Sunspots don't cause global warming, people do
Climate change denialists like to cite Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark's theory that global warming is caused by sunspots in excusing the ongoing de-terraforming of the Earth (Svensmark's work was the basis for a film called "The Great Global Warming Swindle"); but research from Lancaster University undermines Svensmark's conclusions.
The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.Link (via Futurismic)But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.
Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.
This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.
Your headline is wrong, it should be: Sunspots don't cause increased formation of clouds.
No more, no less has the study shown.
Thanks.
Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, and Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark have done studies saying that the solar cycle influences climate.
Brits Terry Sloan and Mike Lockwood have done a study saying that it doesn't.
OK, great, this is how the scientific process is supposed to work: competing theories exist, work is done on both sides, and over time, the preponderance of evidence supports one side or another.
...but I don't understand how Cory takes one data point and boldly proclaims "Sunspots don't cause global warming, people do".
Really?
Is the preponderance of evidence in, and that's what it says?
Cory, what would you say are the strongest and weakest points of Sloan's argument? What would you say are the strongest and weakest points of Mashnich's argument? What further data would you like to see to really settle things?
My strong guess is that you don't have opinions on any of these topics, because you really don't know anything about the topic.
As a layman reading the various press releases (and, yes, the BBC article and most other articles are based on press releases), neither do I.
I imagine that you'd be pretty skeptical of a single press release "conclusively" proving something that you didn't agree with about, I don't know, the correlation of IQ with ethnicity, or the risky sexual behavior of different demographics...and you wouldn't immediately write a blog post with a subject line that boldly states "X does not do Y; Z does".
Sweet to see my university in the boingboing headlines :) !!!!!
"Denialists"? It should be expected that questioning orthodoxy leads to condemnation and vilification in a religious context. This article purports to discuss science, not religion. Why assign insulting tags to those who are willing to look beyond orthodoxy?
Anyone with a basic understanding of physics will instantly be highly suspicious of theories stating that currently-underway climate change/global warming is a result of sunspot activity. Anyone with a serious understanding of physics will be not only suspicious but annoyed that this nonsense continues to be repeated by the same deniers who no doubt also support flat-earth and creationist drivel, because their tiny little minds simply aren't up to the task of dealing with reality.
I recommend (among other things):
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/
and
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.htm
and
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/9/878/93026/133/472774
The short summary is: the sun's output is one of THE most-studied phenomena in all of astronomy, for what I trust are obvious reasons. Every twitch, every flutter is recorded by hundreds of terrestrial and space-based instruments, then pored over by thousands of scientists, many of whom have spent the entire professional careers doing so, and all of whom are no doubt aware that the sun's output is the single biggest factor to consider when building a mathematical model of climate. Were there actually any evidence showing a relationship between solar output and current climate change -- and there is absolutely none -- then (a) someone would be on track to a Nobel Prize and (b) we would be in deep, deep trouble because while we have ways of controlling other variables influencing climate (such as emissions) we are completely powerless to control solar output.
This farsical sunspot "theory" is no more a theory than my offhand assertion that the reason I can't find my coffee cup right now is that gnomes crept in overnight and relocated it to Thailand.
ah, nice... take 20 years worth of "data"... makes it look nice and well studied... such a pity we're talking about average solar output over several hundred years, not short term cycles... the short term 22 year solar sunspot activity cycle barely has any effect on the global temperature...
One factor that doesn't get mentioned much is the solar systems' passage through the different arms of the galaxy... those density waves don't stay put going round the galaxy at the same rate as the stars do... who's to say whether we haven't recently passed through a slightly denser patch that caused the solar heliopause to get pushed in and resulted in more cosmic rays getting through to form clouds...
and what about volcanic activity?... that has a major effect over geological timescales...
The wrangle over whether global warming is anthropogenic is a distraction. Climate change denialists are pushing this agenda to bring attention away from the main issue, which is that global climate change is currently happening. We are currently observing global climate change.
(I did some work in the field as an undergrad. While there may be legitimate scientists who think doubling or tripling global CO2 won't affect climate in some way, I haven't ever met one.)
The debate over the causes is ultimately a distraction. We're not going to convince the denialists -- many of them are politically motivated, and they've got a lot riding on keeping this debate going. They are the trolls of science.
What matters is that climate change is happening. Maybe you have overwhelming evidence that it's being caused by moonbat farts, and it isn't humanity's fault. Whatever. I don't care.
Even if it's not our fault, it's still happening. We still live here. We have -- we should have -- some very serious motivations for keeping the world in a state capable of maintaining our continued existence. The question of who or what is responsible shouldn't change that.
Really "Good" science states a hypothesis (the world is warming up because...). Then the hypothesis needs to be tested. Over time. A long time. Until then, global warming is a theory that seems to make sense, but it's only just a theory. What happens if there is a 15% increase in volcanic activity over the next 100 years? Guess we'll have to see what happens in the next 100 years to find out. That's how science works. I predict an Ice Age is coming. "They" were saying that less than 30 years ago. Guess what, "They" were wrong. People are such lemmings.
Cory's typo ("undermine's") is a perfectly good excuse to plug Bob's quick guide to the apostrophe, you idiots.
So I can assume from this that the global warming on Mars is being caused by Martians?
There is a two page article in the March issue of Physics Today [sorry, but the article is only available to subscribers] discussing periodic variation in solar activity and its relationship to periodic variation in Earth's climate. One of the points made is that modeling periodicity allows researchers to account for (or at least describe) observations that linear models (e.g., correlation) miss.
