I just ran across thisarticle which covers a new discovery by a couple atmospheric scientists. A quote from the article.
So, apparently there is another large mechanism for heat transfer that we knew nothing about. I couldn’t find any information on how much energy or what kind of effect it may have.
Does anyone know what kind of effects this may have?
Slee
I put this in GD instead of General Questions because it involves Global Warming, which always seems to end up as a debate.
I would venture to guess that the amount of heat produced in this process is fairly minimal, or it would have been detected before. Either that, or we had always assumed that the temperature we were reading, coming from the sun, was all coming from one of the sources we knew about. In which case this doesn’t increase the amount of sun-based heat, it just explains part of it.
Either way, it’s unlikely to be related to the global warming discussion, though of course any new discovery does help shrink the margins of error in our simulations of the world around us.
There has to be an invisible sun.
The main implication is that once again, the claims that “the science is settled” and “the consensus is in, the game is over” and “computers can tell us what will happen to the climate in 100 years” have been shown to be among the most unscientific claims possible … every month we learn new and surprising things about the climate, and the game is far, far from over. Climate science is among the youngest sciences, and it would behoove its practitioners, particularly the AGW supporters, to refrain from overblown claims.
It’s the only explanation. :rolleyes:
But it gives it’s heat to everyone.
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done.
Absolutely, science is never completely “settled”, and you should never trust anyone who says it is. But you have to make decisions somehow, so for that you use the best consensus available.
Must be all the hot air expelled arguing and nitpicking global warming during the last decade or so.
With it’s invisible, visible light.
The article is about an energy transfer to the magnetosphere from the solar wind, not the atmosphere. From my reading this will have no effect (or negligible effect) on global warming and really has nothing to do with climate science, bad analogy aside.
Chronos, thanks for the good thoughts.
Since the globe has not warmed in the last decade, what is the urgency? Why do we “have to make a decision”? This urgency is unwarranted by the facts.
Next, I’m not sure what you mean by “the best consensus available”. A consensus means everyone (or in the real world, almost everyone) agrees. How can you have a “best consensus”?
Next, there is no consensus on climate science. There is broad agreement on some things (e.g. that the earth warmed in the 20th century) and wide disagreement on others (e.g how and how much humans affect the climate). False claims of consensus do not bring anything to the table, they only confuse the issue.
Finally, in times of uncertainty, going with the consensus is often not the best move. The best move is often the “no regrets” option. This is to do those things which will help whether the “consensus” is correct or not.
Regarding climate, this means working on protecting people from the vagaries of today’s climate (droughts, floods, etc.), as these are also the feared and much-hyped possible outcomes of global warming. If the world warms, we’re that much better protected … and if the world doesn’t warm, we’re that much better protected.
There is a consensus. There are something like a hundred major scientific organizations which have endorsed the current understanding of climate science (i.e. as embodied by the IPCC reports) and no scientific organizations which have refuted it within the last half-decade, and surveys of scientists have also similarly supported the IPCC reports by a super-majority.
That’s not to say that every scientist agrees, just that a super-majority does. And of course, agreeing that the science is sound still doesn’t mean that you think it’s an issue to be solved or even solvable given the realities of the modern world.
Perhaps you could give us a list of the “hundred major scientific organizations” that have “endorsed the current understanding” … or you could retract the claim … or you could just walk away and hope nobody notices …
But if you do make the list, please distinguish between those organizations that have actually asked their members about the question, and those who have two or three leaders at the top who agree with the consensus and put out a statement without checking with their members. In my experience, the latter is quite common, and the former is quite rare. The American Chemical Society did that, and now a number of the members are up in arms about it …
So no, we have no evidence that a “super-majority” of scientists agrees about anything relating to the CO2 question. The globe has not warmed in the last decade, and no one knows why. Where’s the consensus, where’s the “science is sound” in that?
When you say that the globe has not warmed in the last decade, what do you base that on? Measured against what and over what time scale? And how does that jibe with retreating glaciers…or are you saying that the glaciers are retreating for the most part?
I thought that the fact that the globe was warming was pretty solidly accepted…that the main debate is what the actual mechanism is.
-XT
The IPCC
The EPA
NASA
US Climate Change Science Program
Presidential Office of Science and Technology
International Arctic Science Committe
National Academy of Science
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
InterAcademy Council
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
Australian National Academy
Belgian National Academy
Brazilian National Academy
Cameroon National Academy
Canadian National Academy
Caribbean National Academy
Chinese National Academy
French National Academy
Ghana National Academy
German National Academy
Indonesian National Academy
Irish National Academy
Italian National Academy
Indian National Academy
Japan National Academy
Kenyan National Academy
Madagascar National Academy
Malaysian National Academy
Mexican National Academy
Nigerian National Academy
New Zealand National Academy
Russian National Academy
Senegal National Academy
South Africa National Academy
Sudan National Academy
Swedish National Academy
Tanzanian National Academy
Ugandan National Academy
United Kingdom National Academy
Zambian National Academy
Zimbabwe National Academy
American Association for the Advancement of Science
European Science Foundation
US National Research Council
American Geophysical Union
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
Geological Society of America
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
American Meteorological Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
UK Royal Meteorological Society
World Meteorological Organization
American Quaternary Association
International Union for Quaternary Research
American Astronomical Society
American Institute of Physics
American Physical Society
American Statistical Association
American Association for the Advancement of Science
I presume there to be more, but after those I suspect that you’re getting into small fry.
73% of climate scientists, as individuals, agree that the IPCC report is an accurate overview of the current state of the science.
So far as I can tell, there’s no particular plateau at the end (i.e. the last decade) of this graph, which might explain why the plateau is unexplained.
Well so would you argue that China, India, and Russia are all going to switch to Nuclear power and hybrid cars along with the US?
The US should do everything advocated to mitigate global warming, but that’s because being more efficient and clean is inherently good, not because it’s likely to significantly change the course of climate change. Any slack we put in the system is going to be picked up by other nations who don’t want to pay for new tech and who like cheap fuel like coal.
Hi, intention. Good to hear from you as always.
That is why organizations elect board members and such. So, that they don’t have to have vote directly on every issue. Sure, one could imagine the possibility that a few such organizations might get hijacked…But, that happening to nearly every major scientific organization on the planet? Sounds pretty unlikely to me!
Believe me, if this was anything other than a small but vocal minority, you would be hearing a lot more about it…You’d have members of scientific societies throwing their leadership out in the next elections! (And, that site that you linked to, by the way, is run by Marc Morano, a former aide to Sen. James Inhofe, whose motis operandi is to manufacture the appearance of a grand scientific rebellion against the science on climate change.)
One good possibility why there hasn’t been a warming trend over some carefully-chosen time periods is exactly for the reason that climate models forced with greenhouse gases show similar length periods with the same sort of thing…On short time scales, internal variability is important (and, in this case, it may or may not have had a little help from the solar cycle).
