Climate Change—Don’t Blame It on the Sun

The author of this poorly drafted political statement masquerading as science ought to be ashamed.

This quote reveals everything:
"The lecture is in pure astrophysicist-ese"

In other words, "I'm Stupid"

PLEASE STOP PUSHING YOUR AGENDA IN THE GUISE OF SCIENCE

more information about the subject can be found @
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801174450.htm - 44k -

Response to Epicetus' comment:
This quote reveals everything:
"PLEASE STOP PUSHING YOUR AGENDA IN THE GUISE OF SCIENCE"

According to you, the astrophysicists referred to in this article are stupid as well?

Watchman, why do you feel the need to attack epicetus for his opinion of the article? The only thing that the author said that was intelligent was that she did not understand and id is apparent in her writing. I felt the article was a waste of time and bandwidth. Watch out. Some uninformed legislator may see the last sentence of the article and proposed a law prohibiting us from breathing.

Epicetus and auferret.... I have a hard time believing that there are still people like you that are so uninformed about the issue of climate change. The IPCC reports represent the most up to date scientific understanding of climate change.(http://www.ipcc.ch). The summary for policymakers are an easy read if your science background isn't strong (which by your comments I would guess that this is the case).

Uninformed is not the correct term for people like us. I like to think that we are open minded. I speak for many when I say that I do believe in climate change. I just don't believe that man has that much to do with it. The earth goes through normal heating and cooling cycles. The ice age, for example, occurred long before a certain Nobel prize winner began driving the suv he denied owning. There is also the recent scientific evidence that other planets are going through the same type of climate changes that we are.

We could debate this issue but the real issue is that the article still stinks. It is poorly written and incomplete. The editors should be ashamed that it was allowed to be posted on the website of a respected science magazine.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the planet goes through natural cycles. However, the driving force behind current climate change is undoubtedly anthropogenic. If you need more convincing take a look at figures 2.4 and 2.5 in the latest IPCC synthesis report. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_topic2.pdf Figure 2.4 is a breakdown in the magnitude of radiative forcing attributed to many different factors. From the figure, it is obvious that the natural cycles in solar irradiance are minuscule compared to the effects from various greenhouse gases. Figure 2.5 is a comparison between climate models run using only natural inputs vs. natural inputs plus greenhouse gases. As you can see, only the models that include the effects of greenhouse gases are able to simulate the recent temperature increase.

I find it funny when people like you claim to be open minded. It's the same argument people use to denounce evolution. Just because you believe something to be true doesn't make it equally as valid as an opposite viewpoint unless you have scientific evidence to back it up. Your viewpoint that climate change is potentially caused by natural cycles would be fine if you had some evidence to support it. However, there is an overwhelming body of evidence proving that current climate change is being driven by anthropogenic factors. If you have some references to some recent scientific work that would support your assertions that natural cycles are responsible for climate change, I would love to read them. Please post them!! Then maybe we can have a real scientific discussion.

Your statement in your first comment proves that you have absolutely no idea about the science behind climate change. ("Some uninformed legislator may see the last sentence of the article and proposed a law prohibiting us from breathing.") Yes, the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels is small compared to the amount that is naturally cycled through the environment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle). The problem is that this upsets the fine balance of sinks and sources, and causes the concentration to slowly increase. This increase drives the increase in global temperatures.

The fact that Al Gore drives an SUV has absolutely nothing to do with the causes of climate change. You might argue that he is being hypocritical, since he is advocating that people drive smaller vehicles, but this does nothing to change the scientific facts!

And lastly, I've noticed a fair bit of whining about the quality of the articles lately. I think that PopSci is doing a great job. I don't think these articles were ever intended to be full length and in depth. The website is just a free supplement to the magazine.
Also, have you ever been to a scientific conference? You are often overwhelmed with information. Really, the goal is to try and sample as much of the new scientific research as you can. The presenters are often trying to make a simple point in a very short amount of time allotted to them. That was the point of this article. PopSci is trying to give us a taste of what is happening at the AAAS meeting in Boston. The point of this particular presentation was that there is further proof that the sun is not responsible for recent climate change.

Please, I am very much open to further discussion on this topic.

One last comment... According to the IPCC scientists, recent climate change is "very likely" caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If you look in the introduction, the term "very likely" is used to denote a 90% confidence level.

So, the world's best minds are 90% sure that global warming is attributed to humans. Governments around the world constantly spend trillions of dollars on programs with far less certainty of success.

A relationship has been made between climate change and solar radiation which was observed during the "little Ice Age" in the form of lower levels of sunspots. More sunspots = more radiation. I'm of the firm belief that current climate change is brought on by manmade factors but I also think that it has more to do with the interruption or destruction of Co2 absorbing processes than it does with actual increased Co2 emissions. If you look at the numbers, human Co2 emissions seem like a drop in the bucket (@ 27billion tonnes) when compared with the whole of the carbon cycle (about 800 billion tonnes including all plant and animal respiration) but then human destruction of the rainforest (which absorbs most of the Co2 out of the atmosphere) is utterly prolific at more than 50% in the last 100 years....

sjthuss,

Thank you for the very intelligent response. I am very wary of claims made at ipcc, which is an arm of the United Nations. If that is your only source for information, you will only get a very biased view of an issue. They contend that most scientists believe this junk when in fact, most do not. I could develop a list of sites where there is evidence to dispute their point of view but Phil Valentine has already compiled a fine list for us at http://www.philvalentine.com/GlobalWarming.htm .

