Breaking News-Humans 'not to blame' for climate change
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Deepak Lal: Climate change - Sun & the stars vs C02 - IDeepak Lal / New Delhi June 19, 2007
When the sun shines more brightly, global temperatures will rise, and vice versa. The world is being spooked by climate change. The great and the good, aided and abetted by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Stern Report in the UK, have convinced themselves and large part of the electorates in the West that global warming is caused by human emissions of noxious greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. As India and China have the two largest human conglomerations, arising at long last from their pre-industrial slumber with rapid growth, their noxious emissions will inevitably rise. So that, even if the past concentrations of these pollutants were caused by the currently developed countries in their own escape from mass poverty, the future rise in emissions will come largely from the Asian giants. Hence the growing clamour by the developed countries to bring India and China into some global system of mandatory curbs on carbon emissions. Previous columns have pointed out both the deep immorality of this embrace of the Green ideology, which in effect condemns the poor of these populous countries to continuing poverty, as well as noting that the scientific claims being made—in particular by the IPCC—as irrefutable were no such thing. Given the recent quasi acceptance by US President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard of the current Western political orthodoxy that humans cause global warming, it will not be long before the gentle arm twisting of the Indian and Chinese PMs at G8 meetings will turn into something nastier in the form of trade sanctions, as some in the EU and US are already suggesting. Hence, this and the next column revisit the subject of climate change. There is no dispute that global warming is occurring. The only question is: what is the cause? The current orthodoxy accepts the theory espoused by the IPCC that greenhouse gases, in particular the mushrooming CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution, are responsible. A vivid popular depiction has been provided in that redoubtable eco-warrior Al Gore’s Academy award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. It has successfully linked CO2 emissions with catastrophic global climate change in the minds of the general public. Thus, one of the questions always asked by UCLA undergraduates in my sceptical lecture on climate change is: “What about the ice-core evidence?” For Al Gore makes much of the apparent correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations as revealed in the Vostock ice core data for millions of years (see Fig.1). But, as I remind them correlation does not imply causation. When a correct lagged regression is done of this and other ice-core data: “on long time scales variations in Vostock’s CO2 record lag behind those of its air-temperature record by 1.3 (+/-) 1.0k.a” [M. Mudslee, Quaternary Science Reviews, 20 (2001), p. 587]. So CO2 cannot be the cause of temperature changes. It is changes in temperature which seem to cause changes in atmospheric CO2. But how? The answer lies in the oceans, which are both the primary sink as well as emitters of CO2. By comparison the human contribution to global carbon emissions is negligible. When the oceans cool they absorb CO2, when they warm, they emit CO2. Given the vastness of oceans in the total surface area of the Earth, it takes a long time for the warming of the atmosphere to heat the oceans (and vice versa). Thence the lag between the rise in global temperature followed by a rise in CO2, shown by the millennial ice-core evidence. But what then causes global temperatures to wax and wane, as they have done for millennia? The alternative to the CO2 theory is that changing levels in solar activity have caused changes in global climate over millennia. But, it was argued that these changes in solar radiation were not large enough by themselves to explain the observed warming of the earth by 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last century. Recent scientific work by Svensmark of Denmark, Shaviv of Israel, and Vezier of Canada, has now provided a fuller alternative theory of climate change which has been labeled “Cosmoclimatology” (see J Vezier: “Celestial Climate Driver,” Geoscience Canada.32,1,2005; H Svensmark: “Cosmoclimatology,” Astronomy and Geophysics 48, Feb. 2007 and the book by Svensmark and Calder: The Chilling Stars, 2007). They theorise that the climate is controlled by low cloud cover, which when widespread has a cooling effect by reflecting solar energy back into space and vice versa. These low clouds, in turn, are formed when the sub-atomic particles called cosmic rays, emitted by exploding stars in our galaxy, combine with the water vapour rising from the oceans. The constant bombardment of the planet by cosmic rays, however, is modulated by a solar wind, which when it is blowing prevents the cosmic rays from reaching the earth and thence creating the low clouds. The solar wind in turn is caused by the varying sunspot activity of the sun. When the sun is overactive with lots of sunspots, and the solar wind is blowing intensely, fewer cosmic rays get through to form the low clouds, and the planet experiences global warming, as it is doing in the current transition from the Little Ice Age of the 17th-18th centuries. Thus, on this alternative theory, global temperatures would be correlated with the intensity of the sun. When the sun shines more brightly global temperatures will rise, and vice versa. This seems to be the case (fig.2). But there is still a missing piece in the cosmoclimatology theory. It depends on a hitherto untested physical hypothesis that cosmic rays influence the formation of low clouds. In 1998 Kirkby at the CERN particle physics lab proposed an experiment called CLOUD to test this theory. There were long delays in getting funds, and the experiment will begin in 2010. Meanwhile, Svensmark and his physicist son set up a mini experiment in a basement of the Danish National Space Center in 2005, which found the physical causal mechanism by which cosmic rays facilitate the production of low clouds. When this is confirmed by the CERN CLOUD experiment, the final nail in the coffin of the CO2 theory of climate change will be in place. The sun and the stars will have been shown to control our climate and not the puny self-important inhabitants of planet Earth of current CO2 orthodoxy.
