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Sunspots Reach 1000-Year Peak
rlp writes "Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000-year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots. Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."
So are temperatures. *ducks from thrown chair*
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
So what happened around 1000 A.D.? How did people then manage a similar peak?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
before the trolls come in - know that this doesn't debunk global warming. What most of the 'global warming' controversy is centers on "are humans contributing?"
the answer is absolutely undeniably: Yes
it's never been stated that we're the only cause.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Sounds like the sun needs a good dermatologist!
If they're at their peak, that means they'll soon decline, and then global warming will be reversed! :)
(I think I'm kidding.)
Whatever you do, don't tell Al Gore about this! He will totally freak out if he learns that the sun is a bigger culprit in the warming of the Earth the than his home electricity bill. I'm super serial!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I've heard that missiles can be guided to a target through GPS. Could the noise generated from massive sunspot activity cause the missile to drift enough to hit a completely different target even though it THINKS it's on target?
In other words, could the noise corrupt the GPS signal and offset the readings (but still be understood by the missile), or would it mess-up the system up completely to become totally incomprehensible?
Point of order, sirs...
How can we know we're at the peak if we're also at the highest level we've been? Won't we have to wait until we dip for a while?
No doubt this story will stir up our global warming debate again. Rather than continue the same litany of posts, can we focus on informative or interesting posts about how sunspots could affect various parts of our climate (polar temperature, magnetism, radiation, ozone holes, etc.)? Do they have an effect? How large? Is it significant? Is this accurate? That would be something new and helpful.
/.ers want to read is another string of the same people posting the same links to previous posts and pasting the same arguments, counterarguments, sources, and denouncements of those sources as in the multiple threads we've had.
I think the last thing most
Just a thought.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Well, I'm not entirely sure to what extent things will be affected, but it'll affect GPS-related units (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/04/05/tec h-gps.html). Everything from military applications to hobbies such as geocaching will have less accuracy.
I'm sure the military likely has fallbacks or safeguards in effect, but when I'm geocaching, at least I can fall back on just looking around harder. But I'm sure this will affect far more systems than I can guess at.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
This is the evidence that we've been waiting for. Let's throw out the junk science telling us to wreck our economy to save the environment. It's as false as the rest of the liberal hand-wringing and weeping.
If God had ~not~ wanted us to have lung tumours, he would not have given us chemotherapy.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Folks this says SUN SPOTS. Again, SUN SPOTS. Not solar radiation, not heat coming from the sun, but sun spots.
Sun spots are COOLER than the surrounding sun material.
From wikipedia: Although they are blindingly bright at temperatures of roughly 4000-4500 K, the contrast with the surrounding material at about 5800 K leaves them clearly visible as dark spots.
So no, this does not account for Global warming, or more accurately, global climate change.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The Sun has a DIRECT influence on global climate, yet the author says "indirect influence", and this is not disputed by ANY scientist.
The relationships between where Beryllium comes from, the solar wind strength, number of sunspots and cosmic rays is not explained in a coherent manner with simple statements that could be made.
The number of sunspots has been near constant (on average) over the past 20 years, yet they are at the highest level in over 1000 years for the last 60 years "yet the average temperature of the earth has continued to increase". This shows the author doesn't understand lag times between applying extra energy input to the atmospheric system versus the time required for the large mass of the Earth's ecosystem to respond by warming land, sea and air to the point where average temperature changes can be measured.
These sort of incomplete descriptions give the average reader a bad view of what is really going on. It gives journalism a bad name.
Why does this have to happen now that we finally have technology that a solar storm can mess up?
This is only saying that of the 1000 years of data, this is the highest we have seen it.
Right now we can't say much more than that. Correlating this data with global warming is very spurious. We know much more about earth's climate than the sun and would be making a large leap given the limited amount of data.
We can't really make much of this until we get more data. That will be a long time in coming. Assuming we don't kill each other before then.
No most of the 'global warming' controversy is centered on "are humans the major contributor?"
If word ever got out that we are not a major contributor then I think public perception will re-appropiate funds to issues they consider are more worthy.
It is possible to read into some evidance that even if all consumption and contributions were halted to zero from human activity then the phenomena that is 'global warming' would still continue.
Maybe this is more about politics and the peak fossil fuel problem, all governments need to bring in legilation and taxation to control the masses over their fossil fuel usage ahead of any fossil fuel global crisis, now seems like an ideal time to get started.
Personally I am more concern about non-organic toxins being distributed around the plant for which there is no organic cleaning system than of trying to label a problem with a natually occuring organic gas.
All I'm going to say to this is...... As far as global warming is concerned there are not enough facts or evidence to support this theory. WE need more DATA!!!... CO2 man made or not does not account for the magnitude of influences detected.... I for one think water vapor .... caused by "outside" (Sun) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3869753. stminfluences/ might influence our climate as observed. Granted I'm just an EE and an ME but i think we need more data and less emotion in dealing with this. (at least thats what i tell my wifey)
And on another note because of all this climate emotion stuff my youngest daughter now wants to be a Climatologist ??? (god i hate when i burn my karma)... :-)
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17977
The average sunspot activity in recent years might be the highest in the past 1000 years. However, as we're currently at a minimum in the cycle, the subject is a bit misleading. Care to check for yourself? See Spaceweather. The sunspot count for today, on both sides of the sun, is exactly 0. So any baseless correlations between sunspot count and global temperatures can be ignored for the next few years.
This is a redundant and old story. Last updated date from the article: 6 July, 2004 , almost three years old. Everyone should be aware of this science, but I would hope others have spent time trying to reproduce the data and find other ways to measure solar activity. Solar activity in general is undermeasured in the global warming/climate change debate, if only because of the difficulty of measuring the sun as a whole.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
Yep, this totally doesn't debunk global warming. The incandescent light bulb is much more powerful contributor to global warming than the nuclear fusion of the Sun. We are much more likely to enter another "Little Ice Age" if we swap all incandescent light bulbs for compact florescent light bulbs than if the Sun changes its sunspot activity. Man is mightier than the Sun!
Is it me or has the Global Warming crusaders joined up with the Intelligent Designers? I don't who believes in myths and fairy tales more...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The number of sunspots, right now, appears to be... well, zilch. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
The great sig in the sky!
It's those bad ass SUVs of the gods that does it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.
Just how are they dating these samples? Is there an assumption that each layer is a year? Are they assuming there has been no meltbacks removing several years records?
Dating a volcanic event and matching a tree ring to an Ice deposit is good, but much is unknown about the rest of the pack, missing layers and such.
The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.
This alone may be an indicator of why there is no ice record. Past events may have melted the layer and they are in the ocean, not in the ice pack record. Lack of an ice pack record may indicate erasure of the record, not evidence it never happened.
The truth shall set you free!
There I said it, no more no less. The CO2 that traps more heat is uneffected by more energy given off by sunspots. To put it simply don't buy any oceanfront property unless you are sure that sunspot activity and less CO2 will be in our atmosphere. The scientists who have measured "sunspot"activity have also measured the amount of CO2 trapped in polar ice caps. We are also at the highest CO2 level and small scale models prove that a high level of CO2 will prevent a smaller amount of heat to escape the earth's atmosphere. Will global warming slow? Only if the idiots of earth wisen up and stop producing CO2 at the levels they are doing now.
The Sun God is in puberty and eat too many chocolate bunnies and eggs at Easter?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
looks like i've been modded down by the right-wing thought police - I was up to +5 insightful, then they came on and attacked.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I was under the distinct impression that telescopes, cameras, and computers that help interpret the data had undergone some upgrades since the 1600s. Must be that generation gap thing -- I only thought our instruments were better now or something.
Besides, how can the "observations" since 1610 give us 1000 years of data since 2007 - 1610 = 397? Are we talking about naked-eye observations before that? Has the sun gotten that much brighter that it didn't used to blind people staring at it trying to count the dots?
So, ice cores and growth rings from fossilized trees (which would also show drought and other issues pretty indistinguishably, yes?) might agree for 1000 years. But saying that we _see_ more sunspots now than 1000 years ago is a bit like saying that we _see_ more single-celled organisms now than before the microscope.
As for global warming, yes, man probably has something to do with it. How much is the issue, and better yet how to slow it or if we should. Remember, the planet changing doesn't necessarily mean things will be worse, just different. Perhaps we should have studies on what benefits and drawbacks the climate changes will have. Are cyclical mass extinctions due to warming and cooling necessarily a bad thing?
Of course, dead zones in the oceans due to more direct screw-ups like over-fishing, pollution, etc can't be good. A lack of bees to pollinate crops is a looming disaster, too. What Oscars are being won over these?
So what you are saying is that the Moon is what is warming the Earth, not that big ball of nuclear fusion 1 AU from the Earth?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
We had the middle ages. Europe was warmer, you could grow wine in regions you can't now. The middle East was a trading empire, Vikings were on the march, some Christians were planning the crusades. All things considered, you would probably be a poor peasant, half starving, and about to drop dead from plague or some other ailment at the ripe age of 30.
I subscribe to the keteu.org Aurora mail notification. Which is handy for knowing when Aurora will appear where I live.. When I grew up I saw them all the time, where I live now, I have seen 1 set in the last 5 years.
That said, could someone enlighten me on the correlation between sunspots and solar flares? Yes, I know it is flares that cause the Aurora, not sunspots, but do increases in sunspots correlate to an increase in flares? It has been a few years since I was up on my solar topography as it were, so I am hoping for more Aurora in the next little bit - even if I need to travel up to the Youkon this year to see them again.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Beryllium in ice cores: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1997/97JC01265.sh tml
"The most dramatic is a 10Be peak ?40,000 years ago, similar to that found in the Vostok ice core, thus permitting a very precise correlation between climate records from Arctic and Antarctic ice cores."
