[PeaceBeWithYou]

Several folks have asked for information about the Sun's role in warming/cooling. Here is recent summary with lots of links.

I appreciate the work CO2 Science Mag. is doing on this subject. Send them a donation(tax deductable) if you do also, and are able, so they can keep it going, and keep it free for all.

Enjoy!

[Mike Darancette]

PING

[PeaceBeWithYou]

PING

[RightWhale]

There has been considerable mention on late nite talk radio - you know who you are! - about the color of the sun. It seems that the past couple of years the sun has gotten much whiter.

With the full moon on the fresh snow the past couple days and nights, there was an opportunity to observe the color of the moonlight, which is related to the color of sunlight, without the overwhelming intensity of direct sunlight.

The observation is this: Artificial lighting has gotten warmer, that is, streetlights are pink to orange and interior lights have tended toward longer life bulbs. Longer life bulbs burn dimmer and considerably more yellowish than older style bulbs. All this is acclimatizing our eyes to a warmer spectrum, taking yellow and pink/orange as normal. Then, when we see in direct sunlight, the sun, which is bright but yellowish, seems whiter than it used to. Those who stare at computer monitors every waking hour are also getting used to a different visual spectrum than natural light.

So, the sun is not getting appreciably whiter, but we are getting unused to natural light.

[LiteKeeper]

bump

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Huh? An article on the mind-boggling concept that the sun may have an influence on our planet's temperature, and no mention of Sallie Baliunas?

[Valin]

Some say the world will end in ice,
and others say by fire.
But what I've tasted of desire,
I think I'd rather fire.

[geopyg]

Gee- Who'd a thunk the SUN would have an effect on our climate?! I was doing some work for an environmental geologist and mentioned that I had read an article that said Mar's polar ice caps were shrinking.

I said something like "it's terrible that we drive our SUV's and run our factories and cause all these greenhouse gases. It's getting so bad that now they are even causing Mar's ice caps to melt". He said "Yeah, you wonder where it's going to end" in all seriousness. I looked at him kind of funny and said, no - it probably has something to do with that big heater in the sky. He said "oh".

Perhaps he was just trying to be polite to me and making small-talk, but I don't think so.

[justa-hairyape]

How could something that is so obvious have gone so virtually ignored for almost the entire previous millenia ? Yes virginia, the suns output is an important factor affecting the earths climate. In fact its the most important factor. We should have had satellites up in orbit monitoring spectral emmissions from the sun for decades. Of course it varies and of course these variations have a tremendous impact on the earth. Duh ! This is a perfect example of how 'science' has been perverted into 'political science'. The politics of the sun being the problem did not generate enough lobbyist buying influence within washington to get the politicians to fund the research into the sun being the problem (ie- Not enough 'we can fix the sun' lobbyist). So anyone that thinks modern science generates absolute truths, is being naive. If anything, science is being ruined by politically influenced funding. The funding has been generating the science. For science to generate cogent absolutes, the science should be generating the funding.

[aruanan]

I showed another post-doc a graph they produced of the solar cycles overlaying the land temperature cycles over the past centuries. She then laughed at the notion that global warming cycles are anthropogenic.

[buffyt]

I love to mention that global warming gave us the end to the ice age, and that solar activity affects the earth temperatures. People who believe in manmade global warming just get quiet for a minute or two, before they launch their next attack. I know that our highest recorded temps. here in Lake Jackson Texas were in the 1940s and that doesn't fit into their chart for manmade global warming now.