Jennifer Marohasy

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You Can’t Tax the Sun

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Yes, if you can’t tax the Sun, the current highly politicised state of climate science suggests that there isn’t much point spending money on understanding the Sun either.

I refer to this article on the BBC website: ‘Space weather science rues cuts’

Excerpt: The field of science dedicated to understanding “space weather” – which can pose hazards to satellites and aircraft – may be wiped out in the UK. That is the verdict of experts responding to UK physics and astronomy cuts made as administrators seek to plug an £80m hole in their finances.

Tracking the Sun’s changing activity is vital for managing radiation doses and for protecting aircraft electronics. It is also of economic importance, since it costs airlines to deviate from flight paths.

Blog contributor Arnost observes:

One of the risks that the world faces, as more and more funds are diverted to AGW and related projects, is that “real” science will get under-funded.

This is a case in point – understanding Solar Terrestrial Physics is critical. If adequate warning of solar activity is not provided, Solar Flares / Coronal Mass Emissions etc. may fry satellite electronics (if they aren’t shut down), and in worst cases may cause aircraft (esp. in trans-polar routes) to suffer major electronic failure putting lives at
risk.

It is of course ironic that the first cuts are made to the Solar Terrestrial Physics field – as this is the major threat to the CO2 driven AGW thesis in that a viable counter-theory may be found as a by-product of monitoring / predicting solar behaviour.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Luke says

    Paul a highly concocted piece without some further substantiation and evidence. Lamentable move by the UK but a hypothetical motivation is advanced here.

    (1) Who on the supposed hypothetical “CO2 team” is lobbying for a reduction in solar research
    (2) Administrators have been chopping at physics funding for some time e.g. particle accelerators, super-colliders etc. Is this anything new?
    (3) Who is the razor gang exactly and what are their motivations – perhaps they just want to spend the money on middle class welfare?
    (4) Do cuts to the UK effort jeopardise the international effort? How substantial is the UK effort.
    (5) On what judgement is this science any more “real” than other science – Arnost’s?

    The cuts are lamentable IMO – but I’d like to know some further context.

    You have to smile at the phrase “viable counter-theory may be found ” …. I thought it was all over and the denialist consensus had it in the bag (or perhaps bags plural). Are you now saying you guys don’t currently have a viable counter-theory?

  2. Mr T says

    I would suggest the reverse is true.
    The amount of study about the sun has been pretty good recently, and mostly revealing the sun isn’t the source of recent warming (as over the last 5 years it has been getting cooler).
    The study of the sun is ongoing, go look at the SOHO website.

  3. SJT says

    “One of the risks that the world faces, as more and more funds are diverted to AGW and related projects, is that “real” science will get under-funded.”

    Pull the other one. New Scientist has reported that funds in general for scietific research are being cut. They are blaming the massive blowout in costs on the Middle East wars. Sounds a lot more plausible to me.

  4. proteus says

    “The amount of study about the sun has been pretty good recently, and mostly revealing the sun isn’t the source of recent warming (as over the last 5 years it has been getting cooler).”

    Oh, for god’s sake. And what have CO2 emissions been doing over the last five years, Mr T? They’ve been increasing in a manner similar to the previous 25 years and yet we haven’t seen temp. follow a similar trajectory. Does this mean there is no relationship between emissions and temp.? Of course, not. It only means that the relationship isn’t linear and that there are other variables. Why is it so hard for you and others to imagine the same is true for the solar forcing.

  5. Mr T says

    Proteus
    The people doing the studies on the sun came to that conclusion. It’s not about what I can “imagine” to be true.
    Also they have quantified the effects of solar variation, it’s one thing that is actually very easily quantifiable as you can measure the TSI.
    The TSI has fluctuated by the same amount for the last 30 years. Up and down. Carbon dioxide levels have steadily increased. Look at the temp, you see up and down fluctuations over a steady upward increase. It’s both acting together.
    If you look at climate models they use the TSI as part of the projections.

    Anyway, this is off topic. The topic was whether there was a conspiracy to reduce funding to study the sun, which is silly. I see JAXA (the Japanese space agency) recently launched a satellite to study the sun (in 2006) the HINODE (SOLAR-B) satellite. MAybe the UK will just buy the information off them?

  6. Louis Hissink says

    Proteus,

    Your logic is appalling – you have deemed AGW to be true by consensus and when the facts contradict the theory, you make ad hoc adjustments, or propose yet to be discovered factors that explain your belief in AGW.

    This is simply pseudoscience because the initial assumption of AGW, that 2 x CO2 ===> rise in Temperature has never been verified experimentally.

  7. Louis Hissink says

    I might add that if you cut funding for a certain area, eg solar research, then the solar researchers won’t be able to do any research to contradict your own scientific dogma – pure academic politics.

    Despicable but quite normal for government funded science, especially when the Socratists are in power, as they are.

  8. Mr T says

    Proteus I think you may have misinterpreted what I wrote. I was saying the sun has been cooling for 5 years, not the Earth.

    Louis, the solar research has basically confirmed the sun is not responsible. Also there is no proof that funding has been cut anywhere except in the UK. The Japanese and US have been studying the sun extensively.

    Conspiracy theories abound when rationalism departs.

  9. Mr T says

    Proteus I think you may have misinterpreted what I wrote. I was saying the sun has been cooling for 5 years, not the Earth.

    Louis, the solar research has basically confirmed the sun is not responsible. Also there is no proof that funding has been cut anywhere except in the UK. The Japanese and US have been studying the sun extensively.

