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Our Lazy Solar Dynamo — Hello Dalton Minimum?
tetrahedrassface writes "Solar maximum is supposed to be occurring, and everything from satellite communications to your toaster or radio could be affected. The only problem is that this just isn't happening, and NASA continues to revise downward the original prediction. In fact, the new forecast for Solar Cycle 24 is a lot smaller, and is now pegged at almost 40% of what was previously predicted. Recently, two scientists at the National Solar Observatory have followed the lead of a prominent Russian scientist, who almost five years ago forecast a dearth of sunspots and the subsequent cooling of Earth for the next several cycles. With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum, or worse still, yet another Maunder?"
I'll just up my CO2 emissions by a couple of tons. I haven't been using my fireplace nearly enough lately.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
QUICK! Start spilling out greenhouse gasses to save us from global cooling.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
"Worse still"? Can you please go into detail about the downside of an extended solar minimum?
Fans of data---as opposed to ideology-driven cherry-picking and quibbling---can verify (via daily satellite updates!) that far-north global warming is still accelerating. The relevant site is Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis.
Heck, Hudson Bay in Canada *still* hasn't frozen over ... that *never* happens.
I'm sure Al will set you straight!
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
The globe is warming!
;-)
I mean cooling.
I mean "climate changing".
(clings to the Book of Al Gore and whimpers)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Britain/Northern Europe does not owe its climate status to spot heating. Britain is usually warmer than it should be given its northern position due to the gulf stream. The oceans serve as blocks to cold air from up north coming south. There are incredible global circulation systems which see warm air rise in the mid-latitudes tot he upper atmosphere then cool and return to the ground at the poles. This is the cause of the cold winds that come down from the north. These winds find it easier to come south over land, which cools more easily than water which retains heat better, has its own top/bottom circulation as well as global circulation. Normally the warm currents keep the cold air away.
Global Warming means global warming. The oceans make 3/4 of the surface area to 4' cooling of the land is easily offset by 2' warming of the ocean. 4 * 1/4 = 1 is less than 2 * 3/4 = 1.5. Do not take any specific location changes to mean global stuff.
What global warming does mean is more intense weather systems. Do not go jumping onto local cooling/warming like Europes/US east coast and claim it is getting colder. You need to look at the whole globe. Not just the areas man is in.
Here are the ideas that are considered heretical by the true believers in global warming:
1) The sun is the biggest driver of the Earth's Climate
2) There is already more than enough CO2 for a 'full' greenhouse effect so more will not make it 'worse.'
3) The Earth has been cooling since 2007.
4) Current computer models of the Earth's long-term climate are not necessarily correct.
There are others, of course, but you get the idea. Never say any of the above in the presence of believers.
give up burning oil.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
And it's cold in Scandinavia. But is it colder on earth in average for this time of year?
Isn't this just about winds from the arctic blowing over us this year and warmer winds from the Atlantic blowing further south than usual? At least that's how some graphic on the telly was explaining the current harsh winter.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Weather Underground indicates the temps are within Historical norms. Maybe something else driving the sea ice conditions? Geothermal energy?
1. Even if the Sun were to enter a Grand Minimum it would only offset warming for a few decades. And when the minimum ended, all that warming would come rushing right back.
2. 2010 is on track to be the warmest year ever in modern history. Think about that. The Sun is in the deepest minimum in around a century, scarcely a sunspot to be seen and we are still breaking the all time record for warmth globally.
3. It may be cold in England. But it is way above normal in Greenland. What part of Global don't you understand? Local weather has little to nothing to do with global climate.
Fans of data---as opposed to ideology-driven cherry-picking and quibbling---can verify (via daily satellite updates!) that far-north global warming is still accelerating. The relevant site is Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis
Most people strongly tend to cherry-pick and then draw conclusions from it - yet when it involves an above-average hot summer almost no one concerned about global warming complains because it lines up with their ideology. Well, sauce for the goose... you better hope the Russian is wrong.
It is dumb to draw conclusions based on one winter on one relatively tiny section of the globe. Plus local influences and normal variability often drown out the longer-term signal. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, our mid-to-late winter and (especially) spring weather are strongly influenced by the ENSO ("El Niño"). So far we've been having a colder than normal couple of months, and everyone's blaming the current La Niña - but it's probably not a significant factor given the time of year. Nor is it likely the dearth of sunspots - we just happen to be having a cooler-than-normal late fall and early winter. It happens. If February onward are cooler and wetter than normal, then we can talk.
