Solar Flares Contribute to Global Warming?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

I wonder if there's anything to this.

(Edited to add website link).

The problems we're having today are unquestionably related to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is now at levels that have never before been reached naturally.

I think there is a lot of speculation that it was higher during both the Permian-Triassic Boundary Extinction Event and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extiction events. But, it is definately much higher than it has been at any time in the documented record. The ice cores from the Antarctic ice tell us the max in the past 400,000 years is just under 300 ppm. We are now at about 380 ppm.









Be involved, but, be informed; and never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.

He's a Harvard PhD who does research on global warming in the Antarctic for a major university. I had asked him a question about Inconvenient Truth:

Gore is correct -- there is abundant data on the chemical composition of
air bubbles trapped in ice cores taken from Greenland and the Antarctic.
The records go back 600,000 years over the past 4 or 5 glacial periods.
Atmospheric CO2 varied regularly between 180 and 280 ppm in synchrony with
the glacial-interglacial periods (high CO2 in warm interglacials; low CO2
during cold glacials). It was very constant at 280-290 ppm for the ca 1000
years preceding 1800. Since then it has risen rapidly to 370 ppm. So
atmospheric CO2 is now higher than at any time in the past almost 1 million
years -- maybe longer. There was a periodicity -- a natural cycle, but we
have blasted the planetary system well out of it, and in only 200 years. If
anything the evidence for the cycles in the past demonstrate how unique the
present situation is.

It was only higher during catastrophic extinction events.

Uh...

95% of life was killed off during the Permian extinction, exact cause unknown, or the K-T event, which killed off 70% of life, including all non-avian Dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, due, most likely, to an Asteroid impact. I'm just slightly alarmed here.

Actually, I should qualify that, one thing that I find annoying with people is this "saving the Earth" type of stuff, we aren't saving the Earth, we are saving OURSELVES. Whether its Global Climate Change, or polluting a river, we are killing ourselves, first and foremost. We are dependent on a STABLE climate system for our survival, and, being "higher" life forms, we happen to be one of the more vulnerable species that would be one of the first to go due to any catastrophic event on Earth, human caused or not.

The Earth has weathered far worst events in the past, and will continue to exist, with life on it, for perhaps another billion years or so, but whether human life, or our evolutionary descendants, exist, that is something that is up in the air.

Actually the asteroid theory has been pretty much supplanted by climate change. The evidence is showing that the die off wasn't a sudden catastrophic event but was instead a process that took around 10,000 years.
The real wild card in the deck seems to be the frozen methane deposits under the ocean. Methane is about 6X as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2, and at some point the warming ocean is going to start causing its release. That isn't going to be a good thing.



Be involved, but, be informed; and never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.

of a long and slow decline. The real question is whether SOME non-avian dinosaurs could have survived such a slow decline without an asteroid impact. I would say, it was possible, at least for smaller species, that didn't have the much larger energy requirements of the large carnivores and herbivores.

Frozen Methane is the wild card, I agree, and there are two primary sources, the ocean floor is one, but also permafrost is another, a lot of gases are trapped in the soil of tundra regions, and they are released when it melts. Who knows what will happen if all those gases are released.

Actually, this is a big problem, too many positive feedback loops, we have the Arctic melting, this leads to sunlight absorption at the north pole, ice reflects more light than ocean, after all. This will lead to localized warming of the north pole, which leads to accelerated melting of tundra regions near the Arctic, which releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, which then leads to increased warming, which can then, possibly, warm the oceans enough to release the methane in them, leading to a runaway warming effect.

This could result in many different effects, we could see a worldwide desertification on all major continents, similar to what possibly happened in the Permian extinction. Then again, this could also trigger an ice age, severe enough to maybe freeze over the entire planet, an "iceball Earth" so to speak. Another effect would be a destabilization of the climate, previous areas that were temperate and stable could turn to desert, or have tropical life creep in, etc. Hell, the Earth could then truly live up to being a twin of Venus and be extremely warm, possibly past the boiling point of water, in surface temperature. We don't really know what the long term effects will precisely be, but all I know is that all these scenarios will make it much more difficult for humans, and most other surface species, to survive on the planet.

The solar "output" is an average of the entire stars energy where as a "flare" is an event. Flares in of themselves have not shown to contribute to global warming. Increase solar output does.

Flares are an energetic burst with most of the energy being deflected by the earths magnetosphere showing up as aurora's at the poles.

The exception would be if the earths magnetic field greatly reduces it's strength, (for example during a field flip when north becomes south) and the solar wind directly impacts the outer atmosphere.

It has before. I think the time we are in in the magenetic cycles and sun's brighness ect. is quite possibly the worst time to be creating all this pollution.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html

On in space right now. The planets are changing,neptune is brighter
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2003/17
,mars appears to have water,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_futurist_000622.html

the sun is brighter than it was say, 20 years ago,,
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/localnews/storydisplay.cfm?storyid=3678007&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=&thesecondsubsection=

there are more anomalies and strange things going on in space so things here might be influenced by those changes ON TOP of the human pollution problem. No doubt pollution is causing global warming but could these changes in space such as a brighter sun be making it WORSE than it would be otherwise? Maybe.