    Conspiracy theories abound when rationalism departs.

  10. proteus says

    Louis, where have I “deemed AGW to be true by consensus and when the facts contradict the theory” made “ad hoc adjustments”, or “propose[d] yet to be discovered factors that explain your belief in AGW”?

    Mr T, the people doing the studies come to a variety of conclusions, only a portion of which are reflected in your conclusion (or do you ignore people like Svensmark?) By the way, why only consider TSI over the last 30 years and ignore the increase over the last century and a half? Why wouldn’t the increase over that period be reflected increasingly during the 20th Century and especially in the latter half? Are GHGs the only forcing that keep their heat “in the pipeline”? And, anyway, we are only beginning to learn how the sun influences the climate (very recent research suggests that ENSO may be modulated by changes in solar irradiance).

  11. Mr T says

    Proteus,
    Haven’t ignored Svensmark, just wasn’t very inspired by his work. He has no physical process to describe how GCR actually affect cloud formation. And his work trying to link solar cycle length also doesn’t have a physical process (his solar cycle length correlation also breaks down in the late 20th Century so the correlation he was indicating doesn’t actually continue).
    Sure we are only starting to understand how the sun affects climate.
    I only used the 30 year period, as that’s how long they have sattelite measurements. You can use sunspots as a proxy, but they only go back a few hundred years. Climate scientists don’t just ignore it, it’s been (and is being) studied and found to not be a sufficient answer to what we see.
    Here’s the Wiki entry:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
    “A 2006 study and review of existing literature, published in Nature, determined that there has been no net increase in solar brightness since the mid 1970s, and that changes in solar output within the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming. It should be stressed, the same report cautions that “Apart from solar brightness, more subtle influences on climate from cosmic rays or the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation cannot be excluded, say the authors. However, these influences cannot be confirmed, they add, because physical models for such effects are still too poorly developed.””

    There’s apparently no process know by which these other factors would affect climate.
    The problem is that you appeal to an unknown factor rather than using the known factor (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases).

  12. proteus says

    Mr T, have a look at what Svalgaard’s been saying on CA:

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2679#comments

    Here a some choice comments:

    “the issue here is that it is almost dogma that the sun is the cause of the climate swings the last few thousand years [LIA, MWP, etc]. This is so because we don’t know what else could do it [certainly not man-made CO2, if we except that last 100 years]. The problem is that the latest solar data seem to indicate [and this is still controversial] that the sun varies less than what we thought just a few years ago, so if we will maintain that the sun is still the culprit, then we have to crank up significantly the sensitivity of the climate to solar forcing.”

    “When it was believed that TSI was significantly lower and that the solar magnetic field [HMF] was near zero during the MM, it might have been a good bet to say that there is a causal link between MM and LIA. Now, that there is a strong possibility that TSI and the HMF were not at those lows, we can only still believe that MM caused LIA if we postulate either 1) unknown other causes and/or 2) extreme sensitivity of climate to solar activity. I must have said this about 200 times in past comments. So, now we have these choices:
    a) our [new] knowledge of solar activity in the past is faulty and what we used to believe is correct [some solar scientists would take this position, as scientists are extremely conservative – nobody wants to rock a leaky boat {that may support funding and graduate students}; many cling to old beliefs years or even decades after they have been rebuked]
    b) examine the basic assumptions and calculations that led us to our earlier beliefs to see what might be improved or questioned [surely some are on shakier ground than others], or at least try to explore possible consequences of the new evidence. Is it ‘impossible’ or not? How dogmatic can we afford to be?”

    If Svalgaard is right about TSI varying less historically, then climatologists are going to have a lot of splaining to do.

    And I keep on paraphrasing that ancient Chinese curse: We live in interesting times.

  13. Mr T says

    Proteus, sounds like a lot of speculating on the part of Svensmark. I am not aware that the TSI in the MM was high. I thought it was pretty low. Weren’t they using Beryllium isotopes to determine TSI?
    If Svensmark is correct I am sure the models will be adjusted.
    Is Svensmark assuming that the assumptions aren’t being “questioned or improved”? I thought it would be obvious that they are, as the projections change frequently.

    We certainly do live in interesting times. And I like them.

  14. proteus says

    Mr T, read more slowly. I said [Leif] Svalgaard, not Svensmark when refering to the thread(s) at CA. He isn’t saying that TSI was high during the MM, but that the variation in TSI between MM and now is not as great as we currently think it is.

    His argument, currently argued at CA, and at the most recent AGU where he presented a poster, is here:

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2470

    and follows here

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2534

    then here

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2679#comment-206366

  16. Mark says

    “Haven’t ignored Svensmark, just wasn’t very inspired by his work. He has no physical process to describe how GCR actually affect cloud formation.”

    Better read this then:

    http://spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/resolveuid/86c49eb9229b3a7478e8d12407643bed

    And as to correlation over the last 30 years, you may want to read this:

    http://spacecenter.dk/publications/sciet-ntific-reporseries/Scient_No._3.pdf

    In this specific review, Svensmark shows a remarkable correlation between temperature and cosmic ray levels over the last 50 years taking into account an underlying warming trend. So what caused this underlying warming trend? The reality, once volcanic activity in the 80’s and 90’s is taken into account is that this increase occurred primarily from the late 70’s to the early 80’s and corresponds to the Great Pacific Climate shift tied to changes in the PDO. Since then there has been virtually no warming once the volcanic activity is taken into account. So Svensmark’s theory is still very much alive and kicking. If SC24 is indeed going to be a weak one, it will certainly prove to be a key test.