I would also like to second the objections to the use of terms like 'denialists'. Climate science is still pretty young, and skepticism of the most dire predictions is, in my opinion, still warranted.
G Jules, the argument about the reason for climate change is far from being a distraction. If people cause it, then there's reason to think that we can reverse it (which may or may not be worth the cost), whereas if it's due to, e.g., solar activity, what could we possibly do to be "keeping the world in a state capable of maintaining our continued existence"?
#10, PlanetTom:
No, global warming on Mars is caused by massive dust storms.
This nothing to do with the climate on Earth.
It's interesting that research into factors affecting climate change make someone a 'climate change denialist'.
Or perhaps it just means 'people who propose combined effects other than solely the result of a group of humans'. But who knows, it's not like we'll get to find out anything if any scientist who investigates otherwise is shunned and denied.
In this case, appropriate research has disproved his theory. Well done science. It has found something out by disproof, the only tool it has. Henrik was as essential to this research as the team who disproved him.
Good discussion already! I second TJIC's comment regarding the post title. And Manicbassman raises a good point... 20 years isn't even a blink of an eye over the relevant time frame, so to extrapolate from that limited review that there is no relationship over the course of millennia strikes me as somewhat ridiculous.
That's one thing about the global warming debate that I find irksome... on both sides people are looking at a window of time that is so minute as to be statistically irrelevant when compared to the length of time the Earth and Sun have been interacting with one another, and then trying to pin the results on human activity. Actually seems rather egotistical to suggest we humans have that kind of influence.
However, I do believe in the effects of climate change, they are real and they are drastic. A fascinating book on one of the many side effects of global warming is "No Way Home - The Decline of the World's Great Animal Migrations" by David Wilcove. Wilcove goes into great detail illustrating how inter-related the varying climates of the planet are in relation to migratory species, and the severe impact climate change is having on them. The book doesn't get bogged down in the debate about global warming itself, which is nice.
Re: "denialists". Fine, I'll use a more apropos term, the same one that I use for creationists: morons.
Allow me to make one small, but important, point. I don't think ANYONE is actively denying the fact that the planet is warming. What we are at odds about is what is the cause of it. Is it due to human action, such as increased carbon emissions or is it part of the natural cycle that causes ice ages and heat waves on the planet?
I tend to believe it is a combination of both... I'll jump on the "green" bandwagon because I believe we are stewards of this earth and should protect it, but I don't see humans as the sole cause of global warming. There really are so many unknown factors that cause climate change and I have not seen convincing evidence to suggest that our input alone is sufficient to produce the results we have seen.
But seriously folks, take care of the planet, currently it's the only life-sustaining planet we know of, it's taken pretty good care of you.
The effects of climate change will only be proved as they happen, but 'possible' scenarios scare us because we don't like change.
G Jules #7 said we ought to be "keeping the world in a state capable of maintaining our continued existence". How do you propose to do that with the entire earth? A climate changes, that's what weather, ice ages, volcanoes, a dynamic planet does. We can no more control it than we can the core of the earth.
Whether it's change is 'bad' or 'good' is moot.
Unless humans did it. Then it's bad.
Aw, c'mon. Don't use the word "denialist" which makes questioning any aspects of the mainstream view of climate science tantamount to denying the Holocaust. Climatology is a complex and evolving science and the details are important, just as they are in any science. Calling various hypotheses "denial" based on whether they seem on the face to support a given conclusion or not is just lazy.
The real problem is not whether or not the earth is warming, but whether or not it's a catastrophe that we need to be rescued from.
Bureaucrats the world over are salivating at the possibility of taxing carbon emissions so they can "save us". Can someone remind me what was the last global problem the bureaucrats were able to solve? (Hint: it the eradication of AIDS, global poverty, malaria, nuclear proliferation, genocide, or anything else these international bodies have been tasked with) But if we just give them power over this... they will save us all!
From what exactly? Rising temperatures will ramp up the hydrologic cycle... more rain, and more C02 will accelerate plant growth. Global warming could halt desertification and turn the Sahara, the Gobi, and the American Southwest into gardens.
@5: anyone with a basic understanding of science will know that intriguing facts ought to be considered carefully. It may be just a coincidence that the Little Ice Age of the late 1600's just happened to coincide with the Maunder Minimum, a period of solar activity so low that there were essentially no sunspots. But that would be weird.
Given that fact--and remember, facts are the basis of science, not political expediency, favoured theories, or what the Bible says--it would be a major failure of the scientific community if no one followed up on mechanisms that might account for it.
And it would be anti-scientific in the extreme to say "the debate about causes is a distraction."
A distraction from what? From someone's favourite political agenda?
It is certainly not a distraction from science, which is the only thing that is going to lead to an understanding of our world and our effect on it.
The reflexive dismissal of any investigation into non-anthropogenic causes of global climate change is one half of the poison in this debate, and anti-scientific political activists are not doing humanity any favours by denying the legitimacy or relevance of scientific investigation into these questions.
The falsehoods of Big Carbon can only be countered by our best estimate of the truth, not more falsehoods from politically-motivated operatives of what amounts to just another anti-scientific agenda.
FIGHTCOPYRIGHT@20:
Hell yeah! We'll grow oranges in Alaska!
@ 18: "G Jules #7 said we ought to be "keeping the world in a state capable of maintaining our continued existence"."
Hmm. I should clarify my argument a bit. I'm not arguing that we need to live up to some moral or ethical requirement to keep the Earth livable (although I should note that I'm not arguing that we don't).
