Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming

[wifezilla]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...rs-warming.html

"Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural

[abifae]

ha ha. told you so.

abi

[wifezilla]

He hee hee. I said the same thing about a year ago based on another article about solar activity and got my head bit off!

[borzage]

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Did anyone actually read this article?

...Abdussamatov's work... has not been well received by other climate scientists. "His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.

"And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report." (Related: "Global Warming 'Very Likely' Caused by Humans, World Climate Experts Say" [February 2, 2007].)

The article goes on to explain reasons why this scientist's theory is most likely inaccurate.

Anyone who still thinks the sun is solely responsible for global temperature increases over the last century should be informed that, according to satellite readings (i.e., readings taken from space as opposed to readings taken through the Earth's turbulent, cloudy atmosphere), there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978, when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has not changed.

For more information, read what Stanford University's Solar Center has to say about solar variability and global warming.

[wifezilla]

They used to grow crops on greenland. Melting glaciers have revealed HUMAN SETLLEMENTS. So OBVIOUSLY the planet was warmer at one point than it is now. It has also been colder. Our environment is in a constant state of change and flux, the earth wabbles, the magnetic poles switch.

Do humans have an effect? Sure...SOME. But the coal fires burning in China and volcanoes are more responsible for enviromental damange than American SUV owners, yet whole gets all the blame?

Having lived through the "Great Top Soil Crisis" of the late 60's, the "Impending Ice Age Crisis" of the early 70's, and the "We are all going to be buried under 10 FEET OF GARBAGE IN JUST 10 YEARS" crisis of the 80's...well...color me skeptical about the "Global Warming Crisis" of the 2000's.

All of the previous events had several things in common....

They were promoted by liberal and left-leaning organizations.

They ALL stated we needed to make drastic economic & social changes or we would be in BIG trouble in 10 YEARS or less.

The measures and solutions called for to fix the "problem" all would seriously cripple our economy due to their cost and instill layer after layer of beaurocracy to run new agencies, officials, and government departments.

They were ALL WRONG.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

[Mack]

They used to grow crops on greenland. Melting glaciers have revealed HUMAN SETLLEMENTS.

Southern and Southeastern Greenland are still decent climates to this day (relative to the north or interior). It isn't that amazing that there were human settlements on Greenland. Though it should be stated that Greenland was not a hospitable climate, even at points in time when the world was experiencing warmer temperatures.

So OBVIOUSLY the planet was warmer at one point than it is now. It has also been colder.

That isn't the question at all. The question is whether the rate of temperature change is far more rapid than normal and to what extent of that change is owed to Carbon Dioxide emissions, which can be measured through the past 600,000 years by taking ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica.

Do humans have an effect? Sure...SOME. But the coal fires burning in China and volcanoes are more responsible for enviromental damange than American SUV owners, yet whole gets all the blame?

Ice core sampling would show the emissions of volcanoes as a relative constant over the past 600,000 years. It does not compare to the amount put into the atmosphere by the industrial revolution. That is simply a myth.

The Unites States is responsible for 24.3% of the world's Carbon Dioxide emissions. China is the world's 2nd largest emitter with 14.5%, so you are incorrect once again. In fact, the United States emits more Carbon Dioxide than China, Russia, and Germany combined.

We are all going to be buried under 10 FEET OF GARBAGE IN JUST 10 YEARS" crisis of the 80's

I lived in the 80's as well and I don't remember that at all.

I remember a lot of businesses and nutjob individuals clamoring about how awful Y2K was going to be, but I didn't worry much about it.

They were promoted by liberal and left-leaning organizations.

Scientists are left-leaning organisations? You realise that Margaret Thatcher was an advocate of fighting climate change? I don't think she'd appreciate being considered a leftist.

The measures and solutions called for to fix the "problem" all would seriously cripple our economy due to their cost and instill layer after layer of beaurocracy to run new agencies, officials, and government departments.

The only thing I've seen like this in recent years has been the "War on Terror" which has created government departments and costed a fortune, all to fight a "threat" that is extremely exaggerated.

[wifezilla]

Hi Mack!

How's it going?

(For those of you who don't know Mack, he is 180

[abifae]

can you record it for me?

the few times i wish i had television lol.

abi

[Velvet Elvis]

Hi Mack!

How's it going?

(For those of you who don't know Mack, he is 180

[hollywoodfreaks]

The whole sun/natural temperature cycles as a cause of global warming makes a lot of logical/intuitive sense, but the fact that the overwhelming majority of ALL climate scientists think that carbon emissions are the primary cause should tell you something, unless the entire community of climate scientists is under the thumb of the agenda of some shadowy left-wing cabal. As cynical as I am, I really doubt that is the case. Unless and until global warming is shown be caused by something else, we must assume that the current theory is correct and act accordingly, because if it is true mankind is at serious risk for an unfortunate fate.

[wifezilla]

When discussing this thread, my hubby brought up 2 more "crises" situations that we were warned about during our school years. The population crisis and the acid rain crisis.

We were supposed to all be living in Hong Kong-like packed cities....those of us that didn't starve to death.

