Little Greta comes clean

[Starlight]

The "big oil" conspiracy that you guys love to parrot over and over apparently has little to no influence since most Americans agree that climate change is an issue. So, whether there is a big oil mass conspiracy to propagate disinfo and fake news, based on recent polls, it's a moot point. Again, anti-climate change websites cater to a niche, not to the broader public. I guarantee if you go outside and ask 100 people if they've ever heard of wattsupwiththat.com, one of the biggest niche sites out there, maybe two, three, half a dozen folks would know?

I agree that websites were not a successful part of their strategy, and that bribing politicians to deny climate change so that climate change became a partisan issue, worked much better. Buying politicians worked well for tobacco companies too. Here's Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, explaining how he handed out checks from tobacco companies to congressmen on the House floor, and how that was a bad look, and in future he'll only do that behind the scenes and not in public

[seanD]

I agree that websites were not a successful part of their strategy, and that bribing politicians to deny climate change so that climate change became a partisan issue, worked much better. Buying politicians worked well for tobacco companies too. Here's Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, explaining how he handed out checks from tobacco companies to congressmen on the House floor, and how that was a bad look, and in future he'll only do that behind the scenes and not in public

I don't think the tobacco situation really works in your favor as a counter argument here. It was scientists, the bastions of truth and fact, they apparently were able to bribe to get the results they wanted.

[Starlight]

I don't think the tobacco situation really works in your favor as a counter argument here. It was scientists, the bastions of truth and fact, they apparently were able to bribe to get the results they wanted.

There's always a few bad apples in any group. Why should it surprise you that 1% of scientists might be bribe-able? It just means it's important to pay attention to what 99% of the published research is saying and not the 1% of it.

As a whole, yes, I'd agree that scientists are bastions of truth and fact. But that's speaking as a whole. It's a statement that I would say is "very true" with regard to ~2/3rd of scientists, "more true than not" with regard to a quarter of scientists, but is not necessarily at all true of the last few percent of scientists. The vast majority of people who become scientists do so because they have a love of truth and discovering more of it, but there's a very small percentage who do get jaded over time or got into it for other reasons. It's like saying "people in the military will fight for their country", and it's true of the vast majority of people in the military, but it's also true that some military people in history have taken bribes and sold out their own, it's simply that the second is a very low percent of people compared to the first.

[Tassman]

So you're saying that she makes an excellent spokesperson for the AGW crowd and that she's a font of solid information.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...limate-change/

Silencing Greta or mocking her does not alter the fact that our planet is in peril, as is recognized by the vast majority of scientists worldwide.

[oxmixmudd]

One thing that concerns me about the discussion of AGW is that the role of the Sun doesn't seem to come up. Apparently the IPCC consensus is that it's role is minimal.

But there are some views that propose a much more significant role.


Basically, there is evidence that the Sun's effect on climate is substantial, and more than just the variation in energy delivered by direct solar radiance (TSI). Several possible mechanisms are proposed and compared. Problems are that we can't really predict the future activity of the Sun (although it seems we are heading into a possibly large solar minimum), and we don't really have data for the possible range of TSI variance.

The solar connection is interesting, but we are experiencing, and have been experiencing for two decades, a significant lull in solar activity. Indeed, this fall, as I watched and photographed the planet mercury crossing the sun, it did so before a sun with not 1 visible sunspot. It made identifying Mercury trivial. And yet we are encountering record warming, not cooling.

So one thing scientists can do is directly measure the difference in output across the solar spectrum of a spotless sun, and an active sun. So these differences in solar output of a sun with a lot of sunspots and a sun without spots are not mythical, they are not predicted, they are measured.

So what caused the Little Ice Age if not the reduced sunspot activity?

The old saying is correlation is not causation.

The current best theory that matches not only the when but the where (the little Ice Age was in good part a northern hemisphere phenomena) is volcanic activity the correlates better with the start and stop of the cooling and provides sufficient reduction in solar energy reaching the Earth through the high altitude aerosols of the eruptions to account for the observed temperature drop.

