If you can't do that at least talk about the temperature measurement tech we are dealing with here. Do the temperature measurement stations use infrared tech? At least cite which type or types of thermometer have been used around the world to measure these obvious changes.
The simple fact is that temperature measuring technology that is actually used to measure the air within a useable temperature range is highly imprecise and highly inaccurate. Most will only be able to measure temperature to within +/- 2C! And that assumes calibration that needs to be performed on a periodic basis. And digitals generally fare even worse than analogs at least if you ignore miniscus parallax issues (which of course you should not). It is interesting to me that everyone (on both sides) seems to dance around the very issue of where the rubber meets the road, the nature of the very equipment that seems to be predicting the end of our species, not in the distant future, not 10,000 years from now, but in less than a century. That would seem serious enough to at least warrant a discussion of such issues.
Francis Bacon, the great philosopher of science, cautioned against letting a theory stray too far from the data. This theory is so far from it that hardly anyone even bothers to talk about the uncertainties in that data. As if our methods of measurement, not just in the US in 2007, but in the Soviet Union in 1943, were perfect and absolutely without error. And what about human error, errors in recording the data? We seem to be assuming no human error whatsoever in the the recording of the temperature readings. Did they have automated computer temperature logging in the 1920s in Indonesia or Siberia? Do they even have it today? Such questions should at least be occuring to you. The fact that they are not makes me wonder about whether you really care about the truth.
I would sneer at the idea that it would mean the end of our species and openly laugh when you claim to have evidence that would prove it without the slightest doubt. So much so that any person to deny it is a crank. In fact, barring any unproven, unforeseen, effects, I would quite like an extra 5-10F increase at the lattitude where I currently live. Just means that there would be some migration away from equatorial regions. Some of us already regard them as inhospitable, especially at midday. Bad for some, good for others. On the whole, it sounds like a wash. Certainly not the end of all terrestrial life on our planet.
Actually all of them are. hehe. Okay. Sorry about that. Couldn't resist.
But in a positive way. Show me someplace, anyplace in the world where property on the coast is worth less than inland (discounting the costs within cities)? The owners of such property tend to be (comparitively at least) wealthy. It is true even in Indonesia (one of the poorest countries in Asia).
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
It's a shame that this is posted AC, because I want to "friend" this poster.
Sure, CO2 is a cause of global climate change. I'll go with that, but it's just too early to start branding those who question the current theories as unscientific, crazy, or politicized. We did this to Galileo, Newton, Einstein...
We party on anthropogenic CO2 (a small faucet on a really big bathtub) because it's easy to fall into the trap of favoring the simplest solution to a problem (if reducing anthropogenic CO2 by 70% can be labeled "simplest"). Even after one of my friends warned me not to do it, I favored trying to pin my '85 Volvo's inability to start on the fuel-pump relay. I didn't do this because it was the most likely culprit. I did this because it was only $40, and it was easy to fix.
$300 later, the car runs, and it wasn't the fuel-pump relay that needed to be replaced.
Science is more about asking questions than knowing answers. If those who know the answers scoff at those who ask new questions, science isn't being done.