Sun Burning Hotter?

[General Brock]

SUV's On Jupiter?
Are humans responsible for climate change on the outer reaches of the solar system, or is it the sun?

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, November 16, 2006

Kofi Annan today slammed global warming skeptics as being "out of step" and "out of time," but how will altering human activity halt climate change when the evidence clearly indicates that the sun itself and not SUV's is heating up the entire solar system?

"The U.N. chief lamented "a frightening lack of leadership" in fashioning next steps to reduce global emissions. "Let us start being more politically courageous," he urged the hundreds of delegates from some 180 member nations of the 1992 U.N. climate treaty," reports Forbes.

But how do we square the fact that almost every planet in our solar system is simultaneously undergoing temperature change and volatile weather patterns. Does this not suggest that global warming is a natural cycle as a result of the evolving nature of the sun? Can Al Gore fill me in on this one?

- Space.com: Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

- Space.com: New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

- Current Science & Technology Center: Global Warming on Mars?
A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that the red planet is experiencing a warming trend. If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change.

- United Press International: NASA looks at a monster storm on Saturn
NASA says its Cassini spacecraft has found a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole, nearly 5,000 miles across -- or two-thirds Earth's diameter.

- Science Agogo: Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless. "At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."

- Associated Press: Study says sun getting hotter
Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

- London Telegraph: The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

The simple fact is that throughout the ages the earth has swung wildly between a warm, wet, stable climate, to a cold, dry and windy one - long before the first fossil fuel was burned. The changes we are now witnessing are a walk in the park compared to the battering that our planet has taken in the past.

This is not a defense of the oil cartels or the Neo-Con wreckers, who would have every motivation to ignore global warming whether it is man-made or not.

Nor is it a blanket denial of the fact that the earth is getting very gradually hotter, but how do we reconcile global warming taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system with the contention that it is caused by human activity? Have our exhaust fumes left earth's atmosphere and slipped through a black hole to Triton?

The assertion that global warming is man made is so oppressively enforced upon popular opinion, especially in Europe, that expressing a scintilla of doubt is akin to holocaust denial in some cases. Such is the insipid brainwashing that has taken place via television, newspapers and exalted talking heads - global warming skeptics are forced to wear the metaphoric yellow star and only discuss their doubts in hushed tones and conciliatory frameworks, or be cat-called, harangued and jeered by an army of do-gooders who righteously believe they are rescuing mother earth by recycling a wine bottle or putting their paper in a separate trash can.

Fearmongering about an imminent climate doomsday also hogs news coverage and important environmental issues like GM food, mad scientist chimera cloning and the usurpation and abuse of corporations like Monsanto flies under the radar.

Global warming is cited as an excuse to meter out further control and surveillance over our daily lives, RFID chips on our trash cans, GPS satellite tacking and taxation by the mile, as well as a global tax at the gas pump.

The extremist wing of the environmentalist movement, characterized by people like Dr. Erik Pianka, advocate the mass culling of humanity via plagues and state sanctioned bio-terrorism, in order to "save" the earth from the disease of humanity. Nazi-like genocial population control measures and the environmental establishment have always held a close alliance.

The orthodox organized religion of global warming and its disastrous consequences for our freedom of speech, freedom of mobility and our right to remain outside of the system, needs to be questioned on the foundational basis that the phenomenon is solar-system wide and it is mainly caused by the natural evolution of the sun and not human activity.

PrisonPlanet


Interesting stuff from the fringe, but if true, that doesn't change the soundness of greenhouse gas theory. If anything, it makes the need to reduce man-made global warming even more important.

Although the idea of the sun burning hotter was more enjoyable whan it was just sci-fi disaster fodder.

[Darth Tanner]

Quick invest in solar cells and air conditioning, before Green Peace release their Iraqi bio weapons.

How exactly did they calculate the 1000 year data history if records were only started in 1986? Is it just conjecture or is there some means by which solar output can be calculated from other sources? Plant growth for example.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

This article is pretty much on the lunatic fringe. It's tying together a number of unrelated events and trying to say "HURR HURR HURR, SUN IS AT FAULT 4 GLOBAL WARMING. BUY MOR SUVS!!!111"

Detailed refutation follows:

- Space.com: Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

The article linked to here gives several possible explanations, none of them having to do with the premise of the article. Among them: volcanism on Pluto, and the fact that it takes materials a not-instantaneous amount of time to heat or cool off.