But another is that the lower solar output produced changes in the jet stream which created regionally lower temperatures in the winters, but NOT a global shift in temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

https://www.historicalclimatology.co...n-old-question

also



That's basically my concern - we are not putting enough effort into understanding the Sun and how it impacts our climate. We've committed to CO2 as the main factor, but it's possible that it's not. Our best efforts into reduce carbon emissions may be futile in minimising climate change, if the climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as we think, and may actually be the wrong thing (if we are heading into a cooling phase due to Sun activity).

I was always curious about the solar connection myself. But it is untrue that we are not putting effort into understanding the sun: we are studying the Sun, learning more about it as we go. The Parker Solar Probe will be giving us a much better understanding of the solar atmosphere. Stereo gives us 3-d (stereo) images of the sun.

https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/

There is also helioseismology, a method of studying the sun by it's oscillations (sound).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helioseismology


These are direct studies of the sun itself. But we can also study variations in sunspot activity and climate into the deeper past using proxies. The sun produces different amounts of c14 and be10 depending on how much sunspot activity there is. We can measure those changes over time in varves or ice cores, or (for c14) in living things like trees that we can validate their actual age through tree ring chronologies. Very little correlation arises there between variations in sunspot activity and global climate.

Here is a graph of temperature proxies against sunspot activity proxies for the last 10,000 or so years. Some parts of the graph, the correlation looks good. Other parts it is an inverse correlation, other parts random. Overall, there is little correlation with the major global temperature fluctuations and sunspot activity.

Sunspot_Climate_proxies.jpg

[JimL]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...limate-change/

Silencing Greta or mocking her does not alter the fact that our planet is in peril, as is recognized by the vast majority of scientists worldwide.

Not only in peril, but it might actually be too late now to turn it around. I read that we need reduce carbon emissions by some 7.6% every year for the next, I believe 10 years, and yet we are putting out now some 3.5% more than previously.

[MaxVel]

The solar connection is interesting, but we are experiencing, and have been experiencing for two decades, a significant lull in solar activity. Indeed, this fall, as I watched and photographed the planet mercury crossing the sun, it did so before a sun with not 1 visible sunspot. It made identifying Mercury trivial. And yet we are encountering record warming, not cooling.

So one thing scientists can do is directly measure the difference in output across the solar spectrum of a spotless sun, and an active sun. So these differences in solar output of a sun with a lot of sunspots and a sun without spots are not mythical, they are not predicted, they are measured.

So what caused the Little Ice Age if not the reduced sunspot activity?

The old saying is correlation is not causation.

The current best theory that matches not only the when but the where (the little Ice Age was in good part a northern hemisphere phenomena) is volcanic activity the correlates better with the start and stop of the cooling and provides sufficient reduction in solar energy reaching the Earth through the high altitude aerosols of the eruptions to account for the observed temperature drop.

But another is that the lower solar output produced changes in the jet stream which created regionally lower temperatures in the winters, but NOT a global shift in temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

https://www.historicalclimatology.co...n-old-question

The bolded makes me think that you didn't read the article (I know it's long).

I was always curious about the solar connection myself. But it is untrue that we are not putting effort into understanding the sun: we are studying the Sun, learning more about it as we go. The Parker Solar Probe will be giving us a much better understanding of the solar atmosphere. Stereo gives us 3-d (stereo) images of the sun.

https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/

There is also helioseismology, a method of studying the sun buy it's oscillations (sound).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helioseismology

We can also study variations in sunspot activity and climate into the deep past using proxies. The sun produces different amounts of c14 and be10 depending on how much sunspot activity there is. We can measure those changes over time in varves or (for c14) in living things like trees that we can validate their actual age through tree ring chronologies. Very little correlation arises there between variations in sunspot activity and global climate.

Here is a graph of temperature proxies against sunspot activity proxies for the last 10,000 or so years. Some parts of the graph, the correlation looks good. Other parts it is an inverse correlation, other parts random. Overall, there is little correlation with the major global temperature fluctuations and sunspot activity.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41481[/ATTACH]

The bolded is NOT what I said,

and the rest makes me wonder if you read the article. I think you haven't, and are just trying to educate me on the science of the Sun.


At least you haven't implied that I'm stupid, or morally irresponsible. Yet.

