Science Forums 2

[UncleAl]

Global warming is real.

Sunspots are cooler darker areas than the overall background. They are surrounded by faculae that are hotter and brighter. Energy emission varies as the fourth power of absolute temperature. Let's try 10% cooler and 10% warmer and see what we get for equal areas of emission.

(0.9)^4 = 65.6%
(1.1)^4 = 146.4%

That is not a robust analysis but it is adequately qualitative. If it were 65.6% and 134.4% things would balance. In the real world, the more dark sunspots there are the more energy the sun emits overall because of the coupled faculae. We're talking a fraction of 1% difference/average. It's enough to push the entirety of Global Warming.

http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/sunspots.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/sola..._predict_l.gif
Things have been smoking

The warmest day of summer is not 21 June (August is evil) nor the coldest day of winter 21 December (try February). There is a lag between energy input and temperature distribution. Same for a changing solar constant. If we do nothing, the "hottest years in 500 years" from the 2000-2002 explosion of sunspots will simply vanish. If the sun stays quiet as expected, Global Warming will vanish and the new grief will be an impending ice age.

We know exactly how much coal, gas, and petroleum are burned because we monitor and tax every drip of production. The total fossil fuel CO2 annual input into the atmosphere is lost in the noise of natural emissions measurements. It is a sparrow fart compared to CO2 released by global wildfires each year.

The Carbon Tax on Everything is government revenue enhancement. It will collapse First World economies and not couple to the Global Warming problem short of major national depression like Ford's and Carter's stagflation. You don't drive to work if you don't have a job.

If you want to reduce atmospheric CO2, plant tens of thousands of square miles of new forest. When the wood matures, cut it down and build houses to sequester that carbon in cellulose for another 50 years. Replant the forests.

US Enviro-whiner policy is to discourage wood frame houses. Brazil is destroying the Amazon jungle as fast as it can chop trees and light fires for farms to grow sugar cane for its "ethanol economy." The soil is exhausted in three years and they cut deeper into the Amazon for new land. It must be government - it is exactly the subsidized wrong thing to do in the worst possible way.