Because Global Warming proponents can't get a do-gooder thrill accepting that the Sun drives the Earth's Climate. And politicians can't set up a carbon tax scam.
Because you can't tax the Sun. Blaming the Sun won't gain you political power. You can't mold your evil desires by blaming the Sun.
Just look at the comments. "Because that isn't true." Wow and that is supposed to change my mind? Where is the science? "You should do research on CO2 and other positive and negative feedback mechanisms." This insinuates that you haven't. Well, emily, I have, and there are two actual facts that PROVE your theory wrong. For over a decade the Earth has been cooling, yet the CO2 level of the Earth has gone up. Now study that! Where did you learn your science? From a clown manual? Or Bill Nye's bag of tricks. Here is your study of CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-...
Is that the kind of science you want to use to rob people of their monies and liberties? Anyone who says that in earnest is sick and evil.
GREENIE SPEAK NONSENSICAL QUOTE OF THE DAY: Trevor, "Because CO2 reacts to temperature AND temperature reacts to CO2, it doesn’t matter which one increases first, the other will always follow."
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! This is the same guy who says that Climate Change and Global Warming are not the same but are the same.
Wow! Has he really flipped the lid this time!? What University did he attend? Merlin's School of Alchemy?
And for Trevor's next trick, he will duplicate Al Gore's turning lies into Gold! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Yep, the sun drives the climate on the earth.
AND, the climate on the MOON.
They're not the same because of the contents of the atmosphere.
Seems that it doesn't take much greenhouse gas to make quite a large difference.
Evidence. Or, more precisely, lack of evidence for the position you claim is true, and a lot of evidence for the position you claim is false.
Of *course* the sun influences Earth's climate. And changes in solar input have initiated most *prior* instances of climate change, but with very few exceptions, there aren't natural factors that significantly influence atmospheric chemistry except as a feedback to other warming. But, scientists who know and understand these things know that we get a better estimate of current temperatures on climate models by including the effects of CO2 than we do by omitting them, by rather a lot. Or, in other words, the climate results we're seeing *don't make sense* except by including anthropogenic CO2 as a forcing.
The 'proponents' have science, data and physics on their side. The deniers have right wing radio dummies on their side. I gotta' go with the guys with the data.
Because if that was the case, our average temperature would be -18 Celsius instead of the current plus 15 Celsius and we have an actual real life example for comparison, the Moon.
Because that isn't true. You should do research on CO2 and other positive and negative feedback mechanisms that drive LONG TERM climate change. Does it make sense to you that the sun should drive climate change? How? Our relative position to our sun has not changed all that much and yes the earth's ellipses changes, to induce long term climate change (google milankovich cycles), but scientists can track climate changes in earth's history and how fast these changes have taken place. The only time our climate has changed this drastically in this short amount of time before has been after a major volcanic or meteoric event.
The Warming Activists aren't able to get funding/Welfare from the Sun.
Because that's not the actual point at issue, and I believe the Solar Mean is actually on the downslope.
Maxx,
I’d be surprised if any global warming proponent (or skeptic, or indifferent person) thought the Sun did not have a role to play in global warming.
What you appear to be doing is completely disregarding the role of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and that’s a very big mistake to make.
The Sun is the source of virtually all heat on Earth (99.97% of it). Our planet is some 150 million km from the Sun and at this distance the Sun’s energy warms the planet by 255°C, that’s enough to give Earth an average temperature of just –18°C (Stefan Boltzmann’s Law).
The greenhouse gases are the mechanism by which some of the Sun’s energy is retained, this causes a further 33°C or warming which gives Earth a habitable average temperature of 15°C.
Remove either the Sun or the greenhouse gases and Earth freezes solid.
The variation in output from the Sun is very small, it’s less than 0.1% from the mean (1363 W/m2/yr ±1) whereas the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere has increased by more than 1.2% in the last 100 years (CO2 by 42%).
The other thing you’re overlooking is the fact that heat energy from the Sun is on a downward trend. If, you were correct and CO2 had no effect, then Earth would have cooled in recent decades, but in fact it’s warmed faster than has ever before been known.
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EDIT: Sorry, forgot to address your second point.
Because CO2 reacts to temperature AND temperature reacts to CO2, it doesn’t matter which one increases first, the other will always follow.
630 million years ago Earth froze solid in an event known as Snowball Earth, it was like this for millions of years. The big freeze ended following millions of years of enhanced volcanic activity that released enough methane and CO2 to initiate global warming, this triggered feedback mechanisms that further enhanced warming until, after anything up to 30 million years, Earth had warmed sufficiently for much of the ice to melt.
