Our Lazy Solar Dynamo — Hello Dalton Minimum? 571
tetrahedrassface writes "Solar maximum is supposed to be occurring, and everything from satellite communications to your toaster or radio could be affected. The only problem is that this just isn't happening, and NASA continues to revise downward the original prediction. In fact, the new forecast for Solar Cycle 24 is a lot smaller, and is now pegged at almost 40% of what was previously predicted. Recently, two scientists at the National Solar Observatory have followed the lead of a prominent Russian scientist, who almost five years ago forecast a dearth of sunspots and the subsequent cooling of Earth for the next several cycles. With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum, or worse still, yet another Maunder?"
Re:In before the Global Warming crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
CO2 also acidifies the oceans. Global warming isn't the only result of pumping billions of tons of green house gases into the atmosphere.
Guess I picked the wrong decade to.... (Score:4, Insightful)
give up burning oil.
Re:Far-north global warming is still accelerating (Score:4, Insightful)
Fans of data---as opposed to ideology-driven cherry-picking and quibbling---can verify (via daily satellite updates!) that far-north global warming is still accelerating. The relevant site is Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis
Most people strongly tend to cherry-pick and then draw conclusions from it - yet when it involves an above-average hot summer almost no one concerned about global warming complains because it lines up with their ideology. Well, sauce for the goose... you better hope the Russian is wrong.
It is dumb to draw conclusions based on one winter on one relatively tiny section of the globe. Plus local influences and normal variability often drown out the longer-term signal. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, our mid-to-late winter and (especially) spring weather are strongly influenced by the ENSO ("El Niño"). So far we've been having a colder than normal couple of months, and everyone's blaming the current La Niña - but it's probably not a significant factor given the time of year. Nor is it likely the dearth of sunspots - we just happen to be having a cooler-than-normal late fall and early winter. It happens. If February onward are cooler and wetter than normal, then we can talk.
Re:The things that must never be said... (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are correct about the religious-like fanaticism, the problem is that some people cite one of these facts and act as though it debunks every bit of science out there. There are occassions here on Slashdot where someone cites a 100-page page-reviewed scientific article on the effect of CO2, and someone else counters with "but the model could be wrong!" and acts like the combined work of 5000 scientists was suddenly silenced by their off-hand remark.
I see the Al Gore haters are out. (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The things that must never be said... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Yeah, obviously the Sun is a big driver. And if you keep it's heat in more effectively, that would be an issue.
2) "full greenhouse effect" is obtained on Venus. With a nearly pure CO2 atmosphere. It would appear to be hotter there. Much more so than its closer distance to the Sun would suggest.
3) It's very possible the Earth has been "cooling since 2007", and it makes no difference to a larger trend than the fact that Canada has been cooling since August. The temperature would be this wiggly line on the graph, see, and though there are down-wiggles, they are fewer / smaller than the up-wiggles over the longer term. If it were warmer on Sept 23-27th that it was on September 3-9, would you conclude winter was not coming?
4) There's no chance of current computer models being "correct", the question is whether they are a close enough approximation to be useful for making social policy. The computer models of some 20 years ago were considerably more accurate about today's climate than random chance alone would suggest. That gives them scientific credibility and are the reason that climate researchers have increasingly come to believe them.
Re:The things that must never be said... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you considered the possibility that at least some of these claims are not heretical, but simply false; and that the angry reaction from climatologists derives not from any religious fervor but from the frustration of having to refute them time and time again in the face of someone who thinks some reading online gives them expertise equal to years of academic study?
Re:No Sunspots = Starvation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Global climate != Local weather (Score:5, Insightful)
With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum
Why yes, it makes perfect sense to conclude things about decadal-scale global climate trends based on a month's data from 0.05% of the Earth's surface area!
For a global view of the temperature anomaly (vs. a 1951-1980 base period), see this GISS surface temperature analysis [nasa.gov] (that's for November; December data not available yet). So yes, there's a -1 deg C anomaly in Britain, counterbalanced by huge +4 to +10 deg C anomalies across northern Asia and the Arctic.
For a look at the longer-term trends, try this map [nasa.gov] of annual average temperatures for the past ten years vs. the same base period. Guess what? It's getting warmer, despite declining solar activity [solen.info].
