Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists (occuring throughout the solar system)

SPACE.com ^ | October 9, 2002 | Robert Roy Britt

[lepton]

There is a lag between light and heat.

Do you mean between light/heat peak input and temperature peak?

As long as Pluto is close enough that the net input of heat is positive, it will continue to warm, even though the *rate* of warming is decreasing.

[SuziQ]

What a coinkydink!

[A. Pole]

See my tagline. Looks like we affect other planets (if Pluto is a planet) as well.

[megatherium]

Yes, Pluto got "Plutoed."

[megatherium]

The global warming party line is that they certainly have taken into account the very slight change in solar energy output (only about 0.1%), and it can only account for a small fraction of the observed warming. (Your graph is of sunspot numbers, not actual solar output; the sun puts out slightly more energy during sunspot maximums, and as your graph shows, these have been higher in recent decades.)

[TChris]

Wow! They have SUVs and cow farts on Mars too?

[taxesareforever]

You are correct, though Mideast oil is part of capitalism. Just ask the greenies who want to shut down oil companies.

[mountn man]

Are you saying you don't want warming on Uranus?

[Moseley]

Hey guys, are you listening to yourselves? Dear God, to what lengths are you willing to go to twist and corrupt the truth? People who are willing to pervert the truth in this way demonstrate that they are pursuing some goals other than truth.

As several of you have pointed out, there is a thermal lag of approximately 30 to 45 days on Earth. The earth is far more massive than Pluto, meaning that far MORE energy is required to warm the earth. Yet only 30 to 45 days is needed for the time lag / thermal lag effect on Earth.

One of the major reasons there is a thermal lag is that the ocean holds the heat and takes time to warm up. THERE IS NO OCEAN on Pluto. There is also relatively little atmosphere on Pluto to hold teh heat and retard temperature changes.

Therefore, it would not take 14 years for Pluto to react to the heat of the sun. It would take only a few months.

[mountn man]

I think YOU are missing the point. People are claiming global warming here on Earth is caused by man. Meanwhile, while the Earth warms, so does Mars, Titan, and Pluto.

I'd say something is causing all the warming. And somehow I doubt its SUV's and cow farts.

[xusafflyer]

"Are you saying you don't want warming on Uranus?"

No, because then I'd have to see the doctor.

[NewJerseyJoe]

"And so it begins."

[lepton]

The global warming party line is that they certainly have taken into account the very slight change in solar energy output

But they assume it is negligible. The first papers using the real figures were out last year - which show A) That the direct solar affect is between 10% and 40% of observed, and B) that they don't have long enough of a datastring (barely 2 solar half-cycles) to say that with much confidence.

[John W]

I hope the scientific estimates of when the sun would blaze out and consume the earth weren't off by this much.

[lepton]

As several of you have pointed out, there is a thermal lag of approximately 30 to 45 days on Earth. The earth is far more massive than Pluto, meaning that far MORE energy is required to warm the earth. Yet only 30 to 45 days is needed for the time lag / thermal lag effect on Earth.

That's hemisphere-related due to seasons from the tilt of our axis, but it illustrates the principal that as long as the sun inputs more than the planet outputs, even if less than what it was doing previously, there is still warming. For the overall it's also related to the length of our year. I too am dubious that the offset is 14 years for Pluto, but it is bound to be a while, since for several years the relative change in distance isn't much.

[megatherium]

One intriguing theory is that the Little Ice Age was tied to the Maunder Minimum, the extended period in the 17th and 18th centuries where there were few sun spots (and solar output was less). So skepticism that solar output is not significant in climate change is indeed warranted.

[NewHampshireDuo]

I hope the cooling begins soon enough for us to coin the term "Goreic Science" for the next hoax.

In the 60s we were astonished at how Lysenko had managed to pervert (for the Soviet state) genetics. And, today the same thing is happening.

[theFIRMbss]

>while the Earth warms, so does Mars, Titan, and Pluto. I'd say something is causing all the warming

The solar system was okay back when Britney really was virgin . . .

[lepton]

Given that the Little Ice Age occurred between the MWP and now, it is unsurprising that the time since the LIA has been a general, if broken, warming trend. Even the 20th century had notable breaks in the warming trend.

[sanchmo]

Solar Irradiance:

Scafetta & West, Jun-Sep 2006: The sun might have contributed approximately 50% of the observed global warming since 1900

The much lower 10-40% came from an article published a year earlier, where Scafetta admits "I think it is important to correct the climate models so that they include reliable sensitivity to solar activity.Once that is done, then it will be possible to better understand what has happened during the past hundred years."