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New Research on Global Warming ...
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| occrider |
The plot thickens.
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The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah
(Filed: 18/07/2004)
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.
A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Britain ratified the protocol in 2002 and said it would cut emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels.
Globally, 1997, 1998 and 2002 were the hottest years since worldwide weather records were first collated in 1860.
Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.
To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.
The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.
Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.
He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.
Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.
"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."
Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.
He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.
This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.
Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.
"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.
"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...7/18/wsun18.xml
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I think the telegraph is rather hasty in calling it the truth but interesting all around. |
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| Q5echo |
that just makes way too much sense. sreiously
the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a giant nuclear furnace.
where hydrogen is made into helium, at tepuratures of millions of degrees
They Might Be Giants |
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| Seventil |
| What the hell is a poppycock? |
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| LiquidX |
| yet, another theory.. mmm One thing is for sure, I need to go visit the Glaciers once and for all, and get away from Florida asap!.. aaand. get myself a Hybrid heh. |
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| NeoPhono |
| The only thing worse than humans believing they are smarter than they really are is humans making policy based on this percieved knowledge. "Global warming," gotta love it. |
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| ResonantDrag |
| so, if we drop all our bombs on the middle east at high noon (nukes included) we could potentially propel ourselves to a safe orbit... kill two birds with one stone:p |
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| Renegade |
There's no doubt that solar activity can be linked to global climate trends, but there's still the question of "to what degree". I understand, for instance, that solar activity peaks in 11 year cycles and the last two such peaks, I think, were in 1991 and 2002. Now I might be getting this wrong as I'm going entirely from memory, but these two years of heightened solar activity correspond with two summers of the most abnormal weather I can rememebr having down here. In 1991 we had massive storms over Christmas and New Year, right through January (our house is situated on the side of a smallish valley, and for probably the first time since the area was urbanised, we had an actual creek flowing past the back of our house) and in 2002 we had one of the hottest summers in memory (including a 45 degree day that was the hottest recorded for 70 years or something). Now I'm not a meteorologist (which may come as a shock to many of you ;)) but I wouldn't be in the least bit suprised if there was a direct link between this increased solar activity and the abnormal weather we experienced (I'd be interested to hear if similar things happened in other parts of the world during those two years).
But on the other hand, the evidence offered up in favour of global warming doesn't correspond so neatly to solar activity, or at least not any patterns of solar activity I'm familiar with. When we have a look at the major indicators of anthropic climate change (global temperature, global diurnal temperatures etc.) it's fairly evident that the trends are constant and gradual, even over periods of 50-100 years. This is a global temperature graph I posted in an earlier global warming thread (here for those interested):
Note that despite the variances, the peaks and troughs, there is a very definite upward trend in global temperature. If we were to believe that global warming can be directly attributed to anomolies in solar activity, surely we should expect to see more exagerated variences in temperature in the short term and a flat overall trend of ~0 rather than a gradual, yet constant positive trend? This upward trend is especially significant when, as pointed out in the article, it has continued unimpeded over the past 20 years - perhaps even accelerated - despite no change in solar activity.
Now I'm not saying that there's no correspondence between solar activity and climate change, because in an exotropic system such as ours, there necessarily is. But, on the other hand, if you want to presume that solar activity is the sole cause of the global climactic change that we're witnessing, then you have some anomolies to explain. I'm not a doom and gloom global warming activist, but there is definitely some substantial evidence supporting anthropic climate change and this view - that CO2 and other gasses created by humans are artificially altering our climate - is held by the majority of those in the scientific community. Burying our head in the sand, believing only those 5% of dissenting scientists who disagree with the majority of scientific opinion (and who often have something to gain by offering this view - especially those funded by right-wing think-tanks etc.) is not going to make the problem go away. It is better to take small, incremental steps now to curb the problem than to be forced into making catastrophic changes to our lifestyle once its too late.
Just my opinion though. |
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| Matty V |
Yer well due to global warming the UK is guna enter into another ice age in the next hundred years!!
All the ice melting in ther artic is dumping loads of fresh water into the ocean which is cutting off the gulf stream to the UK. The gulf stream keeps our country from turning into siberia. |
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| NeoPhono |
| The problem with global warming is the timeframe under which we study it. A hundred-year, or even a 500-year sample is not enough time to accurately judge climate changes that take thousands of years to fully develop. Just as in the 70's, individuals using a small enough time frame led us to "global cooling" hysteria, now we find ourselves in the exact opposite frenzy. Should we pollute the earth at will...no, but we should also all calm the hell down and think things through before we attempt to cripple the words economy (Kyoto cough, cough). It's only a matter of time before global warming fades into the next environmental destruction fad. |
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| trancaholic |
I wonder how the authors can say:
| quote: | The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.
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in the same article which contains snippets such as these:
| quote: |
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed
to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades...
...the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so...
This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.
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Rather reckless journalism I would say. People who only read the headlines and first few lines of an article will get the wrong idea IMO.
As to
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The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.
"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."
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this has got to be some of the worst argumentation I have heard in this debate: "I'm sure of it" never was a dandy argument, and even if the "number of scientists" sharing Bellamy's view is "growing" that's of no importance in comparison with the actual proportion of scientists subscribing to his views.
What a lot of these "sceptical environmentalists" fail to consider, is the outcomes of the courses of action that we as humans can take: If we take measures to limit the emission of greenhouse gasses and consequently find that greenhouse gasses are of no relevance to global warming, then we have spent some money - which could have been used for other things. Hardly a catastrophy. If, however, we decide to take no action to limit emission of greenhouse gasses, and consequently find out that they are decisive for the level of global warming, then we will find ourselves with a real catastrophy of which we have seen only the beginning in the consequences of El-Niņo. Thus, even if we could agree that the probability of greenhouse gasses affecting the global temperature is relatively low, the insane difference in utility should prompt us to take action anyway. |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
... Now I might be getting this wrong as I'm going entirely from memory,
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You memorized the global temp mean anomalies chart???:eyes:
Thats insane.
I say we nuke the sun and get it over with.:disbelief Who's with me? |
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| NeoPhono |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
I say we nuke the sun and get it over with.:disbelief Who's with me? |
Sounds like a great idea. :D And while we're at it, let's destroy all industry and revert back to a pre-historic stone age way of life.
Let's save this earth, people!!! |
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