It seems to me that it’s been a while since we hunted down silly theories. On the June Ice Bet Results thread, Shooshmoon asked and I answered:
Lucia I’m just wondering, what is supposed to happen with global warming? Is a giant piece of an ice cap going to rip off and the earth is going to lose it’s magnetic field or something?
Mostly, with respect to the arctic, it’s supposed to get warmer and we expect the amount of NH sea ice to decline over time. Of course, we still expect to see an annual cycle– but June averages will decline relative to June averages, July relative to July and so on. I haven’t done any computations to figure out the rate of ice decline projected by models– Mauri might know.
Some discussion ensued about whether there might be theories suggesting global warming would cause changes in the earth’s magnetic field. I decided to see what I could find by googling “global warming magnetic field”. As usual, Google returned interesting stuff.
The first return was My Claims on Global Warming, an apparently undated web page illustrated by a photo of a guy who looks like he belongs on a 1950’s grade school science film strip. This man discusses how the earth’s magnetic field is going to change and predicts:
The change will be gradual and will depend on the interior heat of the earth; we should expect an increase in global warming for the next few years and a reversal probably within the next 5 years. As the spherical shell of electrons move outward with the resulting decrease in magnetism, eventually the decrease will cause a reversal and then global cooling will set in for a few thousands of years, this will be the start of a glaciers period.
I clicked a link on the sidebar and visited a page discussing additional details about his magnetic field prediction and also provides some copyrights. Eugene D. Richard has evidently been in the prediction business since the 70s.
The second return was Earth’s Magnetic Field Changes Climate at Discovery Channel which reports a paper wherein Danish Scientists report a link between the earth’s magnetic field and precipitation. One researcher, Knudsen is quoted saying,
“If changes in the magnetic field, which occur independently of the Earth’s climate, can be linked to changes in precipitation, then it can only be explained through the magnetic field’s blocking of the cosmetic rays,” he said.
The third is a sarcastic story commenting on something reported by PBS.
The fourth is a May 28, 2010 Global Warming Science entry which discusses an interpretation of regional warming linking it to the local intensity of the earth’s magnetic field.
The fifth is about the influence of the sun’s magnetic field and global warming, and so not relevant to our search.
Reading further, I was able to find articles suggesting the changes in the earth’s magnetic field can cause the earth’s climate to change in some way. I didn’t find articles suggesting the climate changes can trigger changes in the earth’s magnetic field. Then I thought, maybe I should add ” Chalko” to my search. He’s expecting the core of the earth to do odd things. However, he doesn’t seem to specifically discuss global warming causing the magnetic field to change.
Still, you never know. There could be someone out there who thinks warming will cause the magnetic fields to change. If anyone has read a particularly strange sounding theory lately, let us know.
Obviously, this is an open thread. But try to be nice (especially if you find a particularly nutty theory!)
theres a guy on WUWT who blathers on about this. i think. i generally tune out
I never noticed that, but Oliver Manuel, the iron sun guy, is a fixture over there.
Dumb question — does the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field have any effect on the TSI reaching the atmosphere? I’ve read that it protects us from harmful, high energy radiation. If the field weakens wouldn’t more energy reach the Earth?
This is probably addressed somewhere on ScienceOfDoom, though
— back to lurking
Not sure about “magnetic fields”…. But there are some “theories” , hypothesis’, ideas, etc about an electic universe, plasma theory, etc…..?
One would assume, if subscribing to those ideas or accepting them for the sake of examination, then one would expect temperature changes as electical fields differed, or some such?
However, I’m just an interested reader of many things…. Dark matter and the movement of galaxies, are as puzzling as electric universes, to me. I wouldn’t presume to know or understand anything 😉
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm
Ok….. the Dutch v Urg football game is about to start….. I’m off.
Lucia, please, please start a thread about the David Brin guy. I had no idea that such a famous author/scientist/public speaker existed,…
.
I feel like saying some Ben Santerish things.
.
He talks about “TWODA” (things we ought to do anyway) to much applause (mainly self-applause). Who is going to ask him – “if you want to do them anyway, why do you drag the name of climate science in it for?”
.
It is all really FUBAR
The Earth’s magnetic field deflects the solar wind which is pretty hot… so if there is some way that changes in the magnetic field affects climate, that’s probably a good place to start… that is, once you are done trying to link Oliver the Man to skeptics.
Those cosmetic rays
Look sultry; must avoid ’em.
Tip the hat to Noel.
==============
Shub–
I just told Keith Kloor I wasn’t going to discuss Brin. He’s… he’s….
Yes. I agree we should do TWODA. But why does this have to involve Rupert Murdoch? And why all the ranting?
