Why do skeptics still deny SGW?

Question

Since I know many of the "solar global warming skeptics" are blocked by Jello, I think we should give everyone an opportunity to answer this question.

Is it possible that people are skeptical of solar global warming because solar output has decreased over the past 30 years as global warming has accelerated?

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm

Is it possible that people are skeptical of solar global warming because no scientific study has attributed more than one-third of the recent warming to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to solar forcings?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApEBLKJvWYrBej5B0u.usM0Fxgt.;_ylv=3?qid=20080124124728AAqNR8n

What's your favorite explanation as to why virtually everybody is skeptical of "solar global warming"?

Answer 1

What I don't understand is why all the skeptics get their knickers in a total twist about a solar forcing of 0.3 W/m^2 (see the link to the ACRIM plot on the GISS link TC provides) and think that forcing is the driver for warming when it is a factor of five less than the radiative forcing from CO2 alone.  None of them have ever been able to explain it to me, except by saying they don't believe CO2 provides that level of radiative forcing (which is a ludicrous proposition to me).  

The skeptics say they are confined by the physics, but I doubt they really understand what that means.

Edit:

TC, Most climate scientists agree the warming over the first half of the century was driven primarily by increasing solar output.  However, solar output hasn't increased over the last 25 years, the ACRIM plot you linked to shows that quite clearly.  So if you believe the sun is responsible for the warming over the last 25 years, and that forcing has been on order of 0.3 W/m^2 as shown in the figure, you need to do one of two things:

1.  Explain how a forcing of 0.3 W/m^2 can be the prime cause of a warming when there is also a forcing five times as large going on

or

2.  Explain where the planet has been storing the heat required to warm the planet now, 50 years after the increase in solar output ended and how that heat is released.  Furthermore, you need to explain, as in (1), why this release of heat, and not the forcing from CO2, is driving the observed warming.  (This is especially critical because the 3 W/m^2 TSI increase you cite is a top-of-atmosphere number, the actual surface forcing from that 3 W/m^2 is smaller by a factor of five.  So what you are implying is that a forcing that ended 50(!) years ago and at its maximum was at most half of the CO2 forcing now is driving the observed warming.)  

I submit either proposition is absurd if you want to remain confined by known physics, which you state you do, and is why I say you would be laughed out of any reputable major scientific meeting trying to defend it using the arguments you've provided here.  Much as you yammer on about flywheels and such, you have never said exactly what that would look like.  Where is the heat, precisely, and why can't it be measured since it would be a large amount to do this much warming in so short a time.  There are no known mechanisms by which the planet can store heat for half a century and then release it all at once.  However, if you think you can explain how that would work, using known atmosphere/ocean physics, do so.  But you have to go into detail, just telling me "flywheel effect" doesn't cut it anymore.

TC:  Here's the deal, nobody argues that the PDO is a quasi-periodic phenomena that has short-term effects on weather patterns and regional climate, but you need to show how it a) sequesters heat for a period of several decades and b) then releases that heat over a period of several decades.  What you have is a correlation without a causal mechanism.  That is a sketchy thing to base a conclusion on, especially when something else is varying in the same way and on the same timescales (global mean temperature) and where there is an alternate and understood mechanism for the variation in the other parameter.  In other words, warming is occurring, and cooling has occurred, and there are some pretty convincing physical reasons for that warming and cooling that has nothing to do with the PDO.  Therefore, unless you can demonstrate a mechanism whereby the PDO is actually driving the observed warming and cooling, the logical conclusion is not that the PDO is driving the warming and cooling, but instead that the PDO is responding to the warming and cooling.  This is what I mean by your being confined by the physics, as you skeptics point out ad nauseum, correlation does not imply a causal link.  Provide the causal link, show me where and how the heat was stored.    The bottom line is that PDO is an oscillation, it does not produce a warming trend such as observed over the last 100 years or so.  

And you still haven't demonstrated how a forcing of 0.3 W/m^2 is significant in the face of the CO2 forcing of 1.6 W/m^2, in case you forgot about that.

Answer 2

First you insult them and then ask for a reasonable answer. I don't think you deserve one!

