UN: Sun plays significant role in global warming.

Read the paper I linked #18 in the medieval thread and you'll be even more darned. But thanks for keeping us up to date with what Fox thinks is the cutting edge.

PS: Journals are fond of their paywalls, but I'll send a copy to whoever asks.

 

Wait a few billion years till our sun starts expanding in it's path to becoming a red giant..

 

i'm in.

 

If ny_rob got that figure from the solar output wikipedia page, the paragraph above it says that the sun is brightening 10% per billion years. We usually think this will mean that the Earth will hum along in some fashion until the future sun (as a red giant) swallows it up. I think this may not fit the science.

10% per billion years is 1% per 100 million years; 0.01% per million years. That 'steady' 0.01% increase is equal to the difference between maximum and minimum in a typical 11-year solar cycle. Even if we get there smoothly, in a million years solar output increase will begin to be important I suppose. Certainly important in 100 million years.

You have heard of exoplanets and the existence of 'habitable zones' around other stars. Goldilocks regions; not too cold and not too hot (for liquid water). Those studies use extremely simple, 1-dimensional climate models for exoplanets. They could scarcely do otherwise, having so little data about the planets and the stars they orbit. But two of those papers do the same analysis for 'Sun+Earth'. One says the inner (too hot) boundary of the habitable zone is 95% of the Earths orbital radius and the other says 99%. On the chance that their analyses are not whacked, it means that we are rather close to the 'too hot' edge.

Even if we don't get too hot by way of adding IR-absorbing gases, we may get there by increased solar output in 100 million years or less. How 'bout that for Chicken Little?

So fast-forward past the age of fossil fuel, and assume that a large number of humans are still here and still eating plants and plant-eaters. Those people (even if they wanted to) could not lower CO2 below oh, mid-200s ppm, because the plants don't grow well (corn and sorghum are the only prominent C4 crops and they can get by with a bit less). This is the lower limit on our acceptable greenhouse. Meanwhile the sun gets brighter. Eventually, should we last that long, we'll be needing some orbiting solar sunshades.

Even though it is beyond current technology, I reckon it is a lot more doable than terraforming Mars and moving there.

There is plenty to do in the 21st century, but in the much longer term, absolutely El Sol is going to be a matter of great interest/concern.

 

I could have done a better job relating that to the thread topic. There presently exists a range of opinion about the sensitivity of earth's climate to solar luminosity. If the highest sensitivity is correct the Earth could leave the orbital 'habitable zone' (actually the HZ moves out beyond Earth orbit) in a million years. If the lowest sensitivity is correct. 100 million years.

So, in an interesting reversal, it is the (conventional) climate-model deniers who are catastrophists on these time scales.

 

I have some news too. Apparently the Pope is Catholic. Who'd have thought.

 

WOW, the sun contributing to global warming! Who would have thought of it? Al Gore and others? Nope, not a chance. Their political laced heated arguments vastly increase global warming which know no limits or bunndaries.

DBCassidy

 

dbcassidy, I hope not to offend you here in any way because I really wish that you would look at the websites of journals that publish solar/climate studies.Geophysical Research Letters is one, and I'd me happy to give a longer list. The titles and abstracts are never behind paywalls, and if something catches your eye I am sure we can get the entire paper into your hands somehow.

My point is that there are many such studies; more than I could could count (w/o major effort). I mentioned one recently by Tung and Zhou, and those two have at least two other recent studies of interest. But those two applied mathematicians (who else understands wavelet analysis?) are by no means alone in the field. The interesting point, as I said above, is how all those will be handled in IPCC AR5.

If you feel the need to flog Al Gore, have at it, and don't forget his TV network sale to Al Jazeera. But if you're interested in where the science is going, one need only look.

I did not understand grumpycabbie's post until I read yours, which probably demonstrates that I live 'in a different world'. Doesn't mean we can't talk though, and maybe even have some fun while doing so.

 

Rawls redux.

When this "news" came out two months ago, (e.g.,
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100194166/man-made-global-warming-even-the-ipcc-admits-the-jig-is-up/),

here's what the guy who was lead author of that chapter said about Rawls' interpretation of it:

"STEVE SHERWOOD: Oh that's completely ridiculous. I'm sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite, that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible."
(IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun)

So, who you gonna believe: The climate scientist who was lead author of the chapter in question, or the untrained denialist blogger whose two-month-old comments were reported by Fox as if they were news. If you're Fox News, spotlight the blogger, but don't even mention, let alone interview, the guy who was lead author on the chapter, and ignore the fact that this all came out a couple of months ago.