“the magnetic field’s blocking of the *cosmetic* rays”?? Wow. Who knew?
Anyway–it looks like the field is wide open. I’m sure the magnetic field of the Earth has some influence on the Earth’s climate (blocking or deflecting ionizing radiation). The challenge is to come with a plausible mechanism that works backwards.
Perhaps we could start with the guys who said that melting ice on Iceland would lead to more volcanic activity. That has to send lots of charged particles into the atmosphere. Also it may… um… deplete magma pockets, causing… yes, massive earthquakes, eventually sending shock waves deep into the core of the earth, upsetting the magnetic dynamo. There’s a possible starting point (for a comic book, or a Hollywood movie…).
(Actually I just Googled Chalko, and I guess he’s been saying that global warming is causing more volcanic eruptions for a while now…)
Anyone remember Archimedes Plutonium from the old usenet days?? He insisted that our solar system was an electron orbital shell of a plutonium atom. Really off the wall stuff but sincere!
Tim W. (Comment#48009) July 6th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Dumb question — does the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field have any effect on the TSI reaching the atmosphere? I’ve read that it protects us from harmful, high energy radiation
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
TSI means total solar irradiance. This is the “sunlight” or electromagnetic radiation. This is the radiation that is basically photons. These have no electric charge so are not influenced by magnetism, although you might not guess that from the name!
Radiation is often devided into two catagories. Ionizing and non ionizing radiation (cant work out how to link but you can read up on wikipedia for the terms if you want to learn more) but basicaly ionizing radiation is forms of radiation that are charged and will be deflected by a magnetic field. These will be affected by the earths magnetic field. Non ionizing radiation has no charge and is not affected by magnetic fields.
Electromagnetic radiation or light is one kind of non-ionizing radiation (when people outside of science think of light as ‘radiation’ they normally only think of very high frequency light called xrays).
The other type of radiation that is non ionizing is fast moving netrons. (Someone is bound to argue with me here that nutrons can ionize inderectly).
The types of radiation that are affected by the earths magnetic field are things like alpha and beta particles. Alpha particles are large clumps of two protons and two neutrons that are shot off from nuclear reactions and beta particles are very fast moving electrons. These have an electric charge (2 positive for the alpha particle and one negative for the beta particle). These kind of particles are the by product of the nuclear reaction in the sun and arrive at the earth by the solar wind which is not what is measured with the TSI.
This explanation is not perfect but I hope if it does not clear things up a little, at least it might point you in the right direction of where to look for answers.
And if anyone find any errors too egregious, please feel free to correct me.
MikeC (Comment#48024) July 6th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
The Earth’s magnetic field deflects the solar wind which is pretty hot… so if there is some way that changes in the magnetic field affects climate, that’s probably a good place to start
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
I would strongly doubt that there is enough physical mass in the solar wind to have any discernable effect on the energy content of the atmosphere as a whole and most especialy of the troposphere, irrespective of its temperature.
An article from 2009:
Are Changes In Earth’s Main Magnetic Field Induced By Oceans’ Circulation?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615094038.htm
Professor Gregory Ryskin from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, has defied the long-standing convention by applying equations from magnetohydrodynamics to our oceans’ salt water (which conducts electricity) and found that the long-term changes (the secular variation) in the Earth’s main magnetic field are possibly induced by our oceans’ circulation.
There is a theory that Satellites cause Global warming.
http://globalmicrowave.orgfree.com/
Re: dorlomin (Comment#48037)
Thanks very much for the explaination. I appreciate it.
Michael,
I took a brief look at the site you mentioned ( http://globalmicrowave.orgfree.com/ ). Its thesis is that modern microwave emissions (cellphones, satellite TV, etc.) are the source of global warming, rather than e.g. CO2.
It’s hard to take any site seriously when they argue that the amount of microwave energy from satellite TV is significant because “Direct TV alone has 16.8 Million customers.” [Hint: it’s the number of transmitters which counts, not the number of receivers.] At any rate, the idea fails the order-of-magnitude test.
The global energy imbalance is of something like 2 W/m^2, when averaged over time and the area of the globe. Multiply that by the surface area of the earth and you get approximately 10^15 W.
Let’s look at satellite TV. Assume each transponder on a satellite transmits 100 W of power; that there are 20 transponders per satellite; and that there are 1000 satellites in orbit. [First two are decent estimates, third is probably high.] Total transmitted power is of order 10^6 W.