I can wait for that...

[MaxVel]

All of what you said is irrelevant and untrue because in practice 99.99% of people don't read 99.99% of published articles. Your idea that the general public is hyper-aware of absolutely everything any part of the media has ever said and has been carefully measuring it for factual accurate over decades, is laughable.

I'm glad you find your strawmen so amusing.

Instead, what has actually happened is simple:

1. Scientists discovered climate change was happening.

2. Big oil and gas companies who have been some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world for the last century, spotted that governments taking action to mitigate climate change might be a threat to their profits.

3. So big oil and gas companies payed a few people to muddy the waters and produce a few crank websites denying climate change, payed some radio talk show hosts to claim its false, got some commentators on TV to question it, and bribed some politicians into denying its real.

4. They make up absurd arguments like you posted above, trying to use the fact that somewhere sometime someone in the history of media published a hyperbolic article that pretty much nobody at the time read or took seriously and which didn't come true, as if that confirmed the anti-climate-change views you've chosen to hold for other reasons.

You're not clearly smart enough to see past your ego and understand what's actually being said. Stop wasting my time.

Oh, and "payed"

[oxmixmudd]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/s...limate-change/

Silencing Greta or mocking her does not alter the fact that our planet is in peril, as is recognized by the vast majority of scientists worldwide.

An interesting fact to note as it relates to what you are saying is that the last time the atmosphere had CO2 levels that were near the current level (~410ppm) the average temperature on the Earth was 3 degrees C higher, but the oceans (due to the fact glacial ice in Greenland was all but gone and large areas of Antarctica had melted) were 60+ feet higher than the are not. IOW, an extended period of 400 ppm historically melted enough ice to raise seas 60+ feet. That is some major impact on our coastal cities, but it will not be expected to happen quickly. Maybe 1000 years. But That is about how long (500-1000 years) a given CO2 concentration hangs around in the atmosphere once it is there.

So there is a real danger than even if we stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere, we could be looking at major changes in sea level over several centuries.

https://thinkprogress.org/carbon-dio...-b435497e1266/

Source: above

Their in-depth analysis of plant fossils and sediments reveal that such CO2 levels were last seen in the late Pliocene Epoch, a time when there were no ice sheets covering either Greenland or West Antarctica, and much of the East Antarctic ice sheet was gone. Temperatures were up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer globally, at least double that at the poles, and sea levels were some 20 meters (65 feet) higher.

© Copyright Original Source

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-t...why-it-matters

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-above-400ppm/

[oxmixmudd]

At least you haven't implied that I'm stupid, or morally irresponsible. Yet.

I can wait for that...

Why would I do that - this is a perfectly reasonable, intelligent discussion. And I thank you for it.

[oxmixmudd]

Can't follow your point Pix.

[MaxVel]

Why would I do that - this is a perfectly reasonable, intelligent discussion. And I thank you for it.

It's usually what happens when people dare to question any aspect of the current 'scientific consensus on global warming'. But you're doing good, so far.


One thing I found interesting from the article is that the Sun's activity may affect cloud formation and thus how much of an affect the Sun has on temperatures. The IPCC view seems to be that the Sun's activity has a minimal effect, but the article makes a case that this is wrong.

The history of climate altering temperature changes in our long-term history seems to correlate with what we know of the Sun's activity, so it just being volcanic activity or something else seems improbable.

[Tassman]

The bolded makes me think that you didn't read the article (I know it's long).

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ts-still-wronghttps://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

[rogue06]

I think you're barking up the wrong tree completely. SeanD's comments are about media outlet reporting (which the media outlets should correct).

Scientists may or may not push for corrections to false reports, some may not because they have jobs and funding to consider; others because they don't have enough influence, others because they don't want to push back against the popular narrative - 'consensus' vs 'deniers'.

science-news-cycle.jpg

[rogue06]

He said that "what she is saying is well substantiated and supported by the vast majority of scientists." That does not mean that her "concerns" are well-grounded in science but what she "is saying" is well-grounded in science."

So the question remains, is she or isn't she "a font of solid information?

smiley waiting-impatient.gif