There is a lot of scientific data and the summary article (as poor as it was) did not even start to touch on the breadth of what is currently known from the analyses.
OH, get ready for a barrage of of old articles and trolls following you around on this. I made the same statement a while ago and have one troll that I seem to annoy.
BTW, When everyone posts how stupid you are and links o some article debunking it, Match the dates to the story. You will find several interesting things, One is the articles with be links disclaiming water vapor will be older then that article or they will be regurgitated links from articles older. This leads me to believe that either they don't want to consider anything new, or they had anticipated this a long time ago and have the counter measures already lined up. It is strange that both of these situation imply that there is an alertnative reasoning behind the push for humans to be the cause.
Which must explain the global cooling going on right now on the eastern US coast! It snowed... in April... in Washington, DC! Krazy!
Our gaz-guzzling is so effective we are warming up Mars too!
muhaha ha ha ha.
Now I'm not against alternative energy. I see a time when it will save us from far worse problems. I am however against giving them a market that they don't deserve by force of government. We can fund research, discount production costs to some extend, offer tax incentive to them but charging the tax payers more to ensure they have a market is ludicrous. Futher more, Stuff like biofuels, they create less power and it takes more in existing cars to make any savings. forcing that in us is a shame too. If something was truly superior, and cost effective, it would replace oil without any outside interference.
It isn't close and it seems as if we want to make this ok by penalizing the people and more importantly, the poorer people. How free are they when they cannot afford to drive to work because the government decided to hike taxes to force some less efficient fuels into their live. It should be our goal to assist them in making their lives better not screwing the pooch because they got in the way.
According to my recollection, the difference in total solar radiance into the Earth's ecosystem between high solar sunspot time and low parts of the 11 year cycle (let alone other cycles), is about in the range of 0.1%.
Hence, if you are going to plot a difference of 1 part in 1000, you will need to use special charting methods likely with a logarithimic chart or table of some type to make the differences "visible".
Even with good charting, the variables in a short term make it difficult to deal with such small differences versus the yearly variables. Even though they are relatively small, we know from the Maunder minimum era, that they do make a LARGE difference in temperature over time.
Sunspots DO NOT cause global warming. At all.
Oh that settles it. I'm convinced. All global warming is due to SUVs, gotcha.
And had to scrape the global warming off my shoes...
Seriously though.. We're supposed to be at least slightly above average in math and science here on Slashdot, right?
How about we look at it from a more scientific side? I'm sure theres a few people on here with a solid Physics background that can quantify through the laws of thermodynamics how much energy consumption it would take to continuously raise the mean temperature on our planet.
I'm willing to bet that the results would show that we are having far less of an impact than the great glowing ball of hydrogen in our sky.
There are articles out saying that Mars has lost its southern ice caps due to recent warming, and Jupiter is also experiencing climate change.
Now, I know the rest of the world hates America, but even blaming us for that is a stretch. After all, we haven't been able to put McDonalds and Hummer dealerships there yet.
Curious parallel with a BBC story from the year 1612:
"Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Pisa used a telescope to construct a picture of our solar system's activity.
They say Jupiter has moons in orbit around it.
This by no means proves that the Earth orbits the Sun, they argue."
I realize that US bashing is currently in fashion, but whoever modded the parent insightful should be ashamed...
This is Slashdot.
People don't read links or articles here.
You must be too good for this here place. Why don't you run down to some fancy website where you'd feel more welcome.
Damn kids. Come here and start reading links and articles. No respect for tradition. No honor. All he had to do was post a pithy comment and get his +5 insightful, but noooo... he had to read the article.
Why can't you just be like the rest of us, and argue past each other without doing any research while stubbornly holding your own ground, peppering your posts with links you know the other side won't read? Geez...
If you ever paid any attention to American news -- instead of narrow-mindedly focusing on news from the rest of the planet -- you'd know that in many parts of the United States, you most certainly do need a "gas-guzzling quasi-military vehicle just to go shopping." For starters, try doing a search for "mall shooting" or "random shooting" on news.google.com once a week or so. Maybe it'll open your eyes a little as to the realities of life in America.
Just how are they dating these samples? Is there an assumption that each layer is a year? Are they assuming there has been no meltbacks removing several years records?
I am not a paleo-climatologist, but I think we can safely assume that the scientists who are analyzing ice cores are taking these sorts of things into account. Much like a sysadmin reading a log file or processing tcpdump output looking for evidence of hacking, you can safely assume that yeah, the experts did think of that.
When you have expertise in a particular field you tend to become better at perceiving patterns in the data sets you have. The open source 'many eyes' rule of thumb comes into play here, too.
Thus I think we can assume the PhDs in this field would notice an anomaly indicating that their data set may be corrupted, just like I could analyze a suspicious HTTP traffic log file, profile the activity from a specific IP address, correlate it with other sources of information, and make reasonable hypotheses as to what actually was going on, whether the activity was a bot or a human, etc. Or even whether the activity was a human trying to disguise itself as a bot (or vice-versa). And I don't even have a PhD, I just have a decade or so of experience.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Dear Non-US Citizen: I don't have a quasi-military vehicle and like those who left your hell hole and came here, I have no time for your program.
You don't need a gas-guzzling quasi-military vehicle just to go shopping.
I disagree
What?
The article says:
> Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant
This is a weird statement. In last 20 years we've had two solar cycles and the number of sunspots has varied dramatically over the period as it usually does. You could interpret this statement as saying that relative to the cyclic average the number has remained constant - but that's certainly not how it reads, and 20 years is a bit of a short time over which to make such a judgement.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
My understanding is that the jury's still more or less out on the precise cause of global warming. I for one am willing to let the jury come back on that one, whenever that might be.
The issue has become so politicized that it's ridiculous. So let's drop the global warming concern down a notch - can't we just be concerned about air quality?
I live in a mountain valley (Utah, Wasatch front) and there are days when you practically cannot breathe because of the crap in our air and the inversion. My wife has asthma issues, and this air doesn't help her one bit. The air here isn't as bad as, say, Santiago de Chile (we lived there for a few months) but it's still horrid in the winter.
I am no expert on these things, but I would assume that many of the problems the global warming crowd complain about result in much of the air pollution today. Only now the issue has become politicized thanks to Al(armist) Gore and others, which can hinder fixing something that is hurting those of us living in valleys now. The entrance of so many divisive political figures on the scene has lead many to take the opposing view, and continue proudly driving their gas guzzlers that are slowly poisoning the air here as a way to stick it to their opponents, and when poor evidence put forth by many regarding global warming (the only issue people seem to talk about any more) is refuted, people seem to think there is no problem continuing with business as usual, and that the environment will be fine if they continue using their gas guzzler. Maybe this won't cause global warming, but it will irritate my lungs to no end.
I cannot wait to get out of this valley and breathe some fresh air again.
"A single volcano can have higher carbon dioxide (among other pollutants) output than all of human society on a yearly basis." Then why are there NO peaks from ANY of the last few decades' major erruptions in this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbo n_Dioxide.png
Can you see any volcanos ? No? Didn't think so... Reality is of course that volcanos emit very little CO2 compared to our fossil fuel consumption, and hence they are not even noticeable in the average CO2 concentration. On the contrary atmospheric carbon concentrations have increased at a steady rate which just happens to correspond very well with how much carbon containing compounds we burn. We do know how much Fossil fuels we burn, we do know how much CO2 that creates, and guess what, that agrees well with the rate at which we observe CO2 levels increase. That this also agrees well with the best climate models we have and measured temperature records is just another coincidence of course...
Sorry, Freud. Sometimes a limitation on the number of characters you can enter into a textbox is just a limitation on the number of characters you can enter into a textbox.
Explain the shrinking icecaps on Mars that coincide with the increase in Earthly temperatures, smartass.
Because Martian warming is just as much a fact as Earthly warming in the past few years.
the global warming question can't be solved by one answer alone. Many factors can attribute to the temperature changing from what is considered normal. The sun's rays becoming more intense, ozone in the atmosphere being converted into a less protective molecule, and naturally occurring molecules breaking down and raising entropy and enthalpy on large scales are the major factors as already pointed out, but more factors may be playing a role in all of this.
Who knows? [Far fetched idea] Maybe the earth is building up charge due to passing through the sun's magnetic field and this is causing the earth to warm up too. [/Far fetched idea]
We need to keep open minds as saying there is only one cause and thus only one ultimate solution is not going to solve anything except put a band aid on a growing problem.
You complain about Gore being an alarmist while simultaneously griping about air pollution (emissions)? Talk about cognitive dissonance. Did you believe Democratic environmental policy was myopic in 2000 but that alternative energy is great nowadays?
It's really poor taste to disparage someone while agreeing with him seven years after the fact. The worst that anyone remotely credible will say about Gore is that he is right to be tremendously concerned with global warming, but that "it may not be entirely man-made." Funny how they won't expunge words like "may" from their own statements on the matter.
I have absolutely no idea what jury you're waiting on.
Also, I'm sorry about your irritated lungs, but there's gonna be a good couple billion people a little irritated that they've got no water and their house is underwater, whether humans caused it or not.
I'm having trouble spoting those spots (pun :P)
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
Why don't you quote the rest of that wikipedia article?
Particularly the part that says: Since sunspots are dark it might be expected that more sunspots lead to less solar radiation. However, the surrounding areas are brighter and the overall effect is that more sunspots means a brighter sun. (Emphasis added).
