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- dash1185, on 04/03/2008, -12/+53Well thank you Mr. obviously well-informed scientist. The question is not if the sun has affected the climate on earth (of course it has), but if it is the main reason in the rapid change in temperatures observed since 30 years. What the team has proven is that there seems to be no correlation between increased cosmic rays exposure and increased cloud formation (which was a central point in the sun theory). Of course you've got to be careful with these results, so I will wait for the actual peer-reviewed article.
I can't see why you imagine just for a second that you can dismiss all the findings of these "Lefties in science" just with a wave of your hand (unless you're a troll and in that case you got me). The world is not black and white, of course there are many reasons for the current change observed in climate. I don't understand why you cannot accept that humans may be part of the problem (even if a small one). - supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -5/+39Over 2 billion years, you are right, the sun HAS dictated the earth's climate (more accurately, the tilt and orbital variation, distance from the earth to the sun, has dictated the earths climate). Scientists, especially climatologists, have known about this for a long time. They are called Milankovitch cycles, and they are NOT what is at play today. Milankovitch cycles happen over the course of several thousands, tens of thousands of years. To insinuate that climatologists have somehow "missed" the sun's influence is insulting. I'm glad this study comes out and puts the solar forcing theory to rest.
- brjohnson789, on 04/03/2008, -24/+51This is garbage. The guy totally writes off a theory on climate change based on his own interpretation of the theory (which the theory's originator says is incorrect). His results don't match what would happen in his flawed interpretation, so he concludes that we need to get back to taxing carbon emissions. Never mind other data that shows the earth isn't even significantly warming up, such as the fact the oceans' temp hasn't increased the last ten years or whatever. His socialist kneejerk reaction to create a huge taxing system should be an indicator of how his studies are almost certainly flawed.
- WasabiBomb, on 04/03/2008, -2/+28Is FeartheKnighted so dumb as to actually believe that the article is saying that the Sun doesn't affect the temperature of the Earth?
The article doesn't say anything like that, moron. All it says is that the last 30 years of climate CHANGE don't appear to be caused by the Sun- you know, in refutation to the stories we saw a few months ago which claimed that the Sun WAS driving climate change. And if the Sun isn't causing it... well, that just means that it's more likely that WE are causing it- so, yeah, keeping an eye on our carbon emissions would be a good idea.
Crap, I'm just so tired of all these armchair climatologists making fun of real scientists for doing their jobs. - zKman, on 04/03/2008, -2/+27"Cosmic rays are not deflected away by the magnetic field. That is total hogwash and any scientist worth anything knows that. cosmic rays are radiation, and magnetic fields do nothing to radiation, particularly high-energy radiation like CR's. Radiation is stopped by matter, by mass. The atmosphere of earth stops cosmic rays from hitting you."
It looks like you are saying cosmic rays are EM radiation. In actuality, cosmic rays consist of particles, mostly protons, as well as alpha particles and electrons. Cosmic rays do interact with magnetic fields. - Angostura, on 04/03/2008, -6/+29"They are basically saying that the sun does not affect the temperature of the earth."
Thank you for perhaps the worst summary of a piece of research I have ever seen. "Wow" indeed.
Let me fix it for you:
They are basically saying that the sun's cosmic ray output does not affect cloud formation on the earth - dash1185, on 04/03/2008, -8/+29RTFA : the article does NOT say where the first research datasets (Dr. Sloan from Lancaster University) are from. The second datasets (Dr. Harrisson from reading University) is from UK only. Moron.
- supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -0/+20Wow. I know I'm gonna get dugg down for this, but the lack of science in this little posting spree is ***** up. Come on guys, is it too much to ask to actually go read the source? Tell me one place where it says, in the source material, the actual peer reviewed journal, that the sun doesnt affect the temperature of the earth? What they are saying is that the temperature CHANGE resulting from the sun is too small to explain the current warming trend.
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -0/+17"Are people that dumb that they actually believe this garbage? "
No, the only people that are "that dumb" are the ones who modded you up for falsely representing the content of the article. - khail250, on 04/03/2008, -1/+17science /= politics.
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -0/+16"If, by your logic, CO2 emissions are the cause, why do we not see a steady, consistent 4% rise year over year of temperature?"
Because there isn't a direct, short-term equivalency in CO2 concentration and temperature. No one claimed there is, and to say otherwise is to commit the "Strawman argument" fallacy. The effect is likely to be staggered, and because of the complexity of the global weather system, increased energy may result in some cooler temperatures for a short while.
You're just mad because one of the deniers' main arguments has just been proved false.
