Friday, July 24, 2009

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

The climate models used by James Hansen and the IPCC are way off, yet I can't remember the New York Times counseling caution about carbon caps. But compare Saturday's Times story dismissing the influence of solar cycles on temperature change:
With better telescopes on the ground and a fleet of Sun-watching spacecraft, solar scientists know a lot more about the Sun than ever before. But they do not understand everything. Solar dynamo models, which seek to capture the dynamics of the magnetic field, cannot yet explain many basic questions, not even why the solar cycles average 11 years in length.

Predicting the solar cycle is, in many ways, much like predicting the stock market. A full understanding of the forces driving solar dynamics is far out of reach, so scientists look to key indicators that correlate with future events and create models based on those.
Unlike climate prediction models, which are much more certain!

The same article insists:
The idea that solar cycles are related to climate is hard to fit with the actual change in energy output from the sun. From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun’s energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent.
Ok, but I don't recall the Times rejecting the carbon dioxide-forced warming hypothesis on the grounds that "[o]nly 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are CO2," which is 0.039 percent.

Plainly, skepticism in service of socialism is no vice. So, get over the giddy-ness about "restor[ing] science to its rightful place." For press and pundits, lefty slant routinely slays reason.

(via Planet Gore, Maggie's Farm)

3 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

> "From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun’s energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent."

Mean Radius - r - 6371 km

Cross Section (CS) - Pi*r^2 - 127.5 million sq. mhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant#Solar_constant

Solar Constant (SC) -- minimum 1,321 W/m² in early July

Energy received (SCxCS) - 168.5 GigaWatts.

"Trivial variance" == 169 MegaWatts, all devoted to raising (or not) the earth's temperature -- EACH SECOND.

OBloodyHell said...

Further, this just completely blows off the generally accepted effect of such "trivial variances" as a direct cause of ice ages in the form of Milankovich Cycles

"Consensus" in this case isn't proof, but it's interesting how it's "irrelevant" here, innit?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The social argument about AGW is over. The intellectual argument continues.