Is Global Warming a Solar System wide Phenomenon?

[hammo1j]

There have been reports of Global Warming on Mars that is in line with the rise experienced by the earth.

http://www.mos.org/cst/article/80/9.html

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=36049


This tends to suggest Global Warming is a phenomenon that is outside our control.

In science we do 2 experiments to indicate whether something is cause. In this case we have Mars with no people on it and Earth with people on it and the same effect is occurring. My first guess would be people are not the cause of the effect. The effect is there surely, but we are not its cause.

Since the effect is occurring on both Earth and Mars the likely cause is the Sun. Either it is burning more brightly or the region of space we are moving through has less 'dust' to absorb the sunlight.

Whatever the truth I think this information is very important for the global warming debate and should be brought to more people's attention.

[Gillianren]

in a pedantic sense, no--the term "global warming" means warming on Earth. (the globe?)

in a scientific sense, I doubt it but have no evidence to back me up.

[hammo1j]

I do think this is a very important question since it means that human resources will be devoted to a problem that may not exist, where there are many pressing human needs competing for resources.

I don't know enough about Astronomy to validate my hypotheses. Questions for those a bit more in the know:

Does the sun vary in activity?

Is the "space dust was absorbing the heat as we moved through that portion of space" have any evidence to support it?

[The Supreme Canuck]

It depends on what is causing global warming. If it is due to fluctuations in solar output, then it is likely that the phenomenon is solar system-wide. If global warming is caused by natural variations in Earth's climate, then it is not solar system-wide. And if we are causing global warming, then it is also not solar system-wide.

So. It depends.

[Glom]

It wouldn't be a surprise. Of all the factors, solar activity corrolates far better to climate change than any gas does.

[hammo1j]

So you are saying that the output of the sun varies and there is a correlation with the mean earth temperature?

[Jens]

I do think this is a very important question since it means that human resources will be devoted to a problem that may not exist, where there are many pressing human needs competing for resources.

Two caveats here.

One is that it is also possible that global warming could be caused by a combination of solar system causes and human action. So it's not necessarily an either/or proposition. It's always possible that it's 30% caused by human action and 70% by factors outside our control. Right?

And secondly, it's always possible that we could do something about it even if it is not caused by human activities. I think we can all recognize that even a change caused by natural factors beyond our control can have a negative impact on us. So if (and that may be a big if) there are things that we can do to prevent it, it may not be a bad investment even if it's not a result of something we did. As a simple example, earthquakes are not our fault, but it's still a good investment to try to build earth-resistant buildings.

[The Supreme Canuck]

The problem is, if it is caused by variations in solar output, there isn't much we can do short of launching a solar shade. And we can't really do that yet.

[akochan]

This is all very interesting... but in short futile. IF (and note the caps) there is any temperature changes affected by the sun (and I'm speaking currently, I know there have been before but it's usually dips not highs) then there is nothing one can do....

However we do know nigh absolutely (as close to 100% as science can get) that the PRIMARY cause for global warming is greenhouse gases. And unless we want our planet to look like Venus we need to do all that is necessary to stop eminating so many greenhouse gases.

So while it's an interesting theoretical question as to whether the sun COULD make the Earth hotter. We KNOW that we are making the earth hotter now with fossil fuel burning. Thus it is inane to say we should stop worrying about greenhouse gases. Unless you're enjoying this huricane season and hate polar bears that is...

[dgruss23]

This is all very interesting... but in short futile. IF (and note the caps) there is any temperature changes affected by the sun (and I'm speaking currently, I know there have been before but it's usually dips not highs) then there is nothing one can do....

However we do know nigh absolutely (as close to 100% as science can get) that the PRIMARY cause for global warming is greenhouse gases. And unless we want our planet to look like Venus we need to do all that is necessary to stop eminating so many greenhouse gases.

So while it's an interesting theoretical question as to whether the sun COULD make the Earth hotter. We KNOW that we are making the earth hotter now with fossil fuel burning. Thus it is inane to say we should stop worrying about greenhouse gases. Unless you're enjoying this huricane season and hate polar bears that is...