#DeleteChrome
TFS contains at least two major errors:
1) according to the linked wik entry on the Dalton Minimum, "Recent papers have suggested that a rise in volcanism was largely responsible for the cooling trend." I.e., not a decrease in solar activity.
2) Local climate != global climate. Many models expect that even as global temperatures rise, England will cool, due to shifts in the Gulf Stream.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What I find depressing are the amount of people that dismiss the science, because they don't like Al Gore as a politician. It's intellectually lazy and dishonest.
Religious freaks will go crazy if they interpret that the lower sun activity is there to compensate human global warming, as a sign of some god trying to fix our mistakes here. Add that to the near 2012, and be ready for massive amount of people in the streets ready for the rapture.
It is dumb to draw conclusions based on one winter on one relatively tiny section of the globe.
Note: If it's not clear, I was referring to the cold British winter mentioned in the original submission.
#DeleteChrome
Those sunspots also charge our ionosphere. The dearth of spots means less bounce off of the F layer and less signal propagation.
(This comment only relevant to the 5 or so amateur radio ops who read /.)
We are experiencing a very warm winter without snow, when usually we have a cold winter with a significant amount of snow due to the Labrador current. Our current climate opposite of Britain and the rest of North America, where normally we have their current climates and they have ours. 6 years ago we had a very cold winter and the most snow since 1850, and each year followed suit until last year. Before that we had a short period of winters without snow, which was exactly as it is now. And before that (my childhood) we had a significant amount snow all throughout. I don't remember anything before that. My point being, to any Wikipedia scientists, there simply is a cycle of climates which is directly affected by the temperature of the earth, which cycles itself. The jet stream would be the most significant factor influencing our climates. It is of my belief that the current variances in weather are due to the reversal of polarization of our magnetic poles. In the recent years, the magnetic north pole has been moving around in much greater distances, which anyone reading /. should know.
But at least I know this is all pure speculation, unlike most other people who constantly talk in absolutes and yet have no definitive proof.
There were nearly no sunspots for 2 years, 2007-9 and that easily confirms we will have real hard couple of winters a bit later down the road. And then a remission of sunspots AGAIN just recently makes it look like we are "bouncing down" the activity curve, typical of a "cycle".
Every time (since Galileo's time 1600) when we have had a minimal or near zero sunspot activity, there have been colder winters, freezing and storms. Hence we have about 400 years of well documented sunspot activity with weather records to verify what happened.
It is amazing to me that out "news anchors", meaning writers in the "mainstream media" are so ill-educated that they can not do simple reading up on what the effects are of minimal sunspot activity.
Instead "news anchors" and writers in the media spout political lines (Al Gore and global warming crowd), instead of pointing out specific facts and what those measureable facts mean short term (cold weather a year or so later) and what it could mean longer term.
The last time I spoke with a person who ran the solar observations from the radio telescopes in the Mojave Desert, he noted they still were not able to predict longer term events as mentioned (Maunder or Dalton type events).
Why are these events hugely important? I don't hear the news researcher/writers mentioning this. Sweden, Denmark and France lost 10% of their population to starvation/freezing in the Maunder minimum and Finland lost about 30%. That is the equivalent of losses in a major world war or WORSE.
You've destroyed the sun.
1) The sun is the biggest driver of the Earth's Climate
This is like saying the Earth is the biggest driver of the Earth's climate. It's an essentially meaningless statement.
2) There is already more than enough CO2 for a 'full' greenhouse effect so more will not make it 'worse.'
You are simply lying with this one. A 'full' greenhouse effect would mean that 100% of heat is retained. That's impossible, but you can look at worlds where heat retention is in the 99% range, such as Venus.
3) The Earth has been cooling since 2007.
Bull shit. Even if it was true, climate is not weather, the same way macroeconomics is not family household planning. Climate change is measured across decades, not years.
4) Current computer models of the Earth's long-term climate are not necessarily correct.
This is irrelevant to historical analysis, which shows a clear warming trend across decades. But unlike yourself, scientists do endeavor to be honest, and refine their model as new data is available. Most excess heat is getting dumped into the oceans.
There are others, of course, but you get the idea. Never say any of the above in the presence of believers.
Because you'll get called out for being the liar that you are.
