This revelation about global warming prompts the age-old question:
When the sun gets brighter, why do the Dems get dimmer?
.
Posted on 01/23/2007 10:41:17 AM PST by Moseley
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.
advertisement"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."
Holy moley, that sunspot average curve looks like a lacrosse stick, or some other sport stick, um, the name escapes me at the moment...
ping
Nor does it say whether one leads or lags the other....
The great mystery is why the sun shines during daytime when there is plenty of light instead of nighttime when it would be better appreciated.
I demand they adopt a resolution that we invade and destroy the Sun, once and for all. Women, minorities, and children are obviously most affected by the wicked Sun.
Indeed. Although the part of that story that really sticks in my mind is that his girlfriend wears a girdle....
invade and destroy the Sun
Woudn't our troops burn up as they approach the sun? What body armor will they need?
Thanks for correcting a rather dumb mistake on my part.
Kinda furthers the argument a little better, dontcha think?
Roger Waters has the key. He knows what to do.
He foresaw the problem and hid the answer in a song:
Little by little the night turns around.
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn.
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning.
Under the eaves the swallow is resting.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Over the mountain watching the watcher.
Breaking the darkness
Waking the grapevine.
One inch of love is one inch of shadow
Love is the shadow that ripens the wine.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.
Witness the man who raves at the wall
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven.
Whether the sun will fall in the evening
Will he remember the lesson of giving?
Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.
The official end to the Mini-Ice-Age was 1835 which correlates nicely with the graph.
Is there a graph that goes back to the Medieval Warm Period?
They should have asked me. I figured this out some time ago...
HERESY! Dr. Burrows will suffer for these words!
Thanks for posting this article, Moseley. Bookmarking for later.
Global warming???? What a bunch of poppycock.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.