When the sun shines more brightly, global temperatures will rise, and vice versa. The world is being spooked by climate change. The great and the good, aided and abetted by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Stern Report in the UK, have convinced themselves and large part of the electorates in the West that global warming is caused by human emissions of noxious greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. As India and China have the two largest human conglomerations, arising at long last from their pre-industrial slumber with rapid growth, their noxious emissions will inevitably rise. So that, even if the past concentrations of these pollutants were caused by the currently developed countries in their own escape from mass poverty, the future rise in emissions will come largely from the Asian giants. Hence the growing clamour by the developed countries to bring India and China into some global system of mandatory curbs on carbon emissions. Previous columns have pointed out both the deep immorality of this embrace of the Green ideology, which in effect condemns the poor of these populous countries to continuing poverty, as well as noting that the scientific claims being made—in particular by the IPCC—as irrefutable were no such thing. Given the recent quasi acceptance by US President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard of the current Western political orthodoxy that humans cause global warming, it will not be long before the gentle arm twisting of the Indian and Chinese PMs at G8 meetings will turn into something nastier in the form of trade sanctions, as some in the EU and US are already suggesting. Hence, this and the next column revisit the subject of climate change. There is no dispute that global warming is occurring. The only question is: what is the cause? The current orthodoxy accepts the theory espoused by the IPCC that greenhouse gases, in particular the mushrooming CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution, are responsible. A vivid popular depiction has been provided in that redoubtable eco-warrior Al Gore’s Academy award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. It has successfully linked CO2 emissions with catastrophic global climate change in the minds of the general public. Thus, one of the questions always asked by UCLA undergraduates in my sceptical lecture on climate change is: “What about the ice-core evidence?” For Al Gore makes much of the apparent correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations as revealed in the Vostock ice core data for millions of years (see Fig.1). But, as I remind them correlation does not imply causation. When a correct lagged regression is done of this and other ice-core data: “on long time scales variations in Vostock’s CO2 record lag behind those of its air-temperature record by 1.3 (+/-) 1.0k.a” [M. Mudslee, Quaternary Science Reviews, 20 (2001), p. 587]. So CO2 cannot be the cause of temperature changes. It is changes in temperature which seem to cause changes in atmospheric CO2. But how? The answer lies in the oceans, which are both the primary sink as well as emitters of CO2. By comparison the human contribution to global carbon emissions is negligible. When the oceans cool they absorb CO2, when they warm, they emit CO2. Given the vastness of oceans in the total surface area of the Earth, it takes a long time for the warming of the atmosphere to heat the oceans (and vice versa). Thence the lag between the rise in global temperature followed by a rise in CO2, shown by the millennial ice-core evidence. But what then causes global temperatures to wax and wane, as they have done for millennia? The alternative to the CO2 theory is that changing levels in solar activity have caused changes in global climate over millennia. But, it was argued that these changes in solar radiation were not large enough by themselves to explain the observed warming of the earth by 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last century. Recent scientific work by Svensmark of Denmark, Shaviv of Israel, and Vezier of Canada, has now provided a fuller alternative theory of climate change which has been labeled “Cosmoclimatology” (see J Vezier: “Celestial Climate Driver,” Geoscience Canada.32,1,2005; H Svensmark: “Cosmoclimatology,” Astronomy and Geophysics 48, Feb. 2007 and the book by Svensmark and Calder: The Chilling Stars, 2007). They theorise that the climate is controlled by low cloud cover, which when widespread has a cooling effect by reflecting solar energy back into space and vice versa. These low clouds, in turn, are formed when the sub-atomic particles called cosmic rays, emitted by exploding stars in our galaxy, combine with the water vapour rising from the oceans. The constant bombardment of the planet by cosmic rays, however, is modulated by a solar wind, which when it is blowing prevents the cosmic rays from reaching the earth and thence creating the low clouds. The solar wind in turn is caused by the varying sunspot activity of the sun. When the