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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."
In related news, angered Sun goes supernova, replies "I'm not a significant what!?"
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
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!
Yeah, ever since Oracle bought them . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How did the world warm up and cool down before then? Perhaps that is relevant?
I see you did not actually look at the Nature paper they published. The title is: "Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium". The key word is variability. As in variations in solar activity aren't a major driver in climate change, not the Sun itself.
In other words, you are the loon.
Well tell that to my dog Max who only naps in the sun beams.
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.
Scientists from Edinburgh, Scotland have recently published a study showing that the sun is not a significant driver of recent climate change.
Of course they think that - there is no sun in Edinburgh.
Look at it this way. The variance in solar radiation over a thousand year period is less than 0.01% of the variability seen in global temperature increase during the same period. In other words, the variability in solar radiative output (insolation) is far too small to explain the wide range of variance in global warming since the onset of the industrial revolution. In contrast, increase in carbon dioxide, as expected from the physics of its absorbtion spectrum explains cha.nge in temperature quite well (in fact it explains it rather well over the past 500 million years if isotope data is evalatuated).
It should be noted that there is no 18 years pause in global warming of sea temperature records. In fact, if one uses the arbitrary 18 year intervals to assess global atmospheric climate change, the record still shows global warming. Its just that within the last 18 years it has not been increasing as fast as the average over the last 100. Consequently, no one should be surprised that November 2013 proved to be the warmest November in recorded human history.
Or you could learn to read what they are actually saying, and stop listening to the made up crap you invent in your head.
Variations in solar output is not the key driver behind climate variation since 1900AD. That's it. Note the decided lack of dismissal of the sun as an energy source, or of the possibility that the sun could have been the primary driver of climate change. People suggested it, so they checked a millennium's worth of proxy data, and they showed a marked disconnect between the trends in solar and climate activity that appears in the last 100 years. This reconfirms similar studies over the last 20 years that have shown the same thing. Science.
"They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation."
That's what they're saying. But they're offering absolutely nothing new here. This is merely a review of others' past (perhaps too long past) work.
What they do say (section 6.4, "climate change", which is their conclusive paragraph) is:
"Extensive climate model studies have indicated that the models can only reproduce the late twentieth century warming when anthropogenic forcing is included, in addition to the solar and volcanic forcings [IPCC, 2007]. The change in solar radiative forcing since 1750 was estimated..."
Here is a plain English translation. (This bit is pretty important.)
"Climate model studies by other people can only reproduce the late twentieth century warming when anthropogenic radiative forcing is included."
This paper actually claims no new evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming (CO2 AGW) is actually occurring. Their own statements (their own concluding paragraph above if you read the whole thing) says that they are relying on past studies to come to that conclusion. Other people concluded that. And they cite as a reference, an old IPCC report. The newer IPCC report is much toned down from the 2007 version they cite.
Not much to see here, and certainly nothing new, by their own admission. Move along now.
I should also point out that the entire concept of "radiative forcing" this is based on was refuted a few years ago, and so far that refutation has not been successfully challenged.
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.
The UK getting record snowfall despite AGWers claiming the UK wouldn't see snow after 2008.
It goes back and forth. In 2000, they were saying that AGW would get rid of snow. In 2008, they were saying the snow was a result of AGW.
No doubt you will see a reversal again when there is no snow.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
the now decade long pause in global warming.
Except that's not actually a thing. It's a deliberate misreading of data by people who are lying to you for political reasons. (Specifically, separating out selective readings (variations in surface temps) from broader data which shows a pretty constant heating effect, and falsely presenting the selective readings as "Global temperatures".)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
To further your analogy, one of the passengers in the car is insisting that the acceleration has ceased because the slope leveled off for a few hundred feet a couple of miles back, and continues to claim that the speedometer reads 55 MPH even as the needle climbs toward 100 and the entire State Patrol is chasing the car down the highway.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Grasping at straws indeed. This is the map for November, and you're telling me that the AGW folks are grasping at straws?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-percentile-mntp/201311.gif
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?
The pause in temperature rise has been written off as merely the effect of solar minimum.
