Is Solar Activity causing climate change?

[Dean]

I would be surprised if this story has not even been mentioned by anyone else on this forum as-of-yet. Maybe it has and I'm just not looking hard enough. However, I encountered this headline all over the internet: "Watching A Green Fiction Unravel". This may sound familiar, right? What is more, if you type the words "Watching A Green Fiction Unravel" into Google, I must say, you will not believe it. The first 5 or so pages are just re-posts of the same story, and not a single distinctly critical page until fifth Google page, and it took some hunting for! Talk about an echo-chamber effect.

And anyway, this appears to be the current state of the climate bogus-"debate" going on on the internet these days, on thousands of blogs, and unreliable news mills, etc. What they are claiming, and what this article is claiming, is that, apparently based on research from CERN; cosmic rays from the Sun, apparently, are responsible for Global Warming. :lol:

Link: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/583272/201108301816/Watching-A-Green-Fiction-Unravel.aspx

EXCERPT: ~~emphasis added.

Watching A Green Fiction Unravel

Posted 08/30/2011 06:16 PM ET
Science: Experiments performed by a European nuclear research group indicate that the sun, not man, determines Earth's temperature. Somewhere, Al Gore just shuddered as an unseasonably cool breeze blows by.

The results from an experiment to mimic Earth's atmosphere by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, tell researchers that the sun has a significant effect on our planet's temperature. Its magnetic field acts as a gateway for cosmic rays, which play a large role in cloud formation.

Consequently, when the sun's magnetic field allows cosmic rays to seed cloud cover, temperatures are cooler. When it restricts cloud formation by deflecting cosmic rays away from Earth, temperatures go up.

Or, as the London Telegraph's James Delingpole delicately put it:

"It's the sun, stupid." [. . .]

So... this is, as potholer54 said: "the latest urban myth to do the rounds of the internet". - And it also appears to have been accentuated by the likes of Delingpole, et al. A world-renowned BSer. Any journalism involving him is, in my eyes, disqualified for any practical purpose.

It's also a downright scary foreshadowing of the misappropriation of science that is bound to occur almost over night (no doubt) during the Sarah Palin Presidential Administration. :facepalm: The U.S. 2012 Presidential Race promises to be a very interesting and probably hilarious one, when it comes to issues such as climate change, or even Evolution ...

But never mind. This story is anti-science hype of the most obvious and blatant order, as is why I found it appropriate to post it here. I will leave it to Phil Plait to explain why the argument is garbage.

The gist is this: Cosmic rays create aresols, the stuff in the air that water vapor clings on to to make clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight back into space, including infrared wavelengths that generate heat. So these new tests show that cosmic rays can actually increase clouds, and therefor reduce warming.

Except the rest of the facts just don't back this up. We have seen the mean global temperature rise over the past 150 years. The sun cycles every thirteen years. So there should be a correlation between mean temperature and the solar cycle, if global warming critics are right. There isn't a correlation. The data should be obvious to everyone if the sun had that much affect on global warming.

No, I think we can still count the rate of CO2 humans are pumping into the atmosphere as the main reason the earth is warming. The guys who are making such bold and outrageous claims cannot just blame Volcanoes either - which is usually their next fallback position - because we statistically pump 100x more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they do.
I suppose that this is simply what happens when politically centered opinions look for science to back up what they already believe: jump the gun or get it wrong. My personal observation is that religious "fundamentalism", whether it be theistic, cultist, social, economic, etc - often has a strong correlation with reality-denial, especially when people with such absurd views get into positions of power....

Indeed, one often hears, as I do, people saying things like they are not "believers" in anthropogenic climate change, or that they don't "believe" that climate change is caused by human activity, within recent years. My personal inclinations aside (and my keen environmentalist ethics) ...
They might as well state that they reject Darwinian evolution, plate tectonics, or the force of gravity. Pseudoscientific denial of anthropogenic global warming isn't a matter of "belief" when it flies in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Scientific opinion on climate change is nearly unanimous in affirming APG:

• 
  "National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed the current scientific opinion, in particular on recent global warming. These assessments have largely followed or endorsed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) position of January 2001 which states:
  
  An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system... There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.
  
  No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion... ."

And I suppose I will leave you with that. What do you think about this sort of Pseudoscience, as it should be rightly called? I get the impression that the issue is getting to the point where it is rather like the non-exist Evolution/Creationism debate. In other words: the mass media hype seems to seek to create the image of a controversy within the scientific community on climate change that does not in fact exist, just as creationists do, even when 95%+ of the scientific community accepts evolutionary theory. It seems rather like that to me. Yup, I am a Global Warming "extremist". If we carry on as we are now, the way I see it, we will have our first panoramic visions of a true 6th mass extinction by 2050.