"For decades, the world has been haunted by ominous and recurrent reports of impending demographic doom. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich

[wifezilla]

Global warming is not about politics. It's about the ability to understand basic science and do the right thing.

You bring up a great point here. We need FACTS so we can do the right thing. But are we getting the facts or are we getting politics? What reason would there be to feed the public crap (as I am alluding to)?

Give this some thought.....

"Brookes says journalists do not favor the "status quo" as much as the "statist quo" (emphasis added). Brookes reasons that reporters mostly inform readers on issues of government, and the more the state expands, the better it is for journalists.

Crain and Tollison (1997) write that the need for the monitoring services of the press increases as government expands. It is in the self-interest of those in journalism, they write, to promote news that encourages expansion in the powers of the state.

Government has expanded its reach greatly in the past three decades in environmental regulation. Regardless of the individual biases of journalists on environmental matters, it would seem that if the "statist quo" viewpoint were true, the press would champion growth of government environmental regulation. We believe that the issue of acid rain allows for a test case for the "growth of government" view of journalism."

However, economic theory permits us to look at journalism from an alternative perspective, one that examines the perceived marginal costs and benefits to action taken by journalists. In this view, journalism are not guided only by the Canons of Journalism, but also by their own career interests.

Acid rain news coverage did not accurately reflect the debates within the scientific community, instead repeating what some scientists were saying in the early 1980s. Among the nation's major newspapers, only the Washington Post published a story on the dissenting scientists, and that only after the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 were law. Therefore, the inaccuracy of acid rain stories created only a minor stir, and most news organizations simply refused to acknowledge that credible alternative explanations even existed in the first place."

"Examination of the news coverage reveals that, while it reflected the scientific consensus in the early days of research, journalists failed to report changes in the scientific literature that challenged the original theories of lake acidification and harm to forests and vegetation. In fact, the mainstream press seemed to be in a time warp on this subject and continued to repeat the old theories even after they had been successfully rebutted in the scientific literature."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-152759635.html

[wifezilla]

One more thing today for Mack.

Here is some info on the great garbage crisis of the 80's.

"In Thompson's opinion, the perceived crisis in landfill space during the 1980's was a manufactured scare. "Many different constituencies were ready to embrace the idea that we were running out of landfill space. This was one of the few areas in which the big solid waste companies and the environmentalists actually agreed," Thompson explained.

What the 'perceived crisis' allowed, according to Thompson, was for solid waste companies to go ahead and build more landfills to meet the public's need while Congress jumped onto the bandwagon and passed legislation to regulate waste disposal. The Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RECRA) was originally passed in the 1970's, and reauthorized in the mid-80's. RECRA's purpose was to develop regulations for landfills: They had to be lined, have leachate collection systems, ground water monitoring, etc. Similar regulations were developed for incinerators.

"The legislation increased the costs of operating these facilities quite a bit and gave an advantage to larger facilities over smaller ones," Thompson outlined. "This changed the whole economic scale of the industry and caused the first big wave of consolidations.""

http://www.worldsweeper.com/Disposal/v6n2landfills.html

I learned about the "garbage crisis" at my high school. I went to a school in Northern Wisconsin from 1978-1981. It was in a fairly small town in a rather conservative area. It isn't like like I went to school in San Francisco or anything. The great garbage crisis was taught to us in science class. I still remember some of the assignments we had. Mainly because rooting through the garbage to find recycleables was not what my mom considered "science homework". Not only did I get chewed out, I think she and several other parents called the school to complain. The great garbage scare, like many other "emergencies", was a load of total trash.

[december_brigette]

Hi All:

wifezilla you wrote:

We were supposed to all be living in Hong Kong-like packed cities....those of us that didn't starve to death.

i remember my 7th grade science teacher teaching us as FACT this same thing about over-population. this was the mid 1980's. He said we were gonna end up in buildings where everyone was put in a drawer-type atmosphere by themselves (not the same as what abi said on her thread). and once a week, we would get out of the drawer and walk for 30 minutes. that we would no longer eat or drink - food would be given to us either via pill or IV.

that scared the SHITE out of me. as does most of life.

db

[hollywoodfreaks]

Wifezilla, I'm curious--for the examples you give about earlier "crises" that were shown to a load of crap--the possible difference I see between these and global warming is you seem to be saying "environmentalists", individual scientists, or a at least somewhat divided scientific community were the people advocating for these theories. Environmentalists are activists, not scientists, and something that is a serious debate in the scientific community should not be put forth as fact. As far as I know, global warming is about as controversial among climate scientists as the theory of evolution is among biologists.

Second--the predictive power and accuracy of a lot of science has been multiplying exponentially in recent years. I don't know but maybe this applies to climate scientists as well. It could potentially explain the inaccuracy of previous theories.

[Velvet Elvis]

So how does having crappy elementary school teachers invalidate basic physics?

[sepia]

Global warming is not about politics. It's about the ability to understand basic science and do the right thing.

You bring up a great point here. We need FACTS so we can do the right thing. But are we getting the facts or are we getting politics? What reason would there be to feed the public crap (as I am alluding to)?

Give this some thought.....

