4 ms·

There is so much in your reply, I am gratified! I can't possibly reply adequately, at least on this touchscreen phone. A few things: - agree suncycles/sunspo

There is so much in your reply, I am gratified! I can't possibly reply adequately, at least on this touchscreen phone. A few things: - agree suncycles/sunspots follow a general pattern, but by no means precise nor energy predictable. - I suspected static because of some of your conclusions, for example that earth as a closed system. It's not! Earth is slowly growing due to dust/meteor accretions, our orbit and spin are slowly changing, single random volcanic eruptions can throw more particulate matter into the upper atmosphere than all human activity in history affecting weather for years, random cosmic ray inputs, earth's fluctuating magnetic field strengths, sun spots, cloud formation, and on and on ... huge inputs that make the system incredibly dynamic. You are right to say that louder/more urgent pleas for action don't necessarily mean there's an attempt to scaremonger. I just observe that it's tough for fear not to soak the rhetoric especially when the screamer is legitimately afraid. We just need to be methodical about any substantive change we attempt, no more rush to judgement. Fear can lead to rash decision making that could make things worse. (Like that insane proposal a few years back to seed clouds on a massive scale in order to reflect more sunlight back into space.) I continue to hold that, based on recent history, we can apply tech that is clean AND continues our economic and social growth. We can have our cake and eat it too!

pas 10y ago
How do you know that we don't know enough about the Sun to predict the energy output? Because we actually do know. There's solar magnetohydrodynamics and simple measurements, and measurements of other stars' energy output. And stars are pretty well behaved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant The number of sunspots in the past have also been reconstructed, seems crazy, but it's calculable from Carbon-14 dating. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspo... ) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_cycle&oldid=749119074#Solar_irradiance https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_cycle&oldid... see the "ACRIM gap" problem, which is about 0.045% difference ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-vs-pmod/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-... ) in estimating the long term trend in solar energy output. Oh, well, of course Earth is not a closed system, since the Sun is constantly feeding us with energy, but from a simple modeling point of view those are constants. From a CO2 aspect it's closed. (As CO2 does not leave to space, it's too heavy for that.) Just as the mass of Earth, length of a day, and year, and so on are pretty well understood, the variations in orbital position (the already mentioned Sun-Earth cycles). A really bad and big volcano throwing ash in the air is a single event, we can model those too. And those short term (<5 year, after that the particulate matter - aerosol - settles) effects can be simulated. "The screamer is legitimately afraid" - yes, that complicates human matters a bit. Everyone is a stakeholder, yet with slightly different preferences, fears and views. Yes, indeed, carbon quota/tax/etc is the right incentive to make the right decisions. If we'd provide cheap loans to help the transformation, we would be borrowing against our own future, and we can decide to pay those back in a 100 years, so it's not like we lack the resources and capacity to deal with major producers (power plants, electricity, 30% https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... ).

pas 10y ago

How do you know that we don't know enough about the Sun to predict the energy output? Because we actually do know. There's solar magnetohydrodynamics and simple measurements, and measurements of other stars' energy output. And stars are pretty well behaved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant The number of sunspots in the past have also been reconstructed, seems crazy, but it's calculable from Carbon-14 dating. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspots_11000_years.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File:Sunspo... ) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_cycle&oldid=749119074#Solar_irradiance https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_cycle&oldid... see the "ACRIM gap" problem, which is about 0.045% difference ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-vs-pmod/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-... ) in estimating the long term trend in solar energy output. Oh, well, of course Earth is not a closed system, since the Sun is constantly feeding us with energy, but from a simple modeling point of view those are constants. From a CO2 aspect it's closed. (As CO2 does not leave to space, it's too heavy for that.) Just as the mass of Earth, length of a day, and year, and so on are pretty well understood, the variations in orbital position (the already mentioned Sun-Earth cycles). A really bad and big volcano throwing ash in the air is a single event, we can model those too. And those short term (<5 year, after that the particulate matter - aerosol - settles) effects can be simulated. "The screamer is legitimately afraid" - yes, that complicates human matters a bit. Everyone is a stakeholder, yet with slightly different preferences, fears and views. Yes, indeed, carbon quota/tax/etc is the right incentive to make the right decisions. If we'd provide cheap loans to help the transformation, we would be borrowing against our own future, and we can decide to pay those back in a 100 years, so it's not like we lack the resources and capacity to deal with major producers (power plants, electricity, 30% https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... ).