Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Seriously, 17 years is a pulse of noise when you look at hundreds of years. And, most importantly, regardless of whether you believe in global warming or climate change or what not, the method of analysis must be checked against external influence. You can say the atmosphere is retaining or reflecting more heat by comparing against how much heat is coming from the sun to the earth, but if you ignore how much sun is coming down on us and conclude that all the effect is in the atmosphere (or the lack of), your opinion would not be worth much.
I like the football field argument, the majority of the influence in the temperature of the earth surface is the activities of the sun, then the ocean water, then the nitrogen, oxygen, etc. CO2 is much much smaller than the rest, in particular to the non volcanic eruption based on.
+1 The time frames of Man vs. Mother Nature are incredibly far apart. 17 yrs doesn't even register compared to her time frame. Further, she cares less what "we" do much less what "we" think. Too bad we can't follow up 500 yrs from now to see the effects.
Heat From the Sun:
This would seem obvious, wouldn't it? AGW is a man-made thing, independant of the Sun. Really? Narrow it down to CO2 but forget el Sol? More myopia...on an even more extreme level.
The Solar Max satellite, launched in the mid-80's, was one of the first, if not the first to study the Sun, the chronosphere, solar flares, etc. We learned a lot from it. Since then we've launched several solar observatories. Yet how often do you hear of this information with regards to the debate?
People take the Sun for granted and believe its output is constant, never changing. That's not true. It's a G2 class main sequence star. It has quiet periods and stormy periods. All life on Earth is totally dependant on the Sun. Without it, we'd be a dark, frozen block of ice. Furthermore, the reason we HAVE weather is solely due to the Sun's energy.
The Earth isn't in a 'perfectly circular' orbit around the Sun either. Perigee occurs around Jan. when the Southern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun.
The Earth being a spinning body, wobbles on its axis. It's called precession. 2,000 years ago Polaris wasn't the North Star. Something else was. 2,000 years from now, Polaris won't be it either, it'll be something else on the great circle. It takes about 22,000 years to make one revolution.
Lastly, the Earth gains mass every year. Adding mass to a spinning body slows it down. So a day thousands of years ago doesn't equal a day....today. Also thousands of years ago, the Moon was much closer to the Earth. Every year the distance between the Earth and Moon increases. The Moon is critical to the stability of Earth and her ability to support life. In the future, total solar eclipses will cease to exist: They'll all be annular.
Yet we hear none of these facts in the discussion. It's all about Mankind. He's dominant. All important. Number one. Really? I seem to recall another church got into a lot of trouble a few hundred years ago when they believed Earth First! Now they have their own observatories and even they had to yield to Mother Nature.
Small wonder the ancients worshiped the Sun...without it all is darkness and death.