Posted on 11/15/2007 11:49:35 PM PST by Names Ash Housewares
With mounting concern over the alteration of Earth's surface and atmosphere by humans, it is increasingly important to understand natural "forcings" on the sun-Earth system that impact both climate and space weather, said Woods. Such natural forcing includes heat from the sun's radiation that causes saltwater and freshwater evaporation and drives Earth's water cycle.
Increases in UV radiation from the sun also heat up the stratosphere -- located from 10 miles to 30 miles above Earth -- which can cause significant changes in atmospheric circulation patterns over the planet, affecting Earth's weather and climate, he said. "We will never fully understand the human impact on Earth and its atmosphere unless we first establish the natural effects of solar variability."
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
well well well
And once we establish the natural effects of solar variability, we’ll realize humans have zero effect on the climate. It’s all about the sun.
But! Scientists gathered at a consortium in Sweden this last summer determined that the sun has no impact on global warming. Scientists came to a consensus, so it must be so!
How could they possibly think the sun has no impact on global warming? That’s just stupid on the face of it. I mean, really. How do they think winter happens?
This is an insane dogma. I know Rush repeats it, but why not? why not? It's presented without justification, and anybody who cares to calculate can see that the rate of combustion of coal and oil is significant on the planetary scale.
One might dispute the nature and extent of the effects, but to dismiss the possibility that humans are capable of producing any such effects, A PRIORI, is manifestly irrational.
ping for later
the combustion of coal might get us to CO2 levels from 0.036% of the atmosphere to 0.039% of the atmosphere by 2100, which can be rounded to approximately 0.0%. Which is pretty amazing since 70% of the planet is covered by water, and if you’ve ever flown across just this country at night (especially the west) it seems that most of the landmass even here is uninhabited, below a sky that is 62 miles thick. I just hope we never approach the CO2 content of the atmosphere, which was present for thousands of years into the last ice age, lest we will be in real trouble.
I too feel that we have impact, but not nearly planetary climate dictating impact. I suppose if things were utterly static, that might be the case. But they are not.
Like a single candle in a room, could heat it over time.
But not when doors are opening and closing, and the weather outside is changing all the time, sun going up and down, refrigerator turning off and on, etc.
Clearly there are large gaps in understanding to make worst case scenarios predictions. And I put zero trust in supercomputer simulations that lack the massive compelexities of planetary climate.
If compressed to sea level pressure, the atmosphere is about 5 miles thick. If compressed to the density of water, it’s about thirty feet thick. 0.036% of thirty feet is about 0.01 feet of atmosphere at 1 g/cc. CO2 is heavier than O2 and N2, but call it a wash. We’ve got an inch of CO2 at 1 g/cc. This is less than a half inch of solid carbon out of your 62 miles of atmosphere.
The CO2 concentration has risen from 0.031% to 0.039% since 1960, and this squares plausibly with the amount of carbon combusted from human activity in that time period, so to me, this puts us on the board.
But there isn’t any real evidence so far to say we have any significant impact.
Water vapor is the primary “green house” gas by far in the atmosphere. In addition green house gas warming isn’t a linear function. Once most long wave IR is blocked it is blocked. More attenuation makes little difference.
Obviously the planet has been warming for a very long time, as in tens of thousands of years... Otherwise much of North America would still be covered with ice.
The one constant with climate is that it changes. Not that long ago we made blood sacrifices to the "gods" because the weather changed for the worse. In affect saying that man's actions or inactions were the cause... It seems not much has changed...
CO2 and warming have become an article of faith, not science.
One problem with your candle analogy is the closed nature of the carbon cycle. We may note that the rate of injection of carbon into the cycle is small compared to the rate of the carbon cycle itself, but we also have to note that the carbon we are injecting has been sequestered in the ground for these many millions of years, and now is being loaded into the cycle in a “geological instant” as they say, and is bound to be a shock in one form or another to that cycle.
bookmark
Not necessarily
Actually one of the biggest problems for the AGW proponents is the rise in CO2 is too linear
As you can see, The rise has been steady at about +1.5 ppmv per year (15 ppmv per decade)
However, if you look at the world's CO2 output
the emissions have of course been increasing
So the question is why is the rise in CO2 levels per year staying linear? As emissions increased you should see the rate of the increase in CO2 levels per year in the atmosphere also increase.
For example, if pumping out 4000 million tons of CO2 1970 caused the rise of 1.5 ppmv atmospheric CO2, then you would expect that in the year 2000 when we pumped out 7000 million tons of CO2, the atmospheric level should have rose about 26 ppmv that year. But they didn't, it's been holding steady at +1.5ppmv
The reason is obvious, 4000 million tons or 7000 million tons put out by man are both insignificant compared to natural emissions and the rise in CO2 has to be coming from somewhere else. Even 7000 million tons is barely a blip on the seasonal differences.
Looking at the ice cores we see CO2 level changes lag temperature changes by 800-1000 years, well 800-100 years before the 20th century were the 900-1100s which was when the medieval warm period, so that's likely what we are seeing. The temperature rose significantly during this period and 800-1200 years later in the 20th century the CO2 levels are following suit.
~~ AGW ping~~
Excellent analogy (as usual).....
This was known and obvious for a long time. But the entire left and its publishing arm, the media, deliberately and willfully chose to suppress the truth for political gain.
And human activity has an effect greater than zero, but small compared to the effect of the sun.
They both look exponential to me. It would probably be easier to see if you used graphs with a logarithmic scale instead.
bump for later
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