You really ought to read this thread (at least the first 7 or 8 pages) and some of the papers linked to. We've had a lot of discussions on global warming here and the advocates of the notion that humans are responsible for changes in the Earth's climate have had difficulty providing the overwhelming proof.

[Kristophe]

However we do know nigh absolutely (as close to 100% as science can get) that the PRIMARY cause for global warming is greenhouse gases. And unless we want our planet to look like Venus we need to do all that is necessary to stop eminating so many greenhouse gases.

So while it's an interesting theoretical question as to whether the sun COULD make the Earth hotter. We KNOW that we are making the earth hotter now with fossil fuel burning. Thus it is inane to say we should stop worrying about greenhouse gases. Unless you're enjoying this huricane season and hate polar bears that is...

Yeah, as dgruss sorta pointed out to you, if you're going to take that stance there are a number of people here who are going to challange you very strongly to back up what you say with more than emotional rhetoric.

The fact of the matter is that the climate is changing. Of course it is! Climate is dynamic, just like everything else on this planet. At the moment, the Earth is apparently warming. It's popular to blame this on industry, oil, humanity, etc. I'm not entirely convinced these sectors haven't played a part. I'm not entirely convinced that they have, either. But I do know that when people stand up and say "I'm not so sure..." they're generally treated like heritics who hate penguins, polar bears, and coastal settlements. Instead of having their concerns put to rest, they're just treated like they're bad people, and told they should be ashamed of themselves.

That just seems like dirty debate to me.

[Taks]

Does the sun vary in activity?

yes, +/- 1% per year. rarely considered relevant in activist circles, for some strange reason. it is impacted heavily by sunspot activity as well, which is on the decline in the next decade or so...

should this be true, that mars is seeing similar changes, it may well be due to recent increases in sunspot activity... this is a very cyclical, and predictable, phenomena, IIRC. further, if this is true, then the activist crowd may be setting themselves up for some egg on the face in the near future. we shall see, i suppose, because even GW activists admit the current plans for "greenhouse gas" reduction will have little, if any, impact on the overall climate.

oh, and read the thread, and links, that dgruss23 points out... good stuff.

taks

[Faultline]

How much hotter will the sun be in 150 years? Not much, but would it be enough to affect the climate of Earth and Mars?

[Taks]

i don't think it's necessarily a matter of how "hot" it is, since actual heat isn't the sum total of the sun's contribution to our little ecosystem. high periods of sunspots actually correspond to a cooler sun. however, the higher level of activity delivers higher levels of energy, in the solar wind i assume, which our system must absorb.

taks

[hammo1j]

dgruss23. Here's a quote from one of the posts that you refered to that you wrote yourself.

Do we have any idea what those other natural climate forcers are? It turns out the clearest signal of climate forcing comes from solar activity

Now global warming on Mars would tend to support this view, but Taks is saying that sun activity is a cyclical process. What we need is a graph of solar activity average Wm-2 received at Planet Earth over the years 1900 to 2000 to see if there is an upward trend and by what fraction it varies.
I am going to take a look and I would appreciate it if anyone else could do the same.

My own opinion is that I am not decided on GW, but would like to dig deeper rather than taking the fact at face value. I did a search on previous posts about the GW debate (not exhaustive) and didn't find anything about Mars' own global warming so I consider this new information and I want to see how it fits into the debate.

I have learnt plenty from BABB and there are many times I have been wrong not least that H2 had 4 times the lifting power of He for airships. So I am open on this one.

[The Supreme Canuck]

What we need is a graph of solar activity average Wm-2 received at Planet Earth over the years 1900 to 2000 to see if there is an upward trend and by what fraction it varies.
I am going to take a look and I would appreciate it if anyone else could do the same.

Figure 22, page 20:

http://www.cspg.org/deFreitas_climate.pdf

Warning: PDF.