"Your statement in your first comment proves that you have absolutely no idea about the science behind climate change. ("Some uninformed legislator may see the last sentence of the article and proposed a law prohibiting us from breathing.")"

If you read the last sentence of the article, you will find this statement: "The best way to turn down Earth’s thermostat is to stop emitting CO2." Again, there is nothing to back up the statement. Most everyone knows that CO2 is what we breath out. I have an idea of what some scientists (and politicians) say is what is behind climate change. I, however, refuse to believe what they say, just because they said it. Most of what the general public believes about this subject is what they learned in an Oscar winning "documentary" that has been for the most part debunked. The fact that he won a Nobel prize because of it, minimizes the efforts of all great scientists that were honored with the prize before.

Yes, we have done some bad things for the environment. Yes, we could do better. The problem with this article is that it makes a statement and says nothing to back it up. The article was about how boring the meeting was and had nothing to do with the title.

I have heard of a few people through the discovery channel have stated that during the Middle Ages the earth was actually warmer than it is now. The reason they believe this because they tested some of the larger ice packs by drilling into them and extracting some of the ice to under go testing. It proved that carbon dioxide levels were actually higher during the Middle Ages than it is now. I am all for the improvement of the world, and it may also slow the decline of the ice packs and everything. Also, the lessening of emissons and the release of harmful gases help protect the endangered wild Brook trout. The harmful gases that cause acid rain are slowly killing off the last few wild Brook Trout in the Appalachian Mtns.

Why do anything to protect against any naturally occuring force, like forest fires or floods?

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2008-01-15-global-temperatures_N.htm

EARTH'S TOP 10 WARMEST YEARS

1- 2005
2 - 1998
3 - 2002
4- 2003
5 - 2007
6 - 2006
7 - 2004
8 - 2001
9 - 1997
10-1999

(Since 1880)
(Source: National Climatic Data Center)

auferret, sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet, I haven't been on this site in a while. It's late, and I haven't had a chance to check out that link in much detail. One caution though... take time to look at the original source. One article in your link there was a editorial about a blog, about a paper originally published in the peer reviewed journal "Nature". The problem with this is that it is like a game of "telephone", the original message gets distorted along the way. I'll try to look at this again tomorrow.

So, first I check out Phil Valentine on wikipedia, I had never heard of him. And he's a conservative radio talk show host in Tennessee. Great. I'm sure he's an expert on this subject area then :)

Anyways.... ok first link....
Temperature monitors report widescale global cooling
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
Ok, so he's using anecdotal evidence of cold weather this year to support the idea that the planet is actually cooling, rather than warming. Well, anecdotal evidence is a terrible indicator of a long term trend. Also, he says that NASA and others have data indicate that this year was cooler on average than previous years. Fair enough. But one cool year is not an indication of a long term climate change. That's why scientists are typically looking at 10, 30 and 50 year trends. Global weather is sort of like the stock market..... it's always going up and down.

Since you don't like the IPCC (I'll address that later...) here's a peer reviewed article to support this:
Antarctic atmospheric temperature trend patterns from satellite observations
Johanson CM (Johanson, Celeste M.), Fu Q (Fu, Qiang)
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 34 Issue: 12 Article Number: L12703 Published: JUN 19 2007
I have access to it through my academic institution, you may have trouble getting access to it though, or you might need to pay, I'm not sure.

A bit further down the page:
Study finds natural cause for rapid Arctic warming
http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Finds+Natural+Cause+for+Rapid+Arctic+Warming/article10216.htm
So wow.... someone would read this and think that these scientists have found a natural explanation for global warming.... ok, lets take a look at the original research:

Vertical structure of recent Arctic warming
published in Nature, you can read the abstract here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7174/pdf/nature06502.pdf

So first of all, if my research actually debunked the current understanding of global warming, I sure would have put that into the title! If you read the abstract, really what this article is about is that these researchers measured the vertical structure of the warming trend of arctic temperatures. They found at higher altitudes, the atmosphere is actually warming up faster than at the ground surface. The arctic is currently warming much faster than people expected. One of the possible explanations is that as sea ice and snow melts, the changing albedo allows the earth surface to absorb more radiation, and increase in temperature. The higher temperature increases at high altitudes indicates that instead, it is likely related to atmospheric circulation.

Therefore, if you read the original article, you can see that this research had absolutely nothing to do with finding a "natural cause" for global warming. They are conducting new research into some of the feedback mechanisms that causes certain parts of the globe to heat up faster than others.

