Arguments
What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system?
What the science says...
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Mars and Jupiter are not warming, and anyway the sun has recently been cooling slightly. |
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Climate Myth...
Other planets are warming
"[E]vidence that CO2 is not the principle driver of warming on this planet is provided by the simultaneous warming of other planets and moons in our solar system, despite the fact that they obviously have no anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
Mars, Triton, Pluto and Jupiter all show global warming, pointing to the Sun as the dominating influence in determining climate throughout the solar system." (Ian McClintock - PDF, page 8)
At a glance
Experienced students of climate science denial will be familiar with many of the arguments that contrarians use. But every now and then you come across a document so crammed with such talking points that they're like raisins in a Christmas pudding. So it is with the 8-page offering containing the above quote, dating from June 2009.
But 2009 is a long time ago now. So much so that one of the big statements in that document:
"With the Sun now entering a ‘quiet’ phase, it is anticipated that this cooling trend is likely to continue until Sun activity increases."
is self-evidently a complete fail, given that according to NOAA, all of the ten warmest years in a data record stretching back to the late 19th century have been since 2010.
That the document is a complete fail, as evidenced by the above quote, is one thing. But how about the claim that the other planets are warming? This is a weird one, given the impossible expectations demanded of those tasked with recording temperatures here on Earth. Accusations of badly-sited weather stations, data manipulation and similar conspiracy-theories abound out there in various dimly-lit corners of cyberspace. But then you get a document from the same stable that claims Pluto is warming up. What's that based on?
Pluto takes 248 years to complete a single orbit around the Sun. Since the body was discovered in 1930, a simple calculation shows we've had the chance to point our telescopes at it for 37.5% of a Plutonian year, so if the place had four seasons then we've not yet seen half of them.
Apart from remote observations made in 1988 and 2002, we did send the New Horizons NASA spacecraft out there in 2006, to make a flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015. It collected lots of useful data in the process, but three sets of observations over 27 years means just what?
Twenty-seven years is just one ninth of a single year on Pluto. On Earth that would be 40 days. What could you say about the climate from that? Wild and unsubstantiated claims, based on very little data, might fool some people but the advantage these days is that they can be fact-checked and quickly. Nonsensical statements thereby reveal themselves to be just that.
Finally, in the 2009 document, all talking-points converge on a single hypothesis - that the Sun is responsible for the current global warming. Only one problem with that, but it's a huge one. Solar energy output is expressed as 'total Solar irradiance' (TSI) and is easily measured by satellites. Since 1980, TSI and global temperatures have diverged. TSI has decreased by a measurable amount, while the global temperature has continued on its erratic but upwards pathway.
It's not the Sun - it's our cranking out of greenhouse gases in their tens of billions of tonnes every year, on and on and on.
Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!
Further details
This argument is part of a greater one that other planets are warming. If this is happening throughout the solar system, so the argument goes, it must be the sun causing the rise in temperatures – including here on Earth.
This easily dismissed hypothesis depends so much on sparse information – what we know about the climates on other planets and their history – mostly gleaned in the past few decades. Yet its proponents resolutely ignore the most compelling evidence against the notion, specifically that over the last fifty years the sun’s output has decreased slightly: it is radiating less heat. We can measure that heat energy coming from the Sun with good accuracy, both from Earth or from orbit above it. The discrepancy between the facts and the sceptical argument that the sun is causing the rise in temperatures is therefore rather hard to ignore (fig. 1).
Fig 1: Another 'divergence problem'! Global temperatures plotted against total Solar irradiance, 1880-2020. Graphic: NASA-JPL/Caltech.
But if the sun’s output has diminished a bit, then what is causing other planets to warm up? Or perhaps the better question is: are they warming at all?
The planets and moons that are claimed to be warming constitute eight out of dozens of large bodies in the solar system. Some, like Uranus, may be cooling. All the outer planets have vastly longer orbital periods than Earth, so any climate change on them may be seasonal. Saturn and its moons take 30 Earth years to orbit the Sun, so three decades of observations equates to only 1 Saturnian year. Uranus has an 84-year orbit and 98° axial tilt, so its seasons are extreme. Neptune has not yet completed a single orbit since its discovery in 1846 and neither has Pluto.
This is a round-up of the planets said by sceptics to be experiencing climate change:
- Mars: the notion that Mars is warming came from an unfortunate conflation of weather and climate. Based on two pictures taken 22 years apart, assumptions were made that have not proved to be reliable. There is currently no evidence to support claims that Mars is warming at all. We have covered Mars in more detail here at Skeptical Science.
- Jupiter: the notion that Jupiter is warming is actually based on predictions, since no warming has actually been observed. Climate models predict temperature increases along the equator and cooling at the poles. It is believed these changes will be catalysed by storms that merge into one super-storm, inhibiting the planet’s ability to mix heat. Sceptical arguments have ignored the fact this is not a phenomenon we have observed, and that the modelled forcing is storm and dust movements, not changes in solar radiation.