Adult Role Playing Forum
What really settles it for me is this chart here
http://www.pfeg.noaa.gov/research/climatemarine/cmfclimate/cmfcc2.html
Oceans occupy most of our globe, and they are a good indication of global temperature, since they also trap a good deal of our surface heat. Ocean temperatures are rising. Why are they rising? That much is in debate.
Citation please.
Its my understanding it froze over enough in early December (on cue) so that the polar bears could go roaming around and eat some tasty baby seals.
Your BS claims from the site you quoted is dated 4 weeks ago. And their observations on Dec. 6th where based on November data.
The Hudson Bay froze the same week that article was posted, ON CUE. Meaning, thats about the time it freezes over every year.
With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum
Why yes, it makes perfect sense to conclude things about decadal-scale global climate trends based on a month's data from 0.05% of the Earth's surface area!
For a global view of the temperature anomaly (vs. a 1951-1980 base period), see this GISS surface temperature analysis (that's for November; December data not available yet). So yes, there's a -1 deg C anomaly in Britain, counterbalanced by huge +4 to +10 deg C anomalies across northern Asia and the Arctic.
For a look at the longer-term trends, try this map of annual average temperatures for the past ten years vs. the same base period. Guess what? It's getting warmer, despite declining solar activity.
The GISS map generator is a great tool for exploring these variations.
that far-north global warming is still accelerating
Isn't it cherry-picking to point specifically to "far-north global warming", when global warming is supposed to be, er... global?
you self-important jackass.
Just to be clear, the Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis site summarizes a 31-year record of satellite data, covering the whole of the Arctic.
Yes, AGW is real ... yes, it's accelerating ... yes, it's expected to show up first and strongest in the Arctic, then throughout the globe ... yes, the theory and data are in solid agreement ... yes, there's a scientific consensus on this point.
I tend to find people more credible when they're willing to put their own money on the line. 2010 looks like the warmest year on record.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
From TFwA:
Curiously, the duration of the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) coincides very closely with the reign of King Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), known as the Sun King.
The conclusion is obvious. It's France's fault! Now, pass me a mess of those Freedom Fries.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It may be the coldest winter ever in the UK, but here in Quebec, Canada, we've just had our second day in a row with an average temperature of about -1 degree celsius. The warmth of the sun hitting cars was enough to remove any trace of snow and ice that had been building up since last month.
Well darn. I guess I can hold off on putting up that tri-bander for another seven years.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
source of quote You can say what you want about Corbyn but his predictions have recently been way way better than the UK Met Office. In fact, the BBC is more than somewhat upset with the badness of the Met Office forecasts. BBC unhappy with Met Office
Fans of data---as opposed to ideology-driven cherry-picking and quibbling---can verify (via daily satellite updates!) that far-north global warming is still accelerating.
Fans of non-cherry picked data realize that a tiny segment of time looking at sea ice tells us nothing about what is part of a normal cycle for the climate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you look around, they're claiming it's the 'worst winter' since about 1918. An eyelash of time, a blink of the eye, a tiny diatom in the geological record.
Climate change is really about changes over thousands of years, not less than hundreds. It makes it hard to appreciate especially in our short span media. But it's no less true.
Everybody shut up and watch for a couple more decades.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The other day, a town in Greenland (forgot the name) was 2 degrees warmer than St Louis, MO. Clearly a case of global cooling, for some definition of "global."
thegodmovie.com - watch it
MILANKOVICH HERE.
What the hell are you idiots doing arguing about this nonsense when 100,000 years of ice core data already proved me right and every last one of you biased fools wrong?
It's been known for decades we are supposed to be headed into a cooling cycle and likely the next ice age. Global warming has moderated it somewhat but it's going to happen eventually and that is a fact. It looks likely that it's already started. And no we don't have sunspot records going back 20,000+ plus years so the sun's involvement is unknown but an extended solar minimum is a likely cause. Hey let's burn more fossil fuels. Brilliant! Who needs the ocean. What does that have to do with it? Ocean acidification. Too much CO2 means a dead ocean. Also more acid rain which is killing off the forests. The idea that we can somehow terraform our way out of a new ice age is insanity. The natural state of the world is an ice age, we're in an interglacerial period. Short periods of warming between extended cooling. We need to stop burning fossil fuels because they are toxic to the environment and the coral reefs and fish are already dying and it will get radically worse no matter what we do. Now how does any of this have anything to do with Al Gore? Let's have some intelligent discussion and not waste time and energy trolling Al Gore.
as I am not trained in the language that paper is in, can i get cliff notes somewhere in english?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Here you go:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/17/russian_data_cherrypicked_says_sceptic/
I have read the paper itself. It is extremely well written with excellent statistical analysis and so far there has been NO answer from the so called "not another old university in cambridge" which did most of the analysis quoted and re-quoted in AGW papers.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
If anyone knows anything about sunspots, it's Ken -- http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070032658_2007033016.pdf.