My argument is that if we want to stay around as a species, we need to look into what's going to happen to our climate, and how we're going to survive it. Finding convincing proof we don't cause climate change isn't going to make it go away.
I think we should be researching technological fixes because I'm self-interested. I live in Boston. I'd like my city to be here in another century. And I'd like the press to stop writing stories that give courage to the groups arguing that if we didn't cause it, we don't have a reason to try to fix it.
On technological fixes. We know climate is a non-linear system; we know there are a lot of tipping points built in. The better we understand those tipping points, the better our shot at finding a way to work with them. Assuming that a planet is just too big to do anything about doesn't give humanity much credit.
(Note: I think the sunspot research is great. Cloud effects are highly non-linear, and there are intriguing studies showing correlation between sunspots and climate. I just hate seeing it framed in the press as work done specifically to disprove the denialists. Gives 'em too much credit.)
I've always considered this debate a litmus test for idiocy.
Most of the climate denialists are the same folks who jump on here to defend the Bush administration, the creationist museum, the TSA, and police brutality. Arguing with them is tantamount to going down to your local insane asylum and yelling at folks for licking the floor.
Why assign insulting tags to those who are willing to look beyond orthodoxy?
Because there is no "orthodoxy" in this context. The use of religion as a metaphor is spurious and insulting on many levels. It's used as a disingenuous tool to bait and harass those that have accepted the work of IPCC as scientific fact rather than engage in a genuine critique of the evidence.
Hooray! I am impressed with the quality of argument from those, who like myself, are tired of seeing research that fails to support the CO2 global warming connection as favored by the IPCC as being a part of some sort of cabal of "denialists" (a thoroughly loathsome word every bit as offensive as any of the others. A degree of diversity in the perpective on just what is happening to our global environment, the temperature of which is but one assault that threatens a lot more than just polar bears, is much needed. I for one favor Freeman Dyson's perspective, not because I passionately believe he must be correct but because he accepts that he might not be and therefore seeks further understanding while doing those things we know we can to and that will benefit all of us. Cheers to the fellow heretics who stand up to orthodoxy wherever it resides, even in the climate debate (and I use that term "debate" in its most noble and charitable sense). Thanks.
Good point, Another Aaron.
Old news for anyone who follows the field; detection & attribution studies eliminated all the usual alternative sources of the increasing global temperatures long ago. On top of that, the skeptics have never been able to answer the basic physics question: "If the irrefutably higher levels of CO2 over the last century have NOT lead to a rise in temperature, where has all the extra forcing (heat trapped within the atmosphere), that basic physics shows will be trapped in the atmosphere and oceans, gone instead? And by what miraculous new process hitherto unknown to science did it get there?"
Hmm, two comments spring to mind. Firstly, 20 years of data seems rather minimal, given that the effect would be expected to have 11 years as its shortest period.
Secondly, it is relatively uncontroversial that solar forcing was a major factor before 1950. Finding the mechanism of that forcing would be interesting quite independent of any current environmental concerns and useful insofar as it improves knowledge of climate mechanisms.
@Doug L.
I'm not sure I agree with the use of the term "orthodoxy" any more than I agree with the use of the term "denialist." Is it really fair to decry one religiously-charged term and replace it with another? I'm also not sure any segment of the scientific community has been at a consensus for long enough on the global climate change debate for there to be any kind of "orthodox" view.
I've found that it's best to qualify your conclusions on this topic before making them. If you find that you're more certain than uncertain, the precautionary principle should be used. If you find the opposite, look harder, but still employ precaution.
But at any rate, this debate hasn't been about science. It's been about political statements, interest group funding, and talking heads. I don't think anyone can form a realistic opinion without conducting an exhaustive study of available information just to decide which studies are most credible. In my opinion, the whole argument is more about the reliability of modern scientific reporting than whether or not human beings are causing climate change.
I've spent some time researching, working on climate models, and reading the fodder that comes down through the political pipelines. I've got my own perception of what's going on. Each time one of these new studies comes out, the arguments that follow just continue to dilute an issue that should be receiving serious and undivided attention. Afterall, even the skeptics are just skeptics...no one is truly *sure* of what's going on.
It's SAFE to say I think we carry the blueprints to our destruction...
I also think it's never one reason. Life in general (counting the earth) is pretty resilient. Look at the honey bees dying off. It is not one reason. i.e. microwave towers, pollution, weather change, human intervention, etc. This singular blame thing is just an offset of our society.
“Hey shut up! American gladiators are dancing with the mediocre idols on the tonight Bush Nazi show!”
@28: This is a good question, but not necessarily the best way of putting the question. I actually became notably more sceptical about the urgency of the climate crisis precisely by asking a closely related question.
It works like this.
Either increased levels of anthropogenic CO2 will increase the heat content of the atmosphere and oceans, which will result in what I'm going to call "Direct Climate Change", or the climate will respond in ways that keep the heat content more-or-less constant, which will result in "Indirect Climate Change."
Either way, the climate is necessarily going to respond to the additional CO2.
The problem is: no one knows with any certainty to what degree climate response is going to be direct vs indirect, and no one knows with any certainty how large either effect will be in terms of changes in local weather patterns anywhere in the world. There is general agreement that seems pretty robust that polar areas will be most strongly affected, but neither the absolute size of the effect nor in many cases even the sign of the effect in terms of warmer/colder wetter/drier is reliably known for regional climates world-wide.
