On 5/28/06, Geoff < teppich_maus@yahoo.de > wrote:
Sun to Blame for Global Warming
by John Carlisle
Those looking for the culprit responsible for global warming have
missed the obvious choice - the sun. While it may come as a
newsflash to some, scientific evidence conclusively shows that the
sun plays a far more important role in causing global warming and
global cooling than any other factor, natural or man-made. In fact,
what may very well be the ultimate ironic twist in the global
warming controversy is that the same solar forces that caused 150
years of warming are on the verge of producing a prolonged period of
cooling.
The evidence for future cooling is supported by considerable
scientific research that has only recently begun to come to light.
It wasn't until 1980, with the aid of NASA satellites, that
scientists definitively proved that the sun's brightness - or
radiance - varies in intensity, and that these variations occur in
predictable cyclical patterns. This was a crucial discovery because
the climate models used by greenhouse theory proponents always
assumed that the sun's radiance was constant. With that assumption
in hand, they could ignore solar influences and focus on other
influences, including human.
That turned out to be a reckless assumption. Further investigation
revealed that there is a strong correlation between the variations
in solar irradiance and fluctuations in the Earth's temperature.
When the sun gets dimmer, the Earth gets cooler; when the sun gets
brighter, the Earth gets hotter. So important is the sun in climate
change that half of the 1.5° F temperature increase since 1850 is
directly attributable to changes in the sun. According to NASA
scientists David Lind and Judith Lean, only one-quarter of a degree
can be ascribed to other causes, such as greenhouse gases, through
which human activities can theoretically exert some influence.
The correlation between major changes in the Earth's temperature and
changes in solar radiance is quite compelling. A perfect example is
the Little Ice Age that lasted from 1650 to 1850. Temperatures in
this era fell to as much as 2° F below today's temperature, causing
the glaciers to advance, the canals in Venice to freeze and major
crop failures. Interestingly, this dramatic cooling happened in a
period when the sun's radiance had fallen to exceptionally low
levels. Between 1645 and 1715, the sun was in a stage that
scientists refer to as the Maunder Minimum. In this minimum, the sun
has few sunspots and low magnetism which automatically indicates a
lower radiance level. When the sun began to emerge from the minimum,
radiance increased and by 1850 the temperature had warmed up enough
for the Little Ice Age to end.
The Maunder Minimum is not an isolated event: it is a cyclical
phenomenon that typically appears for 70 years following 200-300
years of warming. With only a few exceptions, whenever there is a
solar minimum, the Earth gets colder. For example, Europe in the
13th and 15th Centuries experienced significantly lower temperatures
and in both cases the cold spells coincided with a minimum. Similar
correlations were found in the 9th Century and again in the 7th
Century. Since 8700 B.C., there have been at least ten major cold
periods similar to the Little Ice Age. Nine of those ten cold spells
coincided with Maunder Minima.
There is no reason to believe that this 10,000-year-old cycle of
solar-induced warming and cooling will change. Dr. Sallie Baliunas,
an astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics and one of the nation's leading experts on global
climate change, believes that we may be nearing the end of a solar
warming cycle. Since the last minimum ended in 1715, Baliunas says
there is a strong possibility that the Earth will start cooling off
in the early part of the 21st Century.
Indeed, it could already be happening. Of the 1.5° F in warming the
planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that
increase, or one degree, occurred between 1850 and 1940. In the last
50 years, the planetary temperature increased at a significantly
slower rate of 0.5° F - precisely when dramatically increasing
amounts of man-made carbon dioxide emissions should have been
accelerating warming. Further buttressing the arguments for future
cooling is the evidence from NASA satellites that the global
temperature has actually fallen 0.04° F since 1979.
Of course, it is impossible to precisely predict when solar radiance
will drop and global temperatures will begin falling. But one thing
is certain: There is little evidence that mankind is responsible for
global warming. There is considerable evidence that the sun causes
warming and will most likely stimulate cooling in the not so distant
future.
# # #
John K. Carlisle is the Director of The National Center for Public
Policy Research's Environmental Policy Task Force. Comments may be
sent to JCarlisle@nationalcenter.org.
SPONSORED LINKS
United states Political parties United states mint United state patent United states patent and trademark United state boarding schools
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "human-ignorance" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
human-ignorance-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service .
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "CanYoAssDigIt" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
CanYoAssDigIt-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
No comments:
Post a Comment