Does that tell you all you need to know about how reliable this is?

The rest of the article was the usual Fox propaganda. E.g.,

"An estimate from NASA said that solar variations caused 25 percent of the 1.1 degree Fahrenheit warming that has been observed over the past century."

Seems a bit high to me. But it's attributed to NASA. And it is from NASA. If you bother to look it up, you'll find that that's the figure starting from the Maunder Minimum, to the present. Brilliant -- as an example of propaganda. Not so much, as a way to provide useful information.

Still not convinced? Here's Rawls' home page. Yeah, sure, that's the guy I want to trust when it comes to correct information about global warming:
Alec Rawls' home page: A Republican Form of Government

 

Boy, isn't that the trillion dollar question...

 

He is?

 

It appears from your link the Telegraph is much more inflammatory.

Now do I believe the quote attributed to sherwod is the final word? Of course I don't. We have had lead IPCC authors over state their sumaries before. I don't think we need to be reminded of the incompetence of the Himalayan Glaciers. The head of the IPCC and lead author got that one wrong. Experts often have different opinions, and many at Ipcc have been found to not be experts and rely on grey literature. I am troubled by him claiming that cosmic rays are negligible, if that really is in the summary That is especially bad if some of the peer reviewed research shows cosmic rays have important impact on ocean oscillation.

What was that other statement in this thread? Since the mauder minimum solar radiation has been responsible for around 25% of temperature increase. That seems well within the consensus estimates, and stays away from really unscientific characterizations like X is negligible. Pinning down how cosmic rays effect climate variability should help improve models.

 

How old is the Earth estimated to be?, How old is our star estimated to be?, how many years have we been keeping weather records? Hmmm, seems the weather data sets are way too limited in the relation the age of our planet and solar system.

It would come to no surprise that the more we learn about our climate, the less we know overall.

An interesting paradox.

DBCassidy

 

Jumping ahead to Gaia here. Sum and Earth both about 4600 million years. The oceanic crust, comprising almost 2/3 of global crust, has a maximum age of about 200 million years. It is a perpetual state of churn. This puts an upper limit of what we can ever learn about climate from marine sediments. The things we can learn about climate from (older than 200 million) continental crust proxies are no doubt limited, but I'd be hesitant to try to define those limits.

Now, Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are getting heavily cored and scrutinized, but Antarctica didn't ice over until about 50 million years ago. Greenland ice is younger. So there is an upper limit on all that, even if 'proxied' to perfection.

Paleo soils get buried, are out of communication with biology, and are later excavated. The oldest ones may be about 1 million (so far). I don't think they have yet been used much to 'tell climate stories'

Paleo-trees, living and adequately preserved corpses, about 10,000 years. Older wood may be found in bogs and suitable fresh waters. Not on the sea floor; things eat wood there (creepy things...).

Written records, from which some climate variations may be deduced, stem from about 2000 years ago in China. Quite a lot has been done with those already. Decipherable written records from China span about 4000 years, but in the first half not much has been related to climate so far. I guess they wrote about other things.

The earliest instrumental records that are worthy of the name are from barometers, starting in 1650. By 1750 they where in place to measure things like the ENSO cycle. Maybe a bit earlier. By that time there where also thermometers (ah the fun things you can do with mercury), but just a few thermometers can't tell as much as a few, strategically placed barometers. Especially about the ocean sloshes.

By about 100 years ago, chemists where totally skilled enough to make accurate CO2 measurements, and they did. But not yet having a handle on the ecology of CO2 (Keeling got to that in the 1950's), they measured CO2 in cities which we now know to be, well, pretty useless.

Many 'hard' limits on many different things. Climate proxies already seem pretty good for at least 6 million years, back before the PETM, and surely over that time scale we can expect them to improve a lot. But, it is just 6 million years, 6/4600 of the time in question. "Glass mostly empty" people may emphasize that. OTOH, the glacial cycles that characterize 'modern' climate have numbered in the hundreds in the last 3 million years. Few or none in the 3 million before that, and yes, too-high CO2 looks to have kept the earth deglaciated from 6 to 3 million.