The only thing we can say for sure is that it is absolutely certain that the weather will not get worse everywhere, unless by "worse" you mean "different", for which there is some economic justification.
I tried to produce a robust first-order estimate of the probable magnitude of climate-response that did not depend on very fine details and assumptions of a given model, and couldn't. Nor has anyone else been able to do so, which is not at all surprising given the nonlinear feedbacks and small-scale phenomena that have important effects.
So in trying to produce an argument that would convince sceptics, I became a good deal more sceptical myself about the specific claims being made.
That said, by adding so much CO2 to the planet's atmosphere we are performing a great experiment with our only home, and this is a bad thing. We should be working vigorously toward reducing carbon emissions on the basis of risk-reduction alone. And if we are not intelligent enough to do that, well, then it sucks to be us. We should not succumb to the desire to make strong unsupported claims for the purpose of engendering panic simply because it will motivate people to "do something."
The solar-activity deniers reveal their fear that the global warming hoax is found out. Critics are called "morons" and rhetorically linked to creationists, etc. No science, just name calling.
But such is the game when science is co-opted by politicians and entertainers. Just wait until women realize what the cost of fixing "global warming" will be. Namely: back to the kitchen, girls. Yes, yes, men should take a more active role in housework, and yes, women are just as capable and effective in the workplace. But let's just imagine what is likely to happen if we can't use electricity to wash and dry our clothes, dishes, diapers, and home.
Turn off the AC, and by the sickly green light of those poisonous mercury CFL bulbs - take care of the kids and house. We fully expect that the laws against driving and lighting and heating will be waived for the workplace. Good luck!
Another Aaron - "Most of the climate denialists are the same folks who jump on here to defend the Bush administration, the creationist museum, the TSA, and police brutality. Arguing with them is tantamount to going down to your local insane asylum and yelling at folks for licking the floor."
I'm more or less a global warming denialist, but thanks for denoting the difference between the sane ones and the insane denialists. Based on your scientific criteria, I shouldn't be in the asylum.
But, overall, the "global warming" issue is being used politically to hurt and hinder humankind through the form of a tax scheme. The carbon credit scam is ridiculous.
Isn't the largest producer of CO2 the soil, then the ocean? If so, why are humans only to blame?
The important take away from all this:
1) Let's be worried about Climate Change and do things to be less wasteful, less polluting, and to exist more harmoniously with the environment which we are a part of. The worry factor is useful to motivate individual and collective actions for a better environment.
2) Let's watch out for the bogus politicization of this issue (especially through the usage of orthodoxy and conflict inducing characterizations like "denialist morons") The worry factor should not be an enabler of increased government bureaucracy and overweaning social control policies. (And worst of all, as a scheme for some kind of world government.)
"...the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none."
"Virtually none"? Isn't that the same as saying "some"? :)
I'm not saying that sunspots cause global warming. I just think that there is not enough data on either side to assume that climate change is caused by humanity. Assuming that the Earth is billions of years old, does data collected from the past 100 years count as statistically significant?
@34: You only have to look at the growth of atmospheric CO2 in the past two hundred years to understand that humans are having a very significant impact on its level. To say that "soil and the ocean" are the largest producers may be true, but it isn't relevant to the debate.
There is no doubt that humans are responsible for almost all of the change in atmospheric CO2 levels in the past 200 years. Some of that human contribution may be due to changes in land use, but those are still anthropogenic changes.
I defy you to look at a curve of carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere in the past 200 years and not conclude that humans aren't the dominant factor in it's dramatic growth.
The problem is that no one knows what the effects of that growth will be. Computer models of the climate are far more dependent on assumptions than physics. This is a necessary consequence of how complex the climate is, and it isn't going away any time soon.
Complex models that depend on plausible assumptions do not produce robust predictions.
This is as much a fact as the fact that humans are the largest contributor to changing CO2 levels in the past 200 years. Complex models that depend on plausible assumptions produce predictions that are poor tools of extrapolation no matter how well they match the past. The only way to know what the effect of all the CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere will be is to wait and see.
This sounds to me like a bad plan, and I believe that for lots of reasons we should be moving to limit in absolute terms the amount of CO2 we add to the atmosphere. But we should not pretend a greater certainty than we have while doing so, and we should not label everyone who is looking more deeply into the past and future of the Earth's climate a "denialist". That just stifles the scientific process, which is the only thing that is going to help us make even near-term predictions that will aid us in adapting to the new world climate we are actively creating.
He's more Left than you:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04282007.html
Reasoned debate:
http://climatedebatedaily.com/
Why anthropogenic global warming is not a distraction or small matter: were it scientifically proven humans are causing climate change, governments will tax us for our "responsibility." It is the key issue.
I'm impressed with the quality of most of the commentary here...particularly the immediate exposure of the religious nature of "denialism" and orthodoxy. There's a tendency that's repeatedly bugged me about certain BB posters over the years: on some issues it's all about rationality, reasoned debate, and science, until someone comes up with a counterpoint. At that point, emotionalism and name-calling kick in, and this hypocrisy, if noted at all, is defended as irony or Abbie Hoffmanesque japery.
Anyway.
I really just dropped by to issue a call for a massive, reckless geoengineering project. That'll fix everything. Yay Greg Benford! Or Monty Burns, your choice.
