Global warming? I am more worried about global cooling.

[Buffy]

Los Angeles, Mexico City and Athens in the 70's were all real horror shows...

... You got different varieties of fear mongering on both sides. But those at the right have a lot to lose and have a consistent record of lying (cigarettes, lead exposure ect). Scientists don't seem to have as much interest in decieving people, the pay really isn't too high and the work is tough.

Its not really "right" or "left", its just greed. Hard to believe I guess, but the conservation movement was really moved into the mainstream by a Republican: Teddy Roosevelt... Follow the money...

 

Fortunately though, some enlightened business folk are starting to realize that doing things that are good for the environment are good business!

 

...but I don't think the solution is taking the catalytic converters off everyone's car....

 

Koff, Kaf,

Buffy

[Autopoeisis]

Certainly not I don't think we should pollute in order to reduce the intensity of global warming, the narrative was only meant to illustrate that while people are scoffing at the minimal increase in temperature it is also due to a concurrent phenomena of dimming.

 

You are right there are conservatives that believe in the environment and democrats that don't (clean air act was passed with the much more respectable father of George W in office, you have Republicans like Schwarzenager taking the cause on in California, even in my the state of Pennsylvania former Ridge has better environmental performance than the more democratic Rendell, and some corporations are making advances in using more resource efficient technologies.

 

Is that an exception or the rule, is that political opportunism, is it greenwash by corporations, the democratic congress controled congress under Herbert Walker. Sure I think there are some progressive conservatives and some vandguard corporations ahead in the environmental movement and I applaud these changes. However while it may be a generalization much of the opposition against changes in environmental policy come from the right and the business world. Independent of whether BP renames itself Beyond Petroleum or David Cameron (potential Tory PM of England) takes a photo opportunity next to glaciers business and conservatives as a unit are slowing progress in environmental legislation.

[Turtle]

There is a BBC documentary titled 'Global Dimming' you can get it on Torrent Spy which may be interesting to watch for everyone.

 

We have a thread on that: >>> http://hypography.com/forums/earth-science/6279-global-dimming.html?highlight=global+dimming

 

:)

To clarify again, contrails account for very little (about 2% they said) of reflected sunlight, the rest coming from particulate pair pollution. Evidence of the 'global dimming' effect is actually some 30 years old, coming by way of evaporation tray readings. This is a measurement I only first learned of from this show on PBS.

A circular tray of water is left exposed to the elements, and each day the keeper measures & records how much water they must add to bring the tray back to its original level. The data provide a means of measuring the rate of evaporation.

When record keepers noticed this rate falling, i.e. less evaporation, they went looking for the cause. They looked at wind & humidity levels, but in lab experiments this did not correlate to the actual decline. The answer they found lay in less sunlight, moreover experiments showed that photons striking the water account for the majority of evaporation.

So again, the existence of global dimming is well established. What remains unknown is the amount & rate of the dimming & especially the effect these values have on slowing the global warming.

[Turtle]

here's some fuel for the fire. ooopppsss! get a shovel fellas; we gotta dig up that charcoal for the furnace. :cup:

 

Read the sunspots

 

...But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

 

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.

[Zythryn]

Canada.com "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada."

 

Personally I hope they are right. However, I suspect they are not. The sun's cycles have been in decline for a number of years now. While not at minimum yet, we still see a warming trend. I wonder what these same scientists will be saying in 2025 if the warming trend continues?

[Turtle]

Personally I hope they are right. However, I suspect they are not. The sun's cycles have been in decline for a number of years now. While not at minimum yet, we still see a warming trend. I wonder what these same scientists will be saying in 2025 if the warming trend continues?

 

 

did you read the whole article? i think it covers your objection. :cup:

[Zythryn]

Thank you Turtle, I had not, I stopped at "For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate". As that is completely bogus, no such correlation exists.

 

When I continued on and found he was not talking about the output of the sun as much as the cyclical change the amount of cosmic radiation the article became much more interesting.

A number of articles appear in various scientific journals regarding this. It is an interesting idea and there does appear to be some correlations. Unfortunately they tend to break down over multiple 11 year periods. It could well be that cosmic rays play a role along with many other contributing factors. So when the other contributing factors are stong, the cosmic ray causation is 'hidden', but when they are weak, the cosmic ray causation is easier to see.

I look forward to more research on this topic as it will help our understanding of our climate.

[Turtle]

...A number of articles appear in various scientific journals regarding this. It is an interesting idea and there does appear to be some correlations. Unfortunately they tend to break down over multiple 11 year periods...

 

the 11 year sunspot cycle is only one of many solar cycles the researchers found correlation with. :applause: :cocktail:

 

...In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly...

[freeztar]

I think this is a very interesting discussion and Turtle has provided a reference that needs attention.

 

I find the article heavily biased, as any good scientific experiment should be, but it jumps to a claim that is out of its reach. Claiming temperature changes upwards of 6 degrees celsius from a decade time period (which the article claims) 10,000 years ago is a bit ludicrous imho. Can we claim such accuracy over a decade that existed 10,000 years ago? I don't fully understand the science of core examination and interpretation, so perhaps my questions could be considered moot, under enlightenment.

 

Climate Science is so new, relatively, that we are still fledging our way (note Psychology).

 

After taking a 16 credit course in uni devoted to this subject, I came away with more questions than answers. The important lesson learned for me is that climate change is real. It can shift either way and we, as a conscious body of people, need to prepare for changes (regardless of the debate of Anthropogenic causation).