Goodnight, dear hominids.....
Your turn.

 

[Dean]

A minor note:

I guess it would be helpful to post the full reference to Potholer54's video here:

 

[Unwardil]

Ah this.

I agree with the facts. Humans very probably causing global warming. I think there's still a little bit of debate going on as to what exactly that's going to mean in the long run, i.e. will it cause a mass tropical age like before the dinosaurs or is it going to actually kick start an ice age (correct me if I'm wrong on that one) but in the short term it means more nasty weather, especially in coastal areas and everyone's basically agreed on that point.

I think the argument for the ice age is that if the gulf stream gets diverted by warming temperatures then Europe will actually get a hell of a lot colder in the winter, despite an overall rise in temperature and Scandinavia would grow a huge glacier that would roll down into the North Sea... Or something like that, I know it's a hypothesis at any rate, I just don't know how legitimate it is.


Not my problem though because I disagree with every single proposed solution.

Burning less gas isn't an option. You might as well tell lions to stop eating zebras because they're consuming them faster than the Zebras can breed and eventually they'll all go extinct and then the Lions will too. Well guess what, there IS no other lion food in the area and the lions aren't going to go hungry so things are going to be what they're going to be. The lions aren't going to start murdering 1 in 8 lions either just so that the other 7 can live. A new food source needs to be introduced.

Now in this metaphor, Lions are big business and the Zebras are oil. The world economy needs to find another way to feed it's self. That ain't renewable energy. Not without a whole crap ton of infrastructure investment anyway. Maybe if we start building now in twenty to twenty five years we'll have built enough renewable energy infrastructure to finally kick the oil habit for good, at least in the G-8 nations, but what about the rest of the world?

It's just not gonna happen. Not any time soon is the point and this is a TIME equation that we're going on. If you're looking at mass extinctions in 40 years time, 25 years is too long. By the time we get there, it'll be too late. We're driving towards a cliff at 80 miles an hour and pulling the renewable energy handbrake can slow us down to 20 miles an hour before we go over the edge. About the only thing it might do is buy us precious seconds to make another decision.

Now, incidentally, I think you're being remarkably alarmist about what climate change can do to humanity. We didn't just survive the last Ice age, we completely thrived during it, so much so that we probably caused the extinction of many other species because we were so very well suited to dealing with an ice age, but it would certainly be a global catastrophe to be certain with huge population displacements and famine and yada yada yada.

And that's what I propose we do about it. Prepare for the worst, don't just haul back on the handbrake and hope for the best. When you see the edge of the cliff getting closer, your last ditch resort is going to be to bail and hit the ground rolling. That's gonna hurt at the very least and you might leave it too late and go over with the car. And either way, you're going to be left bloodied and bruised and WITHOUT A CAR. (Civilization is the car in this metaphor)

My proposal is we build a falling-over-a-cliff-proof car.

What does this mean?

It means we do the renewable energy thing because that will buy us time. It means we take the next step in the industrialization of farming. Farming hasn't every really changed since we first discovered you could plant a bunch of the same kinds of plants together and protect them and then eat them later. It needs to come in out of the cold and get the proper factory make over. We can already do this, we just don't for some reason.

Cities should be able to produce all their own food locally, grown hydroponically in multi layered factories. There is absolutely no reason why not and every reason why we should.

1: Food safety. With 100% control over the growing and harvesting conditions, the risk of any kind of ecoli spread on food will be marginalized and much easier to contain if it happens.

2: Food distribution will no longer have to take weeks of land and air transport, it will take minutes of transport by dedicated rail line from factory to distribution centers and then by small truck from distribution centers to stores.

3: Food Quality. Because food will be grown locally, it will be harvested at a date far closer to the time you'll actually eat it. No more picking fruit early to ripen on the back of a truck.

4: Supply control. All the guess work about yields will be done away with. A factory will have a known quota of food it can grow in a given amount of time. If you need more food, build more factories. Easy, predictable, controlled. Rain fall? Irrelevant. Days of sun? Irrelevant. Tropical storms? Irrelevant. Plagues of locusts? Bring it on bitch!


With that retrofitting of the farming industry, one of the really really scary things about climate change, that of affecting growing seasons will no longer be an issue. The food supply would be guaranteed.