- Neptune: observations of changes in luminosity on the surface of both Neptune and its largest moon, Triton, have been taken to indicate warming caused by increased solar activity. In fact, the brightening is due to the planet’s seasons changing, but very slowly. Summer is coming to Neptune’s southern hemisphere, bringing more sunlight, as it does every 164 years.
- Pluto: the seasons on this dwarf planet are the least understood of all: its existence has only been known for a third of its 248-year orbit, and it has only been visited by a space probe once, in the 2015 New Horizons flyby. The ‘evidence’ for climate change that this myth is based upon, however, is older: it consists of just two observations made in 1988 and 2002. That’s equivalent to observing the Earth’s weather for just three weeks out of the year. Various speculative hypotheses suggest its highly elliptical orbit may play a part in Pluto's climate, as could the large angle of its rotational axis. One thing we do know now is that sunlight at Pluto is 900 times weaker than it is at the Earth. It's a very cold place indeed.
Claims that solar system bodies are heating up due to increased solar activity are clearly wrong. The sun’s output has declined in recent decades. Only Pluto and Neptune are exhibiting increased brightness, the cause of which remains to be understood, given that we've yet to see a single orbital year with either body. Heating attributed to other Solar System bodies remains undemonstrated. It's the stuff of fantasy.
For lots of useful information about Pluto and the other dwarf planets, NASA has a useful resource on its website. There are also informative pages about the gas-giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. For specific details about Pluto, see NASA's Pluto: Facts.
Last updated on 28 January 2024 by John Mason. View Archives
mkuske, please do not refresh the page after submitting a comment. Doing so inserts a duplicate of your just-submitted comment. Thank you.
No, mkuske, I did not assume that equilibrium was reached almost instantly. Read my reply to you again. Carefully. Really, read it. All of it. Then refrain from typing for awhile, ponder, and read it again. All of it.
Dear LarianLeQuella, you stated "I suggest that people who think that the sun is responsible, and cite warming on other planets become familiar with the Inverse Square Law. ;)" Nice winky emoticon, but yet I am wondering how this is applicable given that Jupiters' orbit has not changed - not to mention that it is much farther from the Sun than Earth is...shouldnt its weather be near constant given your arguement?[Indeed it has had very consistent storm patterns in the PAST, rings of weather and the famous red spot]. Obvisously the intensity of the suns output effects deminish over distance(the distance squared is still just a relationship to distance, this is much more relevant for gravity)...how would this NOT be the case? Specifically whether or not the sun is causing Warming or Cooling (and I suspect COOLING due to its decreasing MAGNETIC FIELD, not increasing solar output), it is still THE driving force of weather on every planet in the solar system. Its silly to imply that the amount of water vapor or CO2 on Jupiter has been drastically changing over the past few years, and the Suns output was kept constant
[DB] Thank you for your attempts to dialogue with Larian, but Larian has not posted since that comment on this thread, back in 2008. It was a one-off, with no intent to engage anyone.
One thing I have not heard at all in the climate debate is that the Earth and entire Solar System are not only orbiting the Sun, but also, along with the Sun, are moving through Space orbiting the Galatic center. When we orbit the Sun we never return to the same spot. the entire system by that time has moved on. We are constantly moving into areas of space we have never inhabited before.
How can we say with any authority there are not energies we never encountered, and possibly can't even detect, influencing the delecate balance of our climate and maybe more, like the magnetic field?
MagickWizard, you're not arguing for a new force. You're arguing for the same forces that have been measured for decades directly and through proxies for thousands or millions of years. Magnetic flux has been considered as an element of the GCR argument. Or is there a different magnetic flux you're aware of but scientists are not?
You can argue for all the mysterious undiscovered forces you want, but until you show the force as a physical mechanism, no one will take you seriously.
MagicWizard, why would forces that we can not detect have more of an effect than the forces that we can detect. We can detect freakin's neutrinos for God's sake, why would something that we can't detect have such a hufe effect, which is perfectly explicable by the forces we can detect?
Response to sjw40364 from inappropriate thread: I looked at all the links provided, and not a single one of them alludes to a warming of the climate of the planets mentioned. Suggesting that any of these articles indicates a warming climate on the planets considered indicates that sjw did not read or understand the articles.
At best, the Venus and Mars articles underline how we can attempt to better understand their climates, emphasizing that we don't understand them well.
Climate on Earth is defined by a baseline of 30 years. For Mars, Jupiter and other planets going outward from the Sun, 30 orbits translates into respectively 56, 356, 884, 2522, 4947 and 7435 years. That is what would be required to establish a baseline, if we had instruments capable of reliably measuring enough climate parameters. Then we would need proxies to establish the true existence of any significant departure from normal conditions. We are not even fully understanding weather events happening on these planets.
The argument that other planets are warming is one of the most ridiculous ever spewed by fake skeptics.
