GOP Invents a New Junk Science: 'Galaxy Warming'!

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Len Hart (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Len Hart - Writer

The GOP is prepared to embrace all kinds of junk science if it will get them off the hook for supporting industries, technologies and politicians that support disastrous but profitable policies. These deniers of 'global warming' have more than money riding on their attempts to discredit science. They will deny 'global warming' for the threat it poses to their investments and for the psychological threat it represents to their self-esteem, their ideologies, myths, lies and shibboleths. To this end, 'deniers of global warming', primarily the GOP, have invented an entirely new phenomenon: galaxy warming. Not content to blame the victim, they will blame the universe!

My article Sarah Palin Denies Global Warming, Says Polar Bears Not Endangered drew the following comment on another forum:

I find this global warming thing a bit humorus [sic] at times. The whole galaxy is warming up, it has very little to nothing to do with our use of gasoline or coal, it has to do with changes on the sun.

This is a perfect example of how self-styled debunkers of 'junk science have succumbed to 'junk science. Even if the galaxy were heating up, it would have little if no effect on earth for a long, long time. Global warming is here and now. This is not the first time the GOP has tried to invent an entirely new phenomenon.

Our 'junk scientist' asserts that what we call 'global warming can be attributed to two causes: 1) the Galaxy; 2) the sun.

Let's consider the 'sun' first. Certainly, the sun warms the earth and, if the sun suddenly winked out, the earth would get very, very cold very quickly.

The sun is not getting warmer. It is, in fact, cooling as it runs out of hydrogen. Scientists expect that in about 5 billion years, our sun will become a red giant. As a 'red giant, it may swallow up many planets now in orbit, unless their orbits expand to accommodate a much, much bigger sun.

When the Sun becomes a red giant it will steadily lose mass and affect the orbits of the planets, making it hard to predict what will happen to them. Scientists think it is likely that Mercury and Venus will evaporate as the Sun's surface expands outwards, but the fate of Earth is less certain.
--PhysicsWord.com, Earth could survive a red-giant Sun

Let's take the sun out of the equation. The nearest star to earth is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light years from earth. On a very clear night, far, far from city lights you might seek out Proxima Centauri with a good pair of 10x50 binoculars and a very steady tripod. Serious amateur astronomers will have a reflecting telescope, a steady mount and a clock drive. It is highly doubtful that the amount of 'heat' from Proxima Centauri on earth is measurable and certainly not in our life times.

Radiation causing 'heat' will dissipate rapidly with distance in accordance with the inverse square law. In other words, heat felt on earth from outer space is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of any radiation. Consider how infinitesimal the energy reaching earth from stars about 100,000 light years or even farther from earth! Even if interstellar heat arrives in our lifetimes, it may be be immeasurable.

Nothing travels faster than light. If there are any changes whatsoever in the Galaxy, it's gonna be a long, long, long time before any changes are felt whatsoever. What we know of the center of our galaxy now is really all about what it looked like some 1,400 years ago. That applies to heat, or more properly, the radiation causing heat, indeed, the entire spectrum. Portions of the galaxy could be exploding right now, releasing enormous amounts of radiation of various sorts, and we would not know about it for another 1,400 years, the distance from the sun to the center of the galaxy.

Moreover, National Geographic reports that "...Sunspots alter the amount of energy Earth gets from the sun, but not enough to impact global climate change. See: National Geographic: Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming:

Sunspot-driven changes to the sun's power are simply too small to account for the climatic changes observed in historical data from the 17th century to the present, research suggests.
The difference in brightness between the high point of a sunspot cycle and its low point is less than 0.1 percent of the sun's total output.
"If you run that back in time to the 17th century using sunspot records, you'll find that this amplitude variance is negligible for climate," Foukal said.
--National Geographic, Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says

I am of the opinion that the sun has become a convenient 'fall guy' for a political mindset that seeks out 'fall guys' to cover its own inadequacies.

I think some people have suggested that increasing solar intensity over millennia. But it seems to be the consensus that the current warming can't be explained by observed changes in the sun. I'll quote from something I wrote on another blog:

http://futuregeek.blogspot.com/2006/07/5-global-warming-myths-debunked.html

From a 2003 Science Daily article NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate:
"Although the inferred increase of solar irradiance in 24 years, about 0.1 percent, is not enough to cause notable climate change, the trend would be important if maintained for a century or more. Satellite observations of total solar irradiance have obtained a long enough record (over 24 years) to begin looking for this effect." (emphasis mine)
1 | 2

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/

Len Hart is a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts and full-length documentaries. He is a former major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS, ABC-TV and UPI. He maintains the progressive blog: more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author Contact Editor View Authors' Articles