We need to do the same thing with water, not least of all to irrigate the crops in the new food factories. Pipe in sea water and desalinate it on site. Yes, it's a massive expenditure but if they do it for oil then fuck it, they can do it for water too. Use geothermal energy to boil the water and you can even make electricity out of it, maybe even enough to pay for the pipe line. Yes, I know that's an engineering nightmare and that salt water does terrible things to almost every building material imaginable but that's an engineering problem to be solved by throwing lots of money at it. If they can bring oil up from 3 miles beneath the ocean then goddamnit they can pipe in sea water 1000 miles over land and desalinate it. I don't really care how, it needs to happen.

And with those 3 things in place, I think we could deal with shitty weather and rising oceans, I really do. Those things by themselves are not so frighting. I live in Canada, I know from shitty weather. Yeah we bitch and moan about it but life goes on. Drive this car off a cliff and it might get banged up and you might have wished you weren't inside it at the time, but turn it over and it'll keep on driving and you'll be alive to drive it.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Energy.

There's this notion that transporting something halfway around the world is fantastically wasteful of energy. This satisfies "common sense", but it is hardly accurate. Different areas have different growing conditions that radically alter the energy required to get a yield. You could easily raise a hundred sheep in New Zealand and transport them to England for the same energy cost as raising one locally.

Do you have any idea how much energy these "multi layered factories" would burn for the sun lamps alone? The energy "savings" would easily be in the negative four digits of percentage.

 

[Unwardil]

And what happens when a typhoon that nobody predicted hits newzealand and wipes out the entire sheep population?

I'm talking about making our metaphorical car so tough that you can drive it off a cliff and it'll keep on driving. It probably won't be very good on gas as a result, that's not my concern. My concern is cliffs and the driving over of said cliffs. Make it driving-off-a-cliff-proof first, then make it efficient on gas. An economy that depends on separate regions specializing in producing the bare essentials of living is incredibly susceptible to climate change. That's why climate change is such a big fucking deal, because it makes that kind of economy untenable. My solution makes that problem go away.

I don't care if you have to build 50 new nuclear stations in north america alone just to power these damn things, those can be replaced with better alternatives once better alternatives become available. Hell, that would create high tech jobs in two fields at once, the point is it can be done. It is a solution that can work. What cannot be done is telling the world to just stop burning oil and go back to a pre industrial revolution co2 output. Even if it could be done, it's unclear that it would have any effect. That is what ALL the solutions to this problem share is that they are not solutions. Everybody driving a hybrid is not a solution. Everybody getting a windmill and solar panels on their house is not a solution. Revamping the world economic system to be one that is immune to the fickle elements nature can throw at us is a solution.

And it's one that is going to be necessary at some point regardless. What say it all works out and we actually reverse global warming. What do we do when the next meteor hits? Or the next super volcano goes off? Are you going to just stop driving your cars then? I think not. You'll be very happy to know that your food doesn't need sunlight to grow because you won't be seeing the sun for quite a long time and by the way, all the stupid solar panels you put on your roof don't work either because most of the year they'll be covered with ice. AGW is not the only kind of climate change out there. The earth goes hot and cold all the time, we might as well be ready for it.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

This seems... excessive. While there is certainly merit to planning for disaster, what you're proposing is a radical restructuring of a fundamental part of the economy based on possible disaster, at ridiculously fantastic expense. I couldn't even begin to estimate the costs of this, but it would be fairly safe to say that governments would have to severely cut core service areas to get the money and manpower.

If a better solution is needed, it will be implemented - once there's actually some basis for that change that reasonably covers the cost. People have predicting the collapse of farming for centuries and proposed all kinds of solutions; things aren't going to change until there is some actual (as opposed to hypothetical, however likely) reason to do so.

 

[Unwardil]

Right, but in the mean time, why not fund projects of this nature to places in the world where farming has already collapsed? Places such as Africa, where there is no well established agriculture and where there are an awful lot of problems associated with growing anything at all across vast areas of the place.

Or hell, what about in Las Vegas or anywhere in Nevada for that matter where fresh water is already at a premium or in the midwest where irrigation for standard farming has completely depleted the ground water. Pipe is some friggin sea water already and you'll have solved the problem because in the mid west you really don't need the kind of ridiculous measures I'm talking about. Europe does, it absolutely does if the climate change alarmists are even half right, but the Central U.S. doesn't. They'll get plenty of sun. What they won't get plenty of is consistent seasonal rainfall and that's already a problem and always has been. That's why irrigation is needed in the first place.

