RoR: Forum

Post 0

Monday, June 16 - 4:48pm

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Eighty Years of Global Warming Reversed?

It is believed that lowered sunspot activity indicates decreased solar output. The last time this happened was called the Maunder Minimum. I have heard that dated from 1300-1850. During that time the vineyards of England died off, the Thames and the New York harbor froze over yearly, and the Norse colony of Greenland went extinct.

From the article:

In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700....

Geophysicist Phil Chapman...said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman noted in The Australian recently.

Post 1

Monday, June 16 - 10:52pm

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I am a retired Electromagnetics Engineer(last job was designing the shielding of the fly-by-wire 777 against the Induced Lightning threat) starting my career 50 years ago conducting two years of research in Antarctica during the International Geophysical year.
http://library.osu.edu/sites/archives/polar/oralhist/interview.php?cat=interviews&page=reed.htm

I have been telling folks about the earthly cycles of sunspots, cosmic rays, ionosphere, earthly warming and cooling...

But don't tell Pastor Al Gore. Would hate to ruin his wasting of government school monies buying his "Convenient Lies" for future little collectivists. Dale

---
$ dale-reed@worldnet.att.net Seattle, Washington $

Post 2

Monday, June 16 - 11:11pm

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Glad to see you posting on this, Dale. This is very interesting to me. I had a basic telescope as a child and looked at the sun often. With so little magnification, I found only the moon and sun to be worth looking at. The moon always looked the same, except for phase, while the sun had all those black spots I had read about.

I followed a link at the end of the article, (sorry this isn’t a link):

“The Milky Way Enigma -How Galactic Forces May Control Life on Earth”

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/07/the-milky-way-c.html

From that article:

“Adrian Melott and his colleague Mikhail Medvedev, speculate that as the Milky Way rushes towards the Virgo Cluster, it generates a so-called bow shock in front of it that is similar to the shock wave created by a supersonic jet.
"Our solar system has a shock wave around it, and it produces a good quantity of the cosmic rays that hit the Earth. Why shouldn't the galaxy have a shock wave, too?" Melott asks.”

Dale, there is no medium so there can be no shock wave, right? Are they talking about a magnetic field that precedes the solar system (and galaxy)? And this field excites the rare particle?

Post 3

Tuesday, June 17 - 7:44am

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With respect to the article on the Milky Way enigma, no doubt the sun, in anticipation of the coming-into-being of humans, that evil plague on the universe, chose to orbit the galaxy in such a way as to take it slightly above or below the galactic plain every 60 million years or so in order to purge its solar system of any vermin that might evolve to afflict its children, especially Gia. Thus, with Al Gore leading a revival of pagan Druid nature worship, we all should send cosmic vibs to our star Sol indicating we are ready to go quietly into that good night, to eliminate ourselves, to become decaying organic matter to nurture Mother Nature.

My friend Fred Singer, who is an actual climate scientist, wrote a recent book with Dennis Avery entitled Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, which looks in detail at the climate change data.

Post 4

Tuesday, June 17 - 9:28am

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Just to keep some perspective on this, the following is a response to Chapman by David Karoly, published in the Australian, April 29, 2008.

* * * * *

THE opinion piece by Phil Chapman ("Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh", Opinion, April 22) warns of an approaching ice age but contains a number of factual errors, misleading statements and incorrect conclusions.

Chapman reports global average temperature cooled by 0.7C in 2007 and says: "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

It is true that global data sets show a pronounced cooling from January 2007 to January 2008 of slightly less than 0.7C. It is an error to state, as Chapman does, that this is unprecedented, as similar dramatic falls occurred from 1998 to 1999, and from 1973 to 1974. It should also be noted that the global average temperature has warmed substantially, by about 0.3C from January 2008 to March 2008. In addition, the annual average temperature for 2007 was within 0.1C of the average temperature in 2006 and 2005; no dramatic cooling there.

So what caused this rapid cooling during 2007, and also from 1998 to 1999, and from 1973 to 1974? What was common to all those periods? In each case, the common factor was a rapid change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, from warm temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean to cold temperatures in the same region, which has a significant effect on global climate patterns and global average temperature. La Nina is associated with below-normal global average temperature, and because of its influence, 2008 is likely to be about 0.3C cooler than the average of the previous few years.

Chapman did not consider La Nina as a cause of the cooling in 2007 and instead linked it to the minimum in the 11-year cycle in sunspot numbers: "The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday."

I don't know where these sunspot numbers came from but they are in error. The best source of data for present sunspot numbers is the World Data Centre for Solar Terrestrial Physics at the National Geophysical Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. According to it, the average number of sunspots a day last January was 3.4, followed by 2.1 in February and 9.3 in March. The minimum was in October 2007.

So, are variations in global average temperature directly related to sunspot numbers on a monthly, annual or decadal timescale?

Certainly not on a monthly timescale and the effect, if any, on a year-to-year timescale is very small, as can be found by correlating the variations of global average temperature on monthly or annual timescales with the sunspot numbers. Any relationship between sunspot numbers and global average temperatures is much, much smaller than the clear relationship between inter-annual variations of equatorial Pacific Sea surface temperatures and global average temperatures, showing the effect of the El Nino-La Nina cycle.

