Solar activity and climate change
The climate change denial industry has rested some of its argument on the link between solar activity and climate change. They argue that increased solar activity is driving the heating of the Earth, or they argue that decreased cosmic rays coming from the sun causes heating because cosmic rays generate clouds that cool the Earth. They say that rather than use computer modelling of the climate, we should look at these simple factors.
However a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society shows that the simple evidence does not support this conclusion, regardless of the computer modelling. Since 1985 temperatures on Earth have risen rapidly but solar activity has declined, as measured by sunspots or brightness. And since 1985 cosmic rays have increased (the Earth’s magnetic field protects us from cosmic rays and it peaked in 1987) but the temperature has increased, whereas more cosmic rays should have resulted in a cooling planet if the skeptics were right.
Thus whichever skeptics theory you subscribe to, the evidence is pointing the other way. Which isn’t to say that the sun’s activity does not influence the climate, it does. It’s just that current warming is not due to variable sun activity, it’s due to us releasing greenhouse gases. Here is their summary:
There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.
July 12th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Great talk at Newtown, Russel. (I had no idea you were so tall!) Let’s keep up the pressure.
Do you intend to do more “finger in the political wind” posts? I feel that, but for the hardcore sceptics (mainly overseas), the real fight here is in reinforcing public opinion, which is broad but yet to be really tested. What are the Greens doing in terms of a communications strategy?
July 12th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Glad you liked the talk. We are nearing the end of one phase of our work, which was the national Climate Defence Tour that Jeanette and I have been doing. Now we need to do some more thinking about where to next. Where would you suggest we focus on for our comms around climate change?
July 12th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I think you can count on highly environmentally motivated people — i.e. the Greens’ natural constituency — to do the right thing without much more than gentle guidance. It’s reaching the other people that’s vital, and I’m fascinated by research coming out of (I think) the Tyndall Centre that says many green campaigns don’t specifically target these groups. With green awareness at a tipping point, it’s time to strike while the iron’s hot.
(Alex Hannant at Vic Uni says this so much better than I can, and he’s got an awful lot of experience from a market research background.)
As you can probably tell, I’m still groping along in these issues, but as I mentioned to you after the talk, I really would like to contribute from a social science angle. For instance, has anyone held in-depth interviews with farmers or business people, to see what they really think about emission reductions? (The ShapeNZ polls whet the appetite but are unsatisfying in terms of rich data.) What about families? Or action research in small ex-urban communities focusing on establishing local climate-friendly projects that would earn them all some carbon credits (car-pooling, distributed energy, etc.)? Education in schools? Also, I haven’t looked into the research on urban wind turbines, but what would the expected uptake be?
You can probably tell that’s just off the top of my head, but one thing I can say for sure: If you’re looking for people to help, I’d be keen to get involved.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
1)..start presenting/demonstrating that the green party is a party of solutions..
suggested topics:..focus/promote the ideas of the govenment being one of the main driver of the changes/reforms needed..
in campaigning on mandating all govt purchases/vehicles/outside purchases/ongoing contracts etc..have environmental impact as a bottom line/imperative in the spending of all govt monies..
campaign strongly on this..it’s a no-brainer..!
2) start getting your heads around the farmed-animals/emmissions/animal welfare/water pollution problems..
campaign for increased fines/rigorous enforcement of the existing prohibitions against dairy farmers just pouring sh*t into our streams/waterways..
(once again..it’s not rocket-science..)
ist step..promote (cross-party) work for a recognition of/dialogue on the problems..
3)..sell/promote the party as a party of compassion/commonsense..by going out and strongly campaigning for/promoting metirias’ medical marijuana bill..
(y’see..the greens have to stop trying to be everything to everyone..and have to define themselves as different from national/labour…not just slightly different blends/versions of them..)
you should grasp two nettles at once..and campaign for the voting age to be lowered to seventeen..
and for first drivers licenses to obtained at age 17..
setting seventeen as that watershed year..
as a practical solution..why not commission work on a ‘how to live green’ website..?..chocka block full of green problems/solutions..
many of the problems we will be facing as a nation..will require national will/cross-party govts/solutions/national sacrifices….
and the greens should work to be a key component/driver in those solutions..
and part of that role must be presenting the radical(?) ideas/discussions that must be held..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 15th, 2007 at 10:17 am
some of youse may be interested in this climate-change/global warming from 1958…
(btw..whatever happened to the flow of grren ideas/tactics hoping to be engendered by ‘dear leaders’ comment/question..?
are there no ideas/tactics to be had..?
(or is it my deodorant/aftershave..?.)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 15th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Sorry PEL. That was uncalled for. I apologise. I just get puffed up on my own self-importance when I’m expressing an opinion that I’m passionate about.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:29 am
russel..still looking for green ideas..?
how about ‘the core green principles for a green future..’..?
all 21 of them..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 16th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
The problem here is that the correlation between solar activity and temperature is very impressive and is *vastly* closer than that between co2 levels and temperature (in fact, over the last 100+ years, there is absolutely no correlation between Co2 and temperature).
So if you are going to assert that a (claimed) slight wobble in the very powerful solar/temperature correlation significantly weakens that theory then, by the same token, you have to concede that the complete lack of any correlation whatsoever between co2 and temperature blows you theory entirely out of the water.
Is that what you are saying? How could it be otherwise?