PS About the "grant money" red herring, the sums involved pale in comparison to the money Big Oil has put into AGW-denier propaganda. This particular argument of yours is worthless (which is typical of deniers, might I add). - ryan83189, on 04/03/2008, -11/+26This article is absolute crap, yet when this hits front page, some will praise it without ever reading it, deniers will use anecdotal evidence to support their ideas. No one will RTFA, yet it will be dugg. It will be a shouting match. Those who believe in global warming will be called "left wingers, or new world order Gorites" and those who don't will be "naive and deniers". someone will say to the deniers "I bet you believe in creationism too"
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -2/+17"Global warming is happening across several planets in the solar system"
Not really. This myth has been debunked several times already. - Railer, on 04/03/2008, -42/+56Yes we can conclude Solar forcing is nil because and I quote "His own research, looking at the UK ONLY, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation." - yes well looking at an amazing small piece of land surrounded by water and almost constantly covered by clouds might not be the best place to look for cloud formation causes world wide.
I recommend - http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/ev ...
for a longer look at the solar trends. - nblsavage, on 04/03/2008, -5/+18You're worried about "Planet X" but call climate change *****?
- supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -2/+14Svensmark was wrong. Very wrong.
As Bard and Delaygue emphasize, this requires an exactly opposite sign of response to magnetic field variations as claimed by Marsh and Svensmark (2000), and as assumed elsewhere in Courtillot's paper, for the correlation to take place. Courtillot cooks up an ad hoc explanation for why this might be the case, but this leads him even farther afield from anything that can be justified by known, quantified physics. One can find all sorts of correlations if one allows oneself the liberty to change the sign of the sought-for relation whenever convenient, and without any constraint by physics.
“Are there connections between the Earth's magnetic field and climate?” by V. Courtillot, Y. Gallet, J.-L. Le Mouël, F. Fluteau, A. Genevey EPSL 253, 328, 2007
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 265, Issues 1-2, 15 January 2008, Pages 302-307
Anybody can see the lack of correlation between temperature and both TSI and Sunspots. Its ***** obvious:
Graph of TSI: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2007 ...
Graph of Sunspots: http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p137/fireworks_ ...
The above is also a graph of temperature. Things simply do not match up.
I'm going to have to read this study and see the physics and science contained within, but it sounds pretty damning to the theory of solar forcing. - dash1185, on 04/03/2008, -3/+15Actually, they tried to disprove part of the "sun link", which is the theory that cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere cause increased cloud formation. The implied hypothesis is that you do not need long time-spans to observe this predicted effect, which makes sense for me.
But for all of you bashing the article : what do you expect from BBC science ? It's not a peer-reviewed magazine ! - supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -0/+12http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A4.lr ...
Ocean temperatures have not increased in the last 10 years? *****. - BigManOnCampus, on 04/03/2008, -29/+40Yeah, I should have expected that short time-spans of data are perfectly acceptable in the use of proving Climate Change, but totally unacceptable at disproving it. I wonder if they used surface temperature records to compare it to.
btw, there is one part of the article that is inaccurate.
FTA: "Cosmic rays are deflected away from Earth by our planet's magnetic field, and by the solar wind - streams of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun."
Cosmic rays are not deflected away by the magnetic field. That is total hogwash and any scientist worth anything knows that. cosmic rays are radiation, and magnetic fields do nothing to radiation, particularly high-energy radiation like CR's. Radiation is stopped by matter, by mass. The atmosphere of earth stops cosmic rays from hitting you.
In fact, anyone who has done any research into NASA's attempts at solving the radiation exposure problem on astronauts travelling to Mars knows this full well. A proposed solution for deflecting solar wind is a magnetic bubble around the ship. The only proposed solution for protecting astronauts from cosmic rays involves layers of hydrocarbons, basically surrounding the astronauts with high densities of hydrogen atoms. - variant5, on 04/03/2008, -3/+14It's almost ironic that you're the one now advocating going to the actual research article. I'm glad I could have a positive effect on you, Railer. You don't need to thank me; I know how well wrapped up your little brain is in that curious world of yours.
- Logicexe, on 04/03/2008, -2/+12"The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.
Fenton’s team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa’s Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.
When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet."
Read your own goddamn sources. All that article pertains to is Mars, not the entire solar system. Furthermore, it says that Mars is getting warming at about the same rate as Earth. How could the Sun warm up Mars just as quickly as the Earth when Mars is much farther away and has a much thinner atmosphere? Obviously there is another explanation for Mars' warming, and your article supports that.
Christ you people are stupid when it comes to this crap. I guess it's true that people read whatever they want to read. - OnTheTake, on 04/03/2008, -3/+13I am shocked that so many people can't read and think for themselves. The article says they could find no correlation between variations in solar activity (solar flares etc) and increased cloud coverage. If you have a theory, and you can not find data to support it, that theory is suspect. The data that was analyzed showed (from 3 different sources), that these effects are minimal. BTW saying that the sun doesn't effect the temperature on the Earth is reading something into this article that isn't there. Anyone who would say that is an idiot.