Response to PhilippeChantreau.
So those who claim to follow science are going to contiinue to ignore that during the same time frame that the earth became warmer - the Winds of venus increased - over the entire timeframe that the mission proceeded. And could still be but we don't know - we haven't sent another probe back to check yet.
That Mars warmed up during this same time frame so that we can now oberve the effects of liquid water on its surface?
That Jupiter lost an entire band - and if we are not talking climate - not just on small scales but ones that have lasted just how many years?
Your 30 year scenario strawman is based upon then ignoring those flux ropes between the earth and the sun - knowing as we do that flux ropes transport superheated plasma from one end to the other. We will just ignore that fact too while we are at it I guess.
Every single atmosphereic scientist in the world was stunned by what they found, yet you discount this newly discovered source of energy as unimportat????? Falsified every textbook you had on the subject - so of course it is unimportant to you, you still use them.
You didn't even know that this energy source
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/scientists-discover-surprise-in-101025
And this one even existed when the word global warming was even invented.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/11dec_themis/
But you think you got it all figured out - whiloe you continue to ignore every actual observation in the entire solar system - and right in froont of your nose - you just couldn't see or detect it a few years ago. Mostly because as they admitted - they were not looking. So predictive power is out for sure.
Now NASA knew something was up, knew enough energy was being generated to disrupt satelites, probes, etc. Energy you seem to think just magically adds nothing to the system. In direct opposition to the laws of thermodynamics.
Your strawmen convince no one but yourself. Because of course you refuse to accept 99% of the data.
And even when told of two newlt discovered sources of energy never added to any clculation - you think it's ok to dismiss them. The reality they would skew your hand-picked data - so they must be ignored. The shame you do to science.
[PS] Fixed links.
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In particular: Provide a source for your "flux ropes". Watch your tone and no accusations of fraud.
If you want to have a rant about AGW, there are plenty of other sites which would welcome your input. If you actually do want discuss the science then please observe the following:
Read the sources people provide back to you and read them for understanding, not to dismiss.
Acknowledge where you agree and where you not with explanation and sources - preferrably to peer-reviewed literature.
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To any respondents, please likewise follow those guidelines before discussion goes west and I have to start deleting comments.
sjw40364 @33:
1) The water discovered on Mars was discovered by an orbital platform that has been orbiting Mars since 2006. The observed phenomenon from which water flows have been observed were seen over that entire period. Consequently the situation is that water was found by the first observing platform that was capable of doing so. To infer from that that Mars global temperatures are increasing follows the same logic of an explorer who, on first discovering the Mississipi concluded it was evidence of an imminent Noachian flood.
2) On the outer planets, at least, higher windspeeds are associated with cooler temperatures. That is because heat introduces turbulence that decreases the velocity of the wind. On Earth, things differ because increased temperatures increase absolute humidity, and hence the energy supply for storms - but that mechanism is not available on Venus. Ergo, it is more likely that increased windspeed on Venus is associated with cooling temperatures than the reverse.
There is no data showing any possible connection between temperature change in the interesting phenomenon on Jupiter or Saturn. The connection you form is of the nature of a leap of faith. You desire that all planets be warming, so you infer from any change (or entirely new observation) that it is evidence of that warming with no effort to tie the two phenomenon together.
3) Finally, NASA has not come up with "a new source of energy". The effect of the solar wind on the magnetosphere has been known since at least 1965. The 2009 NASA article to which you refer merely discusses improved understanding on what modulates that energy transfer. It has no significant bearing on the (already known) existence of and scale of the energy transfer.
With regard to that scale, it is extensively discussed by Tenfjord and Ostgaard (2013). They show a total cumulative energy transfer to the ionsphere over the period 1997-2010 of 889,000 x 10^14 Joules (W(Ut)), representing approximately 60% of the total energy from the impacting solar wind (W(Usw)). Averaged over the Earth's surface and the time interval involved, that represents 0.00035 W/m^2. That in turn is an overestimate of the forcing as approximately only 10% of energy transfered to the thermosphere (let alone the ionosphere) makes it to the lower atmosphere, the rest being radiated to space.
Note, further that this energy is not new energy. The solar wind did not spring into existence yesterday. Consequently there is no basis from this data to conclude that changes in the solar wind are warming or cooling the Earth. There is every reason to conclude it is absolutely inconsequential to the climate.
Your reasoning is shown to consist of taking some unanalyzed (by you) data from the news and simply assume that it automatically applies in support of your theory (without analysis) and that it is very significant (again without analysis and in very stark contradiction to the facts). Frankly, I am no impressed.
[PS] Good response but watch tone.
Flux ropes eh? That seems to be in the same category as the recently discussed profession of "IR astronomer." Please provide scientific references explaining specifically what are flux ropes.
