If the Sun just continuously pushed out "about 1,368 W/m2" without varying then no, it doesn't have any real impact on global warming or cooling. But of course it does vary some and we can measure that variation and calculate how that affects the Earth's energy balance. The simple answer is that measurements show it doesn't vary enough to account for known climate variations.
Oh really, and what is the reality basis for that statement? Capitalism is merely an economic system that was invented by humans. But in our roots, in tribal societies, the economic model is more socialist than capitalist. Resources are shared amongst the tribal members to strengthen the tribe as a whole.
Don't get me wrong. With the present structure of society some form of capitalism is probably the best economic system but don't elevate it to some sort of altar as an object of worship.
When you're measuring temperature change the precision, that is how well the instrument repeats a reading given the same temperature, is more important than the absolute accuracy, that is how well it give the true temperature. Precise thermometers that could be read in 1/10ths were available quite early in their history. They may have been off by 0.5 degrees but they weren't off by +0.5 degrees one time and -0.5 degrees the next.
Science doesn't require faith (except maybe that humans are capable of actually understanding reality on some level). If someone comes up with some actual science that explains our climate better than the current consensus then I'll happily go with that explanation as will most climate scientists. Instead we get the same tired old arguments that have been debunked time and again with the occasional new claim that quickly gets debunked. I've been following this for 30 years and practically nothing ever sticks and the occasional thing that does stick quickly gets incorporated into the science.
Ok, insolation can decrease for several reasons. In this case the cold summer of 1816 wasn't because of some drastic reduction in solar output that year. The Sun was already in the middle of the Dalton Minimum which was a factor but Tambora caused the extraordinarily exceptional weather of that summer.
Except for the fact we've been cooling for the last 13 years,...
Yes, if you cherry pick 1998 as your starting point you can contrive to make it look like maybe there's been a little cooling. But seriously, who uses 13 years periods for something like this? Climatologists generally use 30 year periods. CO2 is like the rising carrier signal that the natural variability noise signal sits on. Rising CO2 levels don't lead to a monotonic rise in temperatures, just a bias toward higher temperatures. Natural variability can overcome that bias over periods of less than 15 or 20 years.
Well, actually, the temperatures since the last glaciation hit a maximum around 8,000 years ago during the Holocene Optimum and has been slowly cooling since, until recently. How shocking is that to you?
Yes, the Dalton Minimum had its part to play in the Year Without a Summer as did several other large eruptions (~VEI-4) in 1812, 1813 and 1814 but the April 1815 Tambora eruption, a VEI-7 event, was the straw that broke the camels back and led to snow in Upper New York to Maine in June of 1816 among other things. You could say the pump was primed by those other things but it wouldn't have been half as bad without Tambora.
To respond to your straw men:
a) Solar activity is of course completely relevant to global temperatures and you can see the effect of variations in insolation in the temperature record. But it hasn't been changing enough to account for all warming and from the 1960's until this recent minimum it was relatively constant from one cycle to the next. That's why climatologists discount the effects of the Sun for the warming since then.
b) No one who knows his stuff is saying that CO2 is responsible for all of the warming since the Dalton Minimum. Before the 1960's warming was more due to the Sun coming out of the Dalton Minimum and the lack of large volcanic eruptions in the first half of the 20th century. Since then increased GHG's have taken over to as the larger cause of increasing temperatures.
Tambora did spew some greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but probably not as much as humans currently do in a year. What caused the cooling effect was the aerosols that Tambora shot into the stratosphere, primarily volcanic dust and SO2. It took a few years for the aerosols to fall back out of the atmosphere. The effect of "liquid hot magma" on temperatures is essentially zero once you get any distance away from the eruption. Kilauea has been continuously erupting since 1983. How much effect has that had on temperatures?
Thermometers have been very accurate since not that long after they were invented in the 1500's. Maybe modern instruments are accurate to more decimal places than older instruments but they are not necessarily more accurate to the temperature in 1/10ths of a degree.
Globally water vapor in the atmosphere has increased by around 4% in the 40 years or so because of a warmer atmosphere. Witness the number of extreme precipitation events we've been seeing lately. Earth is warm because of a combination of factors that includes the mixture of GHG's in the atmosphere. It's true that water vapor causes the majority of the greenhouse effect but CO2 is a significant factor as well (around 20% of greenhouse warming). There wouldn't be nearly as much water vapor in the atmosphere without the warming effect of CO2 since water vapor levels are completely dependent on air temperature (and also dependent on the availability of water to evaporate into the atmosphere). CO2 on the other hand remains a gas at any conditions that exist on the planet.