sun is overactive with lots of sunspots, and the solar wind is blowing intensely, fewer cosmic rays get through to form the low clouds, and the planet experiences global warming, as it is doing in the current transition from the Little Ice Age of the 17th-18th centuries. Thus, on this alternative theory, global temperatures would be correlated with the intensity of the sun. When the sun shines more brightly global temperatures will rise, and vice versa. This seems to be the case (fig.2). But there is still a missing piece in the cosmoclimatology theory. It depends on a hitherto untested physical hypothesis that cosmic rays influence the formation of low clouds. In 1998 Kirkby at the CERN particle physics lab proposed an experiment called CLOUD to test this theory. There were long delays in getting funds, and the experiment will begin in 2010. Meanwhile, Svensmark and his physicist son set up a mini experiment in a basement of the Danish National Space Center in 2005, which found the physical causal mechanism by which cosmic rays facilitate the production of low clouds. When this is confirmed by the CERN CLOUD experiment, the final nail in the coffin of the CO2 theory of climate change will be in place. The sun and the stars will have been shown to control our climate and not the puny self-important inhabitants of planet Earth of current CO2 orthodoxy.
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http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/brightness.shtml
Changes in Solar Brightness Too Weak to Explain Global Warming
The review, led by Peter Foukal (Heliophysics, Inc.), appears in the September 14 issue of Nature. Among the coauthors is Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR’s primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
Changes in Solar Brightness Too Weak to Explain Global Warming
September 13, 2006
BOULDER—Changes in the Sun's brightness over the past millennium have had only a small effect on Earth's climate, according to a review of existing results and new calculations performed by researchers in the United States, Switzerland, and Germany.The review, led by Peter Foukal (Heliophysics, Inc.), appears in the September 14 issue of Nature. Among the coauthors is Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR’s primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.
Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.
Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
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To be clear, Al Gore is a person. He didn't suceed in politics, so he went to use other people's facts to make a movie for global warming. Then he wrote a book to go for insult on reason, but he is really confused with reason against truth. Truth is what is really happening in all dimensions, reasons are bendable as there are more than one dimension. Our world is three dimensional. He's not green. He's just a messenger.
Articles on the web is not 100% trustable. People can still make things up. I doubt the conservatives think global warming is fiction. They don't accept it because most of them involve in the oil industries and don't want to be broke. Would you like to be poorer if you are so rich that you swim in gold? I think they are poor. Poorer than a peasent and lives harsher than the person living in anywhere.
Theory.
The article is a theory. No proofs. No linking of everything. Water is suppose to be cooler than the surface. Sun's life is billions or was it millions of years? It's from the encyclopedia I read. You can check the facts by going to the library and borrow any books on the star lives.
Okay, the star thing match the mud thing and you think it is the sun's fault. Why don't you say it's the earth fault? Isn't the professor and director of Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre a scientist? Do you like scientists? The earth centre is very hot. You want to go in there, or try to death in doing so?
Why don't you check the weather station and post all of the data of cold and hot temperature and get an average? The output of sun is only 0.1%! How can that be so devatating that it gets coolest temperature for our earth?!!!
Read the article carefully.
I know some scientists and people think global warming is a myth because they cannot accept it, but this is ridiculous.
Not another Svante Arrhenius era!
Articles on the web is not 100% trustable. People can still make things up. I doubt the conservatives think global warming is fiction. They don't accept it because most of them involve in the oil industries and don't want to be broke. Would you like to be poorer if you are so rich that you swim in gold? I think they are poor. Poorer than a peasent and lives harsher than the person living in anywhere.
Theory.
The article is a theory. No proofs. No linking of everything. Water is suppose to be cooler than the surface. Sun's life is billions or was it millions of years? It's from the encyclopedia I read. You can check the facts by going to the library and borrow any books on the star lives.