The GISS map generator [nasa.gov] is a great tool for exploring these variations.
Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole globe doesn't matter -> what matters are local conditions and specific distributions. Nobody has ever been killed because the average cyclonic activity for a year was up by 2%. Plenty of people get killed by specific storms, even when average cyclonic activity for a year was down.
Now, you may believe that an increase in average global temperature is going to specifically cause more damaging weather events where humans are -> but that's a belief system, not a fact. Put more succinctly, even without any change in the average of global temperature, you can have certain distributions that are very damaging, and other distributions that are very benign. There is no evidence that an increase of average temperature must neccessarily create a more damaging distribution of weather events.
Re:No problem! (Score:4, Insightful)
My 1995 Porsche 911 gets about 28 MPG on the highway if I keep it at under 80 MPH - yeah I know its not 80 MPG but its better than 15 MPG and its a heck of a lot more fun than a Prius or a some other econobox
Re:No problem! (Score:4, Insightful)
Then in a few years when our surprise extension runs out, the Greenhouse will be nice and thick for the return to the typical solar cycle, frying us, too late to ever fix or minimize.
Any excuse to ignore the threat should be taken - damn the consequences just a little later.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Please learn the fact that "the climate" is as far outside of your ability to predict and thoroughly understand as is your apparent grasp on a sense of humor.
Re:No problem! (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember we will never be safe till we halt all change in the Universe. After all change is our fault.
Idiots are good for entertainment.
Re:No Sunspots = Starvation... (Score:2, Insightful)
Open up the original data, and disclose all methodology, otherwise you aren't scientists, but priests.
Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do not take any specific location changes to mean global stuff.
And yet how many stories of individual glaciers and polar bears do climate changers nod their heads to?
Re:I see the Al Gore haters are out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking as a scientist... What science?
Climate change occurs over decades and e.g. temperature changes per year are fractions of a degree.
Show me a model which can accurately predict climate over a couple of decades with 0.1 degree
precision for all available weather stations and we would have an informed discussion.
Science is all about predictive power. Right now all climate predictions and warnings and the like are
made by a bunch of charlatans extrapolating wildly, both climate change advocates and deniers alike.
We do need more climate research but it will not produce believable results for decades if not centuries
and we need to be OK with that because the grand vision is a comprehensive model of all processes
on the planet and their interrelation and impact. Until we get there, climate researchers should STFU
in public. Hacks like Al Gore should be seen for what they are. Period.
Re:No problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been using my fireplace nearly enough lately.
Won't help that much - the carbon sequestered in those logs went in 30-40 years ago. You need to liberate some fossil carbon to get serious, but even at that you're a rounding error (sorry to say).
Perhaps there's a reason it's called "the current ice age"? Cripes, people seem to keep forgetting we're still coming out of the last ice age cycle.
"Oh, the Earth warmed a bit in the past century."
"Yeah - what else were you expecting?"
Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, you should be somewhat wary of trusting Wikipedia on AGW - if you think there's heated debate on the issue at Slashdot that's nothing compared to the editor wars there.
Anyway, on CO2 Science you'll find enough "local" MWP/LIA papers for a nice global integration.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php [co2science.org]
Re:No problem! (Score:3, Insightful)
The one from the 70's that said we were going to freeze? 'Global Warming' from the late 90's where we were going to cook. Or the recently changed to 'Global Climate Change' so that it can cover any change at all.
I think you're remembering it wrong. In the 70's scientists started to worry about the rise in CO2 levels (CO2 was known to be a greenhouse gas since the 19th century.) The pioneering studies were published in that decade.
By the 80's there was also evidence of a temperature rise (theory, prediction, data, confirmation! Science! It works bitches!) Scientists began holding regular multi-disciplinary conferences on the topic, and even the non-science media started to pick up on the "Global Warming" message.
Right-wing politicians in the US, and the world over (Reaganites & Thatcherites), started to worry about the traction the scientists were getting with the general public. So they, and their sponsors, began to wage a campaign against the scientists. A Republican spin doctor created the term "Climate Change" after polling showed that, to the public, "Climate Change" felt less urgent than "Global Warming".