See here's the thing. Greenhouse gases (especially CO2) are the major cause of warming. You can't deny that the concentration of these gases are increasing. You can check out the raw data here: http://agage.eas.gatech.edu/index.htm

The climate forcing attributed to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases is dead easy to calculate. CO2 for example will absorb infra-red radiation at a very specific wavelength. This can be measured in the lab. We know what wavelengths the earth emits (blackbody radiation). Then it can easily be calculated. Ignoring all other factors, the increasing concentrations of these gases will lead to global warming (or more accurately climate change, since some areas actually cool in response to changing atmospheric and oceanic circulations patterns). Climate forcing attributed to greenhouse gases far outweighs the forcing attributed to other factors.

Where is this CO2 (and other gases) coming from. Well, again, it's easy to calculate using a simple mass balance approach. We know how much we are producing, and how much is produced naturally, and how much is absorbed naturally. It's also easy to prove this by measuring the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2. Again, since you don't like the IPCC, here's another article (again you might have trouble tracking it down):

Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and CH4 in an urban environment
Kuc T, Rozanski K, Zimnoch M, Necki JM, Korus A
APPLIED ENERGY Volume: 75 Issue: 3-4 Pages: 193-203 Published: JUL-AUG 2003

As for the IPCC...
I think they are doing a great job of communicating the science to the policymakers. The job of scientists is to determine the truth and then communicate it to the public and to the governments. It fine to debate about what should be done or what shouldn't be done in response to climate change, but it's counterproductive to pretend that there is a debate in the scientific community when this really isn't the case. As far as the IPCC reports are concerned.... if anything, they actually represent a very conservative estimate of the risks/causes of climate change. Since the IPCC committees are drawing from published scientific literature to write these reports, they always lag a couple years behind the most recent data. Also, the IPCC scientists are under a lot of pressure not to overstate the climate change issues, because, although they are not a political entity, they do face political pressure to be more "industry friendly". Also, the reports risk being dismissed if they are too alarmist.
You can read more about the IPCC on the wikipedia entry, and make your own decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change
Since wikipedia is open to public editing, you could argue that it is not too biased.

But to summarize, you need to base your arguments on actual peer reviewed articles. The peer review process is what ensures that scientific research is valid and bias free. I like to refer to the IPCC because they draw from peer reviewed research, and they are experts in the field as well.

So I just noticed another comment you made and it made me think of something else:

"They contend that most scientists believe this junk when in fact, most do not."

This reminds me of one of my biggest peeves..... just because someone is a scientist, doesn't mean that they are an expert on climate change. For example, I could be a biologist, but that doesn't give me authority to be an expert on climatology or atmospheric science.

Again, that's what the peer review process is for. Before you can publish something, you're work needs to be "approved" by fellow scientists who are experts in that particular field.

It always irks me when I see something along the lines of "Dr. So and So from somewhere USA, states that climate change is a hoax". You look at his(or her) credentials and see that this Dr. is actually a PhD in Computer Science, or Economics or something else completely unrelated to atmospheric or climate science.

Since the IPCC conveniently leaves out the most abundant greenhouse gas, H2O (95% of the total) it is totally understandable that CO2 being the next most abundant, gives them a 90% pucker factor. How is it that a gas CO2 that comprises less than 4% of the total has such a huge affect? It sounds like power and arrogance rather than science.

If it is not the sun, then why is Mars and the moon Titan both warming?

CO2 has such a greater affect than H2O because of the relative concentrations.
H2O and CO2 absorb at certain wavelengths.
Since the atmosphere is already saturated with H2O, it is already absorbing all it can at that particular wavelength.
Since there is much less CO2, an increase in CO2 means the atmosphere will absorb more efficiently at that particular wavelength.
For the same reason, CH4 and N2O have a greater warming potential than CO2.

As for warming on Mars and Titan.... I assure you we know much more about our own planet...

Also, the IPCC definitely considers the affect of H2O in the atmosphere:
Warmer climate = more water vapor in the atmosphere, leads to greater warming

More water vapor= more clouds, leads to cooling. I believe this was covered in great detail in the last report.

Just this year the global temperature has droped by 1 degree. (either F or C... can't quite remember) It took the Earth 100 years to warm up 1 degree, but yet it has droped by 1 degree just this year. Polar ice caps are becoming so thick that the polar bears can't break through the ice to hunt seals and glaciers are expanding faster than previously recorded.

Instead of worrying about Global Warming, we should be worried about the next Ice Age!
(It's still sub 35 here in Connecticut when it's usually high 40's. Where is Al Gore when you need him?)

Here is a set of blog postings from John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, who happens to be suing Al Gore for fraud. If you are really interested in scientific FACT, I'd suggest reading what he has to say. It is enlightening and makes perfect sense.

http://media.kusi.clickability.com/documents/Comments%20on%20Global%20Warming1.pdf

If you believe this article you might want to thing about slaughtering your friend. He exhales co2 and so do you. Don't blame it on the sun blame yourself