Aug 11 2009
Solar Dimming / Brightening, another reason to be dubious about Global Warming claims
The latest issue Journal of Geophysical Research has 20 articles dedicated to the subject of solar dimming and solar brightening . The article at ScienceDaily on this issue has interesting implications when it comes to man-made Global Warming as a result of CO2 production.
The terms “solar dimming” and “solar brightening” refer to the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface. Scientific study on this subject is relatively young. The global measurement network to measure sunlight didn’t begin to take shape until the late-1950s. Meaning we have less than 50-years worth of information on global sunlight amounts.
The data we do have is interesting as far as the implications for Global Warming theories. The amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface decreased from the 1950’s, with the trend reversing in the mid-1980’s.
Why does this have implications for the belief in man-made Global Warming? Try this quote from the Science Daily story:
A further challenge for the researchers is to incorporate the effects of global dimming/brightening more effectively in climate models, to understand their impact on climate change better. After all, studies indicate that global dimming masked the actual temperature rise – and therefore climate change – until well into the 1980s. Moreover, the studies published also show that the models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fourth Assessment Report do not reproduce global dimming/brightening adequately: neither the dimming nor the subsequent brightening is simulated realistically by the models. According to the scientists, this is probably due to the fact that the processes causing global dimming/brightening were not taken into account adequately and that the historical anthropogenic emissions used as model input are afflicted with considerable uncertainties.
That quote implies, among other things, that there was no warming until the 1980’s despite the increase in atmospheric CO2. The Scientists that blame atmospheric CO2 for Global Warming are blaming a phenomena that shows no correlation with the raise in global temperatures, and ignoring the phenomena that does. If the increase in the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface directly correlates with the increase in global temperatures, how can you possibly blame CO2?
Another little tid-bit when it comes to solar brightening. Solar brightening appears to be caused by a reduction in aerosols and particles in the atmosphere. This results in less scattering of sunlight. Scattered sunlight results in more photosynthesis as a result of the light coming from multiple direction, which results in increases CO2 absorption by plants.
In case you need that interpreted, solar brightening results in an increase in atmospheric CO2 as a result in decreased photosynthesis. And if solar brightening causes Global Warming (as it appears to) it means Global Warming causes increased CO2, not the other way around.
Another little problem, the Scientists admit their models don’t take solar dimming/brightening into account and they have no way of accurately measuring historic man-made CO2 production. That means the Climate Scientists admit to two serious errors in the models they use when it comes to making predictions on Global Warming. In other words, global warming models are a case of garbage-in, garbage-out.
Any result that can be described as “garbage-out” needs to be ignored.
