More science pointing to recent warming linked to solar activity. How does this impact your beliefs on AGW?
This paper documents that we are just now coming out the a Soalr Garnd Maxima. It also charts out solar activity going back severl centuries. Seems to match the variability of climate in the same time period. What are your thoughts? Does science impact your beliefs on AGW?
@ bubba; Honestly what I care about it the science. What can we demonstrate? What can we prove? Postulation while interesting and entertaining has very little scientific vlaue.
This paper incorporates what I expect to see in ANY and ALL scientific papers.
They list their sources for data. They identify their methods and everything is out in the open. They are not simply saying I found this and now I am correct in all things. The paper is goes as far as to acknowedge some known and possibly unknown weaknesses with using proxy data.
If all, or even most, papers linked to AGW did the same you would go a great deal further convincing me that AGW is fact.
Anonymous2012-09-15T02:02:49Z
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Show me a peer reviewed paper published in a journal by a CLIMATOLOGIST stating the Sun is responsible for GW and I will pay attention to it. Until you DA deniers can get a ticket for the dance, you might as well keep your prom dress in the closet.
There are at least several dozen different cycles and sub-cycles that effect climate, some of them work against and some with other cycles. Solar maximum is only one of these cycles. If someone is trying to pin climate change over geological time on a single part of a complex web of an array of conflicting cycles, that someone is pulling someones leg.
All of these complex cycles and sub-cycles work over either geological time, millions of years, or over shorter times spans of hundreds of thousands of years. Some events have an abrupt effect....massive volcanic explosions or a strike from a comet, or an asteroid impact will have a significant though short term effect. (short being relative to geological time.) The movement of entire continents and the rise and fall of mountain ranges also have an effect. Except for the abrupt 'natural' events there has never been a climate change in such a short period of time as the current situation.
Going back to the times when the dinosaurs roamed the CO2 content of the Earth's atmosphere never went much above or below 350 ppm except during the last Ice Age. 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age the CO2 load stood at 286ppm. For the most part it stayed in that range until the Industrial Revolution...about 1830. Since then the CO2 content has increased steadily at roughly the rate of the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing. In 1950 it stood at 350ppm...today it's pushing 400ppm and adding 15ppm per decade. Heat retained by this and other 'greenhouse gases' haven't warmed the overall atmosphere by much as the excess heat has gone to melt ice and warm sea water....so far, so good. When the ice is mostly gone.....we just don't know.
For those that say this is 'natural' they have a point...when you burn carbon bearing material that took millions of years to accumulate in less than 200 years the 'natural' effect of doing that is to release that carbon into our paper thin atmosphere all in a rush...returning the atmosphere to what it was in a much warmer and mostly ice free world. Either a CO2 rich atmosphere makes a significant difference in climate or it doesn't. All of the science, data and physics say it does...I gotta' go with that!
While climate changes have occurred they've been over long periods of time...this climate change situation has happened in a very short 'historical' time frame and given that several of the 'cycles' would suggest a cooling effect the effect of an ever increasing accumulation of CO2 and methane has overcome those weak cycles and presented us with the current situation.
Great paper. This may help develop a better model for incorporating solar activity, but it does not indicate that increased CO2 as a result of human activity is not a significant factor causing our current warming trend.
Do you think this paper proves that human activity cannot be influencing our current warming trend? Or are you falling into the flawed thinking that because solar activity influences weather and climate, that human activity cannot possibly have a significant influence?
I agree with you that this paper is very through, but it is also 88 pages. Most journals want to keep articles less than 20 pages. Lots of times, you have to publish large articles in parts. However, the parts are there, and they are typically well referenced. Many times, details are published and referenced in other articles. This can be a real PIA, even if you are very familiar with the details of the subject. You have to do a lot of reading to keep up. This does not mean that the information is wrong or there is a scam. It is about space are publish enough diverse materials that the journal make money.
'We'll ignore that the papers' main subject is the development of a new method of obtaining historic solar activity and cherry-pick it to pretend it supports our cause when really it does not (Poptech does it all the time and no one has noticed). We'll equally ignore that this new method uses proxies (which we otherwise do not trust) from ice cores (bad) and tree-rings (worse) and 'a computer model' (which we otherwise claim does not work) and call it 'comprehensive' and start asking pseudo-intelligent questions about it on YA". Signed: The Deniers
Usoskin in a 2004 paper:
"During these last years [up to 2004] the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and the cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."
Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 Years: Does it Correlate with Climate?" http://www.mps.mpg.de/dokumente/publikationen/solanki/c153.pdf
I'm not a climatologist. Therefore picking papers and deciding how they fit into the science of climate is beyond my education, training, and specialisms. That's why we have universities that take students to study climatology. That's why we spend years educating them to PhD level. That's why I think the analysis of papers, examination of how those papers fit into grander schemes, whether the theories are consistent with other measurements, etc is a job for scientists, not for interested members of the public with no training or education in those areas.
If people with NO qualifications in climate science believe they can arbitrate on scientific issues, then I believe that represents the most mind-numbing arrogance. The idea that someone suddenly can 'decide' the science of global warming without any training in that field is abhorent to me.
I don't care what papers say. I care what scientists think of those papers. And for the moment, those who study the climate largely support AGW. If evidence arises that forces them to reconsider that theory, then they will reconsider that theory - this is how science has always worked. I'm not going to second-guess the conclusions the experts reach. I'm just going to listen to what they have to say. The moment I think I'm an expert in climatology, am capable of assessing their research, and feel I can discuss the issues with sufficient knowledge to present at a scientific conference, I'll offer an opinion on the science.
I just wish other members of the public with no formal education in climatology would eat a large helping of humble pie.