Are more scientist making the connection that the Sun, not man causes global warming?

Question

"In her lecture series, "Warming Up to the Truth: The Real Story About Climate Change," astrophysicist Dr. Baliunas shared her findings at the University of Texas.

Dr. Baliunas' work with fellow Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Willie Soon suggests global warming is more directly related to solar variability than to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, an alternative view to what's been widely publicized in the mainstream media."

http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20080213/NEWS08/802130360

Dr. Baliunas received Ph.D. degrees in Astrophysics from Harvard University.

Dr. Willie Soon received his Ph.D. aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California and is a physicist at the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Do these doctorates have a theory that needs to be studied further because it is plausible, or do you think you know more than Harvard Doctorates?

Answer 1

It can't be the sun, they can't tax that and fund more "science".

Answer 2

i think more and more people are starting to see the truth everyday. You do realise this question won't stay here for long. Some cry baby AGW believer will report you for having a d**n good argument, that they can't find an answer for.

Answer 3

I AM CONCERNED. We continue to get articles that appear in popular press instead of the paper written and published in peer reviewed science.

The popular press has a long history of selecting from what is said things that appear to support a given political agenda.

Even giving complete credence, that solar variation may have more effect than CO2 in the atmosphere, each is a single contributing vector.

Solar output increases and declines. No doubt about that. CO2 traps heat close to the surface of earth, no doubt about that. Both have an effect.

If we have ups and downs in solar output, but we capture the solar output below a CO2  reflective covering, we will have rising temperatures, and periods when we have slower temperature rise.

CO2 is not the single largest component of the Greenhouse effect. But it is one that has been rising as a result of human activity. It is one of the few vectors that we humans have any control of.

Now if global warming were the sole reason for cutting CO2 emissions, this would be a sufficient reason to do so. But we also have the rapid depletion of a non-renewable energy resource. This all by itself warrants action to reduce our rate of extraction, world wide. Because both of these point in the same direction, it is a compelling reason to cut consumption of fossil fuels, deeply and quickly.

No, I do not believe we have acted soon enough to get control of global warming with just reduced emissions of CO2.

Answer 4

Scientists have been saying this. The lame-stream media has not reported it.

Answer 5

Sure just like water as a ghg...you can only deny it for so long.There are many factors in this world that are unexplained.They can't even determine the Horizon effect, much less relate to concepts of the suns interplay on earth.

Keeping em honest is the whole point

Answer 6

OPPP,  OIL INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA!!

its stuff like this that makes me want to laugh at bob.  He always uses the concensus arguements, or " do you really think EVERY SCIENTIST IN THE ENTIRE world is stupid?"

Because it is clear that it isnt EVERY scientist.  And like Ive said before, those percentages of scientists who agree are inaccurate because they didnt ask every scientist.  I know probably around 10 personally, and none of them have ever submitted any answers to polls like that.  Do their opinions not matter because they arent affiliated with the IPCC?

I agree though, we KNOW that the sun is not a constant.  For the most part, it is, but there are certain aspects to it that are variable, such as UV and XRAY output.  The sun is our only input to the climate, why would people not jump to conclusions that it has to do with the sun in the first place?

Johnnie B... most of our oxygen comes from microscopic organisms in the ocean.  The same ones that set up our atmosphere in the first place.

Answer 7

Quote from your link "One can be concerned by the amount of carbon dioxide in the air and come to it from the philosophical idea of caution. We just don't want to take the chance; still we can take a view of precaution." Doesn't sound as if she is advocating inaction.  If you believe her perhaps Dr Jello you could put up strong arguments against those advocating inaction on Y!A?

Edited Comment:  I am glad you advocate controlling ghgs.  Pity you think politicians should have no role in it.  You are of course right that the sun is raising the temperature on earth but only because ghgs enhance its heating effect.

Further edit If you do your arithmetic properly you will find 380ppm is 0.038% not 0.003% and if you did further maths you could find the effect on the increase in radiant heat absorbed with the 30% increase in CO2 that has occurred in recent decades.

Politicians do quite a good job of regulating other pollutants and without them we would never have had clean air acts or removal of lead from petrol.

Answer 8

No.  Despite your own unfamiliarity with the scientific literature on this issue, scientists have long realized that solar variations have had a very significant effect on some (but not all) past climate change events.  So have massive volcano eruptions, asteroid impacts, continental drift, orbital anomalies and (yes) even massive greenhouse gas releases into the atmosphere.  There's nothing new in your linked article.

Since there have been no recent significant volcanic eruptions, no rapid continental drift change, no orbital anomalies, no significant measured solar output increase, and no large asteroid impacts, but there has been massive greenhouse gas releases the conclusion is pretty obvious to anyone not biased against it.

Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003......

"the Sun cannot have contributed more than 30% to the steep temperature increase that has taken place since then" (referring to 1970).

Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v44...

"The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years"

Solar influence on climate during the past millennium: Results from transient simulations with the NCAR Climate System Model

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

"Satellite data since 1979 quantify the irradiance variations associated with the 11-year Schwabe sunspot cycle to {approx}0.08–0.1% of the {approx}1,367 Wm–2 solar radiation reaching the top of our atmosphere (21). This variation translates into a radiative forcing of {approx}0.2–0.3 W m–2, roughly a factor of 10 smaller than the radiative forcing by well mixed greenhouse gases (2.4 W m–2 in 2000 AD relative to 1750 AD)."

