Uh-Oh…The Sun
There are odd things going on 93 million miles from Dion’s front door. That big yellow thing, the source of pretty much all the heat on Earth is not having its usual spots. Lack of sunspots tends to correlate to a reduction in solar output. And that tends to create “mini” (and sometimes “maxi”) Ice ages.
Up until quite recently people who made the claim that the big yellow thing might have more to do with climate change than, say, CO2 were branded as “deniers” and disinvited from the better class of cocktail party and any participation in the so called “climate debate”.
Well, the absence of spots has become sufficiently pronounced that NASA has called a press conference Tuesday. In the press release NASA states, “The sun’s current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.”
September 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Jay, are you sure it wasn’t the strawman arguments that got them disinvited?
An analysis of radiative forcings would look a little silly without they sun wouldn’t they? Increases in GHG is a positive radiative forcing. Increases in solar radiation is a positive forcing. Variations in one does not invalidate the other.
A closer inspection of the “ridicule” might reveal that it’s aimed at those who claim solar changes explain global warming and that GHG concentrations are irrelevant ( with the obvious exception of the silly people on my side of the discussion ).
Anyway, if you feel the need for a cocktail, we’ll invite you.
September 21st, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Kevin, I am always grateful for a cocktail.
You are, in a trivial way, correct: the Sun and such effects of GHG as can be measured are both positive forcings. However, what got the solar folks disinvited was their idea that variations in solar output might be just slightly more important than CO2 emissions. Call it a magnitude question.
The AGW brigade – in order to press its environmental and economic agenda – had to make the claim that AGW was happening and was significant. They still have not managed to produce an analytically rigorous proof that x ppm increase in CO2 directly co-relates to y degree change in global temperature. But worse, even a relatively insignificant reduction in solar output would drown the entire impact of human produced CO2. And, unlike the various attempts on the warming hysterics part to pretende there never was a Medieval Warm Period, we actually know there have been at least two periods of substantially reduced solar output over the last 1000 years. (You will remember the frozen Thames in Dickensian England.)
The trouble with the Sun is that it does not give rise to any hairshirt, death to SUVs, policy prescriptions other than, perhaps, that you may want to be wearing a hairshirt while driving your SUV as it will be your only chance to make it through the snow drifts.
September 21st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Jay:
“Kevin, I am always grateful for a cocktail.”
Drink it fast Jay before the ice melts.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Gary, this year I have 9.5% more ice…I’ll sip thank you.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
I’ll assume you’re not playing semantic game with “rigorous”. In which case I think you are mistaken. The variability of analysis for the CO2 sensitivity figures is narrowing. There are few ( if any ? ) analyses which produce sensitivity numbers with large discrepancies ( when considering the same boundary conditions and time frames ). The magnitude of solar variability is not, as I understand it, a difficult thing to come to grips with so maybe they we disinvited from poor parties.
In the end, I have some sympathy for the position on the apocalyptical aspects of climate change commentary. Besides, as I like to remind my more cynical brothers, climate change is not really the problem, it is a manifestation of the unsustainability of the current situation.