Gore, terror, global warming

Of course that is your humble opinion Ken...we do know Gore is more involved than bush would ever be and thus the probability of finding out the plot and stopping it increases.

Imho

 

The following is part of an interview with Sallie Baliunas, Chair of the Science Advisory Board, at the George C. Marshall Institute in Washington, D. C. Dr. Baliunas is also an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"COULD IT<the Sun> EXPLAIN GLOBAL WARMING IN AND OF ITSELF?

How does that look against the temperature records? It matches up pretty well with the beginning of the 20th Century. But it does not match up so well now. The surface temperature (of Earth) seems to have risen a little more dramatically than the Sun has in recent decades.

So, in terms of a straightforward link between the two, an association between the Sun and Earth, it looks like the Sun has not been the cause of most of the late 20th Century warming. It could have made a contribution.

We've measured the Sun directly and we measure its total energy output. That's been measured by satellites for about 25 years now. So we know the Sun's energy output has been increasing with the magnetic cycle. We know right now because we're in a low point in that 11 year cycle that the Sun has backed off a little bit in its energy. But it's going to be on the rise again.

Over 25 years, there is evidence from some researchers that suggest there has been a subtle rise in the background and that also might contribute to the amount of energy the Earth receives. But in terms of Mars, one of the polar caps is pulling back the ice. The solar cap is melting back and has done some interesting layering and shelving there that can be measured by the satellites we currently have on Mars. Mars has - it's not clear that Mars is responding very quickly to these changes on the Sun because we don't have enough detailed measurements of Mars to say so. Mars has warmed and cooled in the past. When we look back at pictures of Mars, we see that events that have gone on where it looks like river gullies with subsurface frozen ice melting, coming up to the surface and causing some valleys and rills on Mars.

Pluto - boy, it's hard to say what's going on there! Pluto is probably very little effected by the amount of radiation the Sun puts out. For one reason, it's so far away. For another reason, we just don't understand what's happening on Pluto. There are probably a lot of chemical reactions, gas reactions, in its atmosphere. Pluto does have a highly eccentric orbit, but there you're talking about changes on timescales of thousands of years, not the 11 year cycle. So, it's not clear that they are all linked to the Sun in any direct way. But our view of the Sun is so limited in time that it gets hard to rule a lot of things out. It's worth looking at. It's a very good question.

IF THE SUN WERE NOT CAUSING WARMING ON MARS AND PLUTO, WHAT COULD CAUSE WARMING ON MARS AND PLUTO?

Mars has seasons, very long-term changes. There are changes in its atmosphere that occur on timescales of months. Dust storms crop up. We don't know why those dust storms crop up. Chemical reactions that shift energy around in the system and that the system finally responds.

So, like the earth, the climate of Mars is complicated. There are changes going on many different timescales."

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=1017&category=Science
Apparently there is more going on than the Sun heating up.

 

The president has lots of people involved with the details. It isn't necessary that he is. Jimmy Carter was so involved that he kept up with who was playing on the White House tennis court and look how awful of a president he was. I guess all that attention to detail didn't stop the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979.

 

This is the first I've ever heard of this. Do you have any proof or is this just your overactive imagination at work again?

 

Here is some info on Mars:

www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html

Here is some info on Pluto:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html

 

This is the first I've ever heard of this. Do you have any proof or is this just your overactive imagination at work again? </font>[/QUOTE]Yup, every time I eat those mushrooms from the compost pile I get this way.
I firmly believe global warming is a natural consequence of the warming and cooling phases of the sun, and the idea that man and his feeble efforts can cause any global differences amazes me. Some internal action of the earth itself probably effects our atmosphere (see volcanic activities effects) vastly more than mans so called disastrous efforts.

 

(Emphasis mine).

I sure hope you don't have this #^&* attitude with your students!

My sympathies are with them if your "profile" on this board is typical of your relation with your students!

 

Obtaining accurate temps from other planets is done all the time. I think it's done with infrared technology, but I don't know. One of my sons best friends is a for real rocket scientist, and I'll try to ask him.

 

Actually I bet Helen or her husband Barry would know.

 

Hillclimber
Please do, I'm actually getting curious about physics stuff for once.

From Ken's link about Pluto.
"Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College, said that Pluto's global warming was "likely not connected with that of the Earth. The major way they could be connected is if the warming was caused by a large increase in sunlight. But the solar constant--the amount of sunlight received each second--is carefully monitored by spacecraft, and we know the sun's output is much too steady to be changing the temperature of Pluto.""