Calling out Global-Warming Deniers

[MannyIsGod]

How can you say it is irrelevant when, in fact, it may be that human caused climate change is a farce in the face of something cosmically bigger than humanity -- The freakin' Sun.

No, that's not it. The data on Mars indicates this increased solar activity is causing warming.

For starters, I'd love to see a study that says as much in the definitive terms you've used. The article you linked (which is just an article, not a study) clearly states that more data is needed to draw any conclusions.

And, while it's true that Earth's atmosphere is different than Mars', if we are closer to the sun than is Mars and if Mars is warming faster than the Earth, it is logical to conclude that whatever atmospheric differences we do have are mitigating the Sun's effects -- not exacerbating them.

It is logical to assume that the denser atmosphere that contains a large amount of cloud cover reflects a much larger amount of heat than any Martian atmosphere does. In other words, if both Mars and Earth were in the same orbit and experiencing the same solar conditions, Mars would absorb more heat because of the way Earth's atmosphere is.

Now, you start to increase the CO2 content in the atmosphere, and while the Earth is reflecting a good deal of energy, it is radiating far less because the CO2 is now trapping energy. So even with a raised input of solar energy into the system, CO2 could stil be causing man made climate change.

Actually, he did...You just weren't paying attention.

Mars' core is cooler than Earth's and Like Earth -- the core of Mars is only getting cooler not warmer. Therefore, it is logical to assume that any warming on Mars is caused by solar activity (what other source is there?).

Our atmosphere is -- as you accurately pointed out -- different than the one on Mars. However, it is different in that it is more dense than is the atmosphere on Mars and, since we appear to be warming at a slower rate than is Mars it can be logically concluded that this is because of our atmosphere -- regardless of why our atmosphere is dense. This is where the relevance of the affects of solar activity on Mars comes in.

Huh? You're drawing some very weird conclusions based on very poor science. You think the atmosphere is so simple that you can draw simplistic conclusions based on singular data sets on another planet? You're assumptions are unreal.

So, all that to say, man-made global warming is a farce and man-made global climate change is yet to be demonstrably good or bad...if if you prove it to be true. In fact, it appears it could be a good thing...protecting us from the intensified warming affecting Mars while still ameliorating our weather so that we have longer growing seasons and fewer droughts.

So, let me get this straight, from an article that says that Mars is warming, you drew the following conclusions:

1) The increase in Mars' temperature is due to an increase of solar activity
2) The increase in solar activity is affecting Earth in a lesser manner because of our atmosphere
3) Because the increase of solar activity is effecting the Earth less, man made climate change is a farce.

Wow.

[MannyIsGod]

[QUOTE=Phenomanul]Venus re-radiates (reflects) solar flux with a luminous intensity 5.5 times greater than Earth. But that obscures a finer point; Venus' average temperature is harder to determine because 99.999% of the surface is cloud covered 100% of the time. Infrared measurements don't penetrate the CO2 laden atmosphere enough to accurately determine said temperature average. SO2 is also present in the Venusian atmosphere at a concentration 10,000 times greater than that of Earth... It is this SO2 content that is responsible for most of Venus' reflective brilliance, but it also unfortunately is the component that adds noise to the the infrared measurements that attempt to determine surface temperature. We do know however, from less accurate gamma back-scatter measurements, that the surface temperature can soar as high as 950 degrees Fahrenheit. Not withstanding, it wasn't until one of the Venera missions 'landed' on Venus that these temperatures were confirmed - on instances even recording higher temperatures than what the orbital satelites were recording above.

Anyways, the 5.5 factor above is significant in that Venus and Earth share a similar net solar flux magnitude depite the fact that Venus is closer to the sun. The effect of Earth's distance, is canceled out by the effect of Venus' luminous and highly irradiant atmosphere. This is magnified by the fact that any reference point on Venus' surface would see the sun for an average of 116 days before seeing the first night.

So in this light, what you stated earlier does hold some merit: atmospheric properties do affect the overall incorporation of solar energy. What's harder to assess is whether or not Venus has in fact experienced an increase in average surface temperature as a result of the aforementioned increase in solar flux that caused the temperature rise on Mars. Without the sacrifice of more lander probes I don't know how we would be able to conclusively claim that the temperature has or hasn't increased... On an aside consider this: the most robust probe to date survived for 127? minutes in the harsh Venusian climate.