While those errors are bad enough, the main flaw in Chapman's opinion is trying to infer long-term climate trends from short-term (one year) variations of global temperature. It is well known (among climate scientists) that there are large inter-annual variations of global temperature caused by a number of factors, including El Nino, big volcanic eruptions, or just the chaotic variability of the climate system. It is not possible to make conclusions about long-term climate trends from inter-annual climate variations. Many lines of evidence support the conclusion reached last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal", referring to changes over the past 100 years. Even when we consider only the global average temperature during La Nina episodes, such as the present cool period, we find that we are experiencing the warmest global temperature of any strong La Nina episode in the past 100 years, again showing clear long-term global warming.

Most of the increase in global average temperature over the past 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This long-term increase in global average temperature will continue throughout the 21st century because of further increases in greenhouse gases. Yes, there will be year-to-year natural climate variations, with some colder years, but the long-term warming trend will continue.

David Karoly is a professor in the University of Melbourne's school of earth sciences and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

Post 5

Tuesday, June 17 - 12:57pm

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As for shockwaves in the interstellar or intergalactic medium, I remember hearing that otherwise empty space does have about one hydrogen atom per liter aka cubic decimeter. Not a lot, but at such high speeds and large scales, perhaps enough to generate a bow wave?

Post 6

Tuesday, June 17 - 2:36pm

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In David Karoly's article posted by Bill, Karoly asks and answers:

So what caused this rapid cooling during 2007, and also from 1998 to 1999, and from 1973 to 1974? What was common to all those periods? In each case, the common factor was a rapid change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, from warm temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean to cold temperatures in the same region, which has a significant effect on global climate patterns and global average temperature. La Nina is associated with below-normal global average temperature, and because of its influence, 2008 is likely to be about 0.3C cooler than the average of the previous few years.

This may be a stupid question, but how can El Nino or La Nina change the global average temperature? Obviously they can change global climate patterns, but how do changing ocean currents and atmospheric flow patterns change the average global temperature?
How can the average temperature of the oceans and the atmosphere change? Karoly can't be invoking changes in solar heating because he is attributing the cooling to El Nino and La Nina. And geothermal effects are not the likely suspect because the El Nino and La Nina conditions seem to be periodic, whereas geothermal changes most likely wouldn't be.
It seems that we have a closed system (the oceans and the atmosphere) and all that's happening is that they're moving around. So, how can that change their average temperature?
Thanks,
Glenn

Post 7

Tuesday, June 17 - 3:32pm

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El NiÃ±o & Surface Temparature in Context

Normally there is an immense upwelling of cold water off the Peruvian coast. This cold water is oxygen and nutrient rich, and has historically caused the Peruvian coast to be the most fertile fishery in the world. The natives noticed that sometimes, around Christmas, fishing conditions would seriously deteriorate. This was called El Niï¿½o after the Christ child. Scientists found that there was a cyclical shift in wind patterns that stopped blowing away the surface waters, allowing them to heat and cease the upwelling of nutrients. This periodic cessation of upwelling is now called El NiÃ±o by scientists, and in their typically pragmatic if culturally/linguistically illiterate way, opposite events of strong upwelling are called La NiÃ±a.

The heat mass of water is huge compared to that of air, without checking, I believe it is over three orders of magnitude. If there is a lare upwelling of cold water from the deep ocean, the surface effects to air temperature will be correspondingly immense. Since measurements of global temperature are in truth measuremeants of average surface temperature, the global temperature will vary with such phenomena as El NiÃ±o. (Also, it is estimated that the ocean acts as a heat sink which stabilizes world temperatures over millennia-long periods. I.e., it took more than 1000 years for the world's ocean temperatures to rise uniformly after the end of the last ice age. That effect alone may indicate that current temperature changes may be the hangover of oceanic events that happened centuries ago.)

The effect of the Pinatubo eruption in 1992 was quite strong as well.

It is estimated that during a sunspot minimum, solar radiation decreases on the order of 1%, which is also a huge input.

There are also the effects of interstellar dust clouds, and so many other phenomena, that human contributions to global warming are negliible on any real scale.

Over the long term, world sea levels have varied by hundreds of feet depending on how much water is held in ice above sea level. If all the world's ice were to melt, we would expect the North American coast to appear thus, similar to how it was during the Cretaceous, minus the effect of recent orogeny, and much of Europe and even more of Russia to flood:

During an ice age, the coastline could appear thus, and one could walk from the US to Siberia or Borneo to Sri Lanka:

Both circumstances have occured in the geologic past, and never with the planet-wide extinction of life. In either case, buying property in Spain would seem a good investment, depending on how the Moors are behaving.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 6/17, 4:39pm)

Post 8

Tuesday, June 17 - 4:03pm

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Do not forget - only land ice would have any effect in raising sea levels........[what - you dispute? try this - place two ice cubes in glass of water, note level, then see what level is when ice melts..... they be the same, for the ice displaces its own weight in water, and its volume decreases as it melts]

Post 9

Tuesday, June 17 - 4:32pm

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Yes, Robert, I made that point myself above: "Over the long term, world sea levels have varied by hundreds of feet depending on how much water is held in ice above sea level."