Bull [noaa.gov] shit [noaa.gov]
Yes, you Warmers do certainly like to trot out those pages! I see them every time someone questions the validity of your little cult. You were frothing so much I think you forgot you linked twice there to the same thing - or was it your first lie, pretending you had more sources than you really do. You don't mind being called a liar right? After all you brought up the notion it was proper to do so in debate. I see something you got wrong, therefore the correct term to call it out is "liar".
So since you're leaning so heavily on that one article for data, let's consider what it means.
Did you ever stop to think what those graphs are showing temperatures as being warmer than? They are showing a warming in relation from 1961-1971 on (depending on the graph). Note that's exactly the period when things were getting pretty cold and people were scared about another ice age. (that article is from 1974)
Consider this segment:
when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades
OK, so we're at some kind of local minimum there. And then from there it starts rising again, until it crests over where it was. But that means that saying the lasts years average temperatures is warming so drastically when comparing against this large period of time where we considered it to be much colder, is misleading at best because you have a large period of artificially cool temperatures added into the comparison pool.
Let's take NASA again, a different link, talking about November 2010 being the warmest on record.
Scary stuff! Except now we have veered off what you called a lie, that it has been cooling in recent years. Let's return there. Even this NASA article says:
there is a good chance that 2010 as a whole will be the warmest year in the GISS analysis. Even if the December global temperature anomaly is unusually cool, 2010 will at least be in a statistical tie with 2005
Hey, guess what that implies. It's saying that between 2005 and now, temperatures have been cooler than in 2005.
So it really doesn't seem like he was lying at all now, does it? You just don't want to believe it, because it conflicts with your dogma of a constant and unrelenting rise in temperature that will burn us with earthly hellfire!
As for the "clear warming trend across decades", I find it hard to get excited with such a tiny little window of study, and the new understanding that C02 can only marginally raise temperatures (a revision from five degrees to two degrees). If there's no runaway greenhouse effect, there's not nearly the cause for Alarm you Warmists are trying to instil. And if they were wrong by so huge a margin about how much CO2 would cause temperatures to rise, well then you wonder about other predictions like acidity level and so forth...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone explored the possibility of associations between solar activity and volcanic activity? Is it possible that, say, the amount of neutrinos hitting the Earth can influence the mantle?
The point is that the Arctic ocean is over 50 times the area of Britain, so if Britain is cooler than usual but the Arctic is warmer than usual, that is very much a net warming. Here is a map of global temperature anomalies. You can see that there is a small area of negative anomalies over Britain, and another one over Scandinavia, but there is a MUCH larger and MUCH more intense positive anomaly over the Arctic, Asia, and Siberia. (Note that the map is not an equal-area projection, so be careful when looking at it.)
So in other words, the people crowing about the cold winter in Britain are the ones doing the cherry-picking (although perhaps understandably so, if they are British), because they managed to select one of about 4 or 5 countries with significantly lower temperatures than normal, compared to the many dozens (including all of Asia and Africa) with higher temperatures than normal.
Every single square inch of earth must increase in temperature, otherwise global warning is "denied", huh?
Why should we care what the BBC thinks? I want to know MTV's opinion.
for correcting themselves, is rather low, don't you think?
It's especially difficult when it becomes clear that measuring extant arctic sea ice, for example, is no longer a cut and dried calculation involving coverage, but also the density of the ice, and thickness. So in that case the error becomes neither intentional nor accidental, but rather one of interpreting the data - but the fact that arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing has not changed.
Regarding Climate versus Weather, it's New Years Eve in Minnesota, and it's raining. It's been known for a long time that the same system that cooled Minnesota warmed Europe.
So Europe cools while the American midwest warms.
Climate is a vastly interconnected and complex system. Those who recognize the fact that global warming is occurring also recognize this fact. 'Skeptics' will happily latch on to individual errors, localized (either temporally or physically) anomalies, and so on, and ignore the greater picture as it suits them.
And of course you can't only rely on one source. The OP fell into that trap because one year in the period was in fact cooler than before. A one year anomaly does not make a trend, however, and 2010 will most likely be yet another warmest year on record.