- Space.com: New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

Jupiter produces substantially more heat than it recieves from the Sun. But, reading the article suggests that the cause of Jupiter's current climate change seems to be the formation of these enormous red-spot storms, since they seem to disrupt heat transfer between the latitudes below where the storm is forming, and the poles. End result, the lattitudes below the storm will heat up as heat isn't being convected to the poles as efficiently.

- Current Science & Technology Center: Global Warming on Mars?
A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that the red planet is experiencing a warming trend. If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change.

Mars has a more severe and variable axial tilt than Earth. Polar summers seem to be getting longer, causing the CO2 icepack to retreat, dumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. You do the math.

- United Press International: NASA looks at a monster storm on Saturn
NASA says its Cassini spacecraft has found a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole, nearly 5,000 miles across -- or two-thirds Earth's diameter.

Not at all sure what this has to do with solar-system-wide global warming, but whatever, it's a cool picture.

- Science Agogo: Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless. "At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."

This was covered in the Pluto article. When Voyager 2 passed Triton, it observed ongoing volcanic activity. Volcanic activity on an icy moon like Triton tends to produce methane, rather like the volcanic activity on Titan. Methane is a greenhouse gas.

- Associated Press: Study says sun getting hotter
Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

- London Telegraph: The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

Yes, yes, yes, we know the Sun's radiance tends to oscillate in cycles. The Sun is a mildly variable star. So, for that matter, are many other stars. Solar brightness is also slowly increasing as the Sun ages and inert helium collects in its core. That warming will render the planet completely uninhabitable in less than a billion years. But these are small changes, and aren't enough to explain the dramatic warming that just happened to start ramping up at the same time we started pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The rest of the article isn't worth quoting, as it smacks of one enormous tinfoil-hat slippery slope fallacy.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Quick invest in solar cells and air conditioning, before Green Peace release their Iraqi bio weapons.

How exactly did they calculate the 1000 year data history if records were only started in 1986? Is it just conjecture or is there some means by which solar output can be calculated from other sources? Plant growth for example.

You answered your own question. Tree rings can provide a wealth of detail about the climate that existed during the time the tree was alive, which can extend from hundreds or thousands of years. We can also study the composition of shells in seafloor sediment, by analyzing the isotopic composition of the carbon in their shells. Ice cores and the gases trapped within them provide further clues as to what the climate was like up to hundreds of thousands of years. You can get clues as to how much carbon was in the atmosphere at the time, plug it into a model along with a few other assumptions and see if the global temperatures produced jive with the physical evidence you have. If they don't jive, you change your input parameters until your climate models are consistent with the evidence. One of the parameters being how much energy the Sun is driving into the system. That's how you can form conclusions, or at least speculate intelligently about the amount of solar insolation we've been experienced throughout history.

[Ariphaos]

I did a calculation once that the increase in the Sun's thermal output each year on average was roughly equivalent to something on the order of five thousand tonnes of CO2 - or would be if plankton didn't have a built in cloudmaking response to intense solar light.

The problem with human emissions is that there is no biological process for dealing with them.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I did a calculation once that the increase in the Sun's thermal output each year on average was roughly equivalent to something on the order of five thousand tonnes of CO2 - or would be if plankton didn't have a built in cloudmaking response to intense solar light.

The problem with human emissions is that there is no biological process for dealing with them.

Only 5,000 tons? That's the equivalent of less than 450 Chevy Suburbans.

[Surlethe]

What's the time scale in which the solar-system-wide changes are taking place? Leaving aside the detailed refutations GrandMasterTerwynn provided, the article's conclusion is flawed at best if the warming over the rest of the solar system is taking place over thousands of years, and the warming on the Earth is taking place over a few centuries.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Am I the only one that is more peeved off by the needles apostrophe in the title of the article than the fact that conservatives are trying to dispel climate change again with selective quotation?

[Ariphaos]

Only 5,000 tons? That's the equivalent of less than 450 Chevy Suburbans.

The calculation was exceedingly simplistic. But it is rather tiny when we're talking about countries pumping out billions of tonnes, yes.

