3 biggest solar flares of year all within 24 yesterday. Q the global warming disc.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Are you suggesting the sun has nothing to do with climate on earth?

I don't think so however I wouldn't put it past politicians and tree huggers to suggest man and the evil oil companies have a negative impact on the sun. Good lord some of the comments at the end of the article just make me sad that society is so dumb.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by photon

People/animals dying have also been happening for billions of years as a natural process.

That doesn't mean a specific incident of someone dying (i.e. someone murdering someone) is natural.

X is a natural process therefore this incident of X is natural is a logical fallacy.

So what is incidental and what is natural? If there was no climate change we would be sharing the earth with dinosaurs and thousands of other spiecies of life that roamed this planet many years ago under different global climates. I don't think anyone debates that man may play a small role in climate change but if we all lived in tents and igloos and rode horses since the 1800's to now we would still be facing changing climates today.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by photon

People/animals dying have also been happening for billions of years as a natural process.

That doesn't mean a specific incident of someone dying (i.e. someone murdering someone) is natural.

X is a natural process therefore this incident of X is natural is a logical fallacy.

murder - which is killing for any specific reason happens all over the animal kingdom and has been happening for billions of years.

Humans are a product of nature.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

So what is incidental and what is natural? If there was no climate change we would be sharing the earth with dinosaurs and thousands of other spiecies of life that roamed this planet many years ago under different global climates. I don't think anyone debates that man may play a small role in climate change but if we all lived in tents and igloos and rode horses since the 1800's to now we would still be facing changing climates today.

climate change is a major driving force behind evolution.

[SebC]

So... no auroras. Booooo!

[photon]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

murder - which is killing for any specific reason happens all over the animal kingdom and has been happening for billions of years.

Humans are a product of nature.

If you want to play with semantics (instead of being clear), nuclear winter could be called a natural process because humans are a product of nature.

But you missed the point, which is: Just because X sometimes causes Y doesn't mean that Y is always caused by X.

It's a oversimplified view that doesn't take any detail into account.

Climate changes due to whatever forces are causing it to change. If the sun gets brighter, the earth gets more energy and warms. If the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere were zero, the earth would retain less energy and be a ball of ice. Volcanoes erupt and put reflective particles into the atmosphere, reflecting more energy back into space cooling the earth.

All of these things are called forcings. Humans are the dominant forcing currently.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

So what is incidental and what is natural?

If you don't know the answer to that then you really aren't in a position to form an informed opinion on the subject...

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

If there was no climate change we would be sharing the earth with dinosaurs and thousands of other spiecies of life that roamed this planet many years ago under different global climates.

Sure, no one claims that climate doesn't change by itself in the absence of human influence either. This is the same fallacy as Mel's just in the opposite direction. Just because X is changing because of Y now doesn't mean that Y is the only thing that can change X.

As I replied to Mel, there are a number of forcings that influence climate, all of them have to be studied and tracked in order to be able to attribute a specific event to a specific combination of forcings.

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I don't think anyone debates that man may play a small role in climate change but if we all lived in tents and igloos and rode horses since the 1800's to now we would still be facing changing climates today.

How can you say that when you earlier ask the question about what portion of climate change is natural? If you don't know the answer to that question you can't make this statement (well you can, but it's based on ideology rather than science). Without some support for this claim, it's nothing more than an argument from personal incredulity. Which forcings are sufficient to counteract the directly observed forcing due to increased CO2?

Which aspect of the basics do you disagree with? The basic physics of CO2 and electromagnetic radiation? The measured concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? The source of that CO2?

[Frank MetaMusil]

Saturday, the sunspot AR1748 should be near the center of the solar disk. Earth should get some CME's almost directly by then. I'm hitting a patio.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

Saturday, the sunspot AR1748 should be near the center of the solar disk. Earth should get some CME's almost directly by then. I'm hitting a patio.

English damnit

[CaptainCrunch]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16817...ore-lunch.html

[kirant]

Originally Posted by photon

All of these things are called forcings. Humans are the dominant forcing currently.

Curious: I haven't read updated articles on the force amounts. What is the breakdown currently (as oppose to historically)? And by that, I mean, what is the human impact on all GHGs are, broken down by GHG (as in, what's the human force generation on water, CO2, etc)? I couldn't find that data before...and it really seems like a basic mathematical calculation to me...which is why I found it strange that I couldn't find it years ago.

[photon]

I'd have to look, but I think the current total human forcing amounts to something like 60% of current warming.

[kirant]

Originally Posted by photon

I'd have to look, but I think the current total human forcing amounts to something like 60% of current warming.

Don't worry about finding the numbers. I'm sure they'll pop up...someday.

I have to ask on the bold though because this bugs me when I read it: Is the change in albedo considered or is that basically an emissions related number?

[photon]

Well if they're saying a percentage that would imply they're taking into account non-human related changes as well. That includes albedo changes (which include volcanoes, human areosols, ice cap changes, deforestation, etc).

http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthS...l_2008_JGR.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...28196/abstract

Originally Posted by kirant

...someday.

