So a large percentage of global warming could be down to the sun?

[Haggisdj]

CERN have research that a large percentage of global warming could be down to the sun...

http://blogs.telegrap...climate-change-shock/

[DTCwordfan]

tell the sun to tone down the burn a bit, its not energy efficient.

[DTCwordfan]

Global warming and cooling has always gone on. Read Danny Danziger on 1215 and the UK was 4C average warmer than today and had extensive red wine vineyards to Luton and white wine up to Edinburgh, to the point that the Norman era was all about wine drinking and not per se grains. The mini-ice age of the 16th and 17thC reversed that......thee were mini-glaciers in Scotland, proven by the terminal moraines and Snowdonia was known as the Welsh Alps as they had snow on all year.

This has always (underscored) happen through geology (how many ice ages then?).

However, it does not mean that I condone the wastage of resources and emission management. I do not, but put the global warming in perspective please - incidentally my qualifications - geology and geography with a Masters in Glaciology so we tend to be somewhat longer term looking in our analysis than the likes of Al Gore......

[modeller]

Climate change is caused by many things including man made.
Ther have been many ice ages and mini or little ice ages.
The last little ice age was a time of very low solar activity but its effects were made far worse by volcanic activity which caused volcanic dust to spread throughout the world and lasted for several years. It was so bad in Europe that one year was described as the year without a summer.

As far as major ice ages are concerned it is the variation in the tilt of the globe which has the greatest effect . It is the tilt which gives us our seasons therefore it is easy to imagine that if that tilt is increased we would have greater extremes between winter and summer. If this is accompanied by a long period of reduced solar radiation . The snow of winter is not melted in the summer and therefore each year the ice caps get bigger which reflects what sun there is back into space . R

[DTCwordfan]

I agree modeller....a classic example of volcano effect was Krakatoa - warming mid 19tC was suddenly curtailed by the effects of the volcano - as illustrated by the first Christmas card scenes showing the Thames freezing over and people skating in London on it- never mind the climate data collected by the avid Victorian.

Krakatoa was only a medium-large sized volcano - it is thought that the major volcanoes could trigger ice-ages as their "blanket effect" is so severe that they can trigger a major set-back - the next one due up is the Yellowstone Caldera that, when it last went up, covered an area from current Chicago to Houston with ash, west of the Rockies. The goods news, not for another 250 to 300k years, even though the caulderon is 2/3rds full.

There are, as modeller says, many short, medium and long term factors in play. The consensus of glaciologists is that we are on the slow slide back into another cold recession.

[jno]

the earth is moving toward the sun???

I suppose there's no point in asking where that bit of information came from, before my toes start to melt?

[DTCwordfan]

the earthquake off Japan earlier this year tipped the earth off its current axis, jno, I think it was 0.18 of a degree - that is from memory not a web search, but that in itself could cause climatic change, not sure which way as I dont know if the angle was towards the sun or away from it......

[DTCwordfan]

its smaller than I thought - but you will get the idea of the impact of truly mega events... shortening of the day very marginally

http://www.ibtimes.co...ulsion-laboratory.htm

[modeller]

jno Let 's clear up one point the earth is not moving towards the sun in fact it is moving away but the tilt of the earth varies over thousands of years towards or away from the sun. Which can account for ice ages , followed by inter glacial stages one of which we are in now but coming towards its end .
So over the next millenium we will move towards a new ice age but that still takes time to build up , anything up to 100k years and then another 10k years to come out of it which brings to the same point we are in now.
However man made greenhouse gases could possibly cancel it out but pollution , particulates could make it worse . We don't know . The only thing we do know any major change is a long way into the future .

[jno]

that's a relief, modeller, I was worrying about getting factor 5,000,000 sunscreen.

The path of the earth is slightly elliptical, I believe, so it may inch toward the sun and then away again. This isn't global warming.