|
Posted on 02/26/2008 6:40:53 AM PST by xzins
Calm Sun, Cold Earth By Alan Caruba CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety Center February 18, 2008
I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message.
Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly relentless, a modern version of the Mongols on horseback who swept out of the East to conquer everything before them until they reached the gates of Europe. These days the Greens have long since conquered Europe.
One thing alone stands against the Greens. The science does not support them. Their sense of moral superiority, their contempt for all things modern, their resistance to all forms of energy except the weakest -- wind and solar, and at the very heart of the Greens' message is a contempt and hatred for the human race.
Humans have come to dominate life on Earth because we know how to adapt to the planet. We know how to use its minerals, the riches of its plant life, the domestication of its animals, and its reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission, to fuel the creation of great cities, farms and ranches, and everything that passes for modern civilization.
Long ago humans conquered the continents of the Earth and its great oceans to spread everywhere. Humans now fly between continents in hours. Everywhere on the face of the Earth humans now communicate with one another via the Internet.
For billions of years the Earth existed without humans and it will do so again when we cease to inhabit it. As a species, we are newcomers, but like every other species that lived on planet Earth -- 95% of which are extinct -- we are subject to forces far greater than anything we possess.
To suggest that humans actually cause climate change is such idiocy that the Earth itself reminds us daily of our vulnerabilities. The news is full of tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and wildfires.
On February 7, Investors Business Daily had an editorial titled "The Sun Also Sets" in which it cited the views of Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council. In essence, Tapping wants people to know that solar activity such as sunspots, i.e., magnetic storms, "has been disturbingly quiet."
It's useful to know that global temperatures and events closely reflect solar cycles.
The lack of activity "could signal the beginning of what is known as the Maunder Minimum." While solar cycles tend to last about 11 years, the lack of normal or increased activity can trigger the Maunder Minimum, an event that occurs every few centuries, can last as long as a century, and causes a colder earth.
The most recent such event was the mini-Ice Age that climatologists date from around 1300 to 1850. In the midst of this there was a distinct solar hibernation from around 1650 to 1715.
"Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere."
If these events continue and become a cycle of cooling, it represents a major threat to the Earth's population because it means that food crops will fail and, with them, the means to feed livestock, and the rest of us.
If you have been paying attention to global weather reports, you know that China has had the heaviest snowfall in at least three decades. David Deming, a geophysicist, in a December 19, 2007 article in The Washington Times, noted that, "South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918." This occurred across the entire Southern Hemisphere. "Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever."
It must be said that one big blizzard does not an Ice Age make, but a whole series of events that suggest a cooling cycle may well be the warning that is being ignored in the midst of the vast global warming hoax.
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. He recently published a commentary asserting that a global cold spell could replace global warming. Note that the Earth has been warming -- about one degree Fahrenheit -- since the last mini-Ice Age ended around 1850. "The real reasons for climate change are uneven solar radiation", said Dr. Sorokhtin, while citing others that include the Earth's axis gyration and instability of oceanic currents.
"Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface." Yes, the Sun itself goes through periods of change. Dr. Sorokhtin believes that "Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer."
There is a reason scientists refer to our current era as an "interglacial period", i.e., a time between Ice Ages.
Up to now, the mainstream media has ignored the cold reality of the Earth's known cooling cycles. They have been in complete thrall to the howling of Al Gore with his endless lies about an imminent warming. Given the accolade of a Nobel Prize and even a Hollywood Oscar, why should people unschooled in science believe otherwise?
The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change whose reports have been based, not on hard science such as observations of solar activity, but on flawed, often deliberately false computer models, has been the driving factor behind the global warming hoax. What better way to assert political and economic control over the Earth than to create a global crisis? To their credit, many participants in the IPCC have protested these reports.
Large numbers of scientists have sold their soul to the global warming lies in order to receive millions in research grants, but increasingly other scientists have been coming forth to tell the truth. On March 2-4, several hundred will convene in New York for the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change to offer papers and serve on panels disputing and debunking the global warming hoax.
