Space Forum / Astronomy / December 2006

The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame

global warming: "poppycock"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sShee
t=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

To think that the Sun might have a relationship to global warming ?
Nobody's going to give you money to fund your research grant based on
that and it's not going to negatively affect the American economy, so
it's a risky scientific step.

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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.

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."

Flares on the giant fireball 333,000 times Earth's mass...   CometH of
King Ahmed Raisuli is near
http://news.com.com/2300-1_3-6143726-1.html

Awesome pictures
http://news.com.com/2300-1_3-6143726-6.html?tag=ne.gall.pg

Sun vs man?

Same old idiotic blah, blah, blah, WartPlug!

Saul Levy