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Sun Not a Significant Driver of Climate Change
damn_registrars writes "Scientists from Edinburgh, Scotland have recently published a study based on 1,000 years of climate data. They have compared the effects of differing factors including volcanic activity, solar activity, and greenhouse gases to find which has the most profound effect on climate. They have concluded that the driving factor since 1900 has been greenhouse gases."
Besides, changes in solar activity levels may have a delayed impact via ice melt, changes in atmospheric circulation, etc.
May? The sun's effects may have a delay of over 1,000 years?
At what point are you going to stop grasping at straws and accept peer reviewed facts that are in front of you?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How did the world warm up and cool down before then? Perhaps that is relevant?
I'm pretty sure the OP stopped being rigidly scientific when he started anthropomorphizing the sun, Mr. Buzzkill.
You'll note this study does not cover any serious fraction of the Earth's history, a couple thousand years is a sneeze.
Do you know how derivatives work? Probably not, so I'll remind you. The derivative of a function is its rate of change. The derivative of a constant is always zero, no matter how big that constant is. So if you have a small function that's rapidly fluctuating, it can have a big derivative, whereas a really large signal that's barely changing at all can have a small derivative.
Yes, almost all of the Earth's energy comes from the Sun. But that doesn't matter, because we're talking about climate change. Is the derivative of the Sun's output power big enough to explain the derivative of the Earth's temperature, and are the two at all correlated? Some people who are much, MUCH smarter than you, have looked at the data, and decided that the answer is no.
As an aside, this is why math education is important even for people not interested in STEM fields. You can't think logically when you don't understand such basic concepts.
Exactly.
The pause in temperature rise has been written off as merely the effect of solar minimum. Now they would like to erase any effect of solar input. Have the cake and eat it too! Maybe the cake is a lie after all.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
When those who disagree or are skeptical are funded by self-interested oil companies, or blend their criticism of scientific papers with simple political baggage, then yes, they are ridiculed.
When those who disagree or are skeptical do so in a way that raises a point which has already been addressed and discounted by experts in the field, then yes, they are ridiculed.
On the other hand, you are right to feel that the 'agree' side (for lack of a better word) has a mostly politicized and unthinking membership, too. For me, that problem manifests itself in the (as I see it) idiotic opposition to non-GHG-emitting power sources like fission, fusion, tidal, etc. on environmental grounds.
But you shouldn't let the existence of that mob blind you to the fact that the evidence to date supports the theory that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming the climate, and that a warmer climate will entail significant practical problems, on a human scale at least.
If I'm driving on the freeway, holding the gas pedal steady, and suddenly notice the car is speeding up, I don't think "gee, it must be the small fluctuations in the pressure I'm applying to the pedal, since the engine is the primary source of energy". I start looking at other factors, like a downward slope.
Do you understand? Of course not, because that would mean admitting you were wrong about this issue. If all the scientists in the world can't convince, no logic will ever get through.
false, the Sun and insolation drives climate and climate change, greenhouse gas effects are secondary. First thing one learns in any serious geophysics course.
I made a mistake and read the referenced article. When will I learn...
I think what it says is that the computer models don't show significant change when the solar radiation input is modified. I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation.
The computer models are just approximations for the climate. They have been proven to be bad at predicting the future (like the current 10 year lull in warming). Wake me up when the computer models account for the ice ages.
Bah!
I don't need to calculate shit. The scientists did, and they're better at this than I am.
You don't know what you're talking. Seriously, you have NO FUCKING CLUE. Do you tell the contractors what thickness screws to use in your roof? Do you tell your electrician what gauge wire he should run? Do you tell your doctor which drug he should prescribe? So why the fuck do you think you can tell scientists how to better do their job?
This idiot culture, where we glorify "folksy wisdom" and condemn "book-learnin" is going to be the death of us.
Yep. Science is now for true believers. The method has been abandoned. Anyone who disagrees or is skeptical is to be ridiculed and destroyed. Yay fascism, boo debate.
Honest skepticism is important to Science: scientific theories are considered reliable not because of the strong arguments in favor of them, but because they survive scientific challenge.
But its equally important to recognize that just because skepticism is important to Science, doesn't make all skeptical commentary equally valid, and more importantly it doesn't make all sides equally valid. Its important for scientists to continue to question General Relativity. But when the rubber meets the road, I'm trusting Relativity over any other skeptical invention intended to overturn it. Relativity has survived a lot of challenges. Upstart competitors haven't.
Climatology is an imperfect Science, and its being refined all the time. But Relativity didn't overthrow Newton: Newton is so well tested and established nothing is going to overturn Newtonian gravity because it explains too much of the world too accurately. Relativity *refines* Newtonian gravity in extreme situations Newton was never checked against. All competitors to Einstein are also competitors to Newton: we all know Newton was close enough in most cases: its extraordinarily unlikely anyone is going to discover a normal situation where Newton just plain fails. Anyone wanting to replace Einstein has to not only do better than Relativity, but also better than Newton. Similarly, Climatology is being refined, but the odds are not high that its going to simply fall apart one day. Thinking that will happen represents a complete misunderstanding of how Science itself works.