 

I think that sun cycles are of great importance, but I have failed to see causal confirmation to climate change.

[Turtle]

I think this is a very interesting discussion and Turtle has provided a reference that needs attention.

 

I find the article heavily biased, as any good scientific experiment should be, but it jumps to a claim that is out of its reach. Claiming temperature changes upwards of 6 degrees celsius from a decade time period (which the article claims) 10,000 years ago is a bit ludicrous imho. Can we claim such accuracy over a decade that existed 10,000 years ago? I don't fully understand the science of core examination and interpretation, so perhaps my questions could be considered moot, under enlightenment.

 

yes, we can claim such accuracy for these mud cores just as we can for tree rings.

 

Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

.

.

.

 

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

 

hope this boosts your confidence. let's see now... is there any part of the article i haven't quoted to answer a question yet? :applause: :cocktail:

[Zythryn]

The article is highly biased (just read the article it is painfully obvious).

That doesn't discount the data they have dug up. However, the wording is all wrong.

The change in solar irradiance has been so slight that the calculated affect on the temperature has been placed right around 0.1C (see IPCC.org).

What has changed is the cosmic radiation levels which are not the same as the "sun's brightness".

Has this group dug more than one core? What are the factors in accuracy of reading from a core of mud? I understand the logic they give of the thickness of the layers of plants/pollen. However, have they corrected/eliminated any other possible reasons for a certain summer to have more plants in that one area? Such as rainfall, fewer grazing animals, etc.

I think the logic is promising and should be followed up, but the article itself is terribly biased with unnecessary and unsupported qualifiers littered like stardust throughout the article.

The Science Journal articles I found were much more clear cut. However they noted the conclusions were initial findings with a number of questions that still needed to be answered.

[freeztar]

The Science Journal articles I found were much more clear cut. However they noted the conclusions were initial findings with a number of questions that still needed to be answered.

 

I'm much more comfortable with that!

Do share, Zyth! :)

[Turtle]

The article is highly biased (just read the article it is painfully obvious).

That doesn't discount the data they have dug up. However, the wording is all wrong.

The change in solar irradiance has been so slight that the calculated affect on the temperature has been placed right around 0.1C (see IPCC.org).

What has changed is the cosmic radiation levels which are not the same as the "sun's brightness".

 

the article makes clear that the brightness (and so the intensity of the solar wind) 'modulates' cosmic radiation.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

 

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone.

 

 

Has this group dug more than one core?

 

the article makes it clear more than one core was taken.

...Using various coring technologies,... & My research team began to collect and analyze core samples ...& visible in our mud cores...

 

What are the factors in accuracy of reading from a core of mud? I understand the logic they give of the thickness of the layers of plants/pollen. However, have they corrected/eliminated any other possible reasons for a certain summer to have more plants in that one area? Such as rainfall, fewer grazing animals, etc.

 

it is not land plants in the cores; it's diatoms. these are marine muds.

in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters.

 

I think the logic is promising and should be followed up, but the article itself is terribly biased with unnecessary and unsupported qualifiers littered like stardust throughout the article.

 

do you see the humor littered in that passage? :)

 

The Science Journal articles I found were much more clear cut. However they noted the conclusions were initial findings with a number of questions that still needed to be answered.

 

sounds like good science to me. science is always ammendable after all. looking forward to any further articles you find to contribute. :eek: :)

[Cedars]

Good links Turtle! I have read articles scattered about in different places by Patterson, Reiter, and about the Antarctic cap accumulations inland negating the losses on the outward edge of the continent. Nice to have them all located in one spot so an interested party can google their names for further info (if one is so inclined).

 

The new info to me was the Hurricane expert who resigned from the IPCC.

[Michaelangelica]

Two interesting articles on global Climate Change

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” is itself a Fraud and a Swindle

and

Science Show - 30 June 2007  - Scientific responses to The Great Global Warming Swindle

(Audio & transcript)

[aquamarinegreen]

The point is we live in a glacial age (the last 2 million years) and we are currently in an interglacial period. The next glaciation could happen within a few thousand years and is possibly being kept in check by the temporary warming which is going on. Nothing will stop the next glaciation. The cycles of glaciation are well documented and correlate with the amount of heat received by the earth from the sun. These cycles relate to 3 astronomical cycles which change over thousands of years and combine together to alter the amount of radiation which reaches the earth. These cycles are:-

 

1. The eccentricity of the earths orbit

2. The tilt of the earths axis

3. The precession of the earths axis

 

The cycles are known as Milankovitch cycles and were discovered by Milankovitch in the 1960's or thereabouts - he was ahead of his time. So yes we are heading for an ice age - enjoy this summer....

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

The timing and global extent of these periods, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, are still controversial. See quote from IPCC below. The problem here is that temperature records from time periods are heavily Europe focused and influenced.

Am I to believe that GLOBAL warming or cooling isn't Global but instead more localised? Seems to me that if something is global it's effect is... well... global...you know everywhere...and Why TF when global warming is discussed is it so convenient to forget that we were all freaking out in the eighties and early nineties about global cooling...which the govt and scientists were sooooo sure of back then. And why do people that are sooooo worried about global warming keep makin babies (babies make co2 too...more babies more co2...more co2 more global warming) and buying SUVs and encouraging deforestation for their suburban hellholes, etc. etc.?