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Milky Way's Spiral Arms Could Not Have Caused Climate Change
KentuckyFC writes "One of the puzzles of Earth's climate history is an apparent 140-million-year cycle in the climate record. Various astronomers think this can be explained by the passage of the Sun through the spiral arms of the Milky Way, which also seems to have had a period of about 140 million years. The thinking is that in regions of denser star populations, supernovas would have been more common, bathing the Earth in cosmic rays more often. These cosmic rays would then have seeded the formation of clouds that cool the planet. But in recent years, astronomers have mapped out the structure of the galaxy in much more detail. And now a pair of US astronomers have reanalyzed this climate change idea in light of the new evidence. Their conclusion is that the climate change cycle cannot possibly have coincided with the movement of the Sun through the spiral arms. So whatever caused the 140-million-year climate change cycle on Earth, it wasn't the Sun's passage through the galaxy."
Bummer how the latest economic crunch sent all the "green" masturbators back to their basements.
Yeah, look at them hiding in their basements.
So what? Heart disease is more responsible for human deaths than murder, and yet we still take action against murderers.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Because now the political "we don't cause GW" arguments will begin, and the bickering....
It shouldn't even be about global warming. It should be about national security. If you have no renewable resources, and rely on other (enemy) nations to provide that stuff to you and your way of life, you have a severe problem.
Let's get off oil if for nothing else, to bankrupt every middle eastern country out there. We won't bother maintaining a presence there if there's nothing to take advantage of.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
This is the very technical (and long-winded) explanation for something along the lines of "We are telling you, Miss Daisy, that your cat was not put into that tree by giant ninja robots from outer space."
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
And normal cell proliferation causes most cancers, but smoking is still a bad idea.
Yes, but your analogies suck.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
They're jumping to conclusions. It will be 140 million years before we have enough data to decide.
They've eliminated one pattern. They don't know if there might be something else, such as moving through the parts where the grues are. The grues move around, and the astronomers haven't spotted where they tend to be.
It must be the unicorns fault!
I mean... it cant be us. Right?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
My theory is that the Decepticons are responsible.
(Sorry, but my brain is still recovering from the 2.5-hour Mighty Transformin' Power Rangers movie I sat through as a favor for my friend who wanted to see it. The dramatic parts made me laugh, the action scenes nearly put me sleep, and the comedy bits made me wish my phone would ring.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I have a hunch that the scientist that first theorized this prefaced it with "Good news, everyone!"
Anybody want my mod points?
Both Shaviv's and Melott's papers are based upon models of the Milky Way that are built from observations taken from a single point in the universe, and made during a negligible time frame. This model is then kept valid and unchanged for a timeframe of about 1.000.000.000 years, neglecting for example errors in measuring accelerations of the galaxy and of the solar system, the 3D structure of the galaxy, dark matter influence (and existence...) on the motion of the galaxy, etc. Still too much unknowns before reaching a definite answer, isn't it ?!?
Neither are false analogies, they are useful examples. His illustrates the principle that just because something is not the top effect it is still worth correcting because if left unchecked it could be disastrous, yours demonstrates the principle that some problems are small and local enough that they don't matter. Both are useful, they just apply to different situations. Unlike hippos, you can't avoid the global climate. Unlike murder, you can't even avoid it by avoiding civilization. Human post-industrial emissions falls in the category of things worth addressing even if it isn't the biggest threat, in my opinion.
Though to get back to non-analogies again research shows that solar variance only accounts for ~30% of the measured change. Yeah believe it or not climatologists remembered to check into the effect of the sun even before trolls piped up to remind them of its existence. Amazing, I know. They're so busy raking in those lucrative global warming bucks and shopping for sports cars and maintaining the charade that is global warming, it's amazing they can remember anything about the environment. Meanwhile, the paupers in the oil industry plead for sanity, trying to find the few climatologists honest enough to work for nothing on behalf of the truth.
That last paragraph had nothing to do with your post, btw. The "It's the sun, fools!" line is still a good troll, enough that I bit several comment generations later. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
Ok once more for those people playing along in Rio Linda
Any change in the earths temperature, heat wave or ice age, is cause by that great big ball of gas 93 million miles away it's a little thing we like to call the SUN!