(This is one paper that dgruss23 linked to in the thread recommended earlier)

[hammo1j]

Here's another interesting paper.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/23/12433#F3

In it they take the basic 11.5 year sun spot cycle and assume that there are harmonics 23 year, 46 year superimposed on that cycle and a bit like a music al note with a fourier analysis try and add in the harmonics to create a fit for observed events in the past.

According to this normal sun activity varies by + or - 0.1% of output and over ice age cycles + or - 0.3% with this being a warm period. This does not seem much to cause such an effect.

Using the inverse square law I was going to say well this is probably less than the difference that the difference caused by the Earth moving in an ellipse when it was furthest and closest to the sun. But the earths orbit is as near as damn it a circle! For all my life I thought of it as an ellipse because we are told it is at school so naturally we assume high eccentricity in our minds because that's what we think an ellipse looks like!

Told you BABB taught me new things! Off to bed now. Too tired.

[Jens]

The problem is, if it is caused by variations in solar output, there isn't much we can do short of launching a solar shade. And we can't really do that yet.

Is this really true? The reason I ask is, there has been some discussion in the past about "terraforming" Mars, i.e. planting some kind of bacteria that can have an influence on the climate. Even assuming that changes in climate are caused by changes in solar output, wouldn't it be possible to do something, say by planting some kind of plant in the Sahara, for example, to actually carry out terraforming on Terra?

There was an article in Popular Science recently that discussed methods for terraforming. Yes, they are bold and expensive ideas, but who knows, it seems better to me than the alternative: "it's not our fault, so let's just suffer."

I've heard that ice core samples show that climate has changed in the past (long before human intervention was possible!) over relatively short periods of time, and some scientists suspect that some of the mass extinctions of the past were caused by climate change. So regardless of whether it's our fault or not, it would seem wise to me to prepare for the eventuality.

[Taks]

According to this normal sun activity varies by + or - 0.1% of output and over ice age cycles + or - 0.3% with this being a warm period. This does not seem much to cause such an effect.

the heat of the sun varies little, yes, but why is 0.3% minimal? AAGWs are attributing ALL of global warming to a substance that is measured in parts per million, and it's only a 3% contributor in the first place. also, heat is not the only energy received from sun by the earth. UV radiation varies wildly (steadily increasing since the maunder minimum that glom loves so much!). the solar wind is a big contributor too, and it just peaked, preparing for a dramatic drop corresponding to decreased sunspot activity...

we shall see. i'm siding my $10 with that russian guy...

But the earths orbit is as near as damn it a circle!

well, it is an ellipse, just not very.

taks

[Taks]

Is this really true?

maybe, there is compelling evidence to that affect.

i.e. planting some kind of bacteria that can have an influence on the climate.

kinda like translplanting them australian tree frogs in springfield.

ok, simpsons joke aside, think about what you've just suggested. tampering with small ecosystems on earth has devastating effects. indigenous plant and wildlife are often wiped out. now, let's extrapolate that to attempting to tinker with the entire ecosystem, all at once. can we really guage the impact when we (uh, AAGWs and all) still can't put together two models that always agree?

what impact would we have if we introduced some method of deflecting energy away from the earth? would we turn ourselves into a snowball? is that what happened to the flourishing ecosystem that existed on mars 2 billion years ago (that we may some day find...)? big what ifs, IMO, that i'd rather not take at the moment.

There was an article in Popular Science recently that discussed methods for terraforming. Yes, they are bold and expensive ideas, but who knows, it seems better to me than the alternative: "it's not our fault, so let's just suffer."

yeah, let's get the suffering over in a century rather than a million years. ugh, but let's leave terraforming for places nobody lives, like mars. some runaway terraforming accident on earth could very well be the next step in our evolution: food source.

also, why is it such a bad thing for any warming at all? sure, 15 degrees overnight would be an issue... but 1 or 2 degrees over a century... big whoop. it's not like we won't figure out how to keep NYC from flooding. sheesh, nawlins is 12 feet UNDER sea level already. increased heat means more cloud cover, which means more rain, which means more food which means less starving people in the world.