[Lord Zentei]

- Associated Press: Study says sun getting hotter
Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

- London Telegraph: The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

Yes, yes, yes, we know the Sun's radiance tends to oscillate in cycles. The Sun is a mildly variable star. So, for that matter, are many other stars. Solar brightness is also slowly increasing as the Sun ages and inert helium collects in its core. That warming will render the planet completely uninhabitable in less than a billion years. But these are small changes, and aren't enough to explain the dramatic warming that just happened to start ramping up at the same time we started pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This about sums it up. The increase in Solar activity can account for some of the increase in temperature, but not all of it.

[Velthuijsen]

This about sums it up. The increase in Solar activity can account for some of the increase in temperature, but not all of it.

Some of the stuff we've been pumping into the atmosphere is actually be reducing the amount of sunlight being received by the earth. The only thing that that seems to be a likely candidate to counter the Sahara from looking like the north pole is increased amounts of greenhouse gasses.

link: BBC Horizon program transcript - search for 'project INDOEX' if you don't want to read the entire thing

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

This about sums it up. The increase in Solar activity can account for some of the increase in temperature, but not all of it.

Some of the stuff we've been pumping into the atmosphere is actually be reducing the amount of sunlight being received by the earth. The only thing that that seems to be a likely candidate to counter the Sahara from looking like the north pole is increased amounts of greenhouse gasses.

link: BBC Horizon program transcript - search for 'project INDOEX' if you don't want to read the entire thing

I'm not sure exactly what your point is here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're suggesting that we should be glad we're pumping enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to continue to provide dramatic global warming in spite of the similarly dramatic cut in insolation we've generated by the quantity of sulfur aerosols and fine particulates we've also been pumping into pumping into the atmosphere at the same time? As opposed to something a sensible person would conclude, like: "Hey, we're really fucking things up with our pollution here!"

[Velthuijsen]

I'm not sure exactly what your point is here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're suggesting that we should be glad we're pumping enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to continue to provide dramatic global warming in spite of the similarly dramatic cut in insolation we've generated by the quantity of sulfur aerosols and fine particulates we've also been pumping into pumping into the atmosphere at the same time? As opposed to something a sensible person would conclude, like: "Hey, we're really fucking things up with our pollution here!"

Oh no I'm not suggesting to keep pumping. I'd like to be able to breathe
What it is is that the essay that the OP copied to here in short says: the major (if not the only) reason for global warming is that the earth is receiving more energy from the sun, and the 'evil' scientist conspiracy is covering this up. The Horizons transcript, up to the point of the INDOEX project, is mainly a pre-amble indicating that the earth has been receiving less and the INDOEX project part an explanation of why.

Then the Africa part of the transcript says there are bad effects to particle pollution and that by cleaning up the air these effects are being reduced.
The program (for me) ends on a note of that we should not stare blindly at one or the other problem trying to solve it but should go for a combined approach to get rid of both particle pollution and greenhouse gasses.

[momochan]

Well, there are a couple of pieces of evidence related to whether the sun has been sending us more heat:

- has the sunward surface of our moon shown an increase in temperature? Citation please.

-The very upper layers of our atmosphere have actually been COOLING. This would not happen if the excess heat were coming from the sun (that heat would have to pass through the upper atmosphere first, so...)

Comments, anyone?

[General Brock]

Can't find a thing on the historical temperature on the moon, although you'd think there would be some readily available record of average moon day temperature since 1969.

GrandMasterTerwynn has debunked the OP. Its probably on the fringe because it really doesn't help the anti-Kyoto types, if examined closely, and the science isn't rigorous enough for those who want attention directed at man-made sources first, as man-made factors can actually be acted upon.

The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame

By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah
(Filed: 18/07/2004)

Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Britain ratified the protocol in 2002 and said it would cut emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels.

Globally, 1997, 1998 and 2002 were the hottest years since worldwide weather records were first collated in 1860.

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.

To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.

The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.

Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.

Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.

"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."

Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."

Telegraph, UK


Looking at sun temperature alone is not sufficient; the direct heat from the sun isn't transmitted it to the Earth; heat doesn't travel well in a vacuum. The sun also has no true surface to measure.

The media lay term 'hotter' is getting the message confused; 'brighter' is more accurate.

A brighter, more active sun is radiating more energy in the form of light, including infrared, which delivers heat across the vacuum. The electromagnetic radiations, not the sun's heat, influence planetary temperature.