The solar wind is nothing new. Suggesting that one can warm up the long term climate of a planet with a change in solar wind is like suggesting that one can heat up a tea kettle by throwing hot stones at it. Eventually you could, I guess, but the barrage of stones required would be quite interesting. We're not seeing that at all. Tom Curtis gave you the numbers, do you realize what they mean?
I will add that handwaving my climate baseline remark does not make it go away. If all solar planets are to be considered as having seasonal variations according to their orbit around the sun, as they should, then it is indispensable to have a long enough base of obervation to determine whether or not what is being observed is due to seasonal variation or not. In order for any observed variable to be determined to have a significant departure from normal, a long enough time serie must be acquired to define normal. You make no logical case at all against that idea, you don't even try and just hand wave. I'm sorry but that's not convincing.
If we are to assume that some planets do not have seasonal variations, we need to have some serious basis for that, grounded in physics. You have any reference defending that idea? I would also like to see some scientific reference explaining why it is reasonable to assume that we can detect a climate change on a planet whose climate is barely hypothesized. I would also like to see an equally serious reference as to why any weather event on a planet whose climate has not been oberved through a full orbit can be ascribed to a "warming climate."
Skeptics on Earth argue that the rash of 1 in 1000 years weather events we saw on a regular basis over the past few years are not due to a warming climate. And yet here we are, with another type of "skeptic," who asserts that other planets phenomena, whose frequency is completely unknown to us, must be due to a warming climate. Something is clearly wrong in the "skeptic" camp.
A multitude of weather phenomena have become observable on other planets only because we have recently acquired the means to observe them. There is absolutely no way of telling whether these phenomena happened regularly before or not. One going with logic should assume that the likelihood of a phenomenon only recently observed to have sarted happening just when we became able to observe it is extremely low. Why would that be? Because it comes in handy to defend a pet theory?
If you discover something just because you started looking, that thing was probably happening all along. Therefore its existence does not constitute a change. Do you realize you're even arguing against yourself?
I must agree with Tom Curtis on this one. You select snippets from news stories, fail to look into their true significance, and automatically assume that they support your theory, while said theory is itself ill defined and rather free of constraints from basic physics.
What is your theory anyway? That high energy particles warm up the planets, including Jupiter? Jupiter, whose magnetosphere is so large that its bow shock with the solar wind is 75 radii away? Really? No thermodynamics problem there?
I'll add that, before condescending onto others about thermodynamics, you should perhaps verify that the ideas you defend do comply with them. For example, take the amount of energy from a star that would be required to heat up a giant gas planet, orbting far from the star, in a way that can be noticed from another planet closer to the star. Then attempt to quantify what effect that amount of energy would have on the small rocky planet, 300 times less massive and much closer to the star. Would that effect be something subtle enough that a significant portion of the intelligent beings populating the rocky planet would deny its existence? Methinks this all doesn't add up...
(This is my first post ever in this forum so please, bear with me if I break some cardinal rule. But, please point it out to me.)
First off, I'm not formally educated about any of these topics - cosmology is more of a point of interest or a hobby for me. I approach all of this in fairly broad strokes.
"Climate Warming," now re-fashioned into, "Climate Change," seems to be very little based on science and much more related to your political philosophy nowdays. It is a good excuse to raise taxes and place further controls on the entire planet, for those in power. I honestly don't really have an opinion on all of that, one way or the other, except for my own brief lifetime.
Personally, I do think that the planet is becoming more turbulent, and I don't think mankind has done anything to help the situation. There is no doubt that human industry, war, nuclear testing, pollution, deforestation, etc. have damaged our ecosystems - just a debate over the degree to which we have damaged things. I agree with what I think was the OP's original assertion that the Sun's weather is, by far, the greatest determinant of weather on the Earth. That being said, the Earth's environment, it's "goldielocks" position in the universe being just right, I don't think it takes much to knock things way out of balance - say, a .02% change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Things could be more delicate than most of us realize.
So, if the Sun has such a major impact on the Earth's weather, how much more does our own galactic weather have on our Sun and it's solar system? It's reasonable to hypothesize that galactic weather could have a much greater effect on the solar system, as a whole, during certain galactic weather events. Our solar system is travelling through an interstellar medium, the density and energy of which may vary greatly - and for extended periods of time. This could also explain any other planetary changes which have been, or may have been observed as every object in our solar system could be impacted by such events.
So, here is a link to a site which explains the phenomenon in greater detail than I ever could:
http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2012/09/strange-energy-from-galactic-center-bombarding-earth-2446172.html
I hope this adds something to the discussion - another point of view which may not have been investigated yet.
Bi5h0p,
I am straining how you can give the appearance of being rational and acknowledge your superficial understanding of a scientific subject matter while at the same throwing out an opinion that dismisses an entire body of knowledge as, also, mere opinion. A body of knowledge with which you have confessed lack of familiarity. How does that make any sense?
As far as the rest of your questions, there is a start here button on the site that you should use to start exploring.