You're missing the point. Climate-change deniers (e.g., morons) aren't DOING science. They're doing politics, religion, economics, wishful thinking, avoidance, and everything else BUT science. They do not deserve any respect in the context of a scientific debate because they're not party to one. Like the equally-moronic creationists, they like to pretend that there's a "controversy" when there isn't, claim that they're being "suppressed" when they're not, allege vast conspiracies when none exist, and use anecdotal, flawed, incomplete, discredited, irrelevant or fabricated evidence as support for all this. They're dishonest, incompetent, or both.
We know (a) the climate is changing -- I prefer the term "global climate weirdness" because I think it's more apropos than "global warming", but I use both and (b) the proximate cause of that change is human activity. Debate still exists over many points surrounding these, such "how fast is it changing?" and "what will be the consequences?" and "what can we do about it?" and "what metrics provide the best assessment of this?" but we're well past the point where serious argument over the basic points is meaningful. As one of the articles I referenced (above) pointed out, the moronic claims of denialists that climatologists somehow forgot en masse about solar input are like claiming that NASA mission planners neglected the effects of gravity.
It is not the sun spots themselves, but the intensity of the sun's output that is determined by counting sun spots. But that is not the issue. Don't show me facts and data. Al gore has told us that the science is settled. There is too much discussion of science going on in here.
It is all about taxes and control.
It is very important that anthropogenic global warming be caused by CO2. It is a simple concept. You can sell the idea to non-technical people through media sound bites on CNN, CBS, and MS-NBC. Once the dogma is accepted as "fact" by non-scientist, we can pressure governments to impose caps and fines for CO2 (read taxes). Since we hate the United States, we can use the UN to impose global taxes and control.
We will then tax what for millions of years has been normal weather cycles. History is filled with records of warm and cold periods. Some of them have been pretty severe (little ice ages and warm periods that lasted for decades or even centuries).
If you ask a small child to tell you the cause of a nice summer day, they will draw you a picture with a large yellow sun. You have to indoctrinate children to think that warm weather is caused by evil SUVs. You can't tax and regulate the sun.
When I was a kid they used to joke about taxing the air we breathe. In fact, you are exhaling CO2 right now. It may soon come to pass.
Global Warming is the new home of big government socialists and communists. You can't fix what isn't broken, but you can tax the hell out of people for it.
"Denialist" is not such a bad label, since it puts one in the company of many eminent scientists, including but by no means limited to:
Prof. Freeman Dyson--one of the world's most eminent physicists
Dr. Edward Wegman--former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences
Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology
Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute
Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones
Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski--world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research
Prof. Tom V. Segalstad--head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo
Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu--founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the "1,000 Most Cited Scientists"
Dr. Claude Allegre--member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science
Dr. Richard Lindzen--Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate
Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov--head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science's Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometria project
Dr. Richard Tol--Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Sami Solanki--director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany
Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen--director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy
...and many (most?) former members of the IPCC who were originally appointed to that Committee to provide scientific oversight, and who later found themselves unwelcome when their observations conflicted with the IPCC's stated policy goals.
Yay for the Denialists!
Wow, who turned up the level of ignorance to eleven in here?
#33 posted by WWEBoing
"The solar-activity deniers reveal their fear that the global warming hoax is found out. Critics are called "morons" and rhetorically linked to creationists, etc. No science, just name calling."
Not true Weboing - TJIC is a creationist. If you go to his web page you'll find he is a creationist and apparently believes that blacks are inherently inferior to whites. Among other delusions.
I love it how all the trolls came out to play.
"we should not label everyone who is looking more deeply into the past and future of the Earth's climate a "denialist"."
Follow the money. You'll find that the likes of Friis-Christensen (and no doubt others) have been well rewarded by Exxon for their "contributions" to the debate. Scientists I think rightly feel themselves to be under attack. Their only real defenses are rhetorical and so I think they have a right to label certain nutcases as denialists.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bothered by being lumped into the same category as creationists/world-is-flattists (big thanks there, Gore...) just because I don't believe climate change is alltogether human-caused. And I'm certainly not a denialist.
I do happen to lean more toward the left politically. I am not denying that pollution = bad. However, I see the phrase "global warming" bandied about as a way to wag fingers and a way to gain power politically more than anything else, and I also happen to believe the Earth's climate is subject to change no matter what we try to do about it. And since we can barely predict the weather accurately (wasn't it supposed to rain this week in northern california?), I reserve the right to be suspicious of even the most convincing-sounding science that points to the polar ice caps turning into saunas thanks to cow farts.
And if I even try talking about my views away from the protective anonymity of the internet, I'm crucified.
#40:
Let me put it this way. The first and second comments in this thread has it exactly right. But the attitude Cory expressed apparently blinded him to the reality of the science presented by both Svensmark and Lancaster University, so he put up a headline that had nothing whatsoever to do with the research in question. Bluntly associating Svensmark's research with "deniers" instead of simply treating it as a piece of research that's been contradicted by further research cheapens and obfuscates the entire scientific process.
Non-scientists with poor understanding of the mechanics involved will jump all over the fact that global mean temperatures haven't risen since 1998, but that doesn't mean that this research isn't worth exploring further. Neither does the fact that people will no doubt misinterpret and abuse Miklós Zágoni's research.
The point is that a language of orthodoxy--which is exactly what "denialist" is--does not foster free debate. It is a language of suppression.
You may think that the word "moron" has a place in serious debate about important issues, but I don't. If such people are "not party" to the scientific debate...then why keep bringing them up with such casual frequency?
Sigh.