Well you could wait for someday to happen, or if you really do care you could go out and find out, because there's lots of information. Hopefully someday refers to waiting for a random information collision to get the relevant information rather than someday meaning that the information isn't actually there.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/

http://i.imgur.com/rMmy3YS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uZSmsVW.gif

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ers-of-climate

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by photon

If you want to play with semantics (instead of being clear), nuclear winter could be called a natural process because humans are a product of nature.

But you missed the point, which is: Just because X sometimes causes Y doesn't mean that Y is always caused by X.

It's a oversimplified view that doesn't take any detail into account.

Climate changes due to whatever forces are causing it to change. If the sun gets brighter, the earth gets more energy and warms. If the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere were zero, the earth would retain less energy and be a ball of ice. Volcanoes erupt and put reflective particles into the atmosphere, reflecting more energy back into space cooling the earth.

All of these things are called forcings. Humans are the dominant forcing currently.

I never once said they weren't. Humans are the dominating force driving climate change and have since the first tree was cut down.

[photon]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

I never once said they weren't. Humans are the dominating force driving climate change and have since the first tree was cut down.

Ok, but humans cutting down trees (or building chairs, going to the moon, burning fossil fuels to create electricity) is not natural, by definition, usually when people talk about natural forcings in climate change they're not referring to humanity's contribution, so I thought your point was humanity was not contributing to climate change.

EDIT: Another paper I came across, not in reply to you just a general addition.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/...F%3E2.0.CO%3B2

EDIT2: And a good summary of the basics http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFile...4294972962.pdf

[Thor]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

climate change is a natural process .. it's been happening for billions of years

Right and its important to realize that what climate change science is saying is NOT that climate change is not a natural process, which we understand quite well, but that humans are affecting the speed of it and going well outside the norm of these cycles.

Our planet since forming has been cooling internally, and our climate has found a nice cycle of warming and cooling that includes ice ages and very hot periods, but we we are seeing this century is a deviation from that normal cycle and that is very alarming to anyone who wants to look into the far past.

Yes 400 ppm there was a lush forest in the arctic, and even Antarctica was ice free during a time in the distant past. But we also have seen the extinction of 99.9% of all plants and animals during that time too.

We will have to likely geo engineer the planet in the next 1000yrs to stop a new ice age and play God with the climate on this planet to avoid the next ice age which would be a disaster for our human population, same with what we are fearing now the quick warming we are seeing has huge repercussions and scary risks if we hit a point of no return, IE the warming of the ocean so we see the release of all that frozen methane in the oceans and a host of other scary scenarios.

I have given up on any significant effort by the masses to do something about the damage we are currently doing. My hope is with the countless people working on solutions to combating the warming with science based solutions, and there is some very promising and exciting things on the horizon.

Green business is going to be huge in the next 100 yrs, and that will also help science get the funding and support to help humans get closer to a balance with our planet, which I'm honestly pretty optimistic about.

[Nehkara]

Originally Posted by Thor

Right and its important to realize that what climate change science is saying is NOT that climate change is not a natural process, which we understand quite well, but that humans are affecting the speed of it and going well outside the norm of these cycles.

Our planet since forming has been cooling internally, and our climate has found a nice cycle of warming and cooling that includes ice ages and very hot periods, but we we are seeing this century is a deviation from that normal cycle and that is very alarming to anyone who wants to look into the far past.

Yes 400 ppm there was a lush forest in the arctic, and even Antarctica was ice free during a time in the distant past. But we also have seen the extinction of 99.9% of all plants and animals during that time too.

We will have to likely geo engineer the planet in the next 1000yrs to stop a new ice age and play God with the climate on this planet to avoid the next ice age which would be a disaster for our human population, same with what we are fearing now the quick warming we are seeing has huge repercussions and scary risks if we hit a point of no return, IE the warming of the ocean so we see the release of all that frozen methane in the oceans and a host of other scary scenarios.

I have given up on any significant effort by the masses to do something about the damage we are currently doing. My hope is with the countless people working on solutions to combating the warming with science based solutions, and there is some very promising and exciting things on the horizon.

Green business is going to be huge in the next 100 yrs, and that will also help science get the funding and support to help humans get closer to a balance with our planet, which I'm honestly pretty optimistic about.

I agree with your post, except for the bolded part.

This has never happened. The largest extinction was the Permian-Triassic extinction event (252 million years ago) and while it was massive it wasn't to that extent. The largest brunt was borne by the marine species which suffered a 96% extinction rate, other groups were not close to that high of a rate. (70% land vertebrates, 50% of land plants).

[Thor]

Should have been more specific, badly worded, what I meant to get across is that 99.9999% of all life on earth has gone extinct since life began here billions of years ago.

A great deal of that volatility is how difficult life has been on earth due to the extremes we have seen with climate and a host of other factors.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by puckluck2

Sun is only about a 100 times bigger than the earth but you can fit about one million earths in the sun.

That would make it about a million times bigger.