I await your answer on that question…
From what I can make out this new piece of work is the usual mix of dodgy facts and carefully massaged statistics. For a start, is apparently uses the notoriously unreliable surface temperature record which is subject to a significant upward bias due to the urban heat island effect. There’s a recent initiative to document the condition of the weather stations which make up this supposed temperature record. The findings so far are often shocking. Just take a look at some of these temperature recorders: http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
Any study using such data is worthless. You would first have to identify a subset of high-quality surface data from all that corrupted stuff before you can begin to analyse it.
Also, I understand that this new work conveniently stops at the year 2000. Why is that? The hottest recent year was 1998. Since then every single year has been cooler and the there has been no rising trend; it has been flat. This fits with the observation that the sun’s activity is peaking and we are about to enter a period of significant cooling. The complete absence of any rising trend over the last few years again flatly contradicts your theory.
- “It’s just that current warming is not due to variable sun activity, it’s due to us releasing greenhouse gases.”
Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? And I mean any.
No. No, you don’t. In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary.
To quote Dr David Evans - someone who used to have his own snout in the global warming trough - “There is now no observational evidence to support the notion that global warming is caused by carbon emissions. None. You would think that in over 20 years of intense investigation, after spending $50 billion of government money on climate change, we would have found something! The only current reasons for blaming carbon emissions are the predictions of climate models.”
(http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/d-evans2007.pdf)
Exactly.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Hi Mouldwarp. Some points …
I don’t understand where you get the idea that this study stops at 2000 - Figure 1 of the PDF clearly goes past 2005. Also it is a bit rich of you to claim that pro-AGW proponents are guilty of misrepresentation by missing out recent years, when this is exactly what skeptics have been doing with their graphs missing out all the data since 1980.
And you place a bit too much importance on short term trends - it is not a smoking gun that the years since 1998 have not been as hot, this is just natural variability - it is clear looking at all the years either side of 1998 (e.g. this wikipedia graph) that temperature is trending up, or at least it is clear for anyone with scientific training who is familiar with graphs of naturally variable data that nonetheless still show trends.
Finally there is no proof for the urban heat island effect compromising the temperature record. A number of studies (urban vs rural, or windy nights vs calm nights) have looked in detail into the effect of the urban heat island on the temperature record and it has clearly been proven that UHI is not the cause of temperature increases.
July 16th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
mouldwarp, i think the suns temperature stabilised 50 years ago
perhaps phil should be allowed back in the party and be made campaign manager
, he does make very good points at times, might just need a few people to keep an eye on him
sapient
July 17th, 2007 at 3:27 am
“From what I can make out this new piece of work is the usual mix of dodgy facts and carefully massaged statistics.”
So, you’re saying that these “dodgy facts and carefully massaged statistics” somehow made it past the Royal Society’s peer review process without any of the review editors catching the mistakes — until you came along?
July 18th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
What do you (someone) make of this site:
http://www.trendlines.ca/science.htm
jh
July 18th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
with my web designer and internet consultant hat on:
* It’s not very well designed, it should use less saturated colours and avoid the comic sans font, it’s overwhelming and it could do with more white space and more sub-headings
* It’s not a very popular site, in fact it seems to have no visitors at all:
http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.trendlines.ca
in contrast
http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.realclimate.org
http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.theoildrum.com
* It could do with better organisation into more categories of information with less charts on each page, or more tables of contents to explain what is on each page
* It would be better written in the pyramid style with the first paragraph of each page explaining what information the page contains, although I see that this has been done for each graph, e.g.
http://www.trendlines.ca/urr.htm
so maybe I take that back
with my scientist hat on:
*it seems to do a good job of consolidating a whole lot of weakly related, or unrelated graphs in one place,
* there appear to be some graphs copied from the original source and others that the author of the site has made himself in excel. Given the dedication in his maintenance of his excel graphs you have to give him the benefit of the doubt that the datasets are all correct
hows that?
July 18th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
plum, maybe mouldwarp and BB are saying that all the scientific journals and all the scientific organisations are part of a GW conspiracy - they all get extra government funding to research GW so it is in their self interest to keep the myth going. So they are all complicit in allowing the publication of massaged statistics! And of course all the media channels who accept that AGW is real have a left-wing bias!
who are the loonies and extremists here?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:04 am
With a thirty year lag in the effects of CO2 100 years doesn’t give you that much data, and the correlation has to be offset by that much… by contrast the intensity of insolation has a direct-immediate effect on the climate… which is included in the models and the science.
BJ
July 19th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Martin Durkin, the director of the global warming sceptic film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, concedes that a graph he used of temperatures over the last thousand years ignores data from the last twenty years. In Durkin’s film the endpoint of the graph, produced by a British academic back in the 1980’s, is labelled “now”. Despite being condemned by scientists when it first screened in the UK, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast an edited down version and convened a post-screening discussion panel. In an interview ahead of the panel discussion, Durkin said that it was “absolutely absurd to quibble on when it finishes”. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last two decades. The rights to the film have also been bought by distributors in Germany, Canada, Spain and the United States.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6258
July 19th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Actually that site was linked to on Kiwi blog re peak oil (praising Michael Lynches accuracy) and I wondered looking at the climate section if he was global warming denier > an admission that I’m not up to scratch on the issue.
jh