Sunspots are relatively cooler, but the surrounding areas are hotter.
This may not perfectly account for global warming (and we don't have the data or models to do that anyway), but it sure points in that direction.
-- Alastair
Nevertheless, IMO the global warming alarmism being used to push a neo-communist agenda stinks. I've looked at the evidence, and humans as *the major* contributor just doesn't add up. I'm not convinced by "all the real scientists say so" either. There is too much censoring of dissenters for that to be convincing.
In many cases, the cures exacerbate real problems. For instance, demand for ethanol is causing more rain forest clear cutting to grow sugar cane. Paving large areas causes local warming (urban heat island effect) far in excess of the worst case estimates of global warming, and loses even more ability to recycle CO2 in the air. Eating beef/pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has causes a 10 fold increase in methane, much more that the increase in CO2. All the driving causes stress, and the fatty, sugary fast food combined with the lack of exercise has made most of us fat, driving up health care costs.
My point is that I would like to see a positive agenda. Keep and expand greenspaces and forests. I'm not a stickler for "everything wild" like Gore - parks are fine. Walk, ride bikes, use mass transit. Rent a car for vacations. Use a ZipCar for trips to the store to pick up heavy items. Eat meat only on feast days (e.g. Sunday - modify for your religion), like we used to, and observe a Sabbath (on a day appropriate for your religion). Getting rid of my car saves $300 to $800 dollars a month (depending on how nice a used car I would have gotten to replace it). I have a ready excuse why I can't jump up and drive all over the county on a moments notice. Stop the rushing around. Relax, enjoy your food instead of wolfing it down in a hurry. Eat slowly. Eat less. Fast on a regular basis - if only so you know what it feels like to be hungry. Eat only when you are hungry, not when you are bored, or pressured by friends.
Use our own oil (offshore drilling, Alaska, and/or plant it instead of corn for the cows you aren't eating as much of) instead of buying it from our enemies and carting it over the ocean. Save the oil for the truckers so your fresh veggies won't cost an arm and a leg. The trees will slowly take care of the CO2 if we don't cut them down and pave them over. Whatever you do, don't give control to the government to "fix" things. They will only make it worse. Sufficiently large corporations are indistinguishable from government in their capacity to foul things up.
Take these suggestions slowly so the affected industries have time to adjust.
You're missing the point. Perhaps I failed to make it properly.
1. Global warming is highly politicized at the moment, and it seems to be all people focus on.
2. Alarmists are making claims regarding this issue. These alarmist claims are frequently disproved or at least shown not to be as severe as alarmists claim. Alarmists lose credibility with many.
3. The fight goes on about global warming, with many completely ignoring it due to the alarmists' tendency to be well... alarmist. For all we know, the problem does exist, but many have a "boy that called wolf" response and ignore it entirely.
4. In all of this, attention to a matter of likely more immediate importance is ignored. Many conclude that global warming isn't an issue, so no air pollution issues are important.
I'm not yet sure on the human contribution to global warming. Perhaps I'm a naïve redneck in that regard. Whatever. What I am sure of is that the air quality here will only continue to deteriorate without serious measures, many of which are basically the same measures as those one would want to take to limit human contributions to global warming. However, given the alarmist tendencies of people like Al "Katrina is the direct result of global warming!" Gore (yes, a hyperbole, I realize) and the politicization and intense focus on this one issue, we've can't see the forest for the trees (here, at least). Lord knows that voices on the right who further mischaracterize the Alarmists and use stupid arguments like "but this winter's been really cold! there must not be any global warming!" don't help one iota, either. It seems that the good old Drudge report is full of stories like that in the past few months.
I'm not savvy on the history of environmental politics - I'm a political science major with international relations focus, actually. I don't really care who passed what and when. I don't care where blame is pegged and what games are played. I want the problem fixed, and I want reasoned debate on the issue to fix it, and whoever can fix it deserves my vote and my support. Period.
Why should I bother? I'll let an MIT professor do it.
Your understanding is wrong.
Sorry you had to be the last to know.
I am pretty sure that only in America is there any real question at all. That stems from people who have a hard time with change.
Funny thing is, the same people would be saying something else, because controling air quality would take all the same steps needed to slow the global change that is happening at an alarming rate.
Bear in mind its an alarming rate for climate change, meaning years.
Thanks for pointing out that you just believe what ever the republican party shills out.
Al Gorewas not alarmist, it was alarming. Two different things.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On the other hand, that show is full of shit.
Using a biased source to purport another source to be biased is pretty hypocritical.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
...that this article is 3 years old? Look at www.spaceweather.com, and you will see that right now (and for the past several days) the sun is BLANK. There are NO sunspots.
Willie...
By studying sunspots, the Mayan people predicted the sun will supernova in 2012. The Mayan calendar forever ends on their doomsday date of 2012. That, and the planets will be in alignment, Earth will finish a wobble cycle, et cetera on 2012 as well.
If you are not familiar with the Mayans, they had the most sophisticated and accurate (and obsessive) calendaring system thanks to studying astrology. The calculations are so accurate that they are considered 10,000 times (guesstamation but not exaggerated) more accurate than the time we use today. The Mayans even built a pyramid called Kukulcan that, on every Equinox, would casts shadows showing a snake slithering down the sides.
The History Channel has a special on the Mayans called "Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy." It's pretty good. There's lots of interesting information out there about it, so look it up.
> Dear US Citizens: Please GET WITH THE PROGRAM. You don't need a gas-guzzling quasi-military vehicle just to go shopping.
Not a US citizen, but I am planning on buying a military vehicle to do exactly that. I'm not joking.
" I've looked at the evidence, and humans as *the major* contributor just doesn't add up."
oh wow, some podunk on slashdotdoesn't think it adds up and uses his own personal agenda to 'prove' it.
Well done.
"nstead of buying it from our enemies and carting it over the ocean."
hahahaha.. Apperently you just believe whatever the social group you associate with tells you.
Do you even know where most of our oil comes from?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There. Ran rings 'round ya. Logically.
...don't shoot missiles! The only thing scary here is that someone's first reaction on hearing about increased sunspot activity is to worry about a missile's guidance system. Exactly whom are you planning to blow up or are you just concerned that should the whim take you tomorrow you won't be able to?
Hmmm....Mr. Bush you really shouldn't be depending on Slashdot for technical advice!
Hm... 2007 - 1610 = ... 1000 years !! pinball wizard scores again !!
oops... I was so quick to try and point out how stupid the summary was, that I forgot to even read the whole summary!
FTFS: Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores
I'm sorry I was so stupid.
-pinball wizard
Real Climate is full of lying shit, and written by criminal defenders of a disgraced climate fascist ( http://www.climateaudit.org/ )
(we can keep this up as long as you like!)
Also, random loony people are loony. News at 11? Furthermore your attacks are entirely ad hominem, and many of them are vast generalizations. Two different faults: one, you equate all environmentalists; two, you act as if world problems that the U.N. didn't solve are somehow only the failure of the U.N. Hey, lets go with the zeitgeist and quote Wikipedia on the Rwandan genocide:
Point is that this was an international failure, and that aspect of the nature of the crisis and of the slow nature of the U.N. security council and its members to respond to anything not affecting their own countries. In no way does this preclude a scientific study commissioned by a U.N. body from being factually accurate!
But fine. Three successes? East Timor, ODA, anti-disease programs like their HIV/Aids or malaria fights (sure they haven't wiped them out, but they've done a lot of good where nearly no one was doing anything before). But enough of ad hominem. Debate the merits or shortcomings of the actual theories and tests, or are you afraid that you wouldn't be able to debunk them with the same ease with which you sully the reputation of those related tangentally to the researchers?
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
but wait al gore told me it was my fault the earth is dieing? he says all the cheese burgers i eat make me fart and produce the nasty green house gases.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
sorry you need to work on those comprehension skills there bud. anyone making alarming statments for the purpose of selling movie tickets, is an alarmist. would his movie have been so successful if he spent the whole 2 hours telling us things are OK? i think not, so he needed to spice it up a bit with random clips of weather driven destruction. This fact, makes his film alarmist propaganda.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
PR is just a nice term for Propaganda and with the money and their adaptation to the net I serious wonder what kind of work they are out there doing today in the 'information age.'
This sounds exactly like what an advertiser friend of mine says with some minor variations. He is 100% behind whatever Bush says. He now accepts the climate is changing (and only that.) Outside of us friends who know better--- he LIES to everybody with a surprisingly similar story to the parent post.
Its like the thing was some talking point memo (oh, he is a rather involved party member as well.) So I'd guess that post was either a pawn like my friend or directly connected to the PR war to stop any meaningful change.
Industry and the military probably are the biggest problem worldwide, not american cars or diet. Over population is the biggest problem nobody wants to address. A decent standard of living for everybody means only about 2 billion people worldwide; just because there are few/no starving down the street doesn't mean that we haven't already overpopulated the earth. Most people have a standard of living that wouldn't be acceptable to 1st world citizens.
Many people think we can terraform mars someday soon (50-100 yrs?) yet we couldn't possibly have impacted earth over the last 100+ years... seems like people need to consider the density of AIR and how small (90% @ 30,000ft) the atmosphere is.
Soylent Green is people!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
As can be seen from the wiki page, they peaked in the late 1950s. They don't closely mirror the global mean temperature.
Climatoligists already know about sunspots. As can be seen from this chart, most of the recent increase in temperatures are due to humans.
if you can measure global snowfall from that which your feet pick up!
Or wasn't the cheek in your mouth you had your tongue in..?
(tongue-in-cheek).