Okay, the star thing match the mud thing and you think it is the sun's fault. Why don't you say it's the earth fault? Isn't the professor and director of Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre a scientist? Do you like scientists? The earth centre is very hot. You want to go in there, or try to death in doing so?
Why don't you check the weather station and post all of the data of cold and hot temperature and get an average? The output of sun is only 0.1%! How can that be so devatating that it gets coolest temperature for our earth?!!!
Read the article carefully.
I know some scientists and people think global warming is a myth because they cannot accept it, but this is ridiculous.
Not another Svante Arrhenius era!
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It's happened before.
DNA reveals Greenland's lush past
Armies of insects once crawled through lush forests in a region of Greenland now covered by more than 2,000m of ice.
DNA extracted from ice cores shows that moths and butterflies were living in forests of spruce and pine in the area between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago.
Researchers writing in Science magazine say the specimens could represent the oldest pure DNA samples ever obtained.
The ice cores also suggest that the ice sheet is more resistant to warming than previously thought, the scientists say.
"We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than 2km of ice, was once very different to the Greenland we see today," said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and one of the authors of the paper.
"What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," added Professor Martin Sharp from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the Science paper.
Ice-locker
The ancient boreal forests were thought to cover southern Greenland during a period of increased global temperatures, known as an interglacial.
Temperatures at the time were probably between 10C in summer and -17C in winter.
When the temperatures dropped again 450,000 years ago, the forests and their inhabitants were covered by the advancing ice, effectively freezing them in time.
SAMPLE SITES
Dye 3: 2km long ice core
Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP): 3km long ice core
John Evans Glacier (JEG): Control site
Kap Kobenhavn: Previously youngest known Greenland forest
Studies suggest that even during the last interglacial (116,000-130,000 years ago), when temperatures were thought to be 5C warmer than today, the ice persevered, keeping the delicate samples entombed and free from contamination and decay.
At the time the ice is estimated to have been between 1,000 and 1,500m thick.
"If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming."
Research by Australian scientists has suggested that a 3C rise in global temperatures would be enough to trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
In 2006, research conducted by researchers at Nasa suggested that the rate of melting of the giant ice sheet had tripled since 2004.
While in February 2006, researchers found that Greenland's glaciers were moving much faster than before, meaning that more of its ice was entering the sea.
And in 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet; by 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km.
A complete melt of the ice sheet would cause a global sea level rise of about 7m; but the current picture indicates that while some regions are thinning, others are apparently getting thicker.
Plant-life
The new results were obtained from the sediment rich bottom of ice cores.
The 2km-long Dye 3 core was drilled in south-central Greenland, whilst the 3km-long Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) core was taken from the summit of the Greenland ice sheet.
Samples from other glaciers, such as the John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada, were used as a control, to verify the age of the samples and to confirm that the DNA was from plants that grew in southern Greenland, rather than from plant matter carried by wind or water from elsewhere in the world.
Although the ice contained only a handful of pollen grains and no fossils, the researchers were able to extract DNA from the organic matter held in the silt.
Comparisons with modern species show that the area was populated by diverse forests made up of alders, spruce, pine and members of the yew family.
Living in the trees and on the forest floor was a wide variety of insect life including beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths.
The discovery pushes forward the date when the last forests were known to exist in Greenland by nearly two million years.
Previously, the youngest fossil evidence of a native forest in the region came from fossils found in the Kap Kobenhavn Formation in northern Greenland. There, the fossils date from around 2.4m years ago.
The study paves the way for scientists to probe beneath the ice in other parts of the world.
"Given that 10% of the Earth's terrestrial surface is covered by thick ice sheets, it could open up a world of new discoveries," said Dr Enrico Cappellini of the University of York, UK.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6276576.stm
Published: 2007/07/06 12:20:04 GMT
© BBC MMVII
DNA reveals Greenland's lush past
Armies of insects once crawled through lush forests in a region of Greenland now covered by more than 2,000m of ice.
DNA extracted from ice cores shows that moths and butterflies were living in forests of spruce and pine in the area between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago.
Researchers writing in Science magazine say the specimens could represent the oldest pure DNA samples ever obtained.
The ice cores also suggest that the ice sheet is more resistant to warming than previously thought, the scientists say.
"We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than 2km of ice, was once very different to the Greenland we see today," said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and one of the authors of the paper.