Okay, what about cellphones? Cellphones transmit on the order of 1W of power. If all 1 billion (?) cellphones in the world were transmitting at once, that would come to 10^9 W. [Of course, there’s no way all the calls would get through at once.] Anyway, still orders of magnitude off, without consideration of the actual duty factors. One should also count transmissions from the cellphone towers — I’d guess that comes to a similar value.
I conclude that this qualifies as one of the “silly theories.”
dorlomin (Comment#48043) July 6th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
“MikeC (Comment#48024) July 6th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
The Earth’s magnetic field deflects the solar wind which is pretty hot… so if there is some way that changes in the magnetic field affects climate, that’s probably a good place to start
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
dorlomin says: I would strongly doubt that there is enough physical mass in the solar wind to have any discernable effect on the energy content of the atmosphere as a whole and most especialy of the troposphere, irrespective of its temperature.”
sheesh. Without the magnetic field, the solar wind would strip away our atmosphere.
Re: DB (Jul 6 16:00),
That theory looks like it could develop into a candidate! But so far, the author didn’t actually merge the notion with “changes in ocean circulation caused by climate change”. So, we must wait!
theres a guy on WUWT who …
You are probably refering to Vukcevic:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/
But his idea works the other way around.
Lucia this was the coolest thing ever. Somebody actually went and looked into this for me. Thank you very much, now I will contribute to the tip jar. I don’t know if anyone has seen it but there is a Larry King video with Bill Nye and Richard Lindzen, it is hysterical. Bill Nye contends that somehow the Gulf Stream could be shut down and Richard Lindzen says that he is completely wrong. My next big inquiry is going to be out nitrogen. I think we have like 78% nitrogen in the air, I’m sure there is somebody out there who says another 2% and we’re all dead. Don’t doubt me, folks.
dorlomin:
“I would strongly doubt that there is enough physical mass in the solar wind to have any discernable effect on the energy content of the atmosphere as a whole and most especialy of the troposphere, irrespective of its temperature.”
What would you consider a discernable effect? Half a degree? 10 degrees?
liza (Comment#48121) July 7th, 2010 at 7:39 am
sheesh. Without the magnetic field, the solar wind would strip away our atmosphere.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Venus has no magnetic field and an atmosphere.
MikeC (Comment#48227) July 7th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
What would you consider a discernable effect? Half a degree? 10 degrees?
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
I am not an atmospheric physicist but out of the 287 K of the average temperature of the atmosphere I would be suprised if even half a degree came from the solar wind.
Here’s a nice one with regards to global warming and the Earth’s magnetic pole:
.
The [Greenland] ice sheet land containment integrity failure precursors are being seen in:
(1.) on the earthquakes that have started to occur on Melville Bay section
(2.) the migration of the Magnetic North Pole since year 2000 when its movement suddenly escalated to 1 mile per week or more. This results, according to Group B of Nations, from the large amount of weight distribution changes as ice melts on top and then the melt water either runs off the land to sea or towards Greenland’s central melt water pool that is forming under Greenland Ice Dome on its interior inward subglacial slopes. As a result, the bottom of litosphere hammers harder against the earth’s faster spinning core (that forms the perennial electrical currents and their associated magnetic fields that kept the compass needle pointing to the north). The lighter, electrically-non conductive rock minerals from above then reduce the electrical conductivity under Greenland and re-routing the electricity go elsewhere on the Faraday’s Cage of the Earth’s Core where there are stll good electically conductive surface remaining. The result of electricity re-routing to go around melting Greenland is seen as the movement of the Magnetic North Pole on the surface.
More from Vukcevic correlating Arctic temperature anomalies with geomagnetism; R squared = 0.89.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Lucia, maybe we could have a slogan thread?
My favourite one, that came to me whilst dropping a tree this past weekend –
“AGW – Don’t blame the Amish”
Reading further, I was able to find articles suggesting the changes in the earth’s magnetic field can cause the earth’s climate to change in some way
You mean like this,
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JA014029.shtml
Studies have suggested that odd N species such as NOx, created by Energetic Particle Precipitation (EPP), and consequent ozone loss through catalytic loss cycles could have an indirect effect on stratospheric and tropospheric (e.g. surface level) temperatures.
Rozanov et al. 2005 Chemistry-Climate Model, results predicted NH
winter time (DJF) changes in Surface Air Temperature and 50 hPa
Geopotential Height due to precipitating energetic particles.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023041.shtml
The problem ie interpretation of the (well described mechanisms ) is in the information entrophy that arises in the blogosphere ie over extension,they fail to reduce to a simplistic statement. eg such as this recent paper.