This is called Solar variation theory in the Wiki

The theories have usually represented one of three types:

* Solar irradiance changes directly affecting the climate. This is generally considered unlikely, as the variations seem to be too small.
* Variations in the ultraviolet component having an effect. The UV component varies by more than the total.
* Effects mediated by changes in cosmic rays (which are affected by the solar wind, which is affected by the solar output) such as changes in cloud cover.

Although correlations often can be found, the mechanism behind these correlations is a matter of speculation.

An increase in solar activity, resulting in increased radiance, will not necessarily be reflected by an increase in the sun's temperature. The sun's temperature doesn't matter as much to the Earth as the radiance received by the Earth and reacting with the atmosphere, and Earth-bound causes of global warming are more significant than solar variation.

The IR heat would be more apparent as it is absorbed in the denser lower atmosphere. The hot air rises, cools in the upper atmosphere, and falls back down. A higher lower atmospheric temperature might speed up the currents if air, resulting in a cooler upper atmosphere.

Study says sun getting hotter

Page created 09/27/97 08:30 PM, Copyright Lubbock Avalanche-Journal 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) - The sun is getting hotter, adding heat to an Earth already thought to be warming from greenhouse gases.

Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

The increase is only a small fraction of the total heat from the sun, but in a century it would be enough to seriously aggravate problems of global warming thought to be caused by greenhouse gases, says Richard C. Willson of Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research.

Willson said that most researchers expect greenhouse gases to warm the planet by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 100 years. Solar irradiance could add another 0.72 degrees F and ''that is not an insignificant number. It is smaller than the greenhouse effect, but it is not trivial,'' he said.

''This is a significant increase,'' said John Firor of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. ''It would increase the rate at which we go into warming.''

Firor said that based on the current estimate of how greenhouse gases will warm the planet over the next century, the solar heat increase found by Willson would boost that warming trend by about 20 percent.

Although studies show that the Earth has warmed about one degree in the last century and the trend continues, there is a division among scientists about what is causing it. Some believe it is a natural cycle for the planet, unrelated to humans. Others blame the warming on an increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide from the burning of oil, gas, coal and wood.

At an international meeting in Japan in three months, the United States and other nations will debate the need to reduce the burning of fuels in order to slow global warming.

1997 was just yesterday...

This isn't as new news as first thought...

However hashed my own understanding of the science is, the message is definitely take public transportation, walk more rather than drive where practical, and otherwise 'go green', because man-made sources of global warming may be compounded by the as-yet undetermined mechanism of solar variation.

[Sikon]

Changes in solar output have some effect, but the definitely the article at the top of the thread is way too simplistic.

Here is an illustration of the number of factors affecting temperature, with some pollutants causing warming and some cooling, with a bit more of the former than the latter (probably 2001 data):



Though not explicitly stated in the graph, the CO2 radiative forcing is not for total CO2 but for the extra CO2 from human emissions. For example, a web page here shows an estimate that the increase of CO2 concentration from 280 ppm in 1750 to 380 ppm now has caused 1.7 watts per square meter of extra radiative forcing (probably 2006 data). As implied in the graph, the figures for some effects like the exact degree of cooling from aerosols are not very well-known, i.e. with different sources not always estimating exactly the same figures.

Total solar irradiance changes over time are monitored by satellites. Here is an illustration:



It seems fairly clear that a lot more than fluctuations in solar output have affected world temperatures over recent decades.

Here is a plot of estimated historical surface temperatures versus estimated solar irradiance:



Recent global warming is apparent, and it is not explained just by variance in solar irradiation, suggesting instead artificial causes.

--------------

Although a bit off-topic, one interesting observation is the effect of those pollutants which partially offset warming, like sulphates and aerosols. I haven't heard this discussed much, but it would seem care might be needed to prevent some anti-pollution measures actually increasing global warming by accident. Hypothetically drastically dropping sulphate and aerosol emissions without also dropping CO2 emissions enough could eliminate more of the cooling pollutants than the warming pollutants. Of course, a complicating factor is that the cooling pollutants can be harmful in other regards (i.e. acid raid, reduced visibility, etc.)...

[Darth Wong]

Wasn't prisonplanet also at the forefront of pushing 9/11 conspiracy theory bullshit?