I'll add that not everything is a matter of point of view. There is a right answer. Uninformed opinions carry no validity whatsoever against those formed by the understanding of the scientific issues involved. It really is that simple. If you want to form a opinion worth its salt, you have to do the work. If you don't, you'll just say whatever suits your already existing system of belief and values, or parrot other sources that you recognoze as sharing that same system. That's worth somewhere between a rabitt's fart and a mouse turd on the scale of reality based understanding. The internet contains the best and the worst. Why do you trust the source you cited?
I tried your link, it didn't load for me; I couldnt' evaluate whether they cited any scientific work and how faithful to the original content it was. It appears to be about galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). That's old news and there is a number of threads exploring the question on this site. Use the search engine. CERN has experimented on the subject and they do have info available online. Do your work. Don't expect people to spoon feed you the info. Select serious sources. Examine published science papers. If a blurb mentions a science article, read it, as many cite a paper and draw from it conclusions that are often nowhere near what the authors conclude or even say. That's how it works.
5i5h0p @36.
Your link dates from 2012 and is wrtten in particularly sensational language, usually a bit of a give-away with such publication. It quotes only three scientists (It is not always the wisest thing to rely on very small numbers of scientists. Remember the phrase “There's always one” and with scientists that is certainly the case.) and your link is actually mashing four different phenomenon and three separate issues rolled into the one account.
The first is gamma-ray emissions from the centre of our galaxy. The news is that that Profs Abazajian & Kapling have “patiently sifted through reams of data accumulated from 2008 to 2012 by NASA’s orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope” and now (in 2012) propose that the gamma-rays streaming from the stellar conflagration can be used to infer the presence of dark matter.
On this first issue, with no change in this phenomenon there can be no change resulting on planet Earth. There is no new situation being discussed, just the measuring of something in more detail than before. It is also very new science (as written it had yet to pass peer review and I see no sign of publication today) so should not be accepted from what is just one 'paper in submission'.
The second issue is down to a lunatic called Dr. Alexey N. Dmitriev who has been preaching for some time (This reference date 1998) of a coming armagedon resulting from “highly charged material and energetic non-uniformities in anisotropic interstellar space which have broken into the interplanetary area of our Solar System.” If Dmitriev hasn't managed to convince his fellow scientists in (2015-1998=) 18 years, it likely isn't worth examining the details of his assertions and rather put it down to “There's always one!”
The third issue is very poorly described and presented most sensationally. It is referenced only by use of a NASA quote “once in a lifetime super solar storm event” that apparently dates to March 2006 (the NASA archive links to this are not providing any text at present) and is about the 11-year solar cycle which (No 24) was soon to begin in 2006. With a lot more satellite use since the height of the previous solar cycle, NASA was warning of potential problems from the coming cycle. This does not stop the nutters deciding the warning is about something completely different. Indeed, the only uses of that quote on-line actually discusses, not 11-year solar cycles but instead the rotation of our bit of the Milky Way around the centre of the galaxy. The quote is thus exclusively used by a bunch of real nutters who predict the end of the world. Whether the result will be ”thousands of rocks and asteriods … raining out of the sky” or a “rampage” of “powerful x-class solar storms and coronal mass ejections”, we are apparently in danger of “great earthquakes, super volcanic eruptions, pole shifts, planet crossers and so forth” and that is despite acknowledging that the peak storms of 2012-13 are now passed. All this has zero credibility.
So I conclude that on all three issues mentioned by your link, there is nothing that requires fresh investigations.
Bi5h0p argument turns out on examination to be an appeal to changes in cosmic ray frequencies as a driver of climate. Consequently, I have responded on a more appropriate thread. On the unsubstantive diatribe with which he begins, Phillipe Chantreau @37 raises the relevant question.
And yet the earth has been undergoing heating for the last 25,000 years with no help from man at all. And every approximately 100,000 years it does the same thing its doing now. As a matter of fact a better case could be made that the CO2 has kept this planet from reaching the highs of past warming events. Because despite the effects of CO2 this temperature cycle is less than any of the past events.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Global-temps.png
It's nothing new - has been going on for as long as this earth has existed - and will continue to go up and down regardless of what we choose to do. As a matter of fact you all better hope man can affect the temperature on the planet - because ignoring what happens after every 100,000 year heating cycle is over won't change what happens.
But talk to me in 10 years about how man is heating up the earth, bet you'll be wearing long johns and claiming global warming did it.
[TD] Your comment is way off topic. Please comment on an appropriate thread, such as the rebuttal to "It's a Natural Cycle." Anyone who wants to respond, please do so on that thread, not this one.
Response to anyone ignoring those newly discovered sources pumping energy into the atmosphere:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/scientists-discover-surprise-in-101025
Of course no studies have been made - it's newly discovered and despite claims of knowing of its existence for years - falsified every text book they had on the subject.
"UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.
"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun."