Real life is rarely about "yes" or "no" questions, unless you happen to suffer from OCPD. The _real_ question in this case isn't "are humans contributing at all?" (yes, we do, even by breathing), but "how much are we contributing?" _That_ is the real question.
Because given the magnitude of the phenomenon over more than a hundred years (absolute temperature rose by about half a percent), there's a _massive_ difference between contributing 99% of it, and contributing 1% of it. The former is a case of "ouch, we gotta do something", the latter is "meh, we can continue like it for another thousand years before our contribution is even noticeable."
You also know that undeniably the answer is "yes" to "can an airplane fall on my house?", but that's no reason to build a bunker. If the probability is small enough, then it just doesn't justify the investment or bother. You also know that walking on the side-walk adds a little wear and tear, but that's no reason to never leave the house. The question is "how much?", not "is it contributing anything?" If it's adding a helluva lot (e.g., you're riding a jackhammer as a pogo stick on that sidewalk), then better stop, if not, heck, it's just business as usual.
Real world is like that: it's not about boolean "yes"/"no" logic. Just because you've trained to program a computer, doesn't mean you have to become one. And it's certainly not about, basically, "if the answer is yes to <insert strawman question> then we must act _now_." Real world problems are more like min-max problems with lots of variables and lots of constraints, than one-question boolean situations. Most of the time, any given variable X is a number with lots of decimals, not a boolean. Most of the time, the questions are "how big is X" (not "is it true or false"), what is its effect on the other variables and viceversa, what does it mean in the context of the available constraints (e.g., you have a finite total budget), and whether it's even productive to focus your efforts on X when maybe changing Y would be a better solution.
Basically whenever I hear someone trying to reduce a whole complex problem to "is X true or false", that just tells me they don't even understand the real problem. OCPD cases (or political parties trying to prey on the sheep: "it's a really complex problem" isn't as good a slogan as "act now to maximize/minimize X") tend to think about themselves that they're uncompromising and doing everything nothing short of perfect, but actually 99% of the time they solve the wrong problem, and come up with something that's actually a crap solution to the _real_ problem. They realize instinctively that they can't maximize all variables at the same time, so they end up taking just one variable as the One True Criterion Of Perfection, and summarily hand-waving all other variables as unimportant. So they proceed to maximize one variable and have their perfect solution... that usually is outside the real problem's constraints completely.
But to return to global warming, as I was saying, the _real_ question isn't "are we?" but "how much?" The latter also has a massive impact on _when_ we need to do something at all. If we won't contribute enough for a thousand years, then maybe we don't need to do anything _now_.
Yeah, it may seem like just delaying the inevitable, but the whole human history is actually based on borrowed time and doing what works now instead of what's ideal in the long run. If we tried to do the _perfect_ thing from the start, we wouldn't even have had an industrial revolution (noone could afford emissions controls with that age's technology), or cars, or for that matter we'd probably still be living in caves.
Sometimes you have to make a cheap, crap (by 2007 standards) Ford Model T in 1908 because that's what
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The science behind wraming-causing sun spots is very
0 469846467
well explained in this movie ("Global Warming swindle):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=434013530
brief:
more spots means less cosmic-rays hitting earth (they are deflicted by increased
electromagnetic solar wind originating from the spots),
less cosmic-rays hitting troposphere means less water-vapour is being scattered back
into single molecules, and more vapuor remaining and condensing in the troposphere means
less heat escaping back into space, and that means strongger greanhouse surrounding the earth.
(water-vapour is #1 greenhouse-gas there's, orders of magnitude stronger then over-alleged C02)
I saw a lot of posts making quite logical guesses, but if the movie i saw is right
(which to me is very likely), then a lot of the posts are simple not misinformed
Go look in a mirror if you want to see something stupid. Then go learn how to read.
What was once true, is no longer so
If you are too lazy to type "United nations peace keeping operations" in Google, it is your problem not ours.
And of course if we would quote succcess histories for you (which are far many more than three, but unlikely to make the headlines that your "failures" make) you would define "success" in any way that fits your purposes, not in any way that would be fair to the institution and the limitations that countries like the US, Russia and China put on it.
You say elsewhere that it is legitimate to question the UN's peace keeping operations when talking about its stance in global climate change. I am sure you also think it is legitimate to judge the parents for the sins of their offspring and to curse the descendents of people commiting sin for 7 generations to come.
Lets ignore the science as long as we can rely on the reputation of the messanger. It is such a basic case of ad hominem attack that I frankly do not know why you even bother putting your point of view forward, you disqualify yourself from any informed unbiased debate starting from such a flimsy base.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you want to spread democracy around the world this will come with the necessary democratic bodies in a worldwide scale.
Ditto if you want to sort out nasty regimes or WMDs (ha, ha, ha), you will become accountable one way or another.
It seems to me like the US, going around as the please in the world, are the ones demanding global governance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't think you quite understand the scale of the problem, the free market will not stop international and civil wars from breaking out by those willing to fight to preserve their standard of living. Some would argue this has already started to happen in world affair. There is talk within first world countries that we need to "secure the energy supply" under the belief that "the worlds energy resources should be distributed fairly and should not be in the control of the countries fortunate to surround them".
There is nothing wrong with alternative energy and as the cost of fossil fuel increases the return on investment in research and development verses the risk into alternatives will make advances happen. It is still unclear if those advances will happen fast enough to stop wars from starting.
But starting to change sentiment today it will get everyone thinking and accepting the issues which face us in the future in a calm and orderly way.
Either solar sunspot activity correlates with temerature, or it starts it off. You seem to want both: when it comes to past figures, you say it tracks up and down (and proves that sunspot activity causes CC, though doesn't prove it is the only answer). When it comes to this 1000 year maximum and the current trend, it doesn't track up and down but there is an extended pulse (whose end will be sufficiently undefined so that you can't be shown wrong).
We had the middle ages. Europe was warmer, you could grow wine in regions you can't now.
Yes. I live in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, UK and in the Middle Ages, there was a large vineyard at Hailes Abbey just two miles from my house. Hopefully there will be again in my lifetime!
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The jury is back, passed veredict and went home.
Only you guys in the US still cling to the idea you can polute as much as you wish without having any consquences in the global climate.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
how you research a debunking of the solar spots being cooler yet you don't research the counter-proposals about volcanoes, middle-ages warming, 70's global cooling, pluto or mars.
Must be because the refutation of this proof of non-human effect is solid, then?
Agree & concur. Not all pulled from thin air but certainly most.
Yet this is EXACTLY what the Global Warming is caused by Man crowd does to any scientist who dares raise issues against that mindset. Bring on any scientist, no matter what prestigious background or association he has and sure as shit he will get eviscerated.
It works both ways. Many of the scientist listed on that UN report don't agree with it or all its findings. Yet you will never here that in the press. Why? Simple, big money is involved. Businesses have now discovered the big money in being green, even if its all a shell game. I look at it this way, the doomsayers have always been wrong. We are so damn egotistical in our supposed science that suddenly we can declare we know what will happen when just a few years back we thought the same and were wrong? Global Warming stopped being science when some people decided there was no longer room for debate. Regardless of what the US and Europe does China and India are just going to keep going, which will invalidate any pollution gains we make. I am more scared of the fact that we don't know for sure yet we are going to take a course of action regardless of that fact.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The sun.
It doesnt take a genius to work out that if you TURN UP the gas valve on a heater, IT GETS HOTTER.
Likewise the sun doesnt put out constant energy, it can vary. And we cannot do anything about it, which is why secretly, shhhh
dont tell anyone, coz once every idiot learns that "hey its the sun, we can do zero about it" everyone will do ZERO too and not care at all.
Pretending that we can do something, even if it artificially cools the planet to offset the suns increase can be good, even if most people dont
know how it worked, and the saviours can say, "LOOK WE SAVED EARTH", now pay us lots of taxes forever!!!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
earlier sun was on a 11 year cycle. did we ditch that ? suddenly a thousand year peak shit came up. next thing you know after 3-4 years they will come up and say that 1.000.000 year peak is coming. i just dont buy it.
Read radical news here
Good for you, personally I don't like to label myself, refer to my sig for more info.
"And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd."
But you like to label other people by defining anything you dislike as a "cage", and then throwing others into it arbitrarily based on a catchy song lyric.
Being libertarian is not a label, it is a general approach to analyisis and a certain core set of priorities, one deeper than most song lyrics or bumper stickers. I don't think you can ever apply the word "label" to a system of beliefs wide enough for members within that space to disagree on things (as Libertarians do).
I, too, am a Libertarian - as is most of slashdot really.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He did say that he created the internet. He will show us now that global warming is causing the sunspots to increase. Heck, I should belive him. Why? Because his monthly utility bill is equal to my yearly utility bill.
No doubt either our industrial society or the rise of Western civilization is linked to Sol's solar instability. I am just waiting for Al to confirm it.
So TFA says warmer weather corresponds to increased sunspots, except that it doesn't.
/. community, in that it will support at least two sides of the OMG GLOBALWARMINGISKILLINGUSALL OR NOT argument, which we join already in progress. Never have so many known so little and said so much about it in no uncertain terms.
Putting aside the probability that the BBC article focused on the sensational aspects and overemphasized those, it seems they're using the same data to reach different conclusions when the fact is that one part of the data contradicts another. This requires no small amount of rationalization. Or perhaps that's BBC's approach, and the original work is much clearer on these points.
This internal inconsistency should prove invaluable to the
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
In this modern age, note to scientists, no one reads paper material any more, well at least the young folk.
Get with the times, make a snazy website, flash animations, bit of music, some videos, and have a blog. Thats true peer review.