Beyond the climatic threat of a cooling planet is the one posed by U.S. politicians and their counterparts in Europe who are seeking to impose all manner of regulation and limits on energy use based on the false assertion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming.
They want to mandate a "cap-and-trade" scheme that will make some people and industries wealthy selling credits that will permit greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not greenhouse gases we need to fear, it is the action or, in this case, the inaction of the Sun.
At the very moment the Earth is on the cusp of what is likely to be a very long cooling and possibly a full scale repeat of the last Ice Age, all the engines of government, nationally and internationally, are trying to inhibit the discovery, extraction, and use of energy reserves that will be needed to cope with climate changes that will impact millions and, ultimately, billions of people.
All the wind turbines and solar panels in the world will not keep you warm in your home or apartment when a short or long term cooling of the Earth occurs. Ironically, as the Greens rant about so-called endangered polar bears in the Arctic, the bears are far more likely to survive than humans.
What controls the Earth's climate? The Sun!
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. The views expressed are those of the writer.)
Apostate!
Great news. This means that when I’m riding my two-cycle jetski and filling the atmosphere with Earth Warming Greenhouse Gases, I’m simply doing my part to stave off the coming Ice Age.
Fire up those ATVs, Waverunners and Escalades people.
Our planet needs you.
How long will it take for the Gore-Istas to claim that a colder planet is the result of Global Warming?
|
All this time I thought it was Algore and the global warming hysteria /s
The gravitational pull of my two teenagers completely refutes Copernican Theory.
That’s right. We’re all way too smart for that clap-trap.
Everyone knows that the Prophet Algore is the only one who can save the earth.
“”There is a reason scientists refer to our current era as an “interglacial period”, i.e., a time between Ice Ages. “”
This is wrong. An interglacial is an interval of warmer global average temperature that separates glacial periods WITHIN an ice age. Most folks don’t realize that we are still in an Ice Age.
The Earth has left its orbit and is now heading towards the sun. An artist, Norma, and her landlady, Mrs. Bronson, are the last people in their building, the rest having moved north where it is cooler, (or, presumably, died from the heat). They try to keep each other company as electricity is rationed and food and water are scrounged for, but the landlady collapses and dies. The thermometer creeps past 140 degrees, and shatters. As her oil paintings melt from the heat, Norma screams and also collapses.The scene cuts to the apartment at night. In the darkness outside, it's snowing. Norma is bedridden with a high fever, and attended by Mrs. Bronson and a doctor. She was actually only dreaming that the Earth was moving towards the sun.
In reality, the Earth is moving away from the Sun, which will eventually cause everything to freeze over.
The Left is the scourge of the planet. The world will not know peace until the Left disappears.
DUMB QUESTIONS HERE:
Since the sun is constantly burning, does it ever get smaller, and use up its fuel?
And how does it burn in space where there is no oxygen?
a new sunspot has just appeared Is this the beginning of cycle # 24$
How can a star burn with no oxygen?
Can a fire burn in a room with no oxygen?
A fire cannot burn without oxygen. You can show this for yourself, in fact: if you light a small candle and then put a clear glass upside-down over that candle (without touching the flame), you can watch the flame slowly extinguish as it uses up all of the oxygen that you have trapped around it with the glass.
What if in that same room, with no oxygen, is it possible for a hydrogen reaction fire to start, like the sun?
The way the Sun “burns” fuel is completely different from the way a fire on Earth burns (the term “burning” is a bit misleading when used to talk about stars). The Sun gets its energy by smashing small light elements together to make heavier elements; most of a star’s life is spent smashing hydrogen atoms together to make helium. The burning that a star does, then, is a nuclear reaction, and not a chemical one like the fires on Earth (when a candle burns, the atoms themselves remain unchanged: just the molecules are affected).
If not, how did the sun start to burn without oxygen?