The supposed "pause" is only surface temps, which is caused by the El Niño dominated cycle of the 1990s switching to a La Niña dominated cycle since 2000. This changed the warming pattern from surface dominated to deep ocean dominated (due to the shift in trade-winds exposing different layers of ocean.) This has been known for... well, I've known it for nearly a decade. (It's also known that this normally correlates with a marked cooling of global surface temps (such as in the 1940s), but this cycle is notable that there's still a (slower) rise in surface temps in spite of being a strong "cooling" cycle.)
What is new and interesting is the correlation between the decline in sunspot activity during the same decade as the La Niña dominance. So some researchers wonder if variations in solar activity are a factor in the decadal variation in the El Niño/La Niña cycle.
The is completely different from the research in TFA, which concerns the longer term climate trends, for which there is good correlation with solar output variations across the last 1000 years, except over the last century. The last hundred years are a new thing which needs a factor besides solar variation, the most parsimonious explanation is changes to levels of known greenhouse gases.
Now, it should tell you something about the progress of climate science that the researchers are drilling down and teasing out specific smaller parts of how the climate works in detail; while opponents of the existence of climate change are still stuck on the first page. But I suspect it doesn't.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Agree that the Sun is the source of all the energy in the climate. The composition of the earth's Atmosphere, oceans and crust, have been likened to the "thermostat" in that they can absorb or reflect that energy to varying degrees.
CO2 has been a major factor in climate for a looooong time, at least as far back as the Cambrian explosion since CO2 is what melted "snowball" earth prior to the Cambrian explosion. CO2 can be both a "feedback" (melting permafrost) or a "forcing" (volcanos, human emissions). When acting as a feedback it always amplifies the direction of the change. We have known about CO2's major role since the 1950's when improved spectrometers finally pinned down it's role in the ice ages, ( Milankovich cycles alone cannot account for the magnitude of the changes observed in the ice ages).
Our best estimates of an important metric called "climate sensitivity" come from Fourier's formula and paleoclimatology (aka-geology). Fourier's formula alone gives ~1.5C rise for a doubling of CO2 but that assumes Earth is an ideal black body, which it is not. Adding geological evidence to estimate the feedback component brings it up to ~3.0C, the error bars are between 1.5c and 4.5C for a doubling of CO2, with the upper limit being far less certain then the lower. The uncertainty at the upper end is due to the lack of knowledge on things like frozen methane in deep ocean beds. The recent IPCC report downgraded the risk from sudden "tipping points" so the current high end estimate of climate sensitivity (whatever it is exactly) has a smidge more certainty than the previous report.
Disclaimer, IANACS, just a layman with a 30yr interest in the subject, don't rely on what my aging neurons tell you, WP is your friend for climate facts and trivia and I'm more than happy to be (politely) corrected.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. One week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever." "How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weather man replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy."
I'm sitting right now in Karlsruhe, germany. The temperature according to the yahoo weather app is 13 degrees centigrade. (Yahoo is usually wrong, that means weather is a bit better and a bit warmer actually, but I'm to lazy to dig up an accurate number, as it is not important). Just for future reference if this gets digged out by climate researchers or idiots like you in a few hundret years: today is 24th of december, the year is 2013 (christian time). I repeat he fucking temperature outside is +13 degrees centigrade. ... more snow, snow storms, blizzards and sledges? Ha? What do you think, why that is so? BECAUSE europe is supposed to be covered with snow, from north italy, north spain over france and germany and poland into siberia in the east up to the north pole. With only exceptions being parts of ireland, island and wales and perhaps england. It is supposed to be covered in snow like it always was around christmas, except for the last 20 - 30 years. ... according to the climate of 30, 50 or 100 years ago. But it is, depending on your region: 13, 20 or MORE degrees (centigrade) to warm!
For you morons who don't get it to the slightest: TODAY IS CHRISTMAS! What do you think why every christmas story on the world involves snow? Snowy regions, coldness and snow, snow
HOWEVER: there is no snow! It is fucking 13 degrees to warm for it. It is supposed to have something like -10 degrees here, going down at nights to -15 to -20. But it is not. It was not happening to be that cold since 25 or more years.
With the raw exception of a winter where it actually is a little bit below zero. And then all scream: seeeeee! It is cold! There is no global warming!
I repeat in case you did not get it: right now northern europe should be under a snow cover
(And yes, there are plenty of negative effects for not freezing, like having a mosquito plague every summer)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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