Its faster, more open, not vetted, censored, or done by an old fart who smokes a pipe in a 1970s log cabin.
Static documents are partial dead, dynamic information is the new age, interactive graphs, simulations etc... thats better than a boring
900 page document using courier 14. THAT WASTES PAPER!!! Hello mr scientist, wasting paper, and polluting rivers.
What takes 12-24 months on paper, can happen in 3 weeks on the net. Just like the net wants to uproot the RIAA boys, so does it with established
scientists and politians, every one can be an arm chair participant. Not a serf onlooker.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
bwaaahaaaa !
-- kjh
I have heard people describe realclimate as biased again and again, without a shred of evidence to back it up. Do you have any evidence? Or are you basing real climate being biased on truthiness?
I am not the person above who made that remark, but I have plenty of experience of realclimate.org's extreme bias and anti-discussion advocacy. They banned my contributions where I pointed out the various areas in which they are totally disregarding the scientific method and preventing their favoured interpretations from being subject to proper scientific critique.
That site is a pseudo-science advocacy site, simple as that.
Yes, the local group there are working scientists, but they are treating the the scientific method and scientific discussion with disdain. They have no regard for real Science at all when it is in danger of highlighting their biased advocacy.
That I find that many GW skeptics do the former. That is to say they raise legitimate questions of the empirical data. They question the methods used, such as using computer models to "prove" things (a model doesn't prove anything), the data gathered, the understanding of the system and so on. They bring up extremely valid points. However the response always seems to be the same: They are shouted down. They are called stupid, or industry shills. Their arguments are dismissed out of hand. The existing data/models are presented as being right with little in the way of justification, and so on.
That's the problem. Many people act like they are all about science, and are open to questioning, but then when it happens, the reaction is vicious. Sorry, but you don't get to say "Any questioning of our position proves you are an idiot and thus we don't have to respond." I don't care if you don't like the questions posed, if they are legit then they deserve a legit answer.
From what I've seen, the skeptics do their best to present very well reasoned criticisms and questions of the accepted knowledge. The defenders are the ones that act unscientific and just shout the other side down.
The Intelligent Design thing is often brought up, as an attempt to shut down skeptics. They say "This is just like Intelligent Design and thus shouldn't be listened to!" Only it isn't. Intelligent Design makes a positive claim (that god created creatures as they are now) but the real problem is it makes an untestable one. Might be they are right, but you'll never prove it. Since according to them god is outside of nature that makes god untestable. Well if it's not testable, it's not science, pure and simple. However GW skeptics are just questioning a theory. Also, they aren't saying "No, your theory is wrong because god says so," they say "Your theory is wrong because of these reasons." That's science right there. Doesn't mean that the skeptics are right, but it does mean they are doing science as it is meant to be done.
Real science isn't about making a claim and then trying to shout down anyone who says you are wrong. Real science is about trying to prove yourself wrong. It is about trying to think up every way you can that your theory might be wrong and then testing those. Any alternative you can think of. Only when all those tests fail to prove it wrong, do you believe it is true. It's not a matter of trying to run one test and saying "There, I've proven it true!" and getting mad when people don't agree, it is trying to run as many tests as you can and then saying "There, I've tried every way I can to prove it false, and I just can't." Then if someone has a way you didn't think of, you try that too. You just keep on trying too, you keep working on the theory. No theory should ever be considered proven beyond the need for reinvestigation. All the time new areas of science open up that reveal that a long accepted theory was, in fact, an oversimplification. Doesn't mean it was a bad theory or didn't do a good job describing the facts, just that not everything was understood and now we have a better one.
So to me, it seems like it is the GW proponents putting their fingers in their ears. They don't want to hear any arguments and so any time someone makes one, they pretend like that person didn't and just shout them down.
On this overview of the Wolf number for sunspot activity in the past half century, it doens't seem to be too bad. Moreover, the last maximum in 2000 (we are in a minimum of solar activity right now) was around 120, compared to an average maximum in 17xx around 100.
An additional problem is that before 1700 there was no unified way of recording sunspot information.
So the go green is really saying no more war. Hmm. never thught of it that way.
But using the government to tax people on this won't stop civil wars or wars in general. When Gas prices are high, people tend to support the war in Iraq. This might have something to do with all the war for oild stuff that was going around.
I don't think the government artificially imposing restrictions or taking money from the poorest people in the country is the answer. They could encourage the alternatives and like I said earlier, if the alternatives don't suck, they will be used. I doubt it would stop a civil war or anything though.
Hi sumdumbass, I was wondering when the grand-poobah of the anti-science fundie's would turn up. As I have said recently, you're a master of irony and you haven't disappointed me with your post. And as another poster has already pointed out Chirac is a right wing politician. At least you haven't told any fibs this time, in fact your foot shooting post is quite humourous.
As for the creepy 1984 factor: Did you ever stop to think that the "global economy" is already subject to "global governance" or are you suffering from the delusion that international trade is based on trust alone?
Back to France: It's also interesting to note that ~70% of France's electricity comes from reactors, so it's kinda obvious they will be "winners" in the "inevetible 2012 treaty to curb emmissions"(Paraphrasing the Australian PM who is the last ally in the US administration's so far successfull attempts to kill any talk of negotiated reductions).
By a twist of fate France has low emmissions through a highly subsidized and often critisized industry. Some people would argue that the reactors are a "worse danger", but the scientific evidence and the track record of the reactors says otherwise. However if France sees it's reactors as a viable solution for more than the next few decades I think they will be in for a surprise.
You can rant and rave about "environmentalists" all you like (my disdain for political stereotypes is expressed in my sig), the fact is that nobody with any noticable political clout wants to "tear down civilization" (although some regularly blow various parts of it up). Both the US and Australia are large geographically diverse countries that could (according to DOE and CSIRO) switch to generating ALL their electricity from wind-power and existing hydro.
Nobody is suggesting that we do it all today, but over the next 40yrs, (the lifetime of a coal powered plant), barring any technolgical or economic "breakthroughs" it makes eminent sense from all sorts of angles to direct our energy infrastructure toward a large number windmills dotting farmland and ridges across both continents. Windmills are even compatible with national parks, with access tracks doubling as firebreaks but that would mean killing a "sacred cow", I myself would balk at putting one atop Ayers Rock.
A couple of questions for you to mull over:
Why do you have an irrational fear of a likely boost in economic activity that has more than one socially positive direction and little if any foreseable negative directions?
Coal is responsible for the majority of the worlds atmospheric pollution and as we all know the projected growth figures in places such as China and India are staggering. But regardless of whether you see yourself as a comrade or a consumer, none of us are buying coal for it's own sake, we are buying useable energy as electricity and/or heat. Why is the coal industry such a sacred cow in the "free market" of energy supply? Aren't "sacred cow industries" the preserve of "socialists" and "bleeding hearts"? As a trivial example of what I mean, a national standard for "net metering" is a fairly simple regulatory step that could be sensibly enacted relatively quickly, if not for said "sacred cow".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope."
Which were soon follwed by cries of "GAAAHHH!!! I'm blind!!!"
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
None of these environmental doomsday events were predicted for obvious reasons but at least they go to show that environmental doomsday events are survivable if you are fit enough. As for future prospects for prediction, so far we haven't done well have we? We were already in the several thousand years into the ongoing Holocene extinction event before we even figured out it was happening but at least we have managed to figure out since then that this time around we are a major contributing factor to the extinctions.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If we only started record-keeping in 1610, then wouldn't this be a 400-year peak? After all, there apparently aren't any records from 400-1000 years ago.
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
I know that Slashdot is often a bit late with the news, but this BBC news story was written on 6 July, 2004!
It is always easier to minimize the accountability for one's actions by shifting the focus to something else. So, we face a dramatically warming sun AND a greenhouse to make the most of the extra energy. Sounds like a good time to start cutting back on the greenhouse. Or, maybe, we just wait for the sun to cool off. Yeah, that sounds like a plan! I even ran across stories that the climate is known to shift quickly now and again. So, maybe this is just one of those quick change periods. If we wait a decade or so, it might fix itself. Yeah, that sounds like a plan!
The news came out on how much money the presidential candidates raised, as if that were a measure of fitness. Let's see how many candidates take money from the anti-global-warming interests, how many jump on the media bandwagon of sound bite ignorance, and how many vote against controls on lobbyists, PACs, and other big money influences on our government. I have little confidence that we will be able to do anything about global warming because anything we do now will be reflected only decades from now. My mind may change if some politicians step up to the first step, which is to control lobbyists and special interests and start paying attention to the interests of the people.
Action now costs money and effort and pays off in decades. Procrastination pays off immediately. Guess which we will choose.
about a thousand years ago our Sun was gettin' busy. That's our boy! I'm verclemt... *sniff!*
I'll bet she was hot!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
But the angry daystar is preparing for it's final assault on pale people everywhere! (this should inherently strike terror into the hearts of most slashdotters...)
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Why all the fuss about a story that is 3 years old?
Oh, this is Slashdot. News is never old, just forgotten.
Some aspects of being fit to survive extinction events seem to be being low on the food chain and being either aquatic of land-based depending on the circumstances. To me, fitness arguments are really about the competition between species. Those that are better adapted to their niche tend to do better, over time than those in a similar niche that are less well adapted. Erasing many niches over a timescale shorter than the adaptation timescale is not really about fitness.s -selling-solar.html
--
Adapt to 11 billion people before they are here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Well between Mr. Sun trying to fry us and the automobile industry trying hard to convince everyone global warming by CO2 is no big deal, let's take a page from Carl Sagan and bring on a mild nuclear winter. We still have enough nukes to cast a pretty decent shadow I'm guessing. OR - perhaps we could take Douglas Adams' cue and burn down all the forests. In seriousness, was in the fallout zone of Northern Colorado from the Yellowstone fire of the late 80s. The drop in temperature was significant, and the sky was overcast gray for days. Not from cloud cover though.
