One favourite of the global warming denial community is to claim that the culprit is the sun, not man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Earth scientists dispensed with that pap many years ago. That didn't stop the deniers from reviving it to suit their purposes. The only thing to be done was to test the theory again, just to make sure. It's been tested. They're sure. It's as groundless today as it was years ago. From The Guardian:
The new analysis is designed to counter the main alternative scientific argument put forward - that solar activity may be to blame for global warming.
"The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.
"They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not ... [the temperature] increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up."
James Hansen, a Nasa climate scientist who was once gagged by the Bush administration for speaking out on global warming, said the issue of whether the sun's activity is causing global warming had been dispensed with by most scientists long ago. "The reason [this paper] has value is that the proponents of the notion that the sun determines everything come up with various half-baked suggestions that the sun can somehow cause an indirect forcing that is not included in the measurements of radiation coming from the sun," he said. "These half-baked notions are usually supported by empirical correlations of climate with some solar index in the past. Thus, by showing that these correlations are not consistent with recent climate change, the half-baked notions can be dispensed with."
Even though there is almost no argument among scientific circles about the role of human activities as the main driver of climate change, a recent poll suggested that the public still believes there is significant scientific uncertainty. Despite the efforts of government and campaigns such as Live Earth to educate the public, the Ipsos Mori poll of over 2,031 people, released this month, found 56% of people thought there was an active scientific debate into the causes of global warming.
A spokesman for the Royal Society, the UK's leading scientific academy, said: "This is an important contribution to the scientific debate on climate change. At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day. We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous."
11 comments:
I may be entirely wrong, but the pollution is destoying the Ozone layer,which is there to protect us from the sun's ultra violet rays. Does the hole do anything else?
Scott, last I heard it seemed we were actually dealing effectively with the ozone layer and that it could be restored within a couple of decades. As far as I can tell, it's not directly linked to global warming. It may well do things other than filtering UV butI'm not aware of it.
If its not the sun then what? Everyone agree's the earth has warmed and cooled for millions of years, mini ice ages and mini tropical era's...without a human living on earth, what caused those?
It seems to me, to be honest about climate change and global warming is to admit that its happened before and will happen again, and again, An honest question would be, how much are humans speeding up what is and has been a normal cycle?
Bill, if you want the answer to your question, you're going to have to do a bit of reading. There is no shortage of credible, peer-reviewed material available to you. If you need help finding it, try going to scientists' sites such as realclimate.org. Sure the earth has gone through changes but this is quite different and you need to understand those differences. All I can suggest is that you take the time to get the answers you want.
To be honest with you Mound, I have. And, its all the reading that confuses me. If you take the time to research its probably 50-50 right now re scientists who think global warming is happening versus those who think its a natural occurance. Its become a left right debate that just becomes noise. So, how is climate change different now then lets say 100 years ago. PBS has pictures of Lake Superior in 1908 where the water has receded over 100 feet off the shore line, its risen and fallen over the past 100 years, and, no one knows why, but, it happens in 2007..and bammo...proof of global warming. There is absolutly no proof of climate change today being different then 1000 years ago, but we know of dust bowls in the 30's, the most violent hurricanes were in the early 1900's, of fossilized tropical trees found in glaciers, we can speculate, but, like the waters of Lake Superior, were not sure. We have climate change twice a year in Canada, due to the Sun, it seems to me to be unscientific to rule out the only common denominator, the Sun. After all, if its not the Sun, and you want to rule out the Sun, and climate change has happened before human induced CO2, it would seem that more research is needed, its basic grade 9 science.
Bill, there's nothing 50/50 about this. At most there is a percent or two who dispute global warming and, when you look into those guys, you find out it's the usual suspects. Bear in mind also that the IPCC reports are consensus statements. There are plenty of climate scientists - serious guys, the peer-review class - who believe the situation is considerably worse. Given that, time and again, changes are happening sooner and more dramatically than the IPCC estimates, those who argue the problem is worse tend to be validated by results.
If you really believe this is a 50/50, open debate, I suspect that's because you prefer that uncertainty. All I can say is that's too bad and you're probably best served to ignore this issue altogether.
I think global warming and cooling go a long way back. Up on the Bruce Penninsula they found caves with coral growing on the rocks, lefover since Southern Ontario was tropical.... many thousand of years ago, and it was cold down south, compared to what it is now.