Adult Role Playing Forum
The Kuroshio Current, which flows toward the North American western coast, is much weaker than the Gulf Stream, yet temperatures are not much cooler on the North American western coast than in Western Europe at the same latitude. For instance, annual mean temperatures:
Los Angeles (34.1 N): 18.9 C, Jan mean 14.6 C
San Francisco (37.8 N): 13.9 C, Jan mean 10.6 C
Portland (45.6 N): 12.0 C, Jan mean 4.2 C
Seattle (47.5 N): 11.1 C, Jan mean 4.5 C
Vancouver (49.2 N): 9.9 C, Jan mean 3.0 C
Ketchikan (55.3 N): 7.3 C, Jan mean 0.9 C
Casablanca (33.6 N): 17.4 C, Jan mean 12.8 C
Lisbon (38.7 N): 16.8 C, Jan mean 11.4 C
Bordeaux (44.8 N): 12.8 C, Jan mean 5.9 C
Paris (49.0 N): 10.8 C, Jan mean 3.5 C
London (51.2 N): 9.6 C, Jan mean 3.5 C
Edinburgh (56.0 N): 8.5 C, Jan mean 3.2 C
It's warm just because it's downwind from the ocean. Places on the east sides of continents are much colder:
Charleston (32.8 N): 19.0 C, Jan mean 9.1 C
Washington (38.9 N): 14.5 C, Jan mean 1.4 C
Boston (42.3 N): 10.7 C, Jan mean -1.9 C
St. John's (47.6 N): 4.7 C, Jan mean -4.3 C
Goose Bay (53.3 N): -0.3 C, Jan mean -17.3 C
Shanghai (31.2 N): 15.8 C, Jan mean 3.7 C
Tokyo (35.7 N): 15.6 C, Jan mean 5.2 C
Sapporo (43.0 N): 8.2 C, Jan mean -4.6 C
Wakkanai (45.4 N): 6.4 C, Jan mean -5.5 C
Nikolayevsk-na-Amure (53.2 N): -2.1 C, Jan mean -23.2 C
There aren't vast expanses of North American territory like Northern Europe because there's a wall of mountains off the coast, making the interior much cooler just a short distance inland.
... for 31 years.
Photographs and ship logs covering a longer period of time indicate there's nothing unusual going on.
.... Nor is it likely the dearth of sunspots - we just happen to be having a cooler-than-normal late fall and early winter. It happens. If February onward are cooler and wetter than normal, then we can talk.
Uhm - much of Labrador, northern Quebec and Nunavut are running 10 to 20 degrees C above normal this winter. A much larger area than is being impacted by cooler weather.
For what it's worth, I've found that nearly all discussion forms have somebody who both (a) understand and accept the scientific evidence that global climate change is real and caused by humans, and (b) will refute those who believe the same thing but cite anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
That is, when somebody says, "Hey, it's hot, it must be the global warming", there will always be somebody who says, "Look, I appreciate you being on the right side of the argument, but you're using the same invalid reasoning that the deniers are. Stop it because you make me look bad."
What I have yet to see is a skeptic/denier refute a different kind of skeptic/denier. That is, I have never seen any person say, "No no, the world really is getting warmer, so stop pointing out that it's cold in one place because that's irrelevant. It's just that it's not caused by humans". Skeptic/deniers come in many stripes, mutually contradictory, but they seem to keep any disagreements behind closed doors.
That is where this comes in handy, or any of the other linking long term graphs.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
Its been getting colder for a long time now!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
A real long time.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
Long term perspective for those who want it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Well, according to The Day After Tomorrow it all has to do with the salinity of the ocean currents. As the poles melt, cold fresh water drives the warm salt water gulf currents downward... or something like that.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The current one can be called the Colaninno Minimum. "Around 2006, solar physicist Robin Colaninno described the current minima as both extended and unusual, both similar to the Maunder Minimum (in that it's longer than usual in the Cycle) but also being quite different (in that it won't be the exact same length, nor have the same climate effect)." http://www.science20.com/daytime_astronomer/sunspots_colaninno_minimum_and_pascals_wager
A.
then you will be free to agree upon any next climate-change-prevention-by-throwing-money-at-new-religion scheme, OK?
Perhaps some helpful soul at a climate research center would whip up a model showing that rainbows increase the sunspot count, but only if taxed per view?