"Brookes says journalists do not favor the "status quo" as much as the "statist quo" (emphasis added). Brookes reasons that reporters mostly inform readers on issues of government, and the more the state expands, the better it is for journalists.

the "statist quo" of mainstream journalism appears to be in favor of reporting on climate change from purely economic grounds, giving equal weight to fringe opinions expressed by exxon-mobil-funded think tanks in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus insisting that mankind is a significant factor in global climate change. the earth can heat and cool on its own just fine, for the most part, and while inconvenient for mankind it is seems probable humans can continue to survive with most of these natural shifts. we are now at the point where we are sufficiently major actors upon the environment that we are capable of shoving climactic changes beyond tipping point, rendering much of life as we know it irreparable.

The concept of global warming didn't enter the public consciousness until the 1980s {ca 1988}. 


{...}


Drawing upon a cadre of skeptic scientists, during the early and mid-1990s the GCC {founded by the National Association of Manufacturers} sought to emphasize the uncertainties of climate science and attack the mathematical models used to project future climate changes. The group and its proxies challenged the need for action on global warming, called the phenomenon natural rather than man-made, and even flatly denied it was happening. Maisano insists, how ever, that after the Kyoto Protocol emerged in 1997, the group focused its energies on making economic arguments rather than challenging science.


Even as industry mobilized the forces of skepticism, however, an international scientific collaboration emerged that would change the terms of the debate forever. In 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and government officials inaugurated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific body that would eventually pull together thousands of experts to evaluate the issue, becoming the gold standard of climate science. ***In the IPCC's first assessment report, published in 1990, the science remained open to reasonable doubt. But the IPCC's second report, completed in 1995, concluded that amid purely natural factors shaping the climate, humankind's distinctive fingerprint was evident. And with the release of the IPCC's third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged:*** Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science," wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.


{...}


In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API {American Petroleum Institute} memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences."

[december_brigette]

Hi All:

VE wrote:

So how does having crappy elementary school teachers invalidate basic physics?

That is a good question. right now i dont have the ability to compare physics with global warming.

db

[Velvet Elvis]

Global warming is physics.

[wifezilla]

Crappy school teachers were just repeating what the crappy scientists were saying at the time. Not ALL scientists...just the load, connected ones with an agenda.

Scientists have inconvenient news for Gore

"The creeping unease among scientists has emerged in talks, articles and blog entries over the past few months. Among the critics is Robert Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University, Queensland. In a blog late last year, Dr Carter joined other geologists in ticking off Mr Gore over his perceived failure to acknowledge the globe's long history of climate change.

"Nowhere does Mr Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet," Dr Carter wrote. "Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change."

An emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, Don Easterbrook, told the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America that he did not want to "pick on Al Gore".

"But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.""

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/sci...3722471286.html

[hollywoodfreaks]

Geologists. Not climate scientists. For the most part I don't want to get opinions about genetics from a physicist. Same thing applies here. Although the fields are related, that is not the person's area of expertise. Of course, there are a few "outside of the box" thinkers who come along and revolutionize thinking on a particular subject, but they are very few and far between.

[Panz]

Forgive my levity, I have a theory that all of the global warming is due to the over abundance of hot air in DC

[wifezilla]

LOLOL...Panz is on to something. QUICK! Give her a research grant!!!!

[Unregistered]

So for those on the wrong side of the pond who didn't get to see the programme, and leaving aside the various attacks on the guy's admittedly rather patchy history, here's the synopsis:

1) There is a clear statistical correlation between global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

2) This correlation is capable of being tracked back through ice cores for thousands of years.

3) There is a consistent 800 year lag between a rise in global temperature and a rise in carbon dioxide.

4) There is a clear statistical correlation between global temperatures and solar activity.

5) There is no lag between a rise in global temperature and a rise in solar activity.

6) Increasing solar activity causes increasing global temperatures

7) Increasing global temperatures cause increasing carbon dioxide levels, mostly through a reduced capacity of the world's oceans to contain dissolved CO2

8) There is a lag because the immense thermal inertia of the oceans means that it needs centuries of warmer climate to raise the sea temperature enough to make it give up CO2

9) This has all happened before many times and the world has survived

10) Temperatures in the middle ages were far higher than now and the ice caps shrank but did not vanish, nor did polar bears die out.

Now, I'm a cynic, but this did make me stop and think about it. I'd like to see independent evidence of the trends of temperature, solar activity and CO2 to see if what he claims is cause and effect is so.

Final observation from the film: climate change is hot right now. Try and get a grant to research the declining population of Venezuelan swamp rats, and you're fighting with everyone else for research money. Reword the grant application to say "declining population of Venezuelan swamp rats with respect to global warming" and you're straight to the head of the queue.

[wifezilla]

I am here to announce a new study of margarita consumption due to global warming. I will be seeking grants to study if warmer temps increases cravings for cold, frosty margaritas and possibly Corona beer. Volunteers will be needed, so anyone in the Southern Colorado area, please stop by my front porch on warm days to help with this study

[Unregistered]

Can I get a grant to cover the travel costs? It would count as a field trip, surely.