Answer 9

I'd say man is speeding it up.

Answer 10

the operative word is "suggests" even they admit they cannot be sure and say we should err on the side of caution when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions, i am however of the same school of thought as yourself

Answer 11

I sure hope so becasue the sun is basicly the only source of warming on the planet.

Answer 12

Does that mean we can have our milk and cookies now?

Answer 13

Just take time to measure the CO2 and compare that to there calculations . The plants need CO2 as much as u need oxygen. Oxygen normal level is 20.9 and it is solid. CO2 is much heavier gas  and would of killed us . The lower alarm point of O is 19.5 ,and if it drops below that u will pass out. The plants are the answer and is what is keeping us alive.

Answer 14

A University degree never cooled the Earth but is avaricious for "FUNDING" which is a yuppy name for money

Let's cut out the vile pollutants  which undoubtley cause warming .....and lets not dictate how the Sun behaves

Answer 15

Nope! Just as you stated,it is merely "plausible".The evidence of AGW is way beyond being merely plausible. 20 years ago,any idea would have been plausible. Don't you see how ridiculous these so called plausible ideas sound today?  First,the oil companies denied that global warming was happening at all. Now that the evidence of warming is obvious, to even the uneducated,now all of a sudden, all these bizzare ideas are put forth. You seem so ready to 'believe' anything,except the truth!  We all know that there are paid trolls called "sock puppets" on the web. Usually they're only found in the political blogs and other sites. But it's obvious that there are some on YA,in this section! Oil companies have a lot to lose if the citizens of the USA become as aware of AGW, as the rest of the world.  44 billion a year is what they're protecting!  That's where the real money making fraud and hoax is!  No amount of water boarding would ever change how I understand the science of AGW!  Funny thing about true knowledge,it's like toothpaste. You can't put it back into the tube!  Try to find something else to pin your denying on.  Real Science isn't your thing!

Answer 16

Don't give me any news item in a paper or blog or TV program with Dr. so and so saying this is the way it is. I don't base my belief in something on who supports it, I base it on data. Give me an actual scientific paper with the calculations shown and the data shown. Because I have degrees in physics and astronomy and I can look at the REAL data and decide for myself if it is plausible or hogwash. And I have yet to see any REAL science that shows the Sun has increased in average output over the last 100 years or that it is the main driving force in the increasing temperature, or that it is the temperature causing CO2 to go up and not burning coal and oil.

We all know what B.S. means, right? Well M.S. means "more of the same" and Ph.D. means "piled higher and deeper".

I am not impressed by the title "Dr." or where someone went to school. I have seen too many Ph.D's who were crazy and too many uneducated people or people with only Bachelor's degrees who REALLY know their stuff to just trust someone only because they can put the title Dr. in front of their name.

Right on Bob. That first link is the kind of thing I am talking about.

(EDIT) Oops Dr. Jello, you misplaced the decimal place. CO2 is not 0.003%, it is closer to 0.03%. But I'll give you partial credit.

Answer 17

Why on earth(pun intended) anyone would think that the largest producer of energy/radiation/light and heat in this solar system would not have an effect on our climate and demand that we believe this is absolutely and arrogantly stupid.

I'd also say they have a financial interest in the view they support too.

Answer 18

So what I'm reading from the answers that I've seen is that basically AGW is the cause, that the sun, is really insignificant.  

Okay, then let's find a way to turn off the sun, cause that'd be a heckuva lot easier than trying to have the US solve the problem when China, India, other 3rd world countries won't do.

When 'they' say AGW, they are really blaming MAN.  Man is evil, destroy all man...   Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Answer 19

I see Bob's gone for the I really am smarter than these two scientists because I read a paper once that said that global warming since 1985 wasn't caused by the sun.

  

It's funny how believers can completely suspend logic when it suits.

Answer 20

Nope.  This paper has pretty much destroyed that argument.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

EDIT - BEN O - This is not the only paper to say this, just the most recent and best accepted.  It pulls together data from a number of sources.  There's much more out there confirming it.

Soon and Baliunas work was so dubious that, when a journal published one of their papers, the editor and half the editorial board resigned in protest.

Mind you, the publisher agreed that the work was defective.  What caused the resignations was the fact that he refused to make a public apology for publishing it.

http://www.arp.harvard.edu/sci/climate/j...

"Hans von Storch did not have time to start his job before sitting down to write his resignation letter. Just four days before becoming editor in chief of the journal Climate Research, he ended up quitting over a paper that has many scientists hot under the collar."

Needless to say, they're funded by the global warming denial movement.

Answer 21

Duh! Of course changes in solar intensity can force climate change. But what evidence do you have that anthropogenic (man made) greenhouse gases are NOT responsible for recent global warming?

Global warming deniers expect us to trash 200 years of basic physics; observation and experiments tell us that greenhouse gases absorb outgoing infrared radiation. Increased amounts of greenhouse gases absorb more outgoing infrared radiation.

If you want me to believe that the sun is the cause of recent global warming, then show me some peer-reviewed research that indicates that solar input has recently increased. The last that I heard from you, you were spouting the views of Habibullo Abdusamatov who believes that solar intensity has decreased and that the Earth is heading into some "deep freeze".

Global warming deniers are just like religious fundamentalists. They must toss out 100's of years of scientific understanding to "prove" that creationism is more plausible than evolution.