"What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," added Professor Martin Sharp from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the Science paper.
Ice-locker
The ancient boreal forests were thought to cover southern Greenland during a period of increased global temperatures, known as an interglacial.
Temperatures at the time were probably between 10C in summer and -17C in winter.
When the temperatures dropped again 450,000 years ago, the forests and their inhabitants were covered by the advancing ice, effectively freezing them in time.
SAMPLE SITES
Dye 3: 2km long ice core
Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP): 3km long ice core
John Evans Glacier (JEG): Control site
Kap Kobenhavn: Previously youngest known Greenland forest
Studies suggest that even during the last interglacial (116,000-130,000 years ago), when temperatures were thought to be 5C warmer than today, the ice persevered, keeping the delicate samples entombed and free from contamination and decay.
At the time the ice is estimated to have been between 1,000 and 1,500m thick.
"If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming."
Research by Australian scientists has suggested that a 3C rise in global temperatures would be enough to trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
In 2006, research conducted by researchers at Nasa suggested that the rate of melting of the giant ice sheet had tripled since 2004.
While in February 2006, researchers found that Greenland's glaciers were moving much faster than before, meaning that more of its ice was entering the sea.
And in 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet; by 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km.
A complete melt of the ice sheet would cause a global sea level rise of about 7m; but the current picture indicates that while some regions are thinning, others are apparently getting thicker.
Plant-life
The new results were obtained from the sediment rich bottom of ice cores.
The 2km-long Dye 3 core was drilled in south-central Greenland, whilst the 3km-long Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) core was taken from the summit of the Greenland ice sheet.
Samples from other glaciers, such as the John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada, were used as a control, to verify the age of the samples and to confirm that the DNA was from plants that grew in southern Greenland, rather than from plant matter carried by wind or water from elsewhere in the world.
Although the ice contained only a handful of pollen grains and no fossils, the researchers were able to extract DNA from the organic matter held in the silt.
Comparisons with modern species show that the area was populated by diverse forests made up of alders, spruce, pine and members of the yew family.
Living in the trees and on the forest floor was a wide variety of insect life including beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths.
The discovery pushes forward the date when the last forests were known to exist in Greenland by nearly two million years.
Previously, the youngest fossil evidence of a native forest in the region came from fossils found in the Kap Kobenhavn Formation in northern Greenland. There, the fossils date from around 2.4m years ago.
The study paves the way for scientists to probe beneath the ice in other parts of the world.
"Given that 10% of the Earth's terrestrial surface is covered by thick ice sheets, it could open up a world of new discoveries," said Dr Enrico Cappellini of the University of York, UK.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6276576.stm
Published: 2007/07/06 12:20:04 GMT
© BBC MMVII
How do they explain it a hundred thousand years ago - before the last ice age - or a few hundred thousand years before that - or before that cycle even? There were no humans to blame then. Hell - a couple of million years ago, they couldn't even blame dinosaur farts. It's a natural Earth cycle that someone's decided to cash in on and get rich from - only because there's people around to bilk this time. Nothing will stop it.
Wolf
Wolf
Sirs, the global warming is talking about the present time. In the past, it's all nature. The main question to ask is: if we do so much chemical changes in this planet, what happen to the excess and unwanted? These excess and unwanted happened to cause a harmful effect to our planet. If these effects are not cured, then it will come back at us because we are not mutated to suit the harsh new world.
Yes, it is still possible by the 10% that we are wrong. Nothing is perfect. Even in this world, not everyone's wish can be fulfilled because if there is differences, there is conflict. Where there is conflict, there is errors. I believe like the percentage.
To Lone Wolf:
Sir, it's by a natural cause that people build buildings, medicine, and social organization to hunt, eat, and live. It is how we survive. As we keep on improving the three main things, the money is invented. Although money still give injustice to trade, people use the money. When the money is invented, there are conflicts. (of how things are suppose to be and stuff, of changing values, bargains, and got ripped off, robbers, and killers.) The only way to get out of the cycle is not to just hope for survival, but to reach harmony of earth (less about one species life and more about the whole picture). If you blame earth for not living long enough, fix the mistake!
Yes, it is still possible by the 10% that we are wrong. Nothing is perfect. Even in this world, not everyone's wish can be fulfilled because if there is differences, there is conflict. Where there is conflict, there is errors. I believe like the percentage.