You all talk of irradiance as if it is the sole factor. You try to justify outer panets wind speeds because there is no heat from the sun - then try to justify Venus's and earth's wind speeds because of heat from the sun. Make up your minds please. You talk about internal heat sources of planets while at the same time ignoring that the Heat from Saturn's north pole was 10 times more than predicted.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080103_prt.htm
The source of the heat is not a mystery - it's just ignored in conversations is all.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20110420.html
Just as those connections exist between the planet and moon - they exist between the sun and the planets. Right now we can only detect earth's solar connection.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/11dec_themis/
"NASA's fleet of THEMIS spacecraft, launched less than 8 months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power. The discoveries include giant magnetic ropes that connect Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field....
..."The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the Sun," says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras....
..."THEMIS encountered its first magnetic rope on May 20, 2007," says Sibeck. "It was very large, about as wide as Earth, and located approximately 40,000 miles above Earth's surface in a region called the magnetopause." The magnetopause is where the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field meet and push against one another like sumo wrestlers locked in combat. There, the rope formed and unraveled in just a few minutes, providing a brief but significant conduit for solar wind energy. Other ropes quickly followed: "They seem to occur all the time," says Sibeck."
Just as they will be ignored in this conversation.
[PS] This is getting repetitive and you have failed to answer points made about your previous post. If you expect anyone to take this seriously then please present evidence of other heating sources that represent even a 1/10th of extra heating provided by increased GHG (ie 4W/m2). Extra milliWatts can be safely ignored.
sjw40364 @41, the last NASA article to which you link states:
Averaged over the Earth's surface, that represents 0.00014 W/m^2. For comparison, the reduction in release of energy from the Earth's surface due to the increase in CO2 since the preindustrial is 1.9 +/-0.19 W/m^2. Even the error term of that calculation is 1400 times greater than the "new" energy to which you point.
Worse, this is not newly discovered energy. According to NASA, the Themis spacecraft have "... made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power" (emphasis added). They have not made the discovery of substorms themselves, which are well known, and the energy of which are already accounted for in the 889,000 x 10^14 Joules from 1997-2010 (0.00035 W/m^2) discusses by Tenfjord and Ostgaard (and @34 above).
Further, it is not new energy. The Sun has had a solar wind since its inception, and the Earth a magnetic field as far back as paleomagnatism can be discerned (at least 500 million years, and probably at least 4 billion years). This energy, therefore, cannot account for the sudden, rapid rise in global temperatures over the 20th century.
Frankly, you most recent post adds nothing new to the discussion, illustrating only your determination to shut your eyes to counter evidence with regard to your pet theory. (The post before that is even worse, as it grossly misrepresents the facts with regard to warming episodes in the glacial/interglacial cycle and the temperature history of the last 25,000 years.)
In response to comment no.29, user MagickWizard, who totally nailed it, I will complement your question and give some NASA evidence, in order to get the skeptics think more profoundly about this subject and conect some dots.
Yes, the Solar System is not in a fixed space! We are NEVER in the same place in the Universe! And YES, we are passing through a very high energy interstellar cloud, that NASA knew of since the 70's(!) but the general public only knew about around 2009(!!!) - "On Christmas Eve, 2009, the startling hypothesis that our Solar System, the Sun and all its planets, are moving into a potentially dangerous and destabilizing interstellar energy cloud, was resoundingly sustained." - (source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-e-joseph/passing-into-the-energy-c_b_405086.html )
Various quotes from the same source previously mentioned: "“We have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar energy cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all,” says Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. " ;
"In fact, most scientists had either minimized the possible significance of the interstellar energy cloud or dismissed the whole notion of its existence altogether. But not Dr. Alexei Dmitriev, the esteemed Russian space physicist";
"Dmitriev’s conclusions, based on his team’s analysis of Voyager data, that the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are inexplicably excited — immense storms, mammoth eruptions, plasma arcs jetting from the planets’ surface to their moons. He reasoned that this turbulence is caused by an external injection of energy into the planets’ atmospheres: to wit, an interstellar energy cloud which the leading edge of the Solar System has now entered."
For more information about this intense high energy cloud and how it's being studied, check NASA own page http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/ribbon-explained.html
I also have another source, please check it out: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24153-solar-system-caught-in-an-interstellar-tempest/
highlights: "The solar system is travelling through much stormier skies than we thought, and might even be about to pop out of the huge gas cloud we have been gliding through for at least 45,000 years.";
"The fact that the wind is shifting over the span of mere decades means that the interior of the cloud is either unusually turbulent, or that the solar system is a mere 1000 or so years away from punching its way out."
"“While there had been hints that something was changing in the environment of the sun, when we finally put all the historical data together it became clear that one can make a strong scientific statement that this change has actually occurred,” says Frisch."