[quote]

The Martain observations are not being done with probes on the ground Hector. In fact, there is no direct data as far as what the extent of the warming might be. The data gathered is only that of melting and refreezing CO2 on the surface of Mars being observed by an orbiting spacecraft.

I'm sure you will agree that not a single climate scientist is going to incorporate any data from observations of the surface of Mars into any study on global climate change. Therefor, why would the data have any relevence in the discussion?

All things being equal (and that is the operative factor):

Earth's atmospheric composition hasn't dramatically changed over the past 5 years.

Earth's atmospheric density hasn't dramatically changed over the past 5 years.

Earth's atmospheric pressure hasn't dramatically changed over the past 5 years.

The magnitude of Earth's electro-magnetic field hasn't dramatically changed over the past 5 years.

etc...

Therefore with an increase in solar flux Earth would tend to absorb more of the energy rather than reflect it. That ratio is not constant. Absorbption is based on wavelength properties inherent to the composition of the atmosphere whereas reflection (irradiance) is governed by incipient angles, mostly independent of the atmosphere's composition, and ones which wouldn't change with changes to solar flux (i.e. the radiative vectors remain the same even if the radiation magnitude changes). Furthermore, the shielding effect provided by the magnetosphere is relatively constant (depending on Earth's dynamo). If the flux increases beyond what the electromagnetic shield can deflect then the net flux will usually end up being positive not negative.

But that's just it.... What attribute changes above can be considered as 'not being significant'... as 'not having dramatically changed over the past 5 years'???? Gauging those is much more fuzzy than what we believe it to be.

Exactly. What is interesting to note is that an otherwise normal increase in solar activity might be causing the warming on both and Mars, but thats not so say that this warming is not being exacerbated by any man made causes.

[Phenomanul]

I believe that what Yoni is trying to say is that increased solar activity is in fact contributing to our most current global warming trend. Particularly because the sun is such an enormous driving force.

For him to claim however that man-made factors don't enter into the fray is a bit extreme.

BTW Manny... the temperatures on Mars can be detected with infrared methods from orbiting probes... the Martian atmosphere is not as prohibitive as Venus'. In any case, observations of melting dry ice (CO2) and receding polar ice caps on Mars were used as confirmation of the conclusion, but not as the basis.

[Sportcamper]

PHOENIX (Jan. 22) - Another snowstorm that surprised Arizona with more than a foot of snow in parts left the state Monday, giving children as far south as Tucson a chance to play in the snow...

[Yonivore]

I believe that what Yoni is trying to say is that increased solar activity is in fact contributing to our most current global warming trend. Particularly because the sun is such an enormous driving force.

Exactly what I'm trying to say...and, congratulations, in 50 words or less.

For him to claim however that man-made factors don't enter into the fray is a bit extreme.

I'm not claiming that. I'm merely pointing out that the hysteria over anthropocentric global warming (now global climate change) tends to overlook the elephant in the living room...The Sun.

It also overlooks a few slightly smaller beasts in the room like uncontrollable biogenic and anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gasses such as breathing and decomposition.

[Yonivore]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science....ap/index.html

uh oh Corso

I question the timing.

[Oh, Gee!!]

I question the timing.

2-2-07?

[CubanMustGo]

I question the timing.

You'd question the timing even if it was 140 degrees outside.

[MannyIsGod]

I believe that what Yoni is trying to say is that increased solar activity is in fact contributing to our most current global warming trend. Particularly because the sun is such an enormous driving force.

For him to claim however that man-made factors don't enter into the fray is a bit extreme.

BTW Manny... the temperatures on Mars can be detected with infrared methods from orbiting probes... the Martian atmosphere is not as prohibitive as Venus'. In any case, observations of melting dry ice (CO2) and receding polar ice caps on Mars were used as confirmation of the conclusion, but not as the basis.

If Yoni is going to maintain that warming on Mars is a sign that a significan't portion of Earth's warming is due to the Sun, Im' still going to call it irrelevent, Hector. Why wouldn't anyone just study the Sun itself, instead?