Some researchers investigated a theory by trying to find evidence that sunspot activity caused climate variations. They did not find any significant evidence. That doesn't mean that there isn't any, it means that they didn't find any. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The net result of this is that we don't really know anything more than we did before that study (except perhaps that pursuing this study further is probably not a good use of funding).
We still don't really know what's happening to the climate. There's a lot of posturing and loudly promoted hypotheses on both sides, and none of them have been able to ground their hypotheses in real science; about the best they have been able to do is use science to disprove the hypotheses of their opponents. However, we have learned a couple of things from the past few decades of climate research:
- We suck at creating models of the planet's climate. We can create plenty of (contradictory) models that fit the available historical data, but we've been able to do that for quite a while now, and so far none of them have turned out to be correct when new data was fed in. This indicates that our latest attempts at creating models by fitting the historical data are probably also wrong. There's something here that we don't understand on a fundamental level.
- Nobody is really interested in the truth. People don't want to find out how the climate is actually behaving, they just want to have their unsubstantiated claims vindicated.
Also: subject-verb agreement is super keen!
CO2 is not the problem. We are currently at about 300 ppm. Dinosaurs lived when it was over 1000 ppm. Did dinosaurs die out due to global warming? No. I believe asteroid strike is the accepted theory.
Asteroids, super novas, gamma ray bursts, super volcanoes (Yellowstone), pandemic diseases... all things that can kill us. CO2. Way, way, way far down on the list.
Earth's four billion year history has shown us that catastrophic extinction is the norm. However, the chances of it happening in the next 1000 years is remote.
If we are living in the end of days, there is very little that "carbon credits" can do for us.
@#37: To say that "soil and the ocean" are the largest producers may be true, but it isn't relevant to the debate.
Much of the debate over global warming is whether humans are the cause. If you say that non-human sources of CO2 are irrelevant to the debate, then you're throwing scientific analysis to the wind.
It would be logical to assume that over the past 200 years we've contributed, as we've had explosive growth of CO2 producers just exhaling CO2 called humans, not including the animal population.
I do agree that we do need to start practicing conservative measures, but forcing it through government taxes and regulations isn't the way. People have to make a conscious decision to do so.
20 years is not even one complete sunspot cycle, as others have alluded to. Not enough data.
Forgive me. In post #49, I meant meteor or comet. I know that asteroids are generally small. Maybe, to many video games.
The way the bbc article is written is somewhat misleading. The scenario suggested has two components:
1. The cosmic ray flux on the earth is anti-correlated with the solar cycle.
2. Cosmic rays some how seed clouds.
So during solar max, fewer cosmic rays at earth, fewer clouds being seeded and so the earth heats up.
The problem is that the bbc are mixing the two arguments together saying both are unproven in the new Sloan paper. There is strong evidence that the cosmic ray flux in the inner-heliosphere is related to the solar cycle. But its the second component that the sloan paper argues against, not finding a correlation between cloud cover and cosmic ray flux or the solar cycle.
Cry, fr shm. "Dnlsts"? Snc whn ds scnc s trms brrwd frm rlgs rthdxy?
Clmt chng s hppnng. Whthr t s drct rslt f hmn mssns f C2 s ndr stdy. Glbl wrmng s stdy hs bn gng n fr 40 yrs t th mst. T lvt th cnclsns rchd n th lst 40 yrs f stdy t sttld fct s prmtr.
'm wth th bv. Glbl wrmng hs bn c-ptd by sttsts nd cmmntrns s n xcs t tx nd rglt. t dsn't mttr nymr f th scnc s crrct, t mttrs hw mny ppl y cn cnvnc tht th scnc s crrct.
Do we need to add this to the Proust Questionnaire?
Wow, a thread on global warming that's full of condescending explanations of what the idiots on the other side refuse to recognize as The Obvious Truth, not to mention a couple of visits from the grammar Nazis.
You could knock me over with a feather.
@49: Current CO2 levels are at a significantly increased 380 ppm. (Up from about 280 ppm at the end of the little ice age and largest extent of alpine glaciers in the middle of the 19th century.)
"'Sunspots don't cause global warming, people do'.
Really?
Is the preponderance of evidence in, and that's what it says?"
Yes, you have it exactly: The preponderance of the evidence is in, and that's what it says.
Oooooh! Statists and communitarians coming to eat our lunch and take away our SUVs!
I guess that's progress. Last year's talking points called the whole climate change thing a hoax cooked up by climatologists who wanted to scare people into giving them grant money.
The people I believe to be intelligent (and I thought them so before I knew their opinions) believe humans are damaging this planet. The people I believe to be idiots (and I thought them so before I knew their opinions) believe that humans have nothing to do with it....not only that, but they often turn out to have a connection to Exxon are whoever.
It's not too difficult to reach a conclusion.
Don't tell me to read up on the subject either...I have no intention of becoming a climate scientist. "We need to do more research!" is a hole you'll never find the bottom of.
Why don't we just trust the smarties and put emission filters on our cars and factories already? Oh right, because the CEO of Exxon will have to sell one of his eight mansions.
Yeah, that's right. You, STOP LICKING THE FLOOR. For God's sake, people walk on that.
Like your confused headline the article
from the researchers at Lancaster University
also misunderstands the hypothesis they are trying to refute.
Svensmark's hypothesis has to do with Galactic Cosmic Rays, high-energy particles and gamma rays
that originate from astrophysical processes in our galaxy such as supernovae, star formation etc.