So where is the trans-continental sea water pipeline already? We already need this, why isn't under construction?!

And even if there weren't some looming disaster, I'd still say do it anyway just because it can be done. There is no harm that can be done by experimenting in this method of agriculture, only good can result from it. What it will be, if forced to happen quickly, is needlessly expensive... but get a few pilot projects running now to get the kinks worked out and then if it becomes necessary in the future to expand such a project, most of the practical research and leg work will already have been done.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

Well people are already working on the colonization of Mars but fail to lower their noses a bit and take a look what should be done here on earth first..

 

[Unwardil]

Actually I'd be all for that as well. I want a space elevator too and space station colonies built out of the husks of depleted mining asteroids. The earth is a death trap and while it has spawned plenty of life, it's been ruthless about systematically wiping it all out again. Humanities best chance for survival is to take to the stars and spread as quickly and as rapidly as we can to every nook and cranny of the cosmos we can get to... You know, eventually.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Actually I'd be all for that as well. I want a space elevator too and space station colonies built out of the husks of depleted mining asteroids. The earth is a death trap and while it has spawned plenty of life, it's been ruthless about systematically wiping it all out again. Humanities best chance for survival is to take to the stars and spread as quickly and as rapidly as we can to every nook and cranny of the cosmos we can get to... You know, eventually.

We can bring the love and caring of the human race to another planet -
you know, untill we break that one too. Then we can just keep on going and going with the whole "Spreading into the Universe" thing.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

There's this notion that transporting something halfway around the world is fantastically wasteful of energy. This satisfies "common sense", but it is hardly accurate. Different areas have different growing conditions that radically alter the energy required to get a yield. You could easily raise a hundred sheep in New Zealand and transport them to England for the same energy cost as raising one locally.
.

Fair point. Really bad example. My home county of Yorkshire is famous for its sheep farming.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Right, but in the mean time, why not fund projects of this nature to places in the world where farming has already collapsed? Places such as Africa, where there is no well established agriculture and where there are an awful lot of problems associated with growing anything at all across vast areas of the place.

Did you miss the part about ruinous costs? If they don't have enough money for regular food prices, how would they have enough for the ridiculous costs of your pet projects?

Or hell, what about in Las Vegas or anywhere in Nevada for that matter where fresh water is already at a premium or in the midwest where irrigation for standard farming has completely depleted the ground water. Pipe is some friggin sea water already and you'll have solved the problem because in the mid west you really don't need the kind of ridiculous measures I'm talking about. Europe does, it absolutely does if the climate change alarmists are even half right, but the Central U.S. doesn't. They'll get plenty of sun. What they won't get plenty of is consistent seasonal rainfall and that's already a problem and always has been. That's why irrigation is needed in the first place.

So where is the trans-continental sea water pipeline already? We already need this, why isn't under construction?!

This is already under consideration, particularly for the Southwest. There's a few reasons why it's not being done right away; environmental impact and cost are the biggest considerations.

And even if there weren't some looming disaster, I'd still say do it anyway just because it can be done. There is no harm that can be done by experimenting in this method of agriculture, only good can result from it. What it will be, if forced to happen quickly, is needlessly expensive... but get a few pilot projects running now to get the kinks worked out and then if it becomes necessary in the future to expand such a project, most of the practical research and leg work will already have been done.

It is being experimented on today. These experiments are called "grow ops" and produce illegal drugs, mostly marijuana. Security and the high sale value justify the added expense. It's not like growing things indoors is a mysterious process.

Fair point. Really bad example. My home county of Yorkshire is famous for its sheep farming.

Huh? Your link doesn't say anything about energy costs. The fact that Yorkshire is known for raising sheep doesn't mean they can do so with a high degree of energy efficiency, or in sufficient volume to satisfy demand.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Huh? Your link doesn't say anything about energy costs. The fact that Yorkshire is known for raising sheep doesn't mean they can do so with a high degree of energy efficiency, or in sufficient volume to satisfy demand.

Did you actually click the link? Do you really think that think that the UK would be the world's fourth largest producer of sheep meat if it were so inefficient to raise sheep here? We are a small country and agricultural space is at a premium!