This effort to politicise the science came together in the early 90's in the IPCC, designed to ensure the scientists were made subservient to the politicians (unlike the previous science-only conferences.) They even politicised the name! However, by the time they published, two decades of research has started to make an impact and some countries' politicians accepted the problem as both Real and Important. This allowed IPCC, while crippled, to at least include some genuine science.
Another decade ends, and all political progress has halted. A decade of decreased solar activity, which should have resulted is significant temperature decline, but instead had still rising temperatures. Ten more years of... But you don't care. You didn't read this far. Your eyes glazed over, your mind shut down. "All progress halted." If you haven't been convinced by 30 years of continuous scientific confirmation, you won't ever be convinced.
Some fields of research are ambiguous. You can't tell, at the early stages, which way the science will go, which theory will be supported. Other fields are arrow straight, nearly every finding supports the core hypothesis. Quantum mechanics, big-bang-theory, they were like that. So is climate research. Every year we hit more and more of the "Worst case" numbers in IPCC's models; carbon emissions rising faster than expected, ocean absorption of CO2 declining faster than predicted, sea level rises at the top of the range, etc etc. But you don't care. It's not about science, it's... hell I don't know. Why are you so determined to ignore the science? Why do you trust scientists in other areas, but act like a medieval villager when it comes to climate research?
tl;dr? sfw
Re:In before the Global Warming crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
The great barrier reef is already experiencing the effects of acidification. Parts of the reef near the northern most tip of Australia which used to have every colour of the rainbow 10 years ago when we went diving there are now barren white plains of dead coral and very few fish.
Re:In before the Global Warming crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
A gradual change can be tolerated. Drastic changes not so much. Let me put this in an analogy that is reasonably easy to understand: You can walk down a flight of stairs from the top of a fairly tall building just fine but jumping off the top floor, falling and then making a splat on the ground isn't so safe. It isn't so much the height that is dangerous, it's the sudden stop after the fall that kills.
Re:No problem! (Score:2, Insightful)
yours is alarmism just the same, you only think it is different because it is yours.
Re:No problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Science recently has done a good job of identifying how loose and fast our brains can be with facts. This is how a president like Bush can massively expand the federal government with nary a whisper from Republicans that howl at the first sign of a democrat doing the same thing. Same holds true for a president like Clinton that screwed the unions with NAFTA and got a response from Democrats that I would venture was much different than they would have given a Republican president.
The very instant that something becomes emotionally important to us, beliefs included, the less interested we are in the truth to the extent that it actually affects what information we perceive on a conscious level. It gets filtered out before it gets that far. As an example, years ago NOAA or GISS proclaimed a month to be the "hottest ever". Problem was, due to a technical glitch, they just repeated the numbers from the month before. Viewed skeptically, would it even be possible for the numbers to be EXACTLY the same 2 months running? Unlikely. But it was not the "believers" that discovered this error, it was the "skeptics" or "deniers" if you wish.
In ANY scientific endeavor or theory, it will ALWAYS be the skeptics that have a better chance of seeing the error. Does the above example mean that ALL NOAA data is wrong, or even that their underlying theory is wrong? Of course not. But if you always accept their data and decry the "skeptics" you may end up with more in common with that villager than you would care to admit.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing blind in seeing, comprehending and accepting overwhelming evidence gathered over 30+ years by renown scientists all over the globe. In fact, blindness would be to deny all of this by throwing pseudo-philosophical arguments into the mix.
Re:No problem! (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, because the hypothesis is unprovable (we don't have multiple Earth's to experiment with) and secondly the hypothesis is unfalsifiable, in a strict scientific sense. We're now asked to believe that warming causes cooling. The models that we were told predicted the future centuries ahead, didn't predict harsh winters. They do now of course, because there are so many parameters to twiddle with you can pretty much come up with any projection you like (it's called confirmation bias).
James Hansen. The guy who called coal trains "death trains" and regularly pickets against the opening of power stations (not in China of course, in the US and UK). He's in control of GISS and is responsible for the ridiculous smoothing algorithms they use to smudge temperature across thousands of miles with a couple of temperature stations. He's also the guy who started this whole scare with his evidence to the senate in the 1980's.