The Earth’s middle and upper atmosphere are strongly influenced by solar variability. Changes in the solar spectral irradiance as well as in the solar wind can lead to significant perturbations. Solar wind disturbances have been shown to lead to geomagnetic activity variations, which can result in magnetospheric loss of electrons. These electrons precipitate into the atmosphere at high geomagnetic latitudes where they lead to the production of NOx, termed EEP NOx, through dissociation and ionisation processes. Downward transport in the dark polar winter can lead to significant enhancements of NOx in the stratosphere. Because NOx can catalytically destroy ozone, such NOx enhancements lead to ozone depletion in the upper stratosphere as has been shown e.g. by Callis et al. (1998); Brasseur and Solomon (2005); Jackman et al. (2008); Baumgaertner et al. (2009).
dorlomin (Comment#48260) July 7th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
I said our atmosphere. Not Venus’.
But if you don’t think this is what ripping apart looks like I can’t imagine what else does? See animation:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEM8MYSTGOF_1.html
OK, I’ll play.
Magnetic field interaction with earth leads to
geo-magnetically induced currents (GICs).
Electric current of the GICs through resistive media
(lithosphere) leads to heat (as an electric stove).
Therefore the proxy deduced magnetic field increase
has contributed to warming of the earth.
Negligibly?
Perhaps – I lack the background and perhaps there’s
insufficient data to tell.
And unfortunately such notions seem to go into the
desperately sought alternative theories bucket.
But irrespective of forcing from carbon dioxide,
I’d really like a knowledgeable soul to scale this
process to admit or reject its significance.
Maunder and Dalton
Minimums, they were; Vulcans
Walked the earth and belched.
================
ClimateWatcher:
I’d really like a knowledgeable soul to scale this process to admit or reject its significance.
Second that. I’ll play too, although I hope that Lucia hasn’t set up a crank honeypot to feed into her spam filter. Folks without a background in geophysics might not see the obvious fatal flaw(s) and might seem silly to someone who does.
Help us out here Lucia and weigh in with the rationale.
I got stuck on conjecture #1. Mr Richard seems to claim that the Earth’s solid inner core is surrounded by a shell of iron-nickel plasma which is in turn enveloped by a shell of the disassociated electrons. He thinks this is caused by thermal ionization. Is significant thermal ionization liklely to be occurring at the temperature and pressures at the core?
Also, Richard does not claim this, but any idea on what levels of hot electron production would be necessary to cause a detectable reduction in heat generated by electrical eddy currents in the core? Are these levels likely?
Thanks
DB
ClimateWatcher-
A question of imagination for you: do your “Geo-magnetically induced currents” get to play outside the atmosphere, or are they limited to the “ether”?
Your views intrigue me.
Care to stretch this thread?
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JA013052.shtml
The influence of solar variability into the lower atmospheric regions has been suggested on different atmospheric parameters in different time scales. However, a plausible mechanism to explain these observations remains unclear. Although it is widely accepted that the climate change over the past 50 years is attributed to human influence, we present the case that local climate change in the tropical Pacific may be due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field strength. The changes in the tropical Pacific circulation have been observed during the last 50 years, and they are attributed to the increase of the global surface temperature. However, a geomagnetic modulation of the net radiative flux in the southern tropical Pacific was recently suggested. Moreover, comparisons of long-term reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature and solar activity proxies indicated that the existence of a geomagnetic signal in climate data would support a direct link between solar variability and their effects on climate. Here we show that in the tropical Pacific the sea-level pressure, which is a component of the Walker circulation, could be related to the magnetospheric, ionospheric, and upper-atmosphere processes which may propagate downward to the lower atmosphere. Furthermore, we show that the changes in sea-level pressure and the Walker circulation are correlated to the westward drift of the magnetic anomaly. We compare the region averaged monthly values of the sea-level pressure in the tropical Pacific with those of the magnetic field intensity near the surface for the last 50 years. We find that the sea-level pressure in the tropical Pacific is increasing as the magnetic field intensity is decreasing. The correlation coefficient of the sea-level pressure 36-month running means versus the magnetic field intensity is 0.96. We anticipate our investigation to be a starting point for a more sophisticated investigation of the coupling between the space weather processes and lower atmosphere and ocean dynamics.
.
.
conversely
.
.
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/42844-ocean-currents-may-control-earths-magnetic-field
Ocean currents may control Earth’s magnetic field
Re: ClimateWatcher (Jul 8 19:29),
OK, I’ll play.
Magnetic field interaction with earth leads to
geo-magnetically induced currents (GICs).
Electric current of the GICs through resistive media
(lithosphere) leads to heat (as an electric stove).
Therefore the proxy deduced magnetic field increase
has contributed to warming of the earth.
Negligibly?