[MannyIsGod]

Exactly what I'm trying to say...and, congratulations, in 50 words or less.


I'm not claiming that. I'm merely pointing out that the hysteria over anthropocentric global warming (now global climate change) tends to overlook the elephant in the living room...The Sun.

It also overlooks a few slightly smaller beasts in the room like uncontrollable biogenic and anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gasses such as breathing and decomposition.

It does NOT ignore the Sun. My god where do you get this information from? There is a great deal of discussion on the solar forcing and how it is used in the global climate models that are now being used. This is ridiculous.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ange/#more-351

Pay special importance to the comments.

[Yonivore]

If Yoni is going to maintain that warming on Mars is a sign that a significan't portion of Earth's warming is due to the Sun, Im' still going to call it irrelevent, Hector. Why wouldn't anyone just study the Sun itself, instead?

Because we can't control the Sun and there's no money in it.

[MannyIsGod]

Because we can't control the Sun and there's no money in it.

But we can control Mars and there's money in that? OHHHK. It was a rhetorical question either way, people do study the Sun.

[Yonivore]

But we can control Mars and there's money in that? OHHHK. It was a rhetorical question either way, people do study the Sun.

Well, you missed my point and, admittedly, it's probably because I missed yours and wasn't clear in my response.

What I was attempting to infer is that the Sun's contribution to global climate change is downplayed in favor of the hysterics of anthropogenic causes because, well, you can guilt mankind into dumping trillions into strategies that will -- possibly (according to some of the latest studies -- lower global temperatures by less than .03 degrees celsius over the next 40 years.

You can't guilt the Sun into changing it's behavior and mankind would tell you to go suck a rock if you proposed that you could influence the Sun's impact on global climate change.

Better?

(Sorry, I shot that earlier response out their while trying to watch the SOTUA)

[Yonivore]

ok so the solution is to just say it and keep polluting. sounds reasonable. i just won't have kids.

Well, it certainly isn't bankrupting society imposing onerous restrictions that won't do much. But, if you're an either/or kind of guy, yeah, the solution is to just say " it" and keep polluting.

Bankrupting us with environmental fascism will ruin our quality of life before our industry will.

[Nbadan]

Bankrupting us with environmental fascism will ruin our quality of life before our industry will.

Just like it's ruined California's economy, right?

[MannyIsGod]

Just like it's ruined California's economy, right?

Hey dude,

Are you ever going to share the information behind your prediction algorithims/models? ?

[Nbadan]

Hey dude,

Are you ever going to share the information behind your prediction algorithims/models? ?

No, it almost killed me the first time. that's why I had to stop at 7 predictions when I intended 10.

[MannyIsGod]

Right.

[Sportcamper]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Another snow storm pelted Malibu Beach in Southern California ...Snarling traffic but delighting many who raced to the beach to build snowmen & throw snowballs at frozen jelly fish and other sea creatures that washed up on the shore...

[CubanMustGo]

Yep, another "hey, we had ONE cold incident, that's enough to overrule thousands of hot incident" post. What a surprise.

Don't forget to post something about the entire European continent being so warm it's hardly snowed at all this winter, OK?

[Yonivore]

Nuremberg for global warming skeptics?

Posted: January 24, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Walter Williams © 2007

Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) warned that "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." The Weather Channel has taken up that task with its series "It Could Happen Tomorrow."

The Weather Channel started its "It Could Happen Tomorrow" series in January 2006. The program includes episodes where a tornado destroys Dallas, a tsunami destroys the Pacific Northwest, Mount Rainier erupts and destroys nearby towns, and San Diego is devastated by wildfires.

They omitted a program showing a meteor striking my house, for it, too, could happen tomorrow. Of course, any one of these events could happen tomorrow, but I'm reminded of a passage in Shakespeare's "Macbeth," where after Macbeth listens to the predictions of the witches, Banquo warns him that "Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequence." That is, gain our confidence with trifle truths to set us up for the big lie.

