Posted on 09/21/2005 1:11:52 PM PDT by MNJohnnie
what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.
The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.
"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.
In a NASA-funded study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Willson and his colleagues speculate on the possible history of the trend based on data collected in the pre-satellite era.
"Solar activity has apparently been going upward for a century or more," Willson told SPACE.com today.
Significant component
Further satellite observations may eventually show the trend to be short-term. But if the change has indeed persisted at the present rate through the 20th Century, "it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.
That does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned.
Scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists have argued for years whether humans have contributed to global warming, and to what extent. The average surface temperature around the globe has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880. Some scientists say the increase could be part of natural climate cycles. Others argue that greenhouse gases produced by automobiles and industry are largely to blame.
Willson said the Sun's possible influence has been largely ignored because it is so difficult to quantify over long periods.
Confounding efforts to determine the Sun's role is the fact that its energy output waxes and wanes every 11 years. This solar cycle, as it is called, reached maximum in the middle of 2000 and achieved a second peak in 2002. It is now ramping down toward a solar minimum that will arrive in about three years.
Connections
Changes in the solar cycle -- and solar output -- are known to cause short-term climate change on Earth. At solar max, Earth's thin upper atmosphere can see a doubling of temperature. It swells, and denser air can puff up to the region of space where the International Space Station orbits, causing increased drag on the ship and forcing more frequent boosts from space shuttles.
Which is why we should call it what it is. The Church of the Environment and demand the Hysteric Left stick to their strict separation of Church and State dogma
We need nucular winter! This after the (dry) ice caps on Mars were noted shrinking and attributed to GLOW-BULL WARNING.
Karl Rove was rocketed into the sun several months ago with a pair of bellows.
The sun is an obvious ally of the Bush administration, evidenced by its refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol. And also, the sun is capable of producing large amounts of solar power, and yet we STILL rely on fossil fuels. Plus, I believe it holds stock in Halliburton.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
Well, he is supposed to be the most powerful man in the world. I just never imagined his power would extend out into the solar system too. That's awesome!
Are any of the Kyoto crowd in a position to explain why Mars is warming too? In the past few years since we've been watching, the polar caps have been in retreat on Mars. New gullies indicating liquid flow have appeared on hillsides. I'm pretty sure we had nothing to do with it unless the rovers are producing some kind of exhaust.
Bush needs to appoint a Sun Czar.
You'll never known my good friend the wickedness and power of the Bush Clan has.
Word goes around that papa Bush in conjunction with the Sun, has started melting the Mars Ice Caps.
Could it be that a deep Bush/Sun conspiracy is in the works to set up the first Republican Office on Mars?!
Sounds like a good premise for a comic book.
Finally are getting to the truth about what has far and away the greatest impact on weather patterns, the SUN! And who controls the sun? God Almighty! And who decides if nature is going to wreak havoc on civilization or not, nature's God Almighty. And who decides to bless or curse nations, God Almighty! And who believes that trampling God's commandments and moral standards into the dirt will bring a blessing or a curse?
Please read this article
Oh dear! What if the earth is sucked in and incinerated before history reaches its Hegelian teleological omega point of "social justice???"
I am willing to entertain the argument that the global climate is warming. Here in western Pennsylvania, the winters are substantially warmer and we have less snow than twenty years ago (and I am very aware of the dangers of generalizing experience at one location over a limited number of years to the entire world).
When I vacationed in Alaska several years ago, it was generally accepted that the glaciers on the Kenai Penisula were retreating. There's plenty of other evidence to support the argument (some of the evidence may be cherry-picked or otherwise questionable to be sure).
However, the Alaskan glaciers started retreating 100 years ago - long before anthropomorphic global warming would have any effect.
So, sure, the Earth's getting warmer and there's not a thing we can do about it.
Probably during the Carter years.
" Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s. "
HorseFeathers! This can't be true. There ain't no way Busch, Cheney and Haliburton could have changed the sun. I know that they did all htoes horrible things to Mother Earth, but even they could not change the sun's output. Nope this is just junk science. :)
Because the Earth reflects more heat back into space, the sun is exposed to a warmer solar environment, and like a spark plug igniting a chamber full of gas, the sun responds with a tremendous increase in total energy output, confirmed by events visible on Mars, Saturn, and even the moons of Jupiter.
don-cha-know???
For all our good humor, irregardless of politics the good ole sun could just keep on getting hotter until we are cooked turkey. I was going to say not a damn thing we can do about it, but maybe a screen of some sort could be placed in space to cast shadow on earth at various times and at least slow the process. Any freeper physicists want to tell me how big it would be and whether it would be incinerated?
Yeah but at the direction of Rove right????
Where have you been at? Bush was on Mars with Halliburton spraying Right Guard on their pits!!! Geeze!
It'd take an operation as big as Halliburton to pull this one off.
(They have put huge solar reflectors at the opposite point in Earth's orbit to turn the Sun's energy back on itself so the sun's output will go up, melting polar ice caps and making it necessary to move low lying cities, thereby generating huge revenues and profits for themselves and their shareholders -- At the opposite point of Earth's orbit so it wouldn't be visible from earth and would maximize the effect on Earth, like using the Sun as a giant laser chamber)
Karl Rove at least has to deny any knowledge of the plans for this to work.
Whaddya Think?
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