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

[William Fragakis]

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Editorial-Cartoons/G373,S81137

On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 16:57 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> 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
> 
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