A few years of that applied should allow a new ice-age to form. And that's better right? RIGHT? Food meh - we don't need crops! We need to solve global warming! Plus it's been decades since we've seen a stunning H-Bomb mushroom cloud. Think about the children! Would you deny them this fantastic sight? 3 megaton fireworks are pretty impressive! And ya ya ya, barium this cadmium that - just stock up on iodine and switch to instant Soy Milk. A few hundred mega-rads never killed anyone - instantly - from behind a lead wall.
Most people have no clue about Galileo and what happened. In fact, just the other day someone told me in defense of global warming and criticism of religion "That's why they had Galileo killed!"
Er...they didn't.
In fact, the issue with Galileo was one of politics, scientific peer review, and merely being an egotistical jerk. The Catholic Church has a doctrine that if a natural event can be proved to be true that their interpretation is what is flawed as God made the natural world. So if Galileo had proved his viewpoint then the doctrine of the church would have been altered.
The problem is that Galileo did not have proof and had numerous flaws, but instead of essentially releasing his views as a "theory for peer review" made affirmed statements of fact. He basically by-passed the peer review of the day.
On top of that, other scientists who's work could have assisted in proving and giving serious credit to Galileo's work had been dismissed by Galileo as foolishly wrong. (I believe this may have involved Keppler and another. One of which was that the orbits were elipitical to which Galileo dismissed and rudely did so.) So essentially, Galileo called other peer articles of the day which could have supported his own as false.
Then after all this, he wrote a discourse that essentially publicly insulted the pope. Who had been rather favorable of Galileo.
What Galileo did was Akin to publishing an article stating a new discovery or thought as fact, not having the article peer reviewed and then publicly saying that his fellow peers who were doing similar work were ignorant and off-based and their articles were completely wrong. Than to top it off, doing an interview in a newspaper and stating that the editors of the scientific journal were mere simpletons. And many aspects of Galileo's work were indeed wrong.
Even after all this, the result was to censure Galileo and not kill him. He breached many ethical lines of behavior. Instead, the Pope had him put on house arrest. (Mind you, this was essentially living a decent upper class life with catered food/servants, etc. Think Martha Stewart during her house prison term. And when you consider that scientific work during that day was usually supported by patronages (pretty much either of the nobility or commonly the church) what was done essentially allowed the Pope & Church to censure Galileo for his foolishness and then provided Galileo with a life-long patronage to continue his research.
But many atheists like to use the case of Galileo as a means of attack against religion when there is so much more at hand with the issue. And so much mis-understood. Mainly because we are mis-taught history. No worries. I used to have the same understanding of Galileo and the church until recently as well. Then an interesting historical science fiction novel opened my mind to a slightly different picture and after that I went searching numerous online sites about Galileo and discovered that my understanding was quite incorrect.
What did I do... "I learned!"
- Saj
This is also the subset of evangelicals who repudiate evolution, the age of the earth, and pretty much empirical, factual reality itself. They dismiss the findings of science as "materialism" and they hold that the conclusions they derive from their interpretation of the Bible (which they don't think is interpretation, even though it changes over the decades) have more value and authenticity than the findings of conventional science.
Reason magazine speaks to a different part of the Republican party. The libertarian-leaning Ron Paul faction has little in common with the Christian Dominionist faction, other than that they are both trying to steer the party towards their own political philosophy.
I know I've already linked to it, but please read Kingdom Coming. It may not be a perfect book, but it clarifies a lot of nagging issues that you see in the news. It's fascinating, and of course a bit frightening, to read that a sizeable number of people in the USA live by not just different beliefs, but by a different epistemology altogether. There is no common ground between them, and, well, Reason.
And before the "You hate all Christians! How sad." posters jump on me, don't. Just don't. I didn't say that, you know I didn't say that, and you can read my post to see that I didn't say that. Christian Dominionism exists, they (like Rushdoony) have written books, given speeches, and so on, and we can easily find out about them and their beliefs. They reject pluralistic society, reject science, and reject rationality. All while enjoying the fruits of pluralistic society and the scientific method. They don't represent all Christians, and I never said they did. Even the book I've linked repeatedly points out that they don't typify all Christians, or even all evangelicals. But they are quite prominent, and in fact finance the Creationist movement, the abstinence-only movement, and so on. So a lot of people who wouldn't agree with Rushdoony's more draconian ideas are still on board with them, meaning they have influence beyond their ostensible numbers.
I read somewhere that the magnetic fields of the earth and the sun are linked via the electromagnetic fields of the solar system. I am wondering if there is any chance that the use of intense magnetic field generators such as super colliders on the earth could arc to the sun, and potentially cause solar effects (such as an increase in solar flares), or significant disturbances in the solar system's electromagnetic fields? I know that when you hold an iron nail too close to an electrical source there can form an arc of electricity. Is it possible for an arc of any kind to be created due to these kinds of magnetic field generators? How vulnerable is the earth's electromagnetic field to fluctuations that might be caused by intense magnetic field generators? I'm just wondering if there is any possibility that these devices could cause untoward large scale effects? Thanks.
Regardless of the cause of global warming, and I am a skeptic that it's all man, all man....fear for your lives. I truly believe most of it is solar, orbital, cyclical issues. That said....
I still support cleaning up pollution. Freeing ourselves from the I.C.E. (internal combustion engine). Advancing clean energy sources (hydrogen, solar, even nuclear when done right). Reducing emissions. Trash. Etc.
ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE GOOD THINGS TO DO AND STRIVE FOR REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU BELIEVE THE WORLD IS ENDING OR NOT
Sadly, the global warming alarmism has essentially killed most other aspects of environmentalism. You want to cool the planet. Change how we build our cities and homes. Make them like hobbit wholes with grass and trees growing over them. Instead of as it is today. We cut all the trees to make farmland, than clear the farmland to pave parking lots and suburban sprawl. Eliminating a vast amount of biomass which would extract your precious CO2 from the air. Ironically, one of the main likely reasons for man caused warming is nigh completely ignored as the whole topic is made about oil and national socialism of wealth distribution. Hmmm....and is it any wonder so many cry foul when this is more about politics, global governance, etc than cleaning up our act?
- Saj
Oh, and how little praise given for the current President's establishment of the largest U.S. national park and the preservation of 70% of the United States of America's coral reefs. Funny, all these years of being told how precious these marine environments are (and having studied marine biology for 5 1/2 years I believe they are). But you'd have thought it was worthless. Had Clinton been the one to do such an environmentally beneficial act we'd still see it in newspapers every week for 4 yrs afterwards.
No, this isn't about science or environmentalism...this has become all about politics!
I am constantly surprised at people who claim others are insane for worrying about environmental damage until something actually happens. How many ever doomsayers and shrieking drama queens the environmental movement attracts, you have to concede that human damage to the environment can have severe - and as in the example above, lethal - consequences to humans. It is not unreasonable to look at the possible sources for catastrophic events and eliminate them before those events occur.
For that matter, we see it as perfectly reasonable to do this in regards to terrorism; we curtail rights, increase security, reduce freedom of movement and increase privacy-invading scrutiny of citizens. We do this because "otherwise people might die". Why should the environmental issue be *any* different?
[Ego]out
Just to clarify from the BBC article:
-"A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.
They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer"...so there does appear to be a correlation between the sunspot number and Earth's climate...
-"Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity. The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes. In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface. This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.
It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive"...everything that I have read about sunpot cycles whether in scientific publications, or writing for a general audience basically agree that the Maunder Minimum to some degree was a cause of the Little Ice Age...
-"Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany. He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years. But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase."...the effect of the last twenty years of sunspot activity versus the complete change in activity over 1,150 years will be relatively minimal...it is likely that given a trend of warming on Earth due to an increase in sunspot activity over 1,150 years warming would not suddenly stop due to a 20 year plateau in the sunspot number..
-"This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels."...Dr. Solanki probably had to put this in the paper to get his research accepted by the conference...
-the conclusion by the BBC writer is complete garbage..."This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth"...okay, the Sun has considerable direct effect on the Earth's climate, as evidenced the fact that we have seasons every year as the earth orbits the Sun...the statement that "mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth" is lame as the verb "attempt" implies a will-full action, and the proposition that mankind is amplifying the warming of the Earth overall is an open question, in spite of elements of the environmentalist community and grant-seeking scientists' efforts to squash debate on the issue.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Inform Al and Madonna and the Police! We need a Solar Aid Concert!
man has yearned to destroy the sun, but I'll do the next best thing: post about it on Slashdot.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
But you sure seem to be.
You're the one with the problem that needs to be explained if you think warming on Earth is provably caused by humanity just because it correlates with a rise in atmospheric CO2.
Why does simply pointing out that correlation is not causation bring out the Great Global Warming Religion faith-based loons? Simply pointing out the the correlation of Earth and Mars warming is an obvious monkey wrench in your faith, isn't it? Is that why you're so prickly?
