[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[Greg Freemyer]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:50 AM, drifter <drifter at oppositelock.org> wrote:
>> <SNIP>
>> We know that over the past several decades the ice caps on Mars have been
>> shrinking.  The only obvious cause is increased solar activity.
>>
>> So my third question:
>> What amount of increase in solar radiation is needed to cause the observed
>> effects on Mars? And how would that increase in solar radiation affect the
>> earth's climate?  I suspect this has been covered in "Peer Reviewed"
>> journals, but I have missed the reports.
>
> From what I've read the variation in solar intensity is very minor and
> is not likely to be a major player in global warming by itself.
>
> OTOH, on Earth, unlike Mars, we have a cloud formation process that is
> related to aerosols in the air.  Decreases in cosmic ray counts have
> recently been shown(1) to be tied to aerosol density I believe, and in
> turn to the amount of water vapor in the air.  Water vapor is a much
> stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.  The major climate models have not
> incorporated this finding into them.  (They may be waiting for more
> confirmation of the finding or maybe the finding is too new.)
>
> (1) See <http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml> for
> the peer reviewed article discussing the above.  (I assume it is peer
> reviewed.)
>

Sean,

Here's one more new theory related to solar activity and global warming.

(again peer reviewed.  This time published in Physics Reports which at
least for me is more prestigious than your typical climate journal.)

<http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8012>

This one is about cosmic rays interacting with CFCs.  Per the article
a physicist was studying the ozone holes over the poles and how cosmic
rays interacting with CFCs caused the holes.  He apparently determined
that the same effect also accounts for most of the global warming from
1950 to 2000.  And in turn he believes the earth will continue to cool
over the next 50 years as CFCs dissappear from the atmosphere.  (They
are already illegal and the atmospheric percentage is dropping.)

fyi: cosmic ray intensity varies heavily based on the solar cycle, so
this is 2 peer-reviewed theories in the last year that tie cosmic ray
intensity to a cause of global warming.

The correlation of the solar cycle with global warming (gw) has been
heavily discussed for 10 years or so, but as far as I know these are
the first theories that show an actual mechanism for causing gw,
instead of just showing a correlation.

Highly interesting is that this one also "predicts" the lack of
warming over the last decade or so.  Which is something none of the
major models have predicted.

I suspect that all of these "forcings" are legitimate in some sense,
but as of now the climate models are just way to simple and thus the
predictions they make are almost meaningless.  Or at a minimum have a
huge error term.

Greg