Perhaps – I lack the background and perhaps there’s
insufficient data to tell.
And unfortunately such notions seem to go into the
desperately sought alternative theories bucket.
But irrespective of forcing from carbon dioxide,
I’d really like a knowledgeable soul to scale this
process to admit or reject its significance.
Think in terms of energy. Climate is created by the heat energy of the sun, which comes in ( average over the year and the globe) about 250Watts/meter^2.
The magnetic field of the earth,is about 5*10^-5 Tesla, but is constant,
and the incoming fields from CMEs are even smaller, order of some tens of 10^-9 Tesla . http://www.lund.irf.se/gic/gichome/gic_gic.html
They have very little energy per cubed meter compared to the incoming sun energy which provides most of the heat for the temperatures we see.
An example calculation for 10^-2 Tesla can be seen here http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/316/lectures/node110.html
Remember that 1Watt is 1Joule/second and you can see how small the energy content of the magnetic fields is, with respect to the electromagnetic sun energy on the earth.
Not exactly the same thing, but something I ran into the other day:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=surface+temperature+global+circuit
anna v (Comment#48564) July 11th, 2010 at 6:13 am
“Think in terms of energy. Climate is created by the heat energy of the sun”
Climate is principally moderated by clouds. Nobody has an understanding of cloud formation beyond the basic grade school concept of it has something to do with water evaporation.
Re: harrywr2 (Jul 11 12:51),
Sure, climate is a chaotic system, and what the specific values of the variables will be depends on a large number of interdependent forces.
BUT, and it is a crucial but, most of the energy supporting this system comes from the electromagnetic radiation of the sun and it is to that number that any other energy incoming or geothermal or… has to be compared.
anna v.-
One point of distinction. The amount of electromagnetic radiation received by the Sun is, relatively, understood. What is not understood is either electro-gravitic, nor magneto-gravitic radiation that might also be radiated. There are no known ways of measuring such, or if they might be just the beginning of a list of unknowns.
For example, the massive coronal flux, of a few months ago, impacted the Earth. How did the Earth react? Is this being explored?
I seem to recall increased tectonic plate movement and vulcanism immediately afterwards. Coincident, or causational?
I would like to see this addressed, with regard to the engine that is the Earth. Something to think about, at least.
Re: Melinda Romanoff (Jul 12 07:41),
There is no electro gravitic or magnetogravitic radiation. It is science fiction terms.
All electromagnetic radiation has some gravitational mass equivalence and is affected by gravitational fields. The energy carried by magnetic fields and electric fields has also a gravitational mass equivalence, but the energies I mention above are what characterize the fields, and all are much much smaller than the energy coming from the electromagnetic spectrum of the sun.
harrywr2 (Comment#48588) July 11th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
quote
Climate is principally moderated by clouds. Nobody has an understanding of cloud formation beyond the basic grade school concept of it has something to do with water evaporation.
unquote
There are some good papers on clouds — J Curry has a 1995 one about droplets in stratocumulus, but I think you’re right up to a point. Open smooth ocean has an albedo of essentially zero, stratocu about 70, which means a difference of input around 200 watts per m^2. CO2 forcing is about 2 to 3 w/m^2. Change the amount of oceanic low level cloud and you can explain everything.
Lucy, it would be interesting to cover theories other than the … let us say more extreme ones, Lindzen’s Iris, that sort of thing. Commenters could award points if the theory explains e.g. the similarity of warming from 1910 to 1940 and 1950 to 1980, the collapse of the cod population on the Great Banks, increased salinity in mid ocean, increase pan evaporation rates in Australia, things like that. And the WWII blip.
JF
Oh, yes, one more I’ve thought of. Elvers and the collapse in their numbers in Europe.
Oh, yes, more science fiction.
Tim W.
“Anyone remember Archimedes Plutonium from the old usenet days?”
Oh boy. He was a classic – padiac numbers explained many things for for him as well.
Sorry for the late post.
shooshmon (Comment#48191) July 7th, 2010 at 11:47 am
“I’m sure there is somebody out there who says another 2% and we’re all dead. Don’t doubt me, folks.”
Shooshmon, please let me be first:
1) N2 absorbs in the UV range.
2) excited N2 will collide with C02 leading to excited states
3) Once the C02 gets to an inverted population state it will begin to undergo stimulated emission at the 10um wavelength.
4) The atmosphere start bombarding earth with coherent 10um laser pulses.
Not sure 2% increase is enough for this, but if N2 were to be found to be increasing (with increasing C02), we would have the physical basis. 🙂
For demonstration see the CO2 laser in your neighborhood physics lab.