I am a Libertarian, but a realist, and I'll vote for whoever I like - in the past that has included Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Libertarians. Being a Libertarian does not mean you vote for a party line; you cannot, it should instead help you examine candidates from all parties.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He really means:
I used to ride my bike 6.85 miles to work every day before I got hit by a car and became disabled. I keep the thermostat 65 in (sniffle... achoo!) winter. I make my two remaining kids walk to school, even in the rain (RIP Jimmy). We eat vegetarian (honk! p-u) with the occasional chicken/turkey. I use even less fluourescent lighting now that my wife has divorced me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I noticed that somebody is describing / tagging this as a global warming.
:)
Scientific evidence shows that sunspots have lower temperature than overall.
Then how could they contribute to global warming?
Shouldn't it be ice age instead?
Or maybe the lower temperature is co-produced with a deadlier form of radiation?
This means the E layers of the atmosphere will be charged nicely. That said, HF signals will bounce off that quite handily.
Got to get out the HF QRP gear and see what I can work.
It's not simply a correlation. It is a strong correlation with a carefully studied mechanism which is backed by experimental, computational and theoretical models. We know the absorbtion spectrum of CO2 to great accuracy. We know the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to great accuracy. We have accurate instruments to measure the spectrum of sunlight. We have sattelites in orbit which measure the infrared spectrum of the earth. We have very successful theories explaining blackbody radiation. We have detailed measurements of the atmospheric temperatures. This is not just a case of one set of data being correlated to another set of data. This is a case of physical theory, numerical modelling, observed trends, and carefully measured variables all agreeing. In other words, assuming that man made CO2 is NOT a major contribution to global warming would be very very strange given the amount of evidence in favour of it, and consequentially not acting to reduce it would be a very unwise decision.
I think it's safe to say I'm not the only one calling Gore an alarmist:
0 9-gray-gore_N.htm?POE=NEWISVA
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2007-04-
Thanks a lot, however, for the info on those events. Very sadly, I will actually be packing to move this Saturday and won't be able to attend, but I appreciate you letting me know about it.
Thank you for your kind response. As a side note my 16 year old daughter who is a junior in high school wants to be a climatologist. Why i don't know but she is currently working on a research project on the global warming issue for a professor at the University of Delaware. This professor who also happens to be the "Delaware State Climatologist" and is right on in his views. She works with his grad students on this project and all agree that more accurate data is needed. By the way Joe Biden the governor of Delaware chastisted this professor for his accurate and common sense views.
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Whether humans are the primary cause of global warming or whether it's due to a long-term solar cycle, the fact is that the exact causes are irrelevant right now. Regardless of the cause, the globe is warming, and the effects will be bad for a lot of people unless we can do something about it. Reflecting sunlight (by injecting aerosols into the upper atmosphere or launching many tiny mirrors) should help whether GW is humanity's fault or a natural phenomenon. Dr. Gerold O'Neil had a plan to get humanity into space 30 years ago, but the US dropped the ball. This may be our last chance to build a large permanent infrastructure in space, and we should take it now.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Something important that I think many have missed.
Since the mechanism by which the solar cycles influence earths climate is not known and has really only been recognized in the last 5 years or so, none of the major models of climate change account for solar cycles' effect on the warming of the past 150 years. Instead, in order to get the models to fit the data, all warming due to solar forcing has been assigned to anthrogenic gases. This means that the effect of anthrogenic gasses may have been significantly exaggerated.
The impact of this exaggeration grows the further out the models try to predict. Over the course of a few years or a decade, it might be trivial. Over the course of a century it will be significant. Assuming that just 10%-30% of the warming we have seen in the last 30 years comes from unknown solar forcing knocks global warming predictions out of the catastrophic range and down into the minor annoyance/net benefit range.
Since we lack any means of proving Anthrogenic Global Warming false, we can't really prove it true (K. Popper). Instead, we have fallen back on claiming that the source of change must be Anthrogenic because we can't find any other mechanism. Finding a previously unknown source of warming undermines this logical inference.
He's not asking for someone to point out a successful doomsday prediction...obviously that is silly. How many incorrect predictions have there been? How many times can you cry wolf before you considered a quack?
Wouldn't we have to wait until 2610 to confirm that?
I was afraid the UN was gonna tell me my Ham Radios were gonna quit working! (FYI regular sunspots assist long range radio)
mod me troll...for get me...not coming back
From the article:
n c=1
"Last Updated: Tuesday, 6 July, 2004, 16:07 GMT 17:07 UK"
Come on guys, this is really old news.
If you want something more relevant, perhaps the fact that solar minimum still hasn't happened and the predictions are still being moved further out into the future. Last year at this time, solar minimum was expected in Sept. to Dec. 2006 now Feb. to May 2007 is the latest NOAA prediction.
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/04/06/100/?
1. Smallpox eradication under WHO (a UN body) 2. UN Mandated ceasefire and democratic restoration of Cambodia (since 1991, with severe challenges in 1997) 3. The defence of South Korea from invasion by the North. This was done under UN madate. An oldie but a goodie. I would actually try to find more, there are many, but they don't always grab headlines, or get remembered. Meanwhile most of you disasters and failures Rwanda? Darfur?? are failures of US government policy as much as they are of the UN. Rwanda was a Clinton disaster, Darfur is a Bush disaster.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
The issue has become so politicized that it's ridiculous. So let's drop the global warming concern down a notch - can't we just be concerned about air quality?
Or, for that matter, depending on a politically volatile part of the world for our energy needs? Or have we forgotten about that one already, simply because gas doesn't cost $3.50/gallon yet?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
You complain about Gore being an alarmist while simultaneously griping about air pollution (emissions)? Talk about cognitive dissonance.
The parent is complaining about Gore being alarmist with regard to global warming, not about pollution in general. Believe it or not, global warming is not the only negative effect of pollution (if it is in fact an effect at all), and one can be in favor of reducing pollution (or of reducing fossil fuel usage for other reasons, e.g. geopolitical/economic) even without being particularly concerned about anthropogenic climate change. (Well, to rephrase that, I would be very concerned about anthropogenic climate change, if someone could actually clearly prove that it is in fact happening. As it stands, there's some evidence for it and some that points to other causes, e.g. solar activity.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
I for one welcome or new supernova overlords...
this place is due for a bit of cleanup.
Why not? It's been blamed for everything else.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
mod up. Coming from a religious upbringing, the attitude, atmospherics, and tactics of the Human-Induced-GW crowd sounds to me like dogma.
damaged by dogma
To yourself and the other replies I apologise for the hyperbole, it was unintentional. I will also concede he is the most credible of any of the "skeptics", even though that could be construde as a back-handed comment.
The point I was trying to make is that he does not back his claims against AGW with peer-reviewed publications, he saves those sort of claims for the opinion pages. His papers on such subjects as "the iris effect" are widely disputed.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Instant gratification, turn up the heat and everything should be up to temperature instantly. Sorry, Thermal mass (from the 60's) heats up slowly and only obtains max temperature after a period of time. Physic lesson there somewhere, conservation of momentum/temperature/mass.
"put down", a very nice scientific term, is that reproducible? We were told of the effect of the burning of the Amazon Rain forests, but they are not "fossil fuels", so "we" can burn down the forests, but not coal or oil?
Challenge: within the next 72 hour period, do WITHOUT any product make from or derived from "fossil fuels". That means no cars, trucks, buses, planes. Not plastics, no polyesters.
The main purpose of the UN is to maintain peace; The United States of America start wars.
Clearly, it is patriotic to bash the UN and their anti-war (therefore unAmerican) stance.
You can't take the sky from me...
That I find that many GW skeptics do the former. That is to say they raise legitimate questions of the empirical data. They question the methods used, such as using computer models to "prove" things (a model doesn't prove anything), the data gathered, the understanding of the system and so on. They bring up extremely valid points. However the response always seems to be the same: They are shouted down.
That's fine as far as it goes. And especially when it coincides with erring on the side of caution, it can be useful.
The problem I have with even a lot of the people in this camp is that it often looks like they're not actively developing a more useful conceptual framework for understanding climate change. The purpose of their questions doesn't seem to be to provoke thought or produce illumination.
The purpose simple seems to be to call existing understanding into doubt, and to prevent action based on it.
And then it gets taken to the popular sphere, where it absolutely IS, no question, used by industry shills, political entertainers, and other manipulators of the public mindset.
If the people who are getting shouted down want to be taken seriously, they're going to have to work harder on both fronts: gather better data, produce clearly better models. And they're going to have make the implications of their work clear, so that they don't find themselves being used in the same breath as those who say "Hah! Global warming my navel! I woke up this morning and there was a foot of snow!"
It's a rough road, but it's the real road travelled by those who've been able to fight existing consensus and shift paradigms.
From what I've seen, the skeptics do their best to present very well reasoned criticisms and questions of the accepted knowledge. The defenders are the ones that act unscientific and just shout the other side down.
I'm sure there is simple shouting down going on, as surely as there absolutely people who are living examples of the "Global warming my navel" crowd I mentioned before, and real industry shills.
There are, by the same token, people who are happy to genuinely argue the scientific case. For example, the sun-driven theory of climate change has been around for a while, and its critics aren't simply ignoring it:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180
When the science of the skeptics can be called into question, as it often can be, the shoe should be worn on the other foot.
Tweet, tweet.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey Moron:
The parent post was wrong. Of course, you don't bother to even consider that. So once again a factually incorrect (not to mention full of pathetic spelling errors) post - that would be yours in case you couldn't follow the thought there - gets modded up. Gotta love Slashdot: Where else can the dumbshit masses moderate each other's banal posts up to insane levels?
I am surprised that you haven't received a bigger reaction then you have. I would count it as either being lucky or your position actually made too much sense.
I think it is great that your daughter has taken an interest in the subject and sciences involved in this. I also think it is great that she is getting exposure to real objectiveness along these lines. Too often in this debate I am reminded of this cartoon
Best wishes to you and your daughter and whole family.