A lot of the invalidations of these spaced theories tend to focus on the effects of cloud formation by cosmic rays, but are they so sure that these are the only effects that space could have? Space is pretty big, and the earth is pretty complex, and I would be willing to bet that there's going to be something out there in space, besides the obvious asteroid, that screws us.
This is my sig.
The first 300 degrees Kelvin due to the sun might be all well and good, but when you add 20 degrees more by man-made causes you get big problems.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I'm pretty sure people have shot aggressive or troublesome hippos in the past. We've generally taken as much action as was needed against any big animal species to keep it in line. Unless you really mean to claim that anything short of total extinction doesn't count as taking action, yes, your analogy is false, but in a way that means you are asserting Mr. Slippery's analogy is true.
(We take some actions both against murderers and against heart disease. We generally catch a higher percentage of murderers than we do causes of heart disease, but we manage some reduction in both. We could spend less money on stopping murder so as to free up more for use against heart disease, but we don't have compelling proof we should change as a whole culture. We may not be getting the balance just right, but both actions are doing some good. Shifting focus is among our options, as well as choosing inaction. The choice of what to do is complex, with several alternatives. Our confidence we know the best path should be low and we should reevaluate the mix of actions and resource commitments frequently.)
(We can't do much if anything about the sun's contribution to global warming. We can do something about our own contribution. We can manage some reduction in only one source of the problem. In this case, spending less on fixing man made causes of global warming would not free up resources to deal with the sun's contribution, so we have even less reason to think we should stop fighting man made global warming than to think we should do less about murder. The sole action we can take is doing some good. Shifting focus to fight the sun is not an option, and so choosing inaction is the only alternative apparent. The choice of what to do is therefore simpler, with fewer alternatives. Our confidence we know the best path should actually be higher than in the murder/heart disease analogy case, as there are these fewer alternatives. We should stick to the plan of doing what we can about one of the two causes with high confidence unless something happens to give us more options and make the choice more complex.)
Now if you disagree that we are doing any good in some or all of those cases, go ahead, but that doesn't shoot Mr. Slippery's analogy down. If you think it's not fair to compare spending resources on two causes of death directly without including all the other things we also have to spend resources on, by all means make that point, but then that point goes for global warming and all those other things too, and you still haven't shot Slip's analogy down.
Who is John Cabal?
It was always expected to narrowly pass in the Democratic-dominated House.
Link again if it passes in the Democratic-dominated Senate (in which it is expected to have a much more difficult time).
Also, Congress became overwhelmingly Democratic in a knee-jerk reaction to the no-longer-popular Bush Administration - had a more moderate Republican been president, I posit that the Democrats would not have had such an overwhelming victory in 2008 and this bill would face much more opposition in both houses of Congress.
I'd argue anyway that the majority of our Congressional representatives (regardless of party) are worthy of the moniker 'basement dweller.'
-Taylor
You mean like that time that big ball of burning gas shot down and all dinosaurs died? Or did it just burn colder for a while back then?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Maybe 140 million years is the limit of the cosmic time register. When the clock resets, the climate control system doesn't work properly for a bit until they patch it.
So what? Hippos are responsible for fewer human deaths than heart disease, but we don't take action against hippopotamuses.
Maybe you don't.
Your totally going to get your canoe bitten in half with that attitude.
In 1978 is was suggested that a galactic density wave, rather than passage through the arms, was responsible for the 140 My events. This wave, with a period 1/2 that of galactic rotation, eminates from the galactic core. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k1t6v868227t7403/
The solar system doesn't just orbit the galaxy. It oscillates up and down through the galactic plane with a period of 88 +/- 5 My. This too has been suggested as being involved in extinctions, since the galactic plane is denser than the regions outside it.
I'm glad they got a better galactic map, and I'm sure it shows what they say. But the arms themselves aren't the only things hypothesized to be involved.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Another 2 degrees. 2. Not 20.
the sun doesn't move through the spiral arms, the spiral arms move past the sun.
It's just a density wave.
We have 33C from the greenhouse gasses already and another 2C we're adding AGAIN on top of that.
And it would be true, too, if we added 20C we would be in serious trouble.