nobody has ever convinced me that warming is bad. warmer, moister atmosphere would translate to more snow in the mountains, which i'm all about. -36 degrees instead of -38 degrees in siberia isn't a big deal, but growing wheat in russia is. overall, we'll need LESS of the very thing that's supposedly causing this warming just because of the very fact we're warming. certain plant and wildlife will become extinct, but new ones will begin to thrive. historically, this is proven to happen regularly.

more cloud cover also means less heat gets to the planet from the sun, which means a cooling earth, which means... oh my, it's a feedback loop. now if we can just nail down the million or so poles and zeros, we could probably accurately track it and always know where we'll be when we're dead.

I've heard that ice core samples show that climate has changed in the past (long before human intervention was possible!) over relatively short periods of time, and some scientists suspect that some of the mass extinctions of the past were caused by climate change. So regardless of whether it's our fault or not, it would seem wise to me to prepare for the eventuality.

you are dead on with this one. let's prepare. not prevent. let the earth do its thing. if there are to be cyclical changes, my guess is the human race has been pretty good at adapting over the course of the last 6 million years or so (uh, you aren't a YEC beliver by chance?). we handled it in the past with a lot less technology, why can't we handle it now?

taks

[Jens]

[quote="Taks"]

you are dead on with this one. let's prepare. not prevent. let the earth do its thing. if there are to be cyclical changes, my guess is the human race has been pretty good at adapting over the course of the last 6 million years or so (uh, you aren't a YEC beliver by chance?). we handled it in the past with a lot less technology, why can't we handle it now?

No, I'm not a YEC believer, not unless you'd consider 4.4 billion years to be young.

I see your point about more heat not necessarily being worse. But you have to give me a break here, I'm writing from the middle of Tokyo in the middle of August. Warming doesn't strike me as anything I want any part of. . .

[akochan]

Well if anyone's not convinced that humans are 99% to blame for global warming yet they never will be... the proof is nigh incontrovertable.

Yes the earth has natural climatic changes (hurricane cycles being a good example right now). The current changes creating global warming are not natural. The only significant "natural" source for greenhouse gases are volcanoes... and in case you haven't noticed we're not exactly getting an excessive amount of volcanoes at the moment. Besides the ashes they also produce usually result in a temporal cool down. Thus the greenhouse gases (measurable) are coming from.............................................. .

PEOPLE.

Nobody is poo-poo'ing the posibility that such things as orbital changes, solar flucuations, etc, etc are not ALSO responsible to some degree or another for climate change now or in ages past if not now. But there is pretty much universal consensus by all but the most corporate friendly or uneducated humans that people are the primary greenhouse gas producers via transport and industry.

So one can stick their head in the sand like Bush or one can live up to the fact that our power plants, cars, factories, and the 700 Club are all producing too many harmful gases and are the reason that we have global warming.

[hammo1j]

Couple of things I thought of overnight. The previous paper I posted was a bit "we have created a model that explains climate change back over the past 200,000 years and accounted for Ice ages" but the model must have been derived from data over the past 200,000 years so of course it is going to be correct. The problem with the fourier type analysis is that we can create any waveform so this looks like a clever idea but one that may not help us immediately since we have to wait for the predictions to come through.

Water vapour is the biggest Greenhouse Gas: is this just something as simple as when its cloudy we don't get a frost because the heat is reflected back to the ground ?

[hammo1j]

dgruss23 - there seems to be a good CORRELATION between variation in activity of the sun but what do we think is the mechanism?

0.1% is not a lot of variation. Certainly we would not notice that in an electric fire. There has to be some way in which the effect is geared.

I think its a valid argument to say: water vapour is the main green house gas then after that it's CO2 and we only provide a fraction of that so how can that be relevant, but the climate change and solar activity hypothesis seems to be open to that kind of argument as well.

