Pats&Sox

Global cooling wasnt supported by science in the 70's. It was mainly the media.

Study debunks 'global cooling' concern of '70s

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.

The '70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

Study debunks 'global cooling' concern of '70s - USATODAY.com

Pats&Sox

The first of the three Milankovitch Cycles is the Earth's eccentricity. Eccentricity is, simply, the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This constantly fluctuating, orbital shape ranges between more and less elliptical (0 to 5% ellipticity) on a cycle of about 100,000 years. These oscillations, from more elliptic to less elliptic, are of prime importance to glaciation in that it alters the distance from the Earth to the Sun, thus changing the distance the Sun's short wave radiation must travel to reach Earth, subsequently reducing or increasing the amount of radiation received at the Earth's surface in different seasons.

Today a difference of only about 3 percent occurs between aphelion (farthest point) and perihelion (closest point). This 3 percent difference in distance means that Earth experiences a 6 percent increase in received solar energy in January than in July. This 6 percent range of variability is not always the case, however. When the Earth's orbit is most elliptical the amount of solar energy received at the perihelion would be in the range of 20 to 30 percent more than at aphelion. Most certainly these continually altering amounts of received solar energy around the globe result in prominent changes in the Earth's climate and glacial regimes. At present the orbital eccentricity is nearly at the minimum of its cycle.

Milankovitch Cycles

prag

For Pats & Sox

What causes this 100,000 yr cycle?

prag

Any energy exchange that is not solar, will, according to the 2nd law, create more earth disorder than order. As disorder (green house gas layer, ozone depletion, polluted water, etc) builds up, solar is our only entropy reversing source (because its energy enters the earth system from the outside).

This takes us immediately to the big picture on the Global warming issue.

Entropy is the problem, not energy. If one cannot competently take the 2nd law of thermo into account, they cannot say anything competently about heat--and that includes global warming.

The disorder (entropy) of an earth system and its surroundings, taken together, increases for every energy exchange.

The only way to win, here, is to transduce the disorder to the infinite reservoir that is external to the earth system (the rest of the universe).

This amounts to letting solar do entopy reversing work then reradiate into the universe degraded.

prag

Gravitational purturbations from Saturn and Jupiter allegedly cause the Milankovitch cycles.

prag

Of course the planets do not move in elliptical orbits because the sun, itself is moving. Just kidding.

Caltex

The Sun is moving, it orbits the center of the galaxy, and it orbits the center of our solar system. The center of the solar system just happens to be very close to the center of the sun, because the sun makes up almost all the mass of our solar system. Our galaxy is also moving.

__________________

prag

The just kidding part is that they remain ellipses 'relative' to the sun, which is the AGW issue. Pats thinks I play with words. Come to think of it, who doesn't?

Pats&Sox

Wow! A post without the word entropy! Congratulations!


Just kidding.

jpn of Seattle

I sure am glad that I found this political forum where I can learn how professional scientists are all wrong and conservatives are all right.

Funny how that works--conservatives who have hated anything to do with environmental preservation their entire lives turn out to be the only ones on the planet who still write post between themselves how the entire scientific community is wrong while they've been right all along.

I know the conservatives are convinced. But I'll wait until, say, NASA changes its mind before the conservatives will convince me. Or maybe NOAA:

source: Agency Affirms Human Influence on Climate - New York Times