Edit: Also the UK has a broadly similar climate to New Zealand. Where are these alleged huge energy economies coming from? Surely not scale of production alone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_New_Zealand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_the_United_Kingdom

Second edit: According to Wikipedia you were over an order of magnitude out. New Zealand is 4 times more energy efficient than the UK in terms of sheep meat production, not 100 times. This seems to me to be a far more realistic figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_miles#Energy_used_in_production_as_well_as_transport

 

[Prolescum]

Oi Arthur, before getting sucked into another climate change thread, how about a response in your own one? :lol:

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Oi Arthur, before getting sucked into another climate change thread, how about a response in your own one? :lol:

I wasn't even debating the idea that energy consumption is more complex than mere "food miles." It just struck me that his example seemed way too extreme and it turns out that it was.

 

[Prolescum]

Oi Arthur, before getting sucked into another climate change thread, how about a response in your own one? :lol:

I wasn't even debating the idea that energy consumption is more complex than mere "food miles." It just struck me that his example seemed way too extreme and it turns out that it was.

I'm sure Arthur will acknowledge his error.

 

[Unwardil]

@Arthur

About Growops:

No, they're not really the same thing. That would be like saying people growing vegetables in their gardens is equatable with a full scale mega farm. They are not the same thing. They use the same concepts, but scale is very important. Growops are minuscule compared to what I'm talking about and whenever you shrink something down like that, you lose efficiency. Growops have also now have the benefit of vast quantities of scientific experimentation applied to them and generally steal their electricity and so are unconcerned with the energy costs of the lamps they use. This is why I say the first one would be a giant money sink and would need to be funded by an investor(s) who could afford to lose a lot of money on the first or second generations so that they could make a metric shit ton on generations 3 and up. A Gates or a Branson. Except they're already doing awesome stuff at the moment so I won't bug them for this, but someone on that level of wealth needs to step up and take the hit for something like this to work.

And when I suggested building one in africa, I was suggesting someone rich should take a bunch of money, make an agreement with an african nation and build one there using local workers as much as possible and then train local workers to run the place and distribute food etc. I imagine there are a lot fewer environmental considerations in the middle of a desert, taxes are lower, work costs are lower. Might be more expensive getting the building materials out there but hey, just an idea.

About the pipeline:

Good, bout friggin time. Now make one everywhere.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Second edit: According to Wikipedia you were over an order of magnitude out. New Zealand is 4 times more energy efficient than the UK in terms of sheep meat production, not 100 times. This seems to me to be a far more realistic figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_miles#Energy_used_in_production_as_well_as_transport

Ah, quite so. Even so, the energy savings on a boatload of sheep is more then enough to get it halfway across the world. My point remains.

Growops are minuscule compared to what I'm talking about and whenever you shrink something down like that, you lose efficiency.

Nope. You might get some economy of scale on climate control or fertilizer or other such incidentals, but not on your two biggest ticket items. The energy to desalinate the water (if you're still going with that) and the energy to run the sun lamps necessarily scale in a straight linear fashion with the amount of crops you're growing. Every single crop needs the same amount of water and solar energy, after all. In fact, the energy for the sun lamps get progressively worse as you add more levels to your building and the percentage of crops using the Sun drops.

And when I suggested building one in africa, I was suggesting someone rich should take a bunch of money, make an agreement with an african nation and build one there using local workers as much as possible and then train local workers to run the place and distribute food etc. I imagine there are a lot fewer environmental considerations in the middle of a desert, taxes are lower, work costs are lower. Might be more expensive getting the building materials out there but hey, just an idea.

You're putting your food production - which probably represents a major fraction of the food produced in the region - into a single building which is hooked up to its own massive generator. Do you see some potential problems with this setup?

 

[Dean]

Well people are already working on the colonization of Mars but fail to lower their noses a bit and take a look what should be done here on earth first..

Space exploration will not be needed, so long as the damage done to this planet is repaired. This, however , seems unlikely.

 

[Dean]

A development that's relevant here ...
BBC One has just produced a new nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough!

Frozen Planet is an attempt to increase awareness of an ecosystem in crisis via a more nuanced, visceral, and well-modulated approach than that employed by, say, An Inconvenient Truth. View clip excerpts HERE.

Frozen Planet Trailer - "A World Beyond Imagination" - BBC One

• "Sir David authors "On Thin Ice", the seventh film of the series, which explores the effects of climate change on the polar regions and the lengths that scientists are going to, to understand it. Some regions, like the Antarctic Peninsula, have warmed significantly in the years since Sir David first visited them. He explores what this means, not just for the animals and people of the polar regions, but for the whole planet."

It is a seven part documentary series, to be aired in Britain each Wednesday at 9:00pm. For those of us like myself;' with UK region IP Addresses, the first episode is also available on BBC I Player for the time being. The prospects of this series look exciting indeed. :geek: