Sun not responsible for global warming trends

lovuian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:16 PM
Original message

Sun not responsible for global warming trends

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=263776
The BBC reports a new scientific study has concluded that changes in the Sun's output are not causing climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.
more...
Well the Sun can't be blamed

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

NRaleighLiberal

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:20 PM
Response to Original message

1. But, in part, the (Dim) Son can!

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

Kadie

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:24 PM
Response to Reply #1

2. Ha!

:thumbsup:

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

dweller

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:27 PM
Response to Original message

3. nor can the moon be blamed

for higher sea level tides.

dp

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

Gabi Hayes

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:29 PM
Response to Original message

4. excellent Newsweek article on this....I read the hardcopy magazine today

Edited on Tue Jul-10-07 09:33 PM by Gabi Hayes

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19389317/site/newsweek/page/0/

great compilation of basic facts for putting flat-earthers in their place

The first hint that natural variation fails to explain recent climate change comes from the climate version of noticing that the roulette ball has clattered into an even number three times in a row. That is, you compare seemingly weird weather to what has come before to see if it might not be as strange as it seems. (The chance of three evens in a row in roulette is about 1 in 8, so when it happens you don't automatically conclude the wheel is rigged.) When scientists measured a rise in Earth's average temperature of 1 degree F over the past 50 years, they therefore scurried to the record books, both man's and nature's—that is, to historical weather archives as well as tree rings and ice cores that preserve records of ancient temperatures—to search for precedents.

That's when the roulette wheel started to look rigged. The temperature increase since the 1950s "is not like anything seen in the paleoclimate data," says atmospheric scientist Joyce Penner of the University of Michigan. "It's very clear that the last 50 years are very unusual." Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the second half of the 20th century were even farther out of line with natural variability. They are warmer than during "any other 50-year period in the last 500 years," found the IPCC report, "and it is likely that this was the warmest period in the past <1,300 years>."

The case for natural variability founders on another shoal. When natural cycles such as El Niño cause unusual warming, they also cause unusual cooling. One place heats up and another gets a chill, as if Peter were robbed of heat to warm Paul. The result is no net global change. To warm both Peter and Paul in a closed system violates the laws of thermodynamics. But according to the latest IPCC report, which assesses hundreds of climate studies, temperatures have risen on every continent except one (there are not enough data from Antarctica to draw a conclusion about its climate history). "You can detect an anthropogenic imprint on all continents where we have adequate observations," says Francis Zwiers, director of the Climate Research Division of Environment Canada, a government agency, who is also an author of the IPCC report. Peter and Paul both got warmer. Or, as the IPCC put it, "No known mode of internal variability leads to such widespread, near universal warming as has been observed in the past few decades. Although modes of internal variability such as El Niño can lead to global average warming for limited periods of time, such warming is regionally variable, with some areas of cooling."

The conclusion that observed climate change is our fault rests on the pattern of warming, too. As it happens, "human and natural factors that affect climate have unique signatures," says climatologist Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. The clearest signature is differences in the warming of different layers of the atmosphere. According to satellites and weather balloons, the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, has warmed; the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere, has cooled. That's not what a hotter sun would do. "If you increase output from the sun, you increase the amount of energy that arrives at the top of Earth's atmosphere," says Santer. "And you get heating throughout the whole column. Have we observed anything like that? The answer is a very clear no." Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and methane from, among other surprising sources, rice fields (where bacteria thriving in the submerged paddies release this and other gases) act from the bottom up. That is, they warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere by trapping heat waves wafting off the planet's surface. The warm troposphere and cool stratosphere "is entirely consistent with our best understanding of how temperatures would change with an increase in greenhouse gases," says Santer.

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

hootinholler

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Jul-10-07 09:32 PM
Response to Original message

5. That's right it's not the sun, it's daylight savings adding that extra hour of sunshine.

:rofl:

-Hoot

Printer Friendly | Permalink | | Top

DU AdBot (1000+ posts)

Fri May 03rd 2024, 03:57 AM
Response to Original message

Advertisements [?]

Top

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators

Important Notices: By participating on this discussion board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.