- grecosd, on 04/03/2008, -3/+13The sun's activities do affect the atmosphere in many ways - the aurora borealis, for instance. But there are other obstacles that block the sun's radiation - space clouds or huge clouds of particles that move between the earth and the sun. I remember discussing sun's affects on the earth at our weeking astronomy meeting at our observatory in California thirty years ago. There was a small particle cloud that was detected at the time. But what if a huge cloud, so huge that we wouldn't know we were in it, passed our solor system to bring our temperatures on earth back to normal?
- TrevorBradley, on 04/03/2008, -3/+12Dugg up for speaking the truth
Let's keep it science based, folks. - FeartheKnighted, on 04/03/2008, -45/+54Really? Are people that dumb that they actually believe this garbage? They are basically saying that the sun does not affect the temperature of the earth. Wow.
The last sentence alone proves how biased these 'scientists' are: "So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions.'' - archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -1/+9"the proponents of Global Warming are funded by corporations on the other side of the spectrum"
Prove it. - Gazoo2001, on 04/03/2008, -2/+10If I understand what I read in the article correctly, they looked at a set of data which should show them if the effect was real, i.e. does changing the flux of cosmic rays change the amount of cloud formation. The result was, to paraphrase, "not nearly enough to account for currently observed global warming." They don't have to look at the whole Earth to see if the effect is real or not, just like you don't have ot pick up and drop every object on the Earth to decide if gravity is real or not.
- KnightMareInc, on 04/03/2008, -4/+12if increased solar activity was the caused for the current warming then why isnt the rest of the solar system warmer?
- MrErr, on 04/03/2008, -1/+8Actually there a re bigger business which would rather not invest in reducing emmissions. Good examples are the oil industry, automobile industry, manufacturing etc. So this whole idea that people are pushing global warming for the sake of money is ludicrous.
- Logicexe, on 04/03/2008, -2/+9Thanks guys, I'm using this thread as an example of irrational group-think mob mentality. And no, I don't mean the Climatologists.
- inactive, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6That is a really good point...and over half the time it isn't even around so how could affect anything?!
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -1/+7You get lots more money by denying Global Warming, you know. That argument of yours doesn't hold.
- homercles337, on 04/03/2008, -1/+7Im not sure what your background is in, but there are OFTEN simplifications in popular reports so the average idiot can understand it. In this article here we have a causal relationship: solar wind weak, more cosmic rays penetrate, more CHARGED PARTICLES, more clouds. Your supposed flaw states that when the sun 'burps' it throws out a huge burst of CHARGED PARTICLES. Therefore, by logic, we can say that a sun burp should produce more clouds. It says nothing about sun burps producing increases in cosmic rays. Reading comprehension FTW.
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6It's not.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/04/29/is-g ... - NuchDog, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6It doesn't have all the answers, but sometimes its worth a look.
"Cosmic rays are energetic particles originating from space that impinge on Earth's atmosphere. Almost 90% of all the incoming cosmic ray particles are protons, about 9% are helium nuclei (alpha particles) and about 1% are electrons (beta minus particles). The term "ray" is a misnomer, as cosmic particles arrive individually, not in the form of a ray or beam of particles."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_rays - LLLSecretChimp, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6Science's value is replaced by its current value divided by politics?
- supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6Railer, I'm sorry, but there were no real tools back in 1700 to measure total solar irradience accurately.
Two more things... nice use of an 11 year running mean to correspond exactly with decadal sunspot cycles, and nice overly smoothed solar radiance graph without the uncertainty. Notice that the uncertainty before 1900 makes it possible to match it with almost anything. One other thing to note is that the variation is only .1% between its high points and its low points. I'm sorry, but an extra joule per second per square meter when we're already getting 1300 juoles per second per square meter will not change the global temperature by .6-.8 degrees C.
The radiative forcing due to changes in solar irradiance for the period since 1750 is estimated to be about +0.3 Wm-2, most of which occurred during the first half of the 20th century. Since the late 1970s, satellite instruments have observed small oscillations due to the 11-year solar cycle. Mechanisms for the amplification of solar effects on climate have been proposed, but currently lack a rigorous theoretical or observational basis.
Simulations of the response to natural forcings alone (i.e., the response to variability in solar irradiance and volcanic eruptions) do not explain the warming in the second half of the 20th century.
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=106537&rendTypeId= ...
Check it out. If our temperature really is dictated by solar irradiance, then why at its low point, is the temperature higher than it has ever been in the past 100 years?
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=106538&rendTypeId= ...
this goes up to year 2000. Notice the uncertainty.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf
Also, you can read the source that this very article is talking about.
