deepslope wrote: > To describe the sun's contribution to climate change since time > immemorial as "a denialist's claim shot down by data" is an absurd > statement, not worthy of a supposedly august forum like this one. > Quite apart from Singer's publications and presentations, there is a > huge body of literature, including peer-reviewed, on the correlation > of the earth's climate system with continuously changing solar > parameters. Some of the entry portals have already been mentioned in > this thread and a simple Internet search will lead you in the right > direction.
I'm well aware that there's climate variability associated with the Sun's changes. The Milankovitch orbital variations are thought to be the cause of the repeated Ice Ages seen in the paleo records. There's also measured variation in the total insolation from the Sun, as measured by satellites outside the Earth's atmosphere, changes which closely follow the sunspot cycle. However, the hypothetical linkage between solar activity and cosmic rays as postulated by Svensmark has not been proven and the latest findings, as described in the BBC article, tend to refute Svensmark's claims. David Chistainsen's post was an obvious troll, as he has demonstrated a lack of understanding of the science and posts comments from non- scientific sources, such as Milloy's site, Junkscience.com. I replied in kind. > Remember, CO2 is a trace gas crucial for photosynthesis (and green > houses are known to produce excellent crops at elevated CO2 > concentrations); 1934 is the well-documented warmest year of the past > 150; there has been slight cooling since 1998 (more pronounced since > 2004 - see new satellite data), and much more. And yes, as everybody > can check (below) after surviving an exceptionally harsh winter: > Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area is ahead substantially from a year > ago and close to the mean from 1979 - 2000, whereas Southern > Hemisphere Sea Ice is considerably above the same mean... One must remember that the 1930's were called "The Dust Bowl" in the U.S., a situation which was directly tied to poor farming practices. The global data is another issue. Picking the unusually warm El Nino year of 1998 as a starting point to claim a trend just shows that you do not understand that there is short term variability, which masks the long term changes. After all, we know that there is that obvious solar cycle to drive short term fluctuations. The same might be noted for the last few years, as the solar sunspot cycle is at it's minimum level. I would not be surprised that the climate is slightly cooler these days. As for the recovery of the sea-ice, that's not unexpected. Last summer's strong melt may not be repeated this year, as the wind conditions which may have contributed to moving more sea-ice than usual thru the Fram Strait, but the long term trend of the minimum is still downward. Again, short term variability does not disprove long term impacts of the increase in greenhouse gases. > Example for North: > http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg > - Southern and global data are also there. > > As an aside: the colonization of Greenland by the Vikings and Alpine > Glaciers that had receded much farther than currently are deniers' > illusions? as are the Little Ice Age and the year without summer > (1816), since Mann's careful and universally applicable data proved > that these climate events could never have happened...? That claim about Greenland being warm during the period of the Viking colonization has not been proven. That the colonies died out may have easily been related to the Black Death in Europe, not climate change. Remember, about half of the population of Iceland died out due to the Plague and there are no records of visits to Greenland for decades. Colonies can not survive without support from their mother countries. That said, conditions around the North Atlantic are not global conditions and the variations seem in the THC would impact this region the most. > Are you willing to take credit for the likely global cooling of the > near future, together with Al Gore? The particulate load from new not- > so-clean coal plants may soon be rivalling well-documented volcanic > contributions to the mitigation of solar inputs... Of course. One thought has been that the observed cooling between about 1940 and 1975 was due to the increased emissions of sulfate and soot by coal burning power plants. When the Clean Air act began to reduce these emissions, a result would have been a reduction in the cooling effects of these emissions. > All this does not mean that one should burn fossil fuels with > unbridled abandon. But look at the emerging land use and food cost > catastrophe built on an out-of-control biofuel craze! Isn't it time > to move toward a differentiated approach to natural resource usage and > conservation, to strive toward living in harmony with the constantly > changing metabolism of Earth? Isn't it time to re-evaluate arrogant > attitudes like "Save the Planet" and learn to understand what's truly > going on? Isn't it time to step away from the polarizing debates > between Hot Heads and to stop creating all that new Hot Air? Yes, the problem(s) go much beyond CO2 emissions. When I lived in California some 35 years ago, I found I could not tolerate the smog. I decided to leave the state, as it was obvious to me that CA was the end of civilization for me. Is it arrogant to worry about your own survival when confronted with chronic life threatening insults? I think not. As for your comments about "stepping away from polarizing debates", perhaps you should look a bit closer at the proliferation of numerous anti-science propaganda efforts by the denialist. Scientists can't ignore data that obviously refutes a hypothesis. > Is it not time to check the data a bit more carefully, including the > often sloppy practices of measuring and recording terrestrial > temperatures? Please study other relevant blogs (such as Climate > Science, Watt's up with that, ICECAP and others) with an objective > mind before denouncing the solar information as denialist claptrap... > > respectfully, > > UL I agree that much more care is needed in collecting temperature data. I suggest that we start by reviewing the satellite data from Christy and Spencer, which I showed to have a basic flaw in a paper I wrote in 2003. As for the other sources you mention, most of them which I have, on occasion, observed, do not appear to be interested in science, only in promoting climate denial. ICECAP is a Singer denialist site, as I recall. Blogs are not science, BTW. That you seem to think they are suggests that you do not understand the science as you claim. Here's a novel idea. Read the NOT IPCC report and critique it for us. http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC-Feb%2020.pdf Best Regards E. S. -- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
