NASA: The Sun Behind Cyclical Climate Change
John on March 21, 2007 at 12:01 am
Man, did I pick the right moment to become a global warming skeptic. There’s a bumper crop of bad news for GW promoters these days. And the beat goes on, this time courtesy of NASA:
Scientists have traditionally relied upon indirect data gathering methods to study climate in the Earth’s past, such as drilling ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. Such samples of accumulated snow and ice drilled from deep within ice sheets or glaciers contain trapped air bubbles whose composition can provide a picture of past climate conditions. Now, however, a group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth’s longest river.
[snip]
“Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt,” she said. “These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time.”
A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings.
The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
This is not the same argument being made by the author of The Chilling Stars, but it is similar in that both posit changes in the sun’s output as fundamental to global climate change.
[HT: Bryan at HotAir]
Category: Science & Tech |
the sun is big. real scientists noticed it and have still concluded that not all the effects of the last 100 years are attributable. the math is hard (and i’m not talking ‘balance your cheque book hard, if PDE’s and non-linear feedback systems are not part of your day to day vocabulary you need about 2-4 years tertiary math just to understand what they’re on about).
non-scientists should look toward the consensus view to try and gauge the opinion of complicated scientific problems. i can find a crackpot on groups.physics or groups.biology that deny relativity and evolution are credible, it doesn’t make it true and i certainly wouldn’t bet the world on it.
March 21, 2007 @ 12:35 amOn the Payroll of Big Nile and Other Stories to Ch…
And we all know that JPL is just a shill for Big Oil and Big Space. The people there know nothing about climate change or science! They should be asking big-name scientists like David Roberts (almost got a Ph.D. in philosophy) and Laurie David (a v…..
March 21, 2007 @ 6:54 amSure, and now they’ve just concluded that some more of the effects are.
Scientists aren’t as smart as you suppose and the consensus on this issue isn’t as great as you suppose.
March 21, 2007 @ 8:49 amJohn says march 21st
Non-scientists should look to the concensus view…
But even if a non scientist takes even the most cursory look at the data he will see that the upward temperature change is not proportional to co2 in fact there are periods where temp goes down despite increasing co2 emissions.
Even a lemming can work out that we now will all be rinsed for taxes that are totally irrelevant.
Thank god for some reasoned debate.
What a shame a similar process did not start before we concluded that the ozone hole was also our fault, Again you would have to suspect some equally bad pseudo science was around at the time.
March 21, 2007 @ 11:04 amAnd in other news, Al Gore today addressed Congress and warned them that they must take immediate action on global warming in order to save the planet. Oh, and he’s not running for president in 2008. But he’s the world expert on our impending doom and how to stop it. Oh, and he’s not running for president in 2008. Sure he’s not.
A friend asked me what politicians have to gain from preaching global warming catastrophe. Is it that hard to see? Make the people afraid and tell them that they need to seek a political solution through a political leader. Who’s that leader going to be? The one who brings them the most fear and promises what they want to hear. Michael Crichton hit this point right on the head in “State of Fear”.
“But what does Crichton know? He’s not a climate scientist.” Neither are most of the scientists who form the “consensus” on global warming. He has as much training in climate science as they do…but he’s done more research. And as he correctly points out, scientific truth is not based on consensus. It’s based on hypothesis, falsification and synthesis.
Is the global warming scare nearer to collapse than we’d thought? I’d expected to last a good number of years, but gloom-and-doom fads come and go like the wind.
March 21, 2007 @ 5:27 pm