[Glom]

(steadily increasing since the maunder minimum that glom loves so much!).

I don't like the maunder minimum. It produced a climate of vicious storms, poor agriculture, mass famine and plagues. I'm glad that the sun decided to play friendly again and give us energy. I could say that if the sun didn't warm us up, we wouldn't be burdened by this global warming hysteria, but given that in the 1970s a twenty year trend of global cooling spurned hysteria about an anthropogenic ice age, any climate change will be enough to cause a panic paradigm blaming human activity. So, given the choice, I'd much rather be falsely accused of warming than falsely accused of cooling.

Warming doesn't strike me as anything I want any part of. . .

If its global warming as defined by the ever objective IPCC, then you needn't worry because most of the warming will occur in winter at a night. It is interesting to note that work from the University of London says that for the kind of temperature rises expected in the UK over the next fifty years, heat related deaths would increase by 2,000 but cold related deaths would be cut by 20,000. Given the choice, a bit of warming is better than a bit of cooling.

Well if anyone's not convinced that humans are 99% to blame for global warming yet they never will be... the proof is nigh incontrovertable.

At that proof is? You can say it is incontrovertible until you're blue in the face. It doesn't make it so.

only significant "natural" source for greenhouse gases are volcanoes...

As well as decay of biomatter, various physiological process, forest fires, oceanic discharge and various other factors. Anthropogenic emissions of GHGs are 5% of the natural discharge. It is less than the margin of error on natural sources.

But there is pretty much universal consensus by all but the most corporate friendly or uneducated humans that people are the primary greenhouse gas producers via transport and industry.

That is such a cliche! I was just reading about how the standard tactic is to accuse the heretics of being either shills for Big Oil or just plain stupid.

Appeal to consensus yet again. Haven't you people actually got evidence or is bullying the only argument you know? Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm getting tired of people fobbing me off with this argument by intimidation rather than discussing the scientific issues. If this consensus is so real, then why does Lord May have to practically forge the signatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Amerian National of Academy of Sciences on his "consensus statements"? If this consensus is so real and so legitimate, why do the IPCC need to force one of its scientists to quit because they gratuitiously lie about his work to say the paradigm is implied where it is not? I guess we can also subtract the 18,000 scientists who signed the OISM petition from this consensus. Not that it matters.

But more to the point, why a consensus? If those 18,000 scientists were wrong, one would be enough.

And human GHG are around 5% of total.

Actually, I'm sorry I got that wrong. I forgot about water vapour (so did the IPCC) water vapour is 95% of the greenhouse effect and virtually all of it is of natural origin.

BTW, even if we accept the role of carbon dioxide in climate driving (which the lag displayed in the ice cores thoroughly disputes), then Kyoto is still a complete load of rubbish as this little gem illustrates.

There's also this pdf about the solar connection. I find it amusing the way some wonder about whether the sun could cause climate change while at the same time saying trace amounts of greenhouse gases definitely do. Excuse me, what is the one source of energy driving this entire planet's atmosphere? I'll give you a clue. It's big, hot and the EPA's worst nightmare.

[Glom]

0.1% is not a lot of variation. Certainly we would not notice that in an electric fire. There has to be some way in which the effect is geared.

I think it is stretching things to compare the sun to an electric fire. One produces a few hundred watts. The other produces are few hundred trillion trillion. I don't think you want to know about the kinds of climate changes that would occur is the sun varied its intensity by more than that. Suffice it to say, if we got into the range of a full percent, we'd see things far more catastrophic than a couple of degrees of change. A professor at my university says that from first order radiant transfer, that amount of variation can account for about a third of the temperature change and that's not including the effects of a complex and dynamic atmosphere.

[Glom]

Well if anyone's not convinced that humans are 99% to blame for global warming yet they never will be... the proof is nigh incontrovertable.

I just had another thought. Where did you get that 99% attribution from? The radiant transfer of the sun alone accounts for a third of the temperature rise, not mention the effects of the dynamic and complex atmosphere. Have you no respect for the Medieval Climate Optimum?