Since the SCOTUS has declared corporations have personhood what's the difference? People/corporation. They just have more money to spend on free speech than the rest of us.
Actually though, since corporations are created through the laws of governments shouldn't they get down on their knees and worship their creator, the government? Just a thought.
We have a naturally-mandated (due to extremely high build-out cost) monopoly that is recognized and over-seen by government. It is not government-mandated. It is government-regulated.
And that is why they should separate the content from the delivery of said content. A company that only owns the fibers/wires and has no content of its own (other than customer service stuff) can sell the access to your portal to any content provider you prefer. Make the monopoly part only about the part that has to be a monopoly and allow anyone else to compete for your attention over your access port.
It's as big a threat to deniers as any satellite. It's just that the connection isn't as direct as some of the others. Understanding salinity and ocean surface temperatures are essential to understanding things like density, evaporation and how currents run which in turn affect the climate. The increase understanding will allow better accuracy for inputs into climate models which should improve their accuracy.
If you think things are bad now just wait until the US starts defaulting on its debt. It's the quickest route I can think of to US becoming a second rate power. It will lead to a worldwide depression. If you think the 1930's were bad you haven't seen anything yet. I hope you have some sort of survivalist bolthole to retreat to if that happens.
"Q: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
The question is meaningless in a climatological context because there are other factors not related to climate change that affect temperatures and can be big enough over such a short period to disguise the climate change that is going on.
This is the problem I see with many on the "skeptic" side. The want/expect everything to happen in time periods that are not realistic in the climate context. That's why climatologists generally use 30 year moving averages to determine the slope of temperature change. That's long enough for the shorter natural variability cycles to balance out.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Sun just continuously pushed out "about 1,368 W/m2" without varying then no, it doesn't have any real impact on global warming or cooling. But of course it does vary some and we can measure that variation and calculate how that affects the Earth's energy balance. The simple answer is that measurements show it doesn't vary enough to account for known climate variations.
The law of nature that is capitalism
Oh really, and what is the reality basis for that statement? Capitalism is merely an economic system that was invented by humans. But in our roots, in tribal societies, the economic model is more socialist than capitalist. Resources are shared amongst the tribal members to strengthen the tribe as a whole.
Don't get me wrong. With the present structure of society some form of capitalism is probably the best economic system but don't elevate it to some sort of altar as an object of worship.
When you're measuring temperature change the precision, that is how well the instrument repeats a reading given the same temperature, is more important than the absolute accuracy, that is how well it give the true temperature. Precise thermometers that could be read in 1/10ths were available quite early in their history. They may have been off by 0.5 degrees but they weren't off by +0.5 degrees one time and -0.5 degrees the next.
Science doesn't require faith (except maybe that humans are capable of actually understanding reality on some level). If someone comes up with some actual science that explains our climate better than the current consensus then I'll happily go with that explanation as will most climate scientists. Instead we get the same tired old arguments that have been debunked time and again with the occasional new claim that quickly gets debunked. I've been following this for 30 years and practically nothing ever sticks and the occasional thing that does stick quickly gets incorporated into the science.
So, where's the beef?!
Good luck with that. It's already happening, you're just not perceptive enough to see it.
Ok, insolation can decrease for several reasons. In this case the cold summer of 1816 wasn't because of some drastic reduction in solar output that year. The Sun was already in the middle of the Dalton Minimum which was a factor but Tambora caused the extraordinarily exceptional weather of that summer.
Except for the fact we've been cooling for the last 13 years, ...
Yes, if you cherry pick 1998 as your starting point you can contrive to make it look like maybe there's been a little cooling. But seriously, who uses 13 years periods for something like this? Climatologists generally use 30 year periods. CO2 is like the rising carrier signal that the natural variability noise signal sits on. Rising CO2 levels don't lead to a monotonic rise in temperatures, just a bias toward higher temperatures. Natural variability can overcome that bias over periods of less than 15 or 20 years.
Continuously repeating that lie won't make it true.
Thank you.
Well, actually, the temperatures since the last glaciation hit a maximum around 8,000 years ago during the Holocene Optimum and has been slowly cooling since, until recently. How shocking is that to you?
Yes, the Dalton Minimum had its part to play in the Year Without a Summer as did several other large eruptions (~VEI-4) in 1812, 1813 and 1814 but the April 1815 Tambora eruption, a VEI-7 event, was the straw that broke the camels back and led to snow in Upper New York to Maine in June of 1816 among other things. You could say the pump was primed by those other things but it wouldn't have been half as bad without Tambora.
