Climate denial memes debunked on Youtube

[Puppycow]

Found this via the Little Green Footballs (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34659_Video-_Mars_Attacks_Or_Maybe_It_Doesnt) weblog, which has lately become one of my favorite blogs.
Is climate change really happening on other planets?
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I liked this enough to subscribe to his Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610)

[Puppycow]

Another good one: 1998 revisited
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[Safe-Keeper]

Is climate change really happening on other planets?The tragic thing is, and pardon my high-horse arrogance, that idiocy like this shouldn't need debunking. It's one of those arguments so devoid of logic that they insult me. It's akin to saying that the Germans can't have started WWII, because wars also happen in countries without Germans.

ETA: strike that, I spoke too soon. The argument in this case was that every planet in the solar system was warming, and thus the Sun seems a likely culprit, which is of course far more logical than my accidental strawman above.

[Safe-Keeper]

But yes, it's a great -and long!- series of videos.

[Beerina]

The science of this fascinates me, even if it be used one way or the other in politics.

One odd exchange went like this:

Person 1: Well, the sun's energy output varies!

Person 2: Yeah, but it's only 5%.


And that was that. But 5% (aside from sounding scary rather than calming, but that's my math mind speaking) translates to about 13 extra degrees' worth of energy at around Earth's temperature.

There are lots of other factors, of course. For example, is this "extra 5%" of the same distribution, so to speak, as the first 273 K worth, w.r.t. the fractions of it reflected or absorbed? That kind of thing. The "13 degrees" above suggests it's roughly equivalent, which may not be the case.

In other words, if 99% of the additional 5% got reflected, whereas, say, 50% of the "first 273 K worth" was reflected, it wouldn't make much difference. But if the additional 5% was 99% absorbed, with the same fraction for the "first 273", it could be far more significant than "only" a 5% increase.

[Puppycow]

ETA: strike that, I spoke too soon. The argument in this case was that every planet in the solar system was warming, and thus the Sun seems a likely culprit, which is of course far more logical than my accidental strawman above.

No, I think your "strawman" wasn't too far off the mark. There's also a claim that every planet is warming, but I've heard the claim just based on the report that climate change may be happening on Mars. In the video, some of those comments seem to be based only on that headline.

[Puppycow]

The science of this fascinates me, even if it be used one way or the other in politics.

One odd exchange went like this:

Person 1: Well, the sun's energy output varies!

Person 2: Yeah, but it's only 5%.


And that was that. But 5% (aside from sounding scary rather than calming, but that's my math mind speaking) translates to about 13 extra degrees' worth of energy at around Earth's temperature.

There are lots of other factors, of course. For example, is this "extra 5%" of the same distribution, so to speak, as the first 273 K worth, w.r.t. the fractions of it reflected or absorbed? That kind of thing. The "13 degrees" above suggests it's roughly equivalent, which may not be the case.

In other words, if 99% of the additional 5% got reflected, whereas, say, 50% of the "first 273 K worth" was reflected, it wouldn't make much difference. But if the additional 5% was 99% absorbed, with the same fraction for the "first 273", it could be far more significant than "only" a 5% increase.

I'm at work now and I can't watch the video right now, but I thought he said they considered variations in the sun's output and were able to rule that out.

I matters if the 5% variation is a secular variation or not. If the average output changes by 5% for a long period of time, it would make a big difference, but if it constantly varies within a 5% range it would not. I assume that "the additional 5%" would be reflected and absorbed at approximately the same ratio as the other energy.

[lomiller]

Umm the Sun’s energy output doesn’t vary anywhere close to 5%, unless were are talking about timeframe of nearly 1 billion years.

Normal solar variation though a sunspot cycle is on the order of +/- 0.05% on a scale of a couple centuries is could be as much as +/- 0.1%

[Puppycow]

One odd exchange went like this:

Person 1: Well, the sun's energy output varies!

Person 2: Yeah, but it's only 5%.

I watched those videos again, I didn't see this.