[dgruss23]

dgruss23. Here's a quote from one of the posts that you refered to that you wrote yourself.

Do we have any idea what those other natural climate forcers are? It turns out the clearest signal of climate forcing comes from solar activity

Now global warming on Mars would tend to support this view, but Taks is saying that sun activity is a cyclical process. What we need is a graph of solar activity average Wm-2 received at Planet Earth over the years 1900 to 2000 to see if there is an upward trend and by what fraction it varies.
I am going to take a look and I would appreciate it if anyone else could do the same.

I know the links I provided on the other thread provide some of the graphs you're looking for. In the case of Mars I find it an intriguing idea I'd never considered as an independent test of the Sun-climate connection. But the Martian atmosphere is so much thinner that I'm not sure what we should expect. I'll explain why in response to your later question.

[dgruss23]

dgruss23 - there seems to be a good CORRELATION between variation in activity of the sun but what do we think is the mechanism?

0.1% is not a lot of variation. Certainly we would not notice that in an electric fire. There has to be some way in which the effect is geared.

I think its a valid argument to say: water vapour is the main green house gas then after that it's CO2 and we only provide a fraction of that so how can that be relevant, but the climate change and solar activity hypothesis seems to be open to that kind of argument as well.

Here is a nice research article that takes a look at several ways the solar variations can affect climate. One of the Early complaints about the solar variation was that - as you note - it only varies ~0.1% during a solar cycle. However, more recently they've come to realize that there are secondary effects that can have as large or larger a climate effect as the direct variations in solar output.

First the key here is that as the sun becomes more magnetically active (sunspots increase in number) the total solar energy output increases. At first this seems contradictory because sunspots are cooler than the surface. But what they've found is that when the Sunspot activity increases emission from faculae increases so the overall energy output from the Sun is a net increase at sunpot maximum.

Now when the sun is more active, the solar wind is stronger. The solar wind deflects cosmic rays. So when the solar wind is stronger (sunspoit maxima) fewer cosmic rays strike the Earth. Now the interesting thing is that cosmic rays provide a nice means of tracking variations in solar activity because they interact with atoms in the atmosphere to create Beryllium-10 and Carbon-14. And sure enough records show that Be-10 and C-14 ratios fluctuate with the observed sunspot records. When the Sun is more active, there is less Be-10 because the stronger solar wind reduces the number or cosmic rays striking the Earth.

But in addition to providing a means of tracking solar activity well past observed sunspot records (~1600 A.D.) cosmic rays actually may affect climate because cloudcover seems to vary with the solar cycle. Researchers have suggested that the cosmic rays create particles in the atmosphere that act as seeds for cloud formation. When the sun is less active not only is there less energy from the sun, but more sunlight is reflected because more cosmic rays strike the Earth leading to a highe cloud cover.

And even more recently I was reading something about interstellar dust - that sunlight blocking dust may reach the Earth in higher amounts when the sun is less active. That would add aditional cooling during sunspot mimima.

So those three contributions potentially account for the observed climate changes. According to the Shaviv study I linked to the solar output variations account for 0.16 deg of the observed change and the cloud cover can account for another 0.21 degrees. So there you have 0.37 deg C which is about 2/3 of the observed warming - but Shaviv did not include the possible influx of interstellar dust in his model. If that contribution is confirmed, then the solar cycle influence will increase - leaving very little for anthropogenic causes.

BTW one of the articles I linked to in the other thread traces teh solar climate connection back ~ 100,000 years using the Be-10 ratios.

[dgruss23]

Well if anyone's not convinced that humans are 99% to blame for global warming yet they never will be... the proof is nigh incontrovertable.

Well since I asked for the overwhelming evidence in the other thread and made specific detailed explanations as to the evidence for the solar climate connections and how a detailed look at the records contradicts the CO2 forcing of climate notion, you could perhaps provide a description of the incontrovertable proof? Nobody did on the other thread.