Looks like all the dust and emission particles are warming the sea surface temperatures. On our planet warmer water moves to the poles ( Quantum Information on a sphere in space moves to the poles). Its all fine and dandy until the arctic ocean fills with warm water and starts to evaporate into clouds. If the arctic is ice free in the winter the northern hemisphere will be measuring snow depth in kilometers instead of inches. Prior glacial maximums could have been caused by our planet moving through a dust cloud.
the single point WE'RE SITTING ON!!!
So the one with more data on is more likely to be correct, yes? Else more data is, you say, likely to make it incorrect. Which is daft.
Shit you really cannot handle it being man's fault, can you.
ANYTHING else, just not that.
Why?
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Ah, what crap through yonder orifice breaks...
Why demand from the government that they let you deed lots of your money to your kids on death? That's long term thinking. Your kid could have his throat cut before he gets it.
Why invest for your retirement? That's long-term thinking.
Why look after your heart? That's long-term thinking.
Why worry about copyright expiring in 50 years and demand it last 95? That's long-term thinking.
The actual cause of global warming, is a planet in the solar system that Nasa warned us about in 1983 (Washington Post) but was quickly repressed by the Government. Since then, the planet has progressed in it's sling orbit through our solar system. Currently, it resides just north of the Sun's south pole near the ecliptic. It's a magnetic brown dwarf with unusual moon swirls in 2 "tails", which is why ancient cultures depicted it as a winged planet. It's a magnetic powerhouse, which is why the Sun is uncharacteristically sunspot/activity quiet now -- the interloping planet has it's north pole pointing at the sun. The magma of the Earth is very responsive to a magnetic field; it roils due to the magnetic influence of this planet causing the Earth's crust to heat up -- hence, Global Warming. That simple. Don't look for the evidence of this in normal news channels, they are not allowed to report on this, neither are the astronauts or the astronomical observatories. Crow.
The actual cause of global warming, is a planet in the solar system that Nasa warned us about in 1983 (Washington Post) the news of which was quickly repressed by the U.S. Government. Since then, the planet has progressed in it's sling orbit through our solar system. Currently, it resides just north of the Sun's south pole near the ecliptic. It's a magnetic brown dwarf with unusual moon swirls in 2 "tails", which is why ancient cultures depicted it as a winged planet. It's a magnetic powerhouse, which is why the Sun is uncharacteristically sunspot/activity quiet now -- the interloping planet has it's south pole pointing at the sun. The magma of the Earth is very responsive to a magnetic field, ...it roils due to the magnetic influence of this planet causing the Earth's crust to heat up -- hence, Global Warming. That simple.
Don't look for the evidence of this in normal news channels, they are not allowed to report on this, neither are the astronauts or the astronomical observatories.
Crow.
Something you may be interested in, though water vapor makes the calculation much more complex so this is for Venus.
Derivation:
The adiabatic lapse rate = dT/dz = -Mg/R*(y-1)/y = ~7.82K/km (I was lazy and used 100% CO2 for this, also y = gamma) which isn't too far off from the ALR calculated from measurements using least squares = ~7.74K/km.
T(z) = Tsurface - ALR*z, by definition (~= 735 - 7.82z).
The barometric equation is P = Psurface*e^(-Mgz/RT).
Solving for z = -RT/Mg*ln(P/Psurface),
and plugging into T(z), we get T(P) = Tsurface - (y-1)/y*Mg/R*RT/Mg*ln(Psurface/P)
= T = Tsurface - (y-1)/y*T*ln(Psurface/P),
rearranging, T(P)*(1+(y-1)/y*(ln(Psurface)-ln(P))) = Tsurface
Thereforce T(P) = Tsurface/(1+(y-1)/y*(ln(Psurface)-ln(P)))
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
But it vexes me off that we are so focused on CO2. Considering there are a whole plethora of things we are dumping into the ecosystem that have measurable health effects now. Maybe we should be worried about industrial byproducts causing heavy metal toxicity. Mercury in the fish anyone? Thats been a known problem for ages. Industrial run-off causing red tides? While I'm sure dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere isn't good in the long term, your argumen doesn't hold weight with me because if we are going to focus on human caused problems there are more immediate concerns than CO2 output.