The big lie, conceived by the Weather Channel in cahoots with environmental extremists, is to get us in a tizzy over global warming, and they're vicious about it. Heidi Cullen, Ph.D., the Weather Channel's climatologist, hosts a weekly program called "The Climate Code." Dr. Cullen advocates that the American Meteorological Society strip their seal of approval from any TV weatherman expressing skepticism about the predictions of manmade global warming, according to a report by Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

Dr. Cullen has had a lot of help in demonizing skeptics of catastrophic manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News "60 Minutes" correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to "Holocaust deniers," and former Vice President Al Gore calls skeptics "global warming deniers." But it gets worse. Mr. Morano reports that on one of Dr. Cullen's shows, she featured columnist Dave Roberts, who, in his Sept. 19, 2006, online publication, said, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bas s – some sort of climate Nuremberg." (See the Morano report.) He didn't say whether the death penalty should be administered to those found guilty of global warming denial.

The environmental extremists' true agenda has little or nothing to do with climate change. Their true agenda is to find a means to control our lives. The kind of repressive human control, not to mention government-sanctioned mass murder, seen under communism has lost any measure of intellectual respectability. So people who want that kind of control must come up with a new name, and that new name is environmentalism.

Last year, 60 prominent scientists signed a letter saying, "Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. ... Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."

They added, "It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas." These scientists have probably won The Weather Channel's ire and might be headed toward a Nuremberg-type trial.

I believe the science will ultimately conclude that humans have very little impact on global climate; but, that the planet's own natural mechanisms, the solar systems engine (The Sun), and, indeed, the universe itself, are the principal determinants for that.

But, that's just me...or, maybe, it's not just me.

[Sportcamper]

We must stop the Global Warming!

A young Highland cow covered in snow at Carronbridge, Scotland, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007, after heavy snow fell overnight. Ferocious storms continue to to hit Britain, Thursday with heavy rain, snow and high winds causing rail companies to operate reduced services. English Channel ferry companies reported also reported delayed sea crossings. Police in southeast England warned people they could face disruption from high winds which may blow down trees, causing traffic delays and possible power cuts. The storms will be followed next week by plunging temperatures, snow and widespread frosts, forecasters said...

[Extra Stout]

1) All the political BS is just a smokescreen to obscure the rather obvious link between the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and the percentage of solar energy which is retained. Solar forcing had something to do with global warming up to the solar maximum we had a few years back. We are past the solar maximum.

2) There is absolutely no way we are going back to the days of pre-industry. Nor would it be really all that necessary except in the minds of the absolute extremists. The point is to find a rate of CO2 emissions that is sustainable, so that we don't triiger a shift to a new climate equilibrium that does really bad things to human civilization, and which we really woukdn't have a chance of stopping once it starts.

3) The effects of global warming are things we are experiencing right now. The weather is different. It is generally warmer. Precipitation patterns are unusual. Ask yourself if you think the general pattern has been "catastrophic." (No, Katrina does not count. Human engineering and corruption, not global warming, caused most of what happened to New Orleans.)

4) The things that will suck the most as it gets warmer are that island nations on coral atolls will go bye-bye, and highland peasants whose way of life depends upon consistent glacier-fed water sources will be displaced. The latter is worse because it will have a huge impact on China and India and probably trigger a war in Asia.

5) The changes needed to create a sustainable CO2 level which would avert things like sea level going up 20 feet and inundating most coastal cities are relatively minor.

[Phenomanul]

If Yoni is going to maintain that warming on Mars is a sign that a significan't portion of Earth's warming is due to the Sun, Im' still going to call it irrelevent, Hector. Why wouldn't anyone just study the Sun itself, instead?

I agree; one can't just can't draw the conclusion that man has nothing to do with Earth's recent (post-industrial-era) climate change simply from noting that Mars is experiencing a 'global-warming' phenomenon of its own. But the sun does drive both climatological models, and that factor can't be ignored either. The extent of our impact then is what separates the two models... only this effect is much harder to gauge. The Mars comparison, therefore, is not irrelevant as you've stated repeatedly; it is a very significant find.

Drawing a 1:1 comparative conclusion from said observation, however, would be irrelevant... considering there is much more than meets the eye...

[MannyIsGod]

The worst danger of the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is the killing off of the oceans. Forget the dude sitting on his atoll, because the fish in his ocean will all be dead within 50 years. And thats a conservative estimate. Yet no one ever mentions that. No one.