To Lone Wolf:
Sir, it's by a natural cause that people build buildings, medicine, and social organization to hunt, eat, and live. It is how we survive. As we keep on improving the three main things, the money is invented. Although money still give injustice to trade, people use the money. When the money is invented, there are conflicts. (of how things are suppose to be and stuff, of changing values, bargains, and got ripped off, robbers, and killers.) The only way to get out of the cycle is not to just hope for survival, but to reach harmony of earth (less about one species life and more about the whole picture). If you blame earth for not living long enough, fix the mistake!
Man can only slow man's contribution to global warming. That may delay it by, oh say, a few years. One good volcanic eruption makes man's efforts to poison the world look puny in comparison. If man is to survive, man will have to learn to survive for we're not God enough to stem the tides.
Wolf
Wolf
See now here is a prime example of the type of garbage we see from many media skeptics. How else to say this, one warming event doesn't mean it has any commonalities with another warming event, save for the warming itself. That is what many paleo-climatologists study. What was happening, what was changing, when these past events took place. It's in the proxy data that scientists can get a glimpse of what was happening. Climate shifts happen in jumps. It's like a gun trigger. After enough pressure is placed on the trigger, the gun will fire.
Indeed that is what many are trying to get out there. Man's contribution is much larger than any current natural forcing. Volcanoes? CO2 emissions per year currently, 7GT for anthropogenic, 0.15 GT for volcanic activity. Further, many volcanic events in the past have had noticeable cooling effects, as the ash and sulphur emissions act to block the suns rays.
Are you actually trying to say that no matter how much green house gas you pour into an atmosphere, you can not affect the temperature of a planet?
Is that question directed at me? I'm certainly not saying that, and lone wolf appears to be saying we can't stop our run-away train, which I would argue against. We can stop our addition to the problem, but it will be many, many years before the full effects are reached.
I certainly did NOT say you can't affect a global climate by pouring greenhouse gasses into it. I am saying we are NOT capable of reversing a natural phenomenon - a cycle that has repeated itself since this planet solidified and became the recognizable elements we know today. Maybe some specifics varied in every event - the continents were in different places, mountains were higher (both of which would alter surface winds) and, yes, this time man may have slightly hastened the process. Thing is: man didn't exist to witness in events of eons past. The best anyone has are theories. The one great difference? Man feels threatened. A billion years from now, long after mankind has ceased to be (if some rogue asteroid hasn't smashed Earth into oblivion) the cycles will still be repeating themselves. Though we may slow it, we can no more stop it than we can stop a toothache by kicking a rock. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't water vapour, too, a greenhouse gas?
Wolf :roll:
Wolf :roll:
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The problem isn't the presence of greenhouse gases, even CO2, it also doesn't matter if its natural or not. Greenhouse gasses are a regulator, its not about removing them, its about keeping them at the right level. Pumping CO2 into the air isn't bad. Its about taking CO2 from out of the biosphere (underground) and putting it into the air. If you burned the same amount of CO2 as we do now, but took it from the biosphere (burning biofuel) it would not increase global warming. Its not about the amount, its about the change.
Likewise, we could pump other chemicals into the air to cool it if we wanted. We really are at a position where if we all worked togethor, we could climate control the planet (if we truly dedicated everything to this purpose)
Likewise, we could pump other chemicals into the air to cool it if we wanted. We really are at a position where if we all worked togethor, we could climate control the planet (if we truly dedicated everything to this purpose)
July 09, 2007
The confessions of a former global warmer
Russ Steele
Dr. David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005. He recently declared, “I used to believe that carbon emissions probably caused global warming.” Now he explains how he came to distrust the science and the political motives of those supporting claims of CO2 generated global warming. This short paper by Dr Evans is an awesome indictment of the whole anthropogenic CO2 charade. Please read it and tell me if you still believe Al Gore is right. Download D-Evans2007.pdf
The confessions of a former global warmer
Russ Steele
Dr. David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005. He recently declared, “I used to believe that carbon emissions probably caused global warming.” Now he explains how he came to distrust the science and the political motives of those supporting claims of CO2 generated global warming. This short paper by Dr Evans is an awesome indictment of the whole anthropogenic CO2 charade. Please read it and tell me if you still believe Al Gore is right. Download D-Evans2007.pdf