This is one of the few examples in nature where greenhouse gases were the primary drivers of temperature. Such events are rare and it’s normally the case that temperature changes have influenced CO2 concentrations. But it does indicate that the relationship between temperatures and greenhouse gases is a two-way one, in which one rises and the other follows irrespective of which is first.
Humans are the first and only source of rapid emissions of greenhouse gases. For a comparison with volcanoes, we released the equivalent of 48 billion tonnes of CO2 last year, volcanoes release an average of just 150 million tonnes per year (one three-hundredth the amount we do).
Natural sources do release more greenhouse gases than we do but this is just one half of the cycle, the other half removes the same amount of these gases and thus natural processes are balanced; unlike humans which only release greenhouse gases.
So you see, it makes no difference which rises first – CO2 or temperatures, and it makes no difference whether the increase is natural or anthropogenic, one will always lead to the other.
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RE: YOUR ADDED COMMENTS (1)
COMMENT 1: It would reach 255K or –18°C without greenhouse gases. I’m sure this is what you meant as I know you know the difference between K and °C.
COMMENT 2: Nothing like 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by water vapour. It’s 53% ±17%. CO2 is between 9% and 26% with the remainder made up from ozone and the other greenhouse gases. The range is large because some greenhouse gases have both direct and indirect radiative impacts, for example, there would be far less warming from ozone if methane weren’t present. There are other overlapping forcings, dependent relationships, chemical reactions etc.
Water vapour is 25 times more prevalent than CO2 when globally averaged. Only in the hottest conditions when the atmosphere has reached saturation vapour pressure could there be 100 times as much H2O as CO2 (i.e. in some parts of the Tropics). In other places there is more CO2 than H2O, in parts of Antarctica for example.
Water vapour absorbs more infrared radiation than CO2 because there’s more of it. It is a very weak greenhouse gas with far lower potential than other greenhouse gases to absorb IR.
COMMENT 3: CO2 taken as a standalone is responsible for about 6°C of atmospheric warming. Of all the CO2 in the atmosphere some 70% is natural, 30% is anthropogenic. Ignoring the tendency of ECS to move toward zero, then 30% of the 6°C of warming = 1.8°C. Given time to equilibrate and removing other influences, this is the amount of warming that would occur consequent to our CO2 emissions (all figures approx due to aforementioned factors).
I’m not aware of any genuine peer-reviewed literature that states CO2 levels (or temperatures if that’s what you meant) do not track with human emissions, please cite examples.
COMMENT 4: Earth has not cooled and the HadCRUT records do not show cooling. Only by cherry picking data in a non-scientific and non-mathematical manner can this be claimed.
You’re assuming that CO2 is the only driver of climates and temperatures. It’s significant but it’s one of thousands of factors, you’re ignoring everything else.
COMMENT 5: I’ve already explained that. If your assumption is true then how could there ever be instances in history where CO2 has driven temperatures. How would Earth have thawed out when it did (namely 60 million years before the orbit of the galactic centre would have warmed the planet enough to melt it). Also, this simple principle can be demonstrated in just about any science lab, you can even do it at home using some basic equipment.
MY COMMENT: Sorry Maxx but you’re presenting bogus and irrational arguments. You’re not dumb so I don’t think you’re doing this in error, therefore you must be doing it on purpose. Why?
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RE: YOUR ADDED COMMENTS (2)
COMMENT 6: I’ve already mentioned the Snowball Earth event in my answer, this ended following a rise in greenhouse gases causing the temps to rise. There’s more about it on Wiki, particularly this part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Ea...
COMMENT 7: We’re not talking about the spectroscopics of single molecules, we’re talking global warming potentials and atmospheric concentrations – very different things.
UPDATE 3: CO2 absorbs in three major bands across a wider range of frequencies than H2O does, in a narrow band under idealised conditions H2O will absorb more IR than CO2 on a molecule for molecule basis, but not across the full range of absorption bands. For practical purposes IR absorption can be considered to be similar, but the fact there’s 25 times as much H2O as CO2 means most warming is caused by H2O. If you were correct then CO2 would, by far, be the most significant contributor to natural warming.
UPDATE 4: I’ve always stated H2O could cause up to 70% of all warming (it used to be 72%), it’s nothing new and it’s not progress. I’ve also always stated that CO2 only causes a few °C of all warming – as I did in my original answer.
UPDATE 5: The paper doesn’t support your argument, it barely relates to it. The content of Hockey Schtick is complete nonsense, it totally misrepresents and distorts what was actually said and supplements this with numerous lies and fallacies (normal practice for that site).
Due to different kinds of pollution.