Oh, mod me down again, please. Happy Year Of Neverending Idiocies.
Er... huh? No, the idea of global warming is supposed to be that the average global temperature is increasing over the long term.
To rephrase my earlier post: when global warming deniers point to individual years or individual regions that are colder than they were previously, it's considered to be nonscientific cherry-picking of data. But this guy points to an individual region to support an assertion of global warming, and that's okay?
we are borg. we will adapt.
True Hudson bay isn't frozen over, but there is ice flow downstream on lake Huron, and it's a bit early for that.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I never cease to be amazed by the decline in the education system. Is statistics not taught in high school anymore? Does the SAT no longer have a question like "is this trend increasing or decreasing"?
If these climate disbelievers represent a significant portion of the population, maybe we should embrace what is to come.
Eisenhower... a real Republican.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
So it is a good thing we've been doing everything we can to warm the planet. Frankly, I'm much more concerned about a global cooling than a global warming. Ice ages are a real drag and far more dangerous to life than warm spells. What people are unfortunately missing is that the Earth has been warmer and cooler in the past. People are simply used to the current temperature. The REAL problem is pollution, not cooling or warming.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Physically a closed room with a lamp in it can be seen as an isolated system. If the lamp consumes 100W you are adding 100 joules/second of energy to the system. Conservation of energy applies. So if none of the energy is stored in form of potential energy, converted to chemical energy or brought out of the room somehow, it is converted to heat. It does not matter if it is a light bulb which becomes hotter by itself, or if it is a CFL which converts more energy to visible light. As long as both are consuming 100W, you are adding the same heat to the room.
You are not comparing 1970's computers, instrumentation and models with today's technology, are you?
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
I'm sure they've been called worse things by better people.
The main fact about the far-north is that temperatures are not measured there. Not by satellites, not by regular stations.
The warming there is simply made up: "estimated" in the words of Jim Hansen.
See the point 1) in
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/03/nasa-giss-james-hansen-study-global-warming-record-hottest-year/
With such "estimates" Hansen makes every year as warm as he wants.
Satellites show clearly cooling for more than 12 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979
Your response is typical...'it's all lies!!!!'
This is like saying the Earth is the biggest driver of the Earth's climate. It's an essentially meaningless statement.
No, it is not. The drivers ('forcing functions') are a matter of extensive debate. AGW true believers insist that atmospheric CO2 concentration is far more significant than changes in solar activity...and will shout down any hint that solar activity might have a serious effect on long-term climate.
A 'full' greenhouse effect would mean that 100% of heat is retained. That's impossible, but you can look at worlds where heat retention is in the 99% range, such as Venus.
Your '99% heat retention'statement is ridiculous. Atmospheric CO2 can absorb only in a very narrow wavelength related to its molecular vibrational modes. Radiation outside of those wavelengths will not be absorbed but will just pass right through a gas composed of CO2, whatever its density. Of course, the venusian atmosphere also has 'clouds' of sulfuric acid which would act to block radiation both incoming and outgoing, just as our clouds of water do on earth.
Even if it was true, climate is not weather...Climate change is measured across decades, not years
Interesting that you point to March 2010 and April 2010 temperatures to 'refute' the idea that our climate has begun cooling after decades of warming. Your period of time is even shorter than the 4-yr 2007-2010 period of time. Obviously, we will have to wait another few decades to see if the long-term cooling trend continues...but as TFA points out...the signs are beginning to be obvious.
This is irrelevant to historical analysis, which shows a clear warming trend across decades. But unlike yourself, scientists do endeavor to be honest, and refine their model as new data is available. Most excess heat is getting dumped into the oceans.
The computer models are not used to perform 'historical analysis' but to predict the effects of changes in the earth's atmosphere on our planet's climate...so the quality of the computer modeling is critical to the accuracy of the predictions. Finally, your statement about 'excess heat' (whatever that is) being 'dumped' into the oceans is more nonsense. The heresy is to suggest that the computer modeling predictions might not be right.
Once upon a time "Troll" was reserved for obnoxious people who deliberately made outlandish comments to wind up Slashdotters. Now the trolls have mod points.
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An update has been posted with a response from the The Met office explaining the data selection method. It is not a conspiracy/mistake. The data is a well-spaced global set, not a regional set. Analysis on a regional basis is flawed.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
I saw that movie. You never know in the movies what is based on real life vs. fiction. I didn't know the gulf stream was in Hudson Bay.