Global Warming and the Sun?

Question

Has it ever occured to anyone that the result in the rise in temperature is the result of the sun increasing in temperature? Don't get me wrong, i'm against fossil fuel and c**p, and I beleive that the greenhouse gasses are trapping the heat, but couldn't it be the sun? I read once that the icecaps on mars are melting at the same rate as ours. If it's green house gasses, then how could that be true?

Answer 1

It's not just mars either.  It's virtually every planet in our solar system that's experiencing a warming trend.

And still the "Chicken Little" theorists expect us to believe that it's just a coincidence it's all happening at once.. surely none of it could be related.

Answer 2

Global warming is global warming. People need to accept the consequences of OUR actions, and stop blaming it on... the history of our earth's climate, and Al Gore, and now the sun?

Answer 3

Solar activity has indeed roughly correlated, in the past, with global temperatures. Global warming sceptics will sing this from the rooftops.

But note that I wrote "in the past"? It doesn't now. That correlation ended in the mid 1970's. The two have sharply diverged in recent decades, with solar activity remaining relatively constant, but global average temperatures rising.

The existance of any solar relationship in the past is not very relevant to anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, which is a pretty recent thing, suspected to be largely due to massive increases in human-related CO2 output in the industrial age.

Regarding Mars: the proposition by one scientist, a russian by the name of Habibullo Abdussamatov, that it can't be greenhouse gases if Mars and Earth's icecaps are melting at the same rate has some huge flaws.

Firstly, he doesn't even believe there is a greenhouse effect, which is a bit of a problem, because otherwise the earth couldn't trap heat and would freeze.

Secondly, his idea isn't supported by observations (or even a theory of any sort). Solar influences are mostly explained by wobbles in planetary orbits, not variance in the sun itself. Mars and Earth wobble in different cycles, and it's likely that the simultaneous ice cap changes are coincidental, ie, they both happen to be in between ice ages now.

Now to some of the ill-conceived comments below:

Yes, some (but not all!) other planets are warming. Scientists have explanations for these, and they are not all the same. Why should they be? Each planet is a vastly different world with vastly different climates. My grass is getting greener. So is the neighbours. Does it have to be for the same reason? No, they are two completely different types. Mine better responds to small amounts of water. He fertilises his. To assume it's because we get the same amount of sun is ridiculous and untrue.

Greenland: an utterly irrelevant argument. Greenland was affected by a period called the "medieval climate optimum", which was about 400 years of unusually warm climate. This was an unusual anomaly in climate, not anything to do with normal climate cycles. It is completely irrelevant to global warming.

Answer 4

It has. In fact, it has occurred to every single scientist who has ever studied Earth's climate. Of course, since the sun is the source of most of Earth's energy, it just makes sense that changes in Earth's climate are driven by the sun. And they are, of course.

But not the current change. Try as they might, scientists haven't been able to find any link between changes in solar activity and the changing climate here on Earth. The fact is there just haven't been any changes in solar output of sufficient magnitude to have produced the bulk of 20th century warming.

Here's a graph of Earth's temperature alongside TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) over the past few decades. Notice that TSI tracks temperatures very well until about 1975 (the period when scientists believe human influence began to dominate natural factors in the current global warming) when TSI becomes essentially flat, while temps continue to rise:

http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/su...

Also, the warming on Mars has been explained by dust storms that are sweeping away dust and exposing the "red" planet's dark surface. You can read more about it in the link from National Geographic below:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

Answer 5

Recently observed solar activity suggests we should be experiencing a cooler climate over the next few decades.  This should be fun watching the global warming crowd try to explain how their initiatives have caused this little "cold snap"...

Answer 6

Sadly our sun has no thermostate.  A few centuries ago they were farming in Greenland.  That is why it was named  Greenland.  Now it is a frozen wasteland.  Our public schools and most media back the democrats and their agendas.  If a scientist wants grants and tenure he better be a global warming advocat.  The high priest of global warming is Al Gore.  Al lives in a twenty room, eight bathroom mansion in Nashville, Tennessee.  His other two homes are more modest.

Answer 7

It's been proven it's not the Sun.

"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...

Answer 8

Of course. All the scientists have already thought of that and recent research has shown that changes in solar output isn't the cause. This is why almost every climate scientist agrees that CO2 is the cause.

Answer 9

I think it's funny when scientists neglect the other emissions from the Sun!  They only look like fools when they Deny this.

http://spaceweather.com/

Solar winds

X-ray Solar Flares

Sunspot numbers

Planetary K-index

And maybe the most important of all:

Interplanetary Mag. Field

These magnetic fields are now being tied to the earth's plate tectonics.