To respond to your straw men:
a) Solar activity is of course completely relevant to global temperatures and you can see the effect of variations in insolation in the temperature record. But it hasn't been changing enough to account for all warming and from the 1960's until this recent minimum it was relatively constant from one cycle to the next. That's why climatologists discount the effects of the Sun for the warming since then.
b) No one who knows his stuff is saying that CO2 is responsible for all of the warming since the Dalton Minimum. Before the 1960's warming was more due to the Sun coming out of the Dalton Minimum and the lack of large volcanic eruptions in the first half of the 20th century. Since then increased GHG's have taken over to as the larger cause of increasing temperatures.
Tambora did spew some greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but probably not as much as humans currently do in a year. What caused the cooling effect was the aerosols that Tambora shot into the stratosphere, primarily volcanic dust and SO2. It took a few years for the aerosols to fall back out of the atmosphere. The effect of "liquid hot magma" on temperatures is essentially zero once you get any distance away from the eruption. Kilauea has been continuously erupting since 1983. How much effect has that had on temperatures?
AC is right, oceans are still a sink of CO2 despite warming water temperatures because of the increased partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thermometers have been very accurate since not that long after they were invented in the 1500's. Maybe modern instruments are accurate to more decimal places than older instruments but they are not necessarily more accurate to the temperature in 1/10ths of a degree.
Globally water vapor in the atmosphere has increased by around 4% in the 40 years or so because of a warmer atmosphere. Witness the number of extreme precipitation events we've been seeing lately. Earth is warm because of a combination of factors that includes the mixture of GHG's in the atmosphere. It's true that water vapor causes the majority of the greenhouse effect but CO2 is a significant factor as well (around 20% of greenhouse warming). There wouldn't be nearly as much water vapor in the atmosphere without the warming effect of CO2 since water vapor levels are completely dependent on air temperature (and also dependent on the availability of water to evaporate into the atmosphere). CO2 on the other hand remains a gas at any conditions that exist on the planet.
And they're going to be sorely disappointed when the warming continues despite reduced solar output.
Even if the Sun went into a new Maunder Minimum Global Warming will continue because the forcing from increased GHG's (primarily CO2) overwhelms the change in insolation. There is a peer reviewed paper on the subject here: On the Effect of a New Grand Minimum of Solar Activity on the Future Climate on Earth (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010).
So what will the "naysayers" response be to continued warming despite reduced insolation?
Solar activity had nothing to do with "The Year Without a Summer". It was the eruption of Tambora that caused that.
Democrats create budget problems. Republicans solve them.
Yeah, right. If that's true how come the US Debt increases more under Republicans than it does Democrats?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Since the SCOTUS has declared corporations have personhood what's the difference? People/corporation. They just have more money to spend on free speech than the rest of us.
Actually though, since corporations are created through the laws of governments shouldn't they get down on their knees and worship their creator, the government? Just a thought.
We have a naturally-mandated (due to extremely high build-out cost) monopoly that is recognized and over-seen by government. It is not government-mandated. It is government-regulated.
And that is why they should separate the content from the delivery of said content. A company that only owns the fibers/wires and has no content of its own (other than customer service stuff) can sell the access to your portal to any content provider you prefer. Make the monopoly part only about the part that has to be a monopoly and allow anyone else to compete for your attention over your access port.
It's as big a threat to deniers as any satellite. It's just that the connection isn't as direct as some of the others. Understanding salinity and ocean surface temperatures are essential to understanding things like density, evaporation and how currents run which in turn affect the climate. The increase understanding will allow better accuracy for inputs into climate models which should improve their accuracy.
If you think things are bad now just wait until the US starts defaulting on its debt. It's the quickest route I can think of to US becoming a second rate power. It will lead to a worldwide depression. If you think the 1930's were bad you haven't seen anything yet. I hope you have some sort of survivalist bolthole to retreat to if that happens.
"Q: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
The question is meaningless in a climatological context because there are other factors not related to climate change that affect temperatures and can be big enough over such a short period to disguise the climate change that is going on.
This is the problem I see with many on the "skeptic" side. The want/expect everything to happen in time periods that are not realistic in the climate context. That's why climatologists generally use 30 year moving averages to determine the slope of temperature change. That's long enough for the shorter natural variability cycles to balance out.
No doubt you are right, it was just a flip remark. I was hoping for first post.
Then when the wind speed gets high enough the device has a catastrophic failure like the Tacoma Narrows bridge?