News shows in the USare going more toward a dogmatic end of the spectrum for ratings, not because they sold out to corps or the government.
This all started when the government stopped funding news shows, and they need to make money by themselves.
The story of why the US was funding news shows is fascinating. It was a pretty good way to get unbiased news, even about the government.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Do not look at the sun with remaining eye."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
However, if I were to extend your meterology and climatology to astronomy and cosmology, I think you see where some people are coming from when they doubt the climatologist.
Astronomy and meterology are pretty much observational and akin to a naturalist style science (applying basic scientific principles to natural phenomena). Where cosmology and climatology are more of a model verification (big-bang and global warming).
Although you might state that the later has more "predictive" power, I would suggest to you that the correctness of the models are really beyond the understanding of most people, and especially the people that are the most vocal about them.
Just as it does not follow that climatologist are wrong because thy cannot predict the weather next week, doesn't mean they are wrong. It doesn't inherently mean they are right either (to simplify two "not's" don't make a "true"). It just means their model is inaccurate. So just what tells us their model is accurate under a scientific model? There would have to be an experiment (not just a prediction). It may turn out that they are correct in the end, but they aren't applying science as we know it, they currently just have a model that is somewhat predictive in a local observation model (much like the _theory_ of relativity or _theory_ of gravity, they have a _theory_ of global warming).
Regardless of the short term predictive power, it wouldn't be the first time a theory is right or wrong, but having said that, perhaps it is fair to say it might predict things okay (in the way we know relativity predicts things okay), but the model, is just a model, and in the case of relativity, we are pretty sure that it is wrong (at the quantum level), because we have done years of analysis. It doesn't stop us from making atomic clocks and sending space probes out because the theory is wrong, but it doesn't serve the scientific interest to say that it heresey to doubt it's conclusions.
I think the biggest problem with the _theory_ of global warming, is that many people have similar theories that are being bunched up into one PR effort. Nobody takes the time to estimate and publicize the range and validity of their theories instead choosing to jump on the band-wagon. In my opinion, this isn't science, but a big PR effort and it's no doubt to me why many are skeptical (we've seen too many results of PR/bandwagon science to treat any thing like it skeptically).
For me, I've read as much research as I can about this and although I'm not an expert, the PR doesn't seem to be able to be backed up with the facts. The measurements themselves of course are very alarming (deltaT in ocean water, changing precipitation rates), but the theories and models trends that are being used to predict the future don't seem to be analyzed very well and most of the research is built off of other research (nobody is doing very much basic research in the model issues). Most people are just developing refinement of other people's models, plug and chug with the same climactic data and popping out correlation coefficients over a short period of time (in geologic terms). We all know the models have their parameters tweaked to match historical data and often it seems there isn't enough analysis of the model itself to assess its predictive power yet.
I'm not saying this is a nay-sayer, but you (the parent poster) are giving very poor analogies to back your case. Sure you can measure energy and heat, but if your theoretical climatologist puts in heat (analogous to the sun warming up), and how much the energy the lid traps (analagous to green house gasses), but forgets to put in phase-change variables (as an example, I don't think a _real_ climatologist would ever be that stupid), he might interpret the temperature deltas near the phase change from liquid ocean to water vapor very differently, RIGHT?
Which brings me back to the fact that the model parameters to do prediction should always be open to analysis, yet is rarely publicized, just the grim
This is an interesting video.... i suggest you watch it... my daughter says its very accurate and i happen to agree with her. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022 478442170&q=The+Great+Climate+Swindle&hl=en
sorry if its not in the right format ... i wish SD would allow for embedded vids.. maybe they do but i can't figure it out.
Enjoy
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
I find all of this very amusing, and here's why. Since Al Gore's film came out, any and all over hyped up environmentally concerned college student began whoring out the idea that we were whoring out our world. So we all play it safe, and condemn the Hummers and their offspring H2's and 3's because they are the reason our world will melt away in an emission of polluted filth, all the while we're driving VW bugs because we're eco-friendly. And now, all of a sudden in the wink of an eye, we may have realized, the sun could possibly be to blame for some of this mishegas. I am not aware if our green house gasses are capable of traveling 93,000,000 miles to the Sun and effect it in this way, but if it is possible please tell me that our hypocritical leftists are still correct in accusing everyone else but them. If not, I say lets keep on lowering rates and improving our chances at a future, but relax just a bit when you realize, if we all die from frying in the heat of an overreactive sun, we might as well go out in the comfort and style of an H3.
Stu- Great comments. Don't let comments from the /. subculture get you down. There's plenty of us here that share your views.
Heard any good sigs lately?
Yeah. If it was Global Warming by Earth and Man causes, that would be doable with hybrid engines being slowly introduced to showroom floors. However, if the Sun is involved -as it surely is since Mars is also being similarly fried without the presence of Man- then the reaction of humans needs to PEAK, NOT STOP > http://www.newpath4.com/explainingBadwaterpdf.pdf (4-page discussion, development of 3 zero emissions engines).
But with this new information concerning solar power acceleration the reaction has been the OPPOSITE of that. Tearing down of the Gore statue in Iraq doesn't help a thing. It's grandstanding. Having Man's influence PLUS the Sun roasting us = we need to stop ALL engine emissions and factory emissions immediately. Ugh, meaning that Al Gore is more right than even Al Gore knows. Here's some of my best links > http://www.newpath4.com/homepagebiblegifs.htm > hmm. I forgot to put SlashDot on it. Rats. I'll fix that soon.
I would like to make a Public statement here today. Since my first 3 engines (lightning induction-electricity, air+steam engine, Home power Millenial Dawn) have not been accepted, my last #4 best engine -not on the pdf file- has been put in the hands of the Watchtower Society for safekeeping as my health is precarious. When the rapids get rough you'll have to ask them for it. You might wonder why them. Well, I put my my original Millenial Dawn papers in a Wachovia bank box for leverage to get a loan from them & they have chosen to sit at the back of the class, avoid the teacher's questions and do nothing. Since that accomplished nadamente, this alternate form of intellectual property protection was chosen. Push comes to shove, the bank would sit out the problem just as they are doing now. When you guys realize how hot the fire really is, contact the Watchtower Society, not a bank. The plans are in their temple vault.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
The first point I want to make is that global warming is directly related to the increase in solar flares. Given the problem that the sun hasn't allowed earth to cool down like normal this past 60 years, its no wonder the planet surface is warming. We know this because all of the inner planets have rising temperatures on a scale similar to our own planet, but proportionate to the distance to the sun. The science behind the "man-made global warming" goes into minute details how man is enhancing this natural increase in globally rising temperatures. But it still is known that the actual increase in the temperatures was going to happen. The scientists just insist that it is happening faster than they anticipated. And I've yet to see where the sun's natural increase in activity would not have caused the exact same problems that man is "enhancing", because these were going to happen regardless of man's help. Some people do not understand that the sun is the cause of global warming and think we can just shut down the warming. This is hardly the case.
OT - Sun spots are cool spots only because of their location. Sun spots form on sharp outcrops of the sun's mass - solar flares are eruptions protruding from the sun's surface - which is consistent with what we know about thermodynamics on a smaller scale. Sharp pointed masses shed heat much fast than blunt masses, but this is generally true only when talking about either conduction or convection. (Radiation behaves differently.) Until they know the reason behind the cooling effects we won't know the true tally of man's enhancements related to global warming.
Because if you don't WANT to believe that man-made climate change is happening and that something can be done about it, you'll hear an argument and decide that isn't compelling.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
There is this thing called Specialization...
We have multiple sciences which come into the GW theories and they must collaborate and build upon each other to get anywhere at all. The rest of us listen to them or just use the technology which results from others listening to them. Even when they are "wrong" many times they were close enough for results. (E=mc**)
The place for laymen is trying to figure out credibility not the field of expertise. I suspect one PR tactic is exactly this- fool people into trying to think on par with the experts by using oversimplification and/or misinformation (which are easily distorted) so then conclusions can be guided. Similar to making somebody think it was their idea.
I know how researchers manage to circumvent this "censorship" - researchers are not stupid (well some don't learn.) Grant writing is a unique kind of ass kissing. Theories can be attacked without a car bomb approach. A direct assault on a heavily built-up theory always meets with great resistance and looks arrogant as well. Industry shrills love to do largely laymen-level attacks citing a few real bits which may or may not be applied in context. Even if NOT published, if they are even remotely legit they post their rejected papers somewhere. The shrills have no papers just layman-level position papers and out write political hit-pieces.
A academic journals don't accept layman summaries even if they agree with it (that junk is for Popular Science.)
One thing I often see mentioned is the grant money. A lot of money was to determine global warming, a lot was to determine if we impact it. The people who determine if it happened are DONE. A lot say humans caused it and since a global consensus is now building on that issue, funding for further proof will diminish.
The people doing it for the money will see their cash cow leaving and have to then employ FUD to keep the money coming in (and they can't just work slowly because then other people will make them look bad and they lose funding that way.)
So, if it is true and is just a large money grabbing cabal of academics THEN we shall see them starting to change sides on the debate and argue for the need for more funding so we can prove humans are the cause of GW. If we don't see that, then we know that wasn't their main motive. Few (none?) are getting rich and retiring on this stuff... They will have to work on other research and to some extent their prestige from this stuff will impact their ability to secure funding when overall funding in the area is in decline.
I see no sign of 'vast' corruption or conspiracy or any cabal - it would have to be the biggest one in the history of science. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons to stop O.I.L.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news