Three main mechanisms for centennial-scale solar effects on climate have been proposed. The first is via variations in the total solar irradiance (TSI) which would undoubtedly cause changes in climate if they are of sufficient amplitude. We have no direct measure of TSI variations on century time scales, but reconstructions do vary with the cosmogenic isotope production rate and so this effect has the potential to explain the palaeoclimate correlations (Lockwood 2006). However, the inferred changes in TSI are much smaller than required to cause significant climate change (Foukal et al. 2006; Lockwood 2006). The second mechanism invokes variations in the solar UV irradiance, which are larger than those in TSI, and mechanisms have been proposed whereby despite the low power in this part of the solar spectrum, they influence the troposphere via the overlying stratosphere (Haigh 2001). The third proposed mechanism is considerably different from the other two--it has been suggested that air ions generated by cosmic rays modulate the production of clouds (Svensmark 2007).
If the correlation noted and its hypothesized causal
connection between low cloud cover and ionization are real,
it is shown that the magnitude of the effect implies that a
large fraction of the low cloud cover is formed by ionization.
However, no evidence could be found of changes in the cloud
cover from known changes in the cosmic ray ionization rate.
(This bit is from the actual journal article discussed in the bbc article) - Brutusfly, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6Have you read the transcripts of the hearings? Tobacco was killing while rich executives lied about it. Microsoft was breaking other peoples innovations while their rich executives lied about it. Oil companies just wrote themselves a tax break and control our executive branch and are willing to trash anything and anybody to make record billions. And your worried about liberals? I think you owe them thanks.
- homercles337, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6Quick! Break out the tin foil and links to horribly biased right wingnut websites! Stat!
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6They didn't.
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6"Actually, short-term equivalency is exactly what's claimed."
Short-term effect, perhaps, but short-term equivalency is *not* what's claimed - please don't make such fallacious statements. No one had said there would be a linear progression with guaranteed increases each year. Rather, what we're seeing is a pattern of increased energy ("heat") in the system, which increases the occurence of extreme weather but does not necessarily increase temperatures each year in a stead, predictable way.
As for the Corruption issue, the point is you'd get more money shilling for Big Oil than running after Global Warming grants. If greed is in cause (it would have to be, since you're risking your professional reputation), then might as well get as much as you can, right? - supernovasky, on 04/03/2008, -0/+6By the way, according to the article, the first set of cloud cover data was NOT, as you seem to ***** erroneously claim, only from ireland. The actual journal article clearly states that they use the ISCCP D2 Dataset, as viewed here:
http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/products/browsed2.html
This dataset is global. - variant5, on 04/03/2008, -2/+7'70s, not 70s
You also missed "excepted"
/uber grammar troll - tetsuwan, on 04/03/2008, -1/+6Let me spell this out for you as you were a five-year-old:
Imagine a pot with water on an electric hotplate. At first the water is not boiling. Several hours later, the water is still not boiling. During this time, the temperature of the hotplate has been more or less constant, and has neither an increasing or decreasing trend. We have also measured the current to hotplate, and it's constant too.
Now, suddenly the water starts to boil. We check the temperature of the hotplate: no change. We check the current: no change. This is where we look for other explanations, such as someone putting a lid on the pot. - swrostmore, on 04/03/2008, -16/+21WHAT THE ***** DO "SCIENTISTS" KNOW ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?? ONLY TRUST RIGHT-WING POLITICIANS AND NEW WORLD ORDER CONSPIRACY THEORISTS TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT SCIENCE
- Terr01, on 04/03/2008, -0/+5If you're too lazy to even read a news article before going into "doubt-spreading mode", why should I trust that you're truly interested in reading the academic study itself?
In the case that I'm wrong, their findings should be in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/erl - Logicexe, on 04/03/2008, -0/+5So wait, the sun is apparently warming Pluto by two degrees Celsius despite the fact that it's so far away. Think about it for a second. Pluto is on average almost 40 times more distant from the sun than Earth. Any increase in solar activity strong enough to cause a 2 degree rise in temperatures on Pluto would have a incredibly huge disastrous effect on the Earth.
If it could be explained by simple solar variance why would it "puzzle scientists" as the headline suggests?
As for your other article, did you completely ignore the parts where they explained the different hypotheses for why some objects in our solar system were warming up and how it could just as easily be a fluke?
You people really don't read your own sources do you? - KnightMareInc, on 04/03/2008, -2/+7so out of all of the planets, moons, etc in our solar system you can only point to mars?
- archiesteel, on 04/03/2008, -1/+6"if you won't accept that the past 10 years that the earths temperature has DROPPED"
Except they haven't... - Jareth86, on 04/03/2008, -0/+5Because dumping ***** tons of extra co2 into the atmosphere can't possibly have any effect on the environment. Nope.
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