So, the Sun can “burn” hydrogen to helium without the need for oxygen. It should be noted that in the presence of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, stars heavier than the Sun may burn hydrogen to helium by using the C, N and O as catalysts. Even in these stars, however, an absence of oxygen does not prevent nuclear burning.
Is it true that the Sun burns off a billion tons of gas every 5 seconds?
I heard an incredible claim that the Sun burns off a billion tons of gas every 5 seconds. Is this true?
It is true that the Sun burns several hundred million tons of hydrogen per second, converting it to helium by nuclear fusion. This the source of the Sun’s energy, and if the Sun were consuming gas at less than this rate, then we would not get the required warmth to support life. However, there is no cause of alarm, because there is a HUGE amount of hydrogen in the Sun. The total mass of the sun is 2 x 1033 grams, out of which a small fraction of it is be used for nuclear reactions. If you calculate the age of the Sun based on the amount of gas consumed per second, you will find that the Sun can live for about 10 billion years.
He'll only agree to save the planet if you send him all your money.....
How do you calculate the lifetime of the Sun?
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=285
How can I calculate the age of the sun using classical physics? I know it’s estimated to have a life of about 10 billion years, but was this calculated?
It requires a bit more than classical physics, but still, you can estimate the sun’s lifetime from a very simple calculation.
First of all, if you want the current age of the sun (around 5 billion years) this number is determined from radioactive dating of objects in the solar system which are known to have formed around the same time as the sun, as stated in the answer to a previous question.
The total lifetime of the sun before it becomes a red giant is, as you say, around 10 billion years (meaning that the transition will occur around 5 billion years from now). This can be estimated by assuming that the sun will “die” when it runs out of energy to keep it shining. The time for this to occur is roughly the total energy the sun has that can be turned into light, divided by the rate at which the sun is giving off energy, or:
lifetime = (energy) / (rate [energy/time] at which sun emits energy)
The rate at which the sun emits energy (its luminosity) is around 3.8 x 1026 Watts (that’s the number 38 followed by 25 zeroes - quite a lot of lightbulbs!). This number can be determined from measurements of how bright the sun appears from Earth as well as its distance from us.
The total energy that the sun has to burn requires a little extra knowledge (for example, some nuclear physics) to understand. We know that the sun shines via nuclear reactions in the core that transform four hyrogen atoms into one helium atom. If you look at a periodic table, you will see that one helium atom has a little less mass than four hydrogen atoms combined; about 0.7% of the original mass has “disappeared”. This “missing mass” gets transformed into energy, and this is the energy that causes the sun to shine. Therefore, using Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2 for the conversion between mass and energy we have that the available energy in the sun is:
E = 0.007 x M c2
where c is the speed of light and M is the amount of mass in the sun that is capable of undergoing the above nuclear reactions.
Now, it turns out that only the central part of the sun is at a high enough temperature to actually undergo these reactions. You would need to use a detailed model of the sun’s structure to figure out exactly how much of the sun is at a high enough temperature, but if we’re just estimating things we can say that on the order of 10% of the sun’s mass is in the central part of the sun where it is hot enough to undergo nuclear reactions. We then have:
E = 0.007 x 0.1 x Msun c2
where Msun is the total mass of the sun, 2 x 1030 kilograms. We therefore can calculate that the total energy the sun has to burn is around 1.3 x 1044 Joules. Dividing 3.8 x 1026 Watts (the rate at which the sun is giving off energy) into this number gives an approximate value of 10 billion years for the sun’s lifetime.
November 2002, Dave Rothstein (more by Dave Rothstein)
Related questions:
Is it true that the Sun burns off a billion tons of gas every 5 seconds?
How do we know the age of the Universe and the Earth?
Will the sun go supernova in six years and destroy Earth (as seen on Yahoo)?
When the Sun converts mass to energy, do the orbits of the planets change?
I loved that Zone.
The shot of the paint melting off the canvas at the end gave me nightmares as a child.
(well so did the Emergency Broadcast tone, so I guess I was just strange)
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.