And if you want to read Dr. Dmitriev research translated, please read it here: http://aetherforce.com/planetophysical-state-of-the-earth-and-life-by-dr-alexey-n-dmitriev/
What makes this even more interesting is the fact that in 2006, NASA warned people of an impending huge solar storm for the next solar maximum (2012)... How can they make this prediction 6 years in advance?! Interesting, like they knew something was going to make this solar cycle very abnormal and something is messing up with our Sun - http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/10mar_stormwarning.html But, for this, we can only speculate...
Question everything and always do your own research and take your own conclusions.
Jacksan @43 is the latest in a long line of people endorsing the Anthing But CO2 (ABC) theory of climate change. In support of his theory, he has at least the good grace to provide links.
The first link is to a 2011 article by Lawrence E Joseph in the Huffington Post. In that article, he repeatedly refers to his book, Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End, which is described in his bio:
He has consulted the Mayan Calander and shamens. Who could doubt the scientific credibility of that?
In his Huffington Post article, Joseph cites M Opher as claiming that "that the Solar System has begun to pass into" a magnetic field that is "at least twice as strong as had previously been predicted". The later, at least, is true. Opher et al (2009) find that "We find that the field strength in the local interstellar medium is 3.7–5.5 μG", which is more than twice the previous estimates mentioned in the paper of 1.8-2.5 μG. (For comparison, the Earth's magnetic field at the surface is 250,000 to 650,000 μG, and the Interplanatery Magnetic Field at Earth's orbit is 10 μG.) Unfortunately for Joseph (and Jacksan), Opher et al make no claim that "the Solar System has begun to pass into" the magnetic field. Rather they say:
That the Local Bubble lies within 100-200 parsecs (326 to 652 light years) if the Sun clearly indicates the scales of "local" effects, and precludes any possibility that "the Solar System has begun to pass into" a magnetic field that has in fact been surrounding the solar system for tens of thousands of years. It therefore cannot be the basis of recent changes in Earth's climate by itself.
Not to worry, for Jacksan has additional evidence. Specifically an article in New Scientist, from which he finds several quotes. He finds room to quote "The fact that the wind is shifting over the span of mere decades means that the interior of the cloud is either unusually turbulent, or that the solar system is a mere 1000 or so years away from punching its way out" but not to quote the actual scale of the shift:
That change of 0.15o per year in wind direction represents a delay of about 3.7 hours per year in the arrival of the peak. It is astonishingly rapid in astronomical terms, but in terms of earthly impacts it is glacial.
Other parts of the article that Jacksan did not feel like quoting:
And more crucially:
Pretty much says it all, really - but not if you want to follow the great Mayan Calander catastrophist of 2012 in reading catastrophic outcomes from interstellar tea leaves.
Finally, Jacksan draws our attention to a 2006 NASA prediction of a huge solar storm in 2012. Of course, that prediction was not based on considerations of interstellar media. More importantly, it predicted that "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one", that "the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007--and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011", and that the next solar maximum "could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958". Unfortunately, the prediction was completely wrong. The next solar cycle did not start until 2010, the maximum until 2014, and it was the lowest maximum since 1958 (and probably since the early 20th century):
Jacksan recommends that we should "Question everything and always do your own research and take your own conclusions." Unfortunately, genuinely doing your own research requires years gaining the relevant skills and detailed background knowledge to not make a fool of yourself. Not recognizing that, and pulling quotes out of context, assuming predictions are valid when they are falsified and generally questioning everything except your own conclusions as Jacksan has done is a recipe for pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and nonsense. I heartilly recommend to as many people as possible that they do do the hard yards to become genuine scientists. But pretending 15 hours or less of internet searches (or even a year of internet searches) is some kind of substitute for those hard yards is arrogant nonsense.
We don't think backyard quarterbacks are ready for the superbowl because they've tossed a ball around for a day or two. Why then are we so arrogant as to think there is not an elite in science as there is in sport and that cobbled together misquotation is a genuine substitute for scientific expertise?
Wow! So many inferences about lack of research and data, now one about backyard quarterbacks (did you mean armchair quarterbacks?), yet, some of you would have the world accept AGW as solid science and irrefutable. All these debates prove one thing— lack of concensus and that scientists are not gods afterall. Models are not irrefutable science. THey are just models to help us understand what is going on. They are useful to see our errors and to help us make adjustments. No more, no less!
If one sees a trend, a scientist will test it over and over. How does one do that here. Always guessing, always adjusting, always trying to save face for ones' ego. Compensating for human error and good and bad "guesses".
Global warming is real and there may be, probably is, more than AGW casuing the abnormal increases behind it. Trying to remove manmade contributors is not all feasible. Controlling them is not a bad thing. The human race will survive, we will make adjustments and adapt. Crops will be rotated and adjusted as mother nature has always done, and not all crops will be lost (unless pollinators continue to decline), we will make adjustments to planting seasons as man has for thousands of years. Plants will enjoy the increases of CO2, and the areas which flood— the areas we have been saying not to develop in— will be underwater. So what? We will learn a final lesson and go on with life.
