Is there any evidence that the sun is heating ALL the planets in the solar system?

Question

I have seen this idea put forth as a rebuttal to anthropocentric global heating.

Answer 1

Nope.

First of all, only a few are warming, for different reasons.  On Mars, NASA says it's giant dust storms.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/researc...

Second, we KNOW solar radiation is not increasing, because (not surprising) we've been measuring it carefully for years.  It's actually been decreasing a bit.  Proof.

"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 2

Yes - Russian scientist and the Danish Space Agency are leading the research on this, picking up where US scientist are slacking.

"Instead of professed global warming, the Earth will be facing a slow decrease in temperatures in 2012-2015. The gradually falling amounts of solar energy, expected to reach their bottom level by 2040, will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-2060," he said, adding that this period of global freeze will last some 50 years, after which the temperatures will go up again.

"There is no need for the Kyoto Protocol now, and it does not have to come into force until at least a hundred years from now - a global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions,"

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070115/590789...

"Changes in the Sun contribute to climate change. Solar activity has been exceptionally high in the 20th century compared to the last 400 years and possibly compared to the past 8,000 years

http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-c...

Answer 3

Kent - As you know, I agree with AGW theory, but I also agree with your statement about the planets. There is no evidence all the planets are warming. If someone tells you they are, they are being disingenuous. Go to NASA and look around

Answer 4

Yes a number of planets are showing signs of warming.  Of those planets (and moons) that show an observable change in temperature (eg melting ice caps) all the signs are that they are warming.

The best information available is that not only is the earth warming, but so is the rest of the solar system.

Answer 5

Most planets in our solar system don't have a stable atmosphere like ours, so they have little or no protection from the radiation.  Temperatures can easily change several hundred degrees from the dark side to the light side of the inner planets.  Our Moon, which has no atmosphere at all, has a contrasting temperature of several hundred degrees below zero on the dark side, to severl hundred degrees above zero on the sunny side.

I don't buy the global warming thing.  While ice at the North pole was melting, it was building up at the South pole.

Meteorologist Dr William Grey says that humans should not give ourselves so much credit.  Even with all of our emmissions, humans cannot do anything near what nature already does, and we are not going to change the temperature of the ocean by even one degree.

The Earth goes through cycles.  It warms, it cools.  And has been doing so since before man was on Earth.  I don't think lack of humans cooking over fire or no cars caused our last ice age.

The average temperature has increased 1.5 degrees Celsius in over 100 years.  Wow, thought it felt a little warm in here! LOL at the "Chicken Littles"!!!

You can't even begin to compete with Mother Nature....The Earth will warm and cool just like it did before the first cockroach, and long after the last human leaves it surface.

If you really think you as a species are that important to the planet, think again!

Answer 6

well pluto (not really a planet anymore) is the furthest away from the sun and it is freezing, the ones close to the sun are hot!

Answer 7

No.  

1) Not all of the planets are warming.  The couple that are have logical explanations not associated with the sun.

2) We've measured a decrease in solar radiation with satellites for decades, so we know that it has not been increasing.

Answer 8

Some are, some aren't.  Of those that are, there are other possible explanations for some.   Of those that aren't, or that we don't know are warming or not, most have no atmosphere at all thus there is zero retainage of heat - - again, nobody's saying that CO2 doesn't trap heat or that the atmosphere doesn't trap heat or that adding CO2 doesn't on some level trap more heat - the question is whether increasing the proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 by 1/11,000th of the atmosphere over 200 years traps a material amount of additional heat - and we do NOT know the answer.

Answer 9

It is obvious the sun heats all the planets in the solar system (those closest to the sun get heated most) but they all lose heat at the same time.

The earth is warming because man has caused an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mainly Carbon Dioxide, CO2) which has reduced the rate of cooling and is therefore causing warming.

Heat received from the sun varies from one year to another which, taken with other natural changes, leads to cycles of warming and cooling but man made emissions of greenhouse gases are one way, not cyclical, and so need to be stopped.

Answer 10

Ignoring the first answer, which seems to have actually come from Pluto, there is no evidence at all, some melt of the southern pole on Mars (cause unknown) and a slight increase in the (almost nonexistent) atmosphere of Pluto (cause unknown).

The Russian scientist? and the Danes putting this theory forward seem to have forgotten Venus & Mercury which are far closer to the sun and would show any change to a far higher degree, they haven't.

The Sun is the primary source of heat & light in the solar system, if its output changes, it changes for everything in the solar system not just a couple of planets.

Answer 11

Yes.

Answer 12

I watched a show called Hyperspace with Sam Niell, and they say the sun is either getting hotter or expanding, and our "comfort zone" is moving out.  BUT at that rate, it would still be thousands of years before the rise in Earth's temperature would even reach what is being achieved by global warming.

Answer 13

That's impossible. By the time you get to Pluto which is very close to the sun compared to other planets, it is already cold...let alone the billions of planets millions of times further away!! That would be like saying the heater that warms your room and a little bit the rest of the house, heats up all the houses not only in your neighborhood but around the world! (There are billions of suns - each star you see up in the sky is a distant sun that may have its own planets that it is heating :)

Answer 14

Sunspot activity on the sun is called a solar cycle since it begins, increases, peaks and then declines. The next cycle is easily diffentiated from the previous because it operates in the opposite direction.

Solar cycle #23 ended last year and it was active, as all cycles have been in the last century, except for one mid-century that seems to coincide with the global cooling theory of that time. See link. All planets in our solar system were impacted to some extent by this.

Solar cycle #24 was late in starting and has so far been much weaker than predicted, weaker than previous solar cycles going back 250 years and it might be as weak as the "Maunder Minimum" which happened to coincide with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age. Sunspot activity's impact on our climate compared to human-caused warming is unknown but this coincidence is interesting.

Answer 15

Why does bob think dust storms on mars make it warmer there?