Thos GCRs have enough energy to produce a shower of charged muons at low altitudes that have a major influence on cloud formation by ionizing certain molecules in the atmosphere which then become nucleation sites. Charged particles from the Sun, mostly protons emitted during Sun storms do not have enough energy to produce a large flux of muons at low altitudes. They do collide with nuclei in the upper atmosphere producing isotopes of certain elements that permit reconstruction of solar cycles of the past beyond the period during which sunspots began to be observed and recorded. The charged particles from the Sun are strongly affected by the Earth's magnetic field while the GCRs (the ones that are charged) are too energetic to be affected by the Earth's magentic field. Bu the Sun's magnetic field and the cloud of thin plasma that surrounds the Sun and emcompasses the Solar system because of its extension can block a significant portion of the charged GCRs when the Sun's activity is particularly intense. The effect of GCRs is stronger on low altitude clouds over the oceans, specially on a band of30 degrees of latitude about the Equator where most of heat absorption by the oceans takes place. This region of the world provides the energy supply for most of the weather.
The Lancaster paper focused on the effect of the cosmic rays from the Sun at high latitudes and has no effect on Svensmark's conclusions. That article at best is a straw man.
Riobaldo
"Lst yr's tlkng pnts clld th whl clmt chng thng hx ckd p by clmtlgsts wh wntd t scr ppl nt gvng thm grnt mny."
Flr f cmpstn. Fl.
Clmt chng hs hppnd n th pst. Vstly lvtd C2 lvls hv hppnd n th pst.
W nd strtgy t dl wth th fct tht th ss *wll* rs nd th tmprtrs *wll* bcm wrmr. Prd.
gn, t dsn't mttr f th scnc s crrct, t mttrs hw mny ppl y cn cnvnc th scnc s crrct. Y cn't tx th sn. Y cn't mk lws rstrctng vlcns. Bt y cn tx crs nd rstrct ppl.
cld cr lss, dn't vn wn cr.
Tempatures on earth have only been rising for about 50 years. In order for the sun to raise the tempature of the earth it must increase it's output. the Earth reacts quickly to the extra energy, it's not like energy released by the sun hundreds of years ago waits until today to have an effect.
For the temparture to continue to rise (and be caused by the sun), the output of the sun must continually rise almost in step with the temp increase seen on the earth. a 20 year study covers about 40% of the time of rising temps, and includes the rises we've seen this decade. If the sun output did not significantly increase over the period of time temps are rising, then it is not a cause of current changes. Past changes may very well have been caused by sun output variations, but the current one isn't.
And yes the majority of CO2 put in the atmosphere is not of human origin, however that CO2 isn't increasing and nature is part of the natural carbon cycle. So all that natural CO2 has remained a realtive constant. It's the additional man made carbon that is causing the heating, heating from natural CO2 is what set the climate prior to man dumping tons of the stuff in the air. If some natural cycle kicks in to sink the additional man made CO2 we'll be saved. But I'd rather not bet the world on it.
@57
OK 380 ppm. The point was it has been a lot higher in the distant past. CO2 hasn't been credited with past extinctions. In fact, high CO2 levels have been attributed with healthy plant life and the ability to support dinosaur size animals.
Pointing to CO2 and saying it suddenly drives climate change is like saying that if I paint my truck red, it will accelerate faster.
If you want look at greenhouse gasses and climate, look no further that water vapor.
And of course the great global climate scientist conspiracy to get grants. Point to a global climate scientists that made $123 billion in profit. I think you'll find the group of people with real profit motive in the climate "conspiracy" isn't the scientist.
Further the one scientist that proves the consenus wrong is typically rewarded with a Nobel Prize. You think buying into some conspiracy is a way to win the prize?
@50: I don't think you understood my comment.
Look at it this way: during the Young Dryas the vast majority of the water in the North Atlantic was NOT fresh-water outflow from Lake Agassiz. But to conclude on that basis that fresh-water outflow from Lake Agassiz was not responsible for the dramatic change in thermohaline circulation would be quite wrong.
Climates are quasi-equilibrium systems that are known to be susceptible to violent changes under relatively modest stresses. The Younger Dryas is an excellent example of this, despite the undoubted fact that it's cause was never the dominant source of water in the North Atlantic.
Likewise, simply because humans are not the dominant source of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is still perfectly plausible that anthropogenic CO2 is capable of producing quite dramatic changes in the existing quasi-equilibrium state.
"Tmptrs n rth hv nly bn rsng fr bt 50 yrs."
http://pld.wkmd.rg/wkpd/cmmns/f/f8/c_g_Tmprtr.png
@64
I just wanted to make sure you knew the correct value and put it in perspective. Nothing else was implied in my posting.
We humans can't seem to shake the feeling that Paradise was created for us, but our fatal flaw is that we are destroying it, a sin for which we'll pay on some not-to-distant Judgment Day.
So it it with every major religion in the world. So it is with Global Warming(R).
Therefore it's only to be expected that proponents will defend Global Warming as loudly as if it were their religion.
Really, the scientists have spoken. what you choose to hear is a matter of faith.
Criminy, lay off Cory with the nitpciking, wouldja? At least he's doing something.
Cory! Someone on the internet is wrong! Please argue with them!
But seriously... my response to the inevitable science geek objection that we are mostly laymen here and really know nothing about this (no disrespect intended, science geeks) is simply that policy decisions are made by citizens and politicians, not soley by PhDs-- nor should they be.
My point being that there has to be a debate about it among laymen like ourselves, and the fact that we will only know for sure who is right sometime in the future (if then) does not mean that taking some prudent precautions now makes us "lemmings."