According to me (and you may disagree) the last 6 million are the most appropriate focus for paleoclimtology. Among other important things, it has been the time when solar output has been very much like now, and it is the time when bipedal hominids have been on the scene. So I miss knowing all the details of climate 600 million years ago (and more), but not as much as you might guess.

 

You had me up to there. Solar radiation changes every year in approximately 22 year magnetic cycles - since polarity is not thought to matter much 11 year radiation cycles have been established. The earth rotates in milankovitch cycles lasting about 41,000 years causing great changes to solar radiation hitting the earth. Solar radiation was quite different because of this 10,000 years ago than today. Many believe the simple short solar cycle had a strong influence in the little ice age. We have some proxies that go back for the various cycles, but all of the radiation effects are far from worked out. We perhaps have a good 130 years of good temperature sunspot numbers, but we are still learning about solar cycles and how they impact ocean oscillations.

NASA - Solar Cycle Primer

Its going to take until around 2021 to better understand how this solar cycle affects ENSO, AMO, and other climate variables.

 

The Fox story (and the OP) is about what the IPCC does or does not say in its draft report. Fox is reporting two-month-old comments from a blogger, claiming the IPCC said something. The guy who wrote the chapter said, pretty clearly, no, the chapter doesn't say that, and anybody who'd bother to read the chapter would understand that. I read the chapter, I agree with him. I can't see how anyone could have an opinion about this without having done that first, but you never know.

My cite of the Telegraph story was to document that this "news" is two months old. That's all. And it does that.

Basing the estimate of solar influence on (one old study of) the Maunder Minimum is a cherry pick, like starting any time series based on a minimum value. That's just basic statistics. Confounding that (Maunder Minimum , ending circa 1715) with "the last century", as Fox did, just compounded the error. Best estimate, the contribution of solar over the last century is pretty close to negligible. Here, for example, is the solar contribution for the past half-century. (Not trying to confuse century with half-century, just the handiest thing I could find).



Cosmic rays? Seriously? Here's an overview of the state of the art on cosmic rays. There's no there, there. I'll keep an open mind, but so far the evidence is that any effect is small.
RealClimate: A review of cosmic rays and climate: a cluttered story of little success
Tele

 

I was mainly replying to your telegraph link. It makes fox look fair and balanced. I was reading the peer reviewed articles not the IPCC summary. I can't believe anyone would be able to say CR and solar have no impact on recent warming from the current papers. IF somehow the hockey stick was proven right and we can erase the little ice age, then maybe you can do that, but you would have to throw out a great deal of peer reviewed research.

OH. Is 2 months old? I don't get my news from the telegraph, and after reading that dribble I hope you can see why. It seemed to get the story wrong, and I am thinking skeptical science got it wrong too. I at least hope that after forbes and wsj articles that the ipcc corrects things that are wrong.

You need to do better than put out a chart with no error bars from a political blog that told us the IPCC was right on the Himalayas melting fast. What you could say is there is a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to ENSO, AMO, the solar cycles and IPCC models. There also is a great deal of uncertainty about the warming and cooling effects of varioius particulates and pollutants like SO2 and NOx. This creastes a large area of uncertainty with causes and effects of recent temperature rises. The consensus seems to be that the majority of the increase is added ghg, but CR, reduction of certain pollutants, and other factors seem to cause problems for the models. How do you account for the spike in the temperature record in 1998. Are you sure CR have absolutely nothing to do with ENSO and AMO despite the research to the contrary?

 

Solar physicists (including from NASA)are predicting a 30 year little ice age beginning after 2013.
We wont have to wait long to see who is full of BS.
When the cooling starts ,how will the CAGW believers react?
Blame the cooling on CO2?
Stay real quiet?
Pretend like they never said CO2 was the main climate driver?
I hope you will all be honest enough to admit that you were full of BS .

 

Really? I posted the NASA page on solar cycles and it said nothing of the sort. It did say that the maximum of this cycle would be in this year or the next, and that it would be at a minimum around 2020. It also predicted fewer sunspots next cycle. It did not in any way predict that solar radiation would drop so far to induce an ice age.