I agree it will win out eventually. Who was it who said that science progresses one funeral at a time? That's how paradigms get overturned. The question is whether or not this happens before we end up with pointless political fixes, based on implausible chains of inference (as Lindzen pointed out) and a rolling back of the industrial age.
The point here is that two scientists can argue about Dark Matter, or Dark Energy, or Dark Shikari, and nobody is going to raise my taxes and tell me I can't drive a car to work any more. Political activism and Physics are separate, except when you get into the Nuclear weapons arena. But even there, the hypothesis that nuclear bombs are bad is not particularly controversial.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but we aren't living in a greenhouse. The Earth radiates energy into space. Lindzen thinks sensitivity is of the order of less than 1K, i.e. barely perceptible. The catastrophists (political activists) think it's anything from 4K to 16K. None of them know enough about the climate system to make any predictions, but they publish press releases of their model outputs as if they do. Without AGW, most of them wouldn't have careers.
Re:I see the Al Gore haters are out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as a scientist... What science?
Climate change occurs over decades and e.g. temperature changes per year are fractions of a degree.
Show me a model which can accurately predict climate over a couple of decades with 0.1 degree
precision for all available weather stations and we would have an informed discussion.
Wow, what an arbitrary and divorced from reality idea for testing climate science. Why 0.1 degree precision? Why every single station? There are obviously a number of complex variables to be considered (like, for instance the subject of fluxuations in solar output). Here's a quick science lesson for you. To be legitimate science, something just has to be predictive of future findings. That means if climate scientists make a much simpler prediction, "the average temperature at all stations will be higher for a given year than it was 20 years ago with some statistical probability (say 9 times out of 10)" then that's a valid scientific hypothesis. If future results mesh with that prediction, then you have to give some credence to what they are saying.
What kind of science do you study anyways? Political Science? HA!
Re:I see the Al Gore haters are out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as a scientist... What science?
You're not a scientist if your asking this question. There's a metric assload of peer-reviewed articles, data, and research. Climatology is fairly cross-disciplined in the sciences.
Show me a model which can accurately predict climate over a couple of decades with 0.1 degree
precision for all available weather stations and we would have an informed discussion.
Again, you're not a scientist. Or if you are, you're being disingenuous. You're not going to get that kind of accuracy in climatology. You're going to get a probability distribution, just like when modeling any other chaotic or quasi-chaotic system. I don't here you dismissing quantum mechanics because you can't exactly predict where a particle may be.
Right now all climate predictions and warnings and the like are made by a bunch of charlatans extrapolating wildly, both climate change advocates and deniers alike.
Bullshit. Scientists have been predicting temperature increases for decades. With the advent of more powerful computers, they are now beginning to get to the point where they can look into regional effects. This ranges anywhere from the effects of increased troposphere thickness in tropical regions to the effects of increased sea surface temperatures. You can read the research papers for other predictions if you like.
We do need more climate research but it will not produce believable results for decades if not centuries
and we need to be OK with that because the grand vision is a comprehensive model of all processes
on the planet and their interrelation and impact
Again, you demonstrate that you don't know what you are talking about. We already have comprehensive models that take into account everything from soil moisture to chemical transport and breakdown in the atmosphere. You will NEVER have an exact model. There will ALWAYS be error bars. And if you read the IPCC report they make this very clear.
You can create a simple 0 dimension energy balance climate model that can calculate a good estimate of the global temperature average. You can even make it have a tweak-able parameter for adding and removing the influence of CO2. And this is the simplest, dumbest climate model you can make.
Forecasting the global average temperature is relatively easy and can be done with decent accuracy. However, that doesn't tell you much. Where the bulk of the research is going now is refining HOW that temperature increase will affect regions of the globe. That's a harder question to answer and requires something significantly more complex than a simple 0 dimension model.
Instead of being an ignorant troll you could download and run a climate model yourself. Or better yet, since you apparently think there is a global climate science conspiracy, get a couple of books on climatology and related subjects and write your own model. If you can show that increased CO2 has no impact on climate, you could win a Nobel.