Lets see....I dont have central air, ride a bike to work, changed all the light bulbs to those curly things...and just this year took out the gas pool heater and installed a solar heater on the roof (the box says it takes 2 hours but its a weekend job). Its not that I'm uncertain, its just plain curiosity. You cant say the polar ice caps are melting and not expect people to ask how? The average temperature of the arctic is -38 degrees...how does it get 38 degrees warmer in the arctic without getting 38 degrees warmer somewhere else?, and if it got 38 degrees warmer in Ottawa today it would be 132 degrees, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead. You say dont blame the sun, blame CO2 gasses, but then refuse to give any kind of proof or data of how climate change occured in the past. People who are skeptical aren't skeptical because they are bored, they are skeptical because logic is missing, and, questions go unanswered, basic questions like the ones I've asked above. In grade 10...1973...we studied Global Cooling...Time Magazine..the threat of our generation! Lots of Data, lots of scientists with letters after their names, dont even dare question them, who would, at that time we used to climb the snow drifts of the cottages and sled off the roof's onto the Ottawa River. Things havent changed much, basic logic truth's were overlooked then, and they are being overlooked now.
Bill, there's nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, especially if it motivates one to find answers to their doubts. There are very persuasive answers to each of the doubts you've raised. They'll explain how what is happening now is markedly different to past fluctuations that occured gradually, over thousands of years. There's so much more to this than temperatures and ice melts. It gets into hyrdology, atmospheric chemistry, geology, oceanography, botany, biology - the whole gamut of earth sciences. All these factors impact upon each other.
The eminent British scientist James Lovelock believes we have to approach what he calls "global heating" from the perspective of Gaia, the earth goddess. To Lovelock, the earth is a self-regulating body that, even though largely inanimate (rock, water,air) functions in a highly organic manner. By maintaining the earth within certain limits, the conditions were established for life to be created and sustained. It's this biosphere (the thin belt that ranges 100-miles below the surface to 100-miles above) that prevents our planet from becoming a hot, dead rock. Sure it does undergo cyclical heating and cooling but, until now, that has been a gradual process both initiated and regulated by the nature of the biosphere itself. That's not to say that the biosphere can't be critically damaged. It can. It can certainly be destabilized as we seem to be doing right now.
Fortunately we're not powerful enough, at least not yet, to kill the biosphere but we can destabilize it enough that it will kill most of us. In the most vulnerable regions of our earth, that's already begun.
Great answer. Its why I read your blog alot. I have and will always have a great deal of respect for Dr Suzuki, I put him on the same level as Greenpeace. They both go overboard but, how else can they they get heard? The good both of them have done far outweighs the rhetoric. But, here's the but, this issue got sidetracked and derailed by Al Gore and the Greens. If, pollutants were included in global warming issues, if carbon trading hadnt been introduced, and, if this hadnt been used a political tool it could have been the greatest moment in human history in regards to cleaning up our planet, instead, we get Madonna yelling for motherf*&(ers to jump up and down if your against global warming...sheeesh. You see...I'm not such a bad red neck eh?
I understand your point Bill. This is a powerful political tool, perhaps even a weapon, and everybody wants control of it, often more to enhance their personal interests than to remedy the problem. Simply looking like you're doing something can be just as rewarding as actually doing something. I agree with you about celebrities who jump on their executive jets so they can go halfway around the world and pitch themselves as environmentalists on the strength of performing a song or two onstage.
I'm very concerned about global warming. I'm old enough that it doesn't pose much threat to me but I have kids and I hope will someday have grandchildren. It's the world we're leaving them that troubles me. I also feel we owe a huge debt to the people in places like sub-Saharan Africa who are paying the price of global warming now yet have done virtually nothing to contribute to the GHG problem.
As the months creep into years I find it increasingly difficult to be optimistic about this problem. We need to coalesce around a core of values and principles because the answer has to be every bit as global as the problem.
I've written before that there are several solutions to global warming and we definitely will choose one of them. The best solutions, unfortunately, slipped through our fingers twenty or thirty years ago because we didn't know any better.
We know better now but we're still not ready to act decisively. That means that today's reasonable options will also be forfeit.
Somewhere down the line, ten years or twenty years perhaps, there will be an adequately powerful consensus to effect real change. The solutions remaining by that time will be much less pleasant, harder to effect and considerably less beneficial than what is open to us today.
The longer we wait, the less our society will resemble what we enjoy today. I don't want to indulge in futuristic vision but a number of unfortunate changes will become inevitable.
And finally, Bill, no I don't think you're that much of a red neck. If I did I wouldn't be writing this much. In fact I appreciate challenging views.
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