One more thing: why is this topic such a magnet for unpleasant ideological posturing? It just clogs up a discussion which obviously demands a lot of detailed back and forth on difficult scientific points--and that's hard enough!
All of you people who have faith in the scientific method and want more studies - Sure, I don't really think reasonable people have a beef.
I think there are really people who deny GCC's existence. I don't equate it to holocaust denial, but there are people who do ignore the evidence for their own reasons.
But I think that there is a vast difference between groups who want to study ALL the angles of global climate change and everything that influences it from a scientific standpoint, and people who want to spout talking points debunking it, shout about how this new scientist's interest in other factors is more proof against human involvement... These are two completely different groups of people, and if people who talk about honest scientific inquiry into non-human, non CO2 influences want to be taken seriously, they need to stop letting people who are ignoring the peer-reviewed scientific consensus and just want to make human involvement in GCC disappear stop hiding behind them. In America, half of the problem is the mainstream media's insistence on giving equal credit and page-time to viewpoints that are scientifically not REMOTELY seen as equal, and creating a false sense of schism and controversy.
When groundbreaking new evidence with really good data comes along to knock us off the #1 cause list, I have faith it'll be seriously looked at.
But for now... Temperatures all over are changing, up and down, even if mean temperature isn't growing.
Didn't anyone look at http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/26/slides-from-wonderfu.html?
As if that's not enough, I see two other things going on - A constant maneuvering of the goalposts by people who oppose the scientific consensus for non-scientific reasons. First, it was whether GCC existed. Then it was whether C02 made a difference. Then there are people who state that it doesn't matter, or that GCC will have financial benefits to people. I don't care who can grow new crops when GCC screws up their climate, it's not worth projected 10%+ species destruction.
Now it's whether humans caused that CO2. And apparently, now 'bad people created thousands of years of ice core data and paid off a huge percentage of the world's scientists as an excuse to tax us more'. I guess that for some people this is a logical conclusion, but It -Sounds- like the new goalposts that we keep getting as this 'Debate' goes on.
I can't see how someone can make that claim that people concerned about GCC are profit/politically motivated, when the people who have a CLEAR financial interests - Companies that do business based off of C)2 producing technologies, the businesses that will be impacted if we DO make a real effort to regulate CO2 emissions - Are not considered to be financially motivated. That's intentionally blindfolding yourself to argue a weak point.
To me, it looks like a massive number of people who do worry about climate change and want to reduce emissions have nothing to gain from it, other than not saddling future generations with a different looking climate.
Even if you don't buy human involvement, there's all kinds of pragmatic reasons to reduce emissions... Energy independence and air quality are probably the most obvious. But it comes down to, if we are the cause of climate change, -Even if we do something right now-, global average temps are going to likely rise 3 degrees in the coming centuries, CO2 won't stabilize for 100 years and sea levels will rise (slowly,) for a thousand. I'd rather act now than wait and let the potential problems get WORSE.
Ramen.
A few questions, so we don't conflate issues.
1. Is global climate change happening? yes/no
If No goto 5.
2 Should action be taken as a result of global climate change? yes/no
3. Should we attempt to prevent global climate change? yes/no
4. Is global climate change occurring because of human activity? yes /no
5. Should we increase or decrease the human generated levels of greenhouse gases? yes/no
I see them as primarily wanting to be seen as right at any cost - they are under the delusion that physics is a democracy, and if they can convince enough people to agree with them and do what they propose, then they will be correct. In other words, it's politics as usual.
There is a relatively small lobby with large resources who stand to gain financially on one side of this fight, but so far as I can see, most people involved are just acting out of religious fervour.
Yes I should've qualified by "50 years" by saying recent and rapid increases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
shows it starting about 100-150 years ago and increasing significantly in the last 50 or so.
Hey guys, this thread has been fun and all. I love arguing with the greenie weenie true believers. However, I think we've all beaten the topic to a pulp. I am off to see more of the wonderful things that boing boing is a directory of...
I think the main reason this sets off so many alrm bells with so many people is that normative judgements always seem to come along with the reports. Not in the papers themselves, mind you, but in most of the people relaying them.
And those normative judgements have HUGE implications. They are beyond the scope of any single scientist, politician, or economist. They may save humans from terrible climate dangers, or it may keep billions in poverty for another century.
For the deniers/skeptics, the disagreement may have originated with the normative cure proposed, and they simply worked backwards to find faults in the science itself without considering its veracity. Equally, many supporters may have agreed with those normative judgements and simply found the problem to the solution they already wanted. This "working backwards" is usually what causes the typical debates modeled on religion.
There are plenty of these faults on both sides.
Right... because nothing makes a politician more popular than raising taxes!
I wasn't aware that the free market had found solutions to these problems.
Silly, uninformed me. I forgot that industrialists are super-competent ubermensches motivated by love of their fellow man, and that the deforestation of the Amazon and the obliteration of the ocean's fish stocks are the work of diabolical pencil pushers growing fat on taxpayers dollars!
Not always. How long did it take for scientists to prove the feasibilty of atomic fusion? Pretty quick turnaround there.
Also, much of the support for evolution was there when Darwin and his colleagues were writing. Much of the subsequent evidence has merely confirmed what they established.
I'm not a scientist, but I was under the impression that scientists have more sources of data than historical experience. I.e., fossil records, astronomical dat, etc.
That is, the fact that there were no climatologists in the Roamn Empire does not mean we are totally lacking data about what took place then.