Answer 3

I get a kick out of Wounded Ducks answer.

You hurt his feelings with your question.

The opposite of what he's complaining about, happens hundreds of times per day here.  In other words, loaded questions with implications that AGW believers are all dupes of some communist plot or whatever today's theory is.

Answer 4

It makes perfect sense:  To defend a ridiculous theory constructed out of spotty data collected haphazardly over too short a sampling period (AGW) from the most logical alternative theory (that giant ball of fire next door isn't a constant), AGW proponents would use insufficient data collected over an even shorter sampling period (doesn't look any brighter to me).

Answer 5

Wow ur smart.

U should be the global warming top contributor.

Answer 6

Dana - no need to post any links, because you've done a good job of that.

Jello has a couple of favorites and can't make up his mind which he supports. One day it's cooling and the next it's warming due to solar inactivity or activity, respectively.

Does Jello block you? Sounds like he's intimidated and not willing to let people see alternative, mainstream scientific answers.

EDIT - Obviously, Tomcat didn't notice the peaks in the solar irradiance graph on the GISS link.

Answer 7

By admission of the alarmist it's a fallacy of logic to excluded solar forcing or the lack of.If what you deem to be true, then GW would influence the sun.Can't happen,so just click your heels together three times and wish for something better.

Answer 8

According to the NASA GISS page solar activity has not decreased for thirty years.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

Edit Richard,

Obviously you do not understand that a cyclical time series has peaks and troughs, and the amplitudes of the troughs are just as important as the amplitude of the peaks when measuring the power of a time series. I did not invent the laws of physics I just have to work them.

EDIT GCNP58

You have a little issue with time don't you? Five times the radiative forcing since when? Over the last 150 years TSI is estimated to have increased by 3 watts M^2, would you expect the climate to have cooled over the last 100 years?

Homeboy, what do you think the PDO and other cyclic cirrculation patterns are driven by, a magic wand? The scientific community cannot explain these phenomena because they are currently in pursuit of an untammed ornothoid without cause (wild goose chase).

.

You can't explain the ocean atmospheric interface, it has to be modeled, the exchange of heat between the atmosphere and the oceans are the next addition that needs to be added to radiative transfer. The oceans are stratified because of temperature and salinity gradients, and there are many inversion layers in the ocean system that are not understood and they are always flowing, and there are up going and down going currents that transfer solar energy. The gulf stream is a very powerfull surface current that transfers huge amounts of energy to the northern hemisphere, that water has a source that originates from the depths which will have a temperature proportional to the last time it was on the surface which could be a 1000 years ago. You understand radiative transfer, you can figure out the rest.

.

Answer 9

Actualy solar output has remained relatively the same but shortwave input has increased very slightly due to ozone damage.

What is causing that ozone damage i wonder? And dont even get me started on the greenhouse effect.

The only viable long term solution that costs virtually nothing is population controll.

Answer 10

We have studies from at least 11 years ago that determined quite conclusively that solar changes can't account for more than about 25% of the last centuries warming.  

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/...

[QUOTE] increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 plus a slight change in solar irradiance are causally responsible for the observed changes in temperature ... Because major changes in climate as a response to human use of fossil fuels have been predicted for more than a century, their detection can hardly be considered surprising.

From examining the data records I conclude: Changes in solar irradiance explain perhaps one-quarter of the increase in temperature during the last century. The changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration resulting from human consumption of fossil fuels cause most of both the temperature increase and the changes in the seasonal cycle.

[END QUOTE]

And many more recent studies have only solidified the limited affect of solar factors.

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsD...

[QUOTE]  researchers at the MPS have shown that the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20-30 years. They took the measured and calculated variations in the solar brightness over the last 150 years and compared them to the temperature of the Earth. Although the changes in the two values tend to follow each other for roughly the first 120 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen dramatically in the last 30 years while the solar brightness has not appreciably increased in this time. [END QUOTE]

It's well accepted that solar changes were primary driving forces in past climate shifts, but not in the current one.

Answer 11

It is possible that people are skeptical of SGW because there is nothing they can do about it, Man does not like to think he can't do something.