Only Obama voters dispute this.

Post 10

Wednesday, June 18 - 4:37am

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Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder have written a book on " The Chilling Stars" which suggests that the interplay between the clouds the Sun and cosmic rays may have more effect on the global climate than carbon dioxide

For some interesting correlations see http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/images/0_Simpson_Space_Missions.GIF

Post 11

Wednesday, June 18 - 4:16pm

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Bill, that image shows some sort of reverse correlation, can you explain what the implication is? The url http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/
doesn't tell much.

I have seen studies of interstellar dust (on the local galactic scale) that show that we periodically move in and out of clouds that affect ambient sunlight by a few percent. We are moving toward a denser dust cloud, but I think it is millennia away. I'll see if I can find any web references to this.

Post 12

Wednesday, June 18 - 4:24pm

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The Local Interstellar Medium

This is the dust cloud map I was referring to from:
http://enastronomy.blogspot.com/2008/06/local-bubble-and-galactic-neighborhood.html

Post 13

Sunday, June 22 - 12:30pm

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"Most of the increase in global average temperature over the past 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This long-term increase in global average temperature will continue throughout the 21st century because of further increases in greenhouse gases. Yes, there will be year-to-year natural climate variations, with some colder years, but the long-term warming trend will continue."

You're confidently assuming that we have accurate climate models that can break out climatic changes in greenhouse gases versus non-human phenomenon. This is a huge, unsupportable leap. Do you have any links to climatic models that, run backwards without massive fudging of data to get the desired results, accurately predict the past? Or even climatic models that accurately reflect the behavior of clouds, which are a huge climate driver? Do you have links to the scientific articles that state what percentage of recent climate change is due to human versus non-human influences, and that all converge on a single percentage? What is that percentage? (And any statement that "100% of climate change is due to greenhouse gases" is surely wrong.) Do you have an explanation of why other planets in the solar system (which have a paucity of SUVs) have shrinking ice caps or other indications that they are warming due to solar changes?

The "government must regulate industry to combat anthropomorphic greenhouse gas global warming theory" is alarmist bullshit by socialists trying, once again, to come up with some rationale -- any rationale -- for a bigger, more intrusive government.

Post 14

Monday, June 23 - 10:34pm

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"and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists."

That phrase should tell you just about all you need to know about the objectivity of this scientist.

From their website:

"In November 2002, we released a statement, Blueprint for a Living Continent, which sets out what we believe are the key changes that need to be made now, to deliver a sustainable future for our continent and its people. To live in harmony with the environment, there is a need to:

1. Clarify water property rights and the obligations associated with those rights to give farmers some certainty and to enable water to be recovered for the environment.
2. Restore environmental flows to stressed rivers, such as the River Murray and its tributaries.
3. Immediately end broadscale landclearing of remnant native vegetation and assist rural communities with adjustment. This provides fundamental benefits to water quality, prevention of salinity, prevention of soil loss and conservation of biodiversity.
4. Pay farmers for environmental services (clean water, fresh air, healthy soils). Where we expect farmers to maintain land in a certain way that is above their duty of care, we should pay them to provide those services on behalf of the rest of Australia.
5. Incorporate into the cost of food, fibre and water the hidden subsidies currently borne by the environment, to assist farmers to farm sustainably and profitably in this country."

The statements are a mixed bag, but "living in harmony with the environment" is such a package deal that one would be justified in dismissing anything a member of it says.

Does it mean the author of those earlier statements contradicting Chapman is wrong? No. But anything put out by an explicitly pro-environmentalist organization is necessarily suspect.

Post 15

Tuesday, June 24 - 10:03pm

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Living in Harmony with The Environment

This is a noble sentiment, Jeff. Your skepticism surprises me. One could also apply it to the non-human inhabitants of the planet. Carnivores are notoriously aggressive and resource-greedy. Most mammal carnivores eat 100 herbivores a year. Even snakes and sharks will eat 20 times their weight in peaceful herbivores year. But herbivores also kill off plant life, and are notoriously flatulent. Most of the biogenic CO2 that does not result from men comes from flatulent cattle and other ruminants and cellulose eaters such as termites - not to mention all the CO2 produced by the respiration of eukaryotes (cellular life with mitochondria - such as all animals, plants and fungi.)

For several hundred million years the Earth was an harmonious Eden, dominated by stromatolites, rock-shaped bacterial mats which neither attacked their neighbors nor consumed unrenewable resources. Then the green algae had to evolve, and pollute the atmosphere with their stromatolite-poisoning waste-product, O2. This set the stage for ever increasing waves of biological violence (herbivory, carnivory) and pollution - carbon dioxide and the oxidizing products of photosynthesis. Luckily, stromatolities do survive in oxygen-poor waters off Australia, and they would likely survive any nuclear war we might engage in, whether by mistake or out of an altruistic desire to remove ourselves from the Earth.