Even if we removed all man-made contributors driving the AGW climate change, it would only clear up 10%-12% of the problem. The rest is beyond our control! It seems more realistic, and cheaper, to minimize losses to property and life by removing some existing development and prohibiting further development in sensitive area, continue to put more research into green technologies and water conversion and delivery methods to live more sustainably.
THINK positively, and critically! What can we do to achieve some concensus? What do we do to achieve the least expensive means to accomplish this? We need concensus and realistic goals. Not more theory and arguments.
[DB] Off-topic snipped. Please stay on the topic of this thread, Other planets are warming.
[PS]
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In particular, comments must be ontopic and please note the ban on sloganeering - repeating long refuted myths without any substatiated debate. You post has numerous instance where you making such statement. Eg "Even if we removed all man-made contributors driving the AGW climate change, it would only clear up 10%-12% of the problem." You must back your position by references/data. Strawman arugments also have no place. This is place for discussion of the science and you cannot hope to make some useful criticism of science without spending some effort actually understanding it.
I've found this thread very intriguing (and long-running). I just wanted to ask a question related to all of this:
First, I recently read a theory that our solar system might be weaving in and out of our galaxy, moving over time closer to the galactic center and rubber-banding out to the outer rim, repeatedly. Would this not be cause enough for global warming? It would surely explain the supposed temperature increases on other celestial objects (while understanding that some objects could still cool to lower temperatures simply because of its phase in its lifecycle). Even with the sun reducing its output, the general increase in temperature as we approach our fiery galactic center could easily counter the decrease in output by the sun. Also, if the cosmic dust cloud we're traveling through were to get any thicker, even by a small fraction, would that not also "trap" the sun's heat increasing the temperature of our solar system?
I'm just curious if our temperature changes might be related to the position of our solar system withon the galaxy, just as seasons temperatures can change based on our position around our sun.
Thoughts?
No.
Jonplumb @46 ,
Lest you think that Daniel's reply is giving you the "brusque off" . . . let me expand the answer to your humorous question [though to be more precise, your question is more like 3 jocular assertions, well beyond science fiction comedy].
Since our solar system is roughly 25,000 light years from the galactic center, then our solar system would need to travel around 20,000 light years to get into the more densely-starred inner regions, where, let us suppose [though it isn't] the background radiation level is the equivalent of 1 degree hotter (i.e. the 1 degree hotter that the Earth's surface temperature has risen, in the past 150 years or so).
The hypothetical rubber-band pulling our solar system (toward the inner Galaxy) would need to be extraordinarily strong — also, if you care to calculate the accelerations involved, they turn out to be truly formidable. And there is the (relatively small) problem that the solar system would need to travel at well over 100 times the speed of light. [Fortunately, Einstein is long dead, and so won't be able to protest against that "Alternative Fact".]
Then there is the minor difficulty: umpteen thousand professional and amateur astronomers (as well as a few billion non-astronomer humans) have not detected any significant displacement of Earth relative to the stars visible at nighttime, during the past century or so. Though conceivably that may all be a ginormous Conspiracy cover-up (a conspiracy in which your own eyes are also participating! Damn your lying eyes!).
All that aside — and assuming that (despite appearances) we are now really close to the galactic center, and this position (somehow) caused recent rapid global warming — there is still the problem of CO2. Since the fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere does (scientifically) nicely explain the recent 1 degree temperature rise . . . then we must (somehow) discover some totally unexpected and new factor (a cooling factor) which nicely cancels out the 1 degree of AGW.
So, overall, the "rubber-band" oscillation of our solar system within the galaxy . . . is an "explanation" which is trying to push a megaton of sewage uphill with a pointed stick (of toothpick size).
BTW, Jonplumb, the true center of the galaxy is not "fiery" but actually a Black Hole — the very opposite of "fiery". Let's just hope that the supposed Galactic Rubber Band is not slingshotting our whole solar system right into the Black Hole! That would be a grave situation — indeed, a situation of extreme gravity!
It’s also worth noting that it takes about 240 million years for the Sun to complete one orbit around the centre of our galaxy, a period sometimes referred to as a cosmic year. One cosmic year ago the Earth was just recovering from the worst mass-extinction ever, the end-Permian 252 million years ago. It should be unnecessary to say that any significant climate changes related to the galaxy (if there are any) happens on a much, much larger time scale than a century or so!
Hi there. I found this claim very interesting and I was intrigued how this claim could support the idea that climate change in natural and not caused by anthropogenic factors. However, I think that it is crucial to taken into account the atmospheric conditions as well as the orbital eccentricity of each respective planet as these can vary greatly so we cannot use these planets as exact analogues for Earth to explain our temperatures.
Additionally, I have checked with the external references cited in the author’s piece. The original researchers have only created models in predicting a potential increase in temperature on Jupiter as a result of the whirlpool and sunspot activity on this planet. I also want to point out that although the luminosity of the planet’s may change, this is not proportional to the temperature of a planet or celestial object.