OK, so if we have a bowl of water under a heat lamp, and we turn the lamp on and off at a steady rate, say, toggle it twice a minute. Now we measure the temperature of the bowl of water, and it's average over the the week is pretty consistent. Now let's say we came in to measure it one day and there's some plastic wrap across the surface of the bowl. We measure the water and the temperature is increased. We say, Hey, the greenhouse effect caused by the plastic wrap is causing a change in temperature.
Then some morons say, "But the Steady Heat Lamp! The Heat comes from the Heat Lamp!" We're talking about an increase or change in temperature, and you're saying it doesn't make logical sense that variation in the heat lamp activity isn't a major driver of change to the climate because the heat lamp cycle is steady?
Please explain your troll logic, because I need a good laugh.
That's exactly what will happen. A while back, a friend of mine described the Five Stages Of Climate Change Denial:
1. It's not happening.
2. If it is happening, humans have nothing to do with it.
3. If it's happening and we're causing it, we can't do anything about it because that would cost too much.
4. It's happening and we're causing it, but that's a good thing.
5. If those damned liberals hadn't interfered with all their regulations, the market would have taken care of this problem!
Mostly we see #1-3 right now, but I've seen #4 too, and I'm sure #5 will be along any time.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
To further your analogy, what if it is determined the car is indeed traveling downward on a gentle slope. It was traveling 55 mph, but is now going 60 mph. All the passengers in the car produce "scientific" studies that predict the car will keep going faster because of the downward slope.
However, a funny thing happens. Careful observations of the car's speedometer indicate that the speed is not increasing as it was a short time earlier. But, in fact, has paused for some mysterious reason. Preposterous, the passengers, all scream. Our best computers models prove beyond a doubt that when traveling on a downward slope the car must speed up. It's a scientific fact that no one can dispute and we have the "peer reviewed" papers to prove it. Some even go so far as to proclaim the "science is settled". To claim otherwise is to be an anti-science "denialist". They explain, if the car is not increasing it speed it must because the car must have hit a brief level spot or something. That is why the velocity has failed to increase. Unfortunately for the passengers, though, further measurements indicate the slope is actually now steeper than it was previously, but the car is still traveling at the same speed. Even worse, the latest measurements hint that the car may actually be slowing down.
In all their haste to prove their own "scientific" perspective correct and those of the "denialist" wrong, all the passengers failed to observe the driver has lifted her foot off the gas pedal.
Well when you go looking for evidence, you tend to find it. Both sides in any debate like this will present veritable mountains of evidence in favour of their position, we've seen it time and again. It doesn't make you right.
Citation? Also localized event, also short dips do not contradict long-term trends, also potentially not all that remarkable if it's only the ninth or tenth coldest on record (the statement is pretty non-specific).
Who said that? Someone whose opinion actually matters in this debate or just some newspaper reporter on a slow day?
Well how cold does it usually get in that part of Antarctica? If it gets within a few degrees most years, then that's not news.
As opposed to a typical winter, which sees... how many? Really, this needs to be placed in context.
Who said that? The people who made the report or someone else? If someone else, then I bet they're disagreeing with the people who did make the report. So what is the point of disagreement? What part of the IPCC methodology was flawed? Who reached this conclusion and how did they reach it? There are no details to go on here.
Lies. Lies and deceptions. If it were so 'obvious' there would not be such protracted debate over the issue. Truth of the matter is, most people don't know what to think any more. Both sides seem to have so much evidence that trying to sift through it all is an exercise in futility. We've got to the point where it's a handful of 'true believers' on both sides who are absolutely convinced they are right, and a majority of confused individuals who don't know what side to take if they should even be taking a side at all.
Yep.
Nope. You're very clearly one of the true believers, you're going to find what you want to find and believe that it was just coincidence that all the evidence reinforced what you thought already.
Don't believe me? Look at what you just typed. You are not looking for the truth because you believe you already found it, so what would be the point of looking further?
Honestly, I don't think the problem is that people don't really know this and are arguing against the human effect of carbon emissions on our planet's environment. The problem is our modern society at its foundation is completely based on carbon based fuel and combustion engines. A group of brilliant scientists, no matter how intelligent or correct they are, is not going to convince the entire modern world to stop what it's doing, shut down society and restructure it for the long term health of the planet.
Two things to note about this: 1) That would have a devastating impact because of the chaos it would create and 2) There's not enough motivation because it's not going to affect anyone currently here in their lifetime. By the time it's a problem, it will be a future generation and it will be too late.
Now I know this is a bitter bill for geeks to swallow but you'll have to negotiate the win/win, not just use pure logic. Fortunately, you're the smart group and what you should use your intelligence for is to find an economically equivalent or better, cleaner, environment friendly source of energy and propulsion. Get to work! We're depending on you to solve the problem.
We'll make great pets